Why Your Organization Better Jump Into Cloud Computing

Let’s say you’re like many small to medium sized companies with information systems comprised of a variety of pieces. You have one or two in-house servers, a number of laptops and PC’s, a Microsoft operating system, desktop applications like word processing, spreadsheets, Outlook and perhaps a third party proprietary Intranet application accessed over the Internet. This is common for many small to mid sized organizations.

Trouble is, if you take a moment to calculate what the cost of all this technology and maintenance is for your company you might be surprised. Upgrades, hardware maintenance, software licenses all add up. Don’t even mention that you are unable to really manage what folks are up to on a day to day basis.

To make this more challenging your people aren’t able to take full advantage of things like their smart phones, mobile internet access while they are on the go or at home, social media, and other advancing technologies. This would help them be more productive in serving customers or developing new business.

To make it even more alarming, what is you ARE relying on a third party vendor, which might have financial issues you are unaware of given today’s environment, to manage and host your Intranet content or business systems based on a proprietary infrastructure? You may have some real trouble ahead. What happens if they fold ? What upgrades are they making to adopt new tools ? What is your EXIT strategy ?

You have a problem that deservers consideration. The good news is there is a solution. You just need to gather the will to understand the tremendous risk and opportunity that  all organizations face today around their information systems.

With all of the advancements in technology available to organizations today, particularly with the cloud, you really really have to sit down and take account of how you are using your IT and strongly consider shifting your strategy to the cloud....Entirely to the cloud. Sooner not later would be a very good idea.

Watch Mark Benioff CEO of salesforce.com explain the cloud, technology and what is happening and why you should jump in. Don’t wait and let your competitors beat you to the punch.

Social CRM - Delivering Exceptional Customer Experiences

A recent report by Gartner, commissioned by Salesforce.com, addresses important trends in customer service as the social web continues to impact how individuals and organizations interface. You can get a copy of the report for FREE here.

The implications of new technologies and how people are relating via social media have significant implications. Businesses that get their hands around how to really benefit from this change will have a tremendous opportunity to make a difference by delivering support in new and exciting ways.

A few key finds and recommendations from the study are as follows:

•    Expectations for social CRM (tapping into social networks to improve marketing, sales and service processes) will dramatically exceed the measurable benefits.
•    For much of the world, Facebook will – or already has – become the dominant social networking site. Marketeers and customer service managers will need to take this into consideration when planning social networking projects, while monitoring for shifts in user sentiment.
•    A new generation of Internet Protocol (IP)-based contact center solutions with preintegrated IP interaction recording platforms will be far more effective and less expensive than previous platforms.
•    Consumer willingness to perform all possible customer service functions themselves (self- service) will be universal by 2011.
Recommendations
•    Vice presidents of customer service or customer experience should be sure to measure the consistency and effectiveness of customer interactions across all touchpoints from the customer’s point of view.
•    The popularity of social networking sites means that the service organization cannot expect the customer to come to the corporate website only, but must work on ways to reach out to the customer at these destinations as well.
•    When developing a long-term strategic road map for contact center infrastructure, include call recording as part of this single-vendor solution.

Learn more about Social CRM and salesforce.com's in the video below.

Leveraging Technology & Social Media to Impact Military Wellness & Quality of Life

Meeting people who work in a variety of organizations and industries is quite enlightening. Interestingly, no matter their field or nature of their organization, I hear fairly consistent themes regarding technology adoption. This is particulary true as it pertains to wellness. I lectured at the Symposium for the Army's MWR leadership in Louisville, KY on January 26, 2010. The fine people at the American Logistics Association and their representatives Bob Ellis and Chris Rottner sponsored the lecture. You can view content in the slide show below.

Leveraging Technology & Social Media to Impact Military Community Wellness & Quality of Life

View more presentations from Bryan ORourke.

My talk on technology and social media adoption and its potential impact on the health of military personnel and their families led to a series of conversations with the rank and file of the Army's MWR community. No matter the venue, there exists a great opportunity to educate leadership on how solutions like cloud computing, social media, and wellness technologies can be adopted to positively impact the missions of organizations at much lower cost than extant methods. While the rapid pace of change happenning today makes adoption a challenge, we've got to do a better job of unleashing the potential solutions offer to solve important problems. That is why the symposium was such a great event.  Watch this video. As John Chambers of Cisco points out, organizations can change how they fundamentally work to become more productive.

The ALA also sponsored Dr. James Sallis, who spoke on environmental considerations relating to wellness. His talk was very interesting and pointed out important facts regarding how simple changes in the manner which communities are designed can have a meaingful and lasting impact on wellness. Great work and worth a review.

My thanks to the men and women of our armed services and the leadership of the ALA and MWR. I particulary thank my father, who recently passed away , for being the stellar military officer and distinguished pilot and academy graduate he was. He would have enjoyed attending the symposium and meeting the fine and dedicated professionals I had the privledge to address.

Organizations & Social Media in 2010

Where is social media headed? Its a common question posed by businesses leaders I speak with who want to know how they can prepare for the future. Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group recommends that businesses start by understanding what is happening today. See his video below.

Many brands and organizations are struggling to be effective with SM despite its rapid growth. Businesses have to learn what consumers are doing now in order to be successful going forward.

A concept that is critical is to this evaluation is that “real-time is not fast enough.” Customers are quick and organizations, no matter how big their staffs are, cannot keep up. Advocacy programs must be created to address this issue. An advocacy program is a group of customers that act as a company’s “army” and take care of problems that arise. Since many organizations already have a group of people that support them, all they have to do is enable them for the task.

Another important consideration is that consumers find corporate websites irrelevant. Businesses should, therefore, utilize platforms such as Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, and Twitter Connect to bring a social experience to their own website. In addition, organizations should personalize content for customers.

By keeping these points top of mind organizations can be far more effective in creating and deploying effective uses of social media to grow their business and achieve their mission.



Visual Search - Merging the Physical & Digital

The merging of the physical and digital worlds continues and Google Goggles is but another example of how the surge in mobile devices, GPS, Internet ubiquity, and more powerful search technologies are coming together to deliver new experiences and new business opportunities.

The implications are profound and can be humorously reflected upon by taking some time to watch this demo from Pattie Maes' MIT lab, which got a lot of buzz at TED a few years ago. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some.....

As Harmut Neven, the project manager of the product explains:

Imagine you’re a tourist and you arrive at this place and you want to know more about it. All you will have to do is take a picture of the sign. We send the information up to the server and we recognize this as the Santa Monica pier. The idea is you see something that interests you, you whip out your camera phone, take a picture of the object of interest, and this will trigger a Google search.

As the Android Guys among others, recently noted, Google is working on an incredible technology called “visual search” by tying the cameras in handsets to Google’s search engine. Imagine being able to take a picture of something and getting instant results back on your phone. See the Google explanation in the video below.

A recent  “Inside the Mind of Google” special, aired on CNBC, showed aspects of the development process. Before Goggles can hit the market, it will go through Google's testing process; requiring roughly 20,000 employees to “dog-food” the service and put it through the paces.

Below is an interesting video demonstration of Google Visual Search. Fascinating.....