Mass Distraction – The Case for a Consolidated Marketing Platform
These days, customer experiences increasingly need to be delivered with the help of technology. This does not mean that direct interactions and people are no more important in marketing, sales, or service; on the contrary, but that an increasing number of customers is using the web, social media, chat, or an app to identify suitable products or services or to resolve an issue, when needed. The Customer Executive Board found that 57 per cent of the buying process is already completed before sales personnel get engaged. A Cisco retail study confirms the American Express findings and states that around 60 per cent of all in-store purchases start their journey electronically. The American Express Global Barometer claims that 60 per cent of all customers abandoned a purchase because of poor service experiences. Over the past 20 or so years the way products and services get sold and customer service as well as marketing get delivered to customers changed dramatically. Gone are the times where a potential customer was addressed via a radio- or TV-spot or an ad printed in a newspaper, or a letter in the mailbox … – well, it still happens, but the focus shifted. We started off from one single, unidirectional marketing ‘channel’ – the customer comes into my store and interacts with me, a person. From there on we added an ever increasing number of additional channels, like the ones mentioned, plus many more. In today’s omni-channel world we also have telephone, e-mail, web-delivered ads, mobile apps, branded and white-label communities, social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., chat, messenger applications like WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Snapchat,...
Gartner MQ BI and Analytics Platforms – Lots of Movement
Last week Gartner published the updated version of its Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms, and I need to say that there has been a lot of movement in both directions, up as well as down. There has been a lot of reshuffling especially in the Visionaries quadrant. This can partly be attributed to a changing market that caused Gartner to combine a few of last year’s assessment criteria as well as adding two more critical criteria as below: Critical Capabilities Dropped or Changed: Combined BI Platform Administration with Security and User Administration Modified Data Source Connectivity to Data Source Connectivity and Ingestion Combined Publish Analytics Content and Collaboration and Social BI to Publish, Share and Collaborate on Analytic Content Added Visual Appeal to Ease of Use Capabilities Added: Smart Data Discovery Platform Capabilities Workflow Integration Smart Data Discovery emphasizes the increasing importance of AI and machine learning as part of analytics systems. Gartner defines it around the automatically “finding, visualizing and narrating of important findings such as correlations, exceptions, clusters, links and predictions in data that are relevant to users without requiring them to build models or write algorithms. Users explore data via visualizations, natural-language-generated narration, search and natural-language query technologies”. Workflow Integration acknowledges that there is no actionable insight if there is a standalone analytics system. It is defined around the number of products “needed to deliver the critical capabilities and the degree of seamless integration and workflow between capabilities/components”. This has been true for a long time, but hey, better late than never. Gartner itself states that the changes have been major and that...
AI and Bots will kill our Future – Or Not
After the Hype 2016 has been the year of bots, AI, and automation the beginning of 2017 seems to be the time of looking at wider implications. There is a lot of discussion going on in academia, politics, and on the web, e.g. the one spurred by Denis Pombriant with a very readable article, and two follow-ups here and here, in November and December 2016. Denis, supported by Vinnie Mirchandani, took a very optimistic stance – something that is highly important in times of simplification and pessimism. There is no doubt in my mind that technologies that are driven by artificial intelligence can have a tremendous benefit for both, companies and organizations, as well as consumers. Consumer technology like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, generally intelligent home automation, self driving cars, etc., can simplify peoples’ lives tremendously by taking away routine activities or making it just easier to execute them. Organizations can create improved customer and employee experiences via automating existing processes, and they could create entirely new experiences using technology – doing things more effectively. Opportunities to do so can be found within the complete value chain. Automation also serves the aspect of doing the same, or more, at less cost, i.e. more efficiently. And in the last point lies a catch. This means that less people are needed to deliver on an amount of work. This means less employed people and, on a first view, more unemployment. This means less disposable income. Because advances in technology have the tendency to benefit only a few, which are those who deliver the automation systems and those who are able...