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Posts Tagged ‘B2B E-commerce’

Event Report: CRM Evolution 2012 #CRME12

Published on August 14, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

CRM Continues To Evolve In A World Of Engagement

The CRM industry’s major non-vendor customer focused event kicked off at the Marriott Marquis in New York from August 13th to 15th. Conversations with prospects and practitioners at the event highlighted a few emerging trends:

Shift from transaction to engagement. CRM traditionally focused mostly on the management, a bit on the customer, and very little on the relationship. Major shifts in engagement strategy reflect a move towards two way conversations, unstructured information, and influence models.
B2B and B2C are dead. The notion of forced fit silos to represent a customer no longer applies. The world is rapidly move to people to people models and new systems must reflect this.
The rise of customer experiences. Prior to the coining of the CRM term, front office was the term which defined marketing, service, eCommerce, and sales force automation. The move back to integrated customer experiences reflects a renewed interest in all the front office touch points and all the support in the back office required to support the customer experience.
SaaS/Cloud Best of Breed hell is a real issue. Rapid and random deployment of best of breed solutions versus mature suites results in some basic architectural deficiencies. These deficiencies result in inefficiencies that impact the delivery of customer experience as process, data, and meta data integration increase in complexity and cost.

The Bottom Line: Customers must focus on delivering a single source of truth in the fundamentals

Customers making the shift to next generation customer experiences realize that the basic laws of physics must not be violated. Regardless of where key components reside, a single source of truth must be delivered to support next generation customer experiences. This requires a strong blue print and engagement platform that delivers:

Listening and intent
Interaction history
Master data management (customer master)
Business process management
Complex event processing
Security and identity management
Integration

Your POV.

Are you ready for the new shift to front office? What are you doing to deliver an integrated customer experience? Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

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Assessing social business/digital marketing readiness
Developing your social business/digital marketing strategy
Designing a data to decisions strategy
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Deliver a new customer experience and engagement strategy
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Related Research:

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Quark Summary: What Every CMO Needs To Know About The Six C’s Of Customer Engagement

Published on March 8, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Forward And Commentary

CMO’s seeking to avoid the desensitization that comes with the adoption of new media will want to quickly deploy the Six C’s of Customer Engagement.

A. Introduction

Social media effectiveness for brands and enterprises will rapidly mirror the trends that email and web sites experienced during the late 1990′s to early 2000′s. In fact, social media adoption has passed ubiquitous usage and has mostly begun the process of relevant deployment. Avoidance of Phase 4 Desensitization can be avoided by applying the Six C’s of Engagement (Figure 1.)

B. Research Findings

Recent early adopter surveys identify five key phases of social media adoption:

Phase 1: Eager early adopters. Users eagerly experimented in the newness of the medium. Early adopters attempt to apply the medium to everything.
Phase 2: Ubiquitous usage. Rapid adoption put the medium in the hands of the masses. Adoption exceeds 50 million users.
Phase 3: Relevant deployment. Brands and enterprises apply the medium to the right business use cases and processes.
Phase 4: Desensitization and fatigue. Inundated with marketing, bombarded with irrelevant content, and tired of the newness of the medium, customers begin tuning out.
Phase 5: Rejuvenation. Maturation of the medium ushers an improved era of engagement apply the Six C’s of Engagement.

The Six C’s Of Customer Engagement provide strategies to overcome desensitization and fatigue

Community. Location for engagement.
Content. Topics that drive engagement.
Context. Relevance that create engagement.
Catalysts. Events or actions that facilitate engagement.
Currencies. Monetary and non-monetary exchange of value behind engagement.
Cadence. The frequency of interaction

Figure 1. The Six C’s of Customer Engagement Overcomes Desensitization And Fatigue

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Monday’s Musings: Why Customers And Prospects Expect Clearer Rules About Content Marketing

Published on February 20, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Original Mission Improves Engagement Through Relevancy

Content marketing re-emerges as a hot topic and trend in improving engagement with existing customers and prospects. Marketers can improve the likelihood of engagement through the creation and sharing of relevant information. Typical delivery formats include advertorials, emails, branded websites, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and field marketing events. Content marketers believe that educating a customers with high quality information will improve the likelihood of a sale due to brand association with expertise and thought leadership. Content marketing is a powerful and effective approach when done well.

Many Marketers Will Abuse The Model As Marketer Objectivity Standards Go By The Way Side

As with all techniques, content marketing has the potential to improve brand relevancy and conversion. However, when applied to social media, there is greater room for abuse. Why? The speed of social media and the lack of rules creates a confluence of forces leading many content marketers to quickly blur the limits of objectivity. How? By placing biased marketing content and associating with a known, objective, and trusted brand. It’s happening with paid blogs, paid tweets, purchasing Facebook likes, thinly veiled advertorials in trusted magazine brands, and biased white papers disguised as objective research.

Though many will claim that a new generation could care less about objectivity, selling out on standards will create short term gain at a more punishing long term loss of trust. In today’s social businesses, trust is the new social currency. Without trust based on our actions, we destroy the basis for engagement and relationships. In fact the newness and pureness of social media is what draws users to engage. If marketers deafen the channel with the equivalent of ‘junk mail”, spam, and telemarketing in the guise of content marketing, the recipients will hit another level of social overload and disengagement.

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Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business

Published on January 15, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Public Outrage Grows Over Lax Privacy Polices At Popular Social Networking Sites

Recent actions by social networking leaders in the market place have brought new attention to a user’s privacy rights. Despite the fact that these sites provide a freemium service to users, abuse and arrogance of a user’s privacy rights combined with user ignorance has led to not only a public outrage, but also increasing action from privacy advocacy groups to petition government agencies. Three public examples include:

Google+ Search Plus Your World controversy. The recent decision by Google to feature personalized search results from one’s contacts has generated an uproar. While users may opt out of receiving search results based on personal data, users can’t block information found by their Google+ contacts including those that are +1 pages, messages, contacts, and videos. Despite the personalization benefits to users and the fact Twitter and Google could not agree on terms on real-time search, the forced march and prioritization raises concerns over a user’s rights. Consequently, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has asked the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Google’s practices.
Facebook Timeline uproar. When Facebook recently rolled out their new Timeline feature, users expressed outrage. Though Timeline simplified access to a user’s profile, the lack of time to make changes, suddenness of announcement, and confusion over public versus private data furthered complaints. The constant stream of privacy changes without user control led to EPIC’s petition to the FTC and Facebook’s settlement. Facebook’s market dominance (see Figure 1.) and public proclamation that “The Age of Privacy Is Over” should lead to greater scrutiny by privacy advocates.
LinkedIn Ads backlash. Rolled out in June 2011, LinkedIn exposed the products and services of interest to members for use with advertising. Advertisers could then display which members “endorsed” products and services from an advertiser. The lack of solicitation from an opt-in process led to a backlash from users and LinkedIn backing down to consumer pressure.

Figure 1. US Social Networking Sites Market Share By Page Views

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Research Report: Constellation’s Research Outlook For 2011

Published on January 4, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Organizations Seek Measurable Results In Disruptive Tech, Next Gen Business, And Legacy Optimization Projects For 2011

Credits: Hugh MacLeod

Enterprise leaders seek pragmatic, creative, and disruptive solutions that achieve both profitability and market differentiation. Cutting through the hype and buzz of the latest consumer tech innovations and disruptive technologies, Constellation Research expects business value to reemerge as the common operating principle that resonates among leading marketing, technology, operations, human resource, and finance executives. As a result, Constellation expects organizations to face three main challenges: (see Figure 1.):

Navigating disruptive technologies. Innovative leaders must quickly assess which disruptive technologies show promise for their organizations. The link back to business strategy will drive what to adopt, when to adopt, why to adopt, and how to adopt. Expect leading organizations to reinvest in research budgets and internal processes that inform, disseminate, and prepare their organizations for an increasing pace in technology adoption.
Designing next generation business models. Disruptive technologies on their own will not provide the market leading advantages required for success. Leaders must identify where these technologies can create differentiation through new business models, grow new profit pools via new experiences, and deliver market efficiencies that save money and time. Organizations will also have to learn how to fail fast, and move on to the next set of emerging ideas.
Funding innovation through legacy optimization. Leaders can expect budgets to remain from flat to incremental growth in 2011. As a result, much of the disruptive technology and next generation business models must be funded through optimizing existing investments. Leaders not only must reduce the cost of existing investments, but also, leverage existing infrastructure to achieve the greatest amount of business value.

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Research Report: Next Gen B2B and B2C E-Commerce Priorities Reflect Macro Level Trends

Published on September 6, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Recessionary Forces Challenge Organizations To Not Only Right Channel, But Also Personalize

Organizations with e-commerce initiatives face a flurry of competitive forces that challenge existing assumptions put in place a decade ago. On the operational efficiency front, organizations must battle reduced product margins, shorter product life cycles, greater pricing transparency, and increased friction in multi-channel sales. From a strategic differentiation point of view, organizations must enhance product offerings with services, improve the customer experience with loyalty top of mind, and tailor personalized experiences that support self-service options and mobility. In addition, as customers have shifted their buying behaviors, social channels gain importance in how organizations engage their key stakeholders.

E-Commerce Evolves To Meet Next Gen Requirements

Given the landscape, organizations must adjust to less control of their business than the prior decade. The rules have changed. Buying behaviors have evolved. Consequently, organizations must relearn and reengage to revive their e-commerce initiatives. They should establish trust, not obfuscate through half-truths. They should focus on influence, not attempt at regaining control. Consequently, e-commerce must play a key role in the transformation of the customer’s buying experience. In fact, next generation e-commerce initiatives must address 12 shifts such as (see Figure 1):

Ownership. Governance transitions from a siloed role to part of the overall buying experience.
Approach. Organizations shift from top-down messaging to bottom-up advocacy.
Business requirements. Efforts focus on completing industry vertical specialization.
Marketing style. Initiatives target bolstering brand trust.
Channel management. E-commerce re-integrates back to the overall buying process as a significant entry point to customer lifetime value.
Business process. Functional excellence grows into end to end perfect orders.
Personalization. Improvements in technology enable tailored buying experiences.
Business analytics. Business intelligence moves from basic reporting to real-time decision support.
Social media. Non-existent programs evolve to address one of the greatest trends of the decade.
Product margins. Organizations must evolve to grow profitable revenues.
Product life cycle. Decreasing product life cycles require better inventory management and demand planning.
Deployment options. Multiple options exist and organizations have more opportunities to experiment with try and buy SaaS alternatives.