IBM Marketing Resource Management

Why IBM for Marketing resource management?
               IBM Marketing Resource Management can help you ensure that marketing investments are allocated in the optimal way to maximize returns. Marketing Resource Management is a complete set of capabilities for managing the growing operational complexities marketers face. Available through an enterprise software or on-demand deployment model.
Unica provides everything marketers need to better manage their marketing operations:

• Manage and coordinate all marketing activities in one place by using a central collaboration platform for sharing information, and tracking project status and performance.
• Improve decision making and minimize risk through greater visibility and tracking money being spent.
• Achieve faster, lower cost execution of all marketing activities.
  
  “Strategically assess, manage, and plan marketing programs and spend for maximized ROI”
  

Featured products:

IBM Marketing Operations:

          IBM Unica Marketing Operations – marketers increase their efficiency by gaining better control over their budgets and processes. IBM Marketing Operations helps marketers align resources to objectives, streamline production processes, track budgets and expenses, and improve team collaboration.
IBM Marketing Operations offers features that:

• Bring the work of those who plan campaigns and those who execute them together into a single, collaborative environment.
• Manage all aspects of marketing expenses from cost center definition to purchase order generation to invoice processing.

IBM Marketing Operations On Demand :

          IBM Unica Marketing Operations On Demand – marketing teams can get more work done while also improving the visibility and accountability of all their creative projects and marketing programs.
IBM Marketing Operations On Demand offers a rich set of capabilities that let you:

• Generate template-driven project plans in one click. Scheduling is made easy with a user-friendly tool, and automated notifications keep projects on track.
• Generate detailed reports such as the number of projects handled every month, quarter or year, what each team member is currently working on, what was recently completed, or what is coming in the future.
  

Why IBM Smarter Commerce Focuses on the Digital Customer

          

                            IBM is trying to make it easier for the marketing department and IT to play better together to help organizations reach their customers and constituents through more direct interaction, among other things. At its IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit­ in Orlando, Fla., Big Blue announced new software and services designed to help chief marketing officers (CMOs), chief procurement officers and other key line-of-business executives realize quicker business results by delivering intelligence-guided customer experiences across all digital channels, aligned to the buying and shopping preferences of each individual.

            IBM announced the expansion of its Smarter Commerce initiative with new cloud-based software and services that enable businesses to immediately put the customer at the center of their operations in order to drive revenue and ensure sustainable brand loyalty. The new initiatives include the IBM Marketing Center, an IBM Smart Cloud Solution that integrates digital analytics with real-time marketing execution capabilities into a single solution that allows CMOs to better meet customer needs by quickly analyzing customer shopping patterns and turning these insights into intelligent offers that are personalized to each person. IBM also announced a new Smarter Commerce Managed Services offering that helps clients more rapidly and effectively deploy and manage their e-commerce environments, as well as a new offering for Strategic Supply Management, available on-premises and as a Smart Cloud solution, which speeds and improves supplier governance, risk and compliance.

Solutions for Reducing Call Handle Time

A key metric for many call centers is average call handle time. It's clear why companies monitor this metric closely—the longer the call, the greater the expense to the organization and the greater the burden on the customer. For many organizations, the calls from website customers who were unable to complete their transactions online can be the longest and most expensive. Because call center agents have no visibility into what the customer did online, valuable time is wasted trying to diagnose where things went wrong before the transaction can be completed.

By providing the agent with complete visibility into customer web sessions, Tealeaf makes short work of diagnosing where things went wrong online, accelerating problem resolution significantly. Agents can also shadow-browse with customers to coach them to successful completion of the business process.

Customer Value Propositions in Business Markets

“Customer value proposition” has become one of the most widely used terms in business markets in recent years. Yet our management-practice research reveals that there is no agreement as to what constitutes a customer value proposition or what makes one persuasive. Moreover, we find that most value propositions make claims of savings and benefits to the customer without backing them up.

Some managers view the customer value proposition as a form of spin their marketing departments develop for advertising and promotional copy. This shortsighted view neglects the very real contribution of value propositions to superior business performance. Properly constructed, they force companies to rigorously focus on what their offerings are really worth to their customers. 
 
We conducted management-practice research over the past two years in Europe and the United States to understand what constitutes a customer value proposition and what makes one persuasive to customers. One striking discovery is that it is exceptionally difficult to find examples of value propositions that resonate with customers. Here, drawing on the best practices of a handful of suppliers in business markets, we present a systematic approach for developing value propositions that are meaningful to target customers and that focus suppliers’ efforts on creating superior value.

Three Kinds of Value Propositions
We have classified the ways that suppliers use the term “value proposition” into three types: all benefits, favorable points of difference, and resonating focus.
Which Alternative Conveys Value to Customers?

Suppliers use the term “value proposition” three different ways. Most managers simply list all the benefits they believe that their offering might deliver to target customers. The more they can think of, the better. Some managers do recognize that the customer has an alternative, but they often make the mistake of assuming that favorable points of difference must be valuable for the customer.

Best-practice suppliers base their value proposition on the few elements that matter most to target customers, demonstrate the value of this superior performance, and communicate it in a way that conveys a sophisticated understanding of the customer’s business priorities.

Benefits :
Our research indicates that most managers, when asked to construct a customer value proposition, simply list all the benefits they believe that their offering might deliver to target customers. The more they can think of, the better. This approach requires the least knowledge about customers and competitors and, thus, the least amount of work to construct.
However, its relative simplicity has a major potential drawback: benefit assertion. Managers may claim advantages for features that actually provide no benefit to target customers.
Such was the case with a company that sold high-performance gas chromatographs to R&D laboratories in large companies, universities, and government agencies in the Benelux countries.
One feature of a particular chromatograph allowed R&D lab customers to maintain a high degree of sample integrity. Seeking growth, the company began to market the most basic model of this chromatograph to a new segment: commercial laboratories. In initial meetings with prospective customers, the firm’s salespeople touted the benefits of maintaining sample integrity.

Investments in Social Technologies Climb, While Middle Management Struggles with Uptick

                       
                  Hai Every body,as per the IBM study over the big business companies Investment in social technologies, it causes the middle sized companies and their management facing the troubles.The IBM finds that while companies are increasing their social technology investments, middle management leaders are struggling to embrace these capabilities as part of their day-to-day work.IBM’s survey of 1,160 business and IT professionals shows that while 46 percent of the organizations increased their investments in social technologies in 2012, only 22 percent believed that managers are prepared to incorporate social tools and approaches into their daily practices.

             Despite intentions to rapidly accelerate social initiatives, many companies are still figuring out whether real returns can be gained on social investments. Two-thirds of respondents were not sure they sufficiently understood the impact that social technologies would have on their organizations over the next three years.

           According to a new IBM report (www.ibm.com/socbizstudy) entitled, “The Business of Social Business: What Works and How It’s Done,” companies at the forefront of this trend are doing more than developing a presence on major social platforms. A social business embeds social technologies into core business processes, and then applies the technologies to drive customer-facing activities such as lead generation, sales and post-sales service.

       “Businesses are struggling to make sense of the vast amount of data generated from social networks, said Kevin Custis, Vice President and Global Leader Social Business and Mobility Services, IBM Global Business Services. “To transform a vision into a reality, executive leadership must guide middle management on the value of being a social business, and build company-wide support for the use of social practices across organizational functions.”

                     As demonstrated in the study, the key to accelerating widespread adoption lies in an organization’s ability to build social business expertise among employees, while encouraging behavioral changes that may influence a wider cultural shift. However, only one-quarter of companies believe they are fully prepared to address the cultural changes that are associated with this transformation.

                    The IBM report suggests that for organizations to evolve into social enterprises, some basic groundwork must be laid. At the most basic level, management must provide an infrastructure for engagement -- setting up forums, team rooms and collaborative spaces. Once in place, social practices should be integrated into day-to-day work activities. For example, the use blog posts and activity streams can positively accentuate project management tasks.The organization must also create the capability to understand where and how data generation could benefit the enterprise. Finally, management must teach employees how to collaborate effectively with individuals outside of the organization’s boundaries, using social business methods and tools.

                      With the effective use of social technologies, organizations can integrate and analyze massive amounts of data generated from people, devices and sensors and more easily align these insights to business processes to make faster, more accurate business decisions. By gaining deeper insights in customer and market trends and employees' sentiment, businesses can uncover critical patterns to not only react swiftly to market shifts, but predict the effect of future actions. According to Forrester Research, the market opportunity for social enterprise apps is expected to grow at a rate of 61 percent through 2016*.

Search Engine Optimization - Return on Investment

Figuring out how to spark the Return on Investment of your online business can be a daunting task, considering the vast amounts of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) solutions there are available on the market. The bottom line is this: you want your site placed as high as possible in search engine results for the greatest traffic gains. But it can be confusing and frustrating for web property owners to figure out the best approach needed to increase web presence and visibility, without throwing countless dollars at a marketing plan that doesnt guarantee results.


The most effective ROI strategies for your online property begin by following a strong Search Engine Optimization plan and a few simple guidelines that include: organic optimization, adding relevant links, measuring web traffic, and outsourcing SEO.

Defining paid, earned and owned media

With the rise in importance of social media and online PR, we’re seeing more companies change their method of budgeting, reporting and investing in media to reflect the types of sites where audiences spend their time online. The trend is towards a review of investments in the 3 main media buckets of earned, shared and paid which each give opportunities to influence customers. None of these media types are new, but what is new is the increasing prominence given to owned and earned media while paid media has always dominated in the past.
1. Paid media. Simple. Paid or bought media are media where there is investment to pay for visitors, reach or conversions through search, display ad networks or affiliate marketing. Offline traditional media like print and TV advertising and direct mail remain important accounting for the majority of paid media spend.
2. Earned media. Traditionally, earned media has been the name given to publicity generated through PR invested in targeting influencers to increase awareness about a brand. Of course, it’s still an investment. Earned media also includes word-of-mouth that can be stimulated through viral and social media marketing and includes conversations in social networks, blogs and other communities. It’s useful to think of earned media as developed through different types of partners such as publishers, bloggers and other influencers including customer advocates. Think of earned media as different forms of conversations occurring both online and offline.
3. Owned media. This is media owned by the brand. Online this includes a company’s own websites, blogs, mobile apps or their social presence on Facebook, Linked In or Twitter. Offline owned media may include brochures or retails stores.
It’s useful to think of a company’s own presence as media in the sense that they are an alternative investment to other media and they offer opportunities to promote products using similar ad or editorial formats to other media. It emphasises the need for all organisations to become multi-channel publishers.

IBM Cross-channel campaign management

 Why IBM for Cross-channel campaign management?

        IBM’s Cross-channel campaign management capabilities can help you target thousands or millions of individuals with “the right message at the right time through the right channel”.
It mainly Tracks and honor individual customer preferences, and quickly and cost-effectively design, execute, and measure customer-driven communication strategies across all of your channels, online and offline.

• It Builds an effective, ongoing dialogue with your customer or prospect through a complete interaction history, such as offers presented, context and campaign details, and response or non-response.
• Manage the entirety of your campaign’s logic, including audience segmentation, exclusions and assignment of offers and channels.

Products of Cross-channel campaign management:

 IBM Campaign : Deliver personalized, relevant marketing messages across all channels with sophisticated campaign management.

• Build an effective, ongoing dialogue with your customer or prospect through a complete history, such as offers presented, context and campaign details, and response or non-response.
• Manage the entirety of your campaign’s logic, including audience segmentation, exclusions, and assignment of offers and channels.

IBM Contact Optimization :Determine the optimal contact strategy over time for your customers. 

• IBM Unica Optimize can ensure your customers receive the most relevant and profitable offers while satisfying the needs of individual business areas and minimizing customer contact fatigue.

• Define recorded preferences for each customer, such as preferred channel to receive communications, maximum number of contacts each customer wishes to receive each month, and primary product or service interests.
  

IBM e Message : Engage customers and prospects with timely,personalized outbound digital messages.

• With IBM e Message, marketers can extend IBM Campaign capabilities to email and other outbound digital campaigns with the ability to create, preview, test, execute, and track messages.
• 
  IBM e Message delivers more effective stand-alone campaigns, as well as integrating these communication channels into cross-channel marketing strategies.

IBM Interact : Determine the right message to present in inbound marketing channels

•  With IBM Interact, marketers can personalize in real time the experience of customers interacting with websites, call centers, and other inbound marketing channels.

• The use of IBM Interact in combination with IBM Product Recommendations allows personalized offers to be delivered with product recommendations, increasing the relevance of appeal of personalized messages delivered in real time.

IBM Opportunity Detection :

•       Mainly involves in Event-based marketing to improve cross-sell and retention.
•        With IBM opportunity Detection, formerly Unica Detect, marketers can build effective, event-based marketing programs quickly and with minimal effort, boosting cross-sell and retention rates and improving on- boarding programs.

How Unica eMessage adds value to your business

Engage customers and prospects with timely, personalized outbound digital messages

With IBM Unica eMessage, marketers can extend Unica Campaign capabilities to email and other outbound digital campaigns with the ability to create, preview, test, execute, and track messages. Unica eMessage delivers more effective stand-alone campaigns, as well as integrating these communication channels into cross-channel marketing strategies.

Unica eMessage supports the entire marketing life cycle, from idea through to post campaign analysis.

• Leverage the full range of your on premise customer data through a hybridized on-demand deployment and messaging delivery engine.
• Ensure messages are getting to your intended recipients and customers with a full range of in-box delivery and content optimization reports.
• Achieve robust content creation and management with a drag-and drop assembly of templates, digital assets, personalization logic, and landing pages.
• Create an interactive marketing dialogue with customers through email and mobile messaging woven together with other outbound and inbound channels, both on-line and off-line.
  

Segment, target and personalize

• Drive revenue by targeting the right customers for the right offer
• Track your performance to unique populations based on fine segmentation criteria
• Track customer behavior “after the click,” learn how email drives revenue across your website — and re-target customers with precision.
• Visualize and measure the impact of email campaigns on web traffic to refine your cross-channel initiatives.
• Seamlessly follow consumers from click to browse to determine your email’s reach and influence on website traffic.
• Refine your targeting with up to date performance data and make smarter choices on the next iteration
  

Efficient message delivery

• Achieve efficiency with an integrated, hybridized campaign creation and a digital message delivery solution.
• Drive deep insight into post-click-analysis through customer behavior by examining all of your outbound campaigns and channels.
• Send fully targeted and personalized messages through an On-Demand delivery engine while protecting your customer data on site in your guarded environment.
  

Robust content creation

• Assemble new message content with the drag-and-drop message editor and preview how emails will look in a wide variety of email client types.
• Design and execute more effective strategies and interact more effectively with customers and prospects.
  

Interactive marketing dialogue

• Implement a series of targeted follow-up emails based on interest expressed on your website.
• Enable an interactive, cross-channel dialogue with customers through synchronization with other outbound and inbound channels.
  

Smarter Commerce SaaS Referral Incentive for Business Partners

               IBM is aligning its fast-growing Smarter Commerce SaaS Referral Incentive for Business Partners with a new channel offering designed to drive increased Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) sales and arm Business Partners with the ability to provide customers with quick access to IBM business solutions in the cloud.

Business Partners are looking to expand their capabilities to more effectively fulfill client demands brought on by new online buying patterns that are driven by social networking and mobile computing trends.
The Smarter Commerce SaaS Referral Incentive for Business Partners is a "fast start" offering that encourages accelerated cloud adoption by enabling Business Partners, including cloud services solution providers, to deliver Smarter Commerce solutions.

Benefits:

These benefits and incentives are available only after you qualify for the Smarter Commerce SaaS Referral Incentive for Business Partners.

IBM Coremetrics for optimizing web interaction and sales.

IBM Unica OnDemand for driving incremental business through focused and targeted marketing.

IBM DemandTec is a network of software services connecting retailers and consumer products companies enabling them to define category, brand and shopper marketing strategies.

IBM Sterling Commerce for maximizing supply chain and efficiency.

IBM Commerce on Cloud enables companies of all sizes to quickly maximize their on-line revenue potential and deliver the same capabilities that best-in-class cross-channel retailers provide to their customers.

IBM Emptoris enables companies to maximize financial performance and optimize procurement.

IBM Smarter Cities manages growth and development in a sustainable way that minimizes disruptions and helps increase prosperity for everyone.

IBM WebSphere Cast Iron enables companies to rapidly connect their hybrid world of public clouds, private clouds and on-premise applications.

IBM Smarter Commerce Customer Experence

 
                          
              Hello Every Body I would like to give a small introduction about the Smarter Commerce and  its Usages, I thought that With out a Smarter Commerce there is no smarter planet,and IBM is very much attached to its smarter planter strategy. While it has done a lot of work over recent months with analytics and business intelligence to create smart cities and Business,So the  release of Smarter Commerce are well worth a look.

            IBM(Big Blue )made the announcements at its Smarter Global Summit, which was held  on 06 sep 2012 in Orlando.

Customer Experience, Business Intelligence

        Generally What i thought is IBM Smarter Commerce is specifically for Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Procurement Officers and other top business people that are tasked with producing better and quicker results through better customer experiences across all digital channels.

               Just like Smarter Cities, at the heart of IBM-inspired customer experiences are business-intelligence-based software solutions that tap into the buying, spending and shopping preferences of each individual.All the new solutions in question are cloud-based, which means that companies that decide they need this kind of approach to customer experience can be up and running in a really short period of time.

     IBM expands its Smarter Commerce initiative with new cloud-based software and services that include:

IBM Marketing Center

       This is a Smart Cloud solution that combines real-time marketing execution capabilities with analytics in a single solution enabling companies to analyze shopping patterns and develop offers based on business intelligence taken from the client.

    According to IBM, once live, enterprise can turn data provided by customers into personalized offers via email or website personalization , all with a few clicks.

Smarter Commerce Managed Services

      These services are being provided by its Global Process Services group, which adds to IBM's software and global business services offerings. Services include full business process and IT managed services that enable businesses to manage all their cross-channel commerce processes.

            But Smarter Commerce is not just about software. IBM will also provide human-to-human interaction through these services. IBM says this will simplify the process of interconnecting multiple commerce channels.
Strategic Supply Management

          In This Case I would like to speak about the IBM's new Emptoris Strategic Supply Management,Which is available as an on-premises or a cloud solution that speeds-up and improves governance, compliance and risk management for product suppliers. With it enterprises are offered a complete view of spending, contracts, service providers and supplier intelligence and processes.

              This too comes with enhanced governance, risk and compliance (GRC) features as well as improved analytics for contract, compliance and improved program accountability.

                Finally, IBM has also announced a new asset repository that accelerates the adoption of solutions for Smarter Commerce. IBM Smarter Commerce captures implementation best practices, assets and knowledge that can then be distributed across the enterprise to ensure that any improvements in one part of the enterprise are shared across the board and I suggested that IBM Smarter Commerce is the Best tool for Improving the business Strategies.

Social media driving E-Commerce business

Social networking sites are undoubtedly the most popular websites nowadays and are growing extremely rapidly. With this growth comes new, exciting opportunities for marketing and promotions of your online business (commonly referred to as social media marketing).
For those not familiar with social networking, some of the top sites are Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Now is it ringing a bell? There are so many ways that you can get creative in order to take advantage of social networking as a marketing strategy. You can use these services to connect on a personal level with your clients and customers in order to help you figure out your promotional campaigns.
Regardless of what kind of business you operate and what products or services you sell, there is most likely a way you can use social networking sites to promote your business.
With the advent of new websites and services comes new marketing and business strategies and brand new ways of looking at things entirely.
Sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter create online communities of users that come together in order to discuss, comment on, share stories/articles/videos/pictures/etc. Sites like Facebook have become ways for people to not only connect to their friends, family and colleagues but ways for businesses to create pages in which users can “Like” your business. They can write on your wall, comment on your pictures and start discussions regarding your products. You can gain insights into the psyches and personal lives of your customers in ways you never could before.
Groups are common to mostly all social networking sites. If you join groups that are related to your business then you can easily reach your target demographic.

IBM Coremetrics Intelligent Offer

IBM Coremetrics is the leader in marketing optimization. Its products help businesses relentlessly optimize their marketing programs to make the best offer, every time, anywhere, automatically. More than 2,100 online brands globally use IBM Coremetrics Software as a Service (SaaS) to optimize their on-line marketing. IBM Coremetrics integrated marketing optimization solutions include real-time personalized recommendations, email targeting, display ad targeting across leading ad networks, and search engine bid management. The company's solutions are delivered on the only on-line analytics platform that is designed to anticipate the needs of every customer, to automate marketing decisions in real time, and to syndicate information across all customer channels.

Increase revenue by making product recommendations that are behavior-based, relevant,

and timely.

Highly relevant product recommendations lead to increased revenue. Providing relevant product recommendations not only offers a valued service, but also enables the discovery of products which visitors might not know were offered.

With IBM Coremetrics Intelligent Offer, it is easy to optimize your marketing efforts and engage your customers with recommendations across multiple channels that are behavior-based, relevant, and timely. Because Coremetrics Intelligent Offer recommendations are driven by your customers’ current interests, recommendations are received more positively and can lift revenues by as much as 20 percent. Coremetrics Intelligent Offer also makes it easy to demonstrate results by including impact reports that quantify the increase in revenue, conversion rate, and average order value that is directly attributable to the recommendations. Coremetrics Intelligent Offer also makes it easy to demonstrate results by including impact reports that quantify the increase in revenue, conversion rate, and average order value that is directly attributable to the recommendations.

Smarter product recommendations:

The recommendation algorithms and personalization components of Coremetrics Intelligent Offer are 100 percent automated and continually learned from new crowd and individual data to optimize returns. In addition, Coremetrics Intelligent Offer provides users with the visibil- ity, flexibility and control to quickly optimize product recommendations to maximize business results.

Personalized for each customer :

As a component of the Coremetrics Digital Marketing Optimization Suite, Coremetrics Intelligent Offer automatically optimizes product recommendations based on the customer’s current shopping interests, search queries, wisdom of the crowd, business rules, and a complete history of the visitor’s behavior including historical data captured in their Coremetrics Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience (LIVE) Profile. This unique combination enables Coremetrics Intelligent Offer to

present each customer with the most relevant, effective and timely recommendation possible for wherever they are in the buying process.

Delivered through multiple channels :

As the lines between online and offline are blurring, people are increasingly interacting with a brand across a myriad of channels. Coremetrics Intelligent Offer enables you to provide a personalized and consistent shopping support for your customers through the different channels they use to interact with your brand by including relevant recommendations on web site product and category pages, search results pages, and shopping cart pages—as well as beyond the web site in emails, display ads, mobile applications, social media sites, call centers, and in-store shopping aids. Coremetrics Intelligent Offer also enables users to create and deploy best practice recommendations across these multiple delivery points.