New technologies every marketing manager should know about

Technology that turns agents – computers, call centre staff or mobiles – into advisors. Based on the nature of the interaction and amassed customer data, such systems guide relevant customer ‘conversations’ in real-time. At the front end they have content rich user interfaces to collect and provide information, and behind the scenes powerful real-time analytics that calculate customer propensities and suggest action based on customer strategy. Examples - Chordiant’s Decision Manager, and Speed-Trap which serves up relevant content to online customers – go beyond transactional web analytics. Whatever the channel used, direct mail to mobile, the company can keep up a perpetual dialogue with customers.

Do your customers need your help? Or might they benefit more from your cognoscente customers? Providing a platform and facilitation for customers to learn from each other is an added value service, enabled by the disruptive Web 2.0 technologies. Most companies will now be familiar with software for customer communities, forums, and wikis, as well as resource sharing sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and del.icious. But what is new are social productivity platforms that analyse and grade the reputation of contributors, categorise the innovativeness of ideas and reward customers for the value of their content. Spigit has been identified by Gartner as one of the ‘cool vendors’ in this area.

Generation Y (born 1977-1997) was raised with technology in hand. Their preferred device for social networking and information is the mobile rather than the computer. If this is your market, get behind the fast developing ‘mobile internet' which is overcoming issues of network interoperability, device limitations, and content presentation. Look at Google Android and the Open Handset Alliance which is providing an open source platform for smart phones to rival the proprietary Apple iphone. This breakthrough is a key step in location based ‘augmented reality’ where, according to Gartner, “a user could photograph a building and then receive detailed information about it on a mobile device. Or, in store directions could be provided to particular items via a mobile that also gives suggestion for use. The important thing is not to invade generation Y’s space, let them stay in control.

Reducing market noise and making life less complex is an essential customer service. Portals are a longstanding answer, now come mashups which combine features from different websites into a new customer service on yours. For example, one US company combines details of parking space availability with a Google map to help customer park in a particular city – obviously mobile access is required. TuneGlue combines content from Amazon and Last.FM so that customers can find favourite bands, identify others in the same genre, and try out their music. Technically, a mashup is ‘your application’ that links to the APIs of features on websites such as Yahoo, Google, ebay, Flickr and Amazon; they are enabled by SOA (see section 4).

2. Augmenting people - your most valuable asset

The quality and behaviour of staff is undoubtedly the most important relationship capability a company has. In economically challenging global markets where transactional interactions can be automated or outsourced, organisations need more energetic problem solvers and fewer ‘drones’. According to the McKinsey report ‘The next revolution in interactions’ this is to be achieved by blending technology and talent. Employees need the means to think, innovate and build up skills to address unique customer issues. Upcoming technology in this category brings the benefits of social networks to organisations, creates more insight and at long last makes ‘voice’ a means of data capture.

The moniker 2.0 is shorthand for ‘reciprocal information sharing, for mutual gain, across networks.’ When applied to enterprise, it is not the random use of wikis, blogs and forums – all of which is happening. It’s the technology platform that supports the processes of innovation and collaboration and captures the tacit knowledge that has huge competitive value. Enterprise 2.0 addresses the issues of information overload (imagine less email!) and help employees quickly find the collective knowledge they need to bolster their professionalism. It harnesses the power of the ‘grapevine’ and uses story and ‘influencer profiles’ as much as facts and taxonomy. Gartner ‘Cool Vendors’ in this area include SystemOne, Kazeon and Visible Technologies.

Natural language recognition by computers makes for more convenient interactions. Companies like SpinVox are capturing the voice and turning it into text that can be delivered to email, blogs or social networks. According to Allan Engelhardt, a keen watcher of new CRM technology, “Voice recognition is finally coming of age and being used in call centres both operationally (e.g. looking at stress patterns to identify fraud) and analytically: finally you can think about data mining all those conversations.”

3. Generate the adaptive business

One of the biggest issues for CRM has been ‘out of the box’ software, where it is not expedient to customise processes. Even if an organisation is happy to run with ‘standard practices’, rather than its own strategy, changes to consumer expectations soon mean they are non-standard. Organisations need to be adaptive to the market. This is not to denigrate process – an anathema to many marketing managers. For process is the way we will support virtual teams and overcome the tyranny of organisational silos that stop us dealing with the customer as a human. Upcoming technology in this category is setting both IT and organisational structures free of their ’best practice process’ straightjacket.

The new architecture for CRM sales/service/marketing applications that combines the speed advantages of packages, with the flexibility of self-build. These applications use SOA design and have libraries or CRM functions which slot into CRM process templates. This permits organisations to turn their differentiating customer strategy into flexible processes; an imperative for personal service. No two customers buying processes are alike, e.g. one customer may just buy a case of wine, and the next may want to consult an advisor before purchasing 12 different wines. Providers of these systems include Portrait, Graham Technology, Chordiant and Pegasystems. Oracle (Fusion) and SAP (Enterprise SOA) are both experimenting with less flexible versions.

Imagine there is only one computer in the world, and that even the smallest business can obtain access to its data, applications and computing power. That all of this is contained in ‘a cloud’ and all you need is a device and security ID to access it. That is cloud computing and through it companies such as Amazon (Elastic Computer Cloud) and Google (Application Engine), are set to challenging Microsoft’s hold on the personal computing market. For business this means that virtual business/IT teams can quickly find the information technology and processing power to support new business techniques. The focus will be on strategy and process, not IT purchases and integration. Heaven! It also offers a business revenue opportunity if you want to provide services to the cloud.

4. Behind the scenes

These are the major IT infrastructure changes you need to be aware of. Far from dull, they are 'the doorway to a place of enchantment' for customers.

Data security is a touchy subject as more of it flies around the world via open source networks and clouds! Customers are increasingly fearful of what happens to their data, whilst social network users are advised to make data less public. Tim Williams of Trusted Borders says “in future many commercial companies will be able to use Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) to protect customer data transfers and the delivery of content (e.g. Audio, Video). Likewise, customers will be able to apply security assertions to protect their own data transfers“(see Open ID’s in The intelligence of data).

This is a design philosophy. In the past, programmers built each application afresh; with SOA, they link ‘beads of ready-made code’ (services) together with intricate chains (business processes). Each bead is an oft-repeated core business task, e.g. placing an order. SOA puts the design emphasis on efficient processes and means that the chain, or for CRM the mesh, can be easily refashioned for a tailored service. It also means that the beads can be accessed over the web and that you can link your processes to those of your key customer or business partners.

Increasing bandwidth opens up media options from video to 3D worlds - every company could operate its own ‘TV station’- BBC iplayer is just the start. Increasing memory capacity and decreasing size allows for computers to be fitted into everyday objects.

One of the hottest topics in IT is virtualisation: separating applications from infrastructure. Now this may sound a little dull – but it is important for two reasons. Firstly, IT deployment will be faster and cheaper because each new application can have any operating system and does not need its own underutilised server. This will improve business cases and project timescales. Secondly, the theory of virtualisation – where a ‘knowledge broker’ directs and supports valuable resource to where it is needed regardless of context - can be applied to sales people, call centre advisors and consultants so that they can interact knowledgeably with a variety of customers, e.g. Second Life.

Bottom line

Technology is at its most powerful when organisations grab the opportunity to innovate and create more value, as opposed to just automating current practices to reduce costs. Once astride that stallion, they have to keep riding it with relish to maintain momentum. Today, 50% of IT project still fail to deliver expected benefits because they are not built into organisational change. Therefore, astute business managers watch the market for technologies that are going to help them make a difference and build a sustainable business – can you imagine where Jeff Bezos CEO of Amazon would be today, if he had not understood the opportunity in the internet for customer service?

Recommended Reading

• On the Move – Technology, Mobility and the Mediation of Social Time and Space – Nicola Green (The Information Society July 2002). Recommended by Kevin McReynolds

• ReadWriteWeb – Fascinating web technology blog from Richard MacManus. Recommended by Paul Jennings

• The next revolution in interactions – McKinsey Quarterly no 4, 2005

• Spotting business value in IT – MyCustomer

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