Consumer Technology

Posted on | January 31, 2008 | Comments Off on Consumer Technology

Insourcing and outsourcing at the speed of lightIn the home consumer electronics business, progress is moving at the speed of light. Take digital cameras for instance. In 2006, only 20 percent had resolutions of 7 megapixils or more. By 2007, 70 percent of the cameras performed at this level, and that occurred without price increases. During that same one year span, gigabytes of digital information stored online (from YouTube videos to personal photos) increased six-fold, from 161 billion gigabytes to 988 billion gigabytes. And if consumers are willing to “outsource” their data, they’re also willing to connect to retail outlets if they discover greater options for efficiency and pricing. Photos are a good example. In 2002, 90 percent of all digital photos were printed on home computers. Today, only 38 percent are. Why? The specialty paper and ink costs so much that it’s not worth it. Retailers and online services from Snapfish to CVS and Walgreens make it easy to download and either pick-up at the store or receive perfect pictures by mail. Or you can bring your memory card to the mini-lab and do it yourself.

In a micrcosm, we see then what consumers are capable of.

1. They purchase – and technology performs and evolves in anticipation that progress will deliver profit.

2. They critique – they are troubled by what they see as high cost, poor quality, poor efficiency; and they will seek alternatives to the status-quo.

3. They connect and adapt – they are fully capable of constructing their own processes, linking together virtual and brick and mortar to deliver, in the most time-efficient and cost-effective manner a high-quality service or products.

4. They in-source and they out-source – they have recognized that much of what they need to do or want to do for their families can now be done from home, and the rest can be scheduled, coordinated and staged from home, making the outsourcing component more customized and predictable. In short, when they go to pick-up the photos, they’re ready and they’re perfect.

5. They “mind-jump” – if mixing advanced technology, insourced coordination planning and some execution along with carefully selected, staged-outsourcing can deliver a more reliable, superior, more efficient and less costly service in one sector – why not in another?

Do you see where I’m going with this?