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Tag Archives: programs

Glue raises $8 million to automate customer loyalty programs

November 26, 2020   Big Data

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Loyalty automation platform Glue today raked in $ 8 million in series A funding from private investors led by Unicorn Technologies. The startup says that the proceeds will be put toward nudging local businesses to adopt loyalty programs.

Retail has taken a major hit during the pandemic. Total sales are expected to hit 5.7% from 2019, nearly 12% below eMarketer’s pre-pandemic estimate of $ 26 trillion. Some data suggests that loyalty programs could help lessen future blows. According to Accenture, loyalty program membership in the U.S. grew at a rate of 26.7% from 2012 to 2014. And one recent survey found that 50% of consumers say their primary reason for joining a loyalty program is to earn rewards on purchases.

Glue offers a platform that attempts to gauge loyalty and facilitate the development of daily, weekly, and monthly engagement plans. It self-runs rewards, coupons, and points systems and provides tools for loyalty and sales growth analysis and reporting. Glue offers purchase and behavior tracking for customer targeting and tailors reward tiers to individual businesses; it can import data from existing customer relationship management software and enable customers to register for loyalty programs on their smartphones.

“Glue started as an app creator called Bobile. At the time, we thought every business needs an app, but after a while, we understood what’s really important to the business owners we spoke with is the ability to keep their customers coming back,” Glue CEO Ira Nachtigal, who cofounded Glue with Jacob Tenenboim and Dany Gal, told VentureBeat via email. “But, they are busy.  Most local businesses don’t have the time, the knowledge, or the resources to manage it.  Loyalty, when done right, is complex, so we decided not to create yet another loyalty tool, but rather to do the work for them.”

Glue supports loyalty strategies such as points-earning systems, coupons, loyalty cards, subscriptions, prepaid multi-passes, and play-to-win games. Customers can use it to schedule holiday and special occasions greetings, launch Google Ads growth campaigns, or encourage walk-ins with geofencing campaigns.

 Glue raises $8 million to automate customer loyalty programs

After completing a 15-minute onboarding questionnaire on Glue’s website, business owners receive a branded members club and a projection of savings. Glue claims its programs are customized by leveraging businesses’ customer data and pairing them with data points from 100,000 organizations, resulting in what the company calls an average savings of between $ 15,000 to $ 20,000 per small business and significant revenue growth.

“Glue collects the data from thousands of businesses around the world, analyzes the consumer behavior and optimizes the loyalty strategy that is built for every business,” Nachtigal explained. “For example, let’s say you own a coffee house in Boston. Glue already has a lot of information and accumulated knowledge about coffee shops and their consumers in the east coast. Using AI Glue knows what is most likely to work for your coffee house and your customers and given your specific price range, will be able to tailor a successful loyalty strategy for your coffee house.”

Glue has a number of competitors in the space. There’s AppCard, a mobile-first loyalty marketing program for small and medium-size retailers, as well as Punchh, a startup leveraging machine learning and omnichannel integrations to create customer journeys. Just last year, Drop, a coalition customer loyalty company headquartered in Toronto, raised $ 44 million. That’s all to say that 15-employee Glue will have to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack, but this latest funding round — and its growing number of coffee shop, cosmetic, pet store, service provider, and car repair shop customers — suggests that it’s had success in that respect.

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What are the ‘7 Steps to Build a Successful Business Case for MDM Programs’?

August 9, 2020   TIBCO Spotfire
Gartner 7 Blog 1 03 1 696x464 What are the ‘7 Steps to Build a Successful Business Case for MDM Programs’?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Master data management (MDM) program teams often struggle to build business cases. Part of this struggle stems from simply not having the data to back up the value of MDM. In fact, “90% of companies recently surveyed for the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions lack formal metrics to measure the financial value contributed by an MDM solution” (1).

Without formal metrics, organizations are often left with vendor-led “proof of value” programs as validation of technology rather than demonstrations of how the right technology addresses the requirements and metrics, financial and otherwise, demanded by the stakeholders in your organization. This approach is incomplete as it doesn’t look at the technology as a w9hole and may limit the organization’s success in the long term.  

 What are the ‘7 Steps to Build a Successful Business Case for MDM Programs’?
Figure 1: Percentage of organizations that measure the value of their master data (2)

We’d like to address that gap in the enterprise software industry and shift how organizations buy enterprise infrastructure technology by providing clear-eyed, well-documented point-of-views on how technology can meet business requirements while creating financial value. 

Gartner’s 7 Steps to Build a Successful Business Case for MDM Programs 

We believe educating buyers on the value of technology is a critical first step. So, make sure to check out Gartner’s most recent MDM report, “7 Steps to Build a Successful Business Case for MDM Programs,” written by esteemed analysts and MDM experts: Malcolm Hawker, Simon Walker, and Sally Parker (3). This report provides a seven-step process that data and analytics leaders can use to gain and maintain buy-in for MDM from key business stakeholders. It can help you put together a business case that demonstrates value with measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) and outlines a long-term roadmap for MDM as a key part of your analytics strategy. 

Informed and active stakeholder support greatly increases the likelihood of an MDM program succeeding. Download this report to learn more about how to gain support and reach your MDM program goals.

Informed and active stakeholder support greatly increases the likelihood of an MDM program succeeding. Click To Tweet

And when you’re ready, we urge you to reach out to our team. Have that deeper discussion, not just on the technology, but also, on all the ways the technology—and TIBCO’s market-leading MDM capabilities—can address your business needs and create unique value for your organization.      

(1) 2019 Gartner Vendor Survey for the Magic Quadrant of Master Data Management Solutions
(2) This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document.
(3)  Gartner, 7 Steps to Build a Successful Business Case for MDM Programs, Malcolm Hawker, Simon Walker, Sally Parker, 7 April 2020

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The Rise of Technology in Scaled Event Marketing Programs

November 11, 2019   CRM News and Info

The amount of data we create each day is astronomical. The digital universe likely will reach 44 zettabytes in 2020, according to the World Economic Forum. That is 40 times more bytes than there are stars existing in the observable universe.

As an indication of how fast this is moving, that number will grow to 175 zettabytes by 2025, according to the International Data Corporation.

To say that’s a lot of data is a colossal understatement — but is this truly surprising? After all, we can take phone calls from watches; stream music from refrigerators; open hotel, office and garage doors from phones; order dinner from Alexa; and check the weather from cars. With new technologies emerging every day, the digital overload we experience will only increase.

That’s why the power of human connection has never been more important.

Business leaders know that to acquire and retain customers, they need to build and nurture relationships. When the rest of the world is doing this only through digital channels, the smartest leaders also are connecting with their prospective customers offline.

These are the leaders championing event marketing — not only as an engagement and conversion channel, but also as an opportunity to develop thought leadership, build awareness, generate new demand, and strengthen customer loyalty.

However, today’s event marketing is not like yesterday’s.

The New Era of Event Marketing

Companies stepping into this new era of event marketing are discovering massive, untapped business value in repeatable, scaled event programs. From field marketing programs and roadshows to user groups and sales dinners, companies are going beyond the large tentpole conferences to reach people across the entire customer journey.

Companies are reporting significant investments into these kinds of events, according to SiriusDecisions, and for good reason. When event programs successfully scale, they can grow without adding more resources, ultimately leading to higher ROI and a greater business impact.

To support them, event marketers are looking to a new generation of technology platforms that will leverage automation and artificial intelligence to help them ask smarter questions and better understand their customers. They’re craving a disruptive new technology that targets the right people, personalizes event attendees’ experiences, connects attendees to each other, and so on — with minimal or no execution required from event marketers.

While so many other parts of business are using disruptive technologies — such as sales using CRM systems, and marketing using marketing automation platforms — event marketing has lagged behind. The fact is that this disruptive new technology doesn’t yet exist for event marketers.

Even so, smart leaders recognize that with or without this disruptive technology, they need to scale their event marketing programs, and they need to do it in a way that keeps their programs on brand, compliant and connected.

Event Marketing at Scale and the Value of Technology

Keeping your event programs cohesive while scaling is where things can get tricky, though, as this often means bringing other teams into the mix to build and host their own events. As scary as this sounds, it’s not only possible — it also can be easy, with the right event marketing technology.

The event marketers who are successfully scaling their programs in this way are embracing this as a new concept: event democratization.

“Event democratization” is the act of making event marketing tools accessible to a trusted group of individuals — typically nonmarketers — for use in building and hosting their own events.

The key to feeling comfortable with event democratization is data and design governance, or maintaining a level of control over your prospect and customer information, as well as brand elements and event designs.

Having final say over what data and design assets are available for other internal teams to use (and making them easy to access) gives event marketers the confidence that those teams will represent the organization effectively.

There are two primary ways to accomplish this through event marketing technology: event data integrations; and controlled, reusable event themes.

Driving Results With Technology Connections

An event data strategy is all too often an afterthought for event marketers, even though it is the single biggest differentiator between average and remarkable event programs. Tapping into the vast amount of event data available can mean more customized and valuable event experiences and follow-up communications for attendees, resulting in accelerated business results.

However, today’s most successful event marketers don’t just review this information. To scale their event data, they also integrate and share the data with other technologies used across their organization. This empowers other teams using those systems, such as sales teams using CRM systems, to use the data in their prospect and customer interactions and continue the momentum from their events.

For example, an integration between Salesforce and an event marketing technology should give a sales representative the insights and processes required to close more deals, connect events directly to revenue, and quickly know the answer to, “Is my prospect coming to our next event?”

More specifically, this kind of integration should let both event marketers and sales scale their event data and save time in the process by initiating event campaigns in either platform; updating campaign member statuses in real time; viewing event engagement by lead, contact or account; tracking every invitee, registrant and attendee; and collaborating on guests lists.

Eliminating Brand Destruction – For Good

Marketers know that an organization’s brand is more than just a logo and color scheme. It encompasses values, product experiences, and everything in between that helps customers build trust. This is why it’s important to maintain brand integrity. It impacts every prospect and customer, no matter where they are in their journey.

Although a brand is more than just an organization’s visual identity, that piece is important, because it’s literally how others identify an organization.

For as long as the practice of marketing has been around, marketers have struggled with other teams creating presentations, emails and sales slicks (to name a few) that may use the wrong colors, off-brand messaging, or an old logo. Event marketing is no exception.

With hundreds — or even thousands — of events each year, event marketing teams are more often handing off the smaller, repeatable events to their sales teams. Without the proper governance of event design assets, this can result in organizations hosting off-brand events that leave prospects with inconsistent experiences and brand confusion.

This is why scaling event design is critical when looking to scale a broader event marketing strategy. With the right technology, event marketers or their designers can create a library of on-brand, approved event designs that anyone in an organization can use, letting event marketers maintain a level of control while upholding brand integrity.

At the same time, they are empowering other teams to truly own their events from start to finish — and ultimately, giving themselves the gift of time.

Scale Is the Future of Event Marketing

Live, in-person events have the power to connect people through meaningful, immersive experiences. Although they’re one of the highest revenue-generating activities in marketing, they also can be a black hole of data, and destructive of the brand an organization has built.

Marketers know it’s nearly impossible to have a 100 percent complete picture of every single event interaction. However, collecting, integrating and using event data can be easy, as long as the right tool is in place that helps scale data.

Similarly, marketers know how agonizing it can be to build a world-class event strategy, only to see it derailed by off-brand event design. Finding an event marketing technology that scales event design with controllable, on-brand themes can be a game-changer for meeting this challenge.

Whether an organization is just beginning to develop an event marketing strategy or has had a sophisticated one for years, it’s always prime time to revisit its scalability and how technology can play a role in accomplishing it successfully.

After all, it’s not just about scaling event programs. It’s also about driving business outcomes through what event attendees are coming to expect in their event experiences — and that’s customization every step of the way.
end enn The Rise of Technology in Scaled Event Marketing Programs


Ben Hindman is co-founder and CEO of
Splash.

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How to Use Segmentation and Automated Programs for Better Results

February 28, 2019   CRM News and Info
Marketing Automation and Segmentation How to Use Segmentation and Automated Programs for Better Results

We’ve interviewed dozens of Act-On customers at credit unions, insurance firms, advertising agencies, accounting firms, SaaS startups, sports leagues, and even a coffee distributor — and they all love being able to segment their audiences and then send targeted emails to those lists via automated programs.

According to the 2018 B2B Lead Gen Outlook, engaging prospects and getting them to convert remains one of the biggest challenges for marketers, especially because half of your leads are not ready to buy upon becoming a lead. Meanwhile, the average sales cycle has increased 22 percent over the past five years, according to Sirius Decisions, as more stakeholders are becoming involved in the buying process. Further, marketers are facing new challenges with the development of more sophisticated email inboxes and increased competition for your audience’s attention.

All of these challenges and obstacles combine to create the perfect storm. Luckily, we brought our umbrella — lead nurturing through marketing segmentation and automation!

Why You Should Segment Your Automated Programs

Creating a segmented automated lead nurture program outperforms the “batch and blast” email that many B2B businesses use when sending generic messaging to their master list.

According to our own data, personalized automated email programs increase email open rates by 300 percent and click rates by 700 percent, which are similar results to other findings:

  • Forrester Wave Research found that nurture campaigns generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads at a 33 percent lower cost
  • The Annnuitas Group report that nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads

We interviewed Marc Wilensky, vice president of communications and brand marketing at Tower Federal Credit Union, on the Rethink Marketing podcast, and he spoke about their success using Act-On to launch several automated nurture email campaigns.

“And what was amazing to us was the open rates — the first emails we got our typical open rates, which were in the high 20s. But the follow-up emails, which were really targeted to people that we’ve identified were in the market to buy a car, those open rates we saw were more than 50 percent,” Marc said. “I’ve been doing email marketing for 17 years, and I’ve never seen open rates of anything that large a group that exceeded 50 percent.

“We felt like we were on to something here. We were giving our members relevant content based on the behaviors we had identified through your scoring system. And obviously that’s what people want. They want relevant content.”

What Is Lead Nurturing?

Lead nurturing is a marketing activity that moves undecided prospects along an educational path through the buyer journey. Over time, as people respond, you can learn more about their needs and interest to refine your targeting, which will provide increasingly relevant information to make prospects ready for contact from sales. Lead nurturing creates a cadence of contact with your prospects and keeps the lines of communication open so you’re top of mind as they get closer to purchasing.

What Are Automated Email Nurture Programs?

Theoretically, lead nurture programs can be developed one email at a time, and that may work for some businesses just getting started. But how do you scale to hundreds, thousands, or millions of customers? Squeezing all your talking points into one email is going to create information overload that your audience won’t be able to digest.

An automated program automates the process of sending a series of emails to a targeted group based on criteria you establish.

Once created and launched, you should continue to optimize your automated programs to test subject lines, copy, visuals, CTAs, and so forth. At Act-On, we meet weekly with our content, demand gen, and marketing operations teams to discuss ways we can improve the performance of our automated programs.

Building successful automated programs takes hard work. Depending on the size of your shop, you’ll need to involve sales, demand generation, content marketing, graphic design, and marketing operations from the get-go. You’ll also need to understand your target audience, what their ideal buyer journey includes, and which content assets best match their wants and needs.  

What Is Marketing Segmentation?

Segmentation your automated email program to target numerous audience groups is a great way to personalize your emails and send relevant messaging to prospective buyers. According to Econsultancy, 74 percent of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement. And according to Aberdeen, personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14 percent and conversions by 10 percent.

You can set up lead nurturing at each stage of the sales funnel and segment your campaigns based on target industries and the different stakeholders within each prospective organization.

You can segment just about any data set, including geography, role, stage in the buying cycle, business size, and more.

Act-On’s Core Segments

1. Engagement: Using lead scoring rules, organizations can define the top, middle, and bottom of their marketing funnel, as well as the marketing qualified lead (MQL) criteria that triggers a hand-off to sales.

2. Customer Status: You know who your customers are, so make sure that data gets into Act-On! Segmenting customers from prospects is vital to preventing message confusion.

3. Persona or Role: This is absolutely the most important type of segmentation you can have. Persona-based segmentation usually fits into three key categories:

  • Decision Maker: Budget and contract authority
  • Influencer: Recommends solutions and advocates for your products and/or services
  • User: Benefits from or uses the products and services you offer

4. Industry: Tailoring your messaging with industry terms and relevant content can be a huge competitive differentiator. We recommend that organizations define the industries that they sell to and customize the messaging and content for them. Often this is as simple as changing simple nouns. For instance; (depending on the industry) prospect = donor = patient.

5. Product or Interest: This type of segmentation is based on tracked behaviors. These segments can be used to trigger specific email nurture programs or to exit people from programs they are currently enrolled in.

6. Geography: Timing your messaging and content distribution based on cultural norms and specific time zones is a great way to dramatically increase your campaign efficacy.

The Role of Marketing Automation with Segmentation and Nurturing

Act-On has one of the most sophisticated segmentation engines available on the market today. Our platform allows you to create dynamic segments based on profile (intrinsic) and behavioral (extrinsic) attributes that automatically refresh on any system engagement.

Each prospect’s or customer’s online actions automagically sorts them into the right segmented automated program based on the pages they visit, forms they complete, and the links they click. And those APs would be different based on their role, their location, and so forth.

If you’re not an Act-On customer, you can check to see if your platform creates audience segments based on criteria such as demographics, firmographics, psychographics, and behaviors.

How to Get Started with Segmentation

Before you begin to personalize your marketing efforts through segmentation, you need the data to customize your campaigns. Check with your ops or CRM teams to learn which data fields you can use. If your existing marketing technology is tracking website engagement, you can tap into that as well.

In the planning stage, you’ll want to consider mapping out your audience, goals, and workflow. Here are a few pro-tips:

  • Define who you are targeting
  • Define why you are targeting them
  • Define the outcome you want
  • Define how you will report on this outcome

Creating Segmented Workflows

Workflows are the automated programs you create for each audience. Most successful organizations should have campaigns for cold leads, prospect nurturing, and existing customers.

As you create your workflow, you should consider which questions each segmented audience will have for this workflow and the goals you want them to achieve. In simple terms, you will send your audience a series of emails and the messaging will change based on their engagement.

The number of emails assigned to each workflow depends on the audience and their needs. Think of a workflow as a funnel within the funnel. You are giving your audience a focused, guided series of related messages about a specific topic. So, for instance, if a customer downloads an eBook on lead nurturing, you could place them in a four-email automated program educating them about related topics.

Customize Your Lead Nurture Content

It’s crucial that the content of your segmented automated programs speaks directly to your various audience segments in the language they use and covers the issues and questions they care about. You should regularly revisit your automated programs to tweak the content as needed to improve engagement. As you better understand your audience, you can map out the questions they’ll be asking on their buying journey and match the content to that in your AP workflows.

Put Your Plan in Action!

Now that you better understand the benefits of segmented automated programs, it’s time to create your own. And don’t stop at one. Create campaigns for prospects at each stage of the funnel; create them for prospects currently using your competitor products; create them for the different buyers you’ll engage with at each company from decision maker to user. Utilize any number of segmenting strategies as long as they make good sense for your business from an engagement and communications standpoint.

Finally, before you hit send, make sure to test the following”

  • Confirm you have the right data
  • Clean your lists.
  • Make sure your marketing platform can adapt the email if the data is missing from the field

And, as always, if you have any questions about lead nurturing, segmentation, or marketing automation in general, Act-On is here to help, so please don’t hesitate to reach out.

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Transforming Leadership Education Through Exchange Programs

February 13, 2019   BI News and Info
 Transforming Leadership Education Through Exchange Programs

We see scores of self-help books, motivational articles, and management forums elaborating upon the to-dos and how-tos for leadership. They all, more or less, articulate the same messages:

  • Be agents of change
  • Build one-on-one relationships with your people
  • Be diplomatic, rely on tact, and rein in your urge to deliver blunt feedback
  • Be credible; you are being watched
  • Communicate effectively and consistently
  • Motivate and reward your employees
  • Manage conflicts with wizardry

Yes, of course, these are tried and tested approaches.

Yes, we all agree that they bring effective results!

And yes, they not only help in building good leadership skills; they also help in the overall development of the manager. However, how many management initiatives help managers adopt these methods?

The case for education

Clearly, not everybody comes with inborn communication skills or the art of conflict management. Management skills need to be acquired through multiple instruments such as certification, training, and advanced education – programs designed to enable managers to enable their teams.

While education equips a person with tools for success, the most important question is: does it enable you, as a manager, to fulfill your role as a leader in practice? For managers to become enablers, they need to educate themselves beyond going to trainings and experience practical applications of the things they learn. The learnings gleaned from management books look good in theory but need to pass the litmus test of being deployable in real-world situations.

The case for exchange programs

Education is not only updating knowledge through learning material, info sessions, and training. Education includes on-the-job opportunities such as shadowing and coaching. One very creative and daring instrument is the expert exchange program – which isn’t considered enough when discussing manager enablement programs.

Typically, an exchange program involves two managers swapping of roles or teams (or both). To draw from a real-world experience, we tested this approach in our own teams. In Q3 of 2017, we joined the exchange program, swapping our teams for a two-month period: Friedrich moved to human capital management (HCM) from financials and Richard moved to financials from HCM. This was step 1.

Step 2, the day-to-day implementation of the program, was the most significant part. It required each us to let go of our existing teams and responsibilities and embark upon an adventurous journey into unknown territories and situations. Right from the start, we were tasked with handling completely new people, topics, and processes. From the first day, we learned that what worked in our original teams did not necessarily work within the new contexts.

Small things that became clear right away were the differences in complexity and composition of our new assignments. The priorities were different and so were the expected results, as were other layers of criteria such as location, local laws, and industry-specific best practices.

We learned that the exchange program is not just education, it is also an eye-opener. We experienced the adage: Do not judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. This line not only underscores the need for empathy but also hints at the need for diversity in experiences. This led us to step 3 – the learnings!

Learnings and accomplishments

Breaking the rut of siloed thinking

In many hierarchical companies, it is natural for organizations to think of their own units and put their interests ahead of others’ priorities. Although practical and legitimate, this might not be the best approach in terms of all factors, such as budget. The exchange program asks participants to consider the context of others and helps them develop empathy. This is not forced. It comes from a feeling of ownership and the ability to see problems from the inside – which you were not privy to previously. The exchange program can be very effective in succession management or preparing you for the next step of your career. You can also ramp up in a new topic through the exchange and expand your portfolio of offerings as a contributor.

Acquiring new perspectives

When you take on the mantle of the new team, you can see many things from a different angle. You gain new perspectives and have the opportunity to learn from the other team’s best practices, which you can then apply to your own team when you return.

Viewing problems from the outside

Not only can you gain new learnings from your new team, you can continue learning from your own team after stepping away. Yes, you read it right! As soon as “his” problem becomes “mine,” there is a shift in perspective that helps you understand the situation. You learn it is easy to critique something from far away. However, conversely, when “my” problem becomes “his,” the detachment from the situation can actually help find solutions. You can see the overall situation only when you step out of it.

Embracing the success factors

  • Do your homework by acquiring knowledge about your new business domain.
  • Trust your exchange partner to provide full transparency about his or her department.
  • For your part, ensure that there are “keine Leichen im Keller,” which is similar to the English phrase “no skeletons in the cupboard.” Let your exchange partner know all relevant details – warts and all.
  • As this program requires the participants to move out of their comfort zones, ensure you are willing to learn.
  • Get your team in order before you hand it over as a mess to your exchange partner. Imagine what you would do if you were to let someone else live in your house. Consider it as an “Airbnb” for business departments.
  • Have a culture that can foster this kind of growth and that can accept potential upcoming issues.

Adopting the how-tos

  • Make yourself unavailable for your original team.
  • However, be available for your exchange partner.
  • Take the risk of not being the expert. Expect a steep learning curve. Learn fast. Ask, ask, ask. Especially ask why.
  • Take over tasks, take over responsibilities, make decisions. Try to solve the issues of the new department – get fully involved.
  • Understand the limitations of the exchange program. For example, if stakeholder management goes far beyond the boundaries of the exchange program and could be business critical, know when to raise the flag.
  • Communicate to all involved parties, such as teams and stakeholders.
  • Have one-on-one meetings with all team members and key players.
  • Exchange your calendars. Exchange your rooms, even if it means relocating to a new city!

Preparing for the challenges

  • If there is no trust, it will be a challenge to execute the exchange. If there is a trust deficit, invest in building this first.

Sharing the benefits of the exchange experience

One prerequisite of participating in an exchange program is that the organization offers the openness, freedom, and culture to match anyone with anyone. A “post-requisite” would be that you conduct “lessons-learned” exercises – both from the leader’s perspective and from the department’s perspective. Take inputs from all stakeholders. For example, after our exchange program, our HR wanted us to share our experiences with them so they can invest in this program throughout the company. We were able to share our learnings with them and also highlight the key benefit of enabling two people at no cost.

As an instrument of building leadership, the exchange program is a win-win – it not only benefits the participants but also the entire unit.

Get more advice to transform your career by subscribing to a new podcast A Call to Lead with Jennifer Morgan. 

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Growth for Customer Loyalty Programs Slowing: Census

July 11, 2017   CRM News and Info

Membership in loyalty programs grew at 15 percent this year to total 3.8 billion, according to the recently published
2017 Colloquy Loyalty Census Report.

The growth rate recorded in the 2015 loyalty census, when membership stood at 3.3 billion, was 26 percent.

Growth has slowed because the United States is a maturing market, said Melissa Fruend, author of the report.

Mergers and acquisitions in the grocery sector, which saw memberships plummet 24 percent from 188 million to 142 million, were another factor.

However, the financial services sector is growing strongly, mainly due to cash back incentives. Membership is 664 million compared with 578 million in 2015.

The retail sector, with 1.6 billion reward program memberships, dominates the field. The travel and hospitality sector comes next with 1.1 billion memberships.

One of the most dynamic sectors is the other/emerging sector, covering online-only offerings, entertainment, daily deals, point aggregators and card-linked offers. With 462 million members, this sector makes up about 12 percent of the total membership market, according to the report.

What Drives Members

Emotion was the biggest driver across all groups represented in the census, with loyal customers most often choosing “I love the brand/retailer/service” as their main reason for participating.

Other findings:

  • 53 percent of consumers identified ease of use as the main reason for participating in a loyalty program;
  • 39 percent cited great discounts as the reason;
  • 37 percent cited ease of understanding the program;
  • 57 percent said they abandoned a program because it took too long to earn points or miles; and
  • 51 percent said they trusted loyalty programs with their personal data.

“A bad structure can impact any sector,” Colloquy’s Fruend told CRM Buyer. “As a guideline, if your best customer can’t earn a program’s lowest level reward in three to six months, your model is broken. Why would they stay around?”

As for ease of understanding, “the single biggest problem is when the consumer doesn’t understand the program value proposition,” said Freund — that is, “what’s in it for me?”

Another problem arises when the experience isn’t seamless, such as when a brand puts too much onus on customers to notify it that they’ve made a purchase, for example.

Still, business is good.

“Anything that sees double digit growth is very healthy,” noted Michael Jude, a research manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

Must Work Harder

Retailers have to step up efforts to attract and retain loyalty program members, Fruend suggested.

This applies to “all loyalty programs, in-person and online,” she added.

Meanwhile, brands must optimize the overall experience for their best customers by creating more personalized and relevant experiences for their best customers.

“Do loyalty with the customer, not to the customer,” Fruend suggested. “Utilize data to serve the customer by sending relevant offers and communications. Also consider offering rewards that are experiential instead of discount-driven.”

People say they want a discount, “but what they really want is an experience. Experiences translate recognition better than discounts,” Fruend remarked.

The Problem of Plenitude

“One significant barrier to adoption in loyalty programs is that there are simply so many of them,” Frost’s Jude told CRM Buyer. “It isn’t practical for the average consumer to keep track of all the loyalty programs they might be a part of.”

Further, loyalty gets diluted when customers join a number of loyalty programs.

Joining a loyalty program “doesn’t always indicate online loyalty,” suggested Paula Rosenblum, a managing partner at RSR Research.

“It indicates some kind of perk or other reason to sign up,” she told CRM Buyer.

How Online Businesses Can Improve Loyalty

Implementing big data systems might help online businesses improve customer loyalty, Frost’s Jude suggested.

“If you have a great deal of telemetry on your customers and can tailor specific offers based on their buying habits, credit history and so forth, you can improve their satisfaction and increase sales,” he explained.

Amazon used to give customers a freebie at the end of the year, Jude recalled. “I had the option of getting my books at a local bookstore, but after the first year with Amazon, I wanted to get more coffee mugs.”
end enn Growth for Customer Loyalty Programs Slowing: Census


Richard%20Adhikari Growth for Customer Loyalty Programs Slowing: CensusRichard Adhikari has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, mobile technologies, CRM, databases, software development, mainframe and mid-range computing, and application development. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including Information Week and Computerworld. He is the author of two books on client/server technology.
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Account-Based And Content Marketing Programs Are Not Campaigns

October 7, 2016   BI News and Info

Some moments are so instantly, indelibly etched into pop culture that they shape the way we think for years to come. For virtual reality (VR), that moment may have been the scene in the 1999 blockbuster The Matrix when the Keanu Reeves character Neo learns that his entire life has been a computer-generated simulation so fully realized that he could have lived it out never knowing that he was actually an inert body in an isolation tank. Ever since, that has set the benchmark for VR: as a digital experience that seems completely, convincingly real.

Today, no one is going to be unaware, Matrix-like, that they’re wearing an Oculus Rift or a Google Cardboard headset, but the virtual worlds already available to us are catching up to what we’ve imagined they could be at a startling rate. It’s been hard to miss all the Pokémon Go players bumping into one another on the street as they chased animated characters rendered in augmented reality (AR), which overlays and even blends digital artifacts seamlessly with the actual environment around us.

For all the justifiable hype about the exploding consumer market for VR and, to a lesser extent, AR, there’s surprisingly little discussion of their latent business value—and that’s a blind spot that companies and CIOs can’t afford to have. It hasn’t been that long since consumer demand for the iPhone and iPad forced companies, grumbling all the way, into finding business cases for them.

sap Q316 digital double feature1 images1 Account Based And Content Marketing Programs Are Not CampaignsIf digitally enhanced reality generates even half as much consumer enthusiasm as smartphones and tablets, you can expect to see a new wave of consumerization of IT as employees who have embraced VR and AR at home insist on bringing it to the workplace. This wave of consumerization could have an even greater impact than the last one. Rather than risk being blindsided for a second time, organizations would be well advised to take a proactive approach and be ready with potential business uses for VR and AR technologies by the time they invade the enterprise.

They don’t have much time to get started.

The two technologies are already making inroads in fields as diverse as medicine, warehouse operations, and retail. And make no mistake: the possibilities are breathtaking. VR can bring human eyes to locations that are difficult, dangerous, or physically impossible for the human body, while AR can deliver vast amounts of contextual information and guidance at the precise time and place they’re needed.

As consumer adoption and acceptance drives down costs, enterprise use cases for VR and AR will blossom. In fact, these technologies could potentially revolutionize the way companies communicate, manage employees, and digitize and automate operations. Yet revolution is rarely bloodless. The impact will probably alter many aspects of the workplace that we currently take for granted, and we need to think through the implications of those changes.

VR and AR are related, but they’re not so much siblings as cousins. VR is immersive. It creates a fully realized digital environment that users experience through goggles or screens (and sometimes additional equipment that provides physical feedback) that make them feel like they’re surrounded by and interacting entirely within this created world.

AR, by contrast, is additive. It displays text or images in glasses, on a window or windshield, or inside a mirror, but the user is still aware of and interacting with reality. There is also an emerging hybrid called “mixed reality,” which is essentially AR with VR-quality digital elements, that superimposes holographic images on reality so convincingly that trying to touch them is the only way to be sure they aren’t actually there.

Although VR is a hot topic, especially in the consumer gaming world, AR has far more enterprise use cases, and several enterprise apps are already in production. In fact, industry analyst Digi-Capital forecasts that while VR companies will generate US$ 30 billion in revenue by 2020, AR companies will generate $ 120 billion, or four times as much.

Both numbers are enormous, especially given how new the VR/AR market is. As recently as 2014, it barely existed, and almost nothing available was appropriate for enterprise users. What’s more, the market is evolving so quickly that standards and industry leaders have yet to emerge. There’s no guarantee that early market entrants like Facebook’s Oculus Rift, Samsung’s Gear VR, and HTC’s Vive will continue to exist, never mind set enduring benchmarks.

Nonetheless, it’s already clear that these technologies will have a major impact on both internal and customer-facing business. They will make customer service more accurate, personalized, and relevant. They will reduce human risk and enhance public safety. They will streamline operations and smash physical boundaries. And that’s just the beginning.

Cleveland Clinic: Healing from the Next Room

Medicine is already testing the limits of learning with VR and AR.

sap Q316 digital double feature1 imageseight Account Based And Content Marketing Programs Are Not CampaignsThe most potentially disruptive operational use of VR and AR could be in education and training. With VR, students can be immersed in any environment, from medieval architecture to molecular biology, in classroom groups or on demand, to better understand what they’re studying. And no industry is pursuing this with more enthusiasm than medicine. Even though Google Glass hasn’t been widely adopted elsewhere, for example, it’s been a big success story in the medical world.

Pamela Davis, MD, senior vice president for medical affairs at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is one of the leading proponents of medical education using VR and AR. She’s the dean of the university’s medical school, which is working with Cleveland Clinic to develop the Microsoft HoloLens “mixed reality” device for medical education and training, turning MRIs and other conventional 2D medical images into 3D images that can be projected at the site of a procedure for training and guidance during surgery. “As you push a catheter into the heart or place a deep brain stimulation electrode, you can see where you want to be and guide your actions by watching the hologram,” Davis explains.

The HoloLens can also be programmed as a “lead” device that transmits those images and live video to other “learner” devices, allowing the person wearing the lead device to provide oversight and input. This will enable a single doctor to demonstrate a delicate procedure up-close to multiple students at once, or do patient examinations remotely in an emergency or epidemic.

Davis herself was convinced of the technology’s broader potential during a demonstration in which she put on a learner HoloLens and rewired a light switch, something decidedly outside her expertise, under the guidance of an engineer wearing a lead HoloLens in the next room. In the near future, she predicts, it will help people perform surgery and other sensitive, detailed tasks not just from the next room, but from the next state or country.

Consumers are already getting used to sap Q316 digital double feature1 images3 Account Based And Content Marketing Programs Are Not Campaignsthinking of VR and AR in the context of entertainment. Companies interested in the technologies should be thinking about how they might engage consumers as part of the buying experience.

Because the technologies deliver more information and a better shopping experience with less effort, e-commerce is going to give rise to v-commerce, where people research, interact with, and share products in VR and AR before they order them online or go to a store to make a purchase.

Online eyewear retailers already allow people to “try on” glasses virtually and share the images with friends to get their feedback, but that’s rudimentary compared to what’s emerging.

Mirrors as Personal Shoppers

Clothing stores from high-end boutiques to low-end fashion chains are experimenting with AR mirrors that take the shopper’s measurements and recommend outfits, showing what items look like without requiring the customer to undress.

Instant Designer Shows

Luxury design house Dior uses Oculus Rift VR goggles to let its well-heeled customers experience a runway show without flying to Paris.

Custom Shopping Malls

British designer Allison Crank has created an experimental VR shopping mall. As people walk through it, they encounter virtual people (and the occasional zoo animal) and shop in stores stocked only with items that users are most likely to buy, based on past purchase information and demographic data.

A New Perspective

IKEA’s AR application lets shoppers envisage a piece of furniture in the room they plan to use it in. They can look at products from the point of view of a specific height—useful for especially tall or short customers looking for comfortable furniture or for parents trying to design rooms that are safe for a toddler or a young child.

Painless Do-it-Yourself Instructions

Instead of forcing customers to puzzle over a diagram or watch an online video, companies will be able to offer customers detailed VR or AR demonstrations that show how to assemble and disassemble products for use, cleaning, and storage.

The customer-facing benefits of VR and AR are inarguably flashy, but it’s in internal business use that these technologies promise to shine brightest: boosting efficiency and productivity, eliminating previously unavoidable risks, and literally giving employers and managers new ways to look at information and operations. The following examples aren’t blue-sky cases; experts say they’re promising, realistic, and just around the corner.

Real-Time Guidance

A combination of AR glasses and audio essentially creates a user-specific, contextually relevant guidance system that confirms that wearers are in the right place, looking at the right thing, and taking the right action. This technology could benefit almost any employee who is not working at a desk: walking field service reps through repair procedures, guiding miners to the best escape route in an emergency, or optimizing home health aides’ driving routes and giving them up-to-date instructions and health data when they arrive at each patient’s home.

Linking to the Hidden

AR technology will be able to display any type of information the wearer needs to know. Linked to facial identification software, it could help police officers identify suspects or missing persons in real time. Used to visualize thermal gradients, chemical signatures, radioactivity, and other things that are invisible to the naked eye, it could help researchers refine their experiments or let insurance claims assessors spot arson. Similarly, VR will allow users to create and manipulate detailed three-dimensional models of everything from molecules to large machinery so that they can examine, explore, and change them.

Reducing the Human Risk

VR will allow users to perform high-risk jobs while reducing their need to be in harm’s way. The users will be able to operate equipment remotely while seeing exactly what they would if they were there, a use case that is ideal for industries like mining, firefighting, search and rescue, and toxic site cleanup. While VR won’t necessarily eliminate the need for humans to perform these high-risk jobs, it will improve their safety, and it will allow companies to pursue new opportunities in situations that remain too dangerous for humans.

Reducing the Commercial Risk

sap Q316 digital double feature1 images5 Account Based And Content Marketing Programs Are Not CampaignsVR can also reduce an entirely different type of operational risk: that of introducing new products and services. Manufacturers can let designers or even customers “test” a product, gather their feedback, and tweak the design accordingly before the product ever goes into production. Indeed, auto manufacturer Ford has already created a VR Immersion Lab for its engineers, which, among other things, helped them redesign the interior of the 2015 Ford Mustang to make the dashboard and windshield wipers more user-friendly, according to Fortune. In addition to improving customer experience, this application of VR is likely to accelerate product development and shorten time to market.

Similarly, retailers can use VR to create and test branch or franchise location designs on the fly to optimize traffic flow, product display, the accessibility of products, and even decor. Instead of building models or concept stores, a designer will be able to create the store design with VR, do a virtual walkthrough with executives, and adjust it in real time until it achieves the desired effect.

Seeing in Tongues

At some point, we will see an AR app that can translate written language in near-real time, which will dramatically streamline global business communications. Mobile apps already exist to do this in certain languages, so it’s just a matter of time before we can slip on glasses that let us read menus, signs, agendas, and documents in our native tongue.

Decide with the Eye

More dramatically, AR project management software will be able to deliver real-time data at a literal glance. On a construction site, for example, simply scanning the area could trigger data about real-time costs, supply inventories, planned versus actual spending, employee and equipment scheduling, and more. By linking to construction workers’ own AR glasses that provide information about what to know and do at any given location and time, managers could also evaluate and adjust workloads.

Squeeze Distance

Farther in the future, VR and AR will create true telepresence, enhancing collaboration and potentially replacing in-person meetings. Users could transmit AR holograms of themselves to someone else’s office, allowing them to be seen as if they were in the room. We could have VR workspaces with high-fidelity avatars that transmit characteristic facial expressions and gestures. Companies could show off a virtual product in a virtual room with virtual coworkers, on demand.

Reduce Carbon Footprint

If nothing else, true telepresence could practically eliminate business travel costs. More critically, though, in an era of rising temperatures and shrinking resources, the ability to create and view virtual people and objects rather than manufacturing and transporting physical artifacts also conserves materials and reduces the use of fossil fuel.

The strength of digitally enhanced reality—and AR in particular—is its ability to determine a user’s context and deliver relevant information accordingly. This makes it valuable for monitoring and managing employee behavior and performance. Employees could, for example, use the location and time data recorded by AR glasses to prove that they were (or weren’t) in a particular place at a particular time. The same glasses could provide them with heads-up guided navigation, alert employers that they’re due for a legally mandated break, verify that they completed an assigned task, and confirm hours worked without requiring them to fill out a timesheet.

However, even as these capabilities improve data governance and help manage productivity, they also raise critical issues of privacy and autonomy (see The Norms of Virtual Behavior). If you’re an employee using VR or AR technology, and if your company is leveraging it to monitor your performance, who owns that information? Who’s allowed to use it, and for what purposes? These are still open legal questions for these technologies.

Another unsettled—and unsettling—question is how far employers can use these technologies to direct employees’ work. While employers have the right to tell employees how to do their jobs, autonomy is a key component of workplace satisfaction. The extent to which employees are required to let a pair of AR glasses govern their actions could have a direct impact on hiring and retention.

Finally, these technologies could be one more step toward greater automation. A warehouse-picking AR application that guides pickers to the appropriate product faster makes them more productive and saves them from having to memorize hundreds or even thousands of SKUs. But the same technology that can guide a person will also be able to guide a semiautonomous robot.

The Norms of Virtual Behavior

VR and AR could disrupt our social norms and take identity hacking to a new level.

The future of AR and VR isn’t without its hazards. We’ve all witnessed how distracting and even dangerous smartphones can be, but at least people have to pull a phone out of a pocket before getting lost in the screen. What happens when the distraction is sitting on their faces?

This technology is going to affect how we interact, both in the workplace and out of it. The annoyance verging on rage that met the first people wearing Google Glass devices in public proves that we’re going to need to evolve new social norms. We’ll need to signal how engaged we are with what’s right in front of us when we’re wearing AR glasses, what we’re doing with the glasses while we interact, or whether we’re paying attention at all.

More sinister possibilities will present themselves down the line. How do you protect sensitive data from being accessed by unauthorized or “shadow” VR/AR devices? How do you prove you’re the one operating your avatar in a virtual meeting? How do you know that the person across from you is who they say they are and not a competitor or industrial spy who’s stolen a trusted avatar? How do you keep someone from hacking your VR or AR equipment to send you faulty data, flood your field of vision with disturbing images, or even direct you into physical danger?

As the technology gets more sophisticated, VR and AR vendors will have to start addressing these issues.

To realize the full business value of VR and AR, companies will need to tackle certain technical challenges. To be precise, they’ll have to wait for the vendors to take them on, because the market is still so new that standards and practices are far from mature.

sap Q316 digital double feature1 images6 Account Based And Content Marketing Programs Are Not CampaignsFor one thing, successful implementation requires devices (smartphones, tablets, and glasses, for now) that are capable of delivering, augmenting, and overlaying information in a meaningful way. Only in the last year or so has the available hardware progressed beyond problems like overheating with demand, too-small screens, low-resolution cameras, insufficient memory, and underpowered batteries. While hardware is improving, so many vendors have emerged that companies have a hard time choosing among their many options.
The proliferation of devices has also increased software complexity. For enterprise VR and AR to take off, vendors need to create software that can run on the maximum number of devices with minimal modifications. Otherwise, companies are limited to software based on what it’s capable of doing on their hardware of choice, rather than software that meets their company’s needs.

The lack of standards only adds to the confusion. Porting data to VR or AR systems is different from mobilizing front-end or even back-end systems, because it requires users to enter, display, and interact with data in new ways. For devices like AR glasses that don’t use a keyboard or touch screen, vendors must determine how to enter data (voice recognition? eye tracking? image recognition?), how to display it legibly in any given environment, and whether to develop their own user interface tools or work with a third party.

Finally, delivering convincing digital enhancements to reality demands such vast amounts of data that many networks simply can’t accommodate it. Much as videoconferencing didn’t truly take off until high-speed broadband became widely available, VR and AR adoption will lag until a zero-latency infrastructure exists to
support them.

For all that VR and AR solutions have improved dramatically in a short time, they’re still primarily supplemental to existing systems, and not just because the software is still evolving. Wearables still have such limited processing power, memory, and battery life that they can handle only a small amount of information. That said, hardware is catching up quickly (see The Supporting Cast).

The Supporting Cast

VR and AR would still be science fiction if it weren’t for these supporting technologies.

The latest developments in VR and AR technologies wouldn’t be possible without other breakthroughs that bring things once considered science fiction squarely into the realm of science fact:

  • Advanced semiconductor designs pack more processing power into less space.
  • Microdisplays fit more information onto smaller screens.
  • New power storage technologies extend battery life while shrinking battery size.
  • Development tools for low-latency, high-resolution image rendering and improved 3D-graphics displays make digital artifacts more realistic and detailed.
  • Omnidirectional cameras that can record in 360 degrees simultaneously create fully immersive environments.
  • Plummeting prices for accelerometers lower the cost of VR devices.

Companies in the emerging VR/AR industry are encouraging the makers of smartglasses and safety glasses to work together to create ergonomic smartglasses that deliver information in a nondistracting way and that are also comfortable to wear for an eight-hour shift.

The argument in favor of VR and AR for business is so powerful that once vendors solve the obvious hardware problems, experts predict that existing enterprise mobile apps will quickly start to include VR or AR components, while new apps will emerge to satisfy as yet unmet needs.

In other words, it’s time to start thinking about how your company might put these technologies to use—and how to do so in a way that minimizes concerns about data privacy, corporate security, and employee comfort. Because digitally enhanced reality is coming tomorrow, so business needs to start planning for it today. D!

Read more thought provoking articles in the latest issue of the Digitalist Magazine, Executive Quarterly.

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Identifying must-have features in file-sharing programs

July 8, 2016   BI News and Info

Commoditized cloud offerings like file-sharing programs offer consumer choice. But, perversely, choice may also…

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inlineReg Test4 safeHarborLogo Identifying must have features in file sharing programs

drive the need for migration as the market and feature sets shake out. The file-sharing market is still in a state of flux and growing maturity.

File sharing — or enterprise file sync and share apps — has been a staple enterprise need since digital transformation has come to define the workplace. Companies need a central place to share, edit, manage and find files securely, without losing control of versions and without creating undue hurdles that force employees to default to easier modes of exchange, such as email attachments. Workers need to be able to share these files regardless of their location and regardless of the device they’re using.

File-sharing programs can be distinguished from more full-featured enterprise content management (ECM) software in that they tend to be cloud-based and less heavyweight. They are often easier to use and less heavyweight in terms of configuration, management and users’ day-to-day interactions. At the same time, file-sharing programs have sometimes failed to meet expectations. They may not provide sufficient security or features to be compliant with regulatory needs. They may not be rigorous enough in terms of workflow automation or editing capabilities. This is why users have sometimes defaulted to ECM platforms, despite their heavyweight, difficult-to-use reputations.

Given the array of options in the market for file-sharing programs and content management, more generally, users should feel empowered — but also cautious. There is no shortage of technologies in the market, and they include brands such as Box, Dropbox, OneDrive for Business, Google and Syncplicity.

Technology buyers and users should recognize that choice is good, but it can also create a need rather than trying to choose a technology that has every feature under the sun. Requirements change over time, and service offerings change rapidly, bringing competitive functionality to the market. Organizations typically won’t require all features from the outset, but rather a roadmap to accommodate needs as level of maturity of use increases.

Companies may need to migrate for a variety of reasons, from the quality of support of the provider; licensing cost; and the ability to integrate the technology with existing technologies a company has in-house, such as electronic signature.

Often organizations will be using many file-sharing mechanisms, sometimes by design, but more likely because of organic growth and personal preferences of employees largely supported by a lack of centrally defined governance standards and IT controls.

If a company is migrating to or from a file-sharing program, it is no different from when it was choosing a provider for the first time. There are two principles of change, namely to what target solutions and how will the change be executed. The target solutions must be well thought through based on solid principles of spec and select rather than wishes or whims.

Important features in file-sharing programs

Solution and service provider criteria to consider should include the following:

  • Analysis including statistics. Ability to meet regulatory reporting requirements including audit history of file access such as reads, updates, downloads and uploads.
  • Collaboration. Ability to develop notes external to the file as well as embed and track changes within the file. The ultimate ability for collaboration is to have multiple users operating on the same file at the same time without overwriting changes or versions, known as co-authoring.
  • Integration with other applications. Ability to seamlessly move files in and out of the file-sharing environment from other applications, including services in the Microsoft Office suite as well as CRM and ERP systems. Integration also includes the ability to interoperate with different and often disparate repositories.
  • Mobile functionality. Full capabilities of the file-sharing service being available on mobile devices including across different operating systems and different form factors.
  • Preview. Comprehensive preview capability, including not only common office document formats such as Microsoft Word and Excel, but other, less common everyday formats.
  • Retention policies. Rules-based tools to support content governance including automatically deleting, archiving and moving files among repositories.
  • Security and permissions. Ability for comprehensive, fine-grained permission attributes such as read only, prohibit downloads and allow updates support for when users are not in the organization domain and potentially not signed up to the file-sharing provider — solutions to this include file access links with timed expiry.
  • Synchronization. Background moving of files between the file-sharing environment and local resources for offline access — typically desktop, but also mobile devices. Synchronization should manage multiple offline changes by potentially different users by effecting a merge or gracefully denying updates.

As well as the function and feature criteria outlined above, a mature spec and select strategy will also include nonfunctional aspects, such as cost of operation and deployment, quality of service and defined service-level agreements. Migration considerations include the project roadmap, project plan, approach, pilot, user training and adoption, change management and planning an actual physical content move.

The latter is often the most overlooked, with organizations taking a holistic approach to content migration without considering the detail gleaned through a proper information architecture assessment. Constructing an information architecture following a content inventory will help drive out use cases, inform business taxonomy classification and start to drive efficiency in overall content management. Content management is critical to support effective governance, retention and archiving, effective search and electronic process-driven efficiencies. When considering a file-sharing program, here are some important steps:

  • Develop a formal request-for-proposal process with several vendors to compare feature sets.
  • Execute a proper strategy and planning exercise.
  • Pay close attention to content detail through a formal content inventory and information architecture approach.
  • Set up a hybrid content migration approach with a correct blend of automated and user-driven migration.

The file-sharing program market will continue to shake out over the coming years. Expect to see file sharing become more intrinsic with ECM, collaboration, document management, backup and recovery, and storage solutions more broadly. The leading providers will have better integration with line-of-business applications and with multiple content repositories, comprehensive cross-systems federation, powerful management tools and integrated content governance capabilities.

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3 Levels of Data Analysis to Revitalize Your Automated Email Programs in 2016

January 6, 2016   CRM News and Info

I’ve broken the process down into a three-pronged approach:

  1. Macro-Categorical
  2. Individual Program
  3. Individual Email/Subject Line

Here are examples and definitions of each of the stages:

1. Macro-categorical

Here you categorize your collection of email programs into broad, meaningful categories, such as:

  1. DemandGen
  2. Top of Funnel
  3. Bottom of Funnel

2. Individual programs

Within categories, look at each program. Pay particular attention to the amalgamation of steps and email templates for each. These should be complete, discrete programs, such as:

  1. Anonymous Website Visitors
  2. Top of Funnel Program – USA
  3. Middle of Funnel Program – EMEA

3. Individual email/subject line

Within each program, analyze each individual email and subject line for performance, such as:

  1. DemandGen – 2015 Happy New Year Email
  2. Top of Funnel  – Invitation to View New Video
  3. Customer  – All About the New Feature

Categorical analysis

Hopefully, you’re already using macro organization for your automated programs…that is, you will have already organized your email programs into broad general ideas/buckets.

For example, categories such as Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel, and Bottom of Funnel sort programs by buyer stage. Categories such as EMEA and ROW sort by geography. Website, Webinar, and DemandGen are also perfect examples of macro-categorical buckets. These broad categories are perfect for this first stage analysis. This is important because not only will you want to see how multiple programs are performing in a single category, but this will give you a great birds-eye view of the bulk of your campaigns.

Programmatical analysis

Next up is the program level analysis. Each program is a combination of email templates, steps, and other programmable actions that make up a program. What we want to investigate at this level are how the different programs within one macro-category are performing. If there are programs that are similar, why is one performing better than others? Additionally, are there any ways for us to condense and consolidate our programs down to a smaller number?

If I were to give my humble opinion as to which of the three stages is the most difficult to assess, I would say that the program level is the most difficult. This is because the success of the program is contingent on the multitude of email templates contained within it. The only way to really look at the success of a program level stage is to either look at a program’s numbers vs another program in the same category (regardless of any other variables), or to examine the programs by what went wrong with individual email templates/subject lines. There could be several rotten apples in certain programs that are affecting the entire operation.

Individual email analysis

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Humanizing Technology Behind Employee Recognition Programs

December 4, 2015   BI News and Info

The September issue of the Harvard Business Review features a cover story on design thinking’s coming of age. We have been applying design thinking within SAP for the past 10 years, and I’ve witnessed the growth of this human-centered approach to innovation first hand.

Design thinking is, as the HBR piece points out, “the best tool we have for … developing a responsive, flexible organizational culture.”

This means businesses are doing more to learn about their customers by interacting directly with them. We’re seeing this change in our work on d.forum — a community of design thinking champions and “disruptors” from across industries.

Meanwhile, technology is making it possible to know exponentially more about a customer. Businesses can now make increasingly accurate predictions about customers’ needs well into the future. The businesses best able to access and pull insights from this growing volume of data will win. That requires a fundamental change for our own industry; it necessitates a digital transformation.

So, how do we design this digital transformation?

It starts with the customer and an application of design thinking throughout an organization – blending business, technology and human values to generate innovation. Business is already incorporating design thinking, as the HBR cover story shows. We in technology need to do the same.

SCN+SY Humanizing Technology Behind Employee Recognition Programs

Design thinking plays an important role because it helps articulate what the end customer’s experience is going to be like. It helps focus all aspects of the business on understanding and articulating that future experience.

Once an organization is able to do that, the insights from that consumer experience need to be drawn down into the business, with the central question becoming: What does this future customer experience mean for us as an organization? What barriers do we need to remove? Do we need to organize ourselves differently? Does our process need to change – if it does, how? What kind of new technology do we need?

Then an organization must look carefully at roles within itself. What does this knowledge of the end customer’s future experience mean for an individual in human resources, for example, or finance? Those roles can then be viewed as end experiences unto themselves, with organizations applying design thinking to learn about the needs inherent to those roles. They can then change roles to better meet the end customer’s future needs. This end customer-centered approach is what drives change.

This also means design thinking is more important than ever for IT organizations.

We, in the IT industry, have been charged with being responsive to business, using technology to solve the problems business presents. Unfortunately, business sometimes views IT as the organization keeping the lights on. If we make the analogy of a store: business is responsible for the front office, focused on growing the business where consumers directly interact with products and marketing; while the perception is that IT focuses on the back office, keeping servers running and the distribution system humming. The key is to have business and IT align to meet the needs of the front office together.

Remember what I said about the growing availability of consumer data? The business best able to access and learn from that data will win. Those of us in IT organizations have the technology to make that win possible, but the way we are seen and our very nature needs to change if we want to remain relevant to business and participate in crafting the winning strategy.

We need to become more front office and less back office, proving to business that we are innovation partners in technology.

This means, in order to communicate with businesses today, we need to take a design thinking approach. We in IT need to show we have an understanding of the end consumer’s needs and experience, and we must align that knowledge and understanding with technological solutions. When this works — when the front office and back office come together in this way — it can lead to solutions that a company could otherwise never have realized.

There’s different qualities, of course, between front office and back office requirements. The back office is the foundation of a company and requires robustness, stability, and reliability. The front office, on the other hand, moves much more quickly. It is always changing with new product offerings and marketing campaigns. Technology must also show agility, flexibility, and speed. The business needs both functions to survive. This is a challenge for IT organizations, but it is not an impossible shift for us to make.

Here’s the breakdown of our challenge.

1. We need to better understand the real needs of the business.

This means learning more about the experience and needs of the end customer and then translating that information into technological solutions.

2. We need to be involved in more of the strategic discussions of the business.

Use the regular invitations to meetings with business as an opportunity to surface the deeper learning about the end consumer and the technology solutions that business may otherwise not know to ask for or how to implement.

The IT industry overall may not have a track record of operating in this way, but if we are not involved in the strategic direction of companies and shedding light on the future path, we risk not being considered innovation partners for the business.

We must collaborate with business, understand the strategic direction and highlight the technical challenges and opportunities. When we do, IT will become a hybrid organization – able to maintain the back office while capitalizing on the front office’s growing technical needs. We will highlight solutions that business could otherwise have missed, ushering in a digital transformation.

Digital transformation goes beyond just technology; it requires a mindset. See What It Really Means To Be A Digital Organization.

This story originally appeared on SAP Business Trends.

Top image via Shutterstock

Article published by Sam Yen. It originally appeared on SAP News Center and has been republished with permission.

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