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Capgemini:Evolving the Business Data Lake

UCC Market Has Both Growth Opportunities and Challenges

The market for enterprise communication solutions in the U.S. and Europe offers considerable growth opportunities but also faces a number of challenges, including regulatory issues and limited understanding of unified communications technologies and their benefits.

That's according to new customer research analysis from Frost & Sullivan, which says vendors must educate customer organizations on the benefits of unified communications and collaboration, and take a more consultative approach to their sales efforts, focusing on business needs and value instead of the technology alone. They would also do well to deliver UC&C solutions that improve regulatory compliance at a lower cost given that IT decision-makers consider this the primary challenge for their departments today.

“Presently, video, Web and audio conferencing as well as mobile applications are the most widely deployed enterprise communication solutions across the U.S. and Europe," said Elka Popova, Frost & Sullivan's unified communiations and collaboration program director. “However, the use of more traditional video technologies and audio conferencing is expected to decline due to high costs and increased adoption of Web conferencing solutions. Among existing enterprise communications solutions, business-grade softphones, tablets and UC clients will witness the most significant increase in demand over the next three years."

Further, new business requirements such as the need to support remote workers coupled with mobility and bring-your-own technology trends are driving IT investments and related costs. Growing customer demands for social networking, visual collaboration and a more personalized experience are also key factors influencing IT-related expenditures, the report said. In fact, the cost impact of satisfying these additional needs is hitting IT decision-makers in the U.S., larger organizations and companies in the financial and health-care sectors the hardest. Overall, IT decision-makers in the U.S. are more affected by these costs than their counterparts in Europe.

March 27, 2014 By Kimberly Koerth

Giving IT a Seat in the Boardroom, Not Just Behind the Computer

 

Niraj Jetly
Senior Vice President - Chief Information Officer/Chief Operating Officer
NutriSavings

 

Interviewed by Sam Narisi
Publications Editor/Lead Writer
Frost & Sullivan

NutriSavings recently earned Frost & Sullivan’s CIO Impact Award for Big Data and Advanced Analytics. The company was recognized for its innovative employee wellness solution, which uses big data to score thousands of food items and help people make smarter choices.

Frost & Sullivan recently spoke with Niraj Jetly, NutriSavings SVP, CIO/COO, about the challenges of getting tangible value from vast amounts of data and how technology leaders can make sure IT is aligned with business goals.

What service does NutriSavings provide?

NutriSavings is in the employee health and wellness space. Healthcare costs are increasing year after year, and employers are struggling to keep them contained. The challenge is that people’s wellbeing is driven by two key components – their lifestyle, and what they eat. There are many providers who are focusing on active lifestyles, and they’re doing a wonderful job. However, based on academic research, the majority of a person’s wellbeing depends on what they eat. The nutrition-focused benefits market is underserved, and that’s where NutriSavings comes to play. NutriSavings provides the industry’s first measurable and track-able nutrition-focused wellness solution for employers and health plans. We have one mission in mind: to help employers and employees reduce healthcare costs.

How do big data, analytics, and other IT issues come into play?

When you’re talking about an ecosystem where we have employers, health plans, retailers, and food manufacturers, there is a lot of data flowing back and forth among all these participants. Let’s take an example. When I’m going for my grocery shopping, I have the best intent to buy the healthiest items for my family. But the challenge is when I pick up a yogurt box or a cereal box, I don’t know if it is healthy or not, because as a consumer, I’m not educated enough to compete with the big marketing budgets of food manufacturers. The first application of big data is to look at food items, ingredients, and nutritional information to synthesize a nutritional score for every food item. We have built a big data application that takes into account 200,000 food items and about 150 million data elements which we compare to give a score from 1 to 100.

The second application of big data is processing data from the supermarkets. The third element is working with the food manufacturers. The traditional marketing media used by food manufacturers are the coupons in supermarket inserts. Their challenge is that you don’t know who is using these coupons. Hence, in the age of digital marketing, these tools may not be very effective. We have built a data infrastructure where we can help the food manufacturer actually identify and target the buyers of their products at a much more granular level than before.

What challenges have you run into in terms of gathering and analyzing all that data? How have you overcome those?

There were business and technical that we encountered in our journey. Business challenges could be attributed to new way of doing things, which are radically different from what has been done in the past. For example - why would a food manufacturer like to play in this space when they have been using the standard coupon booklet for the last several years? Why would a supermarket share the data with us? How do we ensure privacy and confidentiality of the data?

Technical challenges mainly came from building systems to handle a huge slew of data in different formats from manufacturers, retailers, and employers, How to make logical sense of data? How can we deliver value to our constituents? What other data elements might create new business models and opportunities for growth? Etc.

Was there any difficulty convincing other parts of the organization that big data and analytics would add business value?

The difficulty convincing other parts of organization was not the value of “Big Data.” Rather the question was, would we really get access to this data? The value proposition of this data becomes compelling to all players in eco-system, when they all collaborate. NutriSavings is majority owned by a French global giant, Edenred. Edenred has extensive experience in data management and Big Data.

It seems you’ve done a great job getting IT aligned with the mission and business goals of the organization. What advice do you have for other IT leaders trying to accomplish that?

I have been in IT leadership for over 11 years. I have chaired several business and technology alignment meetings where business stakeholders and technology stakeholders would come together and figure out priorities. These are tough meetings where everyone needs to make hard decisions. Over the years, I have seen these alignment sessions get easier. My take-away for making these meetings easier was the fact that when IT leaders learn the art of empathizing with clients, alignment becomes natural phenomenon.

In my own case, over the past six years, the amount of time I’ve spent on a daily basis with my customers has increased to about 60% - 70%.The more time I spend understanding my customer’s needs, the less I spend in alignment sessions. I have seen many CIOs still spending the majority of their time dealing with IT problems rather than client problems. My advice to them would be to encourage their leadership teams build communication and collaboration skills, so they can easily empathize with  customers’ needs.

What are some things IT can do to be seen as more of a strategic partner, rather than a cost center?

Around 11 years ago, one of my CEOs asked me, what’s the value of IT? Honestly, that’s a pretty tough question to answer if you are only focused on technology. But the moment you are focused on people and technology, suddenly this question becomes irrelevant. Now I am working closely with my management team and CEO to create the business plan and the strategy together. CIOs need to earn the trust of their management team and CEO by delivering business value. Only after that, they can earn the right to have a seat at the table. You cannot earn your right if you are too focused on technology. You need to be business first, technology later. Focus on your customer. When the customer is coming to your organization, they are not coming for IT or customer service or for product management. They are coming to you because they value what you are offering. So as IT leaders, we cannot afford to just focus on technology and overlook the customer’s needs. You are an integral part of the business strategy, but you have to earn your way there.

How Big Data Can Backfire

By Wim Rampen
Manager, Customer Intelligence and Brand Management (OHRA)
Delta Lloyd

If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product. Most people know this. The basis of the business model is that your personal data is mined and shared with all kinds of companies that can use this data for their benefit. Mostly this data is used to sell advertising space or intelligence to improve advertising efficiency.

The Death of Direct Marketing

What I have always found strange is that this business model was able to grow so rapidly and even “produce” two of the largest online companies of the world. I think this is strange because at the same time, at least in The Netherlands, the end of what used to be Direct Marketing was already clear:

We have seen a massive adoption of the “no-no” mailbox sticker in the nineties and the rise of the “don’t call me” register in the year 2000 with over 8 million phone numbers registered (for comparison, The Netherlands has somewhere around 7.6 million households). Those working in Direct Marketing saw the rapid decline of conversion rates that, regardless of the new channels used, have now stabilized to levels where it’s safe to say that > 97% of all Customers are ignoring efforts and more likely have been annoyed by them.

The Missing Link

With the rise of available data, and more specifically contextually relevant behavioral data, companies are seeing the gold. Marketers, but not just them, believe that now they will be able to build contextually relevant offers for the right customer/prospect at the right price, place and time. How can it not be? Adding real (time) behavioral data to existing transactional, interactional and personal data, will surely result in better outcomes from (analytical) marketing efforts. It’s the missing link, isn’t it?

How Big Data Backfires

In The Netherlands ING launched a plan last week to sell customer data so that buyers could make relevant offers to the ING customer base. That news caused quite a stir even though ING explained it would ask for explicit customer approval to do so. And still one-third of customers say they are considering moving their business elsewhere (many probably won’t in the end, because they are continuing with their busy lives; but the signal is there, not to be ignored).

ING clearly struck a nerve. People are accustomed to the idea of being the product. They accept it every day in the context where the benefit is clear to them. Usually it is the benefit of use. In return they will bear the “costs” to them in shape of “contextually relevant ads” and some privacy. But when “contextually relevant ads” becomes the return for giving up your (financial) privacy, that is not a very compelling offer, is it? And there is more to it.

Empowered With Little Trust

Trust is a very important factor in relationships. We know this. Yet somehow the Big Data (in marketing) promise seems to be at odds with it. There is a huge lack of transparency (what data is shared with what companies and with what benefit) and even if there was, Customers are lack tools, knowledge and skills that help them keep control of what’s out there and what it’s used for, let alone to control the level of benefits they gain from sharing it. Yes, Customers are more empowered than ever before to raise their voices. When it comes to their data they have little to voice. This must change. And yes, we can!

An Improved Promise

Vendor Relationship Management as a concept has been around for a while. To me this has been compelling thinking with little practical stuff to back it up. Until a little over a year ago when The Hub Of All Things was founded by Irene Ng (a.o). The Hub Of All Things (HAT) project approaches opportunities that arise from Big Data from a multi-sided market perspective, building a personal data vault for consumers and a platform for companies to build new business models on. I strongly believe this is the way to move forward. As always the really good stuff takes time, and there will be a lot of time before these initiatives bring forth use-cases that work.

In the meantime companies that are looking to develop Big Data initiatives should really consider what it brings to their customers. If we accept lessons from the past, we know that using it the way we have used customer data to improve one-to-one marketing will only bring us diminishing returns. And harvesting data, as if it is crops on a field to be sold for the highest bid, is not the right way to go either. At least not when the sole aim is to enrich your company, not your customers’ lives.

Using insights from Big Data analytics to enhance the customer experience, to enable Customers to grow their own skills and knowledge to get their jobs done better, probably is a better route to explore.

Big Data holds a big promise. For companies and for customers. Only If we choose so, though. If not, customers will refuse to be the product and the return of trust will too remain a promise. 

This article originally appeared on Wim Rampen’s Blog.

About the Author

Wim Rampen offers fresh perspectives on your customer-related challenges, based on 13+ years experience in (leading) customer facing departments & projects. In solving the challenges you face, he applies analytical and creative methodologies for analysis/research, problem definition, ideation, testing & implementing the solution(s) created together with clients. For more information visit Wim Rampen's Blog.