ChannelVision Magazine

I f you follow NYU Professor Scott Galloway you would hear about GAFA daily. GAFA stands for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. Combined these companies con - trol a lot and are de facto monopolies. But there is a lot to learn from them. Here are four things to take from GAFA for more success with your business. Amazon and Google are known for innovation. That only happens because both companies experiment often. They fail fast – and often, but that doesn’t stop them. And it increases their chances for success. Most com - panies do not innovate or even experi - ment with change. The old insane ad - age of doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome comes into play. Try things. See what works and what doesn’t. Business today is very different from even 10 years ago. The iPhone is only 11 years old. Facebook was cre - ated in 2004 (16 years ago); Twitter in 2006. Yet businesses still do busi - ness the same way they did then. That doesn’t work. People want the ease of their smartphone in every aspect of their life. They do not want to be tripped up over technology. They want the technology to provide the benefits without getting in the way. Hence, chat - bots are proliferating because people will not wait for answers. Amazon sells much more than books and DVDs today. Much of that is due to the frictionless process. The personalization helps, but mostly it is “one-click and boom.” Most other companies – retail and telecom – do not match Amazon for ease of buying. Maybe they can’t, but they should be improving every week. The key to sales is removing the friction for the buyer. Service providers think about ecommerce sales often, but they don’t budget for the time and expense that will be required to design it. Walmart acquired Jet.com for $3 billion in 2016 for the e-commerce engine. This isn’t to suggest that you should budget a billion or not do it, but map out the process, eliminate some bottlenecks and track the process. These things are within the grasp of most web de - signers today. Businesses need to take advantage of what is available in order to lean into success. Real estate agents utilize e-signature, but many telecom companies do not. This goes back to innovation, experiment - ing and change. We try to sell business owners on technology, yet we don’t incorporate nearly enough technology into pro - cesses in telecom and IT. How many companies use e-sig? How many have chatbots? How many use UC&C to talk to customers, suppliers and employ - ees? Eating the dog food helps sales. Workplace by Facebook and WhatsApp are communication and col - laboration apps. The user interface for both of these apps is simple to use. No training required. Facebook understands user design (UX). It helps that millen - nials grew up with Facebook, so they are familiar with the interface, but most UC&C companies have done little in the way of making the user experience simpler (or any better than on the day they launched). User adoption is an ele - ment of customer retention. User adop - tion would require fantastic UX or much training. The industry is all about adding functionality but not on adding UX. The four take-aways from the four giants in tech – Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebbok – are experi - mentation, leveraging technology, ease of use (or ease of buying) and user design. o Peter Radizeski is president of RAD-INFO INC., a telecom strategy and marketing consult- ing agency. He is also the author of five books and is available to speak at your events on channel, marketing, strategy or sales. His next book on channel will be out soon. CHANNEL MANAGEMENT Four Reasons GAFA isWinning By Peter Radizeski Better apply them to your business 66 CHANNEL VISION | March - April, 2020