Simon Nixon founded price comparison website Moneysupermarket.com in the 1990s and floated it on the stock market for £850 million. He spotted opportunities in the emerging broadband market to allow consumers to compare financial products online. This changed the marketplace by forcing providers to cut rates to compete. While others have copied the model, Nixon's first-mover advantage means Moneysupermarket remains the largest price comparison site globally. Floating the business benefited staff who had shareholdings.
This document contains reviews and endorsements for the first and second editions of the book "eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Online Marketing" by Rob Stokes.
The reviews praise the book for being a well-written and essential guide to online marketing. It is said to cover all important eMarketing concepts and be a perfect starting point for anyone entering the field of online marketing. The contributors of the book are commended for distilling their experience into a textbook.
This document contains reviews and endorsements for the first and second editions of the book "eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Online Marketing" by Rob Stokes.
The reviews praise the book for being a well-written and essential guide to online marketing that covers all important concepts. They recommend it as both a study guide and reference manual for marketers. The contributors congratulate the authors for their work in compiling expertise and making it available to students and educators through an open license.
Operational SEO Big Think - The Importance of Good Technical SEOpeterecob
The document discusses the importance of technical SEO and the steps MoneySuperMarket is taking to improve it. It introduces the technical SEO engineer, Peter Ecob, and describes how MoneySuperMarket has evolved by dedicating more resources to technical SEO like a technical SEO team. It highlights how MoneySuperMarket is addressing legacy issues, conducting regular audits to fix technical problems, taking advantage of opportunities like structured data, and educating the business on technical SEO best practices.
Digital Travel Summit LAS 2015 - Confronting The Challenges Of Attribution Mo...Jonathan Isernhagen
This document summarizes a presentation on attribution modeling in a multi-device environment. It discusses the importance of cross-device tracking, evaluating attribution vendors based on criteria like independence and capabilities. It also covers ROI components like variable contribution margin and spend, and challenges in algorithmic attribution including data collection and profile deduplication across devices. The goal is to attribute the correct value to each marketing channel to accurately calculate ROI and optimize spending.
The document discusses a location analytics company called Precision Market Insights that uses mobile location data to provide insights about customer behavior and foot traffic patterns. It highlights how understanding where audiences spend time both physically and digitally allows for more targeted communications. Examples are given showing insights about points of interest and businesses that are popular in Phoenix, Arizona, including fast food restaurants, coffee shops, and stores frequented by mothers. High-income tourists to Phoenix are also profiled based on their locations and activities.
This document summarizes 10 insights from DMX Dublin 2014 about digital media and consumer behavior: 1) 60% of iPad users don't have an iPhone; 2) Ironically, 1 in 6 people registered with Channel 4 say they don't watch TV; 3) 65% of people have TV on in the background while using other devices primarily.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: How Moneysupermarket.com Created APIs Without Startin...CA API Management
The evolutThe evolution of the API’s used byMoneysupermarket.com’s highly successful Car Insurance application. Faced with having to re-engineer the entire application to meet the increasingly demands of security, accuracy & scale – how we incrementally refactored our application to create an OAUTH 2.0 API using Layer 7ion of the API’s used byMoneysupermarket.com’s highly successful Car Insurance application. Faced with having to re-engineer the entire application to meet the increasingly demands of security, accuracy & scale – how we incrementally refactored our application to create an OAUTH 2.0 API using Layer 7
This document contains reviews and endorsements for the first and second editions of the book "eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Online Marketing" by Rob Stokes.
The reviews praise the book for being a well-written and essential guide to online marketing. It is said to cover all important eMarketing concepts and be a perfect starting point for anyone entering the field of online marketing. The contributors of the book are commended for distilling their experience into a textbook.
This document contains reviews and endorsements for the first and second editions of the book "eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Online Marketing" by Rob Stokes.
The reviews praise the book for being a well-written and essential guide to online marketing that covers all important concepts. They recommend it as both a study guide and reference manual for marketers. The contributors congratulate the authors for their work in compiling expertise and making it available to students and educators through an open license.
Operational SEO Big Think - The Importance of Good Technical SEOpeterecob
The document discusses the importance of technical SEO and the steps MoneySuperMarket is taking to improve it. It introduces the technical SEO engineer, Peter Ecob, and describes how MoneySuperMarket has evolved by dedicating more resources to technical SEO like a technical SEO team. It highlights how MoneySuperMarket is addressing legacy issues, conducting regular audits to fix technical problems, taking advantage of opportunities like structured data, and educating the business on technical SEO best practices.
Digital Travel Summit LAS 2015 - Confronting The Challenges Of Attribution Mo...Jonathan Isernhagen
This document summarizes a presentation on attribution modeling in a multi-device environment. It discusses the importance of cross-device tracking, evaluating attribution vendors based on criteria like independence and capabilities. It also covers ROI components like variable contribution margin and spend, and challenges in algorithmic attribution including data collection and profile deduplication across devices. The goal is to attribute the correct value to each marketing channel to accurately calculate ROI and optimize spending.
The document discusses a location analytics company called Precision Market Insights that uses mobile location data to provide insights about customer behavior and foot traffic patterns. It highlights how understanding where audiences spend time both physically and digitally allows for more targeted communications. Examples are given showing insights about points of interest and businesses that are popular in Phoenix, Arizona, including fast food restaurants, coffee shops, and stores frequented by mothers. High-income tourists to Phoenix are also profiled based on their locations and activities.
This document summarizes 10 insights from DMX Dublin 2014 about digital media and consumer behavior: 1) 60% of iPad users don't have an iPhone; 2) Ironically, 1 in 6 people registered with Channel 4 say they don't watch TV; 3) 65% of people have TV on in the background while using other devices primarily.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: How Moneysupermarket.com Created APIs Without Startin...CA API Management
The evolutThe evolution of the API’s used byMoneysupermarket.com’s highly successful Car Insurance application. Faced with having to re-engineer the entire application to meet the increasingly demands of security, accuracy & scale – how we incrementally refactored our application to create an OAUTH 2.0 API using Layer 7ion of the API’s used byMoneysupermarket.com’s highly successful Car Insurance application. Faced with having to re-engineer the entire application to meet the increasingly demands of security, accuracy & scale – how we incrementally refactored our application to create an OAUTH 2.0 API using Layer 7
MoneySupermarket.com: Customer Case Study - Layer 7 API Management Workshop L...CA API Management
This presentation was a customer case study presentation in Layer 7's API Management Workshop - London to show how the Layer 7 API Proxy can help enterprises expose APIs to leverage innovative ways for reaching new customers, create new revenue opportunities and transform business' into platforms. The API Proxy makes it simple for enterprises to:
- Secure APIs against attack and misuse
- Define and enforce API rate limits and SLA metrics
- Implement OAuth and SAML access methods
- Translate between JSON and XML
- Track and report on API usage and performance
- Mediate between API versions
WHY YOUR DATA ASSET IS YOUR GOLD MINE - JOHN ABBEYBig Data Week
John is a Senior Data Consultant with nine years’ experience working for the world’s leading customer science company: dunnhumby. John strives to help brands and retailers put their customers at the heart and grow through data.
During this time he has acquired experience of working with vast quantities and varieties of on and offline data across sectors (retail, media and finance) and markets (EMEA, the Americas and Asia). His role has evolved from coding and data loading when he started as a graduate to creating data strategies for some of the largest retail businesses in the world.
John graduated from Sussex University with a degree in Mathematics & Statistics.
The document discusses achieving personalization at scale through effective customer relationship marketing (CRM). It outlines 5 fundamentals for CRM: 1) respecting consumer opt-ins, 2) making personalization a necessity, 3) focusing marketing efforts on existing customers, 4) using consumer data to inform marketing decisions, and 5) that effective CRM can increase sales, loyalty and transform into a profit center when done correctly. The document advocates for a consumer-centric approach that leverages purchase data and CRM data to develop meaningful consumer segments and personalized marketing campaigns.
The document summarizes the author's journey in predictive modeling competitions on Kaggle. It describes how he was inspired by a talk on horse race prediction in university. He learned statistical tools and programming skills which led him to build an analytics platform and join Kaggle competitions. Over three years he participated in over 75 competitions, had 21 top 10 finishes and won prizes 8 times, ranking 1st among 480,000 data scientists. He discusses several competitions he participated in and lessons learned around algorithms, feature engineering, and collaboration. The author indicates that discipline, understanding the problem, trying new approaches, hours invested, tools used, collaboration and experience all contribute to success in competitions.
How good is your market data? How does its' value for money stack up? This is the latest annual survey of category professional is UK fast moving consumer goods. Please use these slides, share them and join the discussion on our Linked In group "grasp FMCG" ...
A Kanban Case Study At MoneySuperMarketThoughtworks
The document discusses Kanban concepts for software development including making all work visible through a Kanban board, limiting work-in-progress to increase flow, and using queues, buffers, and limits to manage workflow from analysis through deployment and into a portfolio. It also touches on techniques like maximizing throughput, pulling work rather than pushing it, reducing multitasking, enhancing teamwork, and stopping starting and starting to finish.
The document provides an agenda and background information for developing the AW15 strategy for pans at Tesco. Key points from the document include: pans accounted for 33% of category sales and 30% of profits in AW14; intake and CRS margins for pans were lower than the category average; closing stock levels for pans were high at 130 weeks of coverage; and opportunities exist to grow sales and profits by improving margins, reducing stock levels, and increasing the pans option count in line with its sales performance.
The Convergence of Retailers and Publishersdunnhumby
This document discusses the convergence of retailers and publishers online. It notes that digital media is becoming more fragmented and average advertising costs are rising. Retailers are becoming more involved in digital marketing and attracting large online audiences. Brand marketers are shifting more spending to digital. The document argues that retailers can better engage customers at the point of purchase and have stronger data to personalize marketing and measure effectiveness than traditional online publishers. Retailers should be reevaluated as important partners for brand marketers.
5 Practical Steps to Energize your Organization and Bring Customer First Enga...dunnhumby
Retailers with the most effective customer engagement programs have two important things in common - they leverage data and technology to better understand customer needs, and they are led by a common customer language from the CEO to the in-store staff.
This webinar presentation touches on what customer-first engagement looks like and uncovers the data, tools, practices and education necessary to adapt and grow your organization.
In this webinar presentation you will learn:
- How to use data to better understand customer needs
- Tips to create and embed a common customer language
- How to show tangible change in the store
- Methods to align processes, systems, and structures
The presentation is created by David Ciancio, former VP of Loyalty at Kroger, and one of the industry’s leading experts on retail marketing and loyalty. David has developed customer strategies with retailers around the globe and brings a real-world perspective of how to transition an organization from a product focus to a customer focus.
View the on-demand webinar here: http://www.dunnhumby.com/bringing-customer-first-engagement-to-life
It's All About Me: How Metro Is Personalizing Its Way To Growthdunnhumby
Metro is personalizing its customer engagement strategy to drive loyalty and growth. It has launched a new rewards program called "Metro & Moi" in Quebec and is better leveraging its existing coalition program in Ontario. Metro is using customer data from its partnership with dunnhumby to personalize communications, promotions, and store operations. Its goal is to shift from multi-channel to omni-channel engagement to provide a more seamless customer experience across all touchpoints.
The document discusses insights from big data and customer analytics. It provides three pieces of advice: 1) Organize data from the customer's perspective rather than a professional one, 2) Focus on addressing the weakest link such as certain teams, tools, or methods rather than only focusing on best practices, and 3) Focus on long term trends rather than short term outcomes when analyzing data insights. Case studies are presented on topics like early adopters, personalization, and using agent-based modeling to predict category trends to illustrate how following this advice can provide benefits.
This document discusses Raley's transformation to a customer-centric business model focused on personalizing the customer experience through their loyalty program called "Something Extra". The program goes beyond just rewards to cultivate customer loyalty and advocacy. It uses customer shopping data and feedback to deliver personalized offers, rewards, and ideas to increase relevance and engagement. The goal is to better understand customer needs and increase their overall spending at Raley's.
Will Bigger Data Mean Bigger Problems or Opportunities?dunnhumby
Matt Keylock, SVP, Media Partnerships, dunnhumby led a panel at Boston's Future M Conference on October 26, 2012. Big data is growing bigger, daily. At the dawn of civilization through 2003, we created 5 exabytes of data. We now create that in 48 hours. And we’ll create 50 times that by 2020. As we multiply data, we also multiply its complexity and the need for people to make sense of it. As new channels and platforms emerge in real-time, how can we keep pace, navigate from customer data to customer knowledge and to an overarching marketing strategy? Will new data sources enable us to add more value for the consumer and in return, more value for the business?
dunnhumby and Metro Canada - Digital Personalization and Client Strategydunnhumby
1) The document discusses Metro Inc.'s strategy to personalize the customer experience across digital and physical channels in order to increase customer loyalty and sales.
2) Key aspects of the strategy include developing a single customer view, personalized direct marketing campaigns, and coordinating offers across channels.
3) The goals are to attract new customers, increase basket size and shopping frequency through more relevant recommendations and rewards.
Lessons in Data Modeling: Why a Data Model is an Important Part of Your Data ...DATAVERSITY
Data can provide tremendous value to an organization in today’s information-driven economy. New customer insights, better efficiency, and new product innovation are just some of the ways organizations are obtaining value through data. But in order to achieve this value, a strong data architecture is required to ensure that the data infrastructure runs smoothly, while at the same time aligning with business needs and corporate culture. A Data Strategy can assist in building a data architecture foundation through:
Identifying business requirements, rules & definitions via a business-centric data model
Creating a data inventory & integrating disparate data sources
Building a technical data architecture through data models & related artifacts
Coordinating the people, processes and culture necessary for success
Identifying tools & technology needed for creating & maintaining high quality data
Technology Trends Customer Insight, a copy of the presentation delivered by Giles Pavey, Head of Retail Solutions, dunnhumby from the CIM East of England Summer Marketing Conference held on 9 June 2011 at ARU, Chelmsford
Who Says Elephants
Can’t Dance?
Leading a Great
Enterprise Through
Dramatic Change
Louis V.
Gerstner, Jr.
This book is dedicated to the thousands of IBMers who never gave
up on their company, their colleagues, and themselves. They are the
real heroes of the reinvention of IBM.
Contents
viiForeword
1Introduction
7PART I-GRABBING HOLD
9 1 The Courtship
18 2 The Announcement
29 3 Drinking from a Fire Hose
41 4 Out to the Field
49 5 Operation Bear Hug
56 6 Stop the Bleeding (and Hold the Vision)
73 7 Creating the Leadership Team
83 8 Creating a Global Enterprise
88 9 Reviving the Brand
9310 Resetting the Corporate Compensation Philosophy
10311 Back on the Beach
111PART II-STRATEGY
11312 A Brief History of IBM
12113 Making the Big Bets
12814 Services—the Key to Integration
13615 Building the World’s Already Biggest Software Business
14616 Opening the Company Store
15317 Unstacking the Stack and Focusing the Portfolio
16518 The Emergence of e-business
17619 Reflections on Strategy
179PART III-CULTURE
18120 On Corporate Culture
18921 An Inside-Out World
20022 Leading by Principles
217PART IV-LESSONS LEARNED
21923 Focus—You Have to Know (and Love) Your Business
22924 Execution—Strategy Goes Only So Far
23525 Leadership Is Personal
24226 Elephants Can Dance
25327 IBM—a Farewell
259APPENDICES
261Appendix A—The Future of e-business
277Appendix B—Financial Overview
287Index
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CREDITS
COVER
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Foreword
I have never said to myself, “Gee, I think I want to write abook.” I am not a book writer. Until now I haven’t had the
time or the inclination to lean back and reflect on my thirty-five
years in business. I haven’t had the patience it takes to sit down for
a long time and create a book. Throughout my business life I have
been wary of telling others how to manage their enterprises based
on my personal experiences.
And, frankly, I wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested in
reading my thoughts. I read a lot of books, but not many about
business. After a twelve-hour day at the office, who would want to
go home and read about someone else’s career at the office?
I have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise
from behind a desk. That’s why, during my nine years as Chief Ex-
ecutive Officer of International Business Machines Corporation, I
have flown more than I million miles and met with untold thousands
of IBM customers, business partners, and employees. Over the past
two years, after people began speculating that my retirement might
be just around the corner, I thought I’d get a lot of big-picture
questions that outgoing CEOs get about the economy, the world, and
the future. Instead, I have been surprised by how many times—at
big meetings and small ones, and even at private sessions with CEOs
and heads of state—I was asked: “How did you save IBM?” “What
was it like when you got there?” “What were the problems?” “What
specific things.
Brands like Google and Marketo are using comics, but why should you use comic strips and books in B2B content marketing and how should you use them? Find out in our comic eBook.
- The nation's largest newspaper chain, Gannett, is facing declining readership and revenues as the newspaper industry struggles to adapt to the digital age.
- Gannett executives developed a plan called the "Information Center" to reinvent how newspapers work by making them more collaborative, data-driven, and pro-amateur.
- They tested the approach at the Cincinnati Enquirer by launching cincyMOMS.com, a site for local mothers that engaged readers as discussion leaders, crowd-sourced content, and brought in significant advertising revenue beyond print.
Theo Paphitis is a self-made British businessman and star of Dragons' Den. He insists he is not political, though he admires Margaret Thatcher. The article discusses his latest venture launching lingerie brand Boux Avenue, describing it as a "treat" for himself. It also notes Paphitis attributes part of his success to being dyslexic as a child, and believes the government could do more to help young people into jobs through flexibility and part-time work opportunities.
The document discusses the importance of reconnecting with one's original purpose for starting a business. It argues that losing sight of one's purpose is what leads to business becoming less fun to run over time as complexity and stress increase. The author advocates returning to the "brickyard" - focusing on perfecting the basic fundamentals of one's business like customer service, communication, and execution. Reconnecting with one's deeper purpose can provide direction, unity and passion to fuel the business. Rather than focusing on grand visions, companies should spend more time articulating and living out their core purpose, which should reflect why they do what they do and what makes the business fun to run.
MoneySupermarket.com: Customer Case Study - Layer 7 API Management Workshop L...CA API Management
This presentation was a customer case study presentation in Layer 7's API Management Workshop - London to show how the Layer 7 API Proxy can help enterprises expose APIs to leverage innovative ways for reaching new customers, create new revenue opportunities and transform business' into platforms. The API Proxy makes it simple for enterprises to:
- Secure APIs against attack and misuse
- Define and enforce API rate limits and SLA metrics
- Implement OAuth and SAML access methods
- Translate between JSON and XML
- Track and report on API usage and performance
- Mediate between API versions
WHY YOUR DATA ASSET IS YOUR GOLD MINE - JOHN ABBEYBig Data Week
John is a Senior Data Consultant with nine years’ experience working for the world’s leading customer science company: dunnhumby. John strives to help brands and retailers put their customers at the heart and grow through data.
During this time he has acquired experience of working with vast quantities and varieties of on and offline data across sectors (retail, media and finance) and markets (EMEA, the Americas and Asia). His role has evolved from coding and data loading when he started as a graduate to creating data strategies for some of the largest retail businesses in the world.
John graduated from Sussex University with a degree in Mathematics & Statistics.
The document discusses achieving personalization at scale through effective customer relationship marketing (CRM). It outlines 5 fundamentals for CRM: 1) respecting consumer opt-ins, 2) making personalization a necessity, 3) focusing marketing efforts on existing customers, 4) using consumer data to inform marketing decisions, and 5) that effective CRM can increase sales, loyalty and transform into a profit center when done correctly. The document advocates for a consumer-centric approach that leverages purchase data and CRM data to develop meaningful consumer segments and personalized marketing campaigns.
The document summarizes the author's journey in predictive modeling competitions on Kaggle. It describes how he was inspired by a talk on horse race prediction in university. He learned statistical tools and programming skills which led him to build an analytics platform and join Kaggle competitions. Over three years he participated in over 75 competitions, had 21 top 10 finishes and won prizes 8 times, ranking 1st among 480,000 data scientists. He discusses several competitions he participated in and lessons learned around algorithms, feature engineering, and collaboration. The author indicates that discipline, understanding the problem, trying new approaches, hours invested, tools used, collaboration and experience all contribute to success in competitions.
How good is your market data? How does its' value for money stack up? This is the latest annual survey of category professional is UK fast moving consumer goods. Please use these slides, share them and join the discussion on our Linked In group "grasp FMCG" ...
A Kanban Case Study At MoneySuperMarketThoughtworks
The document discusses Kanban concepts for software development including making all work visible through a Kanban board, limiting work-in-progress to increase flow, and using queues, buffers, and limits to manage workflow from analysis through deployment and into a portfolio. It also touches on techniques like maximizing throughput, pulling work rather than pushing it, reducing multitasking, enhancing teamwork, and stopping starting and starting to finish.
The document provides an agenda and background information for developing the AW15 strategy for pans at Tesco. Key points from the document include: pans accounted for 33% of category sales and 30% of profits in AW14; intake and CRS margins for pans were lower than the category average; closing stock levels for pans were high at 130 weeks of coverage; and opportunities exist to grow sales and profits by improving margins, reducing stock levels, and increasing the pans option count in line with its sales performance.
The Convergence of Retailers and Publishersdunnhumby
This document discusses the convergence of retailers and publishers online. It notes that digital media is becoming more fragmented and average advertising costs are rising. Retailers are becoming more involved in digital marketing and attracting large online audiences. Brand marketers are shifting more spending to digital. The document argues that retailers can better engage customers at the point of purchase and have stronger data to personalize marketing and measure effectiveness than traditional online publishers. Retailers should be reevaluated as important partners for brand marketers.
5 Practical Steps to Energize your Organization and Bring Customer First Enga...dunnhumby
Retailers with the most effective customer engagement programs have two important things in common - they leverage data and technology to better understand customer needs, and they are led by a common customer language from the CEO to the in-store staff.
This webinar presentation touches on what customer-first engagement looks like and uncovers the data, tools, practices and education necessary to adapt and grow your organization.
In this webinar presentation you will learn:
- How to use data to better understand customer needs
- Tips to create and embed a common customer language
- How to show tangible change in the store
- Methods to align processes, systems, and structures
The presentation is created by David Ciancio, former VP of Loyalty at Kroger, and one of the industry’s leading experts on retail marketing and loyalty. David has developed customer strategies with retailers around the globe and brings a real-world perspective of how to transition an organization from a product focus to a customer focus.
View the on-demand webinar here: http://www.dunnhumby.com/bringing-customer-first-engagement-to-life
It's All About Me: How Metro Is Personalizing Its Way To Growthdunnhumby
Metro is personalizing its customer engagement strategy to drive loyalty and growth. It has launched a new rewards program called "Metro & Moi" in Quebec and is better leveraging its existing coalition program in Ontario. Metro is using customer data from its partnership with dunnhumby to personalize communications, promotions, and store operations. Its goal is to shift from multi-channel to omni-channel engagement to provide a more seamless customer experience across all touchpoints.
The document discusses insights from big data and customer analytics. It provides three pieces of advice: 1) Organize data from the customer's perspective rather than a professional one, 2) Focus on addressing the weakest link such as certain teams, tools, or methods rather than only focusing on best practices, and 3) Focus on long term trends rather than short term outcomes when analyzing data insights. Case studies are presented on topics like early adopters, personalization, and using agent-based modeling to predict category trends to illustrate how following this advice can provide benefits.
This document discusses Raley's transformation to a customer-centric business model focused on personalizing the customer experience through their loyalty program called "Something Extra". The program goes beyond just rewards to cultivate customer loyalty and advocacy. It uses customer shopping data and feedback to deliver personalized offers, rewards, and ideas to increase relevance and engagement. The goal is to better understand customer needs and increase their overall spending at Raley's.
Will Bigger Data Mean Bigger Problems or Opportunities?dunnhumby
Matt Keylock, SVP, Media Partnerships, dunnhumby led a panel at Boston's Future M Conference on October 26, 2012. Big data is growing bigger, daily. At the dawn of civilization through 2003, we created 5 exabytes of data. We now create that in 48 hours. And we’ll create 50 times that by 2020. As we multiply data, we also multiply its complexity and the need for people to make sense of it. As new channels and platforms emerge in real-time, how can we keep pace, navigate from customer data to customer knowledge and to an overarching marketing strategy? Will new data sources enable us to add more value for the consumer and in return, more value for the business?
dunnhumby and Metro Canada - Digital Personalization and Client Strategydunnhumby
1) The document discusses Metro Inc.'s strategy to personalize the customer experience across digital and physical channels in order to increase customer loyalty and sales.
2) Key aspects of the strategy include developing a single customer view, personalized direct marketing campaigns, and coordinating offers across channels.
3) The goals are to attract new customers, increase basket size and shopping frequency through more relevant recommendations and rewards.
Lessons in Data Modeling: Why a Data Model is an Important Part of Your Data ...DATAVERSITY
Data can provide tremendous value to an organization in today’s information-driven economy. New customer insights, better efficiency, and new product innovation are just some of the ways organizations are obtaining value through data. But in order to achieve this value, a strong data architecture is required to ensure that the data infrastructure runs smoothly, while at the same time aligning with business needs and corporate culture. A Data Strategy can assist in building a data architecture foundation through:
Identifying business requirements, rules & definitions via a business-centric data model
Creating a data inventory & integrating disparate data sources
Building a technical data architecture through data models & related artifacts
Coordinating the people, processes and culture necessary for success
Identifying tools & technology needed for creating & maintaining high quality data
Technology Trends Customer Insight, a copy of the presentation delivered by Giles Pavey, Head of Retail Solutions, dunnhumby from the CIM East of England Summer Marketing Conference held on 9 June 2011 at ARU, Chelmsford
Who Says Elephants
Can’t Dance?
Leading a Great
Enterprise Through
Dramatic Change
Louis V.
Gerstner, Jr.
This book is dedicated to the thousands of IBMers who never gave
up on their company, their colleagues, and themselves. They are the
real heroes of the reinvention of IBM.
Contents
viiForeword
1Introduction
7PART I-GRABBING HOLD
9 1 The Courtship
18 2 The Announcement
29 3 Drinking from a Fire Hose
41 4 Out to the Field
49 5 Operation Bear Hug
56 6 Stop the Bleeding (and Hold the Vision)
73 7 Creating the Leadership Team
83 8 Creating a Global Enterprise
88 9 Reviving the Brand
9310 Resetting the Corporate Compensation Philosophy
10311 Back on the Beach
111PART II-STRATEGY
11312 A Brief History of IBM
12113 Making the Big Bets
12814 Services—the Key to Integration
13615 Building the World’s Already Biggest Software Business
14616 Opening the Company Store
15317 Unstacking the Stack and Focusing the Portfolio
16518 The Emergence of e-business
17619 Reflections on Strategy
179PART III-CULTURE
18120 On Corporate Culture
18921 An Inside-Out World
20022 Leading by Principles
217PART IV-LESSONS LEARNED
21923 Focus—You Have to Know (and Love) Your Business
22924 Execution—Strategy Goes Only So Far
23525 Leadership Is Personal
24226 Elephants Can Dance
25327 IBM—a Farewell
259APPENDICES
261Appendix A—The Future of e-business
277Appendix B—Financial Overview
287Index
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CREDITS
COVER
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Foreword
I have never said to myself, “Gee, I think I want to write abook.” I am not a book writer. Until now I haven’t had the
time or the inclination to lean back and reflect on my thirty-five
years in business. I haven’t had the patience it takes to sit down for
a long time and create a book. Throughout my business life I have
been wary of telling others how to manage their enterprises based
on my personal experiences.
And, frankly, I wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested in
reading my thoughts. I read a lot of books, but not many about
business. After a twelve-hour day at the office, who would want to
go home and read about someone else’s career at the office?
I have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise
from behind a desk. That’s why, during my nine years as Chief Ex-
ecutive Officer of International Business Machines Corporation, I
have flown more than I million miles and met with untold thousands
of IBM customers, business partners, and employees. Over the past
two years, after people began speculating that my retirement might
be just around the corner, I thought I’d get a lot of big-picture
questions that outgoing CEOs get about the economy, the world, and
the future. Instead, I have been surprised by how many times—at
big meetings and small ones, and even at private sessions with CEOs
and heads of state—I was asked: “How did you save IBM?” “What
was it like when you got there?” “What were the problems?” “What
specific things.
Brands like Google and Marketo are using comics, but why should you use comic strips and books in B2B content marketing and how should you use them? Find out in our comic eBook.
- The nation's largest newspaper chain, Gannett, is facing declining readership and revenues as the newspaper industry struggles to adapt to the digital age.
- Gannett executives developed a plan called the "Information Center" to reinvent how newspapers work by making them more collaborative, data-driven, and pro-amateur.
- They tested the approach at the Cincinnati Enquirer by launching cincyMOMS.com, a site for local mothers that engaged readers as discussion leaders, crowd-sourced content, and brought in significant advertising revenue beyond print.
Theo Paphitis is a self-made British businessman and star of Dragons' Den. He insists he is not political, though he admires Margaret Thatcher. The article discusses his latest venture launching lingerie brand Boux Avenue, describing it as a "treat" for himself. It also notes Paphitis attributes part of his success to being dyslexic as a child, and believes the government could do more to help young people into jobs through flexibility and part-time work opportunities.
The document discusses the importance of reconnecting with one's original purpose for starting a business. It argues that losing sight of one's purpose is what leads to business becoming less fun to run over time as complexity and stress increase. The author advocates returning to the "brickyard" - focusing on perfecting the basic fundamentals of one's business like customer service, communication, and execution. Reconnecting with one's deeper purpose can provide direction, unity and passion to fuel the business. Rather than focusing on grand visions, companies should spend more time articulating and living out their core purpose, which should reflect why they do what they do and what makes the business fun to run.
Nick and Kay Baldi started their auto glass business in Kansas City in 1998, financing it by selling all of their investments and savings. They nearly went bankrupt by over-expanding too quickly, but were able to consolidate at one location and stay in business without declaring bankruptcy. They added a new division, KC Window Film, 15 years ago, which now accounts for 50% of their business. Through struggles and successes over 24 years, their business has grown through reinvestment and an entrepreneurial spirit.
The document discusses e-readers and the process of publishing books digitally. It describes what an e-reader is, how it works, and its advantages over printed books. These include being able to update books instantly and distribute them globally at a lower cost. Publishers can earn revenue through ebook sales on platforms like Amazon Kindle. The document outlines the contract terms with Amazon for distributing books digitally, including revenue sharing, rights granted, and requirements around pricing and formatting.
1. 56 57
business
MONEYSUPERMARKET.COM FOUNDER SIMON
NIXON MAY HAVE TAKEN A STEP BACK FROM
HIS GROUNDBREAKING PRICE COMPARISON
SITE, BUT HE’S NOT SLOWING DOWN. HE
TELLS KATE WHITE ABOUT HIS NEW BUSINESS
Investing in
the right sites
IN LUXURY HOLIDAY LETS, SIMONESCAPES
W hen Simon Nixon founded price comparison website
Moneysupermarket.com, he had no idea that 14 years later,
mortgages, that should improve your home sales.
“It really worked, and we found that I could get a lot of
he’d be floating it on the stock market for £850 million. people mortgages who thought they couldn’t get them. I
“I didn’t even consider it,” says the 45-year-old started getting quite a lot of business from these builders,
entrepreneur, who talks quickly and animatedly, with an and I became top salesperson in the office, just by thinking
infectious enthusiasm. “I never sat down and drew up a big laterally.”
business plan. I just thought, this is something that Soon he spotted another gap in the market. “At that time
customers are going to want.” there was nothing to help me, as a mortgage adviser, to find
Today Nixon, who still owns a 54 per cent stake in the the best deal for my clients. I had to phone round all the
company, is worth a cool £536 million, according to this different banks and building societies, which I thought was
year’s Sunday Times Rich List – not bad for a man who grew crazy.”
up in a town in Wales with some of the highest Nixon bought an Apple Mac and then designed and
unemployment levels in Britain. began printing a fortnightly mortgage magazine for brokers,
Born in Nottinghamshire, Nixon’s father’s job designing which compiled all the available mortgage rates into one
parts for jets in the RAF led the family to relocate to Germany publication. In just four months, he was earning enough
before finally settling in Connah’s Quay, which Nixon describes money to quit his job in sales.
as “a humble little working-class town in North Wales”. As computers became widespread, the magazine was
“We were totally working class,” he says. “My dad always replaced with a disk. “It sounds archaic now,” he laughs.
had work, but he was supporting a family of me, my brother “But it really took off, and it saved me loads of money
and my mother. We weren’t on the breadline by any stretch because rather than printing a magazine, we just sent a disk
of the imagination, but money was tight.” out in the post.”
Nixon’s mother died when he was just 18, which he Then the disk became a modem. “The brokers couldn’t
believes is partly what has driven him to achieve so much. do without it, they were totally reliant on us,” says Nixon. “If
“If you lose your mum, you’ve got no one to fall back on,” he our servers went down with an issue for a few hours, they
says. “So you’ve really got to make it on your own.” couldn’t work.”
He enrolled at Nottingham University after leaving school, By this time it seemed as though the company couldn’t
but dropped out of his accountancy degree after two years. grow any further. “The business plateaued – we had about
“I loved being a student, the social life and the 10,000 subscribers, 60 staff and I was looking for where we
independence. But I really hated the course and had no could take it,” says Nixon.
passion for it. It just wasn’t for me,” he says. Then he spotted an opportunity that would change his
“I loved writing poetry and essays and I should have business forever. Broadband was becoming widely available
pursued that. But I felt if I’d done an English degree, it would in the UK, replacing the exasperatingly slow dial-up modems
have been so hard to get work. You’d have to become a with a service that was ten times faster and didn’t disrupt the
writer or a journalist, and it’s so competitive.” phone line.
Faced with a two-week ultimatum from his father to either “I thought, wouldn’t it be great to take our mortgage-
find work or get kicked out of the house, he scoured the job sourcing product, put it online and empower consumers by
section of the local newspaper, where he spotted an advert allowing them to compare mortgages?” says Nixon. “They
for a financial consultant role. could fill in their criteria, see what was available, and find the
“I didn’t even know what it meant, but it said ‘unlimited best deal.”
earnings’. I was 20 and I thought, that sounds really good. He named the website Moneysupermarket.com and in
Then I realised ‘financial consultant’ was a high-powered 1999, it was launched online. “We changed the marketplace,
name for a mortgage salesperson.” because providers had to start cutting their rates to compete
He got the job and ended up “sticking at it for a bit” to for customers for the first time,” he says. “We’d brought
please his dad, but in spite of his initial ambivalence, it wasn’t transparency.”
long before he discovered he had a real talent for sales. The website, which makes its money through commission
SIMON NIXON “At that time, a lot of people wanted to buy a property fees from banks, quickly expanded to include other financial
but they couldn’t find a mortgage,” he explains. “So I did a products, such as loans, credit cards, savings and current
deal with a local builder and said, if I can help your clients get accounts, as well as spin-off website Travelsupermarket. ៑
2. 58
business
“I knew it wasn’t only about how well we executed the
idea,” says Nixon, “but also, we had to grow it really fast and
put the accelerator down, because people were going to
copy us, and they have done.
“You’ve got Confused and GoCompare and so on, but
they came to the market a lot later than us, and because we
had first-mover advantage, we’re still the biggest price
comparison website in the world.”
Floating the business was the “right thing”, he says. “A lot
of our staff had shareholdings in the business, and the only
way for them to take money out was for us to float it. So I
owed it to the staff who had worked really hard.”
Today Moneysupermarket has a workforce of 600, and
after two years as chief executive, Nixon is now deputy
chairman. However, far from scaling back his workload, he
has used the extra time to start up another business.
SimonEscapes is a luxury holiday lets company, with a
portfolio of cherry-picked properties redeveloped to the
highest standard. They range from a country house in the
Cotswolds to a villa in Deià, Mallorca, a favourite of Andrew
Lloyd Webber.
“The idea for SimonEscapes came from the fact that all
my money was tied up in Moneysupermarket, which was a
virtual internet business that I couldn’t touch or feel,” says
Nixon.
“When I floated it on the stock market, I sold a lot of my
shares and took some money off the table. Obviously I
needed to invest it, so I thought, why not put a chunk of it
into bricks and mortar?”
“I’ve always been really passionate about visiting great
locations. I thought it would be great if I could combine that
with property, by building and renovating really high-end
holiday lets.”
One of the latest properties he is developing is a
beachside house in Barbados. “I go to Barbados every two
or three months now to meet with the architect, the interior
designer and the project managers, to make sure
everything’s on track,” he says.
“After an eight-hour flight from the UK where I’ve left
behind a blizzard of snow and rain, when I get off the plane
in Barbados, the first thing I do is go to the sea, dip my
toe in the water and I feel like I’m relaxing and I’m away
from it all.”
In spite of his immense success, the entrepreneur
describes himself as an insecure person. “Entrepreneurs are
driven by insecurity,” he says. “What drives me is not
success, it’s fear of failure.
“I feel guilty when I’m not working, which is a terrible
habit. If I was on the beach all day every day, I’d feel so “[Moneysupermarket.com]
guilty.” And besides, he points out, working on changed the marketplace,
SimonEscapes isn’t exactly a grind. because providers had to
“I don’t see going to Barbados as a hardship,” he laughs. start cutting their rates to
“I’ll get up at seven in the morning, go for a swim in the sea, compete for customers
have a nice breakfast and then my meeting will start at half for the first time. We’d
nine on the beach. brought transparency”
“I’m more balanced now, I don’t work 14-hour days in an Simon Nixon
office,” he adds. “I’m out and about, and I enjoy that a lot
more.
“I probably work almost as many hours as I used to
because I’m always thinking, but I’m thinking and working in
really nice environments and combining what I love – travel to
nice places and good food – with work I enjoy. It’s the best of BUSINESS: Erik Brown
both worlds.” erik.brown@pubbiz.com