Tips to the Internet of things

Sooner or later all the electronics devices in the internet of things will be connected with each other, and capable of taking decisions without any human presence. The devices will be able for example to read your vital signs and if justifiable launch an alert to the hospital or contact the person which you have chosen in case of emergency.

In business companies will be able to improve their operational efficiency, devices will be able to better read symptoms and act adequately. Cars will be driving alone, for example: if you have a trucking company you will be able to program the route in the truck and the truck will arrive at the programmed destiny, while you be able to watch every movement, signal during the delivery route. 

One of my fears in the internet of things world is that maybe it will drive us to a dystopian future like 1984, but let's have hope in humanity and in the great leaders that we have. 

Now if you want to read more about the internet of things world, I advice you to read the articles that Mckinsey has been writing:

• The Internet of Things - More objects are becoming embedded with sensors and gaining the ability to communicate. The resulting information networks promise to create new business models, improve business processes, and reduce costs and risks. Written in March 2010 | by Michael Chui, Markus Löffler, and Roger Roberts.

• An executive’s guide to the Internet of Things - The rate of adoption is accelerating. Here are six things you need to know. Written in August 2015 | byJacques Bughin, Michael Chui, and James Manyika.

• The Internet of Things: Five critical questions - How do industry experts view the development of the Internet of Things, and what would they change? Written in August 2015

• The Internet of Things: Sizing up the opportunity - This connectivity trend is now recognized as a source of growth for semiconductor players and their customers. Here we consider the opportunities and constraints for components manufacturers. Written in December 2014 | byHarald Bauer, Mark Patel, and Jan Veira

• Unlocking the potential of the Internet of Things - Written in June 2015 | byJames Manyika, Michael Chui, Peter Bisson, Jonathan Woetzel, Richard Dobbs, Jacques Bughin, and Dan Aharon

• The Internet of Things and the future of manufacturing - Executives at Robert Bosch and McKinsey experts discuss the technology-driven changes that promise to trigger a new industrial revolution. Written in June 2013 | byMarkus Löffler and Andreas Tschiesner

State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012

Nielsen released a report about social, I'm gonna share with you some excerpts:

 via Nielsen

Social media is coming of age. Since the emergence of the first social media networks some two decades ago, social media has continued to evolve and offer consumers around the world new and meaningful ways to engage with the people, events and brands that matter to them. Now, years later, social media is still growing rapidly, becoming an integral part of our daily lives. Social networking is now truly a global phenomenon.

This report reveals insights such as:

• What's driving the continued growth of social media?
• How is consumer usage of social media evolving?
• How is social media impacting marketing?
• Who is using Pinterest?

Social Media is coming of age

(...)social media has continued to evolve and offer consumers around the world new and meaningful ways to engage with the people, events, and brands that matter to them. Now years later, social media is still growing rapidly and has become an integral part of our daily lives. Today, social networking is truly a global phenomenon.

What's driving the continued growth of social media?

Mobile 
More people are using smartphones and tablets to access social media. The personal computer is still at the center of the social networking experience, but consumers are increasingly looking to other devices to connect on social media. (...)

Proliferation
New social media sites continue to emerge and catch on. The number of social media networks consumer can choose from has exploded, and too many sites to count are adding social features or integration.

How is consumer usage of social media evolving?

The global living room

SocialTv is on the rise. The skyrocketing adoption and use of social media among consumers is transforming TV-watching into a more immediate and shared experience. (...) ,consumers around the world used social media to engage with everyone from close friends to complete strangers, revolutionizing the television viewing experience.

Social care

Social care is transforming customer service. (...) In fact, one in three social media users say they prefer to use social media rather than the phone for customer service issues.

How is social media Impact marketing?

Social word-of-mouth

Social media enables consumers to generate and tap into the opinions of an exponentially larger universe. (...)

Hyper-informed consumers

Social media is transforming the way that consumers across the globe make purchase decisions. Consumers are using social media to learn about other consumers experiences, (...)

Opportunity for engament

Consumer attitudes toward advertising on social media are still evolving. Though roughly one-third of social media users find ads on social networking sites more annoying than other types of internet advertisements, research suggest that there are opportunities for marketers to engage with consumers via social media. 

Click here to access to the full report

A rising role for IT: McKinsey Global Survey results

Mckinsey released their global survey results, I'm gonna share with you some excerpts:

The online survey was in the field  from October 4 to October 14,  2011, and generated responses  from 927 executives. Of  these respondents, 488 have  a technology focus, and  the other 439 represent other  functional specialties. The  respondents represent the full  range of industries, regions,  company sizes, and tenures.

Aspirations and current expectations for IT have never been higher. Executives  continue to set exacting demands for IT support of business processes, and they see an even  larger role for IT in a competitive environment increasingly shaken up by technology disruptions. (...) Looking ahead, executives expect  IT to create new platforms to support innovation and growth, help guide strategy with data  and advanced analytics, and stay on top of possible new roles for mobile devices. For IT  leaders, the good news is that along with these higher expectations, most respondents also see  a greater willingness to spend more on IT.

Meeting expectation

Among respondents to this survey, the highest current priorities for IT mirror those of previous surveys:  improving the effectiveness and efficiency of business processes and  reducing IT cost. (...)

Higher budgets, changing priorities

Perhaps due to a combination of rising faith in IT, the realization of competitive challenges  ahead, and a more positive business outlook, more respondents expect their organizations  to increase spending in 2012. (...)

More data to support decisions

Executives say their companies still rely upon a mix of data and experience in decision  making, although they are increasingly looking to analytics tools for support. 

New platforms on the move

Both IT and non-IT executives say their organizations are beginning to take advantage of  new platforms to further innovation: data and analytics, social Internet technologies (those  known as Web 2.0), social media platforms (such as Facebook and Twitter), embedded  computing, and cloud computing (Exhibit 4). Such platforms can be used to meet a variety of  goals, including better customer and partner engagement and the creation of new products  and services. While most respondents indicate that these platforms have yet to be deployed at  scale, significant shares say their companies are using them in selected areas or piloting them. (...)

Mobile technologies—for example, smartphones, tablets, and sensors—are growing in  importance, according to respondents. They say their companies are using mobile  technologies and applications both internally as collaboration and efficiency tools and  externally to create stronger links with customers and business partners. Respondents in  Europe are slightly ahead of the curve in mobile-technology deployment at scale. The  region where these mobile technologies are most often deployed selectively in pockets across  the enterprise is developed Asia: respondents there lead the rest of the world by anywhere  from 10 to 20 percentage points in selective use of mobile for customer and business  partner engagement.

IT in the boardroom

As technology becomes a more important factor in reshaping industries, survey respondents  say their organizations’ boards of directors should play a more active role in deciding  how technology is incorporated into overall strategy. Respondents say that the  most important technology-related discussions at their board meetings revolve around  approval or review of very large IT projects; but ideally, they say, discussions should address forward-looking assessments of technology trends.

Looking ahead

Many executives indicate their companies are struggling with the substantial technical  challenges of increasing their use of data and analytics. In our experience, some of the  toughest challenges are creating a “single source” of truth, consolidating data architectures,  and developing analytic tools and skills. But critical as these challenges are, successful  rollouts often require a softer element—attention to the cultural changes to encourage  increased reliance on data for decision making as well as the training required to help leaders at all levels incorporate analytics into regular practice.

According to respondents, business executives continue to ask IT to create more value by enabling business processes with technology, which is driving a significant amount of  increased investment. In our experience, success in these efforts requires creating solid, welldefined business cases that include clear stage gates and metrics for holding business and  IT leaders accountable.

New technology platforms and capabilities are clearly creating new opportunities at many  different levels within organizations. We often see business executives experimenting  with these platforms outside of IT’s awareness or permission. Given the proliferation and potential importance of these platforms, IT executives must shift from being gatekeepers  to being enablers and service managers—guiding, supporting, and assisting their colleagues in  these experiments to ensure that corporate policies, data security, or risk guidelines are not endangered.

click here, register and download the full article (pdf).

What marketers say about working online: McKinsey Global Survey results

Mckinsey released their global survey results, I'm gonna share with you some excerpts:

The online survey was in the field from October 11 to October 21, 2011, and garnered responses from 792 marketing executives representing the full range of industries, regions, titles, and company sizes. The data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP to adjust for differences in response rates.

Marketers agree that digital tools and technologies are valuable, though many of their companies struggle to measure the financial impact and capture customer data.

November 2011

Digital media and online tools: (...) Most respondents agree that their online presence is important and that digital tools provide their companies with a major opportunity, but few are taking the structural steps required to benefit from selling online or engaging consumers through new technologies such as social media. Indeed, most respondents indicate that companies are still trying to figure out how digital media can meaningfully improve their bottom lines.(...)

The most pressing competitive challenge marketing executives identify is producing and using customer insights, and respondents hope to use data to drive sales and customer engagement. But they also say their companies often have only basic customer information— despite the tremendous increase in data available to them in recent years—and they report difficulties in measuring the impact of online tools and channels. Respondents also say they lack the internal leadership and resources to develop better analytical capabilities and, as a result, better information and insights about customers.

The state of play online - Marketing executives overwhelmingly agree that an effective online presence is very or extremely important for staying competitive—81 percent of them say so. (...)   about half as many cite either the ability to reach new customer segments or the emergence of new business models as one of the greatest effects of digital media’s pervasiveness. Overall, these tools seem to be creating little competitive differentiation.

Marketers’ online challenges - The most important digital-related challenge for marketers and business leaders—ranked first by the largest share of respondents—is generating and leveraging deep customer insights (Exhibit 3). The good news is that more respondents say their companies either are taking or plan to take action on some of the higher-ranked challenges compared with those they ranked lower (Exhibit 4). Notably, many companies seem to want to do it themselves: on many of these challenges, more respondents say the best approaches involve developing internal capabilities rather than relying on external resources.(...)

(...)Though measuring the effect of online tools isn’t the most-cited problem, other responses indicate that many marketers continue to struggle with developing the right metrics and translating insights into actions that influence consumer behavior. (...)

Marketers and big data - Congruent with the importance respondents place on leveraging customer insights, 71 percent say data-driven customer insights will be very or extremely important to their companies’ competitiveness during the next two to four years—but just 4 percent say their companies now have the required analytical capabilities to manage their businesses more effectively (Exhibit 6).

Looking ahead

Most companies are struggling to define an online business model to drive competitive advantage, despite being well aware of the importance of digital media and its potential to foster customer engagement and loyalty. That’s partly because there’s no single solution: companies need to consider factors such as the extent to which digital operations should be integrated within existing commercial functions, whether it should be centralized or regionally based, and how much online activity should be standardized rather than tailored by geography, product, or service. Yet even though one size does not fit all, companies need to begin searching for what works for them. 

Few companies are taking full advantage of the opportunity presented by exponentially increasing volumes of customer data. Insights derived from how consumers behave and interact online can inform everything from product development and innovation to sales processes, but it requires a commitment to gathering, analysing, and deploying data much more effectively than most companies currently do. 

The race is far from over. While companies recognize the potential of digital tools to drive customer engagement and sales, few have seized the opportunity: only 14 percent of respondents say the effects of digital tools in marketing have included the entry of new competitors. Yet it’s only a matter of time before disruptive competitors that skillfully use digital tools quickly emerge, and incumbents need to take aggressive action before a lot of current value is destroyed.

If you want to read the full pdf you have to register here