Insurance.com: Notes : Pomerleau

Chairperson's Keynote and Opening Presentation

President,
AlphaSight Online Strategists, Inc.

Opening the conference, Chairperson Patricia Pomerleau characterized the Net as a mass communication medium that will change human culture as fundamentally as has television. She described the Net today as at the same stage of development as TV was around 1948. At that time, television transcended from a technology to a mass communications medium because of the breakthrough creative vision of two people: Edward R. Murrow and Milton Berle. Only since 1990 has the same thing happened to the Net with the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee.

Admonishing managers to eschew "trend surfing" and to focus upon long-term strategic planning, she reminded attendees that visionaries must be brave, must experiment, and must be prepared to act before they have all of the facts.

Ten questions CEO's should ask about the Internet, according to Ms. Pomerleau:
    1. How can we leverage our investment in technology to take strategic advantage of the Internet?
    2. What are our competitors doing on the Internet?
    3. What security issues must we address?
    4. Are our Internet efforts building on the corporate vision and the company's core strengths?
    5. Where will the Internet be in five years and how are we going to take advantage of this growth?
    6. How is the Internet changing the behavior of our customers, vendors and suppliers, and what impacts on the business do we anticipate?
    7. What is a virtual community, and why should I care?
    8. How might emerging online intermediaries disrupt the value chain in our industry?
    9. How are Internet business models impacting traditional business models in our industry?
    10. What is the true relevance of the Internet to my decision- making and my business?

Chairperson's Keynote and Opening Presentation
(continued)

Patricia
Pomerleau,

President,
AlphaSight Online Strategists, Inc.

Seamless integration of real and virtual processes is necessary, and a company's Net strategy must come from the top down. "You cannot delegate vision," said Ms. Pomerleau.

She also said that the Net:
    1. Is customer focused, maximizing user flexibility;
    2. Adapts to consumer needs, not vice-versa;
    3. Can organize the disorganized and link disparate thin clients, as does Bibliofind;
    4. Facilitates knowledge management and sharing, as demonstrated by MedicaLogic and The Knowledge Center Org.

Virtual communities will be the gateway to the consumer, as shown by Amazon.com and iprint.com, community service organizations like Third Age, and combination virtual/traditional business models such as FedEx, Marshall Industries and NECX.com.

Explaining how her company, AlphaSight Online Strategists, Inc., employs architects and architectural theory in the development of corporate Net strategies, she advised designers to "build trees not boxes," allowing for dynamic and continual change. She discussed the surprising success of CEO Express, a simple resource she created for busy CEO's seeking shortcuts to Net resources.

Ms. Pomerleau sees as "just enormous" the potential of data mining and the resulting mass customization of marketing and creation of products and services. The data will come from virtual communities and collections of virtual communities.

The focus of the new business model will be the customer relationship and the customer experience, claimed Ms. Pomerleau, saying: "The constant (the customer) is the logical starting point for designing an Internet strategy."