Archive for Crunche World
Bridging the Chasm Between IT and Internet Marketing
During the late 80’s and early 90’s, many companies, in an effort to facilitate the creation of their Internet presence, shifted control of the website and Internet technologies from their IT department to their marketing, or e-Commerce department. “They wanted us to be fast, nimble, and completely unencumbered by the bureaucratic processes that existed in the IT department,” said one e-commerce director. Many executives were sold on the idea that current IT department procedures simply wouldn’t fly in the Internet space – we needed to be much, much faster than that.
For many companies, this proved to be a great strategy. Nimble e-commerce groups created websites and strategies quickly and started producing almost immediate results. However, this approach has lost its luster over the past few years as IT departments are finding their budgets shrinking and staff stagnating. In some companies where the IT department has not had a significant hand in Internet strategy and web site development, a great deal of animosity has grown on the part of IT managers toward anything “Internet,” including Internet marketing. Migrating from an exclusionary mindset to a collaborative mindset is not something that comes easily to some companies. Egos, politics, logistics, and relationships are usually altered in the process. Countless companies are still hobbled by the lack of communication between IT and marketing, inefficient vendor relationships, and archaic processes, all of which compromise customer service. Sure, there are positives to the aforementioned separatist strategy, but there are countless negatives, as many companies have recently discovered. The tide is slowly turning towards cooperation as marketers realize they cannot go it alone anymore in the Internet space, the customers and the technology simply move too fast.
Who’s to blame for this? Both marketing leaders who do not understand the need for soliciting cross-functional support and IT leaders who fail to bridge communication gaps across functional teams play a role in creating the gap that separates IT from Marketing.
A new study recently done in the UK by CatchFIRE Systems reported that nearly three quarters of IT departments are not involved in the initial planning stages of online marketing campaigns, leading to 24% of UK organizations suffering from web overloads and site crashes. Sound familiar? It does to me, I can recall bringing down our web servers SEVERAL times when we began doing email marketing before I thought to involve the IT department.
The study goes on to indicate that almost 75% of those organizations surveyed admitted to not knowing how many users the corporate web site could support. Even worse, over 60% were unaware of how many users were leaving web sites with incomplete transactions, and barely 1 in 10 could put a figure on the consequent monetary losses to their organization. These statistics underscore the basic problem: how can we act as goodwill ambassadors to our customers when we do not have an adequate technical understanding of the tools that are at our disposal? Any good sales manager knows how many calls his sales staff can make in a day, week, or month. Yet, the average marketing manager hasn’t taken the time to inquire about how many visitors her website can handle in a day. This status quo clearly indicates the need for increased contact between IT and Marketing.
Results and relations would improve appreciably if marketing were to send a representative to IT project meetings and IT were to assign a technical liaison to each marketing team. Even involving an IT developer in a weekly sales and marketing planning meeting will have a beneficial impact. While the developer may have little understanding of marketing concepts like CPM, CPA, ROMI, and what have you, at least he can give an honest answer on whether your current CRM technology can handle the sales management mandates or reporting requirements. The average IT person can also bring your meeting back to Earth in a hurry when you casually suggest launching your next product via a worldwide webcast of a real-time speech from your CEO and an exclusive Rolling Stones concert to millions of viewers.
At the end of the day, your sales and marketing team needs an embedded IT team member, especially if you are placing a great deal of emphasis on CRM, Internet marketing and your website to drive your sales numbers. Moreover, if you have designs on ANY integration of your CRM, ERP systems and your web presence, you’re in a far better position with an IT person on board than if you try to go it alone or make that integration happen through the flavor-of-the-month vendor that you’ve hired for the job.
If you’re scratching your head on how to get more involved with IT, or what all the elements are in the equation, here are ten points to consider when engaging your IT department.
1. Treat IT like a partner. Your IT department is not a vendor that you can give orders to. Seek the department’s input. An IT solution is a tool that requires technical input and information sharing.
2. Embed IT personnel into your team. If possible, have IT and marketing staffs sit nearby so they can get a sense of each other’s day-to-day activities and concerns. Have an IT person go on several sales calls to get a better sense of a rep’s daily needs.
3. Choose a project champion to lead both the IT and marketing aspects of a project, regardless of whether they are from the business or technical side. Also, get executive sponsors from both departments. Nothing kills an initiative faster than a lack of upper-management support.
4. Share funding between all departments that will realistically benefit from the IT project, rather than placing the financial burden on a single department.
5. Cross-train individuals on basic technology and marketing skills, or encourage the migration of tech-savvy marketers or business-savvy techies to the other side.
6. Develop shared metrics for IT and Internet marketing. IT is usually concerned about ROI and seeing projects implemented, while marketing wants leads, sales, and conversion. Develop metrics in tandem that apply equally to the objectives of each department.
7. Use collaborative knowledge management tools. By using a project extranet, shared MS project files, or a project weblog, members of both teams can be kept up to date on projects.
8. Build for CRM. Consider how you will be using the data that you will be collecting, and how it can be integrated with both existing, and future, systems, tools, processes, and initiatives. Don’t collect information in a vacuum, even worse, miss opportunities to collect it.
9. Forge vendor relationships together. If marketing is going to be using an ASP for email marketing or web analytics, involve the IT folks in the decision and implementation to extract the most value from the tools.
10. Work out an SLA (service level agreement) between the parties. IT has many projects on its plate and marketers are almost never on time. Make sure the SLA requirements and expectations are clearly and unambiguously defined, along with measurement criteria, consequences, and performance monitoring contingencies. This will help keep things honest and serve to sustain consistent levels of expectation.
If you’re a marketing consultant and you’re reading this thinking, “Whew, glad I don’t have to deal with that stuff,” think again. If you’re in a meeting with a client during the advanced stages of an Internet marketing campaign that will have a significant impact on site traffic or the IT infrastructure, you will need to make sure that your client has involved their IT partner in the planning of the initiative.
Are you ready to start working together with your IT department? It’s amazing, how little it actually takes to build a strong bridge between your IT and marketing camps, when everyone is focused on the needs of the customer.
Links to article sources and additional resources on the web:
[1] Communication Chasm Between IT and Marketing to Blame
URL: [http://catchfs.com/News/2003nov18.htm]
[2] Marketing campaigns ‘can paralyze Web sites’
URL: [http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0],39020375,39117987,00.htm
[3] MARKETING and IT don’t talk
URL: [http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Nov/gee20031120022762.htm]
[4] Bridging the Gap: Marketing Versus IT
URL: http://www.clickz.com/em_mkt/em_mkt/article.php/844361
[5] The Weenies vs. the Geeks: Bridging the gap between Marketing and IT
URL: http://www.myplanview.com/expert104.asp
Dana is a widely recognized expert on blogging, podcasting, RSS, Internet communities and interactive marketing trends and best practices and speaks regularly on these topics at industry events. Recently, Dana was a featured speaker at the American Marketing Association’s Hot Topic series, “Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website.” He has also spoken at OMMA, PROMO, the Internet Retailer Conference, LesBlogs 2.0 in Paris, France and at dozens of other industry events. Dana is a regular contributor to a variety of industry publications and is often quoted on blogging, social media and Internet marketing trends in MarketingSherpa, Wisconsin Technology Network, Internet Retailer, Event Marketer, Sales and Marketing Management and other publications.
Children with Cancer Associated with Parental Marijuana Use
It was suggested in a 1989 study that 16 percent of leukemia cases, specifically acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were diagnosed in people younger than fifteen years of age. The study had suggested that parents who were exposed to marijuana increased the risk of leukemia in their children.
On the other hand, a more recent study done in 2006, the largest epidemiological study of AML in children to date in the United States refutes the 1989 study. Investigators of the recent study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had stated that based on their overall findings, no associations between parents smoking marijuana and cancer in children particularly AML were found. They had further stated that previous report on the affirmative association between parents smoking marijuana and cancer during childhood was not confirmed in their study.
They had also concluded that parental marijuana use is not likely to be a formidable risk factor for AML in children. The investigators of the recent study had also emphasized the evidence of an opposite association between smoking marijuana and cancer risk reduction in AML; however, they had admitted that such findings was inclined to bias instead of any potential protective marijuana effects. This is because case mothers may have been likely to report having smoked marijuana prior or during pregnancy as compared to control mothers.
Another large, population-based case-control study was conducted prior to the most recent study had reported an inverse association between smoking marijuana and cancer risk reduction. The large study smoking marijuana and cancer coordinated in 1999 and published in the American Journal of Epidemiology had demonstrated that there was an association between smoking marijuana and cancer risk reduction in adults specifically non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The investigators of such study had stated that marijuana was the sole recreational drug, which continued to be associated with a reduced risk for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after potential confounding factors were adjusted. It should also be noted that a second study on smoking marijuana and cancer risk reduction had found to association between marijuana use and cancer development. Two other case-control studies have suggested that an increase risk of certain childhood cancers is found in offspring of mothers who used marijuana during or prior to their pregnancy.
On the other hand, both studies were not a planned investigation of the possible link between mothers who smoked marijuana and cancer risk in their children. Comparatively, use of marijuana was one of the several possible confounding variables gauged, which makes it impossible for investigators to attribute cancer development. Neither of these findings has been followed up to this day.
The Word Is Plastic
THERE MAY have been a day when plastic porch furniture was considered declasse. No more. Inspired by the sophisticated European molded plastic designs of Grosfillex and Triconfort, tables, chairs, lounges and sofas of plastic — including those made of PVC pipe — have joined aluminum and wrought iron as status outdoor furniture materials. Attractive PVC pipe furniture is made in Orlando by Palm Casual at 3100 John Young Parkway, Orlando.
WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES
DID YOUR grandmother always tell you that you shouldn’t talk on the telephone during a thunderstorm? Well, she was right, according to a study made by the Lightning Protection Institute in Harvard, Ill. The study examined thunderstorm casualties over the past 10 years. Most lightning injuries occur in the home — at the phone, in the kitchen, in the garage or in the yard (many at the clothesline), the study concluded. The spots where the most injuries occur are at the kitchen sink and near open doors or windows. Consequently, the institute suggests: When you are in the house during a thunderstorm avoid using the phone, electrical appliances or the television set and keep away from metal objects such as plumbing pipes. When outdoors stay away from lone trees, poles and clotheslines.
PAINT THAT STAYS
PEELING HOUSE paint is a familiar sight in Florida. And often when homeowners get around to picking paint for the next coat, they go wrong. Permeable latex paint is generally the best exterior paint for do-it- yourselfers, said fix-it expert Bernard Gladstone in his column in the current issue of Family Circle magazine. Permeable paint lets trapped moisture vapor escape through the paint without causing blistering or peeling, Gladstone said. It should be applied directly on wood or over other latex paint; it’s less successful over oil-based paint. In addition, Gladstone said, paint won’t dry properly if applied in the direct sun or when the temperature is above 90 degrees. It shouldn’t be applied in the early morning before the dew is dry, or just before rain is expected.
HOUSE CALLS
THE TIME to get an estimated price for a service call is when you make the first call, said the Major Appliance Consumer Action Panel in Chicago. The cost of bringing a trained and equipped technician to your house includes, among other overhead costs: expensive tools and accurate testing equipment, an inventory of parts, truck maintenance, gasoline and insurance. A ”trip charge” is generally a fixed rate that covers the trip to your home and the first half hour of labor. Extra labor is often set up for each additional 15 minutes.
The Word Is Plastic
THERE MAY have been a day when plastic porch furniture was considered declasse. No more. Inspired by the sophisticated European molded plastic designs of Grosfillex and Triconfort, tables, chairs, lounges and sofas of plastic — including those made of PVC pipe — have joined aluminum and wrought iron as status outdoor furniture materials. Attractive PVC pipe furniture is made in Orlando by Palm Casual at 3100 John Young Parkway, Orlando.
WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES
DID YOUR grandmother always tell you that you shouldn’t talk on the telephone during a thunderstorm? Well, she was right, according to a study made by the Lightning Protection Institute in Harvard, Ill. The study examined thunderstorm casualties over the past 10 years. Most lightning injuries occur in the home — at the phone, in the kitchen, in the garage or in the yard (many at the clothesline), the study concluded. The spots where the most injuries occur are at the kitchen sink and near open doors or windows. Consequently, the institute suggests: When you are in the house during a thunderstorm avoid using the phone, electrical appliances or the television set and keep away from metal objects such as plumbing pipes. When outdoors stay away from lone trees, poles and clotheslines.
PAINT THAT STAYS
PEELING HOUSE paint is a familiar sight in Florida. And often when homeowners get around to picking paint for the next coat, they go wrong. Permeable latex paint is generally the best exterior paint for do-it- yourselfers, said fix-it expert Bernard Gladstone in his column in the current issue of Family Circle magazine. Permeable paint lets trapped moisture vapor escape through the paint without causing blistering or peeling, Gladstone said. It should be applied directly on wood or over other latex paint; it’s less successful over oil-based paint. In addition, Gladstone said, paint won’t dry properly if applied in the direct sun or when the temperature is above 90 degrees. It shouldn’t be applied in the early morning before the dew is dry, or just before rain is expected.
HOUSE CALLS
THE TIME to get an estimated price for a service call is when you make the first call, said the Major Appliance Consumer Action Panel in Chicago. The cost of bringing a trained and equipped technician to your house includes, among other overhead costs: expensive tools and accurate testing equipment, an inventory of parts, truck maintenance, gasoline and insurance. A ”trip charge” is generally a fixed rate that covers the trip to your home and the first half hour of labor. Extra labor is often set up for each additional 15 minutes.
Wood working plans ideas
It is not easy to determine the ideas and creating of elegant furniture with a high aesthetic value. Wood working really requires carefully planning. Start for preparing tools, home workshops and most important is woodworking plans so that your project has done with very satisfactory results
Some people who intend to build a furniture design began with a google search and using “free woodworking design” or “free woodworking plans” as keywords, or any other keyword starting with the words “free”. For beginner in woodworking maybe already satisfied and feel enough with free resources that can be found in google, however in a fact they got to many problems or even worse there was an error within the design. But for the advanced level, the ideas of freewoodworking plans provided seem a waste of time.
John Metz, is a Professional woodworker from Montana USA. For the past 6 years, he spent thousands of hours buying, reading and restructuringwoodworking plans . Restructuring, because most plans on the market left him with questions – not answers! The diagrams are confusing, unclear, or even wrong and they often skip important parts. No wonder woodworking seemed so hard. Finally by his research he created ownwoodworking plans gallery. This gallery is clear, detailed, step-by-step system that didn’t leave anything to the imagination. When you take a look his gallery you will immediately find out, how to get the job done quickly, inexpensively and with professional results every time.
No matter who you are, hobbyists, professionals and woodworkers alike have benefited greatly from his woodworking plans gallery.
Stopover Grub: Best Restaurants within 10 Minutes of Major Airports
Have a long stopover and don’t feel like paying $14 for a chicken sandwich that tastes like stringy plant fiber trapped between two Hush Puppy loafers? prada bags online Well, usatoday.com has prada bags online a solution for hungry travelers looking for a bit more sustenance between prada bags online flights: catch a taxi into town and visit an honest-to-God, real restaurant.
This particularly helpful column lists a handful of exceptional restaurants less than prada bags online 12 minutes travel time from major airports across the United States. A civilized meal at a non-airport restaurant is the perfect panacea to inject some humanity and comfort into the otherwise uncomfortable prada bags online airport experience.
Most on the list tend to be higher-end and expensive but helpful quotes from the Zagat Guide can help you decide which is right for you. I’ve been to only one of of the suggestions, Café del Rey in Los Angeles, and found it exceptional. The ten minute estimate for travel time, however, isn’t taking into consideration rush hour, so be careful you don’t miss your plane.
Which is Worse: Alcohol or Marijuana?
Putting aside the matter of alcohol’s legality and marijuana’s illegality, there are some fundamental differences between these 2 substances. There is an extensive body of medical research which demonstrates that very moderate use of alcohol by adults who are able to drink (no history of alcoholism, non-pregnant women, and no other medical conditions which preclude drinking) is actually good for their health. Men who drink 3-6 standard drinks (12 oz. beer or 5 oz. wine or 1.5 oz. whiskey) per week (in 2 or more sittings) and women who drink 2-4 standard drinks per week (in 2 or more sittings) simply suffer from less heart disease than people who do not drink at all. Although medical use of marijuana may help certain individuals with either glaucoma or with nausea due to chemotherapy, there are no credible studies which demonstrate that cannabis has general positive health effects for moderate pot smokers.
A second fundamental difference is in the route of administration. Although, marijuana is occasionally ingested, it is mostly smoked. Our respiratory systems were simply not built to handle smoke. Like cigarette smoke, marijuana smoke contains carbon monoxide, carcinogens, tars and other toxins. Some research even indicates that marijuana smokers who hold the smoke in their lungs for a long time before exhaling (as many do) are particularly likely to suffer lung damage. On the other hand, moderate use of alcohol by people who are able to drink is not intrinsically damaging to the digestive system.
Monster Alienware M15x almost £1000 Cheaper Than Dell!
The highest spec refurbished Alienware M15x to date has just come into stock and is priced at £2399, a massive almost £1000 cheaper than an equivalent new one from Dell. it’s bound to get huge interest once advertised so don’t get caught out hanging around!
Its massive spec includes:
- Intel Core i7-920XM Quad Core Extreme Mobile Processor 2.00GHz (Turbo up to 3.20GHz, 8MB Cache,1333MHz FSB)
- 8GB (8192MB) DDR3 1333MHz RAM
- 256GB Solid State Disk (SSD)
- 15.6″ 1920×1080 (WXGA) White LED Widescreen Display with TrueLife 1080p HD
- Blu-Ray Combo (Reads Blu-Ray,DVD and CD, Writes DVD & CD)
- nVidia GeForce GTX 260M with 1024MB Dedicated RAM
It comes in the special edition Nebula Red colour and is a pretty much maxxed out spec. More info and details here.
Aside from this monster spec, we have just made available some more of the usual specifications, starting from as low as £799. With worldwide shipping and various international customization options, the Alienwares don’t tend to hand around for long. See the full range here.
Some more Alienware M17x and M11x models are expected to be in over the next few days.
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Who said you can’t consistently win at roulette?
Roulette is probably the easiest game to understand, but one of the hardest to master. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a master of the Roulette table because Roulette System Tool does that for you!
How to Buy a Digital Camcorder
Digital camcorders make shooting video and editing it on your home computer a breeze. You can create movies and output them to tape or DVD, or post them on the Web. Whether you want to record shots of your new baby or you dream of becoming the next great film director, this guide will teach you what you need to know before you buy.
Which Format Is Right For You? With storage-based, MiniDV tape, and Mini-DVD camcorders all clamoring for your attention, here’s how to pick the best option for your needs.
High Definition or Standard Definition? The world’s gone high-def, but there are still some limitations to think about before you spend your hard-earned cash on an HD camcorder
