General Technology

Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category

Video conferencing is an asset that many companies are utilizing. In fact, the popularity of this form of communication has grown immensely in recent years and more than likely will continue to do so. The reason for this growth in popularity has to do with the fact that video conferencing services provide businesses in all sectors and industries with a multitude of benefits and advantages. Thus, by using video conferences to communicate with associates, employees and clients, business people are able to maximize the potential of their company or corporation in a number of different areas. As a result, it’s not surprising that video conferencing solutions are considered by many to be a great addition to just about any business.

Video conferencing is a form of telecommunication which involves interactive technologies and simultaneous audio and video communication. With this technology architecture, people in two or more different locations can connect and communicate. Unlike voice conferences conducted over the telephone, video conferences allow participants to match faces to voices and to make use of visual aids. In many cases, this provides a more personable and engaging meeting experience which can often lead to greater results and more satisfactory meeting outcomes.

One of the reasons that video conferencing services are such a great asset for businesses of all types and sizes stems from their incredible versatility. No matter what type of company you operate, there are many different ways in which you can put video conferencing to work for you. For example, with video conferences you can interview potential employees and conduct virtual training sessions without losing the important personal quality. Video meetings can also be used to showcase products to associates and clients around the world, to make announcements to your entire corporation and to conduct regular meetings and collaborations. Since video conferencing services allow meetings to remain engaging despite geographical distances, you can experience quality communication and solid relationships without needing to be in the same location as all the other participants.

While video conferencing solutions are extremely flexible and versatile, they’re also highly valuable to businesses in a multitude of other ways. To begin with, video conferences can allow companies to save time. When you can communicate effectively with others without needing to leave your office, you no longer need to waste precious time by traveling back and forth to meetings in other locations. Furthermore, video conferences eliminate the need to pull your sales team and other employees out of the field in order to brief them on new developments and to keep them up to date. This means that everyone can remain where they are the most effective. Video meetings also allow you to save time in the sense that they are easier to schedule than on-site meetings because there’s no need to coordinate multiple travel schedules.

In addition to time savings, this form of communication also provides the potential for significant cost savings. Once again, video conferencing services reduce the need for business travel, a source of great expenditure for many businesses. When you don’t need to travel as often, you spend far less money on fuel, plane tickets and accommodation. This means that your company will have more money left over to be put toward other aspects of the business. As a result, video conferencing solutions allow companies and corporations to optimize the use of their resources by cutting down on unnecessary expenditures of both time and money.

These days another benefit of video conferencing services is also capturing the attention of businesses in every industry. This benefit has to do with the fact that video conferences provide companies with a way in which to significantly reduce their negative impact upon the environment without sacrificing the quality of communication. Traveling across the country and across the world is a large source of harmful carbon dioxide emissions, so by allowing companies to greatly reduce business travel, video conferencing solutions also allow those same companies to reduce their carbon footprint. In an increasingly environmentally conscious society, this is a benefit that catches the interest of many businesses.

From their versatility and flexibility to their potential for providing significant savings, video conferencing services have so much to offer companies and corporations across the entire spectrum of business sectors. Considering these advantages and the fact that effective communication is so important to the success of businesses, it’s not surprising that video conferences are considered to be a valuable asset by many companies. It’s also not surprising that the popularity of this form of communication is continuously growing in practically every industry.

Best Practices for Your Change Management Communication Plan

Myths, Mistakes, and Must-Do’s

It’s standard practice in most organizations to build a communication plan as part of the overall change management project plan. Most companies understand that communication plays an important part in achieving the change management project initiatives. Not all communication plans are created equally, however, and many miss the mark. Communication should be more than just an occasional, sporadic activity. Here are some key points to remember in making your next communication plan more effective:

Mistake: Confusing communication with implementation

While a solid communication plan is extremely important, communication alone is insufficient. Generating sponsorship, developing a reinforcement strategy, defining the change, and developing readiness are as important—in fact, sponsorship is the single most important factor in achieving project success. Organizations over-reliance on communication is a common mistake in many implementation plans.

Myth: Providing information is the primary goal of the communication plan

In reality, the primary goal for project communication plans is to drive behavior change, not just to provide information-sharing. Even if you successfully communicate information to the target audience, you miss the mark if that communication doesn’t actively promote behavior change.

Mistake: Depending on one-way, top-down communications as the primary delivery method

One of the most common mistakes we see is a dependence on media like newsletters, emails, and even web-sites as the primary method for communication of large-scale, complex changes. Even in large, geographically-dispersed organizations, agents should rely much more on two-way communication than is often the case.We see many communication plans that do a fair job of information-sharing, but fail to have a mechanism for gathering data to be fed back to the project team and sponsors.

Must-Do: Include a feedback loop to check for understanding on every communication

Without some kind of feedback loop, you have no way to gather data on how people are responding to the communication, no way to answer questions, and no way to surface sources of resistance.No matter how sophisticated the delivery vehicle, if you haven’t built in a feedback loop, your communication is missing the “best practice” mark.

Myth: Expecting that the production of a large-scale, exciting launch event is the most important element of a good communication plan, or is all that is needed for communicating to the targets of the change

While it can be motivating to produce a creative launch event, or a series of cross-functional meetings, remember that that communication is not a substitute for implementation. As Kenneth Klepper, President and COO of Medco puts it, “You can spend enormous resources on implementation– but if you have failed to build the sponsorship for the change, you can’t spend enough money or have enough cross-functional meetings to be successful.”

Must-do:Put messages in the Frames of Reference of the targets

Keep in mind that messages must be constructed to align with the Frames of Reference for the targets, meaning there will be multiple Frames of Reference and therefore, multiple messages.

Must-do: Use multiple communication vehicles, and communicate on a regular basis

In order to better align with multiple Frames of Reference, a variety of communication vehicles should be employed. Regardless of the vehicle, however, there must be a feedback mechanism. In addition, communication should be planned and done on a regular basis.

By rejecting the myths, eliminating common mistakes, and following the “must-do’s”, you will significantly improve the effectiveness of your change management communication plan.

In delivering a customer communications management system, there are extra considerations in respect of the development of a marketing communications plan.



The marketing communications plan can provide a clear guideline as to how to execute, the expected costs and the expected return. Customer communications management will increase the ease with which a multi-channel marketing communications strategy can be executed. It will also increase the sophistication with which a company can communicate in a relevant manner with its customers.

In the context of discussing the plan I will use Philip Kotler ‘P’s framework as this is the standard study for virtually all marketers.

First off, lets establish the Four P’s of product marketing in context with customer communications management:

Product – Which products are you looking to promote? Today’s customer communications management platforms mean that you can market more than one product in an individual campaign based upon an individual users profile. Therefore Product Range Selection is an additional component in the customer communications management driven marketing communications plan. Place – Customer communications management processes give the marketing communications plan complete freedom to choose from a wide range of communications methods. These include voice, Direct Mail, Transactional Mail, Email, Social Media oriented email, social media direct, SMS, mobile and web. Therefore channel flexibility is a key advantage for the marketing communications plan. Promotion – Specifically what is your promotion and what are the promotion objectives? To garner new customers? To market more to your existing customers? To raise awareness of a product launch? To build brand appeal through a news advisory about your company’s efforts in the community? To raise funds for a charity that your company sponsors? The options are wide and varied. The key thing to note again here is that with an integrated customer communications platform, you will have promotion flexibility.

I’ve highlighted four key phrases here that I feel should now be implemented within the marketing communications plan. Lets review these individually.

Product Range

A good customer communications infrastructure will provide significant data analysis and extraction capabilities. A good propensity to purchase analysis model will allow not just a single product to be promoted to an individual customer but, a range of relevant products that will appeal.

Remember that each customer can be communicated with on a genuine one – one basis. Therefore the scope of products that you wish to promote should be considered – They may not be in the same category but you may desire to push certain products in certain categories harder.

Price Elasticity

Not all customers are born the same. The data analysis process within customer communications management will allow you to build price elasticity into your marketing communications plan. You may know for example that keener customers may only buy when a promotional offer is in place. Other customers may buy only when the product is the newest item available. The marketing communications plan may need to consider price elasticity and the targeting of offers on a one to one or customer segment basis.

Channel Flexibility

The ability to deliver a standard but relevant  message, in a synchronised way to virtually any customer communication channel has always been a holy grail. My list reveals 9 communication channels here. Each has its merits and with the ability to systematically deliver consistent messages across each, the power of these systems is as yet unexploited by marketers.

Certain channels bring the capability to target the consumer 24 hours a day. Others such as mail have the benefit of longevity and time in front of the customers eyes. The scope for ever increasing sophistication in marketing is increasing all the time.

Whilst this level of flexibility is new in the market, I can see that the next few years will reveal much interesting data about the use of these channels and their performance in different customer and product segments. The ability to analyse the performance of campaigns using data from a single system is a new feature that works in support of the marketing communications plan.

Never before have companies had such a choice of communications channels combined with the ability to manage them effectively. The next decade is going to offer some very interesting insights in communications channels and their relevance in different market segments.

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