The concept of eliminating things from our lives in order to have more in life is one that I’ve seen in several self-help, personal productivity, and spiritual guides.  Michael Card wrote a song about it named Things we leave behind in which he says “It’s hard to imagine the freedom we find from the things we leave behind.” Simplifying our lives to gain more sounds great, and makes sense to me, but is very difficult to do.

This sign is mounted on the way out to my garage

For me, it’s because I enjoy doing the do of living life. As an employee, a parent, a husband, a son, and a teacher that means a full schedule of commitments each week.  Throw in some activities for exercising and hobbies,  like writing this blog, and it’s busier still.

In business, I see some areas where simplifying things is a prevailing thought. For example in eCommerce design, we often focus on how to simplify the screen layout, site flow, and number of steps that a customer must navigate. It’s been proven time-and-time again that sites that are easy to navigate have better conversion rates and are more successful. Friction yields failure on eCommerce sites.

But we don’t often apply the principal of simplification to business processes. Unfortunately in most cases when we modify a business process, we add steps and requirements. It happens because our systems are setup to add complexity and not reduce them. We have post mortems on production outages, lessons learned after projects, audits from regulatory processes, and legal guidelines based on laws and lawsuits.  All of those events typically add-to rather than reduce steps from processes.

Can businesses eliminate steps in business processes to accomplish more? I think so. To me it’s just a matter of focus.  As business processes grow overtime, they become bloated with unnecessary and repetitive steps. They also produce output that is not part of the required output (waste). So here’s a call for business leaders to focus on eliminating business processes to simplify their environment and ultimately produce more.  Just think about the  results we can find from the things we leave behind…

Related posts:

1. Stories needed of business process improvement
2. Innovation sourced from standard processes?
3. Thoughts on serendipity and managed processes

I was watching CNN this morning while doing time on the treadmill. A story came on about the warning from OSHA to Sea World that whales would eventually kill a person in the current environment unless they made some changes.  It made think about people within organizations that try to sound

Kai=Change, Zen=Good(for the better), Kaizen=Continuous Improvement

warnings and alerts about business process improvement topics. Everyone is quick to agree that business processes are always full of opportunity for improvement. Remember Kaizen and business process rengineering? I remember a time when the buzz word of ‘continuous improvement’ was common place in the industry. I’d see it at training sessions, webinars, and company culture and leadership training.  But I don’t hear it so much any more.

So I wonder, how much time do we spend making incremental improvements of processes? How does an organization come to support and embrace this? Does it take an event where the process output reaches virtually zero? Is it the result of a change in leadership where the new leader seeks to leave his/her mark? Tell me about business process management in your organization. Do employees continuously seek improvement and does management listen?

Related posts:

1. Process Improvement: Make it happen
2. Knowledge Workers vs Process Workers
3. Simplifying business processes to accomplish more

The prevalent theme in the early discussions on day 2 of eTail West was multi-channel strategy.  Seems like a no-brainer that you need to operate as ONE company. However, based on the questions from the attendees, you can see that challenges *and* opportunities exist within organizations for how to allocate revenue and control channel rivalry.

Another repeated message was “get mobile”. The early retail adopters are filling the space quickly and your industry may already be filled with competing mobile applications. So get busy.

Here are the highlights of my bullet notes from the opening sessions and track B on social media.

Bob Cell – CEO – MyBuys

• Marketing should not be based on events of the past. Use what you know about the customer combined with predictive modeling to suggest/personalize the experience.

Vincent Ragueso – Vice President eCommerce – 1800Flowers.com – Distributing your Store

• Building a mobile program
  • Broad mobile strategy
  • Optimized shopping via wide array of devices
  • First to market in their category and continued evolution
  • Utilized external vendor for expertise and speed to market
• Smartphone penetration growth 20% now, on pace for 40% over next two years
• Key Takeaways
  • Have a broad mobile strategy
  • SMS – Take advantage of it
  • There will be more eCommerce transactions on Facebook. Get involved.
  • Differentiate your social media strategy.

Jason Bertrand – Manager of Online Campaigns – Under Armour

• Revenue attribution – the process of tracking, sequencing, and valuing the contribution of revenue for activities across business channels.
  • Example
    • User clicks on display add and go to email list
    • Few days later visit store but no purchase
    • Few days later go back to site and purchase
    • How do you credit and attribute the revenue from this transaction for the activities leading to it?
    • First touch point is the “introducer”
    • Middle touch points are “Influencer”
    • Last is the “closer”
    • Use the data and knowledge from the touch point funnel to help make decisions for media buys and advertisement budget.
• What should a revenue attribution solution include?
  • Order and sales level attribution
  • Profit level attribution (may need to send profit data to provider)
  • Able to provide product-level analytics
  • View based conversion tracking (email opens, banner views)
  • Purchase path reporting
  • Attribution exclusion capability

Panel Discussion – Decisions to Prioritize Projects
Marc Miller – SVP eCommerce – Aeropostale
Carol Steinberg – SVP eCommerce – ShopNBC.com
Lewis Goldman – SVP Marketing – 1800Flowers.com
Jamie Iannone – EVP Shopping – Barnesandnoble.com
James Keller – SVP Marketing and Business Development – Shoebuy.com
Igor Gorn – CEO – SysIQ

• How do they approach project prioritization?
  • (NBC, Aeropostale) – Capital budget/Operations expense budget – Review capital expense budget items each month.
  • B&N – Have a 12 to 18 month roadmap. Assign product manager/owner to each product responsible for value and ROI.
• NBC -Looks at margin dollars by category. Allowed to go over budget if it bringing in more profit.  They setup mini P&Ls for each program.
• 2010 Priorities
  • NBC – Mobile apps, social, video
  • Aeropostale – Mobile, Facebook, International reach
  • B&N – Digital, Store integration
  • Shoebuy – Selection and service on website, International reach
  • SysIQ – Personalization and one-to-one marketing
• B&N – Using agile methodology for development

Jamie Iannone – EVP Shopping – Barnesandnoble.com – The changing landscape of eCommerce

• Presented a video on B&N nook eReader.
  • The Nook is built on the Android platform
• Discussed iPhone application
  • Store locator
  • Find events
  • Add stores to contacts
  • Promotion – Free coffee if you download the application. Received a free cup of coffee in the store.
• B&N currently uses 6 different twitter handles dedicated to specific topics
• Use of weekly voice of the customer panel meeting
  • 15 customers under NDA
  • Connect product managers with real customers
  • They are not paid in cash. They are sent coupons.

Miguel Almeida – Vice President Online Merchandising – Walgreens – Beyond eCommerce Linking Solutions for customers via the web

• Optimal wellness program
  • Track and monitor specific health conditions
• 3Cs of Web site real-estate allocation
  • Content
  • Commerce
  • Community
• 3x more sales value from multi-channel customers
• Give customers a choice for all channels. Make the channels reinforce each other.

Steve Zapf – EVP Multi-Chanel Management – Guitar Center/Musician’s Friend

• Interesting presentation blending in video and eCommerce concepts. Quite honestly, I was mesmerized by ZZ Top with Santa’s elf.

=======================

Track B – Community, Social Media & Predictive Modeling

Keith Mercier – VP GAP Online – GAP

• GAP Then – The “push” approach – No interaction with customer
• GAP Now – Beyond “push”
  • Leverage store employees to add content
  • “Born to Fit” campaign
  • Challenge from campaign to ongoing catalog
  • Facebook contests
• 3 takeaways
  • Go where the traffic is
  • Aggressively recruit a fan base
  • Be authentic in everything
• Reviews do drive conversions. Their A/B tests proved it out.

Pedro Santos – Chief Strategist – Akami

• Behavioral targeting is difficult if you are not careful with the data
• What are the goals?
  • Awareness?
  • Persuasion?
  • Response?
• Where in the purchase funnel can audience be found?
• Akami hosts a shopping data cooperative
  • 550+ web sites contributing anonymous data
• Predictive Targeting
  • Reach “right” in market buyers
• Future
  • No need for pixel tagging to track behavior
  • Broadens reach of tracking

Panel Discussion
Cost-Effective Innovations in Social Media that Drive Sales
Eoin Comeford – VP Marketing – Moosejaw
Jamey Maki – Director eCommerce – Golfsmith
Lauren Coberly – Director Worldwide Marketing – Kodak Direct
Rich Lesperance – Director of Online marketing – Walgreens
Prashant Nedungadi – CEO – IM Shopping

How did social media get started?

• Golfsmith – Polled fan base. Looked for ways to increase followers.  Giveaways to promote awareness and attention.
• Kodak – Half of product lines that make up 70% of revenues today didn’t exist 5 years ago. As they reinvented the company it was the perfect time to get into social media.

What are the Goals for 2010?

• IM Shopping – Conversion rates
• Golfsmith – Increase mass
• Moosejaw – Increase engagement and excitement – 20 days of decent giveaways.

How do you measure ROI?

• Kodak – Engagement in social media helps search engine rankings. They have not seen the success Dell has with coupons. They look at brand lift and awareness. They look at engagement metrics.
• Walgreens – Looks at sign-ups, sales. Realize though that Brand engagement can be fuzzy.

Do you have a dedicated social media team?

• MooseJaw – Yes. Without constant content and immediate response then don’t play.
• Kodak – chief blogger, chief listener, several part time responsibilities

Do you have suggestions on tools?

• Golfsmith – Lots of free tools. Recommend look at Mashable.com

Phyil Arrington – Manager of Operations – The Body Shop – Engaging the Right Community

• The body shop targets communities that are passionate about the same things that they are
• Engaging Blogger Communities
  • Beauty
  • Mom
  • Values
  • The beauty bloggers are very influential in their niche
• Through Facebook
  • Exclusive content
  • Engage customer complaints
  • Secret Santa tab – Each day post different coupon code and then give click through to the eCommerce site.
• Through Twitter
  • Share beauty tips
  • Retweet influential blogs
  • Announce special deals and promotions
  • Promote causes that corporate supports
• Investment in this channel is not always easy to measure and there is a definite effect on the traffic and conversion rate on the site when you tap into the right community.

Related posts:

1. Takeaways from eTail West Day 1
2. How do you shop?
3. Internet Marketing, eCommerce Marketing, and the 4Ps

I have the opportunity and privilege to attend the eTail West conference in Palm Springs this week. This is a large industry conference for Internet retailers that provides tactical and strategic studies, networking, and salesengagements. To knowledge share with others at the event and the community at large I’m providing a few of the highlights from my notes today.  In general, a few themes I noticed were:

• Get back to basics. Focus on driving traffic, make your site easy to use, and segment your customer profiles.
• Integrate your channels for a seamless brand experience.
• Social or New Media areas are relevant, but they should be a piece of your overall strategy and customized to your business needs. For the first time I heard some retailers question its relevancy because they have not had success in that space yet.
• Mobile is here.  Are you in it?

My session/speaker notes are in bullet statement format rather than a typical blog post commentary.

Paul Elliott – Partner Acquisition Marketing- Rosetta

• Mobile is no longer just for leading-edge retailers.
  • 1 in 5 consumers used mobile phone last holiday season to assist with shopping.

Bill Bass – President – Charming Shoppes Direct (Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherines)

• Number 1 goal of eCommerce overhaul: Make it easy to shop
  • Focus on web 1.0 and not 2.0
• Make sure onsite search works for what consumers know (not SKUS)
• Banner ad retargeting
  • A/B test found that banner retargeting did not work.
• They use their sibling brands on the top of their site as navigation tabs.
  • Attempt to cut down on the number of abandons leaving the brand family. (leakage)
• Flat rate shipping message up front helps to reduce shipping abandonments.

Larry Freed – President and CEO – Forsee Results

• Forrester says that conversion rates in 2009 averaged 3.4% for online retailers.
• On average 55% of visitors come to your site to research information, while 36% come with the intent to purchase.
• Conversion rates as a metric is flawed if you are using search marketing to drive traffic to your site. Think of ways to measure different conversion rates depending on source of traffic.

Jack Jia – CEO – Baynote

• The essence of targeted marketing is context. Focus on presenting like products within context of main product.
• With the Baynote product, the web site displays content dynamically based on what previous users have chosen and where they have navigated. The idea is that they are choosing things within a specific context.  (Wisdom of the crowd)

Pete Howard – Senior Vice President – Staples

• Customer touch points
  • Staples.com
  • Customer reviews
  • Catalogs
  • Direct mail
  • Telesales
  • Retails stores
  • Chat reps, Facebook, Twitter
• Factors that are highly correlated to a 5 in the delivery business
  • On time delivery
  • Ease of finding product
  • Clarity of promotional  offers and product descriptions
  • Helpfulness of delivery driver

Richard Gerstein- SVP Marketing-  Sears Holding

• New tagline “shopyourway” – all channels equal.
• The dead-end shopping experience is the worst shopping experience.
• Examples of cross-channel integration happening in Sears
  • Free shipping for any catalog product not stocked in store
  • Personal Shopper – iPhone app where someone will call to make a purchase based on photo they select.
  • Manage My Life – Download all product manuals for things that you own into a profile.
  • Real time price check – Can check competitor’s prices in store.
  • Group Give – Multiple people contribute towards a single product.
  • LayAway for online purchases
  • Market Place – Affiliate program for small retailers (similar to Amazaon Affiliates)

Nathan Decker – Sr. Director eCommerce – evogear – Product Ratings and Review

• Develop strategies to acquire reviews
  • Seek all information
  • Leverage the content
• All fair reviews are open game
  • Negative information builds domain trust
• Encourage honesty in customer reviews
• Try to get 4-7 reviews per item because purchase percentage is highest in this category.
• Tactics
  • “Write a Review” link on product page
  • Follow-up email
    • Send email 20 days after transaction happens
    • Sparse marketing in this email
  • Contest – Leave a review and be entered in contest.
    • Increased submissions by 49%
  • Use review headlines and star ratings
  • Sort-by filter on site for products with “Most Reviews”
  • Serve up review data so that search engine bots can capture and serve.

Verisign – Tim Callan – VeriSign – VP Marketing, SSL

• Consumers reward sites that use and display best-in-breed security
  • Use-email properly
  • Use recognized security badges
  • Display the green address bar (Extended Validation SSL Certificate)
  • Communicate to your customer
• Challenges
  • Increasing use confidence to transact online
• Compliance
  • FTC guidelines (16 CFR Part 314)
  • NIST NSI Guidelines (SP 800-122)
• Online Fraud continues to rise
  • Unique Phising sites detected is growing month-over-month
• 48% of scanned computers have some type of mal-ware
  • The worst is key logging.

Michael Cooper – VP Specialty Channels – Home Depot – Multi-Channel Retailing

• Creating cross-functional collaboration
  • Store Buy In – Stores get credit for sales
  • Merchandising alignment – Organizational synergies, Assortment alignment.
  • One voice to customer – Marketing messages consistent across channels
  • Stores sales facilitation – Browseable store SKUs.
  • Digital orange apron – online workshops, how-to-videos, online showrooms.
• Ability to return online purchases at a local store
• Redeem gift cards online
• Multi-channel expectations
  • Consistency with online prices and store prices
  • Visibility to store assortment and inventory availability
  • Online purchase for in store pick-up
  • Status updates for special orders and deliveries
  • Online tools to estimate the cost of a project
• Takeaways
  • Align metrics across the enterprise
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration

I’ll post my notes on eTail West day 2 tomorrow. You can also follow my thoughts on twitter.

Related posts:

1. Takeaways from eTail West Day 2
2. How do you shop?
3. The empowered consumer yesterday, today, and tomorrow

I finally forced myself to sit down and come up with a better management plan for password management this past week. As online identity theft grows, it’s becoming more common place for media and bloggers to write about security best practices, password protection, and other topics related to online identity. Unfortunately,  password management is one of those topics that people choose to ignore because they want something simple and don’t want to be burdened with password rules and expiration dates. I counted myself in that group up until now.

I reviewed a few alternatives for password management programs. Some of the programs have local clients to install with the password storage local. Some use a recording and playback method. Some leverage a two-factor authentication system with a physical device that supplies a key.  What is common among all of them is that they require a user to change their habits in someway. I think this is a valid trade-off for added security and a little peace of mind.

For my review, I decided I needed to find a solution that addressed the following criteria:

Portability

Have an online version so that I could access my password storage from multiple locations. Since I use different computers throughout the week or may need to get to a site from an unexpected location, I need something portable.

Multi-Factor Security Options

Ok, so this is obvious right? After all I am giving someone my accounts and passwords. Since I wanted an online solution, I need to be comfortable with the security of the system. A fairly new approach to security that goes above encrypting the contents of the message on the wire is the host-proof-hosting system. I’m not a security expert, but I get the fact that this systems encrypts the data on their server, that I have a secret key that is not stored on their server, and that at no time is the key moved to their server. I see there are several players on the market that are using this system including industry giant Verisign.

Browser Compatibility

I spend 95% of my Internet browsing time using Chrome or Firefox, so the password management system must run on those two browsers. I already have too many applications that only run with IE. I’m going to add another one.

At the end of my journey I selected PassPack as my management tool. The tool meets all three of my decision criteria and offers additional optional security features that I won’t list in this post. There is a local desktop version available as well. The PassPack business model is currently set to give away usage rights for individuals (up-to 100 passwords), while charging for group and administered accounts. It definitely requires a change in my behavior, but I know its for the better. At the end of the day, I’ll learn to enjoy the central management aspect of the password storage system and welcome the value-add it provides to me.

Related posts:

1. Is your money guaranteed from online fraud?

I attended Product Camp Atlanta last weekend hosted at the Georgia Tech Research Institute Conference Center. It was my first product camp, so the only knowledge of format and content I had going in was from the description on the web site. The topics of the conference focused on product management and marketing which are the two primary areas of my career experience and interests.

Overall I was pleased with my decision to go to the all-day camp. Time was given to the sponsors to introduce themselves since they provided the financial backing to make the event possible. However, it was very non-intrusive to the day and didn’t come off as a sales pitch.  Participants voted on a list of possible break-out session subjects that were submitted by other participants.  This allowed the group to discuss a variety of topics over the course of the day.  Each hour there were four choices so that participants could pick a session that matched their interests.  In my opinion, the best sessions were those where the speakers facilitated a discussion rather than giving a presentation.  I say this because my understanding and expectation in attending the conference was that the sessions would be more collaborative and discussion oriented. For the most part, I felt speakers honored this conference format.

Related posts:

1. Takeaways from eTail West Day 1
2. Takeaways from eTail West Day 2
3. Turning your thoughts into action

Two events on my schedule this week revealed to me a maturation of business learning in our culture. It’s pretty exciting for me to see these transformations, and I know they’ll continue to evolve in the future.

The first event was high school orientation for my daughter. She’s a rising freshman and we were invited into the local high school for a brief overview of the curriculum. What surprised me the most was the abundance of business related electives that are now available to students. At our local school there is a full department named Business Education. Some of the course areas include engineering, marketing, video production, and computer science. I don’t know which of these might appeal to my daughter yet, but it’s really great to see the options available. Kids can really benefit from this because they can try things in college to see if they have a passion for it. For my age group, we didn’t really try things until college. It can be an expensive decision to experiment with classes in college not only due to the class fees, but also because of any rework associated with changing majors.

The second event is one that I’ll be attending tomorrow called ProductCamp Atlanta. The website provides a good description of this that I’ll quote here:

ProductCampAtlanta is a collaborative, user organized professional conference, focused on Product Management and Marketing topics. At ProductCampAtlanta everyone participates in some manner: presenting, leading a discussion, showcasing a best practice, or sharing their experiences. Others help with logistics, securing sponsorships, organizing sessions, or setting up/cleaning up.  This is a self organizing collaborative event that is designed be a fun, rewarding and a unique experience.

The product camp follows on recent business book themes about Tribes and Crowdsourcing.  It’s different than traditional conferences because it’s not about vendor booths or sales pitches. It is about collaborative learning and knowledge share. I’m looking forward to spending the day with others in my tribe and sharing some thoughts and insights in my writings on this blog.

Related posts:

1. Class reunions. A tradition worth keeping.
2. Business decisions: customers, profits, and the golden rule
3. Learnings and Takeaways from Product Camp Atlanta 2010