Achieving Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s) is not just an internal exercise. Powerful SCO’s may be created through partnerships with otherwise completely different industries. Look at your services and products through the customers eyes and powerful market winning solutions emerge.
Such is the tie up between Nike and Apple recently. A combination of products - the Apple IPOD and Nike’s training shoes brings a market winning combination for those of us with an athletic bent.
Teaming up they have created a wireless system that connects Apple’s iPod Nike sneakers. Using a small sensor that’s inserted into the sole of a new Nike running shoe — the $100 Air Zoom Moire — the system lets runners record the distance, time, pace and calories burned during each workout.
For Apple, the deal with Nike underscores how the Cupertino, Calif., computer maker is slowly pushing its gadget beyond music. The iPod accounted for $1.71 billion, or 39%, of Apple’s $4.36 billion in revenue last quarter.
Nike and Apple say their new products are different from those launched by rivals because of their simplicity and ease of use. Rather than requiring the use of an owner’s manual or an on/off button on the shoe, the Nike shoe’s wireless rig is ready upon being inserted into the sneaker, says Nike Chief Executive Mark Parker.
Some folks have coined the new joint product “The Nipple” (NIke aPPLE). The “Nipple” will retail for about $29 beginning in July, and includes both the sensor and a wireless receiver that’s attached to the iPod nano. Using the combination, runners can either receive audible feedback about their workout through the nano’s headphones or check their progress on the screen of the music player. The system also allows runners to select a “PowerSong” that they can access quickly to “help kick a workout to the next level.”
Linking your products, services and processes is the route to SCO’s and produces otherwise unseen combinations allowing those corporations to break new ground in the race to win our business.
About the Author
Steve Towers, Co-founder and Chair of BP Group (www.bpgroup.org), is an expert on process and performance transformation. Steve founded the first community focused on business process management in 1992.
Steve has bases in Europe (UK), New York and Colorado.
