The McKean paradox unravelled

As the practice of customer relationship management continues to snowball in popularity, Chris Davies reviews two of the latest books to be written on the subject - "Information Masters: Secrets of the Customer Race" by John McKean.  I first came across John McKean when he was the head of data warehousing team at NCR - one of the world's largest data warehousing manufacturers.

He was advancing the rather outrageous theory that 80 per cent of all data warehousing projects fail because 80 per cent of tile money spent on these mega projects is put behind the hardware and software, whereas it should be spent on the wetware (human!) side of the project. He named this the McKean paradox.

In talking this through with him at the time- some three years ago - it was apparent that such an honest man would not last for long in a technology manufacturing environment.

Indeed he did leave shortly after and I lost contact with him until this book turned up. Now I know what lie has been doing for the last three years - persuading some of the world's largest companies to tell him how much of a headache it is to become truly customer-focused. He has even formed his own corporation, the self-styled 'Centre for Information-based Competition'.

The central purpose of the book is to catalogue 'the race (back to) customer intimacy' by the leading firms in the world and their resulting information require-merits. It records their efforts to create 'information mastery in sup-port of profitable customer relationships'.

The books underlying theme is that success in today's intensely competitive environment is the ability to both extract and then use customer information. Sounds simple doesn't it?

But as the author goes on demonstrate over 250 pages of closely argued pages of text and diagrams, the central problems of legacy computer systems and the problems that traditional mass-market thinking bring have caused severe corporate indigestion at even the most advanced firms.

He states (chillingly accurately) that most firms cannot accurately define their exact number of customers (nor their profit contribution) and engage in mass market solicitations with a 97 per cent failure rate,

It's a shame the author has not been able to name names in the book but given the embarrassing nature of the stories and the extremely candid nature of many of the answers given it is not really a surprise. 

The central purpose of the book is to catalogue 'the race to customer intimacy' by the leading firms in the world.

As somebody who comes across these type of problems almost every day, I can vouch for both the books underlying message and its prescriptions for success. Should you buy it? The answer is a resounding yes, if you have any budgetary responsibility or authority in any area of customer relationship management. After all, it's the budget holder who gets hammered when things go wrong, isn't it?

Chris Davies

Information Masters: Secrets of the Customer Race by John McKean. Published by John Wiley & Sons, L18.99 hardback.