Goals: Provide both companies seeking to become omnichannel and software vendors providing the enterprise tools to facilitate omnichannel culture with an introduction including: - Perspectives - Understanding - Tools to ensure successful implementation ... of an Omnichannel Culture.

2. Presentation Handout Goals
Provide both:
– companies seeking to become omnichannel
– software vendors providing the enterprise tools to
facilitate omnichannel culture
With an introduction including:
– Perspectives
– Understanding
– Tools to ensure successful implementation of an
Omnichannel Culture.

3. Quick About Me
• CEO of Collin Group, Inc.
• Specialize in Value Creation for Companies,
Customers and Careers
• Approach and systems originally designed for:
• life-affecting ultra-mission-critical situations
• making one of the largest technological transitions
and changing processes across diverse and
complex organizations globally.

4. Quick About Me
• Based on my research on the Stanford
University campus as a Senior Research Fellow
of a specialized think tank
• Innovated, updated, refined and tested over
almost 20 years
• Chronicled/cited in 450+ books in multiple
languages*; taught in top university courses
• Implemented at myriad companies, SMB
through global enterprises. Source: Google Books

5. Customer Commitment
So why Omnichannel?
• Omnichannel should not be considered a
means to “surprise” or “delight”
• Today it’s simply expected by customers
• An omnichannel culture helps build strong
customer commitment
• Don’t have it? It’ll appear to customers as a
gaping hole in your customer experience.

6. Why Omnichannel is Critical for You
• Ours is a social and connected world
• Customer success is your successes
• Purchases (both product and buying
experience) that don’t go well are broadcast
to the world
• ... even by one of the buyer’s employees.

7. Challenges to Omnichannel
Part I

8. Is Tech the Core Challenge?
• Omnichannel requires new software and
hardware technologies
• Tech facilitates omnichannel, but also
introduces new challenges
• But the tech challenges are not what put
companies into disarray in this process
• It’s the human challenges that will be the
most significant.

9. The “Human” Challenge
Omnichannel
=
Omni-Change
Almost everyone is impacted.

10. The “Human” Challenge
The hardest thing for:
• Markets
• Industries
• Companies
• Divisions
• Groups, teams and people
to do is CHANGE.

11. Omnichannel requires just about
every employee to think, interact
and execute differently.

12. Some Omnichannel Required Changes
• Company Culture (!)
• Team communication, interaction, sharing and
learning
• How employees view customers
• Tools like software solutions
• Processes, from department to individual.

13. Why Change is Hard
• People spend about as much awake time at
work than in their personal lives
• Changing work means changing your life – and
how easy is that?
• Often very intimidating
• Harder the longer you’ve done something
(processes) a certain way.

14. Simply mandating it won’t make it successful.
“Make it so!”
Copyright Paramount Pictures

15. Building Success
Part II

16. Omnichannel requires more
than project managers to ensure
success, because omnichannel is
more than just procedural
implementation.
It’s Not Just Process

17. Ways to Create
Omnichannel Culture
The Power of the
Cultural Middleware™ Approach
Cultural Middleware is a trademark of Collin Group, Inc.

18. What is the
Cultural Middleware™ Approach?
• Comprised of internal people throughout your
organization that understand your company’s
many internal subtleties
• They understand:
– Processes
– Concerns
– Communications issues and the connections
required to achieve omnichannel culture.

19. What is the
Cultural Middleware™ Approach?
• They build the necessary connections
between:
– People
– Current systems and processes
– Omnichannel thinking and operations
• They’re connectors, counselors and enablers
• They ensure the project becomes a
sustainable, profitable reality.

20. Basic Qualifications for the
Cultural Middleware Approach
To be a member, they must:
• be a member of your workforce
• be culturally- and process-savvy to the
“coverage areas” they’re responsible for
• not be recent new hires, transferees or interns
• Accept being culture and process facilitators,
counselors, problem solvers, friction reducers.

21. Basic Qualities for Members of the
Cultural Middleware Approach
• Knowledgeable: about what needs to be done
• Understanding: of their coverage areas’
people, processes and concerns
• Compassion: for the challenges of a “rethink”
• Sharp Eyes and Ears: for spotting active,
passive, or unintentional push-back
• Engagement, Connection, Problem Solving,
Enthusiasm and Energy.

22. The Roles of the
Cultural Middleware Approach
• Make the change to omnichannel culture smooth
• Address the human stresses involved with change
• Work with key, or if small enough, all members of
their coverage area making the change
• Decide on best approach to work with project
managers and coverage area members
• Empathetically listen, understand, appreciate and
address all concerns of the coverage group.

23. The Roles of the
Cultural Middleware Approach
• Ensure training is appropriate for specific
coverage area
• Create bridges and connections – “smart
seams” to other groups via other Cultural
Middleware Approach members
• Request guidance and other resources as
needed
• Prevent “drop and plop”.

24. Give Them the Tools They Need
• Understanding of the overall changes to take
place, top-down:
– Concept
– Company
– Coverage Area
– Individual
• Must be presented:
– Strategically
– Operationally
– Processes

25. Give Them the Tools They Need
From software providers:
• Their best effort at determining in general,
how and which processes, specialties, and
teams will be impacted
• Software companies can’t know all the
cultural and process changes that will be
required
• Every company is different.

26. Keep members connected to:
• Company experts on the changes
• Their fellow Cultural Middleware Approach
members in other coverage areas across the
company
• Software vendor contacts (internal/external)
• The highest-level executive involved in the
omnichannel conversion process.

27. Tools for Connection:
TEDxNASA video for connecting specialists:
bcln.us/tedxnasa

28. Wrap-Up
• Customers connect with omnichannel
companies both via technology and people
• Everyone and everything must be:
– connected, cooperative, cohesive, contiguous
– congenial, confident, convenient and committed
• It’s what customers demand, and what you
must deliver
• With the Cultural Middleware Approach, you can.

30. barry@collingroup.com @barrycollin
blog: barrycollin.com company: collingroup.com