The connected consumer

By on May 8, 2012 in Post

Understanding how consumers behave before they make a purchasing decision is invaluable knowledge.  In its latest quarterly report Eccomplished looks at the information and inspiration people seek out in order to reach buying decisions.

Consumers look for two broad types of input to answer their key questions.  They look to their ‘information influencers’ for guidance about how a product works, and their ‘inspiration influencers’ for questions about personal taste.

Eccomplished discovered that over half (54%) of consumers visited an online marketplace and 31% read online reviews when making purchasing choices.  Both of these options push recommendations from family and friends into third place.  39% of respondents would complete an online rating after a purchase and 35% state they would recommend items to family and friends.

However, the report suggests that social media tools are not yet having a significant impact on purchasing decisions.  Only 10% of people said they would ‘follow’ or ‘like’ a brand on a social network while 1% said that their decision had been informed by a recommendation on a social network.

The power of in-person communication

By on May 6, 2012 in Corporate Environments, Post, Professional Development

The increasingly distributed and global nature of organisations means that most communications do not occur in ‘real-time’.  However the majority of business leaders consider in-person collaboration as critical to business success.

The Economics Intelligence Unit (commissioned by Cisco) has published a white paper on the value of face-to-face interactions in business.  862 business leaders, representing a range of sectors and business sizes in Europe, the US and Asia Pacific were questioned about the business value of ‘in-person’ (face-to-face) communication.

Over three-quarters of the respondents felt that in-person communication (with colleagues, partners and customers) is critical to success, fostering improved problem resolution, creating better relationships and improving the identification of business opportunities.

However, most business leaders indicated that the majority of their business interactions are ‘non-real-time’ (e.g. via email) and that the absence of visual and audio cues makes it difficult to assess levels of engagement.

Meanwhile, a report by communications firm RW3 suggests that employees in global businesses feel under-skilled when it comes to communicating within cross-border teams.  The 2012 Virtual Teams Survey Report – Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams summarises responses from 3,300 people based in more than 100 countries.  The respondents agree with the business leaders – the absence of visual clues makes it more difficult to collaborate and build trust.  In addition, time zone differences and cultural differences can make virtual team work challenging.  More than 40% report they had never met their colleagues face-to-face.

Although the large majority of those responding conduct at least part of their work virtually only 16% had been trained to help them get the most out of virtual working.

Rebuilding Europe’s skills can generate growth

By on May 1, 2012 in Europe

The economic situation in Europe is challenging to say the least.  Unemployment has grown dramatically since 2008 and economic growth is stagnant.  Although human capital is a critical driver of economic growth, 86% of European employers have cut or frozen their skills and training budgets in the last year. Paradoxically, 43% of the respondents reported at least a moderate skills shortage in their organisations or sectors.

500 senior decision makers across a number of sectors were questioned in a survey carried out by Accenture on behalf of the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium.

The Accenture report focuses on three key challenges currently facing the European skills markets:

  • Untapped talent

The report calls for initiatives to help bring 25 million unemployed people and a further 15 million ‘discouraged’ people into the workforce.  (‘Discouraged’ people include older people, women with children and young people who have withdrawn from the world of work because of a lack of opportunities.)

  • Transferable skills and mobile workforces

Barriers to skills transfer are not only national.  Some organisations have trouble identifying and maximising their internal talent pools.

  • Lack of collaboration between sectors

There is scope for improvement when it comes to planning and managing shifts in employment patterns and labour markets.

The report makes a number of recommendations for stakeholder groups, including policy makers, educational institutions, employers and others.  Key recommendations include:

Actions for employers

  • Invest in data and analytics to profile and track internal talent
  • Offer flexible working options
  • Increase job rotations within organisations and collaborate with others in the same sector.
  • Build partnerships between small and large firms within supply chains to improve skills levels.

Actions for policy makers

  • Improve recognition of skills and qualifications across Europe
  • Simplify regulations regarding global talent recruitment
  • Support partnerships between businesses and education

 

Intellectual property in the digital economy

By on April 26, 2012 in Intellectual property, Post

Intellectual property is increasingly political.  Recent protests against SOPA/PIPA and ACTA demonstrate that consumers are unhappy with big business driving IP policy.  Lena Roland has summarised the key issues surrounding these initiatives in an excellent guest post on the InfoVision blog.

In response to a call from European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes for ‘Big ideas for the Digital Agenda’, the Linked Content Coalition (LCC) has been launched this week.

The LCC brings together executives from TV, music, news media, IT and internet businesses, and has been set up to work on a cross media project which aims to improve the management of copyright in the online world.  LCC participants want to identify what works – and what doesn’t – and to develop a model that will facilitate commercial and non-commercial use of content.

Meanwhile, Consumer International has published its IP Watchlist for 2012.  In it, 30 countries are ranked according to how their intellectual property (IP) laws and enforcement policies affect consumers.  The report gathers examples of ‘good’ and ‘bad practice’ and highlights initiatives which it feels will provide a fair balance between content consumers and creators.

Israel takes first place in the report, praised for its ‘fair use’ approach to copyrighted material.  The UK appears in the bottom three for the fourth successive year.  The report argues that outdated copyright law hinders academic research, digital product development and ‘cultural engagement’ and calls for the recommendations of the Hargreaves Review to be implemented ‘without delay’.

The report can be downloaded for free.

 

UK government – agile and digital by default

By on April 25, 2012 in Digital Publishing, Public Policy, Web Technology & The Cloud

The UK has a tradition of excellence in public services.  However, this has not always translated into excellent online services.  The UK government is now pursuing a ‘digital first’ and ‘digital by default’ agenda which aims to design and deliver world class digital public services.

Mike Bracken is the Executive Director for the UK Government’s Digital Service, responsible for delivering ‘customer first’ digital services.  Speaking at the ‘Agenda Setters’ stream of seminars at this year’s Internet World event, he described how a transformed, agile approach to design and development is opening up online government services.

Gov.uk is the new single site for government services (replacing Direct.gov).  Currently in beta, the site provides simple, clear and fast answers and is designed with external users in mind.  An example of this customer focus can be seen in the contrasting treatment of the same information – in this case about public holidays in the UK.

On Direct.gov, this information is displayed in a table – the information is correct, it is simply not easy on the eye.  The new site answers the key question that most people searching for bank holiday information want answered – When is the next bank holiday?  It is a simple, yet revolutionary approach to delivering truly customer first information.

Key elements and principles of UK.gov

  • Digital first and digital by design
  • Users first!  The users ‘trump’ the government department(s) in all decisions
  • Digital services NOT websites
  • Less information – much of the ‘marginal’ information currently available on Direct.gov will not be transferred onto Gov.UK
  • Quick tasks and answers – for example, by answering four simple questions you can discover your maternity entitlements
  • Understand the user journey – 90% of users will come into the site via search engines, not via expensive ‘home pages’
  • Devices and mobile  - the content is designed for mobile delivery
  • Agile development – small teams are involved in iterative development.  These are not massive, long term IT projects  This approach means you can ‘fail in increments’ and do something about it
  • Learn from experience
  • Build a trusted network of partners – a contrast with previously strained relationships with large external providers.  Work with world class digital businesses

Today, the government has announced a new advisory board to help drive the next stage of Digital by Default.  Leading figures from academia, industry and retail will help the government deliver its digital transformation agenda.

 

Human and digital memory

By on April 19, 2012 in Post

The human memory can be fallible.   Our memories can be distorted by all forms of interference, including hindsight and reinterpretation.  In a session organised by the North London branch of the British Computer Society two speakers discussed what it means to remember – and forget – in a digital world.

What is the relationship between human memory and the artefacts that help us preserve memories?  In non-literate, oral traditions, exact verbatim recall is rare – and in fact serves no purpose.  The oral tradition of history and storytelling is creative and fluid.  In literate societies the written word can support recall – or disprove our memories.   Memory mediated by technology confronts us with ‘the truth’.

In the digitised world, our past never dies.  Even if not taken to the extreme levels of ‘lifelogging’ (where individuals convert their life’s activity into digital forms), we are all creating an increasing number of records which will last and which we will share in new ways.

The artefacts which we use to help us reminisce have moved from the physical to the digital.  The value of many artefacts – particularly those we inherit from older generations – lies in the stories attached to them.  The move from physical objects’ (think vinyl records or hardcopy books) to digital objects means our legacy will increasingly be our manipulation of digital content (e.g. playlists).

But does a digital life preserve the ‘right’ things?  We can capture our ‘life data’ quite easily but how about our emotional life?   How can we ensure we all have the right to ‘informational self determination’ in a world where social digital sharing has changed the very nature of ownership and our understanding of ‘privacy’?.

The speakers at the event were:

Dr Kieron O’Hara, Senior Research Fellow (Electronics and Computer Science) University of Southampton.  Co-author of The Spy in the Coffee Machine

Richard Banks, Principal Interaction Designer, Microsoft Research. Author of The Future of Looking Back

‘The more for less challenge’ – lessons from lawyers

By on April 12, 2012 in Post, Professional Development

It’s always interesting to hear what thought leaders in other fields are saying about the future of their profession.  A recent Oxford University Press podcast features Richard Susskind who is (among other things) Visiting Professor in Internet Studies at the Oxford University Internet Institute.  He is also the author of The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the nature of legal services.  In the podcast, Susskind outlines some of the key challenges facing the legal profession and recommends some fundamental changes.  Not only will the future landscape in which lawyers work be transformed but the lawyers themselves will look quite different.

The pressure on costs will transform the legal profession

The prohibitive costs of going to law will mean that customers will be looking for more value for money.  Even though there will be an increase in legislation and regulation, there will be pressure to reduce the number of in-house lawyers in corporate institutions.   Those left behind will need to do more with less – Susskind suggests that legal budgets may be squeezed by 30-50%.  The figure is so high that fundamental changes are required.  Although high end legal work is not so price sensitive, other legal services will need to be delivered in new ways.  Susskind suggests that legal work will be broken down into component parts and work that can be carried out more cheaply – though outsourcing or subcontracting for example, will be identified.

New structures required

The challenge of these new models is to the profitability of law firms.  The ‘old school’ pyramid structure in law firms will become less relevant because other suppliers will provide the services currently supplied by junior lawyers.

New service providers

The liberalisation of the legal profession will see new players delivering services.   The legal market is currently worth £25 billion per year in England and Wales and unsurprisingly other players are looking to take some of the action.  Susskind suggests that individuals with experience of running businesses in other sectors could transform the provision of legal services.  For example, NHS Online has managed to distil health and medical information for the layperson and it must surely be possible to do something similar for law.

Physical vs virtual spaces

More legal services can and will be offered outside of the ‘physical’ spaces of the courtroom.  There will continue to be an increase in online dispute resolution for example.

New models of collaboration

Collaboration is another way to cut costs.  Clients could share costs with like-minded others in either non-competitive industries or even share non-commercial services with competitors.  For example, banks could collaborate to manage compliance issues.

Susskind says that lawyers should not be fixated on current or historic representations of ‘what lawyers do’.  For him the key attributes needed to make the most of the new opportunities opening up are nerve and imagination.

Something to aspire to!

 

Users of e-content ‘read more’

By on April 10, 2012 in E-books

New research from the US exploring the reading behaviour of consumers has uncovered some interesting insights, in particular that those who read digitally claim to be reading more.  One fifth of US adults have read an e-book in the past year and 30% of readers who read e-content claim that they are reading more.

Summary of key findings     

A range of devices

  • Of those who had read an e-book in the last year:
    • 43% used an e-book reader
    • 42% used a computer
    • 29% used a smartphone and
    • 23% used a tablet device

The importance of recommendations

  • Users of e-reading devices are more likely to use recommendations than printed book readers:
    • 81% of e-reading device users get book recommendations from people they know (as opposed to 64% of hardcopy readers)
    • 31% use recommendations from bookstores (23% of hardcopy readers)
    • 56% use online recommendations (35% of hardcopy readers)

Reading more

  • On a typical day, 56% of e-reading device owners are reading a book (compared with 45% of the general book-reading public)
  • 30% of e-content readers say they are reading more
    • 41% of tablet readers say they are reading more
    • 35% of e-reader owners say they are reading more
    • E-content readers have read an average of 24 books in the past 12 months (compared to 15 for hard copy readers)

What about libraries?

  • Owners of e-reading devices are more likely to purchase than borrow
    • 14% of all those surveyed obtained the last book they read from a library
    • 75% of e-book readers begin their search for reading material online
    • Only 12% start their search at the library

The e-book behavioural research was prepared by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the PEW Research Centre’s Internet and American Life Project and the Gates Foundation.

Meanwhile, The 2012 State of America’s Libraries reports that more than 67% of US libraries are offering downloadable e-books and 28% are lending e-reading devices.

Three’s a crowd

By on April 3, 2012 in Post, Social Media

Many new products and services which rely on harnessing the power of the crowd are being developed and launched.  Here’s a summary of three particularly interesting developments, as reported by Springwise.com.

CrowdIPR is a tool that relies on ‘the crowd’ to help businesses with their intellectual property research. Entrepreneurs can input information about their projects and users of the site can provide information or academic research about any similar products.  Those assisting may be rewarded with points or cash if their input is considered to be the most valuable.  Future planned developments for the service include the option to keep project ideas confidential by engaging only the most skilled research group on the site.

Meanwhile, in Spain, Spotfav has combined webcam technology with crowdsourcing to provide a ‘realtime’ weather reporting service.  Users can create a ‘spot’ for a destination and once a profile has been created, ‘fans’ can post weather reports – provided they are actually at the physical location.  The crowd can also nominate a site where they believe a webcam should be located.

Finally, in Portugal, MyFarm.com is providing ‘online farmers’ with an opportunity to control farming activity on a plot of land via the web.  The site uses gaming interfaces to help remote users plan their planting activities and provides technical advice for those with no farming experience.  Users also receive samples of their own produce.

Digital natives not all ‘e-skilled’

By on March 29, 2012 in Europe

This week is European e-skills week.  This campaign sets out to raise awareness of the value of e-skills in Europe’s employment market.

According to figures released by the EU, the ICT sector is directly responsible for 5% of European GDP, employing 5.8 million people.  In the economic downturn people with fewer e-skills have experienced more difficulties in the labour market and this trend is set to continue – it is predicted that by 2015, 90% of all jobs, across all sectors, will require ICT skills.  The campaign also suggests that just because young people are ‘digital natives’ this does not necessarily mean they are ‘e-skilled’.

The campaign has pulled together the results of a number of research projects and has highlighted some interesting trends and statistics:

  • The number of computer science graduates has been declining across most of Europe since 2006.  Only Germany and Poland are bucking this trend.
  • Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg are the most ICT-specialised countries in Europe.
  • 58% of employers believed the education sector is not doing enough to prepare young people for the modern workplace
  • An average of 13% of young people across Europe are not using the internet regularly – in particular those with a low formal education.
  • Only 25% of young people across the EU consider that they have ‘high’ levels of basic internet skills (finding information via internet search engines; attaching files to emails; making internet telephone calls, file sharing and web page creation).
  • Only 10% of Europeans have created a web page (17 % of the highly educated; 7% of the low educated).

You can follow the links to the research and statistics from the original press release.