Established July 26th, 2010 #MMchat has become a weekly tradition for an ever expanding number of CMOs, marketers and others working in and around the digital social networking space. And all of us @TheSocialCMO were recently very pleased when #MMchat was named one of the 15 Essential Social Marketing Twitter Chats by Mashable.
The perception among organizations over the past five years is that more quantitative methods, with or without Big Data, are critical to success. The problem is that most commercial organizations have little to no depth in these disciplines. Despite the unfortunate name (data scientists) given to the class of professionals (scientists they are not, in general), it does represent a new sort of role in organizations. But staffing and maintaining the necessary roles requires more than recruiting from from a pool. I make some suggestions about how to proceed.
The Nokia Lumia has attracted positive reviews, with both tje phone and its Windows Phone 7.5 (WP7) software platform. While not drawing quite as much attention as the Lumia, HTC's Titan, Radar and other WP devices also look good. One common reason is WP7, which may also provide the nail that seals Nokia's and HTC's coffins (both are currently enfeebled)-- and even Microsoft's own mobile fate as well.
WP7.5 makes extensive use of the Metro interface, with its tiles which contain information. Metro is going down well, and with cause. It is both different and an advance beyond iOS, plus it has a 'language environment' behind it which makes it possible to push developments further and further.
This document addresses many questions asked by CFO’s about cloud deployments and the top integration questions often asked by CFO’s responsible for key business initiatives that involve technology.
A. Executive Summary
Most customer support managers agree that social media will continue to grow as a major channel for handling customer issues and resolving problems. While this is generally understood, what stands out is the lack of integration with established support channels, such as the telephone, Web and email. Companies have made substantial investments in handling customer requests over these traditional channels but often support their social channels with informal teams that are disconnected from the primary support channels. What many support managers fail to realize is that the majority of customers that post a request on social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter will also place a call into the contact center if their issue is not immediately addressed. This results in double handling a request resulting in increasing number of calls and costs. With the average cost of an assisted contact between $7 and $9 duplicate handling is expensive and often leads to customer frustration.Integrating social medi
This is proving to be a week which encourages lateral thought. In particular two extremes come to mind. The first starts with inhibiting Facebook and continues about the future success, or otherwise, of the 'Facebook-model'. The second reflects a wide ranging discussion with Omer Eiferman, CEO of Cellrox and what Multiple Virtual Personas can do for you.
As a previous blog (http://bit.ly/H94hrq) related, my iPhone was recently ripped from my hands by two 'gentlemen' on a motorbike in Tel Aviv . This has obliged an unwanted re-think about what should be the replacement, with unexpected initial conclusions. While the easiest solution is clearly another iPhone, that increasingly looks the least likely option. Instead, the concept of a 'stupid-smartphone' comes into focus (not that such an oddity seems yet to exist).
I suppose there are as many jokes about budgeting as there are about mothers-in-law. Many people dread the budget cycle as a necessary evil to be endured. But, it doesn’t need to be this way. Indeed, to many companies, budgets and forecasts are strategic weapons. These companies deploy best practices to lead the way.
Best Practice #1 – Share the Vision
This example of a Mobile Enterprise Error is about Tesco (the major supermarket chain) in the UK. It comes courtesy of a Tesco customer, whom Constellation Research met at the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) meeting in London in March -- and shows that even the most competent can make mistakes.
This Tesco customer had a Tesco Clubcard, which Tesco uses to collect information about its customers and what they buy. Customers present the credit card-sized Clubcard at the till when they check-out and pay. The details of purchases are then used by Tesco as a reward card and for detailed analysis of both each customer's buying habits as well as to examine macro trends and preferences.
Based on our research at Constellation Research, we find that analysts that work with Hadoop or other big data technologies spend a significant amount of time NOT requiring any knowledge of advanced quantitative methods – configuring and maintaining clusters, writing programs to gather, move, cleanse and otherwise organize data for analysis and many other common tasks in data analysis. In fact, even those who employ advanced quantitative techniques spend from 50-80% of their time gathering, cleansing and preparing data. This percentage has not budged in decades. Keep in mind that advanced analytics is not a new phenomenon; what is new is the volume (to some extent) and variety of the source data with new techniques to deal with it, especially, but not limited to, Hadoop.