While I get to see and hear about hundreds of product announcements, this one is particularly interesting. The race to leverage computing power to synthesize incredibly huge amounts of disparate data in real time to meet the needs of customer demands is the next frontier of customer relations. Today at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global [...] Read the article

Location, location, location. The concept immediately brings back to mind college marketing classes and textbooks; clear lessons from industrial age distribution models. The focus has slowly faded away, however, over the past couple of decades with the invention and growth of a digitally connected, flat economy in which we can buy anything… from anyone… from [...] Read the article

Seth Godin does a phenomenal job of providing insights. Below is something he wrote that I wish I did, but I’ll be saving this and committing it to memory. In many ways, it’s marketing 101, but the clarity with which it’s presented is something every marketer can benefit from From Seth’s Blog: The best approach [...] Read the article

I’ll never forget meeting some people in a remote village of Laos (Southeast Asia) a few years ago. The village had no electricity. Not only was it a journey across culture and geography, but a journey back in time. Our translator helped us to ask about how they lived. They told us how they farmed, [...] Read the article

Here’s a great data visualization on Big Data in retail industry. Also, a FT video on the subject:

Source: Monetate Marketing Infographics

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Our educational system is broken. This isn’t breaking news, of course, but what strikes me is that, while being more and more aware of the deep changes at work in our life, and of the necessity for the corporate world to adapt to the growing hyper-connected nature of our world, most “social business” discussions circle around ways to enhance operational mechanisms, and tend to ignore the real infrastructure these are built from. Can we really talk about trust, collaboration, or leadership, without considering seriously the social and psychological mold which conditions so many of our behaviors: education?

From Socrates to Black Hussars

Far from all the hype surrounding social and collaborative enterprise technologies, social learning remains contained to a confidential arena. Putting side by side the words “social” and “education” (in the mundane sense of knowledge acquisition) in the context of the workplace means...

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In a post on ReadWriteEnterprise, guest author Vijay Dheap, Mobile Security Strategist at IBM, outlines how organizations can effectively implement a mobile risk management strategy. Below is an excerpt of the post, but for the full version please read: The Mobile Enterprise: 4 Steps To Keeping It Secure [Infographic]

Security is a balancing act, especially when it comes to emerging technologies that promise to unlock massive business potential. Each new wave of change requires an enterprise to adapt its security posture, or risk being left behind – or exposed to unmanaged risk.

Mobile is no different.

Given the dynamic nature of the mobile market (see mobile stats in the infographic below), it can be difficult for an enterprise to define a mobile risk management strategy. Organizational inertia alone can lead to...  Read the article

If we truly believe in customer “relationships”, then the concept that the customer is always right is unfortunately flawed, because very few people are ALWAYS right. Customers can be irrational, selfish, irresponsible, and even unprofitable.

As in any relationship, sometimes there is mis-alignment of expectations and lack of a compelling value proposition for both sides. The opportunity for value exchange changes and evolves over time. The duty of an organization is to continually listen, show empathy, gain a deeper understanding of needs and jobs, and provide a product or service offering that provides significant value for their customers, or better yet, provide a platform for customers to co-create their own products and services, and support each other in their mutual journeys and jobs to be done.

To fail to recognize that some customers are...  Read the article

Ashley Verrill – a expert with CRM reviewer SoftwareAdvice.com – interviewed me recently for the second edition of CRM’s Next 5 in 5. This report was an update from predictions five of my industry cohorts made about technologies that will change CRM in the next five years. Special thanks to Ashley for the conversation and for providing the edited snapshot of our discussion below:

Ashley: You’ve talked a lot about how the importance of advancements relative to contextualizing CRM — such as Mobile, Big Data and Social – are a little over amplified (though still important). From your perspective, are there any products or services out there that have actually made real innovation and change to how we use CRM systems?

Brian: Digital networks have significantly transformed how we as people interact with other people, information, and increasingly devices and machines. More and more of our lives are moving into the digital realm. Where we are. What we are doing. Who we know. What we say or think or like. The technologies that capitalize on this increasing wealth of information are the ones that will endure past the hype. These innovators will advance our capabilities in three primary ways: ...
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