The Buffalo Blog

IT For All

Really interesting release through from ThinkGrid this morning, a new company aiming it’s software as a service (SaaS) to the SME market, down even to the smallest startup.

It’s great to see the way the IT industry is changing and that the development of SaaS and other web-delivered IT services are altering the way all businesses experience IT. Enterprise-level IT is now becoming a reality for even the smallest company due to the virtual elimination of expensive initial investments.

The organisational and streamlining benefits of quality enterprise IT are becoming available for all, and almost every small business could be set to benefit.

The outsourcing weekly round up

As a new feature for all our outsourcing clients we will be highlighting some of the top industry stories each week.

Comments are always welcome

sourcingfocus.com
The financial crisis will boost outsourcing as a strategic business tool, says EquaTerra.
http://www.sourcingfocus.com/index.php/site/newsitem/1101/

Computing
NHS IT programme costs London hospital £7.2m
http://feeds.computing.co.uk/c/554/f/7121/s/253460c/l/0L0Scomputing0O0Ccomputing0Cnews0C2230A0A980Ccare0Erecords0Esystem0Ecosts/story01.htm

Outlook for NHS IT is far from healthy
http://feeds.computing.co.uk/c/554/f/7121/s/25c2356/l/0L0Scomputing0O0Ccomputing0Ccomment0C2230A4260Coutlook0Enhs0Efar0Ehealthy0E4334629/story01.htm

ZDnet
Obama and team set to make their mark on tech
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39544374,00.htm

Analyst firm cuts IT-spending outlook for 2009
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39550712,00.htm

Computer weekly
Public sector shared services market worth £4bn over five years
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/11/11/233310/public-sector-shared-services-market-worth-4bn-over-five.htm

Personnel Today
BBC HR chief Stephen Kelly leaves to join Logica
http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/11/13/48358/bbc-hr-chief-stephen-kelly-leaves-to-join-logica.html

Computerworld UK
Sheffield confirms Capita for £200m deal
http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/it-business/services-sourcing/news/index.cfm?RSS&newsid=11967

The damaging media spotlight

Luke Johnson wrote in this Tuesday's FT about the damaging effects of the media spotlight when it is unleashed in anger. He highlighted some interesting opinions about reputation but appeared to miss the point on media crises and the long-lasting effects they have on companies.

Contrary to his article, the effect of a media mess-up can easily destroy a company, perhaps even more so in the B2B space. The colossal amounts of money spent in B2B industries makes people a lot more diligent in their selection of suppliers. A whiff of malpractice, failure, or underhanded tactics, in the press, will quickly see a supplier struck-off any procuremrnt list.

The fact is that bad press stays with a company for a long time; interminably now with Google news cataloguing just about everything on the web. In the consumer space, as with his Bernard Matthews example, sometimes price comes to triumph over opinion but this is rare. The oft-cited example of Ratner’s Jewellers, destroyed by derogatory comments of its owner, is a clear example of a media crisis turned business disaster.

It’s important for public facing businesses to recognise the reputation risks that are out there. Don’t stop talking to the press, just put the measures in place to respond appropriately when things go pear shaped.

The power of the online interactivism

An interesting article in Saturday’s Guardian explored the phenomenon of ‘interactivism’ in the context of the ongoing Brand/Ross phonecall debacle. Whether we agree with the almost nuclear (reputation wise) fallout that has ensued from the pair’s on air antics, ‘interactivism’ (while a tad academic semantically) has great implications for business, politics and of course, entertainment.

 

The core themes were fleshed out in the article: such as the power these well-meaning or malignant forces now wield and how pretty much nothing, reputation-wise, is safe. The reputation of people, companies and organisations now ebs and flows rapidly like a wave and can go from good to bad faster than ever before.

 

What the article missed was the type of people behind this online ‘interactivism’ – if you look at the statistics you won’t find a representative demographic. The people behind these colossal online movements, and they are colossal (try gathering 37,000 people in a town hall to complain about a BBC radio programme), are the vociferous, the politically active, the ones with something to say. But many of them may not be a direct audience of your organisation i.e. some may be abashed listeners but many are likely to have heard about the problem and pitched in with their own ‘two cents’.

 

The fact is that whether your audiences are those doing the talking everyone will soon enough be reading the damning headlines like everyone else. A big story is quick to gain credence on the web as was seen in the rapid increase in complaint numbers as the Brand/Ross story evolved last week. Someone, somewhere, will voice every question and concern that may have passed through people’s heads and if they have good reason and a good argument, it won’t be long until their arguments hit the mainstream press provoking a bigger and more dangerous media storm than would have occurred otherwise. .

 

It often comes back to this point though: these are the same kind of people that have always mattered to companies, political parties and other organisations. They’ve been there writing their letters and making their angry phonecalls for years. It’s just they are now immensely more powerful than ever before. It’s now so much easier and quicker for them to voice their views and have a tangible effect on an organisation.

 

For communicators this is another, from a long line of examples, example of why monitoring and engaging with active and vociferous audiences online is vital. The vociferous audiences will not go away and they will bring your organisation to its knees if it deserves it.

 

For this reason keeping on top of issues, putting your organisation’s voice out there in an appropriate and truthful way as soon as possible is the only way to retain integrity in an online interactivism storm. Heard this before? It is PR after all…

 

Masters (or not) of muckslinging

The last two weeks have brought two great examples of the practice of ‘muckraking’ (digging up dirt on competitors) and ‘muck slinging’ (conveying it to the world by any all means possible to make your opponent look bad) going bad. Whether in business or politics, these ongoing 'mud fights' are salient examples of why muckslinging never a good idea for winning any kind of communications battle.

The two separate examples of which I speak are of course the final verbal battle between McCain and Obama and the ongoing and hugely damaging Osborne donation request saga.

In both instances the offending parties, McCain and Osborne, have attempted to gain the upper hand by making Obama and Mandleson respectively, look rather dodgy. The trouble is that both instances have backfired and for highly obvious reasons – politicians at this level really should know better.

McCain, to start with, ended up looking silly using precious opportunities, in what was their final presidential campaign debate, to focus on Obama’s supposed relationship to a ‘terrorist’. This tenuous and pretty shaky story comes unravelled pretty quickly, and actually only served to Obama’s advantage.

The Osborne ‘scandal’ on the other hand, still yet to truly shake out, is having even worse implications for the ‘muckslinger’ than the ‘mucksling-eee’, and it’s only going to go worse. By telling the world the Peter Mandleson supposedly ‘dripped poison’ about Gordon Brown while they were out in Corfu, has created all sorts of trouble that could easily see heads roll.

The main comeuppance to be felt by those digging up dirt on competitors is threefold:

1. Competitors dig up worse dirt on the muckslinger (as may have happened in the Osborne affair)

2. Competitors make the muckslinger look silly and unfocused (as happened in the Obama/McCain debate)

3. Constituents, customers etc, all think the muckslinger is underhanded and petty and are likely to side with the competitor (as is likely to happen on Nov 4 – wait and see!)

The verdict? It’s always best to keep things aboveboard and not stoop to the level of muck slinging – it’s simply not worth it. Avoiding this dangerous practice is a much safer route and infinitely less damaging for one's reputation.

Obama, McCain and the battle for online reality

There have been some interesting communication developments in the wake of the first McCain-Obama debate on Friday. According to The Independent, just minutes after the debate had finished, the online spin machines were in full motion.

In the first blow, Obama’s backers released a post-event video focusing on McCain’s speech semantics and his failure to use the words "middle-class" or "working people". McCain’s team countered, again within minutes, by releasing information on the number of times Obama agreed with their man during the debate, perhaps to illustrate a perceived lack of independent opinion.

Petty though these tactics and subjects may be, they illustrate some interesting trends in the development of internet debate as a whole:

• The importance of speed

• The changing control of ‘reality’ as a concept

In PR, speed has always been important but never more so in the ‘information age’. Getting a client’s, whether a political candidate or a food company, word out there as soon as possible can avert disaster and create a multitude of great exposure when done properly.

This leads neatly to the control of ‘reality’. While it may sound a little sensationalist, the reality of the world that is not in our direct experience, has always been controlled by the papers, the television and now the internet. We can’t always know things first hand so we accept them as they are shown to us.

The internet, Google and social bookmarking and tagging has changed the dynamics somewhat. This is where speed and skill in online PR, SEO and the like come into play. Whoever can get their word out quickly and skilfully effectively creates ‘reality’ for the readers. The more this content is looked at, linked to, bookmarked, the higher it is ranked by Google and the more enforced it becomes as the accepted reality.

The scary thing is that it doesn’t matter if it is true or not…

But internet users have access to billions of information sources through which they can build a complete picture don’t they? Well yes, but diligence in information gathering has changed to suit our fast-paced, information-rich world. Users may still look at various sources for their information, as they will have done before the internet, but these have been pre-sorted, clipped, edited and indexed by popularity. And there simple isn’t time to take in every   bit of information.

Internet users are now left with the popular view of the world rather than the actual. And the control of this has shifted to anyone savvy enough to take it.

The point of all this I scaremongering musing is firstly, to take everything with a healthy pinch of salt. And secondly as a note to PROs, both in-house and agency, world to take care in what they put out there. It doesn’t take long for reality to take shape on the web and this has profound implications for us all.