Lisa Morgan's Official Site

Strategic Insights and Clickworthy Content Development

Category: C suite (Page 3 of 3)

Six Ways to Master the Data-Driven Enterprise

July 28, 2016 /

As seen in InformationWeek.

StatisticsBig data is changing the way companies and industries operate. Although virtually all businesses acknowledge the trend, not all of them are equally prepared to meet the challenge. The companies in the best position to compete have transformed themselves into “data-driven” organizations.

Data-driven organizations routinely use data to inform strategy and decision-making. Although other businesses share the same goal, many of them are still struggling to build the necessary technological capabilities, or otherwise their culture is interfering with their ability to use data, or both.

Becoming a data-driven organization isn’t easy, however. In fact, it’s very difficult. While all organizations have a glut of data, their abilities to collect it, cleanse it, integrate it, manage it, access it, secure it, govern it, and analyze it vary significantly from company to company. Even though each of these factors helps ensure that data can be used with higher levels of confidence, it’s difficult for a business to realize the value of its data if its corporate culture lags behind its technological capabilities.

Data-driven organizations have extended the use of data across everyday business functions, from the C-suite to the front lines. Rather than hoping that executives, managers, and employees will use business intelligence (BI) and other analytical tools, companies that are serious about the use of data are training employees, making the systems easier to use, making it mandatory to use the systems, and monitoring the use of the systems. Because their ability to compete effectively depends on their ability to leverage data, such data-driven organizations make a point of aligning their values, goals, and strategies with their ability to execute.

On the following pages we reveal the six traits common to data-driven organizations that make them stand out from their competitors.

Forward Thinkers

Data-driven enterprises consider where they are, where they want to go, and how they want to get there. To ensure progress, they establish KPIs to monitor the success of business operations, departments, projects, employees, and initiatives. Quite often, these organizations have also established one or more cross-functional committees of decision-makers who collectively ensure that business goals, company practices, and technology implementations are in sync.

“The companies that have integrated data into their business strategies see it as a means of growing their businesses. They use it to differentiate themselves by providing customers with better service, quicker turnaround, and other things that the competition can’t meet,” said Ken Gilbert, director of business analytics at the University of Tennessee’s Office of Research and Economic Development, in an interview with InformationWeek. “They’re focused on the long-term and big-picture objectives, rather than tactical objectives.”

Uncovering Opportunities

Enterprises have been embracing BI and big data analytics with the goal of making better decisions faster. While that goal remains important to data-driven enterprises, they also are trying to uncover risks and opportunities that may not have been discoverable previously, either because they didn’t know what questions to ask or because previously used technology lacked the capability.

According to Gartner research VP Frank Buytendijk, fewer than half of big data projects focus on direct decision-making. Other objectives include marketing and sales growth, operational and financial performance improvement, risk and compliance management, new product and service innovation, and direct or indirect data monetization.

Hypothesis Trumps Assumption

People have been querying databases for decades to get answers to known questions. The shortcoming of that approach is assuming that the question asked is the optimal question to ask.

Data-driven businesses aim to continuously improve the quality of the questions they ask. Some of them also try to discover, through machine learning or other means, what questions they should be asking that they have not yet asked.

The desire to explore data is also reflected in the high demand for interactive self-service capabilities that enable users to adjust their thinking and their approaches in an iterative fashion.

Pervasive Analytics

Data analytics has completely transformed the way marketing departments operate. More departments than ever are using BI and other forms of analytics to improve business process efficiencies, reduce costs, improve operational performance, and increase customer satisfaction. A person’s role in the company influences how the data is used.

Big data and analytics are now on the agendas of boards of directors, which means that executives not only have to accept and support the use of the technologies, they also have to use them — meaning they have to lead by example. Aberdeen’s 2014 Business Analytics survey indicated that data-driven organizations are 63% more likely than the average organization to have “strong” or “highly pervasive” adoption of advanced analytical capabilities among corporate management.

Failure Is Acceptable

Some companies encourage employees to experiment because they want to fuel innovation. With experimentation comes some level of failure, which progressive companies are willing to accept within a given range.

Encouraging exploration and accepting the risk of failure that accompanies it can be difficult cultural adjustments, since failure is generally considered the opposite of success. Many organizations have made significant investments in big data, analytics, and BI solutions. Yet, some hesitate to encourage data experimentation among those who are not data scientists or business analysts. This is often because, historically, the company’s culture has encouraged conformity rather than original thinking. Such a mindset not only discourages innovation, it fails to acknowledge that the failure to take risks may be more dangerous than risking failure.

Data Scientists And Machine Learning

Data-driven companies often hire data scientists and use machine learning so they can continuously improve their ability to compete. Microsoft, IBM, Accenture, Google, and Amazon ranked first through fifth, respectively, in a recent list of 7,500 companies hiring data scientists. Google, Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, and PayPal are a few examples of companies using machine learning with the goal of developing deeper, longer-lasting, and more profitable relationships with their customers than previously possible.

Tech Buying: 6 Reasons Why IT Still Matters

July 20, 2016 /

ErrorOriginally published in InformationWeek, and available as a slideshow here.

Making major tech purchases, especially big data analytics and business intelligence tools, without consulting IT may cause major problems. Here’s why.

Although shadow IT is not new, the percentage of business tech purchases made outside IT is significant and growing. When Bain & Company conducted in-depth interviews with 67 marketing, customer service, and supply chain professionals in February 2014, it found that nearly one-third of technology purchasing power had moved to executives outside of IT. Similarly, member-based advisory firm CEB has estimated that non-IT departments control 30% of enterprise IT spend. By 2020, Gartner estimates, 90% of tech spending will occur outside IT.

There are many justifications for leaving IT in the dark about departmental tech purchases. For one thing, departmental technology budgets seem to point to departmental decision making. Meanwhile, cloud-based solutions, including analytics services, have become more popular with business users because they are easy to set up. In addition, their relatively low subscription rates or pay-per-use models may be more attractive from a budgetary standpoint than their traditional on-premises counterparts, which require significant upfront investments and IT consideration. Since the cost and onboarding barriers to cloud service adoption are generally lower than for on-premises products, IT’s involvement may seem to be unnecessary.

Besides, IT is busy. Enterprise environments are increasingly complex, and IT budgets are not growing proportionally, so the IT department is resource-constrained. Rather than waiting for IT — or complicating decision-making by getting others involved — non-IT tech buyers anxious to deploy a solution may be tempted to act first and answer questions later.

However, making tech purchase without IT’s involvement may result in unforeseen problems. On the following pages, we reveal six risks associated with making business tech purchases without involving IT.

1. Tech Purchases Affect Everybody
Tech purchases made without IT’s involvement may affect IT and the IT ecosystem in ways that someone outside IT couldn’t anticipate. You might be introducing technical risk factors or tapping IT resources IT will have to troubleshoot after the fact. To minimize the potential of unforeseen risks, IT can perform an in-depth assessment of your department’s requirements, the technology options, their trade-offs, and the potential ripple effect that your tech purchase might have across the organization. This kind of risk/benefit analysis is important. Even if it seems like a barrier for your department to get what it wants, it’s better for the entire organization in the long run.
Also, you may need help connecting to data sources, integrating data sources, and ensuring the quality of data, all of which require specific expertise. IT can help you understand the scope of an implementation in greater detail than you might readily see.

2. Sensitive Information May Be Compromised
Information security policies need to be defined, monitored, and enforced. While it’s common for businesses to have security policies in place, education about those policies, and the enforcement of those policies, sometimes fall short. Without appropriate precautions, security leaks can happen innocently, or you could be opening the door to intentional bad actors.
Cloud-based services can expose organizations to risks that users haven’t considered, especially when the service’s terms of use are not understood. Asurvey of 4,140 business and IT managers, conducted in July 2012 by The Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Thales e-Security, revealed that 63% of respondents did not know what cloud providers are doing to protect their sensitive or confidential data.

3. Faulty Data = Erroneous Conclusions
There is no shortage of data to analyze. However, inadequate data quality and access to only a subset of information can negatively impact the accuracy of analytics and, ultimately, decision making.
In an interview with InformationWeek, Jim Sterne, founder of the eMetrics Summit and the Digital Analytics Association, warned that the relative reliability of sources needs to be considered since CRM system data, onsite user behavior data, and social media sentiment analysis data are not equally trustworthy.
“If I’m looking at a dashboard as a senior executive and I know where the data came from and how it was cleansed and blended, I’m looking at the numbers as if they have equal weight,” he said. “It’s like opening up a spice cabinet and assuming each spice is as spicy as any other. I will make bad decisions because I don’t know how the information was derived.”

4. Not Getting What You Bought
Similar products often sound alike, but their actual capabilities can vary greatly. IT can help identify important differences.
While it may be tempting to purchase a product based on its exhaustive feature set or its latest enhancements, feature-based buying often proves to be a mistake because it omits or minimizes strategic thinking. To reduce the risk of buyer’s remorse, consulting with IT can help you assess your current and future requirements and help you choose a solution that aligns with your needs.

5. Scope Creep
Business users typically want immediate benefits from big data, analytics packages, and BI systems. But, if the project has a lot of technological complexity — and particularly if it involves tech dependencies that are outside the control of your department — it’s often best to implement in phases. Approaching large initiatives as one big project may prove to be more complicated, time-consuming, and costly than anticipated.
IT can help you break a large, difficult-to-manage project into several smaller projects, each of which has its own timeline and goals. That way, you can set realistic end-user and C-suite expectations and effectively control risks. Phasing large projects can also provide you with the flexibility you need to adjust your implementation as business requires.

6. Missing Out On Prior Experience
IT professionals and outsourced IT resources often have prior experience with BI and analytics implementations that are specific or relevant to your department. Some of them have implemented solutions in other companies, departments, or industries and have gained valuable insight from those experiences. When armed with such knowledge, they can help you understand potential opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls you may not have considered which can affect planning, implementation, and the choice of solutions.

Does HARO Really Work?

July 19, 2016 /
HARO logo

HARO: Just a Medium

PR pros sometimes tell me that Help a Reporter Out (HARO) doesn’t work. I would argue the opposite, based on extensive experience with it and the ongoing relationships I’ve established through the medium.

There was some sort of batch-related technical glitch that kept me from receiving about 10 pitches yesterday, but that’s nothing – and certainly not an indication of its lack of usefulness – especially when you consider I’ve been using the medium every week for the last year.  You may or pay not know that ProfNet and HARO are merging, and every merger has technical glitches.

That’s not the reason people have been complaining over the last year.  The reason they’re complaining is twofold:  a lot of journalists are unresponsive and I imagine they’re not getting the results they want.  Ergo, HARO doesn’t work.  OTOH, who’s fault is that?

Don’t Confuse the Medium and the Message

HARO is a medium, nothing more.  It’s just a website or “marketplace” that connects journalists with potential sources and their PR reps.  Blaming HARO for the way journalists behave or the outcome of pitches is like blaming your toothbrush for failing to do a root canal.

On the other hand, I know how frustrating pitching can be.  Been there, done that.  I still do it.  I  understand how frustrating it is when people don’t respond to a pitch, or they’re just plain rude.  It happens to all of us.  However, that kind of stuff happens to some people more often than others – with or without HARO and here are a few reasons why:

You’re Playing the Numbers

If you send a pitch out to a sea of people, it’s likely someone will bite no matter how good or bad the pitch is.  I see people using this tactic as evidenced by pitches that do not directly relate to  a query I’ve posted.  A good example are the fashion pitches I’m getting out of Europe.  Guess what?  Fashion isn’t my beat, not even close.

I usually tell people it’s not my beat, hoping they’ll get the message and stop pitching me.  Although, the more fashion pitches I get, the more likely I am to ignore them.  They’re irrelevant and poorly targeted.  Of all the pitches I get, these are the ones I’ll most likely ignore.

You’re Advancing an Agenda

Well, of course you’re advancing an agenda.  That’s why companies hire agencies and independent PR pros.  OTOH, people often try to advance an agenda that isn’t in line with the specific direction of a story.  And in most cases, it makes no sense to try to shoe-horn a bolted-on topic into the story.

The most common form this takes in my experiences is product-related pitches that are responding to an issues-oriented query.  I get that a lot.  “XYZ company would be happy to tell you why business leaders today need [our client’s product capabilities, including these specific features and functions].”  OK, but I’m actually interested in the personality traits of a data scientist, for example.

Alternatively, I can get things that may seem logical to the person who is pitching, but are not relevant in fact.  An example of this would be, “I see you’re writing a piece on data science.  My client hosts grade school biology science camps.”  The word, “science” is common to both topics.  A pitch about grade school data science camps would have a better chance of succeeding.

I respond to these types of pitches and tell people why their pitches are irrelevant, but I’m apparently among the minority of journalists who do.

Having spent years managing clients and account groups at agencies, I know exactly why people are being trained to do these kinds of pitches – it’s just one tool in the toolbox. The theory is, if you pitch something related to a story, you may succeed.  “May” is the operative word.

You Want the Story Angle Changed

This is a very unlikely outcome, especially when there’s an editorial hierarchy and the writer or editor has already sold an idea to her editor.  A couple of people try this tactic on me every week and it doesn’t work.

The inherent flaws in this tactic are 1) it sends the message that the original story angle is flawed, weak, or or without merit; and 2) the client agenda is usually as transparent as freshly-polished glass.

People pitching themselves tend to do this more.  Don’t write about THAT topic!  Write about me!

It’s Time the Journalist Covered Your Client

After pitching a journalist on the same client time and again, one gets to the point where one feels it’s about time this journalist got with the program.  After all, the journalists’s beat is X and your client fits squarely within the realm of X.  In one of the areas I cover, an industry analyst recently told me there were 2,000 companies he could possibly include in a report but there was only room for 20 or so.  Yikes.

I like to hear from fresh voices assuming the pitch is on-target.

One tenacious young lady who pitches me often had a hit rate of 0 (with me at least).  She pitched me almost every week about the same client and same basic angle.  It wasn’t a fit…until it was.

There were a sea of other pitches that also would have worked but I chose hers over some others because she had the fortitude to stick with it until she succeeded.  I admire her tenacity.  On the other hand, had her pitch been off-base – yet again – I would have passed on it.

Whether it’s “time” to cover a company, topic, product, or whatever is a matter of opinion.  Your opinion won’t align with all the people all the time, but don’t give up.  The most important thing is to learn from your experiences.

Got HARO Horror Stories?

Share ’em.  I’d love to hear about ’em.

Why You Should Fire Your PR Agency. Now.

July 18, 2016 /

puzzle-432569_640PR agencies are inefficient in ways that are not apparent to their clients.  The inefficiencies can cost you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the only “insight” you’re going to have is a rising level of frustration.

One problem is the way PR agencies are organized.  The other has to do with philosophy and people.

PR Agencies May Be Structured Inefficiently

PR agencies have historically been hierarchical organizations.  That’s not true of all PR agencies since the general business trend has been to replace hierarchical organizational structures with flat or matrix structures, but a lot of PR agencies are still structured the same old way.

Typically, your “PR team” includes several people, if your budget allows it.  The most junior people handle the rote stuff and more senior people oversee what they do.  While that operational process is not always inefficient, consider in-house agency meetings.

In-house agency meetings sometimes involve the entire team dedicated to a client.  A one-hour meeting is the sum of all their billable rates, which, if you add them up may astound you.  For your sake, I hope such meetings are fruitful.

Hierarchical structures also fuel egos in a way that is not in the best interest of clients.  Quite often, as people move up the agency ladder, they rid themselves of tasks that tend to be assigned to more junior people.  Depending on what’s happening on the client side, that hands-off mentality may work against the client, especially when a sensitive issue arises such as a product recall, a security breach, or a public attack by a competitor.

They’re Clueless

The typical agency-client relationship looks something like this:  The client is the subject matter expert and the PR agency is the media expert.  It’s a very simple formula that sounds good and is flawed.

For one thing, the client contact may or may not be a subject matter expert.  If the client contact is a subject matter expert – great, especially if the PR reps are actively listening, taking notes, and asking smart questions.  If the client contact is not a subject matter expert, few PR pros will be able to tell because their domain knowledge is either weak or non-existent.  That’s one way misinformation gets propagated.  Everywhere.

Worse, a lot of PR pros don’t understand their clients in any real depth, which I think (and I have always thought) is a mistake.  There are a few reasons for that:

It’s not my job.  Most PR pros don’t take the time to understand their clients and their clients’ products or services because they don’t consider it part of their jobs, as unbelievable as that may seem.  After all, the client is the subject-matter expert.  The problem with that philosophy is that journalists often ask second-level questions that few PR pros are prepared to answer such as, “Why do I need a smartwatch if I have a FitBit?”  If they can’t answer basic questions, you’re likely losing coverage at your expense.

It’s not billable.  Coming up to speed takes time, and the question is, who’s going to pay for it?  Clients generally don’t want to pay to educate agency reps.  Agencies don’t want to invest in fishing expeditions ad infinitum, especially if the time spent isn’t billable.  There’s a balance.  Finding it can be tricky.

They’re green.  Most PR pros on the front line are very young.  They lack the life experience and work experience necessary to infer important insights and ask insightful questions.  It’s not their fault.  They’ll learn eventually,  most likely at your expense or another’s client’s expense.

They lack passion.  Some PR pros aren’t passionate about what their clients do, and when they’re not passionate, they’re not interested, and they’re not doing the best job they could possibly be doing.  In my role as a mentor, some PR people have told me they have a feeling they should be doing something else because they’re uncomfortable with their clients’ subject matter.  These people tend to disappear on their own terms – or on the agency’s terms – in relatively short order.

Good PR People Are Golden

Generally speaking, agencies and people who work for agencies vary greatly in their abilities.  Sadly, clients end up paying for a lot of inefficiencies that are not obvious (even to the people who work in agencies).

My advice is observe the people who are on your PR team and make your own assessment.  You should be able to tell from words and deeds who “gets it” and who doesn’t.  If you have a team full of people that doesn’t get it, it may be time to review your options.

On the other hand, it may be time to look in the mirror.  Quite often the reason agencies fail or people at agencies fail to grasp critical information is because their client contact doesn’t want to share it, for fear of spilling trade secrets, or for political reasons (information is power).  If you’ve had the same issues over and over again from agency after agency, perhaps the agency isn’t the problem afteer all.

Newer posts »

© 2024 Lisa Morgan's Official Site

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑