Technology Manager in Leadership Roles - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
01 Jan

Moving Technical Managers to Management Roles: Leadership Transformations by TWB_

By TWB_ In Communication, Corporate Training, Leadership /  9 No Comments

Technical Managers moving into Management roles is a script that plays out every day in large tech companies. Managers with the best technical expertise and ability to reach performance goals consistently are the first consideration for senior management roles. It is clearly an expectation from managers that they are promoted to management, the management thinks it is great because it represents continuity and that deep understanding of technologies, products and systems. Until it hits everyone.

The new management candidate gets increasingly frustrated because they spend little time using their technical skills and instead on  “people problems,” navigating office politics, and coordinating.  Such a transition hits hard because there is a no clear fit of existing skills to new professional demands and there is no quick way to acquire them. In this article, we’ll explore how the HR/ Management of the company, the Tech-manager can make the transition. This transition can occur from early to mid-career roles, and again from mid-career to management. Here’s what each of the participants in this situation should need to consider to get Technical Managers to move into Management roles:

The HR/ Management checklist to promoting Technical/ Functional Managers

Making this transition to Mangement roles gets harder as the candidate gains years and experience — so the first thing to consider is transitions that come earlier in career say in the middle management level.  To begin with, how do you determine that functional/technical manager is a good candidate for a management role? To begin with they should have demonstrated these skills:

 

  1. Great Communication & People skills: (S)He has strong great writing, oratorial and presentation skills as well as people skills.
  2. Willingness to suspend ego gratification:  to concentrate on helping others succeed: Management is about ensuring success at an organisational level and is not about pursuing personal success or fulfilment as much as it is one’s colleagues and co-workers.
  3. Strong ‘hard skills’: They need to not only have great organizational, project management, and budgeting skills management requires being able to task-switch among them. It also requires overall inputs into detailed deliverables, and to manage — people, time, technology and money — in getting things done.
  4. Strong strategic thinking bias: They need to have a deep understanding of how the technology works to help businesses and organizations meet their goals and objectives. This requires an understanding of the risks and rewards that technology presents, and how to produce the best returns on customers’ investments and activities.
  5. Ability to manage communications in both directions: Success depends on understanding the needs of those above and below them in the organizational chart. Stakeholders are on both sides with management the incumbent has to communicate to both sets carrying expectations, instructions but most of corporate goals and actions to produce the most positive outcomes possible.

The Technical/ Functional Managers checklist to Management position

If you are a technical or functional manager moving into a management position you need to prepare yourself these 2 fundamental shifts:

  1. The first is your mindset has to change — Your technical knowledge is only limited help in your new management role as you now have to focus on the skills and successes that involves multiple functions and teams.
  2. The second is that your identity in the company will change –Being a superstar in your functional role will not save you from starting at the beginning again, and you need to be prepared for this “identity demotion.”

Here are some steps you can take to make your transition into a management role smooth

  1. Solving Strategic Problems: You need to translate problem-solving into a management context. Problems will require multiple functions within the company and other industry players etc to solve. Reading on cutting-edge business thinking can allow you to think & engage on a broader front.
  2. Build a cross-functional understanding: Technical Managers frequently have a narrow worldview. Unless you understand and leverage the marketers, sales, operations and and others, you will struggle to move beyond your role as a technical manager.
  3. Find a mentor — Look for someone in your organization who has succeeded in a management role coming from a functional role. A mentor can help you avoid some of the mistakes that they made and help get across to the right people within the organization critical for your success.
  4. Stay away from technical work– Resist the temptation to get involved with technical projects that aren’t your responsibility.
  5. Meet with your reports and their teams —  Meeting them allows you to find out what interests and motivates them, and they have the professional environment necessary to be successful in their role. It also allows you to find out what your team expects from you.
  6. Be a good communicator —  You need to learn how to write, learning how to speak and learn how to behave as ‘management’. Emails need to be crafted with care and sensitivity. Communication needs to demonstrate your intelligence, knowledge and thoughtfulness.
  7. Dress up: Your colleagues, the industry and ecosystem you inhabit expects it. Always dress the part for the position.

Technical & functional managers from IT, finance, sales, or marketing are promoted to management because they know their job well. The problem is that they have little management experience and most organizations offer very little management assistance.  In a management role instead of focussing on macro influences, strategic issues, and “people aspect” of their new role, they continue to stay in their comfort zone — their own projects and technical skills. It is important for the organization to focus on how to make the transition smooth so the organization benefits from the deep functional understanding that the incumbent brings as well as fresh ideas and thinking.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

 

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7 Steps to Creating a Powerful Technology Brand - Branding for Technology Branding - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
30 Dec

7 steps for creating a powerful technology brand: Branding for Technology (Part 3 of 5) by Rakesh Shukla

By TWB_ In Communication, Corporate Training, Leadership, Product Strategy, Strategic Marketing /  5 No Comments

Discussing branding for technology, we’ve seen earlier what makes a brand — the idea of brand promise and lessons from FMCG branding for technology branding. In this article, we elaborate on brand concepts and suggest some specific steps senior managers can take to move their companies from a product-centric to a promise-centric, brand-driven business.

Let’s consider how the buyers and sellers of technology participate in the sales cycle and perceive branding,

From a tech buyers perspective: When B2B consumers of technology especially information technology weigh the merits of a vendor’s bid, they weigh not just how well the vendor’s products and services complement their own business and technological environment but also how the purchase decision looks to others. They are just as concerned with the image of the product as they are with the technical merits. Therefore while it is meant to be a rational decision that maximizes value, it is based on objective or subjective data. That is where a technology brand comes in.

From a tech marketers perspective: Conversely managers in high-tech businesses find brand management concepts interesting but see no merit in moving from a product-centric to a brand-centric model. The common refrain is “it doesn’t apply here”. This argument is based on what they believe to be unique characteristics of high-tech products and markets, mainly fast-changing technology and high levels of uncertainty.

As we’ve seen in the previous 2 chapters it is precisely this expectation gap that a technology brand solves. Indeed when things change quickly, buyers face great uncertainty and they want to deal with a company they perceive has a vision of their needs.

Challenges in high-tech branding are the same as others businesses in formulating distinctive and credible promises of value. However, in high-tech markets, offering a distinctive value proposition is especially difficult since competitors match one another’s clearly defined performance characteristics. There isn’t a great deal of trust between customers and companies in high-tech markets simply because there are many and frequent new entrants, and most have not had the time or the wisdom to build a promise of value that goes beyond price-performance.

For technology branding in the first place it important that before defining a brand for the company to define where it is and where it wants to go. In the first instance: what’s the brand promise? Google stands for discovery. Apple stands for quality and innovation. What’s yours? Aspiration? Trust? What should the customer feel each time they think about the company or use the product. This emotion is what needs to be built into the brand.

In the second place, the process involved in the development of a branding strategy requires us to review the purpose of the company, its reason to be. “Why we do what we do” is much more important than “what we do” and “how we do it”. What do customers, prospects, partners, investors, reporters, analysts, even competitors think? Bridging the gap between the two with messaging, positioning, and a visual language is the branding.

7 steps to creating a powerful technology brand

Price – Performance in branding

“Price” and “performance,” for example, may mean different things to different people. Does price mean initial cost or life cycle cost? Does performance mean microprocessor speed, the speed of delivery of services, the product’s ability to keep pace with the market? Does performance include presale and post-sale service and support? High-tech companies can make it clear exactly which aspects of their offerings’ price and performance benefit their customers through branding.

Developing the brand promise

The promise of value must be relevant to the people or businesses a company wants to have as its customers; no business can promise everything for everyone. But it is possible to tailor a promise to meet the desires of a specific subgroup of customers, as long as that promise can be kept and as long as it doesn’t confuse anyone. That’s why a company must consider its own capabilities and its target customer segments before developing its brand message. 

Branding on Benefits

Many high-tech managers are most comfortable a brand as a set of tangible, verifiable product characteristics. However, high-tech purchases involve not just technologists but also business managers and end users, who are far more interested in what a technology product does for them than in how it works. As high-tech managers come to understand this, many start changing the way they speak of their offerings. Instead of selling “products,” they sell “solutions” or “benefits.” Such a shift in thinking is not enough. A company needs to decide it wants to be in the space of product competition or brand competition. Competitors can continually match and leapfrog over one another by offering better and more features and by identifying the benefits of their products for customers.

Brand promises need to be enduring

While a brand needs to make an enduring promise. Making and keeping a promise, and keeping it consistently, can be a powerful source of competitive advantage. However making too many promises, or changing them frequently, raises uncertainty and erodes brand value. There’s a high probability that truly strong brands will continue to be leaders because they make and keep a promise of value over successive generations of technologies. True, newer technologies can eclipse older ones but an enduring promise of value can buy time for a brand in the face of new technology even the face of serious lapses in product quality.

Market share is not brand promise

Companies sometimes think that a leadership position in a market is a promise. However, market share, even overwhelming market share is not, a promise of value. Brand equity will distort customer perception of size and value very quickly and there is no way that a company can stay immune to if the competition focuses on it.

Brands provide emotional rewards

It is very difficult for many high-tech managers to acknowledge,  the idea that emotions can be so important to a company’s success. But goods and services that reside in that third level are indeed developed and positioned as a way of fulfilling a promise of value to selected customers, not simply as technologies in search of a market. How do customers feel when experiencing the benefits of the brand? Do they feel confident? Productive? Innovative? Caring? Responsible? Successful? 

Brands have personality

Brands have deeper values — such things as conservative values, family values, achievement-oriented values. These are characteristics the brand would have if it had human qualities: friendly, warm, caring, confident, decisive, aggressive, or the like. They attract a customer set they are focused on and are the differentiating characteristics of the brand. 

Brand Performance should be measured

Too often the only yardstick of performance is awards or 3rd party rankings – both of which may not be adequate -markers of brand performance. For high-tech companies, it is important to track how customers perceive the brand relative to its competition over time. It is also important to monitor the health of key dimensions of a brand’s promise of value. Even the most benchmarked aspect of customer satisfaction managers need to determine if satisfaction is leading to loyalty.

A company cannot expect to build broader acceptance simply by making a promise of value in advertising. It must first know what promise to make and to whom. That requires the ability to assess the potential of relevant technologies and to anticipate its customers’ current and future needs—even before customers can articulate those needs. It must also ensure that the promise of value is understood and fulfilled as the company manages complex networks of value-adding partners, ranging from consulting firms to systems integrators, from independent software vendors to resellers.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

Are you looking to create or improve your technology brand?

 

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Storytelling for Business - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
30 Dec

Great storytelling for business leadership: What makes listeners connect?

By TWB_ In Communication, Corporate Training, Leadership /  10 No Comments

How many of your management team are true leaders — those who can inspire the organization, set a vision, teach important lessons, define culture and explain what the organization. Of those who are, how many are great communicators? Turns out some of the leadership and all of the communication are learnt skills. The easiest and the most powerful communication skill is telling great stories or ‘storytelling’.

Storytelling is critical for management and leadership because very often nothing else works. Graphs will leave listeners untouched. Conversation and dialogue can be too didactic. But the same listener can be moved with a great story. Storytelling in the business context translates abstract numbers into compelling statements of a leader’s goals —  by drawing the listener(s) into the story. Though business cases are made of hard numbers, stories make them spring to life because storytelling can show causal relationships. The question, therefore, is not about telling or not but rather to tell them unwittingly and clumsily or intelligently and skillfully. Storytelling can be learned by anyone who wants to be a leader — CXOs, Senior and Middle management.

Why is storytelling important?

In a  meeting or a talk in a short time-span, a leader can communicate maybe only 1 or 2 powerful ideas. Storytelling, however, allows for multi-layered complex ideas to be told since they are not sequential but interwoven. It is this association that and sharing of complex ideas that can allow leaders to – spark change, transmitting values, share knowledge and lead people into the future.

Leaders establish credibility through telling stories. The audience can feel and respond immediately and deeply. Stories can communicate complex ideas, break status quo, generate interaction & transformation. Rather than merely advocating and counter-advocating positions through constructed and business focussed meetings, talks, emails and other such communication a  story, especially a personal one, breaks through the acceptance barrier. Communication becomes empowering – even as the leader comes across as more vulnerable – yet someone who is still a leader because (s)he has persevered.  

Why is storytelling so powerful?

Storytelling draws in the listener and draws on the active, participation of individuals as against conventional management focuses on lifeless elements  – mission statements,  strategies, processes, budgets and assets. Stories make people discover a degree of coherence that is otherwise very difficult to achieve — something that has been an underlying principle of psychotherapy.

When a listener hears a story that touches him or her they feel their lives have a meaning.  This feeling eventually vaporises and the listener inevitably falls back into an everyday pattern — but with the difference that a radical shift in their lives have taken place and their motivation and behavior are primed for change.

What makes a good story and a good story-teller?

First and foremost the story needs to be personal and it needs to imply values. People make deep associations with leaders that have the courage to tell a strong personal story, and where the story implies certain values. The second is that the audience associates with people with a ‘consistent’ self‐image. For a leader, it is important to have a clear view of a personal life‐story that is aligned that is the thrust what you want the audience to see.

The leader tells a story to show people who they are. Their identity as an individual doesn’t lie in their roles, it is in the one‐of‐a‐kind person they have become as a result of the experiences they’ve had. The leader must tell stories interactively and model it on a conversation — that creates a relationship between the leader and the listener that is symmetrical — such that the listener could speak next. It is this feeling with the listener of being in an open conversation that the leader is vulnerable that the listener is drawn ‘into’ the story.

Types of storytelling

  • Style: The leader should tell the story as if it were being told to a single individual. The story should be kept simple, focused and clear with no alternate points of view. 
  • Don’t argue the truth: The leader should offer listeners an unobstructed view of the truth and listeners will see it and recognize it for what it is — that any reasonable person would have to agree.
  • Practice ease: Only 7% of the meaning of a communication came from the content of the words spoken 93% comes from nonverbal communication. The leader should seem spontaneous. They should choose the shape of the story and stick to it. Practice ease. 

Points of action

The story needs to have an end in mind — what do you want the listener to do when the story is over? These could include:

  • Sparking action: The story describes how a successful change was implemented in the past, but allows listeners to imagine how it might work in their situation. Communicating who they are – provides audience‐engaging drama and reveals some strength and vulnerability from the leaders past.
  • Transmitting values: The leader uses believable characters and situations and ensures the story is consistent about values and actions.  This feels familiar to the audience and will prompt discussion about why they can’t follow the same values/ action too!
  • Sharing knowledge: Leaders focus on problems and shows, in some detail, how they were corrected and why the solution worked and solicits alternative – and possibly better – solutions.
  • Leading people into the future: The leader evokes the future they want to create without providing excessive detail that will prove to be wrong.

No matter how compelling the numbers of sheets, charts or infographics if they require people to act in unfamiliar ways that is unlikely to happen. But effective storytelling often does. Storytelling can inspire people to act in unfamiliar ways. And remember storytelling not only gets the message across effectively, its incremental cost is zero. 

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

 

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Lessons from FMCG branding for Technology Branding - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
30 Dec

Lessons from FMCG branding: Branding for Technology (Part 2 of 5) by Rakesh Shukla

By TWB_ In Communication, Corporate Training, Leadership, Marketing Content, Product Strategy, Strategic Marketing /  9 No Comments

Because the brand concept evolved in the consumer goods markets it is no reason to reject it in business-to-business technology markets. But neither can it be used as is. In this article, we understand the branding gap, draw lessons, and understand the differences, from an industry that creates enduring brands – the FMCG businesses.

A great deal of our knowledge about branding and brand strategies comes from the accumulated experience of consumer-packaged-goods companies (FMCG) such as Unilever,  Procter & Gamble and Nestlé. They practically invented brand management and have created a wealth of enduring and highly profitable brands. We’ve seen in Part I how for a large part of the high-technology businesses identity is seen as a logo or trademark and branding, where does that thinking come from and why. That is the major gap in how enduring the technology is in the market-place.

High-tech markets are often more segmented, focused, and granular. Marketing high-tech products and services, especially to the enterprise, costs less than marketing consumer packaged goods. An individual’s decision to buy a certain brand of soap may be more emotional than that of a company’s decision to go with a certain line of networking equipment, but the line between a high-tech product and a consumer product is becoming increasingly fuzzy. Parallel motives exist even in business-to-business high-tech purchases. Therefore there is a great deal to learn from the FMCG business on bridging the technology branding gap.

Lessons from FMCG branding

While the High-Technology industry is crowded and thrives on discontinuous change, marketing hardly ever focuses on benefits. The FMCG industry (as a surrogate for other industries with mature marketing practices) on the other hand has a much slower rate of change but articulates great continuity in branding! They very successfully make a promise of value is critical for a company to differentiate itself from its competitors and stake a solid claim in its intended market sometimes for decades.

But if FMCG industries are great in branding then why don’t tech companies just run with it? Why doesn’t the high-technology industry leverage FMCG (say) marketing? In the first place, each is defined by the contours of its industry. The channels are not the same. The customer is not the same. The buying decision is not exactly the same. Understanding the differences allows us to highlight how to fill the branding gap in high-technology. Here are some high-technology branding aspects and how they are different from their FMCG counterparts.

Promise of Value

A fast pace of change renders all technology product brands obsolete quickly. Customer criteria and expectations change rapidly. The overall expectation of experience that a customer has with the brand that is it’s purchase-use- feedback-repurchase is the something that the FMCG business likes to tightly control even though the product travels through long-chain channels for delivery and renewal. On the other hand technology businesses have fewer degrees of separation from the actual consumer to where the product originates but the high-tech businesses seldom actually completely articulate their promise of value which is core to building a brand.

Product Longevity

In the FMCG industry, technology is not fast changing and there is a greater emphasis on emotional messaging and building a connection with the consumer. The relationship between a brand and its consumer forms the basis of loyalty and companies build a brand with a horizon that is years if not many decades. In high-tech businesses, not many brands attempt to establish that connection with the consumer primarily because even the best B2B product life cycle is seen as 3-4 yrs.

Communication Asks

The purpose of branding is different in both.  FMCG branding builds a communication cycle to build recall or induce purchase. FMCG brands focus on the ‘touch’ points where the consumer will experience it to induce an interaction. For high-tech businesses, a large part of their business may be with B2B customers, and advertising is a less important ingredient of the promotion mix than more cost-effective ways of approaching customers such as trade shows, the Internet, and user groups.

High-tech users look for solutions to problems — they are invariably looking to ease a pain point or make life easier and they often start by searching for an answer. In high-tech branding, therefore, it is utilized communications that reach customers at the exact moments and places where they seek to engage to solve problems.  

Articulating Benefits

The most key lesson that FMCG brings to branding is the focus on benefits. Most high-tech branding talks about features and not benefits. There is a lot of engineering stuff narrated in high-tech branding whereas  FMCG branding has been able to convert those features into a consumer benefit that in turn focuses on a single promise of value.

Perceived Risk

FMCG products typically carry relatively small perceived risk. Unit prices are low. Time to repurchase is short. Demand for user behaviour change is low. High-Tech products, on the other hand, have much steeper learning curves and most of the time a multi-year purchase lock-in. High-Tech branding message needs to address this risk and manage it through the adoption curve.

Purchase Cycles

FMCG purchase decisions are made quickly and most often by lone consumers based on few criteria and purchases often characterized by impulse buying. High-Tech purchase decisions are more B2B decisions and are made by groups or committees over long evaluation cycles based on many criteria followed by extended negotiations. The high-tech brand, therefore, should be used to set and influence decision-making criteria as well as defend pricing and terms.

Availability, Distribution & Time to Experience

FMCG products typically have deep vertical supply chains for delivery direct to consumer at the time of purchase. Consumer enjoys immediate gratification. In the technology business multiple vendor components ‘assemble’ the product experience. Delivery to the customer includes partners, resellers or multiple third parties such as integrators. Implementation and operation trail purchase by weeks or months. High-Tech branding, therefore, has a large role to play to assure buyers of user experience, risk avoidance, and return on investment.

Tech Branding Lessons from FMCG

High-Tech companies often focus too heavily on the product that they’re selling, rather than telling the story behind it. Technology decisions, especially B2B purchases, are expensive especially when they impact an entire organization. These costs are both direct and indirect (maintenance, training, etc). As against FMCG where risk is low, gratification is immediate and cost of purchase is simple. To induce buyers to buy a high-tech brand must sell a vision, not just a product. A customers’ emotional response to high-tech branding has far more influence in their purchasing decision, even a B2B product, than the actual product itself. High-Tech branding requires continual reinvestment to ensure users engage with the product and develop a strong loyalty to the brand.  High-Technology products reach a threshold of functional breadth and depth quickly which then delivers diminishing marginal returns to customers. Only companies which have developed a brand preference, over more temporary ‘product’ preference, insulate themselves from commoditization and set themselves apart for continued growth.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

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The Essential of Branding for Technology - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
29 Dec

Essentials of Technology Branding: Branding for High-Tech (Part I of 5) by Rakesh Shukla

By TWB_ In Communication, Content, Corporate Training, Marketing Content, Strategic Marketing /  8 No Comments

A high-tech company’s brand is not the product name, not the logo, not the tagline, nor brand colours. All these are associated with the brand – but they do not form the brand itself.  It is the name of its business. In this part 1 of 5 parts, we examine what are the drivers & characteristics of high-tech branding, how the models for FMCG branding don’t work for high-tech and what does. 

TWB_ works with the worlds leading high-tech companies, whose solution is so brilliant that significant business growth has been achieved through inbound marketing. The company and its marketing believe that if a new technology is as good as it says it is then the product can sell by itself. In the short term it may be true but in the long term, it leaves the company vulnerable to attack. The fence is the brand. 

Strong brands are forged out of an emotional connection with customers. Branding forces marketing to ask what is the number one emotion each time the customer engages with the brand. Customers experience through when they read your blog, visit your website, retweet a tweet, visit a store, call customer care or watch a product video. Building a brand, therefore, forces the company to revisit what it really is, because as we’ll see, brands are promises that deliver an experience.

Why do you need branding?

High-tech companies tend to forgo a true branding strategy in place of focusing on improving the technology on offer chiefly delivering additional features. The fast-changing pace of technology means that, although the solution might very well be the best on the market today, tomorrow, another company could bring out something that’s even better – and there is an infinite release cycle to catch up. Brand building is a strategy that looks to the long-term, with the ultimate purpose of gaining a sustainable competitive advantage, here’s how:

Branding creates differentiation

In a world of marketing plagiarism, branding is what demonstrates a company’s competitive advantage by highlighting the company’s purpose. A brand is the identity of a company. And identity is everything. Without branding, there is no differentiation.

Branding is a cushion

For a technology business to maintain its altitude over the long-term,  branding is just as important – perhaps even more important – than the technology itself. Branding – which is the branding of the company as opposed to the actual product – is what give the business a chance of long-term growth and survival.

Branding lowers perceived risk, but highlights innovation

High-Tech industries live in high uncertainty environments. Uncertainty is both about innovation (disruptive products and competitors) and markets (how quickly will the market shift?). Customers, strangely, live in a paradox — innovation is seen as a great motivator to choose a product but anything that is too disruptive and discontinuous is easy to reject, on the other hand.

  • Scepticism is inherent to innovation because new technologies tend to suffer from a liability of newness, that is, they do not have a history of past performance. Consequence there is uncertainty about technology being immature and unstable. A powerful brand can straddle this and communicate the promise.
  • Innovative products elevate perceived risk because consumer familiarity and experience is limited. The perceived risk of a new product purchase may exceed the individual’s acceptable level of risk affecting even if they are early adopters and the financial risk is with the company. Again brands provide a continuity of ‘experience’ even in times of change for both early and late adopters. 

Brands forge company identities & relationships

Brands can create growing base of employees after founders and early employees get outnumbered by new hires. Brands accelerate the depth of an ecosystem of partners. Powerful brands help attract and keep customers. It can also be a strong foundation from which to launch new products, improve relationships with channel partners, foster good communication among employees within and across business functions, and help a company better focus its resources.

Bridging the Technology-Branding gap

But if brands work so well, why don’t more high-tech companies brand more effectively? It’s because Tech managers assume that brands and brand images are relevant only when purchase decisions are “irrational” or “emotional” and seen to be the case appropriate for detergents, automobiles, and fashion. However, the evidence is totally on the contrary on performance data of markets populated by highly sophisticated and experienced customers. High ticket high-tech purchase decision as made on much the same beliefs and decision-making processes. So how do we bridge the gap and create world-class technology brands?

Product-Centric thinking: Why Tech-Managers stall branding

Most technically trained managers won’t  easily buy the idea that their businesses should be focused on brands. The first stop in having effective brand management is well your management.  Here’s why:

  1. “Why does a great tech company need brand management?” The bias is simply because managers who have grown up through the technical side of the business do not truly understand what good brand management involves and what it can do for their company. Most tech-managers think of marketing as selling, and branding as an advertising campaign or a slogan for them these are both costly and difficult to assess. For most tech-managers, the idea of developing and maintaining a strong brand simply does not resonate.
  2. “That’s what marketing does, doesn’t it?” Without C level or even Business or Product Management commitment brand management is mostly left to the marketing or sales departments. So it’s not central to the technical direction of the company. A brand remains a  logo, a trademark, a slogan, or a campaign — and marketing is supposed to handle those things.
  3. While the tech-managers don’t understand marketing, the marketing managers don’t understand technology.

The market share myth of Product-Centric thinking 

Product-Centric thinking is when managers in high-tech companies think that high-tech products and services will succeed as long as they perform as promised. A good product will satisfy customers’ needs, and develop a large install base.

  • Product-centric thinking is dangerous because customers do not necessarily experience a company’s promise of value just because its products enjoy wide acceptance.
  • Technology Managers are taught to think that market success depends primarily on the price-performance ratio and a product’s success is ensured once a large installed base is secured. It is assumed there is a customer lock in as switching costs pose a barrier to buying from other suppliers. However, monopoly power built on an overwhelming market share is not, in the end, a promise of value.

Short term – vs – Long term planning

High technology companies struggle between what they perceive as a choice: short-term product marketing versus long term brand building. Mature technology companies strike a balance as they understand the competitive advantages derived from powerful brands. Others dilute or forego branding in favor of more tactical technology evolution, new product feature sets, increased flexibility or improved price-performance. This short term focus results in a product marketing emphasis, which renders the marketing spend and message obsolete as the technology continually advances.

What then should a brand be?

A brand is the way in which customers perceive this personality. A tech company’s brand is the way in which users experience the product and service at all levels. It is the brand to which customers stay loyal to in a market where there are plenty of other similar solutions. In later parts, we’ll examine the framework of creating a technology brand and how a company develops a ‘promise of value’ for its customers.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

Are you looking to create or improve your technology brand?

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AI in Marketing by Rakesh Shukla for TWB_
04 Oct

B2B Marketing in the time of Artificial Intelligence: What can you leverage and how

By TWB_ In Strategic Marketing /  5 No Comments

Can AI in Marketing help solve the intense pattern matching that appears to be ‘feel’ or intuition for marketers? A few weeks ago TWB_ hosted automationshift_ India’s 1st CXO Conference on AI. Senior AI leaders from Microsoft, Wipro, Salesforce, DimensionData, Microland etc discussed how AI is being leveraged in the enterprise today. While adoption is seeping in, AI in Marketing is something TWB_’s customers grapple with every day (and we grapple for them).  AI is already impacting marketing, and it’s going to further shape the future of how business is done.

And why not — if Google’s AI can master video games in hours and MIT’s AI can predict action on video two seconds before it begins — could AI not allow marketing teams to focus sharply, acquire faster and service better? As an Agency for Technology Brands, TWB_ can see how the potential of AI is giving way to implementations on it can change branding, marketing, and advertising.

What AI can focus on readily, includes (a) Behavioral modelling and targeting where it can help learn user behaviour and target potential customers based on their internet browsing data (b)  Superimpose perception-reasoning-action cycle to the collect-reason-act cycle. A high degree of automation can already be achieved in capturing customer or prospect data. Data can be transformed into information and eventually intelligence or insight and this is where AI has a key role to play. In marketing, context-act would be some sort of communications that would attempt to influence a prospect or customer purchase decision using a ‘market-of-one’ type personalization.

AI is already in the Marketing mix today

We all know Social platforms use insights to algorithmically curate a news feed. There are however other elements of AI in marketing that are already in play today as well. Here are some focus areas:

  1. Website Design: AI called Molly builds Grid’s websites. A user inputs content into The Grid — like images, text, and calls-to-action — and Molly builds the site.
  2. Content Creation: Tools like Wordsmith and Quill are already being used by the likes of The Associated Press and Forbes to create clickable news content though focussing on data as the source.
  3. Content Curation: AIs such as IBM Watson are making brands learn more about consumers by analyzing behaviour — and providing curated content and recommendations for them. Great examples are Netflix and Amazon curating recommendations. 30% of revenues already come from this curation.
  4. Marketing Automation: AI helps send customized, personalized content. AI such as Boomtrain allows brands to customized email newsletters based on previous interactions. Optimove’s AI is automating the segmentation process to started sending personalized content.
  5. Advertising: Albert AI algorithm can handle bidding, integration, management, and execution of ad campaigns across email, search engines and social media. It is used by Harley-Davidson which credits Albert for 40% motorcycle sales growth, and 566% growth in website visits.
  6. Chatbots: Chatbots’ wealth of information helps marketers and salespeople quickly find and analyze information about their industries and competitors to get their jobs done more efficiently.

Can AI address B2B Marketing?

Challenges of  Business to Business Marketing are different than the B2C marketing though, and they focus on generating business leads and closing on complicated sales cycles. But here too AI is being leveraged and solutions are appearing.

  1. Better Lead generation: B2B lead generation has long been a process of hours of human research into different companies and categorization of people with purchasing influence within each company. LeadGenius AI does exactly this by picking out the top decision-makers with buyer roles in each company and giving a business a direct contact to several potential new clients. Once the potential clients have been targeted, the tool generates a target list and highlights key data points to help you segment your audience and develop personalized messages.
  2. More effective Sales calls: Most of the sales conversation still happens on phone conversations but they are very difficult to track, analyze and improve. However, Qurious a conversation AI solution, is already in deployment with customers. Qurious AI joins in on conference calls, just the same way a salesperson does, but it transcribes the sales calls in real time using natural language processing. The real value is in analysing conversation in real time, understanding topics and keywords in the conversation, finding patterns and triggering scripts in real time that work to close call. For instance, if a potential customer mentions pricing, the name of a competitor or pain points these trigger actions or scripts. This allows even less experienced sales reps to use the same language and patterns in their own efforts as the most experienced reps.

The Future is here

Large companies with big budgets mounds of historical and real-time sales and marketing data will be the first to benefit. But the marketplace will naturally bring down the integration cost and learning curves, and SMBs will be able to access AI’s abilities almost as well as their larger competitors.

 

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

What Next?

 

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17 Jul

automationshift_ India’s first CXO conference on automation in IT businesses announced: 15 Sept 2017, World Trade Center, Bangalore

By TWB_ In Communication, Product Strategy /  4 No Comments

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bangalore: TWBShift_ Conferences today announced automationshift_ — India’s first conference for CEOs and other CXOs to share their approaches and technological direction leveraging AI + automation + machine learning that drive higher efficiencies across Marketing + Product Engineering + Product Management + Service Delivery + Learning across their organisations. automationshift_ brings together large enterprise users together with exciting start-ups to create a larger automation ecosystem and is created by TWBShift_ Conferences. The conference is on 15 Sept 2017 at the World Trade Center, Bangalore.

Rakesh Shukla, Founder & CEO TWB_ and TWBShift_ Conferences said, “Automation is changing the technology and manpower landscape rapidly. The common narrative is the pain caused by automation however automation is inevitable and TWB_ itself has been at the forefront of automating content for several years. ” Rakesh further said, “It is a natural step for TWBShift_ Conferences to focus on how automation is transforming businesses and highlight the best products, processes, enterprises and start-ups”.


automationshift_ CONFERENCE

automationshift_ is a 1-day conference that packs in

  • a keynote address
  • 5 individual CXO speakers
  • 1 CXO panel discussion
  • 1 product developers round table
  • Release of a 100+ page publication in leading automation thinking from around the world
  • 1 exhibit area with India’s leading software automation products being exhibited.

automationshift_ SPEAKERS & PANELISTS

The speakers & discussions include

  • CEO perspectives the rapidly evolving machine-learning technology landscape and how the industry is leveraging it
  • Chief Marketing Officers perspectives on the role of CMOs in they leveraging to transform marketing.
  • CTO’s, Heads of Engineering & Chief Product Officers discuss efficiency in product design, development & delivery through automation
  • Chief Learning Officers discuss how AI is personalising learning, skyrocketing understanding and crashing discontinuation.
  • Chief Experience Officers discuss how customer service delivery is being transformed through automation

automationshift_ SHOWCASE

The automationshift_ automation showcase brings India’s 7 buzziest AI products together. The showcase is a curated selection of game-changing AI products that impact how business are run. Interestingly they will be under the same roof as the businesses that leverage them.

automationshift_ PERSPECTIVES

The show report has 10 leading voices in automation of marketing, learning, engineering and customer service from across the world writing for automationshift_ in details. It also has over 15 Indian CXO’s sharing their thoughts succinctly. The 100+ report is called ‘Leadership perspective on the autmotomationshift_’ and will be made available in a limited print run to the Indian CXOs at the conference.

 

About automationshift_

automationshift_ is India’s first conference for CEOs and other CXOs to ideate and share their approaches and technological direction leveraging AI + automation and drive higher efficiencies across Marketing + Product Engineering + Product Management + Learning across their organisations. automationshift_ a TWBShift_ conference, also brings together large enterprise users together with exciting AI + automation start-ups to create a larger automation ecosystem. More details available on www.twb.in/shift

About TWB_

TWB_ is the home of Business + Learning + Product content for Fortune 500 technology leaders and start-ups alike. TWB_ creates, automates, repurposes and publishes content achieving unprecedented efficiencies, enhancing content quality, achieving faster go-to-market and lowering costs. TWB_ is the worldwide pioneer of offshore development of technology content (since 2006), was the first India-based company to roll out & implement enterprise-grade Content Automation solution (2010) and the first India-based company to roll out & implement  IETM IV/V solutions for Defense and Aerospace (2013). TWB_ operates across Information Technology, Telecom, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Life Sciences and Aerospace & Defense. TWB_ delivers to over forty Fortune 500 technology majors including AXA, ABB, Cisco, Fidelity, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Israel Aircraft, Microsoft, Oracle, Société Générale, Samsung Shipping, Siemens, Toyota etc located across the Silicon Valley, the US East Coast, France, Luxembourg, Germany, India, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. More information on TWB_ is available at www.twb.in

 

PRESS CONTACT

Sangeeta Velegar

Vice President – Marketing

The Shift_ Conferences by TWB_
1st Floor, Pine Valley Building, Embassy Golf Links Off Intermediate Ring Road

Bangalore – 560071,  India.
Mobile: +91 9880819180 | sangeeta@twb.in  

 

Intro video: https://youtu.be/QlWbwC79Gss

Press kit: https://goo.gl/wc3ZSs 

Conference details: www.twb.in/shift

Registrations: https://goo.gl/eYYHyr

 

PRESS INVITES, SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS, SPONSORSHIPS

Selena D’Souza

Marketing Manager, The Shift_ Conferences by TWB_

96860 59020 I selena@twb.in

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14 Jul

Automation in Learning I automationshift_ Sept 15, 2017 WTC, Bangalore

By TWB_ In Corporate Training /  8 No Comments

Automation is transforming learning across industries as it creates highly personalised learning experiences, and much more! The top Learning & Development, and HR leadership in India will be at automationshift_ for in depth perspectives. Be there!

automationshift_ is India’s first conference for CEOs and other CXOs to share their approaches and technological direction leveraging AI + automation + machine learning that drive higher efficiencies across Marketing + Product Engineering + Product Management + Service Delivery + Learning across their organisations. automationshift_ brings together large enterprise users together with exciting start-ups to create a larger automation ecosystem and is created by TWBShift_ Conferences. The conference is on 15 Sept 2017 at the World Trade Center, Bangalore.

automationshift_ CONFERENCE

The 1-day conference has a tight schedule that includes a CEO keynote address, 5 CXO speakers, 1 panel discussion, 1 round table and 1 exhibit area with India’s 7 leading Artificial Intelligence startups exhibiting their products. CXO perspectives include the rapidly evolving machine-learning technology landscape and how the industry is leveraging it, perspectives on the role of CMOs in they leveraging to transform marketing, impact on efficiency in product design, development & delivery through automation, how AI is personalising learning and crashing discontinuation and how customer service delivery is being transformed through automation

automationshift_ SHOWCASE

The automationshift_ automation showcase brings India’s 7 buzziest AI products together. The showcase is a curated selection of game-changing AI products that impact how business are run. Interestingly they will be under the same roof as the businesses that leverage them.

automationshift_ PERSPECTIVES

The show reports has 10 leading voices in automation of marketing, learning, engineering  and customer service from across the world writing for automationshift_ in details. It also has over 15 Indian CXO’s sharing their thoughts succinctly. The 100+ report is called ‘Leadership perspective on the autmotomationshift_’ and will be made available in a limited print run to the Indian CXOs at the conference.

 

What next?

  • Visit the automationshift_ website here | Register for the conference here
  • Sponsorships, Speaking Opportunities or other information call 96860 59020 or mail shift@twb.in
  • Watch the automationshift_ intro video
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14 Jul

Marketing Automation I automationshift_ Sept 15, 2017 WTC, Bangalore

By TWB_ In Strategic Marketing /  5 No Comments

Automation + AI + Machine Learning is changing everything including Marketing! At automationshift_ Bangalore, India’s leading CMO’s, across technology led businesses, share perspectives on how they are leveraging automation in Marketing bringing ever greater efficiencies and pinpoint focus.

85% of your customers will engage with you without engaging with a real person by 2020!

automationshift_ is India’s first conference for CEOs and other CXOs to share their approaches and technological direction leveraging AI + automation + machine learning that drive higher efficiencies across Marketing + Product Engineering + Product Management + Service Delivery + Learning across their organisations. automationshift_ brings together large enterprise users together with exciting start-ups to create a larger automation ecosystem and is created by TWBShift_ Conferences. The conference is on 15 Sept 2017 at the World Trade Center, Bangalore.

automationshift_ CONFERENCE

The 1-day conference has a tight schedule that includes a CEO keynote address, 5 CXO speakers, 1 panel discussion, 1 round table and 1 exhibit area with India’s 7 leading Artificial Intelligence startups exhibiting their products. CXO perspectives include the rapidly evolving machine-learning technology landscape and how the industry is leveraging it, perspectives on the role of CMOs in they leveraging to transform marketing, impact on efficiency in product design, development & delivery through automation, how AI is personalising learning and crashing discontinuation and how customer service delivery is being transformed through automation

automationshift_ SHOWCASE

The automationshift_ automation showcase brings India’s 7 buzziest AI products together. The showcase is a curated selection of game-changing AI products that impact how business are run. Interestingly they will be under the same roof as the businesses that leverage them.

automationshift_ PERSPECTIVES

The show reports has 10 leading voices in automation of marketing, learning, engineering  and customer service from across the world writing for automationshift_ in details. It also has over 15 Indian CXO’s sharing their thoughts succinctly. The 100+ report is called ‘Leadership perspective on the autmotomationshift_’ and will be made available in a limited print run to the Indian CXOs at the conference.

 

What next?

  • Visit the automationshift_ website here | Register for the conference here
  • Sponsorships, Speaking Opportunities or other information call 96860 59020 or mail shift@twb.in
  • Watch the automationshift_ intro video

 

 

 

 

 

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26 Jun

MarketingShift_

By TWB_ In Strategic Marketing /  2 No Comments

TWB_ makes your technology stand out.

TWB_ is the Strategic + Creative + Technology Agency for the Fortune 500 & startups alike.

TWB_ provides the strategic Marketing support that fast moving tech leaders need. Positioning. Branding. Analytics. Digital. Reports.

What Next?

 

 

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