Chinese Whispers win Marketing Marathons

This year the Cambashi Seminar was held on April 4th at Chilford Hall, Linton, near Cambridge.

About 100 people attended the seminar to hear independent and authoritative presentations bringing the user's voice to the audience and market analysis on the issues facing IT in industry. We examined ASP services and software pricing; e-procurement and CRM; design co-operation and marketplaces.

An Original vision
The central web site and co-ordinated collateral allow vendors to deliver consistent and focused messages that improve return on sales and marketing investments. Local field organisations add intangible values to the basic brand and product that leaves the development group. These Chinese Whispers could also defocus messages. We argue that business is won when field marketing pragmatism gets them right, rather than when central marketing eliminates them.

External speakers

User viewpoint: Mike Roberts, most recently Director business process improvement for Rolls Royce. Mike has had corporate responsibility for core systems, IT, e-Business strategy, and major business change resulting from implementing ERP.

Vendor viewpoint: Jeff Drust, Vice President, e-Business, Autodesk Inc. Jeff explained the challenges Autodesk has faced in changing the culture of the company and its channels to take on board e-issues. It is not just a question of winning acceptance of new ideas, but also what to change, when to change it and how to drive the change, whilst continuing to meet the expectations of Wall Street - all within the availability of scarce resources.

Cambashi speakers

Cambashi is part of an international virtual team that focuses on IT in industry. We know the world-wide market; our ideas help you to make sales and marketing more effective; we communicate the user's voice. Our digital and paper libraries combined with our analytical skills and industry knowledge enable us to provide tailored solutions to the issues you are facing today.

Chinese Whispers: Mike Evans explained the theme of the seminar and examines the marketing policies and operations of large companies in the age of the Internet. How do they balance marketing centralisation against adding value with industry and regional flavours?

Industry enters the new Millennium - Peter Thorne introduced our annual review of the state of the market by discussing trends and issues in industry. This year we explore current and future 'sweet' spots in your target sectors, incorporating feedback from specially commissioned user surveys.

Collaborative design, the curate's egg - Bob Brown and Nick Ballard considered aspects of co-operative design and engineering applications.

ERP is not dead. It's in disguise - Edwin Ecob and Dan Roberts reported on enterprise applications, with particular focus on the critical role of product catalogues in e-business for manufacturers.

Jury still out on ASP (Application Service Providers)- Peter Thorne examined business issues surrounding Application Service Providers. What are the users' reactions? How will pricing models react and adapt? Is this a route to international business development? What other changes will ASPs make to the way we do business?

Seminar presentations are available for download on our ftp site. Please direct any queries to kathy.strachan@cambashi.com or phone +44 (0)1223 460439.

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