New York Times (October 6)
“For companies and governments worldwide, defending their digital operations is a constant challenge.” Recent cyberattacks at big British brands demonstrate how they can “upend company operations.” Marks & Spencer, Co-op, and Jaguar Land Rover have all been “severely disrupted by cyberattacks this year, bringing pain to the lives of customers, workers, suppliers and government officials.” In fact, “Jaguar Land Rover hasn’t built a single car” since shutting its systems down on September 1. This has halted “production at its factories in England, as well as sites in Brazil, China, India and Slovakia.”
Tags: Brazil, Challenge, China, Co-op, Companies, Customers, Cyberattacks, Defending, Digital, Governments, Jaguar Land Rover, Marks & Spencer, Officials, Operations, Suppliers, UK, Upend, Workers
West Monroe (September 9)
“Legacy banks are at an inflection point.” Today, banks ”are no longer just competing with each other, but rather a sprawling field of fintechs, embedded finance players, and tech firms—all of which are delivering faster, cheaper, and more intuitive financial services. The field is fragmented, but the pattern is clear: customers now expect their bank to act like a digital platform, not just a financial service provider.”
Tags: Cheaper, Competing, Customers, Digital platform, Embedded finance, Faster, Financial services, Fintechs, Fragmented, Inflection point, Intuitive, Legacy banks, Tech firms
Wall Street Journal (December 28)
“Corporate America pulled back on diversity programs in 2024 under pressure from activists.” The new year will bring greater challenges as the incoming Trump administration gears up “to end diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, policies.” Many corporates “still support diversity efforts, even if they avoid the term, bend to the demands of activists or try to sidestep skirmishes with Trump’s administration. CEOs also risk backlash among customers and employees.”
Tags: 2024, Activists, Backlash, CEOs, Corporate America, Customers, DEI, Demands, Diversity programs, Employees, Equity, Inclusion, Pressure, Sidestep, Trump administration
Fortune (July 23)
The response of CrowdStrike has been “underwhelming,” symbolized by CEO George Kurtz’s failure to apologize immediately. With a bug that “hit less than 1% of Windows devices,” CrowdStrike “unleashed global chaos” last Friday. The fallout “grounded more than 6% of the world’s commercial flights. It also halted surgeries, broadcasts, money transfers, 911 call centers, train systems, stores, hotel reservations, mobile apps, and some government services. As of yesterday, many were still scrambling to recover.” CrowdStrike’s comeuppance may come as it enters “a risky period,” with its stock hammered “by almost a third” and angry customers reexamining their ties to the cybersecurity company.
Tags: Apologize, Apps, Broadcasts, Bug, CEO, Comeuppance, CrowdStrike, Customers, Cybersecurity, Failure, Flights, Global chaos, Hammered, Hotels, Kurtz, Money transfers, Recover, Response, Stock, Stores, Surgeries, Trains, Underwhelming, Windows
Washington Post (May 23)
During Q1, “another 2.3 million customers (or 7 percent of the total) cut the cord to traditional cable — the fastest cancel-my-subscription pace ever recorded.” So far cable news has not been greatly impacted, though “the rest of the cable lineup has sagged disastrously…. USA Network, once the most popular cable channel, has lost 75 percent of its nightly audience over 10 years. FX is down 68 percent. History Channel is off by 65 percent.” It probably won’t be long “when an exodus of cable subscribers leaves cable operators unable to afford the hefty license fees that those news programmers now command.”
Tags: Audience, Cable channel, Cable news, Cancel, Cord cutters, Customers, Exodus, FX, History Channel, Impacted, License fees, Q1, Subscribers, Subscription, USA Network
Reuters (August 10)
“What a difference a year makes: Consumers have gotten off the couch…. There is evidence that the streaming market has hit a saturation point. Netflix lost 1.3 million American and Canadian customers in the second quarter, where it enjoys the highest average revenue per user.”
Tags: ARPU, Canada, Consumers, Couch, Customers, Difference, Netflix, Q2, Saturation, Streaming market, U.S.
Chicago Tribune (September 24)
“Many employers pushed Labor Day return to office plans back as the delta variant fueled a resurgence in COVID-19 cases—another setback for businesses catering to the Loop’s formerly bustling office crowd. While businesses like coffee and shoe repair shops are optimistic their customers will eventually return, they may be downtown less often and may need time to rebuild old habits.”
Tags: COVID-19, Customers, Delta variant, Downtown, Employers, Labor Day, Loop, Office, Old habits, Resurgence, Return, Setback, Shops
Philadelphia Inquirer (August 24)
“This is a new phase of vaccinations’ Get tough. Restaurants, cruise lines, colleges, and a growing number of employers—hospitals, municipal governments, Amtrak, Citigroup—are telling workers and customers to prove they’ve been vaccinated or go elsewhere. And all that was before Monday’s full authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.”
Tags: Amtrak, Authorization, Citigroup, Colleges, Cruise lines, Customers, Employers, Hospitals, Pfizer-BioNTech, Phase, Restaurants, Vaccinations, Workers
WARC (May 6)
With plunging online sales, “Adidas and Nike are the latest western brands to feel the effects of China’s attacks on companies that criticize reported human rights abuses against Uyghurs in the country’s Xinjiang region.” There have also been calls for boycotts of H&M, Burberry and Uniqlo. “The reaction highlights the tension foreign brands face between speaking out, on the one hand, as their domestic customers increasingly demand, and, on the other, risking commercial damage by offending Beijing.”
Tags: Abuses, Adidas, Attacks, Boycotts, Brands, Burberry, China, Customers, H&M, Human rights, Nike, Online sales, Risk, Tension, Uniqlo, Uyghurs
New York Times (April 7)
“Businesses and universities want fast, easy ways to see if students and customers are vaccinated, but conservative politicians have turned ‘vaccine passports’ into a cultural flash point.”
Tags: Businesses, Conservative, Cultural, Customers, Easy, FAST, Flash point, Politicians, Students, Universities, Vaccinated, Vaccine passports
