Is your website having an identity crisis? – The changing face of the website

Not that long ago to ‘have a website’ was something both novel and leading edge and, for many, considered to be one-upmanship on the competition.

Hopefully it would provide the level playing field required to help the local butcher become a world-famous sausage brand with thousands of international orders flying in over the ether.

Just add a few keywords to your web site title, description and keyword meta tags and millions of folk would instantly find you on the first page of search engine results.

These days it’s just not that simple.

In fact, some are questioning whether websites are dead or at least dying.

My own view at the moment is that it’s more a case that the role of the website is having to change and adapt as a result of other elements being fed into the online mix and which do certain jobs better .

For me, the main role of the website is now to act like the ‘virtual head office’ where visitors can gain access to official information and library-type content, obtain ‘About Us’ and investor-type information and find links that lead to outsourced tools and applications branded to the organisation but hosted by specialist third parties such as e-commerce, e-learning and webinars.

As far as online marketing is concerned, this responsibility without doubt is now being handled by social media. If you think of social media as being your marketing department situated across the road from your website head office then this kind of helps you appreciate the relationship. The two maybe separate but they’re still connected.     

Social Marketing
Marketing is principally about promotion.

Ideally it should also be about customer acquisition, engagement and brand relationship building which ultimately leads to new and repeat sales.

In the pre-digital age brands often attempted to encourage this by inviting consumers to write to them with their feedback or to obtain future new product information. Now they’re using social media.

Social media has opened up a whole new world of customer acquisition and engagement possibility.

Millions of people are now members of online social communities and the interest in online socially based engagement has been well proven by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

By establishing a social marketing presence, brands and businesses can engage with both existing and new potential customers in ways never previously possible via their website.

To be successful with social marketing though, it’s just like it was with websites – once you’ve created it you have to support it and keep it fresh and up to date.

Video is a great form of social content and allows you to provide interesting insight into your business or brand – e.g.: going ‘behind the scenes’; ‘meeting the team’; seeing how things are made etc. This is all good fodder to kick-start conversations and relationship building between the outside world and the business.

It’s also very easy to propagate content between different types of social media so that by taking one action you automatically multiply the effect and increase social reach.

For example, if you have a YouTube account linked to Facebook and Twitter then whenever you post a new video to YouTube it will be instantly flagged on your Facebook and Twitter sites so that your different communities are all made aware at the same time.

Furthermore, your communities can easily spread the word by clicking simple links to notify others they know about content that they like and is worth sharing. (A process known as ‘viral’).

Social media activity is also very search engine friendly and can generate good early visibility for brands and businesses in relation to natural search engine listings.

So, let social media fulfil your online marketing function – but where does this leave your website?

The New Website Role
Your social media site can and should of course be linked to either your main website (or a dedicated campaign site if part of a specific promotion).

Whilst social media channels are setup to handle online communication and engagement well, they are still limited in other ways and because they are template based they do not allow for the conveying of strong individual brand identity – something which websites do well.

So, use social media sites to attract and engage, develop on-going relationships and promote new products, services and PR events but also use them to drive visitors to your website where they can actually then either buy something or e.g. obtain more in-depth information, search other digital content libraries and gain a more comprehensive overview of the organisation and it’s people.

An Overall Digital Marketing Strategy
These days, more and more companies are using digital advertising in addition to TV and the press.

Digital advertising allows for more tailored customer group targeting and the return on marketing investment can be easily measured by reference to website statistics analysis.

Ideally, any contemporary digital marketing strategy should include elements of paid search and pay-per-click advertising as well as the use of social media as well as re-purposed website.

In addition, all elements should pay conscious attention to issues such as search engine optimisation (SEO), user-centric design, user journey planning and the identification of key marketing goals and targets which are measurable via web analytics software.

On an ongoing basis, website owners the need to ensure that they constantly analyse the results of website data and identify problem areas which need further action.

End.

Customer engagement – at your convenience!

It’s nice to travel and meet people occasionally.

Most folk think I spend 100% of my time working virtually and wearing pyjamas all day but in fact it’s only 99% of the time and the night attire can change according to what mood I’m in….

So, it’s always nice to dig the suit out, find it still fits, and accept the challenge to travel to some place I don’t know, speak a foreign language and achieve the desired result(maybe 50% of the time at least).

Last week I went to meet a longstanding client at a conference they were attending in Nice. This neccesitated flying from Bristol airport (great airport but the most apalling road access to any I can readily think of – save possibly for that edge-of-cliff airport in the Himalayas).

Having managed to avoid the check-in queue courtesy of my self-printed, online boarding pass, I then spent 30 minutes standing in line waiting to get half undresssed to go through the scanner. Jacket, belt and shoes all came off, laptop, handluggage, and several other trays of my stuff followed me dutifully on the conveyor belt and then it took another ten minutes to remember what belonged to me,  get dressed again and decant all my mini-toiletry bottles into a re-sealable plastic bag and which was then placed back in my wash bag (still haven’t worked out what the point was of putting them in the plastic bag and then back into the washbag but never mind).

After all this I felt that I needed a trip to the Gents.

These days, going to the loo is a major advertising experience.

These cunning ad types have long realised that for at least 30 seconds they have a captive audience  gazing at an otherwise blank wall and so what better than to provide you with your own, in-yer-face, personal ad (watch this space for the next generation of TFT panel which delivers multiple, ‘personalised’  video ads as a result of your geo-locationally-aware boarding card which passsed on your interests and preferences to the building management system when it was scanned at security…..) .

So, in an effort to avoid captivation, the alternative is to look down (left or right can get you into serious trouble and behind is not an option for most…) .

BUT looking down revealed yet another marketing innovation – the invitation to contact the company that makes the perforated rubber mats that in the good old days would have stopped cigarette ends from blocking the outflow but these days are mostly for decoration only. Printed on the edge was the number of their ‘customer hotline’.

I have to say that I was mesmerised by the concept and was extremely tempted to phone and have a good natter. The main problem was that I didn’t have my phone in hands-free mode at the time and couldn’t quite overcome  the self-concious aspect of writing down the number in public and delaying others whose need was much greater than mine. 

I  do know however that if I had done then we could have had a long and productive SWOT analysis discussion culminating in the idea that it would be great to be able to try out some competitor product so that you could well and truly say that you’d xxxxxx all over them.

Social Media – Finding The Angle

Social-ability
Some businesses and brands lend themselves better to identifying social media opportunities than others.

These are typically those with existing strong and medium-long term customer relationships such as banks, building societies, loan, finance and insurance companies. Regular repeat customers of various FMCG brands are also good news (think tomato sauce and toothpaste). These examples offer pretty good ready-made bases for developing social communities around their product or service.
 
Car brands also have good ‘social’ potential as there are always plenty of Jeremy Clarksons out there ready, willing and able to publish their considered opinions and join in alpha male car stuff debates.

On the other hand, the property sector appears to be a bit more difficult as the relationship between seller, agent and purchaser or tenant is typically short-lived and not oft repeated and housebuilders, second-hand sellers and agents are all notoriously ‘sensitive’ when it comes to possible negative comment about their product.

Social and real estate
And yet the property market is actually ripe for ‘social’ with plenty of opportunity for housebuilders and commercial developers to establish ongoing early relationships with potential customers and e.g. solicit feedback on new proposed designs, specs and features. The secondhand market and your average estate agency re-seller might struggle a bit more difficult to find an opportunity for ‘social’ however.

(I’ll be blogging in more detail about social and real estate in the near future…)

Social and traditional
Even more of a challenge are products that traditionally don’t appear to have much in the way of an obvious direct B2C interface and where the traditional relationship is e.g. solely between producer and supplier – at least in terms of the supply chain. And yet these are some of the ones I find most enjoyable to analyse and look for innovative angles.

I’ve always had a seeming natural disposition towards wondering what goes on behind the scenes with products. As a sad child, I was always drawn to product labels on the back of things like shampoo bottles which typically had the name of Jane someone-or-other to write to in the consumer department and then there was Tom Champagne and his prize draws (‘Oooh vicar!’) at Readers Digest – great name – but did he or Jane ever really exist I wondered? I’ve always since thought of these people a bit like ‘Room 101’ or ‘The Cones Hotline’ – just sitting in some dark and dusty room hoping noone would actually phone.

Now, it’s social media and it supporting desktop, mobile and ‘pad’ technologies that are making true B2C and B2B community dialogue possible.

Social – enabling novel engagement
I guess, in a way, that in a B2C capacity this is really rather like an extranet and I do like the idea of being able to look for interesting angles in relation to engaging end customers with product originators and using social media to educate, enlighten and entertain by e.g. providing YouTube video clips that document and track the product journey through it’s various stages.

Only last night in fact I was watching a TV programme about Eddie Stobart and at one point one of their truck drivers was attempting to negotiate an extremely narrow lane to pick-up strawberries from a fruit farm and then deliver them to a Tesco depot – and because of the contract with Tesco there was only a half hour window for delivery.

The stop-go trials and tribulations of the transport leg of the journey made for compelling viewing and at one point caused the driver to remark on the fact that little did Wimbledon goers appreciate the complexities and difficulties in relation to the strawberry-to-bowl process. But they would if they had also seen the same programme or – more importantly and pertinently –  were able to access the clip via YouTube as part of a social media campaign and then discuss it on Facebook – and maybe then be offered a special promotion via their mobile for a Tesco strawberry discount or a visit to an ‘Eddie’ depot (of which there are 40 apparently and a truck fleet of 2000 – all which have female names – blimey I didn’t know there even were 2000 female names…..)

Find the angle and implement
Brand identity, acquisition, engagement, conversion, retention and cross-selling (and the rest) are all now able to be bolstered, supported and elevated by social media. There is probably no business or organisation that could not benefit from social media.

The real challenge is finding the appropriate angle and implementing it.

The Futures’s Bright – The Future’s WAP’

 Orange Group has just released results of a recent study which show that 75% of UK mobile users prefer using their mobile web browser to apps for accessing online content.

I find this interesting as it certainly squares with my own views about the mobile web (i.e. WAP 2.0) being the overall long term focus for business investment rather than apps.

It’s also interesting that Marks & Spencer and John Lewis have both elected to go the ‘WAP not APP’ route with both reporting good initial results.

As I’ve previously stated, I don’t have any problem as such with apps – they have a definite and valid role to play in the overall mix of tools available and have helped to give mobile online access a high profile in the last couple of years- but I do have a problem in the over-hyped notion that they are somehow the ultimate method for mobile content access.

Apps are small embedded software programmes running on a particular handset’s native operating system and which do useful specific functions. Some of these functions can indeed be linked to relevant online content and data in real-time and locally store that data for offline localised manipulation. Developed with the mobile user and one finger in mind, these are great for on-the-go users who wish to achieve a specific goal in the shortest time possible and who tend to be juggling many different things at the same time as walking, talking and not watching the traffic. 

On the other hand, the blank canvas that is the web browser allows for across the board access to the vast galaxy that is ‘the web’ and which is the environment in which the vast majority of us spend our online time and which HTML 5.0 is increasingly enhancing.

Mobile apps and browsers are both valid and have distinctly different purposes and functions and both can happily co-exist on the same device – but neither are a substitute for each other.

The other useful fact revealed by Orange is that as mobile plans are increasingly bundled with fixed price 24×7 internet access then cost is becoming far less of a barrier to mobile internet use with only 13% of UK respondents citing that cost is an issue.

Additional interesting facts are that mobile has resulted in 14% of users watching more TV (via their mobile) and 25% use their home PC online more.

This again squares with my own mobile experience as since I signed up for my first ‘all-in’ mobile account at the beginning of this year I now use my mobile as the main means to access BBC news and catch-up TV –  in bed (what an exciting life I lead) – on the train whenever I’m commuting, or in fact almost anywhere that I might happen to be with a few minutes to kill.  (I’ve found that throughout 2010 I can access mobile internet pretty well from almost anywhere I’ve been in the UK – even relying on my Three mobile modem to do serious work on remote servers from the wilds of North Yorkshire after my dad cancelled his broadband account as he hadn’t a clue what it was for and my mother had stopped using it owing to a period of hospitalisation – thus leaving her online friends unable to contact her and thinking that she must have already shuffled off…..).

*I plan to follow up this post with a review of both M&S and John Lewis mobile sites shortly.

‘Housebuilders are backward when it comes to IT’

This post is in response to a discussion thread within the ‘New Homes Hub UK’ discussion group on LinkedIn as posted by Simon Wilkins.

The discussion addresses an issue that I have a long association with and which has been interesting to re-visit.

The Curate’s Egg
Rather like the curate’s egg, the industry is good in parts and there are certainly some housebuilding companies who are genuinely modernist when it comes to the use of IT and new technology.

However, these are still possibly the exception rather than the rule.Things weren’t helped by the fact that any exposure to hands-on computing until 1991 had involved DOS based software with it’s dull, cryptic interface, keystroke commands and monochrome screens in orange or green.

Real Men Don’t Use Computers
Until the late 1980’s I, like many, had equated technology solely with computing and in turn computing with science and maths – both of which I’d always managed to studiously avoid.

In housebuilding, unless you were an architect, quantity surveyor, accountant or an IT geek, you didn’t get involved hands-on with computers – you just pondered over the results they produced and made ‘he-man’ business decisions based on the output.

Seeing The Light
This was during my phase as development director at Balfour Beatty Specialist Homes where I was responsible for new developing joint venture business and project managing the pre-construction phases of custom urban mixed redevelopment projects and niche high value housing.

I enjoyed my time at Balfour Beatty and was not only involved in the P&L operational aspects of housebuilding but also charged with looking at how my subsidiary might develop in a strategic sense.

This was the era when Balfour Beatty was owned by BICC Plc – which at the time was a major global cable technology business.

BICC was very keen to investigate how the adoption of new technology might be usefully embedded within Balfour Beatty’s construction and spec development businesses.

As a result, I found myself being asked to look at how technological-focused thinking might be applied within the residential development lifecycle – and which ultimately included the use of modular design, factory based prefabrication, Just-In-Time delivery, building materials technologies, joined-up IT using networks to improve the efficiency of data and knowledge transfer and – the one that really caught my imagination – intelligent building systems for automating the quality and efficiency of a building’s internal environment in response to its real-time use and function.

This was also at a time when the Japanese construction giants were poised to develop a foothold in Europe and there was a definite sense that their technology-driven approach could pose a serious threat to the old-style, labour intensive, in-situ wet building methods and claims-driven mentality that so characterised the UK building industry in particular.

However, we all know what then happened – the Japanese economy took a nose-dive, the technology-driven threat disappeared, the UK went into recession and by the time the industry recovered in the mid-late 90’s the good-intentions of pre-recession strategy and change were forgotten and – even despite the attempts by the Latham Report – the industry largely went back to it’s traditional ways of thinking and doing things.

By this time, I had left direct employment within the housebuilding industry and was servicing it from a specialist consultancy viewpoint in relation to technology – partly providing ‘gatekeeping’ type knowledge to an enlightened few as well as project managing various early ICT related projects typically concerned with either data transfer or marketing.

As a result of internet and WWW I began specialising in digital media communication – initially from the perspective of construction sector project team communications but then broadened out to designing and delivering web based multimedia information, marketing and CPD e-learning systems.

Between 1995-1998 I spent 75% of my time engaged as a consultant on two large pan-European R&D projects concerned with identifying new construction sector related broadband products and services and working with a mix of major construction groups, national telecom operators and technology companies. This was a particularly interesting period and led to various related spin-offs including my involvement in construction sector related CPD education with a specific focus on ICT and multimedia.

However by 1999 I had broadened my operational activities to encompass a wider variety of industries including medicine and banking and working with doctors and bankers has provided a useful insight into how other sectors perceive and interact with IT (and technology in a broader sense).

And Finally…..
Looking back at the housebuilding sector with my technologist hard-hat on, the fact that it lags behind in its adoption and appreciation of IT is, I believe, the result of a number of factors including:

– An historical lack of internal R&D

– Old-style corporate culture which is perpetuated by handed-down philosophy and autocratic hierarchical management with only lip-service being paid to e.g. employee feedback and innovative ideas and suggestions.

– Lack of bottom-up / holistic strategic thinking

– An ‘After you Claude’ mentality but which is then direct conflict with the equal mentality of of ‘Not invented here’ syndrome.

– Supposedly customer-led but in reality hates having to adapt its product citing tight margins, overheads, building costs, keeping prices low as the key reasons for resisting change.

– Housing is largely provided by a national based industry mostly immune to non-native competition and the associated different ideas and approaches that might otherwise help to enforce change

– Real change is only often effected as a result of either legislation or market competition

– Technology is not seen as an intrinsic aspect of core operational business

– Rather than having strong degree of internal expertise and knowledge technology is often seen as a specialist function and left to external consultancies and agencies to provide

– Lack of sustained support and promotion of technology by associated professional bodies, trade press and CPD level education.

Educashun
Having to again address the perception that ‘Housebuilders are backward when it comes to IT’ is rather disappointing in the sense that after all these years nothing has seemingly changed very much and that the sector has somehow managed to remain unaffected by all that has happened in relation to technology since the early ‘90’s.

However, it is also encouraging in its implied suggestion that there is still an opportunity to educate and help effect change.

 

Friday 13th: The mobile web slayer cometh – ‘Apps’ beware!

Today,  the latest edition of ‘New Media Age’ landed on the mat. 

Increasingly, the last few weekly editions have only served to re-enforce my views on early-adopter enthusiasm and exuberance clouding sensible business judgement but, today, it’s apparent that ‘Apps’ are not proving to be quite the advertising and marketing meal-ticket previously perceived…..

‘Pop-Ups! Pop-Ups!’
Coming from a ‘web’ background, as I do, I must admit that I’ve found the notion of ‘apps’ and their exultation immensely irritating of late. I’m actually reminded of some long-since gone TV ad featuring Jennifer Saunders sitting in an internet cafe having some kind of crisis after being deluged with pop-ups. ‘Apps’ have kind of had the same effect on me.

Now, in fact, I can well see that there is a time and place for everything – and time and place are in fact extremely good variables for use in ‘Apps’ as they can do good things by interfacing with mobile GPS and stuff to provide location-aware information etc.  and do genuinely software-y kind of things that you can’t really do with even the most sophisticated web application.

However, why so many businesses have fallen for the idea of having an ‘App’ which restricts them to a particular handset audience when they could have achieved far more with a decent mobile website has baffled and irritated me for quite a while.

Anyhow, lo and behold in this week’s NMA there is a whole clutch of snippets and items about the shortcomings of ‘Apps’ and the rise in interest concerning the true mobile web. Hurrah! Long live the King! Down with the Emperor! (There’s also a really good piece about not fixing what ain’t broken when it comes to revamping your existing website but I digress….)

Surely not? – ‘Hype’ is used in same sentence as ‘Apps’!
First, on page 4, there’s a subheadline ‘Brands warned mobile apps are not reaching as many users as hype suggests’ . Horror of horrors! Sacre bleu! How can this be?  

Apparently, a recent study by ComScore has revealed that only 31% of UK mobile users have downloaded an ‘App’ whilst over 37% regularly access the mobile internet. Now that can’t be a result of apps being expensive and that there’s a war on – sorry I mean recession. Even I can afford an app or two at £1.50 or whatever they are – if I forego my weekly ice cream of course.

Even more interesting, James Tagg, head of mobile at Starcom MediaVest said “Many advertisers are getting caught up in the hype about apps but there is a growing realisation that the mobile web will soon have to be thought about more seriously”. 

And then on P8 the headline says: Smartphone boom creates division for mobile advertisers’. This alludes to the fact that advertisers are waking up to the realisation that to advertise via ‘Apps’  requires multiple investment, multiple adverts and all the associated double-handling, duplication of effort and attendant management and technical headaches. It’s just not efficient and cost-effective. No wonder then that further down in the same item it says ‘…the polarisation could lead to an increased focus on web activity….’.   ‘Could’? Surely ‘should’ and ‘must’.  It’s really a simple matter of horses for courses. ‘Apps’ are essentially embedded mini-software programmes that can only work with a particular mobile operating system. As such, they need to be sourced, downloaded and installed.

Whilst ‘Apps’ may well have some degree of live connection to the mobile internet so that e.g. up-to-date advertisements can be displayed and interacted with in real-time this is not the same as having an advertisement running on the mobile web and which can be seen and interacted with by anyone with any handset just via their pre-installed web browser on any internet capable handset be it iPhone, Android, Windows, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Blackberry etc., etc.

Personally, I believe this is just matter of time and education.

The tempting Apple
It’s a bit like the ‘dotcom’ goldrush. Everyone has piled in to ‘Apps’ because Apple has led the way in terms of making mobile sexy and fun and other handset manufacturers have had to follow suit. Consumers have only really had ‘Apps’ pushed at them – not as yet the true mobile web.   Advertisers have therefore had to try to reach the initial mobile market via shoe-horning ads into ‘App’s but of course that’s far from ideal in terms of the business case which ideally needs to reach the whole market with  single creative, technical and managerial approach – which only the mobile web can ultimately provide.

Eventually, things will settle and stabilise. ‘Apps’ will continue to have their rightful place as embedded software gadgets doing useful specific stuff whilst mobile web will be the primary medium for true universal access to online information, advertising and multimedia resources (think ‘iTunes’).

Whilst there will be always be good reason for some businesses to have a dual ‘Apps’ and mobile web strategy, most businesses will be focused on mobile web – and especially as HTML5 takes hold.

Surveyors and New Technology – An Oxymoron? Discuss…

(*This is a re-post from an earlier blog written in January 2010.)

I have actually been prompted to scribble something here as a result of picking this month’s edition of ‘RICS Business’ and finding that much of it is devoted to encouraging RICS members (AKA chartered surveyors…) to get going with online social networking. This is to be applauded and it is commendable that the RICS has seen fit to devote a great amount of space to flagging the issue at the start of the year when thinking is supposedly fresh and people open to new ideas.       

As one who battled away in the mid 90′s evangelising about ‘the web’ and digital media to bemused and largely sceptical audiences of chartered surveyors, I do hope that 2010 does indeed turn out to be the year when the digital penny finally drops.

It is nevertheless disappointing to see yet again in hard print that, despite all that has come to pass in relation to the digital world in the last decade, the  perception apparently remains that the UK surveying profession is ’…lagging behind other sectors…’ in it’s embrace of new technology.

Indeed, if we were to momentarily leave aside the more generic elements of digital media marketing and social networking, how many surveyors would know what the terms BMS or KNX mean and their role in energy management and sustainability? – or instantly make a connection between SMART phone GPS awareness, ‘tag’ reader technology and their implications in relation to a potential myriad of property sector related applications?   

Admittedly as an RICS member I know I am rather uncharacteristic of my breed and was an exceptionally early adopter of emerging new technology back in 1992 after I left my role as development director of Balfour Beatty’s Specialist Homes division to focus on property and construction related ICT.

I suppose that I was fortunate in having a bit of head-start as a result of my exposure to some fledgling new technologies that emerged during my time at BB – ’SMART’ building concepts in particular – but which were then very much in their infancy and required a basement full of kit to fulfill the simplest of functions. But at least the possibilities were evident and given that this was a time when early PCs were poised to become ‘ubiquitous’ thanks to Windows 3.0 and the future seemed quite bright – if not entirely orange at that stage.

The advent of the internet, CompuServe and HTML 1.0 had certainly signalled the start of the online revolution by the mid 90′s and their was at least a hum beginning to develop about what it all might mean (despite BT’s best attempts to have you believe that the Information Superhighway was just around the next bend and perfectly cruiseable via 64k ISDN.) 

As a result of my early efforts to generate sector interest in the new online world via my establishment of an industry-focused property and construction network –  ’PROCONET’ (possibly the first sector-specific attempt at what would later become known as a ‘portal’) I was invited  to become involved in two EC funded R&D projects concerned with the potential for broadband applications within the property and construction sectors.  (Highly interesting stuff which I will allude to in a separate blog.) 

The knock-on effect of this, was that I was also asked to produce three CPD videos for the Television Education Network aimed especially at helping educate chartered surveyors in relation to the new digital world.

This also led to invitations to deliver CPD seminars and lectures – especially for Westminster University and The Wilson Centre in Cambridge – and which for the first time brought me face-to-face with the great, the good and the highly sceptical.

It cannot however be said that there was a lack of interest. The lectures at Westminster were packed. But all that anyone really wanted to know was if email would be the ’KILLER’ application. As for the relevance of the WWW to real estate agents this was almost immediately dismissed – mainly on the grounds that by posting property details online this would obviously prove to be an enormous invitation to burglars. But still, it was eventually built, the world came to visit and the crime rate stayed much as it had.

Having disappeared in the late 90′s to work with other sectors and professions on digital media projects, it’s actually really interesting looking back on all of this now. The technology that supports the web and the applications that run on it have matured beyond all recognition and online communication has become a seamless and transparent part of everyday life – and yet the surveying related sectors are still perceived to be lagging behind.

I don’t see this with doctors or bankers. They are typically pushing me to introduce new ideas and technology elements. Much of this highly functional stuff is relatively cheap and easy to implement so it can’t be about cost or availability. So is it about attitude of mind, not-invented-here syndrome, technophobic luddite-ness…? Why is it that the industry seemingly still has to be deliberatley prodded to wake up to this stuff rather than embracing it, trying it out , seeing what it can do, breaking it and in the process let ideas and suggestions for useful and pertinent applications be generated.

The UK surveying profession has led the world in many aspects of real estate and the built-environment. Here’s hoping that 2010 sees this extending to the  increased adoption and development of new technology.

Looking Back – Thinking Forward

Building Sector Broadband Technology Projects – CICC, MICC and RESOLV

Background
Given the recent flurry of comment surrounding the issue of chartered surveyors and new technology, I thought it might be useful to look back on three forward-thinking pan-European real estate and construction sector broadband projects that I was closely involved with in the mid-late 90’s – and which still stand up well today given that their outlook was very much focused on what life might be like in 2010.

In this blog, I simply want to provide an overview of these projects and the background to them.

In a proposed follow-up blog I will try and solicit comments from both those who were involved in the projects and a wider industry audience as to how they perceive to what extent such early technologies and concepts have made it into the real world of today.

*I have video footage of all these projects which was produced at Channel 4 as part of a CPD educational series I made for the Television Education Network’s RICS channel and which I am currently arranging for online viewing.)

1995 and all that…..
1995 was really the first year that I became aware of the WWW. Email and Compuserve were already gathering pace but the WWW was very much in its infancy and the websites that were beginning to emerge were characterised by static, simple content – they had to be – this was still the era of 14.4 modem. (Remember how excited we all were when 56k appeared?)

I had great early belief in the potential of using internet and the WWW as a medium for both vertical market, sector-specific information and also interactive communication. In my case, this was very much focused on the real estate and construction sectors.

As a sideline, I was beginning to dabble in early website coding (I still have the first website editor software in my library – on a single floppy disc) and I thought I’d have a go at developing a site for surveyors and others with an interest in property and construction.

The result was ‘PROCONET’ (Property and Construction Network) and was essentially a series of pages of static text and lists of links to the limited amount of related UK and European sector resources available at that time.

It was picked up by the construction press and as a result I received various invitations to do this and that, speak at various seminars and generally pontificate on the future of the WWW in relation to the surveying industry. (After all, this was just post the Latham Report and the worst of the 90’s recession and the industry was keen to at least pay lip service to anything new that might both satisfy Latham and lead to a brighter commercial future – even if it meant attempting to understand the word ‘technology’.)

European R&D projects
One particular invitation related to my acting as both industry consultant and project administrator in relation to several research and development projects being funded by the European Commission and which were concerned with identifying potential broadband applications and services within the real estate and construction sectors.

These projects were being masterminded by BICC Plc (which at the time was the parent company of Balfour Beatty) and led by Dr David Leevers – somewhat of a visionary in relation to the psychology of communication and human-technology interaction.

As a result, I spent three years working on three very different projects with partners drawn from the construction, technology and academic sectors and who included Bovis Lendlease, Bechtel, Bouygues, BT, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Leeds University, Brunel University and various other specialist European software and technical organisations.

The three project acronyms were CICC, MICC and RESOLV:

CICC – Collaborative Integrated Communications For Construction

MICC -Mobile Integrated Communications For Construction

RESOLV – Reconstruction using Scanned Optical Laser and Video’

*The latter which actually used the RICS foyer at Great George St as the initial demo subject matter – and which will feature in the related podcast.

The European IT and Communication Technology R&D Focus
By way of brief background, these projects were largely enabled as a result of the EU allocating a large budget to technology focused R&D and which is still ongoing today.

The decision to provide such funding was (and is) seen as a fundamental step in helping to ensure the uniform development of information and Broadband communication technologies throughout the whole of the European Union.

Such policy has meant that a unique opportunity has arisen for commercial oriented companies to limit their R&D investment risk and allowed them to develop and test technologies which have a more medium-long term aspect.

Funded projects typically comprise between 5-10 partners drawn from a representative cross section of EC Member States with each being concerned with a particular commercial, technical or evaluation aspect.

2010: The Year of European Advanced Communications (?)
I see that when I was originally writing  the CPD study paper in 1997 I mentioned that

‘…the overall scenario envisaged by the EC was that Europe will proceed to an advanced communications environment by 2010 which will be comparable with other advanced networks elsewhere and which will form part of a global, Broadband network based information infrastructure.’

And guess what? – it’s now 2010!

So has this aspiration more or less been achieved?

This is not perhaps the moment to comment in great depth but to the greatest extent I would say ‘Yes’.

During the last decade, Europe has gathered pace in it’s provision and take-up of broadband networks.

As a result, the applications and services that are now available to both businesses and consumers are enormously wide ranging and light years away from my meagre ‘PROCONET’ effort in 1995.

However, perhaps the main limitation and disappointment is that in the main broadband networks are still based on ASDL and running over pre-internet copper telephone infrastructure. Whilst there are pockets of fibre enabled networks out there, these are still too few and far between to have any current major impact in relation to the majority of end users.

Whilst ADSL based download speeds an capacities are pretty good, anyone requiring decent upload speed and capacities is still finding it very hard going over the typical public networks. (Just try live ‘TV’ style webcasting for example.)

But I digress….

(i) CICC (Collaborative Integrated Communications for Construction)
CICC’s primary objective was to show how technologies such as intranet, online databases, virtual reality and augmented reality can enable true collaborative working between dispersed and temporary teams – and which is a very typical characteristic of construction sector projects.

CICC trialled these technologies within real European construction projects in the UK and Spain and evaluated them from both a psycho-social and techno-economic point of view.

In the UK, the Bluewater retail complex in Kent provided a major trial facility. Web browser software provided single source access to project information and personnel over an intranet and afforded the ability to: view and interact with all kinds of project documents, drawings and schedules from a central database; the ability to interact with a highly detailed 3D virtual reality project model; and the means to instantly communicate with client and project team members through the use of integrated video conferencing and electronic whiteboards.

The stated project objectives were:

• Improving project team collaboration using visualisation techniques to help participants see project issues from a common point of view.
• Presenting the right information in the right format at the right time demonstrated the potential for improving project efficiency.
• The use of electronic decision records to demonstrate how quality could be maintained while devolving responsibilities within a more federal framework.

The project developed and integrated the following components:

• An interactive multimedia directory which presented relevant people and documents in a WWW/VRML (avatar) landscape. The objective was to convey the implied relationships and intuitive communications channels that make team working in a shared office so effective. (As David Leevers now says, this can be thought of as early kind of Facebook application.)

• A three dimensional project model that reinforced client, project team and end user understanding of the characteristics of a particular project.

• “Augmented Reality” – integrated video and virtual reality that assists in 3D visualisation and integrates real, ‘as built’ construction elements with data drawn from the project model and information database.

• Multimedia Communications across a variety of hardware platforms including PCs, mobile devices and specialist prototype products such as a multimedia hardhat.

(ii) MICC (Mobile Integrated Communications for Construction)
MICC partners included major European construction companies Boygues, Balfour Beatty, Hochtief and Dragados as well as mobile technology specialist partner VTT in Finland.

MICC was concerned with the use of mobile communications on construction sites to improve quality, safety and efficiency.

The project centred on the idea of a ‘communications container‘ which took the form of a self-contained communications nerve-centre unit delivered to site at the outset of construction.

The idea was that container would provide all communication infrastructure including radio system, data networks, connections for site offices as well as links to public and private networks such as the World Wide Web and project intranets / extranets.

The stated project objectives were:

• To reduce idle time
• Make more efficient use of plant
• Enable a move towards Just-In-Time Management of materials
• Improve co-ordination

The MICC technologies included:

• Data capture – electronic collection of on-site data with real-time updating of project databases
• Management of plant – monitoring and control of machinery
• Positioning – the use of differential Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) to aid site layout, position structures and locate plant
• Personal communications – replace walkie-talkies with full voice and messaging services
• Multimedia conferencing – video, voice and shared whiteboard tools
• Remote inspection – live video and video stills from site to remote experts

The thought was that the communications container and mobile networked terminals will become commercially available with construction companies being able to purchase or rent a turnkey service.

(iii) RESOLV (Reconstruction using Scanned Optical Laser and Video)
RESOLV was a very novel project which sought to combine laser and video systems in order to enable 3D visual and measured building scans, the data from which could then be used to construct virtual models of existing buildings and which would have visually correct photographic rendered surfaces etc.

The belief was that such reconstructions would have a wide range of potential facilities management, estate management and sales and marketing applications with the additional inherent ability to output the results over multimedia networks such as the World Wide Web.

The prototype used a manually pushed trolley on which was mounted the scanning head which comprised an integrated laser rangefinder and video camera.

The device could be wheeled around a building whilst the head scanned from side to side and up and down, capturing video and measured data in thin ‘slices’ which were then seamlessly integrated to produce the 3D reconstruction. (This was exactly the scenario in relation to scanning the RICS foyer at Great George St in London.) 

The technology challenges were immense in relation to both hardware and software – and the computing power required to build the 3D models was enormous.

Nevertheless the ideas were there – if somewhat ahead of their time and the technological ability require to fully support them.

In Summary
In 1997 I wrote the following in my conclusion to the CPD study paper:

“Society is now beginning to experience the everyday effects of the new information and communication technology revolution.

Changes in social and working trends are being both led and enhanced by easy to use and cost-effective systems such as PC based, web browser accesed, personal global communications and group working applications.

The quality and efficiency of such technologies is improving rapidly with the introduction of new potent multimedia Broadband networks which are now being globally deployed.”

These are having a particular impact in relation to Chartered Surveyors both in terms of the way they themselves work and the property markets and clients they serve.”

… and yet… I could just have easily have written this in January 2010.

The mobile what? Web I never! Who would’ve app’d it?!

As some may know, I have been immersing myself in the mobile web so far this year.

I find the mobile environment fascinating. 

Familiarity breeds laziness
The challenge of designing and developing for the small screen has renewed and re-invigorated my enthusiasm after 16 years of ‘doing’ desktop and becoming extremely lazy in the process as the previous obstacles surrounding bandwidth and technology have largely diminished in the last few years. This has allowed all but total freedom in relation to serving up a diet of rich media and complex mashable mixes which all come together in the blink of an eye on my flat panel 22″ monitor. 

1995 Re-visited
The current mobile vibe also reminds me very much of those days back in 1994 / 1995 when very few knew what ‘WWW’ meant – and those who did were either feted as forward-thinking gurus or branded as charlatans and geeks. 

It will be extremely important to our business (but what is it? – CEO anon)
Given how ‘desktop’ WWW has become so imprinted on the mind of even the most resolute hermit and emblazoned on the most miniscule available area of product packaging, it’s even all the remarkable, then, that recent research by Bigmouthmedia suggests that despite 89.2% of UK businesses believing ‘mobile’ will be very important to them in 2011 onwards, over 75% have very little understanding of it and no clear strategy for adopting it.  (See http://is.gd/dYD1u )        

Certainly there is acknowledgement and understanding of the mobile as a potent voice and text communication device but not, as yet, the growing challenger to the desktop web.

 This maybe part due to the hitherto expense of mobile internet data plans but now that almost unlimited access is available for around just £5 a month this is no longer a barrier to most and the use of mobiles being used to access the web has grown enormously in the last year.

 It may also have been partly to do with a limited range of handsets capable of providing a decent mobile web browsing experience but again that is now a thing of the past with the range of amazing devices now available on low monthly rental and even not that expensive to buy.

App V WAP
What has certainly caught the imagination – if not necessarily the full understanding – of consumers and businesses is the idea of ‘Apps’ – small footprint software modules that need to be downloaded and installed on your mobile but which then can seemingly do remarkably useful or inane ‘stuff’ and even provide access to online content or link up with a device’s on-board GPS to show how many yards you are away from the nearest lap-dancing club.

Ah – but then 50% of the world who have just gone and bought the smallest shiniest phone with the biggest screen realises that they won’t be able to join the lap-dancing club audience because – surprise surprise – err – they can’t actually get that app for their particular handset.   

Now, if only there was a decent mobile WWW and my handset had a capable web browser just like my desktop. It wouldn’t matter what brand of handset, operating system or web browser I had, I could Google and……

 Well guess what? – true mobile web exists and it’s here – and it’s called WAP (2.0).

All modern handsets have extremely capable in-built web browsers can typically access WAP over a combination of Wi-Fi (including your own wireless home of office network) / 3G and HSDPA, the latest high-speed mobile connection.

 The only problem is that once you’ve connected with the mobile wave, the surfing experience tends to be rather limited in terms of mobile-friendly content.

After several fruitless laps of the M25 we gave in and went home
‘Mobile-friendly’? But surely my shiny state of the art desktop website with umpteen live news feeds, large-scale graphics and 75 different subsections can easily be viewed by doing that pinchy-thumb-and-forefinger thing which I’ve seen on those sexy TV ads? I mean, I may have really fat stubby little fingers but even I could do that after a couple days.

Well, you could but it wouldn’t be a greatly rewarding experience after you’ve waited an age for all those bits to download, failed to play any video and completely lost your way because you can’t remember where the navigation menus are as you drag your finger haphazardly around the screen in ever-decreasing frustrated circles – oh and just to cap it all, the time it’s taken to do all that has eaten well into your data plan and certainly cost you a finger and toe.     

Navigating a desktop website via mobile is like trying to find your way around Harrods blindfolded.

Mobile rules – OK?!
The Worldwide Web Consortium (they who oversee WWW standards) have produced a rather nifty online website testing kit called ‘Mobile OK’ to see how mobile-friendly your current ‘desktop’ website is.

Just copy and paste your website address (or that of your competitors) into the form at http://validator.w3.org/mobile/  – press the button, stand well clear and, in most cases, prepare yourself for a nasty surprise….

The really scary thing is that many web developers working on current websites are not yet up to speed with mobile and so are not yet taking into account things that could and should be done to make web content mobile friendly.

It’s a whole new ball game. Normal rules don’t apply.

Early adopters propensity to consume = ROI satisfaction (or thereabouts…)
The likelihood is that in a fairly short while many business and website owners are going to need to do something to their existing website if they’re going to be as equally successful in the mobile world as they have been in its desktop counterpart.

But there is obviously a fair amount of educating to do again before the required critical mass is achieved and the ball starts to roll of its own accord. Déjà vu 1995.

The early-adopters will of course stand to gain a distinct advantage and steal a march on the mobile web as the rest of the world plays catch-up.

Providing a mobile version of an existing website isn’t quite as bad as starting from scratch. At least you know the overall thematic structure, design and content even if it does need to be substantially re-jigged.

For those on the verge of re-vamping their existing desktop site, now would be a good time to take mobile into account and bind it into the equation.   

But what about ongoing maintenance? Surely having two sites to maintain is an extra issue? Well, it could be, obviously, but if planned well and the sites are made to be database-driven and perhaps some content is fed e.g. via RSS then both sites can be updated automatically from the same source.

For most, the big mistake would be to do nothing, ignore it and hope it goes away.

Tag!
As an aside, another potential new and interesting technology is ‘tags’.

Imagine pointing and shooting your mobile phone camera at a small image printed in an advertisement, on a poster, in a shop window out of hours and being automatically connected to a relevant website which gives you all the info you want to know – and all without doing anything other than pressing the camera shutter. That’s what ‘tag’s do.

‘Tag’s are essentially barcodes which hold a website address. The mobile phone camera picks up the barcode and links to the mobile browser which fires up the internet connection.

‘Tags’ are going to be rally big. They already are in the Far East but are only just filtering through to the West.

Anyway, that’s enough for today. A change is as good as a rest so I’m off to just do another five hours of mobile coding before getting into bed with ‘Auntie’ and catching the latest BBC news headlines on my mobile before I nod off dreaming of CSS, cache, DTDs, content-headers, user-agents, WURFL, HTML5, AJAX, Flash and other household cleaning agents …..