Urgency of Importance

 Success are the Parts …

Question: How is what we produce "important"?   There are two thoughts that came to mind asking myself this.  One was "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" …  the other was a quote from Ghandi "Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.".  Certainly what we do, what we produce lies somewhere between the two extremes of nothing we do is important and everything is important. 

So, how high do I raise my bar in relative terms?   Are any of the end results comparable to say….  vaccines or antibiotics? No.  How about as important as nuclear weapons?  Still no. 

My efforts over the past 15 years have primarily been spent launching solutions to protect businesses and users from cyber threats.   My first products protected enterprise assets in general.  Most recently and more importantly protecting the ecommerce user shopping experience,  retailer and service provider assets.    Beneficial absolutely,  of great importance, not as a point solution.   Rather let's consider all the benefactors of a project (Team members internal and external, clients, employer, Me!).  :

1. 2015 launches were leading edge cloud and managed security service solutions.  Differentiation in the market place for the company. 
2. It required the development of a unique service at a new price point for Web Application Firewall and Denial of Service mitigation to protect eCommerce.  Allowing the team to get outside of their comfort zone and learn new technologies (Exciting for techies).
3.  Most successful product launch in 5 years since AWS Magento service. Employer and myself and partners love it.
4. Clients get a service that enables them to meet Credit Card Compliance (PCI-DSS) and prevent down time due to security attacks.  Anything that gets a CIO to sleep at night over security is a life saver.
5. It was bundled into the IaaS pricing for bids further disrupting the managed ecommerce market place.  Sales team likes it easy to sell security, adds value to the brand for the employer.  I look good as it is my vision to recognize that the market was ready for the product yet it was not offered.

Participating in a project that has become rewarding across many touch points growing personally, in relationships and of course businesses it then becomes important to us in reflection.  This is what made the Security Shield product launch a recent highlight achievement.  

The Renaissance Man…

If having a collective experience of related successes defines the overall importance of a project,  then the first humans must have been a happy bunch.  They existed in tribal environments that were essentially communal.  They unquestioningly rely on other members to pull their weight in order to get the job done.  Making the entire new product development project a very experiential process as well as functional.

This all works great as long as things are going smoothly.  What about carrying the message of the project across the groups and promotes the vision?  Certainly there is collective buy in at some point. However, this vision of the end result is not an emergent quality that just pops into existence.  It needs a catalyst. 

In the development process you need someone to make sure the integration points exist.  OK, so we have Agile methodologies which work for first or onetime problem solving?  There still needs to be that person to makes sure within each of the groups they are working toward a common goal.   Further, when the each of the jobs are done (development, marketing, sales, billing and customer service) each meets the expectations of the project mandate. 

There has to be someone that participates as an expert in some areas while knowledgeable in all areas, communicates up and down the organization, finally carries the torch, perhaps takes a bullet or two along the way for the team.

Differentiation…

In order for the Shopify solution to emerge over time you will require that person who can draw upon a broad base of experience:

1. eCommerce - the core of the business application (retail consulting, enterprise solutions ATG, Magento, Hybris)
2. SaaS know how (Eloqua development and integration with Salesforce.com)
1. Defined managed services (SaaS in a different form) where the client is 100% reliant on the service provider
3. SECURITY - The elephant in the room and still the thorn in the side of SaaS and cloud providers.  Who ever knows this will gain the confidence of the users, retailers and industry.

If this is the right fit for Shopify.  Contact me to arrange next steps.

Allan Crowe - Digital Renaissance Man