Posts Tagged ‘customers’

The Union of Structured and Unstructured Data

Monday, August 15th, 2011

I had the distinct pleasure of speaking on a recent CXPA webinar “Gaining Customer Insights from Unstructured Data” along with CXPA co-founder and chair Bruce Temkin and Jason Schneider, vice president of enterprise sales at Clarabridge.  One thing that resonated was Jason’s comment that “the marriage of structured and unstructured data is the point of ultimate action for an organization.”

I would have to concur. The challenge many businesses face today though is that the information needed to support customers is scattered throughout the company.  Sales professionals, account management and customer support professionals have to log into 10 or more different applications trying to find information to help customers. According to Harris Interactive, even once information is found, 44% of customers claim that they received the wrong information. Added to this challenge is the phenomenal growth of unstructured data from internal blogs, content management systems, and customer survey responses as well as data captured outside the firewall from social media.

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Customers “Expect” us to Innovate

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

Every business conversation always circles back to the customer. At a recent #innochat on innovation Graham Hill [@grahamhill] asked, “Do customers need us to innovate?” My immediate response was customers “expect” us to innovate—when we don’t we end up at memorial services.  And sadly enough it would be our own service.

Tenuous competitive advantages coupled with increased global competition mandate that we continuously innovate or risk losing our customers to competitors. Added to this, customer expectations seemingly inch higher daily. Customers want us to anticipate their needs, to develop new products, to innovate, and deliver solutions that bring efficiency to their business processes, their homes, and their life as a whole.

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What Customers Like

Monday, November 15th, 2010

When we talk about the value of information optimization (IO) in customer relationships, we often focus on how we can use information to uncover opportunities, out-sell competitors, and increase account penetration.

These are certainly important considerations, and they should not be ignored.  However, they are also ultimately vendor-centric.  That is, they are primarily about how vendors can utilize information assets to increase revenue, margins and marketshare.

It might therefore be worthwhile to give some consideration to how the effective use of information by a vendor actually provides material benefit to the customer.  We are, after all, at least theoretically in business to deliver such benefits—rather than to simply grab the biggest piece of our customers’ budgets while there is still something to grab.

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Welcome to the Information Optimized Blog!

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Welcome to the “Information Optimized” inaugural blog post. We’ve created this blog to share knowledge and collaborate with you, our customers, our partners and all others interested in bringing people, process and technology together to maximize the business value of information.

So, why the new title? Information Optimized?

An independent party recently completed an in-depth survey of our customer base. What we found was astonishing. We’ve always known that we’ve helped our customers with their information access which has led to significant value for them. However, what we didn’t realize was just how much value. It was fascinating and humbling.

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