Don't go it alone: Create partnerships to prepare for the future A Chat with Ray Wang!

Ray Wang is one of the most visionary guys I've spoken to.  So I caught up with him on the Business Tech Trend report.   And his advice:   Don't go it alone: Create partnerships to prepare for the future

Ray Wang, founder and chairman of Constellation Analytics, talked about this partnership idea during our launch of the Business Tech Trends webcast. He commented that what clients are looking for today are "system integrators, partners, and value-added resellers to co-innovate, co-create. They are looking for new ideas and the ability to transform."
Ray-Wang

Ray is absolutely right! Furthermore, we're on the horizon of a digital business disruption. This disruption is more than just technology and networks talking to each other, it means a fundamental shift in business models. Ray went on to list seven elements of the digital disruption, which you can listen to on the webcast!

I suggest getting started on these three things:
1.  Pursue creative partnerships. Build partnerships that will help you create the next level of solutions.
2.  Increase analytics into your decision-making. Ray suggested that if 20% of your business isn't built on insight patterns by 2020, your enterprise won't survive. To start, register for the Watson Analytics Beta!  Watson Analytics Beta -> http://www.watsonanalytics.com
3.Re-imagine the hiring process. Your ideal candidate shouldn't be one that already fits the mold of your business. You need candidates that are considered outside of the box that will help re-imagine your business model.

Learn more here!  http://ibm.biz/biztechhuddle


Digital tip of the week – Twitter’s analytics dashboard now available for everyone

From our Business Tech Trends report, we found that Pacesetters leverage Analytics in all they do.

Check it out here!

  • “Raising the game: The IBM Business Tech Trends Report” https://ibm.biz/IBMBTT14
  • The IBM Tech Trends interactive Dashboard   http://bit.ly/tt14dashboard

Twitter has made its analytics dashboards available to all its users. You can now find data on how many people have seen and clicked on tweets from your account and get real-time information on engagement, retweets, replies, favorites and clicks for a tweet.

The tool also provides information that only third-party applications could serve until now, such as statistics on number of followers gathered over a two-year period, as well as detailing their sex, interests and location.

This feature was at first only available for advertisers and verified users and there is a help guide and FAQ on its Help Centre website. To access the services, you would need to login with your Twitter details on https://analytics.twitter.com/about .


9 Spokes and Tapit win at SmartCamp Down Under with Cloud and Analytics!

A huge congratulations to 9 Spokes and Tapit for being named the winner and people's choice winner, respectively, of the SmartCamp Sydney competition!

9 Spokes was the judges' choice with its integrated software dashboard. They select apps through a rigorous accreditation program and then make them available to the user through a dashboard environment. No more sifting through thousands of apps trying to find the best match for your industry. They've already located them for you, and made it easy to access!

9spokes_MG_5971

Also, they use the power of the cloud! You can access 9 Spokes and all your apps from any Internet connected device. Everything is at your finger tips!

Tapit's solution deploys, manages and analyses contactless technology, such as Near Field Communications tags, Beacons and QR codes. Using powerful Tapit visualization reporting, clients can easily make sense of how people are interacting with their Tapit-enabled infrastructure in real-time. Their solution provides an easy to use platform that instantly tells you how and where people are engaging with your content, as well as channel format and device.

With Tapit, it's easy to see how people are interacting with your Tapit-enabled infrastructure in real-time.

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Great job to our winners and good show to the Sydney team!


Wumdrop's MOBILE solution delivers a victory at the Entrepreneur SmartCamp Cape Town!

Congratulations to Wumdrop for winning the SmartCamp Cape Town competition!

 

wumdrop

This year's event in Cape Town had 5 outstanding startups competing for the win. Each startup had very different and unique solutions that included scalable transactional monitoring, ecommerce store builder, mobile identity, and even a micro-radar so a bicyclist can track automobiles for increased safety. I'd say the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Cape Town is producing some very creative startup solutions!

Wumdrop's mobile solution allows you to request shipping service at the click of a button. No more waiting in lines at the post office or shipping kiosk! What's so impressive about their solution is that it furthers the notion of mobile solutions making daily tasks easier and faster to complete. This is a great resource for business and personal use!

And a big shout out to Tech4Africa! SmartCamp Cape Town ran in partnership with Tech4Africa. Every time they are involved in a SmartCamp event, it is huge success for everyone! So THANK YOU to Tech4Africa!


London Welcomes Business Tech Trends! What are the European differences?

I will be in London this week for the Entrepreneur County event entitled "Follow the Entrepreneur!"with Julie Myers as well as spending a few days at Shoreditch ... especially highlighting some Europe differences of our Business Tech Trend Study.

So in prep for Europe, I wanted to know the specific differences that we were seeing in Europe! Here's the highlights! As a reference, European companies make up 47% of those who contributed to the study (primarily from UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia)

Differences:
Social adoption is lower in Europe:
64% of European enterprises have deployed social (vs. 70% of non-Europe enterprises)
Plans for increasing Big Data and Analytics investment are lower:
66% of European enterprises are planning to increase investment over next 2 years, vs. 75% non-Europe
Europeans report having the needed cloud skills needed:
63% Europe vs. 56% non-Europe
• European companies are less likely to be engaging academia and clients as a partner:
73% use for activities, vs. 81% of non-European enterprises

79% use clients for activities, vs. 84% of non-European enterprises

• They are less likely to use analytical insights in their decision making:
30% Europe vs. 43% non-Europe (vs. 7 in 10 Pacesetters)
• And Finally, European enterprises are less likely to report gaining major competitive advantage from their initiatives in these areas:

  • Mobile: 66% in Europe gain major comp. advantage (vs. 77% non-Europe)
  • Social: 63% in Europe (vs. 77% non-Europe)
  • BDA: 65% in Europe (vs. 82% non-Europe)
  • Cloud: 67% in Europe (vs. 82% non-Europe)

While here I found this cool app as well -- for seeing the sights ..not that I will get to this trip but it is a fascinating app!
Googling Around London

 

 

Googling Around London [Infographic] by the team at Cheapflights

 


IBM Navigator on Cloud: Try it for 30 days to Manage your content

Did you know that 2.5 billion gigabytes of data are created every day? And, that as much as 80 percent of that data is comprised of unstructured content such as contracts, claims forms, and permit applications.

The explosion of content, and more importantly new forms of it including tweets and posts to social media, has increased the need to use any type of information from nearly any source.

IBM Navigator on Cloud, available on the IBM Cloud marketplace and built on SoftLayer’s Cloud platform, is a SaaS offering that can help all businesses gain value from a huge amount of content. You can even interface to IBM Navigator on Cloud via open APIs. In addition to being a secure, scalable and reliable platform, IBM Navigator on Cloud is also easy to use and delivered through a modern user experience.

IBM Navigator on Cloud has put IBM as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management for its completeness of vision and ability to execute. Also, the leading analyst firm IDC, for the 8th consecutive year, ranked IBM number one in worldwide market share for content management. It's a great tool to use and manage your content and files!

To learn more about IBM Navigator on Cloud, check out the video below! You can also try IBM Navigator on Cloud for a 30-day trial period.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrSgbNtsoH8&w=560&h=315]


TGIF! Pacesetters place big bet on "analytics" - Register for the Watson Beta!!!

I love being able to snap a picture of a check with my smart phone and magically deposit the money into my bank account. No more sitting in a long line of cars to deposit a check or worrying about misplacing that tiny piece of paper! Big data and analytics has made this service possible for financial institutions, large and small, to make available to their customers.

Last week, during our Business Tech Trends webcast, Don Hopper of Fiserv, a provider of information management and electronic commerce systems, shared two reasons why big data and analytics is fuel for his clients:

  1. Small and midsize financial institutions can now leverage insights that traditionally were only available to large financial institutions. Analyzing the data allows them to increase revenue and build stronger customer relationships.
  2. Financial institutions can now more effectively manage mobile and digital channels, like remote deposit services, while analyzing how to increase its adoption.

Hear more from Don, as well as others, in our replay of the Business Tech Trends webcast.

Don't miss out on this great opportunity for you to be part of the Watson Analytics Beta. This solution enables your business to put predictive capability into the hands of your business leaders like CMO, CHRO, and CSO.
You are invited to sign up for the Watson Analytics Beta Program. The time is now!

What kind of ideas for solutions do you have? What insights do you have to share? The 2014 Business Tech Trends study captured a tremendous amount of data. There are more insights than we could include in the Business Tech Trends study. And we're making it available to you!

Here's an opportunity for you to join us for our Bluemix JAM, download the data from the Business Tech Trends report, create your own Bluemix app with the data, and then share your cool insights with us!