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SocietyOne Eyes Off Disruption in Personal Lending

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

For decades, many Australian business sectors have been asleep at the wheel – underinvesting in digital technology, employee skills and strategic thinking. Which sectors? They’re the ones people complain about on Twitter and Facebook – retail, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and financial services. And you can add utilities into that list (but that’s a subject for a future post).

In many ways this is what we’d expect. In the industrial era – business was designed to maximise the profits from investment and expenditure – and that’s what they were doing. We call it creating “shareholder value”. But times are changing. We are no longer living in a world where industrial era business models rule. They are the dinosaurs of the 21st century and those companies and industries that don’t look to reinvent their business models will not only face declining revenues – they’ll risk disappearing altogether.

Don’t think it can happen to you? So did Kodak.

When Google created their own financial services division, they fired a shot across the bow of the slow moving personal lending businesses in the UK. What Google understands is speed to market – and disruption. And remember, they have the inside view of what we search for, what we click on and how long we stay there. The shift to digital – the massive transformation in the way that we think, shop and live has largely been driven by access to Google’s services – and financial services is just the next step in a long journey for them.

But it’s not just global internet giants who will disrupt the market. Smaller, agile players are entering the market – rethinking the old business models and out-flanking them. Take a look at SocietyOne. Connecting borrowers and investors in a peer-to-peer fashion SocietyOne takes “crowdfunding” to a new, more knowable level. It’s designed to match investors and borrowers in an interest rate/risk online pitch-off. Check out their introductory video. Looks like no bank that I know. And that’s the point.

Marketing Transformation Chief Marketing Officer

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Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

These days we see a lot of blog posts masquerading as news – about the industry, media, technology and so on. But there is often not a lot of insight, or action. There’s opinion and sometimes a few ideas – but precious few wrestle with what it means to live in media-saturated, always connected age. Here are five posts from last week that do. I hope they kickstart your brain for the week!

Mark Hurst has an unusual point of view about Google Glasses – and it’s not about the technology. It’s about the experience. But it’s not what you think. It’s the feature no one is talking about. HT @ozdj
Katie shares images from a photographer’s point of view. And how does he see the world? Framed by the view of his girlfriend. Great storytelling.
The world is changing – but we sometimes forget that it changes at different rates for different people. Becky Lang shares some advice for college kids – what they don’t hear, but should.
Great article from Edward Boches reminding us that social media isn’t about reach, controlling or drowning out the message, but about participation. And here’s what can happen when you do it right.
Finally, powerhouse marketing innovator, CK has delivered a knockout transformation with her new website AllThingsCK, complete with mobile experience, an eBook and a range of new services designed to help you and your business. Get the full details on her blog.

Marketing Transformation Chief Marketing Officer

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It’s Not Risk. It’s Gaining Trust

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

We often (still) hear stories of businesses and individuals fearing social media. And if you listen closely to what is being said, you will hear the fear. You will hear anxiety.

And when you hear about those folks who brave social media – who push the envelope within their organisation, you will hear them talk about managing risk. Engaging stakeholders. Dealing with the randomness.

But this great TED Talk by Amanda Palmer reveals a new way of thinking about this.

What if, rather than managing risk, we were to think about “gaining trust”. What would that mean for the way we approach our customers, audiences, stakeholders and employees?

And how would it change what we do.

Marketing Transformation Chief Marketing Officer

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Supply Chain Management Delivers Positive ROI Despite Challenges

President, Computer Economics and Strativa, Inc.
Computer Economics and Strativa, Inc.

Frank Scavo is skilled at formulating and communicating IT strategy, developing the business case for new systems, and facilitating the selection of enterprise systems, such as ERP, CRM, and supply chain management. He is also an expert in benchmarking IT spending and staffing levels for end-user IT organizations. Frank was one of the first tech bloggers, beginning in 2002 with his launch of the Enterprise System Spectator providing independent analysis of issues and trends in enterprise applications software and the strengths, weaknesses, advantages, and disadvantages of the vendors that provide them. Frank has been quoted as an IT expert in numerous business and industry publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, CIO Magazine, ZDnet, eWeek, Datamation,…...

I've just published a new report. The report, titled Supply Chain Management Adoption Trends and Customer Experience, finds that the total cost of ownership for SCM systems often exceeds budget.

Nevertheless, the payback on SCM systems is so good that most companies achieve a return on their investment within two years, despite the challenges in managing costs.

As shown in Figure 1, the full report compares the adoption, investment, ROI and TCO rates of supply chain management systems against the rates for 13 other technologies from an annual Computer Economics survey on technology trends.

Based on survey responses, SCM and the 13 other technologies are given numerical ratings on the levels of adoption, investment, ROI and TCO. Then, SCM technology is categorized as having low, moderate, or high rates relative to other technologies in the survey.

Adoption Rate: SCM adoption is moderate compared to other technologies in the study. That means the percentage of organizations that have SCM solutions in place is within the middle third of the range, defined by the technologies with the highest and lowest adoption rates in the study. It does not include organizations that have plans to implement the technology for the first time but have not yet done so. The moderate-to-low adoption rate for SCM is due in part to the fact that this technology does not have widespread application in some industry sectors, such as financial services or information services.
Investment Rate: The percentage of organizations investing in SCM technology falls just shy of moderate and earns a low rating. Investors include organizations that plan new implementations or enhancements to existing systems within the next 18 months. Once again, the relatively low investment rate is because the technology does not have relevance in some industry sectors.
ROI Success Rate: Among organizations that have adopted SCM, the experience is positive. The survey shows that, compared to the other technologies in the survey, SCM has a moderate ROI success rate, bordering on the high side. The percentage of organizations at least breaking even on their investments within a two-year period is at the high end of the middle range when compared to other technologies surveyed.
TCO Success Rate: However, compared to the other technologies covered in the survey, the TCO success rate for SCM is on the low side. As with many enterprise applications, there is a danger of underestimating total cost of ownership. We define TCO success as actual costs coming in at or under budget.

Interestingly, the ROI success rate is more positive than the TCO success rate. This indicates that the business case for SCM systems is strong: Some adopters must be achieving positive or breakeven ROI in spite of exceeding their budgets for SCM projects.

Competitive pressures, globalization and increasingly complex offshore manufacturing relationships are spurring organizations to expand their supply chain management (SCM) systems, which encompass a wide variety of technologies and capabilities.

The full study quantifies the current adoption and investment trends for SCM systems as well as the benefits that are driving companies to expand their SCM implementations. We assess these trends by organization size, sector and geography. In terms of economics, we look at the ROI and TCO experience of those that have adopted SCM along with current investment per SCM user. The report concludes with practical advice for those considering investment in SCM technology.

Tech Optimization

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Cloud Confusion on The Motley Fool

President, Computer Economics and Strativa, Inc.
Computer Economics and Strativa, Inc.

As I've written in the past, financial analysts may provide good advice for investors in the tech sector. But their analysis is not very useful to buyers of technology products and services. It's not that they don't have insights, but they are writing for a different audience: investors, not customers and prospects.

Some parts of the financial press are another story. Some financial media reporters so poorly understand the tech industry that neither investors nor prospective buyers should listen to them.

I saw an example of this today on The Motley Fool, in a story entitled, Is Oracle's Cloud Really Fake? In it the contributor, Richard Saintvilus, takes issue with an Infoworld article by David Linthicum that criticizes Oracle's most recent "cloud" announcement as "faux IaaS."

The Motley Fool is a website aimed at the individual small investor. It provides both free content as well as paid subscriber material. It also makes money from advertising. Therefore, generating page views is a key objective, with much of its content generated by freelancers, as appears to be the case here. So, the quality of its content varies.

Apologies to in advance to Saintvilus, who reached out to me on Twitter after I sniped at his story. He asked for specifics, so here you go.

Oracle Late to the Cloud

Staintvilus immediately starts with a misconception, that Oracle was an early proponent of cloud computing. Here is his lead:

Wall Street loves a hot trend and had essentially decided four years ago that the cloud was next. With corporations needing all of the cost savings/productivity benefits the cloud offered, the timing was perfect. Oracle was one of the first blue chip enterprise companies to realize this opportunity. [emphasis here, and throughout, is mine.]

Sorry Richard. Even as late as 2009, Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison famously mocked the term cloud computing, calling it no more than a fashion statement. Furthermore, he not only mocked the term, he mocked the concept. To this day, Ellison criticizes multitenant applications, which are the cornerstone of most large scale SaaS providers. Only recently, as Oracle realized it was losing the war did Oracle embrace cloud computing, albeit with its own twist (either hosted single tenant applications, or multi-tenant applications with single tenant databases.) Industry analysts can argue all day about the relative merits of each approach. But none would claim that Oracle was anywhere to be found at the beginning of the trend to cloud computing.

Oracle Market Share in Cloud Services

He continues with a comment on Oracle's rising revenues:

The company [Oracle] is providing a service, of which there has been very few complaints -- at least not according to the rising revenues, which suggest it's stealing share from rivals such as salesforce.com. And Oracle is not the cheapest on the market, either. So, there's a reason why customers are willing to pay the premium. And it's not because these corporate CIOs are dumb.

Yes, Oracle's revenues are rising. But those of Salesforce.com are rising also, up 37% in 2012. Furthermore, while all of the revenues of SFDC are derived from cloud computing, only a small percentage of Oracle's are. So to impute on the basis of revenues that Oracle is taking market share from Salesforce.com is ludicrous. Certainly, in my own firm's work advising buyers in software selection, I do not see Oracle taking market share from Salesforce.com. In fact, in CRM, I see deals in which buyers want to look at Salesforce but do not even consider Oracle, especially in the midmarket.

As far as software pricing is concerned, neither do I see Oracle as commanding a premium price over Salesforce.com, or over other application vendors for that matter. In fact, Oracle is notorious for competing on price when it really wants a competitive deal, as it knows it can make it up on maintenance revenue in the future.

But the author wouldn't know that, because he does not advise technology buyers, nor is he in a position to see actual deals going down.

Oracle's Engineered Systems Are Not "Cloud"

He then confuses Oracle's new Exa-boxes with cloud services.

However, David Linthicum of InfoWorld thinks [CIOs are] idiots (I'm paraphrasing that a bit), which doesn't make sense. CIOs are spending billions annually with Oracle. But in Linthicum's recent article, he insists they don't know what they're buying: "Oracle is continuing its faux cloud strategy, adding to its private-cloud infrastructure offering the ability to rent for a monthly fee preconfigured application servers to be deployed in customer data centers. The available application servers -- what Oracle calls 'engineered systems'"

The author can be forgiven for this misunderstanding, as Oracle itself confuses this issue, which is the whole point of Linthicum's criticism. The basic point is that cloud computing is a "service," whereas Oracle's computer hardware (whether old school Sun commodity servers, or Oracle's new "engineered systems") is a physical product. Renting Oracle hardware does not magically turn the hardware into a cloud service.

Oracle's Engineered Systems Are an Old Concept

He continues with the impression that Oracle's Exa-boxes are somehow a new concept.

Linthicum clearly has an ax to grind. While he's going all-out on Oracle's product portfolio, rival companies have been working hard to duplicate Oracle's offerings. For instance, IBM has a rival offering called PureSystems -- launched three years after Oracle's Engineered Systems, or ES. And, after Oracle has already deployed ES to more than 1,000 customers in 43 countries, IBM followed. Big Blue has gained traction, but not to the extent of Oracle. And I doubt that IBM would have followed a model it didn't think had sustaining potential.

The author appears unaware that Oracle is attempting to return to the IBM era of the 1960s. In fact, Larry Ellison has said so himself. The IBM mainframe at the time was a single integrated platform of hardware, operating system, database, and applications engineered from the ground up to work together. IBM's AS/400 series of machines (now called Series i) took this concept even further. What broke up IBM's dominance in the mainframe era was the fact that these boxes were all based on proprietary standards, and eventually low cost commodity hardware (whether IBM personal computers, or later, Unix boxes from providers such as Sun) could do the job much more cost effectively. The downside was that the new approach led to challenges in system integration, in making all the layers of the technology stack work together.

Oracle's strategy with its Exa-boxes is to return to this single technology stack from hardware through applications, engineered from the ground up to work together. Will Oracle be successful? Only time will tell. And, certainly the 1,000 customer number that the author mentions is not yet enough of a measure of success.

Regardless, what does any of this have to do with cloud computing? Absolutely nothing. Oracle is launching a public cloud offering, with its Exa-boxes as part of the infrastructure. Other providers can do the same using commodity hardware, as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others have already done.

But the Oracle offering that Linthicum is criticizing and that the author is defending is not Oracle's public cloud service. Rather it is an arrangement whereby Oracle customers can, for a monthly fee, rent preconfigured Oracle application servers and run them in their own data centers. Linthicum is absolutely right: this has nothing to do with cloud computing.

According to the NIST definition of cloud computing, there are five essential characteristics of cloud computing, and Oracle's hardware rental offering does not satisfy four of them. (See the link in this paragraph for a more complete definition.)

On-demand self-service. Oracle's rental agreement does not allow the customer to unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.

Resource pooling. Oracle's rental agreement does not pool computing resources for multiple customers in a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand.

Rapid elasticity. Oracle's offering does not allow computing capabilities to be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. As Linthicum points out, the customer has to pay extra for spikes in demand and there is no provision to ramp down demand, and cost.

Measured service. Oracle's offering does not automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability. Customers do not pay as they go.

Clearly then, Oracle's offering may use the terminology of cloud computing but it does not display the essential characteristics of cloud computing. You can call me a fish, but that doesn't make me one.

The List Goes On

I have neither the time nor the patience to go much further. Let me just list a few (and by no means all) of the remaining errors.

"Linthicum is pretending to be an expert on something that is still in its infancy." Cloud computing may not be a full grown adult, but it is certainly not an infant. Providers such as Salesforce.com have been delivering cloud services for well over a decade, ancient history in the technology industry.
"Oracle innovates at the technology layer, thereby giving customers more leverage and independence from consulting fees." What exactly is the "technology layer?" Everything from bare metal hardware to business applications are "technology." Furthermore, talk to Oracle customers: I doubt anyone will tell you they have less need for consultants.
"Had Cisco contracted out its cloud services to Oracle, it could have remained focus on growing its business." The types of cloud services that Cisco offers, such as cloud network management, are not services that Oracle provides. Therefore, it would not be possible for Cisco to contract with Oracle to provide those services on behalf of Cisco.
"Even if Linthicum's pricing claims were correct, then it means Microsoft's Azure, which has a pay-as-you-go model, is also fake. But Microsoft has been reducing its prices because it can't compete." If Microsoft is lowering its Azure pricing, it's not because it can't compete, but because it can deliver cloud services at lower and lower costs over time, as it scales and the costs of technology drop (see "Moore's Law"). Similarly, Amazon lowers its AWS prices multiple times per year and no one in his right mind claims it because Amazon can't compete.

Parts of The Motley Fool article are nearly indecipherable, especially toward the end. But I think this is enough to illustrate: parts of the financial press are poor sources of information on enterprise IT. By that, I do not mean to imply that all financial reporters are suspect. One would not expect to see a story such as this one to appear, say, on the pages of The Wall Street Journal or Financial Times.

Furthermore, none of my criticism should be taken to mean that Oracle is not a good company from either the investor perspective or customer perspective. As the author tweeted me, "Oracle is one of the best tech names on the market and it deserves fairness."

Yes it is, and yes it does. And because of that, it also deserves accurate reporting.

Enterprise IT Buyers: Don’t Listen to Financial Analysts
Oracle's Behavior Undercuts Its Own Cloud Accomplishments
Cutting Through the Fog of Cloud Computing Definitions

Photo Credit: NS Newsflash

Tech Optimization

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Scale Your Digital Marketing with Marketing Automation

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

In these challenging times, we are all asked to do more with less. For marketers, this means coping with an explosion of channels, transformation in the expectations of our customers and an abundance of data that can, in equal parts, obscure or facilitate insight.

So where can you turn to scale your marketing efforts?

The first generation of marketing automation software provided a great way to deal with an increasing volume of broadcast style communications. But in this digital – multi-directional world, marketers must be more responsive, engaging and yes, social.

My just released report, Scaling Up with Marketing Automation, provides a birds eye view of the marketing automation landscape, presents the key strengths and features of a range of vendors and examines how these solutions can help marketers do more with less. You can download a snapshot of the report here.

Marketing Transformation Chief Marketing Officer

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To Boldly Train and Certify - Announcing Constellation Academy Workshops

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

I'm excited to announce the launch of our new Constellation Academy Workshops.

Image:To Boldly Train and Certify - Announcing Constellation Academy Workshops

In these two hour, half-day or full day courses our analysts work with your organization to train and certify your employees on a variety of topics such as:

- Advanced Mobility Management for the Enterprise
- Big Data Analytics
- Building an Effective Customer Engagement Strategy
- Creating A Collaborative Workforce
- Designing A Gamification Strategy For The Enterprise
- Getting Work Done Via Social Task Management
- How To Successfully Use Enterprise Social Networking
- Onboarding Transformed: From HR Event to Business Strategy
- Preventing Social Software Fatigue Via Purposeful Collaboration

and many more. Read all about Constellation Academy here and contact us with any questions.

Data to Decisions Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer

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Genesys Acquires Angel to Expand its Voice Portal Presence

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

Genesys, @genesyslab, has announced it is acquiring Angel, @angelcorporate, to improve its ability to deliver voice self-service applications more quickly and cost effectively. Genesys currently offers a market-leading voice platform, GVP, and has a strong presence in the large enterprise market. Angel, a SaaS voice portal provider, has earned a solid reputation in mid-size vertical markets. Angel’s experience in delivering high reliable cloud solutions will support Genesys’ ability to offer rapid deployment speech applications to a broader customer base on its Cloud Connect platform. This acquisition signals the second significant purchase by Genesys in the last month. Genesys also acquired UTOPY-a speech analytic firm- to add to its product portfolio. Both purchases highlight the importance of natural language speech applications, as a key enabler for delivering successful self-service solutions.

Angel’s acquisition will help Genesys increase its flexibility to deploy speech applications to the mid-market segment. Many mid-market companies have delayed upgrading their Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications from DTMF to voice due to the expense of developing custom speech applications. Angel has been successful in creating rapid deployment speech applications with its Customer Experience (CX) builder interface. Its CX builder creates applications on reusable components, which reduces development time. This capability should enable Genesys to provide its voice portal customers with lower cost entry for building their speech applications.

Speech applications also play an important role in mobile application development. As more customers use their smartphone applications to contact companies and transact business, firms that deploy mobile apps need to ensure their apps provide easy access for customer support directly from within the mobile app. Based on the rapid growth of smartphones mobile app customer support will grow more quickly than the standard voice portal for customer support operations. This acquisition appears to be a good move for Genesys, as it broadens its reach to a larger customer base and becomes more agile in serving the self-service needs for its customers.

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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Tuesday's Tip: Focus On The Business Outcomes, Not Technology With Big Data

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

The Why Behind Big Data Starts By Asking What’s The Business Outcome

So organizations have lots of data. New techniques have emerged to correlate big data. Enamored by the potential of big data, leaders are now reinvesting in technologies to find hidden nuggets of insights with the business goals of:

Mitigating regulatory risks
Identifying operational efficiencies
Improving revenue growth
Creating market differentiation
Expanding the brand presence

These big data use cases often follow the business hierarchy of needs, which are based on concepts pioneered by Maslow (see Figure 1). More importantly, a key question in big data has been to ask the right question.

Figure 1. The Business Hierarchy of Needs Drives Many Big Data Use Cases

An Information Flow Approach Moves The Discussion From Data To Decisions

Unfortunately, the problem is most organizations start by talking about outcomes and then get mired in the technologies to achieve these outcomes. Big data technologies include advanced business analytics, application of existing technologies such as data warehousing and business intelligence. In many cases, application of decision automation, semantic technology and collaborative tools are also needed. Yet, from Data to Decisions requires the integration of quite a few disciplines.

Data to decisions is about taking data sources, transforming them into useful information, gathering key insights, and then making the right decisions (see Figure 2). Data sources, information, and orchestration belong in the realm of IT and hopefully will be delivered via the cloud. Insight, decisions, and actions are line of business driven areas which deliver the most value add:

Data sources. Expect a mix of structured, semi-structured, and lots of unstructured.
Information and orchestration. The mix of information types include physical, virtual, machine, and contextual.
Insight. Information translated to insight considers performance, deduction, inference, and prediction.
Decisions and actions. The outcomes are driven from next best action, prevention, suggestion, and even no action.

Figure 2. The Flow From Data To Decisions

The Bottom Line: Expect A Focus On Outcomes Not Technology As Big Data Awareness Matures

Early adopters and fast followers will shift quickly to business outcomes focused with their big data projects. Why? Budgets for big data are coming from the business side who expect an outcomes based approach. Organizations will adopt a use case approach to tackle the big questions and along the way unearth new questions to answer. Meanwhile, expect the IT side of the big data equation to emerge as a service or platform that makes the technology aspects consumable. Will you and your organization be ready to act on this insight?

Your POV

What business problem will require you to start with Big Data? What are the key outcomes? Where do you expect to move the needle? Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

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Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions. However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Leadership Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Experience Officer

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Content Marketing in Australia Needs a Wakeup Call

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

The Content Marketing Institute’s new report on Content Marketing in Australia is timed nicely for the upcoming Content Marketing Conference (4-6 March 2013). The report contrasts the content marketing approaches taken by marketers in Australia vs the USA and reinforces much that we already know:

Over 60% of marketers expect to increase or significantly increase their expenditure on content marketing in 2013
Australian B2B marketers prefer LinkedIn as a social channel while B2C prefer Facebook
B2B marketers allocate higher proportions of their budget to content marketing activities than their B2C counterparts
A large proportion of marketers outsource content creation (B2C 74% // B2B 54%)

These findings, however, should raise alarm bells for CMOs across Australia.

Poor digital capabilities inhibit success. While 96% of Australian marketers use content marketing, the tactical choices favour traditional marketing channels with much lower levels of investment in experimentation and digital engagement. Marketers should set aside greater levels of budget to experiment and innovate around digital and social media. Training and workshop/conference attendance should be provided to help more traditional marketers to transition their skills.
Weak digital strategy delivers weak outcomes. Weakness in digital strategy is seeing a misalignment between content marketing objectives/focus and measures of success. Marketers should draw upon skilled digital practitioners beyond their organisation (and even their industry), to begin to correctly align their business and marketing strategies.
Conservative channel choice cripples engagement. Marketers the world over are challenged to create engaging content, yet continue to focus on non-digital channels which produce high-levels of engagement. Again, experimentation is vital. Also, look to pure-play agencies to bolster internal skills for particular marketing programs – for example, work with a social media agency on a social media project, bring in a digital experience expert to reinvigorate the online customer experience.
Lack of effectiveness is undermining confidence. Content marketing effectiveness levels remain abysmally low, undermining confidence in marketers and the work produced by their agencies and suppliers. After correctly aligning strategy (as noted above), marketers should build metrics and analytics dashboards to report on effectiveness. Investigate options from companies like Anametrix.
Executive buy-in to content marketing needs to be revitalised: Connecting results with effort will give marketers the tools to gain buy-in from their Boards and from senior executives. Investments in analytics and reporting software that aggregates multi-channel data should be prioritised.

The detailed report appears below. Remember to check out the Content Marketing Conference, using the code CMI200 will save you $200 when registering.

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Marketing Officer

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SocietyOne Eyes Off Disruption in Personal Lending

SocietyOne Eyes Off Disruption in Personal Lending

Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week

Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week

It’s Not Risk. It’s Gaining Trust

It’s Not Risk. It’s Gaining Trust

Supply Chain Management Delivers Positive ROI Despite Challenges

Supply Chain Management Delivers Positive ROI Despite Challenges

Cloud Confusion on The Motley Fool