Digital Advertising is Like Aircraft Seating (Infographic)

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Digital Age to Require Greater Supply Chain Agility

Good read.   You will be expected to make changes to keep up —  indeed to remain competitive.

Excerpt:  If consumers in the future won’t be focused strictly on price, there will be pressure on supply chains to provide value beyond cost containment.

“There are implications all the way up to the machinery we choose in our plants, which allows us to set certain standards for what’s an appropriately or economically sufficient batch of product to run,” O’Marah said. “How much flexibility have we built into the upstream supply chain? And the answer is, we’re going to be expected to have a lot, and it looks like we’re not ready for it.”

Read full article via Digital age to require greater supply-chain agility.  From CGMA

10 Interesting Digital Marketing Stats

Good takeaways from this article with links to various references.

Excerpt:  Here are some of the most interesting digital marketing stats we’ve seen this week.

Stats include how shoppers use mobile for product research, content marketing, Marks & Spencer’s multichannel shopping experience, Vevo and online customer service.

Read full article via 10 interesting digital marketing stats we’ve seen this week | Econsultancy.

Technology Forecast: The Business Value of APIs: PwC

An update and predictions from PwC on technologies  — recommended for all small business takeaways.

Excerpt:  The business value of APIs

This issue of the Technology Forecast examines how enterprises can engage with the challenges and opportunities stemming from SMAC (social computing, mobile computing, analytics and cloud computing) trends by scaling integrations and participating in expanding digital ecosystems.

Read introduction and download full pdf via Technology Forecast: The business value of APIs: PwC.

The Problem With Digital Design

Recommended read with great takeaways for all small businesses using digital design in product development.  Gains are offset by other losses and net value is not achieved.

Excerpt:  So, what’s the problem? There are potentially two. First, because the technology makes the work look complete at every step in the process, it can create a false sense of security. There can be a tendency to move on to the next stage in the process before teams have taken the time to deeply learn user needs, construct alternative solutions and vet both of these. In other words, the “fuzzy front end” of the design process may be cut short — to the company’s long-term disadvantage. This is, we believe, one of the major reasons product failure and success rates have changed little over the past several decades.4

Second, the very ease with which designs can be digitally drafted and prototyped might afford engineers the opportunity to “try it again and then, again and again.” In other words, the final design process can remain fluid longer than is useful. The ability to quickly iterate designs can lead to a spiraling effect, chewing up time and labor expense and effectively mitigating the benefits of digital design itself. Research has shown that these “virtual design rounds” can account for 75% of total project development costs,5 and they can delay project completion.

Read full article via The Problem With Digital Design. From MIT Sloan Management Review

Don’t Build a Database of Ruin – HBR

Here is food for thought — author opines we are headed for diseaster if our focus isn’t redirected.  Reality check?  What do you think?  Data management and mining

Excerpt:  Many businesses today find themselves locked in an arms race with competitors to see who can convert customer secrets into the most pennies. To try to win, they are building perfect digital dossiers, to use a phrase coined by Daniel Solove, massive data stores containing hundreds, if not thousands or tens of thousands, of facts about every member of our society. In my work, I’ve argued that these databases will grow to connect every individual to at least one closely guarded secret. This might be a secret about a medical condition, family history, or personal preference. It is a secret that, if revealed, would cause more than embarrassment or shame; it would lead to serious, concrete, devastating harm. And these companies are combining their data stores, which will give rise to a single, massive database. I call this the Database of Ruin. Once we have created this database, it is unlikely we will ever be able to tear it apart.

Read full article via Don’t Build a Database of Ruin – Paul Ohm – Harvard Business Review.

SES San Francisco: 360 Degrees of Optimization #SESSF

The event is scheduled for August — within a couple of weeks.    See more information on link provided.  If you are interested you should register now.

Excerpt:  As one of the original and largest conferences with a focus on search engine marketing, SES content runs the gamut of strategies and tactics to help marketers improve their performance. This isn’t an easy task in a world where platforms like Google and Facebook can change the rules from one minute to the next.

SES may have had it’s roots in search marketing, but like the “best of the best” search engine marketers, SES has adapted to the changing marketplace and evolved content offerings including: mobile, social, content marketing and big trends like Big Data.

The notion of optimization is increasingly viewed as a holistic approach that can impact discovery of content to anyone that is looking. That bigger picture view of marketing performance optimization is something you’ll find in the tracks, presentations and tactics at SES San Francisco. It’s a real 360 degree view of what it means to optimize digital marketing to achieve any kind of marketing goal with any audience on any platform.

Read article of coming event and register here via SES San Francisco: 360 Degrees of Optimization #SESSF.

Creating Ultimate Guides and Using Them to Build Your Marketing List

Good read with all the rich detail and how-to we have come to expect from KISSmetric’s publications.

Excerpt:  You’ve seen them – ultimate marketing guides to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and other important digital marketing resources. Creating ultimate guides are a great way to attract traffic, links, and social shares to your blog or website. The issue most people run into is with the number of blogs out there (especially ones on online marketing) – how do you create an ultimate guide if there are already tons of posts on a given subject?

In today’s post, we’re going to look at the steps to creating the ultimate guide to anything and how you can use your ultimate guide to get mailing list subscribers.

Read full article via Creating Ultimate Guides and Using Them to Build Your Marketing List.  From KISSmetrics

Reversing the Decline in Big Ideas – HBR

This is an interesting read.  A very frank opinion heads-up world.   Small business take note.

Excerpt: But now I believe the designer-led team is on the verge of irrelevancy, too. The Internet has the necessary infrastructure and achieved the global ubiquity to be able to reimagine and disrupt nearly every industry in the world. But Silicon Valley seems to think that all that is required for disruption are a few “rockstar engineers” and “superstar designers.” This team type used to be able to lock themselves in a room, come up with a big idea and start executing on it. Now, if you throw two engineers and a designer together and tell them to come up with a new startup idea, you’ve got better than 50% odds they will come up with another mobile local social photo sharing app. This team competency was exactly what the doctor ordered when the next evolutionary step of the digital world was just creating software that was actually intuitive to ordinary consumers. But now these teams seem to continually run into a creative roadblock.

Read full article via Reversing the Decline in Big Ideas – Max Marmer – Harvard Business Review.

Digital Customer Centricity Profiler

Tool to help you measure and decide strategy.  Try it.

Excerpt: Your company will have its own unique digital capabilities mix. To understand best practices and see where your capability gaps lie, take the Digital Customer Centricity Profiler, developed by Booz & Company in partnership with Bazaarvoice, a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that turns social media into social commerce for top global brands by enabling authentic, customer-powered marketing.

In 10 minutes, this short survey will help you kick-start the process to assess whether you prioritize the right digital capabilities and how you can invest in talent and skills development to enhance them

Take the survey for your business  via Digital Customer Centricity Profiler.  From Booz&Co

The Global ICT 50: The Supply Side of Digitization

Small business information technology and its impact on our future is far greater by acceleration than we have experienced in the past.   Recommended read.

Excerpt: The top 50 companies providing online IT and telecom hardware, software, and services are facing dramatic change and convergence. How they respond will transform life for the rest of us.by Olaf Acker, Florian Gröne, and Germar Schröder

Driven by a combination of consumer demand and the development of new information and communications technology (ICT), the world is rapidly transforming. This process has been happening since the arrival of the computer 60 years ago, but in the past few years it has accelerated, altering everyday life in unprecedented ways. A society with ubiquitous handheld devices, pervasive sensing apparatus, “big data” analytics, digital supply chains, search engines, social networks, satellite-based geographic tracking, interconnected real-time digital infrastructure, and massive server farms is arguably as different from the 1980s as 1950, with ubiquitous electricity, automobiles, and broadcast radio, was from 1850.

We call this shift digitization. It is being driven in part by the companies that make use of digital infrastructure and in part by consumers around the world

Read full article via The Global ICT 50: The Supply Side of Digitization.  From Strategy + Business via Booz&Co

What the Gaming Industry Knows About Digital Intelligence

Gamification to tame the overwhelmng data load.   Perhaps the two marry well?

Excerpt: Digital intelligence is appealing to many, but it’s equally daunting because no simple solution exists for handling massive volumes of diverse data, tracking visitors across digital channels, and directly connecting insights to actions. But one industry does stand out as an early adopter: the gaming industry.

Gaming firms have significant incentives to master analytics because game usage data is their first and best feedback loop into the health of their businesses and the needs of players. Don’t believe it? Consider this:

Read full article via What the Gaming Industry Knows About Digital Intelligence.  From Mashable

Do You Have the Digital Leaders You Need? – HBR

Let the truth be known.  Not surprising, but also in today’s market, not necessarily best practice either.  Small business takeaways

Excerpt:  These days you can’t have a business conversation without discussing digital — social, local, mobile, big data, the cloud. But that’s just talk. We wanted to discover what companies are really doing about this new world, so we analyzed the backgrounds of the CEOs and directors of America’s largest companies.

The answer is surprising.

Only nine companies — less than two percent of the Fortune 500 — are what we would call “highly digital.” To be highly digital, by our definition a company must pass four tests: it generates a high percentage of revenues digitally; its leadership (both the CEO and the Board) has deep digital experience; it does business significantly enabled by digital channels; and it’s recognized as transformational in its industry.

Read full article via Do You Have the Digital Leaders You Need? – Jeffrey F. Rayport and Tuck Rickards – Harvard Business Review.

Digital Director Roadmap: How to Become a Board Member

More and more it is becoming important to have an information technology expert on your board of directors…..this article gives the potential IT member some tips and how-to.

Excerpt………As a board advisory consultant and executive coach, I have followed the “digital director” conversation for the last few years. This dialogue peaked in 2011 with the publication of white papers by two major players in the corporate governance arena, Deloitte and NACD, that outlined the need for tech-savvy directors in the boardroom.

Read full article……via Digital Director Roadmap: How to Become a Board Member – info-mgmt.com – InfoManagement Direct Article.

Maximizing the Impact of Digitization

Study provides good insights, and there are many small business takeaways.   Leadership and management today!

Excerpt…..Digitization is quickly becoming a critical factor in supporting worldwide economic growth, contributing even more to the GDP of countries at every stage of development than broadband does. As its importance grows, every country must ensure that their economies, societies and public sectors get the greatest possible benefit from this transformation. In light of this ongoing transformation, all major companies must learn how they too can benefit, and which markets offer the greatest opportunities

Download 28 page report via their newsletter here………via IT Foresight.  From Booz & Co.