Social CRM in the Insurance Industry

Frank Diana Digital Foundation, Industry, Insurance, Social , , , , ,

I recently participated in the writing of an article on Social CRM for the Insurance industry. The piece is now available online via the Insurance Networking News. The Insurance industry is showing a great deal of interest in social business – and I hear it in most discussions with industry executives. It is clear that the industry is beginning to understand that insight from social channels can drive better decision making. Companies like Farmers Insurance are driving new growth, new product development, and customer retention by sharing information from Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn with their network of Agents.

A recent study indicates that 56% of companies are planning future Social CRM initiatives, while Gartner indicates that 30% of companies will extend their Social Networking efforts to Social CRM processes within the next two years. As I note in the article, social computing will enable a powerful sales, marketing and customer service platform that improves the customer experience and elevates brand identity. The full article is a worthwhile read, and provides some insight into the future use of Social CRM in the Insurance industry.

More Thoughts on Digital Strategy

Frank Diana Humanity

While reflecting on recent dialog with executives, I’ve realized that although the growth of digital represents opportunity, the speed at which we are reacting could actually be working against us. Technology advancements and their broad consumer adoption are driving initiatives in isolation. We see tremendous opportunity in riding the social media, location and mobility waves, but when pursued in isolation, there could be unintended consequences. For example, several companies have been noted for their social media prowess, but the possible side effects of this prowess are reflected in some key statistics:

  • Coca Cola’s website traffic is down more than 40% in just 12 months
  • Nabisco’s traffic has dropped nearly 74% in just one year
  • The average decrease in unique visitors for Fortune 100 websites is 24%

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The Hottest Trends in Analytics

Frank Diana Humanity , ,

In this recent video, Eric Siegel, PhD, Conference Chair for Predictive Analytics World and Text Analytics World, discusses three innovative advanced analytics trends.  

These trends build upon the growing focus on social data and text analytics. The three areas covered are:

  1. Using social data to improve predictive models
  2. Applying text analytics unstructured data to better predict customer behavior
  3. Using net-lift modeling to determine which customers will be receptive to retention offers.

It’s a brief five minute video that is well worth the look.

Big Data

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Big Data is the latest buzzword attracting all kinds of attention. A Brand New Report by Mckinsey takes a detailed look at this new phenomenon. Mckinsey defines Big Data as datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage and analyze.  

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Digital Strategy 2.0

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I have visited with companies over the last couple of months and the term “Digital Strategy” has come up many times. It started me thinking about the last time the term was very popular – the late 1990s and early 2000 time period. I saw a reference to Digital Strategy 2.0 last week and thought it was a perfect way to describe this latest phenomenon. Several factors are driving this renewed focus on digital strategy: 

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Predictive Analytics in the Insurance Industry

Frank Diana Analytics, Digital Foundation, Industry, Insurance , ,

This very good Article by Anand S. Rao discusses the growing use of predictive analytics in the Insurance Industry. I believe Mr. Rao is right on the mark – although I continue to emphasize the expanding role of Text Analytics in the analytic value equation. In this article, he identifies some of the drivers of predictive analytics adoption.

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Now We’ve Got Social Vending Machines?

Frank Diana Digital Foundation, Social , , ,

So here’s an interesting example of the world growing more instrumented: A Social Vending Machine. Text messages and videos are being sent by a vending machine. Just more fuel for the data explosion fire. Innovative companies like PepsiCo are generating ideas that we could not imagine even a year ago. Still doubt the staying power of this social phenomenon? Still think it’s a passing fad? Vending machines just went social. Think of all the other social business scenarios on the horizon. All the while, the volume of insight bearing unstructured data just continues to grow. It gets more interesting by the minute.

Interesting Social Media Information

Frank Diana Digital Foundation, Social

I came across a very nice visual that describes the Social Landscape. The visual, courtesy of CMO.com, takes a look at the various social media platforms across four categories: customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your site, and search engine optimization. The diagram provides a lot of information on one page. In addition, this Article provides some perspective on which sites are the best across each of these categories.

Evaluating Listening Platforms

Frank Diana Social , ,

In this report – The Forrester Wave Listening Platforms – Forrested evaluates several listening platform vendors. Using 76 evaluation crtieria, Forrester found that Converseon, Nielsen, and Radian6 are the leading vendors. As the need for social intelligence intensifies, companies will continue to invest in listening platforms, while expanding the number of use cases addressed. In evaluating nine vendors, Forrester focused on the strengths and weaknesses of each vendor. The key areas of focus were: user experience, dashboards, data quality, consulting, text analysis, data source coverage, and social media outreach tools.

A Renewed Focus on Voice of the Customer

Frank Diana Analytics, Digital Foundation, Social , ,

Understanding the customer in the world before Web 2.0 was a relatively straightforward task – but the emergence of Web 2.0 has brought an explosion of social channels including blogs, wikis, forums, social networks and an array of social media. Today, customers have a loud and clear voice where they openly share ideas, perceptions, and problems about products and companies. They create trusted communities and powerful, influential constituencies. The voice of the customer (VOC) is therefore expressed in different forms through different channels. These channels are insight rich, with a wealth of untapped customer intelligence. Traditional technologies are unable to access or decipher the unstructured content upon which today’s customer conversations and insights are built.

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The Evolving Role of Business Analytics

Frank Diana Humanity , , , ,

Business Analytics refers to the skills, technologies, applications and practices for the continuous exploration of data to gain insight that drive business decisions. Business Analytics is multi-faceted. It combines multiple forms of analytics and applies the right method to deliver expected results. It focuses on developing new insights using techniques including, data mining, predictive analytics, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, statistical analysis and quantitative analysis. In addition, domain knowledge is a key component of the business analytics portfolio. Business Analytics can then be viewed as the combination of domain knowledge and all forms of analytics in a way that creates analytic applications focused on enabling specific business outcomes.

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A Familiar User Interface

Frank Diana Digital Foundation, Social , ,

This Article by Michael Hugos titled “Social Media front ends plug into enterprise applications” touches on one of the evolutionary social business paths that I believe is inevitable. Mr. Hugos describes a scenario where social media such as FaceBook and Skype become the user interface and connect to appropriate in-house systems using SOA. He states: “People already know the user interface for these social media platforms so the learning curve is not hard. And the new system runs on all sorts of mobile devices like iPhone, Android and iPad, and it stays current as new devices come out because the social media vendors (FaceBook and Skype in this case) do that job for us”. 

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Thoughts from the Collective Intellect CEO

Frank Diana Analytics, Digital Foundation, Social , , ,

In this Recent Article, Collective Intellect CEO Don Springer talks about social media and text analytics. Mr. Springer provides some industry research: 

  •  127 million people, or 57.5% of Internet users, visited a social networking site at least once a month in 2010.  Not only is the number of users growing quickly, but also the audience demographics continue to widen. 
  • The growth of unstructured data is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 62% through 2012.

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The Social Phenomena

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This social phenomena that started with Web 2.0 and accelerated with the explosion of FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter, is at its core a platform for communication, interaction and relationships. It will usher in a new era of innovation. Terms like crowd sourcing, the wisdom of crowds and collective Intelligence, all speak to the notion that innovation is not an organizational function, but the ideas of an organization, community, or society.

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Decisions at the Point of Interaction

Frank Diana Analytics, Digital Foundation ,

After defeating the two biggest Jeopardy champions of all time, people are buzzing about IBM Watson. Reactions range from excitement over the possibility it represents, to fear over the potential impact on society. Count me among those who believe that this technology will have a positive impact on business, Government and humankind. With every new game changing innovation, there is always fear over the potential impact on humanity. However, a machine will never have wisdom. It will never have the ability to invent, have empathy, or match the knowledge and ability to reason of a smart, experienced human being. But this form of advanced analytics will help us perform better. 

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The Retail Industry Turns to Analytics

Frank Diana Analytics, Digital Foundation, Industry, Retail ,

In a recent Blog Post titled Where is Business Analytics Going? I describe the compelling reasons for the growing use of advanced analytics – and the challenges that organizations face in realizing value from their efforts. The Retail Industry may be the poster child for business analytics, as they face some very compelling reasons to expand their analytic footprint. Ventana Research believes that the retail industry is going through a transformation, as volumes and sources of data continue to expand. They state that “Retailers are just starting to realize that understanding and influencing customer conversations on the Internet in social media channels is a necessity and that it requires a new type of analytics that can process text and phrases that reveal consumer sentiment and opinions of their brands”. 

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Where is Business Analytics Going and how do I take Advantage?

Frank Diana Analytics, Digital Foundation , , , , ,

Business Analytics will continue to gain traction in every industry, and several key factors make this a foregone conclusion: 

  1. The expanding universe of data and the opportunity and risk that it represents
  2. The growth of social channels
  3. The growth in mobile interaction and resulting need for analytics
  4. The critical need for customer intimacy
  5. The growing need for differentiation through innovation
  6. The rapid escalation of complexity that surrounds business today
  7. An increasing focus on value creation, growth and revenue generation
  8. The critical need for smarter decision making
  9. A continued increase in computing power that makes real time analytics viable
  10. The continued delivery of new and improved advanced analytic capabilities
  11. The movement to make advanced analytics software business user friendly

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Machine Versus Jeopardy

Frank Diana Humanity ,

Craig Rhinehart leads the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Archive / Governance and Content Analytics lines of business for IBM’s Software Group – I’ve worked with Craig in the past. In a recent Blog Post titled “What is Content Analytics? Alex”, he provides a perspective on the technology behind IBM Watson and the future of data management and analytics. Watson is taking on two former Jeopardy champions in an upcoming episode.

There is skepticism in some of the comments left by readers. As Craig responds, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Having seen first-hand what content analytics can do, Craig is not overstating the potential for this technology. In fact, he just scratched the surface of the many business applications that will benefit from this technology. Insight uncovered by this technology will drive better decisions, deliver better and faster innovation, and help companies reach new levels of operational excellence.

 I recommend this very well written Blog post.

The Role of Social Computing and Business Analytics

Frank Diana Analytics, Digital Foundation, Social , , ,

After some very bad and well-publicized business decisions drove a subprime mortgage meltdown and the near collapse of the auto industry, many would agree that methods for enhancing decision making are greatly needed. Findings in a recent MIT Sloan special report support this notion. Senior executives want their businesses run by data-driven decisions. They want to understand optimal solutions and take action quickly; but as the authors point out, this is no small task. They suggest that in order for insight to drive action, the insight must be closely linked to business strategy, easy for end users to understand, and embedded into organizational processes.

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Are you Listening?

Frank Diana Analytics, Digital Foundation, Social , , , , ,

Are you listening? All of the communication occurring in social channels can challenge our listening skills. How are we sure that we are listening in the right places? What should we be listening for? How can listening translate to tangible benefits for my business or organization? Those are only some of the pressing questions that companies are attempting to answer. As companies move down the inevitable path of co-creating products and services with customers, social channels will become an increasing source of ideas and innovation. The business imperative for customer intimacy will drive many company strategies over the next decade.

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