Focus on mobile, social, cloud and big data

Nikos Drakos, Research VP Gartner, welcomes participants to the Gartner Summit 2013 in London.The "digital storm" of recent years is leaving lasting traces. The world's most valuable brands have just been presented. The 2012-2013 value increases of Apple and Google together are as large as the absolute brand value of General Electric! At the same time, Apple and Google have ousted long-time leader Coca Cola from the throne. The digital industry thus occupies sustainable top positions in the global economy.Have end devices taken the reins?Zurich Switzerland has just announced its new Internet presence with so-called "responsive web design". This takes into account the fact that customers are looking for digital contact and dialog with the insurer using a wide variety of devices. Have end devices taken over the reins? Probably not - but consistent customer orientation can lead to the solution "responsive web design".The drivers of the digital economyAbout 300 business and IT specialists met in London on September 16 and 17, 2013 for the annual Summit Portals, Content&Collaboration. At first glance, the terms "portal", "content" and "collaboration" are neither new nor particularly sexy. So why is this year's Summit so well attended and prominently featuring exponents from all over Europe? The answer is best explained by the central drivers of the digital economy: Mobile, Social, Cloud and Big Data. These four forces represent significant new opportunities, but also significant challenges, for the areas of portals, content and collaboration. Gartner predicts that by 2015, around 60% of the so-called "information workers" will access content applications via mobile devices. At the same time, the content share will shift significantly from text to video in the direction of images. This will also have an impact on the necessary transmission capacities. This example illustrates the future requirements that portals, content management and collaboration systems will have to meet.Customer Experience replaces CRMAnd here are some more key messages from the Summit:

• 85% of the Big Data initiatives over the next three years will not achieve the goals set because of internal cultural differences ("suits vs. t-shirts")
• Information (data) must increasingly be seen as a corporate resource ("asset") and less as raw material for better decisions
• From (classic) market research to real-time feedback collection and processing (example: Singapore airport)
• Cocal Cola already spends USD 420 million annually on social marketing today
• By mid-2014, 10 companies will already spend USD 1 billion or more each on social marketing - these budgets are certainly not "on top" of traditional advertising!
• With BYOD (bring your own device) and BYOA (bring your own application), the IT discipline is moving far beyond the IT department
• Content in the relevant context is the real challenge for companies, both for employees and for customers.
• Customer Experience (CX) is replacing the catch-all term CRM, and at the moment is causing more confusion than clarification

I actually wanted to present my impressions of the Summit in London in a much simpler and clearer way - I didn't succeed. Obviously, the complexity of digital marketing has increased massively in recent years. Keeping an overview and setting the right priorities will be essential. A visualization in the sense of a digital marketing architecture would be helpful. I'll stay tuned.Christoph Oggenfuss, Front Office Architect, www.markiting.ch