How are customers using the Web to make their buying choices? That’s the key question in a new report from Oracle.
The report, entitled The Connected Customer 2012: Evolving Behavior Patterns, was based on an online survey conducted in April by Oracle Retail’s E-Tailing Group. The aim was to examine consumer browsing and buying behavior across Net, mobile, social and cross-channel options. It included responses from 1,033 consumers who shopped online four or more times in the past year. The report focused on respondents who owned smartphones and/or tablets.
Shopping in a Multi-Channel Environment
The report found that determining the path buyers are taking requires more research than it used to, because consumers have access to an ever-increasing number of device and channel options. Shopping within a multi-channel environment is becoming the norm with these buyers, the report found. Smartphones and tablets are increasingly part of the “shopper’s arsenal,” although device choice depends on need, timing and location.
Buyers are becoming much more accustomed to making online price comparisons, because of the increasing convenience in doing so. They also demand comprehensive product information along with education about a product category before making their buying decisions.
The top reasons for shopping online include:
More opportunities to research products (81 percent)
The opportunity to comparison shop (81 percent)
The ability to shop more conveniently (77 percent)
Buy Online, Follow Up in Store
Although more than half of respondents said they like to shop on the internet because it is less expensive, physical stores clearly fit into connected buyers’ shopping strategy. Nearly half, (48 percent) said that they often research online but follow up with a store visit. For a substantial number of respondents, in-store advantages include getting the best fit on clothing, touching and feeling the product, interacting with a “savvy store associate” and the ability to obtain a product right away rather than waiting for it to arrive.
Among the Oracle report's recommendations for both e-Commerce retailers and those who run physical stores, were:
Building a "comprehensive shopping experience" with all the information needed to make a sale
Using category-centric content — such as videos or how-to instructions — to engage customers
Making sure the shopping experience includes strong imagery, supporting copy and the introduction of social elements.
The takeaway for retailers: soon, pretty much every customer will be an educated consumer thanks to their smartphones, tablets and the number of channels available to them. Engage them — with information, social media outreach and a comprehensive shopping experience.
As an increasing number of tablets make their way into the enterprise, and as companies scramble to establish BYOD policies, there remains an important question: is anyone making an effort to train the users about the proper use of their devices? The folks at the SAVO Group were also curious about this.
Tablets - Training = Angry Birds (and Bosses)
SAVO Group cites a study conducted by the Sales Management Association (SMA), "Mobility: Where Your Sales Force is Heading (With or Without You)". The study found that among the 26 percent of participants who reported their organizations are providing tablets for sales representatives and the 43 percent who said their organization supported the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, an overwhelming 67 percent are not being trained on best practices for utilizing the tablet during customer interaction.
The study also revealed that respondents were using tablets for communication, web access and social media applications rather than customer presentations or CRM applications. In the absence of formal training and policies, tablets are quickly becoming a costly investment in email, social networking — and no doubt, Angry Bird tournaments — for sales representatives.
Adopt an Effective Tablet Strategy
What can you do to ensure that some enterprise tablet users don’t disrupt your organization? SAVO Group recommends having a clear adoption strategy, prior to deployment, noting that it should include training those who will using tablets for specific purposes related to sales, inventory or customer service. Not only will this serve to increase adoption, but ultimately, it can also help to drive revenue growth.
Organizations should also consider aligning their applications with a sales process and distributing well-defined usage goals. This is particularly important as 77 percent of those surveyed mentioned their desire to include sales process integration with their iPad adoption. Participants also weighed in on the types of tablet applications that would make them valuable for sales representatives. Most often mentioned were apps that included:
Access to approved corporate materials (74 percent)
Virtual white boarding (74 percent)
Multimedia applications (69 percent)
Webcast hosting (63 percent)
While there is a strong feeling in the industry that tablets won't be replacing laptops anytime soon, it's clear that they can play a role in the enterprise — provided they don’t compromise your security or complicate tasks. But like any emerging technology, it’s important to educate and promote awareness about how to use it so that it becomes an empowering tool — not a disruptive one.
A recent set of experiences at work has led me to ponder the question: can you move your intranet to the cloud?
The answer it would appear is that often given by consultants: "yes, but it depends!"
So what does it depend on? Well, let's investigate some of the variables.
What and Why ?
The first thing to consider is what is your definition of "cloud"? I am not going to be purist about this. Whether it's a "true" multi-tenant public cloud, hosted managed services or even a corporate private cloud, what I am really looking for here is removing the technology stack from my data center / LAN and thus potentially supporting the stack, and even developing for it using staff who aren't on my organization's core payroll.
This diagram is courtesy of Sam Johnston via Wikipedia (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike V3.0)
I will be a little more proscriptive in defining the technology stack. In essence, what I am looking for is a Web CMS for the core information publishing function on an intranet. Whether you prefer the term Digital Workplace, Intranet Ecosystem or some other label, when it comes down to it there are many cloud based solutions for content centric collaboration or social collaboration.
However, apparently there are far fewer alternatives for that good old fashioned core intranet use case of content publishing, or portal development and not every organization is culturally mature enough yet to move to a social platform (e.g. Jive) as their intranet solution.
Organizational Size
Oh yes, size does indeed appear to count! There are some excellent cloud-based or hosted intranet solutions that unfortunately just do scale to 5,000 users. For example ThoughtFarmer is an excellent "social intranet" platform which can run on site or in the cloud, but either way, the ThoughtFarmer team doesn't recommend it for more than 5,000 users.
There are other alternatives, which may serve you in the Small to Medium Enterprise space, with many “intranet in a box” offerings moving to a cloud model, and even heavy duty intranet focused CMS platforms like Ektron are doing interesting things which can include hybrid models via their Cloud Manager product.
Organizational Readiness
So how mature is your organizational culture with respect to moving data into the cloud in general? Do you have standards in place? Or do your Info Sec and Enterprise Architecture colleagues have apoplexy when you mention moving content off your network and outside of your trusty firewall?
This is potentially where the variations of public versus private cloud, versus managed hosting services etc. come into play. Risk assessment is of course the broadly scoped answer to this conundrum, for which there are many corporate or public methodologies which are beyond the scope of this article.
Potential Paths to Investigate
If you're a SharePoint house for portal, WCM and other Intranet functionality, then you can investigate their cloud offering under the Office 365 brand. There will of course be plenty of potential partners to advise you on advantages and warn you of pitfalls, but I am no Office 365 expert, and I don't like SharePoint as a Web CMS !
Two years ago, in the midst of an exhaustive federal criminal investigation into Lance Armstrong’s alleged doping and a cover-up, Fast Company explored the question, “Can Livestrong Survive Lance?” Today, that question is perhaps more poignant than ever.
This time, it's really not about the bike.
Doug Ulman
The news broke last night that Lance Armstrong will no longer contest the latest allegations of cheating throughout his cycling career, prompting the United States Anti-Doping Agency to strip him of his seven Tour de France titles. If any organization can ever be prepared for a global maelstrom of damning headlines about its founder and most public face, it’s Livestrong, the cancer-fighting foundation Armstrong established in 1997. As CEO Doug Ulman told the assembled staff at Livestrong headquarters in Austin this morning, “Ever since we’ve moved into our office three years ago, we’ve been dealing with this.”
Two years ago, in the midst of an exhaustive federal criminal investigation into Armstrong’s alleged doping and a cover-up, I explored the question, “Can Livestrong Survive Lance”? The foundation continues to capitalize on Armstrong’s celebrity while eluding his notoriety. When an Associated Press story ran at the time speculating about the foundation’s demise, Ulman gathered his staff that day in Austin and urged them not to get distracted from serving 28 million cancer survivors. That night, he followed up with an email: “People are assuming we will fail to fulfill our mission…They don’t know the power of 28 million people.”
This morning, Ulman says, he told the team, “The mission of the organization and what Lance created will win out. That’s what I firmly believe.”
In February, the feds dropped their case against Armstrong. But the USADA promptly launched its own inquiry. If anyone was hoping for a nice tidy ending to the whole did-he-or-didn’t-he matter, today’s news isn’t it. Armstrong isn’t admitting anything. He’s his usual defiant self. He calls the USADA’s case “an unconstitutional witch hunt” and says, “I am finished with this nonsense.” His statement, which goes on at length about the USADA’s conduct, follows a judge’s decision last week to dismiss Armstrong’s suit against the agency. The judge, however, was critical of the USADA’s methods.
So far the public reaction is similar to that during the federal investigation. “I think most people have made up their minds,” says Ulman. Armstrong remains a polarizing figure, who divides people primarily into three camps:
The defenders cite years of clean drug tests and question the point of investigating a retired cyclist.
Yes! This doping charge is bull. RT @fastcompany: Do you think Livestrong can survive Lance Armstrong? @chucksalter wants to hear from you.— Alisha Dixon (@dixonsd) August 24, 2012
@chucksalter They have hunted Lance since 99 win despite 100s of tests, why must witnesses b bribed w/ immunity? Why destroy a hero?— RK Stewart (@rksfaia) August 24, 2012
The critics say Armstrong is a masterful liar and media manipulator who uses his foundation to burnish his image and distract from his crimes.
I came to the realization Lance Armstrong was a complete fraud and cheat 5 yrs ago. Evidence was too strong against him.— Laura722 (@Laura722) August 24, 2012
And the cancer sufferers, survivors and advocates couldn’t care less about his cycling career and what he did or didn’t do.
@chucksalter Doing good (making an impact) for humanity is greater than anything that may happen in a sport#livestrong #survivor— Santiago Dietrich (@SantiagoD3) August 24, 2012
As I saw in 2010 when I visited a cancer ward in Philadelphia with Armstrong, what matters to the cancer community is his recovery. He’s a living, breathing miracle--a survivor--a powerful symbol of hope. As John Seffin, the CEO of the American Red Cross Society, a Livestrong partner, told me then, Armstrong is “the most famous cancer survivor in the world.”
For years Livestrong’s biggest asset has also been its biggest risk. Would Armstrong’s tribulations sully the foundation and undermine its good work? Livestrong has endured by identifying itself with a larger mission than his specific cancer. It adopted the name Livestrong in 2004 to replace the Lance Armstrong Foundation. It developed a survivor care hotline as a first-stop resource for anyone affected by cancer; a walk-in clinic in Austin; a service connecting patients with the latest drug trials. It created an exercise program for survivors at the YMCA and a school curriculum to educate kids about the disease.
Ulman and his staff identify holes in the cancer care community. For the most part, it leaves traditional fundraising for research to other groups, preferring to try new things such as a campaign to reduce the stigma of cancer in Mexico and a behind-the-scenes push at the U.N. to make cancer, the world’s deadliest disease, more of a global health priority.
What began as a foundation to promote testicular cancer awareness has become the most entrepreneurial cancer outfit around. It serves more than 400,000 people a year through its various programs. Of the more than 50 people I interviewed for my original story, none believed that the worst case scenario then, a conviction and possible jail time for Armstrong, would destroy Livestrong. The organization has become too personal and too grassroots. It’s about their cancer, their fight, their story.
Lance Armstrong
There’s a lesson here for any organization associated with a charismatic or controversial leader. In a sense, it has to outgrow him or her to become a sustainable organization. Apple’s trying to do this without the late Steve Jobs. On the flipside, Susan G. Komen is trying to recover from the wake of the Planned Parenthood fiasco.
Livestrong will continue doing this in its latest test. Through July, the number of individual donations was up 15%. For now, Ulman will be watching that number daily, instead of weekly. “Our supporters have grown not numb to it, but they accepted it as a cloud sitting over us,” he says of the accusations. “I think they’re relieved to move on. It’s time to focus on more important things.”
When Ulman got to work today, he thought about something he'd read in the paper: “This will just devastate them.” It’s a clip from a story two years ago about how the federal investigation would affect the foundation. Ulman, a three-time cancer survivor, has it displayed on his desk. He loves proving the prediction wrong day after day, year after year. He isn't planning to take it down.
Everyone wants to believe that there is a single bullet solution to solve all SharePoint problems. While the answers are never that simple, the starting point is: asking the question "why?"
Ant Clay, Founder and CEO of Soulsailor Consulting Ltd, is one of a new breed of SharePoint business technology consultants. Known to ask clients repeatedly “Why?” until they breakdown and admit “they just don’t know,” we thought we'd turn the tables on him to ask a few questions about SharePoint, governance and the upcoming release of SharePoint 2013.
Question: What do think is SharePoint 2010’s strongest capability? Why?
Ant Clay: SharePoint 2010’s strongest capability is probably its downfall for most organizations and that is its “flexibility.” With a good SharePoint business consultant, developer, designer and architect you can create pretty much any awesome business functionality you want.
Being more specific, what I love about SharePoint 2010 when compared to previous versions and other platforms is Managed Metadata. I love having the ability to use both a formal structured taxonomy as well as a folksonomy and even promote items from the folksonomy into the structured taxonomy.
The real benefits for customers I think is that this opens up a world of being able to present contextual information (knowledge, people, content and actionable activities) based on who you are, preferences, where you are in the solution and what you are doing. Definitely an area that can deliver significant business value to both organizations and individuals alike.
Q: When it comes to implementing SharePoint, where do most organizations go wrong? Is it more about a good Info Architecture or a strong governance strategy?
AC: I think, actually that’s not true, I know that most organizations go wrong with SharePoint by focusing their time and efforts on what is complicated, but not truly complex and that is the technology implementation. There is a common tendency to not consider the following four areas which I see as being of utmost importance for success and business value:
SharePoint Vision/Strategy
Business Alignment
Holistic Governance Approach
Change Management.
The reality is that SharePoint projects are in essence people projects and therefore are not straightforward — we need to deal with this complexity and best practices just don’t cut it.
I see Information Architecture as a small but very important part of Information Governance which again is just a single “wave” in what I refer to as “The Waves of SharePoint Governance” which covers a range of areas key to good governance.
So to answer your question I see that Governance is most important, but that contains a number of elements that all need to be addressed holistically.
Q: Speaking of governance, what is the first thing an organization should consider when creating their SharePoint governance strategy? Is there a one size fits all approach to SharePoint governance?
AC: The first thing is not to kill too many trees! :) Seriously the amount of governance documents that are 10’s if not 100’s of pages long that get printed, never read and left gathering dust is amazing.
The first thing to consider about SharePoint Governance has nothing to do with governance at all, it’s understanding the platform or project's vision, its “why?” or the difference it is going to make for the organization. If you have within the project team and across the organization a shared understanding and shared commitment to that “why” then governance becomes that much easier.
There isn’t a one-size fits all approach to SharePoint Governance in my mind, but there are two focal points:
What it is
How to apply it
“What it is” refers to the governance framework that you adopt. There are lots out there, but I would recommend people adopt one that isn’t technology focused and leads with the business; I’ve developed a framework “Waves of SharePoint Governance” which I’ll be writing about in more detail soon (and will form the basis of the book I am currently writing!).
Instead of dialing up our anxiety about privacy in the changing online world, we should use it as an opportunity to question and test the security of everything--driver's licenses, plastic credit cards, paper medical records.
As an engineer and a millennial who has grown up with an Internet connection, I’m constantly connected to some device. I read email while I’m running on the treadmill. I built an app that knows where you are at all times, which more than two and a half million people opted in to using. Not everyone consumes technology as voraciously as I do, but nearly half of Americans tote around smartphones. As we become more keenly aware of these phones’ ability to track our every move, strangely almost in lockstep we find that we can’t live without them.
Why do we have so much anxiety about being found when we clearly choose to be wired?
If you want to live a truly private life, ditch your mobile, disconnect your Internet, pay with only cash, get rid of your highway toll transponder, forget about loyalty cards, stop answering the census, stop answering the door, build a bunker somewhere underground in New Hampshire (live free or die), drive a pre-2005 unregistered vehicle without a GPS (or better yet, a horse without a GPS), stock up on canned goods, become extremely paranoid--and don’t forget to hide from the IRS.
Unfortunately, going all Thoreau isn’t an option for most of us, despite our desires to keep our online identities under lock and key. And as the recent epic hacking of Wired reporter Mat Honan tells us, we aren’t entirely immune.
But, all things considered, we should be far more paranoid about the real-world constructs centered around identity that we’ve failed to question for decades -- sometimes even centuries. The problem is, we’ve grown up with so many blatant divulgences of personally identifiable information that we think are completely safe.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Why don’t we question things like credit cards we carry around in our wallets that link our personal information to static and easily visible digits on a piece of plastic? We willingly hand this piece of plastic to strangers almost daily, allowing so many opportunities for massive fraud to happen. Not to mention we print our social security numbers on paper cards and sometimes even send them--unencrypted--over email.
I’d argue physical media (be it paper or plastic) is our identity’s public enemy number one. From medical records to mortgages, there’s so much paper in the world that exposes our identities to anyone who can open a folder in a filing cabinet.
To contrast, the online world that we understand considerably less is a far safer one. Technology is uprooting some of these decades-old constructs that just don’t work, and shouldn’t be status quo for our modern lives. But technological change understandably scares us, as most revolutions do.
That fear is not totally irrational. The trade-off here is one of scale of security breach. While storing your medical records on paper in a doctors office allows for easy data theft, the limit of that theft is the size of the office. It's easy to break into a doctor's office (I don't know this from experience -- promise!) but you can only get a couple hundred records. On the other hand, while digital storage is incredibly hard to break into, if you do make it in, the scale of the breach is hundreds of thousands of records.
In my opinion, this is a good tradeoff. The absolute value of data theft should decrease with intensely secure centralized storage. Yes, breaches are larger, but there are far fewer of them. The lesson here is that we need to take that natural scale of the Internet into consideration when designing systems that touch sensitive data. Encryption is critical. Human security perhaps even more so. But also old-school techniques like dividing the data across multiple systems with heterogeneous security systems and completely different architectures.
My hope is that consumers will simply be more aware of these tradeoffs. If it turns out that there is a more secure digital solution, let's analyze, optimize, then embrace it. Payments is a prime opportunity. If there isn't a better digital solution, then let's stick with the current physical solution until technology evolves to offer a better one. Driver's licenses are perhaps the most poignant example of this, and they are the last thing that still forces me to carry a wallet.
No matter what, I’m happy that we’re questioning technological changes and becoming more informed consumers. Maybe we should be using our anxiety about our changing online world as an opportunity to question everything, no matter how long we’ve managed to put up with it.
--Author Seth Priebatsch is the founder and chief ninja of LevelUp and SCVNGR.
As an increasing number of tablets make their way into the enterprise, and as companies scramble to establish BYOD policies, there remains an important question: is anyone making an effort to train the users about the proper use of their devices? The folks at the 
