The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Charlie Parker's eponymous album. Look it up:
Now this is serious: A benchmark analysis of consumer reviews of netbook laptops collected from consumer electronics review Web sites has been released by Biz360, a vendor of market and media intelligence products.
Seeing as how First Coffee swears by his netbook, could I be... wrong?
One of the consumer research study's findings indicates that consumer advocacy for the Netbooks category "lags behind consumer advocacy for all laptops."
Evidently Biz360 analyzed over 20,000 online opinions, culled from review consumer electronics sites such as Amazon, Best Buy, CNET, Newegg, PC World, Circuit City and CompUSA for the period May 15, 2008 through November 15, 2008. The company's Opinion Insights social media measurement product was used to analyze the online comments.
"While performance is the #1 attribute driving laptop advocacy, the performance Net Advocacy for the Netbooks product category is predominantly negative," the study found.
"Net Advocacy" is Biz360's proprietary metric that factors the positive and negative sentiment of individual comments, as well as the impact of the source of each comment, to yield an indicator of a product or brand's referral value in the marketplace. This process is automated by the Opinion Insights product, which lets companies compare advocacy scores of different brands, models, product attributes and features.
For laptop manufacturers, four key product attributes accounted for more than 70 percent of all online opinions: performance, display, features and accessories, and general opinions.
While Acer is the Q408 top-seller in the netbook product family, Acer ranks lowest in Net Advocacy among the six laptop brands: "The Acer's Aspire One series had a 34 percent lower Net Advocacy than the average Net Advocacy of all laptop brands," company officials say. Acer's Aspire One series, like almost all netbooks, is regarded by the majority of their new owners as not technically performing up to their expectations.
Yeah, well this reporter wouldn't trade his Acer Aspire One for any of those laptops. Well, maybe for the latest 'n' greatest Macbook. Maybe I can ask Walter Mossberg if he can send me of the leftovers he has from all those reviews he does.
See, when one factors "cost" in with all those other considerations listed above, the Acer shoots pretty close to the top of the list. Much like if you're sitting around designing the ideal wife or husband, after you get done with all the fun stuff - "owns a brewery," "loves kids" - toss "likelihood of marrying me" in. Recalculate.
See what I mean? It's fine to sit around technolusting for ideal laptops, but toss in "price" and "convenience" and see where the numbers end up. I'll stick with my Acer One, thank you very much, unless you're buying.
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SaaS vendor Intermedia, specializing in messaging and collaboration products, is now offering Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 as a hosted service through its private label channel partners.
This offering extends Intermedia's reach within the productivity and collaboration space, offering a customer relationship management (CRM) product to its existing hosted Exchange e-mail and collaboration, SharePoint collaboration platform and Office Communications Server instant messaging and presence services.
"Unlike other one-size-fits-all hosted CRM offerings," company officials say without naming names, Intermedia's hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 "is customizable to the specific needs of the individual end customer." This level of customization is possible, the company explains, "because each CRM customer is guaranteed its own virtual dedicated server."
CRM has become a business critical application "because optimizing and tracking the sales process has become more and more important to increasing sales and growing customer relationships," said Serguei Sofinski, Intermedia's CEO.
In addition to customization benefits, Intermedia's Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is integrated with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, a feature touted by company officials as "allowing a minimal learning curve and quick return on investment."
It can be synchronized with e-mail, tasks, contacts and calendars. Users can also export data into Excel for fast analysis and reporting.
Intermedia is headquartered in New York City with offices in Sunnyvale, California, London, England and St. Petersburg, Russia.
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First Trace has released Kinnosa 4.1, described by company officials as a tool "for engineering document management of CAD files and design processes."
Enhancements have been added to Kinnosa's service-oriented architecture to improve Engineering Enterprises' visibility of data, collaboration among distributed teams and automated business processes.
"Document management problems only get worse when firms are forced to lay off people," says Terry Simpson, President of First Trace, adding that Kinnosa 4.1 is intended to help eliminate process breakdowns, enhance collaboration, and "begin generating quantifiable ROI."
Company officials maintain that Kinnosa's service-oriented architecture and open data repository make it "the most adaptable software product for managing engineering files produced by CAD tools from Autodesk, SolidWorks and Bentley Systems." Application add-ins place Kinnosa functionality into the menu bar of CAD tools and Microsoft Office programs.
The First Tracers say Kinnosa's content searching capabilities have been improved with this new release, not in small part with the addition of Search Folders and Saved Searches, added so users can create and reuse custom searches based on document types, properties, and other criteria. "Files are still stored in their original location, but Search Folders are an easy way to organize, search and view files, without complicating data management," explains Simpson.
Company officials are marketing to the straitened economic times, where firms are trying to do more with less. First Trace officials feel that products that eliminate or automate manual processes are gaining popularity, so they're selling a Kinnosa 4.1 which includes additional Workflow Services to manage and automate real-world business processes, such as design, collaboration, review, release and publishing activities.
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The year 2009 will see companies "continue to invest significantly" in online marketing, although less than half (47 percent) of marketers actually use analytics to measure their campaigns, according to the sixth Alterian Annual Marketing Survey.
Online marketing investment is predicted to increase for the sixth consecutive year as organizations begin to look to social networks as well as e-mail, SEO and pay-per-click advertising, the study found, adding that "alarmingly, only 47 percent use analytics to measure the success of this activity."
A quarter of those surveyed cite analyzing results as the hardest part of any campaign.
David Eldridge, CEO Alterian, says that while it's "refreshing to see results that show businesses investing in areas that can directly drive sales," what's "less encouraging" is "the low number of marketers who use analytics to evaluate and refine their campaigns."
The survey collected responses from more than 1,500 marketers, agencies, marketing services providers and systems integrators on spending and investment priorities for the industry over the coming year.
Despite the widespread coverage of the death of offline media and marketing, "only a fifth of those surveyed are predicting a reduction in offline marketing investment, with 38 percent predicting it will actually increase," the study found: "Online direct marketing is also set to see healthy growth this year, with nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of organizations citing planned increases in budgets."
Marketers are still using multiple applications to do their job, the study shows, with around a quarter of respondents using more than seven applications on campaigns: "With more than half of those surveyed (51 percent) using between three and six applications it means that a vast majority of marketers are attempting to analyze data from disparate systems, with little or no integration."
"Multichannel marketing is commonplace in 2009, but the challenge for marketers is to measure the value and draw results across these various systems in order to provide a true picture of ROI back to the business," Eldridge said, adding "this seems to be a tough challenge for many organizations as they continue to market in the dark."
The survey also provided interesting insights into the importance of a website in the overall marketing mix. One-fifth of respondents claimed that their website was only 'basic' and not at the core of its marketing activity, but with increased investment predicted in online marketing channels, companies need to better understand the importance of the website in effectively underpinning its online presence. This demonstrates a need for companies to better understand the channels available to them before investing their marketing funds.
Eldridge concluded: "Online marketing offers organizations almost limitless ways of engaging with their customers and prospects, but in the rush to make the most of these new technologies some businesses are getting the basics wrong. Marketers must not forget that their own website is the destination that many of their activities drive customers and prospects to, and they need to be extracting the maximum value this cornerstone of any forward-thinking company's marketing activity."
Notes to Editors
The Alterian 2008 Survey polled a total of 1,545 marketing professionals. The annual survey, now in its sixth year, was conducted in North America and the United Kingdom in October and November 2008 through a dedicated website landing page and hardcopy in-person interviews at the 2008 Direct Marketing Association Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas, the 2008 Ad:tech Exhibition in New York and the 2008 Interactive Marketing Show in Manchester.
Bob Barker, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Alterian will be presenting the full results of the 2008 Annual Marketing Survey in a global webinar on 22nd January 2009 at 4pm UK time. Please click on the following link to register for the webinar: www.alterian.com/news__events/events.
If you are interested in receiving a copy of the full survey report, please email
About Alterian
Alterian (LSE: ALN) empowers marketers with an integrated marketing software platform combining database, online and operational marketing applications on a shared data infrastructure. The Alterian Integrated Marketing Platform makes it practical and cost effective for marketers to use actionable insight to execute an integrated marketing strategy across online and offline channels.
It is the unique integration of analytics, content and execution through Alterian's industry leading tools, such as the Alterian Messenger email platform, and the award winning Alterian Content Management web solutions, which enables marketers to drive a seamless, multichannel customer experience.
Alterian's analytically-led software is delivered to approximately 1,000 marketing departments, across 26 countries, and an international network of more than 100 business partners, including marketing services providers, agencies and systems integrators. Its partners, such as Accenture, Acxiom, Allant Group, Cap Gemini, Carlson Marketing, Experian, Epsilon, InfoUSA, LogicaCMG, Merkle, Ogilvy One and Euro RSCG Worldwide, deliver Alterian software alongside their own domain and services expertise to help market leaders such as Princess Cruises, General Motors, Zurich, Astra Zeneca, HSBC, Limited Too, AEGON, Avis, Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment, Dell, Amnesty International and Vodafone integrate marketing processes and drive competitive advantage. For more information about Alterian, products within the Alterian Integrated Marketing Platform or our Partner Network, please visit www.alterian.com.
