A 360-Degree View is Best for Your Business

Yes performing "in the round."

One of my favorite concert experiences was watching the progressive-rock band Yes perform “in the round” on a circular, revolving stage located in the center of the arena. With this approach, there wasn’t a bad seat in the house; everyone had a 360-degree view of the performance, rather than only a partial or distant view as is sometimes the case in concert halls. The sound was also excellent, because the speakers were also arranged in a circle to project equally in all directions. Check it out in this video.

In business, we also prefer 360-degree views over partial views. For example, we want a 360-degree view of our customers so that we have a complete picture of their relationships and interactions with our company to better serve their needs. Some companies prefer 360-degree performance reviews, which incorporate perspectives from peers, subordinates, superiors, and possibly also customers and other business partners in addition to supervisors.

With the advent and importance of social media, we definitely need a 360-degree view of all that is being written or spoken about our company and our competitors. It is no longer sufficient to only monitor traditional media, because we can learn more than ever before from all who interact with our organizations and share their experiences online. The largest focus group in history is available to us in social media today if we just put some effort in to listen, participate, and share with our audience, and measure the results.

That’s why I’m excited about Attensity360, which provides 360-degree monitoring of all the “buzz” about anyone or anything from all media sources based on selected keywords. You can use the information that Attensity60 provides to connect with customers, answer a question, solve a problem, create or modify a product, and see how you stack up against other companies in your category.

You can also use Attensity360 to analyze the specific words and phrases that your audience uses in social communities when discussing your products, services, solutions, and issues. Then, you can integrate those words and phrases into your page titles, website content, pay-per-click campaigns and ad copy. In the new world of social media, customers own, define, and refine your brand and messages almost as much as you do.

For more information, take a 360-degree view of Attensity360, and say “yes” to the benefits of social media monitoring. Social media monitoring is part of a complete business and communications strategy; it will put you ahead of your time and your competition, just like the members of Yes were when they performed “in the round” and interacted in ways never before possible with their audience.

What is your social-media strategy, and how do you plan to monitor the many outlets that customers, media, and other influencers have to share their opinions and observations of your business performance?

A Tornado is Coming from the Cloud

In the movie, “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy suffers a head injury during a tornado and is catapulted, with her house and dog, Toto, to the magical Land of Oz, where she has many adventures and cleanses the land of two wicked witches. In the business book, “Inside the Tornado,” author Geoffrey Moore describes the tornado as a period of exponential growth for new companies and technologies as the market tips in their favor. Moore uses the “Land of Oz” metaphor to describe the spectacular, “magical,” rapid growth that new companies and technologies achieve after they cross the chasm from early adopters to the mainstream market. Read the “Land of Oz” and “Crossing the Chasm” chapters of “Inside the Tornado” here, thanks to Google Books!

In a recent post on TechCrunch, “The Coming Tornado: Cloud in the Enterprise,” Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of cloud content management provider Box.net, argues that cloud computing is ready to go inside the tornado of mainstream adoption in enterprise computing. I think he is right, because several funnel clouds have already touched down to positively change the computing landscape at high-profile enterprises.

For example, last year Los Angeles County approved a $7.25 million deal to move its 30,000 employees to Google Apps, while global electrical engineering and electronics powerhouse Siemens signed a deal to roll out SuccessFactors software-as-a-service human resources solution to 420,000 users in 80 countries and in 20 languages. Last month, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft announced they would spend $250 million to co-develop cloud computing systems, while IBM announced what it says is the biggest cloud deal to date: Panasonic will port more than 300,000 employees, partners, and suppliers to IBM’s LotusLive online collaboration system. Also last month, Salesforce.com announced record quarterly revenue and Google’s profit more than quintupled in the fourth quarter 2009 to $1.97 billion, or $6.13 a share, from $382 million, or $1.21 a share, a year ago. Gartner forecasted last month that, by 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets. That prediction follows Gartner’s listing of cloud computing as the top strategic technology for 2010.

If we are now moving inside the tornado to the Land of Oz with enterprise adoption of cloud computing, we, like Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz,” have a few “wicked witches” to destroy in the chasms of compliance, security, privacy, and interoperability. However, just like Dorothy found fast friends in the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow in the Land of Oz, we have seasoned IT professionals at vendor, customer, and research organizations with the courage, heart, and intelligence to help us cross those chasms; follow the yellow brick road to success; and build better information systems to support the new generation of mobile information workers and agile organizations in the cloud.

Consider these magical cloud-based solutions that are experiencing mainstream enterprise adoption inside the tornado in the Land of Oz:

• Enterprise mashup dashboards such as mashmatrix Dashboard provide rapid, personalized development of dashboards from any web-facing data source; get a complete view of all the information you need on one screen without having to switch between screens and applications.
• SaaS business intelligence (BI) applications from Birst and eiVia provide quick reporting and predictive analytics for decision-making.
• Enterprise relationship management solutions such as BranchIt help your business leverage relationships that colleagues may have with prospective customer or partner contacts.
• Price optimization applications from companies such as Mimiran help you avoid leaving money on the table in pricing your products or services.
• Enterprise brand management solutions from Biz360 aggregate, measure, and analyze news media and consumer opinion from print and social-media sources to yield insights that enable sales, marketing, PR, and executives to better understand their customers, competitors, influencer communities, industry trends and issues, the press, and the investment community.
• Enterprise cloud databases such as TrackVia help you quickly design and deploy cloud-based applications to solve business problems.
• Integration products from Pervasive Software and Sesame Software provide data exchange and interoperability between legacy on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
• Cloud-based single sign-on systems from companies such as TriCipher provide a secure, single login for a user to access all authorized cloud-based applications.

What is your yellow brick roadmap of success with enterprise solutions in the cloud? How can cloud-based applications help you reach the Emerald City of optimized business performance and revenue growth?

Why You Need a SaaS Strategy

Sun Tzu

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” – Sun Tzu, from “The Art of War”

John Lennon  

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” - John Lennon

How much strategy and planning is enough in a changing world, and how can you make your organization as agile as possible to adapt to unforeseen changes and unplanned events? These are questions that managers continually wrestle with as they steer their organizations in a changing world.

Cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) can help you manage and adapt to change, because of their rapid time to market, pay-as-you-go service fees, scalability, and support for mobile users. However, in a recent article in InformationWeek, “Why You Need a SaaS Strategy,” IT consultant Michael Biddick argues that “too many CIOs take an ad hoc approach to software as a service. That won’t cut it as SaaS use expands.”

So, according to Michael Biddick, what is an appropriate SaaS strategy that will give you the flexibility to adapt to change while protecting your organization and its assets? Michael suggests a nine-point approach to SaaS strategy:

1. Select the right provider. Continue performing rigorous analysis of the vendor, the application, security, and your ability to extract your data if you decide to switch providers.

2. Sign the right contract. Review the contract in light of its support for your changing business needs and its exit terms.

3. Have a detailed exit strategy. Make sure you can get your data and customizations back in a form that you can use if you decide to switch providers. Look for bandwidth charges that would add up if you move large amounts of data from a SaaS provider.

4. Manage the relationship. Monitor and evaluate application performance and usage to determine if the provider is meeting your needs.

5. Create a contingency plan. This is especially critical for apps that can’t go down or data that can’t be lost. Perform a weekly full data export from your SaaS providers so that you have a local copy of all of your data.

6. Dig deep on interoperability and integration. Few applications are effective in a silo, so you must ensure that your SaaS apps communicate with other online or conventional software.

7. Agree on IT’s role in supporting the product. While conventional software support such as patching an operating system and deploying a security update isn’t required, someone still has to add users, change passwords, create workflow, do screen designs, and perform other support tasks.

8. Get senior executive support and involvement. If an application service is performing a critical business function, make sure the top leadership understands the benefits and risks of SaaS.

9. Align to the company objectives. Does the company have a goal to reduce capital spending, or shorten the time to deliver services? SaaS must be considered in that broader mission.

I think these are great suggestions for ensuring that a provider and an application meet your needs, while you still benefit from the rapid time to market, lower capital and operational costs, and flexibility that SaaS provides. This approach provides the strategy and tactics that Sun Tzu advocates in his above quote, with the ability to adapt to changes and events outside of your plans as John Lennon suggests in his quote.

Another point to consider is managing the number of SaaS vendors. Although SaaS provides a greater choice of vendors because of its low barriers to entry, you will probably need to balance that freedom of choice with the ability to manage multiple contracts, relationships, and vetting processes. 

What is your SaaS strategy, and how does it compare with Michael Biddick’s nine-point strategy?

Obama, Paygo, and Cloud Computing

One of President Obama’s points that struck me the most in his State of the Union address yesterday was his support for the pay-as-you-go (paygo) amendment, which the Senate approved today. From the Wikipedia, “The paygo rule compels new spending or tax changes to not add to the federal deficit. New proposals must either be ‘budget neutral’ or offset with savings derived from existing funds. The goal of this is to require those in control of the budget to engage in the diligence of prioritizing expenses and exercising fiscal restraint.”

President Obama indicated that an earlier paygo statute in effect from fiscal years 1991 to 2002 helped create from 1998 to 2001 the first federal budget surpluses since 1969, and that he wants to re-enact paygo to curb the current spiraling budget deficit.

One of the most attractive aspects of cloud computing is the ability to pay as you go. With cloud-based solutions, you can eliminate or restrict the large initial investments and lengthy commitments that traditional IT investments normally require. You can get up and running in days with systems that quickly deliver business value and information services that your company needs to remain competitive. Paygo for enterprise cloud computing also ensures that cloud providers remain competitive; with shorter contracts and lower initial investments, there is little inertia between you and an alternative cloud provider.

If all goes well it will take several years for a full economic recovery and a healthier federal balance sheet. Businesses can’t wait that long; they slashed IT budgets by more than eight percent last year but still require return on investment and success with IT initiatives that support business objectives. As I wrote in my last post, these factors are transforming IT’s primary role from maintenance and support to strategic contributor.

In a recent press release about global IT budgets for 2010, Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research for Gartner EXP said, “Transition gives the enterprise and IT the opportunity to reposition themselves and exploit the tough corrective actions taken during the recession. CIOs see 2010 as an opportunity to accelerate IT’s transition from a support function to strategic contributor focused on innovation and competitive advantage. They have aspired to this shift for years, but economic, strategic and technological changes have only recently made it feasible. Asymmetric technologies like virtualization, cloud and Web 2.0 enable companies to get out from under a front-loaded heavy investment model that limits IT’s agility and flexibility.”

Paygo may be one way to help decrease our federal budget deficit; it is clearly an approach that business management prefers for information systems in this business climate that requires flexibility, faster time to market, and better return on investment.

Try these cloud-based solutions on a pay-as-you-go basis:

• Enterprise mashup dashboards such as mashmatrix Dashboard provide rapid, personalized development of dashboards from any web-facing data source; get a complete view of all the information you need on one screen without having to switch between screens and applications.
• SaaS business intelligence (BI) applications from Birst and eiVia provide quick reporting and predictive analytics for decision-making.
• Enterprise relationship management solutions such as BranchIt help your business leverage relationships that colleagues may have with prospective customer or partner contacts.
• Price optimization applications from companies such as Mimiran help you avoid leaving money on the table in pricing your products or services.
• Enterprise brand management solutions from Biz360 aggregate, measure, and analyze news media and consumer opinion from print and social-media sources to yield insights that enable sales, marketing, PR, and executives to better understand their customers, competitors, influencer communities, industry trends and issues, the press, and the investment community.
• Enterprise cloud databases such as TrackVia help you quickly design and deploy cloud-based applications to solve business problems.
• Integration products from Pervasive Software and Sesame Software provide data exchange and interoperability between legacy on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
• Cloud-based single sign-on systems from companies such as TriCipher provide a secure, single login for a user to access all authorized cloud-based applications.

What changes occurred in your IT budget during the recession, and is your management now steering your organization toward a paygo approach to budgeting and spending?

Global IT Spending to Rebound in 2010 to 2005 Levels

During the last two weeks, both Forrester Research and Gartner published reports about IT spending this year. Forrester predicts that global IT spending will increase by 8.1 percent, while Gartner predicts a 1.3 percent increase. Gartner’s 1.3 percent increase would bring global IT spending to 2005 levels after losing more than eight percent last year. Forrester’s 8.1 percent increase would bring IT spending back to 2008 levels, mostly offsetting the decrease in 2009.

Although the two firms differ on the amount of increase in global IT spending this year, they agree that IT is in a positive state of transition to more agile systems for lower initial investments than in the past, and to more focus on innovation and strategic contributions than on support and maintenance.

According to Andrew Bartels, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst, “We are entering a new six- to seven-year cycle of IT growth and innovation that Forrester calls Smart Computing. New technologies of awareness married to advanced business intelligence analytics make computing smart. Smart Computing rests on new foundation technologies such as service-oriented architecture, server and storage virtualization, cloud computing, and unified communications. 2010 marks the beginning of this next phase of technology advancement.”

Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research for Gartner EXP said, “Transition gives the enterprise and IT the opportunity to reposition themselves and exploit the tough corrective actions taken during the recession. CIOs see 2010 as an opportunity to accelerate IT’s transition from a support function to strategic contributor focused on innovation and competitive advantage. They have aspired to this shift for years, but economic, strategic and technological changes have only recently made it feasible. Asymmetric technologies like virtualization, cloud and Web 2.0 enable companies to get out from under a front-loaded heavy investment model that limits IT’s agility and flexibility.”

I look forward to seeing these positive transformations following such a rough economic period. I also look forward to watching IT break through some of its restraints to use innovative, best-of-class cloud-based systems that deliver rapid value such as:

• Enterprise mashup dashboards such as mashmatrix Dashboard provide rapid, personalized development of dashboards from any web-facing data source; get a complete view of all the information you need on one screen without having to switch between screens and applications.
• SaaS business intelligence (BI) applications from Birst and eiVia provide quick reporting and predictive analytics for decision-making.
• Enterprise relationship management solutions such as BranchIt help your business leverage relationships that colleagues may have with prospective customer or partner contacts.
• Price optimization applications from companies such as Mimiran help you avoid leaving money on the table in pricing your products or services.
• Enterprise brand management solutions from Biz360 aggregate, measure, and analyze news media and consumer opinion from print and social-media sources to yield insights that enable sales, marketing, PR, and executives to better understand their customers, competitors, influencer communities, industry trends and issues, the press, and the investment community.
• Enterprise cloud databases such as TrackVia help you quickly design and deploy cloud-based applications to solve business problems.
• Integration products from Pervasive Software and Sesame Software provide data exchange and interoperability between legacy on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
• Cloud-based single sign-on systems from companies such as TriCipher provide a secure, single login for a user to access all authorized cloud-based applications.

The increase this year in global IT spending may only bring budgets back to levels we saw five years ago, but if all goes as well as Forrester Research and Gartner suggest, the increase in agility and innovation this year will catapult business and IT ahead of their time.


Do the Forrester Research and Gartner predictions reflect the IT budgets and priorities at your organization?

The Price is Right for Price Optimization

Bob Barker

Have you seen the television game show, “The Price is Right?” Here’s a clip of a Double Showcase winner!

From the Wikipedia: “The Price Is Right” is an American game show centered on the pricing of merchandise to win cash and prizes. The current version of the show premiered on September 4, 1972 on CBS and was hosted by Bob Barker until his retirement on June 15, 2007. Drew Carey succeeded Barker at the beginning of Season 36 on October 15, 2007. TV Guide named “The Price Is Right” the “greatest game show of all time”. The show is well-known for its signature line of “Come on down!” when the announcer directs newly selected contestants to Contestants’ Row.

The original version of “The Price Is Right” aired from 1956–1965 and was hosted by Bill Cullen. While retaining some elements of the earlier generation show, the 1972 revival added many new distinctive gameplay elements, and now has the distinction of being the longest continuously running game show in United States television history, with more than 7,000 episodes aired.

I had a call today with a great group of sales executives discussing pricing. Pricing is a very interesting and important aspect of business, because it can literally make or break a business. There’s a big price for not getting the right price for goods and services that you buy and sell.

How do businesses fare in getting the right price for their products, as they play “The Price is Right” in the real world? It depends; some are good at it, some need coaching. Businesses can call a consultant, like phoning a friend on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire,” or they can rely on wisdom, knowledge, experience, and some analysis, like contestants on “Jeopardy.” They can also ask a computer, like the crew members on “Star Trek” do when they need information and analysis.

I broke my string of game shows with “Star Trek,” but isn’t the “Star Trek” crew’s method of getting an answer from comprehensive, granular, and rapid computer analysis combined with human thinking better than relying on a combination of guesswork, experience, some analysis, and intuition? I think so, and many businesses are in agreement as they begin to play hard ball with getting the price right using price optimization software. Space is the final frontier on “Star Trek,” and price optimization is one of the final frontiers of business intelligence.

Mimiran Sales Compass on-demand price optimization software

Price optimization software helps you segment customers and use historical customer pricing data to predict future outcomes and set a price that covers your costs, serves your customers, and keeps you in the game. It has the ability to analyze complex data sets from multiple systems and provide guidance in getting the price right.

According to this excellent post by Knowledge@Wharton, “The Price Is Right, but Maybe It’s Not, and How Do You Know?” businesses can increase margins by two to eight percent by using price optimization software. Also cited in the post is a 27 percent revenue gain on baby products at Duane Reade, a drugstore chain in New York City. Duane Reade altered the pricing on its baby products for parents of newborns and for parents of toddlers as a result of using price optimization software. “The data showed that parents of newborns are not as price-sensitive as parents of toddlers. In response, the company cut prices on toddler diapers to remain competitive with other stores and raised prices on diapers for infants.”

Price optimization is a hot area of business intelligence, which is high on the list of CIOs and analysts today. Cloud-based price optimization software from companies such as Mimiran make it easy to get up and running, because there’s no software to install and no servers to maintain. Just create an account online and you’re on your way to higher profit margins, which keeps your ship running like the Starship Enterprise and rings like a winning bell on “The Price is Right” in any business climate.

How much can you charge for your goods and services this year, and how much is that answer worth to you?

Martin Luther King and Cloud Computing

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the greatest advocates for civil rights, freedom, human rights, democracy, and peace. It is great that we honor him and the difference he made on this day.

In San Francisco there is a Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at Yerba Buena Gardens, which has several of his quotes translated into the languages of San Francisco’s 13 international sister cities, as well as African and Arabic dialects. You walk behind a waterfall to view the quotes; it is well worth a visit.

Perhaps King’s most famous event was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. He delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech there. From the Wikipedia: “The march made specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee. Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington’s history. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Infamy Speech, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was involved in many social and political movements during the 1960s that remain with us today; during the same time, there was also a movement in the computer industry that is now revolutionizing our way of life as radically as the 1960s did. Timesharing, which is sharing computing resources among many users, was in its infancy in 1963. Check out this video, filmed at MIT in 1963, which explains timesharing. The link that timesharing and the present time share is that timesharing is one of the essential characteristics of cloud computing.

Cloud computing and social media are providing a new freedom of expression that reminds me of the 1960s. Just like King inspired the dreams of many in his “I Have a Dream” speech, social media allows the voices and dreams of so many more than ever to be heard, as this video about the explosion of social media shows. Just like King stood for democracy and freedom, cloud computing and social media are democratizing computing power, information access, the ability to be heard, and the ability to learn and understand.

Cloud computing is even doing its own march on Washington. President Obama likes and advocates it, and so does his CIO, Vivek Kundra. They don’t just advocate it; they implement it as shown in this post. States such as Michigan are following suit as the cloud-computing movement reverberates from Washington D.C. to states across the nation.

Just as the 1960s impacted corporate culture with increased flexibility, informality, and casual dress, cloud computing is beginning to impact business with increased flexibility, pay-as-you-go service agreements, and easy provisioning. “More business intelligence for more users for more decision empowerment” is the rallying cry of many CIOs today; that’s what 2,500 CIOs told IBM in this survey.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. helped us imagine and create a future that improved our relationships and interactions. Cloud computing and social media enable his visions to live on and our future to improve in ways he may have never dreamed possible.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

• Was the image on Google’s homepage today
• Made the top 10 tweets on Twitter today
• Was viewed about 10 million times delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech on YouTube thus far
• Has more than 723,000 Facebook fans today

What are your dreams for empowering your company with accessible information and collaboration for 2010?