ER what?

Should companies adapt to ERP or the other way around?

Before even considering who needs to adapt to who, I need to find out what ERP actually is?!

Electron Paramagnetic Resonance? Well perhaps that too, oh no...but wait a minute... that's EPR...

Ok... 'Enterprise Resource Planning' on track again...

The following image helps to understand what ERP is about!

'Enterprise Resource Planning'

TPCmag.com defines it as:  

"An integrated information system that serves all departments within an enterprise" 

 As the image above illustrates, ERP is a central system which provides flow of information within the differnt part of the company internally, as well as customers and other external stakeholder such as suppliers externally.

What are the benefits of ERP?

Is simple words, it increases efficiencies within each department of the organization. "It improves the coordination of the company’s process into one streamlined process where everything can be accessed through one enterprise wide information network."

As an example; supplier>inventory>customer. By linking these, the system identifies what products are selling well, when stocks are low and an order will be placed accordingly.

"In order to have a successful implementation of your ERP system, you need to make sure you have your information in line to help make the process swift.  It doesn’t matter whether or not your company deals with paper or plastics, ERP provides your company with the right system and performance needed."

According to the above statement, both ERP and the company need to be adapted to one another. 

I would however argue the company's need to adapt to the ERP would very much depend on how much the given ERP would increase the company's efficiency and if the cost of this adaptation outweigh the benefits. 

Implementation of an ERP system and the integration of the enterprise in itself is a complex procedure and great care should be taken when choosing such system. If in addition to that, the company is required to make major changes to be able to utilize such system, it is most necessary to carry out a cost analysis and estimate the time in which the benefits would be appreciated.

Facebook beats google

The power of social networking sites should not be underestimated as the trend clearly illustrates the popularity of social networking is not on decline. It is only a beginning of a revolutionary change in the way people socialize, communicate and make decisions. 
 According to Hitwise, (a web analytics firm) in the UK, social networks receives more hits than google.

"during May 2010, social networks accounted for 11.88% of UK Internet visits and search engines accounted for 11.33%, representing the first ever month that social networks have been more popular than search engines in the UK.

Should google be worried? They claim that this is of no concern to them. Google also admits that more time is being spent on social networks, but claims that their interest is quite the opposite. They want people to search on google and find what they are looking for in as little time as possible.

While this might have some logic in it, I am not convinced. How would advertisers react knowing that their add may not have a chance of even being seen... and what if people could actually start searching on facebook? Now that would be an interesting shift!

Facebook II

I recently had the pleasure of having an insight to facebook that was provided by an actual insider!

It was a great session but very short. I had so many questions in relation to how get the most out of facebook which remained unanswered so I guess I just need to continue my experimentation on facebook.

Overall the discussion were mainly about what facebook is about and what their plans are. As can be expected, there were also many questions about privacy issues etc. Nonetheless, we didn't discuss the issue of facebook ban in China and whether facebook expects any changes in this market.

What I got out of the session...

What I did eventually get an answer for at the end of the class was how their 'bidding' advertising works? You basically decide your own price and the chance for your add to appear based on that price, depends on the amount of other bidders with similar add! This is something I will experiment with and I will write about the result in due course.

An interesting notion about advertising opportunities on facebook was their interactive adds which are the most successful on their site. In fact, these are often shared with friends if the advertiser can satisfy the targeted customer.

While these are not bidding adds and a quotation would be necessary to obtain the price, it is an amazing way to communicate a message without being intrusive. Something that companies should really be careful with if they want to advertise successfully.

But how do they customize the adds on each person's profile?

Do they use analytical tools on profile behavior? When you click on different profiles, you can see that the advertisements differ according to the interest of the particular profile. I have seen this change on my own profile. For a while I was searching for pages related to IT and at the same time, the advertising on my profile was mainly IT related.

Equally, when I joined sited related to nutrition, calorie count etc, I kept receiving advertising which related to diet.

Other opportunities are games, quizzes and different applications. For example a health/fitness company could post quizzes where vitamins/calories could be guessed. Also applications such as calorie counts and tracks. There are many other games, applications and quizzes I could think of which could increase the traffic to a given page. Another option would be to use these tools to direct the traffic to the actual website.

Facebook

Needless to mention the revolutionary success of facebook but interesting to explore this 'simple' online platform which is used by my friend's 83 year old grad father among 400 million other active users of different age groups and backgrounds and in different languages spread around the globe.

According to facebook 50% of their active users log on to Facebook in any given day and have (on average) as many as 130 friends! Not to mention the ones who exceed 5000 friends and have to switch to a public profile!

It is no longer a question of being 'cool' or a geek to have a presence on facebook. It is almost becoming part of an everyday life for most users. People no longer ask for your number or email address.

The question is:

Sounds amazing right? How does facebook do this? How does it engage this large crowd who are so different from one another with such a standard product?

What is facebook anyway?

Is it a the site where you find your old school mates? hmmm that was orkut right?

So...is it the site where you meet the love of your life? Naaaa... cos there is no such thing! or was is match.com who promise that there is?

So...is it where you share your thoughts?...no wait... that is twitter, right?

A political site where political views are shared?? Up for a discussion...

A site where you can make free phone calls or send free texts? hmmm that would be skype right?

A tool where you can chat to your friends regardless of where the are located? hmmm No that would be Fringe I guess...

So is it an advertising site?

A technology site?

A gaming site?

A platform where you can download applications?

Event site?

Ecommerce?

A political site?

...Or

...is it all of the above in one simple platform????

If anyone thinks that facebook is simply a social networking site where you can go and read gossips on your 'home' page or tag the picture of your 'best friend' drunk in a bar, then they must think again!

Facebook have received a lot of criticism for privacy issues with regards to photo sharing among others. However, one would truly be underestimating the power of facebook if they don't see beyond their privacy issues and instead tries to see the actual potentials in facebook.


To be continued on the next blog...



...but for now some basic statistics from facebook:

• There are over 160 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups and events)

• Average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events

• Average user creates 70 pieces of content each month

• More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

• More than 70 translations available on the site

• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

• Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application

• More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries

• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications

• More than 550,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform

• More than 250,000 websites have integrated with Facebook Platform

• More than 100 million Facebook users engage with Facebook on external websites every month

• Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook

• There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

• There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

Warm wishes from The Matrix !!!

Fringe

I recently downloaded fring application on my iphone. Fring allows free voice/chat/and video calls to your 'fring buddies'.

Although I was wishfully hoping that I would be able to make calls to a normal number and not necessary a 'fring friend', I found it quite interesting as it actually allows add-ons such as Twitter  skype, MSN, etc.

This means that you can communicate with your friends from different services.
It is specially useful if you have friends in different countries who each use a different messenger service. Fring allows me to stay in touch with all of them by only logging in on fring.

What I would like to find out is whether it is possible to use this on a website and allow people who are logged in to contact each other without leaving the site.

1:12 am... perhaps I will sleep on this and explore it more after the accounting test tomorrow!

Foursquare

Following my recent experimentation with the new online ‘gadgets’ (hyper-linked in my first blog post), I must say that my interest in the ‘Matrix’ world has really amplified!

Being a business opportunity seeking by default, a new concept triggers my brain waves to automatically search for the ‘business benefits’ of it and the most recent one being the ‘FourSquare’.

What is FourSqaure? Who uses Foursquare? Why is Foursqaure used? .... And my ‘preset’ thoughts: Where is the ‘benefit’?

To my great joy, today we were actually assigned by our dear professor Enrique Dans to look into the FourSquare business model.

...in brief: Foursaqure is an application which allows users to collect points by checking in at different locations.

The user who collects most points at a certain location becomes the mayor of that place. This simple concept encourages the user to check in and it often results in 'competition' among friends to become the mayor!

It is free for users and it allows them to comment/recommend a location on Foursqaure. It also allows users to add friends on Foursqaure and connect to facebook and twitter.

So...where is the business opportunity in this? Different thoughts go to my mind...

As I am looking at the different ‘checked in’ locations of my few FourSqaure friends, I think...aha!!! If I had a business...then the more ‘check ins’ the better...I am thinking, this is genius!!!

We are all sick and tired of being targeted by advertising here and there and yet on FourSquare...WE ARE ADVERTISING FOR BUSINESSES with great pleasure!! ...on top of that, we are informing them how and where we spend our money!

Ok..so far so good...now, what’s in it for FourSquare? Does this new ‘marketing tool’ generate any revenue from the ‘checked in’ locations? Not sure...this requires further research...

...I start off by google and I come across the following sites:

Wikipedia...
Foursquare ...
Business Insider...
Cruchbase ...
TechieBuzz...

Will not bore you with details (although very interesting, hence I have provided the links) but here are the basic facts:

• So far 300.000 users (Feb 2010)

• Business has been valued at $100 million with acquisition interest from yahoo and Microsoft and a strategic partnership offer by facebook.

• Currently, still in the ‘testing face’ and free for most ‘customers’ (customers being businesses). Some businesses are offering ‘specials nearby’ goodies to users (for example a free cocktail) towards the points the user has been awarded.

The planned business model:

Foursquare will be adjusting its strategies for three types of organizations for paid services:

1. Small, privately owned stores and restaurants
2. Brands with retail chains
3. Huge multinationals marketers

Foursquare is also creating analytic dashboard (for bigger brands) to enable businesses to track their stay visitors.
Other opportunities are within deals against impressions such as web ads, clicks such as search ads, or even cost per check-in.

The interesting question is however, whether the popularity of FourSquare will grow in the same speed once it becomes an official ‘marketing tool’ where users are being ‘targeted’.

How can it avoid having the same dilemma as twitter where 5% of its user generate 75% of its overall activities?

When I was examining how I could promote ‘my online business’, I also wondered why FourSquare model has not considered online businesses। Perhaps a new opportunity... ?
In any case, it is interesting to follow the progress of the FourSquare business model and to see how it will progress in the near future.