Successful Case in Europe in Business Network Management

We have experienced questions about the effectiveness of the Business Network Management (GRN) methodology in acute cases, i.e., short-term success but which has a positive and exponential effect in the medium and long term. In this sense, I report a very close professional experience. When I finished my international MBA at RSM Eramus University in the Netherlands, I was hired in a selection process involving more than 2,500 candidates. All were MBAs from the main business schools in the United States and Europe. I became the first Brazilian executive to work in a large Swedish telecommunications group as Director of Marketing and Sales Europe for the electronic credit card transactions subsidiary. At the time, the company had four business units spread across 17 European countries.

On my first day on the job, my CEO confessed to me about the company’s bankruptcy situation and gave me just two months to present not only a solid business plan but, mainly, tangible results from its implementation. Otherwise, the company would be closed. It was then that, intuitively, I applied the business network management methodology, even though at that time I did not have the entire design clearly defined in my mind.

It is worth remembering that I started the work with only a highly discouraged internal team, extremely dissatisfied customers and business partners and no knowledge about the market, competitors and all the professionals who made up the business networks around the company. Not to mention that I was a non-European and faced frequent challenges presented by the local language barrier in the vast majority of countries under my direction. Most of the time, English was the language common to all stakeholders.

In summary, the service that the company provided to the major hotel, restaurant and parking chains in Europe was quite simple. When the end customer swiped the credit card at the terminal in question (hotel / restaurant management systems or ATMs in parking lots), the electronic transaction was captured and sent to the Luxembourg-based processing center and, from there, redirected to the banks and credit card companies in accordance with the respective contract agreed between the corporate client and the financial system. In reality, we acted as an electronic connector for transactions in addition to offering other services, such as real-time and continuous reports via the web site.
I found that the main networks surrounding my own company were just three: (1) internal team, in which the program’s implementation always starts; (2) customers, for obvious reasons and; (3) business partners. As for the partners, I divided them into two categories: terminal manufacturers (hardware) and financial institutions, namely banks and credit card companies.

The mutual gains between all parties were clear and evident. Corporate customers had their operating and financial costs reduced tremendously in addition to the security and certainty of processing electronic transactions that accounted for 75% of their payment methods. Terminal manufacturers included electronic transaction processing software and our processing services in the combo package that was offered to customers. Financial institutions saw us as a central and secure aggregator and reconciler of electronic transactions and thus were able to offer more attractive and competitive credit card rates to their large customers in the Pan-European scope. Finally, my internal team gained strong allies in their presentations as well as focusing their time on meeting the demands and business opportunities identified by our business partners.

We started to make presentations in partnership with manufacturers and / or financial institutions at a central point of contact and decision since all of our customers were large chains with a strong presence throughout Europe. Therefore, in reality, we managed all the business networks involved since our own customers and business partners were also structured in the form of a network. Finally, as we belonged to a telecommunications group, we were able to use technological resources to create a WAN – wide area network – interconnecting the terminals and directing transactions to our processing center in Luxembourg. In this way, we use a technological network to create a “lock-in” effect involving our customers and partners.

Acting as CNO – Chief Networking Officer and as a result of the intuitive application of the business network management methodology, we obtained a contract with a famous chain of high luxury hotels across Europe within two months, which guaranteed survival everyone in the company. As the company increased its success stories in Europe and consolidated its reputation in the market, the customers and business partners began to demand services in other regions of the planet. Shortly before being sold, the company is “alive”, expanding and almost completely globalized with a presence on all continents, except for Latin America and Africa.

The conclusion is quite simple and practical. Business Network Management works at all levels and circumstances. From the scope of an individual to a country. Be a company in formation, be a large conglomerate in global expansion. Applicable in emergency situations as well as long-term planning. It is always a good time to start implementing this project in your career or in the organization whether you have the necessary contacts at your disposal or not. If you do not want to implement it, just hope that your competitors do not. This is the type of competitive and comparative advantage that, once established and consolidated, it becomes very difficult to overcome the leader in question. In these modern times, it is not the strong that overcome the weak but the most adaptable and agile that overcome the slow and conservative.

Success!

Octavio Pitaluga Neto

(creator of the CNO concept – Chief Networking Officer globally on Wikipedia)