{"id":12259,"date":"2012-06-20T14:05:20","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T13:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=4068"},"modified":"2012-06-20T14:05:20","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T13:05:20","slug":"the-future-of-business-faster-than-real-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/the-future-of-business-faster-than-real-time.html","title":{"rendered":"The Future of Business: Faster Than Real-Time?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jeremiah<\/a><\/p>\n

Presenting at LeWeb London, Analyst Jeremiah Owyang<\/a> of Altimer explained that the conference theme (\u201cFaster Than Real Time\u201d) referred to the importance of anticipating customer needs, not just reacting to them as fast as possible.<\/p>\n

He used the retailer Target as an example: the company uses predictive technology to give special offers for products that customers are likely to want in the future, and in one infamous case knew that a teenage girl was pregnant, even before her father was aware of it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Just as the top sport stars have learned to anticipate where the ball is going to be, based on their long experience of the underlying patterns of play, organizations can now monitor the patterns of business and take action.<\/p>\n

The challenge in business is that there is rarely just one ball in play. Owyang outlined the complexity of the problem, multiplying the number of sources of information by the number of different possible channels, the number of different screens, and the different stages of engagement. This results in a massive 525 potential ways that customers can interact with a company, even without taking into account different customer profiles and geographic location.<\/p>\n

\"owyang\"<\/p>\n

Owyang talked about his company\u2019s research into the \u201cDynamic Customer Journey,\u201d where today\u2019s consumers face an overwhelming amount of choices:<\/p>\n

\u201cA few weeks ago, I was in Times Square. I had a mission to count every logo from a fixed position. I tried to do it. But in a few seconds, I gave up. There were so many digital screens that were constantly changing \u2013 at least 15 of them. This is what we call the dynamic customer journey. This same experience will be in the living room and the retail store in the future\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the amount of data available is rising exponentially:<\/p>\n

\u201c250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook each day. If you printed them out, would be 80 Eiffel Towers of photos each day.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He gave two examples of organizations that are using new technology to change the way they interact with customers. The first was the famous case of Tesco using the walls of the Seoul metro<\/a> to create a \u201cvirtual supermarket\u201d where shoppers could use their mobile devices to choose products and have them delivered.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo: DesignBoom.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The second was American Eagle\u2019s digital signage in Times Square<\/a>, where customers could have their \u201c15 seconds of fame\u201d by having their picture taken in the store, which was then displayed on a massive billboard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo: michaeltk<\/a><\/p>\n

Organizations are struggling to figure out what new sources of information they need to track and how the experience will change across different channels and devices. And in the future, with technology that can provide highly contextual information to customers, advertising itself may evolve to something else, resulting in disruption to traditional revenue streams.<\/p>\n

Owyang also talked about Altimeter\u2019s research into \u201cThe Sentient World\u201d, where everything around is \u201calive and full of information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Examples included GE Lighting\u2019s iphone application<\/a> that lets homeowners view the effects of different lighting choices on the mood of their own rooms.<\/p>\n

He also talked about how new technology is helping monitor our own bodies, whether it\u2019s running devices that track our performance, or \u201csmart pajamas\u201d for babies<\/a> (tagline: \u201cwe know how your baby feels\u201d). And how customer experiences are being changed, in restaurants<\/a> featuring \u201ce-tables<\/a>\u201d that react to the food that is placed on them, or by looking at the world through devices such as Google Glass<\/a><\/p>\n

Owyang ended with three big questions that business need to answer in the future:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. If everything emits data, how will we sort intelligence from noise?<\/li>\n
  2. How will consumers communicate with inanimate objects? How will these interactions be measured?<\/li>\n
  3. At what point does this new world become self-sufficient beyond human intervention? Which companies will benefit from this?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For more about Altimeter\u2019s main research themes<\/a>, you can visit their site, that gives more details about their research into the Dynamic Customer Journey<\/a>, the Adaptive Organization<\/a>, and the Sentient World<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Presenting at LeWeb London, Analyst Jeremiah Owyang of Altimer explained that the conference theme (\u201cFaster Than Real Time\u201d) referred to the importance of anticipating customer needs, not just react to them as fast as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[91,652,689,1072],"class_list":["post-12259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-altimeter","tag-jeremiah-owyang","tag-leweb","tag-timo-elliott"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/altimeter_banner_thumb.jpg?fit=690%2C310&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3bJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}