Sustainability and Growth in Business

It is clear that sustainability today plays a key role in most of business growth and corporate profitability and it is becoming integral to the way to do business. Sustainability is now generally understood to be a combination of environmental, social and economic performance, and many organizations are demonstrating that by placing the stewardship of the environment and society at the center of their strategies and operations, they are better placed to manage or improve their reputation, comply with regulations and reduce costs. Perhaps more interesting is the fast emerging trend of sustainability being seen as a source - even the source - of revenue and business growth.

There is a quote says:-

“Let’s look at the opportunities for long term improvement presented by embracing the sustainability industry itself” by Samuel Pengel

So I would like to clarify the Benefits to Businesses of Operating Sustainably

• Reduce costs
• Preserve resources
• Comply with legislation
• Enhance reputation
• Differentiate
• Attract quality employees
• Satisfy customer needs
• Attract capital investment
• Capitalise on new opportunities
• Meet stakeholder expectations

Therefore, we deduce the positives of sustainability: the opportunities that exist for long term improvement in service and cost saving, and those presented by embracing the sustainability industry itself: the research, development and production of energy efficient technologies.

The Benefits of a Response

Given the number of external and internal factors which serve to encourage industry into responding to the sustainability agenda, those organizations that do respond will enjoy a number of benefits, the majority of which are a direct result of enhanced competitive advantage.

Cutting resources use without losing productivity

Sustainability-driven innovation goes beyond designing green products and packaging solely on their inherent virtue. It entails improving business opera tions and processes to become more efficient, with a goal of dramatically reducing costs and waste. It’s also about insulating a business from the risk of resource price shocks and shortages. Taken together these enhancements can deliver business benefits that go far beyond the bottom line—whether it’s improving your overall carbon footprint, enhancing your brand image or engaging your employees in a more profound way.

Gaining Competitive Advantage

6 point plan to implement sustainability agenda a company should:

•     Identify how their activities interact with the sustainability agenda
•     Decide what they want to do
•     Work out how they can do it
•     Put it into action
•     Correct deviations from their initial plan
•     Review the direction for the future so that improvements can be continual

 

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Boost Your Company's Value Based on 4 Elements

It takes more than luck to sell your company for a premium price. You have to work on these 4 fundamentals elements to generate interest

Nowadays, some business owners believe they’ll be able to "get lucky" and sell their companies for higher than the market average. While luck never hurts, preparation is critical if you want to secure a higher price for your company.

Surprisingly, 65 percent of these same owners do not know how much their business is worth and 85 percent do not have an exit plan. In essence they are relying on fate with a healthy dose of luck to ultimately secure a premium price for their company should they exit by choice.  Experience has taught us that managing these four variables helps to replace luck with strategic preparedness in securing a premium price for your business:

"Luck is where the crossroads of opportunity and preparation meet." 

1. Your company should not be dependent on any one person.
If the future success of your business is dependent upon a few star employees or one person on the leadership team, it can impact the financial potential of the company and could degrade valuation. Ensure your company has great processes in place that could be executed by others if necessary. This makes it easier for a potential buyer or investor to envision how the company could continue to grow and expand even without the current owners or key employees.

2. Your company should be recognized as a great place to work.
Investors are attracted to companies that are great places to work. The employees are excited and happy, and turnover is low. Their compensation packages are fair and tied to performance. The company should strive for a reputation of honesty, fairness, and ability to deliver. In great companies, the employees feel lucky to work there and the owners will benefit when it is time to find investors or sell the business.

3. You company should have at least three growth markets identified at all times.
Companies, that sell for higher prices or secure the capital they need to expand, can demonstrate they will continue to grow. Investors are looking for an opportunity to make money. One proven way to make money is to invest in companies that are growing and will continue to grow in the future. To ensure future growth, owners need to adapt to changing technology, identify new markets, and continually train the workforce. Attractive companies know where they are going and have a definite plan to get there

Companies who are attractive to potential investors or buyers seek out good advisors across all fronts. They seek the advice of experienced financial advisors, lawyers, HR consultants, and investment bankers. They’re among the 15% who have an exit plan in place and probably have had the plan in place for a long time. Their financial records are in order. They do not have any pending legal issues. They have a solid understanding of what their company is worth and they have clear personal and financial goals.

4. Your company should have at least one proprietary product or procedure.
Smart business owners develop new methods to accomplish everyday jobs in a more efficient manner. Really smart owners patent those methods or technology so they own it and it cannot be duplicated by a competitor. This concept is proven almost daily when technology companies that have not even made money, sell for millions and sometimes billions. Owning proprietary technology or patents is a great way to boost the value of your company and attract investors.

If an owner has built a strong, successful company with a great future, the likelihood that they will "get lucky" and sell for a much higher price is much more likely. They’ve simply followed the advice of the Roman philosopher, Seneca. They were prepared when the right opportunity became available.

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3 Key Elements To Convert Leads With Social Media

Businesses that engage in social media marketing are already doing themselves a world of good. A strong online presence is crucial to successful online marketing, and social media plays a huge role in building that online strength. Social media, however, can do even more.  Converting leads with social media seems like a pipe dream to many businesses, but for some, social leads actually convert. Stop doubting your ability to turn a real social ROI; here are some of the best tactics for converting leads with social media

Publish gated content

When you come up with a great piece of marketing content, place it behind a gate when publishing it. A gate is an online form that users must fill out, usually with their name and email address, in order to access the content. Those users are then generally added to a lead funnel for outreach by the sales department, or subscribed to an email newsletter. 

Gates should be used sparingly, because public content (ie, content that’s accessible to search engine crawlers) is essential for good organic search visibility and SEO. But some marketing channels are perfect for gates, and social media is one of them. 

Social media is great for gated content because once users reach your online form, you know their interest has already been piqued. When you post content to Twitter, for example, anyone who clicks your link has already decided they want to view that content. 

Will some leads be put off by content that requires a gate? Undoubtedly so, but if the content is presented well enough and you have a decent reputation, seriously interested readers will gladly give their name and email address to see it.  One great example is Infusionsoft’s gated eBook. Infusionsoft, a marketing software provider, published an ebook titled “How to Convert Fans and Followers Into Customers”, and placed it behind a gate on a landing page. The page clearly explains the features and benefits of the ebook, and only requires a name and email address to access it.

Include a promo code in your profile image 

Whether it’s your Facebook cover photo or your Twitter background, static images on your company’s social media profiles serve as ideal locations for promo codes. Leads who just happen upon your profile may be intrigued enough to find out more about your business, and already interested leads will find the encouragement they need to become your customers.  Non-coded offers work too, but codes are especially useful in social media because they provide a direct way to measure ROI. If you create a promo code just for Twitter, every time that promo code is used, you’ll know Twitter converted for you.

One great example of this is HostGator’s Twitter profile. HostGator knows a thing or two about social media conversion; their Twitter profile exhibits a simple call to action in the profile background image, including a 20% off promo code made just for Twitter. With over 50,000 followers, this tactic provides users with an easy way to get in touch, while providing a monetary incentive for doing so that allows the company to track conversions via social media.

Create a clear path to conversion

All too often, businesses develop beautiful social media profiles that offer no opportunity for followers to become customers. A link to your company website isn’t enough. Like all well-converting landing pages, every social profile you maintain needs a call to action and an easy way for leads to complete that specific action. 

Of course, your options are limited in different ways for all the different social media sites, but there are a few key tactics any business can use.

• Drive Facebook fans to convert through a custom Facebook tab. If your main goal, for example, is to gain more email subscribers, create a tab that invites leads to sign up and directs them to your signup page.     
• Drive Twitter followers to convert by publishing your phone number in your profile. Twitter is used very much across smartphones. Make it easy for your leads to call you.
• Convert Pinterest followers with pin-specific calls to action. Every pin has a place for a description. Include a call to action and the link, email address, phone number, or whatever is needed to complete that action.  

 Your business is missing out if your social media profiles don’t convert leads. Does every conversion tactic work for every business? No; that’s why you should mix it up, and try different tactics until you find some that work especially well for your business. Other companies are converting leads with social media. Trust that you can, too!



Source: Drew Hendricks,- http://www.forbes.com/sites/

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Top Five Hot Data Storage Trends

As the speed of change in businesses continues to accelerate, the pressure for organizations to provide the most cost-effective and highest performing supportive IT services around the clock has never been greater. Information is an organization’s most valuable asset—and often the most costly to maintain. Users are accessing data more frequently from more devices than ever before. As a result, new solutions (including flash storage and converged infrastructures) are better suited for a world where digital data creation is growing by around 50 percent per year and organizations work to keep pace and stay within budgets.

Today’s organizations understand that quickly storing, securing, accessing and analyzing data, while managing it securely and cost-effectively, can mean the difference between business success and failure. Enterprises will continue to demand IT infrastructures that allow them to rapidly and efficiently deliver quality services.

Here are five enterprise storage trends that Dell expects to see heat-up this year.

Flash Storage Economics
Flash storage has been gathering momentum as use cases increase, technologies advance, and, frankly, overall costs decrease. Flash storage’s ability to handle data at much faster rates than traditional spinning disk has organizations weighing the options of performance versus cost. While performance elevates flash over traditional spinning disk in the storage hierarchy, its cost has remained the number one barrier to adoption – until now. According to a 451 Research survey in 2013, hybrid flash arrays (arrays that combine flash and disk drives) are the leading choice for organizations, followed by server-side flash and all-flash, which has traditionally been the most expensive variant.

More and more, organizations are seeking vendors that break through the traditional cost boundaries to deliver flash at significantly lower prices. For example, combining technologies such as various flash drive types (e.g. MLC, or multi-level cell, and SLC, or single-level cell) with automated tiering (autonomously assigning data and applications to the most appropriate storage medium) is a proven way for customers to get all-flash performance at economics equal to disk prices today.

Flash at the Server
In today’s world, instantaneous results are being demanded by consumers across the globe, and there is no better example of this immediate need for speed than looking at the appetite for rapid online transactions. Flash cache technology brings the most frequently accessed data closer to compute resources by placing flash on the server system bus thereby minimizing data travel from the server to storage through the network, improving response time and accelerating both read and write performance.

While point products for flash at the server exist today, organizations will gain more value from integrated server and SAN flash technology in the server – such as Dell’s Fluid Cache for SAN becoming available this year – to vastly increase response times without sacrificing availability for consumers in industries such as healthcare, finance and retail where instant transactions can redefine the customer experience. For applications like databases, server-based flash cache can reduce data access latency by as much as 90 percent. With point products, users are forced into a “silo-ed” management approach or one that sacrifices traditional SAN data protection features, such as snapshots and replication. With an integrated approach, users can treat flash in the server like another tier of storage and benefit from the traditional SAN features and the cost advantages of automated tiering when server-side flash becomes managed as a “Tier 0” from their SAN.

Convergence
As enterprises look toward converged infrastructures, the complexities associated with heterogeneity within their environments will be front and center. The driving force behind converged infrastructures is the opportunity to increase efficiency and agility in operations, applications and service management. The benefits go far beyond “one throat to choke” to include reduced cost of running applications, faster infrastructure deployments, simplicity and speed of management, and improved time-to-value for application and cloud deployments.

The road to convergence will be easier as organizations can choose from physical converged infrastructure offerings – where server, storage, networking and management are included in the same chassis – or a software-based management layer that aggregates customers’ heterogeneous infrastructure investments into a virtual converged infrastructure.

Software-Defined Storage – Real Trend or Hype? 
The often discussed concept of Software-defined storage (SDS) has found its way into the enterprise storage and the broader software-defined discussions. However, there’s much debate and market confusion on the true definition of SDS, a la early days of defining “cloud computing.” The allure for SDS is around flexibility, but more significantly, reducing the overall cost of storage. Organizations that manufacture both servers and storage arrays today already offer SANs incorporating the lowest cost industry-standard servers with help from economies of scale. Offerings dubbed “SDS” today typically don’t provide the full-featured benefits of traditional SANs, and it’s uncommon to see these vendors provide full service on both the storage software and the hardware on which it resides. As user appetites grow and available SDS offerings mature, real-world benefits and models for the software-defined data center will become clearer, and even more innovative solutions will emerge.

Automation – Make Your Machines Work for You
Innovative storage vendors place a significant focus on automation and easier-to-manage storage environments to not only reduce storage complexity, but also reduce costs. Innovations like automated tiering, snapshots, virtual server and desktop integration/optimization, and de-duplication and compression are ways for organizations to apply additional “under-the-covers” automation to reduce overall storage costs.

For example, automated tiering helps organizations manage data when and where they need it, and in the most cost-effective storage tier. Many organizations buy storage that is capable of more performance than they might ever consume because they aren’t confident in their ability to measure and configure precise real-time demand for performance. Storage systems with automated tiering allow users to let the system determine the optimal tier for data workloads. Over time, it allows data to gravitate toward the media choice that best fits its actual needs and budget considerations. Expect to see automated tiering open the flood gates for flash adoption in the coming year, as blending tiers of MLC and SLC flash drives, for example, will enable customers to get all flash performance for what they spent on spinning disks last year.

Furthermore, automating processes such as storage provisioning, snapshots, and integration with virtualization software vendors, can remove a substantial amount of mundane IT staff hours spent implementing and managing a successful storage environment. Smart automation leads to easier to use systems that can lower the overall total cost of storage for users. 

There’s a lot of storage innovation in the days ahead. The continued data explosion and advancements in technology will keep driving momentum in these key areas as storage users demand innovative solutions to cost-effectively keep pace.




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Source: ALAN ATKINSON - http://www.greendatacenternews.org/articles/share/695257/
 

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CIOs Take the Lead with Social Media

A common theme emerged from the conversations I had while attending sessions: How do I get into social media data so I can do more? More precision. More insight. More and better analytics. Both senior business executives and senior IT execs expressed this same concern.

From Measuring Volume to Measuring Impact

Everyone is struggling because they know there is value to be extracted from social data, but the move from measuring volume (e.g., our engagement is up 26 percent this week, we got 270 likes on our big data post), to measuring impact (new leads, propensity to buy, conversions, sales and EPS) — is still elusive. 

This question lingered after the conference. Then I read a great piece by Michael Krigsman, recapping the findings of a recent IDG CIO survey (registration required) sponsored by Hootsuite. The piece outlined some very interesting insights on the role of the CIO in shaping social strategy, and challenged the common narrative that marketing is the biggest advocate of social media strategy. The headlines:

CIO and IT leaders are advocating for a strategic approach to social. Surprisingly, 61 percent of respondents consider senior IT executives to be the biggest proponents of a social media strategy.  This last point may come as a shock to some, but I suspect that this is not only more prevalent than the survey indicates, but also foreshadows a revolution that is only starting to take shape more broadly in the market — the CIO as owner of social data, whose goal is to deliver strategic value within the business.

CIOs Own the Data 

When you look beyond the common narrative that marketing owns social, the reasons why the CIO is stepping up start to become clear. They include several trends happening simultaneously:

• The number one request of all CEOs is for more information and more intimacy with customers. According to the 2013 PwC survey on CEO priorities, 89 percent of respondents listed better information about customers as their top priority to grow the business. CEOs are pressing CIOs for more customer insight now. 
• Social data and tools have exploded in the enterprise. According to Susan Etlinger of Altimeter Group, an average enterprise has more than 170 social media accounts and as many as 25 different apps and tools to try to manage all the different networks and activities. CIOs are needed to manage the sheer volume of users, processes and costs. 
• Social data and enterprise data live in silos. Extracting real value requires capturing social data and then integrating it with other internal data sources to provide context and make it actionable. If it was not happening before, IT needs to get involved to solve the data problem and bring the picture together.
• CIOs understand the power of social because many of them are active users and contributors to great social content. From Peter Yared at CBS (@peteryared) to Ben Haines at Box (@bhaines0), many top CIOs are leading in social by example.

With CIOs and senior IT teams responsible for data, analytics and business intelligence, these roles are stepping into the forefront of social. These leaders are starting to assert control of social strategy because they understand the importance that organizations now place on customer-specific information, on the value of analytics, and the true requirements of turning data into actionable information. If this really is a data-driven world, wouldn't you want the data experts in the organization to take the lead?



Source: By Patrick Morrissey  |  Apr 2, 2014 

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The Biggest Web CMS Challenges

Adaptive content. Responsive design. The separation of content from presentation.   It's a dense world in web content management systems (CMS). Ultimately, though, the primary challenge may be staring you in the mirror. The human challenge

"The human challenge is actually the primary one," said Tim McLaughlin, president and founder of Siteworx,a digital agency and system integrator based in Reston, Va, that specializes in web content management (WCM), e-commerce, digital asset management (DAM), mobile and content marketing and strategy.

"Authors like to see the context of their content," McLaughlin added. "That's why Microsoft Word defaults to showing you the WYSIWYG mode. If an organization chooses to do that separation of content from presentation, then the tools should easily facilitate previews and authors should be well educated on the reasons for it."


Mobile vs. Omnichannel

McLaughlin talked to CMSWire on the heels of his organization's citation from Adobe as its 2013 Digital Marketing North American Regional Partner of the Year. Siteworx received the award during the Adobe Summit Digital Marketing Conference last week in Salt Lake City.

CMSWire asked McLaughlin what a good Web CMS platform should include as companies embrace an "omnichannel world." He said that while omnichannel often ends up being discussed as the “newest channel,” the reality is that, as painful as it is, consumers still use a lot of email and even good content management systems tend to neglect that.

"The more exciting channel that most platforms claim to include — but how well is still debatable — is mobile," McLaughlin said. "It’s new, so everybody is thinking about that. The ability of WCM platform to support content delivery to consumers through in-store mobile applications is something we’ve been paying a lot of attention to. Another channel that is compelling is the 'new email' — text messages."

Mobile may be hot. But it's not easy, McLaughlin said.

"Anything related to mobile is still tough, not the least of which is that budgets for mobile channels are still in the 'experimental phase," he added. "This is despite the fact that the results already show that we are well past that stage. But in hindsight, that should not surprise us since it wasn’t until last year that advertisers started reallocating significant budgets from traditional — print, TV, etc. — to digital."

Multichannel Support


Right now in the industry, a proliferation of devices and formats is currently expanding the gap that mobile started with the new channel, McLaughlin said. He added he sees vendors trying to close the gap, but it is an "extremely difficult problem."  "Try as we may," he added, "software can currently only get so far in solving it. Ultimately experience architects have to think about the usage contexts of these devices and design in the differences."

Adaptive Content and Responsive Design 
With all the talk about "Adaptive Content" and "Responsive Design" and which is more important, McLaughlin feels the argument distracts from the real challenge. 

"We are all trying to reuse as much content as possible for a plethora of reasons," he said. "Those of us who have been through this before used to refer to it as 'separation of content from presentation,' but I suppose everyone likes a good argument. In my opinion, some content can be abstracted from context, and some cannot. But gray zones like this make the conversation more interesting."  Adaptive Content and Responsive Design concepts deal with the same challenge of content and presentation abstraction, McLaughlin added. 

He referred to a project for NPR where it started using the COPE (create once publish everywhere) model. Neither the term "responsive" nor "adaptive" was around then.  "Those terms came afterwards," McLaughlin said, "but I tend to think that they are slightly different approaches to the same challenge albeit not all that different."

Business Drivers

 Adaptive Content (AC) allows for better content reuse and that typically is the driver, McLaughlin said.
"Reuse has a lot of cascading benefits such as simpler management and a more consistent user experience," he added.  Are there some challenges on the tools side (WCM) related to AC?

 The biggest challenge with AC is that people actually consume content in context — or in a presentation to say it another way — and authoring it out of context is not something people are used to," McLaughlin added. 

 "The tools don’t make this particularly easy to understand, since almost all WCMs at this point focus on in-context editing and forget about the abstraction of content and presentation," he said.

"Typically such a system is great for small and quick efforts and all appears well at first, but as the content grows, inconsistencies and duplication creep in, and maintenance becomes a nightmare. This is where there is no substitute for good architecture."


Source: CMS Wire - http://www.cmswire.com/cms/

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8 KPIs that you should adopt it in your Your Content Marketing Measurement

Web analytics and general knowledge of digital marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) have come a long way since the days when people were measuring “hits” on a site. Tools like Google Analytics, Omniture, and proprietary systems within companies have made digital marketing reporting more simple and accessible for the average marketing professional. These days, you’re nowhere in marketing if you don’t understand your basic web KPIs, including customer engagement and conversion rates.

However, as content marketing takes the forefront in digital marketing tactics — especially for B2B and SEO marketing — marketers are still stuck in the stone age as it relates to measuring the effectiveness and impact of various forms of content. For example, consider white papers (or any page turn publication) — they are a common lead generation tactic within content marketing, yet most marketers fail to measure anything beyond “downloads.” The question remains: What can a marketer do to better understand the effectiveness of this type of content?  The tactics that work in measuring a website or a traditional customer acquisition funnel do not always translate into content marketing measurement. For white papers, eBooks, blogs, eNewsletters, or whatever format you choose, here is a definitive guide to what KPIs you should be measuring for your content marketing initiatives.

Reach 
1. Unique visits: UVs are the most standard measure of how many individuals have viewed your content within a given time frame (typically a 30-day cookie window). This KPI provides a good baseline for which to compare different forms of content and trends over time.  However, it is important to keep in mind that not all unique visits are the same. For example, a unique visit to a white paper might be much more valuable for lead generation purposes than a unique visit to a blog — especially if that visit spends more time with the content (which we’ll get more into later on).

2. Geography: Understanding where your content is being read is important in order to understand where to allocate more budget and resources based on where your audience is. Google Analytics provides page-level details of such geographic information, which in turn helps content marketers optimize for the geographical locations (or geos) that are most important to their business — and its bottom line.

3. Mobile readership: It’s great if you know how many unique visits (or readers) your content is getting.  But how are they reading your content? Are 50 percent of them on mobile devices, as the latest content consumption research suggests? And which mobile devices are they using?  Understanding trends in how your content is being delivered to different devices is key to determining how to optimize your content and its design (i.e., responsive design) for future publications.

Engagement 

4. Bounce rates/time spent: An obvious goal (and one that’s critical to engagement) is to not lose your reader because you didn’t deliver on their expectation of what they were clicking on. A high bounce rate might mean just that. Another similar measure is how much time your audience is actually spending with your content. So what if you have 15,000 unique views if the average time spent is 12 seconds for a 30-page white paper? Both bounce rate percent and time spent metrics are good early indicators of how engaged the traffic to your content is.

5. Heat maps and click patterns: There are many great tools out there that illustrate how your audience is engaging with a page and its content. One such tool, CrazyEgg, allows you to create heat maps to see what sections of a page are getting the most views.  In addition, tools like Google Analytics can offer in-page analytics to track click patterns. My company (Uberflip) also does this for digital content through our Zoom Points product. Such information is critical to understanding what is relevant to your audience, allowing you to optimize content and design based on your findings.

6. Page views: This is another basic KPI that is often overlooked. We discussed UVs earlier, but understanding the correlation between UVs and page views (PVs) is an important one. A high page views/UVs multiple is a good sign that your audience is engaged — and quite often means that they are coming back regularly to your content. Further, with your digital content, it’s a good measure of how far along in a publication they may have gotten. Did they read four pages before dropping off? Is 90 percent of your audience dropping off before page seven? Answers to these types of questions will help you understand how to develop future content for your audience.

Sentiment 

7. Comments: In the age of social media, almost everything you make available online becomes subject to two-way conversations. Don’t make the mistake of trying to restrict it or block it — embrace commenting and social sharing! Users are the best advocates for any product or service, so if they’re engaged enough to openly discuss your content, consider it a success.  Now, be mindful that the discussion may turn negative. However, often even negative comments can be great feedback for you, as they can help you gain better insight into the attitudes and pain points of your prospects and customers. Be ready to respond in a meaningful manner when this happens. 

8. Social sharing: Making your content easily shareable is critical for almost all content marketing initiatives. What better way to find new eyeballs for your digital content than by having people share it to their networks? With just a few social shares, the reach of your content can expand exponentially at an amazing rate! Embrace this trend by incorporating sharing widgets throughout your content. At Uberflip, we like to use the AddThis widget, which allows content to easily be shared across dozens of popular social networks.

The ultimate goal of content marketing is to increase your brand’s reach and bottom line. Thus, the ultimate indicator of success is often the number of leads generated from your content marketing initiatives. However, by not overlooking these other KPIs along the way to a lead or a sale, you’ll be in much better shape while getting more out of your content!



Source: contentmarketinginstitute.com..

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