Club Information Business

CMO = Is Your 2014 Marketing Plan Obsolete?

As CMO, you’re constantly trying to answer these 2 burning questions:

Are customers responding to our marketing campaigns?
What are we doing to adjust to the market demands?

Perhaps in the past you laid out a multi-year marketing plan, or simply went year-to-year. World class CMO’s are perfecting the agile approach to marketing campaigns. The agile approach is paying off. The average tenure of CMO’s has doubled since 2006. It’s now up to 45 months.
cmo marketing plan

There are a number of reasons for the increase in tenure. But one combination always sticks out. It’s a solid marketing plan with an agile process approach. There are many components to a solid marketing plan. In this post we’ll focus on the B2B Demand Generation (DG) plan. Download the 2014 B2B Demand Generation Planning template here to get started.

B2B Demand Generation – Building a Base Plan

Like a football coach going into a game, you start with the baseline plan. Developing the game plan involves multiple groups and huge amounts of research about your customers. This research includes accurate buyer personas and buyer process maps. The plan going in must start with a clear set of goals and objectives. Then continue with a set of strategies to support those goals.
As an example, you may run 3 different types of campaigns for the year:

Growth campaigns focused on increasing the wallet share from your existing book of business.
Retention campaigns focused on reducing churn in the existing customer base.
Acquire campaigns focused on new logo acquisition within a specific vertical, channel or region.

In many cases the overall campaign framework or approach remains the same. You may have a proven methodology for reaching your audience. What changes or is customized is the content. What may work in one vertical or region doesn’t necessary work in another. An example may be in the small to mid-size market; a customer in Oklahoma may buy differently than someone in Los Angeles.
The game plan continues to evolve with the associated tactics, target audience (both internal & external), execution responsibilities (RACI) and schedule. When you’re watching football you notice the coaches constantly looking at picture or results of prior plays. This is agile coaching; agile demand generation is no different. You’re constantly analyzing feedback from campaigns and making the necessary adjustments to campaigns. This may mean completely scraping a campaign. Your goal is the greatest return on the marketing’s investment as possible.
When you apply this approach to affiliates, partners or your sales channel the same concepts apply. More collaboration is involved with a clear communication plan and quality data being the cornerstones. A closed loop communication process both internal and external supports better decision making.

Agile Demand Generation Execution Process

Agile execution by nature is what marketing is supposed to be doing. What often happens is you’ve not adopted an agile culture across your team. The team starts executing the plan but doesn’t feel empowered to make quick decisions. The result is the team executes the initial plan and ignores critical data. The team misses the opportunity to adjust a campaign or stop it all together. The result is typically a reduced return on marketing spend.

Key Components of Agile Execution:

Pilot Plan – A small segment of the market is selected by working with sales leadership. Launching with the purpose of validating and fine-tuning the campaign prior to a broad launch. This reduces risk and increases speed to market.
Test & Learn Plan – A/B Testing leveraging a planned run-off between two versions (a control version & alternative).
Lead Management Score Card – Captures existing performance and provides historical and external context to evaluate performance. Conversion rates between stages are tracked and compared against B2B averages, B2B world-class conversion rates, and where possible industry metrics.

How to Get the Benefits of Agile Demand Generation

The benefits are worth the extra effort to change the way you work. You may meet resistance, but you will realize tremendous gains, including:

Results generated in half the time
Success probability increases by 2X
Greater measured return on marketing investments
Supports the constantly changing buyer
Collaboration among affiliates, and channel partners improves
Greater speed in the marketing team
Improved buyer personas, and buyer process maps
Increased number & quality of SQLs handed off to sales
Improved relationship with sales
Greater campaign execution
In some cases less reliance on 3^rd party support

Trade info industry grows 4.4% in first half of 2013

Dec. 5, 2013 - For the first six months of the year, business-to-business media and information company revenue totaled $13.108 billion, up 4.4 percent from the $12.560 totaled over the same period in 2012. ABM's Business Information Network (BIN) Report, an ongoing research project that calculates the size of the industry, considers revenue from trade events, print advertising, digital (online) advertising, and business information products and database services (collectively, "data").
H1 2013 BIN Report Table

Event revenue, as reported to ABM by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research, rose 2.7 percent. CEIR is projecting that "there will be minimal growth through 2013" -- although the CEIR report emphasizes that the trade event industry has experienced twelve consecutive quarters of year-on-year growth.
Print advertising revenue is slowly declining, showing a 4.3 percent dip compared with the first half of 2012, although it remains a substantial contributor to total revenue (see pie chart). Some segments, such as health, tech and agriculture, are doing very well. ABM's print advertising data is reported by publishing service bureau Inquiry Management Systems.
Digital advertising surged 24.8 percent in the first half of 2013, driven by two factors. Search engine revenue, which is not included in the BIN Report, is growing at a slower pace. That may be because marketers are pushing ad dollars into mobile platforms, which are included in the BIN Report; mobile ad revenues rose a startling 145 percent over the first half. That growth rate is accelerating -- considering the second quarter only, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, mobile advertising rose 149 percent compared with the second quarter of 2012.
The data component of the BIN Report, which includes business information, online directories and database services, grew 7.1 percent in the first half of 2013, driven by growth among several major players. McGraw Hill Financial's Commodities & Commercial Markets division saw revenue grow 7 percent in the half. Hearst Business Media, which reported its 12th year of record revenue in 2012, has recently launched data services focusing on credit reports and electronic medical records. The data component of the BIN Report is provided by information and research firm Outsell, supplemented by publicly available data and ABM estimates.

H1 2013 BIN Report Revenue Share By Stream

By Michael Moran Alterio

The Freight Brokerage Business – Basic Information And Licensing Requirements

Freight brokers are basically middle-man between the shipper, buyer or owner of the product and the trucking company that moves the freight. Freight brokers will accept an order for a load to be moved from the customer and arrange for the transportation of the goods by locating a carrier to move the load. Freight broker’s revenues are generated by the freight broker simple paying the carrier less than what they are being paid by their customer, which then becomes the freight brokers “Margin” or profit.

This freight broker business model, for all intents and purposes, sounds simple but in actual fact, it is not. There are freight broker licensing factors that need to be considered to become a freight broker that is not always apparent when first looking at it.

Freight Broker Licensing

Before you can start your freight broker business and actually brokering freight, you need to become established with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association which licenses freight brokers. Although there are very little regulations that are specific to freight brokers, there are some basic requirements. These would include a Freight Broker Motor Carrier (MC) number. This freight broker MC number is fairly easy to acquire by providing your incorporation papers and paying the application fee of approximately $500.00. This will almost immediately get you a freight broker MC # that is in pending status. In order to remove the pending status from your freight broker MC, you will need to file a freight broker Surety Bond of $10,000.00. A surety bond is basically security for carriers that in the event they are not paid for a load from the freight broker, they have the right to file a nonpayment complaint against the freight broker bond and will receive all or a portion of their payment from the bonding company. The bonding companies will then go after the freight broker to top the bond back up to the required $10,000. There are a number of bonding companies that will look after this for you and their services vary. Some require freight brokers to front the $10,000 up front while others will finance you until the total is reached. Along with the freight broker surety bond, these companies will also set you up with a “Process Agents” in each state. These process agents are where the carrier with the nonpayment complaint, will file their issue against the freight broker.

If you are a looking at being a freight broker out of the Canadian market then the above licensing is not required. Canadian based carriers will not ask for MC information from freight brokers nor will they be looking for a surety bond. Each province will have its own specific licensing requirements for being a freight broker but these are normally limited to business registrations and nothing more. As a Canadian based freight broker, if you chose to broker freight that originates in the US and is destined for the US and the final stop, it would be strongly suggested that you go after the US based MC authorities. US based carriers will never take a load from a freight broker that does not have a MC number and surety bond.

KU grad, British knight talks perceptions of America abroad

Students in Angela Murray’s marketing class Monday morning were treated to a lecture titled “The Image of America Abroad” from Sir Robert Worcester.

A University of Kansas graduate, Worcester now lives abroad in England, where he founded MORI, Market and Opinion Research International, in London. As a former president of the World Association for Public Opinion Research who was knighted by the Queen of England, Worcester shared some of his vast marketing and opinion research knowledge with students.

Sir Worcester and Angela Murray

Through his presentation, Worcester led students through the progression of the public opinion of America abroad since 2008, also including advice and experiences from his career in public opinion research.

“You have to ask the right questions of the right sample and add up the results correctly,” Worcester said of his field, which is easier said than done, he added.

Working across language and cultural boundaries, effective international market research has to adapt to its sample, he explained. Changing one word in the translation of a question can completely reverse a survey’s results.

Worcester told students that market research is not only an important and interesting career, but it also creates an opportunity to work with an impressive list of clients.

From presidents to prime ministers, major religions to the biggest of businesses, he’s worked for them all, Worcester said.

by Annie Montemayor

Sanmina reflects on four years of going Google

Posted by Elliot Tally, Senior Director, Sanmina

Editor's note: Our guest blogger this week is our long-time friend and customer, Elliot Tally, Senior Director of Enterprise Applications, Collaboration & Innovation at Sanmina, a global electronics manufacturer headquartered in San Jose, California with over 47,000 employees. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Since I joined the company over 12 years ago, Sanmina business communications have evolved from an organization into an organism. In the past five years using Google’s tools, I have seen the business transform further from a traditional manufacturing company with change-resistant IT infrastructure, basic collaboration, and a reliance on resource-draining travel for “teamwork,” into a modern company that has embraced the cloud, breathing clean air through more inclusive collaboration, and fostering a flexible and dynamic environment for employees to work effectively where and when they need to.

In 2008, when we first looked at moving to the cloud, we wanted to reduce infrastructure and cut IT costs. We were dealing with a lot of data: 112 Exchange servers across 70 locations. We create 2 Terabytes of email per month, and our Guadalajara campus alone was spending $15,000 a quarter on backups. Plus, we were spending millions of dollars on Microsoft licenses. By choosing Google Apps, we now save about $1.5 million a year, reduced our on premise email infrastructure by more than 90% and have seen a reduction in servers, refocusing of staff, licensing costs and other operating expenditures. We only need two people, instead of six, to support Google Apps for our 21,000 employees who use email.

I knew moving to the cloud would impact our bottom line, what I didn’t realize is how it would influence the culture of our business and the way we get things done. Working across time zones used to involve countless emails, crowded teleconference rooms, and expensive travel. Employees quickly and organically embraced Google Docs to work together without worrying about time zones or physical location. Now we have more than 700,000 Google Docs, 3,200 Google Sites and 4,000 Google Groups spanning all functions of the business. For example, our product engineering teams use Google Sites to track documentation, planning, and product testing for many of their projects, including leveraging the platform for customer collaboration. Using Google+ Hangouts on a daily basis has cut travel costs and we find that employees feel more connected and productive, without the jetlag.

Google Drive has also helped us grow by facilitating the discovery and information sharing process during mergers. We used to manage acquisitions using file attachments for everything from the discovery questionnaires to legal contracts. There were too many attachments to create a record for everything. The draft content was usually shared via email or FTP and version control was a challenge. So when we purchased BreconRidge in 2010 we decided to use a Google Site and Google Docs for the majority of the documentation. The advantages were threefold: active collaboration, inherent version control with synchronization, and ease of sharing. We shared docs internally and with BreconRidge throughout the process to reduce some of the travel requirements, be more transparent, and to facilitate the discovery process and negotiations. The increased collaboration & document control effectiveness resulted in this model becoming the de facto choice for managing subsequent M&A transactions.

Google Apps isn’t the only Google offering helping to streamline our business. In our factories, we’re in the process of replacing thousands of data collection points - spanning each part of the manufacturing line -- with commodity Android tablets. These tablets present a touch-enabled and rich interface for employees, which is readily available on their own mobile devices. Our plant managers appreciate the simplicity of the single interface and the automation; we have dramatically reduced the need for expensive PCs, paper or filing cabinets, and printed work instructions, creating instead a convenient platform for our engineers to target with innovative new apps using technology they already know. The tablets can also send notifications to supervisors and issue quality alerts, allowing for speedier resolution of problems in our plants. We’ve leveraged Google App Engine to host a machine maintenance and calibration system we developed to track equipment and spare parts, and automate the relevant business processes, reducing parts inventory and ensuring easily auditable compliance. Our Printed Circuit Board (PCB) plants even created an interface using the Google Drive API to programmatically create Google Spreadsheets from their PCB engineering design system for sharing with customers as part of the quoting process. We’ve been using the Google Search Appliance since 2009 and added 2 new Google Search Appliances 7.0 this year to index our intranet, our Google Apps content, and a few other internal content stores.

We exceeded our original goals of cutting costs and reducing IT infrastructure by more than we could have conceived of at the time, but the real benefits of “going Google” have emerged over the past four years. It’s much easier to quantify server reduction than the more intangible benefits of using Google Apps: employees working together seamlessly, testing creative solutions without investing in expensive hardware, and in the job satisfaction that I can provide my team by letting them focus on strategic projects. But, it’s exactly these types of activities that have evolved our business culture from a collection of independent teams into an agile multicellular company leading the industry with collaborative communication solutions.

Rebirth of IT

Posted by Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google

Yesterday I had the chance to deliver the keynote at the Gartner ITExpo in Orlando. I took this opportunity to reflect on how business technology has evolved in the three years since I last spoke on this stage — and, as part of that, how Google’s commitment to enterprise customers has grown.

In 2010, the suggestion that a company could move all of its employees to the cloud was often met with skepticism. People relied on desktop computers and Exchange servers because that was what they’d used in the workplace for the past two decades. And, the few companies that did embrace the cloud tended to see it as a more cost-effective way to do things they’d always done. But over time, they started to recognize the transformational benefits of working in the cloud.

Today, moving to the cloud is not a questionable proposition — it’s inevitable. This is good news for IT staff, who don’t need to spend time maintaining servers and installing upgrades, and also for employees, since the cloud makes it easy to collaborate and get more stuff done quickly. Sooner than almost anyone thought possible, hundreds of large-scale companies have succeeded in moving their businesses to the cloud, paving the way for millions more to follow. Consider a few recent examples:

Woolworths is Australia’s largest retailer, with more than 3,000 stores and a staff of 200,000. They moved to Google Apps and Chrome.
The country of Malaysia adopted Google Apps for 10 million students, teachers and parents, and deployed Chromebooks to schools nationwide.
And yesterday, Whirlpool — which owns Maytag and KitchenAid — announced that they’re rolling out Google Apps to help 30,000 employees collaborate and innovate more quickly.

These organizations realize that the cloud is not just a cheaper way to maintain the status quo, but also a way to fundamentally transform the way a business is run and how people can get work done together. Inviting 50 people to collaborate on a Google document in real-time is an order of magnitude more efficient than sending attachments back and forth to those same people. More than half of Americans now own smartphones, while PC sales are steadily declining. In their personal lives, employees expect to check email on their phone and join a video call from their tablet, at any time, from wherever they are. Increasingly, people want to bring these habits to the workplace so they can work the way they live.

Companies like Google play a pivotal role in this “consumerization of IT.” More than 425 million people around the world rely on Gmail in their personal lives, and now more than 5 million businesses are using Gmail as part of Google Apps at work. At Google, there are now thousands of employees — a substantial portion of the company — who help us build and support products for these business customers.

The real beneficiaries of this rebirth of IT are not technology companies, but the rest of us — business owners, makers, teachers, students and employees. Having the power of massive data centers and smart mobile devices at our fingertips makes it easier than ever to create, communicate, learn and collaborate.

Another choice for schools & businesses: introducing the HP Chromebook 11

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Chrome OS, Google

Today we are pleased to announce that schools and businesses now have a wider choice of devices when considering Chromebooks. This morning our partner HP announced the new HP Chromebook 11, made with Google. At $279 with a super bright display, a light but sturdy shell (weighing just over 2 pounds), and a battery life of up to 6 hours, the HP Chromebook 11 is a new option for schools and businesses.

We would like to share some of the positive results schools and businesses see from using Chromebooks and Google Apps. We recently reached over 30 million students and teachers using Google Apps for Education, and Chromebooks can be found in over 5,000 schools around the world. In Fairfield County, a rural district in South Carolina, these tools enable a greater focus on building critical skills, like student collaboration and leadership.

“Chromebooks have significantly impacted the instructional delivery taking place. Student engagement and time-on- task have increased tremendously. As a result, teachers serve as facilitators to help guide students’ critical thinking, collaboration and creation. Teachers also enjoy using Google Drive to provide immediate and targeted feedback on assignments in real time.”
---Dr. Claudia Edwards, Deputy Superintendent Academics at Fairfield County Schools

In business, Chromebooks are a great fit for companies that have adopted Google Apps. In addition, Chromebooks are being used as customer kiosks that help drive sales in retail stores, as employee terminals that connect call center agents to customers, and as shared mobile workstations to track production on manufacturing shop floors.

To learn more about the new HP Chromebook 11 and other Chromebooks, visit the education or business websites and fill out the “Contact Sales” form to speak with a member of our team.

Whirlpool moves to Google Apps to build its “winning workplace”

Editor's note: We spoke with Google Apps customer Mike Heim, CIO of Whirlpool Corporation, the world’s leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Can you tell us about Whirlpool, your business and your decision to move to Google Apps?
Whirlpool is in a very competitive market. We’re the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances with 68,000 employees and 66 manufacturing and technology research centers around the world. We market Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Brastemp, Consul, Bauknecht and other major brand names to consumers in nearly every country around the world. Our products are very different globally, but the design principles and the ability to scale depend on our ability to interact and move at pace.

One of the challenges we face is the need to innovate faster. We believe Google Apps is critical to helping us do that — to collapse geography and take the best of the global ideas and apply them locally. Google Apps is a simple solution in many ways, but the features are actually very sophisticated, enabling us to surround our business processes with the right tools to connect people. It allows us to unleash the talent in the company, without a lot of IT support, which is very helpful. The move to Google Apps isn’t just a change in IT strategy, it’s a shift in our company culture. We need to think, share, and move faster to bring our products to the marketplace.

Can you tell us about your vision for cultural transformation and how the move to Google Apps plays into that?
We are becoming much more of a customer company in terms of how we think and act. We want to move to where the consumer is headed, not where they are today. This isn't always easy because we operate across so many locations internationally. I believe that our future success depends on our ability to build strong relationships and share and work together across the team. We spend lots of time building trust and sharing, so we can stay true to our mission. We believe Google Apps is helping us break down our geographical barriers and work together quickly, from anywhere—keeping us on track to help build what we call, "the winning workplace."

What will make Whirlpool thrive in the years to come?
I think that comes down to product leadership. Great products and great brands create desire in the marketplace. The challenge is being able to sustain the excellence at an increasingly rapid pace. We have global competition and our ability to innovate is critical. We need to focus on bringing products to market sooner and at the level of quality our customers expect. It’s also key for us to accelerate the process of collecting customer insights, so we can provide the best customer service at scale. Creating new ideas is critical to the success of our business in the coming years.

Signing off from the retail Hangout On Air series

Posted by Meghdutt Brahmachari, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

If there’s one thing we discovered from our retail Hangout On Air series, it’s that there’s no shortage of innovative new ideas percolating in the retail industry. Retailers are using Google to improve how employees collaborate on projects, speed up customer searches for products, and uncover insights on consumer behavior. Here’s what our interviewees shared with us over the past month:

Improve customer experience and engagement

Speedway Motors, the world's largest manufacturer of hot-rodding and racing products, relies on Google Search Appliance to help shoppers quickly find parts and accessories. By improving their customer experience, Speedway increased conversions by 45% and search revenue by 116%.

Create a stronger digital presence

Ocado is using Google App Engine and Google Maps to build a stronger digital presence, including development of a customer-friendly “Where’s My Order?” feature, which uses maps to display the exact location of an order.

Innovate and be more productive

Ocado is innovating with Google App Engine to let employees build customized dashboards for monitoring business information unique to their jobs.
Ahold, the global grocery retailer, cut costs by 75% and improved employee productivity by switching to Google Apps – plus, they benefited from a no-headaches implementation.

Use data to drive strategy

Big Data can help retailers decide on strategic direction: Interactions Marketing and Tableau Software used Google BigQuery to analyze massive data sets and uncover “unexpected insights,” such as predicting how many products will be sold at an event based on variables like the weather.

If you missed any of these Hangouts, good news – you can watch the recorded versions below and discover new ways to build retail businesses that rely on new and collaborative technologies.

How Ocado Innovates with Google

How Speedway Motors revved up its site search with Google Search Appliance

How Google helps retailers turn Big Data into big insights

Learnings from a CIO

Meet the Professor: Diane O’Byrne

Diane O’Byrne joins the MBA team here at the School of Business as coordinator of the Kansas Impact Program, a year-long initiative that provides MBA students with team-based consulting experience by taking on some of the state's thorniest management issues.

Why did you decide to join the Kansas Impact Project (KIP)?

After meeting Dean Neeli and understanding her passion and vision for the project, I knew I wanted to be involved. Meeting MBA director Catherine Shenoy sealed the deal!

What is your philosophy on higher education and how does that tie into KIP?

My philosophy is that higher education should help students find their passions and paths in life. It’s an opportunity to help students develop a sense of how they may impact the world with their intellects. KIP is the ideal project for everyone involved! It's a tremendous opportunity for the University of Kansas School of Business to give back to our community. Our non-profit partners benefit from the bright and dedicated minds of our incoming MBA students who assist them in solving a challenge they are facing. And what an opportunity it is for our students! They are taking all the tremendous knowledge they are learning in their academic coursework and actually applying it to solve a significant issue.

What are your goals for KIP?

My goals are simple: 1. To add depth to the skills and knowledge of our MBA students. 2. To have a significant impact on the non-profits we serve in the state of Kansas. 3. To face head-on Chancellor Gray-Little's challenge of finding ways to serve our entire state.

What most uniquely qualifies you to run KIP?

My greatest passions are education, business and non-profit missions. KIP combines the three perfectly. I have been on the KU campus for more than 20 years, so my heart is in higher education. I have been fortunate to sit on many non-profit boards through the years and continue to see the day-to-day challenges they face. As an entrepreneur who has owned a business for over 20 years, I see the business applications to help our partners.

What do you think students value most about KIP?

I hope they value the immediate opportunities to immerse themselves in a challenge presented by a non-profit and have an impact on our Kansas community. Additionally, I hope they understand sound business solutions are applicable to the non-profit world.

What are one or two of your proudest professional accomplishments during your time at KU?

I am most proud of my students and the success they continue to find, whether it’s personal or professional. I often receive a note, LinkedIn message, Facebook message or email from my former students and I love hearing about where they are now and the impact they are having helping others. I ran into a student who is now a recruiter for a company attending our business career fair, who graduated in 2002. When she saw me, she repeated a concept she had learned in my class all those years ago! She said she regularly quotes me when helping others find the right career paths. It just doesn't get any better than that; to know that my students truly learned and are still applying the knowledge and skills I taught them to help others.

What strengths and expertise will carry over from the journalism school and contribute to the business school?

I taught in the strategic communications track for the journalism school and those are skills I hope to bring to our business students. No matter what your position is in the business world, the more effective you are at communicating, the more success you will enjoy.

What do you love most about being at KU?

For me, there is simply no greater reward than watching that light bulb go off in someone’s head. The look on their face when a concept or idea we've discussed clicks in and they immediately see the application.

Even though I have taught at KU, I am still a "newbie" in the business school and I love how welcoming the MBA team has been as well as the other faculty members.

by Mackenzie Leander

Hangout On Air: Lessons from a retail CIO on moving to the cloud with ease

Posted by Meghdutt Brahmachari, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

Change is never easy, but when a business has tens of thousands of employees in locations around the world, bringing in new technology can be very disruptive. In this week’s Hangout On Air for retailers, Christine Atkins, former CIO of global grocery retailer Ahold, explains why moving to the cloud offers the best chance to adopt faster, flexible business solutions without implementation headaches.

Come to the Hangout On Air this Thursday, October 3, at 10 a.m. PT, to hear Atkins talk about her experience guiding Ahold to go Google. Ahold switched from an aging and inflexible legacy system for email and collaboration to Google Apps. As Atkins, now a principal at Atkins & Cameron Consulting LLC, explains, the shift to Google Apps and the cloud led to a 75% decrease in costs, plus a no-hitches implementation and higher productivity. Atkins and Bill Hippenmeyer, director of Google Apps for Business Strategy, will talk about these retail challenges:

What tools does a distributed workforce need to be successful?
How do you choose technology that meets the expectations of millennials?
How do you manage the culture changes that come with technology innovation?

If you missed our previous Hangout On Air with Interactions Marketing and Tableau Software on mining insights from Big Data, you can view it here.

RSVP for the Christine Atkins Hangout On Air, and take part in the Q&A by posting your questions on Google+ or Twitter using the hashtag #GoneGoogle.

Amtrak maps trains from coast to coast with Google Maps Engine

Posted by Steve Alexander, Creative Director of E-commerce, Amtrak

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Steve Alexander, Creative Director of E-commerce for Amtrak, the United States’ intercity passenger rail service and high-speed rail operator. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Rail travel has been around since the mid-1800’s, but these days at Amtrak, we spend more time looking forward than backward. A big part of being innovative and making travel easier for our 31 million passengers every year, is giving people accurate information about train locations and arrival times. Google Maps Engine is providing the technology behind our newest online feature: an interactive train locator map that makes it easy for people to see where trains are and when they’re getting to their destinations.

Checking on train status is the second most-common activity at Amtrak.com, right after buying tickets. Whether it’s a business traveler trying to figure out which train to take to get to a meeting on time, or a parent wanting to know when to pick up their kid returning from college, everyone wants to know when their train will arrive. Prior to the train locator map, Amtrak customers could only see a text list of train status and station arrival times. The station map we launched for our customers last year had already shown us how compelling a visual representation of train information could be – and that led us to expand our use of Google Maps Engine for our latest map.

Our new train locator map lets people look at all the active trains across the country, or zoom in on a given region or station. People can search for one of our 300 daily trains by name or train number. By mousing over a train on the map, they can see a pop-up window showing whether the train is on time or late, and when it’s going to arrive at the next station. We get the near real-time data from GPS devices on each of our trains; as a train passes by sensors near the tracks, the location information is pushed into Google Maps Engine, along with station data from our content management system.

With Google Maps Engine, the map data is in the cloud, so we don’t have to host and maintain the infrastructure. It provides us with a reliable platform and a comprehensive basemap so our E-commerce team can focus all our energy on building useful maps that will help our customers.

This way, Amtrak can continue to think up more ways to make our map traveler-friendly, like adding information about local transit, restaurants and nearby tourist attractions. As we build more layers on top of the map, we hope it improves the customer experience even further and changes the way our customers think about their upcoming travel with us.

SeaPort Airlines takes off with Google Apps

Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Dan Shearer, Director of Safety of SeaPort Airlines Inc., a regional commuter airline operating flights to 21 destinations across 9 states. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Planes are a way of life in the rugged inlets of Southeast Alaska. While cars and roads rule the terrain in the lower 48 states, flying is often the easiest way to get around the mountains, moose and water that dominate the North. SeaPort Airlines Inc. was born in these rugged outdoors -- we’ve been flying short routes in and around Juneau, Alaska since 1982, back when the company went by Wings of Alaska -- and have since added commuter routes in Oregon, Southern California and six states in the Midwest and South. Altogether, our staff of approximately 225 is spread out across the country and operates a fleet of 20 planes.

You can’t underestimate the importance of communication in the aviation world. Everyone has to be on the same page at all times, so we can accurately communicate weather reports, passenger lists, flight times and other critical information. For years, we did this on paper, by emailing attached spreadsheets or using an outside file-sharing service. While we were meticulous in our method, there was always the risk of grabbing an out-of-date document with incorrect details. We implemented two or three different hosted email systems over a four year period, but none of them lived up to our expectations; we faced ongoing problems with outages, lost emails and not enough storage.

We knew we needed a more stable and collaborative platform. With help from Google Apps Reseller ViWo, we switched to Google Apps in January. ViWo was instrumental in getting us up and running. They showed us the best way to roll out and set up Apps to our 225 employees, pointed out tools for transferring data and helped with ad hoc technical support.

With Google Apps, we got a reliable email system with built-in collaboration tools that all our employees can access with a single login. Best of all, it was easy to use. It took me just a few hours one night to create a Google Sheet that’s become the main way we track our departure and arrival status and performance to make sure our flights are running on time and scheduled efficiently. Dozens of agents can update the master Sheet at the same time without us worrying about losing any data or getting a detail wrong. Sheets even translates time zones and lets us easily process monthly reports. We also use Google Docs for internal information like reservation instructions and contracts. We can update these details instantly for the whole company, without printing off hundreds of new pieces of paper.

In the past, IT was best described as reactive, and our technology problems took valuable time and energy away from our primary focus: delivering customers and their baggage safely and on-time to their destinations. Google Apps is changing that. Now, it’s simply a matter of people getting more comfortable with using the system. Just like flying in Alaska, IT managers know they’re going to run into pockets of turbulence. Google Apps ensures that at least our email and collaboration experience is a smooth ride.

Mexico’s Secretaría de la Función Pública brings government data to citizens using Google Earth and Google Maps

Posted by Alberto Herrasti, Consulting Director of Digital Government Projects at SFP

Editor's note: Our guest blogger this week is Alberto Herrasti, Consulting Director of Digital Government Projects at the Secretaría de la Función Pública (Secretary of Public Administration, SFP) from the government in Mexico. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say and discover our interactive demos.

As the Consulting Director of Digital Government Projects of SFP, I work to bring tools that make information easily accessible to Mexican citizens. We recently deployed Google Earth and Google Maps to solve a long-standing problem.

In the past, both our local population and our government workers had trouble finding official documents and records about government agencies and services because this information was distributed across various websites in a fragmented way.

Finding something as simple as the opening hours of a state-owned gas station, or the location and address of a nearby hospital would require a search across many official sites. The only alternative would be to physically visit the offices likely to have the information and spend more time waiting in long queues.

In 2010, the President’s office directed us to address this problem, and we set out to create a consolidated website (now known as mapas.gob.mx) that would serve as a central repository of geo-indexed data, allowing citizens to easily retrieve up-to-date information overlaid on the map data of Mexico.

We reached out to a number of mapping technology providers to evaluate their offerings but the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) -- Mexico's offical mapping and statistics institution -- identified Google Earth and Google Maps as our best option. We completed and launched the new site by 2012. The site integrates data from more than 70 public organizations and aims to place useful and helpful information in the hands of our local population.

Now, with the new Google Maps-integrated site, any user can find information by viewing it on a familiar, easy-to-navigate “globe”. We’ve also added a lot of useful information. The site now consolidates more than 900 maps with government-related information and covers every region of Mexico. As of 2013, more than 300 people use the site daily, and both awareness and use continues to grow rapidly. Instead of waiting in long lines or spending hours searching online, citizens can simply point their browsers to the new site and use maps to quickly find nearby resources and information.

Since we launched the tool in 2012, we’ve had more than 16,150 downloads of the geolocalized data and this tool allows government agencies to respond more effectively and efficiently. Thanks to t Google Earth and Google Maps technology which made the tool easy to build and easy to use, we’re able to better serve our citizens and respond to their needs with the right information at the right time.

Hangout On Air: Tapping Into Big Data to Discover Future Retail Strategies

Posted by Meghdutt Brahmachari, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

When it’s raining out, do people’s shopping habits change? Those are the kind of questions the team at Interactions Marketing, working with Tableau Software, think about when analyzing massive data sets on behalf of retailers. In a highly competitive market, retailers need the edge they can gain from business data – and with the analysis they can generate using Google BigQuery. By analyzing these data sets, you can find what Interactions Marketing calls “unexpected insights,” which help businesses make predictions that can improve sales. For example, they look at how external factors like the weather will affect retail sales.

Find out more about the value of Big Data and unexpected insights for retailers – and how Google BigQuery supports these analytics projects – in our Hangout On Air on Thursday, September 26, at 9 a.m. PT. Giovanni DeMeo, Vice President of Global Marketing and Analytics for Interactions Marketing; Paul Lilford, Global Director for Technology Partners at Tableau Software; and Daniel Powers, Director of Sales for Google Cloud Platform will explain how retailers can understand their businesses better and boost success:

How can unexpected insights help retailers attract and keep customers?
What are the pressures on retailers to glean insights from their data?
How does cloud storage make Big Data analysis possible?
How can you make it easier to visualize and understand your data?

If you missed our previous Hangout On Air with Speedway Motors, the world’s largest manufacturer of specialty hot-rodding and racing products, you can catch up on the recording here.

RSVP for the Interactions Marketing/Tableau Software Hangout On Air, and participate in the Q&A by posting your questions on Google+ or Twitter using the hashtag #GoneGoogle.

More On Gmail’s Delivery Delays

Posted by Sabrina Farmer, Senior Site Reliability Engineering Manager for Gmail

(Cross-posted on the Official Gmail Blog)

On September 23rd, many Gmail users received an unwelcome surprise: some of their messages were arriving slowly, and some of their attachments were unavailable. We’d like to start by apologizing—we realize that our users rely on Gmail to be always available and always fast, and for several hours we didn’t deliver. We have analyzed what happened, and we’ll tell you about it below. In addition, we’re taking several steps to prevent a recurrence.

The message delivery delays were triggered by a dual network failure. This is a very rare event in which two separate, redundant network paths both stop working at the same time. The two network failures were unrelated, but in combination they reduced Gmail’s capacity to deliver messages to users, and beginning at 5:54 a.m. PST messages started piling up. Google’s automated monitoring alerted the Gmail engineering team within minutes, and they began investigating immediately. Together with the networking team, the Gmail team restored some of the network capacity that was lost and worked to repurpose additional capacity, clearing much of accumulated message backlog by 1:00 p.m. PST and the remainder by shortly before 4:00 p.m. PST.

The impact on users’ Gmail experience varied widely. Most messages were unaffected—71% of messages had no delay, and of the remaining 29%, the average delivery delay was just 2.6 seconds. However, about 1.5% of messages were delayed more than two hours. Users who attempted to download large attachments on affected messages encountered errors. Throughout the event, Gmail remained otherwise available — users could log in, read messages which had been delivered, send mail, and access other features.

What’s next? Our top priority is ensuring that Gmail users get the experience they expect: fast, highly-available email, anytime they want it. We're taking steps to ensure that there is sufficient network capacity, including backup capacity for Gmail, even in the event of a rare dual network failure. We also plan to make changes to make Gmail message delivery more resilient to a network capacity shortfall in the unlikely event that one occurs in the future. Finally, we’re updating our internal practices so that we can more quickly and effectively respond to network issues. We’ll be working on all of these improvements and more over the next few weeks—even including this event, Gmail remains well above 99.9% available, and we intend to keep it that way!

Fortune 100 CEO addresses trust in financial services industry

TIAA-CREF CEO Roger Ferguson addresses audience at 2013 Sutton leture

Roger W. Ferguson Jr., president and chief executive of TIAA-CREF, packed the house at KU Edwards Campus Oct. 16. Students, faculty and the general public gathered to hear his talk on the process of, and need for, rebuilding trust in the financial services industry.

He began by bringing attention to the fifth anniversary of the U.S. economy’s devastating meltdown. The unemployment rate is still high, he said. He added: We have not yet escaped the after effects of the 2008 financial meltdown.

Ferguson discussed the importance of trusting the financial services industry and what an important tool financing is in society.

“Financing is creating the architecture for setting goals,” he said. He elaborated on the four different steps necessary to bring the financial service industry back.

First, considering what is in the best interests of stakeholders through a long-term view. Second, holding management accountable for supporting a culture of long-term thinking, a no surprise environment and an ethical performance. Third, regulating and supporting a broader view of roles within the industry by asking, “what kind of culture is this?” Lastly, long-term stakeholders are responsible for influencing the company to be honest and behave with values.

“We can rebuild trust by handling a better ethical performance,” he said. “Ethics is an enabler of our dreams and aspirations.”

To wrap up his lecture, he passionately discussed the importance of trust. Ferguson used TIAA-CREF as an example of why trust is so crucial.

“People put their life savings into TIAA-CREF and this is because they trust you’ll be there in 75 years,” he said.

When answering questions from the audience, he highlighted how far we are from achieving trust in the financial services industry. Ferguson acknowledged that trust is simply not returning, noting how Millennials perceive financial services.

TIAA-CREF, a Fortune 100 financial services company, is the leading provider of retirement services. Ferguson’s lecture served as the 2013 Walter S. Sutton Lecture, co-sponsored by the School of Business and KU’s International Center for Ethics in Business.

by Mackenzie Leander

Top tips from the Marketing Maestros..

Top tips from our Marketing Maestros Following our fantastic Inspiring Entrepreneurs event in partnership with Barclays on Monday evening, here are some of the top tips from our panel of Marketing Maestros......read more at the Innovation and enterprise blog

Marketing professor mentors two of top three teams in case competition

The teams from assistant professor Jessica Li’s integrated marketing communications class waited nervously for the Target representatives to tell them the results of the case competition. Weeks of hard work led to this moment.

The case study, made possible by marketing and strategic management lecturer Joyce Claterbos, was titled, “The War for Guests.” It involved developing a marketing strategy to help Target attract more customers. Li mentored two of the teams, whose presentations were also part of the final project for her class.

“For the final project, I let them choose between several options including participating in the Target competition,” Li said. “I hoped that by doing the case competition they would use some concepts and principles we learned in class.”

Zach Watchous, a member of one of the teams Li mentored, explained one of their ideas, a groceries-to-go service. Using a smartphone, a customer would input a grocery list and the Target employees would have the items waiting curbside when the customer drove up.

Credit: SXC

“You do this maybe 30 minutes before you leave work,” Watchous said. “Someone who doesn’t want to go to the store has their groceries that much faster and pretty much effortlessly.”

Jayant Narula said his group focused on three points. The first was a marketing campaign that focused on Target’s superior customer service. The second, a technological enhancement of sales strategies and devices, is meant to ensure everyone who walks in the store buys something. Marketing communication was the third point, and Narula said his team used the teachings from Li’s class more on this point than any other.

“It was about conveying all of our strategies and positioning effectively and efficiently so the customer knows our policies and why we’re above and beyond the competition,” he said.

Both students agree that the experience of the competition will benefit them in the future.

“It’s one thing to present to your class,” said Narula. “It’s another thing to compete with others while Target employees, people who are actually in the industry, judge you.”

Li believes these kinds of experiences are crucial to a good business education.

“I think it’s important for students to get as much real world experience as possible in their class,” she said. “Using opportunities that are out there to get the students more exposure to actual companies and experiences that can help them in their careers later on is definitely something I’m going to build into my future classes.”

by Dan Dutcher

Freeing Quickoffice for Everyone

Posted by Alan Warren, Engineering VP, Google Drive

(Cross-posted on the Google Drive blog.)

Quickoffice has been a part of the Google family for over a year now and we’ve been focused on making it easier for you to get work done in Drive -- no matter what type of document you need to work with. Converting old files to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides is still the easiest way to share and work together, and we’re working every day to make the files you convert look better. But sometimes the people you work with haven’t gone Google yet, so we made the Quickoffice mobile apps free for Google Apps for Business customers. And today we’re making Quickoffice available for free to everyone: students, businesses, nonprofits, governments, consumers and anyone with a Google Account.

You can get the free Quickoffice app on Google Play and in the App Store. Simply sign in with your Google Account to start editing Microsoft Office Excel, Word and PowerPoint files on your iPhone, iPad, Android phone or tablet. Quickoffice is integrated with Google Drive so you can safely and easily store and access your files across devices. Users who currently have Quickoffice for Google Apps for Business can update their app to the new version and will notice a new icon. You’ll also see a number of new features including the ability to create .ZIP folders and view charts in Excel and PowerPoint files. Plus, the new app works across devices so you don’t have to worry about installing separate versions anymore when you go from using your phone to editing on your tablet.

While we’re on the topic of free stuff, if you sign in to your Google Account from the new Quickoffice app for Android or iOS by September 26, 2013, an extra 10GB of Google Drive storage will be added to your account for two years (look for it in the next few weeks.)

Note: Previous versions of Quickoffice have been removed from Google Play and the App Store. Learn more about how this affects customers currently using Quickoffice Pro and Quickoffice Pro HD. Users who have the Quickoffice for Google Apps for Business app will receive an update notification to upgrade to this new version.

Property management, powered by Chromeboxes

Posted by Louis Gouletas, Chief Information Officer and Chief Marketing Officer of National Rental Services

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is National Rental Services’ (NRS) CIO/CMO, Louis Gouletas, who worked with Newmind Group to deploy Chromeboxes at NRS offices. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

When my partner and I acquired NRS, a property management service company based in Chicago and Orlando, we knew we wanted a simple and cost-effective IT environment. In the past, I experienced the pain and expense of running physical servers and time-consuming networks. I also had to deal with crashes and viruses. I wanted to have more time to add value to the business instead of dealing with day-to-day IT hassles.

We decided to turn our IT infrastructure over to experts. We accelerated our move into the cloud with Google, and partnered with Newmind Group, a managed IT and cloud services provider, to help with our transition. We were especially excited about our new customer kiosks, based on Chromeboxes running Managed Public Sessions, that we’ve installed in each of our offices. We’ve set up several Google devices in each office that allow potential renters to peruse properties complete with floor plans, HD photos, videos and 3D panoramas we create using Google Photo Sphere. If renters want to tour a property in person, the system is linked to our Google Calendars, so they can schedule a viewing on the spot with an agent.

Renters can also start the application process, submit a maintenance request or pay their rent using our kiosks. We manage over 1,000 bank transactions each month, so security is very important to us. We’ve enabled Managed Public Sessions mode via the Chrome Management Console, which allows us to whitelist and blacklist sites and automatically wipes all of a users data at the end of their session.

Internally, with Chrome for Business and Google Apps, we have virtually everything we need to maintain company productivity, from managing billing using Google Sheets to holding virtual company meetings via Google Hangouts on a weekly basis.

At NRS, one person is now able to accomplish the work of what previously required multiple IT personnel, and we are able to offer both our property owners and renters better service at more competitive prices. We plan to use our Chromeboxes, Chromebooks, and Nexus devices to maximize productivity for our staff as we continue our progress toward a 100% cloud-based company.

CAN Telematics and Google Maps enhance compliance and keep mobile workers safe

Posted by Duncan Ford, CTO at CAN Telematics

Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Duncan Ford, CTO at CAN Telematics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. CAN Telematics provides Mobile Resource Management solutions to a range of industries—notably, the oil and gas industry concentrated in western Canada. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say and learn more about how Google Maps for Business can help businesses in the transportation industry.

Oil and gas companies face an unusual set of challenges in their everyday operations as a result of having a lot of equipment, assets and people spread throughout a large territory. These companies need to track the location and status of all their drill rigs, pipelines, trucks, crews and other assets.

Our company, CAN Telematics, helps oil and gas companies address these challenges with solutions that track their assets, operating status, maintenance history, financial information and more. For example, one device monitors a well pump or a generator to sense the presence of certain gases or poll for other engine data. Another, mounted in a truck, logs location, speed, acceleration and braking habits. A third provides an “SOS” button for remote workers. Some devices incorporate accelerometers to detect falls or lack of movement.

The data is collected by GPS-equipped monitoring and sensing devices, then stored in the cloud. Our solution is based on Google Maps and retrieves data from Google Maps Engine, offering a familiar interface for our users as well as huge scalability. We also save our customers time and money by making information more accessible, and immediately meaningful. This video about Trakopolis shows how the sensing devices and maps work together to help companies track their assets and related data.

The benefits to companies are significant, starting with cost savings. They can add their privately built roads to the public roads in Google Maps, so it’s easier for them to determine which truck is closest to a facility that needs assistance. The maps also enable more efficient routing, saving time and fuel. These companies can also earn rebates on fuel taxes by easily determining the portion of their trucks’ travel that occurs on private roads -- with a fraction of the tedious, error-prone, manual record-keeping effort formerly required.

Driver’s history plotted on Can Telematics’ Trakopolis map interface. Dispatchers can enable Geofencing capabilities to receive alerts when certain assets enter or leave an area.

Even more savings can come from tracking average speeds and driving habits: once monitoring begins, truck drivers tend to slow down and drive more carefully, so there’s a big safety benefit along with fuel and vehicle maintenance savings.

Our overall goal is an easier, more efficient and cost-effective way for far-flung companies to keep track of their extremely valuable assets. As we deploy our solutions to other continents and other industries, Google Maps is the natural choice for delivering critical information to the people who need it.

The Enterprise Club-Is starting a business right for you? 23/9/13

The Enterprise Club-Is starting a business right for you?
Monday, 23 September 2013 from 18:00 to 19:45
Leeds Central library 3rd floor meeting Room

The Enterprise club provides an opportunity to network and access information, support and advice on starting and running a business from set-up onwards.The workshops are open to anyone thinking about setting up their own business or becoming self employed and are FREE.

Book on eventbrite http://theenterpriseclubleeds4.eventbrite.co.uk/ To find out more contact:Business and Patent Information Services Tel: 0113 2478266 Email:piu@leeds.gov.uk

A Leeds Business Week Event

Sept 23-27: Over 60 great business events for all! FREE to attend, REGISTER: http://leedsbizweek.com

We are holding more events as part of Leeds Business Week, take a look:

Pre business start-up workshops 24th and 25th Sept

Event on 24th September: http://leedsbizweek.com/events/view/22/start-up-workshops

Event on 25th September: http://leedsbizweek.com/events/view/30/start-up-workshop

Stream your data into BigQuery in real-time

Posted by Ju-kay Kwek, BigQuery Product Manager

Today, we live in a world where businesses are generating large amounts of real-time data from web applications that serve millions of users, online sales transactions, or customer activity created by an explosion of connected devices. Being able to react quickly to changes in the data being generated is critical to remain competitive. At the same time, businesses are gathering, storing and analyzing data -- sometimes 100s of gigabytes per day -- using legacy systems that struggle to keep up.

We built Google BigQuery to enable businesses to tackle this problem without having to invest in costly and complex infrastructure. And today this gets even easier with two key new features:

Real-time data streaming: you can now stream events row-by-row into BigQuery via a simple new API call. This enables you to store data as it comes in, rather than building and maintaining systems just to cache and upload in batches. The best part? The new data is available for querying instantaneously. Streaming ingestion is free for an introductory period until January 1st, 2014. After that it will be billed at a flat rate of 1 cent per 10,000 rows inserted. The existing batch-based ingestion will continue to be free.
Query portions of a table: you can now query a specific subset of a table using a simple new @<t> that we call a “table decorator” in your SQL statements. Though restricted to data inserted within the last 24 hours, this capability provides significant benefits beyond just cost efficiency -- for example, in conjunction with real-time data streaming, you can now use table decorators to monitor the last 30 minutes of user activity after a new change is pushed to your application.

In addition to these features, we’ve also expanded BigQuery’s window functions to include SUM and COUNT -- statistical capabilities that many customers have asked for -- as well as regular analytic functions for calculating Correlation and Standard Deviation.

And to make the entire querying experience smoother, the BigQuery user interface has also received numerous productivity-enhancing updates. These include an expanding information panel when clicking on a query, as well as action buttons at the bottom of the query box to make it easier to edit, run, save, and show results.

You can get details about these new capabilities and examples from our Developer Blog and in our updated product documentation.

Whether it’s for capturing streams of application event logging or real-time user behavior analysis, we can’t wait to hear how you’re using BigQuery’s new features. And we hope you’ll share with our community via the #BigQuery tag on Google+.