Summary: The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms is just out and once again there are big changes in the leaderboard.  Some major incumbents have fallen and some new challengers have emerged.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms is just out and once again there are big changes in the leaderboard.  Say what you will about our profession but as a platform developer you…

Understanding customer transactional behaviour pays well for any business. With the tsunami of start ups in recent times and the immense money flow in businesses, customers find lucrative offers from companies for acquisition, retention & referrals strategies. Understanding transactional behaviour of a customer has become even more complex with the invent of new business houses everyday. Although, with the rise of powerful machines, one can…

Some months ago, booking.com joined the ginger group of brands to combine artificial intelligence (AI) with mobile to get a headsup in anticipating a customer’s purchase intent.

Booking.com app users now not only receive instant booking access to a destination with a single QR code but also get…

What do you do before purchasing something that costs more than a pack of gum? Whether you want to treat yourself to new sneakers, a laptop, or an overseas tour, processing an order without checking out similar products or offers and reading reviews doesn’t make much sense anymore. Thanks to comment sections on eCommerce sites, social nets, review platforms, or dedicated forums, you can learn a ton about a product or service and evaluate whether it’s a good value for money. Other customers,…

The age of technology is way past its nascent stage and has grown exponentially during the last decade. In my role, travelling to events and meeting with thought leaders I am aware of the developments made across different technological fronts.…

A fictitious retailer which I am calling Malwart sells automobiles and automotive parts.  On this blog I will be focused on the sale of a particular automobile model called the Blair - a sporty compact that can be ordered in custom colour schemes.  Because all sales must be done by clients that also have accounts,…

The research firm Technology Business Research (TBR) recently came out with a report titled, “Winning The Business Of Digital Transformation Services Requires A Process-Led Approach” authored by Sebastian Lagana and Jennifer Hamel. The report is full of good nuggets, but I especially liked the way that they categorized the 3 phases of Digital Transformation:

Drones flying in the skies to deliver packages to customers, is how technology based on data and analytics is likely to impact retail industry and consumers both – in near future. New ways and means of understanding the customers are emerging and both, online and offline retailers are embracing this data first strategy. These retailers are trying their level best to match customers to products and services.

Retail is increasingly becoming a data driven…

I attended the interview with Nick Drake, Senior Vice President, Direct to Consumer at T-Mobile and Otto Rosenberger who serves as CMO at the Hostelworld Group at the Adobe Summit. The key take away of the entire session was that customer experience is the beginning and the core of digital transformations – it is where it all begins. 

T-Mobile and Hostelworld are…

Do you want to be a digital enterprise? Do you want to master the art of transforming yourself and be at the forefront of the digital realm? 

How can you change your business to achieve this? 

Derive new values for yourself, and find better and more innovative ways of working. Put customer experience above and beyond…

Analytics needs a evangelist! Without such a person, you just don’t get the impact that Analytics actually is capable of providing! Mostly this evangelist needs to be right at the top, the CEO! I have worked with a range of industries & everywhere the degree of impact shoots up once you have a CXO who is evangelising this change.

Of course, some CMOs have led their organizations into embracing the practice, including John Costello, former exec VP-CMO of Home…

It isn’t too unusual for surveys to contain open-ended questions:  respondents would be free to enter their comments in any manner.  More on an operational basis, not surveys but rather client systems might hold such comments; and not the respondents themselves but customer service agents would be responsible for entering the information.  These same agents would likely classify the nature of the exchange or comments maybe using drop-down menu choices, radials, and check-boxes.  One approach…

How valuable would it be to know everything about your customer’s interactions with your competition? Creating a 360-degree customer view is considered the holy grail of customer intelligence, and you can create it, today.

Would you like to know how much they’re spending, when they’re spending, why they’re buying with the competition and not you, what…

Over the past few weeks, I’ve written on a broad range of topics pertaining to the customer journey. While we went wide and deep, the main takeaway was this: to properly measure the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives, brands must view all of their data (pulled from all of their touch points) concurrently and through the same lens. This got me to thinking about heuristics, and how my assumptions were framed by the teeny tiny amount of information available to me.

But let me…