5 Ways Competitive Intelligence Teams Can Prove Their Worth

There is definitely value to be gained by competitive intelligence teams, but the understanding and how-to are, in my opinion, yet to be mastered.  Good read for all leadership and management

Excerpt:  For CI efforts to shine bright from the top of the food chain, CI teams must prove their efforts positively impact the quality of decision-making among executives and departments leaders. It’s actually not about quantifying tactics or measuring ROI like other service functions may do, CI functions must prove their value is supportive, much like accounting or project management. So instead of waiting for management to ask about analysis and results, CI functions must be proactive and transparent about showing it.

Here are five ways CI teams can show their value day-to-day and in the long term:

Read full article 5 Ways Competitive Intelligence Teams Can Prove Their Worth. From Clear Technology to Compete

Why Changed Goals Require Changed Metrics

Important read with small business takeaways.  Explore why your ROI has probably changed and what to do about it.

Business needs, changes in management, competitive pressures, or any combination, can lead to significant changes in paid search goals. Where the enterprise was using paid search for brand awareness and customer acquisition and was happy to invest in future growth, now the goal shifts to making search profitable in the immediate term, or vice-versa.

The beauty of paid search is that we can turn on a dime to hit those new goals.

The problem is that flawless execution will produce “bad” year-over-year comparisons that are a natural consequence of the change in goal. Senior executives in other departments and consultants (having no institutional memory) will proceed to beat up the paid search manager for doing her/his job well.

Read full article via Why Changed Goals Require Changed Metrics.  SEO Search Engine

Know Your Customers Wherever They Are – HBR

Good read on today’s customer actions in buying a product.   Business needs to address how to collect and use the data.  Sales

Excerpt: Jane wants to buy a TV and starts her shopping journey with a Google search. She finds an electronics review site, clicks on a banner ad, reads about the product details, and decides to go into the store to see the model. She speaks with a sales associate and posts a picture of the TV on Facebook for her friends’ feedback. She also uses her smartphone to do a quick price comparison, and scans the QR code to get additional product information.

Welcome to problem #1 for retailers: The company knows that a potential customer has interacted with it across a lot of touch points but it has no idea that all these interactions are with Jane. It can track each of these interactions across touchpoints, but doesn’t know how to tie them to an individual customer. Since each touchpoint yields a particular piece of data, this becomes a complex data management challenge.

Retailers are desperate to unlock this intelligence so they can make more personalized offers. Research shows that personalization can deliver five to eight times the ROI on marketing spend and lift sales 10% or more.

Here are four keys to tracking today’s multichannel customers.

Read full article via Know Your Customers Wherever They Are – Josh Leibowitz, Kelly Ungerman and Maher Masri – Harvard Business Review.

Engagement Is the ROI on the Front End of Innovation

This article continues our efforts to better understand means and manage innovation.  There are good how-to within the content.  Recommended for all leadership and managment.

Excerpt:  People discover, too, that every enquiry—whether in the form of an innovation challenge or a World Café hosting or an immersion in design thinking—has two distinct phases: a front end phase and a back end phase.

Read full article via Engagement Is the ROI on the Front End of Innovation | Innovation Management.

Variabilization of Information Technology (Infographic)

Variabilization is the transformation of fixed costs into variable costs, for greater ROI achieved by aligning cost with demand and providing an agile IT infrastructure that enables effective response to dynamic market scenarios.

Learn about infographic design.

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3 Reasons Why There’s No Measuring ROI On Social Media

Wondering how to measure ROI social media  —  are you finding it is like fitting a square peg metrics into a round hole formula?    The author addresses that isuue.   Good read.

Excerpt:   How to measure ROI on social media has become s a common question. There’s a hope that the ever- evasive ROI formula will finally be revealed in a flash of blinding light, paving the way for continued investments into social media.

Keep dreaming.

The human race has created vaccines, solved Fermat’s Last Theorem, and discovered the elusive Higgs boson. If social media ROI were indeed determinable, we’d have solved it over a not so busy weekend.

In fact, the next time you’re asked for social media ROI, you should simply ROFL.

Read full article  via 3 Reasons Why There’s No Measuring ROI On Social Media – Forbes.

Leadership Governance of Information Technology ROI

The down deep and gritty information technology is so complex for most of us that being able to manage the people and processes is a lot less effective than we need.

Excerpt:   IT is a huge part of most companies’ budgets. CIOs write massive checks to vendors that are forever gobbling each other up and gaining the leverage to increase their fees. IT governance — the process that allows a company’s senior management to direct and measure their IT investments — is one sure way to get the biggest bang from those big checks. But most governance functions do not work that well. Typically, all those committees, meetings, reports, and rules of engagement do more to encumber IT decision-making than facilitate it.

Read full article CFO leadership governance IT ROI.  From CFO.com

Customer Analytics: How Analyzing Real People Will Improve Your Business

Okay, just about the time we are all getting into “analytics”, “metrics” , “ROI”, in this new business environment of ours today …..  wait …  take a look at this heads-up article about what we are measuring and what does it mean.  Can we actually take the current measurement without first eliminating the “noise”,  mmm … probably not such a good idea.  Data management

Excerpt:  If we’re only tracking aggregate revenue, all of us want to take credit for the spike in sales (including Santa). With all this noise in our data, it’s very difficult to determine who gets the most credit. Curse you Santa!

So, how do we minimize the noise in our data and find the real signals for improving our business?

We focus on people.

Read full article via Customer Analytics: How Analyzing Real People Will Improve Your Business.  From KISSmetrics

How Many Hours Per Week Should Your Nonprofit Invest in Social Media?

Nonprofits need to use the social media avenues.  What does it take in terms of time and committment?  This article addresses each with reasonable estimates.  Also, there is a link to a prior related article you should also check out while you are there.

Excerpt:  The estimates below allow for the time required to research and create content for your social media campaigns, the actual time spent engaging and participating in your nonprofit’s online communities, and the time necessary to monitor and report ROI. It’s important to note that the time requirements for each tool are fluid and are always changing from week to week, but the estimates do provide a framework that will help you draft a realistic social media manager job description and decide what social media tools your nonprofit can utilize based on your capacity.

Read full article via How Many Hours Per Week Should Your Nonprofit Invest in Social Media? « Nonprofit Tech 2.0 Blog :: A Social Media Guide for Nonprofits.

5 Small Business SEO Campaign ROI Secrets

This is a good article and timely.  SEO management, though critical —  for the small business owner, it can be daunting.  Good advice to use.

Excerpt:  SEO is a competitive place. With such a strong emphasis on specific SEO mechanics and tactics, it’s easy for small business owners to lose the forest for the trees.

A disciplined approach that surrounds sound SEO with best-in-class measurement and evaluation techniques is critical. Furthermore, tight integration between SEO and other marketing processes such as email nurturing and sales CRM might just make the difference in achieving a positive ROI for SEO

Read full article via 5 Small Business SEO Campaign ROI Secrets ~ Sociable360.com | Useful Social Media, Blogging, SEO & Marketing Resources..

A/B Testing: Why Don’t Companies Track ROI of Testing and Optimization Programs?

There are some great stats, points and ideas in this recap of a big marketing event a couple of weeks ago.   Small business takeaways.

Excerpt: During our second annual MarketingSherpa and Marketing Experiments Optimization Summit 2012 two weeks ago in Denver, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS (the parent company of MarketingSherpa), presented some interesting data points on brand-new MECLABS research conducted by Meghan Lockwood, Senior Research Analyst, MECLABS, for the upcoming MarketingSherpa Website Optimization Benchmark Report.

I live blogged this material for MarketingExperiments, but I thought the research was worth sharing with our SherpaBlog readers as well.

Read full article via A/B Testing: Why don’t companies track ROI of testing and optimization programs? | MarketingSherpa Blog.

How to Take a Social Venture to Scale -HBR

Business strategy for the startup social venture.  Good advice, and although it may seem to be obvious steps, seeing a list and knowing the steps are how others have succeeded, helps the newbie.

Excerpt: A scaling strategy, in short, is a plan for creating a special blend of capabilities that fit well with an organization’s theory of change and its surrounding ecosystem. Most social entrepreneurs want to maximize their ROI, even though the “social returns” they seek have more to do with jobs created, lives saved, or cleaner water. A well-thought-out scaling strategy is the best assurance —not only to them but to their many stakeholders —that they have the potential to make a real difference in the world.

Read full article via How to Take a Social Venture to Scale – Paul Bloom – Harvard Business Review.

QuickBooks to Cloud: Considerations and Case Study

With the offerings Intuit now has via QuickBook’s versions, a small business can go a long way before needing to upgrade out of the Intuit group….however, it does happen as your growth outstrips the capabilities…   You will have to register on this site to be able to download the whitepaper, but I believe it is worth your time if you are at or near the need for a bigger and better accounting system.

Excerpt……..It happens thousands of times every year in this great land of opportunity. Successful businesses outgrow their entry-level accounting systems. More often than not, the system is QuickBooks.

But moving to a new accounting system or more robust financial system is expensive, and time consuming. So when should you start? And when will you recover your costs and see a return on your investment?

This whitepaper addresses these important questions by identifying some of the pain points you run into that indicate it’s time for a change. Here you can access a video that gives some quick insights into why growing companies make the move to a new system. We then illustrate how to envision what a more robust and flexible accounting system can bring. Next, we’ll detail how to consider and compare total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI) of the two financial system upgrade alternatives: on-premise and cloud. Finally, a real-life case study will demonstrate how a high-profile business, GrubHub, graduated from QuickBooks to Cloud Accounting.

Register and download white paper………via QuickBooks to Cloud: Considerations and Case Study | Proformative.

Social Media Analytics: Making Customer Insights Actionable

The site does require you register before you can download the whitepaper,  but registration is free.

Excerpt…….Learn how the right combination of technologies can help you understand emerging customer trends and increase the ROI of your marketing campaigns.

Free register and download……via Social Media Analytics: Making Customer Insights Actionable| Whitepapers | TechRepublic.

Survey finds just one in ten UK firms measure social media ROI

Stats from across the pond with small business takeaways for US and other countries. 

Excerpt……..research report published by digital marketing firm EPiServer has found that just one in ten of UK businesses are measuring their ROI in social media – despite continued growth in the sector.

The survey found that over half of UK companies have increased the amount of time they spend on social media this year, with marketers spending an hour a day on average on such sites.

Read full article….via Survey finds just one in ten UK firms measure social media ROI | The Drum.