Fostering Innovation Means Listening to Feedback & Learning From Failure

The Economist Intelligence Unit has a new report out that says don't be afraid to fail — great innovation can come of it.

The report: "Cultivating business-led innovation", is based on a survey of 226 senior executives conducted in April 2012. The execs were in a range of industries, geographies and businesses sizes. And as a note, the report is sponsored by Oracle.

The driver for this report stems from the desire to identify fundamental strategies and procedures that encourage and support business led innovation. The reality is that businesses find it hard to innovate and if the CEO isn't on board with new ideas and approaches to achieving innovation, you're kind of screwed (that may sound a bit harsh — but it is the reality organizations must accept).

What exactly is innovation? It's "fresh thinking that provides value people will pay for” (Economist definition in March 2012).

Research has shown that successful businesses have cultures and processes in place that foster good ideas and know how to implement them quickly. Not only that, these businesses monitor and manage how these ideas are developed, allowing them to spot trends and create new opportunities for innovation. This includes learning quickly from failed innovations. That's right, failure is an option — if you know how to leverage your lessons learned and apply them back into new ideas.

Here are the key takeaways from the report:

1. Put Away Innovation Silos

To be successful at innovation, you have to forget about department lines and pull together teams from across the organization. The survey shows that innovative ideas come from all different types of departments across the organization, including IT.

But the report also showed that IT is very underutilized in many circumstances. This is unfortunate because it's IT that often has its pulse on the newest tech trends that can support innovation. In the survey, 51% of IT departments are involved in implementing new ideas but not the actual generation of ideas.

The size of the company played a role in how innovation is done. Larger businesses tend to be more siloed in their innovation approaches. In addition, businesses with US$ 500 million or less in annual revenues take advantage of customer feedback to create innovation. But for orgs of this size, the approach used is mostly direct interviews. Large organizations use interviews but also leverage social networks and sentiment analysis.

2. The Right Technology Helps Innovation

Disruptive technology supports innovation. Big Data, Social Media — both are great examples of technology and along with mobile and cloud computing were mentioned by the companies surveyed.

But each technology doesn't not necessarily offer the same innovations. Big Data was recognized for its ability to create new pricing models (60%), improve business processes (38%) and develop new products or services (38%). There was concern noted, however, around the lack of Big Data talent available.

In terms of social media, innovation in customer service (43%) and new ways of selling (44%) were noted. Although interest in social data is high and growing, many businesses recognize that they still have a lot to learn about social media's potential.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Mzinga Debuts OmniSocial Engaged for Deeper Social Intelligence

Social intelligence provider Mzinga has debuted a customizable platform for addressing targeted audiences at a deeper social level called OmniSocial Engaged.

It's a suite of features that can integrate into existing systems or be a standalone product for better search and meaningful experiences with analytics and reporting for better insight.

Engage with Customers

Creating better customer experiences is about how people feel. Can they find what they are looking for on your website? Do they get rewarded for being involved and even helping others? Online groups like enthusiasts, for example, will benefit from these kinds of features, but they are also good for improving customer support. 

Retailers or service providers need as many ways as they can get to make support less painful, and one of those ways is to offer a self-service solution. This can include things like Facebook Page integrations, website widgets or full blown customized websites.

Multiple solutions are included with OmniSocial Engaged, and that means better targeting and happier customers.

OmniSocial Features

OmniSocial combines multiple solutions to meet these customer engagement challenges. Community managers and moderators can take advantage of things like banned and watch word filters, user permissions and a moderation queue dashboard. Additionally, managing content can be automated for removing harmful content and enforcing Terms of Service.

The product includes gamification elements, allowing companies to assign badges and reward icons for top contributors, engaged members or influential members to give customers incentives. Mzinga has been going down this road for some time now, and offering more personalized experiences is what the company is all about. That's important because at least one recent study has found companies see a lack of quality social business analytic products in the market. 

That is particularly true of hard to measure things like ROI, sentiment analysis and identifying influencers. However companies are engaging customers, making support and search less painful are always welcome, even if the entire industry sill needs more fine tuning.

OmniSocial Engaged is available now, and pricing is available on request.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Splunk Updates Big Data Search, Analytics Software with Enterprise 5 Release

Splunk has announced the release of Splunk Enterprise 5, introducing improvements to the company's big data collection and analytics software.

What is Splunk? 

Splunk creates software for real-time operational intelligence. Splunk 5 collects and indexes an enterprise's data to generate complex reports quickly, from data gathered across applications, websites, servers, networks and mobile devices. 

Technology needs to provide answers as quickly as users think of questions, regardless of the speed, complexity and scale of the underlying data [and] users need to be able to use their data in ways that help to achieve operational intelligence,” says Guido Schroeder, senior vice president of products, Splunk. “We need to put that technology in the hands of developers and IT professionals so they can innovate and drive new ideas. It is for these reasons and more that we created Splunk Enterprise 5.”

What are the Improvements?

Enterprise 5 aims to improve security controls in its data collection and analytics product and make it more intuitive for end users.

Other updates include:

• Through report acceleration technology, the product claims to create reports up to 1000 times faster. Summaries are indexed so they can be easily found again or searched.
• Dashboards are easier and more useful. With dynamic drill downs, users can create a custom “drill down behaviour.” When they click on another dashboard or website, they can leave that site with relevant material needed for their work.
• Enterprise 5 integrates PDF file creation, which allows users to send reports and dashboards to a variety of platforms: Linux, Unix, Windows and Mac. PDF’s can be shared when needed, or follow a schedule.
• Through Splunk’s Index Replication service, the data that is collected, even during an outage, is automatically indexed and copied multiple times to ensure that data isn't lost. 
• Users of Splunk Hadoop Connect incorporate the two systems together as data can be sent to Hadoop Connect or data from Hadoop can be sent to Enterprise 5.

The Availability of Splunk Enterprise 5

Splunk Enterprise 5 is available as a free download for those who have a Splunk Enterprise license.

If you’re unsure if you’d like to continue with the product, you can either get a free trial for 60 days that allows indexing of 500 megabytes a day. There are free and paid option for those wanting a full license:

• Free: For the free license features include: the use of 500 megabytes a day, universal indexing, accelerated reporting, Index Replication and a developer platform.
• Full: The full version is available for $6,000 for a 500 megabyte-per-day perpetual license, including first year support, or U.S. $2,000 per year for a term license including support. The full version has all of the features of the free version, while other features include: a distributed search, single sign on, PDF delivery, and access to premium Splunk apps.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Knowledge Networks, Content Intelligence and The Zen of SharePoint #SharePointSym

It’s not everyday that I attend a SharePoint conference and become engaged in academic discussions about the value of knowledge sharing and content intelligence. Such was the case when I attended the opening keynote of the KMWorld 2012 of which the SharePoint Symposium was a part.

A Higher SharePoint

Listening to David Weinberger, one of the authors of Cluetrain Manifesto and Co-Director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab at Harvard University; and Jeremy Bentley, CEO  and founder of Smartlogic speak about how the concept of knowledge is changing and how applying content intelligence to the information collected can improve its value, respectively, you can’t help but understand SharePoint on whole other level.

When you think about it, SharePoint isn’t simply a platform, it’s a knowledge network. The benefits of knowledge networks go way beyond simply sharing information. According to Weinberger, participating in knowledge networks, whether it’s SharePoint or Reddit, makes us better equipped to be better humans. We learn how to appreciate the power of disagreement and difference, while at the same time we embrace humility and display generosity. It takes a lot to ask a question in a public forum, and requires great confidence to supply an answer. Even if we are able to hide behind a clever moniker or avatar, participating in knowledge sharing makes us quite vulnerable.

Is Your SharePoint Portal an Echo Chamber?

As a result, Weinberger cautions, we resort to echo chambers to make us feel safer and secure. We are among our own in forums where we’re most likely to agree with the answers given, whether they be political, personal or professional in nature. Weinberger challenges us to embrace the messiness, the vulnerability and the uncertainty that knowledge sharing brings by learning how to appreciate difference and diversity of the crowd.

When creating our own networks, he urges us to learn how to deal with difference in useful ways, like approaching issues from different perspectives, or asking questions about the things we don’t know and inviting others to ask questions about us.

When you think of SharePoint, the same strategies should apply. Are your users power users, or everyday users? Has your SharePoint portal become an echo chamber for your team, or is a place where diversity thrives? If not, it may be time to take a step back and examine the integrity of your knowledge network.

How Smart is Content Intelligence?

In every knowledge network, there is information. But how is it structured? If you’re still managing your information the same way you did a decade or more ago, Jeremy Bentley suggests that you might want to add some intelligent content layers to it.

For starters, you probably have a lot more information to manage than you did a decade ago. It used to be that you had information overload. Now you have big data. The difference — how you handle it. With content intelligence, you can better identify what is your information. It’s almost impossible not to label it something (even if most of us label it unstructured!).

Once you identify it, you need to extract meaning from it. What's in it? Once you extract, you need to classify it to determine what it's about.

Again, the same process can be applied to how we share and manage information within SharePoint. It sure would make it much easier to use if we knew what information there was, what's in it and what it's about, wouldn't it? The same content intelligence is just as vital when it's self-contained, as when it's being shared. Bentley says that the new world of big data needs a new layer of content intelligence — and I've even argue that it's just as true with each new generation of SharePoint.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

NewBrandAnalytics Targets Hospitality Industry with Social Monitering Tool nBA 3.0

Social media monitoring has become social listening — which has, in turn, become social market intelligence. There is so much being said online and in the cloud about restaurants and hotels that companies like newBrandAnalytics are sweeping in with digital tools to help businesses make sense (and cents) of it all.

The company's nBA 3.0 social monitoring tool listens to what people are saying (or complaining) about restaurants. The software boils this information down into mission-critical insights that help managers and marketers make decisions to improve the customer experience.

Hospitality Industry Benefits

While newBrandAnalytics nBA 3.0 could be used for any type of business, the company is pushing it as a way to help service industry types get a handle on social media. Making data-driven decisions is hard when your main focus is on the customers sitting at your tables. 

NBA 3.0 lets businesses to see what people are saying on review sites and social media. This lets them figure out what their customers like and — most often — what they're complaining about. (We all know how easy it is for people to go off on Yelp or Twitter about their lunch.) The company says that by using nBA 3.0, restaurant groups and hospitality managers would be able to:

• Uncover and fix product, pricing and value issues
• Measure service effectiveness and identify training opportunities
• Pinpoint trouble spots with equipment, suppliers, internal processes and delivery
• Understand competitive benchmarks and discover ways to win new customers
• Connect directly with reviewers to increase customer loyalty

Now that this level of social media saturation is getting down to the restaurant level, it provides a good opportunity for service establishments not only to connect with their customers — but also to see what the competition is up to.

Track engagement, get feedback, and make decisions based on location or brand.

The Importance of Customer Experience

In the retail and hospitality industries, those companies focused on repeat business need to get busy finding their biggest fans online. Whatever value people may put into online reviews, there's no harm in reaching out to those influencers and connecting with them. It shouldn't be difficult to see what complaints people are posting on Facebook and Twitter, and then measure which areas those complaints are focused on.

Using an nBA 3.0 tool called Instant, companies can set up alerts to notify managers about problems as they come up. That way, the right person can contact that person in real time. NBA Advantage is a tool that can lay out metrics like sentiment for understanding what makes customers happy. Let us know in the comments what businesses have ever contacted you because of something you tweeted or wrote on their Facebook.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

New Oracle BI Release Makes Data Analytics Mobile, Visual, Actionable #oow

Oracle is rolling out Oracle Business Intelligence Release 11.1.1.6.2BP1. Notable features of the latest Oracle BI release, introduced at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, include a new mobile user experience and visualization features.

Responding to Mobile Popularity

Responding to what an Oracle press release calls mobile devices becoming “ubiquitous productivity enhancing tools across the enterprise,” the latest Oracle BI offers revamped mobile features including live thumbnails and search for both online and offline content, as well as greater touch and multi-gestural interactivity, offline content access that can be restricted by administrators, enhanced visualization tools such as charts, graphs and maps, “trellis views” of data and scalability Oracle says can “serve thousands of mobile users simultaneously and process millions of rows of data.”

Oracle BI users can also deploy the solution on premises or in the cloud, and Oracle says development on a single unified platform allows all apps created with Oracle BI to be controlled from one central location. 

Oracle Sees Mobile Future

An “oracle” is one who can see the future, and Oracle apparently sees a future where mobility is a key component of business technology. Earlier this week at Oracle OpenWorld, the enterprise IT vendor introduced three new mobile applications as part of its PeopleSoft HR/financial management suite.

The new Oracle PeopleSoft applications — Mobile Expenses, Mobile Approvals and Mobile Company Directory — provide access to data via smartphone, tablet and desktop. Based on HTML5 and CSS3, the solutions do not require download but are accessible via standard login and provide a user experience tailored to the specific user device. 

Putting Data on the Road

According to a recent Forbes article, mobile business intelligence meets the growing need of businesspeople to have data readily available on the road. “The decision maker often needs only quick access to a few key metrics shown on a mobile device,” states the article, which goes on to say mobile business intelligence solutions can “reduce decision bottlenecks, increase business process performance and enable broader input into the decision at hand.”

Although laptops, smartphones and other portable devices started popping up on the IT landscape in the early 1990s, Forbes identifies the April 2010 introduction of the iPad as the “inflection point” for mobile BI. “The time for mobile BI is finally here,” Forbes concludes, and Oracle is agreeing with that conclusion.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Webtrends FY'12: Mobile Up 58%, Optimize - 34% + Nabs Former IBM Exec for CMO

If you were unsure how important analytics and data intelligence is for today's customer experience strategists, look no further than Webtrends' latest fiscal year as it recorded double digital growth in mobile, social and optimization business.

Mobile, Social Analytics Key Drivers for Customer Experience

Webtrends released it fiscal 2012 (July 2011- June 2012) numbers and as one of the most well-known analytics providers, it's really no surprise how well the company actually did.

The growing demand for digital intelligence solutions and the vendors coming out the woodwork to provide them is amazing. While Webtrends has been around since the days of basic web analytics, the vendor offers much more than that now.

Here's a simple breakdown of its financial news:

• SaaS services have grown 15% over the same period last fiscal year
• Mobile business grew 58%
• Optimize solutions business grew 34%
• Average annual value of customers rose 25%

According to Webtrends, it expected that its Optimize business will grow dramatically as the demand for more targeted, personalized experiences is high.

A New CMO to Sell the Customer Experience

With good financials often comes some new blood to help an organization continue its momentum. Webtrends has announced that former IBM strategy exec Martin Doettling, is the new CMO. Doettling has over 20 years industry experience and played a lead role in IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative.

Coming from Coremetrics (he was the vice president of product marketing prior to IBM's acquisition), Doettling was responsible for product and market strategy for Coremetric's analytics and digital marketing portfolio. This, along with other previous positions demonstrate sound experience analytics and cloud-based solutions.

Looking Back at Webtrends in 2012

This year isn't over, but already we've seen a large number of updates and new offerings from Webtrends, including a new — and free — iPad social analytics app, an updated Analytics on Demand and the addition of heatmaps (although some noted that this seemed a little late coming)

In addition to new and updated solutions, Webtrends signed a partnership with Tealium,a provider of tag management software, were recognized as a key Partner in Facebook's new Preferred Marketing Partner program, and their analytics module received SAP Web Experience certification.

Overall, Webtrends has shown its commitment to offering the right services and solutions to meet the customer experience marketer's demands. Based on the growth of both the mobile and Optimize businesses mentioned above, you pretty much know where the company will be headed for the next fiscal year.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Quest Leapfrogs Business - IT Gap with Toad Business Intelligence Suite

 Following on last week's unstructured data management product launch, Quest has just announced a new business intelligence tool that aims to build a bridge between business analysts who create data, and data consumers that use that data to make decisions.

Quest Toad

So maybe that’s a fancy way of saying Quest has launched a new suite of business intelligence tools that aim to take meaning from data, but it also highlights the huge gap that has emerged between those who are developing data and those that need to use it.

The new tools, which are built around Quest’s Toad suite, aim to provide enterprises with the ability to leapfrog the gap between IT and business users securely and without having to pay out a small fortune for it.

The Toad concept is not new. Toad has been around for a while in the shape of Toad for Oracle, for database administrators for Oracle products, and is available for Microsoft’s SQL Server, IBM’s DB2 and Sybase as well.

Toad Business Intelligence

According to Quest, the new BI Suite is a collection of three separate existing tools from Quest that, combined, will enable organizations to access, integrate, cleanse and distribute data across the enterprise. The three tools consist of:

• Toad Intelligence Central: This is the hub of the new suite providing a virtual data layer across existing BI and IT architectures. It enables users to share data and offers data views across the two desktop tools: Data Point, Decision Point.
• Data Point: Connects to traditional data sources like relational database management systems, or data warehouses, along with connections to non-traditional data sources including Salesforce.com, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, and other cloud data sources.
• Decision Point: Enables users to combine, explore, analyze and understand data in simple interactive views to speed data analytics without issues with compliance or governance.

The BI Suite also helps technical and non-technical users understand data by offering new interfaces. With it, technical users have all the tools needed to provision and deliver complex data, while non-technical business consumers can access this data through visualizations or existing business intelligence systems.

It also provides automated dataflow processes that enable self-service data integration with agile access to data located in different repositories across the enterprise. By enabling enterprises to connect all data sources and cutting out manual processes, Quest offers the ability to analyze data over longer timeframes that provide more accurate pictures of what’s happening.

Toad Business Intelligence Suite is available now, with North American pricing at US$ 1,295 per named user with a minimum of five seats. If you’re interested in more on this, check out the video below.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

A New Way to Think About Social Media #socialintel2012

Day One at the Social Media Intelligence Conference yielded thoughtful amendments to the word-of-mouth textbook on enterprise-level social media strategy. As the opportunities for social networking expand exponentially, so do the possibilities they offer. 

You'll still hear no (smart) business person deny the relative infancy of social data, but like the medium itself, a pervasiveness of theory, experimentation, pontification and opinion is helping to shift some preconceived notions into practiced, applicable strategy.

It's A One-Way Mirror

Dorothea Bozicolona-Volpe's keynote had a purposeful stride which succinctly summarized the most basic ideals of utilizing social media in a business environment. Volpe argues that this stuff is in our DNA, and we have an innate capacity for it. And sometimes it does seem to be the graphical representation of our inner monologue, reflecting everything from our most profound realizations to our most mundane events. 

There's a prominent looking glass right before our eyes, where we're compelled to notice and analyze our lives as they happen, potentially causing more narrating than living. Smart businesses capitalize on your vanity; absorbing your narration, converting it to data and, ideally, responding with an affirmation that you've been recognized in order to kickstart the cycle again. We are in a worldwide focus group, except we don't know when we're being watched (assume: always).

When you go through the looking glass to observe the unfiltered world, you get truly honest data. These are, as Jesse Gross of Semphonic put it, unsampled, unsimplified, real-world totals. How many marketers have yearned to be a fly on the wall, gaining real insight into the perception of their product? Sally Falkow pointed out that while that used to be a dream, it's now a standard and fundamental tool at our disposal.

Transparency = Authenticity

The social landscape has no hiding and no gatekeeping. There exists unfettered creativity, constant interaction and complete visibility. Not only do mistakes and issues refuse to be buried, they are frequently propelled to viral fame. People love to promote inspiration and discourage deception. En masse via social media, they have the power to do both.

To encourage a positive response, initiate a positive emotion. To dispel disparaging accusations, admit wrongdoing and offer to make amends. Don't deny or deflect, because authenticity earns respect, not avoidance. The consumer holds grudges, and is pretty damn wary of being deceived.

We're Not Kidding Around Anymore

The truth is, the Internet is social by nature. Whatever persona we thought this phenomenon would embody, that's where it has gone. Social interaction is woven into the technology, as it serves to provide worldwide connectivity. Policing connectivity by attaching each interaction to a real, live person is what social media does. That has the added bonus of making each interaction valuable and measurable, rather than ambiguous or distant (like an impression or a visitor).  Like the average social media user, responding to your emotions is not only innate, but useful. Merging intuition with data should make for a pretty effective combination.

About the Author

Matt traveled here from the 1950's in a time machine made from an old jukebox, and now spends his days staring in wonder at all of the awe-inspiring innovations that clutter the digital age.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com