Just after presentation and test.
The Class MBA BM770 Group A
Miss Purple presenting. She will have to NOT wear purple for a week next semester for failure to keep up with the deal made!
Bulls**t? :-)
I like!
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Benefits of Intranet
- Workforce productivity: Intranets can help users to locate and view information faster and use applications relevant to their roles and responsibilities. With the help of a web browser interface, users can access data held in any database the organization wants to make available, anytime and - subject to security provisions - from anywhere within the company workstations, increasing employees' ability to perform their jobs faster, more accurately, and with confidence that they have the right information. It also helps to improve the services provided to the users.
- Time: Intranets allow organizations to distribute information to employees on an as-needed basis; Employees may link to relevant information at their convenience, rather than being distracted indiscriminately by electronic mail.
- Communication: Intranets can serve as powerful tools for communication within an organization, vertically and horizontally. From a communications standpoint, intranets are useful to communicate strategic initiatives that have a global reach throughout the organization. The type of information that can easily be conveyed is the purpose of the initiative and what the initiative is aiming to achieve, who is driving the initiative, results achieved to date, and who to speak to for more information. By providing this information on the intranet, staff have the opportunity to keep up-to-date with the strategic focus of the organization. Some examples of communication would be chat, email, and or blogs. A great real world example of where an intranet helped a company communicate is when Nestle had a number of food processing plants in Scandinavia. Their central support system had to deal with a number of queries every day. When Nestle decided to invest in an intranet, they quickly realized the savings. McGovern says the savings from the reduction in query calls was substantially greater than the investment in the intranet.
- Web publishing allows cumbersome corporate knowledge to be maintained and easily accessed throughout the company using hypermedia and Web technologies. Examples include: employee manuals, benefits documents, company policies, business standards, newsfeeds, and even training, can be accessed using common Internet standards (Acrobat files, Flash files, CGI applications). Because each business unit can update the online copy of a document, the most recent version is usually available to employees using the intranet.
- Business operations and management: Intranets are also being used as a platform for developing and deploying applications to support business operations and decisions across the internetworked enterprise.
- Cost-effective: Users can view information and data via web-browser rather than maintaining physical documents such as procedure manuals, internal phone list and requisition forms. This can potentially save the business money on printing, duplicating documents, and the environment as well as document maintenance overhead. For example, Peoplesoft "derived significant cost savings by shifting HR processes to the intranet". McGovern goes on to say the manual cost of enrolling in benefits was found to be USD109.48 per enrollment. "Shifting this process to the intranet reduced the cost per enrollment to $21.79; a saving of 80 percent". Another company that saved money on expense reports was Cisco. "In 1996, Cisco processed 54,000 reports and the amount of dollars processed was USD19 million".
- Enhance collaboration: Information is easily accessible by all authorised users, which enables teamwork.
- Cross-platform capability: Standards-compliant web browsers are available for Windows, Mac, and UNIX.
- Built for one audience: Many companies dictate computer specifications which, in turn, may allow Intranet developers to write applications that only have to work on one browser (no cross-browser compatibility issues). Being able to specifically address your "viewer" is a great advantage. Since Intranets are user-specific (requiring database/network authentication prior to access), you know exactly who you are interfacing with and can personalize your Intranet based on role (job title, department) or individual ("Congratulations Jane, on your 3rd year with our company!").
- Promote common corporate culture: Every user has the ability to view the same information within the Intranet.
- Immediate updates: When dealing with the public in any capacity, laws, specifications, and parameters can change. Intranets make it possible to provide your audience with "live" changes so they are kept up-to-date, which can limit a company's liability.
- Supports a distributed computing architecture: The intranet can also be linked to a company’s management information system, for example a time keeping system.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
E-commerce platform using Demandware
Things you need to think about when you want to go into E-commerce, made easy with Demandware.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Webcredible ecommerce prediction - trends for 2011
October 2010:
2010 has been an interesting year for ecommerce and multi-channel. The arrival of tablet devices and emergence of location based social networking have given marketers new playthings. However, the economic uncertainty of the past few years has also served to increase the focus at Board level on the profitability of the ecommerce channel. Consequently the pressure is increasing on web managers to display commercial acumen alongside a thorough knowledge of digital marketing. What will the future hold for 2011? This article discusses 4 trends that Webcredible expects to dominate.
Web analytics no longer an after thought
Web analytics is still under-valued by many etailers both large and small. Online budget is ploughed into digital marketing and optimisation is bottom of the pile, unloved and under-used. 2011 should herald a mind shift amongst ecommerce managers. 2010 has continued the trend of diminishing traffic, especially for search in markets like Electronics and Computing, and the erosion of margin as consumers spend more time researching price savings online and using price comparison and discount aggregators. The spending on internal analytics staff has been slowly increasing since 2009 and 41% of companies surveyed stated they would increase their web analytics budget in 2010 [Source: Lynchpin report 2009].
The glory days of rapid online traffic and sales growth are on the decline and a more pragmatic business model is emerging where commercial acumen is important. It always should have been but the scrutiny from the Board is increasing and web managers need to be savvier in the way they control ROI. In 2011 there will be more resource dedicated to website optimisation, using web analytics, voice-of-customer and testing to improve KPI targets.
Increase in dedicated mobile sites
Smartphone usage increased by 48.7% to 54.3m units in the 1st quarter of 2010 [Source: AOP Digital Landscape Report, June 2010] and is growing faster in the UK than in Europe. Whilst 2010 has been continued the trend of mobile apps, with large multi-channel retailers like Argos stepping up to the plate, it is likely that more retailers will invest in dedicated mobile platforms in 2011.The rationale is clear - for brands that are experiencing a shift in customer browsing habits from PC to mobile, it's essential that they provide a robust and scalable ecommerce offering that is cross browser compatible. Ebookers1 is a good example having launched its dedicated mobile travel site in February 2010. Halfords2 has recently launched its own mobile platform as it gets over 5% of visitors from mobile devices.
Tablets capture on the move market share
The launch of the iPad seems like a distant memory but the Tablet market is the new Everest. The latest addition, Samsung's Android tablet device3 called the Galaxy Tab, has upped the ante with the ability to make phone calls and send text messages. As of June 2010, Apple had sold over 2m iPads4 (quicker uptake than the iPhone in 2007) with the UK reputed to be the 3rd biggest market globally.Tablets offer users greater usability with a larger screen on which to run apps and browse the Internet on the move. The figures suggest the trend will continue and more and more UK consumers will embrace tablet technology as more vendors enter the market.The challenge will be for ecommerce teams to ensure the compatibility of their website with tablet technology and to tap into marketing technology that enables them to geo-target customers on the move with location specific offers.
Social media becomes a core component of customer service
Visionaries like Guy Stephens5, previously of Carphone Warehouse, have long advocated the necessity to integrate social media into the Customer Service framework. Social media is essentially just another communication channel; therefore it has the potential to influence customer opinion. However, social media is not in itself a solution. It needs to be planned and have a structure the same way that any other customer communication channel does. Companies have been dabbling with social media as a customer service tool to varying degrees of success. The damage if done badly is striking – United Airlines6 is the best example whereby a disgruntled customer used YouTube to broadcast his displeasure, the company didn't respond effectively and the net result was a 10% drop in share price, or a cool $180m. Money talks. 2011 should see an increase in the tie-up between ecommerce marketers and their Customer Service counterparts, with internal SLAs established to ensure customers contacting companies via their social channels are given a high quality service and issues are effectively managed. The Econsultancy article from way back in 2009 on how Naked Wines handled a customer complaint via social media7 is worth reading.
This article was written by James Gurd, guest writer and blogger at user experience consultancy8, Webcredible. They run a range of fantastic training courses including Google Analytics training9 and social media training
Music Video of the week...
I thought this music video would be appropriate considering the theme of the blog...enjoy!
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