Keeping Up with Expectations: Buyer Satisfaction and the Customer Experience

There used to be saying in business that the customer is always right and anything or everything should be done to make the customer happy, even if it includes throwing someone under a bus. On the other hand, some professionals in sales and service would contend that keeping the company mission in mind and fairly representing the company side of things is a better way even if the customer goes away mad.

Mobile BI Design Framework: Real Estate

Just as the saying goes “There are three things that matter in property: location, location, location,” the screen on a mobile device is the most valuable design property. The limited amount of space still remains as one of the biggest challenges in designing for mobile devices. Maximizing the user interface for both consumption and interaction is critical to the design of an effective mobile business intelligence (BI) asset.

Here are several pointers that will help you make the best use of this valuable mobile property.

Everyday BI: Introduction

Business intelligence (BI) is everywhere. It’s more accessible. It’s mobile. It’s in the cloud. It runs in real time. It’s part of “Big Data” and small data. Simply put, BI surfaces, in one shape or another, in a tangled, twisted, and integrated way everywhere in our everyday lives. In this new series, I want to take a…

Sports and Analytics: Vision for Tomorrow

Imagine traveling back in time to attend a major sports event in the early 20th Century. The game-day broadcast may be available, but only on the radio. You may be able to buy hot dogs, but there are no fancy drinks or snacks. Forget about large-screen monitors or billboards. And the only thing that fans bring to the game is themselves—no smartphones, and no tweeting.

Now, contrast that image against the world of sports today. The comparisons are amazing, and they remind me of how computer systems no more powerful than a pocket calculator were able to guide astronauts in theApollo mission to the moon.

Mobile BI Design Framework: Design Elements

The advent of the mouse and large screen-dependent design elements of the PC era influenced the makeup of traditional business intelligence (BI) solutions. Similarly, mobile BI comes with its own design elements that replace the mouse with touch screens, which merge the input and output components into a single device.

The “mobile BI design framework” promotes the idea that mastering these mobile design elements can benefit mobile developers (not just mobile BI teams) in order to deliver on the promise of mobile.

Here are several key design elements that I’ll cover in more detail in this series.

10 Steps to Customer Feedback and Dialogue Excellence – Are You Looking at the Past, or the Future?

A cornerstone of the customer experience revolution, organizations around the world are increasing their investment in soliciting customer feedback. Yet there’s one dirty little secret no one wants to talk about: response rate. Most customers ignore or refuse to respond to all the requests for feedback they get. To best understand this dirty little issue,…

Mobile BI Design Framework: Audience

It goes without saying that when we design anything, we must know and understand our audience well. But I often find that in mobile business intelligence (BI) projects, this is where the first oversight happens—not because we lack the knowledge, but because we make the wrong assumptions.

The “mobile BI design framework” promotes the idea that we need to go beyond just knowing our audience by creating every opportunity for greater user interaction right from the onset of our engagements.

The Data Behind Speed: Trade-offs in Fast Food Speed and Variety

Firms are settling for being fast enough. Sliding a bit on service times — as long as it doesn’t get crazy long — is acceptable because it let’s the firms distinguish themselves. A unique salad offering separates Wendy’s from McDonalds’ and potentially draws a premium price. The question is at what point would service times become a problem. That is, at what point does greater product variety stretch out service so long that a new salad or taco just ain’t worth it?

The 6 Steps of the Blue Ocean Strategy from a Process Perspective

The Blue Ocean Strategy is highly related to process innovation. The idea of this strategy is to build new businesses where none existed before. So-called Blue Ocean industries are more profitable than traditional business fields with head-to-head competitors. In the Blue Ocean strategy, you must offer your customers a value innovation (i.e. tangible product or service advancements) accompanied by demonstrable savings. To be able to do that, you have to look at your process innovation from a new perspective. Let’s revisit the six steps of the Blue Ocean strategy from a process point-of-view.