New Crop of Leading Digital Service Companies Sign on as Monetate Certified Partners

$4 billion in financing available to IBM Business Partners to provide clients access to the latest technology

IBM is making things easy for customers to implement their tool.  Other vendors require a payment upfront and do not offer help with financing.

Source: ibm.com/partnerworld

IBM announced that its global ecosystem of credit-qualified Business Partners will have access to financing of up to $4 billion over a period of 12 months through IBM Global Financing. IBM is delivering more simplified access to financing options for credit qualified businesses, opening the door for affordable financing options that will help businesses quickly and easily acquire advanced technology solutions such as analytics, cloud, and PureSystems that can ultimately help drive growth.

For Lima Consulting Group, working with IBM Global Financing means to improve our cash flow, grow our business, and also help our clients improve their competitive position. When we recommend IBM Global Financing, we’re not only offering our clients real value–we give ourselves a number of advantages throughout the sales process.  IBM Global Financing enables us to sell more by making solutions more affordable and overcoming our clients’ cost and budget challenges. read more

70% of business CEO’s are betting on analytic data to understand their clients

70% of Business CEO’s are betting on analytic data to understand their clients

Based on the Global Study of Top Management-CEO Study IBM-2012: “Leading in a hyper-connected world.”

More than 70% of CEO’s are looking for a better way to understand the needs of every client and to increase their potential for solutions. Given the need for a deeper knowledge of the clients, the so called “out performers” (Those organizations that beat the competition in the same industry in terms of growth, income, and revenues.) have a clear advantage.

IBM has been working on this report since 2004.  On the fifth edition they were able to sit  face to face with 1,700 CEO’s from 64 countries all across the world, of which 230 work for medium size companies. read more

ExactTarget Identifies the Digital Personas of Consumers

ExactTarget, a partner with Lima Consulting Group, describes a series of divergent personas that online consumers represent.

Accurate communication is key when interacting with customers. to make this connection, you must know your consumer; personalities, preferences, and most importantly, the online role the consumer is most identified with.

Below are a number of the more distinguishable profiles and online tendencies:

Family & Friends – Focused on family and close friend relationships—they’re not particularly interested in developing new online relationships.

Shopper – Shopping is the focus while online—but this isn’t limited to online transactions. Much of their time is spent researching future purchases. Think quality over savings with these consumers.

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IBM Expands Cloud Based Analytics for Smarter Commerce

I think it’s neat to see how companies are getting together in a consortium, if you will through IBM’s Coremetrics product.  Collectively, they allow any client that opts-into the program to view the aggregate averages within their industry.  Summary information is now being picked up in the press as an indication of how Black Friday went.  Pretty cool if you don’t have to share your information.  And that’s where the IBM Acquisition of DemandTek comes into play.

A sample dashboard from DemandTec

So this type of thinking helps companies competing in the digital marketplace to adapt to changes in consumer demands as they occur.  Companies that can quickly and effectively adjust their price points and product mixes in response to ever-shifting customer buying patterns will have a key competitive advantage in the era of mobile and social networks.

That’s why IBM’s acquisition of DemandTec this past Thursday will make the  Smarter Commerce initiative even more valuable to retailers and manufacturers of packaged consumer goods.  The San Mateo, California based DemandTec develops cloud-based analytics software that allows businesses to examine consumer buying data mined from both online and in-store sales.  DemandTec customers can use that information to quickly and accurately identify consumer trends, helping  them make better price, promotion, and assortment decisions.  And because DemandTec’s software is cloud-based, retailers and manufacturers can collaborate to make time-sensitive business decisions instantaneously.

A sample Coremetrics Dashboard

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Defining an Online Marketing Strategy and Roadmap

Check out our latest video developed to assist Internet Marketers in developing an integrated and cohesive digital marketing strategy.

Please let us know you’re feedback, we’re launching a series of theses and would love to hear what you think.

CPG Creative Best Practices Online: Driving Breakthrough and Persuasion

This is a re-print from Yahoo! blog entry and I’ve injected comments throughout.  I’ve recently had an opportunity to speak with several Consumer Packaged Goods companies, some large, some small and in just about every case was curious about why the industry at large struggles with the development of digital strategy and implementation when they are so advanced in their execution of traditional media.

This research from Ipsos OTX and Yahoo! was terrific and really offered some insights into the product life stage relative to the marketing objectives.  My intuition is that many of these practices will work for e-commerce sites as well.  read more