Mac News: Business Intelligence

LexisNexis Makes CRM App More Relationship-Savvy
July 10, 2009

LexisNexis is enhancing its customer relationship management product, InterAction CRM, with its version of social networking functionality. Called "InterAction IQ," the tool delves into the CRM app and the Exchange Server to establish which users have relationships with certain clients or prospective clients, and then rates those relationships as to their strength.

Analysis: Veramark's Performance Advisor for Telecom and IT Expenses
June 25, 2009

This article draws on two discrete data sets: BI deployments of over 270 respondents in an Aberdeen Group April 2009 benchmark report; and the telecom lifecycle management solutions of 140 respondents in a March 2009 benchmark report. This data will be used to contextualize the value of integrated business intelligence functionalities and their ability to drive additional cost savings.

Getting a Grip on Business Intelligence TCO
June 18, 2009

IT and business management are increasingly expressing alarm at rising costs associated with business intelligence implementations. The fear of hidden costs has kept many companies from making an investment, and many adopters have found that the costs related to ongoing support and maintenance of an ever-changing set of analytical and reporting requirements inhibits user penetration.

Safeguarding the Crown Jewels With Online Brand Monitoring
June 11, 2009

The most valuable asset of a company is its good name. Yet the rapid growth of the Internet and the explosion of social media, in particular, have made it infinitely more challenging for a company to protect its good name. Recent examples abound of how, owing to the viral effect of social media, ordinary people now wield the power to do untold harm to a brand.

Riding Out the Storm: Q&A With Information Builders CEO Gerry Cohen
June 01, 2009

Business Intelligence has evolved considerably in the last several years. At one time the domain of PhDs or other highly trained employees, it has become accessible to the masses. Indeed, one of the competitive differentiators among the vendors in the market -- from the huge stack players to the small best-of-breed providers -- is not whether, but how, they make this complex technology available to business line users.

IBM Launches All-Seeing, All-Knowing, Real-Time Data Cruncher
May 14, 2009

As the pace of business increases, business intelligence technologies have been forced to speed up so they can crunch more data and do it faster. On Thursday, IBM unveiled InfoSphere Streams, a high-performance computing system designed to, in essence, provide business intelligence capabilities on steroids.

Diving Into the Online Ad Network Spaghetti
May 07, 2009

The report came out right before the economy nose-dived, before ad revenues started to shrink, before even online display advertising started feeling the recession's pinch. A February 2007 report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations -- the keepers of media buying/selling trends and standards for publishers and advertisers -- highlighted the opportunities and the challenges for the then-still-hot online advertising space.

Crowd Wisdom
May 06, 2009

I wanted to write a piece about the wisdom of crowds for a long time but I needed a clip from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" to make it work. After a lot of procrastinating, I went to YouTube, did the hard work of reviewing all of the Python clips and found the right one.

Making Social Networks Pay, Part 3: An Eye on Privacy
May 05, 2009

Can the privatized and anonymized be monetized? When it comes to the mega-million-name member lists of social network sites like Facebook and MySpace, Big Business really wants to know. As consumer databases go, the Facebook and MySpace lists have an appealing advantage over databases derived from indirect sources like phone books and rental lists.

Making Social Networks Pay, Part 2: Players and Products
April 28, 2009

With an attractive force akin to the massive black hole at the center of the galaxy, online social networks have pulled into their orbits scores of new startups searching for profits. The target: eyeballs. Last January, Facebook totaled 68 million unique visitors and 1.1 billion page views, and MySpace had 58 million unique visitors and 810 million page views, according to Compete.com.

No Channel Is an Island: Web Analytics and Marketing Muscle
April 23, 2009

When poet John Donne wrote, "No man is an island," he suggested that that all human beings are bound by the experiences of others. This timeless notion can also be applied to the business world: "No marketing channel is an island." When online information is examined on a larger scale across several thousands of customers, trends emerge.

Tracking the Trackers
April 22, 2009

I have been remiss in not paying enough attention to social media monitoring software. I suppose it's understandable given that social media is at the margin of CRM -- moving to the center, but still in the outer shell -- and monitoring software is somewhere beyond that orbit in the software equivalent of the Kuiper belt.

Making Social Networks Pay, Part 1: Strategies and Technologies
April 21, 2009

Nobody, not even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg himself, has yet successfully produced a proven, sustainable and scalable business model that can satisfactorily monetize the vast ecosystem of the social networks -- Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. The reason for this could be rooted in the basic noncommercial nature of social networking services.

Twitter and the Future of Discourse, Part 2
April 20, 2009

In a bear market, nearly everyone is willing to put up with a little bull. Twitter is certainly full of it, in the form of mundane drivel, yet everyone seems to be touting it as the river of gold. "Twitter has a lot of pros, but something this effective and free has very little cons," Lon Safko, coauthor of John Wiley's upcoming The Social Media Bible, told TechNewsWorld.

Drowning in Data: Web Analytics and Information Overload
April 16, 2009

Conventional wisdom suggests that the more information a person has concerning a particular issue or event, the more likely they are to accurately predict the outcome. This applies to such diverse areas as baseball, meteorology, and, of course, business. The challenge, however, is deciphering which bits of information are germane to the objective at hand and which bits are extraneous to immediate concerns.

Maximizing the Mobile Commerce Experience
April 14, 2009

It's official: Mobile is moving into the mainstream. With the ever-growing proliferation of devices offering full Internet browsing access, more and more consumers are interacting -- and purchasing -- on the Web via their device of choice. Adding to this trend, there are now more than 40 million active monthly users of the mobile Internet in the U.S. alone, according to Nielsen Mobile.