THE BUSINESS FUTURE
by Phil Moore

[Phil delivered this keynote address at ENA's conference in
Philadelphia in May '88.]

When my staff heard I'd agreed to talk about the business
future of computer conferencing, a few of them got nervous.
They know I'm a very open sort of guy ... and they were
worried I'd be giving away our "secrets" at NWI. Well, of
course I am going to be honest with you about how we see the
future! All of us here share a stake in having the medium
we care about realize its potential.

But first let's talk about business in the present ...
especially business communications.

One of the requirements for effective business is effective
communication. Yet we all experience, from time to time,
the same familiar impediments ... we play telephone tag, or
the secretary isn't available, or our document's not ready
for the Federal Express deadline ... whatever!

Most maddening of all are the communications problems within
an organization -- just scheduling a meeting is hard, let
alone getting it to happen when you want it, or even keeping
it from being cancelled!

And there's that other fact of life: the classic failure to
document enough. So points are forgotten after the meeting,
or agreements are mis-remembered.

It's this set of frustrations, internal communications, that
electronic mail has attempted to solve. But E-Mail is a
first-generation solution. It introduced a number of new
problems as it set out to solve the old ones.

Instead of just an old-fashioned telephone and calendar, E-
Mail required that the right kinds of people have the right
kinds of equipment and get the right kind of training. New
users of E-Mail often discovered that the person they needed
to talk with didn't yet have a computer, didn't know how to
access it, or was not very often checking electronic mail.
Maintaining a listing of appropriate addressees for an E-
mail topic could also be a hassle.

E-Mail was, however, often self-documenting. That was a
plus, leaving a written record. But it wasn't very easy to
go back and sort out only the notes that covered a specific
issue. E-Mail wasn't organized that way. What E-Mail
represented was an interesting new way of addressing some
business needs ... which unfortunately brought along its own
complexity and limitations.

One thing I can tell you I am sure of: business doesn't
tend to buy ideas for their own sake ... not gadgets, not
toys, not fascinating technology. Business only buys
actual solutions to problems. That's what they're willing
to invest in. What is a solution? By definition, it must
be easier than the problem it's trying to solve! Business
doesn't like to trade one set of problems for a more complex
batch of new ones.

Costs come into play, too. Even though a solution might
ultimately enhance the value of an organization, it must
initially be justified on the cold, hard basis of current
expenditures ... it must be proven cost effective.

Also -- it's much harder to sell a solution for any problem,
if the customer needs to change significant habits to make
it work. It's better to get a solution that fits existing
ways of doing things.

So complexity OR cost OR change ... any of them is enough to
frighten away a prospect long before you've started to solve
the problem at hand.

This is an interesting time in the history of
communications. So many new approaches are being tried ...
approaches that move beyond what E-mail started.

Voice-mail has had a certain amount of success ... but I
believe, ultimately, it's limited because the needs it
addresses aren't universal in scope. It stops short of
intelligent interaction, of being able to perform even a
simple, interactive task like making an appointment for you
with your dentist while you're busy doing something else.
It's a medium, too, for which you have to TRAIN people how
to communicate, how to push buttons, how to remember codes,
rather than communicating in the way people talk already.

That, by the way, illustrates why we've added LIVE,
professional operators to NWI's capabilities ... for the
folks who don't want to push buttons ... for people who
would like to do more than just leave a one-way message with
no ability to respond or interact. More about our operators
later.

Inter-office PC links ... so-called Local Area Networks ...
are another interesting communications development of our
time. They allow work groups to share expensive resources,
like laser printers, but they fall short of addressing needs
outside the work group. It's fine for Marketing to talk to
Marketing, for example, but when Marketing wants to talk
with Purchasing things can begin to get complicated.

I admire, however, some of the innovations we're beginning
to see ... networks being combined with other kinds of
services, like MCI mail, to reach people outside the company
with printed correspondence sent from the office PC. That
kind of thinking is on the right track ... combining options
for broader service. Unfortunately ... the commands to use
MCI-Mail are different from the commands for inter-office
communication ... creating new training problems even as it
offers new service.

E-Mail, as we've said, set out to solve a problem, but it
also brought new problems to the user. Computer
conferencing represents a second generation, wherein it's
easier to organize group dialogue around a single, core
topic. Topical organization offers real superiority
versus original E-mail.

Another conferencing improvement is not needing to keep
track of "mailing lists" ... people can automatically JOIN
an electronic meeting, or even create smaller sub-meetings.
And in state-of-the-art software, every invited participant
can automatically receive the appropriate pieces of mail ...
in exact chronological order ... grouped by particular
topic. That, too, is a substantial improvement in
organizational support over E-mail.

BUT -- I have to say that, in its present form, conferencing
still doesn't address the issues of availability to all
members of the organization ... it's still not easy to learn
and it's still not universally accessible ... you still need
equipment, software, and substantial knowledge of how to use
it. It's got built-in limitations ... limitations that
will keep it from realizing its full potential in business,
unless one is flexible in how one combines and offers it,
and to whom.

The ultimate business solution needs to be TOTAL ... it must
be as easy or easier to use than scheduling or attending
meetings.

It must be accessible to any member of the organization,
regardless of particular equipment and training. If the
solution really were that easy, in fact, we'd have less of a
requirement for training at all.

Besides ... since business cares so much about maximizing
its investments ... the ideal solutions would use the
equipment and training in which the company has already
invested.

That means: if you have a fax machine, you should be able
to passively receive your mail via fax if you want to,
insteading of your having to log on to get it. You don't
telephone the Post Office every day to ask for your mail to
be delivered, do you? You should be able to get electronic
mail automatically, too, if you want, and based on your
desired schedule.

Really, your communication should be where you need it, and
when you need it. Suppose that, on a business trip, you
are one of the majority of travelers who does NOT bring
along a laptop computer. You ought to be able to pick up a
phone for human support if you want to -- and have someone
else at a computer terminal, anywhere at all, be able to
read you your electronic mail ... or fax it your hotel ...
send it to you via telex ... print it on bond and mail it
first class, or even overnight mail.

You ought to be able to get such a service on all your
electronic mail, if you want ... OR on only the most urgent
and selected topics you want to keep up with at the moment.

In short, computer conferencing is really a fine tool -- I
couldn't believe in it more, and I've used it actively in
business for years! But it doesn't, all by itself, address
the real-world problems of the non-tech manager or the busy
traveler on the go. And we HAVE to address the lives and
habits of our customers!

My personal experience in the early days of word processing
has been helpful to me in thinking about conferencing. I
remember selling word processing machines at $15-$20
thousand dollars a unit. People didn't understand the term
"word processing" so we called it "power typing", which they
got.

Along the way, we made some mistakes ... by not thinking
enough about how our customers really worked. We told
people that word processing machines produced letters so
much faster, they could reduce the number of secretaries in
the office. Wrong! Our approach didn't work because we'd
forgotten about all the other things secretaries do besides
typing letters -- answering the phone, filing, making
photocopies, organizing the office. We hadn't been
listening well enough at first ... so we were offering our
technology without understanding well enough the context in
which it would be used.

If you install computer conferencing, your coffee can still
get burnt and your milk can still go bad. It will NOT solve
all your problems, and if you try to sell it that way, you
will fail.

Conferencing itself is still evolving, as are the ways to
apply and combine it. We typically tend to think of it,
though, as just a kind of electronic meeting room -- period.
I think that's a limiting point of view. Business, after
all, can use electronic help for more than just meetings ...
so in what other ways can the software be used to solve a
company's real needs? A lot depends on how we define our
own roles.

Do I define myself, Phil Moore, for example, as being in the
"conferencing" business? I am, of course. But am I REALLY
in the business of helping companies and people with
information and communications? ... not just among topic-
oriented groups in "electronic meetings", but from a company
to its distributors ... or for the exchange of private data
that could be very important to the right people in or out
of the company.

Self-definitions are important. And I am first, last,
foremost, and always a SALESMAN. Yes. I am one of those
people in life who loves selling.

Now maybe you have a different view of selling than I do. A
salesman, according to my definition, is a person who
matches solutions to needs. That's effective selling. Real
solutions to real needs. Not crafting an artificial need to
temporarily create a desire to purchase .. not selling an
encyclopedia, for example, unless you sell it to someone who
will really benefit from what's inside. Too often selling
is focused on making a sale ... and not on needs
satisfaction.

A true salesperson sells by listening and not by talking. A
true salesperson cares more about customer satisfaction than
getting the next order. That means being able to say, "I
guess I don't have anything right now that satisfies your
needs", and being able to walk AWAY. If you don't have a
solution, why waste your time and resources in order to get
a sale that will ultimately fail?

When I worked at IBM, I didn't know, really, how my buddies
there felt about our training school for selling. We were
learning literally 7 days a week, 12 hours every day, how
IBM thought we should sell. Myself: I loved it! Let me
show you a little demonstration that they used in that
training ... just to make a point. If you've already seen
this illustration, please don't spoil it for those who have
not!

The point is, by selectively listening to the customer, you
can focus their attention on the solutions you can offer.
And you can do it without talking much at all.

So ... I've already identified and written on the easel
behind me one card from the 52 cards in a deck.

Collectively, you all already know what that card is ... but
you just don't know you know!

So let me ask for help from some of you.


[Here Phil lead an audience participation
demonstration in which, by selectively listening
to audience choices on what card he had previously
written on a chart in front of the room, he was
able to guide the result of audience choices to
"be" the Four of Clubs. It's better if you see
it than if I describe it!]

The "Four of Clubs" game illustrates a way of actively
listening, narrowing the focus of what the prospect is
actually saying to the product you can offer ... but only if
it truly solves a customer need.

Think about it ... wouldn't I be in a stronger position, and
wouldn't my customer, too ... if, actually, I could offer
MORE than the Four of Clubs? Why should I limit my hand to
just that?

And why should I limit my communications services to only
computer conferencing? Conferencing is an important part of
the business solution, but it isn't, in my view, the
solution itself.

That's WHY we've added to our conferencing service telephone
operators who can sign on for the customer ... who can fax
mail to the customer ... or send it by telex ... or send it
by mail.

You see, I believe that the future of electronic
communications in business is going to have be very
flexible. Toffler's immensely important book, THE THIRD
WAVE, discusses the move away from mass production to
customized products ... for automobiles, for plastics, for
designs on T-shirts, for custom-tailored suits. "Full
customization" is the phrase he uses, and I believe it
applies as much to our industry as any other.

What companies actually need is particular help, which
varies from one business to another. Some of them need
distribution of information ... some need reliable
historical archives ... some need access to outside data.

To succeed in business tomorrow -- it's my belief -- means
individually and uniquely adapting one's products to each
organization ...satisfying needs in a customized way.

It's not going to work -- it's not -- to expect business to
adapt to the requirements of computer conferencing. No --
conferencing needs to adapt itself to the needs of business.

So we've written our own software to make it more possible
to customize conferencing ... to let the consultants who
sell our products be electronic chameleons, in effect ...
tailoring what NWI offers to the honest-to-goodness needs of
the client.

In the eight months since October, when we began really
marketing NWI, we've added 16 organizations to our list of
active clients. We could never have achieved that result if
we hadn't determined, from the start, that custom
flexibility would be a part of all we built. Let me give
three examples of clients for whom we've custom-configured
our software, our information, and our capabilities.

One of our corporate clients is Access Energy. They're
among the nation's largest independent marketers of natural
gas. The company buys gas from suppliers in all major North
American production areas and sells it to customers
throughout the United States and Canada. Using our basic
capability, which included conferencing but wasn't limited
to it, we designed an information system for them which
gives the gas industry a daily electronic edition of McGraw-
Hill's print publication, GasWire.

The electronic information service we created for Access
Energy also includes continually updated data related to
natural gas -- like pipeline discount rates, well-head
prices, and foreign exchange rates, plus complicated
mathematical formulas for calculating gas prices.

The user can also search through our news feeds for the
latest information on a topic ("Saudi Arabia", for example.)
And the service contains data having nothing to do with gas,
as requested by Access Energy's management: in their
information service, they also wanted to have the latest
sports scores, travel, and entertainment data, frequently
updated. The problem we solved for Access Energy was how
to put together its own information service for re-sale to
others ... in a minimum amount of time ...with no up-front
investment ... with its own configuration of data ... and
with a single cost per minute, 24 hours a day, that its
subscribers could rely on in their business accounting.

Let's contrast Access Energy to a major computer company,
another NWI client. The company cares nothing about
wellhead calculations! But it's vitally interested in
sending private information to the computer dealers who
distribute its product ... data about pricing, maintenance,
promotions, product modifications. The company also wanted
to liaison with a separate group -- customers themselves --
about maintenance agreements, for example. And they need to
hear, back from their customers and dealers, about machine
malfunctions or requests for service.

They also wanted to distribute information about the
computer industry as a whole -- including the latest wire
service news about competitors in the business. They wanted
stock prices, new public offerings, and other financial
data. They wanted everything available in one information
system ... not news from one place, and company data from
another. And they had already found that managing their own
information service from within was too demanding and
distracting a task to handle that way.

Most of all, the company wanted their customers and dealers
to be able to get the information in a variety of ways ...
computer terminals, to be sure, but also by talking to an
operator on the telephone ... or receiving it by fax ...or,
overseas, by telex.

Now, consider a third customer, for whom we are supplying
yet a differently configured system. Multi-Zone is a young,
entrepreneurial company who asked us to design a new
service they could sell to car dealers ... WE use the
computers, the CAR dealer uses the TELEPHONE. You may not
think of it, at first, as conferencing, but I assure you it
uses conferencing principles and software.

Multi-Zone is beginning with Ford dealerships, independent
leasing companies, and used vehicle wholesalers. Their
concept is based on a genuine need that a car dealer faces:
your chances of actually selling a Ford, for example,
increase dramatically as you increase your speed in finding
exactly the vehicle the potential customer wants. He wants
red seats and a moon roof?

You don't have one in stock? How FAST can you find one?!
Multi-Zone saw how conferencing software could help
dramatically speed the process. Dealers pool data on their
inventory of cars ... and the salesperson doesn't have to
hunt around for hours, or even touch a computer, to get an
answer for the customer.

We use the computer ... the salesperson simply calls a toll-
free number and speaks to our Data Operator. Instead of the
several hours of random calling at the end of the day ...
that's what used to be required ... we go into our database
to locate the model desired, or the closest one to it ... in
only 45 seconds ... solving a problem, in a way we'd never
tried before, cost-effectively for the client.

These three companies are individual examples of how we try
very hard to tailor our solutions to the needs of our
clients.

Just "electronic mail" ... just "conferencing" per se ...
just "stock quotes" and sports scores alone ... none of
those is the point. The real task is to design the ways
that technology can be FLEXIBLE to do whatever the customer
needs ... to assemble just the elements that really do work,
to avoid creating new problems, to be truly cost effective,
and to minimize the degree of change that the client must
undergo. We're finding that when it's appropriate to
combine conferencing as one of the tools we offer -- but not
the only tool we care about -- people really are willing to
pay: because they can actually have business needs satisfied
in a completely custom, individual way.

We can't succeed as an industry unless we look at ourselves
from the customer's point of view. Do I really have to
learn to say dot-S at the end of a message if I can
telephone someone who'll know the protocols for me? Do I
really have to turn on a computer if you'll deliver my
electronic mail to me on paper instead? At least give me
the choice! It may well happen that, if we make it
painless for people to discover the technology, they will
progress themselves -- not in a leap, but in an evolution --
to the benefits and power of holding the same "electronic
meetings" we do ... when its comfortable for them to do so.

We're all guilty of speaking from the reference we know
best, using the language that's part of our world. But
plenty of potential customers have no idea what a modem is
or looks like, may think "download" is something that comes
off a dump truck, may think datapackets is something you get
from the mail room.

I repeat: the most effective way to sell someone on computer
services is to let THEM tell you what their needs are, what
their frustrations are ... let THEM describe the expense and
the lost opportunities that come out of those personal
facts. THEN you can propose a solution, using terms they
already understand and the tools that you have in hand.

I know that some here today feel enormously disappointed
that conferencing hasn't yet become a more vigorous and
thriving part of daily life. But I think that's our fault,
not the medium's ... our fault for trying to make it be too
much, our fault for not listening well enough.
The opportunities are still really ENDLESS. Because
business is communication ... and we all need help in
getting the right communication we need at the right time.
I'm not talking about subcutaneous implants in your
eyeballs that send a tv monitor image to the reflection of
your glasses! I'm talking about more effective
coordination of the tools we already have ... computer
conferencing plus the telephone plus the fax plus the telex.

What would I advise anyone who wants to spread the benefits
of computer conferencing to others? I'd say, concentrate
your skills on being able to identify where conferencing
really is a solution. Try not to see it in isolation. The
first thing to concentrate on is YOURSELF: sit down with a
tape recorder and talk to yourself, just as though you were
the client. I've done that so many times, I can't begin to
tell you! Or videotape yourself.

And if, in the playback, you don't hear for yourself that
you really are offering a more cost effective solution than
the problems you're trying to solve ... then, perhaps, you
should modify your approach -- or maybe you should modify
the solution you're proposing! LISTEN to yourself, that's
step number one.

If you're a trainer ... supporting the new user who's trying
to learn ... then listening to yourself from his or her
point of view is also the way to go!

In a way, all of us here are sales people -- we all
represent the industry. The Department of Commerce says
there are only 25,000 people employed in our field ... only
25,000 people to take the world by storm! The people
attending this conference are in the forefront ... BUT: we
can so easily be talking to just ourselves, if we don't
listen ... and that would only postpone our influence on the
future, for business and otherwise.

If there are some of you here who are actually potential
clients -- please do NOT raise your hands, because I would
NOT like to see you pounced on by all these sales people! --
if you're a potential client, then you are stepping across
the threshold of a brand new technology. You are like the
first people to ever use word processing. As the early
adaptors of technology, it falls upon you to tell us what
you really think.

If you're not satisfied, say so, because the industry will
only grow by shaping itself to YOU. And if you're open and
conversational about the things you don't like, you'll be
the first to get the benefits of the changes we make in
response.

For any of these technologies, a successful future in
business will result from the exact same behavior: effective
listening to business, being open enough to hear, and
modifying what we offer as a result of what the market tells
us.

It's been a pleasure sharing these thoughts with you today.
And speaking of listening, I sure appreciate your listening
to me! Thank you very much.