tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-290202252024-03-13T00:09:52.006-04:00Improving ItBusiness processes, business technology, online marketing. I am Phil Ayres, 20 years in enterprise software and business improvement. And blogging on and off since 2006.Phil Ayreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.comBlogger388125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-11273552282644321932015-05-08T10:48:00.002-04:002015-05-08T10:50:47.934-04:00BPM is still broke. So I'll just take the bits I like.<div style="">
Back in July 2014 I announced that I would be stepping back from <a href="http://www.consected.com/">Consected</a> and the Improving It / Consected Blog. I had the excitement of a new startup drawing me in, and I felt then, as I do now that the technology and practice of <b>Business Process Management</b> (BPM) had become too partisan for me. There were too few right answers to the questions organizations were having about how to improve their businesses, but still no consensus on which of those few right answers would work well in any real situation.</div>
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The short story is, <b>I'm Back!</b></div>
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I'm carefully stepping out of the day to day operations at <a href="https://www.repse.com/">REPSE</a>, the startup I co-founded, having contributed some great technology. That technology worked amazing well, proven by how it morphed quickly in support of a business that moved from "commercial real estate not-quite-crowdfunding", to "online advisory and investor management for private companies" as they move through their investment lifecycle. It was a fun tech challenge as CTO, and I still hold the title and live up to my responsibilities on evenings and weekends. At this point in time it doesn't need me playing technology leader and coder 60 hours a week. </div>
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Humbled by the experience, appreciative of the amazing people I've worked with, and rested after a little break, I'm back in the land of Consected. So what is my new focus? If I still believe that BPM continues to be little more than a pile of "he who shouts loudest" marketing from software companies and consulting practitioners, how can I reasonably re-enter this space? </div>
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My focus is what I think Business Process Management should be. Stirring up the best parts from BPM practice (some Lean, some Six-Sigma, some smart analysis), formal project management (including the PMI PMBOK), balanced scorecards, agile development (Scrum-ban being a ready made melange), change management and good-ol' common sense. All whipped up and given some 21st century splashes of technology for good taste.</div>
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Here are some early thoughts on where I see challenges and how to make them better. </div>
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Balanced value generation</h4>
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Recognize that business value is generated in many different forms, not just financial (or operational efficiency or customer service or human potential). Help organizations recognize all the components that they can control, and admit their true value proposition to customers, employees, investors, communities and the environment.</div>
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Structure drives ownership, communication and focus</h4>
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Clearly analyze and present to companies how they are structured. Demonstrate how this structure both contributes to and impedes their generation of value. </div>
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Businesses often choose to believe that some aspect of their operations is failing due to the people working on it (and that <i>may</i> be the case). The same businesses also need to see how a land-grab mentality to creating an org chart affects communications between individuals, leads to lack of ownership of objectives and subsequently failures in focus. This includes soft-focus, rose tinted, completely ignoring the truth that you just f'd up and it's time to fix it.</div>
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Continuous improvement</h4>
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In these days of data everywhere, you'd think that businesses would have a clue what is going on. But using all that data, not just storing it is what matters. And if you can understand your data, you can measure your performance in the factors that affect value generation. And only then can you really make changes to see what got better and what potentially unintended side-effects you had.</div>
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I'm going to stop there. With a million other things that can be done we all have to present the grand vision. Mine is not fully formed, and it will continue to evolve. But I won't forget that with the "grand" there is also the simple and pragmatic: removing activities that are obviously broken or offer no value; processes that can be automated to avoid wasting time; and change controls that can be easily implemented to avoid project timelines from slipping.</div>
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We all have to start somewhere. I've started by fixing my business. Can I help you fix yours too?</div>
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Phil Ayreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-24509572119326961562014-07-16T21:57:00.001-04:002014-07-16T21:57:19.745-04:00No more business process improvement?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This week I received some surprise congratulations on LinkedIn for my 5th work anniversary. Five years of Consected. Scarily, there are archives on this blog, pre-Consected going back to <a href="http://blog.consected.com/2006_05_01_archive.html">May 2006</a>. Let me know if you find anything there. I'm almost too afraid to look!<br />
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On this Consected / Improving It blog I have always spent most of the time talking about businesses, the processes they run, and how they can improve. Occasionally, though sadly rarely, how these organizations are model citizens in the world of <b>business process management</b> or <b>BPM</b>.<br />
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Business process management, as anybody in the industry of helping companies work more efficiently already knows, is a term that comes with confusion, even from its own practitioners. Some believe that <b>BPM</b> is just about the discipline of skilled professionals going and helping companies see what they are doing wrong and helping them do it right (or at least a bit better, then a bit better again, etc...). There are others that believe <b>BPM</b> is about the tools and software to help people do their jobs better, faster, cheaper. They are generally the software vendors.<br />
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Me? I thought of <b>BPM</b> as all of the above and more. Hell, sometimes the best thing to happen to a business is an Excel spreadsheet, copied and pasted every time you use it. Sometimes, though I hate to say it, a Microsoft Sharepoint site is enough to help people work together better. But do anything seriously repetitive, requiring a bit (or a lot) of automation, and some controls to ensure compliance and you're hitting the essence of what business process management should be:<br />
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<li>seeing how things are not working</li>
<li>using experience to understand how to do things better</li>
<li>defining the most cost-effective tools to help run the new process</li>
<li>implementation of that new process</li>
<li>measuring that it is working</li>
<li>fixing and improving it, over and over</li>
<li>throwing it all away and adapting to a complete change in the industry you are in</li>
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We've seen the software vendors fight, come up with their own terms to describe BPM, band together to generate silly concepts like the <b>BPM suite</b> (<b>BPMS</b>), <b>'adaptive' BPM</b>, then get acquired and their technology integrated (in other words, forgotten). And we've seen the consulting practitioners fight to reclaim their turf, which they believe is the true <b>BPM</b>. Or call it <b>Lean</b>, <b>Six-sigma</b>, or something else that you can't trademark, or at times even pronounce the main concepts.</div>
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Me? I thought that applying close to 20 years of enterprise software, consulting and business improvement experience needed a little more than riding the bandwagon. I backed off a great job opportunity, with a solid company, with great people. Because I wasn't ready to retire myself to an industry that is clinging to partisan divides, and vendor lock-in. I decided that I needed to apply this experience back into a real business, of the type I'd spent years trying to help (and sometimes sell to).</div>
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So, with a couple of co-founders we created <a href="http://www.repse.com/">REPSE</a>. It isn't BPM. It isn't technology. But it does have the vision that smart processes and carefully placed software can help businesses, investors, and financial technology (fintech) work better for more than consumers' iPhone apps. To help real estate businesses raise the money they need when the banks won't help. And to make sure that less money is wasted on administrative junk.</div>
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<b>That for me is what BPM is about. Using processes, technology, tools and skills to make real businesses work. </b></div>
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I'm now CTO at REPSE, and I hope to make a huge impact on the business (OK I believe I already am, only 7 or more months in, depending how you measure it). For now, thanks for watching Consected, and feel free to follow <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/106554861550641914983" target="_blank">+REPSE</a> on Google+, or <a href="https://twitter.com/repse_inc">@repse_inc</a> on Twitter where you'll see me write more stuff about the REPSE business. Or if you really want to connect with Phil the person, rather than Phil the corporate brand, my <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/philayres/">LinkedIn profile</a> is the place.</div>
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<i>Check out my posts on <a href="http://www.repse.com/resources.php">REPSE</a> and share it with friends, family and wealthy investors! </i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-12070744974389075722013-08-06T12:41:00.001-04:002013-08-06T12:42:22.353-04:00What can successful open source software projects teach corporate marketers?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">A successful open source software project is the winner in a worldwide popularity contest. </span><span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Marketers in corporations with budgets of almost any size should be jealous. </span><span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">This popularity is especially evident when you consider that most non-technical Internet users have heard the term ‘open source software’. Many even know that </span><b style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Wordpress</b><span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;"> is a blogging platform; some few million use </span><b style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Ubuntu</b><span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;"> as a free alternative to Windows; and a large handful might even recognize that </span><b style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Ruby on Rails</b><span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;"> is a hot developer programming platform, even though they wouldn't dream of coding themselves. Hey, even my parents (the gold standard for non-technical users) know that </span><b style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Firefox</b><span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: left;"> is open source, free and a better alternative to Internet Explorer on their PC. Without huge marketing budgets, open source projects have achieved international recognition, without which they tend to fade into oblivion fast. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Open source software (OSS) projects are only successful when they can encourage a large, vocal group of users to adopt the software, install and use it in their homes or businesses, get involved in its development and most importantly advocate its use to other users. Since even the largest projects with big corporate sponsors rely on volunteers to keep them in the spotlight, you’ll find many of the current hot marketing strategies of the corporate world have been used for years by these projects, often by accident. Yes, you guessed it: I'm saying that open source software projects beat corporate marketers at social media and content marketing, with minimal budget and just a bunch of people giving their time for free. Just not in quite the ways you might think.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Undoubtedly, open source software starts with software developers. But it takes a huge distributed effort of community and content to ever become more than a chunk of software code dumped on a server somewhere for random people to stumble across and ignore. To see what works, I've taken a look at the three open source projects I highlighted at the start of this post to see how they might have achieved and maintained their popularity. There are likely to be others that could be equally deserving of mention, although I wanted to pick projects with very different profiles and user-bases.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">So, what works? Let's start with the real application developers, progress through some website designers and finish up with a bunch of people using their PCs to write a document and browse the web.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;"><b>Ruby on Rails = Software development made cool, with a “get started fast” mentality</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">The <a href="http://www.rubyonrails.org/">Ruby on Rails</a> web development platform is focused on developers, for sure. It has been adopted by companies ranging from startups (including <a href="http://www.consected.com/">Consected</a>) to Groupon, Yellow Pages and Twitter. According to the website it has 2,100 contributors to the code and documentation of the project, which is no small number. And its focus on making web application development faster and more productive means that it has to live up to that promise the moment a new developer hears about it. The website pushes a "see it to believe it" approach, getting a new developer a quick buzz from building a quick application in less time than it takes to eat a sandwich one handed while typing an email to your boss.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">The rubyonrails.org website is constantly updated, following the rhythm of the product releasing. It constantly shows new quick start guides, loads of screencasts showing how to perform simple and complex programming tasks, pushes Rails development and best-practices books, and has links galore to Rails related blogs and website through its <a href="http://www.planetrubyonrails.com/pages/channels">Planet Ruby on Rails</a> channels. This constant tick of content from the core Rails team, plus the huge amount of advocacy (and occasional griping) that comes from the network of regular and one-off bloggers keeps the community strong and the project in the spotlight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;"><b>Wordpress = Blogs about blogs and pure SEO from user generated content</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">You can’t argue with the success of Wordpress: it is used to develop 18.9% of all websites <a href="http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress/all/all" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">[view reference]</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">It is the broad Wordpress ecosystem that has made the project so successful, helped along with a big push from the technology. The ability for any software developer to produce a plug-in for a Wordpress blog, or a stunning theme to make it look amazing, and present these in a directory on the <a href="http://www.wordpress.org/" target="">Wordpress.org website</a>, has led to a constant stream of new Wordpress related content directly on the site. Every plug-in gains a space to present itself, to capture reviews and to support users (many of which are non-technical). This makes the Wordpress.org world an accessible meld of technology, bloggers, web developers and software coders with a huge amount of ever changing and growing content. This is an SEO dream. Google something about a blog, you'll most likely arrive at Wordpress.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">When you tuck in the array of non-affiliated blogs about Wordpress matters, from those about the best looking themes to some clever hints and tips, (for example <a href="http://wpcandy.com/">http://wpcandy.com/</a> and <a href="http://www.wpbeginner.com/category/beginners-guide/">http://www.wpbeginner.com/category/beginners-guide/</a>) you get what appears to be a great deal of testimonials to why a user should adopt Wordpress for their website platform. Then add in the commercial ecosystem that surrounds</span><span style="font-size: 12px;"> the project, all very vocal online, and you can see why they are on to a winner.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;"><b>Ubuntu = A Linux desktop with clean design, and a constant push to appeal to non-technical users</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a> represents the epitomy of design-driven free software, intended to appeal to a community of non-technical, semi-technical and complete geek users. To achieve this, Ubuntu has an obvious brand, and it pushes that brand hard on all of the core websites. Visitors know they have arrived at an Ubuntu site and are welcomed in with careful consideration of what they want to know, how it looks and the drip feed of constant new and useful information.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">If the SEO potential is large from the six-monthly product release cycle, and the constant contribution of new content on the wikis even greater, then the community is key. There is an enormous amount of information about the desktop and server operating systems on the website; there are blogs; information about <a href="http://design.ubuntu.com/">using the Ubuntu design and branding</a>; Q&A forums; and more and more. There is a never ending supply of new, user generated content to help people get started, adopt and strongly shout about their use of the Ubuntu products.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Ubuntu is an open source project that has a marketing driven backer in Canonical. But it is the highly active, vocal, and welcoming community of users and developers that ensure the Ubuntu desktop stands firmly in the limelight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;"><b>What's the catch?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">When I started looking at this post, I was considering how open source projects out-do their corporate cousins at social media and content marketing. Having really thought it through, I don’t know that is entirely true. Open source ‘social’ doesn't center on the use of Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. It is about Q&A forums, IRC chat channels and the occasional meetup. Open source project content doesn't have an editorial calendar or a careful email list tied into gated content, blogging and e-books. It is ad-hoc, unplanned and largely user generated, but there is masses of it and it never stops coming. In every form, media and every language. Open source projects rely on user generated content and collaboration that do not even sit on their own web properties, such as <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/">Stackoverflow</a> and <a href="http://www.github.com/">Github</a>. With open source, the project's content marketing library is everywhere, published by everyone, with little control over what's being said. Corporate marketers are becoming familiar with this on Facebook fan pages, but the concept is still a little alien and uncomfortable. But open source projects know this is how it has to work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Successful open source projects have more contributors than many companies have employees, more vocal advocates than big brands have Facebook fans, and more users than many companies could dream of having customers. It is the accessibility and openness of the community in some cases that creates this, and in others it is the lack of command-and-control over creation and publishing of content that makes the project come alive. There is no single answer, but when you stumble across a lively, active open source project you certainly know it. And it is that vibrancy and freedom that many companies could adopt in order to grow their social and content marketing into something really valuable, not just a droning broadcast of corporate messaging.</span><br />
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-70900907352235633912013-06-20T09:42:00.001-04:002013-06-20T09:46:39.703-04:00What can a major sports team's IT teach the corporate CIO?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Yesterday I sat in on the final keynote session of the Boston e2 Conference to hear from the IT leaders of major sports teams about their experiences using IT to support such unusual businesses. And the information they provided turned out to be hugely valuable for more traditional companies too. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">The stars of the show were:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">* Bill Schlough, CIO, <b>San Francisco Giants</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12px;">* Jay Wessel, VP of Technology, <b>Boston Celtics</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12px;">* Steve Conley, Director of IT, <b>Boston Red Sox</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Boston considers itself a serious sporting city, and is intensely proud of all of its top-tier teams, so to add sport into the enterprise software conference is always going to be interesting for the audience. And despite the expected rivalry, the insights all of the tech leaders presented were quite thought-provoking.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Really though, what can a corporate CIO possibly learn from these guys? After all, the largest IT team among any of the presenters is 11 people at the Giants. And maybe that is the biggest point: all of these teams have deadlines that can’t be moved (the new season opens, the next game is scheduled), they have an ever changing temporary worker base of thousands, so they all have to <b>think ‘lean’ to get things done</b>. No pressure then.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Forgetting the team rivalries, what were the memorable points a corporate CIO can learn from?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">“Don’t be a server-hugger”</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: 12px;">For a lean IT team, your VP of IT can’t be too attached to the actual physical servers. The cloud for custom hosting and more importantly SaaS products that already package the functionality you need to run your business are essential. IT egos can’t be attached to the actual physical boxes, since managing those things just kills time. Applications just can’t be developed in house, so use what is available commercially and can be customized to suit your needs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">This is not something any IT team hears. The daily grunge of operating important IT infrastructure doesn’t win anybody awards. Outsource this kind of commodity function to any of the big players who can do it better than you, probably at lower cost. This allows you to really focus on your critical services, such as ticketing, and front line customer systems.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">“Demand-based pricing - or doing anything radically different”</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: 12px;">Freeing up resources lets you look at transformational projects, enabling your IT team to really help the business. By getting data to support decisions, and managing external resources to trial new ways of working, the Giants were able to roll out a new demand-based pricing model for tickets. Much like buying a flight, nowadays ‘last minute’ doesn't mean cheaper. If you can commit to a ticket in the stadium early on when demand is low, you get a better price. As demand rises and space becomes limited, ticket prices rise, steeply. Since the major share of revenue for all these teams is supporters in seats, getting this right can have a huge up-side, or a terrible impact.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">For this to work, the IT team needs to have the capacity and capability to look at the bigger picture. To look at how the current ticket sales systems work, what can be adapted and what needs to be replaced. They need to be able to analyze the current state, and model the future. IT needs a business head on its shoulders to operate in this environment. And it definitely needs to acknowledge that external advice and experience is going to be needed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">“Loyalty data is not Big Data”</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: 12px;">If you have a loyal customer base like teams have with season ticket holders, and a city full of people wanting to watch a game, knowing your customer is essential. But outdated, paper-based, in-house systems can’t do what you need in this regard. At the same time, there is no need to fall into the trap of building out a huge Big Data facility to understand your customers. First, you actually have to get hold of information that can get you the insights you hope for.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Can you imagine that at least one of these major teams has only recently moved from paper tickets for season pass holders to a smart card? What does the smart card get you, beyond saving a tree or two? Well, once you have that central ‘identity’, you can use it to track purchases of beer, snacks and ice-cream at games. You can watch attendance at games. You can collect information that you never had before in order to understand how to attract new season ticket sales in future, and to reward and retain your existing customers. This isn’t a big data problem. It is just a “get the data” problem, and fixing up old ways of working can help you do that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">“If sporting performance has peaked, how do we retain and attract supporters in the future?”</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: 12px;">Not every team wins the cup every season. Not every company releases new, stunning products every year. How can IT support the business when the primary product starts to lose some of its sparkle? Customers are fickle and have a short attention span. Fair-weather sports fans especially so.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Again, it comes down to having the time, the vision, and the right people to allow you to focus on keeping current customers happy, and making the experience of being at a major sporting event even more exciting. It has to be incredibly better than watching an HDTV in the comfort of your home. IT can provide fans with facilities such as free wi-fi, allowing tens of thousands of people to remain connected, to Tweet, to share photos of their experiences. And to feel like they are connected to the players who are the face of the team. It can enable more interesting online community experiences, and work with Marketing to keep people involved outside of the stadium. IT can help streamline business processes so the business can adapt more easily to customer demands and expectations ensuring that the nitty-gritty doesn’t get in the way of the experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">The end game</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: 12px;">The sports team CIO is really a model for how a CIO in any corporation that takes customer loyalty and experience seriously (not just lip service) should consider operating. Think:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-size: 12px;">identifying technology that can enable an exceptional customer experience</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 12px;">getting and using data smartly to understand your customer better</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 12px;">letting go of the physical servers and outdated business processes to allow transformational projects to be considered</span></li>
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-76331462867707631902013-05-07T12:59:00.001-04:002013-05-07T12:59:46.393-04:00Tracking is not a dirty word. Understand customers through their actions.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I've started a new blog over on Tumblr, focused on social media and associated marketing topics. The initial thought was that it would allow me to get very much more onto a new topic than I wanted to do on the Improving It blog. That said, I want to give you a taster of what is going on over there. So here is one of my recent posts, previously published on the new blog. <a href="http://meaningful-social.consected.com/">Check out and follow me on Meaningful Social</a>. And make sure to keep watching out for new posts on this blog (its not going away).</i></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">Tracking is not a dirty word. Understand customers through their actions.</span></span></h2>
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So much emphasis is placed on tracking visitors to websites for advertising purposes that the words ‘tracking’ and ‘cookie’ has almost become synonymous with evil ad-spyware stealing your privacy and anonymity on the web. And that’s not to say that there aren’t some pretty aggressive organizations out there trying to know your every online move. Sometimes though, tracking visitors to a website, or even within a logged-in web app can really add value to their experience. No, really.</div>
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The thing is that using focus-groups to understand what a general audience of people likes about your product or service is just plain expensive, and sits squarely in the realm of multinational corporate brands who are pushing millions of units of packaged food gloop to overworked parents. On the web, we can get more information from more people, more cost effectively and more accurately. We are watching the wildlife in its native habitat, rather than dragging some focus-group animals into a zoo to be laughed at by a bunch of children. Tracking users on the web allows us to learn about mass behaviors, completely anonymously for the end user, and still improve our service. And the honesty of people voting with their mouse or finger tap is far higher than calling them up and asking them about their opinion.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes though, anonymous tracking doesn’t offer everything we need. It can lead us to segment our audience and only focus on the largest percentage of actions performed (see a related story by <a href="http://bit.ly/12sQ7ZU" style="border: 0px; color: #f36a21; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 1px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Christopher Penn on A/B testing of email & websites</a>). And the other problem is that it is always based on how fast we can update our service based on historical information.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By tracking the actions of customers in real time, we can start to offer them the information and services they want more rapidly, with fewer clicks and less frustration. What this means is that we aren’t just enforcing a single path through our customer service process, we allow them to skip a step here and there, or do everything in reverse if their real-time activity indicates that is the right thing to do. The outcome for a company may be the same, but for the individual customer the experience can be hugely better.</span></div>
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Now, this sounds like nirvana. But it ain’t easy. It requires a lot of data, some smart decisions, some actively flexible business rules, and a recognition that some customers just don’t want to feel like they are being watched. </div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.8); color: #4c4c4c; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">Do you despise the thought of being tracked on a company’s website? Does your company use tracking data to make customer experience better? Let me know.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.8); color: #4c4c4c; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-55304525231641728062013-04-23T09:36:00.003-04:002013-04-23T09:36:21.473-04:00One Year Lived - the book. Or travelers make the best team members.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->I’ve reviewed books before on this blog. Usually I take a look at an unusual business book or something about innovation. Readers seem to like the reviews, which is a good thing. So, when I was approached by Adam Shepard to review his new book “One Year Lived”, I was willing to take a look, even though it doesn't fall into either of the categories above. This is a book about Adam’s quest to ensure he would have great memories about life to tell the grandchildren, while doing a little good along the way. A year spent traveling in Central America, New Zealand and beyond. Something that average Aussies do without thinking and average American kids rarely even consider, and that's why this book matters.<br />
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As a blog that looks at tech and business and organizational and social issues, I think I can get away with talking off-topic without really being off-topic. More importantly though, I value travel highly. I associate well with people who have chucked in a good job to pick up a backpack and see a chunk of the world that is more real than any resort destination. A country and population and slice in time that has grime and crime and interesting adventures. I work well with people like that too, as perhaps a side-effect of working for an Australian company west of London as the first job post-university that I chose, rather than it choosing me. Travel brings out the best and worst in people. It also really makes it pretty obvious what you are getting when you interview or collaborate with a traveler in a business environment.<br />
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Generally as corporate working people travelers are quite transparent as to what they want and what their goals are. This makes travelers an important part of a team. Not every person who has traveled like this will fit your team, but that's OK, because it will be more obvious who fits and who doesn't. Getting mixed up in difficult situations in places where you have no control and only hand-waving as a way to communicate can strip away a lot of stupid ego. So that is why I wanted to read Adam’s book. He’ll make a great employee and entrepreneur and CEO and floor-sweeper, and he'll do the one that makes him happiest, not the one that necessarily makes his ego tingle. And we can all learn from that.<br />
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As Adam experienced, you find out a lot about what you are good at in surprising places. Shepard, from North Carolina, and educated on a basketball scholarship up in Merrimack New Hampshire, was, not surprisingly, pretty good at hoops. But put him in the middle of Guatemala volunteering to help with kids and he tells us in plain, easy to read English how not only did this become one of the most memorable things ever, it helped him realize how he worked in a team. Or maybe how he didn’t. He certainly tells us how he can identify clearly the team players of the volunteers, the people great in their roles, the people he would pick for their enthusiasm, and the others who were there just until it was time to be somewhere else. And Adam was self-aware enough to know that in that moment he just wanted to be an individual contributor. Collaboration and team work wasn’t working for him. So, he made another brave volunteering decision and went to dig ditches for water projects alongside locals in Nicaragua, because there is not too much planning and collaboration to do.<br />
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In doing so, Adam learned more about what makes workers tick, and equally how important it is to ensure people have accountability in everything they do. A water pump, which you’d thing would be treasured and cherished in a small village without a clean water supply just dies and becomes scrap when nobody feels accountable for its upkeep. Finding the ways to give the right people ownership, was by the sound of it an important lesson.<br />
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In “One Year Lived”, you can read about a 30-year old man, Adam Shepard, who drops everything to go and travel, absorb as much experience, language and learning as possible. And along the way he works out what he’s good at and what seat in the eventual boardroom of life, corporations or politics he’ll occupy.<br />
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Adam has kindly offered some free e-books for download for anybody that shares this blog post over the next 48 hours. Make sure you follow and mention @consected in a Tweet or add a comment linking to your post below and I’ll send you a link to the book. Just be quick. And take a look at the <a href="http://oneyearlived.com/">One Year Lived</a> website for great stories about the book and more information about the author.<br />
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Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-70154471806282777972013-04-03T11:34:00.001-04:002013-04-03T11:34:20.078-04:00Nothing says privacy risk more than an API<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Less than a handful of years ago, mention the three letter acronym 'API' to a regular Internet user and you'd have got the look of "stay away from me, you scary unwashed software geek who is about to bore me to tears" (that's the bleeped version of the internal dialog). Now everything has changed. Not only is API part of the regular semi-tech word-dropping of web users, lack of one can raise questions about the viability of a modern web application. A publicly available API is a badge of honor for startup web apps that says "the information we have is worth being consumed by other apps, so its got to be good enough for you too". </div>
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The Application Programming Interface, or API, is the technical Lego brick that lets developers from across the globe plug into an application, to use the data and functionality of the website without the annoying user interface of that website getting in the way. It makes it easy for other applications to see the data that you as a regular logged in user can see, as long as you click the OK button to authorize it to do so. If you can see details of your friends lives, there is a good chance that by authorizing that app by entering your password that app can see the details of your friends lives too.</div>
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A well thought out API is not technically the problem. Many APIs recognize that they are a great way to trawl through far more data than could be done by just browsing the website and protect really private stuff effectively. The problem is still that an API can allow a fairly anonymous developer to collect tons of data, process it and store it extremely rapidly. That developer has their very own, possibly limited privacy policy that you as a user of the primary web service have no control over. Your friend who clicked an OK button authorized a developer to access to your data as a proxy of what they could do on the website. You had no say in the matter that a third party app now has access to the data your friend sees on the website.</div>
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In the majority of cases the API itself is not the problem. It is what it stands for in terms of the sheer amount of data a web service has. Re-phrasing what I said at the beginning:</div>
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"API" says that a web app collects, stores and makes accessible a lot of potentially personal information that any number of third-party applications might find valuable to consume and reuse</blockquote>
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The real problem is that in most cases the information web apps have is not original data and a work of exceptional creativity. It is data collected from its users who enjoy sharing details of their lives with their friends and occasional strangers. It is the data stored in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, et al. The data is largely personal and untouched, beyond being transformed in a way that allows it to be retrieved in an instant. When you read "API" on a social networking site, consider this: the website in question probably collects a lot of personal information about its users and their daily habits and actions. Can you trust the developers that tap into your data through the API as much as you trust your friends?</div>
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-90466101771760601902013-03-13T12:58:00.000-04:002013-03-13T12:59:09.567-04:00Big Data - and what we'll do with it<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=2124315" rel="nofollow">The Gartner Hype Cycle</a></td></tr>
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<!--StartFragment-->Big Data: it is all just hype until the clouds clear, business users can use it, and customers are served better because of it. When Big Data truly arrives as some products in the enterprise, business decisions will start to be based more on information and insight and less on gut feel (by the highest paid person who trumps everybody else). While we are waiting for the <a href="http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/293397/gartner-dead-wrong-about-big-data-hype-cycle">final crescendo of hype</a>, I’d like to consider what we are going to do with all that new information.<br />
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Most rational people quietly accept that Big Data is mostly hype right now. Everybody is trying to stake a claim to their chunk of it and the chatter on social channels as marketers try to nurture the term into a real market is a source of big data in itself. The concept only starts being real as forward thinking CIOs focus less on the mundane IT networks and PCs and more on helping the business extract value from all the data they have access to using the tools borne of the hype. That is Big Data - the real use of analyzed data to help make business decisions, not just the technology hype about who has the best <a href="http://hadoop.apache.org/">Hadoop</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-memory_database">in memory database</a>. Don’t know what these terms mean? You are a member of 99.999% of the business population, AKA normal people. Because you shouldn't have to know.<br />
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We are still in the early phase of the technology cycle for Big Data. The IBMs, SAPs and HPs of the world are still appealing to very early adopters who have money to burn on acronymic technologies that have yet to be formed into meaningful products with advertising friendly names. By 'meaningful', I want to imply that only a small team of consultants are required to install them and make them do something that regular business users and executives can make use of.<br />
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Currently most of the focus of the hype and actual product releases seems to be on the storage, manipulation, analysis and visualization of the data. I've seen little meaningful discussion about what I consider key problems:<br />
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<li>making information actionable</li>
<li>taking business decisions from a concept through actual change</li>
<li>providing communication and business records without generating a ton of irrelevant email and wasted report writing along the way</li>
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This is where business process management (BPM), customer relationship management (CRM), and case management tools come into play. But not as the tech vendors might have you believe. The value is not purely from the extra data they pump into the system from day-to-day management of customer interactions and employee collaboration.<br />
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Of course, having a good insight into your customers and business activities is great. Being able to manage the flood of required decisions coming from future Big Data analysis is equally important. How do you actively handle all the business information coming out of the business? Losing it in email is not the answer. Never actually following up with your newly revealed best customers is just a waste.<br />
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Handling the flood of new work emanating from real Big Data analysis should not be yet another chore. This is going to be valuable stuff we never had access to before. Managing the work actively through flexible processes, using tools designed to help people follow up on decisions that need to be made, this is a key component of Big Data. Its not currently the sexy part (for geeks at least). But it is the final component that ensures that all the investment in technology, analysis and experience is not just lost into meaningless email conversations that go nowhere.<br />
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<i>Speaking of conversations going nowhere... follow me <a href="http://www.twitter.com/consected">@consected</a> on Twitter</i>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-19193951999588459402013-03-05T11:37:00.002-05:002013-03-05T11:39:27.525-05:00Automation, BPM, ethics and competition. Or serving customers better.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->A recent discussion on the ebizQ Business Process Management forum asks: “<a href="http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/ebizq_forum/2013/03/what-percentage-of-processes-should-be-automated-in-a-company.php">what percentage of processes should be automated?</a>”. In any given company, how many of those routine processes that get work done should be taken largely out of the hands of employees and made into software, or painstaking converted into automated manufacturing production lines? An interesting response came back came back from <a href="http://procesje.nl/indexen.html">Emiel Kelly</a> on the ethical implications of full automation. What happens to all the human-beings that previously had jobs and have now been phased out? This is not new news, but it did touch a nerve for me, as I was just reading George Orwell’s 1984, filling the huge gaps in my school history classes with some time skim-reading Wikipedia about Marx, and thinking how to avoid the “race to the bottom” in the world of software development as the low-cost offshore talent pool continually grows.</div>
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So, is there an ethical issue to automating business processes that can be fairly automated? The question is perhaps, “who benefits from business processes being automated?”. Should an organization be holding back improving its products and services, and providing a better customer experience because it is afraid of the moral implications of significant organizational changes? Or is it just hoping to cut costs to be more profitable and serve shareholders with larger dividends? Really the ethics of a corporation are guided by its own policies and mission statement, within the very loose boundaries of the law. If corporate governance suggests “employees first” then it can have an ethical issue with large scale automation. </div>
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">The reality of the situation is that automation of processes and using BPM to reduce waste and improve efficiency are not big evil entities, out to strip every experienced employee of his or her pride. If BPM doesn’t improve the way a business performs and serves its customers, competitors in the marketplace will certainly ensure that hard working people in an 'overly' ethical company lose their jobs. Or those competitors will force that company into a position where business process outsourcing or offshore manufacturing become the only option. From the standpoint of supporting the local population with employment, outsourcing is no better when it comes to your complex ethical quandary.</span><br />
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Companies have to decide for themselves the right balance between:</div>
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<li>responsibility to their local labor-forces as potential employers of people</li>
<li>responsibility to existing employees providing value to the company</li>
<li>responsibility to shareholders to ensure continued investment to operate and improve</li>
<li>responsibility to customers to meet obligations and attract new customers.</li>
</ul>
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At the end of the day, the majority of people want a secure job for a secure wage. Free-market economics, the social safety net, government (big or small) and technology all have a part to play in meeting the needs of the local population. There is no easy answer. But you can guarantee that by avoiding automation and organizational change for fear of facing such ethical issues, a more ruthless competitor will walk in and still serve what were previously your customers better than you can. A company remains in no position to employ people when it has no customers.<br />
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<b>Automation and BPM can help a company advance to serve customers better, at a lower cost. This subsequently ensures the ability to survive, thrive, innovate and subsequently employ a greater number of local people.</b></div>
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Chat with <a href="http://twitter.com/consected">@consected</a> on Twitter if you think I'm missing the point. </div>
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-2599236982804300832013-02-12T10:46:00.001-05:002013-02-12T10:47:12.068-05:00A Neaderthal named Grongus and Build Versus Buy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lhTdufViglg/URpe8IVlisI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/r2VxoV7-xhM/s1600/Neanderthaler_Fund.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lhTdufViglg/URpe8IVlisI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/r2VxoV7-xhM/s200/Neanderthaler_Fund.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19.1875px; text-align: start;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neanderthaler_Fund.png">Ther Neanderthaler Fund</a>, 1888</i></td></tr>
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<!--StartFragment-->A Neanderthal was the first innovator of business productivity tools and started the road to the big question of “build versus buy”. Long before Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, our early evolutionary ancestor (let’s call him Grongus) started spending the time to make tools. He probably didn't do this because it was fun (although maybe Grongus had a little time to kill between hunting and finding shelter). Like many an innovator he got lucky, by observing accidentally that a broken flint could cut things, allowing him to shape a piece of wood to fit alongside another piece of wood and make a frame for a shelter.<br />
<br />
So add some time, thousands of years and a plentiful supply of flint, and tools became a natural part of what drew us out of the caves. It was long after Grongus that anybody started to think about making the creation of certain types of useful tools a repeatable thing - a product. Early craftsmen were the innovators of products (pots, spears, bags, etc), and we call all thank Grongus for why the iPhone exists today and you work with a PC or Mac on your desk. <br />
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Despite this long history, <b>still today we struggle with balancing the cost of creating custom tools and the significantly extra time it takes to make them into useful, repeatable products</b>. Modern day craftsmen, the innovators of products come at a cost. And as consumers of products we need to remember that if we want more of our unique desires and requirements for a product to be met, we have to pay for that to happen.<br />
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Software is a tool and it is the coolest thing, since it lets us create products that would not otherwise exist. There is not a person out there who doesn’t use software, on a PC in the office, an Android in your pocket, setting your microwave to cook a TV dinner, come to think of it the TV itself, driving a car, buying a train ticket at the station. Then there are all the amazing websites, the places where you can buy almost anything without disconnecting eyes and brain from screen (except to dig down the side of the sofa to find where your credit card slipped). And of course there is the enterprise and SaaS software that allow businesses to run more automatically and workers to be more productive. <br />
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I’ll say it again: software as a tool is the coolest thing, and that's because of the things that we can create with it. It also highlights the ongoing balancing act between <b>tool</b> and <b>product</b>. It is the balance between the effort to develop useful websites, automate business processes and build databases of your customers, and the exponentially larger time to make that pile of code into a product so that almost anybody can create a website, optimize business process management, or configure a CRM system.<br />
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The tool/product balancing act is always hard for innovators. It requires a strong business plan that shows you can create enough user-friendly functionality to hide the nuts and bolts technology, at a cost that is much lower than the number of times you think you can sell this product to people who find it useful. From the customer perspective there is a <b>compromise</b>, especially with business software. There are things businesses want to do with software that can’t be done with pure configuration of software products, especially if your business is in the slightest way unique. Most business software allows for customization, for additions to be made by smart software developers using tools. But then again comes a cost. <br />
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Balancing tools with products may mean buying a more expensive and more closely matching product up front to avoid manpower for customization. Or it may be in buying that more expensive product you are wasting a ton of stuff you don’t need, meaning that starting with a lean, lower cost product and paying for some customization is more cost effective. How much you tailor your software for the bespoke solution is often just a matter of taste.<br />
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After all is said and done when comparing software tools and products, <b>calculating the “build versus buy” equation never equals a cost of ‘free’</b>. The time you are pulled away from making your business more successful while you learn and configure software products, or the time you pay others to do the job through software development, it all carries a cost. If you have strong requirements for a website, a business improvement application or a customer marketing automation tool, you can expect there will be a price, in expenses or opportunity cost. The only way this cost (of the product and configuration and customization) can be avoided is to reduce your requirements and expectations to virtually nil, so you can use a free, advertising supported, sign-up and go product. And compromize heavily to accept where there are gaps.<br />
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If you have unique business requirements, creating the perfect product you can configure absolutely to your needs is time-consuming. With free products you get what you pay for with a leaner product that requires it to be customized with additional effort. Do you want to pay more for a product so you can do the work yourself? Or will you employ somebody to do it for you? One way or another software developers, business analysts, project managers and YOU all hope to get paid. You have options that Grongus never had: it is just about finding the balance of "do it yourself" or "done" that works for you.<br />
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Challenged with a build-vs-buy conundrum or selecting the right software for your business? Leave a comment to share your thoughts. <br />
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-81209311620091707222013-01-30T09:36:00.000-05:002013-01-30T09:44:17.688-05:00Big Data, gold nuggets and the email abyss<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Gold_30g_for_a_860kg_rock.jpg/314px-Gold_30g_for_a_860kg_rock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Gold_30g_for_a_860kg_rock.jpg/314px-Gold_30g_for_a_860kg_rock.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gold_30g_for_a_860kg_rock.jpg">Gold on Wikipedia</a></td></tr>
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<!--StartFragment--><b>Big Data</b> is a big buzz in the software world. It is an attempt to create small nuggets of gold from a steaming mass of information. It is not a product or a theory, more a collection of tools and platforms for organizing, analyzing and visualizing masses of data in new ways. This isn't a post on which vendor has the best visualization, the best data management, or whatever. It just provides a quick glimpse into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data">what Big Data is</a>, and how one of its biggest failings is common to small businesses as much as the huge research establishments that coined the term.<br />
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Big Data has sprung out of the desire for corporations to gain more meaning from all the data they collect every minute of every day. The information they are collecting about customers, about activities people perform, what they buy and the decisions they make. It is based on techniques grown in scientific research such as the Large Hadron Collider (that enormous “atom smasher”), that attempts to make the results of its 150 million sensors producing millions of sets of data every second into something that mere humans geniuses can understand. It provides medical research with a ways to make the human genome project into something more than a big experiment, developing drugs to address real diseases. And of course, government, with ways to meaningfully understand the requirements, trends (and tax evasion) of tens of millions of citizens. <br />
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Big Data is one big funnel, with megatons of data flowing in the top, and ounces of precious observation dripping out the bottom. And just like any organization, dealing with any insight, issue or lead it is at this point the Big Data analysis organization falls over and resorts to... <i>email</i>. All that effort in understanding an aspect of client behavior, drug interactions, or financial transactions takes real human effort. The care taken with a valuable result it is to dump it into a large abyss of junk mail and Facebook notifications.<br />
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Large corporations, governments and small businesses are all alike; everybody suffers from the same issue. They spend a lot of time working on problems, finding leads, understanding clients, but have no way of really organizing the useful information into something meaningful, to ensure that the value in the data doesn't get lost. That the potential new customer doesn't just forget she asked for information on your website. That your biggest client doesn't get upset at poor customer service and Tweet <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23fail&src=typd">#fail</a> about it to the world. That the analysis of your customer’s spending patterns doesn’t just leak out the bottom of a busy executive’s iPhone messages. <br />
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Sometimes email is good enough, but often we all need just a little more <a href="http://blog.consected.com/2013/01/focus-on-focus-focus-on-customers.html">organization of information, a defined business process to follow</a> and some simple management of who gets to see what, when. This combination of workflow and simple tools is all that is needed to prevent your own Big Data gold nuggets disappearing into the email abyss.<br />
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Follow more of my information management, Big Data and process rants: <a href="https://twitter.com/consected">@consected on Twitter</a>. Or ask me about how to prevent the precious information in your business leaking away.<br />
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-37667957625747162013-01-23T11:18:00.001-05:002013-01-23T11:19:25.501-05:00Methodology does not trump human nature<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Methodology</b>. An ugly word. When used alongside <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/skills/skill/Business_Process_Improvement">business process improvement</a>, 'methodology' suggests that there is a logical approach, a preordained series of steps, a pretentious way of saying there is a method to fixing business process problems. Like a workflow for fixing your workflows. At a high level, I’ll concede that this may be reasonable, but get much deeper than “analyze, measure, improve, rinse and repeat” and the methodology is just a hack of a bunch of experience and skills (I hear the <i>Six Sigma</i> guys beating at my door already). A methodology when used without care can blatantly ignore human nature, organizational behavior, and sheer common sense. I prefer my methodology to be more a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology#Relation_to_methods_and_theories">constructive generic framework</a>.<br />
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Things get even worse when the eventual goal is a strictly defined, no nonsense <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPMN">Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)</a> map of the process. Any graphical notation for drawing ‘workflows’ that requires a <a href="http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/PDF/">538 page PDF specification</a> probably needs the support of an equivalently strict methodology so its <i>developers</i> don’t stray off too far from some form of best practice in drawing their pretty workflow diagram.<br />
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As we all know, there are many ways to actually handle the implementation of business process improvement projects:<br />
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<ul>
<li>a business process management (BPM) tool to implement the workflow</li>
<li>a suite of tools to draw, develop and analyze the processes</li>
<li>a bunch of offshore software developers to produce some vaguely usable services for end-users</li>
<li>some common sense guidelines for workers to help them guide the process better themselves</li>
<li>any combination of the above</li>
</ul>
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The reality of many successful business process improvement projects, independent of the implementation approach, is that the more methodology you try and stuff into the analysis and development of the ‘solution’ to your problems, the less room there is to maneuver when it comes to the actual reality of business processes: <b>human nature and company politics trumps everything</b>.<br />
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My proven approach (call it a methodology if you must) to business process improvement projects, (whether they depend on software development, business process management (BPM) tools, or plain simple task lists) is simple:<br />
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<b>flexibility, iteration and communication</b></div>
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I unfortunately haven’t had the pleasure of re-engineering a process of 15,000 people, which likely requires some significant structure to making it all work. My experience is more for the 15 to 150 people processes, and to do them well often requires less methodology and more flexibility.<br />
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Think I'm completely wrong? <a href="https://twitter.com/consected">Follow @consected on twitter</a> and tell me!<br />
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-29003213166835413312013-01-15T14:30:00.002-05:002013-01-15T14:30:30.507-05:00Focus on focus. Focus on customers.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->With all the tweets and posts about 2012 highlights and 2013 predictions out of the way, I’m going to miss headlines like <span style="font-style: italic;">"Mayan’s preferred Microsoft"</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">"Android buys iPhone"</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">"Big Data eats Samsung CIO at Las Vegas CES"</span>. But a heavy dose of reality (two weeks in, how am I going to make the next 50 really count?) has helped me focus on my focus - what does my company, and therefore what do I, do best? <br />
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<b>Focus on the customer</b> is the mantra of many of companies. Knowing your customer should be more than knowing where to send the bill. It includes organizing and making available information (not just data) of all types, to the right people, at the right time. What information?<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>what are the customer’s business problems?</li>
<li>why did they pick your service, solution or product?</li>
<li>would they recommend you?</li>
<li>what are their current issues or concerns with your product?</li>
<li>when did they last call for support or help?</li>
<li>what marketing communications do they receive and respond to?</li>
<li>how are they connected to your other customers?</li>
<li>are they interested in other products you have?</li>
<li>where do we send the bill (and does it get paid on time)?</li>
</ul>
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Customer focus is an information problem for sure. It is also a process problem. The problem is preventing the day-to-day, week-to-week issues from getting in the way of a great customer experience. Put simply, it requires the back-office operations staying nicely hidden in the back-office, not leading your customer to fret about how disorganized you are and having to deal with unnecessary issues. Simply put:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>are your bills sent on time, for the correct products, to the right place?</li>
<li>is there an easy process for changing changing details?</li>
<li>can customer support issues be easily tracked?</li>
<li>are renewals and updates handled automatically?</li>
</ul>
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Customer focus requires giving employees the power to service customers well. Your systems must support employees with all the information they need to make good decisions, and taking some of the load off them by automating some of the repetitive things that nobody really wants to do. Put this into a package and call it <b>Customer Relationship Management</b> or <b>Case Management</b> if you need a software industry term for it.<br />
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Recognizing how to change processes, information and technology is something that is hard to do when you and your employees are stuck in the middle of doing their jobs. An independent, outside-in view is often needed to recognize opportunities to work better and improve customer focus. <br />
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Follow me on twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/consected">@consected</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/104207857625556333478">Google+</a> for updates on process, information and technology.<br />
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-54950748281795417402013-01-08T12:06:00.000-05:002013-01-08T12:06:06.106-05:00Mobile and tablet technology is more than a distration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->If you are new to this blog, welcome! If you have been following for a while, let me apologize right away for the break since the previous post. Over the last few months I have been focusing on the direction of Consected, to continue to serve our customers well, and to attract new opportunities. So you could say that my creative juices have been directed elsewhere. What does this mean for you, the blog reader? Hopefully, it means that you’ll be seeing more fresh and interesting posts from me on a regular basis.<br />
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Over the last couple of years, technology, both consumer and business, has been absorbed in the explosive mobile technology space. Consected and this blog have been following closely from as soon as the iPhone really started to impact the way we thought about the lump of plastic we wedge against our ears and shout at. The desperate catch-up scramble from Android devices led to some messy (and ongoing) patent disputes that resulted in interesting competition. Then the iPad hit the streets. The Netbook revolution that never really happened got swamped. Everybody wanted a slab of supercomputing plastic and glass. Consumers led businesses into what many would identify as the Star Trek tech era. After all, why would you want to lug around a monster laptop, with a charger and battery that weigh more than a large house brick, when you could enjoy having a slim, light tactile device in your hands at any time? <br />
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Businesses are still struggling with the idea of employees buying their own devices that trump the work PC, which they want to attach to the corporate network. The ‘bring your own device’ (often referred to as BYOD) struggle continues. As does the love-hate relationship with social media.<br />
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Consected and therefore this blog has been following all this, for the sheer novelty of it all, and because we know there is a real business (and technology and social) impact. For me, the mobile / tablet revolution has opened my eyes to several things:<br />
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<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>The apps we have been using on desktop PCs are clumsy, overloaded, and frankly ugly. Users are demonstrating that they can do more with less on-screen clutter, fewer menus, and a UI you jab with a finger rather than carefully align with a tiny mouse pointer.</li>
<li>Business processes, those back office operations that make everything tick (or often grind) by day-by-day, need fresh thinking to accept that not only do our customers want to communicate with us everywhere, but so do our employees.</li>
<li>It has become really hard to operate without an always-on Internet connection, since ‘the Cloud’ is king. Everywhere. Anytime. On the train, in the car, in the office, at home, at a bar. Handling that offline time is where our devices (and our sanity) are failing.</li>
</ol>
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So my focus for this blog, and Consected the company, is to really start addressing these things holistically. We have a lot of experience with mobile web technology now. Consected has some great mobile products to help others with that experience. The aim for all of us is to start pulling mobile technology, the use anywhere / use easily devices and apps, back into the business processes that are the life-blood of larger companies and organizations. From the point where we start to meet new potential customers (our leads), through to when we are serving them well and eventually dealing with issues that arise, online and offline devices matter. Facilitating employees to do their jobs better and more easily, and to remove (or at least hide) some of that annoying administrative stuff that detracts from everybody working well and being profitable.<br />
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That’s my round up of where me, Consected and this blog have been, and a little of where we are going. Our big exploration into the mobile space is part of a bigger-picture, and I hope it really is a great opportunity for everybody to work better.<br />
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-80415446906258118062012-12-17T13:19:00.003-05:002012-12-17T13:19:32.981-05:00APE it up. Author, publish and market your own creative genius.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MCjhgAmaL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-70,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="200" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MCjhgAmaL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-70,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" title="APE" width="200" /></a></div>
Have you ever considered writing a book? Is it your calling? Do you hope it will make you rich (and famous)? Are you trying to promote yourself to get extra business? Whatever has you thinking about putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), you've almost certainly wondered about getting your work of creative genius published. And if you have read a book sometime this century, you've definitely looked at Amazon. And probably wondered if you can publish your book, yourself. This new book by the master of marketing, Guy Kawasaki and his tech sidekick Shawn Welch talks plain and simply about the benefits and pains of self-publishing. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AGFU5VS">APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book</a> is that book, which of course, is itself published by the authors themselves.<div>
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Personally, I haven't felt the urge to lock myself away to author a serious work. My simple endeavors into writing some <a href="http://www.consected.com/mobile_sites_free_ebook_extract">free e-books on the subject of mobile websites and e-commerce</a> have demonstrated to me that writing is a time consuming, and quite frankly wearying experience. But I have friends and family who are serious writers. And my wife recently led the production and promotion of a serious business book on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/constantcontact/app_171144422995164">Engagement Marketing for small businesses</a>. So I read a review copy of APE with interest.</div>
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The book is honest when it suggests it be read quickly, from cover to cover the first time. To get a sense of what matters and what is involved in self-publishing, or even the initial writing and editing of a book, skimming through the chapters in an evening can make you much more of an expert than you were previously. This is what I did. Each chapter of APE gets deep into the details of every step of the writing, publishing and marketing of books, so the skim avoids you ending up in the weeds. But even if you do so, the book handles those weeds in an unintimidating, easily accessible way. Sometimes even just skimming through, one of the many illustrations, screen-shots or photos catches your eye and you start reading about details that you'll possibly never need. But the writing draws you in as the personality of the authors shows through.</div>
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Overall, Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch have done an excellent job with this book. It is quite possibly going to become the self-publishing bible that it pitches itself to be. And its own success will be the best review and recommendation. So if you are serious about authoring and publishing a book, whether you are considering self-publishing or not, this could be the best ten dollar addition to your e-book collection there is. Find it on Amazon: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AGFU5VS">APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book</a></div>
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<i>By the way, I've been terrible at writing this blog recently for all kinds of 'overworked, underpaid' reasons. I promise in the New Year to do better! Happy Holidays / Merry Christmas to you all.</i></div>
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A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div>
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Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-32343907937278835592012-03-14T14:39:00.007-04:002012-03-14T15:30:43.084-04:00Growing customers - advertise to attract, reward to retain<a href="http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp?ls=extra3&pn=consected"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 108px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eOzTJ_d4ihE/T2DxUIaDUgI/AAAAAAAAACQ/OCKBC5K0tww/s200/Screenshot%2B-%2B03142012%2B-%2B03%253A27%253A44%2BPM.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5719836854916960770" /></a><p style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">In the last week or so, Constant Contact has released a new 'deals' product designed to give <a href="http://www.groupon.com/">Groupon</a> and <a href="http://www.livingsocial.com/">LivingSocial</a> a run for their money. Or more importantly, Constant Contact's <a href="http://www.constantcontact.com/savelocal/index.jsp?ls=extra3&pn=consected">SaveLocal</a> aims to help small businesses control the deals they offer. With discounts they can afford businesses attract new customers by rewarding current customers that share their coupons with their network. It is an interesting concept, and just one of the tools that small businesses can use to attract new customers. But do deals just downplay the value of what a business offers, cheapening the product and the vendor?</p><p style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">The concept of SaveLocal, is that by offering rewards to current customers for sharing your coupons with friends, you are more likely to grow a local and loyal new customer base. Today's New York Times online article, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/business/smallbusiness/a-groupon-alternative-aims-to-offer-small-businesses-a-better-deal.html">A Groupon Alternative Aims to Offer Small Businesses a Better Deal</a> talks with Constant Contact's CEO to flesh out the details of the way it works. When it comes down to it, the argument is that small businesses typically thrive on referrals and endorsements from current customers, since the new customers they bring in are likely to provide repeat business. </p><p style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Groupon on the other hand does the opposite, focusing on a mass of previously unknown wannabe customers sharing with their bloated social networks, in order to satisfy the entry requirements for getting 50% or more off. The Groupon masses are likely to just take the discount and never be seen again. Which means that your discounted rate minus fees still has to cover costs, because a businesses is unlikely to recoup much from a new customer base. If profit margins are over 75% on your products (remember that Groupon takes half of your discounted coupon value, so you effectively see 25% of the full price) then Groupon can get you a flood of customers really fast. Some may come back. </p><p style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">This is the issue with deals to attract new customers: like any discount scheme, the customer's expectations have now been set based on the discounted rate. In future they may not want to pay double what they paid the first time. And if a sub-standard service was offered, there will be no repeat business anyway. There are not many wins in this.</p><p style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">For years, this approach to attracting and retaining customers has worked for companies big and small: </p><p style="font-size: 12px; "></p><blockquote style="font-weight: normal; "></blockquote><blockquote><b>market for awareness, advertise to attract, reward to retain</b></blockquote><p></p><p style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; "><br /></p><p style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Advertising your products at full price, spending 25-40% of your sales on advertising may ensure that your brand doesn't suffer a devaluation up front. With new customers in place from advertising, the SaveLocal approach can then help keep them loyal, since they've paid full price for the products and now feel rewarded for coming back again and again, and encouraging their friends to do the same.</p><p style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">So it seems that deals can be seen less as pure devaluation of your products and more as rewards for loyalty, as long as you use them right. Huge discounts to an unknown crowd seems like a risky proposition. I think I'll stick to marketing with valuable content (does this blog count?!), using free business listings (<a href="http://www.manta.com/">Manta</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/places/">Google Places</a> and Consected's own <a href="http://www.roaminglocal.com/">Roaming Local</a>), Google AdWords for online advertising (<a href="http://www.consected.com/contact">contact me</a> for a $100 coupon to get started - no obligations), and rewarding my current customers in very individual ways.</p><p style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; "></p><p style="font-weight: normal; text-align: right; font-size: 10px; ">A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></p><p style="font-weight: normal; text-align: right; font-size: 10px; ">Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-71722173976037616122012-03-01T11:35:00.003-05:002012-03-01T11:47:14.851-05:00Business excellence - how do you know you've got it?<p></p><p><span><span>There is a concept of 'excellence' that is often used in business improvement to show that we are doing something so well that everybody agrees that we are excelling at it. On the <a href="http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/ebizq_forum/2012/03/how-would-you-define-process-excellence.php">BPM ebizQ forum</a> this morning, the question came up of what is process excellence, and what is a key metric to show it?</span></span></p><p><span><span>A great response from Steve Weissman sums up the difficulty of measuring any form of excellence:</span></span></p><p><span><span><span></span></span></span></p><blockquote><span><span style="font-s ize: 12px;">It's sort of like pornography in that – as Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart famously once wrote – it's hard to define but "I know it when I see it."</span></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span><span style="font-s ize: 12px;">My thinking was along similar lines, that excellence is hard to measure but easy to know when you observe it working in practice:</span></span></p><p></p><blockquote>I'll suggest that process excellence is an emotional response to a process or set of processes. "Happiness" could be the very untechnical metric.<br /><br />If everybody is truly "happy" with an organization's processes, there is a good chance they are excellent. When we don't have process excellence, it is hard to measure but easy to observe: users don't fully adopt them and there is rarely additional investment.</blockquote><p></p><p></p><p><span>As with anything we do in business, happiness with processes just means that they are delivering the results that everybody wants without getting in the way. So maybe I could have suggested an even better non-metric to define business or process excellence:</span></p><p><span><i>If you don't notice that you are performing a process or activity because it is so easy and natural, and it has the desired results every time, you have probably achieved excellence,</i></span></p><p><br /></p><p style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size: 12px; "></p><p style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: right; font-size: 10px; ">A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></p><p style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: right; font-size: 10px; ">Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-1471358029814043572012-02-02T18:17:00.003-05:002012-02-02T18:32:25.493-05:00Facebook welcome pages - but why?<img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 162px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5G7yIRXFZQY/Tysc0r-oHAI/AAAAAAAAAA0/2IJqf2II1uw/s200/fbpage.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5704685044479040514" /><br /><p style="font-size: 12px;">Last night I received a question from a customer asking how his new Facebook welcome page can help the ranking of his main website. He suggested it was a dumb question, but when you think about it carefully it is hard to see the link between all the effort that goes into Facebook and getting the rankings on a regular website up so you can convert more visitors to new business.</p><p style="font-size: 12px;">So, it is not a dumb question at all. Here is the way I look at it, and it is likely that social media gurus will be able to scream at me and say I'm missing something. So go ahead, scream! That's what the comments box at the end of the post is there for... </p><p style="font-size: 12px;">But back to the real issue, how does a fancy Facebook welcome page help drive up your main website rank?</p><p style="font-size: 12px;">In short, the more people you can get to Like the page, the more likely you are to keep them engaged and have them share things you post that point back to your website. This will get you more traffic to your main site, and will get you a bigger likelihood of links from other blogs and sites. This drives up page rank. </p><p style="font-size: 12px;">Of course, people aren't going to do much if your Facebook timeline is empty. So it is essential that you share something at least once a day on the Facebook page to make it worth people coming along and coming back to take a look.<br /><br />In general, for promoting the Facebook page with the aim of getting more people to visit your website, I would suggest a few things:<br /><br />1) discuss your Facebook page in a blog post, and reference how it is (or you hope it will grow into) a community of people interested in your area of business and sharing their experiences etc.<br /><br />2) is there something you can give away? Can you offer discount coupons or similar things? Maybe you can offer one of your longer articles you've been sitting on for a while, made into a simple PDF ebook. Visitors will only get it if they like the page (see the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Consected/317298483416">Consected page</a> for an example, which I put together today, where you get a free eBook if you like the page)<br /><br />3) if you do have a give-away of some form, make sure you send an email newsletter pointing people to the page, discussing its merits as a community and telling them what they get for free when they 'like' it<br /><br />4) once you get more people involved in it, tweet about interesting items on the page occasionally<br /><br />5) everything you do needs to keep people involved in your brand and so the more activity there is, the better chance of higher page rankings<br /><br />There is no causal link that I'm aware of between a Facebook page with plenty of fans and a higher ranking website. The page rank may not get boosted directly, but the amount of traffic you get back to your blog and website will grow, which is the real aim of the exercise. Visitors are where your leads come from, not a mystical page rank number. So keep blogging, keep sending email newsletters, keep Facebooking, keep Tweeting and keep updating your website.</p><p style="font-size: 12px;">And if you'd like a Facebook page like Consected, just drop me a note!</p><p style="font-size: 12px;"></p><p style="text-align: right; font-size: 10px;">A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></p><p style="text-align: right; font-size: 10px;">Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12842606260651074105noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-30589827607583207132012-01-23T09:19:00.000-05:002012-01-23T09:19:17.429-05:00The end of RIM is nigh<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BlackBerry_7230.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="RIM BlackBerry 7230" height="200" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/BlackBerry_7230.jpg/300px-BlackBerry_7230.jpg" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; font-size: 0.8em;" width="148" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: right; width: 300px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BlackBerry_7230.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span></span></span><div style="font-size: 12px;">I remember using a <a class="zem_slink" href="http://blackberry.com/" rel="homepage" title="BlackBerry">Blackberry</a> for the the first time. My boss at the time was driving to meet a client, and I was riding shotgun. Of course, he had no idea where he was going, so he handed me the blue device and said "look in my email, you'll find their phone number". Without fear, I found the little thumbwheel thing did just what I expected. A big block moved up and down and pointed to just what I needed. The device was more intuitive than I could have imagined. Even when it came to opening a browser to find the elusive phone number, then just clicking the link to call it. I needed no instruction. It just worked. So, dear Blackberry makers, Research in Motion (<a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:RIMM" rel="googlefinance" title="NASDAQ: RIMM">RIM</a>), what happened?</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">I'll admit that I remember that first Blackberry use more vividly than other tech experiences. So I understand why people (especially salesmen, bored in airports) got hooked. The 'crackberry' was addictive. People needed them. So what changed? It certainly wasn't the Windows Mobile devices, which looked similar, but had the intuitiveness of a brick.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Well, the <a href="http://blog.appboy.com/2012/01/rim-ceo-steps-down-new-ceo-records-video-proving-again-that-rim-is-in-trouble/">Appboy blog claims that you can blame the late, great Steve Jobs</a>, not for changing the mobile market (at least not in this context), but for being the presenter and imperfect idol that he was. He just set the bar too high for RIM executives. His flair and presentation, his innovation, just made it impossible for a little accidental success like RIM to survive. Certainly an interesting take on it, and a scathing judgement of the new CEO.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Then of course, there is the likelihood that there were Blackberry users who wanted a big screen device (those were the days when mobile phones were getting smaller, not bigger) that felt solid and real. They weren't Blackberry fans though, and quite easily were taken by the bigger screen <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.sprint.com/iphone" rel="sprint" title="iPhone 4">iPhone</a>. Close to useless for business people in its initial form, with poor email support, virtually unusable calendar and a single mobile carrier (AT&T) unable to manage the load. So the few accidental Blackberry users who didn't really care about corporate email moved to iPhone, the masses moved to iPhone and the mobile market changed beyond recognition.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">But, Blackberry should still have had a grip on the business market. It had infrastructure to support them, and an apparently intimate knowledge of how their users could make subtle shifts of their thumbs to control their electronic world. No repetitive strain inducing swiping a whole hand to scroll through your email. Typing in a moving car on potholed Boston roads was possible with a real raised keyboard (as long as you weren't driving). But still RIM lost the plot.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">A touch screen Blackberry was a nice idea, though you couldn't exactly type in a car any easier than an Android. The <a class="zem_slink" href="http://us.blackberry.com/playbook-tablet" rel="homepage" title="BlackBerry PlayBook">Playbook</a> was just stupid branding in my opinion, and apparently it didn't have a native email client, so it wasn't really a Blackberry, just a toy for the kids of Blackberry owners. It touted that it had support for Flash, just as Adobe announced that it was going to scale back development of Flash on mobile devices. Bad luck, or bad planning?</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">If RIM is to survive, seven minute monologues by the new CEO is not going to save them. Neither is another Playbook. As Appboy said, innovate, innovate and innovate some more. Hell, make a tablet called a Workbook with real email support. That's your market, so stop trying to expand out of the one you've got when you are barely keeping a grip on it.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">I have to say, good luck to RIM. There will be disaster in corporate IT if you go away. Many people rely on getting their email through your servers. If the company goes, the infrastructure goes, and that possibly makes the devices instantly obsolete. Don't panic!</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=16929c19-794d-483c-8534-5a03b15011cd" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>Phil Ayreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-19235987587946556772012-01-09T11:43:00.000-05:002012-01-09T11:43:47.656-05:00Aspen QR Code review - 100% fail!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZStDVAphCDE/TwsYuNrrgoI/AAAAAAAAAGg/B6pTKnzrbAk/s1600/IMG_0476.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZStDVAphCDE/TwsYuNrrgoI/AAAAAAAAAGg/B6pTKnzrbAk/s200/IMG_0476.JPG" width="200" /></a></div><div style="font-size: 12px;">I had the pleasure of spending Christmas and the New Year in Aspen, Colorado, skiing. It was a great place, although Mother Nature could have lent a hand with some more snow. While I was there, I picked up some of the local free papers and glossy magazines, with the intention of testing my theory that advertisers and marketers are starting to understand the value of QR Codes and the importance of mobile friendly landing pages and websites. Aspen is a pricey place. Consumers are wealthy and many have ample free time to spend a small fortune. Extracting some of this fortune is the top priority of businesses. Advertising should be top-notch, right?</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">As you've probably guessed already from the title of this post, my theory that QR Codes have "come of age" was squashed. In the <a href="http://aspendailynews.com/">Aspen Daily News</a> and the pull-out TimeOut supplement for December 23rd, there were only five advertisers that I spotted using QR Codes. In 56 pages. That says to me that QR Codes are by no means saturated yet. They are still unusual and readers of printed publications will still notice them. </div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Worse still, of the five QR Codes I noticed, only one scanned with my old iPhone 3G. A phone with autofocus might do better, so I'm not going to beat people up over my outdated technology. Target consumers in Aspen have the latest and greatest, so I'm just not representative. Still, two of them were completely unscannable even after digitally enhancing with photoshop. That's just a waste of ink. And my question is whether the people designing the ad even bothered to scan the QR Code on the proof before going to print.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Most distressing of all though - 100% fail - not one had a smartphone-friendly website sitting behind the QR Code. Beautiful websites they may have been when I got home and looked on my PC, but unusable on my phone. Why bother with a QR Code if you are going to send a visitor to a site that just annoys and frustrates them. Have them call you or email you instead to find out what they need.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">A new years resolution for all print advertisers should be to investigate QR Codes. They stand out. And when done right, your company will stand out too.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>Phil Ayreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-26149231661142740392011-12-02T10:56:00.000-05:002011-12-02T10:56:17.582-05:00QR Code Blunders #2: Heinz Ketchup - Our Turn to Serve<div style="font-size: 12px;">This is the second in the series of QR Code blunders, which I think is not as <a href="http://blog.consected.com/2011/11/qr-code-blunders-1-becks-vier-ireland.html">bad as the first</a>, but a little unfortunate given the worthy goal. This time around, Heinz Ketchup features a QR Code on restaurant squeezy bottles of ketchup, which can be scanned to quickly help you support veterans. The idea is that you scan the QR Code, and either 'like' Heinz Ketchup on Facebook or send a veteran an electronic postcard, and Heinz will make a 57 cent donation to the <a href="http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/">Wounded Warrior Project</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hd3rvA0bvx0/TtbqNDOgoUI/AAAAAAAAAF0/kGTv7J_wLns/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hd3rvA0bvx0/TtbqNDOgoUI/AAAAAAAAAF0/kGTv7J_wLns/s320/photo.JPG" width="240" /></a>Here is a photo of the bottle, sitting on the bar at a local watering hole. There is a nice blurb about the project and a decent sized QR Code to scan. Now, this restaurant has decent lighting, but I still have an older iPhone (the 3G), which does not have autofocus. Still, it can still take a decent enough photo and scan a reasonable QR Code. In this case though, the blunder is not in any of the instructions, or the size of the QR Code.<br />
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In this case the blunder is a simple one: the QR Code contains a full length URL (not a nice shortened one), so the number of blocks that make up the QR Code are a great many more than is necessary, making them too small for older phones to pick out clearly. I'm not the only person in the world still toting an older iPhone or Android, which is why this is unfortunate.<br />
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When I got home, I did a little image manipulation to see what the QR Code contained. Here is the link I managed to get out of it:<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;"> </span><b style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.heinzketchup.com/rd/btrestaurant">http://www.heinzketchup.com/rd/btrestaurant</a></b><br />
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And please do take a look. There is nice mobile friendly website under it, and more importantly you too can add your own little contribution through a like or an e-postcard.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
What should the QR Code have looked like? Not like the one below that I extracted from the bottle. Way too many blocks. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-R9a8y45X6l8/TtjwYE3s-6I/AAAAAAAAAGM/QnsqUN06iLc/s1600/qr2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-R9a8y45X6l8/TtjwYE3s-6I/AAAAAAAAAGM/QnsqUN06iLc/s1600/qr2.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
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<div style="font-size: 12px;">Here is more what it should have looked like (I faked the blur and background on this for effect to show how larger blocks show up better). A shortened URL like the one that this contains ( <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif;"><a href="http://cnsd.co/7vq">http://cnsd.co/7vq</a> ) </span>takes just a few seconds to produce, and generates QR Codes that are readable in worse lighting by older phones.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ph4SOjhOMn0/TtjyyRx5CeI/AAAAAAAAAGU/wv9zfJGhBak/s1600/qr-demo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ph4SOjhOMn0/TtjyyRx5CeI/AAAAAAAAAGU/wv9zfJGhBak/s1600/qr-demo.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can't scan me? Browse to: <b>cnsd.co/7vq</b> instead</td></tr>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The rule is to always, always shorten a URL before creating a QR Code. This gives you three benefits:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><ol><li>a more readable image on more phones in poorer lighting or printing conditions</li>
<li>the advantage of being able to track scans (how many, when, location, etc)</li>
<li>a URL that is easier to type in on a mobile phone keypad if the user just can't scan the thing (11 characters rather than 40-ish)</li>
</ol></div><div style="font-size: 12px;">For more information about QR Codes for effective mobile marketing and producing mobile websites to support them, visit <a href="http://consected.com/mobile">http://consected.com/mobile</a><br />
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</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>Phil Ayreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-1661095104011831382011-11-14T18:34:00.000-05:002011-11-14T18:34:08.263-05:00QR Code Blunders #1: Beck's Vier Ireland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tDViDweSbKY/TsGdwR-oW2I/AAAAAAAAAFM/hvDEVLbtu70/s1600/becks+ireland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tDViDweSbKY/TsGdwR-oW2I/AAAAAAAAAFM/hvDEVLbtu70/s200/becks+ireland.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="font-size: 12px;">I've been meaning to start this series of blogs for ages, and tonight I realized that I had too big a blunder to miss. This is a QR Code blunder that is just too big to pass up. I'm currently in Dublin, Ireland, a land where competition for beer consumers could be considered to be large. Very large. So seeing a QR Code on the beer mat pictured here, I had to go with it.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">The QR Code on the beer mat could be considered to be a smart marketing ploy (it is one I have suggested in the past and actually have a small, regional client in the UK doing). Imagine this following scenario. Think of grown men, in pubs in Dublin during the day, a bit bored while their friends go off to get another pint from the bar. Ooh, shiny object (QR Code), let's see what it does.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Well, in the case of the Becks example, not a helluva lot. Or if you have an older iPhone, even in great lighting (not renowned in pubs, anywhere), nothing at all. Beyond the fact that the QR Code is too small to scan and doesn't use a shortened URL, so it is more pixelated than it needs to be, there are a bunch of other failures:</div><br />
<ol><li><span style="font-size: 12px;">the URL points straight to the Facebook page they want you to visit - there is no real way to track this action and see how many people scanned that QR Code, so who knows whether the beer mat QR Code campaign is working? Just the webmaster at Facebook and I don't think he's going to tell you that for free</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 12px;">the URL points straight to the Facebook page they want you to visit - "so you want me to login to the really slow mobile facebook page that my QR Code scanner sends me to so I can see the page? Oh look, here comes my pint. This thing is a joke."</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 12px;">the URL points straight to the Facebook page they want you to visit - I forgot, this is Dublin, and the Guinness has to settle on the bar twice as long. I had time to login to Facebook. First thing I see is some irrelevant post about architects having more creativity than artists. Or something unrelated to beer (despite the really small tag line I missed at the bottom of the beer mat about turning beer into art). "Childish male drinking humour almost kicked into my brain sitting waiting for my pint - art, rhymes with...? Ooh, pretty girl just walked past. Where am I?". No click on the Like link should be expected.</span></li>
</ol><div><span style="font-size: 12px;">So my pint turns up, and Beck's still only has 2184 Facebook friends, and everybody thinks that QR Codes are a stupid idea. </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">Not really, you just have to do them right and target your audience better.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12px;">Cheers to them for giving me a great example to kick off this series of QR Code blunders. And feel free to visit the Facebook page for the unreadable QR Code</span> at <a href="http://www.facebook.com/becksvierireland">http://www.facebook.com/becksvierireland</a> (I had to take a photo with a good quality digital camera, then photo shop the image to get it to scan.)<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b> </b></span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12px;">I hope that Bulmers, the owners of the distribution rights to Beck's Vier, and <a href="http://www.eightytwenty.ie/blog/?p=740">eightytwenty/4D who announced with such pride that they are handling the digital activity for the Bulmers brands</a> realize the error(s) of their ways. And its easy for me to criticize here and now without offering solutions to the problem, but let me suggest that QR Codes work if you actually try scanning them with a real phone, life-sized, before going to print. And you don't rely on Facebook for your MAS (minimum attention span) marketing to mildly intoxicated blokes.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>Phil Ayreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-75769596851208406392011-11-03T12:48:00.001-04:002011-11-03T13:10:32.331-04:00Go Mobile, Global<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://c501106.r6.cf2.rackcdn.com/globe-mobile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://c501106.r6.cf2.rackcdn.com/globe-mobile.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Google is finally shouting about mobile websites. They have released <a href="http://www.howtogomo.com/">GoMo</a> and are putting on a mobile event in Alabama to start pushing businesses to convert their regular websites to a smartphone-friendly format. At Consected, we feel we need to crash the party, although we're not going to Alabama. We're not even going on the road. Read on to find out about our global party-crashing plans...</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Google probably feels it can focus on mobile websites having reached a milestone with the Android platform, overtaking Apple and the iPhone as the operating system the majority of smartphones are running. They have 200,000 apps on the Android marketplace, although a large proportion of these are meaningless copies of poorly performing websites, with little or no advantage to Google in promoting their advertising. So Google has (rightly in my opinion) decided that real, mobile-friendly websites need a little helping hand. and GoMo is the way they are shouting about it - along with some expensive sponsored listings from vendors who they claim can get businesses going fast. But before you go, let's revisit why you want a mobile website and not just an app.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">A mobile website helps every potential customer who wants to use a service, not just the limited number who have a phone that works with the app. Apps are great for software developers who have a contract from big corporates to build them, first on iPhone, then on Android, then maybe a Blackberry version. Apps are great for consumers playing games and using real productivity applications (think of Excel on your phone). They are completely unnecessary for the majority of mobile marketing requirements (I don't need an app to search for special offers from my favorite retailer, TalFart). And, as people are starting to find out, many apps don't work well on tablets like the iPad or Galaxy Tab, well unless you like a pokey little mobile phone sized app in the middle of your large screen, or want to pay the developer even more money.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://c501106.r6.cf2.rackcdn.com/holsworthyales-site-screenshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://c501106.r6.cf2.rackcdn.com/holsworthyales-site-screenshot.jpg" width="128" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://holsworthyales.getinview.com/">Holsworthy Ales mobile site<br />
A very recent new client</a></td></tr>
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Having a mobile website is essential if you have a business with customers on the go. So feel free to try out some of the services that are being touted through the Google website. Please accept a little advice though -- spend some time really looking at the result. A nice menu, all the text from your website pasted blindly on the page, much of it irrelevant to a customer trying to find you on her smartphone. Everything else stacked at the bottom, as the robot creating your site didn't know what to do with it. And really very little control over the end result (pink or blue is about the choice). This is why Consected wants to crash the mobile party. A mobile website is not just a vertical version of your current website. It needs some TLC and a real person.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><b>Here is where we crash the Google GoMo party.</b> We will create a custom mobile website, by hand (think of an artisan mobile website) for any customer who prepays for a 12 month mobile website hosting service with us. You'll get:</div><br />
<ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><strong style="color: #567a26; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">a real, working, zero effort mobile website</strong></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">a home page following the style of your current website</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">a contact page with "tap to call", "tap to map", "tap to SMS", and links to your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn pages</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">up to three pages describing your services or products (we'll even edit the text to make it useful and concise)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">your logo in the header</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">ad-free and our logo does not appear anywhere on the page</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">QR codes for every page</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">your own domain name linked to the site</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">free access for you to login and change any part of the website you desire </span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">You don't have to be in Alabama to claim it. You don't even have to be in the US. The time for us to build the website by hand exceeds the value of the hosting service, making the mobile site effectively free. <b>Free</b> is a pretty good deal for a mobile website that looks professional, useful and something you can use to promote your business.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">To join us in crashing the Google GoMo party, and claim your own mobile website, built by hand, just fill in this quick form: <a href="http://cnsd.co/5n5">http://cnsd.co/5n5</a></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>Phil Ayreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-65333219116087768532011-10-11T09:14:00.002-04:002011-10-11T09:15:47.752-04:00Mobile, local and loyal - small business customers<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BNHWsxDfxPs/TpRA6hABTrI/AAAAAAAAAE8/Y_3sc-ZU6Q0/s1600/consumer+logo+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BNHWsxDfxPs/TpRA6hABTrI/AAAAAAAAAE8/Y_3sc-ZU6Q0/s200/consumer+logo+2.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theadmenu.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Local, mobile and loyalty.Deals for real people</span></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-size: 12px;">Many people are saying that the daily-deals sites like <a href="http://www.groupon.com/">Groupon</a> are struggling, especially after they <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-03/groupon-s-stumbles-seen-paring-back-size-of-ipo-as-investor-interest-wanes.html">turned down a once in a lifetime $6BN opportunity to be acquired by Google and had to drop a proposed IPO</a>. The reason I believe is that consumers are maturing, or maybe just reverting to human nature. We shop, eat and enjoy ourselves more when we don't have to travel halfway across the country to do so. Daily deals give the impression of offering local offers, but local just means Massachusetts or Ireland, not Boston or Dublin. People are getting tired of this and so the <a href="http://www.pitchengine.com/theadmenu/new-irish-discount-shopping-service-theadmenu-launches-this-autumn/179037/">announcement today by theadmenu.com about a new local online service</a> [also see the <a href="http://www.irishpressreleases.ie/2011/10/11/new-irish-discount-shopping-service-theadmenu-launches-this-autumn/">Irish Press Releases</a> site] is really interesting. I've been working with theadmenu.com for a little while now, so this makes it even better!</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">If you run a small business, a shop, restaurant, bar, hair salon, car dealership or lunchtime deli, you know that your customers typically come live or work close by. They are <b>local</b>. Since you have the type of business where the number of feet through the door is proportional to the amount of business you do, you know that you need to catch the attention of people on the move. Your potential customers are <b>mobile</b>.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">The thing that many small businesses struggle with is persuading customers to come back again and again. Your most profitable customers are not one-offs, they provide repeat business and so you need <b>loyalty</b>. Beyond one on one exceptional customer service, loyalty is hard to promote. But we all know that there is big business in loyalty, since every big brand store, every airline, even the railways have loyalty programs. The question is how can smaller businesses get in on this?</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://www.theadmenu.com/">TheAdMenu</a>, the new service I've been working with, is based in Dublin, Ireland and aims to address "local, mobile and loyalty" for local businesses. It is quite simply a mobile-friendly website that uses the location services of smartphones (also known as GPS, geolocation, satnav, etc) to help customers find the services they want in the local area, at the best price possible. And it then takes the one-off special offers, and helps customers and businesses benefit from loyalty, by making it easy for business to provide repeat promotions to existing customers, and customers to find out what deals or new services their favorite shops are offering.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Mobile sites, like the cities that will be represented by theadmenu.com should be targeted at their local audience, not just a way to try and sell the same old stuff to bored commuters across the country with iPhone or Android in hand. With <a href="http://www.consected.com/">Consected</a> <a href="http://www.consected.com/mobile">mobile sites</a> technology, I'm proud to be helping <a href="http://www.theadmenu.com/">TheAdMenu</a> deliver simple loyalty programs to local business that want to attract and retain mobile customers.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>Phil Ayreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-6427537049203944252011-10-05T09:54:00.000-04:002011-10-05T09:54:27.624-04:00Apple does little but keeps app developers busy<div style="font-size: 12px;">Apple collected a lot of tech reporters together for an event to make a big announcement. Everybody held their breath, guessing at what the next big revolutionary change would be in the mobile space. What huge leap would we see in smartphone technology? According to Mobile Marketer's Chantal Tode, this amounted to not a lot except that the <a href="http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/software-technology/11148.html">Apple iOS update poses challenges to existing apps in App Store</a>. Yes, there is an iPhone 4GS, the next version of the ever popular smartphone, but its not ground-breaking. Instead, it was time for the operating system software, the "face of the phone" to move forward.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">And this represents a dilemma for many people. Unless you are desperate, you're not going to buy a 4GS, knowing that the chance is greater than ever of an iPhone 5 with a great new screen and cool new stuff being just around the corner. If you are the owner of the iPhone 3 (like me), with a device that is running slower and crashing more than ever, will you even have access to the new iOS upgrade to hopefully fix some of your issues introduced by Apple's previous update? That could give your phone a few months more life (hopefully not screw it up even more), perhaps putting you in the running for an iPhone 5 (not me, I'm going to try Android next time).</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">And for app developers, the guys and girls building all the apps you find in the App Store, the 200 new features that could help some apps work better, break others, and finally completely replace others still, make for a busy time. The iOS software is tired, it need some TLC to make it more desirable, and hopefully add some of the missing essential business features (rich text emails for example). It needs to allow me to get notified of things that are going on with less pop ups. But any major change to an operating system represents a challenge for developers. In testing, in new development to benefit from new features, in quick fixes and late nights.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Of course, if you don't want to have to worry if your business's mobile app will work on iPhone 4GS, 5, Android, Windows Mobile, etc, etc, then it is worth considering developing using open standards like HTML5. Otherwise known as good old "web development". With some work, a mobile optimized website can avoid the constant arms race against for each vendor you want to support, giving you a consistent, easy to use and highly functional mobile website or app.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Thanks Apple, I won't hold my breath until your next big smartphone breakthrough. Mobile web optimized apps are already on their way, and companies like Consected are making them more about configuration and self-contained solutions, and less about development.</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: 12px;"></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">A post from the <a href="http://blog.consected.com/">Improving It blog</a></div><div style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">Let us help you improve your business today. Visit <a href="http://www.consected.com/">www.consected.com</a></div>Phil Ayreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.com1