E-Payments - A Changing Field

The banking industry in Canada is finally acting on the idea of using mobile units like smartphones to make payments. Canada has been lagging in this area for several years now. Details are expected to be announced very soon, possibly even today. This new initiative, having the backing of the banks and telecom companies, is likely to take off quickly. This article summarizes the initiative, which will change the business model of the telecom companies into pseudo banking operations. Rogers has already applied for a banking licence.

Traditional credit cards are still the most common form of payment for e-commerce transactions, although Paypal is running a close second, at least in North America. Worldwide, the payment systems vary, and that needs to be taken into account when venturing into foreign markets. Recently, BMO introduced a new payment system for smartphones and perhaps tablets. Just touch your phone to a cash register add-on device and the payment will be made. It's been slow to develop, but chances are it will be popular. Also, some organizations, including some of the banks, are developing mobile wallets, which will be useful for payments.

This referenced article provides a summary of the forms of payment used in some key foreign markets, It's worth some research if that's where your business is going.

ERP in the Cloud

One of the major issues with ERP systems since they came in has been the fact that many large companies have numerous ERP systems in place. The whole point of ERP systems in the first place was to give the company a common platform for its major business functions and therefore have all its users working on the same page. However., ERP systems are very large and complex applications, and their implementation is famously expensive and rife with downside risk. So companies have been hesitant to implement ERP systems just to replace one ERP system with another, in order to get their companies all on the same system.

Of course, the existence of various ERP systems within a single company poses operational challenges for companies. Many of them are going to ERP systems in the cloud. This enables them to gain the benefits of ERP while snot having to go through the treacherous process of in-house implementation. Then the company can be on a single platform, and users can get used to having similar processes across the company.

"The latest BriefingsDirect podcast, from the 2012 Ariba (Nasdaq: ARBA) LIVE Conference in Las Vegas, explores the latest in cloud-based collaborative commerce with Cox Enterprises, a US$15 billion communications, media, and automotive services company." This article summarizes some of the key points made about the Cox implementation and shows clearly the advantages of cloud based ERP implementation. Check it out.

Let's Integrate These Devices

One clear result of the proliferation of portable devices in the past couple of years has been that people end up with more devices to carry around and to store their files on. Many people now have a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop and sometimes a PC at home. All for good reasons. A smartphone is good for quick access on the move. A tablet for easy acccess and partial functionality, a laptop for generally full functionality and a PC for premium functionality and storage, where such is needed.

In many cases, if not most, these are not completely coordinated. Apple owners have a better chance than most, as long as they stick to apple products and only buy a iPhone, and iPad and a big Mac. But the rest of the world is in trouble. There are some techniques for synchronizing. Most of the portable products have synch capabilities, but they often are crude and cumbersome. Then there is the cloud, where files could be stored and accessed by some if not all of the products, but then working in the cloud can be slow and difficult, and in some cases costly, when you don't have a high end data plan.

The bottom line is that there is a real need for more user friendly and effective means of establishing synchronization between these different devices. For one rumination on this general topic, check this article.

Digital Wallets Are Coming -But Slowly

They are something most people seem to want. Surveys support that. Also a majority of people own smartphones, which can handle payments easily, but they just haven't taken off yet. The main reason appears to be the lack of coordination between the various parties who can make it work. That includes mainly the banks, terminal providers and retailers. When using your smartphones to pay for things you buy becomes common, it will likely happen quickly. All the elements are there. They just haven't come together very well. Here's one take on it.

Social Marketing a Social Force

The use of social media for marketing purposes has become a standard part of many companies' marketing strategies. This goes well beyond simply using social media like Facebook, LinkedIn and the others into a scene where sales automation software is incorporating social media characteristics and linkages. It has also extended into the incorporation of social media into CRM systems. So the whole corporate interface with customers and potential customers is taking on social media-like characteristics and methods. It's a massive change under way and one that will have an enduring impact on the whole field. For an article showing how specific recent mergers and acquisitions have revealed the nature of this movement, check out this link.

Social CRM - The Unstructured Data Problem

Customer Relationship Management has taken a new turn with the advent of social Media. There has been an increased awareness of the value of the extensive data being made available through Social Media in Managing Customer Relationships. The issue is that there needs to be a means of analyzing the data. Traditional CRM systems have been developed to enable the analysis of structured data. Tools for analyzing unstructured data have been scarce. But they are coming on to the market.

The firm Customer Relationship Metrics recently announced a new tool Text BI, which is designed to enable the advanced analysis of unstructured data. Essentially it incorporates a method for adding a structure to the data and then feeding it into its analytics tools. Analytics of this type are increasingly important for CRM and BI systems and we can expect to see more of them coming out. For a brief rundown on Text BI, check out this article.

Mobility and Corporate Internet Strategy

The advent of mobile units like tablets and smartphones is obvious to most people and widely heralded. Many companies, however, still don't get the full implications of this massive wave of innovation. The fact is, mobility is changing everything. While internet use has historically been primarily restricted to access through browsers, access through mobile units has been growing rapidly. Business has been aware of this and many have developed websites that can be adapted to the small screens of those mobile units. However, the mobility phenomenon goes a lot further than just the size and type of browser. The difference is in the apps.

Users love their apps, and seek them out for many things they do. Smart companies are developing apps that their customers can use to interact with their brand. Travel companies are making travel planning apps, gas companies are creating gas station finder apps, retail stores are creating product discount apps. There are apps for almost everything, and the list is growing.

Companies need to include in their internet strategy the idea of which apps they are going to have to help customers interact with their brand. The competition is doing it and eventually it will be a competitive necessity - eventually being not too far into the future.

To develop the strategy, the company needs to think of the ways they want their customers to interact with them and their product. This means stepping back and considering the whole situation with objectivity and creativity. Then a range of apps need to be developed and put into the hands of the customers, through web sites, blogs and social media. It's a diffferent approach, but one in tune with the times. Here's a good article on the subject.

Bringing Social Media into Online Education

When you think about it, most traditional online education is modeled after the old classroom lecture style of learning, a style that has been largely abandoned inmost progressive educational institutions for some time. They do employ discussion boards, but again, that is modeled after the old classroom style.

We also know that most learning takes place outside of the classroom, usually when the students collaborate with friends, classmates and others. People learn best by studying on their own, clearing up their weak points  and pursuing the areas of particular interest through collaboration.

It's a prime situation for the use of social media, so educators have been experimenting with this type of tool. Strangely, the online courses that are offered most often tend to stress the old classroom style of learning, which is something of an irony.

Not all, however. Telus is a case in point where social media, including blogs, social networking tools and YouTube videos are used in its training programs. They have constructed an approach that should be looked at by everyone interested in online learning. Check out this article.

Big Data Analytics

Many businesses have twigged to the fact that a vast amount of data about their markets and potential markets is available on the internet (in the cloud) and have started to incorporate it into their business systems. The problem is they have been having trouble analyzing it so as to be able to make best use of it. The vast quantities of sometimes disparate data just makes analysis difficult.

It's true there are tools out there, but they haven't always been what was needed.

Google has announced its entry into big data analytics - called Big Query. It has the advantage that it is a Google product, which should mean it can take advantage of Google's impressive data analytics capability. Also, Google is one of the largest providers of big cloud data, and therefore close to the source.

Big Query should be a big success. but we shall see. Check out this summary of the tool.

Cloud Computing is Bigger Than IT

Going into a cloud environment, which is happening very quickly, involves a lot more than It issues. IT is often a very large outsourcing exercise, one that requires a lot of thought about compatibility, scalability, privacy, data protection, legal responsibilities, management responsibilities, and so on. For a larger company, moving to the cloud can be a major initiative.For that reason, the federal CIO Council and the federal Chief Acquisitions Officers Council (CAO) recently released a guide to cloud contracting dealing basically with the kinds of issues that should be included in a Cloud outsourcing agreement.. It's worth a look.

Encyclopaedia Britannica vs Wikipedia

EB has finally decided to discontinue its expensive print version of the Encyclopaedia. It's a decision that has been a long time in coming, despite the obvious signs for the past ten years or so that expensive print books are no longer a viable way to disseminate information. EB has been grappling with this reality for many years, while continuing to lose money on its print version and experimenting with its website. The website version has been charging fees for several years, but has run directly up against Wikipedia, which offers its contents for free.

The Britannica dilemma typifies the difficulty that information providers have been running into since the advent of the Web. There is so much information available on the web for free that people are not willing to pay for information at all. Users have in fact come to expect information to be free.

This expectation appears to ignore two basic facts of life. One is that if information is only provided for free, professionals who are best able to provide that information will not do so. They will not be willing to work for nothing. That puts information provision into the hands of the amateurs, who for the most part produce an inferior product. We see this on the web regularly. There is a lot of information there - you can Google anything - but a lot of that information is misinformation or otherwise wrong or incomplete. To some extent, users can distinguish the good from the bad, but often they can't. Or don't.

A major difference between EB and Wikipedia is that EB has traditionally been written by acknowledged global experts on a particular subject while Wikipedia can be written by anyone, with some cursory editorial oversight. However the fact that EB is likely to be the most knowledgable source, it is not enough of a difference to convince people to pay for it. EB's challenge is to come up with a competitive advantage that will actually be convincing to people. It simply hasn't been able to do that yet.

On the other hand, the Wikipedia model is not a viable business model either. Even though the content is written by anyone - some professionals and some amateurs -  for free, there are still costs to maintaining the site. Since there have been no revenues to cover these costs, the site has been relying on donations to keep going. Which means someone is out there who is willing to pay for information. But reliance on donations is almost by definition not a viable business model and it stands to reason that sooner or later, Wikipedia will need to come up with a viable model. They are in the same boat as Encyclopaedia Britannica, just at the other end of the spectrum.

The bottom line is that there needs to be a system to compensate information providers for their efforts. Otherwise, while information will continue to proliferate, quality information will become harder and harder to find. And probably more expensive. Here's an article on the announcement by EB.
 

E-Discovery in the Cloud

The cloud is a pretty broad concept and to talk about anything in the cloud means a lot of different things. This applies to e-discovery as with other areas. In e-discovery, the question is gaining access to key data in the event of a legal action.

A host of issues arises, however. Storage in the cloud can mean storage with a number of different hosts. You may not know where the data is stored by those hosts and need to go through them to find it. Also, the agreement with the host may or may not contain procedures in the event of discovery hearings. Can you retain control over the data if it is subpoenaed? Also, does the data remain in your possession and control under the terms of the agreement?

These may not be crucial issues in the normal conduct of business, but they may become very important quickly in the event of a legal action. Check for more here.

Groupon - Doin' Good

Groupon, the consumer deal maker, is doing well. Its IPO was a big hit. But the business in which it is engaged still raises concerns among investors. It isn't so much the business model of Groupon itself, but rather the state of the industry and the consolidation it is going through. Also, a natural for Groupon is to venture into the mobile market, which it is trying to do. However, mobile payment systems using mobile units are needed for this and they are just not here yet. So Groupon has some issues, but it looks like a viable business both for consumers and for investors. Check out this article for more.

Social Analytics

The past year has seen a tremendous increase interest by companies in the vast array of data made available in social media. Data about markets, customers, buyers, competitors, suppliers, almost any aspect of a business. The analysis of those data is being incorporated into the mainstream information systems and put to use for strategic and other purposes. In this series published by InformationWeek, the burgeoning field of Social Analytics is examined in some depth. Worth investigating. Check it out.

How E-Books are changing the Publishing Industry

The publication of e-books has grown to the point that it is now an established and important part of the overall industry. New publishing vehicles are emerging which enable authors to publish their books without the need to find an agent or jump the hoops with a publisher. The new vehicles, like Createspace and Lulu enable authors to offer their wares for download or in paper on a print-on-demand basis. The real winner is the consumer, who can chose how they do their reading and will have a wider choice of authors to choose from. Also, they can get their books online for a much lower price  in many cases as little as 99 cents.

As one who has published books in both ways, using traditional publishers and the new vehicles (in my case, Createspace), I can say that I much prefer the new scene. I can get my books out there in a form that I like, set the price and find ways to seek out readers for them (the hard part). With traditional publishers, you can't do that. You are at the mercy of the publishers., your book goes on the market for a short period of time on book shelves and than is taken off to make room for the new ones. The result is that most authors do not make any money on their books, even though it might be a very good one. With the new system, authors can leave their books for download on sites such as Amazon indefinitely, can have their books made available in print indefinitely and can devise their own marketing schemes, making use of the many emerging e-marketing specialists out there.

The new world of publishing gives consumers of books a better choice and gives the authors more control over their product. A win-win. For another writer's view, check out this article.

The Wireless Spectrum Shortage

The amazing growth of mobile units like smartphones and tablets is having an enormous impact on the way people communicate and on business generally. As those units become steadily more powerful, they transmit ever increasing volumes of data. Something that is often forgotten, except by people in the communications industry, is that this uses up available spectrum, and that there are limits on the spectrum available.

The ability to transmit over the air waves is a controlled function. It has been so for many years because if it were not controlled and organized, the transmissions would get mixed up, interfere with each other and become very unreliable and unsafe. So government agencies administer spectrum and data carriers buy it.

So the amount of spectrum available is limited. To complicate the situation, most of the spectrum is not owned by the mobile operators, making the availability even tighter.

All of this means that the cost of using mobile devices is bound to go up. Unlimited data plans will be a thing of the past, which they already are in some quarters now. And tiered plans that charge heavy users higher fees will continue to grow. For more on this, check this link.  

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.

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.

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.

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.