Co-create Innovation Opportunities

Customers today want to be actively involved in value creation with their vendor partners.

The key to joint value creation is having a platform around which customer and partner resources can identify and jointly create innovation opportunities.

What is Co-Creation?

In their book The Co-Creation Paradigm Venkat Ramaswamy and Kerimcan Ozcan provide numerous case studies in co-creation. For example, they explain how Nike has used NikePlus (http://www.nike.com/us/en_us/c/running/nikeplus/gps-app) as a running experience platform. A key step for NikePlus was Nike’s collaboration with the Apple iPhone which was launched in 2007. Nike used the iPhone’s built-in Accelerometer and GPS to build its iPhone app. Nike not only involved Apple but also coaches, trainers, runners and Nike employees to build a community of NikePlus devotees who eagerly contributed their feedback, recommendations and innovative ideas which has led to a whole series of innovations not just with NikePlus, but also across the whole Nike product line.

Using Lakeside SysTrack to Co-Create Value

Similarly, Lakeside Software’s SysTrack is being used by partners and customers as a value creation platform. Lakeside’s partners such as VMware and Dell are using SysTrack to develop a number of new solutions and services. VMware recently announced their Horizon cloud-based desktop assessment service in order to simplify the process of moving from a traditional desktop environment to virtual desktop. Customers are working with Lakeside to speed the problem resolution process. They’re looking to integrate their Service Management systems such as ServiceNow or BMC Remedy with SysTrack in order to accelerate Mean Time to Repair, increase worker productivity and reduce Service Desk costs.

Within the workplace infrastructure environment, SysTrack makes visible what was invisible. When that visibility is provided, we continually see IT managers realize that what they are managing is a very dynamic, rapidly changing, highly complex system in which they have no chance at being successful using their existing approaches and methodologies.

Jointly working with their partner and Lakeside, customers can use the real-time insights, trends, patterns and rapidly delivered knowledge created by SysTrack to help resolve problems, improve user experience, improve existing processes and suggest new ways of thinking about long running problems and issues. This collaborative effort not only provides value for the customer, but loops back to both the customer partner and Lakeside with new insights into how to provide improved services and functionality.

To illustrate the point: until recently, SysTrack made information available through a series of dashboards, views and reports that were provided in SysTrack’s visualizers, but customers wanted custom dashboards often populated with real time data, giving them visibility to key metrics and problem areas that were targeted at their specific needs.

With SysTrack 7.0, new dashboarding capabilities were provided that allowed customers to develop custom views and even integrate data from external databases. As this information has become immediately available, problems are more quickly resolved, end users are happier, and management is suggesting to their partner and Lakeside value creation opportunities around areas like Security Operations Management, Power Management, Asset Optimization, Health Checks, and Self-Healing Services.

In short, the co-creation process is alive and well with Lakeside, its partners and its customers. In the coming months we’ll be highlighting some of the new functionality in SysTrack resulting from this process. We may even take the Co-Creation Process to a whole other level.