Chilli Tips #8

Sharing technical information is key to customer outreach

By Donna Wilson

In the modern high-tech entrepreneur world, the web site is considered the best way of communicating technical information to potential customers in order to convince them to purchase a product or service. In order to win the customer, it is in a company's best interest to find out exactly what their customer needs and provide it. In this article we consider why sales and marketing is not necessarily the best conduit for gathering information about the problems being addressed by the customer, and argue the case for building a community which can share technical information and resources to the benefit of both the vendor and the customer.

In an ideal situation, engineers from each company would sit down and brainstorm together to find a solution to a specific requirement. In the process each side would learn the capabilities of the other and in this way build a community of resources that could be leveraged to solve even more complex problems. If and when, for example, company XYZ needs to build a new low-power, do everything widget for some hand held consumer device, they know they can leverage expert resources from ACME designs, 123 Mixed-Signal Inc and Portable Design Ltd.

This community of resources would form and reform in various ways depending upon the problems to be solved. However, this isn't a perfect world, and companies rarely empower their design engineers to share information with others.

The website, and even technical articles placed in respected engineering journals are often the primary communication channels a company uses to distribute such information. But these channels are set up to send information out and not receive feedback. In addition, much of the information published via these channels is written by a marketing person and contains little or no information about how a particular problem was addressed. They are more often problem/solution approaches with a particular product as the best solution.

Many companies provide datasheets, application notes and product brochures on their websites. Some provide product backgrounders or market white papers and case studies (setting up a situation that is perfectly solved by one of that company's products). However, they rarely provide the kind of technical detail a potential customer needs to evaluate a vendor's experience and capabilities in solving a particular problem.

Technical editors at trade publications are often presented with contributed articles from companies that are supposed to communicate some of these technical challenges. The ingredients of a good technical article also form the basis of good communication with a potential customer. Ron Wilson, technical editor of the US-based publication EETimes, offered this advice on what constitutes good knowledge sharing based on the following analogy. He said, "During the 14th century, experts in the craft of harpsichord building were part of the Guild of St. Luke and knowledge was passed down from master to student. A student would apprentice himself out to a master builder and learn every phase of the process for building this magnificent instrument. The apprentice would provide the tools, the master provided room, board, materials, and training. As a final project, the apprentice would build a complete harpsichord that was judged by a group of master builders. If approved, the instrument became the property of the master, also known as the masterpiece (the original meaning of the word). If the instrument did not pass the judges test, the apprentice was responsible for buying it and repaying the master for all the time and effort expended upon his education."

Quality counts

Wilson continued, "Fast-forward to present-day India. Engineering graduates in that country do not select jobs based on the best salary or job title. Instead jobs are selected on the basis of the quality of a company's senior engineering team. It is the custom for the senior engineers to work with teams of new hires and teach them everything there is to know about their area of specialty - for example, analogue/mixed signal design. In some companies, the junior engineers get rotated among several of these experts, so that by the end of their training, each has a clear understanding of every aspect of the design. It is this sharing of knowledge that is missing in much of the technical world today." [Editor's note: apprenticeships in the high-tech sector were common prior to the 1980s in the UK, but declined with the decline in big corporations like GEC and others]. Wilson concludes, "But properly done, this can help a company raise above the competitive noise." By rethinking the content of information that goes out from the company, and modifying the two communication channels discussed above, it is possible to help create a broader awareness of a company's capabilities.

In order to fulfil such a requirement, the first step in the process is to modify the website to include a special section where technical issues and problems can be discussed by the engineering community. In addition to increasing awareness of the company's technical capabilities, and begin the process of community building. This will make it possible for the company's marketing department to uncover trends and stay on top of industry concerns. Of course, someone will need to manage the inputs to make sure the site isn't turned into a soapbox.

Typically, a person responsible for PR or marketing can and should handle this along with any necessary editing of the questions and answers before they are posted. Access to these discussions will also help determine the issues and topics that can and should be turned into the kind of technical articles needed to cement the company's credibility.

As far as technical articles go, they are best written by engineers as if they are sharing information with a peer. Unfortunately, this type of article is becoming increasingly rare. This doesn't necessarily mean revealing all about the particular solution the company derived, since that may rightly be considered the company's intellectual property and can be patentable. It's better to focus on issues like how to minimise signal cross-talk; engineers are more interested with the insight into the company's thought processes as they struggled with a particular problem. For example, what kind of chatter was encountered, and across what part of the design? What results came up as each of the potential causes were evaluated and discarded? Why were some discarded? By what process did this engineer narrow his search for the problem?

These are issues over which every designer struggles. Gathering information about how others approach these issues will validate the approach, provide new ways of thinking about the problem, provide new sources of information and thereby increase the credibility of the company.

Donna Wilson is a freelance PR consultant based in California, USA.

Any comments on this article? Email the editor at Editor@TheChilli.com

© Chilli Publishing Ltd 2004

19APR2004