August 30th, 2010
by Brian Hobzek

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, and it can certainly be nice to present data in visual form. But on the IT and analytical side, we are sometimes skeptical of pretty pictures. We worry they can oversimplify data, mislead viewers, or prevent the kind of manipulation (i.e. sorting, filtering, and pivoting) we need to garner real business insights.

So, when should you use your data to create a visual representation of your business intelligence? I thinks it depends on two main factors:

• Who is your audience? Are you talking to other analysts, your marketing team, or executives? How much time will you have? What are their priorities? As with any presentation, this should guide how detailed your visualization is.
• Will the visualization make your data substantially clearer? Can you find a visual format that is easily comprehensible? You want the visualization to illuminate your data, rather than obscuring it. If your charts distract viewers from the important insights, causing them to fixate on red herrings, reconsider your visualization.

Because we have more data, faster processing, and more complex data sources, Business Intelligence now has access to a quantity (and quality) of data that was previously only accessible to enormous research firms—or NASA. Making sense of this data is harder than ever, and design can be a vital part of digesting and presenting data effectively. (A recent TED talk did a great job of showing just how helpful it can be.)

IT’s cultural hesitation about “just” pretty pictures is justified: how many times have we had someone draw up an elegant UI on a wireframe, but neglect to involve the technical team in discussions about feasibility and long term flexibility and support? We know that starting with the picture can run the risk of creating unrealistic expectations or ignoring technical realities. We prefer to start with data and the ability to sort, filter, pivot and manipulate it in whatever ways we need to make our analysis.

On the other hand, if I’m a Chief Marketing Officer and I can quickly illustrate—with hard data—my claim that this year’s campaigns have been more effective than last year’s, my CEO is much more likely to sign off on the budget I’m seeking for next year. A dramatically sloped line, intriguingly weighted pie chart, or clear spatial correlation can be stunningly persuasive. What if I could look at multiple campaigns and channels and overlay the impact one has when used in conjunction with another one? For instance, email and a quick follow up phone call vs. a newsletter sent out after a trade show?

If I’m a business owner, good data visualization can give me a snapshot of how my business is performing as well as helping me spot trends and trouble spots more quickly. For the techie in IT, visualization provides validation for my business intelligence initiatives by increasing understanding of them among those who operate more at the business level.

Recently I attended a Seattle Technical Start Up meeting, where Tableau Software presented their method for visualization of data about FAA accidents with various types of birds. The type of bird was represented by a colored circle which grew in size relative to the total cost of the collision with the airplane. At a glance, you could tell which type of bird caused the greatest damage and filter by time of day or type of aircraft, drilling down to the underlying source and raw data to appease their need to see the numbers.

If we can more quickly and clearly understand the vast amounts of data we all are confronted with on a daily basis and use this information to make changes in our business processes earlier on, we’re one step closer to the promised land of analytical enlightenment.

Contact me at brianh@projectlineinc.com if you would like to learn more.

August 19th, 2010
by Ed Siegrist

Online customer communities are all the rage these days. One doesn’t have to look very far to see a Facebook or Twitter page rife with customers chattering back and forth, providing valuable word of mouth advertising without the cost of big media buys. However, for every Comcast and Ford, there’s a graveyard of communities that never get off the ground. The scenario goes something like this:

• Step 1: Enterprise 2.0 savvy marketer gets buy-in from boss on a customer community.
• Step 2: Enterprise 2.0 savvy marketer builds community using the newest, latest cool online tool – something with lots of vowels in its name.
• Step 3: Enterprise 2.0 savvy marketer invites customer community to visit the online site.
• Step 4: and then nothing happens…

Well, the boss complains about a failed project, but that’s likely not the desired result. When it comes to online communities, the argument of nature vs. nurture is irrelevant. If you lock five people in a room for a period of time, those persons have no choice but to interact. In the online world, there’s always something else vying your communities’ eyeballs.

You can do everything right in planning your community, but without ongoing management, marketing, and maintenance, you set yourself up for a lone spike in traffic, and that’s it. As much as organizations want customer feedback, customers also want a reason to come back to the community. You don’t have to create elaborate content to keep users returning, but you will need to maintain an ongoing presence that speaks to the needs of your customer base.

This maintenance should be as much a part of the community plan as setting up the goals and choosing your initial customer targets, and resources should be allocated accordingly. Plan for ongoing content creation, and remember that even if you intend to be the key point of engagement for your community, your time is not free. In most cases, a successful customer community has a dedicated community manager that can focus on community promotion, content creation, community monitoring, and reporting. A dedicated community manager can help you build a stronger relationship between your company and your customers.

At Projectline, we love nothing more than creating spaces for the voice of the customer to ring loud and clear. We can help you build and grow a community where your customers can share their experiences, learn from your leadership, and provide much-needed feedback for strategic planning. When run correctly, these communities can also increase customer loyalty and positive word of mouth.

tags: customer communities

August 16th, 2010
by Corey Mahoney

We’re excited to share a great new article from our Business Intelligence team: 4 Steps to a Better Customer Dimension.

Good business intelligence is invaluable in helping companies decipher the flood of information about their customers. A well-designed, flexible customer dimension is crucial to gathering, filtering, and presenting customer data effectively.

Our article spells out the most important considerations in building or improving a robust customer dimension. We offer recommendations that are relevant for business intelligence challenges shared by startups and Fortune 500 corporations alike. We’ll discuss why you should plan for core business needs, prepare for flexibility, prioritize for swift adoption, and design with the future in mind.

It’s totally free to read and download, so please–take a look, read it through, and let us know if it raises any questions for you. We’d love to answer them in the next installment!

tags: article, business intelligence, customer intelligence

July 26th, 2010
by Anika Lehde

At Projectline we have produced dozens of testimonial videos for our clients all over the world. We have also seen hundreds of videos that are just short of great due to a few common mistakes. Occasionally we are even asked to go against our better judgment and knowledge to create a video that is less of a true customer story. We resist when we can.

Lighting? Good sound? A huge production team? Hiring the right consulting firm to help? No, these aren’t where the most critical mistakes are made.

If you are just embarking on your first customer or partner testimonial videos or you need a refresher, let me share with you the 3 most common mistakes that can render a video significantly less impactful. As helpful as they can be with most content, don’t let your branding manager or your senior executive bully you into changing your true testimonials into marketing mush:

• Don’t narrate the story. Here’s the thing: if YOU are telling the story instead of your customer, you are losing the single most powerful effect of the video. A narrator can and will say anything their client asks of them. A customer will not. Let your customer tell the story, because they’ll be more trustworthy. Ask them questions that bring out the full story from beginning to end. To that same end, do not have your customer memorize a script or specific ways to say things. Let them break your brand rules and be genuine.
• Don’t appear in your video. Your audience isn’t interested in what you have to say about your own products or services. Even if your Account Manager, Technical Consultant, or Customer Service Rep was instrumental in the customer’s satisfaction, don’t interview your internal team about how great they are or how they helped. Let the customer tell the story. Let your customer talk about them if it was important.
• Don’t over-emphasize branding throughout the video or place product logos in every shot. We’ve all seen videos where the company shows the product logo every time the customer says the product name! There is no need to show your product logo over and over – in fact, it disrupts the story and turns a genuine interview and customer testimonial into one more piece of marketing fluff. Include your logo and URL at the end of the video with a call to action.

You can have the tiniest budget video, but as long as you let the customer tell the real story, you have gold in your hands. Don’t let over production and micro-management overshadow a real life story. Go forth. Record. Share.

[The videos above are ones we're proud of. One highlights one of our own happy customers, and the other is a video we produced on behalf of a client.]

tags: customer evidence, video

July 12th, 2010
by Brian Hobzek

I spent the first half of last week at Gartner’s Customer 360 conference, which used to be known as the Gartner CRM conference. As part of my attendance, I was asked to take part in a focus group that provided feedback on the rebranding and conference changes, which led to some interesting perspectives on what “Customer 360” meant and what the conference was all about.

Some participants thought the new title implied too much emphasis on data and metrics, and others were sorry to see the “CRM” moniker go, but I think the change demonstrates the coming of age of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the convergence of marketing and business intelligence. The new name, to me, shows that the industry has recognized the need to get a full 360 degree view of the customer.

One of my favorite sessions that spoke to this was by Gartner Analyst Bill Gassman. Called “How Marketing Benefits from Data Analysis and Marketing Skills,” it focused on three major areas: how BI can help with marketing strategy, bringing the business and IT closer together, and the importance of data quality. His presentation described some of the ways that a good business intelligence framework can contribute to that 360-view of the customer by avoiding information silos.

The focus on comprehensive customer insight is especially important in the current economic climate, with tightening budgets; the CEO, CFO, and Sr. Marketing management are all being held more accountable for the return on their marketing spend. They need the information to decide which programs are most effective.

At Projectline, we’re helping our customers get the insight they need by helping unlock siloed data, improve data quality, and manage the whole view of the customer. To learn more, contact me at brianh@projectlineinc.com.

July 2nd, 2010
by Corey Mahoney

This past Sunday (as usual), we found ourselves looking for brunch. The nearest place is an odd little corner café descriptively named the Volunteer Park Café. They have delicious quiche, good salads, and a nearly overwhelming banana French toast dish. From a block away, we could see someone standing in the doorway with a boom mic. Was it a news crew? Was the café still open? People seemed to be going in past the filming operation, so we followed them in.

Inside, there was a note on the register explaining the video shoot: a friend of the café had volunteered to film “Love letters to VPC” in support of the owners and café community. Customers were encouraged to share if they had anything nice to say about the café or their experiences at the café over the years.

Why Love Letters?

It turns out that the café has been working on building a back patio for some outdoor seating, and one of the neighbors objects. That neighbor has filed a complaint with the city pointing out that the building is historically zoned as “grocery” instead of “grocery/café.”

In order to stay in its spot—and continue to grow—the café will need to request a zoning change from the Department of Planning and Development. And in order to do that, they’re collecting customer stories to build a “supportive argument” for the café.

The oldest social media

From my spot by the wall, I can hear what’s going on around me: two elderly gentlemen in the corner are discussing the Federalist Papers; one of the owners is greeting a baby whose mother is standing in line; two men with dueling MacBooks are working beside me; and several pairs of friends are meeting for lunch.

Video testimonials, customer evidence, and new media may be popular buzzwords and growing marketing practices, but this is the oldest “social” media: people gathering to talk with each other, work together, and build communities. It seems only natural that video and “new” media should support this place’s existence.

It’s a good reminder: the boom mic may be new, and the Twitter account might help a little bit, but the real secret to great customer evidence and strong testimonials is helping them fall in love—with your space, with the products, with each other, and with the community.

tags: customer evidence, social media

June 18th, 2010
by Eric Larson

Recently, we’ve been helping a client assess sales materials to figure out how they can improve relevance and quality. In talking to the product marketers and sales people, we discovered a few gaps.

Often, sales people modify materials to fit their prospects, presentation lengths, or personal styles—not to mention adjusting according to what works well and what falls flat. For marketing teams to capture what the sales people are learning and improve the materials over time, you need to build in a feedback loop.

Because everyone—not just customers, but sales people and marketers too—is getting used to interacting more directly through online networking and social media, our expectations have changed; we expect to be able to speak back, rate, and comment on things, whether they’re products, experiences, or even sales assets.

How might a product marketer enable that feedback and create the tools to capture it?

• Assign a contact person or owner for each piece of material. Even if it’s not the perfect person, or several people should be involved, having someone “own” the material will prevent “not-my-job” and help ensure that there’s some accountability.
• Create a central repository for the materials (many organizations already have something like this), but allow for commenting or rating of each asset. Think of how easy it is for people to “like,” “upvote,” or “downvote” something on Facebook, Reddit, or Digg – aim to create a frictionless way of communicating effectiveness.
• Have the sales team nominate their most effective colleagues in the field, then ask those people to share the collateral that works for them. Ideally, they could also provide trainings or even example presentations, so that both product marketers and sales colleagues could see the sales assets in action.
• Bring together some of those field champions to review content as it becomes available, using their experience to provide some initial improvements so the content can perform better right off the bat.
• As a product marketer, don’t get too attached to your material. If you feel personally invested in the materials instead of the materials’ success, your pride can stand in the way of getting the best content for your audience. Your job is to shepherd the content to its best result, not to guard its wording.

Most of all, keep in mind that any solution needs to save time, not create more steps and tasks. Be respectful of your colleagues’ time—anything that costs them sales time won’t be sustainable beyond a few weeks.

tags: marketing, sales

June 14th, 2010
by Kim Johnson

For many companies, email newsletters are still a vital tool for communicating internally and keeping employees looped in to company-wide news.

However, internal newsletters are often running on a tight budget. As a result, internal communications teams often design, develop, and disseminate these newsletters in-house. For an internal communicator tasked with an email newsletter project, one of the first things to consider is what kind of template will work best to make newsletter production manageable. Because there are so many options for email newsletter templates, it takes a bit of planning and foresight to choose one that fits your needs and resources.

A visually appealing template is definitely important, and employing the services of a graphic designer is money well spent if your budget allows for it. It’s easy to become hyper-focused on aesthetics (everyone likes a pretty email newsletter), but a good design isn’t the only thing to consider. To me, a template that balances beauty, functionality, and flexibility—and plays well with a wide variety of email clients—is a clear front-runner.

In my experience, people tend to lean towards using Microsoft Office Word document templates when email newsletter projects arise, because they are so familiar with Word. However, there are other options worth considering. Below are a few of the options that I have come across, including the up- and down-sides I’ve experienced with each:

At the end of the day, it comes down to your needs, preference, and budget. You can compare a good email newsletter template to a good, practical car. Ultimately, it should do what you need it to do: get you where you’re going, or communicate across your organization. In both a template and car, I want something that’s attractive, economical, and reliable.

One recommendation before you choose: make your email newsletter accountable. Having the ability to get metrics (e.g., open rates, click through rates, etc.) is key to measuring the success of your program, and worth considering as you look for a newsletter solution. A communication ROI study by Towers Watson found that highly effective communicators are using more communication metrics (than less effective communicators) in their employee communications programs. However, 43% of participants reported that they had no formal measurements or assessments in place. The primary obstacle to using metrics was insufficient resources. This can become something of a Catch-22; if you don’t have budget, you may have trouble implementing a solution that allows for metrics, but if you don’t have metrics, you’ll face an uphill battle in demonstrating the value of your program to build a case for more resources.

There are a lot of options, but if you can update the template easily, the formatting is stable, and you have reporting and tracking capabilities, then you’re ready to roll. If you need help developing or producing effective internal communications, contact us. We’re always happy to help!

tags: email marketing, internal communications

June 8th, 2010
by Eric Burgess

Today, we’re happy to share a blog post by Eric Burgess, a Social Media Strategist on the team that works with Microsoft’s Startup Business Group. This was originally posted on his blog, but offers some grounded advice about how he does great work for our clients.

Being a Social Media Strategist at Microsoft (by way of Projectline) involves much more than just tweeting and maintaining a Facebook page. It’s about building community. Our product, one in the educational sector, requires a lot of online networking. I work hard to establish and build trust with educators around the world. While you think the Microsoft name alone would give you a shoo-in to any community – it simply doesn’t.

Teachers want to know that you are just as passionate about education as you are about the product you are marketing. To show them this, when I tweet out something, I usually always sign my name at the end to help give it that personal touch. Many Social Strategists and Community Managers sign only with their initials in this fashion: ^EB. I go the extra mile and sign: -eric. On Facebook, I will send them personal emails and comments with my own profile (Eric Burgess) as well with my Mouse Mischief profile. It’s absolutely crucial in this day and age to be as reachable as you can to your customers. The old way of conducting customer service by way of 800 numbers and expensive CMS email software is on its way out. People want immediate access to you – so why not give it to them? It’s all a part of the community building I mentioned earlier. How can you build a community without making you and your product as transparent as possible? You can’t. Below are some important things to consider as you work to build up your community.

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tags: online communities, social media

June 4th, 2010
by Brian Hobzek

During lunch at last month’s Gartner BI Summit, Microsoft presented an overview of their new PowerPivot product. As they showed its capabilities, you could see the look of concern spread across the faces of IT managers in the audience. Their furrowed eyebrows seemed to say, Great, something else that can spread like wildfire and create more information silos—just when we thought we had business users reigned in and had done away with their under-the-desk ‘shadow apps.’ Now we’ll never get one version of the truth.

But, like it or not, the meteoric rise of “self-serve” Business Intelligence tools (like Qlickview, Tableau Software, and PowerPivot) shows that these tools are not going away—and maybe that’s not such a bad thing. In fact, I would argue that these new tools will actually be good for the adoption and overall growth and maturity of Business Intelligence in many organizations.

While these tools aren’t a substitute for dimensional modeling, they do serve a purpose and help to drive more investment in projects that show a greater ROI; they serve as a foundation for better collaboration between business and IT by giving the business users tools that help them access data and build their own reports. Looking at how these tools are used, allows IT to get a better understanding of what the business truly wants to measure and can make better investment decisions around data warehousing and decision support systems to serve a broader audience.

For example, let’s say I’m the manager of customer service and I decide the enterprise Business Intelligence tool I’m using doesn’t give me all of the information I’m looking for. Perhaps I’ve seen a 20% drop in customers over the last year—I need to find out why they are leaving. Using my CRM and some Pivot Tables, I can spin up some quick reports that bring in other data sources that I think might be relevant to the recent changes.

If my analysis shows a strong correlation between the loss of my customers and (for instance) a new competitor opening in my region, then I probably want to bring that data into more of a main stream environment and share it across the organization. If the drop seems primarily related to the change in economy, I probably don’t need to invest in a more tightly and costly integrated solution that brings the new data source into my centralized data warehouse. In this scenario, a few simple self-service tools could provide a rapid solution to help me understand some changes in my business (without bothering the busy folks in IT) as well as a barometer on what data/reporting needs should be brought into a more formalized reporting framework.

So there’s no need to be afraid of the more powerful self-service tools. Used correctly, they don’t take the place of data warehousing or integrated intelligence models—they simply help make informed decisions about larger Business Intelligence solutions.

If you’d like to learn more about how to establish a framework for successfully integrating these tools into your current BI environment, contact me at brianh@projectlineinc.com. We’d love to help.

tags: business intelligence