Guest Post: The Relationship Between Cloud ERP and Big Data
There have been quite a few articles written on adopting cloud-based ERP, and whether the technology will be along the lines of its counterparts. Businesses are becoming more aware of the computer industry and the software is improving with each release. Cloud technology is becoming crucial in developing new capabilities to attract customers.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) within the cloud is the engine utilizing data produced on the plant floor to power manufacturers. Cloud ERP gives manufacturers more precise and real-time data. Also, it is delivering programmable logic controllers, barcode readers, visual management systems, and wearable technology that can assimilate with the ERP system.
Big data is popular amongst business intelligence and analytics applications. Big data technology is evolving and it is changing application systems that have long supported them; it has given challenges and great opportunities. Acquiring business value is not only a challenge but it puts the business’ goals into context. 18-20% of the world’s GDP is contributed by manufacturing. Data is well on its way to becoming the new way to be efficient, since manufacturers worldwide are using it gain an edge on the competition. They are looking for products to better themselves and their consumers while discovering services that can be innovative and add to their image. 50% of reduction from manufacturing in product development holds real value. The largest source, arguably, of data in manufacturing is from ERP. Cloud adaptation is being forced at this point, which is the location where data is evaluated and processed using state of the art analytical engines that can slice and splice data into conventional and unconventional sources. ERP is now the connection of the cloud and Big Data.
Cloud ERP showcases enhanced flexibility, customization, lowered cost of ownership, and better integration with emerging technologies. You may also see a lowered number of times you call your IT department. The developments indicate that ERP on the cloud is not a situation of when manufacturing will become part of the trend, but what it will choose to deliver via the cloud before ERP immerses itself in the cloud completely.
In this moment, ERP in the cloud has proven itself to be a key player in manufacturing. Many companies will do their best to obtain flexibility, enhance customization, lower their costs and drive the integration of emerging technologies. The cloud will be a central figure in its success. As manufacturers gain confidence and experience the benefits, modules that go far above the functions of basic ERP will submerge in the cloud. Mobility and data growth are adding to the need, which would take ERP into the cloud, to create an improvement in efficiency and intelligence leveraged regardless of time and locality. This change coming will be historic. The ERP landscape is being reshaped as this is being written.
(Image Source: FanRP)
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Saurab Prabhakar is a SEO & Outreach Intern at The Marketing Zen Group. He writes creative content on behalf of the ERP systems specialists at TGO Consulting, and enjoys his work. You’ll find him instructing Group Fitness classes and enjoying great food. You can connect with Saurab on LinkedIn.
NICE Systems Announces the Launch of Total Voice of the Customer (TVOC)
What is NICE Systems Voice of The Customer Announcement Mean to Your Company? The announcement the launch of Total Voice of the Customer (TVOC) is the latest addition to the NICE VOC suite of solutions. TVOC leverages NICE’s Voice of the Customer solution, alongside NICE’s unique Interaction Analytics capabilities and vast experience in recording calls and making sense of that information through analytics. The solution enables enterprises to listen to and register what their customers are saying — directly and indirectly — in calls, chats, emails, on the web and in any other channel and analyzing the interactions to extract implicit feedback data. With the acquisition of Nexidia Interactive Analytics, NICE’s VOC capabilities will be even further strengthened, creating a true Customer Analytics Powerhouse.
What is Included in NICE TVOC? NICE TVOC adds voice recordings, social engagement, chat logs and other digital channels to multi-channel surveys, in order to deliver a complete picture of customer disposition. It also leverages the power of the reams of data captured during millions of conversations to yield valuable, actionable insights into customers’ thoughts, including those not obtained in surveys.
What Should Your Brand Be Striving For Around Single View of the Customer? Achieving a single view of the customer across multiple channels is among today’s top challenges for customer experience management. NICE TVOC helps solve this pain point with its unique ability to deeply analyze the unstructured content of the customer communication across all channels. The insight derived can be used in conjunction with other data to map emotional expression to observed behaviors in order to understand customer desires, motivations and actions.
How Does Nice’s Integration of VOC Affect Quality & Performance Management? NICE’s portfolio integration allows the organization to drive VOC into areas such as Quality Management, enabling it to make the maximum impact on its customer experiences, and with Performance Management, so that companies can reward their employees for creating the desired customer experience and coach those who are falling short.
Miki Migdal, President, NICE Enterprise Product Group:
“There are many ways to survey, but in a multi-channel world you need more than just survey questions. Instead you need to listen at key inflection points in the customer lifecycle so that you can understand problems that result in a lower customer satisfaction score and may ultimately lead to customer churn. With NICE Total VOC not only can you understand customer emotion, you can see which actions you need to take to build customer loyalty and brand advocacy.”
My POV: There’s nothing more important than the voice of the customer. This integration makes it easier to really understand customers and be able to deliver awesome customer experiences. What are branding competing on? Customer Experience. Period. Seriously. You are a customer, you tell me. When you have a good experience do you buy from that company again? And when you have a bad experience, do you hesitate to buy from them again? I made my point.
@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Should the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Oversee the Whole Customer Experience?
Customers, Value Chain and The Customer Experience Imperative Should the CMO oversee the whole customer experience? Today, the value chain in business has gone from products that became commodities to services that fuel anticipation of superb customer experiences that go beyond anything customers have expected previously. These new customer expectations have put pressure on companies to deliver on these experiences, which affect the revenue, margin and profits of a company. Brands are under a new type of pressure to keep the right customers and ensure that each of those customer’s experiences live up to their customer’s expectations. In order to make that happen, especially in large organizations, someone has to have customer experience as their primary responsibility and also have the clout to improve it. This is not your grandpa’s CRM. It’s starts with strategy and difficult leadership questions.
The big question? Who should lead the entire customer experience? With the shift to digital marketing, electronic commerce, social media and mobile interactions, brings a massive transformation to how brands and organizations engage prospects and customers. Customer Experience Management is a major pillar in many B2C and B2B organizations’ efforts to engage and retain customers. As it gets more complicated to engage and retain customers, organizations are realizing there is more to the job of customer experience than many first realized. This is in part because providing superb customer experiences often means getting many different departments or functional areas to collaborate, especially when they had not been in the habit of doing so before. Many times the reason for the lack of collaboration and why it has not happened before is because it’s not easy. Again, it’s not your grandpa’s CRM – it’s not about technology really. It’s really starts with a cultural mindset.
Falling Through The Cracks? There are many points along the customer experience journey where an organization can miss the mark and not even come close to meeting customer expectations. However, market leaders realize the future requires proactive, digital online engagement, integrated with in-person and/or in-store experiences to support the strategy. In this research we spoke to many leaders to find out how they are tackling the issues around customer experience and leadership and how best to lead this key strategic initiative in their organization.
The Research Found: The Role of Chief Marketing Officer Is Undergoing Fundamental Transformation, Yet Few Are Ready As we explored the readiness, rewards, risks and gottcha’s for a CMO to step into an all-encompassing role to deliver the end-to-end customer experience, Constellation identified what CMOs are going through as they are being asked to add more to their “already” full plate. As they lead their organizations to become more customer-centric by creating and maintaining top-notch customer experiences, they helped us identify issues that can inhibit a CMO’s success –if how the business is run and the role of the CMO itself –doesn’t change. Here is a condensed version of the challenges we learned CMOs are facing:
1. Confusion abounds on who should lead (own) the customer experience.
2. Agile, design-thinking is required to lead changes needed for successful customer experience.
3. Marketing is often focused on communications rather than innovation, product development and business innovation.
4. Marketing only recently became more accustomed to being highly measured, so building the business case for the additional responsibilities of the “new” CMO role may be difficult.
5. The Consumerization of IT has created often unfulfilled customer experiences.
6. The abundance of data requires immediate analysis and action to provide meaningful mass personalization at scale.
7. The plethora of data requires a data management and utilization strategy
8. Marketing can be isolated from other departments that affect customer experience and that isolation hurts the ability to lead change.
9. Marketing can be isolated from other departments that affect customer experience and that isolation hurts the ability to lead change.
10. Customer experience requires a highly collaborative individual to lead cross- functional collaboration.
The truth is there is not any “right” way to lead and deliver customer experience. Every single company has to think about their brand, the type of customer experience they want to deliver and their ability to do that consistently. As products and services have become commoditized, the last frontier to compete on is differentiation of the customer experience, so it is something that is more important than ever. What’s your take on who should lead the customer experience in your organization and why? Click here for more of what we found and read my latest research report, Should the CMO Lead the Customer Experience? Download the table of contents and an excerpt of the report here: http://info.constellationr.com/report-download-cmo-oversee-customer-experience
@DrNatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Covering IOT of Customer Facing Initiatives in Marketing, Sales and Customer Service that Create Great Customer Experiences