Of Integrated Customer-Centric Digital Marketing & Personality

This is pursuant to my earlier post: Mobile Marketing and Local SEO...of iADs and Siri...Catalysts for Businesses (http://moksha001.blogspot.in/2011/11/mobile-marketing-and-local-seoof-iads.html)

If we look at integrated customer-centric social media marketing, it’s about people connecting with people. Personality is an integral part and this requires a personal approach.

The evolutionary process of social media marketing has been going on for years, from communication that was primarily company-oriented and more of a monologue than a dialogue based, to customer-centric interactive based.

The convergence of SMAC forces (Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud) has enabled customers/people to voice their opinions in very public ways and to have more control over how they interact with businesses. This in effect has contributed to business becoming more customer-centric and listen to the voice-of-customers. Twitter’s growing importance as a news and communications tool around the world, LinkedIn’s march to 200+ million users, Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, and Pinterest’s rapid rise are good testimonials.

Today, virtually in all business functions, people, personality and relationships are key; however, many organizations still look at the tools, mode and channels first and don’t seem to get the overall digital business picture yet. In the last few years, digital marketing itself has come a long way, evolving from a nice addition to a company's marketing strategy to being a necessity for business success. Social media marketing today is more than just tweet marathons and Facebook updates. It is more about participation, active engagement, interactivity, knowledge-sharing and establishing a connect with one's internal and external customers, those to whom companies can add value, or receive value from.

If we look at recent studies, in America, there was a total estimated spent of ~US$170 billion on direct marketing, including both physical and electronic types in the last year alone. Out of all of that, only 3% resulted in any buying. For, electronic media, the hit-rate was only 0.1%, and for online adverts the conversion-into-sales was a minuscule 0.01%. This translates to an amount of about US$165 billion being spent on no revenue generated, and rather contributing to spam, annoying people, cluttering mail filters and creating huge paper landfills.

There is huge effort, time and money spend by marketing departments to gather terabytes of data on potential customers, analysis of spending habits and data-segmentation to attune their campaigns to appeal to specific groups, and yet the ROI derived is negligible.

The problem lies in the approach that is being followed. Businesses are trying to understand their customers by studying their demographics. Capturing data such as age, gender, marital status, place/location, income etc., and their existing buying habits and designing their marketing strategy based on analysis of the same. There is an inherent flaw in this approach. It misses the major parameter of personality, to discover the deep psychological profiles of their customers, including their personalities, values and needs.

In uni-directional approach, we can see that people are missing the connect, a bond and losing trust in ads, corporate messages and businesses in general. We see customers skipping advertisements on TV, increasingly ignore emails/eDMs, especially when not personalized, Web banners been turned a blind eye to. Content and Message formats do make a difference, but there is more to it than what meets the eye. It’s about the people and organization customers trust and distrust, personality types and psychological profiles.

Rapid development in software and analytics is aiding personality-profiling, working on technology which could deduce psychosomatic  information, such as by taking streams of tweets, comments or likes from various social mediums and searching and analyzing them for words, meanings,  that indicate user personality, values and needs.

Smart organizations are understanding this and have quickly realized that they need to put their customer first and utilize such technology and medium to provide value and generate more revenue. This is one of the key fundamentals of social media and business success and also fundamental in content marketing success. This entails changing the mentality in which organizations put channels, content and messages first, and replace this approach with establishing a connect of the brand’s personality, as per the voice-of-the-customer, with the personality of their prospects/customers. Companies need to essentially connect the dots between various marketing tactics, medium and provide a linked, consistent and integrated customer pitch and feel.

Integrated social customer-centric marketing certainly drives purchases, but can deliver even more if companies can connect the dots and provide their customers with what they seek. The basis of creating trust and long lasting bond with prospective customers is to have a strong and personal connect. The stronger and more personal it gets, the more valuable it becomes. The foundation of a strong relationship is personality. People see a brand and business as a whole but the reputation of the brand is the result of many a contact moments or touch-points.

Additionally, the strength of more social relationships travels fast in connected reality, as people are not isolated but linked with each other. The essence of a business is not the products and services it sells or markets but the people that work for it, the people that buy and all others in the organizations ecosystem, including partners, vendors and in today's social and connected reality, the relationships of their relationships, the audiences of their audiences, the links of their links, the entire network. This changes the perspective of digital marketing making social media engagement, personalization, personality-profiling, targeted content marketing and optimization, mobile optimization, important priorities for digital marketers.

Sharing: Essence of Life

 

Life's essence is in sharing...

to experience the oneness and harmony with all life

to expand our sense of self

to help us feel greater love and empathy

for our world and its inhabitants.

 

-Clicked from my iPhone @ Hailey Road, New Delhi

Business Continuity Planning: A Must To Ensure Non Disruptive Business

Business today need to be prepared and have viable business continuity plans in place, well in advance, regardless of the disaster or emergency that may arise.

Having a plan that ensures “business-as-usual scenario” in the wake of a natural or manmade disaster is a critical task for enterprises of all sizes and is pertinent to ensure customer and partner confidence. Data over the past 20 years consistently show that an extremely high percentage of companies go out of business within one year of sustaining a multi-day outage.

In today’s rapidly changing IT environments, business continuity planning constitutes a complex process and presents formidable challenges for IT managers. A proactive approach and having the right ITNW solutions in place ensures that work doesn’t comes to a standstill and employees can still communicate and carry on business processes with internal or external customers in the event of a disaster or disruption.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) helps organizations to better prepare for disruptions in business operations including natural disasters, pandemics or outbreaks and comprises of a methodology used to create a plan for how an organization will resume partially or completely interrupted critical function(s) within a predetermined time post a disaster or disruption.

The interchangeable use of the terms “Business Continuity” and “Disaster Recovery” is because of the reason that some of the objectives underlined in a Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery plan are same. However considering the spectrum of objectives covered, it can be said that the business continuity plan has a large scope.

Risk Assessment is one of the key components of disaster recovery planning. In order to create an effective plan for recovering post a catastrophe, an organization must foremost consider what potential disasters that they could feasibly encounter, and how each of these might impact their business continuity.

In a laconic sense, a business continuity plan will have two facets i.e. 

• Identification of the mission critical business functions
• Drafting of the plan, policies and the procedure to ensure the continuity of these critical functions in the event of a disaster

After the preparation of a comprehensive Business continuity plan the following activities needs to be preformed:

• Training of the employees to make them well verse with the Business continuity plan
• Performing mock drills to check the effectiveness of the drafted Business continuity plan

IT system being a business facilitator is an integral part of any business continuity plan hence to ensure non disruptive business it becomes a prerequisite to ensure high availability of the IT systems. The aim is to protect against unplanned downtime (breakdowns) and also against planned downtime (updates, upgrades, etc…), of which the consequences can sometimes be underestimated.

A wide range of technologies and approaches are available to help organizations in creating a comprehensive implementation plan in line with their BCP. With the wide spectrum of technologies available, a wise decision is required to be taken by an organization to select and deploy the best suited cost effective solution to meet their requirements.

As technologies are constantly developing, the implementation of a DR plan or a HA system solution can be very complex and costly in terms of administration of processes and resources as opposed to direct costs of implemented products (hardware, software). Therefore, technology innovation should be a simplification, consolidation and optimization service in order to reduce administration costs.

NEC offers an comprehensive integrated single-point business continuity solution  to its customer to better tackle business challenges. Based on technological leadership and innovation, NEC offers its clients a complete business continuity infrastructure (Servers, storage, Cluster, DRP, continuous availability, Management Software’s and Services) from a single-source, which can reach a 99.999% level of availability.

• Organizations looking for cost effective, comprehensive protection for business critical data and applications against hardware, software and site failures, should consider integrated HA & DR solutions such as NEC EXPRESSCLUSTER X. The solution offers disk mirroring based data protection and recovery to minimize data loss risks while offering high-availability clustering based application protection and recovery for fast and flexible application recovery.
• A single moment of downtime is not an option in today’s business environment. System administrators, therefore, focus their efforts on minimizing risk of downtime and keeping their systems up and running. Equipped with fully redundant components designed to run in lockstep, the industry standard Intel architecture-based NEC Express5800/ft series fault tolerant servers address planned and unplanned downtime and deliver exceptional availability.

The NEC FT Server System cluster with EXPRESSCLUSTER X, is ideal for mission-critical systems that require higher availability and reliability offering:

• Up-to 99.999% availability
• Affordable Fault Tolerance using industry standard Intel Xeon based technology
• No loss of transactions, no loss of data
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership
• Provides both Hardware level as well as Software level redundancy
• Supports any Standard/Custom built application
• Have both Local High Availability as well Disaster Recovery capabilities
• Support for Virtualization technologies
• Operational Simplicity and Easy maintenance

NEC HYDRAstor is a highly resilient distributed grid storage solution exclusively designed to address global Backup, Archive & DR requirements of business with lesser cost, complexity & risk as compared to tape solution. NEC HYDRAstor offers key benefits, as

• Unrestricted scalability,
• Self-evolving system,
• Enterprise de-duplication,
• WAN friendly DR solution,
• Non-disruptive linear scalability from Entry-level to Datacenter-class,
• Adjustable node/disk protection level beyond RAID,
• Application aware de-duplication.
• Data Protection in case of a site failure
• Data Protection in case of disk / node failure 

In conclusion, businesses today cannot afford to have systems that are not up and available, especially during peak working hours. NEC is well positioned to address the full spectrum of requirements under a business continuity plan from high availability to data protection to disaster recovery through EXPRESSCLUSTER X and FT Server, similarly HYDRAstor fulfills backup, Archive and DR requirements. The planning, design and implementation of an NEC Business Continuity solution will ensure that critical systems and data are available when needed.

All in all a combination of these offerings from NEC ensures an efficient and effective implementation of the drafted Business continuity plan.

 

Emergence of 3D Projection in Education- Adding a New Dimension

The interest in use of 3D projection in education has been increasing and while the potential of 3D technology was always understood, it fell short on its practicality and affordability.

3D imagery is now fast becoming a commonplace experience all around us. In 3D movies, in 3D TV's with dedicated 3D channels, in 3D hand-held/mobile devices, offering viewers new and exciting experiences. 

In today's digital world, children are immersed in the internet, connected through use of tablet devices, PC's, laptops and smartphones and it is of more relevance that today this interactive and digital experience is incorporated into the classroom to engage children effectively.

With use of 3D projection, it is possible to fuel creativity with use of technology innovation and provide a learning experience that is not only exciting and immersive, but is also more effective than the conventional teaching methods.

Use of 3D technology is enhancing the learning environment in classrooms and is changing the way students imbibe knowledge by increased benefits of presenting teaching content in 3D, generating significant improvement in comprehension and retention by students. 

3D projection technology dramatically improves the learning experience for students, particularly those studying geometry, anatomy, biology, astronomy or physics. Higher education institutions and technical schools get great advantage by use of 3D projection technology to show engine design, architectural 3D models, GIS and weather simulations. Such 3D modelling and viewing creates informative and captivating learning and is more efficient method of passing on spatial knowledge and visual computing data by creating more rewarding viewer experience and greater interest. It is much easier to teach such topics if the material can be visualized in 3D. This is also helpful in engaging students in the learning process.

Teaching with 3D technology is a remarkable educational tool that enables students enhance their learning capabilities wherein they can truly engage and interact with he subject criteria in a highly effective way. There are studies showing better understanding and retention, faster learning in students when taught with 3D teaching aids. 

Research has shown that 3D educational materials are more engaging and more effective. For students, the experience is more immersive, and for educators, the learning objectives are more efficiently and productively achieved.  

For decades, 3D technology and stereo-graphics has been a key feature of military, medical and geophysical imaging. With 3D projection technology becoming more affordable, it can be widely deployed in education and be beneficial in range of activities as, Architecture & Town Planning, Engineering Design, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Forensic Science, Genetics & Genomics, Oil Prospecting & Petrochemistry, Seismology & Vulcanology, Neurosurgery, Vascular Surgery etc.  

Use of 3D projection is an excellent teaching aid to make more representational models, visuals or fly-through in Design, Engineering, CAD/CAM and Simulation applications. 3D models enable the viewer to fully appreciate the final appearance of an engineered product. This is highly beneficial in Virtual Prototyping and Industrial Design.

Traditional 3D projection technology required two projectors, one for the left eye and one for the right. Both devices have to be precisely aligned through a time-consuming process and users require special filters and potentially also a special screen. These typically feature polarization methods to separate the two images at the eye and at the projector or spectral filtering methods.

For deployments in education segment, this traditional process is generally expensive and the setup being sophisticated requires expertise while installation. The new process using DLP Link technology for 3D projection from TI makes it easy to install 3D projection as this is achieved by one projector rather than traditional more expensive two projector method. Hence, no stacking of two projectors is necessary, no special screen, no special filters or signal emitter are required. The single projector produces the images for both eyes by doubling the frame rate to 120 Hz (60 Hz/eye). The impression of 3D is created by the interaction with the active LCD shutter glasses which open and shut the electronic filter in front of each eye in synchronization with the L/R eye images. This solution is cheaper and more user-friendly than the traditional two projector based 3D stereo-projection.

The availability of 3D educational content is a critical factor in rapid adoption of this technology in mainstream education. There has been a tremendous growth in the number of shipped 3D systems and devices from 20K to 8M in just 3 years and this is now driving the increased demand for 3D content. Increased 3D content availability covering wider subjects, from all aspects of K-12 to higher education is very important to further the cause and gradual improvement is seen as more and more 3D material, courseware is becoming available. 

Uniformity in 3D technology standards may be an issue, particularly with adoption of content format standards. There are many ways to achieve 3D projection and hence standards differ. Single projector system using the DLP Link protocol is gaining momentum and may become the standard in future.

Deployment of 3D technology can create a unique marketing value proposition for the school as well. A typical 3D projection setup includes the following:

• 3D Ready Projector 
• 3D Content
• 3D Glasses
• 3D Graphics card for the PC system

To make the learning process more effective and to ensure maximizing benefits from such technology advancements, it is also very important to continuously educate and share information on benefits, ease of adoption to both educators and students. A great deal of work has to be put to convince teachers on benefits of 3D technology and encourage children to learn together in groups, to have a collaborative learning process and motivate them to have their own interactive experiences.

Schools and educators also have to be responsible for the well-being of their students and need to be aware of the vision related health issues associated with prolonged 3D viewing. 

There is need to pay special attention to use of professional good quality 3D products as poorly made glasses, low quality projectors could cause fatigue and eye strain. It is also very important that the projection system is set up properly and hence, services of professional integrators should be used. Poor set up will result in non-optimal viewing and adversely effect the overall 3D experience.

It is also imperative that technology providers, consultants and integrators work more closely and collaboratively with schools to convey real benefits of use of 3D technology offerings and not just push technology into education for short-term gains. 

Mobile Marketing and Local SEO...of iADs and Siri...Catalysts for Businesses

The importance of mobile marketing and local SEO are increasing with the rapid deployment of mobile technology and ever increasing subscriber base.

Mobile marketing, broadly is the process of using mobile technology, communication and media to promote a brand, product or business, selling something, through an MARCOM campaign. This encompasses advertising, brand awareness and reputation management, increased visibility/eye-balls, acquiring bigger audience or consumer market, improving conversion rates, website optimization, SMS or text messaging ads, social media, SEO, and much more

The most common forms are mobile web marketing, mobile application marketing and SMS marketing/advertising.

Mobile web marketing focuses upon website creation, visibility and promotion and focus on user access of the mobile web or website through a browser or search engine, working more or less like regular online website marketing, except that strategies are focused solely within mobile communications.

In the case of mobile application marketing, the main focus is on the use of mobile software applications or apps, rather than mobile browsers or search engine. The classic example are the host of apps available on the Apple iPhone ecosystem. The way this is works is the app (client device side software) is downloaded to the mobile device (mobile phone, tablet etc.), and is installed on the device. This is same as downloading software on a PC/desktop. The mobile software application can have thousands of possibilities for functionality, purpose and use, online or offline dependence, and may range from  apps with simple functions that can work without the mobile or WiFi network (games, flash apps etc.) to work, to more complex  apps that open to a particular online destination (Facebook app, Twitter app, iTunes, Apple Store,  Amazon shopping app, eBay app, Weather Channel app etc.).  

In April 2010, Steve Jobs launched Apple iAd, a technology built into iPhone iOS, to help developers incorporate advertisements into iPhone Applications (available for iPad and iPod Touch as well, through mobile or WiFi networks). This is an great example of the use of mobile application marketing, for promotion and to draw more mobile consumers to sites for making purchases.  iAd uses simple HTML 5 to create interactive in-app ads, with the advantage that one can get back to the app being used, back to where you left, by simply closing the ad. Developers and brands can use the iAds network to make interactive ads, bringing visibility of their products to billions of users of Apple devices and help promote their apps and in turn make revenues as Apple sells, hosts the ads, and gives 60% of the revenue to the developers.

By introducing iAd, Apple has increased the scope of mobile advertising to an enormous extent. Companies are now seeing the potential of this form of advertising, as they are able to tap into a huge audience. Apple iAd has made a great impact on mobile advertising and has changed the way companies regarded this as an effective means of promoting their products.

Such usage of  mobile marketing through a process where mobile technology and communications are used to achieve business goals, to increase visibility and consumer market, drive optimized conversion rates and for brand management, is gaining high significance quickly and making it an invaluable service to any business, small or large.

Further, with the iphone 4S launch, apple has introduced the new voice recognition app, the Siri, that allows users to control their iphones, through voice interaction, allowing one to use voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, get directions etc. Unlike other traditional voice recognition software that requires one to remember keywords and speak specific commands, Apple’s Siri, understands users natural speech, and even asks the user questions interactively, in case more information is required to complete the requested task.

The bigger impact of Siri, currently in its Beta, is on Mobile SEO, and ability of Siri to mine depth of information by accessing built-in apps, public data sources, use search and location services to provide relevant and variety of service as per the request made. Some of the apps and services that Siri works with are FaceTime, Mail, Messages, Weather, Stocks, Web Search, Find My Friends, Wolfram, and local search with Yelp! (at present available in US). The list of Third party applications and additions to language support is expected to increase in coming months, making usage more widespread, consequently decreasing the traffic to traditional sites. This is significant as there is increase in the percentage of local component  in searches, making local SEO more important for businesses.

Such local search automation is expected to change the current SE result pages/pay-per-click business model followed by traditional search engines and hereby diminishing their utility/importance.   

Integrated Digital Signage Solution - Inform, Entertain & Promote...

Digital signage refers to a variety of technologies used to replace traditional retail signs. Instead of static print signs and billboards, digital signage is composed of electronic signs dispersing content and messages in the most targeted, interactive way.

 

Importance of Digital Signage is growing day by day. A shift from paper based bulletins to high valued additional information of images and moving pictures, in clearly seen in the corporate environments. In government facilities (schools or exhibition halls), increased use of electronic bulletin boards relay desired on-the-spot information to customers. There is increased need for the presentation of informative media to attract potential customers in commercial businesses and new business models brought on by the popularization of networking.

The human eye is drawn to dynamic movements and so advertisers are now putting their visual campaigns on plasma or LCD screens in public places. This works very effectively in retail stores, hotels, university campuses, schools, transit stations, food courts etc. Retail Digital Signage messages of advertised brands produced a weighted average increase of 22% in volume and 24% in sales, 59% of shoppers recall seeing the digital signs. Digital Signage can substantially influence  behaviour of the target audience and is an extremely effective medium for communicating information.

Stages of a Digital Signage program includes Content Preparation and Schedule setting followed by Distribution and finally displaying it on the final Visual medium, via a LCD Panel or Projector.

 

Applications of Digital Signage:

·         Public information - news, weather and local (location specific) information, such as fire exits and traveller information

·         Internal information - corporate messages, health & safety, news, etc.

·         Menu Information – pricing, photos, ingredients and other food information including nutritional facts

·         Advertising – either related to the location the signage is in or just using the audience reach of the screens for general advertising

·         Brand building – in-store digital signage to promote the brand and build a brand identity

·         Enhancing customer experience – applications include the reduction of perceived wait time in restaurant waiting areas, bank queues, etc., as well as recipe demonstrations in food stores

·         Enhancing the environment –with interactive screens (in the floor for example) or with dynamic wayfinding

Virtual Desktop Computing - a perspective

Virtualization has taken over as the most sought after trend in the IT space in the past few years.

A virtual desktop is an individual user's interface in a virtualized environment.

The core concept is to "move PCs to data centre" to maximize security and manageability while maintaining the current usage and convenient features of business PCs.

The virtualized desktop is stored on a Centralized server rather than locally. Virtual desktops enable enterprises to centralize their desktop infrastructure in the data centre, dramatically improving remote access while retaining workspace personality. More and more organizations are increasingly becoming more aware of their environmental footprint and are deploying virtualization as a tool to reduce power utilization and computing waste. The idea of virtual desktops and their associated business value have inspired businesses to embrace virtual tools which can be a natural extension of the virtual infrastructure. 

Virtualization is a key technology for the future Enterprise Computing platform. Virtual client solutions have advantages on data security, system manageability and TCO reduction over PC environment.

Virtual desktops provide a number of benefits that make them a preferred choice over normal desktops and notebooks. Some of the merits of desktop virtualization include:

• Increased security

• Better utilization of resources

• Reduced operational and maintenance costs

• Better manageability

• Mobility and flexibility

• Low Power Consumption

• Environmentally friendly

• Realize vendor independence

The overall market for virtualization in India is emerging, desktop virtualization is emerging as one of the major technology trends in enterprises among other verticals. Virtualization adoption in India, both on the server and the end point (desktop) side has been restricted largely to the IT intensive sectors, IT/ITES, telecom, and BFSI, apart from very large enterprises. With companies moving towards cloud computing, desktop virtualization will play a major role. However, this is expected to change over the next few years.

Although, the adoption of this technology is picking pace, there are certain hurdles that are restricting its wide spread deployment.

Some of the limitations are:

• Potential security risks in case the network is not properly managed

• Not suitable for graphics intensive applications

• Driver maintenance for peripheral devices is a challenge

• Multimedia operations can get tedious and complex

• It might cause increased downtime in the event of network failures. This can be prevented by the use of HA options, but will increase the cost

• WAN deployments are challenged by technology limitation

With popularity of cloud computing, application virtualization and reduced bandwidth cost, desktop consolidation will be able to penetrate the Indian market in coming years.