real-time social intelligence

Customer Intelligence in a real-time social eco-system

The pressing need in customer intelligence is a solution related to a real-time eco-system. One deeper philosophical issue in this space relates to variable velocity, to quote Lee Bryant. Tools like PeerIndex and Recorded Future do a good job of segmenting and defining the truly staggering flow of data AND audiences interacting with that data. Datasift (http://datasift.net/) is a leader in architecting methodologies for analyzing the complex fabric of the social Internet.

For an important new study on Customer Intelligence Trends 2011, see the following Forrester Report: ‎”At the same time, the demand for insight — not just data — in real time creates a challenge but also a huge opportunity to extend the value of Customer Intelligence throughout the enterprise. Leading CI professionals who evolve and adapt to these trends will quickly find themselves at the nexus of the business.” ~from Customer Intelligence Trends To Watch In 2011 (http://bit.ly/customer_intelligence_trends_2011)

WHAT IS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: DEFINITIONS
(Some basic info below)

Business intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments or associated costs and incomes.

BI technologies provide historical, current, and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of Business Intelligence technologies are reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, and predictive analytics.

Business Intelligence often aims to support better business decision-making. Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system (DSS). Though the term business intelligence is often used as a synonym for competitive intelligence, because they both support decision making, BI uses technologies, processes, and applications to analyze mostly internal, structured data and business processes while competitive intelligence is done by gathering, analyzing and disseminating information with or without support from technology and applications, and focuses on all-source information and data (unstructured or structured), mostly external, but also internal to a company, to support decision making. (SOURCE)

The global business intelligence (BI) software market is projected to reach $12.4 billion by the year 2015, driven by the growing need to empower all stakeholders of businesses with right information at the appropriate time.

Uncertain economic conditions, intense competition and increasing volumes of organizational information are forcing enterprises to seek efficient means of deriving value from information for improving the overall efficiency of business processes. In this regard, BI technology is emerging as an essential tool for identifying new revenue-generation opportunities as well as to control unproductive expenditures. BI offers tools, processes and applications for facilitating organizations to analyze and consolidate data gathered from various sources for optimizing operational performance and for improving business decision-making. BI and analytics software helps organizations to analyze the information built up over the years, which resides in the enterprise systems. (Source)

What is real-time social business intelligence?

What is real-time social business intelligence?

Real-time social business intelligence provides, amongst other things, (a) the right vantage point(s) to observe the “river of news” from; (b) a scuba-suit to dive INTO the river and scour its depths; (c) an informed assessment/report of volume, content AND context over time; and (d) targeted frequent alerts on specific findings for the sake of staff who have other things to do.

A superior social intelligence report includes, amongst other options, the following sections:

1. FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS (Should be accompanied by data-rich infographics that distill findings into a digestible format). Here is a PERFECT example of what the a final product would be: http://jess3.com/go-green-go-public/ Includes the classic 5 W’s of Journalism plus a few more, as outlined here:

• WHO? Who was, is and will be involved? We are able to see a vast amount of material in the social properties based on our current CRM databases.

• WHAT? What happened in the past, present and future? Yes, the future! With tools like Recorded Future, we can refine our knowledge of what is coming up around any vertical or entity.

• WHERE? Where did it take place in the past, Where is it taking place now and where will it take place in the future?

• WHEN? When did it take place in the past, when is taking place NOW, and when will it take place in the future? We can map this very precisely now.

• WHY? Why did it happen? Why is it happening NOW and Why COULD it happen in the future? This has A LOT to do with accurate contextual and sentiment analysis. Temporal Analytics play a part in future analysis. We also get to prove our campaign idea(s) BASED upon both quantitative AND qualitative measures here.

• HOW? How did it happen in the past, how is happening now, and how will it happen in the future?

• Is it WORTHWHILE intelligence? There’s a LOT of junk out there. Filtering out the wheat from the chaff is an essential aspect of our work. Does the content fit in the context we expected or would like to know about.

• What’s the WOW! factor? How much buzz is this keyword or that entity gaining.

• Develop ACTIONABLE items from the intelligence. Single, punchy commands about what, where, when, why and to whom one MUST message.

• GET SOCIAL! Foster AND WEAVE community with the intelligence.

• ON-GOING: Outline a plan for responsible and consistent follow-up and on-going intelligence gathering that dynamically moves WITH the brand, product/service.

2. IDENTIFY YOUR SOURCES AND METHODOLOGYfor the report as a best practice.

3. PROVIDE RANKED KEYWORD DATA SETS Be sure to include data from Google and Alexa here, as well as other important historical and current data from social property insight/analytic panels.

4. IDENTIFY INFLUENCERS WITH REACH + AMBASSADOR ARCHETYPES (These are suggestions of candidates that represent ideal Community Managers or Brand Ambassadors for a brand/product/service).

5. SHOW SEASONALITY OF PRODUCT/SERVICE (When is the BEST time of year for the various messagings about your product/service?).

6. SHOW TIME OF DAY PRODUCT IS DISCUSSED IN GENERAL IN THE SOCIAL PROPERTIES (When is the BEST time of day for the various messagings about your product/service?)

7. ASSEMBLE REAL TIME BUZZ PANELS (Your view into the “river of news”) One format would be like THIS: http://bit.ly/real_time_buzz

8. CREATE A COMPARISON of size of clusters/categories of conversations around specific product/service features.