TekMarketing

Traditional process and rule systems

The traditional approach to optimization in process and decision support systems is to model the problem using a framework (e.g. business processes, business rules, or a combination of the two), integrate the model to the necessary data sources, deploy and execute the model using an engine that understands the model, observe and analyze the execution over time using integrated monitoring and analytics tools, identify bottlenecks and issues in the model, modify the model to address the issues, and redeploy it. This iterative process can be represented with Figure 1 below. For more on this refer to my article on BPM.
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I often get questions about product management and product marketing from potential clients and employers: what they entail, how they’re different from one another, how they work together, what are the important skills for each one, etc. In my previous posts on marketing, I’ve covered this topic to some extent. Here I want to get into some of the finer points around product marketing and its relation to product management and sales.

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Background

One of the interesting developments in software and cloud in the recent years is the so-called file sync and share space that started to shape up in mid to late 2000s. Back in 2011 I spent a few months researching this space as part of a strategic project with a previous employer, and continued to cover it through early 2013. At the time start-ups such as Dropbox and Box were getting good traction and were reporting impressive adoption and growth. These vendors were getting impressive valuations and funding and a few got acquired. The growth, however, was primarily in number of consumer-oriented users, which didn’t necessarily translate to revenue, given the freemium model that most of these vendors use.
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In the previous post, Introduction to Competitive Intelligence, I provided an overview of CI and introduced a high-level CI process. In this post I discuss the process in further detail and provide CI guidelines and best practices. CI is the process of research and gathering information on the target markets, the competitors and their products and customers, synthesizing and analyzing the information, and delivering it in a consumable form to various internal teams — sales, marketing, product management, product marketing, and the leadership — who may use the CI analysis for better decision making in their respective areas. Below is the CI process.
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The other day I came across this quote by Henry Ford (cited in Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman): “The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.” While that statement can be true, it may seem to undermine the importance of competitive intelligence (CI) function. But to make one’s business better, one must know and understand the competition well.
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TekMarketing

Optimization in process and rule based systems using machine learning

Traditional process and rule systems

Building and Marketing a Product: Product Management vs. Product Marketing

Competitive Intelligence Process and Best Practices

Introduction to Competitive Intelligence