Forrester Blogs › Category: Social

Forrester Wave: Digital Experience, The New King Of Web Content Management

Posted by David Aponovich on the Application Development & Delivery Professionals Blog on April 8, 2013

David Aponovich

Not long ago, digital marketers lived by the rule “Content is king!”

Today, what matters is what you do with that content and your digital channels. In 2013, digital experience (DX) is king, so it’s imperative that you deliver interactions that are personal, contextual, and multichannel. We’re talking websites, mobile, social, email, and kiosks — with Google Glass and more coming soon.

Firms need the right technology in place so IT and marketing pros can deliver on this big vision if they intend to differentiate via digital.  But let’s be frank: This is a complex challenge, and many companies are a long way from solving it.

There’s good news if you’re trying to crack this nut, however. Our newly published report, “The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For Digital Customer Experience, Q2 2013,” shows that the current crop of web content management solutions is laser-focused on supporting the DX mandate.

Our report provides IT, business, and marketing pros a deep look at 10 providers of web content management (WCM) solutions — Adobe Systems, Acquia, Ektron, HP Autonomy, IBM, Microsoft, OpenText, Oracle, SDL, and Sitecore. We analyzed solutions across 100 criteria, reviewed extensive product demos, and spoke with dozens of WCM vendor customers. We heard the good, the bad, and the ugly of WCM use in the field. And, for the first time, Forrester’s WCM Wave looks at an open source platform (Drupal), through the lens of Acquia, a for-profit company that supports Drupal.

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Are you ready to source digital disruption?

Posted by Christopher Andrews on the Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals Blog on April 2, 2013

Christopher Andrews

Digital capability – social, mobile, cloud, data & analytics – disrupts business models, introduces new competitive threats, and places new demands on your business. Highlighting this fact: Forrester’s 2012 “Digital Readiness Assessment” survey found that 65% of global executives say they are “excited about the changes that digital tools and experiences will bring” to their company.

While most people know these digital trends are coming, however, far fewer know how to purchase these cutting-edge digital capabilities. What companies will you rely on? Where are the new risks? What are the pricing models?  In the survey mentioned above, only 32% of the same sample agreed that their organization “has policies and business practices in place to adapt” to those digital changes.

This is important, since developing the breadth of digital capabilities your company needs cannot all be done in-house. To succeed, your company will need to access the strengths of its supplier ecosystem, maximize value from strategic partners, and leverage emerging supplier models.  

This is a tremendous opportunity for sourcing and vendor management professionals to increase the strategic value they provide to their business. But to do this, you’ll need to balance your traditional cost-cutting goals with demands for business expectations for growth, innovation, and value.

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ITSM in 2013 and Beyond: The Webinar Link And Audience Poll Results

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on March 20, 2013

Stephen Mann

Earlier today I was fortunate enough to participate in a BrightTalk webinar on the future of IT service management (ITSM) with these fabulous gentlemen:

If you want to watch the webinar on demand it can be found here (you will need to register if you are new to BrightTalk). What you won’t get with the on demand webinar (I think) is the full set of audience poll results, so I've included them here.

Intro polls:

Where are you based?

a.      Americas                                    66%

b.      Europe                                         25%

c.      Middle East / Africa                        4%

d.      Asia                                              4%

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IBM Pulse 2013: IBM Talked Of Its Customers' Customers And I Liked It

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on March 12, 2013

Stephen Mann

I didn't get the chance to jot down my thoughts after a couple of days at IBM Pulse last week but I didn't want to not share my observations and thoughts. So here we go as I fly off to itSMF Norway's annual conference ... It's somewhat random but what did you expect from me? A Katy Perry inspired title?

My view of the IBM Pulse keynotes …

The IBM keynotes covered many of the things you would expect (see my pics below) such as: big data, cloud, mobile, smart-things, and big data. And did I mention big data? It's a key challenge/opportunity for IBM and its customers.

What really resonated with me during the keynotes, however, was not big data but the use of a certain lexicon – with words like "value," "customer-centricity," business outcomes," and even "Outside-In." It was my first proper IBM Pulse so I was unsure whether this was the norm or whether IBM has started "thinking outside the data center" – a criticism I have previously used with other vendors.

Given IBM's traditional focus on enterprise-spanning deals and business, rather than IT challenges/opportunities, it's probably the former but IMO a key part of helping enterprise IT organizations support their customers is IT service management (ITSM). And IBM despite having a fit for purpose ITSM offering and probably thousands of ITSM "experts" throughout its organization has just not been in people's minds and ITSM conversations the last two years.

IBM markets at the enterprise level and this means many potential customers don't think “IBM” and then think “ITSM” (or the reverse) as they would with other ITSM tool vendors. It might seem a harsh thing to say but I believe it to be the reality. I think this might be about to change though – I'll come back to this after a quick detour.

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The Forrester SaaS ITSM Tool Market Overview: Who Is Where With What

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on February 26, 2013

Stephen Mann

It’s finally here. The Forrester Market Overview: SaaS IT Service Management Tools covers: a little ITSM tool history and how we have moved on, the benefits and risks of the SaaS delivery model, key selection criteria for selecting a SaaS (or on-premises) tool, and overviews of 23 tools (from 21 vendors) and their functional capabilities across the enterprise and midmarket marketplaces.

“Why on earth did you write a SaaS-only ITSM report?” I hear some cry

It’s simple – Forrester client demand. In 2012, a good 25% of my 400ish a year client inquiries related to IT service management (ITSM) tool selection; and the SaaS-delivery model (and the key vendors) was covered in nigh on all of them. That’s not to say the client ultimately went SaaS though, inquiries are very much about rapid information exchange in helping clients make important decisions. It’s not about making the decision for the client.

What the SaaS ITSM market looks like

The following figure shows the 23 vendor tools split by average customer subscription (seat) count (described as Enterprise, Upper Midmarket, and Lower Midmarket) and their degree of customer success (the number of paying customers):

There are of course other ITSM tool vendors who declined to participate for a variety of reasons. One would be that they were not briefing Forrester analysts and thus not on our radar.

The key benefits of SaaS for ITSM

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The Top 10 IT Service Management Challenges For 2013 — But What Did You Achieve In 2012?

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on December 24, 2012

Stephen Mann

This time last year I wrote a blog entitled Top 10 IT Service Management Challenges For 2012: More Emphasis On The “Service” And The “Management,” which has racked up a healthy 10,000+ reads since. It spoke of three high-level challenges:

  1. Increased business scrutiny: the need for IT cost transparency and business-value demonstration.
  2. Increased business (and customer) expectations: around IT agility, availability, “personal hardware,” and support and customer service.
  3. Increased business and IT complexity: particularly cloud, mobility, and compliance.
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Which Social Metrics Have Value?

Posted by Nigel Fenwick on the CIOs Blog on December 6, 2012

Nigel Fenwick
For social media evangelists, the question on everyone's mind is this: "How do we effectively measure the business value of social initiatives?" 
 
Even when we get close, there's always that pesky issue of causation vs. correlation — can we really prove causation even for examples with high correlation between social initiatives and business outcomes? (Read Freakonomics, or watch the documentary, for insights into the challenges of causation vs. correlation.) 

Every day there is a plethora of "social media experts" offering advice on how to win using social media (and nearly all of it is posted on social media). In just a single edition of SocialBizBuzz on Dec 5 21012, you could read: Alistair Rennie from IBM writing in The Huffington Post on the differences between social media and social business; Francis Gouillart writing in the HBR Blog Network on the value of co-creating through social; and Mashable's Todd Wasserman opining on how most social media marketing is a waste of time! 

The wonderful parody of social media expertise produced by The Onion (see video) hits the nail on the head ... without real metrics how can anyone claim social initiatives deliver value?
  
 
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Officially Introducing The Always Addressable Customer

Posted by Melissa Parrish on the Marketing Leadership Professionals Blog on August 8, 2012

Melissa Parrish

Today, at long last, we published our report officially introducing the always addressable customer, though I (and others) have been talking about it for a while now. Just to refresh your memory, always addressable customers are people who own and use at least three web-connected devices, go online multiple times per day, and go online from multiple physical locations — and it's already 38% of US online adults.

This report was a true collaboration among many people on the Interactive Marketing research team, including Lizzie Komar, who was a pretty new Research Associate at the start of our journey, and who shares her thoughts about the report and its findings in the following guest post:

The Always Addressable Customer report is finally available to Forrester clients, and we‘re really excited about it.

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How Is Social Media Changing Your Brand Strategy?

Posted by Tracy Stokes on the CMOs Blog on May 8, 2012

Tracy Stokes

How many times have you been asked, “What’s your social strategy?” As Facebook’s IPO grabs the headlines, and new social sites like Pinterest and Tumblr grab consumers’ attention, many marketers are wrestling with what brand building looks like in today’s social world. But the real question you should be asking yourself is, “How does social media change your brand strategy?”  

Marketing leaders now view social media as critical for brand building. In our February 2012 Marketing Leadership Online Survey, nine out of 10 marketing leaders told us that social media is fundamentally changing how brands are being built in the 21st century. In fact, they view it as second only to search for brand building. But many are still struggling to determine how to integrate it into their marketing plans. The truth is, while social is a great new tool, it lacks the power to build a brand alone. Marketing leaders such as Coca-Cola and JetBlue recognize this and are integrating social with paid and owned media to build a 21st century brand experience. In my new report, "How Social Media Is Changing Brand Building," I identify three ways social media can help marketers harness the power of social to build their brand by 1) building a relationship to become more trusted; 2) differentiating through an emotional connection to become more remarkable; and 3) nurturing loyal fans to become more essential.   

How is social changing your brand building strategy? What challenges are you facing in the social brand building world? Comment here, or join the conversation in our community of marketing leaders.

Thanks!

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To Succeed In Social Media, Lower Your Expectations

Posted by Nate Elliott on the Marketing Leadership Professionals Blog on April 6, 2012

Nate Elliott

I've been hopscotching Europe this week, seeing clients and colleagues in London and Istanbul — but my thoughts have been in Los Angeles, where in a couple of weeks I'll be giving a speech called "Taking Social Media From Cool To Critical" at the 2012 Forrester Marketing Leadership Forum.

I chose that topic because it’s a concern I hear almost every day — and sure enough, I heard it from several clients on my travels this week. "We’ve put time and resources into social media marketing, because it seemed like we had to, but . . . it’s just not having much of a business impact." By comparison, four or five years into the era of search marketing, most companies were making a killing from their SEM programs. The same goes for email marketing. But here we are four or five years into the era of social media marketing — and for many companies, social media is still a curiosity, a sideshow that attracts lots of interest but adds little value. It's still cool, but at most firms, it's just not a critical part of the marketing plan.

I think the main reason marketers still struggle to make social pay is simple: They overestimate social media as a marketing tool. Let me be clear: I'm not bashing social's value for marketing; social media can have an enormous impact on the success of your marketing programs, as we’ve seen time and time again. The point I'm making is that it can’t create that success all on its own. You need to use it as merely one tool in your marketing tool kit.

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