Techaisle Blog

Rapid fire announcements from Intuit, all directed towards the betterment of small businesses. Today Intuit announced the availability of Intuit Small Business Revenue Index, which is based on aggregated data from QuickBooks Online. By the very meaning of the term “aggregated” it should be understood that the data is anonymous, that is democratized across 200,000 small businesses. This index is the first of its kind in the market that provides current information on monthly small business revenue. It complements Intuit’s monthly Small Business Employment Index to provide a more complete picture of the economic health of US’s small businesses based on revenue, hiring and compensation trends.

With its latest announcement, Intuit has demonstrated that it is bringing data-driven insights to small businesses, sole-proprietors; insights that were previously only available to large enterprises. This information should empower small businesses to compare themselves against benchmarks and thereby effect changes in their organizations.

It certainly places in the hands of Intuit’s small business customers, power of the data. Both the Employment and Revenue Indexes are updated monthly by Intuit which is far more often than government stats and take a snapshot that is more targeted and pertinent to small business owners. They could use it as a signal for whether it’s time to hire, cut back or increase employee salaries.

As Techaisle had mentioned in its own press release on big data on April 26, 2012, data analytics is equally relevant for small businesses. 12 percent of small businesses using business intelligence are interested in big data analytics. However, they are looking for an IT vendor or partner to collect, collate, and analyze big data and present to these small businesses as a resource, in other words, democratization of big data. The collected data is an aggregation of information being created by other small businesses within the same vertical segment or employee size category. Intuit to my mind, just did it.

Timing by Intuit could not be more perfect.

Anurag Agrawal
Techaisle

Intuit today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Demandforce for approximately US$423 million. Demandforce has been primarily focused on SMB segment offering products and services to help SMBs navigate and thrive in connected economy by automating their marketing and customer communications, building and maintaining a strong online reputation and raising their profile with their local consumers.

Speaking on the acquisition, Kiran Patel, EVP and General Manager, Intuit Small Business Group said, “Demandforce sits at the sweet spot of Intuit’s SMB customer base and is consistent with our goal to help our customers save time and make money.  With a compelling customer value proposition, SaaS model and high growth profile, Demandforce will provide opportunities to grow Intuit’s customer base and revenue per customer over time.”

Analyst Speak

Intuit is continuing to build its capabilities in cloud application areas focused on alleviating the pain points of small businesses. Based on surveys conducted by Techaisle over the last 3 years, improving sales and marketing has shown up consistently as the top business pain point of small businesses. Moreover small businesses are increasingly struggling to grow their revenues, retaining and positively connecting with their customers in a virtual world. Techaisle survey data shows that nearly 45 percent of small businesses are not sure how social networking tools can help promote their business. 68 percent of small businesses mention that “their business success depends upon a strong relationship with the customer, providing goods and services highly customized to their needs and being responsive to their demands”. These same small businesses are gravitating towards social media campaigns (48 percent), email marketing initiatives (68 percent) to generate new customer leads and maintain existing ones.

Demandforce acquisition certainly helps Intuit in extending its existing offering of website services. It rounds off the full suite from “get found” to “increase exposure” to “extend communications” to “consolidate presence”.

Beyond the capabilities of Demandforce, the acquisition brings into Intuit’s fold many different small business vertical industry solutions. These verticals are typically ignored or only addressed by web-hosting providers. They constitute a very large part of the SMB universe but with a dichotomous adoption of technology. For example, salons and spas use very limited technology but still want to increase their customer base beyond the usual “word-of-mouth”. On the other hand wealth management businesses use advanced and emerging technologies but strongly desire customer expansion, communication nurturing, feedback mechanism and certified reviews to positively impact their business.

Success of the acquisition will be dependent upon Intuit’s ability to integrate Demandforce with its web services, back-end systems such as Quickbooks and cross-sell across both Demandforce and Intuit customers.

It is a move in the right direction.

Anurag Agrawal
Techaisle

End-to-End Solutions Company
Convincing conference, unified messaging from all executives, substantial customer success stories including SMBs, considerable partner alliance conversations, convergence showcase, expanding geographic footprint, emerging technologies, mid-market design point, and end-to-end solutions story. What can I say?

At the recently held Dell Annual Analyst Conference, in Austin, the centerpiece of messaging was Dell’s relentless pursuit to be an end-to-end IT solutions provider and a trusted partner. Michael Dell in his conversation with the analysts proved that Dell has changed the conversation from product to services.

“Many new change vectors are going on - Data centers are becoming server centric/compute centric, networking is being combined with computing and storage and security are becoming one – Dell has the ability to understand where the puck is going”, said Michael Dell. To that extent Dell is busy building products and solutions from which customers can capture value.

Dell has made 20 acquisitions since 2008 to build a solutions delivery capability. Its R&D, which is increasingly being focused on storage, server, security and networking convergence went up by 40 percent in the last year alone.  A key aspect of the strategy is to develop converged solutions that include storage, security, servers and wrapping it all together with services and deliver end user solutions that help customers compute in environments with pervasive data access.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since his return as CEO, Michael Dell has steadily moved Dell into new areas for higher growth and profitability. Although Dell’s revenue has remained within a narrow margin, growing by only 1.5% from 2008 to 2012, its net income after taxes has grown by 18.5% within the same time period. Dell today has greater diversity in its solution offerings and broader geographic footprint. Both storage and security are higher margin products and with the acquisition of EqualLogic, Compellent and recently SonicWall, Dell’s margin story continues to improve.

Dell’s end-to-end solutions story is also beginning to look complete with portfolio having evolved from PCs and servers to services. Dell’s software portfolio is not where it should be but Dell is building out its capabilities for on premise software, cloud applications and software embedded in hardware. Consistent with the overall theme it wants to offer software solutions that are easier to buy, easier to use and easier to extract value.



 

 

Even the channels organization is perfectly aligned and focused on continuing to grow its PartnerDirect program that was started five years ago and is now approximately US$14 billion business for Dell. The channel’s organization headed by Greg Davis is continuing to make its rules of engagement very partner friendly and empowering and training its channels to provide value to their customers. Greg is ensuring that there is consistent
channel engagement across both mature and emerging markets with deal registration, compensation neutrality and executive priority. With over 135,000 training modules delivered in the last year alone it aims to provide simplicity, enablement and a strategy to win datacenters together. To take advantage of new social media networking platforms, Dell has also launched a new social media training program for its channel partners. The training program, developed based on Dell’s own experiences, provides its channel partners access to a number of useful social media tools and tips, including links to all of PartnerDirect’s social media platforms, a Q&A forum, registrations for both a live virtual training session and on-demand refresher courses.

Executing on its vision
Dell’s vision is being driven by five key market dynamics:

1. Emerging markets growth


2. Consumerization of IT


3. Explosion of data


4. Alternative computing platforms


5. Corporate IT complexity

Dell has not only been able to integrate the businesses it has acquired but also has successfully scaled them. Dell Boomi, a middleware for cloud, originally acquired for its ability to bring cloud integration to SMBs, is equally at home in large enterprises. A  recent example is OneWorld Alliance which has implemented a new information technology (IT) hub based on Dell Boomi AtomSphere cloud integration, designed to substantially reduce complexity, cost and time involved in linking new member airlines into the alliance.

SMBs' "CIO in a box"
Whenever an IT vendor presents customer stories I look for sincerity in the customer’s dialog and contribution of the IT vendor to customer’s success. Current Motor, an Ann Arbor, Michigan based SMB stole the show and my heart. With only 12 employees it uses full end-to-end solutions from Dell in the most interesting yet fundamental ways. Remember that it is only a small business; nevertheless Dell put a team together to bring to fruition integration with salesforce.com and digital dashboard enablement of Electric Scooters six months sooner than expected. Solutions used – mobility, cloud, hardware, software, services. As Laura Flanagan, Executive Chairman, Current Motor put it, “Dell is her CIO in a box.” And it all started with Laura approaching Dell with a business pain point. The result -- sincerity in dialog and value-add by Dell.

As Dave Johnson, SVP, Corporate Strategy said in his presentation, the “heart of the customer is the CIO.” No worries, SMBs, if you do not have a CIO, Dell can play that role for you.

Next Steps for Dell

• The entire Dell team has to work harder to get its messaging and capabilities heard by its current and potential customers because I feel Dell’s end-to-end
  solutions story has not yet reached the crescendo it deserves


• By focusing on mid-market design point Dell should not forget that small businesses have different needs and the last thing they want is a scaled-down version of product meant for mid-market businesses. Other IT vendors have tried in the past with zero to limited success


• Dell should formulate and articulate its mobile strategy beyond its planned introduction of tablets and smartphones, especially for the SMB segment that are adopting mobility solutions faster than enterprises


• Technology pain points have now overtaken business pain points for SMBs. Dell can be that unique IT Vendor that helps SMBs sort out and identify relevant technology options (cloud, mobility, infrastructure, managed services, virtualization, social media, business intelligence, marketing automation) by becoming a trusted advisor and business consultant

Anurag Agrawal
Techaisle

The Big Data Analytics' promise: enable “data monetization” through timelier, more accurate, more complete, more granular, more frequent decisions. So, what exactly are the types of business problems big data analytics likely to solve? For this one may need a mini-MBA in Big Data Use Cases.

First let’s define what makes data Big.

Big Data, Little Data
We live in a world of data: transactions, feedback and real-time interaction with customers, partners, suppliers, and employees. In addition to brick, click and mobile transactions, the new variable in the mix is Human generated data – explosive growth of blogs/reviews/messages/emails/pictures. Social graphs such as product recommendations based on circle of friends, jobs you may like, products you have looked at, people who are your contacts etc. also create “second order” data that can be mined for sentiment analytics on products or companies or fact discovery.

Another new variable is computer generated data. Computers generate data as byproduct of interacting with people or with other devices. More the interactions, more is the data and this data comes in a variety of formats from semi-structured log files to unstructured binaries. This “exhaust fumes” of data can be extremely valuable. It can be used to understand and track application or service behavior so that one can find patterns, errors or sub-optimal user experience. One can mine it for statistical patterns and correlations to generate insights.

However, if one listen to the hype, companies can harness this information learn faster, make better decisions, and stay one step ahead of their competitors. Unfortunately, harnessing big data (and separating the signal-from-noise) is trickier than it looks. It takes a lot of skill and superb understanding of use cases.

Big Data Use Cases
The key to exploiting Big Data Analytics is focusing on a compelling business opportunity as defined by a use case — What (What exactly are we trying to do?). Use cases are emerging in a variety of industries that illustrate different core competencies around analytics.

E-tailing/E-Commerce – Online Retailing Use Cases

• Recommendation engines


• Cross-channel analytics


• Event analytics


• Right offer at the right time

Retail/Consumer Use Cases

• Merchandizing and market basket analysis


• Campaign management and customer loyalty programs


• Supply-chain management and analytics


• Event- and behavior-based targeting


• Market and consumer segmentations

Financial Services Use Cases

• Compliance and regulatory reporting


• Risk analysis and management


• Fraud detection and security analytics


• CRM and customer loyalty programs


• Credit risk, scoring and analysis


• High speed Arbitrage trading


• Trade surveillance


• Abnormal trading pattern analysis

Web & Digital Media Services Use Cases

• Large-scale clickstream analytics


• Ad targeting, analysis, forecasting and optimization


• Abuse and click-fraud prevention


• Social graph analysis and profile segmentation


• Campaign management and loyalty programs

New Applications

• Sentiment Analytics


• Mashups – Mobile User Location + Precision Targeting


• Machine-generated data, the exhaust fumes of the Web

Health & Life Sciences Use Cases

• Health Insurance fraud detection


• Campaign and sales program optimization


• Brand management


• Patient care quality and program analysis


• Supply-chain management


• Drug discovery and development analysis

Telecommunications Use Cases

• Revenue assurance and price optimization


• Customer churn prevention


• Campaign management and customer loyalty


• Call Detail Record (CDR) analysis


• Network performance and optimization


• Mobile User Location analysis

So, What’s the Big Deal?

The big deal is that if analytics is done well there is room for margin expansion and additional profit.

Shirish Netke
(Republished with permission)