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Cognos - Creating Niche
Leadership - Part II
"At Cognos
we always had a clear idea of where we wanted to lead."
from the desk of Peter Fillmore
February 2001
Last month, we discussed three elements of building niche leadership -
building common views of strengths & opportunities (internal), choosing
partners (external), and declaring leadership (internal & external). We
continue with some other key elements:
Creating Leadership - I talked with Rob Rose,
V.P. Product Marketing at Cognos . 'The first
step' he said, 'is primarily an internal effort to unify a group of
professionals to be hungry for leadership.' Rose recently read 'Selling
the Dream' by Guy Kawasaki who suggests that creating a cause is the
key - a cause for people to rally around. For a company with dreams of
market success, the cause must have two components - one for customers,
and one for the people who make up the company. At Cognos, the vision is:
- To
create a new high value application for customers - 'Business
Intelligence on every desktop' was the historic vision; the scope has
expanded to 'Creating competitive advantage - by driving enterprise
relationships and decisions.'
- To
create new markets & new opportunities for the company.
To
create a vision internally, Rose suggests three steps. First,
develop and communicate a statement of core values. At Cognos, these were
three 'Focus on customer success; Build it right; and Deliver
organizational excellence.'
Then define a 'Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG).' This was 'Business
Intelligence on every desktop ' for Cognos. The goal should be clear,
memorable, and have at least a five-year time horizon, so people don't
confuse it with tactics when faced by short-term roadblocks. Examples
include NASA with 'a man on the moon by the end of the decade' and
Microsoft with 'a computer on every desktop.'
Lastly, create vivid descriptions of what will happen when the goal is
achieved. These can be used to motivate your developers, sales team, the
market influencers, and the future customers who will ultimately achieve
success as a result of your efforts. An HBR article includes some
though-provoking examples from Sony, Ford and others, expressed when they
were early stage companies ('Building your Company's Vision' - Collins &
Porras - Harvard Business Review, September-October 1996 available at
hbr.com).
Chose your product 'category' carefully -'At Cognos, we
always had a clear idea of where we wanted to lead,' said Rose. 'Early on
we wanted to own the Oracle market for Query and Analysis.' The category
definition is very important, and it may evolve over time. In the case of
Cognos 'it evolved to be 'Reporting & Analysis' then 'Business
Intelligence.' All this time the Cognos rallying vision was 'to
democratize corporate information.' There is some subtle competitive
positioning here, as there should be. 'There were a number of competitors
with products having similar technical capabilities;' said Rose, 'we were
the first to aim at non-technical managers. For prospect corporations, the
biggest pain was in sales and marketing, so that was where we initially
focused.'
Adjust technology focus as market matures - For Cognos,
their category evolved due to the progress of database vendors adjacent to
Oracle. As the Data Warehouse sector emerged and grew, Cognos added
support for Sybase, Informix, and others who were growing in that space.
Then, the Database became less the focus of IT planners. As Rose
commented, 'The question became "What application do I want a data
warehouse for?"' Answering that led to a redefinition of the niche as
'Business Intelligence (BI).'
Then came the 'Mother of all discontinuities' as Rose referred to the
Internet. 'It blew open the door for us to truly democratize the data
analysis applications. There was a lot of technical development work - we
had to create robust server-based software for the Internet.'
Also, as customers are evolving into e-businesses, Cognos is finding their
customers BI applications are falling into two categories - operational
(You look at my inventory, you ship when needed, I pay you) and
performance-based (How is my e-business doing?). This is good for growth
in the BI sector because many of the applications that used to be
'reporting' are now becoming 'mission critical.'
Crosskeys - Creating Niche Leadership - Part I
Cognos & Crosskeys - Creating Niche
Leadership - Part III
Your comments, questions, and suggestions for future articles are welcome
fillmore@westpark.com
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