We're looking for a new analyst to join Forrester's Consumer Product Strategy practice.  Are you experienced in the field of product planning, development, and innovation?  Do you have an insatiable curiosity for where the digital economy is headed, and how digitally disruptive products are changing the world in which we live?  If this sounds like you, keep reading…

Digital disruption is transforming consumer products, inverting industry economics, and redefining customer relationships for companies in all industries.  Forrester is helping our clients adapt their businesses and innovate their products in response to the unprecedented pace of technology change that characterizes this revolution.   We need a Senior/Principal Analyst with cross-industry experience to join the team, and help serve Forrester’s clients with forward-looking research and advice on how product strategists can capitalize on digital disruption. 

If you’re interested, apply online.  We look forward to hearing from you!

I’m excited to announce the recent publication of Welcome To The Era Of Digital Intelligence. This idea has been brewing for a long time, and it shouldn’t surprise anybody who follows interactive marketing or web analytics. The macro marketing environment has changed – and continues to rapidly evolve – to accommodate new touchpoints, sophisticated consumers, and highly coordinated multichannel customer experiences. And as the remit of marketing expands, so too must that of marketing analytics.

It’s clear that traditional analytics approaches were not designed or intended to handle the breadth of channels, devices, volume, and speed that fuel today’s digital interactions. The endemic symptoms of these gaps are plain for anyone to see: the proliferation of analysis tools, the explosion of data warehousing projects, and the struggle to translate analytics into actionable insights. It is abundantly clear that we need to take a step back and re-imagine an analytics framework that adequately supports modern digital marketing.

Forrester calls this updated approach to marketing analytics “digital intelligence,” defined as:

The capture, management, and analysis of data to provide a holistic view of the digital customer experience that drives the measurement, optimization, and execution of marketing tactics and business strategies.

Digital intelligence comprises six “layers”:

As a new analyst at Forrester, I’m taking over coverage of cross-channel attribution, metrics, and measurement for customer intelligence professionals. It is a wide-spanning topic to cover, but I’m up for the challenge!

One of the major topics that I’ll cover is cross-channel attribution. Cross-channel attribution is essentially an advanced measurement approach to measure channel performance and customer performance metrics more accurately by calculating the true credit given to a specific marketing effort that leads to a desired customer action. It’s a daunting task for marketers because it requires organizational support and a deep understanding of attribution modeling.

For support, marketers often turn to external vendors — the subject of my latest research: Understanding the Cross-Channel Attribution Landscape. As I was researching this report, it was clear that cross-channel attribution is top of mind for marketers and CI folks alike. Why? It’s a more advanced, precise way to measure channel and customer performance. In an age of austerity that requires responsible and efficient marketing investment, it’s no wonder that it’s a priority.

For just over a year, we’ve been writing a stream of research around customer loyalty programs. Loyalty is “en fuego” right now, and it’s an exciting time to be covering the technologies, services, and analytics that support these programs. To make things even more thrilling, we just published The Forrester Wave™: Loyalty Program Service Providers, Q1 2012.

This is Forrester’s first evaluation of loyalty program service providers. We screened more than 30 companies that build and manage loyalty programs but narrowed down the field to Aimia, Brierley+Partners, Epsilon, Kobie Marketing, Maritz, and Tibco Loyalty Lab. These players demonstrate market momentum, offer a full range of loyalty services to support the entire loyalty life cycle, and generate strong customer interest.

Our assessment consisted of executive briefings; reference calls and online surveys of user companies; and a 60-criteria evaluation. These criteria included the vendor’s approach to loyalty strategy; technology offering; integration capabilities; program management services; and analytics and reporting services; as well as the strength of their roadmap and vision for the future of loyalty.

Forrester clients can read the full report to see how vendors ranked, including scorecard details and the ability to customize the evaluation criteria with personalized weightings.

Some people say that the old Maya calendar predicts that the world will end in the year 2012. Will this happen? Most likely no. Without judging anybody’s beliefs in this ancient calendar: Some experts say that the Maya calendar is like a five-digit odometer in your car: When it reaches 99,999 kilometers or miles, it will restart at 0. However, 2012 is beginning to show the ingredients of the long-expected stronger consolidation in the banking platform space.

While it is not yet clear whether Misys and Temenos will merge to move out of the gap between gorillas and antelopes, French software and services company Sopra announced “a project to acquire a majority stake in the Belgian company Callataÿ & Wouters (C&W).” For obvious reasons, it is too early to provide any detailed comment on this announced merger. However, I see two initial areas of interest: