| Four Tenets for Selling KPO to Your C-Level |
| By Alok Verma on 6/8/2010 2:08:20 AM |
"We have about 1500 business analysts in our organization, spread across 25 or more countries around the globe. These analysts work with their respective business units or individual departments to help with their data analysis needs. The problem is everyone works in siloes ─ seldom talking to each other, let alone sharing best practices or common methodologies. I have often tried to impress upon our corporate leadership the importance of consolidating this fragmented set of common skills to derive greater leverage, but to little impact," rued a client of mine who is a part of the global sourcing team at a leading consumer electronics company.
It was a no-brainer that his topmost challenge was bringing the siloed skills together to ensure that the organization truly leveraged the power of research and analysis. And, I realized that this was a problem agnostic to the size of an organization. As we discussed further, I shared with him a few ways in which he could possibly sell the concept of consolidation and then, outsourcing it. Over my years of experience working for a KPO, interacting with sourcing managers and research organizations, I have come to realize that there are four core tenets to selling a KPO engagement to your senior management. |
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| Is Clustering Countries The Foolproof Solution To Entering Global Markets? |
| By Amitabh Bose on 6/7/2010 11:19:58 AM |
We have moved into an era of increasingly complex lifestyles, and marketers are aware that the one-size-fits-all strategies are bound to collapse. However, increasing localization may not be cost-effective. How many products can you create and for how many markets? And therein lies the solution ─ clustering countries based on their need evolution. While the concept of clustering has been around for years, we have applied it to identify countries at the same state of evolution. Toward achieving effective clustering, we use three dimensions: Macroeconomic factors, technology and competitive dimensions, and finally, consumer dimensions. |
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| Co-creation is the future |
| By Mark Wiggins on 3/29/2010 3:18:58 AM |
Co-creation is sharing research, innovation and product development initiatives with engaged stakeholders outside the corporate boundary - customers, suppliers or contractors. This approach, often called open innovation orcrowdsourcing, draws upon subject matter experts both inside and outside the company to jointly develop strategies, products and markets. |
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| How analytics can help the cruise business |
| By Sanjit Bhoumick on 2/9/2010 3:56:10 AM |
By using analytic techniques like customer segmentation, demand forecasting and inventory analytics, cruise operators like CCL and others can obtain a better understanding of their customers, design more relevant and custom products/offerings, and eventually make more money without losing out on customer service or quality. The days of developing strategy based solely on “gut-feeling” and “experience” are fading fast, and the cruise business is beginning to catch up quickly on the use of analytics. |
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| Use outsourcing to improve quality of information for decision making |
| By Rajesh Desingu on 11/2/2009 1:53:49 AM |
Insurance companies the world over are experiencing tough times. Thanks to the economic slowdown, business has taken a hit- -sales premia have fallen, policy counts continue to drop, and the liquidity crunch remains.
Given the uncertain economic environment, high quality insights that can aid senior insurance executives’ decision-making is becoming harder and harder to come by. There is no paucity of data – there is more than enough data-- but the challenge is to analyze this voluminous data in order to draw meaningful and actionable insights quickly. |
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| Customer Lifetime Value can help improve customer loyalty |
| By Hemant Todi on 10/26/2009 11:12:40 AM |
John Doe has been a customer of retail bank X for almost two years. However, with increasing competition, bundled product offers, price-lock guarantees and more, John has more choices and is therefore open to moving from Bank X to another bank. Sounds like a typical customer loyalty challenge?
According to the Banking & Credit Card Survey 2009, the number of people who bore a grudge to such an extent that they would never recommend a particular lender (i.e. financial services company) grew to 41 percent from 32.6 percent the previous year, With diminishing differentiation between banks and the effects of the recession, customer loyalty is becoming a rarity.
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| Leveraging analytics is critical and you have several operating models to choose from |
| By Sanjit Bhoumick on 9/7/2009 9:07:04 AM |
IBM’s announcement about its acquisition of SPSS for $1.2 billion clearly underscores the growing importance of analytics. While companies are trimming spending on technology, expenditures for business intelligence (BI) software has been largely spared. |
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| Marketing channels are dynamic…can you measure? |
| By Brian Welsh on 8/24/2009 10:56:31 AM |
Are you missing a huge opportunity? Fact: almost 63 million Web users in the U.S. access the internet via a mobile device, accounting for a staggering 14 percent of total media consumption today and are expected to grow by 60 percent over the next two years, according to new research from IPG's Universal McCann and AOL.
This presents an opportunity, the likes that we have not experienced before. Mobile usage creates an environment whereby marketers can transition with consumers real-time as they move from activity to activity throughout the day, using their mobile at the same time as they consume other forms of media such as TV and radio. |
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| Meta Analyses can increase efficiency and reduce costs of your research projects |
| By Brian Welsh on 7/13/2009 9:58:59 AM |
Meta Analyses can best be explained as the confluence of domain expertise, statistical modeling and raw data. It is the pooling together of information that is drawn from diverse sources to make a narrative more meaningful and authentic in terms of its interpretation. |
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| 3 ways to implement analytics for improving customer experience in a contact center |
| By Hemant Todi on 7/6/2009 9:52:38 AM |
Cost savings aside, there is a significant value in outsourcing contact center operations because, if the engagement is properly structured, the change in business model can enhance the customer experience, driving benefits directly to the bottom line. |
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| Outsourcing to optimize knowledge processes |
| By Jay Venkateswaran on 6/29/2009 3:05:20 AM |
Despite its criticality to business performance, a substantial percentage of companies do not leverage knowledge in their decision making. Why? Because truly competing with knowledge is difficult. Inadequate skill sets, an inability to scale up, organizational impediments, a lack of standardization and cultural resistance all challenge a company to become a true knowledge competitor.
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| Need for data integration |
| By Brian Welsh on 5/12/2009 11:28:28 AM |
Most organizations have vast reams of historic data and critical information scattered over different silos, systems, and formats at any given time. A new way of working demands a new way of organizing. The need of the hour is data integration or consolidating and managing, as part of one large repository, pre-existing as well as current information from multiple sources — across domains, functions/silos, and industries. |
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| Intelligent cross-sell - the Amazon example |
| By Amitabh Bose on 5/12/2009 11:11:00 AM |
Ever purchased a book on Amazon? When you click on the title of your choice, you will also get a list of what other customers who bought that book also bought (if others bought it, it must be useful too) and which other purchase would give you the best value (makes economic sense and gives more value for money). You can also share information about your purchase with friends or the online community... |
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| Migrating to knowledge-driven decision making |
| By Brian Welsh on 5/6/2009 9:14:48 AM |
While not undermining the importance and allure of intuition, it is necessary to understand that making marketing decisions based on just plain intuition or obsolete knowledge or past experiences has an inherent risk of missing the finer vital details or widely misjudging. While successful decisions driven by hunches are lauded, big and expensive bad decisions based on gut feeling are either swept under the rug or conveniently forgotten. At this rate, companies working solely on intuitive-decision making will forever be working at suboptimal levels.
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| Predictive analytics leads to better sales results |
| By Amitabh Bose on 3/1/2009 10:03:22 AM |
Most of us on the listening end of a generic mass marketing call have usually turned down (often not too politely) the "special offer," even before the telemarketer is halfway through the script. As a result, it is no surprise that this approach produces very low response rates, presenting a challenge for marketing departments’ ROI.
But consider this. You get a call where the telemarketer hits a sweet spot - a free 4 day / 3 night holiday at your favorite beach resort which you haven’t been to in a while... suddenly the deal doesn't sound so bad... |
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| Predictive analytics helps you predict customer behavior |
| By Amitabh Bose on 2/28/2009 8:12:19 AM |
In the famous Hollywood movie Minority Report, law enforcement has prevented all murders in Washington. Using the premonitions of Pre-Cogs - three psychic humans led by Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) are able to foresee crimes and arrest the perpetrator before harm is done.
As customers become more discerning and the competitive pressures increase like never before, wouldn’t it be cool if we as business managers could foresee what each of their customers will do next, thereby affecting the outcome? |
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