Growth at Altimeter Group: Supply Chain Management, Government Innovation

Two Key Additions In Growth Areas: Lora Cecere, Alan Webber
We’re pleased to announce that we’re expanding two new partners Lora Cecere (full bio), Supply Chain Management and Alan Webber (full bio), Government Innovation. Founding partner, coauthor of Groundswell, Charlene Li discusses the hires and the changes in the market. At the Altimeter Group, we’re not forced into limited topic areas, but instead look at the intersection of major themes.  Each partner has a unique perspective, and we are constantly talking, sharing, and pushing our ideas by collaborating, you’re starting to see this manifest as Ray (CRM) and (Social) converge on Social CRM. We know that customers demand a holistic experience, so organizations will follow suit, here’s how our world of social technologies merges with these two new topic areas:

Supply Chain Management: Intersections with Consumers
In my area of focus, customer strategy, it’s important to expand the thinking to ‘where the customers will be’. With the rapid adoption of simple social technologies, they’ve caused great disruption to marketing, PR, media, and customer support. With customers and prospects explicitly giving off signals of what they want, don’t want, or intend to do, it gives companies the opportunity to anticipate their needs. We see this opportunity to tie these customer signals in social media and getting the right products to customers –when they need it most. So what’s next? Beyond social media marketing, or supporting customers with social technologies, an upcoming trend we see is tying social technologies with supply chain management. There are three areas where social and supply chain management start to converge:

• Demand signals by empowered consumers using social and mobile technologies. As consumers indicate their demand for new products or intentions, these signals will be transmitted to companies, their distributors, and sellers to anticipate the needs of consumers.  Companies can reduce their inventory, shipping, an risk of spoilage of limited shelf-life products.
• Co-innovation of new products between consumers –and engineering. We’re already seeing some companies like Uservoice, SalesForce ideas power Nokia, Dell, and Starbucks to ask their customers what they want built, but we expect this trend to continue.  Aside from reducing time and cost of the R&D process, companies can produce just the right amount of inventory, and benefit from an army of engaged advocates that participated in co-creation.

We’re pleased to bring on Lora Cecere from AMR, where her domain knowledge of supply chain management will cross over with many of of our areas of focus. Learn more about her on her bio on the Altimeter site, or on Twitter.

Government and Education Connect With Communities
Open government, citizen media, and social media used to organize and rebuild after a crises have all touched our lives in one way or another. Undoubtedly, government agencies are realizing the power of these tools to understanding their citizens, learning from them, and influencing them. As a result, expect disruptive technologies like mobile and social to quickly move into the government limelight, such as the TSA adopting a blog to connect with travelers.

• Build better relationships with communities. We’re already seeing government organizations benefit from understanding these tools, and using during campaigning practices. As citizens have already adopted these technologies, government organizations can benefit by listening, understanding and responding to citizens using social tools.
• Use social technologies to innovate programs. It’s not just about using these tools for campaigning purposes, but also improving existing programs.  Take for example, San Francisco uses Twitter to located troublesome potholes, reducing the costs for city workers to find the areas to fix –instead relying on citizens to reduce costs.  Expect new forms of innovation to emerge that will improve cultures and where people live.

It’s a pleasure to welcome former colleague Alan Webber from Forrester Research, who’s got a strong background on web user experience, and a focus on government innovation. Together, we’ll be crafting frameworks for government agencies, educational institutions and those that serve them on how to harness social technologies to improve their missions. Learn more about Alan from his blog, Ronin Research, his bio on the Altimeter site, or on Twitter.

Growth At the Altimeter Group
Back in late August when Ray, Debs, and myself joined Charlene, we were excited to try a new model. Now, four months later, we’ve over 40 clients on retainer relationship, that’s little over 2 companies signing on board with us per week and are about a dozen employees.  We’ve previously announced new hires, recently we hired Valerie, our operations manager, who will keep the gears going as we help our clients tackle ‘wicked’ problems.

Although we’re best known for our focus on disruptive technologies like social, web and marketing, the Altimeter Group has a wider offering that expands to enterprise applications and innovating new products.

Related Posts

• Carter Lusher of SageCircle breaks down the changes.
• Founder and Partner, Charlene Li welcomes the new crew
• Alan Webber makes his announcement
• Ray Wang, Partner focused on enterprise strategy, welcomes the growing team
• Tekrati covers the changes: Altimeter Group Adds Two Partners