Highly Competitive - software industry insights

Intelligent Transportation Systems for Midsized Cities

 ...

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When intelligent transportation systems are discussed, the focus is usually on mega-cities (populations of 10 million or more). But midsized cities (anywhere from 250,000 to 1 million people) face many of the same issues as larger cities, especially regarding forward-thinking planning for transportation systems. In fact, midsized cities are still a significant untapped market for intelligent transportation systems.

Right now transportation system technologies are evolving faster than overall management strategies. Adding to the management 'chaos': the proliferation of massive amounts of data related to transportation systems, including machine-generated big data. For midsized cities, data is a key asset for the planning, control and advancement of intelligent transportation systems.

When intelligent transportation systems take advantage of advanced data analytics, the value that results includes optimized infrastructure management and operations, as well as improved transportation services in terms of variety of modes, safety, reliability, and efficiency. Transportation data analytics also contribute greatly to real-time improvements to traveler / user experiences.

Categories of transportation data include:

• User or traveler behavioral data – survey data, social media sources, video, monitoring
• Travel demand and system use – monitoring data, machine-generated sources
• Socio‐Economic data – land use, demographics, income
• Transportation services – frequently as machine-generated data from sensors and meters
• Traffic management data – primarily machine-generated sources
• Infrastructure – roadways, facilities, vehicle fleets
• Environmental impact – emissions/air quality, local health concerns, other pollution/contaminants

Urban transportation networks frequently exist in an ecosystem of transportation modes and other urban governance entities in order to consolidate overall vision, resources and functions, which can lead to better outcomes for all. Intelligent transportation systems should support data sharing across modes, functions and stakeholders to show the value of collecting all relevant data, as well as being able to deliver data to different data management and analytics structures. And "stakeholders" aren't just humans – machines and automated systems are often around-the-clock consumers of transportation data.

 

Managed Services for Midsized Transportation Systems

I've written before about the differentiation that managed services providers can create by concentrating on specific industries and developing the distinct services that will make a difference to that industry. To provide niche or industry-specific services means developing in-depth expertise for the service offering, both in terms of the industry or niche and the problems that need to be solved.

Managed services can be developed to help midsized cities improve intelligent transportation systems through the use of advanced data analytics. The focus should be on new ways to deliver cost-effective services and solutions through cloud platforms, lower priced data analytics tools, and mobile applications.

Beyond services for the continuous data analytics needed to govern and improve urban transportation, managed services providers can help midsized cities understand how to apply analytics results to achieve significant improvements to transportation systems in multiple areas:

• Personalized interactions with citizens using transportation systems
• New services created more quickly
• Real-time operational responsiveness
• Measuring the effectiveness of current decisions and actions

Such services and solutions should be tailored for midsized cities to keep costs down and provide exactly what these cities need for faster, more effective transportation systems to better serve their citizens. A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works. Managed services providers need to craft core services and implementation templates that can be easily customized for different cities and their transportation systems.

 

Image source: swarco.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

Meet Your New Cybersecurity Partner: The CFO

 

 

As with other data management and analytics processes, Chief Financial Officers are increasingly becoming an integral part of the management of cybersecurity initiatives. This is primarily due to the huge financial impact that cyber attacks and data breaches can have, seriously threatening the financial health of the organization. CFOs are also beginning to align their oversight of risk and compliance with the proliferation of cyber threats, providing an added imperative for CFO involvement in cybersecurity strategies.

A broad range of organizational information underlies everything that the CFO and his team do on a daily basis, and much of that information is both highly sensitive and crucial to the business strategies of the organization. The CFO must have constant knowledge of where this information resides, who is working with it, and the plans to keep it secure. And now CFOs must have heightened awareness of where cyber threats are coming from and the many ways that intruders can get to that information.

Besides working to ensure the safety of corporate information, CFOs also must assess the risk and potential impact to the organization should a hacker successfully breach security measures. The damage to an organization is not just determined by the direct cost of the cyber attack. As many well-known corporations have demonstrated all too often, there are often long-term negative consequences related to the loss of trust and a tainted brand reputation.

Investments in cybersecurity technology solutions and services are increasing each year. Managed services providers are finding that their clients want and need a partner who combines knowledge and expertise for cybersecurity itself with the implementation of effective technologies that can keep pace with fast-changing methods of attack. And MSPs must understand the responsibilities of a corporate office like the CFO and the mandate for secure corporate financial operations. For MSPs to do well, understanding business objectives, processes and corporate behavior is every bit as important as top-notch technology skills.

Every new technology development translates into new ways for hackers to digitally threaten organizations. The in-depth and broad range of MSP expertise for many technologies and business processes is invaluable for helping CFOs not only grasp the current state of security in their organizations, but better visualize what the future may hold for new kinds of cyber attacks. As organizations adopt new technologies, they should also develop new plans for protecting digital corporate assets.

The future of managed services depends on these new ways of working with an organization, to best support the goals and business outcomes that the organization seeks. MSPs can no longer simply look to traditional IT roles and ways of working. Sophisticated technology and the digital era demand that managed services and solutions always look at the bigger picture and work with more non-IT roles. Innovation calls for new approaches to help organizations attain success.

 

Image source: IBM

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

 

 

Riding the Mobile Data Highway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image source:  cisco.com

 

Vendors and services providers for mobility management solutions can overly fixate on the vast array of software platforms and services for "corralling" mobile devices and ensuring secure computing. While these are vital areas, ultimately to enable successful organizations it can be far more important to provide services to amplify the value of what employees are doing with mobile devices. Particularly as businesses have become more mobile, the never-ending ebb and flow of data has made comprehensive data management a mission critical element both for business agility and for guaranteeing trustworthy, useable data.

Mobility adds a distinct flavor to real-time data management, particularly since mobile is a top source of big data. But data by itself – no matter the source – carries no value. Even worse, poorly managed data can cause real harm to organizations. Real value accrues when data sources are streamlined and cleaned up, when the processes that consume and create data are more responsive to business needs, and when business users trust the data they are using for decisions and work requirements.

Obviously business data is everywhere these days, as cloud services and mobile software offerings keep pace with worker preferences for tools. End-to-end task workflows may even take place on multiple platforms, off and on premises. The future of applications for mobile devices is ultimately about providing the workforce with the data they need, when they need it and where they need it. With a growing "mobile first" mindset for workers, organizations must enable as much functionality for their employees as possible while also ensuring data - and corporate - security.

One of the important changes for data management solutions is the demand for many different ways that integration processes can be created and used. Not only do data integration platforms need to be high performance, they must continue to innovate ways to connect to data where it lives, and then perform any number of actions to take data where it is needed. Added to integration and management imperatives is the ongoing battle to eliminate more data silos, to speed up access to the right data from mobile devices.

With 'speed to solution' as a crucial aspect of mobile data management, managed services can play an important role to provide what many organizations need, by applying expertise in mobility and cloud services to 'old school' data management processes and mindsets. True data mobility gives rise to data flows consistently and "effortlessly" (from the user perspective) between any points whether cloud or on premises.

Managed services have a natural fit with the management of the entire life cycle of mobile data and information. The objective is to keep up with changes regarding where data is created and stored, and where it needs to flow, to reach everyone in the organization who can benefit from such data. So mobile data management is as much about continuously creating and maintaining the right business processes as it is about data access and security.

Process-centric initiatives are often optimal approaches for the things that companies want to accomplish. Business processes make it possible to directly connect work to business outcomes that lend themselves to various metrics that provide clarity for business performance. It is through business processes that data can be mapped to business value.

Some of the difficulty for transitioning how enterprises derive value from business processes (and the data running through them) is the fact that most data-related initiatives have been driven by IT instead of by business-oriented roles. To enable better business outcomes, mobile data management initiatives need to bring business and IT teams together as symbiotic partners. Managed services providers can be the game-changing bridge to promote strong relationships between business and IT teams in order to best support a growing mobile workforce.

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

One on One Engagement: Mobile Content Marketing

 

Mobile-first is a phrase often heard when discussing web and content design, as well as marketing strategies. The mobile-first focus propels companies into strategies that reflect the amazing growth of mobile usage for business purposes, both on smartphones and tablets. And we are likely to see more vendors move towards mobile-only strategies, as mobile becomes the core customer communications platform for their businesses.

Many reports show that B2C vendors are quickly taking rewarding advantage of marketing and selling through mobile channels. But B2B vendors greatly lag their B2C counterparts, continuing to miss out on a significant opportunity that brings distinct competitive advantage. B2B customers bring with them the positive experiences that B2C vendors give them on mobile – B2B vendors must engage well on mobile if they want to continue to gain and retain these customers.

The average person spends two hours per day looking at a mobile screen. Think about that. Two hours out of every twenty-four – 8% of an entire day – on a mobile device. That's more time than users spend watching TV or using a personal computer. Whether it's at home, at work, or in between, users seem to be inseparable from their mobile devices.   (Source: High Impact Prospecting )

For midsized vendors the message is clear: mobile is wide open right now for smart vendors to reach more customers in very direct and compelling ways – every day. It's time to jump in to create effective mobile marketing strategies and a creative approach to mobile content marketing.

 

Mobile Content Design

Mobile devices offer new ways to create and deliver content which opens up many new possibilities for content marketing teams. Content marketing strategies and content creation have to recognize how different mobile content is from content that is delivered on traditional computing devices. For instance, Google search algorithms are constantly updated to reflect the rising creation of mobile content of all kinds, so it's important for content marketers to develop the right mobile content that aligns with successful semantic search results.

                        

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mobile marketers also have to understand the mobile behavior of target customers: how do they use their mobile devices for different activities? Tablet usage is different from smartphone usage, so marketers need to segment user behavior by device. The available space on a smartphone is obviously premium real estate, while tablets offer a larger canvas for content. The wealth of information that comes from tracking and analyzing how people use mobile devices adds significant intelligence to correctly engaging customers one on one, in ways that they will accept.

Beyond the knowledge about how people use their mobile devices, marketers need to consider what these people are doing when they are consuming mobile content. They could be commuting on a train, plane or bus; in the office; or at home. In different settings, mobile content has to compete with all kinds of distractions. To grab and hold the usually brief attention of the mobile user, content should follow a mobile-smart model:

• Bite-sized content that quickly gets to the point
• High impact "wow" content
• Easy-to-spot actions to take
• Streamlined layouts
• Visual elements instead of text, whenever possible
• Easy-to-read fonts
• Vibrant colors for overall content

There are vendors experimenting with longer form content for mobile engagement. Instead of longer content as the initial view, it may be more effective to offer links to that longer content or to videos. This approach gives control to the mobile user who can then decide when to view additional content that can be time and resource consuming. Vendors can then track click through and conversion metrics to determine the success of longer form content approaches to learn more about customer desires and attention span, and to fine tune marketing efforts.

 

Mobile Content Marketing Strategies

Mobile content marketing is a component of overall content marketing strategies. It should fit well into a unified and consistent experience for customers, no matter what device / channel is used for engagement. And for some companies, mobile is becoming the dominant component, so content marketing strategies must reflect the growing significance of mobile for marketing and selling.

81% of mobile leaders say that mobile fundamentally changed their businesses    (Source: IBM )

Many midsized businesses lack any sort of mobile strategy, let alone planning for effective mobile content marketing. These businesses are missing tremendous opportunities to reach more customers and are likely giving away competitive advantage to other vendors.

  

Image source: Content Marketing Institute

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

  

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Content Marketing for Midsized Companies: Who to Target, What to Create

 

An integral part of creating a strategy for content marketing initiatives is to identify which of your customers are the targets of your content: what are their roles in their companies, what part do they play in the buying process, what are their preferred channels for different kinds of content. Then decisions must be made for the types of content that will be created, based on the preferences of target customers and different phases of the customer or buying journey. Just as companies should be segmenting target markets and target customer roles to better connect their products to customer needs, the same segmentation should be used for content.

 

Software solutions are important tools for learning more about customers and their buying behaviors, to provide the continuous intelligence needed for effective content marketing. Advanced analytics can process data from many disparate sources, such as social media, master data and CRM systems, and provide customer insight that helps with customer segmentation, mapping customer journeys, and relating customer content preferences to specific channels for publication. Content management and marketing automation solutions enable dynamic management of the customer / content matrix as it relates to buying processes and customer desires. Various software solutions also nurture consistent customer experiences across channels, to enhance positive perceptions. Most of the above technologies provide capabilities for tracking activities and outcomes, to be able to repeatedly measure effectiveness, and fine tune approaches and processes.

 

 

What Kind of Content Should You Create?

Forcontent to provide superior customer engagement, the focus is no longer on vendor offerings and product features. It's about content that helps prospects and customers solve their problems and improve the performance of their organizations. The kind of content that attracts your customers will change on a regular basis, as media options evolve along with customer interests and needs. Companies must keep on top of these changes through different industry reports, analytics on the effectiveness of current content marketing activities, direct feedback from customers, and continuously tracking changes to buying / customer journeys.

 

Content categories that currently catch the attention of different kinds of customers include:

à Content Optimized for Mobile Consumption

Mobile is rapidly becoming a top channel for connecting to customers. To engage customers, content must be specifically optimized for the device, particularly smartphones where display real estate is at a premium. Content has to make sense for how customers use mobile devices and generally should be simple, very interesting and to the point.

à Video

Customers like video content when it covers topics relevant to their needs. High quality, sophisticated video is greatly preferred over amateurish efforts. Customer expectations for engagement look for entertainment combined with information.

à White papers and Product Information Sheets

These types of content are primarily of interest for B2B customers. White papers will only be useful if they cover topics and issues that matter to customers. Customers are strongly turned off by marketing "brochureware" masquerading as a white paper, and may well reject the vendor that created it.

à Customer Stories and Case Studies

Customers still find great value in customer stories with useful details around the customer problem and how it was solved. Include the value and benefits that were gained by the customer after solving the problem – and keep the focus on the customer, not your company.

à Interactive Elements

Engaging customers with interactive elements, such as embedded video or hyperlinks, frequently builds customer interest in your content, and can take customers further into the buying process. Be sure to overtly identify what each interactive element will do. For example, you may be losing customer follow-through on links if it's not clear what will happen when the link is clicked.

 

Content Marketing Doesn't Stop at Purchases

The bonus value of content marketing is to nurture and build positive customer experiences beyond the purchase, throughout the lifecycle of a customer. Customers and markets can change very quickly; agile and sophisticated software technologies, processes and creative practices are needed to grow and sustain positive customer relationships. Content marketing is an integral part of what it takes to positively engage customers on any channel at any time.

 

 

Image source: ironpaper.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Content Marketing Strategies for Midsized Companies

  

Content marketing isn't anything new but it has proven to be an effective marketing strategy for companies of all sizes. For 2014 the Content Marketing Institute reports that overall amounts spent on content marketing is segmented by B2B companies allocating 30% of their marketing budgets, while B2C companies earmark 24% of their marketing budgets. In 2012, midsized organizations spent 22% of their marketing budgets on content marketing.

 

Midsized organizations are using content marketing to support multiple objectives:

• Brand awareness – thought leadership and trusted source of quality information
• Customer retention and loyalty – nurturing ongoing relationships
• Lead management activities (lead gen, nurturing, presales buyer journey touchpoints)
• New customer acquisition
• Improving website traffic and eCommerce activity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        Image source: Post+Beam

 

 

 We see a lot of articles about how organizations go wrong when it comes to content marketing.And most of what's called out is not surprising: failure to write properly on topics that customers prefer or to even find out what customers want to read; poor writing quality and non-engaging material; promoting marketing brochure-ware instead of useful, thought-provoking material. Organizations can fail to understand how to match the right content to the right channel, or lack the knowledge as to which channels different customer segments prefer for various kinds of content. These organizations may not even have clear customer segmentation for their products.

The existence of these missteps usually indicates the lack of a cohesive long-term strategy for content marketing. And it's just as likely that there is no overarching marketing strategy that ties into corporate goals and objectives. This may mean that not only does content marketing lack executive backing, but the overall marketing function is suffering the same fate.

 

Well-Crafted Strategies

So before an organization can create a well-crafted content marketing strategy, upper management must make the commitment to be customer-focused and marketing savvy. The value of content marketing to reach the customer-as-buyer must be given credence, support and enablement. Content marketing is not a short term campaign or project; it's a strategic commitment that impacts the entire enterprise.

Content marketing (if done well) keeps the company focused on understanding and meeting the needs of customers – something companies should be doing anyway. Align the business with the customer, align content with the customer. Content marketing is a natural progression from recognizing that the customer-as-buyer drives more of how, when or even if sales happen. The work to be done to understand how to deliver the right content to customers and prospects is the same work that organizations should be doing to deliver the products and services that customers and prospects want and need.

Strategic decisions need to be made regarding the technology tools to assist content marketing initiatives. For well-targeted content, marketing teams need sophisticated analytics for customer segmentation and behavioral insight to create the right content for the right customer segment, delivered where the customer wants to find it. Digital marketing technologies interoperate with content marketing initiatives, including marketing automation and omnichannel experience management platforms.

 

A comprehensive content marketing strategy provides a wellspring for all company content so that organizations connect with customers consistently and clearly. The content marketing strategy pulls together individual marketing programs and initiatives resulting in a more seamless transition for the customer from channel to channel. Connecting the tactics of marketing to a content strategy makes it more possible to construct metrics that track the effectiveness of quality content, that then can be mapped to functions such as lead gen, sales funnel and overall marketing ROI.

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

 

Shaping the Future of Customer-Responsive Marketing Automation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marketing automation has shown that it can be a smart tool (when done right) for shepherding and converting leads, and automating marketing processes. The near future role for marketing automation has begun evolving as MA technologies have become more sophisticated to deliver customer-responsive interactions on any channel. If this evolution continues, the name 'marketing automation' will become inadequate to describe what can be accomplished with these technologies when combined with customer-focused processes, practices and strategies.

Within the marketing realm, marketing automation capabilities are becoming an important component of integrated marketing and communications, for seamless interaction management on any channel and support for omnichannel customer experiences. Marketing automation is also converging with cross-enterprise customer-adaptive processes and 'sense and respond' models, both of which have been in practice for quite some time for various enterprise functions, with customer needs as a strong focus.

Marketing automation has growing relationships with 'anything customer', such as customer service and customer master data. Content marketing strategies and initiatives are essential partners for effective MA. To deliver better buying experiences, marketing automation integrated with other customer-focused systems can reveal a great deal about customer behavior, motivation, and needs. Organizations can interact more authentically with customers anywhere using such intelligence.

 

Speeding Past 'Sense and Respond' to "Predict and Act"

Retail and eCommerce take advantage of customer-adaptive processes to personalize and propel buying journeys. And supply chain management and retail have successfully utilized 'sense and respond', aka agile/lean or just-in-time management, to optimize supply chain functions while speedily fulfilling end customer requirements. For these models, important common denominators aren't just responding to customers more quickly and accurately, but also delivering more value to customers - on customer terms.

The increase in real-time multichannel communications and interaction touchpoints has brought 'sense and respond' processes to marketing. Mobile is a particular focal point for sense and respond, particularly with the increasing use of 'in the moment' marketing and buying opportunities. Touchpoints become more effective with sense and respond and customer-adaptive processes behind them. The customer intelligence attained through integrating data and analytics from marketing automation, customer service and other customer-focused functions will power smarter touchpoints that include faster, more customer-accurate responses. The implications for competitive advantage are clear.

The strategic combining of marketing automation with cross-functional integrations results in continuous highly personalized communications delivered to customers. Adaptive processes based on context continuously respond more accurately to every customer action on any channel. Marketing and other customer functions are now in the world of real-time, location-aware customer experiences, moving past the basic mechanics of interaction.

Predictive analytics behind both customer-adaptive processes and 'sense and respond' are moving organizations from analysis of past and in-process interactions to anticipation of near future activities in order to better understand and fulfill customer desires. The continuing transformation of marketing automation is rapidly changing to "predict and act".

But all of this takes strategic commitment, the right experts, much preparation and testing, improved processes, and a lot of hard work. Done right, there is much to be gained for nurturing and growing ongoing customer relationships. To achieve more valuable use of marketing automation, you have to start with thoroughly understanding customers, buyer journeys, trigger events and key touchpoints. This means a great deal of research, analysis and segmentation at sophisticated levels – all of which will have to be constantly refreshed.

    

Technologies as Evolutionary Tools

When marketing automation is first introduced into an organization it's easy to get caught up in the tunnel vision of how to use new technologies and the tactical tasks that can be accomplished. It's easy to fail to see the big picture of how all the pieces fit together to achieve higher level objectives and corporate strategies. Many are still struggling to connect these technologies to overall marketing functions, and larger objectives – and to add all of the right people: designers, marketing technologists, analytics experts, data managers, content professionals, and strategists of all kinds.

As marketing automation technologies have progressed to better manage multichannel interactions and an omnichannel customer experience, they're addressing the complexities of understanding interactions during buying journeys, accurate customer segmentation and better personalized communications. A comprehensive view of the customer requires more than what the marketing automation platform covers. Extensive integrations are essential with other systems and processes, such as CRM, content management, content marketing, and social media tools. Marketing automation works best when it includes bi-directional integrations with other customer and product focused systems to deliver the most accurate intelligence in real-time - to any function.

Business process design, automation and event processing must be done at sophisticated levels to respond to circumstances and participants that can change at any time. All of this comes into play to both manage and maintain response-ready processes for today's more complicated customer experience lifecycles.

 

Overcoming Organizational Obstacles

Like much in the enterprise, cross-functional collaboration and integration of business processes are key elements for successful outcomes. The entire organization must be empowered to make a strategic commitment to the customer and to nurturing improved experiences. Upper level management must ensure that the entire organization can focus on the customer first, with top notch execution of practices and processes.

Organizations that continue to see marketing as an add-on function will not achieve improved customer experiences. Organizations that allow functional silos to persist are equally destined for failure. Because of these organizational flaws, most obstacles to successful marketing automation and customer-adaptive processes are not directly related to marketing automation itself:

• Inadequate budget for all aspects of marketing automation and multichannel interactions
• Reluctance to invest in quality content creation for all customer interactions (which also impacts the content marketing strategy)
• Lack of the right staffing and skillsets -- and no budget to invest in them
• Poor cross-team integration and collaboration
• Lagging systems integration across the organization
• Deficient data quality and analytics processes
• Badly designed business processes across the organization

 

The Future is Now

The idea of the customer-focused organization has been around for a while, but there's still a lot to be done to do it well – and to earn value in the eyes of customers. Continuously positive customer interactions obviously create immeasurable return for an organization. Such experiences result in more resilient customer loyalty – but to achieve them requires sophisticated actions and orchestration of practices and processes across the organization. Non-integrated silos for communications, marketing, customer service, and product development cannot ever achieve a holistic customer experience that matters to customers.

The strategic potential of marketing automation isn't about a single campaign or even the marketing function, and it isn't about the technology platform. It's about customer experiences throughout the lifecycle of a customer with a particular organization. Customers and markets can change very quickly; agile and sophisticated technologies, processes and creative practices are needed to grow and sustain positive customer relationships. Marketing automation can evolve into a customer-focused platform that offers new possibilities as an orchestration hub for a significant portion of customer interactions and for nurturing improved customer experiences with a vendor.

Marketing automation has the potential to become an important catalyst for the multi-dimensional intelligence that is critical for digital marketing processes and many other corporate functions . To achieve this, not only is a change in the marketing mindset essential, but the overall corporate mindset where marketing objectives become an integral part of corporate strategies.

 

Image Sources   business2community.com      clarkstonconsulting.com

 

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

 

Timely, Relevant and Wanted: How to Succeed with Mobile Push Marketing

 

 

Not only are people spending more time on mobile devices, much of it is dedicated to using apps. Because of the intimate nature of mobile, marketers have to take on new ways to effectively target consumers both for in-app and mobile website engagement.

Push notifications or messages only happen if mobile users opt in to activate them. These notifications focus on very specific purposes: relevant / requested vendor offers, customer service alerts, new content availability, social updates, various reminders, or notifications tied to current consumer location. Push messages require an immediate action, which has compelling value to vendors:

• In-the-moment marketing that is simple but with lots of room for creativity
• A new way for delivering memorable customer experiences
• An inexpensive way to keep in touch with already interested customers
• A highly detailed targeting and metrics tool

But marketing through push notifications comes with a serious warning. Marketers must be very respectful of the trust mobile users are extending by giving vendors access to their mobile devices – and their attention. Similar to marketing automation and content marketing, mobile users expect highly personalized relevant content. The difference is that push notifications are extremely targeted to very specific interests and actions of individual consumers, often related to the exact moment or current location. If marketers fail to deliver what consumers want in push messages, the messages are ignored and deleted – and the consumer is likely opt out of future push notifications as a waste of their time.

 

A recent JiWire study found that 75 percent of shoppers act after receiving a location-based message.

 

Consumers who are heavy app users are also the most interested in push notifications:

According to a report from Maz, consumers spend 40 percent more time reading content in apps than on Web sites, but marketers are still hesitant to ramp up in-app ad spend. At the same time, Juniper Research just put out a report that predicts that in-app advertising spend will grow to almost $17 billion by 2018, so that reality may be changing in the near future.

    

While in-app marketing is growing in importance, not all customers want to interact with a vendor through apps. Mobile websites continue to draw customers. Consumer actions on mobile websites can dynamically set off the display of personalized content, as a "push" response. And push notifications can be used to drive consumers to specific web pages.

 

Push Notification Relevance Depends on Continuous Analytics

As with marketing automation, a robotic one-size-fits-all won't cut it for consumer-personalized push messages. And as with content marketing, marketers must avoid anything that smacks of blatant sales propaganda. The focus has to be on the consumer perspective, what they need and want.

This is an interesting new direction for effective marketing. Push notifications require personalization on steroids to generate the right timely targeted offerings. This calls for continuous advanced analytics, detailed segmentation, and location-based services. Vendors should already be constructing well-informed segmentation and profiles of customers for marketing automation, content marketing and product development. Push notifications now take it deeper and add new dimensions to customer behavioral data.

Push notification processes introduce the opportunity for very detailed metrics to determine the engagement quality of the communications: what specific actions were taken, which messages were opened immediately, how many app opens occurred, the amount of time spent in the app. The preferences set by mobile users also generate useful data, particularly if the options are quite granular.Marketers have immediate intelligence about what works and what doesn't, and can make quick changes to approaches.

Beyond the specific needs of continuous improvement of push messages, this new customer intelligence should be shared with all other customer-related functions in the company. Push notifications should never exist in a vacuum, but must be part of an integrated cross-channel strategy for customer engagement.

 

The Omnichannel Customer Experience

While mobile is a unique world, mobile marketing still needs tight integration with all multichannel strategies such as a direct marketing. Push marketing must exist as a consistent component of the omnichannel experience for each customer. It should complement messaging tactics on all digital devices for orchestrated actions and engagement across channels.

The consumer intelligence gained from understanding how mobile users react to push notifications should strive to relate the impact of such messages to subsequent cross-channel behavior. As the sophistication of push notification analytics grows, many possibilities should emerge for highly engaging and creative push interactions anywhere anytime.

 

Image source: 99mobileapps.com

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

That Pesky Qualitative Side of Digital Customer Engagement

 

With the growth of digital and interactive marketing efforts, a great deal of focus is on customer experience and engagement – and how to measure customer engagement on digital properties. Some marketing practitioners seem to think that understanding more about "customer engagement" means that they can control the customer experience. Always remember: only the customer owns the customer experience, which is the customer's personal takeaway from interactions with your company, whether digital or in person. It is this fact that brings in the qualitative side when trying to assess customer engagement on digital properties.

Engagement - like influence - is at heart an abstract.

For purposes of customer engagement on the web, engagement can be thought of as the measurement of attention to something -- which takes us to another ambiguity: what constitutes customer attention to a company's web presence? For each company, what comprises indicators of engagement can be fairly unique, generally derived from a matrix of attributes, in turn leading to a matrix of metrics. As web presence becomes more far-flung and sophisticated, the metrics, tools, data, and analyses become more complex – and in some ways, more subjective.

Not only is the level of engagement unique to each customer, it can be unique to each web property. Selection of the right metrics for each digital property becomes fluid, not easy or black-and-white. For the quantitative side, it's best to think in terms of customer interaction categories and what it takes to understand customer behavior. The overall picture comes from quantitative analytics results that are tempered by the understanding that customer engagement has a distinct and elusive qualitative side.

The qualitative side of digital engagement takes us into the messier world of sentiment analysis, which is still a work-in-process, as well as semantic/content analysis. Demarcations are likely to start blurring between what matters for customer engagement on the corporate website and what matters on social sites, also along qualitative lines.

In the category of not everything that counts can be measured: listening, understanding, acting on what customers/buyers have to say are among the most important corporate 'to-dos' regarding real engagement. Responding to actual customer behavior and interactions is a much better route, than trying to "control" customers.

If you really want to touch the customer in a positive way, keep authenticity in your marketing efforts. It's not a matter of trying to make customers do what you want (which won't ever really succeed) – it's about digitally providing worthwhile content, offers, and interactions that merit customer attention.

 

Source: performanceconnections.com

 

 

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I've been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Where’s My Magic 8 Ball? -- Customer-focused Analytics

                                                                                                         Cross-posted on CMSWire

 

Your customers know that they have handed you a lot of their personal information through a variety of interactions and channels. And your customers fully expect that your company has done its job and processed all that information to know what they want, how to give them excellent customer service and streamline doing business with you.

Customers don't really care that you need to work through heaps of data to continuously update your customer intelligence. Customers only want you to shake the Magic 8 ball and have the right answer pop up. If the wrong answer materializes, customers know you aren't taking advantage of their information. Customers quickly conclude that you haven't bothered to get to know them, meaning you really don't care about them.

But you should care -- and how you interact with your customers should show it.

 

 

Source: thestrong.org

 

From Big Data Analytics to Relevant Customer Intelligence  

Surprise! -- big data analytics is not a Magic 8 ball that you can just shake for the answers. Indeed, it would take a lot of different "big data" Magic 8 balls – testing, experimentation, creating different analytical and data models – to reach insight from the analytics.

Big data comes in many shapes and sizes; all kinds of big data sources can have value for marketing and sales. Besides social media and eCommerce data, sources such as machine-generated data (sensors, GPS and location, automated operational and digital networks) point to interesting possibilities. But it takes time and resources to explore and amplify those possibilities.

Certainly many companies have the resources to set up dedicated marketing science functions to include big data analytics in decision-making and innovation processes. But for many companies it may be just as likely that marketing can't do this alone, due to budget and staffing limitations. Many companies may be better off centralizing all of their advanced analytics functions. Centralizing analytics requires a strategic approach where data scientists and analysts collaborate extensively with the experts in different business functions – this is what is needed anyway to improve the accuracy and usefulness of analytics. Centralizing advanced analytics efforts will also spread intelligence benefits across the enterprise.

 

Centralized Customer-Focused Analytics

The starting point for customer-focused big data analytics shouldn't be Marketing strategy, programs or campaigns. It has to start as an initiative for the entire enterprise to learn more about current and potential customers and what they want and need. First the organization should find out if it is even creating products and services that customers want, if it understands how customers want to interact with the company and make purchases. Key activities like customer segmentation isn't just for marketing – it is important for corporate customer strategies, innovation, product groups, and sales.

Centralizing analytics can eliminate redundant effort to glean intelligence from big data and other sources. Adjunct analytics functions can be set up for individual departments like Marketing that fine-tune specific analytics and carry out special objectives that support departmental programs. Marketing and sales find the best success when all functions across the enterprise work in harmony. Centralized customer-focused analytics also contribute greatly to engendering consistent customer experiences across channels by sharing the right insight with all customer-related functions.

Another reason to centralize big data analytics is that big data alone is not enough. Big data is often fragmented and difficult to connect to specific customers or customer segments. Context, corroboration and relevance have to be introduced to link big data analytics to what the enterprise needs for customer strategies. So many other data sources are needed, including master data which can provide what is missing from big data sources by making the connection to mission critical data across the enterprise. Master data management also connects analytics to the business processes that should be consuming intelligence and integrated data views.

Often marketers (and other departments) rely too much on their own silos of data and don't include a wide variety of data sources. Centralizing advanced analytics should dynamically work to eliminate data silos in the enterprise and bring different perspective into the formulation of analytical models and a wider breadth of benefit to the enterprise.

 

Big Data Analytics Mistakes Don't Just Belong to Marketing

A bit too many articles are popping up on "what marketers are doing wrong for big data analytics". Big data and advanced analytics are still very new – you could point to every business function in the enterprise for taking wrong steps with various analytics. A lot of hard work has to happen before significant and reliable results emerge – particularly those that lead to expedient decisions and actions. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. Marketing can gain a great deal from advanced analytics.

Focusing on the customer and the customer's perspective will help steer marketing and other business functions along fruitful paths. Outside-in perspectives keep activities connected to what matters most and should keep functions from detouring into internal-facing concerns that offer no value to customers. Advanced analytics based on customer big data won't deliver value if the insights are diverted into "business as usual": building marketing messages that try to persuade customers to buy products, instead of working from the customer perspective for buying journey preferences. Marketing might successfully use analytics to identify the right customers for the company's products -- but fail by taking the wrong course of action when communicating with customers.

 

Most of the Time Your Gut Isn't Enough But…

Marketers are still relying heavily on intuition and past experience, and still lag on including well-crafted integrated advanced analytics in their decision-making processes. In most cases your gut alone doesn't make a very good Magic 8 ball:

Our latest survey of 358 marketing professionals confirms – and expands on – these findings. Only 23 percent claim to be highly effective at uncovering new insights to generate additional business value. Only 25 percent claim to be highly effective at identifying and capturing new markets. And only 32 percent claim to be highly effective at engaging with individual customers.  

82 percent of Traditional Marketers still rely largely on hunches and experience

  

But big data analytics alone won't get the job done either. Combining advanced analytics with marketing experience and creativity is where marketing can shine. Making use of advanced analytics is not meant to replace creative vision and innovative ideas that come from the human element. Just as big data alone isn't enough to connect to context and relevance, the same goes for marketing endeavors. Marketing functions need advanced analytics to keep the customer in full focus as the most important piece for context and relevance.

The "gut factor" for decisions still matters. 'Gut+Data' adds intelligence behind brainstorms and fresh ideas. This combination connects the gut to what's going on in markets and how customers are behaving.

The 'Pure Gut' road is a riskier path, but sometimes trumps 'Gut+Data', if the idea is disruptive and, of course, succeeds. In many cases, creativity is made better with insight from analytics for validation and amplification of the creative spark, as well as indicators of how to apply creative thinking.                                                             

 

 

 

 

Source: consciouslifenews.com

 

 

Related Links

How Master Data Management Improves Your Understanding of the Customer  

Business Priorities Point the Way for MDM

Information, Intelligence and Process: Combining Forces to Better Answer Business Needs

Goals and Metrics – Measuring Customer Engagement on the Web

The Ever-Expanding Importance of Analytics–True Intelligence for Business

Connecting Data Governance to Business Outcomes That Matter

Symbiosis: Customer Experience and Business Process

Perception: The Customer Journey and Business Success

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective