PBBI Insights ‘09: The Cloud, Recession = Eye of the Storm

Pitney Bowes Business Insights (aka MapInfo) president Mike Hickey launched the Insights 2009 user conference (follow on Twitter) event by welcoming attendees to the "eye of the storm," metaphorically referencing a dismal economy and the "great global recession." Hickey’s message was aimed less at the financial disruption and more at the disruptive technologies such as cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS) and social networks. He is focusing PBBI to move as quickly as possible to the cloud. Hickey told me that PBBI held an employee session just prior to Insight’s just that generated tens of ideas on product development and deployment but with heavy emphasis on cloud computing.

Though PBBI is a big organization that’s part of an even bigger company, Hickey is trying to get his organization to act with the agility of a small company…a tall order when in the last 18 months PB effectively created nuclear fusion by smashing together Group 1 and MapInfo. The result has been challenging, to say the least, because the messaging from the company has to straddle location intelligence, geospatial technology, operational applications, and business intelligence, and then look across their available platforms, like MapInfo Pro, to create vertical solutions.

Essentially, Hickey wants to re-engineer PBBI to be a client-focused organization because as it exists today, with so many moving parts and products, he must look out to his client base for their needs and input. As such, the company launched a service called “Voice of the Customer” that employs a metrics-driven feedback system to give PBBI some insights into customer loyalty. The program is a closed loop process to follow up on any issues uncovered throughout the account so that there is more proactive communication with clients. Marilyn Otto, VP of Customer Experience is spearheading the program that has put order entry, fulfillment and tech support under this organization.