Archive for February, 2011
by Bill Ives
February 24, 2011 at 3:52 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
JackBe has been in the mashup and application development business for some time and I have covered them on several occasions. The most latest was: Jackbe Releases Presto 3.0 and opens internal Enterprise App Store. They recently announced enhancements to their newly launched Real-time Intelligence platform for the enterprise.. This is part of a number of new features within Presto 3.1, their real-time intelligence platform. Last week, I spoke with John Crupi, CTO and Chris Warner, VP of Marketing about their 3.1 release and other new features.
John and Chris said what originally started as an enterprise mashup platform has now evolved into a real-time (business) intelligence platform. This makes sense to me for several reasons. First, they are moving from an enabling technology to a business outcome. Second, this business outcome is becoming increasingly strategic and third, many of the pundits are predicting that real-time will be an increasing focus of business intelligence. They paraphrased an analyst at Gartner, “using up-to-date information, getting rid of delays, and using speed for competitive advantage is what the real-time enterprise is all about.”
They provided some useful contrasts between traditional BI and the new real-time BI. First, the focus in real-time BI is on what is happening right now versus going back into a data warehouse to see what happened in the past. And in Real-Time BI there is greater support for self-service, collaborative decisions and low dependency on IT support to obtain the data. While data sources can include a data warehouse in the new real-time BI, they move beyond that as a limitation to also looking at what is happening right now on the Web and elsewhere.
Rather than using predetermined, static data models, real-time mashups can be created on the fly to explore new sources as they arise. Often speed is more important than completeness to make timely decisions. Rather than have “perfect be the enemy of good enough” Presto can quickly pull together the right content for decisions on demand and allow experts to fill in what remains. They have also created a number of data visualizations and can make use of third party tools for more. Presto 3.1 is not designed to replace traditional BI reports and dashboards, but make better use of them. I like this.
Another part of the new real-time BI is delivering intelligence (in the form of Apps) wherever it is needed, One focus of the new Presto 3.1 release is to provide secure, real time access to information to mobile devices. Apps can run on any mobile device (Blackberry, Android, iPhone, iPad, Tablets), as well a SharePoint webpart or in an enterprise portal, often without any code changes. They have modified the UI to accommodate the smaller screens. They also have a new mobile version of their App Store (still in beta, as they say) that runs as a native app to provide a better App browsing experience. And they are leveraging HTML5 for Web distribution of the apps themselves. This allows for more dynamic applications. Here is a sample iPhone app showing DC crimes scences.
Here is an example of data visualizations on the iPad.
Another aspect of Presto 3.1 is enhanced support for SharePoint 201A0. SharePoint is becoming a dominant player in document management (and corporate portals). They have made it easier for SharePoint to be both a source and a destination point for Real-Time BI. The latter is especially important, as it can be difficult to get content into SharePoint outside of manual cut and paste methods. Jackbe made Presto3.1 a peer with SharePoint 2007/2010 so it is now easy to have content flow in both directions. This also enhances security. They see SharePoint remaining a major player in the market so they have worked hard to enable better connectivity between the two worlds, those in SharePoint and those outside it.. It is generally less expensive to make use of the capabilities within Presto 3.1 to enhance SharePoint content for business intelligence purposes than to resort to custom development.
Jackbe has also created a ‘Free Starter Edition’ to let organizations give Presto a try with little risk. It is full-featured and available for up to 5 connected users. Support comes through the Jackbe community (www.jackbe.com/dev). This is a smart move. It is interesting to see the evolution a technology that remains one of the building blog blocks of enterprise 2.0. I look forward to what they do next.
by Bill Ives
February 15, 2011 at 9:52 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
Recommind provides predictive information management software through search-powered business applications. I last spoke with them in 2009 (see: Recommind’s MindServer Search™ 6.0 Addresses need for More Effective eDiscovery). Recently, I spoke with Craig Carpenter, Recommind’s VP of marketing and General Counsel. I noted the unusual job combination, and Craig said when your main clients are law firms and law departments within corporations, the combination helps. We mainly focused on their Axcelerate™ Review & Analysis suite with Predictive Coding™ and how it impacts eDiscovery.
I first asked Craig to define eDiscovery. It is a term that I have seen used both narrowly and broadly. Craig said it was initially used in a more narrow sense to refer to the process of preserving, collecting, reviewing, analyzing and producing relevant documents after a legal process has begun. Now, it generally extends to include information management in anticipation of possible legal issues, as well as during them, while also addressing regulatory needs. This reflects a more proactive approach that is being adopted by many Recommind customers. This broader approach means that content collection is not an isolated activity but one that is integrated into an enterprise’s total information management system on an ongoing basis.
Cisco is using Axcelerate to take a more proactive, strategic approach to eDiscovery. One of the drivers of increased eDiscovery costs is the explosion of enterprise content, which ironically Cisco is helping facilitate with its technology that simplifies the creation and transfer of large files, such as videos. Cisco wanted to have its own enormous stores of enterprise data easily accessible ahead of any legal issues that might arise. They also wanted greater cost containment and predictability so that legal costs do not dictate when they settle and when they fight a legal challenge.
Axcelerate offers customers like Cisco a comprehensive, end-to-end platform for eDiscovery management. First, Axcelerate’s Predictive Analytics™ capability automatically categorizes documents and enables deep analysis of the data at the start of a legal process, before major costs have been incurred. This greatly reduces the amount of expensive manual labor by legal experts as they decide which documents are relevant and/or privileged in a case. It can create a taxonomy on the fly based on the content and/or work with an existing taxonomy. Here is a sample Review and Analysis scree.
You can see the flow from Predictive Analytics to Predictive Sampling below.
Second, Axcelerate’s Predictive Coding™ technology and workflow automatically analyzes, prioritizes and codes all documents in a collection. After a knowledgeable attorney reviews and codes a small number of documents, the software can automatically sort through all remaining documents on its own, in the process flagging all other pertinent documents while setting aside the rest. This dramatically expedites the document review process, slashing eDiscovery timelines and costs by 50%-90%.
Third, Axcelerate’s Predictive Sampling™ methodology provides metrics on the accuracy of the Predictive Coding process, thereby making Predictive Coding not just the fastest review but also the most accurate and defensible. The availability of a specific accuracy rate makes courts far more comfortable with the process, as it goes well beyond what is considered “reasonable” – far more so than traditional linear review. You can see a sample Predictive Sample screen shot below.
Craig said Recommind offers both on-premise and private cloud options. The private cloud option has been growing fast (over 500% in 2010) as firms see the cost savings and flexibility of cloud solutions and become more comfortable with them.
Recommind offers other search-based applications as well. We briefly spoke about Decisiv Categorization, which many companies use for information management and governance. It uses Recommind’s patented Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) technology to look for patterns in the text within documents and automatically categorize them. I think that as the explosion of content continues there will be increasing applications for the technology that Recommind brings to the market.
by Bill Ives
February 8, 2011 at 3:20 am · Filed under
Collaboration, Communities, Culture
This is the third part of my notes from the Hyper-Social Summit sponsored by the Human 1.0 Network. It is based on research conducted by Francois Gossieaux of the Human 1.0 Network and Ed Moran, Director of Innovation at Deloitte. I will highlight some of the key findings that were presented.
There was a wide range of companies involved in the study: 22% had revenues over 1 billion and 32% had revenues under a million. The smallest group was the 500 million to 1 billion revenue group which accounted for only 2% of the sample. Within the sample 56% were considered B2B, 23% B2C, 9% were nonprofits and 2% were government.
There was also a range of experience with 14% having communities up for more than three years and 24% less than 6 months and fairly even representation in between. The size ranged from 26% less than 100 members to 11% with over 50,000 members.
Francois pointed out that the dynamics of pilot will be different than a large scale implementation so be careful with pilot results – 53% did pilot and 47% did not. A community can be successful either way. Many piloted their external communities internally so the results might not be relevant on many levels.
There was a wide range of objectives for the communities: 50% served marketing research, 46% were PR related, 45% had branding objectives, 43% provided thought leadership, 39% supported reputation management, 32% provided customer support, 28% provided lead generation, and the same number supported knowledge management.
Marketing was by far the most function engaged in the development of a community with participation in 79% of the communities. Next, was IT at 37% and sales at 36%, followed by knowledge management at 22% and legal at 17%. Similar results occurred for community management with 53% marketing, PR and community development at 11%.
These results suggest a strong external focus and that was the case with %*% externally focused, 10% internally, and 28% hybrid. Within the external and hybrid communities 81% were customers focused, 49% were prospect focused, and 37% were partner focused.
There was often a mismatch between goals and implementation. There can be too much marketing focus when non-marketing goals have been generated. Related to this finding, there have been too many programs around products rather than audience.
The objectives considered most successful were: generate more word-of-mouth 40%, increase brand awareness 27%, increase customer loyalty 25%, bring outside ideas into the organization 24%, and improve customer support quality 23%. The least successful was to increase sales at 22% of the respondents. At the same this was the leading measured used for success at 38% followed by increase leads at 33% and generate awareness at 28%.
Success factors included: ability to connect with like minded people 50% and ability to help others 45%. The findings stressed the importance of social factors for success and secondary importance of other incentives.
The biggest obstacles were getting people to engage 66%, getting people to come back 42%, and attracting people 42%. The number of active people varies as to whether you can rely on user-generated content. Only 25% deployed external people to develop content and 65% did have internal people develop content. A big factor is the level of passion. However, a community should still have some professional generated content to seed it and direct it.
The investment were mostly modest with 68% spending less than $50,000 a year on the community and 16% between 50 and 200k. Most community were managed by employees 84% and only 8% out sourced. The investment in management was also modest as 51% have less than one FTE and 16% deploy 1 FTE. Looking ahead, 50% plan to increase investment and 45% stated than the level of investment will stay the same. Looking at what types of investments will increase they found that 85% will increase time, and 68% will increase funding. In addition, 68% will invest in content development and 58% will increase their marketing efforts for the community.
These trends indicate that companies do perceive they are getting value from the communities as only 5% plan to decrease investment. However, communities are still primarily driven by marketing goals and some are really marketing programs with little social components or focus. There is often a disconnect between objectives and success factors. The companies are missing the value that can be derived from strong leadership as only 45% indentified leaders within the community.
While there is some success, there is a lot of room for improvement by injecting a greater social focus into the communities. This is very consistent with then theme of the event. It is the human much more than the technical that will make a community work. Communities will be a major component of company’s success going forward. The winners will realize that these are human networks and act in this framework. There is much opportunity and much room for improvement.
by Bill Ives
February 4, 2011 at 3:22 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
This is the second part of my notes from the Hyper-Social Summit sponsored by the Human 1.0 Network. It is based on research conducted by Francois Gossieaux of the Human 1.0 Network and Ed Moran, Director of Product Innovation at Deloitte’s Global Technology, Media, and Telecommunications, that is documented in their book, The Hyper-Social Organization.
Francois led the event. He went over several factors that characterize successful companies on the social side. First, they are aware of the needs of the communities within their market, Francois referred to these communities as the tribes. He noted that there are many small business communities on the Web and this is an opportunity for marketing effects if done right. The focus needs to be on the people and not on the product.
Successful companies also do not use social media as a channel. People often buy without looking at company material. They listen to others (because of reciprocity issue) so it is better to use the Web as a listening channel.
Successful companies don’t just talk about themselves. They want to engage in conversations especially where buying decisions are made. They treat the people in these communities like press and give them special access to information.
Successful companies also create content that travels well so that people want to share it. This often involves tips on how to use the product for an activity that uses the product.
Successful companies have stopped thinking about company or product centricity. It is about your customers. They need to be in the center. Francois gave the great example of a Europe scissors company. It created a community around scrapbook people (not about their product) but about application of their product. It attracted a huge following of dedicated people.
Successful companies embrace the messiness of social aspects. They do not exercise too much control. One example is Best Buy. They wanted to enter the high-end music business. They found out who has passion for music in their company and asked them to help with online communities around these instruments. It did matter what area within Best Buy they came from.
Successful companies turn a business process into social process. This is not just putting social tools in place but looking at the human characteristics of reciprocity and fairness, You need to get people to help each other even if it is not their job. You need to allow people to engage in their passion. It will increase the passion and engagement for your product.
A customer acquired through word of mouth is twice as loyal as one acquired through traditional marketing. When Francois and Ed looked within organizations, they found social aspects in almost every process except legal and finance.
Here are a number of things to think about to implement social aspects to your business. First, bring down the walls. Let the wall around company dissolve. Let internal and external communities and people work together. Then do not build new walls. Fix the divide between customer touch points in your organization. Make sure they are all on the same page. Your relationship with your s customers is only as good as they last contact they had with your company.
Be sure to not simply do the same thing again. For example, there is a new way of buying so traditional CRM is not relevant. Now buying process is more social so you need more social CRM.
Also, make sure the CIO and CMO are good friends. Think culture before tools. Become the customer advocate and not the product advocate. Establish trust as new business currency.
I liked these words of wisdom and it helped me better think though how I might reach the market for a software firm I am connected with. Now that the focus is more on the people and the community than on the company and the product, smaller companies have a more even playing field. It is not so much the size of the company as they size of the community. Smaller firms can go after the communities and the Web is another big equalizer.
In the third and last part of this series, I will cover a number of the research statistics that Ed and Francois collected in their research.
by Bill Ives
February 1, 2011 at 3:15 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
I had the pleasure of attending an extremely useful meeting recently on a very snowy day in Cambridge, Mass. Here are my notes from the Hyper-Social Summit sponsored by the Human 1.0 Network. It is based on research conducted by Francois Gossieaux cofounder of the Human 1.0 Network and Ed Moran, Director of Product Innovation at Deloitte’s Global technology, Media, and Telecommunications Group. Their book, The Hyper-Social Organization, covers this research in more detail. Ed got snowed out in NYC and could not co-led so Francois led the event.
Francois began with some highlights from their research. I liked his comments that bad practices in online communities are enjoying rapid adoption. For example, the SAP social network provided financial rewards for individual participation. This resulted in bad behavior, as people got competitive over the money. When they switched to an aggregated reward that was donated to charity, the bad behavior went away. However, participation remained.
We need to look at the human issues in online communities rather than just the tools and this need has suggested the name Human 1.0 for the network that Francois and others are developing. Reciprocity is a key issue and a basic human reflex. If you act without reciprocity it can hurt the community so humans have developed a sense of fairness. There has been a lot of research to support. Fairness is even more important than transparency.
People can use a social framework or market framework to evaluate a situation. Key is getting people to use a social framework because it leads them to develop better connections and act more fairly. Sometimes money gets in the way of this fairness as in the SAP example.
We tell people what we think they want to hear. This causes people to give market research false answers. For example, Jet Blue asked their passengers if they wanted healthy snacks. People said yes, as they thought was the correct response. However, very few people actually selected the healthy snacks. Now I know from personal experience that the majority of JetBlue snacks are not healthy. I am currently on my way to Lotusphere via JetBlue as I edit these notes and just finished a bag of potato chips, cashews, and a diet coke. They were some of the healthier choices.
We also love status. This works well with communities but we need to be creative on this and allow for a refresh of the status ranking. People get disinterested if they feel they have no chance for status.
We have a herding instinct. We go where the crowds are located. We follow them. I experienced an example when I was briefly acting as a sidewalk artist in Copenhagen in the 60s. If I was working on my chalk drawing people would stop as they liked activity. If a few stopped then others would also stop so there was a multiplier effect. If I just sat there few would stop, they went were the crowds were forming. We also tend to have loyalty built in so if a product is okay we tend to stay with it.
In the second part of my notes I will cover some of the traits and activities of companies who are successful with online communities.
Thought...
