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| Accenture Technology Vision 2012: Emerging Technology Trends for IT Leaders |
Accenture publishes its technology vision annually. It is a distillation of extensive research over the course of the previous 12 months, the experiences of their research teams and the input of clients. In it, they outline the emerging technology trends that forward-thinking CIOs will use to position their organizations to drive growth and high performance, rather than just focusing on cost-cutting and efficiency improvements.
Accenture has identified six technology trends that will influence business over the next three to five years:
Context-based services. Where you are and what you are doing will drive the next wave of digital services.
Converging data architectures. Successfully rebalancing the data architecture portfolio and blending the structured with the unstructured are key to turning data into new streams of value.
Industrialized data services. The ability to share data will make it more valuable—but only if it is managed differently.
Social-driven IT. Realize that social is not just a bolt-on marketing channel. It will have true business-wide impact.
PaaS-enabled agility. The maturing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market will shift the emphasis from cost-cutting to business innovation, supporting rapid evolution for business processes that need continuous change.
Orchestrated analytical security. Organizations will have to accept that their gates will be breached and begin preparing their second line of defense—data platforms—to mitigate the damage caused by attacks that get through.
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[Full Article]
Jan-29-2012 |
| 88% Less Likely to Buy from Companies who Ignore Complaints in Social Media |
A new study by Conversocial looks at consumers' sentiments and expectations concerning interactions with companies on social media platforms. The future of communication between companies and their customers lies in social media. A majority (50.7%) of consumers currently use social media to communicate with corporations. Moreover, 78% of respondents believe that social media platforms would either soon entirely replace other means of customer service altogether or become the dominant way for consumers to communicate with corporations.
Here's a snapshot of some of the study’s key findings:
High Rate of No Response: Of those respondents who have communicated with companies on social media sites, nearly a third (32.5%) were either neglected or altogether ignored.
Price of Neglecting Customers: If ignored by companies on social media sites, 45% said they’d feel anger, and 27.1% said they’d stop doing business with the offending company altogether.
88% Less Likely to Buy: If confronted with unanswered customer complaints on a company’s social media site, 88.3% of respondents said they’d be either somewhat less likely or far less likely to buy from that brand.
Low Level of Current Consumer Satisfaction with Companies’ Social Media: Nearly a third of respondents, or 32.4%, characterized their overall satisfaction with the way companies use social media sites to communicate with customers as either poor or very poor, while 59.6% expressed guarded optimism for future positive developments in the field and only 8% were thoroughly satisfied.
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[Full Article]
Jan-29-2012 |
| New Research Finds IT Budgets Are Up, and so is Demand for New Technology Projects |
InformationWeek Reports, a service for peer-based IT research and analysis, announced the release of its latest research report. Outlook 2012 encompasses analysis of results from InformationWeek's recent survey on IT spending, staffing plans and strategies for 2012. More than 600 business technology professionals responded to this poll.
Research Summary:
IT budgets are up, and so is demand for new technology projects, according to the 2012 edition of InformationWeek's annual Outlook survey. Fifty-six percent of respondents say their companies plan to increase tech spending in the coming year, up from 46% two years ago. Three-quarters of respondents see heightened demand for new IT projects, up from about half in our Outlook 2010 survey. This budget growth builds on last year's momentum, while strong demand for tech projects is a positive sign for overall business expansion and investment.
Other Findings:
Two years ago, the IT hiring picture was bleak: Just 14% of companies were expanding compared with 18% making cuts. Today, 25% are expanding vs. just 9% cutting back.
23% say IT is viewed as a business driver and is therefore asked to cut spending less than other departments.
49% of respondents say their companies will increase spending on data center software next year compared with just 9% cutting that spending; 42% say they will increase spending on data center hardware, while 12% will cut.
Tech pros are changing their tune about tablets: 51% of IT pros last year "strongly disagreed" that their companies would give tablets to even 10% of employees who normally would get a PC. Now just 35% of respondents are that deeply skeptical.
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[Full Article]
Jan-08-2012 |
| Email Marketing and Social Media Are Top Areas of Investment in 2012 According to StrongMail Survey |
StrongMail, a provider of interactive marketing solutions for email marketing and social media, announced the results of its "2012 Marketing Trends" survey, which provides unique insight into how businesses plan to budget and prioritize marketing dollars in the New Year. Conducted in November 2011, 939 business leaders participated in the global survey.
Survey Highlights
92% plan to increase or maintain marketing spend in 2012
60% plan to increase email marketing budget; 55% social media; 37% mobile/search (tied)
45% cite data integration as primary email marketing challenge in 2012; 43% lack of resources/staff; 40% content management
48% cite increasing subscriber engagement as top 2012 email marketing initiative; 44% improving segmentation/targeting; 32% growing opt-in email list
68% plan to integrate email marketing with social media; 44% with mobile; 17% with search
Marketing Budgets Remain Healthy; Email and Social Media Attract Increased Investment
Email marketing (60%) and social media (55%) were cited as the top two areas for increased marketing spend. According to the survey, 51% of businesses plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2012, and another 41% plan to maintain current levels. Only 8% of respondents plan to decrease marketing budgets, which is a slight increase over the 7% reported in last year's survey. Other areas of increased spend included mobile and search, which are tied at 37%. Direct mail (28%) and tradeshows (23%) are top targets for decreased spend.
Subscriber Engagement is Top Email Marketing Priority; Data Integration is Top Challenge
The top email marketing initiatives for 2012 are increasing subscriber engagement (48%), improving segmentation and targeting (44%) and growing opt-in email lists (32%). Data integration is key to achieving these top priorities, but it is also identified as the primary email marketing challenge in 2012 (45%), followed by lack of resources (43%) and content management (40%). These opposing data points represent an opportunity for email service providers to fill the gap with relevant services.
Marketers Focus on Integrating Email Marketing and Social Media
More than two-thirds of businesses plan to integrate social media and email in 2012, versus 44% integrating mobile and email. The strong ties between email marketing and social media are also emphasized by the 47% of businesses that plan to increase investment in using email to drive growth in their social media channels, such as corporate Facebook and Twitter pages. The next popular areas of investment are batch promotional (44%) and newsletter (39%) programs, followed by real-time lifecycle marketing programs (35%), with an emphasis on winback (68%) and welcome (59%) programs.
Marketers Unclear on Value of Mobile Marketing
More than a third of businesses plan to increase their investment in mobile marketing programs such as mobile apps (29%) and SMS alerts (20%), but there is a lack of consensus on the primary value of this emerging channel. Building customer and loyalty (35%) was identified as the top benefit, followed by expanded reach (29%) and awareness building (28%). However, this is offset by a similar percentage still trying to figure it out (24%) and a smaller percentage citing no value at all (7%).
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[Full Article]
Jan-08-2012 |
| Worldwide CRM Applications Market Forecast to Reach $18.2 Billion in 2011, Up 11% from 2010 |
International Data Corporation (IDC) released its latest results from the Worldwide Semiannual Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Applications Tracker. The Tracker monitors nearly 190 CRM vendors (global and local) across a total of 49 countries globally. Information provided include biannual market size, vendor share, and forecast data for the four functional markets – Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, and Contact Center – that comprise the CRM applications market.
The global CRM applications market recorded a very strong performance in the first half of this year, with revenues totaling $9.2 billion. The semiannual year-on-year growth of 13.3% was a third stronger than what it was a year ago.
Out of the four functional markets, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service are each expected to achieve double-digit growth in 2011. While the Contact Center functional is not forecast to follow suit, it nevertheless should recover very strongly from a prior year decline of 3.6%. In terms of geography, Americas and Europe will be registering at least double the growth of 2010.
A total of 18 vendors (two more than during the first half of 2010) achieved revenues of more than $100 million revenue during the first half of 2011 (1H11). Combined, these vendors captured a total market share of 63% with the remainder shared among 170 vendors and others. The two new vendors that surpassed the $100 million revenue mark in 1H11 were Nuance Communications and Reynolds & Reynolds.
Oracle remained the number 1 CRM vendor worldwide, growing above the market average and the only vendor that earned double-digit market share (13.2%) during the first half of 2011. Salesforce.com continued to impress with the best year-over-year growth (22.6%) among the top 10 vendors during the same period and moving into the number 2 position worldwide for the first time since IDC started tracking the market semiannually in 2008. Within the top 10, SAP and NICE Systems were the other vendors that had stronger than overall market growth.
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[Full Article]
Jan-08-2012 |
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