Value Creator (BrianVellmure.com) - Latest Comments

Re: Leveraging the Internet of Everything to Create a Better Customer Experience

Alberto Manuel — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 10:29:17 -0000

It is curious that today many of you are talking about digital transformation, big data, deep data, data mining, process mining, without having deep knowledge of how such the concepts are implemented in reality.

When you refer the amazon example it is curious that I noticed that despite they record and trace every point of contact a consumer have with their company, only when I install their applications in a multitude of platforms like windows, android and is, they start offering nee kind of buying possibilities using those platforms, meaning that there us still a long road ahead for companies like amazon to learn how to explore data.

Regards
Alberto Manuel

Re: Leveraging the Internet of Everything to Create a Better Customer Experience

Akla Pothik — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 01:43:20 -0000

Nice and informative article, hope of getting more in future.
http://myitzn.blogspot.com

Re: What every business can learn from financial markets

Brian Vellmure — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 14:16:23 -0000

Thomas,

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. I'm not sure of the merit or accuracy of simplifying financial markets to luck and criminal activity.

The main thing is attempting to understand the role and trajectory that algorithms and automation are playing and wrestling to grasp and imagine the opportunities and challenges that those dynamics will bring to each industry.

Best regards,
Brian

Re: What every business can learn from financial markets

Brian Vellmure — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 14:04:48 -0000

Neal,

Thanks for reading and taking the time to share.

Good idea. I think that customers (and people) are Predictably Irrational. :)

But, are the markets truly irrational? Or, at least are they becoming less so? We know that people are irrational, but what about algorithms? Can irrationality be programmed away? Or does it introduce more irrationality into the market?

Re: What every business can learn from financial markets

Thomas Wieberneit — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 03:38:22 -0000

Hi Brian,

interesting indeed, although I do not really see the capital markets as a good example. Yes, they are predatory and no, they are not predictable. The successful trader this year is almost certainly the loser next year. This is probably not because the trader lost it in between or got surpassed in knowledge and ability.

Apart from the tech wave I reckon that there is a very good deal of plain ole luck and, sorry, conning in that business, the latter as currently being evidenced by an increasing number of players - institutional as individual - not only facing court but also sentences.

But to some extent I agree: A key ingredient to being successful today is having (the right) information and connecting the dots ... fast (aka making it actionable and act on it).

Thanks for the post!

Cheers
Thomas

Re: What every business can learn from financial markets

Neal Taparia — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 10:50:07 -0000

Hey Brian,

Very interesting article and I agree there is a lot to be learned from the financial markets. In addition to the automation trend, I think there is something to be learned from the irrationality of the financial markets. Specifically, I think there’s value in trying to predict when customers will act irrationally.

What are your thoughts on predicting the irrationality of customers?

Cheers,
Neal

Re: Lithium bets big and acquires Klout: Published deal size in question

Jim Berkowitz — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 13:19:36 -0000

Personally, I'm just not sold Klout's Influence Calculation Process -- If I don't post to Twitter for a couple of days my score goes down. If I consistently post a bunch of things, my score goes up. I don't know about you... but I find it hard to believe that my influence in the digital world is really so affected by my Twitter posting frequency... Maybe Twitter should have bought Klout. Their justification could have been that Klout would "encourage" people to keep up with their tweeting.

Re: Lithium bets big and acquires Klout: Published deal size in question

Brian Vellmure — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 11:03:52 -0000

Koka,

Agree. Everything hinges on how this is executed, and there is plenty of risk associated with this move.

What's your take?

Re: Lithium bets big and acquires Klout: Published deal size in question

Koka Sexton — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 13:18:47 -0000

Its going to be very interesting to see how Lithium implements this into their platform.

Re: The Anatomy of Growth: Five pillars to fuel dynamic growth in your organization

Brian Vellmure — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 19:22:05 -0000

Thomas,

Thanks for reading and commenting. Think "legs on a stool". Also, each person added effects the culture a tiny bit. There is no culture without people.

Re: The Anatomy of Growth: Five pillars to fuel dynamic growth in your organization

Thomas Wieberneit — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 03:05:21 -0000

Hi Brian, why did you make people the first pillar? People are important, no doubt, but if you do not have the culture then they will leave you again soon enough.

Cheers
Thomas

Re: How the Digitization of Everything is forcing CMOs and CIOs to evolve

Laura Martin — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 22:05:11 -0000

Great summary Brian. We are certainly at a fork in the road to success with this disparity. I agree with your observation of conflicting priorities. Would love your feedback on this perception to bridge tech and biz: http://wrd.cm/1juXM4s. Appreciate it!

Re: Critical Lessons: NFL focuses on a better customer experience – Next Gen marketing on display

arpy — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 15:35:36 -0000

The elephant in the room here is sports betting. As much as they hate to admit it, the NFL and betting are tied together and they should lobby to make in-stadium, low-limit, betting legal. A team-specific app that you can log into with a code from your ticket and do $5-$10 max wagers throughout the game and participate in 50/50, trivia, etc. Also use your mobile as a second screen to see specific camera views.

Re: The Digitization of Everything and It’s Impact on Customer Experience

Stephanie Hastings, Loyal Joe — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 22:38:59 -0000

LOVE this series of posts. Everything than can go digital, will go digital. I've been working with businesses to create digital referral programs - sort of like the one you hint at in your story. It has been very timely and a lot of fun! Feel free to check out my work at Loyal Joe dot com.

Re: The Digitization of Everything and It’s Impact on Customer Experience

Brian Vellmure — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 13:05:40 -0000

Andy,

Thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment. I love the scenario that you presented as it displays yet another scenario where surplus all around us is being better allocated and the experience for the individual is better. Energy is such an interesting place because there is such significant potential, but regulation and state owned bureaucracy stands in the way quite often. However, Toronto's esteemed mayor evidently has proven an ability to cut through political tradition, so perhaps he can help speed things along. :)

Best wishes on your journey, and please keep sharing your thoughts. If I can ever be of assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Kind regards,
Brian

Re: The Digitization of Everything and It’s Impact on Customer Experience

Andy Heppelle — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 12:26:09 -0000

Thank you Brian for sharing the great information. Narrative - very interesting idea. I work with Utility companies, the world over, who are all trying to plan, build and deliver to very best possible customer experience for the people that use the energy and water that they provide. One great source of inspiration for what the future world could look like comes from British Gas. http://www.britishgas.co.uk... . Imagine Jane driving home with her new sweater and upon arriving finding that her home is at just the temperature she likes as she alerted the house that she was coming home, with her phone, and it warmed up based on the drive time calculated by traffic patterns and her location when she decided to go home. As she pulls inter her garage, she parks her car on the recharging mat and her phone tells her that she is at a 60% battery charge in her electric car and that she is scheduled for a recharge at the best possible energy rate at 3am. She can accept it or start the charge but her phone shows her the calculated total difference so that she can decide. She also sees that her home battery is at full charge as it was a cloudless day and her solar panels have topped up her home energy store as well as selling enough energy into the grid to offset some of the price of her new sweater.
I love that so many companies, entrepreneurs and individuals are working to build things that will help us all have a better experience and to make a better impact on our planet as we work, shop, travel, live and manage our daily lives.
Thanks again for sharing the ideas Brian.
Andy Heppelle, Toronto, Ontario

Re: Dreamforce 2013: What Salesforce1 actually means

J. Bruce Daley — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 15:04:23 -0000

Really could not agree with you more Brian. In my estimation the value in quick deployments is huge. Also based on how similar products to Salesforce1 are being used, (and here I am thinking about aMinds Solutions Web and Mobile Frameworks) there also the opportunity to use Salesforce1 to integrate information silos below it. Again thank you for such a great post!

Re: Dreamforce 2013: What Salesforce1 actually means

Brian Vellmure — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 14:08:26 -0000

Bruce, thank you for taking the time to read and comment. At least you didn't say it was a new mobile app. :)

Salesforce1 is a re-architected Chatter which can theoretically leverage an unlimited set of apis and can render user experiences across a number of devices. Call it what you want, though "arch" may have a tough time getting market adoption.

The main point is that it should help enable quick deployments of "value-in-use" (regardless of the mashup of underlying apps, functions, or data) in quickly evolving use-case scenarios to users across an ever changing landscape of devices.

Re: Dreamforce 2013: What Salesforce1 actually means

J. Bruce Daley — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 09:24:45 -0000

Nice post Brian. You capture the spirit of Dreamforce and impact Satesforce.com has on the industry. Good work! Disagree with you on one minor point. I don't think "platform" is a good way to characterize Salesforce1. A better analogy might be to call Salesforce1 an arch rather than a platform. New applications are not built on Salesforce1, they are built on the device software stacks above it. Since arches typically are used to support the weight of a wall, platform, or bridge above it the analogy rings more true to me, but you may disagree. In fact, I think of Salesforce1 as belonging to a whole new category of software.

Re: Social CRM is dead.

Warren Whitlock — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 17:06:16 -0000

one constant with buzz words and fad phrases.. when one dies, two more will take it's place.

Re: Optimizing the Full Spectrum of Customer Interactions

Erez David — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 06:48:29 -0000

Dynamics CRM can be very slow sometimes but optimizing it can make wonder.
Http://dynamics.co.il

Re: Enterprise Software Chronicles: A synthesis of the rapidly evolving customer technology landscape

Leslie Porter — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 20:57:24 -0000

Technology has really paved the way to reaching great efficiency when it comes to dealing with businesses. Everyone is given the opportunity to rule and compete in this paperless arena. This is indeed a great advantage for managers in bringing their businesses in a competitive manner. Thanks for sharing this article.

-http://www.adkad.com/

Re: The era of asking great questions

Questions1st — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 23:16:15 -0000

I agree that questions are important, but questioning is even more important. In other words, we should question all concepts, ideas, beliefs, realities that we already know and take for granted.

You talked about world hunger and asked why this is still happening today. If we question this further, we may find that we actually have the resourced to eradicate hunger or poverty, but we don't have the political and economical will to do it. It's not nanotechnology that will help much, but a new approach to fighting hunger. In order to find a new approach, we need to question the old one, understand what's wrong with it and do something about it.

Re: Mindspark: The sharing economy in just over a tweet

CustomerKing — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 06:26:30 -0000

To Jeremy Owyang is just a reality. Have you read all articles and reports produced by him and Altimeter about this topic? Sounds interesting.

Re: Seizing Opportunity in a Hyper-Dynamic Environment

Ray Collis — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:03:21 -0000

Brian, it reminds me of Tom Peter's advice from years back that CEOs need to become Chief Destruction Officers - to leverage innovation to jump the curve