Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Facebook and Twitter Important Shopping Tools

A recent Gartner Study has revealed that Facebook and Twitter are becoming important tools used by consumers to choose their purchases. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, much of this use is taking place on mobile phones.

When the internet first started, one of its first primary uses was as a source of information for purchases - the internet was where people researched their options, and thus began the era of the informed shopper - shoppers coming in the door who already knew about all the products and their prices and features, and often had already decided on what they were going to buy. Of course, the internet is still used that way, but now it is used more often than initially for making the actual purchases as well.

It is inevitable that phones assume this role. and it will be the first step in a series of steps that will take the phones through the evaluation stage to the purchase stage and even the payment stage. All of these things are at the beginning stage now, but can be expected to evolve quickly. Since apps like Facebook and Twitter are often used on mobile phones, it stands to reason they will factor into the equation. This brings in an element that might not have been there before as strongly - the advice and experience of friends. People have always made use of such advice, but not necessarily in the technological sense. Facebook and Twitter make this not only possible but easy and efficient.

For an article on the Gartner Study, click this link.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Monitoring the Cloud

One of the lessons learned by early adopters of cloud computing, even those who adopted with the majors, like Google and IBM, is that it's difficult to know how the applications are performing in the traditional IT sense. Are there I/O issues, for example? Or other resource stresses? Established internally managed systems have lots of monitoring tools to deal with these questions, but not so with cloud computing. At least the options in cloud computing seem to be more limited.

An article in InformationWeek surveys briefly some of these lessons learned by early adopters, and points to some of the possible solutions.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Is Facebook Maxing Out?

Recently Facebook announced that their membership has reached 500 million. This is a level that was given a good head start by being so popular with the young users in the beginning. Gradually, its use has spread to adults and even seniors.

The generalization of the appeal of Facebook among the population may turn off some of the youngest users. Indeed, they like to use facilities they can call their own, separate from their parents and other adults, and Facebook no longer meets that description. So the continuation of user growth is thrown into question.

Another issue facing Facebook is the apparent unhappiness of users with the new privacy rules. surveys show that this is a real issue, and in any event, Internet users don;t generally like a lot of rules and regulations.

Having said all that, it seems obvious that social networking is a permanent part of our digital landscape, and Facebook has a prominent place in that landscape. It remains to be seen how long it will take to reach the next 500 million, or whether it will. For more, see this article.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Mobile Bandwidth Being Tested

Mobile usage has grown tremendously - 280% per year in the last two years. Predictions are that this growth will continue for several years.

Mobile bandwidth is not an unlimited resource, and though it is growing, the growth in usage will continue to test it.

Accenture has published a paper called "Monetizing Mobile Bandwidth", which focuses on the fact that this growth scenario will lead to customer usage issues, like dropped calls, which in turn will lead to larger rates of customer churning.

"Accenture recommends a comprehensive, four-part method to delivering high-quality service while holding costs down:
  • A quality operations center—that is, a centralized approach to quality management—helps monitor and control overall service quality.
  • Enhanced policy management can dynamically adapt network resources according to demand to relieve network congestion.
  • Innovative mobile device management capabilities can help companies understand the service quality that customers are experiencing on their devices.
  • Network and application probes can proactively discover the source of service issues."

    You can download the paper from the Accenture site. 

Monday, July 19, 2010

Mobile Banking in Africa

A major difficulty for the people in the poorest parts of Africa (and some other areas) is a lack of infrastructure. There often is, for example, little or no telephone service, very poor roads, and few banks. Businesses cannot follow that most basic of control principles of depositing their cash every day. Making a deposit often involves a long and sometimes dangerous journey.

The ability of such areas to plug into the information economy is limited or non-existent.

Mobile phones have been a notable exception. Nowadays its not unusual to see a Masai warrior with a cell phone at his ear.

Mobile phones provide an opportunity that is not going unnoticed. In one case, as outlined in the referenced article, they are being used to provide banking services. Special accounts are set up and money can be texted from one person to another using the service. it provides a form of electronic cash and also gives the money much greater mobility. And the velocity of money is one of the underpinnings of a robust economy.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Another case of Insourcing

Tennessee bank offers an interesting case study on the recent movement to insourcing - in this case referred to as un-outsourcing.

Times change and in this case, circumstances changed such that Tennessee sold its mortgage company leading to a changed business strategy such that outsourcing no longer fit its strategy. Something that all companies need to stay on top of. For an article on this, follow this link.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

From Outsourcing to Insourcing

A few short years ago, outsourcing was all the rage. Companies big and small were outsourcing many of their key functions, anticipating savings of millions of dollars. Now, the scene has changed. Some of those same companies are now bringing those services home again, to save millions of dollars. So what has changed in the intervening years. Several things, including a growing need to be able to respond strategically to change. A need to economize. A need for more control.

Insourcing is not simply reversing the outsourcing that was previously implemented. There are different issues. For example, the skilled staff that the company had before the original outsourcing deal may well be working for the oursourcer and may be less than keen on moving back. They may even be disgruntled ex-employees to deal with.

For a good summary of the pros and cons of outsourcing vs insourcing, see this link.
The Growing Importance of Mobility

From mobile banking to mobile airline check-in to mobile cash register payments, mobility is becoming a major force in computing. So major that companies are having to address the management of their mobile interfaces with a new urgency and degree of importance. In some quarters, thought is even being given to setting up separate mobile computing departments. Look for this trend to continue. This article provides an overview.