In my opinion, Netflix responded to the crisis (regarding separating their business into two completely different segments for streaming and DVD rental) on its CEO’s blog, by taking the plan back. I was checking the CEO’s blog and people’s comments after I got an email from Netflix about them being two separated websites. I remember I was thinking that Netflix has to do something with these hundreds of angry comments, and a bit excited to see how they’d deal with it! Actually I wasn’t expecting them to take their word back (even though I was one of those people who really hated the idea of having to use two different websites), but they did take it back pretty quickly.

A lot of people around me still don’t have trust on Netflix yet, but I’m still a subscriber and believe in them. The crisis showed that Netflix is actually reading and caring about those comments from consumers on their blog, and they are capable of accepting their mistake and apologizing right away. I think that is really trustworthy.

Ranga

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Only thing I would like to add to what you have said is that Big Data Analytics goes beyond Social Media BI and includes use of Predictive Modeling.

Thanks again for your comment,

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Social media business intelligence is the crossroads between business intelligence and social media, the bridge between these new unstructured data streams and the BI to help make better business decisions. 

@sdolukhanov:twitter 

I agree that ”
World in general is asking for more and more freedom and open source is democratic” and yes, Android market is a very good example. 

You are also correct that it is tough to convince management in analytically not-so-matured  companies about paying the bill for software such as SAS and SPSS. In fact that is where Open Source alternatives will come in play as I have highlighted in my post. And thanks for the link  to Microsoft example, that is a great case study.

Thanks again for your comments,

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Here’s my take on points you have mentioned:

* Agree that “”community” developing/offer significantly improved, enterprise-ready versions of Hadoop, R, etc. As they gain acceptance, expect the prices to rise” but not very much. Still a great bargain compared to what some of the analytics/BI vendors are charging, add to that cost of professional services.

* Agree 100% that “BI was developed and grew as essentially a reporting tool, not a tool for quantitative methods and reporting is still valid, even if it has changed its use and presentation” My take on this is that given the volume, velocity and variety of Big Data, focus is less on “historic” reporting and more on “predictive modeling” like causal path analysis –> Churn/customer attrition forecasting in telecom for example. There is great value in using predictive analytics and taking corrective action, rather than just historic reporting like BI.

* We disagree the most about Predictive Analytics from what you have written. You said that “behavior itself is not perfectly indicative of true underlying propensities. People’s behavior is ineffably random and it can’t be figured out by sifting through hundreds of attribute about the customer”. Techniques like Multiple-regression couple with factor analysis, cluster analysis and causal path analytics can be used very effectively with Big data – now that we have many variables, both in terms of rows and columns (variables and no. of observations for each). 

Talking specifically about CRM, social media data can be used effectively for Churn forecasting/attrition management. And since this information is publicly available for free, cost of such solution both for data and analytics (R, HBase, Hadoop) is much lower as compared to “traditional” solutions from Analytics and BI vendors. This is what I have tried to highlight in my post.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, much appreciated!

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

I believe open source is definitely going to challenge commercial BI software and this is going to be healthy for the market.

World in general is asking for more and more freedom and open source is democratic. Look how Android’s market share is on the rise. People tolerate less,  getting locked-in with certain propitiatory technologies and this will be on the rise by having more options on the table.

I agree with Neil that most companies have small data warehouses and they can go very far with simple reporting and OLAP drill-downs. That means that Big Data is going to stay with giant leaders and maybe some challengers. But if we speak about predictive modeling for instance,  many average companies are in need of building segmentation/loyalty models, it is really hard to convince management in analytically not-so-matured  companies, paying the bill for software such as SAS and SPSS. The way SAS advertised their packages a decade a go, by giving away student licenses to statistical departments at universities, R is getting very popular today. And people enjoy the freedom, large number of packages and getting around with software licenses without sweating to convince the management for paying the bill.

This will certainly push big vendors to a direction to open up more and reconsider their pricing and strategies, if they want to remain competitive. 

Just have a look how Microsoft today has realized power of open source and their big Hadoop projects http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/01/meet-bill-gates/all/1

Second, BI was developed and grew as essentially a reporting tool, not a tool for quantitative methods. The success of companies like QlikTech and Tableau, and continuing growth of IBI and BIRT from Actuate, prove that reporting is still valid, even if it has changed its use and presentation.

Most companies have relatively small data warehouses and modest BI needs. The world can’t be full of leaders. 

On predictive analytics – its not a good term. Most useful analytics, even statistical/quantitative ones, are not predictive. For example, there is pretty wide agreement that when it comes to customers, behavior itself is not perfectly indicative of true underlying propensities. People’s behavior is ineffably random and it can’t be figured out by sifting through hundreds of attribute about the customer, which is what “predictive” analytics purports to do.

Hadoop/MapReduce in a functional programming framework for processing large amounts of weird, distributed data and is either overkill and/or not suited to BI. Someone still has to count the beans.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

The first hurdle for many organizations will be learning to treat social media as a telephone and not a megaphone.  Providing access to our companies so our audience will have a place to interact and see us as real will be the second hurdle.  Finally ones ability to stop tracking numbers of people as though they were points on the scoreboard will perhaps be the last one to clear.

Along with you, my goal for the coming year will be to bring back the business deal with handshake via social interaction over the internet and creating tangible relationships not just traceable reactions.

Holiday blessing and prosperous New Year!

Perhaps your org is, but I can assure you that some of the others you listed aren’t yet. ;-P

I maintain that there is a genuine need for more voices like your own within the Cloud Cabal upper levels – who do recognize they type of talent required to pull it all together – and will subsequently change both their recruiting practices and role requirements. 

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

I have been in the forefront of eCRM revolution since its inception more than 10 years’ back. And if I can relate to how things were when CRM was “eCRM” (before large vendors entered the field in a big way), I can say that once consolidation happened in the industry, demand for talent sky rocketed, and is still strong even now for experienced CRM, ERP IT professionals. We are at “consolidation” stage when it comes to Social CRM – just see all the M&A in the last one month alone and a string of IPOs in Social Media. 
As I have highlighted in the post, demand for talent will pick up going forward. Experienced CRM/ERP professionals can benefit from this coming boom by picking up required technical skills in the area and by becoming experts in technology/tools used in Social CRM – SFDC/Radian6 for example and similarly for Oracle, SAP and Microsoft too. 

There are many Social CRM pundits (preachers), but if one is expert in using the tools and delivering Social CRM solution using some of the leading tools, that person is going to be highly valued. Just my 2 cents worth of wisdom!Thanks again for your comment,Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

I don’t necessarily see that there is as much of a critical shortage of skilled resources who have strategic and tactical skill with Enterprise, ERP, CRM apps/suites/processes, plus an understanding of social customer psychology.  Rather, I think there is indeed a pool of resources out there that the ‘big’ social business vendors aren’t tapping into yet, or at least they’re not moving them into high enough roles in the organization where they can have real impact on the overall direction of delivery strategies and the creation of real customer success stories. We are the missing link – the real practitioners between the Preachers and the Pioneers, but we’re not being well utilized. 

I think a big part of the challenge isn’t a lack of resources, but vendors not understanding who the resources are, and why they should be recruiting them.
I number quite a few candidates to fit the bill amongst my own friends and colleagues, but it’s a tough task to get the attention of the big vendors unless you’re perceived as a social media voice or blogger versus a battle-worn, ‘in-the-trenches’ talent treasure.  I’d lay bets on all of them, (myself included), in a challenge against most of the self-proclaimed social business gurus on something as simple as development of a plan of execution.  I have no doubt I’d make a killing on that wager. But, first we must get past the gate-keepers to those who are willing to take up that challenge.

I’ll add a little personal research via this snippet copied from from one of my posts on this topic:

“Looking at the positions posted on three ‘top’ social platform vendor sites doesn’t bode well for the clients. While we’re all searching for success stories, I forecast many dismal failures ahead if the right people aren’t being used in the right ways. Of 55 jobs posted by those vendors offering social collaboration solutions for businesses, only 4 of the jobs listed have any sort of business analysis consulting or enterprise software implementation experience as a requirement. That’s nothing short of scary.”

As you astutely clarified, it’s not just an issue of hiring the right resources, either. Ideally, when resources such as ourselves are recruited into any of these organizations, they should be utilized as a cadre of Drill Sergeants who can cross-train and mentor those coming up in the ranks as the next generation of service professionals. It’s not enough to rally the troops with a new battle cry, we need to be in a position to carefully build best practices, share basic tenets of consultancy, architect best practices, and vet the competency levels of the rest of the team.  We need to write the narratives for social enterprise from within.

I’m game. As are several skilled colleagues.  Now what?