SociOffer Review | SociOffer Bonus + Demo

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SociOffer Review : Bonus

SociOffer is a software that will help you create free native offer post inside Facebook pages and sharing your all other pages, groups, profile and auto liking the post by other pages.

Also with this software you can create offer post with video, single video offer post, images…. and these images are clickable, and also schedule offer multiple times, and automatically post over a period of time to get more and more engagement.

Not only that, you’ll be able to share the post across all other pages, groups and your profiles, Auto like on your post by other pages that you own. Even if it means, you have 100 pages or groups you belong to, you can automatically share your offers, and people can claim their discount, which will in turn generate massive sales for you in return.

This is literally the “grand autoresponder of offers”….it deploys your offers automatically, and while you sleep or take lunch it helps you get people to buy your stuff on Facebook – on complete autopilot. This tool is 100% Facebook compliant, it’s also a revolutionary piece of software built around the exact same business strategy that companies like Udemy, Amazon and Alibaba use to create a massive sense of urgency in the minds of their customers…an urgency so strong that it has helped these brands generate millions of dollars in their business.

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What Is Blockchain? A Primer for Finance Professionals

It’s often not easy to envision or understand a new technology when we first hear about it—especially when the technology is not something that you can see, hold or touch.

Everyone can see what a smartphone is, and most finance professionals understand the impact that related technologies, like mobile and social, have had on the way we conduct business.

Emerging technologies are a different matter.

My colleagues have already written primers on new technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics process automation. Today, I’d like to take a closer look at blockchain—another new concept that finance teams are only beginning to grasp.

When writing about complex ideas, my editor likes to say, “Explain it to me as if I’ve never worked in in a technology company.” So, let’s start with a simplified example.

A Simplified Blockchain Example

Imagine that you have a child in university, and every month, you send them a living allowance. There are a number of ways you can do this, but the most common is transferring money from your bank account into your child’s. There are two records of this transaction: a debit recorded in your bank account, and a credit in your child’s account.

In most circumstances, neither of you can see the other’s bank records. Banks keep separate ledgers on their customers’ behalf, and they spend a lot of time and money ensuring that these ledgers are accurate, and private.

But what if you didn’t want the ledgers to be private? What if you wanted both you and your child to have access to a single ledger, with all transactions visible to you both?

In the past, this would require setting up a joint bank account. Blockchain offers a different approach.

Learn more about the latest in modern finance. Get the handbook.

Now imagine that, every time you send the monthly living allowance, you laid down a “block” with the transaction information carved into it (date, time, amount, and so on). Both you and your child can see the block, confirming that the money was sent and received. Your spendthrift kid couldn’t come back to you a week later claiming that “the bank screwed up” and the transfer never came through.

Every month, you lay down more blocks, which form a “chain.” Together, they create a record of all transactions with your future college graduate. When you get old and infirm, you can point to the chain, show your kid how much money you paid for college, and demand that they invest a similar amount in a high-quality nursing home.

This is, more or less, how blockchain works. Each block is a record of a monetary transaction. The chain is a shared accounting ledger that is visible to all parties across multiple networks, or “nodes.” Every new transaction is verified by all nodes and, if valid, added to all copies of the ledger—in other words, a new “block” is added to the “chain.”

The chain is cryptographically secured, so nobody can change a record once it has been inscribed. And even if you were to find a way around the cryptography, the records are visible to all members—making it nearly impossible to change a block without someone noticing. The most you can do is lay down new blocks.

The Implications for Finance Leaders

Modern financial structures evolved from Venetian traders in the 15thcentury, and later, Dutch bourses in the 17th century. Double-entry bookkeeping has been with us since those very early days, and has helped build the institutions upon which our modern financial world rests.

The concept for exchanges and transactions of all kinds—including money, commodities, stocks, loans, and products—have required each participant to track every transaction using its own ledger. Most of the time, this works very well. But occasionally, ledgers get out of sync—leading to audits, mistrust, and increased scrutiny.

The difference with blockchain is that all parties use the same ledger, which is visible to all participants. Ledgers can never be out of sync when there is only one of them.

Why Blockchain Matters

This new approach to monetary record keeping offers multiple benefits, including:

• Increased transactional trust. Since every participant can see every block in the chain, it’s easier to ensure that all transactions are above board. It’s hard to deal under the table when everyone is watching.
• Reduced fraud. Similarly, it becomes difficult—if not impossible—to hide, misrepresent or delete monetary or other transactions (for example, the movement of commodities).
• Reduced risks and associated moral hazards. With more trust and reduced fraud, enterprise risk is likewise reduced. Moral hazards are harder to hide as contracts and deals are evaluated.
• Lowered transaction costs and faster processing times. Fewer systems and organizational infrastructure simplify and speed up the entire transaction process, for less money.

Beyond Bitcoin

While bitcoin and blockchain are often discussed in tandem, they are not the same thing. Bitcoin is an application utilizing blockchain; blockchain does not require bitcoin. Nevertheless, bitcoin has proven, on a global basis, how blockchain works and has driven rapid interest in the technology—especially in the financial services industry among banks and credit card processors.

But the disruption opportunities of blockchain will not be limited to financial services. Consider other industries that move products through distribution, or even utilities that measure and track the use of electricity, water, and sewage. Short term housing rentals, car sharing and food production from farm to fork could experience disruptions driven by blockchain.

Examples of rapidly evolving blockchain applications include online voting, medical record keeping, provenance of art and historical artifacts, non-profit banking service for regions and populations not served by traditional banking, and process automation for generic, time-consuming back-office activities.

Other potential applications of blockchain include intercompany transactions for financials, distributed procurement through a network for vendors, and loyalty management programs for consumers.

More Efficiency, Transparency and Trust

Think about the problems and situations you encounter today that require multiple ledgers and systems. Some of those systems add cost, complexity, and control with little or no additional value. With blockchain, you might soon have the potential to securely and safely extend these systems outside the enterprise, reducing friction when transacting with trading partners, or even with customers.

Both finance and technology organizations are only just beginning to look closely at blockchain and imagine future applications. Even during these early stages, there is the potential to deliver more efficiency, transparency, and trust—with less risk, cost, and complexity.

 

https://blogs.oracle.com/what-is-blockchain-a-primer-for-finance-professionals-v2

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4 Mistakes I Learned About Marketing and Data While Working at a Fortune 50 Company

For the past nearly 3 years, I’ve been in charge of Audience Development for one of the largest media companies in the US.

I learned a LOT during that time. Even more important, I learned a lot about what NOT to do.

Not all of these things were personal ‘mistakes’ per se. Some were top down decisions that were influenced by lack of foresight, knowledge or budget. Others were due to an industry that is undergoing rapid change.

As John Powell said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

To that end, here are the top 4 mistakes I learned during my tenure. I hope sharing these and their learnings will spark some good discussion – either internally or in the comments below.

1. Not Investing in Building User Data

This one definitely took me by surprise.

When I arrived, I had big plans to leverage CRM data to build remarketing pools, lookalike audiences, email campaigns, etc.

But there was no CRM database.

One thing not often considered about media companies is the fact the consumer data is controlled by the cable provider. The cable company collects the payment and therefore have all the associated consumer data:

• Name
• Address
• Phone
• Email
• Credit Card Info
• Purchase history
• Login Username/Password
• Etc.

In it’s simplest form, the media company simply provides the content the cable provider sells to the consumer. For the longest period of time, the value of collecting this data had been overlooked.

Plan of Action:

To access ‘free’ content within an app from the likes of NBC, CBS, Fox and others, you must go through an authentication process. This is done using the same credentials you would login to pay your cable bill.

In one of these apps, you’ve likely come across a login page that looks like this:

This poses two challenges:

1. Many consumers don’t know or remember this login. As a result, a lot of potential video consumption is lost.
2. As mentioned above, this is an interstitial page that drives to the cable provider as they own the username and password information.

In collaboration with the product team, a strategy was developed to implement a ‘free trial’ in exchange for the user’s email address. This would allow the user to forego the authentication requirement.

This was the minimal piece of information required for us to begin building a CRM and the beginning of a customer match marketing program across Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It also provided us with the initial piece of consumer data that we could subsequently build on with supplemental offers in exchange for profile completion.

The overarching lesson here is – invest in CRM. Even if you have to start with just a database of email addresses. Start somewhere.

2. Not Understanding the Nuances of Mobile Tracking

As you might imagine, much of our marketing strategy and budget focused on the mobile space. Interestingly enough, this is also a space where ad-blockers are not working.

That said, with mobile advertising comes tracking nuances that I was initially unaware of.

When I joined the team, we were full-steam into launching the first ever marketing campaign. In our haste to launch, we did not take the time to fully understand the impact of not solidifying our mobile tracking solution.

Our primary mobile advertising consisted of:

Desktop & Mobile Banner and Social Ads:

The standard process for attribution is based on the use of cookies.

When a user visits a website via their desktop or mobile device, your banner displays and a cookie is dropped on the visitor’s computers  – regardless of whether or not they click through to your website.

Depending on the ad-server being used, this cookie can remain active for up to 2 years.

Eventually, if the user performs the desired action, that same cookie fires sending the proper attribution for your campaign. All is well in the world.

Apple’s Safari browser blocks 3rd party cookies by default which makes this ‘standard’ tracking more complicated. Among other things, this means your app cannot read the cookie data stored by Mobile Safari.

This presents a challenge to advertisers as Safari’s market share is around 33% globally.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our brand websites):

I’m sure you’ve noticed when you open a link in an app, it doesn’t open a new browser window. Rather, it opens an “in-app browser”.

This makes perfect sense for UX as it allows you to quickly return to the app.

The issue lies in the cookie drop on your phone. This naturally occurs with the click, however, it only drops a cookie for the in-app browser session. Unless the conversion happens immediately within that session, the attribution is lost.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our apps):

Quite simply, cookies are not used ‘in-app’. This left us with zero attribution or cross-device tracking.

The lack of attention to these details was quickly evident. At the end of the campaign, we were left pointing to engagement metrics like impressions, CTR and social shares as a measure of success.

Not at all what a consumer acquisition campaign should be reporting.

Plan of Action:

The quickest change to a leaky attribution bucket that we could make was to tackle the Safari issue. We simply updated our social and display targeting to remove Safari browsers.

While Google struggles with mobile and socially-driven demographic/interest targeting, Facebook provides the ability to target (or exclude) users by Web browser.

While not foolproof, for the likes of Twitter and Google, we targeted only older operating systems in an effort to capture users who were still using legacy browsers.

Considering our audience was US based, we estimated that we would only be missing out on approximately 15-18% of the overall market.

The other two challenges were a bit more complicated and required a mobile attribution solution that established the match between the user’s advertising ID and the publisher.

While there are many companies available for this, after evaluation, we landed on Kochava as our solution provider.

Pro tip: if you’re on a budget, Branch.io is a completely free solution that provides many of the same features.

3. Focusing on Sexy vs. Efficient

The programmatic display and mobile space is filled with shiny new tools, ad placements, and even ad units.

Combine that with the traditional types of advertising done by media companies (think big billboards, bus sides, etc) and these quickly become distractions from tactics that are proven to work.

I think it’s fair to say we spread our tactics far too wide in the early years in hopes of capitalizing on that sexy new ad-unit or the hot new ad targeting. This was, unfortunately, at the expense of tried and true tactics like traditional paid search.

A smarter approach would have been to test into these tactics rather than build a comprehensive media plan that included them.

Plan of Action:

I’m a huge fan of Steve Jobs. And Apple in general. One of my favorite quotes from him is:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

With more data and proper attribution in place, we were more empowered to direct the media plans across the brands.

We focused on tried and true channels that significantly outperformed the “shiny objects” that had resulted in wasted spend and higher costs for creative development.

This paid off in a big way:

• Total impressions declined significantly, however, clicks increased just as dramatically
• Average click costs also declined
• Cost per app install decreased nearly 200%
• Cost per video start decreased 230%

Sometimes the ‘simple’ things just work better.

Ultimately, after seeing the data, I took away a few lessons that can be applied to almost any campaign:

Programmatic display isn’t the end all, be all. It’s an industry buzzword. I could even say ‘buzztactic’. It’s rife with click fraud and vendors with non-transparent ‘private networks’. It’s susceptible to ad blockers and comes with many privacy issues.

Don’t get me wrong. It can work.

But, test into programmatic options ONLY after you’ve exhausted the below tactics.

Focus on channels where a consumer is actively searching for you. They’re already self-qualified based on their actions. The most applicable here is paid search across Bing or Google.

Remarket your way to lower cost per acquisitions. You’ve already paid the premium CPC or CPM to get that user to your website. Typically, remarketing campaigns come with much lower costs. Why not re-engage a warm lead for less?

Image Source

#Hashtags are inherently social, but leave them out of social ad copy. Through our trimming of tactics, we also trimmed areas where consumers might be tempted to leave the topic at hand.

In this case, we removed any hashtag mentions in our ad copy so consumers would focus instead on the ‘install’. Our conversion rates improved as a result.

When pushing mobile installs, leverage a device in your creative. When you think about it, of course. It makes sense. But we proved it out via testing. Showing consumers an image of their device in the creative they’re being served improved conversion rates.

4. Not Leveraging an Always on Strategy

Consumers, myself included, are always on. Always plugged in. It’s a bad, addicting habit.

But, that also means running a campaign for a TV show only when that show is in-season leaves opportunity on the table.

There are a few challenges with being able to do this:

First, media companies are selling off the rights to their shows to the likes of Netflix and Hulu. In some cases, the ability to create a show is solely dependent on the revenue coming from these transactions.

This means an always on strategy will never be an option once the rights are sold.

Second, when we first launched our campaigns, we were spending large portions of our budget on fancy creative and higher cost CPMs trying to capture the next big thing.

This left us without budget pacing that would allow for an always on strategy.

Plan of Action:

We tackled the second issue as part of our streamlining of tactics. This enabled our budgets to stretch farther and for longer periods of time both pre-premier and post-finale.

The matter of rights was more complicated and is probably worth a completely separate post. That said, as a test, we decided to focus on a core set of shows where the rights had been retained for several years.

The hope was, if we could show a series with multiple seasons resulted in larger average views per user, we could start to build a case for investing in the rights for the more popular shows.

It worked.

We found not only were the average views per user up, but these campaigns were far outperforming pilot shows and series with limited rights.

This resulted in overall efficiencies for the campaign.

Wrapping Up

There’s no question the digital space can provide lots of opportunity for growth and learning. I have certainly learned a ton.

Hopefully sharing some of these insights will help you better streamline your digital marketing efforts, focus on what works, get your tracking in order and ultimately drive increased performance.

About the Author: Jon Clark is the founder of Fuze SEO, a boutique digital marketing company in New York. He writes regularly on SEO tactics, analytics and social media best practices. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter. When not working or writing, Jon enjoys documenting his travels on Instagram.

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LinkedIn Marketing 3.0 Biz in a Box Review : Bonus

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The Conversion Rate Conundrum: Common Mistakes and What to Do Instead

In real estate, the axiom is location, location, location. It’s first and foremost. The number one consideration.

For your digital efforts – email, web pages, eCommerce platforms – an argument could be made for a few different ones: search engine optimization (SEO), the user experience (UX), conversion rate optimization (CRO), or perhaps something else entirely.

Ask five experts and you’ll probably end up with five different answers. But what’s really the end goal? Why are you doing whatever it is you’re doing?

Conversion, conversion, conversion.

Whether that means signing up, downloading, opting in, subscribing, or purchasing, you want your target to do something. Ultimately, everything else should be assisting that one objective.

With apologies to Meghan Trainor, I’m going to suggest it’s all about that CRO. SEO is obviously necessary, but traffic alone is meaningless. And the UX? A happy and satisfied user is imperative, but try paying your rent with one.

So, at the risk of drawing the wrath of the SEO and UX camps, they both fall under the CRO umbrella (they’re all very, very important, though). But – and this is a big but – it’s a massive mistake to believe that SEO and/or UX alone will do much for your CVR.

Start with the end in mind. You need to focus on specific ways to improve your conversion rate.

CRO: An Uphill Battle

Consider this: a couple of years ago, 80% left a site without doing anything. No conversion. That figure is up to 96% in 2017. The global average CVR of online shoppers early this year was 2.48%. Those stats are a bit scary.

The good news? With numbers like that, things can only get better. It just takes time, effort, and a systematic, active approach.

But don’t fall victim to these traps, pitfalls, and mistakes.

Your Mistake: Focusing On the Wrong Things

Quick question: would you rather have something beautiful, or something functional? Would you rather be clever, or understood?

I’ll be blunt…beautiful things are nice, but functional things are essential. And that goes double for your email marketing, website, eCommerce portal, or app.

And clever? Don’t get me started. Clever headlines and subject lines don’t mean a thing if no one clicks or opens them. Consumers want to know what it’s about immediately. They don’t want to have to guess or click or open before finding out (and most won’t anyway).

Be functional. Be clear. Full stop.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good looking website. Nor should your headline be boring and the first dull thing that pops into your head. Quite the contrary. But if you’re putting beauty over function and cleverness over clarity, you’re doing it wrong.

A breathtaking site that’s confusing and awkward to navigate but bursting with clever puns, wordplay, and double entendres may win you fans, but few or no conversions. Which do you want?

Do this instead…

Put your customers first. Consider their wants and needs. Use every available data source – analytics (Kissmetrics goes much deeper than Google…just sayin’), industry studies, surveys, polls, etc. – to identify and create detailed buyer personas. Then, create a site for them.

But don’t stop there. Once you have it where you think it should be, have others take it out for a spin. Try an impartial and third-party service like UserTesting to get invaluable video of real people using your site. Where did it fail them? Take that insight and tweak.

Next, turn to the old standby: A/B testing. You’d be surprised by the big results you can get from tiny changes. Use a testing tool like Optimizely or Visual Website Optimizer to confirm your theories about colors, placement, copy, design, images, and more.

One site saw a conversion lift of 304% simply by moving the CTA button from above-the-fold to below it.

Don’t make it look pretty. Make it practical.

Having said that, a cheap, outdated design with grainy stock photos isn’t going to cut it, either. People won’t trust it – or you – and if they don’t believe you’re trustworthy, they won’t convert. Keep your design clean and modern, and use high quality images of your products and people.

Finally, always opt for clear – Get Your Free Trial – over clever – Click or I Kill This Puppy.

Your Mistake: You’re Targeting Just One Platform

Desktop. Tablet. Mobile. Which one is most important?

It’s a trick question. You’ve no doubt heard a lot about the increasing role of mobile devices when it comes to the online world. Chances are virtually everyone around you is staring at their smartphone screen.

Google announced a change to its algorithm in mid-2015 that made mobile-readiness a ranking factor. Since then, more people access the internet on a mobile device than a desktop computer.

Like any good webmaster, you’ve dutifully checked the mobile-friendly tool and made sure your pages passed the mobile test. Kudos.

But the desktop is not dead. Far from it.

Image Source

More people shop weekly online using their desktop than a mobile phone, and the same number shop daily using both.

Traditional desktop computers still boast a higher conversion rate than both tablets and mobile phones. In fact, desktops had a CVR that was more than 3x higher than smartphones for American shoppers in 2016 (3.55% vs 1.15% respectively).

Mobile at the expense of desktop? Bad idea.

So how about desktop over mobile?

We’ve already mentioned that more people head online using a mobile device than desktop computers, so you’d be waving goodbye to a huge chunk of potential.

And when it comes to your local market, you’re missing out if your platform isn’t mobile-ready. More local searches result in a purchase when made on a smartphone than those made on a desktop (78% vs 61% respectively).

Finally, 59% of smartphone users expect a website to be mobile-friendly and feel frustrated when it’s not. They’ll leave and likely never return.

No mobile? No way.

Image Source

Do this instead…

The solution should be obvious. Desktop or mobile? You need both. And tablets, too. Create a website or portal that looks and functions equally well on all three, and you’re ahead of the curve.

In big markets like the United States, Canada, China, and the United Kingdom, the vast majority are multi-platform people.

Image Source

Try a tool like Screenfly or WhatIsMyScreenResolution to see for yourself. Is everything legible? Are the buttons and links spread out and big enough to be easily tapped on a touchscreen? Do you use more scrolling than clicking?

Google recommends you use a responsive site design rather than dynamic content or a separate mobile URL. And it’s best to follow their advice. Of course, there’s a lot more to mobile optimization, but this is enough to get you started.

The key takeaway: Don’t sacrifice one for the other. Design and optimize for desktop, tablet, and mobile, and watch that CVR head north.

Your Mistake: You Don’t Care About Speed

This can’t get any simpler: speed matters. For your customers and the search engines. So be fast.

As you beef your site up with tools, HD images, videos, and more, your speed suffers. If you believe that a practical, responsive site and good products are enough, you’re wrong. Why?

Because if your page takes too long to load, they’ll leave before even experiencing any of that.

Nearly half of web users expect a page to load in under 2 seconds, and 79% won’t return to a site with performance issues like slow load times.

As much as 83% of users expect a page to load in under 3 seconds, and a 1 second improvement in your load time can produce a 7% increase in conversions. That’s right.

The godfather of eCommerce – Amazon – experiences a 1% loss in revenue for every 100ms delay…that’s just one-tenth of a second.

Do this instead…

Care about speed and load time. A lot. Actively work to make your pages faster and more streamlined.

• Limit the number of plugins you use
• Compress images with a service like TinyPNG or ImageOptim (Mac only)
• Keep the amount of analytics and tracking codes to a minimum
• Upgrade your hosting provider. HostGator and InMotion are two that consistently sit at the top of speed rankings.
• Optimize for and enable browser caching
• Reduce the number of redirects
• Use a content delivery network (CDN)
• Turn on Gzip compression
• Test, tweak, and optimize frequently using PageSpeed Insights or GTMetrix

Google suggests that your site take no more than 2-3 seconds to load. At most. How do you measure up?

There are other mistakes that negatively affect your CVR: you give up too easily (solution: retargeting, cart abandonment emails, etc.), no social proof (solution: add social proof), weak call-to-action (solution: make it active, make it clear, test, and optimize), and more.

Check out some of the great tutorials by Neil Patel, Glide, Kissmetrics, and HubSpot if you want to dig deeper and go further. In the meantime, find and fix these three mistakes to shift your CRO into overdrive.

Because online, it’s conversion, conversion, conversion.

About the Author: Daniel Kohn is the CEO and co-founder of SmartMail, a company that helps E-commerce stores and online retailers increase sales, average order value, and lifetime customer value through email. Download SmartMail’s 4 highest converting email templates to help jumpstart your E-commerce email marketing program.

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MailGet Review : Bonus Plus Demo

MailGet is an email marketing service that required no hosting and complicated setup. You can send mass emails to reach their prospective customers via Amazon SES and other SMTPs. It has very low price i.e. 100x cheaper as compared to other mailing services.

MailGet was creates back in 2014 and ever since, MailGet has sent more than 500 million emails. They are currently delivering more than 30 million emails every month. If you’re active email marketer, you’ve probably noticed that people really aren’t opening the emails you’re sending – close to 85% are ignoring you. You should be feeling the heat of poor delivery rates.

Sadly, the common experience is that there’s no reliable way to send emails consistently and get them to inbox. So how can we make sure your emails are being opened, read and clicked by as many people as possible : by using MailGet!

MailGet is what people turn to when they want to maximize their open rates. In fact, MailGet increases email marketing open rates by 48% or more. How? Well, every mailing list service tends to offer simple email personalization but mailget takes it one step further with Auto Follow-up feature.

This amazing feature send automatic emails to your clientele who hadn’t opened your email in the first campaign and effectively achieve higher open rates and what i like about MailGet is that it connects with 40+ SMTP services including Amazon SES, Mandrill, SendGrid, Postmark, Google, Yahoo and many more.

The next article was initially seen on : MailGet Review : Bonus Plus Demo

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A Supply Chain to Meet Modern Demands

Businesses today not only need to respond quickly to shifts in the market and changing demand—they also must be able to tap into a range of internal and external data to predict and even shape demand, bringing together groups from across the company to plan and execute efficiently.

That’s not possible with outdated and disjointed systems. To help organizations gain the flexibility they need to meet rapidly changing demands and market conditions, Oracle has introduced significant expansions to Oracle Supply Chain Management (SCM) Cloud. As part of Oracle’s latest release of its cloud applications, Oracle SCM Cloud now includes six new products that enable companies to incorporate demand-driven, customer-focused processes and capabilities in the key areas of supplier collaboration, quality management, maintenance, sales and operations planning, demand management, and supply planning—as well as expanding capabilities across Oracle’s existing cloud-based SCM solutions.

“Business leaders recognize the undeniable benefits of digitizing core business functions like the supply chain, yet many still struggle to maintain outdated supply chain systems that are designed for the problems of the past—not the challenges of the future,” says Jon S. Chorley, chief sustainability officer and group vice president of supply chain management product strategy at Oracle. “Oracle SCM Cloud is built from the ground up for the cloud in order to support current and future business challenges. These enhancements go broader and deeper, demonstrating our commitment to supply chain excellence, which includes delivering the visibility, insights, and capabilities organizations need to successfully balance supply and demand across increasingly complex global supply chains.”

The additions to Oracle SCM Cloud include:

• Oracle Sales and Operations Planning Cloud: Executes strategy consistently with enterprisewide alignment and visibility for growth and profitability, helping organizations achieve business goals by quickly evaluating and acting on plans. Organizations can benefit from aggregate planning with social collaboration and sales and operations planning process management by aligning sales and operations to enhance decision making using embedded analytics.
• Oracle Demand Management Cloud: Enables organizations to achieve business objectives by optimizing new product introductions, improving decision making, and synchronizing cross-functional demand plans. Organizations can improve demand visibility; manage demand variability; and accurately sense, predict, and shape customer demand.
• Oracle Supply Planning Cloud: Adapts quickly to fluctuating demand with the ability to plan for multiple manufacturing and fulfillment strategies in real time, including planning global supply chain activities, monitoring and prioritizing problem areas, and evaluating and executing the actions that will have the greatest impact.
• Oracle Supply Chain Collaboration Cloud: Supports increased business velocity by enabling organizations to plan, manage, and collaborate with suppliers and contract manufacturers more efficiently. It enables organizations to benefit from integrated planning, orchestration, visibility, and execution to better transact with trading partners; collaborate on order forecasts; and manage exceptions, track production processes more effectively, and gain control over outsourced operations.
• Oracle Quality Management Cloud: Delivers exceptional product quality to protect organizations’ brands with the combination of collection, analysis, and action. Enables organizations to drive best practices from issue to resolution by providing a comprehensive and integrated solution for auditable, closed-loop quality management.
• Oracle Maintenance Cloud: Enables improved return on capital and lower costs with the ability to better maintain enterprise assets. Helps organizations to achieve efficient and productive maintenance operations with a complete integration of maintenance, supply chain, and financial applications to transform asset maintenance from a complex and expensive process into one that can open up the ability to gain a competitive advantage.

In addition to these new products, existing Oracle SCM Cloud modules have been significantly enhanced to provide role-specific dashboards and landing pages that highlight issues and direct users to relevant actions; integration with Oracle Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ) Cloud; a redesigned self-service procurement; and hundreds of other new capabilities.

Take a look at Oracle’s full line of modern, data-driven supply chain solutions in the cloud.

And for companies looking to add the advantages of Internet of Things technologies to their SCM operations, Oracle offers products that provide real-time data and insights to monitor assets, production, and fleets—and plans to add a product that helps companies monitor worker safety and health.

https://blogs.oracle.com/a-supply-chain-to-meet-modern-demands

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Oracle Exadata Applications Can Now Run on Next-Gen Cloud Infrastructure

Oracle’s Exadata system is now available on Oracle’s next-generation cloud infrastructure. This combination of Oracle Exadata with Oracle Cloud’s bare metal compute and storage services enhances all stages of application development and deployment through faster connectivity, provisioning, processing, and database access, allowing customers to move their most demanding applications to the cloud. 

Oracle Exadata already supports high-performance database operations. Now, “Oracle’s next-gen infrastructure optimizes all the other pieces that support the application, in addition to the database” including servers, storage, and the networking, according to Kash Iftikhar, Oracle vice president of product management. The result, he says, is that “applications that do high-demand work, such as real-time targeting, analytics, or personalization can now run in the cloud with extreme performance.”

Opening the Cloud to Existing Applications

Oracle databases in Exadata Cloud on next-gen cloud infrastructure are completely compatible with those deployed on-premises, enabling a smooth transition to the cloud and an efficient hybrid cloud strategy. This provides a unique opportunity for Oracle customers, says Iftikhar.  

“Other cloud services cater mainly to an individual developer who wants to build something new and scale it over time,” he says. Whereas “customers of Oracle’s service might already have hundreds of applications that they have been running for years.” With Oracle Exadata Cloud on next-gen cloud infrastructure, says Iftikhar, “We give those customers the options they need to start taking advantage of cloud.” Whether that’s “moving some applications wholesale without changing them, or moving them and enhancing them with other technologies, or even replacing them with one of Oracle’s many SaaS apps,” he says, “we give them options we know they need.”

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers self-provisioning of multiple bare metal servers in less than five minutes, each supporting over four million input/output operations per second [IOPS]. The combination of these powerful servers, block storage that linearly scales by 60 IOPS per GB, and now Oracle Exadata Cloud on the same low latency Virtual Cloud Networks, help ensure that applications run at unparalleled speed.

“With the power of Oracle Exadata, customers using our infrastructure are able to bring applications to the cloud never previously possible,” says Iftikhar. “They’re doing it without the cost of re-architecture, and achieve incredible performance throughout the stack.” 

https://blogs.oracle.com/oracle-exadata-applications-can-now-run-on-next-gen-cloud-infrastructure

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Value Creation vs. Revenue Extraction: Which Kind of Business Are You?

There’s a problem in business.

Okay, fine, there are plenty of problems in the wide world of business.

Obviously, there are tons of good things in business brought about by new innovations, advances in technology, and improvements in customer engagement.

But for all the new changes, old habits sure do die hard. Specifically, there are a lot of old ideas that still have a grip on the business world.

These ideas are preventing businesses from successfully engaging present day users.

This is why so many brands are dying out; they’re failing to actually serve today’s customers. Think about your business’s focus, where you’re putting your energy.

Is your business people-first or money-first?

Because the hard truth is that a business that puts revenue first won’t be able to stay afloat in the tumultuous waters of today’s economy. It sounds counterintuitive. Doesn’t a business exist to make money?

Yes. Obviously, you need to think about profit. But when you make that your number one goal above your customers, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

This is more than just a chicken-and-egg riddle.

This is about how and why you do business.

If you haven’t given the issue some thought, I will share a few thoughts that I think are crucial to a business’s longevity and ultimate success.

The point I’m making is simple. Businesses should work to create value not just extract profits.

Let me show you the how and why.

A Primer on Value Creation and Revenue Extraction

In terms of customer interaction, there are typically two general types of businesses: value creation and revenue extraction.

You’ve probably seen both in action before, but you might not be able to tell which one you are.

So let’s start by going over the characteristics of both types of businesses and looking at some examples.

If a business is focused on value, it will naturally put its customers above everything else. (Yes, even above revenue.)

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As the definition above notes, value creation increases your business’s worth.

Listen to that again: Value creation increases the worth of your business.

How does this happen? It happens because customers are attracted to businesses that can give them something.

The more value you provide, the more attracted your customers will be to your business.

It’s a simple (and scalable) formula, but far too few businesses actually adopt it.

Many companies still believe that a revenue extraction model is the best for doing long-term business.

What’s revenue extraction?

Revenue extraction is the idea of operating a business with the sole goal of getting money from customers. It’s the exact opposite of value creation.

This little image sums it up well:

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Where value creation is focused on serving, revenue extraction is obsessed with being served.

The type of business makes a colossal difference in how customers respond and interact.

And that’s not just theory. It’s a fact.

Quick caveat here.

Obviously, every business has to focus on profit to some degree.

Why?

It’s simple.

If a business doesn’t make a profit, it doesn’t exist. End of story.

Value creation vs. revenue extraction has more to do with motivation and priority rather than simple accounting.

As I’ll explain below, placing a higher priority on value creation will produce higher revenues.

Let’s look at an example.

UrbanBound is a company that prioritizes value extraction. They weren’t engaging their customers well enough, so they listened to customer feedback and rolled out a new marketing plan that included lots of high-value content.

The results were astounding:

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That’s what value creation can do.

Okay, that was a positive example.

Now let’s look at a negative example.

From 2000 to 2014, Steve Ballmer was the CEO of Microsoft. As CEO, Ballmer was known for focusing on sales to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

I’m smelling revenue extraction.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Ballmer made it obvious that he was focused on revenue extraction, saying, “It’s easy to glorify the products produced and the reputations won, not the money made.”

Even his exit from the company didn’t stop him from having this mindset. In early 2017, he said of Microsoft, “I want to see more profit growth.”

Sure enough, Ballmer’s attitude contributed to Microsoft’s poor performance during his tenure. The company produced several products that flopped, share price was largely stagnant, and Forbes called him the worst CEO.

When Ballmer announced his retirement as CEO, the stock price jumped 10%, which ironically enough, added even more to Steve Ballmer’s enormous wealth. He quits, and makes $1 billion. If only we could all be so lucky.

Interestingly, while Ballmer increased Microsoft’s revenue, his reign also saw a dip in customer satisfaction.

Some point to Ballmer as the big bad reason why Apple overtook Microsoft.

Apple, who seems to focus more on the customer, steadily grew its revenue while staying at the top of the American Customer Satisfaction Index for eleven years straight.

Today, the fact that Microsoft lost customers (and that Apple gained customers) in the long term is evident by just looking at each company’s revenue over a ten-year period.

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So what’s the point of all of this?

If you rely on a revenue extraction business model, you’ll turn your customers into enemies.

Your sales might look good for a bit, but that won’t last long.

If you think about human nature, this makes a lot of sense. No one wants to feel like a company just wants to empty their wallets.

Rather, customers see themselves as part of an exchange system. They contribute money to a business. In return they get some sort of value.

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When customers receive value, they have a huge incentive to come back to your business.

And in a crowded economy, if you want to stand out, you have to win your customers over with a ton of value.

The world’s most successful businesses all think this way, and it’s proven to improve your relationship with your customers.

You might be scared right now, wondering if you’re focused on value creation or revenue extraction.

Here’s how you can tell.

Where’s your focus?

Businesses who focus on value creation and those who focus on revenue extraction look very different when you look at their priorities.

And, really, that’s all this is — a priority issue.

Pivoting from revenue extraction to value creation doesn’t require firing your employees, shuffling top management, or changing your logo.

It simply means an adjustment of priority. That can start with a simple mental shift.

I’ve identified five positive priorities of a value creation business.

1. You put the most effort into creating and refining your products or services with your customers in mind, and you continually take customer feedback into account.

2. You often ask your customers for feedback and maintain a strong online presence, answering questions and addressing complaints.

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3. You publish lots of free, value-packed content. You might publish so much free content that people tell you to charge for it. Hubspot is one company that does this often:

4. Your company ethos revolves around helping your customers achieve their goals.

5. Your marketing hinges on the benefits your customers will receive from your products or services.

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Now, let’s go over to the dark side.

Here are five signs that you’re a revenue extraction business:

1. You put the most effort into your pricing schemes and/or create your products or services with profit in mind.

2. You rarely ask your customers for feedback and don’t prioritize your online presence or interaction with customers.

3. You don’t publish free content often, and when you do, it doesn’t provide a lot of value.

4. Your company ethos revolves around maximizing your bottom line.

5. Your marketing hinges on sensational tactics (like clickbait) to get people’s attention using hype.

Of course, it’s not always black and white. In fact, your company may have characteristics from both of those lists. Most businesses tend towards one side or the other.

What about your business?

If you’ve identified your business as the revenue extraction type, don’t panic.

This doesn’t mean you’re doomed to fail, and it doesn’t mean you have an evil company.

There are several tactical ways to shift from the revenue extraction model to the value creation model.

Value begins with great content

To provide the kind of value that your customers will love, you need to make some serious changes.

In particular, you need to know what your customers want and need and then give them what they’re looking for.

Learning who your customers are is important for every business, but if you’ve found out you only think about revenue extraction, you need to kick your customer engagement strategy into overdrive.

This is where it gets good.

The best way to do this is with a killer content strategy.

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If you don’t have one, you need to make one.

But whether you’re revamping your current strategy or creating one from scratch, the steps are more or less the same.

Here’s a good framework for what a content strategy should look like:

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Let’s break that down.

Step 1: Plan your content

What kind of high-value content are you going to produce? This is a step you should spend some time on.

You don’t want to put out a ton of content if it’s just going to be watered down. Instead, focus on quality over quantity.

There’s a lack of high quality content on the web. If you’re one of the businesses in your niche that’s creating helpful content, you’ll easily stand out.

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Your content should revolve around information that will benefit your readers in some way. Sometimes that means actionable tips, and sometimes that means in-depth explanations.

Remember, providing value needs to be your core mission.

As long as you prioritize that, you’ll be on the right track.

Step 2: Audit your existing content

Even if you don’t have much content right now, you might still be able to salvage some or all of the content you do have.

If you search “content audit,” you’ll be greeted by several articles that focus on SEO.

You don’t have to worry about that too much right now, but you should determine if any content on your site is driving large amounts of traffic.

If you find something, you’ll definitely want to update it.

For all your other content, think critically about how well the content would perform. You can use sites like Buzzsumo to see what’s trending in your niche.

If you choose to keep any content, you should update it. Your existing content is probably low-value, so increasing the amount of value will be your first priority.

Step 3: Fine-tune your content process

During this step, think about how you can make a repeatable, scalable process for content creation. This needs to be a system that you can use time and time again.

First, you need to think about how you’re going to deliver the content. Will you use longform articles? Videos? Infographics?

Second, you need to create an editorial calendar that will map out what you publish and how often you publish it.

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Basically, you should have a smooth process in place that covers all the bases.

This will take some time to fully develop, so expect to make frequent changes.

Step 4: Set up a performance tracking system

To maintain a powerful content strategy, you need to know what’s working and what’s not.

In terms of content, your success or failure will be measured by how well your content performs.

Performance is generally measured using a few key metrics: views, time on page, and conversion actions (like email signups or even sales). These are also called Key Performance Indicators or KPIs.

You can see all of these metrics in Google Analytics. Once you get familiar with the platform, you’ll be able to track each metric individually to put your strategy under the microscope.

Step 5: Share your content

This is the “marketing” part of “content marketing.” If you’re serious about your content, you want to get it in front of as many people as possible.

Social media plays a big role in this. You’ll want to have a strong presence on the big social networks and share your content on them, optimizing the content for each site.

If you optimize well enough, your content will get lots of views and shares, and your traffic will grow.

One more thing: Having a social sharing schedule will let you make the most of your content.

But none of these steps matter in the least if you’re not delivering value.

That’s where it all starts.

Conclusion

To put it simply, the revenue extraction business model is outdated.

Customers have more choices than at any point in history.

If you don’t like one coffee shop or grocery store, you can easily switch to one of the countless others.

In most situations, every customer has the ability to decide where they want to spend their money.

You have to convince them that your company is worth spending money on.

That’s why so many businesses are utilizing high-value content strategies. People respond to value, and they want to give back to businesses who give them value first.

How are you going to provide that kind of serious value to your customers?

About the Author: Daniel Threlfall is an Internet entrepreneur and content marketing strategist. As a writer and marketing strategist, Daniel has helped brands including Merck, Fiji Water, Little Tikes, and MGA Entertainment. Daniel is co-founding Your Success Rocket, a resource for Internet entrepreneurs. He and his wife Keren have four children, and occasionally enjoy adventures in remote corners of the globe (kids included). You can follow Daniel on Twitter or see pictures of his adventures on Instagram.

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