Tag Archive for: Interview

Majority of Irish students favor use of private devices and Facebook…

What will companies say if employees want to bring their own devices to work? How about security issues and support opportunities for companies? A real challenge for the future when we look at an Irish study that interviewed 164 students in secondary school and at third level in order to understand how this generation is communicating these days.

The study by IT distributor Data Solutions on behalf of Blue Coat Systems shows that more than 60% of young people expect their employers to allow them to use their own personal devices (i.e. smartphone, laptop, etc.) for work purposes in the future.

The argumentation behind their expectations are obvious: They know how to use our private devices, so they don’t need to learn new technology which saves the company time and money. The challenge for companies will be to establish a set of new policy and security guidelines, as well as data safety and storing options.

“More than 85% of the students surveyed own or have access to a laptop, and almost 40% own a smartphone. This facilitates the trend towards ‘bringing your own device’, and every business is going to have to learn to accommodate this trend while ensuring security (…) When today’s students enter the workforce they will be completely in tune with the new ways of communicating and collaborating online, as most are already using social networking sites, blogs, Skype or instant messaging. Employers now need to look at new ways to facilitate their needs and expectations.” Michael O’Hara, Managing Director, Data Solutions

The study also shows the bluring use of email comunication. 75% of Irish students favor social networking sites like Facebook as their main channel for communicating online these days. Just 6% prefer to use email.

Spot On!
The study findings illustrate that social media sites continue to be on the rise in popularity, and it indicates how older traditional online communication tools like email become less attractive. When 88% have a Facebook account, it is not surprising that they are not swappping to Outlook anymore when communicating with each other, not matter if business or private. And it seems that this will have the same effect on the hardware and devices they want to use. Maybe we just need a separate login on our computers in the future? What is your view on this development…?

News Update – Best of the Day

Although the mobile hype is massive, there are studies that question the power of smartphone mobile advertising and it’s efficiency. A new research from YouGov shows consumers accept placements as part of their day-to-day mobile experience but consider them intrusive (79%) and tend to ignore them altogether. Only 5% think mobile ads are a good idea and welcome them. However, the general apathy smartphone users have toward seems to equal ignorance: 88% ignore ads on applications and 86% have ignored placements on the mobile internet.

The security company Imperva released a study that states “web applications, on average, experience twenty seven attacks per hour, or roughly one attack every two minutes.” Imperva monitored 10 million attacks between December of last year and May of this year “targeting 30 different enterprise and government web applications.” Of the 27 attacks per hour most of them are trying to identify vulnerabilities on websites. If a vulnerability is found, attacks can increase to 25,000 per hour which would be seven attacks per second.

What is the future of Twitter? During a keynote interview at Fortune BrainstormTech in Aspen, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo gave insights in his vision of the company’s business model.

PS: Just in case you ask why Twitter is cool, Steven Winterburn has got the answer: “”Twitter is like a fridge. If you’re bored you keep opening & closing it every few minutes to see if there’s anything good in it.”

Speech-recognition apps – a step into the mobile future?

In an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West,” Gary Morgenthaler, a general partner at Morgenthaler Partners, speaks with Emily Chang about Apple Inc.’s potential strategy for speech-recognition applications. With the company’s purchase of Siri Inc. in 2010, Apple gained technology leadership that lets users search the Web by talking to their phones.

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Sometimes I am asking myself if we are getting sucked into the opportunities of mobile (and Apple…) technology, or if people will move away from such “extreme” usage of technological progress. Or will it happen as it is Apple, or shall we better say Steve Jobs, who is in the driver’s seat saying: “It just works.”

Would be interesting to see how you, the social and mobile advanced users, if Apple is just catching up on an old trend or evolving the technology to make it market-ready…finally for the normal consumer…?!

News Update – Best of the Day

IBM just recently published their study “The State of Marketing 2011”. The study that asked 300 online and direct marketers from different companies, industry sectors and sizes gives some interesting insights.

– Marketers are not only trying to go “measurement, analysis and learning”. The next challenge will be “IT support of marketing needs”.
– Marketers see technology as the key to productivity (let’s bear in mind it is an IBM study).
– Marketers see an integrated marketing solution as the driver of future business. 87% stated interest in a marketing suite that is better integrated.
– Marketers trust in Interactive Marketing. 57% adapt inbound marketing tactics (personalized targeting/messaging) for their Web activities.
– Social Media Marketing stays a challenge. 53% use it currently for their efforts but have to justify their workload with it now.
– Marketers love web data. 92% appreciate the value and importance of Web data. Most of them don’t apply the data to their campaigns though. Just one third thinks they are effective.
– Mobile Marketing is increasing. 43% use it currently for their tactics, 23% planning to start this year.

Craig Hayman, General Manager of Industry Solutions at IBM Software Group, talks in a Forbes interview about IBM’s conclusions from those study findings.

How Social could meet POS? Just look how PepsiCo’s Social Vending System offers full touch screen interactive vending technology, “enabling consumers to better connect with PepsiCo brands right at the point of purchase”. The prototype of the Social Vending System debuted at the National Automatic Merchandising Association’s One Show in Chicago last month. The question is if people really would share their contact details with a machine (humanization of companies?) but the idea is great. Just imagine you could log in with your Twitter account and share with your network how enjoyable it is to have a “Coke” now. I am sure the brands would love you then…

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The next wave of the new Passat commercials also surprises with another nice story (although not as brilliant as the Darth Vader one). If I was a surfer, I would have a closer look at those who are jumping in the sea with their boards with me…

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Cebit Interview – Über die Zukunft der Arbeitswelt

Die Arbeitswelt verändert sich. Die Menschheit fägt sich, ob Social Software, Social Media, Social Networking oder Web 2.0 harte Arbeit ist, oder die Produktivität der Businesswelt an den Abgrund treibt. Geht es nur um die Erhöhung des persönliche Reputationsindex, des Personal Scoring Index, oder ergibt sich nachhaltige Lead Generierung -erst kürzlich als Salestainability umschrieben- und neues Business einfach selbstständig aus Gesprächen?

Wenn man zum Interview auf der Cebit von IBM eingeladen wird, kann man in ein paar Minuten nicht alles sagen, was man gerne sagen würde. Man kann auch keine 3-Säulen-Strategie im Detail erläutern, die man in der Zukunft als essentiell für den erfolgreichen Einsatz des Social Web für die Webstrategie eines Unternehmens ansieht.

Ich wollte im Interview so verständlich wie nur möglich auf die wichtigen Trends und erfolgversprechenden Taktiken eingehen, die sich abzeichnen und teilweise heute schon gelebt werden in der Businesswelt. Hoffen wir, mir ist es gelungen…

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Die Idee der Visualisierung meiner Gedanken von Anna Lena Schiller während des Interviews finde ich sehr gelungen. Sie greifen den Gedanken des Personal Web Managers auf (links oben), sowie die zukünftige zentrale Herausforderung für den Einzelnen, einen 24 Stunden Tag so effizient mittels Social Software zu nutzen wie einen 36 Stunden Tag.

Der IBM Social Business Channel gibt im übrigen noch weitere Einsichten diverser Vordenker im Social Web. Ich empfehle sich auch die Meinungen mal anzuhören bzw. anzusehen.

Nun interessiert mich eure Sichtweise der Zukunft der Arbeitswelt. Wie stellt ihr euch den Arbeitstag von morgen vor? Was fehlt euch heute, was wünscht ihr euch morgen? Bin gespannt, auf eure Gedanken…

How Cisco's SocialMiner helps improve the conversation with customers (a John Hernandez interview)

One-on-one interview with John Hernandez

John Hernandez is General Manager of the Customer Collaboration Business Unit (CCBU) at Cisco, which provides contact center and interactive voice applications to enterprises and service providers. In this capacity he oversees product and market development, and is closely involved in the business with the Cisco sales force and partners.

The Strategy Web spoke with him about the launch and benefits of their new customer care product SocialMiner.

What were Cisco’s most successful social medias tactics in the last 2 years? How did Cisco came across the new solution SocialMiner? Why is social media monitoring so important from a strategic point of view for businesses?

Cisco is very active in social media. Our employees were some of the earliest adopters of Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social sites. We have tens of thousands of active social media users in our company, as well as a robust and vibrant corporate presence on the social web.

Social media monitoring can become a key strategic advantage for businesses. From a contact center perspective, social media could be treated as “just another channel” in a multichannel approach. However, the public nature of social media, along with the sheer volume of social media postings, makes social media as much a business intelligence tool as a new way to engage with customers. Cisco believes that proactive social media customer care will have a transformative impact on how companies engage and serve their customers.

The concept of the SocialMiner product came from our observation of the changing communication habits and Internet usage of consumers. As consumers have adopted social media channels for their individual communications on an ever-increasing basis over the past couple years, it is only natural that they would consider interacting with a business via social media. This concept of social impacting customer relationships is a very active topic within the emerging “Social CRM” community.

Is SocialMiner just a Customer Service product? Bearing in mind that social conversations on the web affects the whole business…

Cisco SocialMiner is an engagement product, not a “listening product.” SocialMiner is designed to scale the quality and quantity of social media interactions performed by a business. SocialMiner can be used for a variety of business functions such as Support or Sales, but we believe the customers that derive the most value from social media will also use these engagements to drive business process change. For example, an organization could use SocialMiner as a source of business intelligence to provide real-time customer appreciation or criticism of a product or service (or of a competitors’ product/service). Social media can direct their business strategy. Cisco believes that companies that learn from social media will become closer to meeting their customers’ expectations and this will drive overall business success.

Which three benefits do business users have using SocialMiner compared to other tools in the market (Radian6, Alterian, etc.)

1. Cisco SocialMiner is complementary to brand monitoring dashboard solutions. It is designed to support scaling social media by leveraging the best practices from contact center type operational models: Queuing, Service Level Metrics (Average Speed of Answer), and productivity metrics for users. By contrast, many of the brand monitoring dashboards have pieces of workflow capability, but these capabilities are either relatively limited or recently introduced functions.

2. Cisco SocialMiner is a component of the Cisco contact center portfolio which currently includes an installed base of over 10,000 customers. SocialMiner is packaged, priced, and delivered along with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise solutions, and therefore it supports the same installation, deployment, serviceability, and user experience as these other Cisco collaboration solutions.

3. Cisco SocialMiner is a very easy to install and operate software appliance. It runs on premise or in a customer controlled data-center hosting facility and offers unlimited capture capability. Cisco SocialMiner is an API-first product with 100% of functionality available via REST API’s and all user interface delivered as OpenSocial gadgets with documented source that can be modified by Cisco channel or customers. This model supports the preferred consumption model of most enterprise organizations along with a broad customization capability.

Can it be used as a stand-alone product or only in combination with other Cisco products for customer service? Do you have any case studies of success?

Cisco SocialMiner can be used as a stand-alone solution. We have several case studies that illustrate SocialMiner’s success. Zone Labs is one of them. The small wellness company was looking to accelerate revenues & grow 1000% in next 3 years, implemented Cisco SocialMiner to increase customer engagement, customer satisfaction and sales. Zone Labs started developing social communities on their own website as well as Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets. They used Cisco SocialMiner to route and queue contacts to experts within their organization.

Using SocialMiner, experts were able to proactively answer health and wellness questions via Twitter, providing encouragement to consumers on the Zone Diet, customer service and expert advice on questions such as vitamins and healthy recipes. Zone Labs saw improved agent productivity by automating capturing and responding to social media posts (currently estimated at ~10x). They gained greater customer satisfaction & brand mind-share from faster first inquiry resolution on the web, and were able to compete on comparable scale with larger companies. Their social media activity reduced their customer acquisition cost and created a larger funnel with more leads, that were converted more easily and more quickly than before.

Within 4 months of using SocialMiner, Zone Labs saw tremendous results:
– Web site transactions up 189%
– Revenue up 203%
– 202% increase in total visitors to www.zonediet.com

Thank you for your time, John. And by the way: I like your commercial for the product…

Absatzwirtschaft über "führende Werbeblogger" in Deutschland

Das Marketing-Magazin Absatzwirtschaft, eines der deutschen Top Marketingblätter, hat vor ein paar Wochen für seine Printausgabe die “führenden Werbeblogger” Deutschlands interviewt. Für mich war die Tatsache eine Ehre, das man neben “Indiskretion Ehrensache” und “Off the Record” auch The Strategy Web zu einem der “führenden Werbeblogs” in Deutschland zählt, sowie zum Interview bittet.

Natürlich hätte ich gerne mehr über die Bloggosphäre gesagt, aber eine grundsätzlich diskussionwürdige Stellungsnahme ist sicherlich das Zitat:
“Es ist ziemlich verworren, was zurzeit im Bereich der Webstrategien abgeht! Markenverantwortliche träumen von Bloggern und Followern in ihren Diensten, doch die modernen Socialmedians verhalten sich anders.” Es verdeutlicht, was derzeit die Marketiers wollen, aber die Bloggosphäre meiner Ansicht nach, oft noch nicht bereit ist zu vollfüllen.

In den nächsten Tagen werde ich das ein wenig mehr ausführen, wenn ich meine dreiteiligen Reihe “Insights 2010” veröffentliche. Der Beitrag “Spaßgetrieben” kann im PDF-Format nachgelesen werden…

Study: Web 2.0 increase market share, gain benefit

The latest research by McKinsey & Company states that companies embracing Web 2.0 opportunities have more chances to gain market leadership and step ahead of their competitors than companies that are less Web 2.0-savvy. The research was interviewing 3.249 companies as part of its annual Web 2.0 survey.

The study concluded that “networked enterprises” are more likely to be market leaders and winning market share. The study’s authors, Jacques Bughin and Michael Chui said that the Web 2.0 companies “also use management practices that lead to margins higher than those of companies using the Web in more limited ways.” They found that 27% of companies overall gained market share against their competitors and could succeed with higher profit margins.

The success curve of the “networked companies” is exponential. Those companies that are “highly networked enterprises”, defined as companies using Web 2.0 inside and outside their business in innovative ways, “were 50 percent more likely to fall in this high-performance group than other organizations were,” the authors state.

The authors prediction is that that in many industries, “new competitive battle lines may form between companies that use the Web in sophisticated ways and companies that feel uncomfortable with new Web-inspired management styles or simply can’t execute at a sufficiently high level.”

Companies that have embraced Web 2.0 philosophy continue to report that they are receiving measurable business benefits. 90% are reporting at least one benefit. The benefits were increasing speed of access to knowledge – 77% of respodents with internal Web 2.0 efforts and 57% using Web 2.0 to engage external partners. Obviously cost saving is a big topic: 60% of internal and 53% of external users mention that communication costs could be reduced. And travel costs decreased as well said 44% internal users and 38% external users.

News Update – Best of the Day

How will the future of the workplace look like? I have my views: flexible working hours, mobile offices and driving busness by networking outside of the office. Generally speaking, I love to share ideas and thoughts that I come across like these work displacements. Now that Porsche and VW (partly) banned access to social networking sites, it is interesting to see the other side of the medal. Maybe social networking becomes the main corporate sales strategy in the future. This example shows why the use of Salesforce Chatter could become an optimization of the future workplace.

The good thing about Social Media? People blog about events you could not take part in as they took place when you had meetings, where not in the country, etc. They share their new knowledge and some good case studies of social media campaigns like Juan Martinez who took part in the Social Ad Summit ’10. He tells us about the 5 Dos and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing, he learned from Aaron Shapiro, partner at Huge, Inc..#

One of the succesful modern virals was the Old Spice campaign. AdNews interviewed Isaiah Mustafa on the future of media and on becoming an internet sensation.

dmexco 2010 – Flashback in Tweets & Quotes

The main message of the dmexco 2010 can be concluded as follows…

Marketers have to face the fast dynamics of a changing advertising industry. The new topics they will be tackling in the future are predictive behavioral targeting, multiscreen targeting, augmented reality as well as mobile device advertising and … of course Social Media.

Facing the social web challenge, this means marketers have to look for conversation with their clients, whilst still being authentic, honest, human, friendly, open, conversational, responsive. Business relevant topics are not meant to cross their minds such as contact management and generation, quantitative ROI measurement or sales-driven aspects – and I am not even talking of lead nurturing. At least from a social media user-perspective…

Respect to all marketeers who can make this challenge happen in the future!

My flashback…?
Doing the co-moderation of the conference program was a very exhiting and interesting job. It gave me the opportunity to talk to great marketers (Sidney Mock, Spil Games and Manish Mehta, Dell Inc.), real thought-leaders of the Internet industry (Russell Buckley, AdMob Inc. and Tom Bedecarrè, AKQA) and just fabulous web personalities (Harry Huj, Pepsico Investment and Dean Donaldson, Mediamind).

As there was not much time to look around the halls and the booths, I would like to summarize the event with the 10 tweets and quotes that represent the value, the mood and the atmosphere of dmexco from my perspective.

Future
1. dmexco 2010: The vision of the leaders http://bit.ly/bRyrlQ via @MkDirecto

Augmented Reality
2. Never heard of “augmented reality”? Check out the Museum of London case study http://bit.ly/aucZ4Y via Kaizenadv

iPad
3. Study #iPad Effects: “80 per cent use the iPad predominantly at home” #dmexco #research (translated) via tomorrowfocus

Gaming
4. Sidney Mock, Spil Games, counts 650 million online gamers worldwide via dmexco (More gamers than Facebook users…).

China
5. Harry Hui (Pepsico): “Los consumidores chinos se mueven a otro ritmo”. http://bit.ly/czFA8x via lpittol85

Social Media
6. Great interview with @ManishatDell (my boss) about the value of social media for #dell from the dmexco conf. http://bit.ly/9pjxaF via DennisMSmith

Facebook
7. Joanna Shields: “Marketing develops from a one night stand towards constant connection and ongoing conversations.” #dmexco #Facebook via dmexco

Mobility
8. Dean Donaldson shows the relativity of the mobile progress, reading out a SMS he received during the Mobile Debate. It tells him how expensive roaming is and explains how ISPs limit mobile opportunities like in the AOL age some years ago.

Future Media
9. The future of the media is mobile. Shame *none* of the world’s design/PR agencies have realised: http://cot.ag/dolCIO via Adam Westbrook

Summary
10. Tom Bedecarré, #AKQA, is excited about #dmexco: “What a high energy event with so many people!” via dmexco

Spot On!
After sharing my view, I would appreciate to get your ideas and thoughts. What did you think of dmexco 2010? How did you like the conference program or the debate hall concept? What was positive and negative? Did any of you use the blogger lounge? If so, what did you like or miss? Looking forward to your feedback…

PS: Next dmexco?: Cologne, September, 21. and 22, 2011 !

Foto Credits: Horizont