Battle of the Morphis Superpowers
My four-year-old grandson Kipp is nutso for superheroes. He has a Spiderman car seat and a Batman cape because everybody knows those things give you superpowers. The moment that golden-haired lad straps into that car seat or slips on that cape, he suddenly becomes possessed and exclaims: “KippPower!!! Whoop. Whoop.”
This scene was kind of where my mind was when our marketing director asked me, “What are Morphis’ superpowers?”
“All of them or just the main ones?” I snarked.
“Just the super-est of the superpowers, please,” came the impatient reply.
“That’s easy; it’s the stuff we AUTOMATE: Forecasting and Ordering, Track and Trace, Reconciliation and Balancing, Billing. AUTOMATION is our superpower.”
“What about CUSTOMIZATION?” she intoned. “Alif, says CUSTOMIZATION is Morphis’ superpower because it lets each customer get precisely the Morphis experience they want. And it allows seamless real-time communication with other systems. Most importantly, it enables our customers to have the unique touches that set them apart in their marketplace.”
(Ugh, “Alif said this, and Alif said that.” Tedious.)
“Well, I disagree.”
“Of course, you do. I can’t think of much you two guys ever agree on.”
Fast forward about 30 minutes, and I got this very excited call from our customer Mike saying,
“They’ve awarded us the business can we be ready tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? Probably not. Let me get back to you.”
It seems we get caught in this trap all of the time, we do some work for a “demo” a year ago, and get nothing. Then out of the blue – we need it tomorrow.
Around 10:00 PM I called Mike back to let him know we had turned it on.
“You guys are the greatest.” he’s gushing now. (This guy is a super salesman, so you never leave his presence feeling underappreciated. So, I just let him run for a while. I have got an ego too, you know. Please, pump me up.)
He began his monologue, and I settled in to enjoy the heaping praise when Mike pivoted.
“And the greatest thing is how Alif is always able to customize Morphis to give us exactly the thing we needed to win a new customer.”
I instantly deflated. All I could hear in my head was Kipp singing, “Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah” while Mike continued to spew praise of which I had become most disinterested. And then hope…
His final comment was the most telling (IMHO anyway) when he said,
“Ever since we got Morphis, it been like flipping a switch.”
Yeah. We automated it.
