Sunday, February 22, 2009

Where To Place Trust When Making a Big Bet?

Businesses take risks in order to make returns. A business retains employees with a plan that the employees will produce marketable value. A business purchases equipment or licenses intellectual property to create products or services. A business makes commitments to suppliers and business partners to combine their goods or services into something of greater value. In slang terms, a business “places a bet” in taking a risk in order to make a return.

Sometimes a business makes a “big bet”, through an unusual risk or investment. When a business makes a big bet, the potential gains are greater, but so are the potential losses. Leaders direct special attention to identify and manage component risks in order to realize the greater gains and avoid the losses of big bets. They call on the best available expertise. They enlist the most trusted partners.

A friend of mine reports that her firm has been called by the United States Treasury Department to manage portions of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). TARP is a high-visibility big bet. The invitation from the Treasury Department is based on reputation of her firm. It is a reputation built on a track-record of success with large-scale and complex financial operations.

Crown enables the success of big bets that require careful, timely content management solutions and services. When Crown is called to enable big bets, it is a reflection of the trust that clients place in Crown. That trust is based on proven expertise and commitment to success. It is trust built on innovation and in demonstrated capacity. It is also a challenge to once again prove that Crown’s world-class reputation is warranted. It is a challenge to further strengthen and extend that reputation.

When ST Microelectronics teamed with Ericsson to create the world’s strongest product offering in semiconductors and platforms for mobile applications, Crown provided the web content management solution that brought the news to the world. Crown is the company they could trust to present and enable ongoing updates to complex information delivered via high-visibility web sites.

When a major North American pharmaceutical company and its Japanese partner decided to transfer intellectual property related to their joint venture with more than US$3 billion in annual sales, they called on Crown to enable the transfer. Crown is the company that they could trust to handle the transfer efficiently and in compliance with pharmaceutical industry regulations.

When the Unites States Army needed to achieve dramatically higher recruiting goals, they called on Crown to provide the solution that would improve the efficiency and targeting of their recruiting. Crown is the company the Army could trust to leverage recruiting assets repeatedly for campaigns across the country. Crown is the company the Army could trust to focus recruiting on narrower audiences with information designed specifically for those audiences.

The rest of the Crown leadership team and I value the trust that clients place in us to enable their big bets. It’s an honor and it’s a challenge when the world’s largest corporations turn to us to provide strategic content management solutions and services. Crown accepts the role of big-bet-enabler and repeatedly proves that its world-class reputation is warranted. Enabling these big bets is the keystone objective for the hybrid organization of our firm. This is the work for which we were born and bred.