2 Comments

The Multi-Channel Matrix Has You

Oct 30, 2005
by

News flash (which is really not news at all to most of us): the day of the internet as standalone channel is dead. Today, marketers and businesses recognize that the goal is to deliver the same messages and programs across the Web as through their telephone, mail, storefronts and other channels, with a particular bias toward migrating business online for greater customer control and cost-effectiveness.

The good news about all this is that we’ve had 10 good years to perfect our organizations and processes to optimize the web channel delivery before diving into this deeper end of the pool. We’ve all got it nailed, right? For anyone choking as they read this, you’re right – I’m guilty of being a bit facetious here. Truth is, probably 90% of us who are operating online have a long way to go before we can even create the proper conditions to nail the Web.

And yet we’re definitively at the point in time where those players who can best coordinate their channels will have a striking competitive advantage. So what to do about this?

Perhaps the greatest challenge in moving to a M-C approach is managing the complexity it brings to the traditional organization model. The Web has already cut across this standard model of marketing, business, and technology, creating a challenging operational matrix. Now, we need to push this even further by solving for uniformity of customer interaction functions *across* channels – while still enabling optimal execution
within each.

To my view, this moves us from a two-dimensional matrix to one with three dimensions. Think of it – if your business involves applications (for credit cards, for instance), you may need to have marketing, web, and multi-channel applications team members all working together in perfect harmony to deliver an experience optimized for the web while still aligned to the broader supra-channel customer experience. Is this really likely to happen, and how if so?

I’ve barely solved for organizational questions for managing the Web so far, and now it looks like I’m also going to have to consider this fly in the ointment. I’ll be looking at ways to align resources for success online, with an eye toward this new third dimension.

Filed under: Internet Strategy
  • Beth Kirsch

    Dan,

    That is a interest piece which raises interesting questions.

    But I'm not sure I agree with you completely, I think you missed some shades of gray. Direct Responce online pure plays are the only companies that used the Internet as their only channel. For all other companies, they always had the other channels and went on to the web as it emeraged as a power channel. Your example of credit cards proves that point. Credit card companies use the web now to market, but 10 years ago they really did not.

    Yes, pureplays are adverting offline, but, I think we are a long way from seeing any offline channel as the powerhouse channel for a pure play.

    There are some that advertiser for new customers off line (Amazon, eBay, Overstock, and NetFlix are the one's that come to mind), but I think there are more mid-size DR pure plays who don't. Moreover, I think Amazon et all still focus mostly on the Internet. These are DR companies, DR is harder and more expensive offline with out brick and mortor stores.

    So, yes, for MC retailers you are correct, but they never saw the Internet as the only channel while the pure plays did.

    Thanks for the interesting blog.

    Cheers,

    Beth

  • Dan Leeds

    Beth – you are absolutely right that the above reflects the more traditional company's challenges in addressing the internet as a channel, let alone channel convergence. The impact on traditional organization structures was my main concern since I've found it to add a lot of complexity and present an interesting problem to solve.

    I would argue, though, that even pure online plays have to deal with alignment with the telephone as a channel – it's not just print/TV – but even so they probably have an easier time of it coming from a more web-based org structure.

    Finally, I'm intrigued by your application of the direct/branding dichotomy to the question of channel affinity as they could be argued to be independent dimensions. I'll look forward to more discussion about this since it's one of those fun great big debates.

    Appreciate the comment.
    –dan