Showrooming

A new phenomenon, driven by technology, specifically smartphones, is causing retailers to change their marketing and selling  strategies. It's being called Showrooming, and relates to the practice of a growing number of shoppers to go to stores, and compare the process to online prices and buy at cheaper prices online rather than in the store.

Check out this post.

Where are those damn keys!

You know those things you sometimes waste time trying to find? Like the car keys you left in the pocket of a rarely used jacket. Or the remote. Or the cat.

Help is at hand. It's called StickNFind. it's a small sticker that is bluetooth enabled. You just stick it on whatever you have a habit of losing and as long as it is within 100 feet, you can find it using your smartphone. All you do is place the sticker on the item you have a habit of misplacing. Great idea! Here's a better description.Great stocking gift!

Why Amazon had to Cannibalize its own e-Reader

Amazon was first off the mark with its e-Reader, the Kindle. Then it had to produce a new tablet, the Fire, to meet competition. Tablets of course are very good for reading books and magazines. So tablet sales are taking off and Kindle sales are dropping. The graph in this article shows dramatically the effect of these trends.

The Future of Outsourcing

This year has seen a large decrease in outsourcing, as companies like General Motors and Apple move some of their operations in house and back to the US. Thee are several reasons for this, one of them being that costs in some of the major venues for outsourcing, like India, have been increasing such that some activities are not as economical for outsourcing as they were a few years ago.

Adam Smith predicted this in 1776, in his classical economic study, The Wealth of Nations. In that tome, he described in great detail how companies would take their production activities to the place where labour is cheapest.and that over time those wages would rise until some sort of equilibrium is reached and and then they would seek out other venues for their activities.This is happening with outsourcing now, and we will see further change over the next year. However, there is no way that outsourcing will end, as there will always be opportunities for it with different products and services. Check out this view on the subject.

Internet Addiction Disorder

IAD is a disorder that may get formal recognition next May. It's a potentially destructive disorder, stealing time and ruining relationships. Here's an article on the subject.

How Indigo is Rebuilding its Supply Chain

Indigo Books and Music is Canada's largest book retailer and therefore has been facing major challenges as the popularity of e-books grows. Since e-books are generally bought online, less space is needed for physical stock in stores, and yet that space needs to be fully utilized. Diversification is key to success in this situation.

This article by David Trites shows how Indigo has achieved success in its efforts to remain relevant in today's changing world..

IBM 's Workforce in India Now Exceeds Their US Workforce

It is well known that IBM, like most other large IT companies, has been outsourcing it's jobs to India and other countries for years, And it was just a matter of time before the Indian workforce exceeded that in the US.

Well, now it's happened. Exact numbers are hard to come by, because IBM stopped reporting them a few years ago. However, several sources indicate that IBM has about 90,000 US workers and about 110,000 workers in India.

In the grand scheme of things, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Adam Smith, in his great work "The Wealth of Nations" wrote eloquently that in a free enterprise global economy, jobs would migrate to the areas with the lowest wages. Recent stats show that the average wage in the IT industry in India is $17,000 per year, very low by US standards, or Canadian standards for that matter.

Over time, Smith said, the wages in the low wage country will rise, until some sort of parity is achieved. Then the outflow will stop and perhaps reverse. In the meantime, consumers will have benefited from lower cost goods and services, giving them higher discretionary income, which means higher levels of savings, higher levels of investment, growth in business and the rise of home grown employment in, say, service industries, where wage rates are more comparable globally or in industries that cannot be outsourced. The outsourcing country will benefit from higher exports, because the other countries have more money to import with, creating jobs in export industries and helping to offset the lower employment from outsourcing..

What that means is that everyone benefits. Win-win. That's the theory.

You can read more about the IBM employment situation in this article.

Google Planning to Extend Their Search Capability

Google has been conducting a study intended to tell them what information people need that they are not using Google for. In other words, they want to extend their search capabilities to cover that additional information.

One of the avenues for them to follow is context specific, location based searches. It is directed to the use of mobile devices and recognizes that people are often travelling or just in transit from home to work and want particular information along the way. For example, they might get to a bus stop and want to know when the next bus is coming. Or they might want to go to a particular night spot and want to know the wait time.

The system of course depends on using GPS chips to track peoples' movements and pinpoint their location at any time, raising privacy issues. If people don't want to be tracked, they can turn the GPS function off in their phone.

For a summary of the research Google is doing, follow this link.

Customize Those Websites for Good Marketing

More companies are starting to customize their websites to respond to the particular needs and desires of their customers. This can be done by tracking some basic data, like what they have searched for before, where they are from, what the weather is like where they are from, their demographic, even the device they are using to connect to your website.

The challenge then is to incorporate the data into the actual style and content of the website they see. That means if they are using a tablet, then the website should be specifically designed for a tablet. Same for a smartphone. There is web development software to accomplish this.

Some of the other information can be linked directly to content, such that if, for example, they searched for hand made kitchen furniture previously, then when they log in, they can be presented with ads, say, on a new line of locally made kitchen chairs. Or if they are from North Bay and it is January, they might be presented with a line of heavy sweaters.

Specific customer oriented marketing is the wave of the future in online marketing. Check out this link for more.

Location Based Marketing Moves Ahead

Cisco announced last week a new technology that can be used to track customers in or near their stores. It uses the customers' cell phone signals, transforming them into WiFi signals, which can then be transmitted back to the store WiFi and analyzed. The technology can track their location quite accurately. In addition, if the customer has previously purchased at that store and agreed to a store promotional campaign, the technology can bring up their past history of shopping and their preferences. All of this big data is then analyzed and used to offer the shoppers special deals on the spot. It's a classic location-based marketing exercise using big data analysis techniques. It's a technology that has a very bright future, since smart phones are holding more and more information and are about to be used for payments, adding additional information to the mix. See this article on Cisco's announcement.

Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves

The One Laptop Per Child Organization is starting to show some very positive results. Self-learning works! Check out this article.

MOOCs, an Approach to the High Cost of Post-Secondary Education

While not a panacea (none of those actually exist) MOOCs point the way to a way to bring about radical change in the educational system. Check this article.

Strategic Social Business

The use of social networking in business is something that. like other business applications requires a good deal of planning and coordination. It isn't enough to just set everyone loose on conventional social networks and think that it will somehow lead to something good. It might not. Social networking is a potential game changer and can significantly alter relationships within the organization, It can lead to the development of new influencers and result in the decline of managerial authority. That's not necessarily a bad thing because we know that the effect of social networking is to turn the organization upside down in a hierarchical sense and generally level the organization out. But if its going to be beneficial to the organization in terms of productivity and doing a better job of serving customers, then that requires enough planning to ensure that the set up of the networking is consistent with corporate goals and strategies. In fact, it should be considered a key part of the strategic planning. Check out this article on the subject.

Secure Web Data under PCI Requirements

The Payment Card Industry's requirements for protecting credit card data can be challenging and confusing for those who must comply. Many hire consultants or Public Accountants to help them..

All retailers need to understand how to protect the credit card and other customer data that comes from online transactions. According to Verizon's 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report, retailers are the second leading source of leaked data (after the hospitality industry), accounting for 20% of total breaches.

For an interesting report on this topic by the staff of InformationWeek, click this link.

Movement Tracking Software - The Next Big Thing

As our devices become more and more powerful and more of them contain cameras, the time may be ripe for some useful movement tracking software. For example, if you get up an leave a room, such software could ensure that your TV is turned off, the lights are softened or turned off, and appliances, like the oven are off.

Tracking software could also learn your gender and study your facial expressions to determine whether you are about to make a decision. It could track your movements in a store, for example, and note your hesitation in looking at a new car and offer you a discount on the spot.

Speaking of cars, your car could keep an eye on you and determine if you are falling asleep and then warn you or even pull over to the side of the road.

These are only some of the technologies under development as we speak (read?). IT promises to be a game changer in many areas. For some more on the developments in one company check this link.

Gartner's Top Ten Trends for 2013

Gartner Group has come out with their annual publication of the top ten trends in technolgy for 2013. For the most part, the list is predictable. The growing importance of mobile devices is featured, for example. But they won't replace PCs any time soon. PCs are deeply embedded in the work world, and in fact most of the applications used in business cannot be used effectively on mobile devices. Maybe eventually, but not yet. On the other hand, the number of devices in use to access the internet, and the sheer volume of usage might outstrip PCs at any time.

Other predictions feature the growing use of the cloud for personal purposes. This makes sense in a multi-device world, where people on the move will want to have access to their data without always having to synchronize their various devices.

And the growth of big data and data analytics is an important trend that cannot be denied.

For an article on the Gartner Trends, check out this link.

Big Data for Government

A new Study released last week for the purposes of advising on policy in the US government provides a cogent analysis of the opportunities available to government through big data.

Big data has evolved as a term denoting the vast quantities of structured and unstructured data now available on the Internet and on various Information Systems. There has been a growing interest in the data from businesses and governments over the past year. Tools to analyze the data are being implemented in a wide number of organizations.


"The report pointed to possible values of Big Data analysis for the federal government, including determining the most effective medical outcomes across large populations, analysis of health anomalies in the hospital or home through sensors, new levels of real-time traffic information, a better understanding of the most effective online learning techniques, better fraud detection, or improved weather predictions."

The analysis of big data was incorporated in a significant big data initiative launched by the Obama administration earlier in the year. This new report marks a significant contribution to the policy issues that are now being addressed.

For more, check out this article.

The Perils of Giving Out Your Private Information

Check out this article on this important topic. Something we need to keep reminding ourselves of.

Mobile Phones - A Revolution

IT may be an understatement to say that mobile phones have changed the way we communicate with each other. IT goes much deeper than that. They are changing the way we as humans interact with each other in profound and revolutionary ways. never in the history of humanity have we been in such close contact with each other. And never have so many events been so transparent to so many people. Pictures and videos of significant events can circle the globe in seconds, and change the way people perceive them and their implications. This has already led to the downfall of governments.

CNN is recognizing this with a new series "Our Mobile Society" recognizing the profound effect of mobile technology on our society.  

Mobile Marketing

The shift from traditional PC's and laptops to mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets has had numerous implications. One that has been particularly under scrutiny lately is that of marketing. Not too long ago, internet marketing was something new and the world of marketing was severely shaken up. Marketing strategies were forced to embrace the internet and to find ways to reach customers without aggravating them by slowing down their browsing. 

The old traditional marketing in pre-internet days saw ads transmitted to a very passive audience on TV or in the print media. On the internet, however, the audience is far from passive - one click and they're gone. So marketing had to be less intrusive, quicker and more instantly engaging. It also had to combine internet and non-internet marketing in a way that the two complemented each other. Marketing has fully adapted to this scenario. The advent of social media and the consequent social marketing has extended that paradigm.

Now users are moving in large numbers to mobile devices, and their tolerance for advertising and interruptions is even more limited. Mobile users are often on the run, and want to do things very fast. For example, they may be on the street and want to find a particular restaurant and make a reservation. The last thing they want is to wait through an advertisement on a clothing store sale.

It presents a real dilemma for advertisers.Just how quick can they make their advertisements and still get their message across. One answer, of course, is to shorten the message. Make it not more than 5 or 6 words. For example, "Hillside Buick sells buicks and pontiacs" or "Big sale at Hillside Buick"

Those may not be the best examples, but the point should be clear. Even flash ads may come into vogue - where Hillside Buick is flashed on the screen for a half second, creating a subliminal impression. 

With people using Facebook more now on mobile units than on computers, that company now faces these problems in spades. Read about it in this article.