Weekend Reading: Time to Show Big Data Who's the Boss

We've heard the tales of how quickly companies are amassing data. We've seen the capacity to store and create data increase at a dizzying rate. We've heard the warning tales of big data thrown around so much it's taken on the status of the bogeyman.

Our contributors this week offered some hard-earned wisdom to help calm our fears about the big data deluge. But as soon as our fears were relieved about big data, we were told to fear content marketing and had cause for concern about the future of SharePoint Designer. 

Curious? Read on. 

Taming the Big Data Beast

Three Big Data Rules to Live By

Chelsi Nakano (@chelsi): The Internet walks into a [karaoke] bar: “Every breath you take, every move you make…I’ll be watching you.”

In today’s increasingly connected world, practically everything we do creates an electronic record. Every purchase, every status update, every Like becomes a part of the digital ether — a tiny but permanent speck in the growing collective. And as organizations continue to amass this so-called Big Data, so grows the pressure to prove its intrinsic value. If you’re lost as to how, you’ve got a lot of company.

Is 'Big Data' Marketing's Next Frontier?

Trip Kucera (@tripkucera): Big data is everywhere, both literally and figuratively. On the figurative side, it’s hard to escape the hype about big data, the term appearing in headlines of major national newspapers and business publications (most recently the cover of the "Harvard Business Review"). But the hype is happening for a reason, and that’s the amount of data we’re all collectively generating in our off- and on-line worlds.

Analytics: Tap into Data to Build Real Customer Relationships

Tyrona Heath (@tyrona): With the explosion of big data, most businesses are acutely aware that they are sitting on a mountain of untapped data, struggling to get an in depth view of the customer. Along with the rise of social media, multiple disruptive forces like empowered consumers, shrinking budgets, insanely fast innovation cycles and an ever growing number of channels underscore the importance of making marketing informed by data easier.

Reaching the Empowered Customer with Data-Driven Marketing

Lisa Arthur (@lisaarthur): The average consumer in 2012 is very different than the average consumer 10 years ago. For that matter, consumers today are a lot different than they were 10 months ago. Empowered by technology and with instant access to vast quantities of information, people have new rules for shopping, communicating and even relaxing. The bottom line is that consumers are now data-driven, which means marketers have no choice but to dive even deeper than their customers and competitors into the information goldmine.

Discussion Point: From Data to Decisions -  Real-Time Analytics Support the Customer Experience

Katie Ingram: Every organization captures data — social media analytics, customer interactions, website traffic and other metrics, the list goes on. That the amount of data collected is growing exponentially is no surprise, that technologies are emerging every day to help us capture and analyze this data is also no surprise. But how are these analytics and data support tools changing to help better support the customer experience and what can we expect from these technologies in the next few years? That's the question we asked our esteemed panel in today's Discussion Point.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

How Support.com Turns Data into Actions -- and Results

A customer represents two things: an immediate dollars-and-cents sales opportunity, and a store of valuable data, including buying habits, behaviors and opinions. Technical support company Support.com has some ideas on how to use this data to improve the way your employees influence customer experience.

When a Stranger Calls, Data Answers

We thought it was fitting to take a closer look to see how a tech support company uses data to improve the way their personal technology experts turn data into actions and the impact these actions have on customer experience and satisfaction. We spoke with Paul Vaillancourt, senior vice president of Contact Center Operations at Support.com to learn more.

Support.com provides remote technology services to consumers and small businesses directly via an online portal and channel partners (which include retailers and anti-virus companies). Personal Technology Experts must pass rigorous testing and training before helping customers.

Unlike other companies, everything at Support.com is analyzed. From the moment a call is answered to the moment the case is resolved, calls are recorded, scrutinized and archived on-site. Additionally, because one single system is used, data is instantly available, eliminating time it may take to transfer data from one CRM into another.

Influencing the Behaviors of Others

How tech experts are trained can determine whether companies meet their overall goals and whether customers’ problems get solved. As a result, when Support.com noticed a higher than normal attrition rate, they focused their attention on the training process to better understand how they can improve the effectiveness of tech experts.

First, they listened. Before tech experts get to answer actual customer calls, they undergo rigorous training and then a nesting period, during which they role-play. They listened to what those who decided to leave said in their exit interviews, as well as to feedback they received from others. They learned that experts were overwhelmed by the complexity of their tool set. As a result, Support.com changed how they introduced experts to calls, having them listen more to actual customer calls before they role-played (which they did more of as well).

Then they created a goal. Goals were actual behaviors, rather than a metric. Instead of saying that they wanted to decrease the length of the call by two minutes, they said: we want experts to solve problems quicker. In order to solve problems quicker, it was important to understand how experts could glean better information from callers. They determined that not enough probing questions were being asked. Sure, experts were active listeners, but they weren’t necessarily asking questions that could uncover useful information in a timely matter. Once experts were properly trained to listen for keywords and specific prompts, call times were shortened.

Finally, they give constant feedback. PTE’s are given score cards which contain six weeks' worth of data, including average call length, call disposition, contacts per hour, attendance and a quality score. The score card also compares an expert’s results to other experts as well as company goals, so individuals can see how their behaviors impact overall goals.

Creating a Culture of Intentional Actions (and Outcomes)

What Support.com’s process for listening, analyzing and producing actionable insights really highlights is the impact that a company culture built around data can have on customer experience. Every company says that they are dedicated to ROI — but not every company invests in the actions of their employees to really understand how behaviors translates into outcomes.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Amazon's Kindle Fire 2 and A New Smartphone To Be Unveiled Today

 Amazon will show off its new hardware later, as it tries to capture more of the tablet market, and attract further users to its huge digital market place and store. But, the star of the show could be a new smartphone which could dominate Amazon's store front for Christmas. 

The Amazon Hardware Warrior

Driven by its huge content ecosystem, Amazon will be looking to increase its userbase with more powerful hardware in a wider range of formats at an event in Santa Monica, being held shortly. That includes a new, more powerful, Kindle Fire, a larger version of the tablet (shown off in a TV advert aired during the NFL season's opener between the Cowboys and Giants) and a smartphone to take on the likes of Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy range. 

The advert also showed off a "paperwhite" model of the popular Kindle device, showing that Amazon won't leave behind the product that launched it into the gadget market. But, it is the prospect of a more powerful tablet, a larger brother for it and a smartphone that paints a tempting picture for Amazon customers in the run up to Christmas. 

Power of the Amazonites

With all these devices splashed across the front page of Amazon's web stores (and it is highly likely that Kindle Fire will see a worldwide release this time around), the company can bank on massive multiple sales as folks pick them up for friends and family Christmas presents.

With Amazon, there won't be any fuss about new proprietary charging leads (which Apple will no doubt suffer from next week), there won't be any hype about fantastic new camera capabilities, expect a decent specification across the range of devices that will run a modified version of Android to leave as many hooks as possible to Amazon's stores and services. 

Since Amazon can't use Google Maps on modified Android devices, it is likely to partner with Nokia (who launched its own Windows Phone 8-powered Lumia 920 yesterday) to provide the high-quality Nokia Maps app. 

We'll have news from Amazon's event as it happens (things kick off at 10:30AM PST):

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Video Blog: Importing Labels to SharePoint 2010

There are many positive features to using the Term Store taxonomy management feature within SharePoint 2010. Unfortunately, not everything that we need as information managers is one click away. 

For example, when importing terms into the Term Store using the .CSV template, the ability to bring along synonyms such as alternate spellings or acronyms isn't as seamless as it could be. This video discusses two workarounds to importing "Other Labels" into the SharePoint 2010 Term Store.

Editor's Note: Mike Doane writes and blogs frequently with taxonomy tips. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

35,000 Foot View of SharePoint 2013 for End Users

This is the last article of a four-part 35,000-foot overview of some of the major changes expected in SharePoint 2013. What's in store for the end user?

What’s New for End Users?

When end users begin using SharePoint 2013, they will notice additional collaboration features, as well as an increase in social components.

Collaboration

SharePoint has always been a tool for collaboration, but SharePoint 2013 promises even more robust collaboration tools. SharePoint 2013 has added new features to increase collaboration, including:

• OneNote Notebook included in the Team Site for taking and storing notes locally
• Share Dialog Interface, which allows users to quickly add people to list and share content even between site collections
• Callout Feature for managing Items in List or Library
• Drag and Drop Between Sites or between SharePoint/Desktop allowing you to quickly move documents between sites or between SharePoint and your local environment.

Video and Rich Media Improvements

Video and rich media is invading the business world, and SharePoint 2013 is striving to make it easier to organize and access this form of data. Improvements related to video and rich media, include:

• Videos have video pages that contain metadata to improve the search functionality.
• Users can now preview videos from the search results before spending valuable time downloading the video.
• Users can now search for videos by length or by date.
• HTML5 and Silverlight Players are Supported in 2013 for viewing.
• Improved refinement options when it comes to SharePoint 2013 from end user perspective.

Records Management and Compliance

There are improvements to the records management functionality that help meet compliance requirements you may have in your organization, including the following:

• Site-Based Compliance — SharePoint Sites are now integrated with Team Mailboxes in SharePoint 2013, which means that any time an end user is preserving content, both the SharePoint Sites and the Team Mailboxes are searched.

• In-Place Records Management — SharePoint 2013 still has In-Place records management, but now it preserves content that has been modified. So if a user has put a lock on the content, it allows other users to make a change to the document, but it keeps a copy of the content as it was prior to the modification.

  Documents, list items, pages and Exchange Server 2013 mailboxes can be preserved. The preservation of the information is done at the site level but you can use filters to avoid preserving the entire site or mailbox.

• Enterprise-Wide e-Discovery — SharePoint Server 2013 introduces a new site for managing and holding your discovery cases. Within this site collection you can perform e-Discovery queries across multiple SharePoint farms and Exchange servers and preserve the items that are discovered.

  You create a new site for each case using the eDiscovery Center site template. This site creates a portal through which you can access discovery cases to conduct searches, place content on hold, and export content. To implement e-Discovery across the enterprise, configure SharePoint Server 2013 Search to crawl all file shares and websites that contain discoverable content. You can then export the results of an e-Discovery search for later import into a review tool.

   

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Weekend Reading: SharePoint Challenges, Going to the Social Business Circus

Our SharePointpalooza continued this week with the debut of a new series on SharePoint governance, a few perspectives on what SharePoint 2013 holds in store and something anyone contemplating the switch to the latest version can relate to: the SharePoint upgrade headache.

We also heard further reports from the archival front and were asked if your workplace was a circus, who would you be?

SharePoint: What's Working, What Isn't

SharePoint 2013: Not Quite What I Expected

Jennifer Mason (@jennifermason): With each new release of SharePoint I become like a kid in a candy shop, ready to find all the new and exciting goodies that have been made available. SharePoint 2013 has been no exception.

Since the release of the Customer Preview I have been anxiously digging in and trying to find what new and exciting things have been added. What I have found so far has been a pleasant surprise, and not quite what I expected.

SharePoint Business Governance Strategy: An Overview

Frederik Leksell (@letstalkgov): Many portals, intranets, public websites and other solutions fail to deliver objectives and ROI within 6 months to a year because no one governs the solution. This series will share my high level SharePoint Business Governance strategy to help your company turn those success rates around.

The SharePoint Upgrade Headache

Martin White (@intranetfocus): With SharePoint, it really can be 2007, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2014 all at the same time.

Over the years I’ve been faced with some very challenging intranet projects but none of them come close to the challenges of upgrading software on the office computer.

35,000 Foot View of SharePoint 2013 for Developers

Brian Alderman (@brianalderman): Are you ready for SharePoint 2013?

This is the second in a four part series that provides a 35,000-foot overview of some of the major changes expected in SharePoint 2013. With this piece we will dive into what will be new for developers.

The series covers these changes as they relate to administrators, developers, designers and end users.

SharePoint Adoption: Is Customization the Rally Cap?

Kevin Conroy (@seattlerooster): I always like to put events into a solid sports analogy and SharePoint lends itself to this in a unique way. SharePoint is somewhat akin to the New York Yankee teams of the past couple decades: this product has been a consistent leader, though it has had some ups and downs in the enterprise collaboration space, and continues to hold its place in the echelon of enterprise productivity tools that will continue to lead well into the next many “seasons” to come.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com