It doesn't take much data to give you an idea of what's going on -- if you get the right data. I'm working on an article concerning CRM analytics. In the middle of doing that, I found this Very Cool Link. Using a visualization method remotely resembling Hollywood's motion capture, you can adjust how a series of dots move on the screen to make a man or a woman do something ... with variations you can control.
Intrigued? Click!
(Safe for all ages.)
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
WobbleFlix?
As part of the CEM certification course I help teach, we look at how channels have unique interaction characteristics that can create strategic advantage. Netflix offers DVD rentals online, with a rental queue. Blockbuster was traditionally a brick-and-mortar location.
Netflix has more titles than your local Blockbuster. You don't have to leave your house to choose your next movie. Or to get it. Sure, there's a delay (but Amazon.com has gotten us used to this ... ).
Netflix as a result has been growing gangbusters, while Blockbuster was feeling the heat. Then they got into the online business. We go through very careful analysis of the site experiences and churn rates for online customers at each firm. Things were looking good for Blockbuster's strategy.
Except that the board, and the stockholders, felt that Blockbuster's investments were just too costly. Profits plummeted while they acted like a growth-obsessed startup instead of the cash cow they had been. CEO? Fired. New CEO has a Southland Corporation background, all retail and supply chain.
Ah, now we come to today.
Netflix, hot on the heels of Blockbuster's new CEO, is actually reeling a bit. But it's because they've lost some growth momentum to Blockbuster's combined online/retail model. Rent online, return to your local store (not all stores are participating.)
The saga continues. Will Blockbuster continue to pick away at Netflix? Or is the new CEO a signal that Blockbuster doesn't want to compete online?
Check out the Netflix earnings story here .
Netflix has more titles than your local Blockbuster. You don't have to leave your house to choose your next movie. Or to get it. Sure, there's a delay (but Amazon.com has gotten us used to this ... ).
Netflix as a result has been growing gangbusters, while Blockbuster was feeling the heat. Then they got into the online business. We go through very careful analysis of the site experiences and churn rates for online customers at each firm. Things were looking good for Blockbuster's strategy.
Except that the board, and the stockholders, felt that Blockbuster's investments were just too costly. Profits plummeted while they acted like a growth-obsessed startup instead of the cash cow they had been. CEO? Fired. New CEO has a Southland Corporation background, all retail and supply chain.
Ah, now we come to today.
Netflix, hot on the heels of Blockbuster's new CEO, is actually reeling a bit. But it's because they've lost some growth momentum to Blockbuster's combined online/retail model. Rent online, return to your local store (not all stores are participating.)
The saga continues. Will Blockbuster continue to pick away at Netflix? Or is the new CEO a signal that Blockbuster doesn't want to compete online?
Check out the Netflix earnings story here .
Mashups, no longer cutting edge?
I've actually been lecturing on Mashups lately -- did a gig at the World Bank, and it's part of my Customer Experience Management talks now. My argument is basically this. With AJAX at the front end allowing customers to see and interact with data stores from different sources, and with the enterprise's ability to aggregate, recombine and supplement its own data incrementally, all at low cost, then the only thing keeping a company from letting customers manage their own experiences is ... nothing. Mashups are here. The question is, what kind of access can you give your customers to your data -- crossed with things like Flickr, Google Maps, and so on -- that will build your brand?
If you don't think giving customers this level of control and transparent access to key data is a good idea, feel free to maintain that opinion, whilst your competitors beat the socks off of you in the market. :)
And, hey, here's a great link listing some new mashups. See if you can imagine something similar for your business.
If you don't think giving customers this level of control and transparent access to key data is a good idea, feel free to maintain that opinion, whilst your competitors beat the socks off of you in the market. :)
And, hey, here's a great link listing some new mashups. See if you can imagine something similar for your business.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Democratic Tag Clouds
This may seem off topic from global CRM issues, but bear with me.
Pollster.com posted an analysis recently of the language used by Democratic candidates in a Spring debate. The analysis was represented as tag clouds. (Janet Harris, a friend of Pollster.com, posted the analysis. I think but I'm not sure that this is the same Janet Harris who founded and runs Upstream Analysis, a consultancy that does media monitoring.) Tag clouds are most often used to represent the relative popularity of words on a given topic by making popular words larger and/or heavier in typeface. Common words such as "the" and "and" can be removed.
In fact, some services don't actually look at the words, but at the way people like you and me tag them. Britney Spears might be the phrase, but "doofus" might be the tag applied to her by some number of people. If you doubt that people would be so rude in tagging content, check out the user tags describing Britney Spears albums on Amazon.com. (When folks like you and me tag things, those tags make up a "folksonomy" -- not a taxonomy.)
Check out Janet's analysis here, and then come back for the global CRM point. [UPDATE: In the interests of bipartisanshipnessicity, here's a link to a Republican debate tag cloud.]
(fingers thrumming on the table)
OK, you back? Interesting, huh?
OK, the idea is this. When determining your value proposition in a given local market for your products and services, you had better get some savvy market intelligence, especially about how your target audiences will value/assess your offering. You can do focus groups, surveys ... and you can actually get prospects and customers to tag your offerings on your home page.
If you look at these tags across cultures, what do you think you'll discover? Will it matter? Will you be able to act on it?
If you doubt that tag clouds, presented to your chief marketing and sales people, won't make an impact, take a look again at Janet's analysis, and pretend you are a campaign strategist for Chris Dodd (Senator from Connecticut, and a decent guy from all accounts, including from personal experience). You want to bet that Senator Dodd has already seen this information?
The trick always is to find out what your market thinks and feels about you. If you can, exploit the power of the Internet to give you that insight: consider tag clouds.
Hey, and here's something cool: a tag cloud for this blog posting:
Pollster.com posted an analysis recently of the language used by Democratic candidates in a Spring debate. The analysis was represented as tag clouds. (Janet Harris, a friend of Pollster.com, posted the analysis. I think but I'm not sure that this is the same Janet Harris who founded and runs Upstream Analysis, a consultancy that does media monitoring.) Tag clouds are most often used to represent the relative popularity of words on a given topic by making popular words larger and/or heavier in typeface. Common words such as "the" and "and" can be removed.
In fact, some services don't actually look at the words, but at the way people like you and me tag them. Britney Spears might be the phrase, but "doofus" might be the tag applied to her by some number of people. If you doubt that people would be so rude in tagging content, check out the user tags describing Britney Spears albums on Amazon.com. (When folks like you and me tag things, those tags make up a "folksonomy" -- not a taxonomy.)
Check out Janet's analysis here, and then come back for the global CRM point. [UPDATE: In the interests of bipartisanshipnessicity, here's a link to a Republican debate tag cloud.]
(fingers thrumming on the table)
OK, you back? Interesting, huh?
OK, the idea is this. When determining your value proposition in a given local market for your products and services, you had better get some savvy market intelligence, especially about how your target audiences will value/assess your offering. You can do focus groups, surveys ... and you can actually get prospects and customers to tag your offerings on your home page.
If you look at these tags across cultures, what do you think you'll discover? Will it matter? Will you be able to act on it?
If you doubt that tag clouds, presented to your chief marketing and sales people, won't make an impact, take a look again at Janet's analysis, and pretend you are a campaign strategist for Chris Dodd (Senator from Connecticut, and a decent guy from all accounts, including from personal experience). You want to bet that Senator Dodd has already seen this information?
The trick always is to find out what your market thinks and feels about you. If you can, exploit the power of the Internet to give you that insight: consider tag clouds.
Hey, and here's something cool: a tag cloud for this blog posting:
analysis applied bear blogs candidates clouds com common crm debate democratic doofus fact fingers folks friend given global harris heavier http janet language larger making monitoring number ok people php pollster popular posted relative removed represent services spears spring sure table tag things think thrumming topic typeface upstream used words
created at TagCrowd.com
Seven Consumer Trends, and the Empowered Consumer
The megatrends I keep in mind are these:
1. The internet is empowering more people each day. They buy smarter, share more and redefine what matters in their online interactions.
2. The network effect that comes from connectedness makes the first trend non-linear and increasing.
3. Businesses that want to outperform the market will leverage the first two trends.
But ... these are three trends. Where are the seven trends promised in the header to this post? Here, in this incredibly great summary of consumer (read: internet user) trends that really matter, by Reinier Evers of trendwatching.com. Don't just read it, print it and tape it to your desktop.
1. The internet is empowering more people each day. They buy smarter, share more and redefine what matters in their online interactions.
2. The network effect that comes from connectedness makes the first trend non-linear and increasing.
3. Businesses that want to outperform the market will leverage the first two trends.
But ... these are three trends. Where are the seven trends promised in the header to this post? Here, in this incredibly great summary of consumer (read: internet user) trends that really matter, by Reinier Evers of trendwatching.com. Don't just read it, print it and tape it to your desktop.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Whole Foods and the FTC
Whole Foods in the United States is the leading "natural foods" grocer. (You can check its stock performance here.)
Its entire brand promise and experience have created a new kind of grocery store. In fact, their impending acquisition of Wild Oats may be blocked by the US Federal Trade Commissions because it might represent a monopoly of the organic grocery segment that Whole Foods helped define and grow.
To say that mega-grocery chains such as Safeway and Kroger do not pose a competitive force in this market is to say that Whole Foods has executed a blue ocean strategy very well by turning this segment into its own sector -- at least that's got to be what the FTC is assuming. Whole Foods' market cap is currently about 5.65 billion USD. Safeway's market cap is three times that. And Krogers' is four times bigger. So, lowly Whole Foods is a monopolistic threat ONLY if you consider it the dominant player in a whole new sector. (If you want to see graphically how much a non-threat Whole Foods really is, just compare it to Safeway, as in this Yahoo Finance chart.)
It's a problem they've created inadvertently by redefining the grocery store concept using superbly all the five forces of CEM – except one.
The current controversy with the FTC is partly driven by revelation about Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey having used a pseudonym on a blog to trash his competition. Of course the Securities and Exchange Commission wants to know if this noise affects the acquisition materially. (UPDATE: Markey apologizes.)
But the big risk to Whole Foods is the sheer ineptness of the CEO in handling his blog strategy. He didn't realize that the blogosphere is a medium of influence, not control. (My acronym for how companies should strategically use the five forces of CEM is MIB: Manage what you can, influence everything you cannot manage, and balance any of the stuff that is totally out of your control.) Mr. Mackey did not take into account that everything put on a blog is subject to blogosphere rules, which generally skew to favor transparency and non-commercial communications. Oops.
(If you want my PDF on the five forces of CEM, just email me.)
Its entire brand promise and experience have created a new kind of grocery store. In fact, their impending acquisition of Wild Oats may be blocked by the US Federal Trade Commissions because it might represent a monopoly of the organic grocery segment that Whole Foods helped define and grow.
To say that mega-grocery chains such as Safeway and Kroger do not pose a competitive force in this market is to say that Whole Foods has executed a blue ocean strategy very well by turning this segment into its own sector -- at least that's got to be what the FTC is assuming. Whole Foods' market cap is currently about 5.65 billion USD. Safeway's market cap is three times that. And Krogers' is four times bigger. So, lowly Whole Foods is a monopolistic threat ONLY if you consider it the dominant player in a whole new sector. (If you want to see graphically how much a non-threat Whole Foods really is, just compare it to Safeway, as in this Yahoo Finance chart.)
It's a problem they've created inadvertently by redefining the grocery store concept using superbly all the five forces of CEM – except one.
The current controversy with the FTC is partly driven by revelation about Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey having used a pseudonym on a blog to trash his competition. Of course the Securities and Exchange Commission wants to know if this noise affects the acquisition materially. (UPDATE: Markey apologizes.)
But the big risk to Whole Foods is the sheer ineptness of the CEO in handling his blog strategy. He didn't realize that the blogosphere is a medium of influence, not control. (My acronym for how companies should strategically use the five forces of CEM is MIB: Manage what you can, influence everything you cannot manage, and balance any of the stuff that is totally out of your control.) Mr. Mackey did not take into account that everything put on a blog is subject to blogosphere rules, which generally skew to favor transparency and non-commercial communications. Oops.
(If you want my PDF on the five forces of CEM, just email me.)
Friday, July 13, 2007
NetSuite and the iPhone
It didn't take long for NetSuite to crack the iPhone ... any hip enterprise iPhone user can now access data from NetSuite 2007. Wait, not just data ... the iPhone user can employ NetSuite's user interface, because they have strong (although not perfect) support for Safari, the browser Apple has included in the iPhone. This includes the Javascript and XML support provided by Safari to enable AJAX applications.
The brilliance of the NetSuite/iPhone integration has yet to be truly appreciated, but think of the world about 12 months from now. Apple's complete Safari browser on its phone will lower the cost of developing rich Web 2.0 applications for both desktop and mobile deployment. Sophisticated users in the field, including front line service and sales personnel, won't need separate training. They'll be able to get full access to all the data they need, not just a subset offered by a specialized mobile application version of a CRM system.
Is this going to drive a lot of iPhone and NetSuite sales? Not in the short term. Probably not even in the medium term. But you'll start to see two things happening in the market. First, smart phone manufacturers are going to seriously reconsider their OS requirements, pushing innovation back up to mobile OS companies (listening, Redmond?). Second, NetSuite's brand will get a bit of polish. Any company doing business with Apple -- a hotter company today than ever -- is in great company. NetSuite's upcoming IPO isn't going to hurt. It will be able to tout its shoulder-to-shoulder "relationship" with Apple, even though, truth be told, any company doing AJAX development can get their apps in the pockets of iPhone users.
UPDATE: Stuart Lauchlan, contributing editor at MyCustomer.com, just put out a nice piece on this topic. Check it out!
The brilliance of the NetSuite/iPhone integration has yet to be truly appreciated, but think of the world about 12 months from now. Apple's complete Safari browser on its phone will lower the cost of developing rich Web 2.0 applications for both desktop and mobile deployment. Sophisticated users in the field, including front line service and sales personnel, won't need separate training. They'll be able to get full access to all the data they need, not just a subset offered by a specialized mobile application version of a CRM system.
Is this going to drive a lot of iPhone and NetSuite sales? Not in the short term. Probably not even in the medium term. But you'll start to see two things happening in the market. First, smart phone manufacturers are going to seriously reconsider their OS requirements, pushing innovation back up to mobile OS companies (listening, Redmond?). Second, NetSuite's brand will get a bit of polish. Any company doing business with Apple -- a hotter company today than ever -- is in great company. NetSuite's upcoming IPO isn't going to hurt. It will be able to tout its shoulder-to-shoulder "relationship" with Apple, even though, truth be told, any company doing AJAX development can get their apps in the pockets of iPhone users.
UPDATE: Stuart Lauchlan, contributing editor at MyCustomer.com, just put out a nice piece on this topic. Check it out!
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