Fishers of men...

We can feed someone fish for a day, but if we teach them to fish they eat for a lifetime. As technologist we should make the marketing department fishers of consumers.

Lead scoring is the assignment of a number (score) to a contact determined by the contacts activity. Once the contacts score reaches a certain level they can be handed off as a qualified sales lead. This indicates someone who has been consuming data on your website is possibly interested in more of your products. While setting up scoring and having the initial conversations we found it difficult for some to grasp or visualize the intent and purpose of the scoring.

Scoring is developing workflows that nurture someones interest by taking a journey of well timed and appropriate content depending on their previous actions. In these workflows individual contacts can have media pushed to them depending on their previous response. If you send a newsletter and the person clicks through, then they will move to the next step and receive an invite to customize their profile. If the person clicks through and navigates to another section on your site they receive a coupon for a future purchase, and a link to download that coupon. When they click through that they move to the next level and so on.

I see this as a virtual self guided tour through your website and content. If you were going to sit down with someone and walk them through your website, what would that look like? Now map that out and create a workflow for each phase of that process.

The benefit is a personal engagement with your customer. I know "personal" can be a catch phrase in sales but I believe we don't sell things, and I don't buy things that are sold to me. I buy things I need, and offer solutions to people who are looking for them. The old saying when the student is ready the teacher appears, offers great insight to how we learn. The goal of technology in marketing should be to automate the movement of consumers to students, and at that right moment placing the teacher within arms reach.


Below is a good reference for lead scoring.
http://www.kentico.com/Product/All-Features/Marketing/Lead-Scoring

I walked the LINE...

Walking the line between conflicting requirements

This week I will spend 16 hours in meetings discussing the development and roll out of lead scoring in our Kentico Enterprise Marketing Suite (EMS). We just rolled out the new website in June and we are pleased with Kentico, and our developers https://bitwizards.com. 

There is always more than one way to skin a cat, or peel a banana if you are an animal lover. Well actually there is only one way to peel a banana properly, and if I think about it there was only one way to properly skin a deer when I was a kid on a farm, so I would imagine the same holds true for a cat. (I promise not to fact check that)

Now back to the point, every project, and every process has a several layers to it, and several intersections that can be navigated differently depending on the desired outcome, and prejudices in perspective.
The Key?

• Ask Questions
• Why is this process, project important?
• Why is that answer important?
• Why is that important?
• And down here you usually find their "What", their esprit de corps, purpose behind their flywheel. For some it is family, and making a difference, for others it is money, retirement and making a difference in their own life. 
• Both are acceptable tools to connect members to purpose. This helps them remain engaged and dedicated to the big picture - drive organizational outcomes.
• What does success look like? 
• In your mind what was the step right before that success?
• How did we get to that point? 
• And so forth until you get to today. Stepping backwards through a problem is a great way to avoid the pitfalls of "We can't do that... We've tried that before... That won't work..." etc. 
• I think those involved are looking at each event individually rather than wondering if each event feeds their own goal. 

Remember that no matter where you work, everyone on the project is human. They all have a goal, and a motivation to reach that goal. I do not want to miss my goal when I remember the impact it will have on my family. I will miss my goal to protect my family, but I will not protect my goals to hurt my family. Keep priorities straight in your heart and your business will follow.

Seek to understand rather then be understood, do not come to scoff without further inspection. 

Check out next post where I share a story about 1,000% process improvement from re-engineering. 

Below is a great article about Requirements Elicitation.
http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/what-questions-do-i-ask-during-requirements-elicitation/ 

I'm Windows the 8th, I am... (Part One)

Windows 8 Deployment Journey

In the beginning...

Hello world, 

(may that never get old)

Please contribute to this work by adding your questions and experience in the comments section. This is not intended to be a complete review of Windows 8, I have listed some below. This will be a journal of my rode to deploying Windows 8 to a corporate environment with 85 local users and another 120 virtual users. We will deploy with Office 365 Enterprise licenses, SharePoint 2013, and CRM 2013. (Let me know if interested in those journeys.) 

I just received my new Dell XPS 12 Touch. This device is amazing with a solid state drive. Which means it turns on when you turn it on, not after it thinks for a minute finds what it needs and then loads that in order to load the application to load the page you need to log in and load your profile, etc. 

So my 3 year old windows 7 laptop was slow to start. But that has as much to do with amount of programs and junk that you accumulate over the years. 

But I digress, lets talk about how I was surprised and confused with Windows 8, yet in the end I love it.

Key initial takeaways

• Users will need their own Microsoft Live account aside from their corporate domain account (even with Office 365)
• Ghost Image will not account for Apps that we may want to load for each user
• App review and recommendations are essential to successful user acceptance
• While the desktop is available to use in traditional manner, doing so will feel like eating soup with a fork.
• Basic work processes will change, I could not intuitively ind control panel, command line, etc. 
• Windows 8 Training apps do the work for us, and are useful
• Touchscreen is not mandatory, mouse interaction works fine

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned as I move forward with this project. Spoiler alert, IE 10 does not work with ADFS, and Office 365 Portal. 

A review of Windows 8.

http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews/pc-mac/software/operating-systems/windows-8-1093002/review

CNET - Reviews of Windows 8 Devices

http://reviews.cnet.com/8300-33642_7-292.html

What's a Business Analyst's "What"?

I am eager to hear what others learned from their early years as a BA, so please be sure to comment.

I have learned to avoid being a know it all. I thought I was hired as a BA because I knew the right answers. In reality a mentor explained I asked the right questions. I watched a senior member of our organization continue to ask questions, when he was in a position to make decisions and demand action. But he always asked questions and in return people acted.

I tried telling people what they needed for their process, or how this process would work better if they only listened to me. (That did not work) Now I realize that if I ask enough questions (5 minimum) then I usually partner with the process end user in THEIR journey to fix their process. Analytics is a thoughtful introspective process, but my role is to make this a collaborative, human friendly ongoing cycle.

In Short be a people person, win the hearts of those you work with before you try to win any kudos for yourself. No matter how good of a process or system you design if user will not use it, then you are worse off.

Above all, I think to be good at anything, we must connect to purpose and finding worthwhile meaning in the work we do. People will not care how much you know, until they know how much you care. And I do care, I care about my work, I care about my career, and I care about my company. All because I remember what I do this for... my family, my future, etc.

Find your "what" and connect to your next projects true purpose, and you will find yourself listening and asking a lot more.

Have a wonderful day!