Social Networking - Monetizing Facebook Business Apps

In previous articles we’ve looked at “apps” (applications) for Facebook:
1. Standard packaged apps
2. Customised apps used by the UK political parties to spread the word approaching the general election

Let’s look at a couple of custom-written apps for commercial businesses, the first of which is the simplest form – customised Facebook pages

Marmite. Do you love it or hate it? They have taken this question and produced a series of Facebook marketing campaigns. The one earlier in 2010 was a mock election between two “parties”l:

• The “Love Party"
• “Marmite - Hate it” which promises to ‘Stop the Spread’ of Marmite

There are also various other Facebook sites for Marmite (type Marmite into Facebook’s search)

During the "election" they had apps to help “spread the word”, just like the main UK political parties did. But these have been removed now the Marmite election is over.

Another household food brand has taken apps a stage further. Pringles has 3.4million “fans”, and has set up two apps:

1. “Pringoooals”, playing on the World Cup theme
2. “Oversharers” where a user can use a Pringles-sponsored button to tell friends when they blab too much in their status updates.

Both the Marmite and Pringles examples are in the B2C space, principally because Facebook provides the vast numbers of people that are a B2C marketer’s dream.

Monetizing Facebook apps more directly has been described as “the holy grail”. We’ll look at this in the next apps article.

If you know of any other good apps examples, B2B or B2C, do add a comment.

.

Escaping Excel Hell - Add-Ins for Excel

In an earlier article I mentioned that there are three principle ways to escape Excel hell.

The first is to make better use of the version you have, or upgrade to Excel 2010.


The second is to replace it with a database or specialist software such as budgeting/reporting.

The third is to use add-ins or integration. Looking at add-ins, there are several that are worth evaluating:

1. For dashboards: Excel gauges from Pendragon Systems, as in the graphic above. Click here for this example and a free trial.
2. For graphics: Sparklines for Excel (SfE)
3. For business intelligence – analysis and reporting: PowerOLAP 9 using Excel as a front end, from BIOLAP in the UK
4. For statutory accounts production: VT Final Accounts
   

If anyone has hands-on experience of any of these tools, good or painful, please comment. Likewise if there are any other favourites or best-to-avoids! Suppliers are equally welcome to comment.

.

Performance Management - KPIs and the Brewery Analogy

Yes, that got your attention! But why the association between KPIs and breweries?

KPIs are of two types:

(1) KPDs – Key Performance Drivers
(2) KRMs – Key Results Metrics.

It’s the KPDs that are the real Key Performance “Indicators”, providing information about how well the underlying business processes are running.

Let’s think for the moment of a business as a money-making machine. There are typically a number of key stages with any business, in this example B2B (business to business):

1. Marketing function generates interest
2. Sales closes deals
3. Operations supplies the product or service
   
4. Finance collects the customer payment. and pays suppliers and staff
   

How do you monitor how well each of these (and any other) stages are working?

We are talking about business processes. So let’s look at how to monitor a manufacturing process. Yes, let’s look at a brewery, and imagine you are in the control room. What would you want to see on the control panels?

Simplifying the brewing process, we have at least six key stages:

• Receipt of raw materials
• Preparation for fermentation (Mash Tun, Copper and Hopback)
  
• Fermentation
• Filtration
• Bottling & Casing
• Despatch & sale

For fermentation you’ll want to know a number of key metrics, perhaps:

• Temperature & pressure (probably on gauges)
• Quantity of raw materials added per batch or hour
• Quantity of finished product compared to “standard” for the amount of raw materials (yield)
• Alcoholic strength produced
• Etc etc

These are all non-financial metrics, and are a mix of KPDs (driving the process) and KRMs (the result of the process).

Applying a similar approach to a sales team, for example, you can benefit from setting KPDs & KRMs for managing the sales funnel. Weekly metrics might include “value of quotes per week by salesman” plus “conversion rate from quote to sale.within x weeks”, where x is appropriate for the length of the sales cycle.

There’s the old phrase “What gets measured gets done”. You therefore need to be careful about which metrics you use, to ensure that in combination they drive behaviour that is congruent with the business’s goals. This is especially relevant where there are fractions e.g. converted quotes divided by total quotes raised. This is because it is easier to improve the metric by reducing the number of quotes in this example, by excluding those that are not virtually certain of success, than by actually improving the closing process. If the business prefers that quotes are also raised in situations where the order is not virtually certain, there needs to be another metric that encourages staff to raise them.

If you’d like further information, I wrote a whole series of articles on Performance Management . Or just give me a call.

.

Cloud Computing - Hot Air or Business Reality?

Cloud computing is BIG BENEFITS, BIG RISKS. Is use of the cloud living on a wing and a prayer? Or is the cloud business-ready?

See recent article Hot Air or Business Reality?

.

Weekly review – iPhone 4 launch / iPad availability / PowerPoint’s role

Apple iPhone 4

Normally I wouldn't talk about mobile phones in this blog. But with little exciting in the news this last week, the sheer power of modern mobiles and their growing importance for internet access (and my own N95 8GB being eligible for an upgrade!), I’m taking a little more interest than normal in the mobile market.

Hot on the heels of the Apple iPad is the iPhone 4. It is the "iPhone 4" not the "iPhone 4G", communicating at most using 3G. (4G, whether it is LTE being trialed by O2, or full IMTA, won't be available commercially in the UK for some time). The iPhone 4 is available from Thursday June 24th from all five UK mobile networks (O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Three & Vodafone, plus resellers such as Carphone Warehouse & Phones-4-U). Only O2 appear to have announced their tariffs, which unlike the iPad includes an iPhone 4 in the monthly contracts.

The original iPhone took the world by storm three years ago. The iPhone 4 is a distinct improvement on the previous models, such as by providing multi-tasking and a 5MP camera. But many are saying that other manufacturers’ phones, many using the “Android” operating system may be a better bet, especially the HTC Desire, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and the Blackberrys.

The iPhone 4 offers significant functionality, including better resolution display, and HD-quality videoing.

To a certain extent the choice between the iPhone and other smartphones is what “apps” (applications) are available for the “platforms”. It's also the age-old battle between the Mac OS available only for "lovable" Apple products (in this case the iPhone) and an operating system available usually more cheaply on a variety of manufacturers’ devices (in this case “Android”).

It may be a matter of choosing between heart and head.


Apple iPad Update

The iPad is still very difficult to get hold of in the UK. There were some of the iPad models without the 3G micro-SIM slot available directly from Apple shops over this last weekend. Currys and PCWorld seemed to be sold out around the south east at least, but both now offer a stock availability checker (click on the links above, then your region, then model at bottom of page then "Click here to check the availability in your area"). For the 3G models, which allow connection to the 3G mobile data network for an extra subscription, it should hopefully only be a matter of days before new stock is available.

But which model? Check for yourself, but unless you are going to be loading a lot of videos onto the iPad, the entry-level 16GB should be sufficient. Instead of bigger storage, why not save your money and buy a decent case and other accessories instead? The choice is yours.

For 3G services, there's a big disparity in tariffs among the operators, none of which include an iPad, which has to be bought separately as above. So which operator?

Here are the Apps available for iPad and previous articles on the iPad:

• MobileMe (item 3)
• iPad - Fashion Fad or Business Workhorse

PowerPoint – Presentation or Persuasion?

You'll find this an interesting take on the role of PowerPoint from Graham, Jones, the “Internet Phychologist”.

.