As one of the small – but growing – number of iPad users in the office, I thought I’d canvas some opinions and share our combined views on the apps that we find most useful/interesting…

Kevin (the roaming worker): Kevin’s a fan of Splashtop, an app that mirrors your PC’s desktop on your iPad, allowing you to do anything on your iPad that you can on your PC (albeit with a couple of milliseconds delay!).

Paul (the information junkie): my most frequently used app has to be Flipboard, which creates a personal magazine from all the online content that my contacts (or people/blogs I follow) are creating or linking t. Used in the right way, it’s a great antitdote to information overload. Having said that, it raises questions for online magazines that rely on advertiser revenue. And it’s also a great example for marketers of how new platforms are making it even harder to predict the way our content is consumed or even know who’s consuming it.

Nick (the assiduous note-taker): Nick’s been experimenting with SoundNote, an app we’re finding very useful for meetings/interviews. SoundNote lets you record audio at the same time as typing notes (or even drawing). So you have an audio record of your call/meeting/interview and a written set of notes in the same place. And if you tap on one of the words when you’re looking back over your written notes, the audio playback will instantly jump to the point in the recording when you were typing that word. Which makes it a fantastic time-saver when you’re looking for more detail to add to the written notes.

A quick run down on some other apps that I am/am not using regularly:

I’m not really using any of the Word/PowerPoint/Excel apps (other than to read email attachments). It’s not that they don’t have the features, just that I’m usually multi-tasking when creating a document and (even with the OS 4.2 upgrade), the iPad isn’t the ideal way to do that. But I do find the pre-loaded Notes app really useful as a way of instantly capturing thoughts if I’m not sitting infront of my computer. The other pre-loaded apps (particularly the Safari internet browser and email client) are also good for quick access away from the PC.

There are a host of webex-style apps (from adobe, citrix, cisco), but the one I’m most keen on is Fuze meeting – which allows you to run the online meeting from your iPad and share documents on screen (as far as I can see, the others only let you see what others are sharing on their PCs).

PDF Presenter is a good little app for – as the name might suggest – presenting PDFs. If you connect an iPad to a projector/monitor (via the vga connector), you can use PDF Presenter to run through your slides.  You’ll need to convert your preesntation to a PDF first – which can be good as PowerPoints aren’t always converted perfectly by the readers on the iPad. On the subject of PDFs, iAnnotate is useful for reading and commenting on/marking up PDFs.

And some that are outside the realms of work or productivity tools:

The TED app is a great source of intelligent thought on the issues facing the world – although just flicking to it now, I’m not sure about the featured talk on ‘Why not eat insects?…

I prefer the Amazon Kindle app to the Apple iBooks one – mainly because I like the option to read white text on a black background (which I haven’t found in iBooks).

Alice in Wonderland, Wired magazine and The Times all show – in different ways – how the tablet format can bring new life to publishing.

Drums! (a touch-drumkit that you can use to play along with songs in your library) is a great demonstration of the touch-screen in action.

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter apps are pretty much as you’d expect.

Aweditorium and Photo Cooking are great ways to explore (respectively) new music and recipies – sitting back and ‘exploring’ being very much the ‘tablet’ way to interact, as opposed to sitting up and ’searching’ on a PC. It’s things like this that make me think that the tablet format is much more than just a different way to access the same information – fundamentally it could encourage a different way of thinking/interacting.

And Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds are my favourite iPad games.

B2B Marketing has published an overview of our lead nurturing programme for Oracle’s Supply Chain Management solutions. The programme won the ‘Best Lead Nurturing Initiative’ award at last month’s B2B Marketing Awards in London.

We had a great night at the awards – The Marketing Practice was a finalist for Agency of the Year, and our own Sales & Marketing Forum (a series of events for our senior clients) was runner-up for ‘Best Live Initiative’ (beaten only by Lloyds TSB).

A brief summary of the write-up of our Oracle lead nurturing programme:

“Oracle’s campaigns for its Supply Chain Management (SCM) business aimed to generate UK sales of SCM solutions to both existing Oracle customers and net-new accounts. Webinars, live events and direct mail resulted in a ROMI of some 65:1.”

“The campaigns sought to align sales and marketing in a nurturing programme, combining the strengths of sales (deep close relationships with customers); with those of marketing, by taking a cross-account view with the ability to offer an enlarged ‘footprint’ for sales – through content, events and insight that are relevant to target business contacts, tailored based on their behaviour and past intelligence.”

There are just too many cases of companies tolerating sub-standard data because “it’s never perfect” or “no-one else does it any better” or “that’s just the way data works” or “it will take too long to fix, we’ve got more pressing priorities”.

At the risk of sounding a bit evangelical, it really doesn’t have to be this way. A high-performing data platform is just too important to give up on. Because almost all B2B organisations have very poor data and data management systems, getting it right is a great potential competitive advantage and efficiency driver.

So what do I mean by “sub-standard data”? It isn’t just a case of physical contact or company records – more often it’s a case of the process that surrounds the core data. Examples would include (this is going to be a pretty long list…):

- no tiering to differentiate the treatment of a 50-person cold prospect from a 5,000-employee hot lead

- taking 2 weeks to extract and confirm a campaignable list of prospects

- existing customer records mixed in with prospects

- errors in updating core data with changes (whether the changes come from Sales, Marketing, Account teams, data services…)

- missing key contacts/job functions (or, worse, having the contacts but not recording the job functions)

- inability to record campaign histories/contact behaviour and adjust future campaigns accordingly

- trying to use a system that has been set up for progressing sales opportunities to run activities like teleservice

- no clear process/division of ownership between Sales and Marketing (for using/updating/adding contacts)

- a history of long-drawn of CRM system selection/incomplete implementations

- no valuable reporting from the data about the effectiveness/results of different marketing activities (let alone any intelligence on the target market or what to do next)

I know that these issues range from the tediously tactical to the ‘million-dollar’ strategic, but that’s the thing about data – filling in the big picture plan is (relatively!) simple; it’s the detail that can cause any data programme to stumble.

And as I said at the top, a high-performing data platform is just too important to give up on. It’s one of the 4 foundations of an indispensible marketing department (the others are content, continuous communications strategy and opportunity management).

Of all the 4 foundations, it’s the data platform that lets the others do their magic. So if you attract people in through content, then the data platform will capture them and bring them into your future activity. And the right data platform will let you focus your communications strategy on the right people at the right time.

We’ve seen enough examples now of data working in harmony with the rest of a marketing programme to know that it is possible (and we’ll post about some examples of this in the next couple of weeks). And the right answer is always deeply tailored to the realities of the business involved (the structure and responsibilities of Sales and Marketing; the way that the target market is divided and tiered; the kinds of marketing programme being employed…).

Having said that, there are plenty of things that successful data platforms have in common. The most important of all are probably that when they started they didn’t bite off more than they could chew, and that system selection came a long way after detailed working through the practicalities of what the system needed to support. There’s an interesting set of skills/experiences needed for this work, which combines understanding the things that various data management systems can offer with seeing what it is that a business truly needs from its data platform.

If you can do that at the same time as starting small, there’s every chance that your data could soon be working for – rather than against – your marketing programmes. As I said, just in case you don’t believe me, we’ll post some positive examples over the next few weeks…

So your annual flagship event is all set up and ready to roll. You’ve booked a venue big enough for hundreds of attendees and exhibitors. You’ve lined up speakers that include the most senior people in your business, your partners and your clients. You’ve signed up over 30 sponsors. The invitation process is well underway and (all being well) the delegates are signing up in droves.

And then, two weeks before the big day, the union announces a strike on the day of your event that will close the London Underground.

That seems (from an entirely uninformed perspective) to be exactly what has happened to Salesforce.com’s London Cloudforce 2010 event, scheduled for 7th September. I get cold shivers just thinking about it.

It must have felt like a suitable subject for Michael Buerk’s ‘The Choice‘ – carry on with the event as planned (and frustrate or lose delegates in travel chaos), or find another day when the tube is up and running (hoping that delegates can clear their diaries with 2 week’s notice)?

Salesforce.com seem to have decided to push the event back a day (what were the chances of the venue being available on both days?), with all the re-scheduling and re-confirmation that involves. It would be interesting to find out how that affects their numbers on the day – certainly it will make the post-event follow-up to no-shows more important than ever. Or maybe some kind of ’spirit of the blitz’ will emerge and actually boost attendance or create a shared experience that makes the event more enjoyable for all…

The challenge that TED give their speakers (some of the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers) is to give the talk of their lives in just 18 minutes.

It’s a great model of real thought leadership (and also of intuitive,  effective website design), so if you haven’t visited it before then do take a look at www.ted.com – just be prepared to spend at least half an hour there…

One of the most popular talks on the site is Sir Ken Robinson (creativity and educational expert) on “Do schools kill creativity?” On YouTube alone it’s had almost 1.5 million views in the last 3 years, and it’s a perfect example of true thought leadership – engaging people around a big issue, tackling the subject from a fresh viewpoint, demanding that you pay attention, effortlessly showing why he has the right to talk about the issue (and leaving the viewer wanting to find out ‘how’ the answer can be delivered).

His latest talk has had over 60,000 views in just 3 months.

We normally shy away from any kind of blatant self-promotion in this blog (yes, really!). But we recently had the great news that we’ve been shortlisted as Finalists for two categories in the 2010 B2B Marketing Awards, which hopefully excuses a quick congratulatory post…

The first category is Best Lead Nurturing Initiative, for our programme with Oracle’s Supply Chain Management business unit. And the second category is Agency of the Year, so congratulations to the whole team here (and thanks especially to clients, partners and suppliers for their support). Fingers crossed for the ceremony in November…

James Gardner, CTO at DWP, is writing an e-book about what the enterprise sales process looks like from the buyer’s point of view. (The chapter on Tricks Vendors Play to get a first foot in the door promises to be particularly interesting…)

A recent extract posted on his blog talks about the tell-tale signs of a ‘gone native Account Director‘ (an Account Director who feels they work for the client organisation rather than their own, is building a true partnership with their customer, and is embarrassed by any overt attempts to sell to the client because they believe the client will bring opportunities to them rather than the other way round).

Now I’m putting words into James’ mouth here, but he seems to be saying that going native is a good thing for an Account Director – and ultimately for the sales operation they work in – because a true partner will end up with more (or better quality) business than they would have done through hard selling.

I would suggest that Marketing needs to think about the same principles too. We know for a fact that the campaigns we run work best when they “don’t feel like marketing” to the end audience – that’s a key principle of course for social media and it’s always been valid in real life too. But it’s very difficult to achieve, and only possible I would argue if you start from

• a real interest in the issues of the marketplace;
• combined with a deep belief that things could be better for that marketplace if they thought more about what you have to offer;
• and an interest/affinity for the people you believe you can help.

Those are the defining beliefs of pretty much all the best marketers I know. Start from anywhere else, and the sales objectives you’re trying to support will be blatantly obvious – to such an extent that they will switch off the audience. So much so that I find myself getting embarrassed when I see examples of marketing that add nothing to a bare sales message, or are obviously trying to promote a course of action that will result in a sale. (I’ll pick out some examples of this from advertising in this month’s Harvard Business Review in an upcoming post.)

Now this isn’t to say that Marketing shouldn’t be about supporting sales objectives – if it isn’t helping to sell today or creating a better sales environment for tomorrow, then it doesn’t have any reason to exist. But the point is that – for the ‘gone-native Marketer’ – successfully driving sales is inextricably tied to the belief that their product/service can make the world a better place, a desire to find opportunities to make this happen, and a deep interest in the people whose world they can improve.

Our recent Sales & Marketing Forum examined the position that suppliers to the public sector find themselves in now. Our speakers on the night were James Gardner, CTO, Department for Work and Pensions, Colin Cram, Former Director, North West Centre of Excellence, and Simon Carter, Marketing Director, UK Government Division, Fujitsu.

A write-up of the session is available to read here, covering four key sections:

1. Why is the public sector so important?

“Put simply, annual government procurement is huge — at £220 billion it represents 0.75% of the total global GDP”

2. Why is selling to the public sector so challenging?

“The implications of a new government determined to significantly reduce government spending are massive, but this drive to cut costs also represents an outstanding opportunity for technology vendors to demonstrate options for driving operational efficiency and effectiveness. The baseline objective of any supplier should be to demonstrate an ability to deliver savings in the order of 25-30%, either on previous contracts or as process savings. Do this, and they will be ideally positioning IT as a force of innovation as well as equipping public sector workforces for future challenges.”

3. What is the experience of procurement client side?

“Most business cases brought before the public sector collapse because they do not help address the ‘big game’ — the immediate and urgent need to find ways of taking massive amounts of spend out of government operations.”

4. How can vendors best approach the public sector?

“In reality there is very little that can’t be outsourced by government — even Whitehall policy work can be outsourced! — and if public sector management have the ambition and vision to follow a more ambitious outsourcing policy there is estimated a further £100-150 billion of services that could be run by the private sector.”

[Or, a hymn in praise of integration...]

Have you got an iPad yet? Did you buy a 3D TV just in time for the World Cup? How about a walkman? (…OK, one of those isn’t actually a must-have gadget this year)

And what about the marketing must-haves for 2010? Have you appointed a Head of Social Media? Implemented a marketing automation system? Designed a content marketing strategy?

The next big thing makes our capitalist world go round – from the consumer who believes their life will be complete with 3D TV, to the marketer who turns to the latest technique as the answer to their prayers.

Suffering from boom and bust marketing?

The danger comes when you step off the merry-go-round. You realise that football is still football whether you’re watching in black and white or 3D – and social media won’t automatically solve fundamental challenges like uniting Sales and Marketing or differentiating you from the competition.

What’s the problem with jumping to adopt new marketing techniques?

• It can excuse (or distract) from failure in older channels – hopefully the next new thing will come along before it’s time to analyse the success of the last one…
• It can make marketers chase the wrong goals – metrics become about the success of the online community rather than contribution to the sales pipeline…
• It can make us less strategic – distracting from the chance to become the voice of the customer, driving the creation and application of new propositions.

This isn’t an argument to ignore the latest marketing trends – especially not ones like social media that have such potential to reach key audiences. It’s just a plea to consider them in a more integrated way.

Paul Dunay from Avaya was talking to Brian Wallace, VP of Digital Marketing and Media for RIM, and recalls him saying that “2 years from now – if I still have a Director of Social Media – I should be fired!” Once it gets off the ground, social media isn’t a programme in itself – it needs to support the bigger goals like prospect acquisition, customer growth or co-creation of products/services. Putting it in a silo won’t help anybody achieve these core objectives.

Demand generation – integration in practice

Take a big marketing challenge like delivering sales leads. (To start with, let’s not forget that the ‘old’ channels (events, direct mail, telemarketing…) are still delivering opportunities every day.)

But suppose you believe you could be driving more demand ‘inbound’ rather than relying solely on the traditional ‘outbound’ channels? You’re faced with the temptation to kick off any number of isolated projects to attract these sales opportunities.

Take the big three – social media, marketing automation, content marketing. It would be simple to create a programme for each:

• One set of people looking to improve your reputation/presence online
• Another building nurturing/communication processes for visitors to your website
• A third group dedicated to creating content that customers and prospects will find valuable

But shouldn’t these really all be part of a single programme? Creating content that the audience wants, delivering it in a format that can be distributed across the web/used to start conversations, and then being ready to track inbound interest and provide more good content at relevant points on the prospect journey.

And integration would go further than that – it would look at the ‘old’ channels and see how they could also use the same content, qualify people into the lead nurturing funnel, and provide essential opportunities to convert initial interest into sales leads.

Seven success factors for the new integrated model

To start with, there are four pre-requisites – all about knowing what you’re going to do. But let’s assume you’ve done all of those – understood your audience, thought about the great content you can provide, identified the channels to use, and set your objectives.

The final three success factors are a bit less obvious, and more about how you do it:

1. Sell the next step
   It’s true that the best programmes create content and calls to action to suit the needs of the audience – but it’s also possible to subtly direct those needs and the journey the audience will take. This means stepping back from the core proposition you’re selling, and think more about selling why the prospect should stay with you for the next step of their journey.
2. Don’t be afraid to involve sales: you can’t automate everything
   In the rush to become more self-sufficient, Marketing is increasingly frightened of handing an ‘unready’ lead to Sales. But sometimes (especially for high value deals in the relatively small UK market) a sales conversation or meeting can be the best next step for the prospect even if they aren’t going to buy for another 9 months.
3. And keep going… across all the channels that work
   In one recent programme, 57% of leads handed to sales came after three or more waves of campaigning. The point is clear – seamlessly integrating multiple touchpoints (social, email, website, events, calling…) over time is the only way to uncover the true potential of a market.

So like any team of superheroes (The Avengers, the Power Rangers – select according to your generation) using tools and channels on their own will only defeat some challenges: it’s the ability to combine them seamlessly that will destroy the evil genius who is taking over the world.

IBM has released its 2010 Global Chief Executive Office Study into the lives and pressures of CEOs in the world’s top organisations. IBM calls 2009 the ‘wake up year’ for many CEOs and, as this survey was run in 2004, 2006 and 2008, profiles this year’s performance against past results for comparison.

You can see the full report here.

Research on this scale and into this target audience is rare for free download. In total 1,541 CEOs took place in face-to-face interviews – the research will tell you their full demographics, but suffice to say there’s a broad spectrum of public and private-sector organisations from across the world. Interestingly, 3,600 students were also interviewed (the CEO of tomorrow) and their opinions used to add another dimension to the report. [These ‘views of generation Y’ are being given increasing attention by all the decision makers we speak to – the world is changing so quickly that sometimes only the new generation seem able to keep up...]

In 2010, for the first time, the primary challenge of CEOs was complexity. We probably all know this already – interlinking networks of suppliers and dependent third-parties – but removing or managing complexity isn’t something we see all that commonly as a message in many campaigns. Perhaps this could be a key to aligning your propositions with boardroom priorities.

As an aside, IBM has built a neat assessment tool to benchmark your attitudes against those of the CEOs in the research. In the interests of openness, take a look at the customised report we built for ourselves here!