I've spent the entire weekend thinking about where we are as a company and were we are going -- so I decided to spend some time tonight writing them down and sharing it with you.
Our Vision: eBusiness that Makes a Difference...
Wow. What a long road we've traveled to ultimately end up here. I'd love to tell you that it was all architected in the beginning. In fact, I'm certain I can make up a rational story that would support it. But the truth of it is we ended up here by continuously looking to add value to our customers, provide the right solutions to them, and by relentlessly evolving our business model and go to market strategy to support it. What's in a 5 word phrase anyways you say? Well, here is what "eBusiness that makes a difference" means to me.
First, "eBusiness" means that we are in the "revenue" chain. We are focused on helping our customers figure out how to grow their revenue (sales). Whether it be through delivering the right message to the right person at the right time through the right channel (Content), supporting online transactions for both B2B and B2C from product search through selection, through checkout, through order management to customer service (Commerce), ensuring they have the right message for the appropriate personas with the right user experience delivered through email, SMS/MMS or social (Communications), or ensuring that not only can they make heads or tails of the data in these systems, but they can get real insights from it that helps them iterate from Phase 1 to Phase 2 to Phase n of their revenue growth initiative (Analytics) -- Crown has assembled a team of colleagues, partners, frameworks and processes to ensure success.
Now, it's the "that makes a difference" that inspires me the most. If you've ever heard me explain this to our new colleagues or a potential client I start by saying "for the first 7 years of the company's life we only focused on the Fortune 500. In fact, I stopped counting in 2007 when we had 133 of the Fortune 500 and 37 of the Fortune 100 as clients. BUT, we didn't move the needle for many of them. 4 or 5 years ago (the transition was a bit fuzzy) we decided that we wanted to focus on clients where we could change their trajectory (for the positive). And, we wanted to be in the revenue chain because after all, you can't cost cut and drive effeciency forever on your way to success. You have to focus at some point on growing. And, we want to be that point of inflection for our clients when they eventually look back and see how their business changed for the better and started growing again." That's what we mean by "that makes a difference".
Building the Plane while Flying it
Have we ever been doing this! Our plane has been flying and evolving at the same time. If someone got close to the edge, we just grabbed them by the collar and yanked them back into the plane. That's why the word evolution was such an important core value. The interesting thing is we are so good at evolving now that it's hard to slow it down -- even when we should. In fact, once we do in the back of our mind we start questioning whether there is just another evolution of our business on the horizon. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's critically important that evolution turn to iteration. We need to iterate on our business, go to market strategy and execution to stay current. But, the evolution has slowed. We know who we are and where we are going and are focusing on on driving it forward now.
Here is some interesting data for you. In 2010 55% of our business was from consulting with our clients on their back office efficiency or cost savings initiatives. Only 45% was in eBusiness or in the flow of their revenue. In 2012 the back office focus for Crown dropped to 30% and the eBusiness focus rose to 70%. And, in 2012 we consciously shut down any further efforts on back office consulting and 2013 will be nearly 100% eBusiness consulting focusing on helping our clients grow. Even more mind boggling, we will double the size of the company between 2010 and 2013. If that isn't building the plane while flying it, I don't know what is...
Our Clients
The work we are doing for our clients tends to be either their top 1 or 2 initiatives in the company. It is so important that we frequently sit with their leadership team executives and sometimes even board of directors with a seat at the strategic table. We are making a difference for them. And, they are clients you may have heard of: Fidelity, Herman Miller, Wyndham, Totsy, Pampered Chef, St Jude, etc. And even more interesting, we aren't just another vendor for them. We are their partner in ensuring success. Our teams work hand in hand with their teams and in some cases it's difficult to see the lines between our companies. I have to tell you, nothing is more satisfying to me than getting an email or phone call from one of our clients where they just thank us, thank one of you for your dedication, focus and execution towards making them successful. It's why we keep doing what we do -- to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, something bigger than Crown, and even something bigger than the solution we are implementing.
Experienced Based Commerce & Communications
One of the recent iterations has been how Content, Commerce, Communications and Analytics comes together. Our three go to partners in Adobe, hybris and ExactTarget are the right partners at the right time for the right solution. They are the better alternative to Oracle (Fatwire, ATG, Endecca, Hyperion, Eloqua). As an Oracle Platinum partner (through Crown's former Business Intelligence Practice), we have credibility saying Adobe | hybris | ExactTarget is the right solution. It would have been easy for us to piggy back off of our partner status with Oracle and focus on their platforms. But, go back to my very first paragraph above -- we wanted to make sure we are delivering the very best solutions to our clients. We have some new collateral coming out that supports this message and have recently integrated these three platforms as a demo for Adobe Summit 2013, as a training environment for our colleagues, and as an accelerator for our customers. What's our tagline again? That's right… xcel faster!
Leadership Team
We've finally hit our stride as a leadership team. The company as a whole is now represented by individuals on the leadership team responsible for definitive functions of the business. They are a solid team capable of running an organization 5x its size. As Founders, it's definitely made our life easier and far more scalable knowing that we have an group that can run the company effectively.
Practice Leadership
This is an area that I've seen significant improvement over the last 18 months. Each practice now not only has a Practice GM, but has several APDs (Assistant Practice Directors), focused SEs (Sales Executives) and dedicated Alliance and Marketing Managers. The tightened focus on our 3 partners has allowed for significant depth in our activities as Practices. Everything from hiring to training to mentoring to certifications to delivery -- we've gotten significantly better. To be sure we have many more iterations to go -- and we'll never relent on getting better and better. But we are in a very good place in all of our practices.
Account Leadership
This is an area that I'm very proud. Our significantly increased focus on our Client accounts and their success is light years ahead of where it was several years ago. For fear of being redundant to "Our Clients" above, I'll say that the focus we've put into Project Management, Program Management, Business Consultants and Client Account Leads has drastically improved our ability to ensure our clients success.
Technical Excellence
The presentation at RED strategy session on Thursday and discussion that followed -- around Technical Excellence -- was one of the most promising dialogs we've had as a company in a long time. It's the difference between firefighting and bricklaying. We are a company with significant technical depth. This is why our competitors still call us to support them when they get in a hole and need dug out. It is also the one thing that has frustrated me to no end for some time. I see us absolutely killing it (in a good way) with one client in a particular technical challenge and then see us struggling with the same thing at another. That's to be expected for a company our size growing like we are -- but that's also a cop out for not fixing the problem. The team that volunteered themselves to be Crown's CTO by committee has identified some hugely valuable processes and plays for us to build upon as a company. They have moved from Crawl to Walk and I absolutely can't wait for them to hit stride and Run. It's incumbent on us a colleagues to embrace their ideas and suggestions and to make sure that we are doing everything we possible can to deliver the absolute best for our clients. I believe this initiative is one of Crown's most important.
2013
Which brings me to 2013. It's a year of significant growth for Crown. A year where we take full advantage of our position, our evolution, and our 100% eBusiness focus. It's a year where there will be some challenges for sure, however I expect them to be minor when compared to building the plane while flying it.
In Closing
I said it at the close of the RED strategy session on Thursday and I'll say it here again. I've never loved this company as much as I do right now. We've endured setbacks, a business revolution and even seen some of our close friends depart. However, we've come out on the other side physically and emotionally stronger than we've ever been. Our clients are inviting us into the CxO suite and asking -- sometimes begging us to help them through their own trying times. And we're right there, ready and able to help. I know that sometimes it feels like completing an engagement is like landing a fighter plane on the deck of an aircraft carrier -- out of control and sure to crash -- right up to the point that hook grabs you and stops you safely, but we've gone live with over 1000 solutions at Crown and nearly every one of them has landed safely! Oh, and by the way, if you haven't checked out www.ST.com, you should. That fighter plane is on the deck of the aircraft carrier, safely!
Quote
I typically end a note like this with an inspirational quote. One that is fitting that summarizes everything into a few sentences -- written by someone else. This time I'd like to share my own thought I shared the other day to someone admiring Crown's success. "It amazes me how few people have passion for what they do. Do what you love and love what you do and the world is your oyster… That's how greatness is achieved. It finds you. Not the other way around."
Richard
CEO and CoFounder Crown
We are Winning -- another note from your CEO and CoFounder
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