Larry Dignan: Hi Drew, thanks for joining me.
Drew Martin: Happy to be here.
Larry Dignan: Everybody knows Sony products but many people don't know what's under the hood. Describe the size and scope of your operations.
Drew Martin: The Sony Electronics in the US is really about 12,000 employees and about 35 operating locations, and those would include manufacturing facilities in Mexico, San Diego and also Alabama, as well as a lot of supply chain operations to get product from overseas especially in China and Japan. So a lot of what we do in the IS world is to make sure we provide a good secure infrastructure to handle all those supply chain complexities, and also focus on the sales and marketing aspects for Sony, presenting that brand and value proposition to our consumers.
Larry Dignan: I've seen a few presentations that you've given on customer service, and it struck me that as CIO you were very involved with it. Is that a big focus for you and Sony?
Drew Martin: Yes, certainly as I mentioned before, sales and marketing is a very key area for us. From a customer perspective, I think that if we're customer centric and we put ourselves in the customer's position, you realize that the average customer is not an expert in electronics products, so they don't understand maybe 1080p or Hi-Def and Blu-Ray and all these terms, so that's one complicating factor for a customer, the other is the ways they can come to Sony. They can come to our Website of course. They can come to a Sony-style store. They can go to a big-box retailer like Costco or Wal-Mart, or an electronics exchange like Best Buy, or another e-tailer they hear about things their friends and families, so it's a complicated product and many ways to find out about it and research it. It's a high enough ticket item that they want to make sure they make the right purchase. We try to make sure, from a customer perspective, anytime they ask questions about our products, they kind of know to get the right information at the right time and can make informed decisions as they go through that process. And then once they get the product, we want them to have, you know, a good out-of-box experience and anytime they have a service question or support question that also has to be seamless even if they come to Sony or go through a third-party to get questions answered.
Larry Dignan: What are the most popular channels to reach Sony?
Drew Martin: Well, I think as everybody knows, there's a big shift towards dealing more direct with CE manufacturers, so we see other manufacturers who shift towards online sales. And in some cases, they're going to buy the product from Sony on the Website, or in other cases, they just want to research and find out directly from the horse's mouth or from the manufacturer, "What should I know about this product?" And they just want an education, so I'd say on the front end on the buying side, they really start with a direct interaction with Sony. As they go down the pipeline in the sale process, they'll get more comfortable going maybe to a local store, and we see that fairly steady. Of course there's been also consolidation with some of the big-box retailers and bigger customers and electronics like Best Buy.
Larry Dignan: As CIO how can you affect the perception of the Sony brand?
Drew Martin: That's a great question, and I think when you talk about the interaction with Sony, it's really about information, and really understanding what are the products that we have, what's the value proposition for each product? And so much of that is getting good information out there on the front-end. Now the next part is, when they are a Sony customer and I think it's a pretty well-known household brand most people in the US in some shape or fashion are a Sony customer, we want to make sure we support them well and to the extent they have a question or service challenge, we want to make sure we're there with the right support and the right information and make that touch-point seamless. We're continuing to evolve as the customer evolves, you know, with social networking and with CRM-related technologies to make sure we're always thinking about the customer, putting them in the center of what we do.
Larry Dignan: How can a CIO enable product development at Sony, so it comes up with the next iPod?
Drew Martin: I think that's another great question. What we're seeing in the industry of course, PNG is a great example where they've set that target from a social network point of view that half of the new product ideas are going to come from their customers. I think we are looking at the same kind of thing as far as creating all these social networking sites that can start listening. You asked before about how we're listening, in some cases it's very manual and just looking through and coming through for market intelligence. In other case we're starting to get into the text analytics, but it's very interesting to see when we put information out about our product, how many of the responses come back, "It's great and here's what you should do for the next iteration of that product," so we really have our development teams both in the US on the product development side, and in Tokyo and worldwide, looking at what the feedback is from the customers and looking at what that should mean in the next generation of products.
Larry Dignan: How has Sony handled the very competitive electronic space? Can your IT enable Sony to leapfrog Apple and Nintendo?
Drew Martin: I wouldn't say that it's so much focused on any specific competitor, I think it's a lot more to do with: what does the consumer really want? Certainly there's other examples, we can look at electronics and games and pictures and movies, and Sony's business lines where there's other successes we want to learn from, but at the end of the day, we're really trying to tap into what does the consumer want? And, find the thing that maybe no one's looking at, and really, the next walkman, the next Bravia, the next Vaio, those kind of things.
Larry Dignan: Finally, at CES Sony Chief, Howard Stringer, talked about the convergence of consumer electronics, computing and entertainment. How can IT help Sony push that convergence along?
Drew Martin: Sir Howard, as we call him, talks about Sony United in that convergence. I think the marriage between content and electronics goes back for a long time, probably back to the Edison days, with the turntable and the record player and the albums, and the first format war: the 33 1/3 vs. 45. So, it's always been out there. What's new these days is the IT and computing part in the middle of that, so to me that introduces the need for software and connectivity from the internet, so the computing power and the internet connectivity has really changed the game. I think in that respect IT is uniquely positioned to educate. You know, how do you develop software for a TV? One great example that Sir Howard has talked about is on our Bravia TVs, they can be hooked up to the Internet, and we've been able to marry that content from Sony Pictures, like a movie like Hancock that we were able to stream that over the Internet to Bravia TVs before the movie Hancock came out for DVD rental or on the cable channels. That's the first in the industry and my team is actually involved in connecting the customer information and the commerce transaction with that connection between the TV and the movie house, so that's a kind of example of how software needs to fit in the middle from what used to be the hardware or the electronics and the content side.
Larry Dignan: Drew, thanks for your insights today.
Drew Martin: It's been my pleasure, thank you.
Larry Dignan: I've been speaking with Drew Martin, CIO of Sony Electronics. For CIO Sessions, I'm
Larry Dignan: Thanks for watching.
