Efficiency and Customer Responsiveness

The CRM system is an important improvement to your infrastructure, IT, and sales team. However, Intel values Research & Development and Innovation. The Vice President for Marketing for your business group thinks you missed a great opportunity to be a part of an important R&D team for the next great mobile product. Your interest in mobile technology inspired her to consider you for a lateral move into a different technology segment - Mobile Information Systems.

In your new role with Mobile Information Systems, you've been asked to consider how to keep up with customers' changing needs. Your co-worker in marketing has two potential ideas for how the marketing team could contribute to the cross-functional team for product development. Which of these do you believe will ensure future versions of the software meet customers' needs?

1)A quarterly meeting with the Executive Vice President for the mobile group. At these meetings, you can ensure that the product developers in R&D are aligned with the leadership's vision of the product.

2)A twice-per-year users' conference, where you invite current customers and software users to come for training sessions and customer panels. They will discuss how they're using the software and what they wish the software would do.

Is it 1 or 2?