Social data in the cloud part 3

This is the last in a series of blogs that discusses where digital data from principally social network systems is stored, who owns it and how it is used.

The first two parts addressed the issues surrounding the control of data for companies like the BBC and how blogs, postings, photos, video, audio files and reports remain essentially unregulated, uncategorised and impossible to track. It’s no wonder this is the case with nearly 2 billion people now globally online, over 1 billion on social networks and over 3 billion items being shared daily. Companies for legal and PR reasons need to bring order to their data to avoid potential litigation disasters and control what is being said about their companies internally.

But what of consumers? Equally, individuals and groups are doing exactly the same thing every day, blogging, posting, pasting and generating huge amounts of personal data. Most of it is out of the individual’s control once released to the cloud.

The questions to be asked are: “shouldn’t YOU be the single biggest owner of your data? Shouldn’t you own your own online life?”

One individual might have calendars, journals, photos, collections and insights etc, scattered in the digital cloud and not know where it is, how it can be retrieved or how ‘ownership’ can be regained. Gone are the days of the locked filling cabinet. An individual’s life is now largely public, there is no privacy. Socially, nobody is ‘safe’. It is particularly vital for child safety for example, to have safe systems that redress this balance and bring privacy and protection back into the foreground. Essentially there is no control of data, some is ‘siloed’, some is fragmented and has limited availability (even to the owner); much data is lost, there is a lack of interoperability, it is becoming increasingly difficult to reuse and there is a complete loss of privacy.

The data can, as a first step, be divided into four major categories.

Social Networks:

Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

Information:

Google, Wikipedia, The Washington Post

E-commerce:

eBay, Amazon, Expedia, Best Buy

Services:

Nectar, EDF, NHS, HSBC

At present, there is no perfect solution. What is needed is a system that consolidates all your data in one place on one device (or on one cloud), has advanced search capabilities, is ultra-secure, enables and facilitates control of your data, your interactions and your relationships. A ‘permission based’ access system for re-use and discovery, your ‘library’ of you.

Indeed, some companies, mainly with names that have ‘archive’, ‘backup’, ‘safe’, ‘lock’ or ‘social’ in their titles all profess to do some of this but the problem is that ‘the bath water is coming into the bathtub faster than the overflow can cope’. It is a real issue and one for the consulting world to get to grips with and provide comprehensive solutions.

There are exciting opportunities and lucrative projects for those out there with the expertise and the vision to be ahead of the digital data revolution.

The author of this article is David Reeves.

               

Social data in the Cloud

‘How can we manage and control social media data in the Cloud?’  Issues and solutions for companies and individuals.

Consider the basic facts: with an estimated 1.8 billion people online globally, 1+ billion on social networks and 3 billion items shared DAILY (Software and Information Industry White Paper February 2013), it is no wonder that even locating a company’s and your own individual digital data is becoming more and more difficult. Controlling and managing the data is akin to herding cats. If we dig more deeply, we find that 98% of all US businesses are using social media systems actively and 23% of time on the internet now in companies in the USA is spent on social media activity.

Every millisecond and with every keystroke, an item of data is created. It ranges from a few bytes to a few terabytes.  Where though does it go, where is it stored, who has access to this data and how can it be consolidated and managed?  Is this data explosion in fact out of control and eventually going to overwhelm companies and individuals alike? Or can the monster be tamed and eventually put to good use?

The first part of this blog will not attempt to answer these questions, but rather increase the awareness of the issue and possible solutions that some companies are considering and indeed putting in to action.  The second part will focus on consumer data.

Most social media data from companies is now finding its way in to the ‘Cloud’, long gone are the Dickensian days of Bob Cratchit recording everything dutifully for Ebeneezer Scrooge on paper so that he can scrutinize who may be cheating him, long gone is microfiche, long gone are warehouses of magnetic and data discs (although some companies still have these for their business recovery plans), the evasive but inclusive ‘Cloud’ is now where most data is stored.

The crux of the problem, however, is not how everything is stored, it is how it can be easily accessed and retrieved and then monitored and analysed that is causing the problem. Why would a company want to retain and be able to analyse the data? Consider, therefore what companies face with social media.

Companies need to be fully cognisant of the consequences of actions by their official and unofficial blogs, tweets and social media emails. There is a vital need to abide by regulated industry compliance with statutes for such items as: (abbreviated by the power of 10).

There may be deliberate accidental legal deformation of persons such as libel, or slander, harassment (sexual and other forms) and discrimination, confidentiality breaches of customer and personal data, premature release of protected information (e.g. movies, games, product launches (XB Box One, PS4, iPhones), trademark and IP infringement, unfair promotional claims, illegal use of data gathered from social networks, password security leaks and contravention of state gambling or lottery laws. The list is endless but in most cases the company’s legal department are blind to any contraventions by employees.

The above are just some examples of the law can be contravened inadvertently with the use of social media within companies.

The obvious solution is that a company has:

• A social media policy defining best practice for their organisation.
• A precise chronological  record of all social media activity undertaken by or on behalf of their business in order  to anticipate legal and regulatory requests and monitor internal activities.

It is not easy however, within a company; there are  ‘centralised’  accounts, those official accounts controlled by a corporation, networks  owned and managed by dedicated teams and then there are ‘dispersed’  accounts on the very same social networks, ‘owned’ and ‘distributed’ by a variety of company representatives or web bloggers.

As an example, CNN has over 700 dispersed business accounts and the BBC has over 500 accounts on Twitter alone in addition to their ‘official‘ accounts and that does not even count  their respective employees who actively use social media and refer to their CNN and BBC roles.

Part two of this article will be published shortly and the author is David Reeves.

If you would like to discuss how The Quantic Group can help your business, please give us a call.

Part II of Are you maximising all your ‘clicks’ to sales?

PART I of this article on e-commerce dealt with the history of the emergence of e-commerce and its growing importance. PART 2 looks at the best approach to maximize your share, revenue and profits.

After the ‘.com’ bubble burst over 10 years ago, there was relatively slow growth in e-commerce as companies consolidated and reconsidered their positions. In the last two years, particularly however, there has been a massive resurgence and forecasts are for a massive growth of e-commerce globally and across all product fields including ‘fresh’. This growth has been fuelled by faster and more secure technology, ease of access (m-commerce), more customer friendly user interfaces, competitive pricing, faster delivery and wider choice.

Many companies now no longer regard e-commerce as an ‘add on’ and incorporate e-commerce into an ‘omni channel’ strategy to maximize sales opportunities. In addition, many have completely restructured their organisations internally to address the importance of D2C. There are still companies, however, including global multinationals, who still have not sufficiently addressed its rapid emergence.

Part II discusses where a company might be in the e-commerce development life cycle and suggests what next steps need to be taken to turn ‘Clicks to Sales’

One possible methodology is to divide into three specific levels of e-commerce development:

• Level 1 Development (EC1): companies who recognise the opportunity but have taken no steps to consider e-commerce.
• Level 2 Development (EC2): companies who have an e-commerce site operated from within or have their products on multiple third party sites, probably offer physical delivery only and do not have the site integrated into either their channel strategy or their whole company ethos and philosophy. Site ‘efficiency’ and profitability is not measured, consumer profiles are not compared with retail buyers and SKUs are the same as those in retail traditional channels and consumer feedback is not monitored or acted upon.
• Level 3 Development (EC3): companies for whom e-commerce is already part of the internal channel strategy, (indeed e-commerce may have its own channel strategy), have an established company site or regularly monitor performance against competitors (not just Amazon) on third party sites, profitability is discussed at board level and there is a programme to continually upgrade via for example, HTML5 and ensure multi format access for smart phones, tablets as well as laptops and home PCs. SEO and MEO is de rigeur and specialists are employed to keep the internal site that way and advise retail partners.

Consider the following real global examples.

Company A, in 2011, a major German homeopathic company with well established brands was selling into retail stores across Germany.  It was losing share, both to Amazon and specialist German and other EU e-commerce sites selling health foods offering the same generic product at a cheaper price. These sites also had free next day delivery to Germany.  Company ‘A’ was an ‘EC1 level’ company. They were advised by one of their non-executive directors on their board to hire specialist e-commerce consultants to:

• Design and build a ‘front end’, to map out the range strategy for the new e-store.
• Ensure measured SEO was in place.
• Sub-contracted the setting up of multiple payment systems to a specialist.
• Established a north and south fulfilment system for the whole of GSA, plus guaranteed one day delivery everywhere in Germany.
•  E-store prices were reviewed, taking into account the increased margin generated by selling B to C, in store prices were revised to reflect the changes and new SKUs were developed specifically for the e-store.
• Company A’s own brands were even placed on Amazon and the competitive e-commerce sites

Within six months, their share of market has been restored and additionally, sales in Bavaria, which had few retail outlets jumped 32% year on year.

Company ‘B’ was an ‘EC2 level’ multinational Australian retail chain selling video games with a ‘state of the art’ e-store offering B2C physical delivery on day of launch, special editions, multiple payment platforms, a ‘loyalty programme’ and had reduced the number of clicks to existing registered members to a maximum of three except where the credit card needed an additional check. Company ‘B’ prospered, gained market share, integrated their strategy between retail and e-store and even competed with lower priced imports.

Company ‘C’, an Australian competitor, however,  was only a ‘Level 1‘ company but retailed not only video games but Blu Ray and DVDs, digital cameras, PCs and laptops, mobile phones,  accessories and books and ‘cheat guides’ about the branded products.

Company ‘C’ hired local e-commerce Melbourne consultants and converted themselves to beyond ‘Level 2’ in seven months. The first move was to build a consumer friendly in-house e-commerce site that offered the choice of digital downloads or physical delivery on PC games and digital tokens for Xbox Live and PlayStation store games. This resulted in not only physical prices becoming more competitive, as the margin on digital increased  by 38%,  but  enabled instant delivery and pre ordering and downloading. Secondly, branded camera goods were ranged on the site. Meta data from the manufacture was included in multiple languages and demonstrated on the site, with tips and suggestions for interested buyers. Delivery was offered to the home or by in store pick up.  Six other major enhancements were built in including instructions for some products in Mandarin where it was identified that > 20%   of the mobile phone purchasers  actually had Chinese as their first language.

Company ‘C’ now not only have the largest market share in video games but have increased turnover in Australia (retail and e-commerce combined) by 28% and profitability (direct operating income (DOI) a % of gross sales) by 16%.

Company ‘D’, a major US blue chip global consumer products company were already an ‘EC3’ level’ Company. They had both internal e-commerce sites and monitored and advised third parties on the optimisation of selling the company’s products on the third party sites.

They had foreseen very quickly the emergence of e-commerce but additionally, the importance of ‘digitisation’ of the all the divisions internationally of the company and the value of a direct relationship with the end user.

No stone was been left unturned in engaging with consumers on their comments received on both their own sites and third party vendor sites. The objective was to maximise the number of consumers clicking and buying, not just clicking. Even ‘Bayesian’ analysis was used to monitor the ‘consumer pulse’ and iPads adopted in production plants to follow the predicted path of the product to the consumer. Not only to the consumer in the USA but even as far as the Philippines and Japan.

The ‘EC3’ Level 3 however needs to continually upgraded and there are now specialised e-commerce consultants on hand to guide them to get to the ultimate goal of tracking profitability through both the company’s own sites and the partner third party retailer sites.  The most advanced, consumer friendly, fastest access technology, the continual  monitoring of the clicks to purchase, the identification of the consumer groups most likely to purchase on which site, the brand most likely to sell on line compared to in store; the list is endless and still evolving.

E-commerce is now very deep and advanced, it is something that can bring instant results as in the case of the German homeopathic product company, it can enable a company to ‘leap frog’ another as in the Australian example, or can transform a multinational USA company’s philosophy.

Like a modern car, however, the fan belt cannot be changed without first connecting with the laptop, getting to ‘Level 1, 2, or 3’ requires a specialist adviser. As with the new automobile technician, the investment in his or her specialist knowledge will pay off in a very short time.

In the digital era, instantly.

Ignore e-commerce, or give it just lip service, at your peril.

So, what level does your company operate at with regards to e-commerce?

EC1? Where it is hardly recognised or has been difficult to get through corporate red tape?

EC2? Where e-commerce is an important part of your business, it is recognised corporately and has a ‘division’ working on it but still is not 100% integrated in to the fabric of the company?

EC3? Where not only e-commerce but digital marketing has changed the way the company does business, indeed the whole structure of the company and its marketing and sales philosophy.

We would be interested to hear from you, listen to your own experiences and happy to help.

Written by D Turnbull and D Reeves of The Quantic Group