The Coach House

Are you ready for the Digital Revolution?

This infographic attempts to paint a complete picture of the implications of the digital revolution in all its complexity.

Created by the McKinsey Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum, the graphic demonstrates the broad range of implications that businesses need to wrestle including the new Customer Journey, Big Data, Multichannel, On / Offline influences and planning ahead.

thisistheverge:

Facebook on building for Google Glass: it’s another way to ‘plug into the world’

Google today launched several new services for Glass — dubbed “Glassware” — including a Facebook app that lets you post photos to your timeline. Facebook’s efforts were led by Mobile Product Manager Erick Tseng, a former Product Manager on Android, after an early conversation with some old colleagues at Google. “They’ve done a great job creating, even at this early stage, an environment that made it quite simple for us to build this app,” he says. “We only had two engineers that worked on this — from the day we came up with idea with Google to today was just a few months.” 

Is your business ready to make money from freely available data?

Many of our clients are surprised to learn that the Internet provides a wide range of freely available data.

In stark comparison with 10 years ago (when data was owned and ‘locked down’ by the Online elite) data has exploded in a surprising variety of ways.

Now, businesses, institutions and governments provide safe and secure access to data to help facilitate a wide range of collaborative online services. Not all data is free, or permitted for commercial use, but not all is costly or closed to profit making enterprises either.

Often accessed via an ‘API’ (an Application Programming Interface) data can be amalgamated to create powerful new services.

One of the most practical and easy to grasp examples is the crime statistics database that adds a crime rate onto a property map. Two completely unassociated pieces of data - until you put them together and the result is - a map for house hunters who want to research local crime figures, before they commit to a property search.

Recently the Digital Public Library Of America was launched, which includes an open API. With 2 Million items, the mind boggles at opportunities to use and re-use that kind of data.

Access to data via API’s has become so popular and in demand that a variety of directory services have sprung up to allow for data service searches. Other services (such as Mashery) help businesses manage a successful API of their own.

There are even lobby groups that seek to release public access to data in specific regions, for the benefits of communities and citizens. In Manchester their is a very active Open Data project, but their are initiatives all over the UK too. Here’s a good video that asks the question ‘What’s the point of making data open?’

An interesting exercise maybe to explore and consider what data your business holds that can be shared, licensed or used to provide an additional service, revenue stream or partnership. You can also consider what data you can draw upon to compliment your data, or create a hybrid service.

Our advice would be to seek out the best legal and consultancy guidance before you activate any programmes, but considering your options is a smart step towards digital sophistication that may just result in an entirely new opportunity for your business.

The Digital Disconnect

We read many articles about online disruption, digital transformation and market change associated with the Internet - but none have really hit the nail on the head so effectively as The Rise of the CMO by Jake Sorofman.

Writing for the Harvard Business Review (Blog), Sorofman has highlighted some simple yet stunning insights into the slower than anticipated adoption of digital marketing.

Leading with this fact: “When it comes to marketing spending, analog still outstrips digital by a factor of three to one” (Source: Gartner’s 2013 digital marketing spending report) Sorofman asks how this could be the case, when digital marketing is plainly more accountable and most efficient at driving customer conversions and transactions.

Quote: “Assimilation to the new digital culture is incomplete”

The Blog makes mention of the “Digital Disconnect” (a leadership vacuum when it comes to adopting new digital strategies and technologies) amongst other factors. In our experience we see key decision makers looking to proactively ‘take control’ of their digital future, by pooling in the right resource to reduce risk, review profit potential and help manage customer relationships as part of the digital revolution. This article is refreshing because it digs into some of the detail behind slow adoption, including the transparency that digital measurement can bring, and the role of the Marketing Director within businesses that are looking to ‘digitise’.

Our advice? Digital disruption is an opportunity, not a threat. Consider that there is no single ‘one size fits all’ strategy that will work for your business, but instead gather your toolkit for modernization, by finding the right people, advice and suppliers to help manage your digital equity.

(Source: blogs.hbr.org)