]]> For the Social Business Convention I did a presentation on the value of Enterprise Social Media. It shows a very clear way of  calculating the benefits of enterprise social media. There are two different types of benefits mentioned in this slidedeck:

1. Benefits that create a cognitive surplus
2. Benefits that create a direct benefit (often cost saving or increase in revenue)

Direct  benefits

Direct benefits are often very contextual, and since examples of these cases would only make sense in a certain context I only listed generic direct benefits, especially since the presentation was for a mixed audience and each of the audience members have their own context. However two generic direct benefits are: reducing telephone costs and reducing travel costs. For me these are rather obvious savings which provide people with the insight that there are other and better ways to get in touch with each other and to exchange information.

Cognitive Surplus

Saving  time (for example by making employees more productive), doesn’t directly create a cost saving. However these additional hours can be seen as a cognitive surplus: time that can be spend in a very useful way for a company. Or in some cases: playing some additional solitaire or Angry Birds. The cognitive surplus and especially the increase of this surplus is often one of the basis benefits of enterprise social media. These benefits are applicable to nearly all companies and are often implemented rather easy (as in: the return on investment is rather high and the turnaround time is at worst a bit more than three months).

ROI and Business Cases

Business cases are guesses, since nobody knows exactly upfront what the benefits will be and how much money you will save or if you will be able to create or increase a cognitive surplus in our organization. So the best way to move forward is to do things, to make change happen. Only when things are done you know what the actual result was and you have a clear view on the benefits. Though one thing is certain: benefits are there and social enters the workplace no matter what company or market you are working in.

]]> Human Resources space, especially on talent acquisition front has been on “Talent War” footing despite instable market conditions and higher unemployment. It is more to do with niche / special skill candidates in more demand. This situation has pushed corporate HR / recruitment teams to think beyond the traditional methods of candidate search / attraction. The classical approaches like print ads and job portal recruitment are lagging behind as they lack an ability to “listen” to their target audience in today’s cut-throat competitive model. 

This is a tailor-made situation for “Social Media” to provide a complete solution to any corporate recruitment department. Yes, there is a definite buzz about Social Media in every industry. Recruitment being a “people oriented” function, “Social” provides an exact platform for candidates and recruiters to not just meet / network but also go beyond short-term goals.

What is Social Recruiting?

Social Recruiting is more than just recruiting with Social Media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. These channels also provide an excellent opportunity for branding and marketing for recruitment department to position themselves as leaders in their target market and thus creating an interactive and engaged talent pool for long term objective.

The Social channels provides a great platform for companies to present their culture, capabilities, future growth plans, internal talent pool along with presenting career opportunities. This creates a great amount of interest for potential talent pool to engage with a company for longer run. One of the biggest advantage though for companies is an ability to “listen” the target talent group rather than just “telling” their part of story. Recruiters / HR people can now observe and listen to candidates through what people are saying about their company, competitors, technology etc and engage them through mutual dialogue. This also results to “woo” those hidden passive candidates who may not be actively looking in the market for now; however they will look at these opportunities as a first resort once they are active in the market again. This will only happen as a result of proactive communication, listening and engagement.

Creating an effective Employer Brand is a first and foremost important piece to your strategic recruitment puzzle. And remember – “brand” is what people say about you and not just what your marketing says.

Sharing is Caring

Putting your “Employer Brand” out in “Social” environment also means you are reaching out to bigger audience beyond your direct followers due to viral nature. People will be happy to share your messages to their followers and it is the fastest way for spreading a good word in the market. Internal associates are the best brand ambassadors for your talent brand.

At any point of time only 10% to 15% people are actively looking out; hence Social Recruiting helps to reach larger share of your target market and by their own network.

Social Media is a two way communication channel and has a great potential to enhance the entire candidate experience, employer brand thus adding more value than a blanket “one-way” method of posting jobs for recruitment. Being “Social” may also attract some negative vibes which can also spread virally against your employer brand; however they need to be tackled positively and openly.

Recruitment has always been a “social” activity and these channels have given a fantastic opportunity for recruiters and companies to bridge the gap between them and potential candidates. Listening to them carefully and engaging is the ultimate key to achieve success in talent acquisition space in longer run.

In the end – candidate (customer) is a king! So you better be “Social”

]]> A Serial Scrum Team

The simplest situation of doing product development with Scrum is to have one Product Backlog capturing the desirements for that Product, and having one Scrum Team implementing that Product Backlog in Sprints. The Development Team has all skills to turn several Product Backlog items into Done per Sprint upon the definition of Done. The Development Team manages its work in the Sprint Backlog and has a daily inspection to safeguard direction and alignment via the Daily Scrum. The Product Owner provides right-time functional and business clarifications. The Scrum Master coaches, facilitates and serves the team and the organization.

The Sprint Review is easily guaranteed to be fully transparent, an important prerequisite to make the empirical approach of Scrum work.

Multiple Scrum Teams

For larger products, the need to build a product with multiple Scrum Teams will arise. The multiple Scrum Teams build one Product, i.e. work on the same Product Backlog. Each Scrum Team (Product Owner + Development Team + Scrum Master) derives its Sprint Backlog from selected Product Backlog items, does its Sprints and has its Daily Scrum. The need for a transparent ‘inspect’ at the Sprint Review remains. The Increment presented for collaborative inspection should still live up to the definition of Done, i.e. have no undone, hidden work left, and it should represent the complete product that the Multiple Scrum Teams are jointly building. It is expected to be an integrated Increment.

To have an integrated Increment by the end of every Sprint implies at least regular communication and information sharing across the multiple Scrum Teams within the Sprint. The Scrum Teams have regular Scrum-of-Scrums meetings besides the Daily Scrum that they have per Scrum Team. In the Scrum-of-Scrums, the best placed Development Team members of the Multiple Scrum Teams gather to exchange integration information, so that each Scrum Team can optimally plan and re-plan its Sprint Backlog.

When working as multiple Scrum Teams, the Sprint Backlog of each individual Scrum Team will obviously need to hold integration tasks to live up to the quality expectation of integrated Increments, upon a shared Definition of Done. The multiple Scrum Teams will most likely work upon the same Sprint Length to simplify planning of an integrated Sprint Review. Depending on the number of multiple Scrum Teams, a common Sprint Planning meeting part 1 may be considered, but probably a separate Sprint Planning meeting part 2. They might want to consider to do (part of) the Sprint Retrospective together. What works best for them to build integrated Increments.

Platform Level Scrum

In more complex situations, a mere Scrum-of-Scrums meeting, although being performed, might not be enough to keep the multiple Scrum Teams’ work fully integrated. Maybe there are too much Scrum Teams building the same product. Maybe multiple products are closely connected or technically linked, while each has its own Product Backlog and one Scrum Team or multiple Scrum Teams implementing it.

For clear empirical reasons, Increments are expected to be technically complete, no undone work, integrations included. No unknown remaining work should impede the Product Owner in the decision to ship upon the assessment whether the Increment is functionally complete or coherent enough.

This situation might reveal the need for a team that doesn’t works as a feature team. A feature team typically is a vertically sliced Development Team having the skills and authorization to work on all components and layers needed to build features that are actually usable by end-users. This specific team does not implement functional desirements from this end-user perspective but has the other Scrum Teams as ‘customer’. Key is that this is a full-time team that performs its work for the other Scrum Teams on a daily base. It is essential that work is not postponed, as it will accumulate and result in unpredictable and uncontrollable efforts. The specific team performs inspections that enable the other Scrum Teams within the Sprints to adapt their Sprint Backlog plan for producing integrated software by the end of each Sprint.

A common purpose for such a team is technical integration. An “Integration Team” in this setup regularly collects checked-in code of the multiple Scrum Teams, merges, runs and tests it on specific systems in order to feed back the results to the multiple Scrum Teams. This inspection reveals important development information that needs to be taken care of during the Sprint, not be postponed to some later phase. However, the model is also applicable on highly specialized skills that cannot be injected in every Scrum Team. E.g. think of highly specific performance or security testing in large financial institutions.

]]> Many enterprises have experienced with social media and now want to develop opportunities that influence customers to favor their brands or buy their products, yet vast majority of business leaders are still falling short understanding their customers’ needs and expectations. While being perfect may be impossible, but responsiveness enables enterprises to appear more appropriate and deliver experiences at the right time to build strong customer advocacy. However, I am quite surprised to see the results of a new survey carried out by American Express on consumer preferences that found more than eight in ten consumers of which 83% have bailed on a purchase because of a poor service experience on social media.

Where the enterprise fails on its promise: Social media has revolutionized the way people interact with each other and if the customers are not getting the response they need from you, they are a lot quicker to share their frustration with friends and other networks now.

• Shortcoming in understanding the customers: The challenge is, social technologies are relatively new for most of the companies, and when companies invest in social media with little understanding of how it influences their customers – they encounter serious issues. In general, business leaders tend to focus on the operational excellence – “What can be created faster, cheaper and more efficient, rather than “what their customers may value the most”.
• Underestimating social media as a secondary activity: Today, customers rely heavily on digital communication and have high expectations in regards to your customer service. However, many businesses fail to monitor customers’ preferences and attitudes that lead to a bigger crisis – the issue may be shared publically, and would negatively impact your brand.
• Unable to offer consistent content across different social platforms: A mature coordination within various social accounts has still been missing and known as a greatest challenge – when publishing content through social platforms, your company often can’t stay on top of all these messages and can’t tell what’s been responded to, resulting in a huge risk to your brand reputation.
• Skeptical about talking to social channels: The vast majority of business leaders and C-level executives are still absent or ignoring to communicate with their customers through social channels. A recent survey by BRANDfog explains when senior executives within any company become active on social media, it can increase brand trust, loyalty and purchase intent. cal about talking to social channels: The vast majority of business leaders and C-level executives are still absent or ignoring to communicate with their customers through social channels. A recent survey by BRANDfog explains when senior executives within any company become active on social media, it can increase brand trust, loyalty and purchase intent.

Don’t allow others to define your brand

A brand is a perception that lives in the minds of your customers. And someone said it correctly, that perception creates value and your customers value the promise your brand offers to them. To succeed you must be willing to learn how to effectively use social accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and your blogs for finding potential customers.  A company has to be involved and use analytical tools to review what your community has been talking; also must listen to and respond to customers when they seek information from you. Always remember, a timely responsiveness can make a lot of difference to customers’ opinion about your brand.

Understand your customers and their social media journey

Learn from others

Marketers must align their social initiatives with their customer experience strategy – With the use of existing social media accounts, a company can understand their customers’ digital touchpoints, identify gaps in customers’ product perception, and create metrics to keep the organization true to its social objectives. I have expressed some thoughts on my previous write up “Want to win faster than your competition – Become the People’s champion, First” as how companies can effectively engage and involve their customers via social channels.

• Listen to your customers: Dell generates more than 20,000 oline conversations throughout a day, which is not at all easy to manage. However the company uses social media listening command center to successfully manage the information and learn/engage with its customers. The manufacturer understands why social listening is important – Due to its defined approach to listening; it can track real time customer insights and take timely action.
• Become responsive: In May 2010, when the volcano in Iceland spread tons of ashes in the air, most of the planes were grounded for days – During that crisis period KLM increased the number of staff devoted to social media accounts, by simply using Facebook and Twitter to help their customers. After gaining experience under such circumstances, KLM has expanded its use of social media to reach customers.
• Let the audience understand what you need from them: Customers can generate ideas outside of your internal team – Best buy and Star bucks have initiated idea-exchange sites, whereby customers provide feedback on their existing products, services and experiences. While such sites generate equal criticism as well as useful insight, it’s always good to tell potential customers that a new product was created with the direct inputs of existing customers.
• Focus on building relationships, not transactions: As a customer, I always seek for an actual and timely response. Social, being a tool can empower deeper relationship with your customers. In Sephora’s beauty talk online community, the company’s experts help customers understand how to use number of cosmetics, makeup, skincare, and other beauty products, in addition to answering their customers’ queries; the community offers a video library that shows how to get the trendy looks.
• Understand the power of mass collaboration: The wisdom of the crowds cannot be captured if the crowds don’t participate. GE’s ecomagination challenge utilized Brightidea’s platform to raise awareness of the need for innovative energy solutions while also encouraging the general public to offer solutions for implementation.

Create and sustain momentum with your online customers

Use social media as a marketing channel like you do use your primary methods – with TV ads, radio and prints etc. Remember, your customers are not making any unreasonable demands – they simply want to be treated like individuals. By paying heed to customers’ grievances, a company can learn constructive lessons and reduce the impact of such criticism in public.

]]> Capgemini is co-organizing the first Scrum Day Europe. This one-day event takes place on 11 July 2012 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Exact location is “Pakhuis De Zwijger”, Piet Heinkade 179, 1019 HC Amsterdam. Ken Schwaber of Scrum.org is keynote speaker.

Capgemini, as a leading global consulting services company, is proud and glad to contribute to the continuous growth of Agile via Scrum in the Netherlands and beyond. Capgemini, with its subsidiaries in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK in the lead, is adopting Scrum at a fast pace. This evolution includes the injection of large portions of Agility into Capgemini’s own organization, behavior and thinking. Capgemini thereby steadily keeps improving its solid partnerships with its clients, collaborating from the perspective of Value-Driven Delivery.

Feel free to join us on that journey! Maybe the Scrum Day Europe is a good start. Be quick to subscribe however. The number of seats has been limited to make sure energy levels and interaction can be kept high. Register via the website: www.scrumdayeurope.com.

]]> The ambition of the IT-management is “We want all projects using the Agile way of working, no exceptions”. In a way I’m happy with this ambition, because I understand what lies behind it, but I think that a lot of project members don’t agree with this statement and don’t want to be forced. Forcing people doing things they don’t want or from which they don’t see the benefits, leads to resistance to any other way of working. So it is important that management give the necessary differentiations like: “We can use all of Agile some of the time and some of Agile all of the time” (with thanks to Dynamic Systems Development Method).

As said before: management and coaches have to keep in mind that implementing or using Agile is not a goal on itself. The reason that we implement Agile is that it helps us in achieving our goals, like getting successful and predictable projects and a shorter time to market. This means that not everything has to change. Only the areas where we can make improvements and will lead to more success are part of our change area. This will help people in accepting a new way of working: we keep what works well and we improve what didn’t work well.

What I noticed is that there are two ways of resistance against change. One is “It is not possible, we can’t do this in our project” and the other one is “we already doing this”. Both reactions have the same effect: nothing happens, nothing will change.
As a coach (and process engineer) I prefer the first reaction, because than I can use a lot of coaching techniques to give them insight in how it can work and explain the benefits to convince them. By focusing how things can work we adapt the Agile practices to fit in their project.
In case of the second reaction “we already doing this”, it is more difficult. Because than I  have to do some research to make sure that they indeed already doing it with positive results, so than we leave it that way (don’t fix a car which is not broken). But sometimes you discover that it is not really true what they say, well in their opinion it is true, but not in mine. In that case I have to explain that we mean something different. It is clear that a careful approach is necessary. Saying that the current way of working is not effective leads to more resistant (so you say that what I’m doing for years is not good?).

Let’s give an example of the reaction “we already doing this”.
We want to implement an Agile dashboard and a daily standup in a project team that is responsible for the maintenance of an application. Their work items are RfC (Requests for change). Currently they use a tool which shows the status per RfC. Every team member has access to the tool and they can see on which tasks they are assigned to. They update the status in the tool. The project manager controls the tool and in a weekly progress meeting the status is discussed with the whole team. The project manager doesn’t think an Agile dashboard and a daily standup are needed because they already have the tool and the weekly meeting. Because everything went well, the project manager thinks there is nothing to improve, so there is no need for change.
But what I see is that the team members can work more closely together than what they do now. They are not co-located and by updating the tool they don’t interact with each other and don’t know what the others do. It is not visible for them what the status is of the work items they don’t work on, because mostly they only update their own tasks in the tool. Also some issues stays undiscussed for a week. The team members also work on other things and only the project manager has sharp what has to be delivered when.
By bringing the team together on a daily bases (minimal twice a week) and doing a stand-up with the whole team in front of a dashboard, the team members get in sync with each other and know exactly where everybody is working on. The main benefit is that issues are raised and sometimes solved immediately by supporting each other. They also see the status of all work items that has to be done and focus on the delivery of the end-result within time. The effect will be that the team act more and more as a whole team taking responsibility for the end result and become more self-organizing. After a while the project manager doesn’t have to control all RfC’s anymore, the team can do this themselves in close collaboration with the product owner. The project manager can then focus on taking away impediments for the team. And so on… all improvements will help in being more effective. As a result the lead time of RfC’s becomes shorter, the team members are happy being part of a self-steering team, and project managers can change from command & control style to a facilitating style within normal working hours.

The lesson learned is that sometimes it seems that teams are already doing Agile, but when you have a closer look, you can see more improvements than you thought at first sight.

Link to Transition to Agile, how dows it work? (part 1)

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Over the years I have noticed a lot of agile anti-patterns during projects. Wrongly used agile approaches, dogmatic use of agile approaches, agile-in-name-only. Recently I have presented a talk at a number of agile and software development conferences that demonstrates patterns of agile misuse. These conferences include Agile Open Holland (Dieren), Camp Digital (Manchester), GIDS (Bangalore), ACCU (Oxford) and Jazoon (Zurich). Anyway, here’s the slide deck. Enjoy.

]]> In a recently published article (http://www.information-management.com/news/SAP-Oracle-IBM-Gartner-BI-analytics-PM-10022274-1.html) Gartner research predicts that Business Intelligence sales for the major vendors will continue to expand due to an increasing demand in analytical and cloud solutions. They also see “hyper growth” for (cloud based) new vendors filling BI niches like social and mobility. Andreas Bitterer and Bhavish Sood (both also from Gartner) again stress the importance of mobility in BI in another recent article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/gartnergroup/2012/04/24/mobile-business-intelligence-puts-data-on-the-road/) . Both articles share an overall focus on innovation and growth.

There is no denying that the amount of data is increasing and with this increase grows the realization that information can help drive smarter decisions. Therefore it is easy to understand the increased business demand. Meeting this demand is not the only a challenge for the supply side, but also often the IT department. Their current focus is less on innovation and growth, and more on cost reduction and budget costs. This impacts investments in Business Intelligence by IT and overall can slow down the delivery of intelligence to the business. And let’s not forget the other everyday challenges that many organizations have to deal with on top of this: Data Quality issues, non- performing BI platforms or lack of MDM (see Steve Jones’ recent blog for Capping IT Off: http://www.capgemini.com/technology-blog/2012/04/mastering-clarity-why-your-mdm-pitch-deck-should-have-3-points/). Simply said, in order to make smarter decisions, first you need better intelligence. Having said this, it seems that fixing the basics is equally as important as innovation and growth, and for some organizations a first logical step.

This brings me to the topic of speed skating. A sport for which we Dutch are world-famous. In this sport we also have seen some recent innovations, for example the clap skate (or “klapschaats” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clap_skate). This is a skate where a part of the blade is no longer fixed to the boot allowing for more ice contact and therefore faster results and new records. However, if you give me a clap skate, I will guarantee you that my performance will be horrible. Why? Because the guys and girls that use the clap skate are also excellent skaters on traditional skates. They have spent many years improving and refining their technique. The clap skates allow them to be even better. Just like the special swimsuits you see at the Olympics or racing bikes in the Tour de France. So first they are good at the sport, and now this innovation makes them even better. I would argue that the same applies for Business Intelligence. First you need to have a robust information foundation where you store and transform data. Where you guarantee the quality of the data, create that single version of the truth or manage performing BI platforms.

Don’t get me wrong. I love innovation and I think it is essential for improving your intelligence. So if you haven’t started a BI innovation project please do so asap. But only after having mastered the basics of BI, which you might already have, is it then time for business & IT to go on a journey together to find smarter insights through mobility and analytics, or more agility through cloud or SAAS solutions.

]]> Last week, I attended a breakfast meeting at the House of Commons to discuss and reflect on practical issues around implementing recommendations of the Hargreaves Report, as well as ways in which the IP system can be evolved to better enable the benefits from 21^st Century business and technology opportunities.

• London has the largest cluster of IP related start-ups, as well as the biggest hub for VCs, in Europe
• There has been a lot of international interest in the Hargreaves report and recommendations (the good professor regularly gets calls from interested observers across the globe). Also, the review findings and recommendations had good traction with the UK government.
• Digital economy versus creative economy; are they one and the same (i.e. is there and/or should there really be a difference)?
• The larger creative industry players (e.g. publishers), and their lobbyists, are not in full agreement with the review findings and / or recommendations, and remain firmly resistant to change
• According to one attendee, the interests of creative stakeholder (e.g. content creators) were not well represented or served by the review findings and recommendations
• Collecting societies act like de facto monopolies, which can make life difficult for some more innovative start-ups
• Broadcast TV players are trying to innovate and catch up with what consumers are already doing in their homes, but the current IP system is not sufficiently geared towards enabling such initiatives.

Note: Further information, comments and observations can be found in the IPT blog post about this event.

The upshot of the above points, in my opinion, is that a new / evolved IP system must really be geared towards dual targets, i.e. to help simplify and facilitate the use and reuse of IP works, especially in the digital realm. Such a focus would undoubtedly go a long way towards addressing the legion of non-technological challenges faced by most innovators, entrepreneurs and investors in the creative digital industries. For example, according to an article (see: The Library of Utopia), published by MIT technology review, “the major problem with constructing a universal library nowadays has little to do with technology. It’s the thorny tangle of legal, commercial, and political issues that surrounds the publishing business.”

These are pretty much the same issues to be found in similar ventures within publishing and other major creative industries, e.g.: Music (think cross border licensing for the much vaunted Celestial Jukebox), or a global film and image library (e.g. a mash-up of Hulu, Netflix, Corbis and Getty Images). In all cases, technology is not the stumbling block, because the bigger challenges lie with any combination of: business strategy, commercial models, legal / political / cultural mindsets, encountered along the way.

Having said that, it can be argued that such hurdles are not sustainable, for various reasons, not least of which is that individuals (or customers, casual pirates, consumers, freetards etc. – take your pick) are already way ahead of the curve in terms of digital content / technology, and will often use it exactly as they see fit.

This means that established incumbent players in the creative industries are forever playing a reactive / catch-up game, instead of pursuing or encouraging discovery of the next big thing. As a result, most disruptive propositions will invariably have a high impact on established business models, especially if and when they harness the natural instincts of individual users. An interesting example could be the recently launched Google Drive, complete with built-in OCR capability (which will enable users to digitize and search scanned content). Could this ultimately lead to a user generated version of Google Books?

To conclude, an IP system worthy of the 21^st century is an urgent necessity, but there is also pressing need to keep in mind the big picture, which is that the Internet is a global enabler / platform, therefore any new IP system must likewise be global in scope. The UK, with its wealth of creative talent, plus such efforts as the IP review and recommendations, may be in a unique position to provide some leadership on the best way forward for IP in this 21^st century.

]]> One defining shift that marks our society today is the rate of change and its democratization. Information flows in real time through ordinary people using simple channels like social media or mobile. The Jasmine Revolution in the Middle East showed how information democratization led the change to actual democracy.

The same concept applies to organizations. Today we are facing tumultuous changes in the way we work or communicate or even buy & sell products and services. The shift of “information power” to consumers as well as the rate and scale at which this information moves have made businesses re-think old marketing paradigms. Businesses are struggling to present a personalized interaction every time they interact with these “Hyper-Aware “customers. They are facing falling revenue per customer and margins pressures. Increasing IT or contact centres have failed to bridge this gap.

While this represents a state of flux and confusion, it may actually represent a once-in-a-generation opportunity for organizations to emerge as new leaders in this fast changing digital world. In order to be nimble and meet these challenges heads-on, organizations must focus on two fundamental capabilities – ability to transform business processes in-line with the changing business & competitive realities and aligning information directly with the processes. We call this Information driven Process Management.

The concepts involved in this change have been in vogue for some time now but new paradigms have emerged in recent years such as cloud, big data, analytics, MDM and process-contextual decision modelling capabilities. The key piece in this puzzle is the process-context aware intelligent decisioning which until now was primarily driven manually. Today leading BPM platforms come with in-built decisioning engines that follow adaptive/predictive models, to either learn from scratch or utilize existing enterprise data to “offer personalized suggestions”. This allows end users to drive intelligent business actions within and outside of the BPM platforms.

If we could combine a customer’s usage patterns from the analytical systems with the power of the customer & household information from MDM and mash it within the decisioning engine of the process hub platform, it would allow businesses to determine the type of interaction/personalized offer they need to make to their customers. It would allow businesses to use these decisions to drive business processes or interaction cases across channels to deliver seamless yet personalized experience to customers wherever and whenever they need it.

For example, consider the following scenarios – a bank wanting to define personalized credit card limits and interest rates based on the customer lifetime value and risk for default; or a mobile communications conglomerate looking to define personalized plans every month for its customers based on their usage patterns and holiday cycles or a utility planning to personalize energy plans depending upon a customer’s consumption patterns.

In all these cases, master data and analytics systems would combine vast amounts of information about the customer, his/her demographics, usage patterns as well as patterns from similar profiles in the same region or socio-economic strata to come up with personalized information regarding potential opportunities or offerings. This information fed to the decisioning engine would allow businesses to combine and modify existing services into customer specific individualized offers. The sales & fulfilment of these offers can then happen by using the process hub’s case management capability by connecting the front & back office operations to deliver these services across multiple platforms including social media, mobile or contact centres.