Hi, I’m Peter Brockmann (News - Alert), industry analyst, consultant, blogger and recent communications equipment executive. Click here for my bio. I’ve chosen the title ‘Out of the Box’ for two reasons:
- I’m always thinking ‘outside the box’. One of my managers once wrote on my annual evaluation, ‘Peter has many ideas, but not all of them are good ones.’ Despite the slam, I’ve been rewarded for connecting some great dots together and creating value where none existed. One employer gave me an Innovation Award, normally reserved for the fellow who invented a new kind of ____ that saved the company and created a $1 billion market. I didn’t do that. Instead, I won the Innovation Award because of the way I had launched a new networking product.
- As an analyst, I’ve conducted research in customer experience and have positioned my company as experts in customer insight. Analysts, like everybody else in crowded markets have to explain where they fit and my company, Brockmann & Company is no exception. We don’t do magic maps. We don’t do wet finger forecasts of product shipments in 2020. We don’t publish statements of last quarter’s sales breakdowns. Instead, we analyze what users are doing, and what they’re planning to do. This data can be used to draw powerful links between the adoption of a given communications technology and better business performance. My research is about what comes ‘out of the box’ after you’ve deployed it (whatever IT is, especially if we’ve done research on or around it).
In this column I will be writing about my observations and about the users’ experience. I hope that you’ll find these humble contributions interesting enough to comment on, or bookmark or even check out our research at http://www.brockmann.com.
Today’s Out of the Box Post:
Being Green is a big trend. Just like being Internet-savvy was important a decade ago, today, everybody with a pulse wants to get in on the green fun. Oil company marketing, led by BP, with their flowering energy logo, have been positioning their brands as green conscious and broader than oil for the better part of the past five years.
Consumer products companies have been focusing on green— the zero-landfill Subaru auto assembly plant — the availability of thousands of green products from Wal-Mart — and with the Boston Celtics playing well (so far) into the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals, green is good, especially in New England.
Even the communications equipment services companies are getting in the act. For example, BT (News - Alert), the landline provider in the UK recognizes its role as a major consumer of electrical energy and goes so far as to report its revenue/ton of CO2 produced. TANDBERG, the video conferencing manufacturer sponsored a global study of nearly 16,000 consumers and found two important results:
- consumers like working for companies that are green
- consumers like buying from companies that are green
It pays to be green, even in B2B settings. In ad hoc research by Brockmann & Company, 60 percent of respondents would be willing to pay 10 percent more to purchase a green product or service for their employer.
There are business performance reasons to becoming a greener company. Aligning respondents in our recent Power of Green report into the top 15.9 percent (Top Performers) and bottom 15.9 percent (Poor Performers) showed that Top Performers had:
- 3 times more customer satisfaction
- 4.7 times more employee satisfaction
- 1.7 times more revenue per employee
- 42 percent more market share
Being green is for market winners.
But it’s not just about recycling in the office, or reducing the packaging of your products. It’s about the communications choices you have available and implications for reducing and or offsetting your organizations carbon footprint. Probably the biggest single thing business users can do to reduce their carbon footprint is to reduce business travel.
It’s not easy, but there are systematic and powerful policy choices that your company can implement. Telepresence (News - Alert) or high-definition video conferencing makes a huge impact. Using social pressure within the company by publishing the monthly or quarterly list of greatest to least traveler spending in terms of $ and tons of CO2 produced.
How to get started?
Here are a few resources that you might find interesting:
The Power of Green Report — (login required) analysis of the state of green-ness in over 100 companies. The practices and policies were reviewed and analyzed in terms of the Green Quotient. Best practices are discussed.
Creating a Green-er Company — This presentation reviews the fundamentals and how to organize to become greener.
Stimulating Alternatives to Business Travel — (login required) Establishing effective network, social and business goals encourage the practices that can help organizations reduce their dependence on business travel.
Check these out. All are free.
About Brockmann & Company
Brockmann & Company is a consulting and advisory ?rm serving high tech equipment & application vendors and service providers. Clients accelerate growth through customer research & thought leadership. Our motto: “In God we trust, all others bring data.” Learn more: http://www.brockmann.com.
Peter Brockmann is the President of Brockmann & Company, a high tech marketing consulting company.
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