Get Started for FREE
Sign up with Facebook Sign up with X
I don't have a Facebook or a X account
 Your new post is loading...
Scoop.it!
Today, HubSpot announced a milestone of more than 1,000 integrated apps featured in the app marketplace for its CRM platform. The call to better integrate martech is being heard. As you may know, I joined HubSpot a little over four years ago to help grow its platform ecosystem. So I'm delighted to see this momentum build. And I feel like it's still in the early stages of what it will become. A huge 'thank you' 
Sign up to comment
Scoop.it!
It may come as no surprise that technology-centric roles stole the show among emerging jobs in the United States, but the prevalence of machine learning and data science roles and skills indicate a shift in the types of technology we can expect to be using in the near future, as well as what professionals should be preparing themselves for. Having an academic background and a comprehensive suite of skills were also strong trends, especially among professionals who are now machine learning engineers and data scientists. Both of these roles are also often held by professionals with 10 years or more of professional experience, so for those just starting out and having trouble landing one of these titles, don’t be discouraged! It’s always a good reminder that soft skills will always be important, no matter the profession. The ability to collaborate, be a leader, and learn from colleagues will stand out in interviews, and even more once starting a job.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the conclusion of the study is simple: go to University and study something related to technology. Simple, no?
Scoop.it!
What are the secrets behind the world's most successful salespeople? Uncover the hidden truths with 107 statistics that explain the method to their madness.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Knowledge is power.
Scoop.it!
http://lecfomasque.com introduction to BI, dashboard and business KPIs
Farid Mheir's insight:
(in french) a good overview of excel dashboards and what they should contain. This one focusses on sales dashboards but you can replace sales with pretty much any business unit and the presentation remains relevant. Does not dive into technical details but other presentations by Sophie provide amazing insights. Very useful.
Scoop.it!
Most Customer Relationship Management or CRM implementations are governed by an incomplete vision, one that is far too internally focused, and as a result, they are quietly failing to live up to their potential.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Just goes to say how important system integration is within an organization. Solutions such as CRM or SFA (but also ERPs, eCommerce, and many others) that can pull information from all the sources that an organization has about its clients, from inside (field service, customer support, etc.) and from the outside world (linkedIn, twitter, websites and more), is essential. This requires an enterprise strategy and architecture around the client data, which most do not have yet. This is the real challenge.
John Presutti's curator insight,
October 16, 2013 3:31 AM
But successsful implementation of CRM means Marketing, Corporate Srategy, Finance, and IT working together and speaking the same language!
Scoop.it!
NEW YORK – A Forrester Research analyst at the Mcommerce Summit: State of Mobile Commerce 2013 conference said that three-quarters of consumers surveyed use their smartphones while in-store.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Mobile in stores has enabled showrooming which in turn is flipping the shopping retail model. Before it was: go online to research (tv, cars, etc.) then go in store to buy. Now it is: go in store to browse and try then go online to buy (for less usually). Complete flip of the shopping world, brick and mortar retailers are bracing for online pure plays to steal their lunch.
Scoop.it!
Target and Best Buy have made it clear they are fighting the phenomenon of showrooming, in which customers browse for television sets and other products in stores and then buy them online for less. A new study of Amazon customers who research products in stores byPlaced, a mobile analytics company, offers some insight into who else could be at the greatest risk of losing business to showrooming.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Showrooming may become a major disruption for established retailers. As customers flip their shopping patterns to go in store first then buy online, retailers should see showrooming as a blessing in disguise. They have the physical presence, the stores, which Amazon does not. It is much easier for them to open price competitive online stores and modify the store merchadising - and maybe size - to offer the best of both worlds. But this has a cost and require a huge change in their processes and people. After all it may be easier for Amazon to open showrooms...
Scoop.it!
Acquiring organic traffic requires the right keywords, well-researched and developed content, and precision timing.The Takeaway
Farid Mheir's insight:
Search Engine Optimization - SEO - is the blackart of making sure a website returns in the first results of a google search. Most digital transformations have a web component that requires decent search results position so I believe this story is very interesting. Follow the links provided by the author to learn more about this subject.
Scoop.it!
Walgreen's E-commerce VP Miguel Almeida explains the offline and online approaches that has helped the company's growth as an omnichannel retailer.
Farid Mheir's insight:
The Walgreens case study is a sign of the times because most brick-n-mortar retailer ar embarking in an omni-channel transformation to stay relevant in the face of online pure-plays like Amazon as they break down the barriers of eCommerce sales without a physical presence. BestBuy is doing it, Walmart is doing it and I assume most other retailers are thinking about it given the evel of interest around the topic at the recent NRf show in NYC. What we can learn from Walgreen is that physical presence should not be a bad thing if you embrace digital technologies - mobile, eCommerce, showrooming, store pickup of internet orders, etc. - to differentiate your offering from pure plays by leveraging your physical presence to offer improved customer service (that's the omni-channel part). If you don't and try to compete on price, as is mostly the case now, pure plays will win because they do not have to support a network of stores with employees and cash registers.
Scoop.it!
Google is stealthily preparing to launch an Amazon Prime competitor called "Google Shopping Express." According to one source the service will be $10 cheaper than Amazon Prime at $69 a year and offer same-day delivery from brick-and-mortar stores...
Farid Mheir's insight:
Interesting when you compare this with the Boston Consulting survey on same-day delivery which basically says that retailers are embracing same-day delivery but that customers really don't care about it.
Scoop.it!
Best Buy ruled retail until it was knocked sideways by the Internet. Can it make a comeback, or is the big-box era officially over? But Best Buy faced an even more fundamental challenge: The entire big-box retail industry appeared to be dying... The mobile Internet posed an even larger problem for big boxes. Showrooming was a potentially existential challenge—customers coming into the store to get hands-on experience with a product, then whipping out their smartphone to purchase it from Amazon at a lower price...
Farid Mheir's insight:
What is even more interesting comes midway through the article: BestBuy still sells a lot of stuff, so even though there are challenges ahead the bulk of sales today remain in stores. "It’s the biggest PC retailer, the biggest independent phone retailer, and the largest camera retailer in the world. It sells more tablets than any other retailer—including Apple. Last year, Best Buy clocked $50 billion in sales, roughly the same as in 2010. That’s about 50 percent more than the next-largest consumer-electronics retailer, Walmart. Analysts estimate that Amazon does just about $14 billion in annual electronics sales."
Scoop.it!
Apple's retail stores makes more than $6,000 per square foot, more than twice that of the next most productive retailer.
Farid Mheir's insight:
This demonstrates that physical presence remains important in the digital world. But the experience can be transformed, as is the case in Apple stores that combines product demonstrations, classes, service - genius bar - as well as instant availability of products - no delivery delays. Moreover, with an Apple account, you can leave without a paper invoice - it gets emailed to you.
Scoop.it!
Farid Mheir's insight:
Sales are being transformed, not eliminated, with digital collaboration technologies. It can help cut costs and improve productivity not only with high tech companies like Verizon or Rosetta Stone but also with Ulrich Barn builders which sells barns and sheds, made out of wood and other real world materials.
Scoop.it!
eMarketer’s latest forecast for worldwide digital ad spending finds digital taking an ever-greater share of total media ad dollars. By 2016, more than one-quarter of spending will go to online and mobile internet formats.
Farid Mheir's insight:
No surprise, advertising digital transformation is well under way and accounts for a substantial part of the total already. Growth, however, is predicted to slow down and stay at 11% in Canada for example.
Scoop.it!
The leader in digital retail, of course, is Amazon. It’s well known how they’ve revolutionized retail (and, more impressively, continue to revolutionize it). What’s less well known is how they’ve done it. We did some analysis recently to understand how Amazon continuously moves the bar ever higher. In that analysis, we think, are clues for how multichannel retailers can improve their own operations and create the kind of customer experiences that Amazon has made standard across so many industries. Here is a short slideshow of the most intriguing insights we found:
Farid Mheir's insight:
Slide 9 : McKinsey presents very convincing arguments to show how Amazon has addressed almost all of the top reasons that prevent consumers from buying online vs. in-store. This should be required reading for all store owners and managers during startegic planning season.
|
Curated by Farid Mheir
Get every post weekly in your inbox by registering here: http://fmcs.digital/newsletter-signup/
|
WHY IT MATTERS: so true, integration should become the primary focus when choosing a product. Every vendor now has a marketplace of pre-built integrations (hubspot has 1000+ it seems). So, integration is easy.
But there are caveats: where is the master data if you have multiple solutions? I fear this post does not provide an answer for this, I find, is the major long-term issue.