Consumer Collaboration Due Dilligence

It is critically important to perform a robust and regular due diligence review of the consumer community for many reasons and especially relating to the security requirements as it relates to the use of cloud services and tools.  This starts with the initial start-up of the community and then continues throughout the lifespan of the community.  This due diligence includes software services, hardware services and especially the security analysis, configuration and review.  All of these aspects of due diligence are important and the security aspect is especially critical because of the form and function of the consumer community and the requirement to secure and protect the consumer information that will be shared on the community.

Considering the impact and recent security breach events experienced across industries, you cannot address security plans and concerns as an after thought.  Security concerns and protection must be at the forefront of the development, implementation and maintenance of the consumer community.  Consumers are, or should be, leary and very careful about the sites they spend time on and the sites where they share personal information.  This means that clear and strong security and protection of consumer information is the cost of entry into this arena.  This also means that security of consumer information must be handled as a continuous improvement process in order to maintain your community with integrity and safety for the members.

The hardware and software services also require a high level of due diligence in developing your community because of your utilization of cloud services and technology.  The cost, and especially the initial startup costs will be much lower due to the utilization of cloud services and technology and that does not eliminate the need for careful review and management of the services.  In fact, due to the number of services and providers and the level change in the services and providers it means that you must spend more time in the selection and management process to ensure that you are able to maintain the level of service that consumers will demand from the community.

Another important aspect hardware and software you utilize in support of the community is the performance and availability, nothing will kill the community like a serious outage or continuous poor performance.  Everyone understands a periodic outage, however a continuous occurrences of short outages or an extended outage or general poor performance will spell the quick death of the community.  People in general have less patience and less acceptance of a regular pattern of poor performance or availability because they simply do not have the time to spend waiting and will simply stay away from sites that do not provide the access of what they want and when they want it.  Continuous monitoring and review of services and performance is quite simply a cost of doing business and a lack of this will kill your community.  Do not be lured into performing less frequent reviews just because you have just implemented a service, you must institute a program of analysis and review to maintain the required high standards of performance, security and services.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Consumer Collaboration Data Value Prop

The value proposition provided by the combination of cloud storage services and big data analysis is a potent one-two punch. Then combine that with the value that can be achieved through collaboration with your external partners and the value increases dramatically to a very compelling level.  There are two key areas of return on investment; the savings which are hard dollars and the value derived from the big data analytics opportunities.  The initial value derived through the reduction in storage investments will provide a very strong value foundation and then the value derived from the big data analytics will build that value to a compelling proposition.

Starting with the hard savings; the start-up cost savings provided by a cloud storage strategy presents a savings by allowing you to start small with a minimal investment to start the community.  This strategy then supports the thoughtful growth based on actual and forecast usage rather than a guess on future needs to make a large purchase that may not be necessary for quite some time.  There is a second area of hard savings that should not be discounted and that is the savings in surveys, focus groups and external market analysis consultations.  These can also become significant savings to eliminate external spending and replace with internal actual consumer response, not based on a biased survey or questionnaire but based on actual consumer interaction in the community and responses to the offers and requests and suggestions from other consumers in the community.

The savings derived from the analytic capabilities will produce the greatest long term value based on the research capabilities provided to the entire extended network.  This is not a savings that you can initially forecast and bank, however it is a savings potential that can produce tremendous increases in sales along with reductions in inventory costs and especially in overstock mark-downs.   The analytical opportunities have the potential for changing your market strategy and capabilities.  This has been the call of big data and this is especially true of the potential that can be achieved through the analytics of the consumer community data and especially sharing this data with your extended partners for additional network research.

You cannot, though, go into this plan without performing due diligence and contractually holding cloud service providers accountable for the safe storage and recovery of data.  It is critically important for the long term viability of your consumer community strategy and framework that you enter into this initiative with eyes wide open and define both the potential issues in storage and recovery of data.  

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Consumer Collaboration Data Design

The design phase in any initiative is the most important phase and the more time invested in the design will produce a higher quality product and the design of the collaboration data integration collection and storage is no different. In fact, I believe this aspect of your collaboration consumer community is highly dependent on the design and therefore should be given the greatest focus and expertise to provide a robust and flexible design that will support the long term potential needs of the community.  The community can and will change over time based on the demands of the consumer and the capabilities of the collaboration tools and technology while the data collected from the interactions and reactions of the consumer provides the historical stream for analysis and validation.  

This continuum of data and collection requires a framework that is flexible and robust to support the data and analytical requirements as they change.  As the capabilities and the requirements of the collaboration community change, the data provides the thread that supports the long term analysis and trending required for robust analytical activities.  The one thing you can count on with the consumer collaboration community is change - to the requirements, to the capabilities and to the tools that support the community.  Your data storage and design must support these changes and this is why it is so important to engage an experienced big data architect to guide the design.

Fortunately, the cloud tools and services provide a very flexible method to support your storage needs through robust and flexible storage availability through many service providers.  This provides a simple means to quickly and cost effectively increase your storage capacity as your data collection and storage requirements increase.  The cloud storage services also provide an efficient and robust means to share data across your extended network simply by providing access to the cloud for the data.  This is probably the greatest value provided by the cloud; a robust place to store data that is accessible to any device or person simply by subscribing and provided secured access to the data.   

This flexible and secured data availability via the cloud provides one of the greatest value returns through initial and even long term investment savings.  These savings will not only help to justify the effort required to develop your community, they will help to justify and reduce the investment and effort required to not only analyze the data but to share the data with your extended network for research and analysis by your extended network.  I believe this value proposition can justify your entire effort to develop and maintain the consumer community.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?