Sales Still Matters More than Social Media

Sales Still Matters More than Social Media

Sales Still Matters More than Social Media It’s become commonplace for observers to tout the transformative potential of digital technologies and bemoan the allegedly slow pace at which companies support these initiatives. Two recent blogs published by HBR.org are representative and, I believe, wrong. Walter Frick, an HBR editor, contrasts the enthusiasm of executives for spending money on digital initiatives versus their relatively unsupportive boards. “Digital growth is appropriately a priority for a diverse […]

A Predictive Analytics Primer

No one has the ability to capture and analyze data from the future. However, there is a way to predict the future using data from the past. It’s called predictive analytics , and organizations do it every day. Has your company, for example, developed a customer lifetime value (CLTV) measure? That’s using predictive analytics to determine how much a customer will buy from the company over time. Do you have a “next best offer” […]

9 Habits That Lead to Terrible Decisions

9 Habits That Lead to Terrible Decisions

Several years ago we came up with a great idea for a new leadership-development offering we thought would be valuable to everyone. We had research demonstrating that when people embarked on a self-development program, their success increased dramatically when they received follow-up encouragement.  We developed a software application to offer that sort of encouragement. People could enter their development goals, and the software would send them reminders every week or month asking how they […]

Good Business Analyst, Bad Business Analyst

A Good BA has a product management approach to their role, partnering with stakeholders to define the very best solution. A Good BA is the subject matter expert of the project requirements. They are viewed by both Creative and Tech teams as one of their own while in reality serving neither, only the client’s project goals. A Good BA has patience to learn from the client, educate the client, and push back when needed. […]

The Value of Business Analysis: Identifying Business Need Featured

The Value of Business Analysis: Identifying Business Need Featured

The Value of Business Analysis: Identifying Business Need One of the critical roles of the Business Analyst (BA), or Enterprise Analyst (EA), in the area of Enterprise Analysis is to identify business need. Many business professionals make the mistake of thinking that since it is named Enterprise Analysis, that identifying business need can happen only at the enterprise level. Nothing could be further from the truth; Enterprise Analysis and identifying business need, can happen […]

How to Plan a User Acceptance Test

We see this problem all of the time. Companies and teams want to do the User Acceptance Testing process right, but they just don’t know where to start. The problem is that the starting point is usually to hand the product over to the users and allow them to check the product against their own business requirements. This informal testing process can be extremely costly if the users miss something. So how do you […]

Don’t Have A Big Data Strategy Yet? Good.

Big data noise has reached the point where most are reaching for the ear plugs. And with any good hype bubble, the naysayers are now grabbing attention with contrarian positions. For example, The New York Times expressed doubt about the economic viability of big data in ” Is Big Data an Economic Big Dud? ” This post grabbed a lot of attention, but, like many others I read, it fundamentally misses the point of […]