Digital Consumer

Digital Consumerism starts early and how!

2011-12-28T10:29:15Z

Experience 1:

I was travelling and had in the seats beside me, a couple with 6-month old twins -travelling to visit their family back home. As you can imagine, travelling with kids is tough and they had their share of diaper bags, baby food etc. The girl was fast asleep while the boy was wide awake and decided to play with me - it was good fun while it lasted but when I decided to gently touch his cheeks, he let go a noisy bawl.

I would have expected the mother to pull out a small rattler or something similar to distract the child. She calmly pulled out her iPhone, tapped on an application and some nice regional music came on with great colorful, moving images! The boy stopped crying, grabbed the phone and viewed it with a great deal of interest.

Experience 2:

My colleague, as is the case in many families, has multiple laptops at home. He also has a 2+ year old boy and constantly frets over the child's eating habits. One day, the boy kept repeating 'apple' and "you too" which was assumed to mean the fruit and a disposition to share. My colleague was ecstatic and rushed to peel and cut an apple into small pieces. The boy calmly pushed that away and pointed at the logo on the laptop, presumably wanting to tap on the keyboard. And what was "you too"? - it was YouTube which the kid had been watching a Barney cartoon on.

[This story almost sounds like it was made up, and I do think my colleague added some twist of his own - but that's not the pointJ]

Now, there is nothing earth-shattering about kids wanting to play with these devices - all kids want to play with the phone, listen to ring-tones and tap the keyboards. And yes, using Paintbrush to doodle.

But what amazes me is that these devices now are actually replacing some of the other de facto options - the omnipresent rattler and TV in the above cases.

I always have personally believed that exposure to computing/digital devices too early is not warranted. But I am beginning to wonder - there will be peer pressure pretty soon on what latest game was downloaded, what email /social account one is active on etc - should we prep our kids actively?

Public speaking was considered an important aspect of a child's development - will that become "public tweeting" pretty soon??

Big Data : Making sense of Social Media Madness

2011-12-02T08:57:22Z

Social media usage among consumers is growing at a humongous pace resulting in huge amount of data getting created every minute. The growth in usage of smartphones, location based apps and more "Internet of Things", the data is multiplying at a faster pace. The following statistics provides a glimpse of the amount of data we are talking here and no guesses that it is going to move in upward direction only. Few statistics on the social data growth,

· More than 250 million tweets are generated in a day and it is increasing at a tremendous speed.

· 30 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook on a monthly basis.

· 40% project growth in global data generated per year.

· Data will grow over 800% in the next 5 years and 80% of these data will be unstructured.

While handling such huge volumes of data pose a significant challenge, at the same time provide huge opportunities and competitive edge for the enterprises, which are ready with a strategy to handle them. Social Media data has tremendous wealth of information which analyzed properly can make significant impact to both the top line and bottom line. That is where BigData technology and Infrastructure is coming to the rescue.

Big Data processing can be defined in simple terms as fast and reliable analysis of complex and huge volumes of data in near real time with commodity hardward. Big data technologies helps in combining Social World data streams with Enterprise IT systems in a powerful way using which one can derive meaningful and actionable insights. Big data technology is not new, it has been adopted by technology companies like Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Amazon and many more for quite some time now , it has come a long way in terms maturity and now it is ready for mainstream adoption.

Having a scalable BigData Processing Infrastructure to analyze Social Data will help enterprises in,

· Responding faster to a social outburst before negative sentiments go viral the in social world.

· Creating powerful Recommendation Engines for customers to enable cross-sell and up-sell.

· Providing a complete Personalization experience for users through data collected from across the channels.

· Taking key decisions on products and services based on consumer feedbacks.

· Identifying key influencers who are impacting the increase or decrease of sales of a particular product.

Mckinsey Quarterly has projected that there is 60% potential increase in retailers operating margins possible with big data analysis. Though it is too early to put definitive numbers on the impact of BigData, this is the next Big thing which enterprises need to be prepared to get an definitive edge among the competition.

Influencing Minority versus Influenced Majority?

2011-11-03T11:22:33Z

Almost every brand manager would like to use social media as an additional channel to reach out to consumers. And I think every brand manager is also beginning to be painfully aware of the potential pitfalls.

Two recent instances:

Unilever is known to be a savvy user of digital media but they had a problem with Ragu recently. In sum, they had a video which had moms talking about how dads cook (or rather don't). This led to some strong reactions from dads, who genuinely cook and hated being stereotyped - added to the fact that this video was twitter spammed to them. Bottomline: a lot of bad social press
Read about it here:
http://socialmediatoday.com/ginidietrich/370992/brand-bullying-tale-ragu-and-social-media

]]>

Netflix is a company that I genuinely like. I have used their service and have happily followed the stock price run-up from nearly $25 to nearly $300, while weathering a recession (I wish I had bought some J). In the recent past though, they have received bad social press due to 2 reasons: an increase in the price and other service changes and spin-off of the DVD rental service into a different brand called 'Quickster'. Bottomline: this really hurt, stock prices have plunged and how! (the plunge is possibly also due to the business model coming into question but the bad social press accelerated it in my opinion)
Read about it here:
http://socialmediatoday.com/hkotadia1/364124/netflix-s-self-made-crm-crisis-and-how-social-crm-can-help

Without debating the merits of the decisions taken by the companies, I was just thinking of the vast difference social media has made towards "empowering" the consumer. There was a time when we would be very happy if the products were designed with the consumer in mind, it now looks like the consumer will also determine org changes and advertising etiquette! Not bad.

But does this also mean a set of powerful influencers could determine the reaction of the larger group? We have a herd mentality when it comes to buying stocks, is it significantly different when voicing opinion?

Can then engaging with these opinion makers be an option for companies to avoid a trip-up in the social world? Where would this engagement end? Would this blur lines between free opinion and paid opinion?

For those familiar with Indian cricket, the recent brouhaha over Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri being paid retainers by BCCI resonates with the above?

What do you think?

Infosys - Conference Track Sponsor at Internet Retailing, London,2011

2011-09-29T16:10:00Z

Next week we will be participating in Internet Retailing Conference, London, as a conference track sponsor where we will be showcasing our solutions for the eCommerce industry.

Internet Retailing is UK's leading conference for online and multichannel retailers, along with suppliers and analysts. The conference attracts delegates from UK and Europe. Various industry experts deliver sessions on the evolution of retailing and how to keep up with ever changing consumer behavior, competition and market growth.

At the conference, Amy Bastow,Head of Multichannel from The Phone House Europe will be sharing their experiences and best practices on "Building a Common Platform to Support International Markets". The Phone House Europe is using new technology solutions to improve the multichannel customer experience and business capability across The Phone House operations in 7 countries. This session will provide an overview about the technology, challenges and lessons learned.

For more detail on the conference and the session click here

If you are attending the conference, please drop by our stand and we would be happy to have a conversation.

Measuring Consumer Engagement - The New Data Challenge

2011-09-27T14:24:25Z

In my last blog, I had shared my thoughts on how mobility and social is influencing customer engagement and how businesses can use it in their favor. Although, recent times have been great and exciting but they have brought their own challenges; increased consumer engagement and exponentially multiplying social footprint is great but it is giving headaches to businesses which rely on data rather than hype to measure success.

In the good old days, not so long ago, you could publish a website put some JavaScript tags and sit back and relax, wait for your favorite analytics tool to spew out the numbers. You just had to slice and dice it and put it on a nice PowerPoint slide and present it to your bosses.

]]> Notwithstanding that it is still required but that's so old school now because consumer engagement has changed overnight and so has its measurement. That's why you see your favorite analytics vendors and their competitors clamoring to offer a new feature to measure social engagement. But the problem is even that's not going to be enough. Let's just try and understand the enormity of the problem because I believe understanding the scope of the problem is half the solution itself.

There is no one way communication now. Gone are the days when you would broadcast a message and hope your target audiences listen to it and like it. It is real engagement -its two way communication now and in near real time.

There are around 2 billion internet users worldwide and for every new product or web content you put out, there are bound to be multiple reviews, opinions, feedback, bouquet, brickbats et all; that too almost instantaneously. And you cannot control it because it's not limited to your website or digital assets; it's all over the web. People are discussing them on Facebook, Twitter, writing blogs on them, discussing them on their favorite geek forum. Problem gets complicated further with RSS feeds and Mashups. How do you measure engagement when the content is spilled over at places where you have no control whatsoever? You can control and measure the digital assets you own but it's a free world out there, how do you measure it?

In the multi-channel retailing world the difference between the digital and brick 'n' mortar is diminishing fast. The consumer goes through multiple channels before making a purchase. He sees a great ad on the billboard, goes online to research the product features, visits a third party site to get reviews, asks his friends on Facebook for opinion and finally purchases from the nearest store. Which channel do you attribute the sale to? Where and how do you spend your next limited advertising budget?

You release a great video ad for your brand. And suddenly there are dozens of spoofs on the YouTube and ad has gone viral. How do you measure true reach in this case? Do you consider views and comments for just your ad? Are the spoofs contributing to your campaign? How do you calculate the positive impact or the negative one in unfortunate cases?

Just before the premiere of his movie the lead actor tweets something erroneously or by design. People not only retweet it, they create a hashtag and start creating jokes around it and it starts trending on Twitter. Although it created a lot of buzz and garnered publicity for the film. How do we calculate if it actually helped collections at the box office?

Forget about controlling the conversation, you are not in the medieval times - You can't! As I had mentioned in my last post also just join the conversation and try and make it work in your favor because that's the least of your problems. The real problem is how to measure the impact of the conversation on your brand and conversions. That's the million dollar question and whosoever solves it or even gets close will make a few million themselves .....

Infosys - Entering the Biggest Digital Marketing Event in London

2011-09-09T08:20:56Z

We will be participating as a Platinum sponsor in ad:tech, London, a leading digital marketing conference. This year the conference is being held on 21st and 22nd of Sep, 2011 at National Hall, Olympia, London.

]]> The conference would draw experts in the digital marketing industry, from UK and across Europe, who would reveal the latest digital trends and market figures, share best practices and address industry challenges. We are particularly excited about our participation in this conference, as we will be showcasing our offerings in the digital marketing space. We will talk about how we partner with enterprises to simplify digital marketing while amplifying consumer engagement.

Our experts will be sharing their thoughts on prominent digital marketing topics.

Growth Through Big Data - 21 September, 15:50-16:20 GMT, in "Analytics" track
Simplifying Digital Marketing - 22 September : 13.50-14.20 GMT, in the "Innovation" track
5 Steps to Transform Marketing Performance Management - 22 September: 11:50-12:20 GMT, in the "Engage & Convert" track

For more details on the sessions and the event click here.
If you are attending the event, please drop by stand # 241. We would be happy to meet you!!!

The Key to Community Success

2011-08-01T15:17:05Z

Despite all the media coverage, books, webinars and conferences on the topic, a large number of successful IT community deployments struggle to provide business value. Some communities succeed; others fail, seemingly without reason. Why?

Many seek the answer in a review of tactical details, a search that may obscure a much more important foundational difference: successful implementations accept community platforms are unlike other enterprise applications and execute accordingly. The tactics used in both programs may be similar, hence the confusion. What differs is the driving decision as to why, when, where and how they're deployed.

]]> A bold pronouncement, but one I've had a lot of opportunity to consider. Many of my previous communities consistently grew exponentially faster and were more successful than programs with similar if not more resources. This led other program owners to ask about the 'secret' to our success. Despite, if not proven by inexperienced community program owners who asserted 'it will work differently for my project,' I have found certain aspects of community work the way they work, consistently, across different communities and/or topics.

Hence, the 'secret' to success is quite simple: focus on adapting to how community works, versus expecting it to adapt to your program.

What exactly does that mean? Rather than assuming existing enterprise software adoption approaches will work, think of community as a related but different 'species' of software. Design adoption strategies that work in accordance, versus in ignorance or opposition with the following community axioms.

Axiom 1: Other members, people not software, provide value

When it comes to software applications most users can jump right in and get started, as the inherent value, the features are there for the taking. As many new IT-focused community implementations discover, that's not the case with community. If no one is using the platform the refrain is usually along the lines of 'we've given them the software, why aren't they using it?'

With community it is the people you interact with, others who have adopted the platform, not the features that provide the majority of the value. By comparison, adoption does not have a major impact on the value of word processing software - it's the same whether or not others are using the same application.

Once you accept that members, not features provide value the conundrum newly implemented communities face at launch begins to emerge. The answer to 'why aren't they using it' may very well be:

New communities have no members
Members provide value, no members no value
New members won't join unless they see value

Hence to be successful community programs require strategies, planning and expertise to overcome this seemingly no-win situation, which leads us to...

Axiom #2: Community building skills/strategies are a mission critical resource

Don't let viral social media network success stories fool you. As many firms discover after making significant IT investments, active participation rarely just happens.

Community software, no matter how many features it offers supports but does not provide the adoption programming activities only community building skills, services and/or guidance can implement. As participation creates value, which in turn defines success, these services are a critical business requirement, not as commonly thought, nice-to-have.

In IT it's accepted that enterprise software requires customization and system integration services, the cost of which can be a 10x multiple of the software purchase. An IT department would never consider the software purchase the only required expense, yet when it comes to community, they often do.

Community also benefits from integration - social integration. Social integration is a customized deployment plan that outlines how the new functionality will integrate with the human aspects of a firm: organization models, business processes, culture, and individuals.

In the face of the social complexity found in any large enterprise how could anyone expect community IT deployment to be integrated successfully without the support of corresponding strategy or planning?

Sadly, it is still not uncommon to see firms assign someone who has no previous experience, extra bandwidth, training and/or specialized support to the community management role. Is it any surprise community 'ghost towns' with little to no activity still outnumber thriving communities? Some businesses, fearing brand repercussions may provision social integration services for external communities, however the reality is building internal communities can be even more challenging.

So if we accept 1) members provide value and 2) community building strategy/integration resources are required, how we get from here to there?

Axiom #3: Thriving communities are grown, not mandated

Most successful large communities and movements - whether in person or online - start with a small group of committed people and grow from there. At the beginning, a 'grow and nurture' approach may seem like it is ramping up too slowly to be of use. However if done right once it takes off its growth rate will quickly surpass mass adoption program growth rates.

The 'grow and nurture' approach differs from typical software transitions, which are usually done en mass - on a given day either all the employees or a series of designated groups are moved from one application to another. Three conditions support this approach:

The application, not the adoption rate provides value
The new application usually replaces a similar application
You can force the issue by sun-setting the older application

By comparison, community can't rely on these as:

New community implementations offer limited if any value
Community and/or collaboration is often a new activity
Community doesn't fully replace older applications, say email

Firms sometimes assume marketing approaches can drive mass adoption, usually to no avail. A large publishing firm was pleased to see their 'create a profile and win an iPad' program generated a flurry of activity on their new community platform. As people vs. software provide value (see Axiom #1) exposure to the platform via the contest didn't result in lasting adoption. The 'participants' did the minimum required to enter the contest and never came back.

The key to starting with a small group and growing from there is to identify the individuals who in turn will drive other teams to join, who then invite larger groups, etc. Easier said than done, given at each stage community activities and participants have to provide the other participants with significant value.

Even with all the required support and software, it takes time. Communities take anywhere from six to more realistically, twelve months to mature. Initially, during creation it takes more time and money than it delivers, but once it takes off assuming the strategic value was well defined, the community provides much more value than it costs to maintain and nurture.

Implied Actions

Budget BOTH software and 'social integration' resources. Software implementation without in-house or external community strategy support is unlikely to add business value. Companies must reposition how they categorize this expense. Not as an 'extra' but as a required implementation service.
Seek out partners and/or staff who have a track record building communities. Keep in mind social media experts and agencies who have had great success promoting themselves, a product or a brand across social networking sites don't necessarily have (and often don't realize they don't have) the skills required to build a community. Getting others to join, collaborate and do the heavy lifting required to create a successful community is not the same as getting people to click a retweet, subscribe or 'like' button.
Start with a community strategy, which can help define your IT requirements. The best community software platform in the world may be the worst option for your specific needs. Defining your program, desired features, required integration and the right number of licenses will save both time and money.
Plan accordingly and set the right management expectations. More on this in another dedicated post but be realistic in terms of participation goals (i.e. don't count on 100% participation) and delivery timelines. Ensure management is aware that given the time and investment required, communities are not worth building without long term support and funding.

Relevancy in Social Strategy

2011-07-26T21:19:49Z

'Social' is the new buzz word for businesses. But what makes a business really social? What are basic ingredients that a company should have for a relevant social footprint? In this day and age where every company, every business, seems to be adding a Twitter account and a Facebook fan page to their portfolio to join the social bandwagon, what is it that separates one company from the other?

Most companies when asked about their 'Social Strategy' are clueless beyond Facebook and Twitter and most just use them as 'Shout' channels and not really as engagement platforms. So what are the benefits that the social media provides which can be used to both support and leverage the brand and customer base to align with the overall company goals? How can you move beyond just Twitter and Facebook to have a relevant, well-meaning and structured social strategy?

]]> I believe, most of the points mentioned below already exist and smart companies have always been using them to their advantage. Current wave of Social media just provides an easily accessible platform to make up for a more level playing field.

Customer Feedback

Amazon has been using customer feedback successfully for years. It invites and encourages people to post reviews for the products they bought and people spend considerable amount of time and effort in posting valuable first hand experiences about the products. A customer always values the opinion of another customer more than the seller. You can write a beautiful product description (not that it's not important, a well written product description is a huge asset) but an end customer will always value more what a person, who has been in his position earlier, has to say.

Not many companies were able to build a review system as robust as Amazon but Social Media provides an excellent platform today for recieving feedback. You don't have to put together a 10-question long survey to do that. Just pose a question to your fans/followers and you have a dedicated customer base, who love and appreciate your product and value your brand, ready to give their opinion. Encourage them!

Customer Service

They say every touch point with the customer is a marketing opportunity. Use your Social Media channel not only for feedback but also as a customer service channel. Encourage them to seek help and ask questions. The advantage is you are not doing that on an isolated phone call or an email exchange. It's out there in the open and if you do it well, you have hundreds of others who have watched that interaction and can be instantly and positively influenced by it.

This, however, can be a double edged sword because if you are not able to provide a good service you surely will lose more than one customer.

Targeted Customer Base

One of the basic principles of marketing is that you should know your customer. Go deep into Twitter and Facebook and beyond them as well. Thanks to the boom in social media there are a lot of niche online communities that are interested in a particular activity who could very well be your targeted customers. Say you sell trekking shoes; it's now easier to find a community that is interested in trekking and thus provides you a ready and willing customer base. Seek out the relevant people. You can't make everyone happy so why not choose and target the ones that you care about.

Crowd Sourcing

Use your customers to create a buzz around your product or brand. Use crowd-sourcing to get user generated content via blogs and videos and get people talking about your brand. The 'Old Spice' viral videos are an excellent example (Their 2.0 is just out). If you can get the people to talk, write or discuss your product, they will be your spokespeople and your salespeople.

'Govind Tiwari' in India, recently, became famous not because he had a great blog. In fact it was so bad (and different) that people got talking and the blog went viral and he became an overnight celebrity to be featured on national news channels. Same is what happened to Rebecca Black in the US sometime back. It's not just the bad that become the talking point, if you have an excellent and unique product, it can create buzz too. Apple is a great brand not just because of its great products but also because it has a huge online community that not only talks about the current products but anticipates and discusses what the future products will look like.

Collective Bargaining

Invest in and initiate mutually benefitting promotional strategies like collective bargaining to customers through channels like Social Living and Groupon so that not they benefit themselves but share it with their friends and family thereby increasing your reach and increasing your sales.

What I mentioned above can be some of the ingredients of your social media strategy but ultimately what you use and how you use them depends on your approach, strategy and goals. The one thing that we always should remember is that Social Media is not a silver bullet for success. It is just a facilitator in terms of technology and platform. How you want to use it is entirely up to you.

Social Commerce

2011-07-07T05:51:51Z

Commerce has gone electronic and social. In this blog, I am penning an example of how it has altered the shopper in me.

]]> About a decade ago I bought my first motorbike and sure enough I was quite excited about it. After about four months I had my first fall off the bike when it skid. Strangely enough I had a few more such falls, thankfully all minor accidents. It was about nine months later that a friend told me that because of the narrow wheel base, the tendency to skid and fall off that particular make was higher. I really wished I knew about this before I bought it. Contrast this with my experience buying a camera. I had narrowed down the choices to two cameras (say A and B) based on price and features. As I was reading through the user reviews at a website, I came across a review that said that Camera A despite all its features, does not run on rechargeable batteries. That did it for me- I didn't want to harm the environment every time I clicked and so I went for Camera B and sure enough it has been a very satisfying purchase.

Sometime between the time I bought my first bike and my camera, commerce had gone electronic and social. Purchasing was no longer as simple as walking to the nearest store and buying from the limited stock available and hoping that it would last long enough. Today I can start my search based on the information that the company posts, the product reviews that I can get from early adopters or recommendations from my peer group. I can choose to visit one of the eCommerce sites based on my past experience/ peer recommendations/ deals being offered etc. Once at the site, I have limitless product options, I can get all the specs and information, I can narrow down the choices based on price, look for the best deal and above all I can get all the reviews by actual users needed to make my purchase. Before the final purchase, I can choose to go by the reviews on the product page or I could choose to tap into my own social network asking for feedback from friends or friends of friends. After my purchase, I do my bit for the community by posting my own honest feedback on the product, the service and overall the shopping experience via my blog or twitter or Facebook or at the product review page.

The purchase process had distinct flavors of Social networking and eCommerce and leverages both to help me get to the best offering at the best price. Somewhere at the back of my head, I also know that because of my social network, the manufacturers and e-retailers would respect me and listen to me, should I have any problems. That last reason alone would tempt me to follow this purchase process again. Thus, the coming together of social media and eCommerce is democracy for the consumer - the ability to vote in or vote out a business depending on price, service, reliability, experience etc.

M-Commerce: Customer Engagement Redefined

2011-07-05T21:31:09Z

A recently published study claimed that people in US are spending more time inside mobile applications on average than they are on the web. As per the study, although there is a constant increase in the amount of time spent on the internet in general, the time spent on web through mobile apps has shown significant increase.

This trend is expected to continue upwards atleast for the time to come. What this also means is that it presents a big opportunity in the mobile-commerce area. More and more retailers are trying not just to connect to their customers but looking for ways beyond that - to engage with their customers and these mobile devices or smart phones provide an excellent platform just to do that.

]]> Below are some areas and examples where businesses are interacting and engaging with their customers like never before. Since the m-commerce area is still new, a lot of exciting experimentation is happening which is fun because it opens doors for innovation and creativity.

Interactive Advertising

It is time to move beyond just display advertising which is already prevalent on the internet. Advertising on mobiles provides hordes of opportunities to engage your customers.

· A simple 'Call to learn more' as a Call-to-Action in your display Ad can help your customer reach your product/service specialist who can answer the queries directly related to the product or service being advertised. Much better than customer calling a generic 1800 number, dialing a series of options and waiting in queues for hours before getting his query answered.

· Consider another scenario, where the customer scans the QR code displayed on the advertising billboard of your latest product which takes him to the specific product page on your website to check for more information and place an order within a matter of few minutes. You receive multifold benefits -

o First, you integrate your online and traditional advertising, thus bridging the gap that traditionally existed.

o Second, you are likely to get more conversions since the person who scanned the QR code is already interested in your product and is further up in the buying cycle.

o As a bonus, you also can get additional tracking data on 'how well is your offline campaign doing?' which is difficult to measure in traditional media.

The opportunities are unlimited in this space; it's about how creative we can be. Best Buy has already started placing QR codes on their products scanning which will take you to the specific product page.

Mobile Payments

This is still in the evolutionary phase and hence provides a big opportunity. Yes, there is Starbucks which allows you to pay for your coffee through your iPhone app and yes, Visa is already talking about your mobile being your wallet but still nobody has a perfect solution yet and at the same time everyone knows this is big - real big.

Starbucks not only has an app where you can locate a store, customize a drink and share your creation with your friends but also has a separate app which can be used for payments thus eliminating the need to carry your wallet J [http://www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/mobile-apps/starbucks-card-mobile]

Location Based Services

This is another area which I feel has not been used to its full potential. There are location based services like Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla etc which allow you to check-in at places, offer tips and reviews and maybe get some rewards and discounts in return. But check-ins seldom offer any real value either to the customer or to the business and more over, they can be faked easily. The real benefit would be to integrate these services with the POS, so that the customers benefits at the time of checkout. Here are some more ideas that could be implemented.

· Offering customers coupons through their mobiles based on the store that they are in?

· Instead of store cards or membership cards, how about an app on the phone that can be scanned at the checkout?

· How about an app which allows the customers to prepare his shopping list and as soon as he enters a store, he is informed that say 3 of the 5 items on your list are available in this store and of those 2 are available at the lowest price compared to any other store.

Below are some of the prevalent location based services being offered -

Social Media

Almost all companies already have Facebook pages and Twitter handles but most are struggling with what to do with them. In my opinion, people who follow your brand on social media already like it so traditional "shout" marketing intended to bring people on board is both offending to your followers and a wasteful exercise as well. Social Media can be an excellent feedback platform. You don't have to design a survey questionnaire any longer and send it to a blind list of users and hope that some of them take the pain of completing it. Why not to put the question on Facebook and Twitter and let people who love and value your brand answer the question. Below are some other good uses-

· There are a few restaurants that allow table bookings and reservations through their Facebook pages

· Certain companies take complaints through Twitter/Facebook and provide real-time assistance using them as customer service channels

· Delhi Police allows users to post pictures of traffic violations and assures necessary action

But these are very few examples and far between. There is still need to understand these platforms and customize them to suit your needs. After all having 2 million followers on your Facebook Fan page and getting no conversions in return is no fun either :)

Look Beyond Facebook and Twitter for your Social Media Strategy

2011-06-27T08:44:26Z

Recently, I had a chance to interact with several CXOs from our client organizations during their visits to Infosys, to talk about social media and the Infosys iEngage Digital consumer Platform.

One questions comes up very frequently during these discussions is, "We already have presence in Facebook and Twitter, what is the need for our own social media platform and solutions?"

]]> There is no doubt that Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites provides great platform in making the brand presence where millions of customers are interacting on a day to day basis. But clearly there is a limitation to the extent of engagement you can have with the consumers in these social sites in terms of functionalities, personalization, branding, analytics and extent of integration with your enterprise systems.

Enterprises should use Facebook, twitter as a platform for initial engagement with their customers but also should have strategy to bring them to their own social engagement platforms where deeper conversations can be possible. There are scenarios where interaction with a specific segment of your consumers and create communities around them, engaging with your customers in co-creation of product or service, leverage new trends in social media in terms of listening, content aggregation and distribution. All these could only be possible with a robust social media platform which is enterprise class.

To make this initiatives a success customers should have enough incentive to come to your own social sites in terms of rich content, experts participation, contextual information, real-time response, etc., This will also result in a huge wealth of information over a period of time which can be used for getting meaningful insights about your products and services.

The biggest success for a brand is, when the customer has a query, opinion or feedback about a product or service he or she coming to the brands own social engagement platforms rather than reaching out to their friends in Facebook or Twitter. This means you have truly started engaging with your customers.

Infosys iEngage - Committed to Social

2011-06-08T09:55:27Z

Preparing ourselves for the launch of the new release of Infosys iEngage, we are again leveraging the reliable platform provided by Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston.

As part of our participation in 2011, Infosys iEngage is a Diamond Sponsor of Enterprise 2.0 Conference (others include Microsoft, IBM, Avaya & Cisco). We had some useful meeting in the conference in 2010 and we are looking forward to it again. This year the conference is being held at the Hynes Convention Center, Boston between 20 to 23 Jun and we will be showcasing the latest release of the iEngage platform which contains the new Social Commerce Platform, enhanced Employee Engagement Platform and the Mobility module.

]]> Our participation highlights includes panel discussion on 'From Innovator to Leader - Lessons Learnt' on 21-Jun (15:45-16:30 ET). The panel includes Bryce Williams, Social Collaboration Consultant at Eli Lilly, Kevin Jones, Head - Internal Social Media Strategy, Marshall and Goddard Space Flight Centers at NASA and Michelle Lavoie, Community Manager at EMC. The session will be moderated by Dhiraj Mukherjee, Industry Principal, Infosys Technologies.

We are also organizing a thought leadership session on 'The Keys to Effective Employee and Customer Engagement' on 21-Jun (12:30-12:50 ET). This practical discussion is for innovators and change agents. The session includes a case study and an in-depth discussion on succeeding with innovation and building tomorrow's enterprise. Gain hands-on, practical tips from experienced panel members on how to lead change and get results. This session will be lead by Manish Barmecha (Product Head - iEngage)

Click here for more details.

If you are attending the event, please drop by Booth # 107. We would be happy to meet you!!!

Infosys iEngage - Entering the London Social event scene

2011-06-08T09:48:51Z

Next week, we will be participating in the Social Media Influence Conference, London (14-Jun) as the title sponsors for the conference which draws industry-leading brands and companies from across UK and Europe. We had attended this event in 2010 and found this to be very insightful and intriguing. This year the event is being organized at the Cavendish Conference Centre, London, United Kingdom and this will the first participation for iEngage in any Social event in UK.

As part of the program, Selina Sykes, Senior Brand Manager (Lynx) at Unilever UK, will be presenting an overview of their social media approach and how Social Analytics is used to generate relevant actionable insights. Then Richard Downs (Business Director - iEngage Europe) will share a brief overview of Infosys iEngage's capabilities and talk about some of the new offerings on the platform.

http://www.infosys.com/newsroom/events/pages/social-media-influence-conference2011.aspx for more details.

If you are attending the event, please drop by Booth # 10. We would be happy to meet you!!!

Social CRM - Thy name is SMART

2011-05-18T11:07:08Z

It's interesting to see how CRM has evolved over the last decade and a half. While the fundamental objective of keeping the customer at the heart of the organization still remains the same, we have seen the technology outpace the growth of business applications. The challenge is still to apply the technology to a matured business process.

Call it "Social" or "Smart"... CRM is a strategy and technology enables it. In this article, published in CRM Reviews, Prasanna Rajanna, Prinicipal Consultant - iEngage, has tried to bring out a novel business application keeping CRM as a strategy in mind. For a successful CRM, the focus should never be shifted out of "The Real" customer.

http://www.crm-reviews.com/articles/social-crm-thy-name-is-smart/

Juxtaposing Traditional and Social Content

2011-05-04T07:00:27Z

Kiran Karadi (Principal Strategist - Infosys iEngage) recently presented at the MarkLogic User Conference in SFO California where he spoke about how the publishing industry is preparing for the social media challenge. He also spoke about the importance of maintaining a crucial balance between traditional content and the user generated content. Since the reader has moved on and is endorsing the social content the publishing industry also needs charter their way forward and walk in tandem with the reader. Kiran also paid emphasis on the importance of building and nurturing the community and how this is the way forward for the publishers.

Check out Kiran's presentation at the conference http://www.marklogicevents.com/file/presentations/Juxtaposing_Traditional_and_Social_Content_Karadi.pdf