” We are a few years away from an economy based on fun,” says consultant @marwschaefer. Games are the newest layer of engagement after augmented reality, mobil and social.
(via The future of business: Six layers of customer engagement)
Using data to power and feed an island nation. Analysis of weather and climate data will help Brunei to: 1) diversify from oil and gas to renewable energy; and 2)improve food security by increasing rice production from 3% to 60% by 2015.
(via IBM Research: Using data to power and feed an island nation)
“Is a social network without integrated analytics like a vehicle without a safety belt?”
Social media hit a low with the Boston Marathon witchhunt, says blogger Eric Schartzman. Analytics, he argues, needs to be embedded in big data.
Via briansolis.com |Without Analytics,Big Data is Just Noise
Analysis of Twitter posts predicted postpartum depression with up to 80% accuracy using a mathematical model based on factors such as volume of activity, ego-centric network characteristics, emotion, and linguistic styles.
(via Predicting Postpartum Changes in Emotion and Behavior via Social Media | Follow the Crowd)
New IBM Customer Experience Lab focuses on CEO priorities
Yesterday IBM announced the creation of the IBM Customer Experience Lab, an exclusive Research and GBS capability aimed at the front-office agenda of clients in the world of Big Data. One hundred Research scientists worldwide will work with thousands of GBS business consultants to address the emerging C-Suite Front Office Digitization priorities.
Banorte-lxe, one of the leading banks in Latin America, and Nationwide, the world’s largest building society, are among clients already engaged with the Research and consulting experts of the new lab. During its start-up phase, the Lab will focus on six priority industries — Banking, Insurance, Retail, Consumer Products, Telco and Energy & Utilities — and we are going to select and manage the engagements coming into the Lab through GBS Global Industry Leaders and partners.
IBM Research: IBM Customer Experience Lab
To help its clients successfully navigate these changes, IBM has established the IBM Customer Experience Lab to invent new ways for them to provide best-in-class customer experiences across their many channels. Located at the T.J. Watson Research Center, with additional virtual collaborators around the world, the IBM Customer Experience Lab is a partnership between IBM Research and IBM Global Business Services. A dedicated team of researchers and consultants will work with clients on customer insights, customer engagement, and employee engagement through the use of mobile, social, cloud and analytics technologies.
Where marketing execs are spending all those tech dollars
By 2016, 80 percent of marketing tech investments will come outside of IT, Gartner predicts. Here’s where those marketing dollars are going now.
* Marketing automation. Content management and social media monitoring, as well as the automation, aggregation, and analysis of social data. Also, established technologies such as sales-force automation and CRM. These increase the effectiveness of the marketing processes themselves.
* Social technology and mobile technology. Both technologies produce fundamentally different interactions with and among customers. How to take advantage of this? At one end is the monitoring new behaviors — what they comment on in social media and how they shop or look up information when not at a desk, for example. At the other is using these new conduits to customers to serve them actively, such as tapping into location data to provide localized recommendations — marketers use the terms “geotargeting” and “hyperlocal” to refer to these new types of possible services.
* Analytics for real-time business intelligence. Historically, companies have used business intelligence to assess the past, then roll out changes based on that assessment. But in a fast-moving world, that insight often comes too late. Also, it’s typically based on data collected for very specific purposes, so the insights that can be gleaned from it tend to be limited to those original purposes. But new, often cloud-based technologies — collectively called big data — are providing ways to analyze information very quickly (even in real time), from multiple sources. Companies can adjust their operations and marketing more quickly — and even more targeted to specific types of customers
Getting closer to customers in an indirect channel
Being customer focused in the digital age means knowing and interacting with customers as individuals rather than as market segments. Unfortunately, the current electronics distribution model makes customer intimacy difficult. Due to the indirect sales model that dominates the consumer electronics industry, most manufacturers are not directly involved in the sales transaction with the end user.
The combination of analytics and connectivity will enable electronics companies to establish a relationship with the end consumer – regardless of channel – and use that connection to gain significant insights and drive future growth.
Via Growth through analytics, Burak Kircali, IBM Electronics Blog
“It’s no use just re-engineering what works on the desktop. Voice-enabled analytics is being missed.”
— Gartner analyst Ted Friedman
Why mobile app development should come in-house
While it’s fine to strike out on your own with an agency for your first mobile app, as customers grow to expect more, you’re going to need to connect that app back into the systems of record and systems of operation that your company has. To do that you’re going to need to figure out how to effectively work with your IT organization, because they own that data and those systems.
— Jeffrey Hammond, principal analyst at Forrester Research, Cambridge, MA.
