Tips to Coursera Capstone Digital Marketing

I have recently completed my Capstone for Digital Marketing, a great experience to be shared with wider audience.
Important aspects to adhere:

1.    Stick to the word counts and citation is must for each sessions

Stick to the word count mentioned on each assignments. There is weightage on this on your score.

Citation and Reference at the end is must, this usually not counted against your word count. So you can add this under the footnote to reviewer as reminder. Most of the reviewers, which I have come across are very professional in the approach and will not degrade on the score, if you put proper footnotes.

2.     Try to get more research and concentrate on the sessions from Kevin Hartman, those sessions has an import part of most of the assignments

Yes, indeed the course started from Prof. Erik provided a much needed introduction to digital world; during capstone which I have responded (Grainger and Bosch) is mainly focusing on the courses Mr Kevin handled.

There is special focus on the Data analysis, interpretation of the data, inference and how you can focus on the data quality.

3.    Research and Read relevant topics and Recommended readings for the Weekly Assignments

Read a lot to tackle some of minor challenges you may need to face during the course. I have gone through some chapters from “Web Analytics” book from Avinash Kaushik. Unfortunately, the book needs a multiple readings to read and understand author’s viewpoints. I will set a personal goal to finish the book twice in 2016.

But a must read for any aspiring Digital Marketing professionals.

Try to visits the recommend readings at least once (a glance will be enough). The best one I remember is on the analytical part that provided on Week 4.

4.    Be frequent visitors to the Grainger and Bosch websites (Not sure your assignment changes from this or not ).

Encourage to visit relevant sites for the assignments; Understand the product/services the companies provides over websites.

Navigate through competitor sites for me it was Amazon, HomeDepot, and Lowe’s. (Retailer)

Milwaukee, Makita vs Bosch tools (Manufacturer side)  

5.    Understand the products on Web analytics.

I have browsed through different products during 1-2 months period

·         Google Web analytics

·         Similar Web

·         Alexa

·         Open Web Analytics (OWA)

6.    Try to be capture a good compelling Images

There are some session on capstone asking to get the images, modification, suggestion, and change in user experience etc. Do these session with supporting images.

7.    Be yourself
It is important while writing your thoughts; You are free to express your thoughts; the answer need to be accurate. However, as you know already there is no 100% accurate answer, be objective with examples and prove the statement you win 80% of battle.

However the grading is done by some individual seems to have biased manner. You can ignore those unprofessional behaviors. There are 95% of peers will evaluate you with the contents and knowledge you have.

8.    Use discussion board

I took some good hours to understand some of the capstone (weekly assignments). You can always post your concerns on the discussion board. The great place and response you can get within 24hrs at the max.

Thumb rules:

Understand the problem statements

Read the excel sheet and understand the numbers and relevancy of numbers to the problem statements and Scenarios


I have created 6 scenarios as combination and presented my capstone and most of the time it is well received with the peers.

In case if you need any guidance please reach me on kks.krishna@gmail.com

I won’t be doing any assignments for you. Only technical/functional discussion and knowledge sharing only.

This is not a paid service and am not in that business! Happy reading

Business of Network Product (An Experience with Siebel N/w Product Design). Adaptable for Product design considerations

Network

Node

Connection

Three topics will be discussed in perception with Siebel product Model of the N/w products. Siebel CRM is taken due to its massive popularity and OOTB configuration it support for any kind Telecom products.

I guess to SFDC, MS CRM, SAP will struggle for some years (at least till 2020), to get some way near to Siebel order management features especially for the telecom.

The approach from Siebel is proven and can be taken for any solution design considerations.

Introduction to N/W product:

Understanding a network product is important before modelling the product in Siebel. As a next step, it is important to understand the business (Selling, Quote Management, Order and Cross/Up Selling).

Network product is used by big corporates to establish their IT network needs to the outside world or for inter-location based connectivity.

Typical example that is coming to me is a simple P2P connection. MPLS, VPN, Ethernet, Frame Relay etc. Some of them are dedicated and others are shared. A significant decision criteria to choose the network types is based on Speed and type of usage you have.

Most of the tier-1 service provider in your country provides Network products; some of them are global players intercontinental service providers like BT, AT&T etc.

In a typical network product, two location are linked via a connection to form a network.

Pic:There are 2 nodes connected (A google search will take you to NODEJS! so please be specific on your search queries) through 1 connection to form a network.

Model consideration:

• N/w product holds the Nodes and N/Ws

Parent and Root product will be of type Network which should contain a connection product with certain attributes like speed, SLA parameters, OSS provisioning parameters etc. The Node comes mostly at same level as connection, but it is up on the solutions complexity you needed for the implementation.

Node is contains the details of device, premise details, LM etc. Once again depending on the business you have to model on CRM application. However, Siebel or any product model from any CRM is capable of accommodating these changes without much effort. If a certain product vendor says a lot of customization required to adopt to these simple product models/attributes, check your RFP floated for CRM application.

• Node based validation should be done (Constraints)

To make the product offer in Siebel to work properly you may require to define constraints in Product Administration level to set up the rules. The rules will validate during order process on the e-Configurator level.

Details is once again depending on the customer requirements.

• N/W based constraints

Same as above; No explicit explanations required for this.

Examples of the Constraints is below:

• Standalone node is not possible, Two Nodes are mandatory 
• Network without connection is not possible
• Connection can't be shared with other nodes

Quote, Order and Asset:

Welcome!, to new approach for most of the people called Project Asset cache feature Siebel provides. I came across this topic in my early days of Siebel Order Management.

However, I experience this during Network product configuration scenarios.  Let me explain simple as possible as I could.

Suppose a scenario that a customer is already have an Asset (Installed Product) , then Order and Quote validation will take the existing products in Order or Quote into consideration and validate with the existing Assets.

e.g: Product P2, has a constraint that it should have only 5 instances for any customer at any point of time. This is implemented using a constraint in Siebel.

 Currently customer A, has already purchased 2 instances of P2, and Ordering 4 P2 products, in this case the order will fail due to the exceeding the constraint defined on the product.

In a normal Order validation, the rules will configure from Orderß àAsset. However, in N/w product, it can be configured from

Quote ßà Orderß àAsset (This line I need to further research, will get back to you later)

The best Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Sites and Indian Presence

Recently, I got an online certification from Coursera.com on Digital Marketing. I have came across online training sites around 3-4 years.

Early in my career with IISc Bangalore, I have acquired reasonable exposure to the Digitalization of the academic programs in different digital channels. But change and evolution in IT brought a lot of innovative business and MOOCs are one of them.


If you think about University related courses that can attract your employers please try

Cousera
Edx
Udacity


As an Indian flavor IIT-B/MHRD are signed a memorandum to build indigenous MOOC platform current status is pathetic.

I hope technocrats of IITB can provide the right director to this great initiative.

https://www.iitbombay.org/news/Current/open-online-courses-a-welcome-step-in-indian

Explore more on MOOC on the Aggregate site:

https://www.class-central.com/report/swayam-india/






 

SFDC: Why Larry Allowed to SFDC to Grow bigger than Siebel CRM

SFDC: Why Larry Allowed to  SFDC to Grow bigger than Siebel CRM

This is tricky question, but that is how the world in Digital and Cloud era. Disruption can be from any where irrespective of direct competitors. The competition from different industry vertical can overturn your business upside down in a matter of time.

For e.g, Think about traditional Music industry and Media, iPod just took away the business. Similarly think about the Camera giants like Kodak, Nikon etc. Mobile took 1/2 of the market share. Most of the patents has brought by Motorola, Samsung etc.

Coming back to Siebel and SFDC:

The following is my observation about why technically SFDC able to grow.

• Cloud presence, SFDC leveraged the cloud buzzword and modeled the technology focus around that.
• For Siebel, with the underlying data-model and the architecture which it is running may not be able to scale-up for a cloud based multi-tenant application. (Could have focused on the CRM onDemand which is the first cloud offering on CRM started somewhere in 2004). However Oracle seems to be focused on Fusion application and lost Cloud based initiatives esp on the CRM On-Demand space.
• If you want blame Oracle for some reason this is right place to do that. Larry is still fuming on the missed opportunity. As a rear guard action, Oracle did buy Bigmachine, a CPQ platform (on force.com platform).

• SFDC Model and Market place Applications is the ticking force behind force.com. So far, none of the Oracle product able to have this. (Key Differentiation factor and going to be only important differentials). To leverage the developers this going to be the key.

Finally, Larry knows that the Oracle shares won't him 2-4 x returns in another 10 yrs. and SFDC easy can give the return in 2 yrs or so. Smart in one way. :-) 

PS:

On the contrary the SFDC was direct competition to mighty CRM market of Siebel. On the high Siebel enjoyed a whopping 73% of Market share in CRM applications.

But with competition coming from Niche players and enterprise application product vendors like SAP and new highly motivated Navision through Microsoft. The picture and landscape changed for Oracle and its community in a short period.

Nevertheless change is inevitable and Oracle is going to turnaround table in coming years. A lot of investment done on Innovative Pack based applications to support Mobile platforms.

Needs to change the DB landscape to make Siebel application more adaptable to the new digital Era.

Getting Ahead of 360 Customer profile in Digital Era

It was a fascinating era with Customer information which consolidated on Account Summary screen in Siebel CRM or any other CRM you worked on.

Going forward in Digital era, can we bring customer profile in one screen. Probably impossible. The limitation is not technical, but understanding what Digital means for an organisation.

Many organisation start tracking the social media from 2010, Social Media CRM getting lime-lighted around 2008-2009. Currently this is not a buzzword, you can find Social Media based Customer care Pre-build integration are build into many CRM applications.


Use case like Service requests creations, Follow-up activities are commonplace scenarios for which CRM has touch based with Social Media.

Social Media alone won't enable the "Digitalization". It is mix of technology that is going to enable the Digitalization this COULD be IoT, Cloud, Bigdata, etc (SMAC). And SMAC is going to have smash for 21st century.

In another 10 years, machine language can easily imitate Human brains and thoughts. A terminator is possible soon.but time machines yet to invented to save the world.

Jokes apart, a fascinating customer profile is yet to be developed for digital world may it look like the below depending which vertical you are in.


Customer Data

• Demographics (Location based Services, Recommendation etc)

• Interactions and Channels (Social Media Channels, Mobile Apps, Direct, Push data and Customer interaction preference)

• Recent Entities and Interactions (Quotes, Orders, SR etc)

• Current Business (IoT Devices, Current Services/Assets base)

• Analytic Dashboards (Embedded Dashboards Persona based )

I put recent entities, this could be flat and independent of entities Quotes, Orders etc. This will be recent interactions that the customer had with business. This information is crucial and needs to denormalised form.

Next session I will be discussing on how Bigdata Digital is going to feed an existing running CRM application in a two way transaction model.

As a reference, PB (Pitney Bowe's) has leveraged from the new SMAC initiative come to new 360-degree view where they know the interaction with customer with entire history of transaction with the customer.