Wednesday, January 25, 2012

SunLife Makes Good use of Tablets

In this case study, SunLife sets out how they gained a clear advantage by using the Blackberry Playbook Tablet. In collaboration with RIM, SunLife, one of the world's larger insurance companies, addressed an issue with their training programs they were offering their customers' staff on retirement programs. A significant purpose of the training was to have customers fill out forms afterwards for SunLife's marketing purposes. However, they were having difficulty getting the forms actually filled out and after weighing the problem, decided on a novel approach. They made available Blackberry Playbooks to the attendees and asked them to fill in the forms online. It worked very well, and after testing, implemented it with a thousand playbooks being distributed to their trainers. A novel approach for obtaining feedback from customers.

A logical next step might be to implement a more generic app for mobile phones and try asking the customers to fill in the information on their own units if they wish. Might or might not work, though.

For the case study, click this link.

Friday, January 13, 2012

The Big Data Era
by Gerald Trites, FCA

A growing part of business is a focus on data. Companies that have learned how to obtain and create value for data are the companies that will succeed in the modern world. That is why data analytics has become such a big industry. And why the ability to analyze has become such a major part of the search for talent by many organizations. The importance of data is well known. What is not quite as widely appreciated is the magnitude of the change being wrought by data.

In June, 2011, McKinsey Global Institute published their landmark study, "Big data: The next frontier
for innovation, competition, and productivity". Since its publication, the study has gained influence in business, academia and research. Big data has become a major watchword of the 21st century.

When we talk about big data, we mean the vast quantities of data that are created and consumed every day in our world. Not very long ago, we discussed data in terms of megabytes. Then came gigabytes and in larger systems, terabytes. Each exponentially larger than its predecessor. Now we are talking about exabytes.

To get an idea of the meaning of exabytes, one of them is equal to a byte times 10 to the 18th power. That's equal to one quintillion bytes. To put it another way, one exabyte is more than 4000 times the total information stored in the US Library of Congress.

The data is being created at a growing rate through internet traffic, media, research and many other ways. A significant portion is generated through social media, mobile devices, the cloud, etc.

From a business point of view, the data represents a vast resource for defining customer needs, designing new products, determining business trends and developing strategy. The value of data is becoming so important that its presence marks the dawn of a new revolution in business, one in which the success and even the survival of a business depends on its ability to create value from the data, to direct it to the creation of strategic advantage. Companies are beginning to realize this and are ramping up the search for talent that has analytical abilities; something that is becoming a major industry in itself.

But the creation of value from data is subject to a number of constraints. The old ERP and CRM systems, while designed to direct data analysis to strategic decision making, were never designed to cope with the vast volumes of data in the big data world, nor were they designed to cope with the data that comes from social media, although Social CRM has been moving in that direction. The analytical sophistication of these business systems needs to be seriously improved. Also, corporate systems tend often to be segmented into different platforms, thus restricting the mobility of data and the ability to analyze it.Finally, too many managements and their advisors don't get it yet - are not "data-minded" and therefore will miss the strategic advantages that come from big data. And the shortage of people with serious data analytical abilities limits the ability of business to create that value, even if they realize it needs to be done. Absolutely a big challenge for educators and corporate trainers.

We've gone from bytes to exabytes in less than thirty years. In a world of exponential growth, imagine what the next thirty years has in store.

For a copy of the McKinsey report, go to the McKinsey Global site here.

Friday, January 06, 2012

Facebook May be Getting Serious About Privacy

Facebook was roundly criticized by Canada's privacy commissioner in the last few years, and made some changes in its privacy functionality as a result. What they don't seem to get is that most western countries apply similar principles on privacy, and changes need to be made worldwide to accommodate those countries as well, along with the nuanced differences.

Recently, privacy authorities in the US and Ireland have also found Facebook to be lacking in the privacy area, forcing the social network to make some more changes. There is word that they are now beginning to realize that they need to conform to the privacy legislation in the different countries in which they operate, which means most countries in the world.

The Irish feedback came after an extensive audit. Also, Ireland is a headquarters site for Facebook International, meaning changes made their will set the tone for other countries. It's been a long struggle with Facebook and its privacy, but an issue that looms to greater importance with its plans to go public with an IPO.

For an article on this subject, click here.

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Facebook Marketing - "Like" Us

We've all seen the buttons. They appear on most sites these days. Like us on Facebook. And people are liking like crazy. So much so that the use of Facebook "like" buttons has become a major marketing tool for many companies.

Their objective is to spread their message as far as possible, So if people press the "like" button, it gets announced on their "wall", their friends see it and some will replicate it and so it goes. If only a small percentage of the friends do repeat the like, the size of the Facebook audience is so vast that it amounts to a significant number of potential customers. So companies are jumping in with both feet.

Through search tools, they can also accumulate lists of the people doing the liking and then use those lists for further marketing. Add in contests,m quizzes and games and you have a fully fledged marketing program. All for a modest cost. It's just one visible way that companies are using social media for marketing. For more, check out this article.

Monday, January 02, 2012

Top IT Trends for 2012

Recently Gartner published a summary of the top ten IT trends to expect for 2012. The usual suspect are there, like virtualization and social media. But there are some new ones that are interesting. One in particular is the rapid turnover being exhibited by the young employees in their 20's and 30's. Many of them are not staying in their jobs for more than one year, particularly if they aren't shown clear career progress. They want to be fast-tracked. Also, when they receive training, which of course is the norm in IT, they receive offers from other companies and, not being caught up in the old company loyalty myth, are often gone. It is getting to be a serious problem for IT departments and indeed any functions in the enterprise that require IT expertise, which is a growing number of them.

Another interesting addition to the usual list is that of big data, or data analytics, depending on how you look at it. There has been a trend towards unstructured data for some time, and it continue to grow such that it is now a big industry. How to handle all this data and find business opportunities in it has become a major industry. At first glance, it presents a major opportunity for XBRL, since making good use of unstructured data is what XBRL is all about. However, it could spell its death knell as well, because companies have been slow to adopt XBRL and are being quick to adopt the newer data analytics, which could eventually overrun that window of opportunity for XBRL.

For a summary of the Gartner Top Ten, check out this link.