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

Forrester Report Finds Enterprise Embracing Open Source WCM

Cloud services provider Acquia has commissioned a Forrester report on open source WCM, and while the results are not overwhelming, it does show more enterprise companies are employing open source systems.

Nearly 60 percent of the 160 companies surveyed said they had at least considered open source for their WCM programs. The report also found that executives who make these kind of decisions are also the ones who are least likely to be very satisfied with their choice. 

Open Source Successes

Acquia certainly has a stake in the findings in this report. As a cloud services provider specifically for the open source Drupal ecosystem, Acquia would love to see more large companies adopt the open source ethos. Forrester found several large vendors who have successfully adopted open source CMSs, and there were a few reasons why those companies enjoyed that success.

Company infighting seems to be what is holding enterprises back when it comes to successful WCM implementation.

Company culture and classic marketing versus IT fighting may be the biggest reasons businesses failed to implement a new Web CMS, but let's look more closely at the number two reason: lack of a company wide strategy. This obviously goes hand in hand with number one, but at least Forrester has some recommendations for how to build that strategy. They are, in order:

• Required a solution that allowed for more customization and flexibility.
• Prioritized integration between WCM and other solutions to support digital customer experiences.
• Focused on more than just cost reduction.
• Made specific plans for supporting the open source WCM deployment.
• Understood the myths and reality surrounding open source security concerns.

First, most companies agreed that open source allowed for more flexibility and customization. One survey respondant, a UK educational institution, told Forrester that when using a proprietary system, it took nine to 10 months to add a new feature. With open source, they were able to add functionality within days.

As for combining systems, the all-in-one solutions often offered by vendors does not seem to fit with those companies who had adopted open source. These companies preferred a best of breed approach, and often realized the power of the developer community to assemble system components.

How to Choose an Open Source Web CMS

If you've been skeptical of open source in the past, you have nothing to fear from what Forrester says:

Open source has by and large achieved a higher level of technology maturity over the past several years and have demonstrated some success in large-scale web deployments."

It's not just entertainment, media and traditional education that are finding success with open source, the report reads. Governments, pharma and retail are having success with it as well, a sure sign it should not be excluded when evaluating Web CMSs.

Because open source allows for downloading entire systems for test driving, this is a decided advantage when doing an evaluation. Be sure to try out those prospective systems and contact the developer community for extra insight and validation.

Open source is not perfect, of course, so areas like support and implementation should be explored carefully. There are developers and system experts out there who have built networks on top of open source software. That way, many IT aspects can be outsourced including core platform support, module support, module creation and enhancement, system upgrades, integrations and 24 x 7 x 365 infrastructure and uptime.

Acquia, of course, offers just these kinds of services for the Drupal-based platform. The company has even begun diving into digital marketing with its latest release, called OpenWEM. Tell us in the comments if you've had reservations about open source in the past or if there are some concrete reasons it simply won't work for your purposes.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Preparing for Social Media Collection and Preservation in e-Discovery

Recently the eDJ Group, a leading e-Discovery research and analyst firm released a report about social media as it relates to legal discovery. In it, they make it very clear to companies of all sizes that there’s no excuse for not managing and preserving social media content for compliance and litigation purposes.

Keeping Up with Social Media

Seven years after social media became mainstream, more and more businesses have adopted, embraced or otherwise accepted its presence into their marketing strategies. But many more companies haven’t begun to address it as part of a holistic e-Discovery strategy.

For some, they waited to see how others addressed it; for others, social media was a fad that didn’t warrant additional concern. However, as social media has become an accepted marketing and customer service channel, organizations are struggling to get caught up thanks to regulatory standards put into place by FINRA and the SEC.

Elements of a Social Media Governance Policy

There are many ways companies can effectively integrate social media governance policies. Previously we’ve outlined 9 Steps to Developing a Repeatable Social Media Litigation Readiness Plan. In the eDJ Group report, they encourage companies to be specific when designing their policy. It’s simply not enough to advise employees not to post company information on social media sites; rather it’s more important to outline particular types of information that cannot be shared or posted, like trade secrets, earning reports and other sensitive and proprietary information.

The report also recommends including the following elements in your organization’s social media policy:

• Guidance on acceptable use of company social media profiles for personal reasons
• Clear rules on whether and how employees can use company intellectual property in personal usage of social media
• Prohibition of disclosure of confidential information
• Ramifications for policy violations

There's No Such Thing as Privacy

While having a social media policy tailored specifically for your organization, its employees and socially acceptable behaviors is important, it’s also necessary to understand the legal implications of the privacy expectations of the major social media networks. The report cautions that many of these sites have “crafted policies in such a way as to allow discovery of information to happen should law enforcement or the Courts require.”

The report outlines the policies of some of the major social media publishers as they relate to eDiscovery:

What does this mean exactly for your organization? It means that information is not as private as users might think it is and it can be much easier to collect as well. It means that if a company does not proactively retain social media content, it can still be accessible.

Define, Collect, & Preserve

Ultimately, the report serves to remind us that there is much more to social media than sharing of information. The preservation of information shared is also a key component that companies must also prepare for. Much like anything for which a company must develop a strategy, it’s critical to define requirements based on what’s relevant to its culture and the regulatory standards of the industry. In order to determine what method to use for social media collection and preservation, companies must first answer several questions so as to define requirements, such as: 

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Adobe's Global Digital Advertising Update Sees Increase in Social Engagement and Mobile Traffic

Adobe has released their Q3 2012 Global Digital Index Report, which analyzes and reports the findings on social engagement and paid searches.

Adobe is pretty focused on the customer experience. The provider of digital marketing solutions conducts a lot of research into trends in its industry. In August we saw research pointing to the growth of mobile for online shopping.

Now we dig deeper into the what's happening in the digital advertising industry today and where it is headed next year. The data in this report (Q3 2012 Digital Advertising Update) came from over 260 billion impressions for 338 companies and the activity of 70 million fans — taken from Adobe AdLens and Adobe Social.

Search Trends

Web traffic has started to shift in more of mobile route with the increase of smartphones and tablets. At the same time, search spend is also increasing in the US, UK and Germany, despite a bad economy, demonstrating how important search still is in the marketers arsenal of advertising tools.

ROI and Spend

• Searches and ROI has been growing in the U.K, U.S and Germany over the past year. In the US search spend was up by 11 percent, and ROI improved by 26 percent. In the UK and Germany spend was up by 36 percent and 25 percent, respectively, YoY.
• The percentages that were related to specific search engines in the last quarter didn’t change much. Bing/Yahoo! increased by one per cent, while Google declined by one per cent.

Click Volume and CPC

• Click volume had a surge of activity over the last quarter. Google, which was down in the last quarter has slowly been improving. Their average for this quarter was up 21 percent YoY, while Bing/Yahoo decreased to 11 percent YoY.
• Google CPCs were down 10% YoY, and the report points to the increase in mobile clicks as part of the reason for this.

Mobile Devices

Overall search spend has increased across all devices, but conversion rates, CPCs and ROI varies widely. Conversion rates vary by device and OS, with iOS nearly double those of Android. This supports the idea that marketers need to organize their search spend differently across devices.

Social Engagement

Facebook has become a key source for companies to spread their brand. According to the advertising update, engagement, which is defined as likes, comments and shares, on the social network grew about 896 percent YOY. It was determined that increased engagement is partly a result of platform updates (specifically Timeline), new metrics for acquisition and engagement, and more effective social marketing. 

Forecasting Search

Adobe is expecting search to have a strong retail season, with a prediction of 15-20% growth in both the US and Europe. It also expects CPCs to increase due to the holiday season and to Google Shopping transitioning to a paid model. Paid search clicks are also expected to continue to increase from mobile devices (smartphone or tablet). And finally, expect that Facebook advertising will grow.

Report Conclusions

• Social Engagement is becoming a key and valuable tool that should be used when marketing a product to a general or specific audience.
• Search should also continue to be part of the marketing tool set as it continues to grow, especially on mobile devices.
• Marketers should spend time forming a plan on how to make search spend part of their tool set, as it is becoming important to digital marketing. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Report: Amazon Bargaining for Texas Instrument’s Mobile Chip Branch

Is Amazon negotiating to buy Texas Instruments's (TI) mobile chip operation? A new report says it is.

The report, from the Hebrew-language publication Calcalist, remains unconfirmed by either company, but it would mesh with TI’s recent announcement that it will concentrate on embedded platforms such as cars, and reduce its involvement in OMAP chips for smartphones and tablets.

Billions of Dollars

TI announced in late September that it would “reduce R&D expenditures” on the OMAP system-on-a-chip (SoC) used in a wide variety of tablets, including Amazon’s, and smartphones. Observers interpreted the announcement to mean that TI was leaving the mobile chip business, even as Intel has ramped up its investment in that market. The OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) chip was developed by TI.

The Calcalist report was authored by Assaf Gilad, who had been the first to report that Apple was interested in buying Anobit, a Israeli flash storage company. The technology giant did buy that company early this year, for about US$ 390 million.

If Amazon does buy TI’s chip business, it would gain greater control over the mobile destiny of its Kindle Fire tablets — and for smartphones that it might be developing. Samsung Electronics makes its own mobile chips, and currently manufactures Apple’s mobile chips, mostly based on Apple designs. However, Apple and Samsung are engaged in a worldwide patent war, and there have been numerous reports that Apple intends to take its chip manufacturing business elsewhere.

On the other hand, the deal would likely cost Amazon billions of dollars for a stake in a highly competitive chip industry, where smaller chip makers are struggling. It would also turn the virtual retailer’s focus more toward hardware.

Nook’s Vulnerability

The competitors who could benefit from TI’s move include Samsung, which, according to some estimates, could reach a 50 percent share of the OMAP SoC application processor market if TI’s operation is sold. Other beneficiaries could include Qualcomm and Nvidia, which together represent as much as 35 percent of the market. TI’s share had been in the 15 to 20 percent range.

One big competitive question is how this might affect Intel, which has said it will ship a dual core, Atom-based SoC before 2013.

The other big competitor impact could be on Barnes & Noble, which uses TI chips for its Nook tablets and e-readers. At the very least, having the Nook’s processor brains dependent on the chip subsidiary of its key competitor could put Barnes & Noble in a weakened bargaining and strategic position — and lead it to find another chip maker.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Amazon In Running For Texas Instruments' Chip Division

A report on an Israeli website claims that Amazon is in serious negotiations to buy Texas Instruments' mobile chip division. The firm announced last month that it was doing away with its chip operations and instead focusing on embedded platforms. It's a logical step forward for the online retail giant with a sideline in hardware, as it means that Amazon will have direct influence on what goes into its Kindles, and, perhaps, its future smartphones.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Oracle Report: Buyer Choices Depend on Device, Channels

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.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester: Global Proceses for a Local Customer Experience

Managing customer experiences for any enterprise is a difficult task — and when customers are spread globally across numerous countries and languages, the difficulties are even greater. However, according to a new report from Forrester and sponsored by SDL, these problems can be resolved.

Planning is the Key to Successful Strategy

Like everything in IT, the key to resolving these issues is planning: first, identifying exactly what the problems are and second, developing a strategy to resolve those issues without too much disruption.

The paper's starting point is that because of the rapid development of new and (literally) far-reaching technologies, enterprises are facing the problem of having to manage customer experience in places and cultures that are unfamiliar to them.

This is clearly a problem. But it would be possible to argue that it is one that has always existed — and the real issue is that customers expect a lot more these days due to the development of CXM technologies.

But that’s a discussion for another day. According to the Forrester white paper  "Global Processes Help To Deliver Local Customer Experiences,"  the globalization of products and the increasing difficulty in distinguishing different brands of the same product has led to one real differentiator for enterprises — the quality of the customer experience they deliver.

The report also states that distinguishing different brands will be even harder in the future, as the widespread use of digital technologies will make customers more aware of the global landscape and give them higher expectations.

Connecting with Global, Local Customers

The development of global markets now requires that enterprises not only make physical in-roads into each market, but also that they provide a relevant customer experience in each market.

Localization has been an IT discipline for years, but the wider the market — and the further the reach of the company — the more difficult it is to do. Forrester suggests a framework for putting a plan into place:

1. Local brands, local CXM strategy: Recognize that customer experience is the customers' perception of the way they see themselves interacting with a company. It is local by definition.
2. Developing clear understanding of the local customer base: This is almost Marketing 101, but it basically means getting to know your local markets by understanding what the customers are thinking. Social media analysis might be considered a good example of this.
3. Experiences relevant to local market: From the research into customer wants and needs, enterprises should develop local solutions — and translate insights into local action.
4. Governance: Companies need to develop the best processes and practices, and apply them to local markets.
5. Metrics: Enterprises need to have a collection of global metrics to compare results of initiatives across markets, and measuring the success of regional and local campaigns.
6. Customer-centric culture: The key to a successful customer experience strategy and culture is putting the customer at the center of it. This can be achieved by hiring practices, socialization of customer experience strategies and a rewards system.

While the report suggests that companies need to rethink their approach, it would probably be more accurate to suggest that companies need to check that their approach has not deviated from the right path.

Many companies already have mature and developed global CXM strategies. But there is always room for improvement, especially as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries are generally regarded as displaying the most growth potential in the medium term.

In all five BRICS countries there are radically different regional considerations that need to be taken into account. But it is important to remember that each country has within it distinct local markets to be considered as well.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Report: Canada's Online Ad Industry Had a Good 2011

O Canada! That’s the refrain from the online advertising industry, following the release of a report showing that its Canadian revenues rose 16 percent last year compared to 2010.

The annual report, "The Canadian Online Advertising Revenue Survey", was conducted by Ernst & Young for the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB Canada). One of its most notable findings was that French language online ad revenues rose 14 percent and constituted 19 percent of total Canadian online revenues in 2011.

Cdn Online Advertising to Grow 10% This Year

Forecasts indicate that the industry should grow by another 10 percent this year, to a total of CDN$ 2.844 billion, including French language ads.

The report noted that even as the pie is growing larger, consolidation among online publishers in Canada has resulted in the top 10 earners taking 84 percent of all online ad revenues, an increase of 3 percent from 2010. The top 20 earners accounted for 90 percent, also a 3 percent increase.

Search and display ads both grew, with search up 19 percent to nearly CDN$ 1.1 billion and display up 22 percent to CDN$ 840 million. Classified/Directories dropped slightly, down 2 percent from 2010. Online video continues its boom — online video ads grew a whopping 96 percent from the previous year.

Automotive continues as the largest category by revenue, accounting for 15 percent of the total — an increase of 3 percent. Packaged goods (12 percent) and financial services (10 percent) took the second and third spots.

Mining Data for Opportunities

By comparison, TV ads in Canada increased by only 5 percent and radio by 4 percent, while newspapers dropped 6 percent. Overall, online ads in Canada now represent a 21.7 percent share of the entire advertising market by revenue.

Challenges facing the industry include competition from social networks, ad agency emphasis on performance-based pricing and downward pressure on display CPMs. The continued growth of automated buying demand-side platforms has had a significant impact on display CPMs.

The report highlighted the need for “a more compelling rationale” for premium inventory management strategies by online publishers and for “more intelligently” mined audience and usage data that will identify content opportunities (check out :Are Your Digital Analytics Action-packed or Action-less?). The report also highlighted a need for multi-platform media owners to work with production teams who can support a high level of integrated ads while controlling costs.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Wave: Enterprises Concerned Over Cloud-Based Collaboration Feasibility

There are a number of surprising takeaways from a new Forrester Wave report that should force many collaboration vendors to think through their development strategies twice. Not least of these is that despite all the progress that has been made, many IT leaders are still questioning the feasibility of cloud-based collaboration tools.

Cloud-based Online Collaboration

The report, Forrester Wave: Cloud Strategies Of Online Collaboration Software Vendors, Q3 2012, is based on research compiled by TJ Keitt and is the result of surveys sent to 2,438 IT executives and technology decision-makers located in Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US working in everything from SMBs to large enterprises.

It identified what Forrester describes as eight significant collaboration services providers — Box, Cisco Systems, Citrix Online, Google, IBM, Microsoft, salesforce.com, and Yammer — that were scored on over 38 criteria.

Today we will look at some of the issues that this evaluation raised, while tomorrow we will look at the five companies that made it into the Leader’s segment of the Wave.

Forrester Wave Online Collaboration: Vendors included in the Wave
 

Before looking at it in detail, there are three main takeaways from the study that put the entire body of research in perspective. They include:

1. Business Agility

To address business problems enterprises must partner with a number of external groups outside the firewall. Cloud-based collaboration tools can be delivered to both PCs and mobile devices and enables the free flow of information.

2. Cloud-based Collaboration Feasibility

Despite the massive strides in security and compliance and the fact that more than half plan to use online collaboration tools in the next two years, many IT leaders still don’t trust online services.

3. Vendors Reassure IT leaders

Following on from this, then, it makes sense that successful vendors in this space are those that can reassure businesses around these issues. Successful vendors in this space will be able to provide the flexibility enterprises require to achieve business goals.

Online Collaboration Appeals

While there is considerable competition in the online collaboration market, Forrester says that the rush to get products to the market is not vendors trying to one-up each other, but reflects a very real and expanded demand for products. More than half of enterprises survey said that they are or will be using SaaS collaboration technologies in the next two years. Business leaders believe SaaS offerings will offer them the following advantages:

Responsiveness

Customers that are increasingly informed and empowered can force an enterprise to change its strategy to suit. Business leaders believe that they will be able to respond to this with technologies that enable easy information flow, and a space outside the firewall where the enterprise can collaborate effectively with clients.

Feature Upgrades

Traditional on-premises software that depends on a three-to-five year refresh cycle prevents enterprises from changing and upgrading outdated software. Online services update themselves, a factor that was mentioned by 60% of those in the survey.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

IBM May Be Interested in RIM's Enterprise Business

Both Reuters and Bloomberg report that IBM is considering a bid for the enterprise division of Research in Motion (RIM). Is it true?

RIM's Enterprise Business

According to Bloomberg, citing two unnamed sources, IBM has made an informal approach to RIM to buy out the enterprise business that currently runs the servers RIM uses to support BlackBerrry email and messaging services.

While the Bloomberg report adds that no formal talks are underway at the moment, it does say that a review of operations instigated by the new CEO Thorsten Heins, and to be carried out by a bunch of bankers, could see it selling parts of it technology portfolio, or entering into technology partnerships where beneficial.

Also of note is that Bloomberg has also said that the same sources say that so far on one has come forward to buy the phone business, or the company, for that matter.

RIM's Steep Downturn

Incredible though it may seem, it wasn’t Apple, or even Google with Android that invented mobile email; it was RIM with BlackBerrry.

However, it is struggling as both Android and iOS now dominate the market.

RIM's share of the global smartphone market fell to 4.8 percent in the second quarter of this year from 12 percent a year earlier as Android climbed to 68 percent and Apple slipped to 17 percent, according to research firm IDC.

The result, Bloomberg says, is that  that over the last year, RIM has lost 70% of its market capitalization.

RIM Sells NewBay

Also a possibility in this review could be the sale of NewBay, the Irish-based company that RIM paid US$ 100 million for in 2011.

The move was seen at the time as a late, but timely, move by RIM into cloud services. NewBay should have fit in nicely with RIM, providing video and social networking tools for smartphones (and computers) and was seen as a key to shoring up RIM’s failing fortunes.

When RIM bought it in October of that year NewBay had over 80 million subscribers and could deliver any media stored on its services to any mobile device.

The thinking was that with NewBay, RIM would create a new business segment and boost its offerings, not to mention revenues.The proposed sale would also fit in with the sale earlier in the year of Alt-N Technologies the email services provider, which it acquired in 2009.

Instead, it seems now that Heins is focusing on delivering new range of devices that will run on RIM’s BB10 operating system, in the first quarter of 2013.

IBM Plus RIM Services?

As to what IBM might get out of it, it is hard to gauge at the moment and can’t be gauged until such a point as a deal is reached and the terms have been released.

However, the enterprise business would enable IBM to add mobile services to its already extensive service offerings to large enterprises. It could also add a substantial boost to its Global Services group that pulls in half of the company’s total revenue.

And then IBM is also one of the few companies that could actually afford the price tag, which has been estimated to be worth between US$ 1.5 billion and US$ 2.5 billion, depending on who you talk to.

In addition to this, IBM is still buying all around it; since the beginning of this year it has already closed five acquisitions and still has a very deep war chest for other acquisitions.

It is not clear when a decision, if any, on this deal will be announced, or confirmed, and both companies have denied there's anything going on at all.

But as soon as something happens, we’ll let you know.

 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Altimeter: Content Marketing is Key to Converged Media Imperative

This year “convergence” is becoming much more than just a buzzword, particularly in the world of content marketing. As a recent report from Altimeter Group explains, three previously distinct channels are now merging to produce increasingly necessary hybrids.

The Media Trifecta

The report, “The Converged Media Imperative: How Brands Must Combine Paid, Owned, and Earned Media,” begins by defining these channels as they were originally known:

• Paid Media: display or broadcast advertising that requires a media buy, including banner ads, pay-per-click search ads, advertorials and sponsored links.
• Owned Media: content assets a brand either owns or wholly controls, such as websites, branded blogs, social media profiles, videos, etc.
• Earned Media: content that is user-generated and/or user-shared, including Tweets, Facebook updates, shares, reviews and comments made in open forums. “Another component of earned media is mentions in media or on social channels that are the result of PR or media relations,” reads the report. “For brands, earned media is the most elusive and difficult of the three channels; while it can be influenced, it cannot be directly controlled.”

The intermingling of these three approaches (illustrated in Altimeter’s graphic below) has been a natural result of digital marketing, as well as the growing levels of consumer connectivity. For example: paid advertising frequently incorporates social network-based conversations, or is re-fitted into the brand’s owned media, such as YouTube channels, for an extended shelf life. Meanwhile, owned media, such as a brand’s blog post, is now fed through social networks, often resulting in the generation of earned/shared media in the form of engagement.

“All channels work in concert, enabling brands to reach customers exactly where, how, and when they want, regardless of channel, medium, or device, online or offline,” explains the report. “With the customer journey between devices, channels, and media becoming increasingly complex, and new forms of technology only making it more so, this strategy of paid/owned/earned confluence makes marketers impervious to the disruption caused by emerging technologies.”

Strategies to Live By

But however natural, marketers are still struggling to harness the disruption this convergence has caused to their still segmented workflow. After all, brands have traditionally been organized into marketing subgroups of different territories and mindsets — not to mention departmental silos and disparate tool usage as well.

The report offers software vendors strategies for overcoming these related obstacles, including highly useful insight for planning:

• Overview and forecast of converged media landscape
• Converged media strategy checklist
• Leading vendor comparisons (including Adobe, IBM, Google, Salesforce and Oracle)
• Leveraging influencers throughout POE
• Converged media campaign case studies

Content Marketing Mayhem

All in all, Altimeter has recognized content marketing as today’s key to business success. As brands of all types continue to extend their feelers into the world of publishing, this will only prove to be more true, and a well defined strategy will be required to inspire communities to share and thereby prolong the life of that messaging.

"Preparing for Paid, Owned and Earned integration is not just a demand of present reality, but an inevitable necessity of the future of marketing, advertising, and communications,” reads the report in closing.

How are you currently managing Paid, Owned and Earned (POE)? Let’s start a conversation in the comment section below.

Editor's Note: To read more of Chelsi's thoughts on content marketing:

— Word of Mouth: Content Marketers' New Best Friend

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Report Says Think Customer Engagement Not Marketing Campaigns

Multichannel marketing has now become common. That’s one of the conclusions of a new report from Forrester, about marketing in the age of multiple ways to reach the customer.

The report, entitled The Multichannel Maturity Mandate, was commissioned by Sitecore, a provider of software for web content management and customer engagement.

Mature Practitioners in Multichannel Marketing

It found that 40 percent of survey respondents assessed themselves as being “mature practitioners” of marketing for multiple channels, and another 40 percent self-described as transitional. About 5 percent reported they had no plans to undertake multichannel marketing.

Mature multichannel marketers reported that they aggressively adopted new technologies, are more inclined to work with IT, and work more collaboratively with sales departments in setting goals.

The report recommends that companies “create a culture that worships customer knowledge,” and that marketers stop thinking about campaigns and start thinking about customer engagement. Toward that end, Forrester suggests a company’s website be transformed into a “pervasive customer engagement hub,” and that a company’s technical infrastructure be developed, alongside a trusted IT advisor.

Finally, the report said, companies need to embrace change management and choose outside technology partners who can immediately help deliver short-term gains.

Key Impediments to Multichannel Marketing

The study found that key impediments toward making multichannel marketing a greater priority included a lack of knowledge and skills, and a dependence on the skills of external marketing partners. For mature practitioners, the key areas for improvement were a greater integration between various marketing processes, often supported by new technologies.

The report found that a multichannel approach was needed to reach most customers at the touchpoints when they are open to marketing. These include discovering, searching, researching, sharing, getting help, evangelizing, using, deciding, suggesting to a friend, and, of course, purchasing.

Several benefits were cited as resulting from multichannel marketing. These include a 15 percent increase in impressions for 48 percent of respondents, and a 15 percent increase in customer satisfaction for 43 percent. Twenty-four percent found that sales cycle times were reduced by more than 15 percent.

Another benefit was in the performance of digital marketing campaigns by such metrics as improved clicks, conversion rates and customer engagement.

A revenue increase of more than 15 percent was reported by forty percent of mature multichannel marketers, and 60 percent said they had an increase of more than 10 percent in return-on-marketing investment. Other benefits include increased alignment between sales and marketing.

The study utilized an online survey of 226 organizations in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Scandinavian countries, Singapore, and the U.K., and was conducted in December, 2011.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com