isn’t Archives - Business Intelligence Info

Tag Archives: isn’t

Why Failing Fast Isn’t Failure At All

July 15, 2020 TIBCO Spotfire

Reading Time: 3 minutes

For whatever line of work you’re in, you’ve probably heard the term “fail fast and fail often.” While failure was once taboo, it is now a guiding principle that drives company culture. In fact, failing fast and failing often is one of the best-kept secrets of companies leading in digital transformation. It creates innovation by giving the freedom to think beyond how things have always been done—and to disrupt and change for the better. But, no matter your budget or resources, you can still find a way to catalyze positive change. Still, businesses need to make sure they can efficiently learn what is and isn’t working in order to utilize their limited resources more wisely and maximize their ability to innovate.

Failing fast and failing often is one of the best-kept secrets of companies leading in digital transformation. Click To Tweet

To fail fast and often does not mean to fail in a wild and disorganized fashion. It also doesn’t mean that failure should always appear as a negative result, for often failure is simply the discovery of an unintended outcome. As Thomas Edison once said regarding the invention of the light bulb, “I haven’t failed — I’ve just found 10,000 that won’t work. […] Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Discovering failure needs to be done with appropriate analytics tooling and within the context of well-defined outcomes and business KPIs. To anticipate the future, you need to be prepared analytically and for many potential scenarios, and know how to react quickly.

An example of an organization that does this well is the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team when it comes to identifying the best race vehicle setup for a given race weekend. Based on a wide range of variables — from track characteristics, weather, humidity, incline, and more — the team will make adjustments to the vehicle setup in order to aim for the best racing outcomes. The team’s approach uses data analytics to identify potential problems, find opportunities for improvement, and collaborate within sub-groups to make that improvement a reality.

Hence, the team runs millions of setup combinations to explore potential outcomes — only a small number of which will ultimately be used in the real world. Discovering millions of possible setup combinations does not mean failing millions of times; rather, a continuous improvement to not only find the setups that will yield the best outcomes, but also hundreds of thousands of other setup configurations that may be better suited for different racing conditions or scenarios. Knowing what works and does not work best gives the team confidence that Friday of a race weekend, the team is prepared with many options for, and able to quickly adapt to, any conditions that may arise.

At any business, employees need to be encouraged by their executive leaders to take risks in the context of examining potential outcomes, value theses, and ROI tradeoffs. Whether you want to break into a new market, create a new product or service, or enhance your current offering, you want to encourage employees to explore all options available in a calculated manner.

Global producer of polycrystalline silicon for semiconductors, Hemlock Semiconductor needed to accelerate process optimization and eliminate cost. With an advanced analytics and integration solution, Hemlock achieved centralized, self-service, governed analysis; revenue gains; cost savings; and more. “Now, we collaborate as one team and dig into the data in real time to be able to solve problems,” said Keith Carey, CIO. “Enabled by data and the Spotfire platform, the speed at which we learn and fail fast is significantly different from the past.”

While executives are primarily responsible for creating an environment and setting the goals for innovation, it’s the company’s teams and departments who select the technology that helps them execute successfully. Teams essentially drive shadow innovation, using a variety of technologies to fail fast in order to solve a problem. They tend to choose technologies based on what they can bring to their department and later the entire organization. This is typically seen in companies with innovative cultures that foster that type of environment and encourage employees to experiment, rewarding them for doing so.

An example of a company where this has taken place is Istrabenz Plini, a leading gas company in the Slovene market. The company was initially challenged with providing customers with reliable products and services and automating its manual reporting processes. Through the implementation of predictive analytics, Istrabenz Plini was not only able to improve its customer loyalty but also found that the same technology could support its transformation from distributor to becoming a multi-utility company. Often innovation that starts in one area of a business can impact not only another department but the entire company.

By implementing appropriate technology tools, simulations, what-if scenarios, and value theses, your company—no matter the size or industry—can experiment and find ways to close some of the gaps your company might face in a cost-effective and efficient way. You never know, one of them might just turn into your next million-dollar idea.

Learn how Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 sifts through billions of possible setup combinations to find the winning combination for a competitive advantage. Contact us to learn how we can help your organization innovate to help reinvent your business, improve your operational efficiency, and bring you closer to your customers.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

The TIBCO Blog

Why a Single Source of Truth Often Isn’t

November 22, 2019 CRM News and Info

This week, Salesforce used its annual Dreamforce mega-show to make a host of announcements, ranging from contact center partnership with Amazon to a smart speaker tool for sales.

For the most part, the keynote featured practical applications of Salesforce technology. Some Dreamforces focus on the highly aspirational; others focus on the ways to attain those aspirations. This year is the latter.

However, Salesforce did get very aspirational with the announcement of Customer 360 Truth. Last year’s event followed the Mulesoft acquisition, and
the big idea was the unification of data across various cloud-based systems in something it called “Customer 360.”

The cloud has enabled companies to become profligate in their use of on-demand, easy-to-deploy applications, which started to silo and separate information — the exact issue that CRM was introduced to combat way back when companies lacked a single source of sales data.

This year Salesforce took that idea a step further. Customer 360 Truth aims not simply to aggregate that data but to organize it across sales, marketing, service, commerce and more. The goal is to create a complete view that reflects the reality of the customer at this moment, enabling the company to deliver a trusted, personalized, customized relationship with each customer.

The Fourth Wave

Applying technology to customer data for a more accurate understanding is not a new concept. More than a decade ago, InsideView began gathering information about customers, examining it, and presenting the pieces of data that were the most current. Even back then, the term “single source of truth,” or SSoT, was bandied about with enthusiasm.

Mark Benioff took that enthusiasm to the next level Tuesday by declaring that SSoT was the “Fourth Wave of computing.” That is dramatically overstating things. We’ve spent the last 35 years using technology to collect, collate and employ data about our customers. Data was scarce 35 years ago. Now we can collect a lot of it — and sure enough, it needs to be sorted. However, the fundamentals have not changed.

What I worry about is the term “single source of the truth,” and what it implies. In the context of a business, it means the most accurate data set in its possession. That is never going to be the sole source of truth about someone, or even the best source of truth. It just happens to be the source of truth your analytic systems have decided on, based on what your data collection systems have gathered. It’s useful — but be careful.

Getting to Know You – or Not

Every day, I am exposed to evidence that the “truth” about me, as understood by the data systems of various companies, bears very little resemblance to the actual truth (no quotes) about me. I regularly receive “targeted” ads on social media that are wildly off the mark: emails touting products similar to one-off purchases of gifts, or Halloween costumes bought for my daughter years ago, or direct mail asking for my support for causes that I’m diametrically opposed to.

These ads would suggest that I’m a Republican gun owner who wears lots of T-shirts and is really into Tinker Bell. That’s about as wrong as you can get it, and businesses waste lots of money on me believing it’s a real truth.

I’m sophisticated enough to know why these false indications exist: flaws in data collection, half-baked inferences about customers, sloppy data entry, and so on. This is where the concept of a SSoT can become derailed. No matter how much you invest in technology to pull data together, when you use faulty data to determine what is true, what you think is the truth will be faulty.

The other mistake businesses make is to believe they own the SSoT about customers. In reality, we each own the best SSoT about ourselves. However, data about people is much easier to manage and deal with than data from the people themselves. So businesses spend ever more money making educated guesses about their customers, doing increasingly complex digital detective work, and kidding themselves that their SSoT is a perfect reflection of reality.

Separating specious data from accurate data is important, but unless your processes ruthlessly eradicate spotty or off-base data collection, routinely challenge inferences and assumptions about what data means, and check in with customers to see if their truth is close to your truth, your single source of the truth could be your single biggest weakness.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.

Chris%20Bucholtz Why a Single Source of Truth Often Isnt
Chris Bucholtz has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2009. His focus is on CRM and other topics surrounding buyer-seller relationships. He is director of content marketing for
NewVoiceMedia, and a speaker, writer and consultant. He also has written four books on World War II aviation.
Email Chris.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

Microsoft Partners and CSPs Need Automated Billing Systems – Why Excel Isn’t Enough

November 15, 2019 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

If you’re in the business of generating recurring revenue like Microsoft CSP Partners and using Excel to handle your customer’s subscriptions and billing, you’re not alone. Dynamics 365 can easily be used to manage your sales and service, and with Work 365 you can manage recurring revenue and Billing automation for subscription sales. While Partner Center and Distributor portals are available, most Service providers still use spreadsheets to log and record the changes that are being made to subscriptions and services. These changes along with a combination of all the different invoices are used to invoice and bill a customer.

This process can take hours or even days for teams of sales and accounting members to manually go through customer accounts and match up customer data in Dynamics CRM with the appropriate subscription changes in order to manually create and send out invoices. Most importantly this process is not scalable.

automated billing 625x192 Microsoft Partners and CSPs Need Automated Billing Systems – Why Excel Isn’t Enough

Automating this process can save a service provider hundreds of employee hours that can be used to focus on value creation tasks around customer service and sales to grow the business. Billing automation solutions like Work 365, that are built on Dynamics 365 allow Microsoft Partners to grow their recurring revenue with these great features around billing automation:

Bundling products and services into custom packages
Automatically Creating invoices by calculating prorations, refunds, and renewals
Automatically Sending and Collecting payment for invoices through
Calculating monthly Sales commissions and incentives
Integrating with accounting systems
Enabling Self-Service scenarios for customers to directly provision and manage their services

Work 365 is built on Dynamics 365 and has bi-synchronization with Partner Center, all subscription changes, billing, and payment status, and invoicing can be done directly from Work 365 with a click of a button, saving Partners and CSPS time and using multiple systems to keep their records in check.

Watch our webinars to see how Work 365 can help Indirect and Direct CSPs automate and reconcile billing and invoicing.

By Ismail Nalwala

I am a Dynamics 365 enthusiast. I enjoy building systems and working with cross-functional teams to solve problems and build processes from lead generation to cash collection. Work 365 is a global developer of the Billing Automation and subscription application for Dynamics. Helping companies to streamline business processes and scale their recurring revenue.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Isn’t that how this all started?

September 14, 2019 Humor

Posted by Krisgo

Isn’t that how this all started?

via

About Krisgo

I’m a mom, that has worn many different hats in this life; from scout leader, camp craft teacher, parents group president, colorguard coach, member of the community band, stay-at-home-mom to full time worker, I’ve done it all– almost! I still love learning new things, especially creating and cooking. Most of all I love to laugh! Thanks for visiting – come back soon

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Deep Fried Bits

Why all data isn’t created equal

December 19, 2018 Big Data

Presented by Uptake

Enterprise software systems like ERP and CRM have reached the point of diminishing returns. The data inputs for these systems — human entry and process-based events — have hit natural limits. The value provided is restricted to internal business processes, defining how teams interact. This approach isn’t equipped for tapping crucial data sources to influence financials that move businesses and customers forward.

It’s time to link data to revenue. New business models will be formed by intelligent platforms that use AI to break down silos, connect different systems, and unlock previously inaccessible or overlooked data. This creates one source of truth for driving financial outcomes.

Heavy industry is changing. Successful companies like Caterpillar and Berkshire Hathaway Energy have broken the cycle of reliance on legacy technology. Instead, they’re tapping their own data sources, which until now have been underutilized.

It’s why industrial business executives are zeroing in on digital transformation. They recognize sizable opportunities to save time and money by dramatically increasing productivity and operational efficiency.

It’s time to link data to revenue

I’ve observed countless examples of technology stacks serving siloed purposes in heavy industry. They fail to help key functions like operations, maintenance, engineering, finance, and customer service. They also frustrate CIOs and technologists who spend millions of dollars integrating systems.

Too often, leaders fall into the trap of referring to their businesses via IT systems without asking, “What data do I need to run my business?” At best, it’s limiting. At worst, it’s damaging.

Because functional teams rely on disparate pieces of technology that rarely communicate with each other, they can’t leverage learnings from one area (stored in its system) to improve an adjacent area (making that system smarter). This includes valuable machine data that reveals financial truths about revenue-generating assets.

This old blueprint can’t support broader organizational objectives or generate the financial results businesses need. Nor does it promote the necessary flexibility and agility for winning in today’s markets. Businesses are self-limited by their speed of innovation and creative curiosity, placing a strict governor on success.

The good news: This no longer has to be the case. Businesses are overlooking priceless data their legacy systems aren’t designed to capture or use.

Businesses must separate signal from noise

In its raw form, big data is too difficult to use in a meaningful way. It’s important to understand something: Not every piece of data that can be counted actually counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. This is why humans will always be required.

For decades, discussions centered on the mountain of unused data businesses are sitting on, advancing the causes of cloud, server, and storage providers. While it’s part of the equation, it’s come at the expense of businesses accessing the right data — at the right time, for the right outcome.

An intelligent platform does the legwork. Using AI that’s purpose-built for heavy industry, it automates the complex task of preparing, cleansing, and distilling the data that really matters. It separates signal from noise, linking business KPIs to data that can change economics. It then turns data into insights, predictions, and recommendations people can act on to make informed decisions that impact financials.

Industrial AI gets smarter with every data point ingested. It also gets increasingly accurate over time. This establishes the vital closed loop that lets systems continuously learn from business value delivered.

Technology’s next great moment will accelerate financial outcomes.

In the 1990s, ERP and CRM were monumental. They created efficiencies by automating billings, handling transactions at scale and facilitating customer relationships. Businesses could stock inventory and labor for the future based on historical behavior and trends.

However, this opened doors to incremental process improvements, not bottom-line improvements that businesses need. But we’re at an inflection point. Industrial AI enables businesses to reduce costs, increase revenue, and define new investor metrics with which to measure success.

By building data counterparts that digitally represent physical machines, equipment, and components, industrial AI predicts failures and plans minimal maintenance times. Businesses can answer principal questions: “How do I optimize operations through the lens of remaining asset life? How do I optimally plan for required parts and labor based on current and future production levels?” They can run critical assets at maximum efficiency to produce more revenue.

Businesses can analyze actual versus expected output, identifying underperforming assets and examining root causes. They can compare against fleet-wide benchmarks and make adjustments that increase production levels.

By predicting, repairing, and preventing future failures before they happen, assets’ lifespans increase. This captures more value and lowers capital expenditures. With more reliable assets and safer work environments, businesses can minimize risks and even save lives.

At Uptake, we’ve studied how intelligent platforms can meet businesses wherever they are on their digital journeys and scale as their needs evolve. Read our findings here.

Jay Allardyce is the EVP of Industries, Data and the Partner Ecosystem for industrial AI software leader Uptake. He oversees Uptake’s industry business lines with a focus on industrial data strategy and partner ecosystem. Before joining Uptake, Jay was Chief Product and Marketing Officer for GE Digital. He was also a founding member and Chief Operating Officer of GE’s first vertical digital business, Power Digital Solutions. Jay previously held senior leadership roles at Hewlett-Packard Software, Vertica and Adobe Capital Partners. Follow Uptake on Twitter at @uptake and Jay at @dyce1120.

Sponsored posts are content produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. Content produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Big Data – VentureBeat

3D Printing Isn’t The Only Printing Tech To Pay Attention To

September 9, 2018 BI News and Info

Over the last few years, discussions of printing technology have focused squarely on the 3D rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing spaces. It’s easy to understand why. The continuing development of 3D printing technology promises to create a fundamental change in the way companies develop and manufacture products, deliver custom industrial solutions, and even how we approach surviving in space.

While those are exciting developments, they’ve tended to eclipse the rest of the printing industry, which continues to be integral to companies all over the world. Today, that industry is still dominated by well-known hardware manufacturers like HP and Canon and online print shops like GotPrint, but there are some exciting new printing technologies coming along, which when commercialized could change a number of industries forever. They represent an evolution of traditional inkjet printing that might enable whole new products and make existing processes more precise and efficient. Here’s a look at two of the most notable new technologies in the printing space and what they could ultimately mean to businesses.

Nanographic printing

The world of digital printing has long relied on inkjet technologies. In fact, for almost 40 years, little has changed about the technology that most commercial printers use to reproduce images on a variety of substrates. Still, inkjet technology has always had inherent limitations. First, its print quality is dependent on the quality and physical characteristics of the print medium, which limits the flexibility with which inkjet printers can be deployed. That could be changing.

Through a new process called nanographic printing, it is now possible to create high-quality image reproductions on almost any substrate – with no variance in quality and without sacrificing speed. The process distributes billions of nanometer-sized ink droplets onto a heated blanket, which results in a 500nm-thick dry polymetric film. That film, once dry, may be transferred onto almost any material, creating near-perfect image reproductions in an abrasion-resistant laminated layer. Currently, the technology is being deployed for large-scale print operations, but could soon be miniaturized to displace inkjet printing as the go-to business printing technology.

Acoustophoretic printing

Another new printing technology that’s under development may end up having nothing to do with image reproduction but may revolutionize a wide range of industries all the same. It’s all based on the work of Harvard University researchers that have found a way to harness the power of sound waves to manipulate fluid droplet formation. The process, called acoustophoretic printing, makes it possible to print almost any type of liquid onto a substrate. That means that future printing systems could be freed from limitations on the viscosity or electrohydrodynamic properties that come with existing printing systems.

In the abstract, that may sound like an incremental advance, but it could revolutionize industries from pharmaceuticals to food production and many more. The heart of the system applies high-intensity, focused sound waves at the point of a printer nozzle to amplify the force of gravity on the liquid in the system. Amazingly, the force created is more than four times that found on the surface of the sun – enabling hyper-precise sizing and unparalleled fluid delivery control. Critically, it’s also non-destructive, meaning that it’s safe for applications in biosciences, where fragile cellular materials are not suitable for existing printing technologies.

Sharing the spotlight

These new printing technologies make clear that additive manufacturing and 3D printing advancements may soon be sharing the spotlight with a variety of other crucial printing breakthroughs. Their effects may echo up and down industries and supply chains, making possible innovative new products and increasing flexibility in production environments. They illustrate the fact that liquid-based printing technology is continuing to evolve in ways that seemed impossible a few short years ago – and may end up facilitating as many new business breakthroughs as their oft-discussed 3D counterparts. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

To learn more about how new printing technologies are impacting businesses, read The Impact Of 3D Printing On ERP Systems.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Digitalist Magazine

Your CRM System Isn’t Your Pet…If It’s Not Doing the Job, Let it Go

May 3, 2018 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Are you finding it difficult to capitalize on new opportunities and deliver an unforgettable customer experience? Are your efforts to grow or expand being frustrated by old technology or outdated processes? Your legacy CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution may be holding you back. Perhaps you’ve been working with your legacy CRM solution for quite a while. It’s become a part of the family, your team has become familiar with its quirks and limitations, and up until now, you’ve been comfortable with it. It has paid for itself and been a definite business asset.

But of late, you’ve begun to realize that there are some things that your CRM system can’t do, and you may be faced with complex and costly workarounds just to keep it up to date.

When your legacy system starts to show its age, your IT team might be reluctant to let it go because they’ve put so much time and effort into it. In fact, they might have developed an attachment with it–like a favorite pet. They’ll spend hours or even days diagnosing and resolving problems, hoping it will limp along to make it last as long as they can–even past its normal life expectancy.

There is nothing wrong with having a “pet” legacy system, but it will come at a cost in both time and resources. The question becomes not if, but when you will replace it.

The new IT approach: systems aren’t pets

Forward-thinking IT organizations look at their systems not as pets, but as cattle. In other words, they understand that technology is an asset that, when it stops performing, needs to be retired. They appreciate the principle of using their systems to the full, but they are OK with replacing them when something comes along that is clearly a better tool for the job. When your system starts acting up, perhaps because of poor application development or a bad patch of the operating system or just lagging behind in updates, don’t waste time and resources trying to figure out how to patch it up and keep stumbling along. Take the opportunity to find a better way.

You may wonder if this is a waste of an expensive investment, but your investment becomes more of a financial burden if it doesn’t continue to fulfill its function and meet your changing needs.

Moving from the status quo to a new approach is where the Cloud comes in. In today’s cloud-first world, you can access the infrastructure you need and use it as long as it is doing its job. Cloud-based infrastructure is purchased from a qualified Cloud partner and run on a subscription basis. This new IT model makes it cheaper and faster to eliminate the old infrastructure and deploy a new one from scratch. Trying to nurse your legacy systems back to health is a waste of time and money when a cloud-based solution can be up and running quickly with little disruption to your daily business processes. If your IT team has been working overtime to keep your legacy system running, you’ll be surprised and pleased by the amount of time and money you can save by moving to the Cloud. Your cloud provider ’s reputation is built on having experts available 24/7 to care for any issues that arise. It is their responsibility to ensure the reliability of the systems so that you can concentrate on your business. With a reliable Cloud provider, your CRM solution is in the best hands.

When you choose Microsoft Azure as your Cloud platform, you’ll have Microsoft on your side. The burden of making sure that the physical infrastructure is healthy will be removed from your shoulders and placed in the hands of the experts. All the concerns about the hardware and its maintenance are theirs, not yours. Security, compliance, and protection are now their responsibility. The time and energy you used to spend can now be put to better use growing your business. And with a partner like AKA, even the basics of sizing and monitoring your environment can be eliminated from your concerns; AKA’s Cloud Operations Managed Services will run any Cloud solution on your behalf! Now IT can focus on innovation for your business and forget about running, maintaining, and upgrading your legacy CRM solution. You’ll get all of the benefits and none of the hassle.

Moving to the Cloud

When you move your CRM to the Cloud, your infrastructure problems can be a thing of the past. To ensure the transition is a successful one, rely on a partner who is knowledgeable not only about the Cloud but also about your industry. Each industry has unique issues, and understanding these issues requires hands-on experience. Our industry experts possess deep knowledge and experience gained from working in and with various industries and from years of close collaboration with our clients.

If you are ready to save time and money and free yourself from the frustration of an unhealthy relationship with your legacy CRM, contact the Cloud experts at AKA. We can show you how to step up to the Cloud and get back to the business of your business.

By AKA Enterprise Solutions, www.akaes.com

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Walmart’s problem isn’t Amazon — it’s a lack of interest in who its customers are

February 25, 2018 Big Data

This week investors held a collective freakout over the fact that Walmart’s online sales grew at just 23 percent over the fourth quarter of 2017, down from 50 percent the previous quarter. They tanked Walmart’s stock by 10 percent, its biggest one-day decline in several decades.

While I also happen to be bearish on Walmart, I think its investors are missing the bigger picture here. E-commerce accounts for less than four percent of Walmart’s business. This is a company with much bigger problems.

Unlike the rest of Wall Street, I do not agree that Walmart’s problems begin and end with Amazon. The Walmart-versus-Amazon battle is typically framed as a clash between an ascendant e-commerce business and a dying retail industry, but that’s nonsense.

Selling products to strangers doesn’t cut it anymore. To succeed in retail today you need to start with the customer, not the product. You need to flip the script. Let me explain.

Nearly every American spent money at a Walmart last year. The vast majority of us live within 20 minutes of a Walmart store. The company has almost 5,000 retail locations, over two million employees, and over 140 million customers.

But let me ask you a simple question: What was the last thing you bought at Walmart? Walmart certainly can’t tell you. Got any receipts handy? Once you walk past the cash register at Walmart, you’re gone.

Walmart is still essentially a product company. It has decades of institutional experience with supply chains, transport logistics, and inventory management. It knows how to buy and sell products. That worked fine for a long time. It doesn’t anymore.

In the old product model. You built a product, put it into as many channels as possible, and hoped there were customers waiting at the end of those channels. In the new service-based model. You start with the customer, understand their wants and needs, and then wrap your service around that customer via relevant channels. No more pushing units to strangers.

Now let me ask you another question: What was the first thing you bought on Amazon? It’s sitting right there in your order history. Go ahead, open up a new browser tab and look it up. I bought “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and “Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley’s Cutting Edge” on January 11, 1997.

Amazon is beating Walmart because it knows its customers. That’s the reason. Plain and simple. So does this mean e-commerce is bound for glory, and retail is doomed to failure? Will it be all retail apocalypse and zombie malls from here on out? Of course not.

Right now, there are at least a dozen new companies in the midst of opening hundreds of new retail stores. And why are they doing this? Because the stores they currently have are making money hand over fist.

You’ve probably heard some of the names: Allbirds, Casper, Birchbox, Boll & Branch. According to real-estate data company CoStar Group, these online-first stores have increased their retail space tenfold over the last five years. Warby Parker is averaging $ 3,000 per square foot of retail space, which is almost as good as Tiffany’s (!).

Why is this happening? Well, one reason is that it’s really hard to operate as a standalone e-commerce vendor. Almost two thirds of all online sales are owned by just 15 giant e-commerce marketplaces. RetailNext CEO Alexei Agratchev recently told me:

“As an ecommerce vendor, you have really high variable costs around shipping and returns. On the other hand, Amazon is an amazing logistical machine, and they’re not even running at a profit most of the time. … And the other question is, how do you really differentiate yourself online? Anything you do on your website, a competitor can steal pretty easily. But you can actually create really cool experiences in stores.”

As a result, retail is changing in all sorts of interesting ways. Take a look at b8ta, a new personal technology chain. It has hip, minimalist stores that let you try out the latest gadgets. What’s even more interesting is that b8ta doesn’t make any money from product sales. Product manufacturers pay a subscription fee for access to its customer base.

And as for those malls? Well, the ones that are doing well are doing really well. As old retailers are replaced by new online-first stores that are doing two to three times more business, the malls benefit from the increased foot traffic and attract better brands. Everyone wins.

Again, it’s never been just about e-commerce versus retail. It’s always been about flipping the script — starting with the customer as opposed to the product sale, and wrapping both your e-commerce and your retail channels around that customer experience.

Walmart is a product company that still views its e-commerce efforts as a distinct channel, a separate line of business. That’s not too surprising, considering the vast majority of its e-commerce business has been bought, not built: Jet.Com, Bonobos, ShoeBuy.Com, Moosejaw.Com, etc.

Walmart tried to buy its way in. But it doesn’t seem to be working out. The leopard can’t change its spots.

Tien Tzuo is Founder and CEO of Zuora.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Big Data – VentureBeat

“The Real Scandal Isn’t That Trump’s Secretary Of State Called Him A Moron”

October 8, 2017 Humor

October 5, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Counterpoint. pic.twitter.com/kt3pbLhGgy

— Afflictor.com (@Afflictort) October 4, 2017

Some perfectly bright people, like Matthew Yglesias, cling to the notion that Donald Trump must be very intelligent despite all evidence to the contrary, because he and his have avoided prison despite the dubiousness of their “business deals,” and Trump was even able to weasel his way into the White House. I, however, instead see a remarkably dumb and damaged person who wasn’t long ago checked into the Graybar Hotel along with some of his nearest and dearest because of an American failure to curb criminal activity of the white-collar variety. That’s due to how riddled by money our political system has become.

Just this week, a joint report by the New Yorker, ProPublica and NPR revealed how the two elder Trump offspring were on the verge of being indicted for fraud in regards to Trump SoHo when family lawyer Marc Kasowitz visited DA Cyrus Vance Jr., a politician the attorney has supported financially. That the case almost immediately went away is less a sign of innocence than a sign of the times. The putrid paterfamilias himself never being placed in a pen for his exorbitant money laundering and numerous other offenses isn’t a display of his effectiveness but of our societal failure.

As far as Trump landing in the Oval Office by hook or especially by crook, it probably wasn’t any native genius that enabled him to run a Bull Connor-as-a-condo-salesman campaign aimed at the worst of us and, quite possibly, to conspire with the Kremlin in upsetting our democracy. Let’s not confuse pathological shamelessness with intelligence. There will always be terrible people who disgracefully attempt to bilk a system. A culture that allows them to thrive is corrupt and…moronic.

Two excerpts follow.

__________________________

From “Is Trump a Moron? Duh.” by Max Boot in USA Today:

Trump journeyed to Puerto Rico on Tuesday to try to dispel that image. Again, it was a comedy of errors. The most widely seen picture from the trip showed Trump throwing paper towels at hurricane survivors as if they were seals receiving fish from a trainer. Trump refused to meet with Cruz, leading to more quotes from her lambasting him. “This terrible and abominable view of him throwing paper towels and throwing provisions at people, it does not embody the spirit of the American nation,” she said.

Wait. Trump wasn’t done.

At a news conference at an Air National Guard base in Puerto Rico, the president lauded the Coast Guard as “special, special, very brave people.” Then he turned to a man in uniform and asked, “Would you like to say something on behalf of your men and women?” His response: “Sir, I’m representing the Air Force.”

Mixing up Coast Guard and Air Force uniforms is understandable for a newly elected president with no military experience; it’s less excusable after more than eight months in office.

At this same briefing, Trump also said, in that tone-deaf way of his, “You can be very proud. Everybody around this table, and everybody watching, can really be very proud of what’s taken place in Puerto Rico,” because fewer people died than during Hurricane Katrina. So Puerto Ricans should be proud of the catastrophe engulfing them because other disasters were even worse? It’s like telling New Yorkers that they can be proud that 9/11 didn’t kill as many people as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Little wonder that only 32% of respondents in a recent poll approved of Trump’s handling disaster relief in the U.S. territory. His overall approval ratings aren’t much higher.

The real scandal isn’t that Trump’s secretary of State called him a moron. It’s that his job performance lends so much credence to that description.•

__________________________

While Tillerson is right in his gauging of Trump’s idiocy, he probably should look in the mirror when tossing around the m-word given how abysmally he’s performed as Secretary of State. From Zack Beauchamp at Vox:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job is at imminent risk.

In the wake of Wednesday’s NBC News report that Tillerson had called President Trump a “moron” in July, the Secretary of State was forced to give an unusual and bizarre press conference in which he denied any intent to leave. But when the Washington Post spoke to 19 current and former White House officials about the controversy, the clear consensus was that TIllerson is not likely to survive such public reports of insubordination.

This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. The consensus among foreign policy observers is that Tillerson’s tenure as secretary of state as been an unmitigated disaster.

“Tillerson would be at or near the bottom of the list of secretaries of state, not just in the post-Second World War world but in the record of US secretaries of state,” says Paul Musgrave, a scholar of US foreign policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The former Exxon Mobil CEO — whose nomination was initially greeted warmly by prominent foreign policy hands — has failed to wield any significant influence in internal administration debates over issues like Syria, North Korea, or Russia.

His push to slash “inefficiencies” in the State Department and seeming disinterest in working closely with longtime staff were even more damaging. By failing to get people into vital high-level posts and actively pushing out talented personnel, he ended up making America’s response to major crises incoherent and weakening the State Department for a “generation,” according to George Washington University’s Elizabeth Saunders.

This can’t all be blamed on Tillerson: Even a skilled and experienced diplomat would have had trouble maintaining influence in the chaotic Trump White House, where people like UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Jared Kushner wield major influence and foreign policy is often made by tweet.

Yet both nonpartisan experts and high-ranking State Department appointees in the past two administrations believe he personally deserves much of the blame.

“I think he really will go down as one of the worst secretaries of State we’ve had,” Eliot Cohen, counselor to the State Department under President George W. Bush, told Axios’sJonathan Swan. “He will go down as the worst secretary of state in history,” tweeted Ilan Goldenberg, an Obama-era official who worked on Israel-Palestine issues.•

Tags:Donald Trump, Max Boot, Rex Tillerson, Zack Beauchamp

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Afflictor.com

“Predicting The Future, It Turns Out, Isn’t What Futurists Do”

January 12, 2017 Humor

Read Peter Frase’s book Four Futures recently, and the author didn’t predict exactly what would happen tomorrow but provided a tour of what was possible. That’s wise.

In 2014, two young Princeton academics applied epidemiology to social networks to make a prognostication I’m sure they’d like wiped from the Internet: By 2017, Facebook would lose 80% of its users.

Missed by that much.

This Singularitarian moment is particularly given to all sorts of bold prophecies of technotopia by this year and machine superintelligence by that one. But isn’t there a way to look ahead without looking foolish?

In his most recent smart Wall Street Journal column, Christopher Mims explores how the methods of futurology can be employed by us all without giving rise to grandiose forecasts. He was surprised to learn that futurists seldom focus chiefly on technology when trying to divine what will be our path forward. The opening:

In 2004, Ford Motor Co.’s resident futurist, Sheryl Connelly, led a team that imagined what would happen if an economic shock and a rapid increase in the price of gasoline led to a crash in automotive sales. With the 2008 economic crash and subsequent bailout of the U.S. auto industry, it seemed as if their scenario had come true.

But did Ms. Connelly and her team really predict the future?

“I always feel compelled to tell people that the same group also spent time, albeit a short one, talking about what would happen if aliens were to land and religions reacted in a way that led societies to crumble because they have no more moral infrastructure,” says Ms. Connelly.

Predicting the future, it turns out, isn’t what futurists do And in a funny way, that’s what makes their work so vital. Many futurists are convinced that, now more than ever, everyone needs to start thinking the way they do.

What futurists actually do is facilitate as groups of people work through a highly structured, sometimes months-long process of coming up with as many hypothetical futures as they can, in order to prepare for more or less anything.•

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Afflictor.com

Tag Archives: isn’t

Why Failing Fast Isn’t Failure At All

Why a Single Source of Truth Often Isn’t

The Fourth Wave

Getting to Know You – or Not

Microsoft Partners and CSPs Need Automated Billing Systems – Why Excel Isn’t Enough

Isn’t that how this all started?

About Krisgo

Why all data isn’t created equal

It’s time to link data to revenue

Businesses must separate signal from noise

Technology’s next great moment will accelerate financial outcomes.