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Connected Experiences Delivering Value Today, Driving Innovation for the Future CREATING CONNECTED DIGITAL EXPERIENCES
Connected Experiences
Delivering Value Today, Driving Innovation for the Future
CREATING CONNECTED DIGITAL EXPERIENCES
Executive Summary
If it’s true that change begets opportunity, then Chief Marketing Officers today are up to their necks in opportunity. The unprecedented speed of change in consumer behavior is fueled by both an ongoing adoption of a digital lifestyle and the continuing economic challenge.
Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and their teams have been working towards opening a dialogue with consumers and communities.Through this dialogue, consumers become an active participant in value co-creation. And with what is now called “Collaborative Marketing,” companies are not only observing consumer behaviors but are part of that discussion. For example, attempts to connect with consumers through social networks are a perfect example of the growing popularity of collaborative marketing, and recent surveys show this trend is on the rise.
Recent surveys also show that a majority of CMOs and other marketing professionals increasingly are betting on digital channels to deliver these new collaborative experiences. As a technology company, it probably won’t surprise you that we agree. However, you may be surprised to learn that we also believe that the majority of marketers will find themselves dissatisfied with the results that they receive from their digital marketing expenditures.
Why? CMOs are telling us that have several immediate goals:• Show true campaign ROI beyond “last click” metrics• Increase efficiencies through automation or workflow improvements• Open a dialogue with consumers and improve the ability to respond to consumer feedback
Unfortunately, many companies are implementing point solutions—from authoring tools to analytics packages —that don’t connect to each other, much less to these goals. We predict that CMOs who go down the path of selecting point solutions as a sort of technological “band-aid” will find themselves facing a complete overhaul of their marketing platforms in less than a decade.
Digital marketing is an evolving space, so make choices now that will give your organization a strong, flexible foundation. After all, how can you provide a seamless experience to your consumers when you’re working from a fractured platform? Microsoft® can partner with you to connect all of the technologies that make up a marketing platform. And when those technologies work together, everything clicks.
US Marketers Indicate Expected Marketing Spend Increase by Category
Print AdvertisingOnline Advertising
Virtual EventsE-mail Campaigns
Engine OptimizationSocial Media
3%48%48%49%
51%75%
Figure 1: Customer Acquisition and Retention Top Priorities, eMarketer, September 21, 2009
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 2January 2010
Internet overtakes television to become biggest advertising sector in the UKSeptember 30, 2009
-guardian.co.uk
What customers are telling us
“I just don’t trust the data I have right now. I don’t even think I have enough data points to begin with…”
“I feel like I should be using social networking more. But, how?”
“I am mainly measured on the amount of revenue that I drive, but somehow I feel I have little control over the actual amounts of revenue generated…”
Creating Connected Digital Experiences
When you talk about creating digital marketing experiences, you’re really talking about making connections through technology. And delivering engaging experiences through technology is a topic that has driven us for some time, now. After all, we have been a consumer goods company for quite a while and as a result we have a deep understanding of the unique challenges of marketing in the digital age. We don’t just offer technical know-how; we also know why.
Here’s something that we’ve noticed about the conglomeration of point solutions offered by our competitors: they all promise to make your work life easier. And yet, deploying multiple point solutions that don’t work with one another—much less connect to your enterprise-wide systems—actually makes your job harder. You end up buried in data, but somehow still lacking relevant information.
We decided to take a different approach. We have developed products that can be forged into a connected solution. Digital advertising, commerce platforms, web content management systems, rich customer analytics, enterprise systems, customer mobility, and social shopping—all of it connected and built around providing you with a view of your customers. We believe that it’s easier to create collaborative experiences when your technology all works together, too.
Reaching your audience through a blend of traditional and new media channelsIf information is power, your customers are armed as never before. Consumers are finding it easier than ever to search, to select, and then to switch vendors, brands and services. Is customer loyalty a thing of the past? We don’t think so.
Consumers still want to feel good about their purchases. If you can fill that need by providing consumers with the best possible shopping experience, you will come out ahead. This requires creating new kinds of interactions. Instead of talking TO consumers, talk WITH them. This can only be accomplished—on a grand scale, at least—with technology.
Not that long ago, there were three major options for your advertising dollars: print, radio, and television. The dominance of the “big three” remained the status quo for almost 50 years. Over that time, a standard-ized system for judging the value of various properties in these channels was developed: publication statis-tics, Arbitron data and Nielsen ratings help you determine how many people you are reaching and have a sense of who they are.
Now, you have a maze of potential channels and very few metrics for judging value. Social networks, location-based marketing to mobile phones, Point of Service (POS) kiosks, and gaming consoles are just a few of the new ways that you can learn about your customers and influence purchasing decisions. We can help you to understand how your consumers are digitally interacting with your brands in order to adjust your campaigns and to assign credit for sales.
Leveraging customer insights across channels Your consumers want relevant, interactive and social experiences that they can receive when, where and how they want it. Is the time shoppers spend online with you improving their in-store experiences, and vice versa?
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 3January 2010
At home, at work, at play, yourcustomers are also our customers.We can help you reach them.
• Digital advertising• E-commerce• Online communities• Gaming• Consumer Devices• Search• Web-based consumer content
Online behavioral planning toolsallow you to place online ads more strategically by pinpointingthe sites that your customersactually visit.
Atlas Media Console
Xbox® and Doritos puts fans incontrol with engaging onlinecontest. Read the case studyto learn more.
For example, can customers make a purchase from your Web site and pick it up at their local store? Have you thought about using geo-smart features to send location-aware marketing messages to your customers’ mobile phones? And what are you doing to reach customers with digital marketing—while they’re in the store? What about the reverse—can you leverage a customer’s in-store history to offer targeted offers that will increase loyalty and drive revenue? In order to deliver these kinds of synchronized, consistent experience that keep consumers coming back, you need to get rid of the silos.
The best way to accomplish this is to develop a customer-centric view across your entire operation—from call centers, to Web sites, in-store systems. Once you have developed a 360 degree view of your customer across your company, you will be able to access and to act on customer data across channels. When you can better predict customer behavior, you’re ready to better meet their needs.
Multichannel customers spend more money—almost $100 more per transaction.Ideally, you already have or are ready to invest in a connected foundation that will allow you to provide industry-leading customer experiences. At the very minimum, make sure that you and your agency are selecting technology that is capable of integration into this sort of enterprise-spanning marketing that we believe will become the standard in the near future. The Microsoft® marketing platform and related tools offer ease of integration, enabling you to leverage both third-party applications and other Microsoft products that you may already have in place.
Keeping up with evolving consumer expectations Features that you introduce as exciting extras—like the ability to read reviews from other customers, for example, either are or will soon be simply expected. So how are you using your digital interactions to create customer loyalty? Can potential customers see a 360 degree view of your product? Maybe you have a great location that underscores your branding story—a flagship store, perhaps, or a natural food company’s orchard or family-owned farm. Consider replacing the same old canned video with a customer-controlled tour that allows the viewer to choose when to zoom in on details that catch their interest.
In addition, how often do you update your Web site? You wouldn’t want your product to be displayed in a store that looked the same, season after season, so make sure you’re refreshing your online store, as well. How quickly can you respond to changes in the marketplace? If you have a new product or pricing plan, how quickly can you get that information to your customers? Web users want interesting, interactive new content and you want the ability to communicate with your consumers through your Web site at will and in “real time.” Unfortunately, in many cases, workflows create false slowdowns between content generation and content publishing. And if you’re hiring an outside agency to refresh your site, the work can be costly as well. Consider selecting a content management system that allows business users to create and manage content at will without having to turn to expensive outside agencies.
Finally, no matter how exciting your bells and whistles, your customers must be able to quickly and easily find what they need. Poorly delivered digital experiences—from Web sites with confusing navigation to those that doesn’t “translate” properly to the mobile phone—are quickly abandoned.
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 4January 2010
Engage with potential customersthrough your packaging, with Microsoft Tag.
Tools that are flexible enough to evolve as your needs evolve.
Tools that do not require to totally rethink your systems as they already exist.
Tools that are easier to use than you may think. Ask us.
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Well-designed, forward-thinking digital interactions—like sites that can interpret behavior and personalize images and text to a customer’s interests—will be rewarded with more of your customer’s time, attention and eventually, wallet-share.We have developed some innovative personalization tools for our customers’ sites. For example, imagine a packaged food company’s site with our personalization tools in place. A visitor to the site reads an article about managing diabetes and also browses recipes for after-school snacks. The next time that user came to the site, she would see a landing page that reflected her previous visit—perhaps recipes for sugar-free desserts and a coupon offer for products suggested in the after-school snack recipes. We can deliver these results without requiring user logon or authentication, and a user’s Web behavior can be unlearned or stopped as requested.
Tapping into the value of social networking Social media such as Twitter and Facebook have consumers increasingly participating in the creation of content—to the benefit of both active participants and more passive visitors. Executives have certainly taken notice. One of the earliest examples of corporate implementation of social networking principles is T-Mobile’s myFaves. Since then, many companies have included social networking features (like reviews and ratings or polls) on their own online properties to create an online community based around their brand. Some companies even allow online users to “push” content directly from their sites onto a social network with a single click. For example, a bride-to-be might share several bridesmaid dress options to her Facebook page, inviting her attendants to weigh in on the dress selections—and at the same time, greatly increasing the likelihood that they will order their dresses through that store. Companies have been working to develop a presence on existing social networks. Even more progressive, some companies are integrating purchase functionality into their social network presence—moving from connection into conversion. For example, a pizza restaurant chain has placed an “order now” button on its Facebook fan page. After all, who is more likely to indulge in an impulse pizza order than the restaurant’s self-proclaimed fans?
Engaging consumers in these sorts of interactions provides a “stickier” customer experience and can be a dynamic way to communicate brand messages.But social networking is far from a “silver bullet” answer for marketers. While tracking activity on your own site is fairly simple—and valuable—there is a vast landscape of social networks that have participants sharing opinions, comments, possibly even photos and videos about your brand. Ideally, you could create these forums yourself, on sites that you control. The reality is that much of the conversation will take place outside of your site—so you had better find those sites and monitor customer’s ongoing perception of your brand as it is being formed. Unfortunately, finding those sites has been a classic “needle/haystack” proposition in the past.
We have been working to help our customers harness the potential of both home-grown and external social networks. In addition to including social networking functionality in our e-commerce platform, we have been developing a kind of “social network scanner” or dashboard that could keep tabs on chatter certain keywords that you define—brand names or even topics like “mobile phone plans” or “fashion.”
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 5January 2010
An innovative digital image“stitching” tool creates panoramicimages with the potential for “zoom-in” detail with Microsoft Photosynth™.
Are you trying to build next-generation experiences on last-generation tools? See whatMicrosoft Silverlight™ can do for you.
Intrigued by the idea of a social network dashboard? So were we. Watch a demo of our prototype:LookingGlass
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Gaining insight and optimizing your spend Remember how easy it used to be? You could look at your newspaper or magazine publication figures, maybe some Nielsen ratings and you had a pretty good idea of how many people were seeing your ads. You even had a decent idea of their demographics. It wasn’t perfect, but at least everyone was working with the same metrics. You need better data about your digital campaigns, data that you can trust.
Now, just as you need well-defined and quantifiable metrics more than ever…they are harder to obtain. Your banner ad reached your targeted number of hits—great! Your website exceeded your goal number of visitors—fantastic! But how many bounced in under five seconds? Where did they go? And who are those people, anyways? And while we’re at it, why are you paying another company to release your own data back to you?
You need to own your own data so that you can analyze that information together with enterprise informa-tion, like customer databases, in order to truly gain valuable insight. Trying to develop marketing without this level of information is like having an important conversation over the telephone—possible, but missing an entire dimension of feedback that enriches the whole interaction.
You know your product and how to sell it. There isn’t a piece of software written that can replace that.
What our technology can do for you is give you granular information about how your digital campaigns are being experienced—and by whom—in order to allow you to make adjustments that will improve your results.
Your choices today will determine your readiness for tomorrow We have covered a wide ground, here. From ad buying to data mining, social networks to multi-channel efforts, these topics typically are “owned” by many different people within a company. And yet, at their heart, these issues are about your desire to connect more closely with your customers—to understand their needs in order to fulfill them.
The last few years have brought incredible change to how we think about and market to our consumers. The next wave of consumer experience improvement has already begun to swell. Marketing roles are changing. Those of you who are poised to take advantage of the next big wave of change will succeed. Are you ready? We can help.
What about your industry?
While the collaborative marketing challenges discussed are broadly applicable, each industry has its own specific challenges and opportunities. We have experts in your industry working to fine-tune our strategy and vision to your specific business needs. Together with our partners, we are developing solutions for you.
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 6January 2010
Creating Connected Digital Experiences in Retail
RetailBecause retail straddles the brick and mortar versus digital divide more than any other industry, improving the multi-channel experience is particularly important for you. First of all, don’t confuse “multi-channel” experiences with the “multiple-channel” experiences that are actually being provided by the majority of retailers today. Multiple channel retailers may tout their online presence, but it will have little to no crossover with in-store channels. This is because, for many retail companies, e-commerce platforms were developed when online retail was seen as a peripheral or stand-alone business. These legacy systems are often clunky and incapable of handling today’s increasing demands for commerce transactions and digital marketing func-tionality. Worst of all, they exist in silos, cut off from the rest of the retail company.
To give customers true multi-channel experiences, you must be able to share information freely across company systems. Can you access information from your loyalty database to create tailored promotions? Speaking of loyalty programs, are you crediting customers with their online purchases? What happens if a customer wants to return product to your store that was purchased online? Connected systems within your company enable you
to create consistently excellent customer experiences.
When “leaving the store” is a matter of only a few clicks, it is crucial that retailers capture every opportunity to improve the customer experience. To that end, retail marketers want to increase site personalization, deploy social network features like product reviews and ratings, and quickly change content in order to “refresh” the online store.
As a retailer, you also need to be thinking about shopper mobility. The high adoption rate of web-enabled smart phones has resulted in customers who can look up product information and then find your nearest store location—all from their phones. Your Websites must be device independent, allowing customers to interact with the online store when, where and how they desire. Have you considered how you can make use of geospatial features? If a customer accesses your Website from his phone, can you offer directions to your store or tailor your promotional messages based on the store nearest to their current location?
Empowered retail customers have turned online for product information, reviews and price comparisons. In essence, the Web has come to play the role of the experienced salesperson for many shoppers. As a result, the customer’s transition from product research to purchasing decision is more seamless than ever. So what are you doing to bring immersive Web experiences into your store? For information-heavy products like electronics or small appliances that require a lot of training to bring salespeople up to speed, have you considered POS kiosks with touch screen navigation to display the knowledge base while allowing your salespeople to fill the role of friendly brand representative.
Finally, changes in trade restrictions, global sourcing trends, and the emergence of new markets have made globalization an important consideration for retailers. Retail marketers can use libraries of reusable content to gain more value for their creative dollars. Also, they can select content management systems that allow business users to easily edit content, enabling you to cost-effectively localize Web pages without starting from scratch in each new market.
Learn more about Microsoft in retail: www.microsoft.com/retail.
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 8January 2010
“Early reports suggest that Americans shopped more enthusiastically online for holidaybargains than they did in storeson Black Friday.”December 1, 2009
-cnnmoney.com
See how customers can connecttheir Bluetooth-enabled phonesto Microsoft Surface.
Creating Connected Digital Experiences in Consumer Goods
Consumer Goods Larger consumer goods (CG) companies have faced the struggle of managing multiple brands for years. Typically, companies deal with these struggles by compartmentalizing operations—either by brand, by product group or other divisions. As a result, it is not unusual for a company to have dozens or even hundreds of individual business units—each with their own, individual relationships with advertising agencies as well as investments in disparate development tools and platforms.
While this compartmentalized business model has provided individual business groups/brands with much-needed agility, it has come at the cost of capturing economies of scale. When this is occurring in CG com-panies—for whom marketing is frequently the second-largest line item on the budget—taking advantage of these economies is a heady prospect, indeed. In many cases, CGs may want to separate the creative aspects of their marketing from the underlying plumbing. This approach allows their brand managers continued autonomy with their messaging (and the ability to maintain successful relationships with their advertising agencies), but integrates technology across the company for improved cost-effectiveness. This also enables integration between marketing functions and back-end enterprise systems such as customer loyalty programs, or retail POS data giving marketers a 360 degree view of the customer.
This customer-centric view is more important than ever for CG companies. First, today’s shoppers are more empowered, demanding product information such as price comparisons, reviews, stock levels, and the availability of special offers. To increase brand loyalty (and develop product champions) CGs need to engage in relationships with consumers, providing personalized and social experiences. In addition, current economic realities have changed consumer buying habits drastically. Where once private label products from retail partners only addressed the needs of the value shopper, today retailers are establishing private label products that are extending into the space once occupied only by national brands.
In a world where consumers are less likely to pay a premium based only on national brand name, CG companies must nurture a direct and personal relationship with their consumer to quickly pick up on the new buying trends and adapt their offerings to changes in consumer shopping behavior.In addition, promotions—both consumer and trade—can be improved through digital channels. With newspaper readership moving to the internet, traditional consumer promotional strategies like Sunday FSIs are dwindling in effectiveness. CG marketers need new ways to reach their consumers at both the point of consideration and the point of purchase. Digital channels such as email and mobile couponing offer the ability to achieve these goals successfully and inexpensively. And since trade promotions remain an important and costly part of the CG marketing strategy, typically costing 17 percent of revenue, being able to tie these promotions back to the retail POS data enable marketers to have more visibility and accountability. With more digital trade promotions, marketers can optimize their trade promotions and more granularly manage, monitor and track these costs.
Learn more about Microsoft in consumer goods: www.microsoft.com/consumergoods.
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 10January 2010
Creating Connected Digital Experiences in Telco
TelcoFor Telecommunications CMOs, everything is just a bit more complicated. You have the complexities inherent with high-tech digital consumer goods mixed in with all of the typical issues inherent in retailing. In addition, you have complex rating and billing plans that need to be easily understandable and personalized for customers. Finally, competition in your sector has never been greater.
So how do you turn these challenges into opportunities? You do it with great customer experiences. You need to staff retail stores with employees trained in both the electronic devices and rate plans? Use touch screen-enabled kiosks to do the heavy lifting with style—and free your sales associates to fill the role of brand ambassador. You have complex billing structures that challenge customers’ understanding? Incorporate proactive transparency when you notice unusual spending choices. For example, alerting a customer to a potential savings opportunity like a vacation package could keep them from defecting to a competitor once the bill arrives. While it’s true that competition has never been tougher, customer satisfaction has become the single most influential factor affecting churn. It’s all about the experiences.
Your customers, more than in other industries, want to connect with your company on the channel of their choice—and they want the ability to switch channels at will. This multi-channel focus means that you must orchestrate your campaigns across all of your channels—mobile, Web, contact centers and stores—simultaneously for maximum impact. Integrate your campaigns within self-help channels to leverage customer pull. But most importantly, keep your customer at the center of it all. Customer-centricity—the ability to follow and serve your customer as they move from channel to channel—will help to turn your customers into devoted fans.
Consider the following scenario:
Your customer, Maria,access the self-care functions on her smart phone. Your geo-aware campaign notes that she is less than a mile away from one of your stores.
You send Maria an in-lineholiday campaign mes-sage with a promotional price on your newest phone. You also send her the address of the nearby store.
She has been consideringadding a phone to her plan, so she sends a “reserve handset” request. Staff at the store are alerted to set aside a handset for Maria.
When Maria enters the store, she sees digital signage that lies into the campaign offer she received on her mobile phone. She is getting excited about having a new phone.
Maria uses your intuitive multi-touch displays to learn about the product and service plan. She makes her decision and is told a clerk will be with her in five minutes.
While she waits, you ask Maria if she resolved the issue that caused her to access her phone’s self-care functions earlier today. She has not.
You offer to activate a two-way video conference between Maria and an Advanced Technical Sup-port Agent. Maria accepts.
An additional camera is pointed at Maria’s phone to speed the process and minimize confusion. Maria’s problem is quickly resolved.
Meanwhile, the sales clerk has Maria’s shopping cart ready to go on his wireless POS device. After discussing acces-sories, Maria completes her purchase.
Maria returns to the multi-touch display to be guided through activation and device set up of her new phone. She is thrilled with her new phone and with her new experience.
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 12January 2010
Watch how Microsoft Surfacegives Telco customers an innovative, immersive brand experience in an AT&T retail location.
How do you reach tech-savvy young men who are your target demographic? In-game ads press the right buttons for mobile operator. Read our case study.
The multi-touch experience offered by the Microsoft Windows® 7 operating system offers new possibilities for self-service, engaging campaigns, remote support and more.”?
Check out Windows Touch
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In this example, your customer switched channels several times, but she received the same level of excellent service at every point. A single failure along the way might have been enough to send her running to your competitors. And while this customer certainly experienced a number of marketing messages, she remained the focus—not the sales pitch. From geo-aware campaigns sending her information relevant to her location to an offer to connect her with tech support, your customer’s experience was the focal point. And while not every customer would require every one of these capabilities—don’t you want the ability to offer these kinds of consistent, cohesive multi-channel experiences to every customer?
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 13January 2010
Microsoft and Partners
The Microsoft digital marketing offering includes:.
• Web Content Management
• E-commerce Transactions
• Mobile
• Social Network Capabilities
• Integration of External Services
• Next Generation Development Tools
Technology partners and solution providers can plan and design the use of Microsoft products to create complete, end-to-end solutions that will help you address immediate and future needs. Partners can also help you get the senior executive support that you need to accomplish your digital marketing strategy.
There are many potential partners who can plan and deploy our products. If you already have a relationship with a technology partner, we are confident that our products will allow your partner to create for you a flexible, scalable marketing platform.
However, if you need to select a partner—or if you already have Microsoft investments that you wish to leverage—we have a select group of partners with whom we have worked closely to develop end-to-end digital market-ing solutions that can deliver the kinds of collaborative experiences that we have been discussing.
Accenture and Avanade Connected Commerce Solution
Accenture and Avanade offer Connected Commerce, a best-in-class e-commerce solution designed to help grow your online business and improve customer loyalty. Using Microsoft technologies, Connected Commerce can help you leverage the latest in search, mobility, and social media to convert shoppers into buyers. Connected Commerce will allow companies to get up and running quickly with a comprehensive, multi-channel platform tailored to each business.
• Search/Navigation
• Online Advertising
• Catalog Management
• Data Warehousing
• Analytics/Business Intelligence
• Integration Services
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 14January 2010
Accenture Avanade ConnectedCommerce Solution
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• Improve customer experiences. With the shift in technology adoption toward web and mobile devices having a dramatic impact on consumer purchasing decisions, Connected Commerce can help you adapt to the changes and engage shoppers with personalized, interactive digital experiences.
• Lower your costs with true integration. Built on Microsoft technologies and leveraging our extensive implementation experience, Connected Commerce can help deliver a solution that is truly integrated with your key support systems and processes.
• Empower your business users to respond quickly. Connected Commerce can help prepare your business users to take action by allowing them to update marketing campaigns, product catalogs, and user experiences with little or no involvement from your technology department. Efficiently change the branding of your e-commerce web application using our well-defined processes.
Connected Commerce solution is backed by Avanade‘s alliance with Microsoft and Accenture. Selecting us for your e-commerce solutions means you are choosing partners who drive industry innovation. With Accenture‘s retail industry experience, Microsoft‘s leading edge technology, and Avanade‘s vast implementation experience, we bring our expertise to your team.
Contact information: Americas Seattle Phone +1 206 239 5600 [email protected]
Europe London Phone +44 (0) 20 7025 1000 [email protected]
Asia-Pacific Sydney Phone +612 9005 5900 [email protected]
Accenture Intelligent Digital Platform
Proctor & Gamble (P&G) and Accenture have collaborated to establish Accenture Interactive, a new business that helps companies develop world-class digital marketing capabilities and optimize online/offline investments. Accenture Interactive will bring together advanced technology platforms with consulting, analytics, Web development and digital managed services capabilities in an integrated model.
Accenture Interactive and P &G have teamed to create the Accenture Intelligent Digital Platform, a solution that combines leading-edge technology and analytics to transform the consumer on-line experience. By analyzing customer behavior and consumer preferences, the solution is able to bring the most relevant content and information together to create an optimal online-experience. Accenture Intelligent Digital Platform is the first and core offering of Accenture Interactive.
“Digital is becoming an increasingly critical component in reaching consumers,” said Marta Foster, vice president of Business Building Solutions at P&G. “We see digital as an opportunity for our brands to engage with consumers in new ways. Accenture’s technology and services will allow us to build deeper connections and will also offer efficiencies that will free brands up to do what they do best. In the process, we are also deepening our strategic partnership with Accenture.”
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 15January 2010
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Tim Breene, senior managing director-Strategic Initiatives at Accenture, said, “Procter & Gamble has long been a pioneer in adopting new technologies. The Accenture Intelligent Digital Platform will help P&G quickly capital-ize on innovative digital technologies and services and will also deliver more engaging and relevant digital experiences to their consumers. The platform will offer brands the advantage of being able to deliver relevant messages in new and engaging ways.”
Contact information: Ben PayneAccenturePhone +44 (207) 844 0440 [email protected]
Alex PachettiAccenturePhone +1 (917) 452 5519 [email protected]
Cactus Commerce CommerceLive solution
CommerceLive from Cactus Commerce is a complete, multi-channel e-commerce solution that provides packaged solution advantages with custom solution flexibility. CommerceLive offers retailers, consumer goods companies and telcos the ability to interact and transact with their customers online through multi-channel merchandise management, promotions and campaign management, advanced site personalization via segmentation and targeting, A/B & multivariate testing and more.
• Reduced Time-to Market: By leveraging a core set of e-commerce features with multiple deployment options, CommerceLive enables you to build a customized e-commerce while getting online quickly and effectively. CommerceLive uses virtualization technology to streamline development, pre-production and deployment of your site, minimizing many problems that plague traditional implementation models.
• Flexibility: CommerceLive speeds time-to-market without sacrificing agility. You can offer a differentiated experience to your consumers and modify your solution over time as business needs change. In addition, you can smoothly ramp up bandwidth as needed during peak demand periods such as seasonal shopping periods and take advantage of catalog, category and product merchandising tools that are structured to support any mix of merchandise or services. Finally, you have the choice of an on-demand or on-premise solution, as well as the ability to easily change models according to future need.
• Enabled Multi-Channel Experiences: The CommerceLive solution provides business users with the tools that they need to communicate products, services or other relevant information to consumers across multiple channels– with minimized IT involvement. For example, CommerceLive can be configured to allow consumers to send wish lists or detailed product information to a consumers’ mobile phone.
• Differentiated Experiences: You can leverage the solution’s pre-built feature sets and configurable options to tailor site functionality and presentation in ways that will reflect your brand and your business needs. For example, you can create, “skin”, and manage multiple storefronts with CommerceLive and your business users can refresh content as often as necessary. You also can incorporate social network features like reviews and ratings to encourage a social shopping experience. You can also use the solution’s sophisticated promotion and campaign management tools, like the ability to target and personalize offers to customer segments defined by either on-line or off-line customer data.
• Lowered Total Cost of Ownership: CommerceLive provides you with packaged shopping features bundled for B2C. By focusing on core e-commerce features, Cactus can offer lower-cost solutions while still accelerating time-to-market. CommerceLive allows you to reuse functionality, products, content and presentation in ways that minimize development and business management effort.
Contact information: 1.888.CACTUS.0 (1.888.222.8870) or [email protected].
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 16January 2010
CommerceLive from Cactus Commerce
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Customer Evidence
Kraft Foods
Kraft to Save $2.2 Million over Two Years with New Web Content Management Solution
One of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, Kraft Foods needed to give its brand groups greater speed and flexibility in connecting with consumers online. The company chose Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 as a new global standard for Web content management and is now running its three largest Web sites on its new solution, with plans to migrate all consumer-facing Web sites by the end of 2010. Through its use of Office SharePoint Server 2007, Kraft is benefiting from streamlined Web content publishing; support for new forms of digital marketing; and the performance, scalability, and reliability needed to support more than 100 million page views per month. What’s more, the solution’s rich capabilities and ease of management are expected to save Kraft millions of dollars over the next two years in agency fees, support costs, and development costs.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000005209
Kimberly-ClarkKimberly-Clark Migrates Consumer Site to New Web Platform for High Value, Lower Cost
Kimberly-Clark wanted to integrate its MyKleenexTissue.com site with the rest of its infrastructure to lower costs and boost marketing. The company redeveloped the site using Microsoft® Silverlight™, Microsoft Commerce Server 2007, and the Microsoft .NET Framework. Kimberly-Clark expects to save up to 40 percent annually in IT costs and develop stronger customer connections with a Web environment that can flex to meet future needs.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000004915
GameStopVideo Game Retailer Improves Online Experience, Store Traffic with E-Commerce Upgrade
An ambitious growth strategy at video game and entertainment software retailer GameStop called for enhancements to the online customer experience, along with tighter integration between online and brick-and-mortar sales channels. However, an aging e-commerce system, based on Microsoft Commerce Server 2000, hampered the retailer’s ability to add new functionality. By upgrading to an e-commerce solution based on Commerce Server 2007, the retailer gained the ability to offer in-store pickup of products ordered online, expanded product look-up capabilities, and enhanced customer-generated content. Since the upgrade, the number of unique visitors to GameStop sites is up by 14 percent and the average amount of time that visitors spend there is up by 10 percent. The robust, flexible solution also provides GameStop with a solid foundation for future growth.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000006245
NBC Sports NBC Sports Realizes Its Vision with Olympics Web Programming
NBC Sports joined forces with Microsoft, MSN®, and a team of other partners whose developers used Microsoft® Silverlight™ and other Microsoft Web tools, technologies, and services to build and deploy NBCOlympics.com on MSN. The high-production-value site broke all NBC Sports records for online traffic and audience reach, drove a new stream of advertising revenue, and proved that the NBC TV model for sports broadcasting could be extended successfully to the Web.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000004131
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 17January 2010
easyJet Leading Airline Set to Transform Customer Experience with Powerful Travel Portal
Low-cost airline easyJet aims to redefine the travel portal to offer customers the most intuitive site ever experienced. A proof of concept, taking advantage of the latest-release Microsoft® software and services, has demonstrated the transformation in progress. The new geospatial features in Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 database software will allow customers to extract detailed geographical information about their destination. Microsoft Silverlight™ browser plug-in offers a seamless interface, new levels of flexibility, and inspiring travel options and services. Once complete, the Web site will meet the needs of all easyJet customers. The company expects that this unique service will not only leave competitors behind, but will also lead to significant revenue increases.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000001604See the video: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/video/Embed.aspx?fr=4000003634
Hard Rock International Hard Rock International Creates Unique Rock ’n’ Roll Experience Online
Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Vertigo and design and advertising agency Duncan/Channon, Hard Rock used Microsoft Silverlight™ 2 to create a unique Web site for sharing its extensive collection of rock and roll memorabilia. Visitors use intuitive zoom technology to navigate the collection, investigate the stories behind each piece and share their discoveries with friends. Using Microsoft products and technologies, Vertigo built a content management system and infrastructure for the site in just 30 days.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000002432
Penguin U.K. Publishing Firm Builds an Interactive Web Site to Encourage Teens to Read
After researching teens’ reading habits, Penguin teamed up with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 developers Content and Code to produce a Web site using social networking, videos, and blogging to encourage teens to talk about reading, a pastime not usually associated with the online activities of teenagers. The resulting Web site, Spinebreakers.com, was immediately popular with its target audience. Over 20,000 users logged on during the first two months after launch.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000002171
QuiksilverOnline Retailer Keeps Web Sites Fresh, Costs Lower with Timesaving Software Tool
Online retail is brutally tough, and companies can quickly find themselves with more expenses than profits. Successful retailers have to keep their operating costs low and their Web sites fresh to be successful online. Surf-culture clothing retailer Quiksilver Americas used Microsoft® software to create a clever product man-agement tool called Bob that shortcuts the onerous administrative work involved in posting, refreshing, and managing thousands of online products. Instead of juggling dozens of spreadsheets and manually posting data to File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites, Quiksilver merchandisers can create compelling marketing copy and manage Web commerce elements in a single user-friendly tool. One developer created Bob in a few weeks and linked it to an existing content management investment. Thanks to Bob, Quiksilver has been able to eliminate the search for spreadsheets and create a single repository of online product data that is easy to manage. Bob saves merchandisers hundreds of hours annually, giving them more time to focus on being creative, attracting customers, and boosting sales. Bob also helps Quiksilver keep headcount low, which is critical to turning a profit in today’s tough retail environment. “Cutty & Scratchy? That is how you would describe the reef at Deserts or the rocks at Lowers. These trunks can be worn at both.”
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000005135
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 18January 2010
Blockbuster Entertainment Provider Improves Video on Demand with New Web Tools and Technologies
To stay on the leading edge of the rapidly evolving online entertainment industry, Blockbuster needed to provide its customers with a compelling, PC-based, video-on-demand experience. Blockbuster used a set of integrated Web tools and technologies from Microsoft, including Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5, Windows® Presentation Foundation, the Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 development system, and Microsoft Expression Blend™ design software, to build a feature-rich, downloadable application that helps to bring the Blockbuster brand into the digital spotlight. The Blockbuster OnDemand application provides customers with top-quality video downloading, playback, and synchronization to portable devices. And, with its integrated development tool set, Blockbuster can quickly and easily update the application with new features and functionality.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000004880
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 19January 2010
Solution capability and architecture
While digital marketing is a topic of overwhelming interest to CMOs these days, it is important that the CIO is included in the conversation at a relatively early juncture. Organizations choosing a Microsoft-powered digital marketing solution can leverage their existing Microsoft IT infrastructure to build a secure digital marketing platform that is easy to use and configure. A digital marketing software platform should provide the basic building blocks needed to develop and run scalable digital marketing solutions. Such a platform should seamlessly bring together the following key subsystems:
Content ManagementA digital marketing platform should include a rich platform for creating, publishing and delivering all forms of digital content. A content management platform should provide end user friendly, comprehensive support for content authoring, editing and publishing of digital assets such as documents, web content and rich multi-media content such as images, audio and video. The content would be viewed by potentially millions of target customers and hundreds of brand managers and other internal users. The content management system should provide the scale and security needed. A greater number of users find products and services through internet search rather than marketing campaigns. Hence the content management system should allow for search engine optimization on all external facing properties.
CommerceA commerce platform is the heart of any digital marketing solution and provides capabilities for the creation, management, storage and runtime support for core ecommerce entities. These entities include, for example, user profiles, product catalogs, orders and payments. The platform should be able to scale to support large numbers of users, products, orders and transactions. Developers should be easily able to extend the plat-form with plug-in components to do business specific processing and interfacing.
SearchSearch is an integral part of a digital marketing platform, finding the right information about products and services efficiently is the basic requirement for a successful user experience. However, because users look for information to make decisions, a Search platform should extend beyond information and should really be a decision engine that helps users sift through myriad of choices, options and possibilities. The platform should seamlessly query transactional data, content repositories and line of business systems. It should be able to understand the user’s intent and provide the right information to make the right decisions.
Figure: Digital Marketing Platform—Conceptual View
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 20January 2010
AdvertisingA digital marketing platform should allow for advertising and marketing campaigns to be created based on industry trends, demand, product availability, inventory, and brand awareness. At the same time, the platform should provide the tools to gain customer insight and understand the target consumers for each campaign. The platform should have an analytics subsystem that enables brand managers to deeply understand the effectiveness and results of such campaigns.
User Management In an increasingly multi-channel world, customers research online, buy and pick up goods in store and then go back to online channels for service and maintenance. A good digital marketing platform should allow for user identity, profile and purchase history to flow seamlessly across channels.
An effective digital marketing campaign should be targeted to the end consumer and consider not only users’ age groups but also their demographics for that instance of contact. A good platform should allow for deep personalization of the user experience based on various factors such as age, location, time of the day, the Website the user has clicked through to get to the brand etc. These concepts are as relevant in the offline world, where the personalization is mainly a customer service task.
Social ComputingSocial computing has not only brought large number of users to the Web but also fundamentally changed how many of these consumers interact with product and services. A digital marketing platform should provide the ability to connect to common social networks like Facebook and Twitter. It should allow brand managers to appropriately advertise their brands on these networks. It should allow consumers to reach out to their social network with the click of a button to seek input while making buying decisions. It should provide easy to use capabilities for consumers to search and read product reviews, rate products and discuss about them.
Integration MiddlewareA digital marketing platform needs to effectively abstract the interactions between the core user facing system and other backend line of business systems. It should also allow for seamless integration of data and processes across different channels. Hence the platform should include an integration middleware to provide routing, translation, transformation and orchestration services.
AnalyticsAnalytics is the soul of a digital marketing platform, whether to understand the user behavior and affinity to a particular brand or the effectiveness of a campaign, a comprehensive analytical platform is needed. A data warehouse should provide the central repository to collect data related to products, transactions, users, and campaigns across multiple channels. Collection and categorization of data is done in the data warehouse in preparation for analytics. The data warehouse has to be implemented with sufficient data integration points across the entire system. A powerful analytics and reporting system should complement the data warehouse to allow rich visualization of data, slicing and dicing of information and decision making.
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 21January 2010
Cross Cutting Concerns Following are some cross cutting concerns that any platform that can be used to build solutions upon must support:
Scalability – The platform should scale to large number of users, transactions, views, etc.
Security – The platform should provide for secure solutions to be developed that do not compromise any data or processes and ensure high availability of the solutions.
Manageability – Solutions developed should be easy to manage, with tools to monitor the load and activity and the ability to set rules and policies.
Administration Tools – Not only IT users but brand managers, category managers etc should have appropriate business user friendly tools to create and run marketing campaigns.
Microsoft offers a comprehensive digital marketing platform that allows partners and customers to build end-to-end solutions. Following is a snapshot of the different technologies and tools that come together to provide this platform.
The Microsoft digital marketing platform encompasses:
• Bing is a powerful new decision engine designed to help consumers accomplish tasks and make faster, more informed decisions.
• Bing Shopping enables consumers to compare features, opinions and prices simultaneously, simplifying search to help consumers save money and make purchase decisions more quickly.
• Bing Cash back combines the power of Bing with a comparison-shopping engine to bring consumers some of the best deals on the web. The program rewards consumers with cash back rebates for a purchase, and gives advertisers the opportunity to sell on a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) basis.
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 22January 2010
SharePoint Search for content search such as reviews, images
• FAST Search for SharePoint, a new search server that adds the high-end search capabilities of FAST ESP into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
• Active Directory provides the means to manage the identities and relationships that make up network environments.
• SharePoint Forms Based Authentication forms-based authentication enables user authentication based on validation of credential input from a logon form.
• SharePoint FIS for brand websites with support for social computing
• Atlas Advanced Analytics offers a flexible and diverse collection of in-depth reports so you can tap into powerful metrics and optimize your media, creative and web sites and make smart marketing decisions.
• Microsoft Advertising portfolio including
• adCenter With Microsoft adCenter, you can use intelligent targeting tools that identify your audience, so you can reach the right people, at the right time—so that every click counts. Which makes for excellent returns on your investment.
• pubCenter - Whether you are just starting out or managing a website with millions of page views a month, Microsoft pubCenter lets you place relevant, profitable ads on your website.
• Commerce Server helps you create e-commerce solutions and Web sites with high-performance, familiar tools that simplify setup, management, and administration tasks.
• BizTalk Server connects systems inside and across organizations, to exchange data and orchestrate processes requiring multiple systems.
For developer and user tools:
• Expression Studio If you think and design visually, Expression® Studio is a perfect tool to enable you to create compelling, impactful and expressive designs for the desktop and the web. The visually rich technologies in Silverlight® and .NET offer amazing possibilities to bring your creative ideas to life using a range of design tools purpose built for the task.
• SharePoint Designer Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides you with tools to automate your business processes, build efficient applications on top of the Microsoft SharePoint platform, and tailor your SharePoint site to your needs, all in an IT-managed environment.
• Commerce Server Admin tools for developer and user tools
The Microsoft products that form our digital marketing offering can be built into an integrated, scalable platform capable of delivering the personalized, consistent experiences that today’s consumers want. When you choose Microsoft products for your digital marketing needs, you gain the ability to leverage your company’s other Microsoft investments. In addition, you benefit from our decades of focus on meeting the needs of the digital consumer.
Contact Information
For more information about the Microsoft in digital marketing platform, please reach out to your local Microsoft account team or: Matt Muta, Director for e-commerce solutions email: [email protected]
Stephane Boss, Director Industry Marketing email: [email protected]
Javed Sikander, Industry Technology Strategist email: [email protected]
Check our website: www.microsoft.com/digitalexperiences
Creating Connected Digital Experiences 23January 2010
The information contained in this white paper represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft
cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.
This white paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.
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Part #098-116091.
Connected Experiences
Delivering Value Today, Driving Innovation for the Future
