For a while I’ve had ongoing conversations within my group of business friends about core businesses. The conversation goes like this: companies say they do Y but act like a company that does Z. It’s a discrepancy in perception (or public relations) and actuality (which usually isn’t so public). I was reminded of this topic this morning when I read a message from Hugh MacLeod, who said that Wal-Mart is a tech company. Very true.
I replied to him with my two favorite examples: Amazon.com is a tech company and Fandango.com is a research company (try it… http://fandangoresearch.com). I have more… AAA is a research company, NASCAR is a marketing platform not a sport, etc.
I’ve had a few conversations about the core business of the company I work for and it’s always a very enlightening discussion. I wrote about one such encounter with the Chairman of the Board. His version of reality was very different from mine — wishful thinking on his behalf. He thought our core business was a call center of 30-some-odd people who take care of ‘customers’ who call in for assistance. The reality is that we are a company that creates products for banks. Our ‘customers’ are banks. People who call to consume our services are, for lack of a better word, 3rd party to us — they are our customers’ customers. We keep them happy so our real customers don’t leave us.
Only recently has this core business idea been challenged. It took a completely objective executive consultant to dispel the call center myth. Apparently a lowly Director in IT knows nothing about business 
. Needless to say, there have been a lot of frank decisions that are disruptive, but necessary if this company has any chance of getting out of the roundabout (Look kids… Big Ben. Parliament!) and on to bigger and… uh… other things. But the company is thirty-one years old! It’s taken thirty-one years to understand the core business!
The first time I hinted at this subject was in a meeting two years ago for marketing’s ‘web strategy’ initiative. Their goal was to align our business with the Interwebs, thinking it was a platform to save us money by allowing more self-service.
Wrong! Go straight to jail, do not pass GO.
Self-service and decreasing operational costs, yada, yada, yada are sometimes an affect of a decent web strategy, but should not be the cause. With all of the functionality they wanted to throw onto our website, I made the following flippant, but very serious comment…
“I’m all for turning us into a technology company, but has anyone asked our clients, customers and vendors if they actually want this functionality on our website?”
After a few seconds of silence, someone asked why I thought this would make us a technology company. The answer was simple. In order to deliver the amount of sophistication they wanted on a website, we would have no choice but to outsource it for millions of dollars, or become a technology company. Since no one was willing to spend millions of dollars for the functionality, it was inevitable if we headed down that path we would indeed become technology focused. Which again, I was completely cool with that idea.
While I’m sure it pissed them off that I was questioning their work, the result was effective. The ‘web strategy’ project was pulled off the table only to resurface about six months ago with a narrower, more focused scope. They realized technology was not our core business.
