Alan Webber: The best of both worlds is the ideal, but too often we get a far inferior reality. So what are the obstacles that the hybrid companies -- the blend of old- and new-economy organizations -- have to overcome?
Jim Sappington: We've all seen a lot of great innovation, but we haven't yet seen the great execution. We come up with great ideas for our restaurants, but too often we're not delivering the great service or the great food. We can use technology to try to have a positive impact, but in fact, it isn't a focus on the technology that will make the difference.
Lars Nyberg: One of our biggest challenges is that top management needs to understand what technology can do. It needs to have the vision to change the company and allow the organization to benefit from what the technology has to offer. If top management doesn't understand and appreciate the promise of technology, it will get beaten by somebody else who does.
Amy Williams: The biggest challenge I see is making investments in the people and in the technology -- which is huge when you have 20 million customers and 13,000 distributors. Top management has to understand the potential of those investments and have faith that they can generate additional earnings. Without that faith, it's very hard for top management to buy into making those investments, either in people or in technology.
Mary Lee Schneider: One-to-one marketing is a great aspiration. One-to-one databases don't exist in a cohesive and coherent way. It's a wonderful dream. At Donnelley, when we work with our customers, we find out that the average response rate for a direct mail piece is 1.5% to 3%. In general, 40% of all magazines that are printed end up being returned unsold from the newsstand and destroyed. There's a huge amount of inefficiency there. So the real challenge is revolutionizing communications effectiveness to give people the right information at the right time in the right format.
Lars Nyberg: I have to challenge that. There are companies that do use technology to understand the data they have about their customers -- and they double or triple the responses they get, compared with the numbers that you mentioned. You can use technology to gain market share or to shave costs. And if you get a 9% response rate instead of a 3% rate, you get more revenue. So yes, it's ambitious. But it's also clearly possible.
Warren Holtsberg: It sounds like we're painting technology as the devil here! I would unequivocally state that technology makes my life better every day. But you know what? Technology does not solve every issue that I deal with. Ultimately, it goes back to individual accountability. It's up to us to decide what we want technology to do and to recognize what it can't do. I would remind you that the wireless devices that we sell have a great feature: It's called an on-off button.
Eric C. Dean: Speaking from the technology perspective, I think that one of the biggest obstacles we have to overcome is the information systems of varying vintages that our companies have. Some of the oldest systems perform some of the most important tasks for the company. But it's hard to pinpoint the return on investment of rebuilding the old monsters. All you can say is that if you don't do it, one day you'll realize that you should have started to rebuild it several years back. That is one thing we can blame the dotcom era for: It distracted us from the important idea that we really need to train to run a marathon. Instead, we all got great at running wind sprints.
Warren Holtsberg: One of the big lessons that we've learned is that despite our capabilities and expertise in engineering, we don't have to do everything ourselves. Some of these startups with 20 or 30 people who think that they're going to change the world just might be able to change your world. They might be able to accelerate what you do, bring you to new technologies, new markets, and new talent.
Brad Brinegar: That is one of the biggest challenges our industry faces. For 30 or 40 years, we were the marketing partner for our clients -- everything from soup to nuts. We have to stop believing that we can solve all of our clients' problems and instead focus on our core competencies. We need to learn to leave certain pieces of business on the table. If we put together the right package of services for a client, whether we own them or not, the business lift will help all of us.
Lars Nyberg: The real question is whether senior management is willing to cannibalize a good business before somebody else does. Usually, the answer is no. It's hard to take a big moneymaker, stop it, redefine the business model, and do it without knowing how you're going to come out on the other end.
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