It’s often said that opposites attract.  As far as personal relationships are concerned, I haven’t found this to be the case.  However, for people working in the eCommerce and multi channel world, the ability to attract or bring together opposites is becoming increasingly important.

Here are six sets of opposites that come to mind:

• Developing strategic IT architectures and embracing rapidly emerging technologies.
• Listening to what the customer wants now while anticipating their future needs.
• Balancing cost versus capability in solution design.
• Delivering personalised customer experiences and super-fast web site performance.
• Managing divergent goals of stakeholders from marketing, stores, supply chain, IT and finance.
• Building sound return on investment cases in the context of rapidly changing business models and technology.

(I’m sure there are many more than six, so would welcome your thoughts on others.)

So why is the ability to attract opposites important ?

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…”

The memorable opening of Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities came to mind today as I reflected on the wide variation in customer service we all experience day-to-day.  First a couple of contrasting examples:

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Today, I was delighted to make an preliminary announcement that Salmon have been recognised as Rackspace EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Partner of the Year 2008.  There is more here.

This is a wonderful accolade.  Rackspace have a plethora of wonderful partners, are passionate about hosting, and are also making interesting announcements related to cloud hosting.  This, married to our commitment to eCommerce is already helping clients reach new heights.

For the remainder of 2008 and throughout 2009, Salmon will continue to work closely with Rackspace on joint sales, marketing and deployment engagements; in particular focusing effort toward helping organisations maximise their online potential.  In this regard, Salmon helps organisations innovate by developing solutions that seamlessly integrate data, systems & solutions.  Rackspace complement these solutions by helping us deploy on robust, secure & scalable hosting infrastructure.

Update 03/12/08: There is now more here

The presentation that we gave with Rackspace at London’s eCommerce Expo 2008, is available to view on Slideshare.

[slideshare id=717044&doc=maximising-your-online-potential-1225725844108909-8&w=425]

Topic: Maximising your Online Potential: Seamless integration of data, systems and solutions backed by robust, secure & scalable ecommerce hosting infrastructure.

Presenters: Fabio Torlini, Marketing Director, Rackspace; Chris Hoskin, Chief Marketing Officer, Salmon.