"Our research(1) revealed that contextual information such as CRM
verbatims, online content and even emails between organizations and
their customers are seldom analyzed or even shared with the same roles
that perform quantitative customer survey analysis," stated Leslie Ament,
research vice president for customer intelligence strategies at Hypatia
Research. "When turning customer voices into customer insights,
organizational challenges center on 1) finding the right 'customer
signal' within high velocity volumes of contextual information, 2)
analyzing and disseminating critical decision-support insights to key
personnel, and 3) creating an operationally-executable plan (i.e.
structured business processes) for leveraging VOC insights.
Attensity Accolades and Events:
Attensity
was recognized by customer intelligence analyst firm Hypatia Research
as a top ranked provider of Voice of the Customer solutions and honored
to place within Hypatia's Galaxy(TM) evaluations.
Whenever you look for
the purchase decision influencers in business
intelligence (BI) and business analytics, you end up looking at the
trade press. And there's some noteworthy news on that front this week:
media giant TechTarget
announced
that they've acquired the BeyeNETWORK
properties and network of experts. TechTarget plans to leverage
BeyeNETWORK experts to build out their footprint in BI via the new SearchBusinessAnalytics.com
destination site.
Regardless how this
M&A looks once the dust settles, it will have
a definite impact on the influence wielded by the BeyeNETWORK experts.
Many of these experts
are solo or small-group professionals with deep
subject matter expertise. The group includes analysts, consultants,
lecturers and authors. They tend to have closely held relationships with
their clients and industry contacts. They influence purchases,
implementation, and best practices around enterprise business
intelligence, data warehousing and analytics software. They engage with
the market, and formulate and promote their own opinions. They can also
play important roles in the influencer ecosystem as intermediaries --
bringing the viewpoints of more powerful influencers, such as vendors,
directly to their own contacts.
If you're in the BI
market, monitor BeyeNETWORK and TechTarget over
the next 3 to 6 months to see which experts get more play, which get
less, which get lost, and any new experts attracted by the larger
combined media site. Keep your focus on the individual influencers, not
the BeyeNETWORK brand itself.
For example, some of
the BeyeNETWORK experts I recommend putting on
your watch list: Merv Adrian, Lou Agosta, Leslie Ament, Steve Dine, Neil
Raden, Craig Shiff, James Taylor, and Colin White.
Google search the name Hypatia and you'll
quickly find information about the fifth-century scholar who many
claim to have been one of the first notable female mathematicians. Or
you may find information about the upcoming film, Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenabar and
starring Rachel Weisz.
(For the New York Times review click here.)
What you won't easily find is the research company Hypatia.
For those of you who haven't yet worked with Hypatia Research, LLC., it is a company
that delivers customer intelligence research, industry benchmarking,
best practices, technology vendor selection, ROI assessment, and
consulting services that reduce cycle-time and influence customer
management, product strategy and channel development goals, according to
the Web site.
Leslie Ament, Research Vice President of Hypatia, is excited about the film
release, and optimistic about what it might mean for her company's Web
traffic. "We chose the name Hypatia in 2001 because we calculate results as industry
analysts," Ament says.
An Executive's Guide to Customer Data
Analytics, Part 1
Attaining true
"customer intelligence" is both art and science --requiring attention to
technology, including customer data analytics, processes and
organizational mindset.
Prior to the recent
global melt-down of 2008-2009, many executives
believed that marketing,
branding, customer interactions and social media investments were mostly
about creating buzz around
an organization's product or service offering -- an intangible
investment that didn't require
justification. The new post-recession paradigm calls for senior
executives and marketers alike to
create alignment between key performance indicators (KPIs), marketing
performance metrics,
corporate goals and shareholder earnings in order to prove value and
remain relevant to multiple
stakeholders. Hypatia Research LLC studies confirm that more than 50% of
marketing departments,
sales and business development professionals, and customer service and
support teams continue to be
tasked and measured in a non-integrated, often ad hoc, fashion. In
short, companies actually
committed to measuring marketing performance continue to rely on a
patchwork of linear and
non-integrated metrics. more...
Don't miss the other installments in Hypatia's
customer data analytics
guide
Over the next few years, all hospitals will be required to have a basic EHR application that meets federal certification requirements. However, hospitals should resist the rush to purchase and implement EHR in order to meet federal deadlines and take the time needed to carefully evaluate, test and implement the best application for the needs of the medical staff.
Even missing out on one year of the promised Medicare and Medicaid bonus payments to early adopters is a better option than hastily implementing an EHR system that is not a good fit for the staffs' needs. That said, there's also no point in putting off the inevitable. Now is the time to be taking an inventory of requirements and evaluating products.
Hospital CIOs are faced with two basic goals in selecting an EHR application. First, the EHR must meet the federal government's criteria, which currently is fluid as defined by the ONC with an eye towards finalization this Spring. Second, it must meet the criteria established by the hospital's IT, administrative, and medical staffs.
The government's
expectations of an EHR are summed up in the catch phrase "meaningful
use," which is what medical providers will have to show in order to
qualify for bonus payments and avoid penalties.
Meaningful Use of EHR The concept of "meaningful use"of EHR will ultimately be defined in terms of specific capabilities. Generally though, HIMSS has defined the meaningful use of EHR by hospitals as having four main components:
A functional EHR product certified by the CCHIT®.
Electronic exchange of data between clinical and administrative providers, using standards that include the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel's interoperability specification.
Clinical decision support tools and information.
The ability to support metrics for the improvement of patient safety, quality of care, and cost reductions.
With customer intimacy a priority, the use of information
analysis has moved beyond a competitive advantage to become something
simply necessary to stay in the game. Hypatia Research's Leslie Ament
highlights the obstacles to effective use of customer insight.
Earlier this year, Hypatia Research released a quantitative research study
concluding that the use of marketing science and information analysis
services had moved beyond a competitive advantage for companies -- and
had become something simply necessary to stay in the game. The bar had
been raised once more. And, according to Leslie Ament, co-founder and
research vice president of Hypatia Research LLC, it is unlikely to remain in its present position for long.
"In this highly commoditised global marketplace, in which companies
are unable to compete on price alone, B2C companies will continue to
defend market share by building greater customer intimacy through
investment in customer intelligence initiatives," she suggests.
"How do they use this information to reach their customers such that
they create greater intimacy and influence them to purchase those
goods?" asks Ament. "Companies are generally moving along the maturity
grid, from mass customisation to true customer intimacy but they have
yet to reach that visionary level in which they are effectively using
this insight. And there are a number of reasons for that."
Healthcare Electronic Records Technology and Government Funding: Improving Patient Care?
Consistent Processes, Performance Metrics and Quantifiable Patient Benefits are Long-Term Goals
Many in healthcare and government want to see the wide gap in IT
capabilities closed and more providers moved to adopt electronic health
records (EHR) systems in order to improve the healthcare industr's
ability to transmit, share and access critical patient data when and
where it is needed.
One to Watch - Sales Force Automation A renewed
focus on SFA-and a big nod toward Salesforce.com users with both an
integration offering (SuiteCloud Connect) and a 50 percent-off price
promotion for converts (RenewForce)-makes NetSuite one
to watch for 2009. Leslie Ament, research vice president, Hypatia Research, says, "This is a highly efficient and economic
offering for customer-driven SMB and midmarket companies as front to
back office data integration is built in." In tough financial times,
customers are acutely aware of cost and transparency, making NetSuite's
competitive pricing for its on-demand offerings and its position as a
public company increasingly attractive for new adopters.
Healing the Sick
Facing
regulatory requirements, spiraling costs, and an aging (and ailing)
customer base, the healthcare industry looks to CRM to balance a pair
of age-old doctrines: First, do no harm--and physician, heal thyself.
Consider this scenario: Your lifelong family physician has your
medical records on file--and has even made them digital. After you
fracture your foot in a skiing calamity, she recommends you go see an
orthopedic specialist within the same medical facility. At your
appointment, you're required to fill out a lengthy health history form.
You think to yourself, "My primary doctor's in this same
building--shouldn't this be on file?" No such luck.
After the
appointment, the orthopedic doctor hands you a CD-ROM with X-ray
images. You bring that to your physician at your next visit to add to
your medical file. Surprise--her system rejects the images. In fact,
more often than you'd probably imagine, medical offices that share an
elevator can't be bothered to share technology solutions.
"Even
if all of your doctors belong to one hospital, each
department--radiology, orthopedics, oncology--has its own information
system structure and [the systems] are not integrated," says Leslie
Ament, managing partner with Hypatia Research and Consulting.
That big bag of federal cash, however--essentially government
incentives to get healthcare organizations to embrace EMRs--may help
explain the slew of software vendors promising a surefire remedy for
the industry's data problems.
In medical terms, the healthcare
industry is riddled with metastatic silos--and it's about to get the
green light for some experimental (and expensive) treatment.
"Without
incentives, [healthcare providers] will keep doing what they're doing,"
Ament says. "If someone gave me a free one-week cruise, I'd take it
because it's free. Why not? It's the same principle here."
Leslie Ament reminds us that use of
marketing science and information analysis services has moved beyond a
competitive advantage for companies that seek to grow aggressively. It
has become necessary
to stay in the game.
BI as a SaaS is nothing new, really. However, the interest in cloud
computing, including SaaS, has made BI-enabled SaaS accelerate. That
was the point of this recent article by Leslie Ament and Howard Baldwin.
"Acquiring business intelligence (BI) capabilities through a
software-as-a-service (SaaS) model versus enterprise business
intelligence represents the inflection point of two separate trends in
business. One trend signals the increasing importance of gaining
insight into all manner of business events. These events encompass not
just transactions, but patterns in activity as widespread as customer
responsiveness, network management, supply chain performance, and fraud
detection."
The idea is simple; it's cheaper and much simpler to leverage an
on-demand version of BI technology than using one that's on-premise,
that's pretty clear. However, the larger issue is the durability of
that model in the context of BI which has a tendency to be more bound
into the enterprise.
However, the article goes on to highlight some other advantages:
"With a SaaS application, companies can generally:
Deploy applications faster (weeks rather than months)
Reduce the cost of deployment (by a factor of four)
Avoid the cost of hardware and associated maintenance and monitoring
Eliminate the need for on-site expertise in the application itself"
Acquiring business intelligence (BI) capabilities through a
software-as-a-service (SaaS) model versus enterprise business
intelligence represents the inflection point of two separate trends in
business. One trend signals the increasing importance of gaining
insight into all manner of business events. These events encompass not
just transactions, but patterns in activity as widespread as customer
responsiveness, network management, supply chain performance, and fraud
detection. The focus on business intelligence comes from business
grasping the importance of the axiom: "If you can't measure it, you
can't manage it."
The second trend relates to an increasing interest in the concept
of SaaS. The idea of leasing rather than buying a software application,
and accessing it over the Internet, offers companies many benefits
relating to the conservation of resources. With a SaaS application,
companies can generally:
Deploy applications faster (weeks rather than months)
Reduce the cost of deployment (by a factor of four)
Avoid the cost of hardware and associated maintenance and monitoring
Eliminate the need for on-site expertise in the application itself
There's an old joke about economists: If you laid each one end to end,
they would never reach a conclusion. So, just as there is no consensus
about when this economic downturn began, there's also none about when
it will end.
This begs the question: What do you do in the
meantime? Once the frenzy has somewhat abated, plan to embark on
projects that position your company to come out of the downturn
swinging.
Leslie Ament, Research Director and Managing Partner
of Hypatia Research LLC (and newly designated channel expert for
Customer Analytics and Insight on the B-Eye Network), suggests three
activities to put on your agenda for the year.
Consolidate Your Channels.
A downturn is a perfect time to focus on standardizing your data model. "I worked with one company that sold the same products through multiple
channels -- online, catalog, in-store and even B2B," Ament says. "But
each channel had its own database." This siloed structure gave company
executives no insight into the multi-channel impact of their
advertising or into customer segmentation.
A retailer might have a small business customer who
buys office supplies online but goes into the store for electronic
devices to see first-hand how they work. "If the company consolidates
all of its business units on datamarts or a data warehouse using a
consistent data model, they'll capture all the same data about
customers in the same structure and make it easier to analyze the
information for both downstream and upstream decision-making," Ament
says.
Look for Gaps in Customer Data.
Take the time to improve your insight into customer demographics, both
on a micro and macro level. Ament recommends using services from Dun
& Bradstreet, Acxiom, Experian or others to fill the gaps about
your customers.
On a micro level, look at specific demographic
information about your customers to mesh with what you already have. On
a macro level, use aggregated information from these services to create
attitudinal and psychographic data about potential customers with
similar demographics.
"Use the segmentation profile to predict the success
rate of a particular advertising campaign," Ament says. Knowing this
data has ramifications all the way up and down the supply chain,
because you can better predict inventory requirements to reduce
stock-outs or overstocks, sales and profitability.
Take Time to Collaborate.Ament urges executives -- no matter whether they are in finance, IT or
operations -- to work together to develop a better sense of each group's
business requirements so subsequent BI analysis will make more sense.
She tells the story of a hospital's finance
department that found out through BI analysis that some physicians were
ordering $200 hip-replacement devices, while others were ordering ones
that cost $700. Putting the cheaper devices in less active patients in
their 80s made sense because their life expectancy was shorter than the
device's. With younger or extremely active patients, the
longer-lasting, more-expensive devices were more effective and would
improve range of motion and quality of life.
"Understanding how and why data is segmented a
certain way helps you make the best decision for the patient, rather
than having the finance department make decisions based solely on
cost," Ament says.
The result of all this interim work should be a
leaner, more efficient way to conduct business intelligence analysis
just when you need it most -- when business is improving and transaction
data is flowing smoothly once again.
The healthcare firms that rely on BI and information management services to
streamline costs, improve patient care and to enhance clinical research include
Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Aetna, MetLife Insurance, Centers for Disease Control,
Health Net, Inc., New York University Hospitals, St. Luke`s Medical Clinic,
John Hopkins Health System, AstraZeneca Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services,
and St. Jude Children`s Research.
While the use of BI in the healthcare industry has proven to be an effective
tool for developing strategies for sustainable growth, not all facilities or
organizations are in a position to be able to launch BI strategies.
According
to Leslie Ament, partner at Hypatia Research, LLC, a tight budget is one major
obstacle to BI adoption. "Upfront costs, which range from $2-$3 million,
coupled with ongoing investments in creating business rules, data models or
role-based reporting templates while migrating and consolidating information
into one centralized repository can be daunting," she shared in a statement.
Researchers for Hypatia found that the main barriers to BI adoption are a lack
of resources during a recession; interoperability between diverse departmental
systems-Radiology, Admissions, Financial, Scheduling, Pharmacy, Supply Chain,
Laboratory, Patient Records, etc.; and uncertainties about the future market
and economies with evolving regulations and policies.
"BI
projects of limited scope that demonstrate tangible monetary benefits will be
funded and regarded as an essential investment." said co-author and senior
analyst, Sue Hildreth.
Information
is the currency that companies have used for competitive advantage in
business since the earliest beginnings of barter negotiations and
commercial commerce. Success in barter commerce often depended on
knowledge of sources of food, labor or materials that could be
exchanged. In today’s highly competitive global economy, knowledge of
consumer and business behavior, socio-economic, lifestyle and/or
demographic information, can be transformed through information
analysis (known as decision science, marketing science or customer
analysis) into actionable insight. It is this insight that provides key
decision-making support to companies that seek to enhance profitability
and/or gain a competitive business advantage.
To read the Decision Science and Customer Analysis report entitled,"Competitve Advantage or Necessary to Compete?," please click here.
By
Jeff Kelly, News Editor Jan 2009 | SearchDataManagement.com
Highly
accurate, up-to-date data-especially customer data - is one of the keys to
maintaining strong customer relationships and ultimately growing revenue.Even among organizations that do use data
quality tools - either commercial or homegrown - less than a third have
deployed the tools enterprise-wide, according to Gartner. The consequences are
not trivial. Poor or siloed data can result in missed cross-sell and up-sell opportunities
and can even alienate customers who have come to expect personalized
interactions.
"Especially
in the under-40 demographic, customers do expect a high level of
customization/personalization from companies -- and this puts pressure on
companies to deliver or risk losing their existing customers," Leslie
Ament, managing partner at Lexington, Mass.-based Hypatia Research, said in an
email interview.
So why do
so few organizations use data quality tools for customer data enterprise-wide?
The reason, according to some, is that most companies collect and store
customer data in numerous data sources spread throughout the organization with
no way to connect them. Put
another way, lacking a single view of the customer through a master
data management (MDM) system or customer
data integration (CDI) initiative, organizations lack any realistic way of
applying data quality tools enterprise-wide. Their only alternative is to
tackle customer data quality one department or database at a time.
"Many
larger retailers have upwards of 10 different databases with different schema
for collecting customer data," Ament said. "Standardizing and
normalizing this information is akin to having root canal surgery at the
dentist."
As Hypatia's Ament points out: "Using data
to understand and respond to customers can make a huge difference in a crowded
marketplace."
TMCnet.com
Hypatia's Analytics Report, SMS for Voter Registration, Webcom and Tripwire, Vitrium's Documentrics Challenge
By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz
Hypatia
Research, LLC has released a report titled "Decision Science and
Customer Analytics: Competitive Advantage or Necessary to Compete"
which outlines "strategies, techniques, vendor products and services"
used by companies, according to Hypatia officials.
Wal-Mart,
American Express, Cocoa-Cola, Staples, Best Buy, Harrah's
Entertainment, Proctor & Gamble, Toyota, Hilton International. AOL,
IBM, and Oracle
are among numerous blue-chip companies using business and consumer data
today, report officials say. In fact it'd be hard to find a
significantly successful company who doesn't use analytics, First
Coffee thinks.
The
report finds that information is "a currency used for competitive
advantage since the earliest beginnings of barter negotiations and
commercial commerce." In today's global economy, knowledge of consumer
and business behavior, lifestyle and demographic information can be
transformed through information analysis, the report finds, in a form
known as "Decision Science, Marketing Science or Customer Analytics."
It
is this insight that is used in decision-making to help companies that
seek to enhance profitability or gain a competitive business advantage.
"In
order to create an effective decision analytics eco-system, companies
need to establish an operational foundation for customer data analysis
and decision-support," says Leslie Ament, Managing Partner at Hypatia.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the
fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.
Experian QAS Offers New Web-Based Point-of-Entry Email and Phone Validation Services
QAS Email and QAS Phone are designed to reduce time wasted on manually identifying and fixing incorrect email and phone information while assisting organizations to develop a more accurate view of its customer base.
"Organizations that invest upwards of 20 percent of operating expenses on online media advertising or partnerships for lead generation, visibility or for customer loyalty programs risk squandering email marketing budgets on bounce reports that provide customer intelligence after the fact," stated Leslie Ament, managing partner at Hypatia Research, LLC.
"Our research found that use of good quality data, checked at the point of entry, results in higher open rates for email [ > 30 percent] and reduces soft and hard email bounce rates as well as the potential for being blocked as Spam by certain domains. Fewer bogus email addresses also has a positive impact on an organization's conversion rates and future investment decisions in media advertising."
In the News:
"Decision Science & Customer Analysis: Competitive Advantage or Necessary to Compete?" by Leslie Ament, published on MyCustomer.com.
Wal-mart, American Express, Coca-Cola, Staples, Best Buy, Harrah's
Entertainment, Proctor & Gamble, Toyota, Hilton International. AOL,
IBM, Oracle are among numerous blue-chip companies that believe
leveraging business and consumer data is necessary to compete in
today's economy. What used to provide a 'secret sauce' or competitive
advantage to companies savvy enough to exploit the value of customer
data within their own proprietary databases, has now become a rather
lucrative service business for vendors able to provide key components
including customer analysis; list and data enhancement; customer data
integration; and database marketing services. Hypatia Research, LLC explores this area.
What do insurance, consumer goods, retail and manufacturing companies have in common? Each relies on a complex value chain of partners engaged in collaborative business processes in order to develop relationships and deliver goods or services to customers.
"Get Marketing ROI Now! How to Set Goals, Develop Plans, Measure & Quantify Results" published in CRM Magazine, by Leslie Ament
Many people believe that marketing, branding & communications are all about creating “buzz” or increasing visibility & awareness of an organization’s product or service offerings -- an intangible “investment” that cannot be measured or justified.
In these days of shrinking profits and corporate belt-tightening, if a person or a team’s contributions cannot be measured or justified in relation to profits, it is considered a non-essential expense.In other words, marketing professionals are prime targets for cost-cutting measures at organizations of various sizes across many industries.
Therefore, the $100K question becomes, “How should marketing professionals justify their value in contributing to an organization’s financial success?”
"Output and Demand Need Careful Cohesion" published byThe Financial Times of London.
"Hunter-Douglas Slashes Inventory with Collaborative Forecasting" by Leslie Ament. Published by Consumer Goods Technology. "Demand Attention" as published in Supply Management Magazine, by Leslie Ament of Hypatia, Calculating ResultsTM
Integrating demand more effectively with procurement would revitalize companies' Supply Chains and help to cut costs says Leslie Ament of Hypatia Market Research & Communications.
"The Demand-Driven Company: the next business model?" by Leslie Ament. Published in Logistics Europe.
Product-intensive companies have long been searching for sustainable business advantage. For many years, ERP and/or Supply Chain systems promised to deliver the desired results: improved internal operations and incremental speed to market. However, in today's extended, collaborative, e-business environment, the models have changed so drastically that companies need to anticipate and respond to dynamic market changes with greater speed and flexibility.
"Winning Ingredients for Establishing Your Customer Intelligence Ecosystem"
Leslie Ament, Managing Partner with Hypatia Research & Consulting, LLC will be moderating a panel discussion with industry leading experts designed to help CRM & Business Intelligence practitioners deploy Customer Intelligence Management programs. Participating companies include: Teradata, Salesforce.com, QAS/Experian and Dun & Bradstreet. http://www.crmaconference.org/agenda/day2.html
Hypatia Research, LLC, http://www.HypatiaResearch.com delivers high impact market intelligence, industry benchmarking, best practice, and vendor selection research for how businesses use technology and service providers to capture, manage, analyze and apply customer intelligence to enhance performance and to accelerate growth. Coverage areas include: CRM, Business Intelligence, Customer Analytics, Marketing Automation, Database Marketing, and Customer Data Integration and Quality. Since its inception by co-founder Leslie Ament in 2001, clients have relied on Hypatia for industry insight, expertise and independent research for guidance in assessing various technology and service options. Like our namesake, Hypatia, we are committed to Calculating ResultsTM for our clients.
Hypatia of Alexandria (circa. 370-415 AD), invented several scientific devices--the astrolabe, planesphere, and hydroscope (hydrometer). These instruments were used to calculate the distance between planets, the position of visible stars at any time of the year, and the gravity of liquids respectively. Hypatia was the first woman to make substantial contributions to the development of mathematics, astronomy & philosophy.
