Having covered best-practice fundamentals in e-servicing and questions that businesses need to ask themselves, we will now consider a process that busienesses can use to develop a statement of their requirements.
The proposed requirement definition process comprises six stages that progress the business from its big-picture requirements through to specifics. This statement of requirements will form the basis for initial concept testing with external customers and the brief for the development company/s.
The process-flow diagram in Figure 4-4 illustrates the six stages of the requirement definition process.
Figure 4-4. The six-stage requirement definition process.
As much as we want to use narrative, metaphor, and scenario to enrich our understanding of e-customers, we also want it to enrich the business's vision for, and understanding of, the ways in which it will serve e-customers.
The main forum for this internal story creation, is the "group session." The group session provides a creative context for companies to explore their e-business strategy from a number of different vantage points all grounded in what e-customers need and want. A representative cross-section of the company should be involved in the group sessions, from strategy makers through to people who deal with customers ear to ear, or face to face.
Preparing for, facilitating, and translating the results from the group sessions is
demanding because it requires a good understanding of the relevant e-environment and e- customers. Whether you use external consultants to facilitate the group sessions, and the requirement definition process, is up to you. The key is to ensure that the people driving the process don't miss opportunities for your company to create competitive advantage, by either missing the big picture or detail relative to the business you are in.
Of course, at the time of requirement definition, compaines don't have perfect information about what customers want, and need, from them. While exploratory
research gives companies a lead on e-service opportunities and constraints, companies have to go through the requirement definition process before they can put some definite ideas in front of e-customers for feedback.
During requirement definition, companies have to put some stakes in the ground about what e-customers want, and need, from them. Then, once their ideas are better formed, companies will be able to assess, and revise, their requirements on the basis of e-service concept testing. This revision will be made before the Web site designer is briefed, to ensure that the requisite Web site is customer-effective. Oftentimes, the revised statement of requirements becomes the brief provided to the Web site designer. (An example of a brief's content is given later in this chapter.)
In addition to kicking off the briefing process, requirement definition also kicks off business process improvement and the formulation of an Internet strategy and Web marketing plan. Business process improvement gets kicked off because requirement definition requires the business to identify processes and consider how they could be improved. Then, more rigorous examination of each process would occur later in the development phase of the project. (Business process improvement is covered in Chapter 5.)
To help you formulate and plan your own requirement definition process, we will look at each of the six stages in more detail.
Conduct one-on-one interviews
The design of the group sessions is key to their success. You may have only three hours in which to guide group members through a process by which they can describe what they think needs to be done for e-customers, and you'll get only one shot at it. A three- hour investment is a lot these days, and you'll need to do a top-notch job.
By conducting some one-on-one interviews before designing the group sessions, you can get a feel for some of the current service dynamics and issues and discuss some initial thoughts on the application of Internet technologies. The responses you get will give you a good sense of the areas you must address in the group sessions and relevant case studies and customer scenarios to explore.
You should interview a representative sample of company participants—but don't go overboard; you want a flavor of what's going on in the company and not the recipe. A good facilitator will be able to adapt the group session to take into account new information and perspectives as they come out.
Interviewing people from different areas in the company will also help you decide on the best makeup of the group sessions. You'll need to put participants into groups of up to twelve, and finding commonalties within groups makes for more effective facilitation and more interactive group sessions. Interviews will also give you a picture of the different levels of understanding within the company, so you can design around them.
2.. Design group sessions
Through hands-on experience, I have found the following basic agenda to work very well:
1. Introduction to the Internet and e-servicing.
2. Introduction of a model for thinking about application of the Internet.
3. Exploration of some case studies and sites illustrating different approaches.
4. Group application of the model to participant's own business situation.
5. Groups presentations.
6. Central discussion of ideas, issues, and next steps to wrap up.
Overall the process flow is:
1. Educate.
2. Create a meaningful frame of reference.
3. Apply.
As companies become more familiar with the Internet and e-servicing, the need to educate participants on the characteristics of e-servicing, and the fundamentals of best practice, will reduce. However, it is useful to establish some agreed-on ways of thinking about e-servicing before you get started. Then looking at a range of different Web sites, and discussing them as a group, will create a very rich context for thinking about the company's own approach.
You will have time to look at only bytes of other Web sites, so you need to do a lot of preparation to decide which parts of those Web sites will create the most meaningful context for discussion. Generally, I find that focusing on two or three competitive sites and a completely off-the-wall (seemingly), nonrelated, site works best. Putting
participants face to face with the world as e-customers experience it can be a sobering experience for them, and they will quickly react to what they are seeing by demanding a higher standard of performance from themselves.
3.. Run group sessions
I use models as triggers to help companies think about what they need to develop to serve e-customers better, smarter, and faster online. The models are useful frameworks for thinking about things. Some professionals are happy to use very free techniques, such as inviting participants to create free-form pictures, mind maps, or whatever else channels their creativity. Free techniques are good for visioning and less useful for gathering the detail needed for requirement definition.
Of course, you could run two lots of group sessions, rather than one. The first lot of group sessions could be dedicated to visioning (and utilize more free techniques) while the second lot of groups can be dedicated to fleshing out the vision. I find that, for the purposes of alignment and buy-in, it is best to keep everyone involved as much as possible, and running one lot of group sessions helps achieve that. In addition, the
logistics of running two lots of group sessions involving the same people can be prohibitive, and I find that one session can be designed to give birth to vision and concepts; as well as explore them (because the two pursuits are intertwined anyway).
I have found two models to provide meaningful triggers, and the two models and their respective uses are discussed below.
Model 1
The first model shown in Figure 4-5 works well within companies that have identifiable
"exchanges" with customers; in the form of information exchanges and sales and service processes, for example.
Model 1 simply gives us a way to illustrate how we relate to different groups of customers; to think about the nature of the different exchanges we have with them and how the Internet can be applied. And because the Internet is an active medium, we can also associate specific outcomes to each application of the Internet. This helps remind us of the behaviors and responses we are creating.
Model 1 can be used to consider the application of Internet technologies across a range of audiences such as internal audiences or other suppliers and vendors. In this way,
companies can think generically about the application of Internet technologies, and these may be translated into related intranet and extranet requirements. Sometimes there is an intuitive fit between Inter-, Intra- and Extranet requirements, and this fit can be explored efficiently and holistically in one group session.
Figure 4-5. A workshop model for exploring the application of the Internet to audience- specific exchanges.
I have found Model 1 to be successful because it helps participants break things down simply into people, actions, and applications. The process of identifying audiences tends to be intuitive; people identify groups of people according to the nature of the exchanges they have with them. Audience identification is not meant to be a rigorous customer segmentation exercise and is not treated as such.
Also, in thinking about how the Internet is applied, participants are not expected to suddenly become Internet gurus or Web designers. Rather, participants think in general terms about how Internet characteristics help facilitate better customer exchanges (and those characteristics, and examples of how they have been applied, are discussed earlier in the same group session).
And because we start by identifying customers, and the nature of the exchanges they have with the company, a customer-centric focus is inherently adopted and carried through the application of Model 1.
In applying Model 1, participants complete five activities, as follows:
1. Identify key audience groups.
2. Identify the key exchanges that currently exist between the company and customers, and the nature of those exchanges.
3. What are the outcomes of those exchanges for customers and the company?
4. Identify any ways the Internet could improve those exchanges and outcomes.
5. Are there other exchanges that would also add value to the customer? Identify whether there are desired outcomes not currently met through existing, or known, exchanges, or exchanges that could create new outcomes for customers.
Model 2
The second model, shown in Figure 4-6, works well within companies that have quite different areas of emphasis for different customer groups; and that need to understand and explore the differences in those emphases.
Model 2 shows the relative stages within the marketing and sales cycle and follows this with a curve, along which various customer groups can be placed. The placement of Audiences 1–3 below is hypothetical and would translate to Audience 1 principally requiring after-sales support, Audience 2 principally requiring sales, and Audience 3 requiring presales support. Different audiences could require quite different areas of emphasis because of their different nature and the different service offering the company offers within different service contexts. Establishing different areas of emphasis up front can help avoid a one-size-fits-all mentality creeping in later on.
Of course, the two models can be used together or with different groups within the same company. Model 2 is easily understood by marketing and sales-oriented people while Model 1 is easily understood by customer service personnel (mind you, neither model is particularly demanding and should be understood by all company participants).
In applying Model 2, participants complete five activities, as follows:
1. Identify key target audiences (groups that are similar or do similar things).
2. Consider marketing and sales activities with each audience.
3. Identify the role of the Internet in helping facilitate these marketing and sales activities. Where do they sit on the curve? What is the relative value proposition?
4. Given where customers sit on the curve, what "experience" (interactivity and content) is required to "encourage" e-customers to complete marketing and sales activities?
5. What do the customer and company achieve from partaking in the Web site experience?
While questions are provided to help participants apply the models, each group (within a group session) tends to adopt its own approach. The questions are provided only to answer the first question every group asks itself before embarking on a joint activity—
"So, what are we doing?"
Figure 4-6. A model for placing different audiences within the marketing and sales cycles.
Groups will present back using flip charts and notes. It's always worth encouraging groups to write as much down as possible, so you have a record for later. Sometimes a recording of the session also helps establish, at least, an audio memory of the occasion. I find an audio record useful when issues come up and I haven't fully understood them, or had time to explore them. By going back and replaying the comment, I can explore the issue and catch something, potentially, vital.
A workshop report would be generated as a result of the group sessions. This report should capture the core activities of the groups, their outputs, and the issues discussed.
The workshop report can include an emergent vision statement, or this can be synthesized and distributed separately. The benefit of combining the vision statement with more specific requirements identified in the workshop report is that it creates more tangibility and results in increased impetus and buy-in within the company.
4.. Describe E-business vision and strategy
You will get a lot of output from your group sessions, a lot of great ideas and a surprising amount of detail about possible initiatives and areas the company needs to address. At this stage, the idea is to gather the central thoughts of all that output and formulate a central vision. Doing this first gives you a platform from which you can achieve
organizational alignment and filter and synthesize all the detail you have to to produce a list of requirements for the company's approval.
Oftentimes, the statement of e-business strategy and vision will be part of the executive summary of the workshop report. This allows participants and other organizational stakeholders to see quickly how the strategy and vision were arrived at.
5.. Add supporting e-service concepts and requirements The person involved in translating the workshop output into an initial statement of requirements bears a great responsibility. He or she must find common themes in a diverse, and possibly eclectic, array of group-generated information. And he or she must add value to the information that has been generated by finding additional meaning as a result of collation and additional deliberation. Rather than just regurgitating participant inputs, you will be looking for common e-service concepts and their supporting
requirements.
Sometimes it can help to go back to the people who were interviewed in the one-on-one interviews and "sanity check" some of the themes and concepts that come out of all the group-generated information.
6.. Finalize statement of requirements
After another round (or two) of feedback from participants and stakeholders, you should have arrived at the final statement of requirements. Well, as final as it will get at this stage prior to concept testing with customers. Requirements may then be revised as a result of customer feedback before briefing the Web site's development company/s.
And a final tip relating to the presentation of the company's requirements: you will facilitate quicker signoff from company stakeholders by centering everything on scenarios of what e-customers want, and need, to do.