Week 9: Synchronization

The article discusses about two cases, 3M and Rewiring Thomson Financial. In the case of 3M the fragmentation was very awful as sales representative of each division need to collect all the information from customer by calling them individually and then store all that information in its own database. As a result it was impossible for the company to retrieve the profit from an individual customer. Each business units had to maintain and update its customer database separately which increases the expense of the company. The same situation arose when the company moved online. In fact 40% of the customers address was invalid. Thus the company decided to build its own database and spend $20 million to create a global data warehouse. By synchronizing and collecting all the data in the single data warehouse the company can redesign, reaggregate, and reconfigure its offerings to better fulfill the needs of groups of customers or to capitalize on market opportunities. Thus it can be said that if the company has a strong organizational culture it can overcome any single issue.

On the other hand, the case of Thomson Financial followed the customer scenario model discussed but in a slightly different way. The company segmented its customers into three groups which are portfolio managers, equity analysts, and traders. The company then studied each segment in details and based on the result of this study, it directed packaged products to the appropriate segment. Thomson Financial traditionally offers its customer a fragment set of product controlled by the isolated business unit. To solve this problem they created a set of tailored offering individual customer segmentation. In addition, organizations need to organize themselves to meet how their customers think about them and their products.

Thus from the article it can be said that synchronization can lead a major issue for the organization, so to resolve the issue organization should adopt a strategy which overcome all the issues. To make your organization more responsive and efficient you need to break down the walls between your units, rather than manage the information.