There's No Safety in
Your Silo
Shutting
yourself in what seems like a safe and secure space is an act of willful
blindness. You need to look across your industry to leverage all the data
available, including within your own company. And yes, there are platforms for
that.
Many years ago, I realized that there are enormous advantages in
developing new data-driven services and solutions that provide real-time access
to comparative corporate intelligence in ways that could overcome the barriers
to information flows that exist within many large businesses. Too many
companies don't know what they know or what they have and do a poor job of
sharing and communicating knowledge.
Today, we have newer companies
like Knowledge Hound (See How Knowledge Hounds Sniffed
Out a New Platform.) and 1871 alum Baloonr (See Common Communication Mistakes
That Destroy Productivity) helping companies address specific
aspects of this problem.
It was clear way back when that the same kinds of issues existed
within entire industries. Groups of competitors operating independently needed
to have access to certain kinds of critical information they couldn't
efficiently accumulate or practically/legally share easily. These were often
oligopolistic markets with very large players operating essentially in their
own vertical and narrowly-focused silos. They couldn't even see what they were
missing much less come up with a solution. Basically, they needed an
independent outsider to build a common, shared (call it "horizontal")
and broader data platform for them.
One of the simplest examples of
this type of solution was the development in the 1980s by my first business,
CCC, of a computerized service for the auto insurance industry that I
called VINguard. Initially, it was a program that let insurance adjusters
validate and decode the 17-digit VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) for any
car that was involved in an insurance claim for theft or total loss. Embedded
in the VIN number by the manufacturers was a bunch of descriptive information
about the car in question, which could save the adjusters considerable time in
data entry and would also make sure that they were dealing with the
properly-described insured vehicle.
But the auto insurers had a bigger, costlier problem. Crooks and
other con artists would take the VIN number from a single wrecked car and then
use it to obtain insurance coverage from, and file false claims with, multiple
insurance companies for the same allegedly destroyed or stolen car. Amazingly,
the insurance companies at that time never talked to each other or exchanged information
about suspect VINs that should have been taken out of circulation.
This situation was the
opportunity that VINguard addressed by creating and constantly updating a VIN
database built from information drawn from the claims departments of all of the
large automobile insurance companies, which was then provided back to them as
an anti-fraud tool. We broke down their silos and created a horizontal data
platform that spanned the individual insurance companies and solved a problem
that they really couldn't solve themselves. In essence, we sent them back their
own information and charged them for the privilege. But, in so doing, we saved
them time, resources, and unnecessary payouts as well as increasing the
productivity of their people-- all at the same time. No one complained.
This, of course, is all part of
the power and value of building an industry-wide platform, which I've written
about in the past. (See How Ridescout Demonstrates the
Power of the Platform) You make the investments and do the hard work
of building it once, it's used by many who couldn't justify the time or
investment to do it themselves, and you take the money to the bank.
A more recent example of the same idea is Rippleshot. Rippleshot
(www.rippleshot.com) is a company started several years ago at 1871 that
provides fraud-deterrent services to help merchants and card issuers protect
themselves from stolen credit card numbers in ways they can't do alone. Other
examples abound.
Bottom line: In today's global and inter-connected world,
shutting yourself off in what seems to be a safe and secure silo offers little
real advantage or protection. You probably know what your own business is all
about and you may even have a fairly clear idea of what your direct competitors
are doing and planning. But that's not the problem.
You need to access and understand the criticality of everything
that is going on around you and especially outside the four walls of your own
business. The coming changes, disruptions, and new technology solutions as well
as the changing demands of your clients and customers are not simply head-on
challenges - they're lateral attacks, competitive entries from adjacent
markets, and newly-enabled ways of doing business that never existed before.
Uber wasn't a better taxi company - it was a harbinger of the
new world.
