Tag Archives: Lou Shipley

Retailers need to get real about security – Lou Shipley

MIT Sloan Lecturer Lou Shipley

MIT Sloan Lecturer Lou Shipley

From Xconomy

It seems a distant memory now. In December 2013 – light years ago in technology time – the retail giant Target disclosed a massive software security breach of its point of sale systems. The bad guys fled the virtual premises with the credit card information of 40 million customers. This astounding number would later rise to 70 million customers.

Target’s embarrassment, its loss of market share, its brand erosion, and its legal costs to settle claims collectively should have served as a nerve-jangling wakeup call for retailers large and small nationwide.

It would be hopeful to believe that retailers learned from Target’s data breach, but in fact the opposite has happened. In 2016, retail software security breaches were up 40 percent over the prior year and in 2017 the following familiar brand names suffered breaches – Sonic, Whole Foods Market, Arby’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Chipotle, Brooks Brothers, Kmart, and Verizon. Retail software security is getting worse, not better, and the dismal trend seems likely to continue in the near term. Why? Read More »

“Taken for granted” is not the new customer service norm – Lou Shipley

MIT Sloan Lecturer Lou Shipley

MIT Sloan Lecturer Lou Shipley

It’s been an extremely rough 30 days for three of the US airline industry’s largest carriers – United, American and Delta – whose rude and brutish treatment of customers was captured in smart phone videos that not surprisingly went viral.

In United’s case, the damage control was anything but as CEO Oscar Munoz immediately delivered a tone deaf, blame-the-victim response. His belated apology for United’s execrable behavior was of little help.

Friendly skies? Not so much.

The three high-profile airline debacles are stark examples of ham-fisted customer disregard and have given rise to the question: In an increasingly automated and technology-driven world, is being taken for granted the new customer-service norm?

Emphatically, no.  In fact, there’s ample evidence that it’s quite the opposite.

Savvy companies – global industry brands around the world – are investing in, listening to, and learning from customers because they realize that a relentless focus on their customers drives success and growth.

There are many excellent examples of companies that are putting a premium on delivering a consistently great customer experience to increase both revenue and customer loyalty.

Good examples of businesses that are both highly successful and customer-experience focused include Amazon, Netflix, UPS, Trader Joe’s, and the giant insurance provider USAA.

These thriving enterprises are in highly competitive markets and all of them are using customer service as a differentiator.

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With “Go,” Amazon identifies another job it can do better–Lou Shipley

MIT Sloan Lecturer Lou Shipley

MIT Sloan Lecturer Lou Shipley

From Xconomy

Early last year, I “fired” talk radio along with NPR’s morning and evening editions. That same day, I “hired” Amazon Audible as my commute companion.

It wasn’t a difficult decision. Audible is far better than its predecessors at doing the job I need done as I travel to and from my office – provide on-demand access to an array of rich, custom content.

I got to thinking about that firing-hiring recently when reading an article about Amazon’s new “Go” concept: a quick-stop grocery and convenience-meal venture that will allow consumers to grab what they need off the shelves (Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology tracks what’s added to the shopping cart), confirm the purchase, and leave without ever standing in a checkout line.

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Opinion: How big banks can stop FinTech upstarts from getting your money – Lou Shipley

MIT Sloan Lecturer Lou Shipley

MIT Sloan Lecturer Lou Shipley

From MarketWatch

A high-stakes competition is underway between traditional financial services institutions and disruptive FinTech startups.

The Economist reports that more than $25 billion has been invested in financial technology — FinTech — in the last five years, with 4,000 firms challenging banks in just about every product line.  As financial services comprise about $1.2 trillion of U.S. GDP, increased levels of investment are likely.

Big banks have the advantage in this fight — at the moment. These institutions have well-earned reputations for safety and security. They benefit from strong, multi-generational customer relationships, have considerable brand equity, and offer myriad financial products and services.

Except well-funded, agile FinTech startups including SoFi, Billguard, Square, Wealthfront, Venmo and Neighborly are innovating and nibbling away at banks’ market share. They’re doing this by offering custom solutions for everything from student-loan refinancing and payment processing to lending and facilitating neighborhood investment.

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The road to safe, secure driverless cars — Lou Shipley

MIT Sloan Lecturer Lou Shipley

MIT Sloan Lecturer Lou Shipley

From Xconomy

The development of autonomous vehicles promises a future of safe and efficient roads, unimpeded by distracted, impaired, aggressive, or deliberately speeding drivers. But to achieve this, the companies involved in developing driverless cars will have to navigate significant obstacles.

The transition from personally controlled to automated vehicles can be likened to the shift that occurred over the past 20 years from brick-and-mortar retail to e-commerce. For traditional storeowners, security depended on door locks, alarm systems, cameras, and access to cash registers. For online retailers, security has to do with networks and software.

Similarly, the safety focus in driverless vehicles will be largely about securing the networks and software that drive the cars. Today’s cars have approximately 100 million lines of code in them. Autonomous cars will have many times more. The companies that manufacture driverless cars will have to actively manage all of the security aspects of the vehicles’ software.

Today’s carmakers have, over time, developed efficient procedures for recalling and fixing vehicles with parts identified as faulty or unsafe. Similarly, with autonomous vehicles, manufacturers will need to devise methods of identifying and fixing problems discovered in software. In many cases, repairs can be done remotely, in the same way that mobile phone and computer makers can send patches over networks. But however fixes are made, management of software supply chains will need to be as efficient as the management of the supply chains for physical parts.

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