How to ensure a bright future
Author: Jessica HobsonOver the last couple of months I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about the future. While working on our three year business development plan I was looking at what new services CCH should create and in which direction we should take the business. Last week I attended a two day CCH leadership and innovation program In Kuala Lumpur and enjoyed some intelligent, exciting and creative discussion around what CCH might look like in 2012.
Whatever direction we take we will get lost very quickly if we lose touch with our customers. After attending Book Expo America 2009 Kassia Krozser blogged on Booksquare that:
“the publishers who take the time to really listen to their constituency, from distributors to readers, will survive the ocean crossing into the future (and there will be some rough seas ahead!) while the publishers who don’t will be lost at sea.”
I agree with her sentiment. So how do CCH listen to their ‘constituency”? One very successful way is by employing a user –centered design process called contextual design. Wolters Kluwer, our parent company, use contextual design to build new systems and services and the process has produced our most effective solutions for customers. Our new online platform Intelliconnect was built with our customers using contextual design and it just won the The CPA Technology Advisor’s Tax and Accounting Technology Innovation Award in the US. Mike Sabbatis, CCH President, accepted the award and said:
“We share this award with our customers, who participated in hundreds of hours of interviews and testing to produce a new model for research that enhances their productivity and efficiency,”
Intelliconnect is a great success because it was a joint effort: without collaboration with our users it would not be so powerful.
Tags: contextual design
To post a comment, click here