Digital Consumer

Digital Consumerism starts early and how!

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:29:15 +0000

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

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 08:57:22 +0000

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?

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:22:33 +0000

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

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

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:10:00 +0000

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

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:24:25 +0000

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.

Infosys - Entering the Biggest Digital Marketing Event in London

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:20:56 +0000

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 Key to Community Success

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:17:05 +0000

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.

Relevancy in Social Strategy

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:19:49 +0000

'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?

Social Commerce

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 06:51:51 +0000

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

M-Commerce: Customer Engagement Redefined

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 22:31:09 +0000

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.

Look Beyond Facebook and Twitter for your Social Media Strategy

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 09:44:26 +0000

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?"

Infosys iEngage - Committed to Social

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:55:27 +0000

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.

Infosys iEngage - Entering the London Social event scene

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:48:51 +0000

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

Wed, 18 May 2011 12:07:08 +0000

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

Wed, 04 May 2011 08:00:27 +0000

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