Upcoming Events Webinar: Strategies for Productivity, Talent Fit, and Business Performance | June 4th @ 9:30am PST Pamela Stroko, a seasoned HCM Leader with over 20 years of experience, has excelled in developing strategies that enhance employee experiences, drive productivity, and foster compelling cultures. In this Thought Leaders webinar, we’ll explore best practices in HCM leadership, the cost of inefficiency, the importance of talent fit and development, and unlocking employee potential to achieve extraordinary performance. isolved Connect | October 7 – 9, 2024 Join Pete Tiliakos, as he speaks at the upcoming isolved Connect user conference in Orlando, FL October 7 – 8, 2024. Register on the isolved Connect website: https://www.isolvedconnect.com/ The full event agenda can be found here: https://www.isolvedconnect.com/agenda Recent Research Research Agenda: Workforce […]
Marketing
Guest Podcast: AI – Perception and Reality with Author and Analyst Geoff Webb
Mark Feffer welcomes Geoff Webb to this edition of PeopleTech. Geoff, an author and contributing analyst at 3Sixty Insights, has an impressive resume in technology and product development, including his role as isolved’s VP of solutions, product, and marketing strategy. In this episode, we’ll delve into AI, focusing on its messaging and marketing. We’ll also discuss reskilling and some unexpected challenges. All that and more, on PeopleTech. Listen to the full WorkforceAI podcast here: AI – Perception and Reality with Author and Analyst Geoff Webb
Council Guest Post: Agile Beyond Software – Transforming Marketing and Other Business Functions
In the B2B world, companies are constantly seeking ways to improve efficiency, adaptability, and customer-centricity. Agile methodology, which originated in software development, has proven to be a powerful framework for achieving these goals. But what if the benefits of Agile could be harnessed beyond the realm of software? I’ve had very strong results applying Agile principles to other business functions, particularly marketing, and I’d like to share my thoughts in this article. At its core, Agile is a set of principles and practices that emphasize iterative development, collaboration, flexibility, and customer focus. These principles have revolutionized the way software is developed, enabling teams to deliver high-quality products faster and more efficiently. In the past, a software project was, for lack of a better description, like […]
Guest Council Post: 5 Myths About Sales and Marketing Relationships in B2B Companies (and how to dispel them)
We humans seem to thrive on, or at least are fascinated by conflict. In life or in entertainment, we love seeing characters and groups (real or not) squaring off. Pick your adversaries: Red Sox and Yankees, Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, Holmes and Moriarty, Kirk and Khan, Batman and Joker, Ahab and the White Whale. A nd of course, that loyal Acme customer, Wiley Coyote versus Roadrunner. The list goes on…endlessly. One pair that shouldn’t be in conflict though are Sales and Marketing. And yet, in the world of B2B companies, sales and marketing teams often find themselves at odds, leading to missed opportunities and suboptimal results. Unfortunately, many of the tensions between these two crucial departments stem from misconceptions and myths that have persisted […]
The Employee Experience: HR Must Learn to Let Go
This week I happen to be in Nashville, Tenn., to attend HR software vendor isolved’s annual user conference, isolved Connect. Wednesday morning’s keynote from Chief Marketing Officer James Norwood touched on how organizations top-to-bottom must meet employees where they are today. Mentally, where those employees are today is a very different place than pre-pandemic. Because of this shift, employers must fundamentally rethink the employment value proposition. It’s solid advice. In listening to James and viewing the slides displaying stats backing up his assertions, it occurred to me: along with this recalculation of the employer–employee relationship is a basic truth. It’s always been there. But cultural attitudes and the state of the art of software have only recently brought us to a place and point where […]
3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Lina Tonk, Senior Vice President of Marketing at isolved
Who should own the employee experience (EX)? “There’s room for everyone,” said isolved Senior Vice President of Marketing Lina Tonk during her guest appearance on the #HRTechChat video podcast. And she’s right. The EX occurs everywhere any employee is involved in work. “I do believe the final responsibility should reside with HR. And I think HR leaders will probably agree with that.” They probably would, yes. HR’s job is not to micromanage the EX, however; it is to shepherd, lead and help shape it. From this, responsibility naturally flows. Speaking of marketing, have you ever wondered whether, why or how marketing and HR could join forces to bolster and improve EX? I know that I have. And it turns out that it’s an idea gaining […]
For Insight Into Why a Company Might Be Failing, Look Beyond the Numbers
It never ceases to amaze me that when a business begins to fail, its leaders inevitably turn to the numbers. Don’t get me wrong: Numbers are certainly important. But focus too much on them, and you’ll be doomed to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Sears and other giants of yesteryear. It’s no secret that the recent pandemic and its lingering economic impacts have left their collective imprints on people and businesses far and wide. Unfortunately, the repercussions for some businesses have been incredibly detrimental, and many are grappling with a suddenly uncertain future. Now that the pandemic’s upheaval has stabilized, one would think these businesses should see a financial turnaround, and yet they continue to struggle. If it’s not the global pandemic, then […]
Making the Most of Your Corporate Events in 2022
‘Tis the season for new year’s resolutions. We’re all thinking about how we can do better in 2022, and if you’re a vendor planning to host events in the coming year, 3Sixty Insights has some advice to share. We’ve seen many vendors going all-in on events in the COVID era. Some have been great; others, not so much. Below are our takeaways from the past few years. First, let’s agree that event hosts should always offer virtual options. Even as we prepare for more in-person events, we must continue to provide virtual accessibility. If COVID has proven one thing, it’s that we are all living with uncertainty: about the future, about the right decisions, and about our own and others’ comfort levels. At this point, […]
Case Study: isolved Re-Brand Transforms Culture and Enables Company to Weather the Pandemic Successfully
Many organizations struggle with internal strife due to siloed teams or positions. Marketing and sales are frequent combatants, a situation that is particularly unfortunate as sales enablement works best when it’s the responsibility and purview of both teams. Although sales enablement is often perceived as marketing-led, the fact is that while the sales team needs the resources marketing provides, the marketing team also needs feedback and context from sales in order to source the most effective and useful leads. The two roles certainly do depend on one another, but if the communication is lacking, this interdependence can breed frustration for both divisions. Without proper synergy, the sales team will be uninformed about the company’s marketing campaigns, and the marketing team won’t know what actually helps […]
Sears: What’s the Lost Opportunity Cost for a Squandered Super Brand?
It’s understandable and only human to focus on the calculator when revenue stagnates, dwindles or looks like it might do either. In business, however, the circumstances signal that we must exercise our actual humanity and invest like mad in what we have built. This isn’t everyone’s reflex, but the alternative is to descend irretrievably into the death spiral of left-brain-only leadership. For all its incessant focus on ensuring the business remains in the black, the attitude only leads to financial ruin—everything the left brain fears. In the Wake of Sears… Jeff Bezos must have loved whoever it was who got rid of the Sears’ catalog. Only an unforced error of such magnitude would ever have ledt a berth in its wake wide enough for a […]
3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with James La Brash, Founding Managing Director at InFlight
3Sixty Insights welcomed James La Brash late last week to the latest episode of #HRTechChat. James is founding managing director of InFlight. Truth be told, James and I have had the pleasure of engaging in several conversations, and we finally concluded that we should try to capture in the podcast as many of the great ideas we’ve discussed as possible. As anyone can imagine, there just wasn’t enough time to cover everything, but we did get to a lot of it. The launching pad for our discussion in the video here is the idea that there just might be some room for human capital management and marketing — the CHRO and CMO — to cooperate, benefiting from mutual data analytics wherever possible. Furthermore, we noted […]
Fintech, meet Foodtech
Markets are easily distracted by Fintech news. Just the other day, I found myself meandering around the internet researching a series of Fintech acquisitions that amounted to fewer than $8M in 2021 sales to a single-billion-dollar shrinking dinosaur. I woke up mid-webpage with a major déjà vu headache wondering how many times we were going to read that very same story before we learned to save ourselves the time and the trouble. (The Highlander already knows the way these things ultimately work). Okay, to be fair, and as Yum Brands knows, like their progenitor PepsiCo who spun them off, there’s usually at least two–right, Coca Cola? But there’s never 100, let alone 1000, let alone 10,000 in a market, like there are estimated Fintech startups […]
Research Note: Exploring the Necessity of Modern Customer Success in the Cloud
When did customer success become a department, a division, a role, at vendors of business software for the enterprise? It was when their leaders first feared that customers’ dissatisfaction with, or ambivalence over, the product would begin to affect the bottom line in uncomfortable ways. When and where was this? According to The Customer Success Association, it was in 1996 at Vantive, a company that produced software for customer relationship management. This surprised me. My guess was a cloud company as the first. But the rationale at that CRM company, Vantive, was similar. And, once it becomes relatively easy for customers to discard with one vendor’s product in favor of another product to address the same need, vendors are more apt to sense the urgency […]
11 Tips to Realign Your Small Business for Success Today
We are in some difficult times. With essentially the entire world on lockdown, business has been tough. We are seeing businesses freezing budget, pulling back on expenses and laying off employees in record numbers, just to keep their heads above water. All is not lost, business around the world is being conducted and people are winning new deals. It has just become more difficult. In times like these, we continuously need to remind our teams that the slowdown is not a result of their actions and that their hard work can and will eventually pay off. Our rule of thumb is you have to work two or three times as hard in order to close the same (if not less) business… No level of complaining […]
Five Tips to Quickly Help Get Your Business Online, Before It’s Too Late
Something that we at 3Sixty Insights have been educating the small business market about for years, has been the need to have a digital and online presence The Importance of Having an Online Digital Presence for Local Small Businesses. Yet, some still haven’t made the change. As a result, slowly but surely, businesses that have not adopted digital and online strategies have been disappearing from the landscape one by one. However, up until recently, it has been process that has been slowly but surely killing them off… But, given the current economic pressures with essentially the entire world on lockdown, businesses no longer have years to make the shift. With most small businesses looking at significant loss of revenue, and in some cases losing their complete […]
Marketing Performance Metrics Need to Be Just as Visible as Sales Metrics
When you think about the health of any business, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Most people immediately go to sales numbers—pipeline, bookings, and revenue. And, they are not wrong. However, here at 3Sixty Insights, we push our clients to focus on another aspect of the business: marketing. Let’s put this into context a bit. How often do you personally purchase a product or service from a business that you’ve never heard of before? If we are being honest with ourselves, the answer is “never” or “very rarely.” This is why we believe that tracking the performance of marketing is as equally important to the health of the business as tracking sales performance. Current statistics show that it takes an average of […]
Why Small Businesses Should Always Respond to Inquiries
As a consumer, one of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that most small business do not respond to inquiries. I’ve lost count, both personally and professionally, on how many times I’ve reached out to a business, only to never receive a response. We are talking anything from questions about a product or solution to direct buying questions on pricing and delivery timeframes—and yet, nothing… There is nothing that will guarantee a loss of business more than simply not following up on an inquiry. With so many small businesses struggling to grow or keep their doors open, it still amazes us the staggering amount of businesses that ignore inquiries… The concept is not lost on us, that back in the day there was a […]
Why Email Marketing Is Broken, and How to Fix It
Email marketing is broken but still remains a strong communication channel… Most business professionals spend an unprecedented amount of time per day (28% of the week to be exact) chained to their inboxes responding to countless amounts of email! This would make one think: if you have such a captive audience, then why is email marketing so broken? Well, it isn’t broken; it’s the way the majority of businesses structure their messages that makes it broken. When you break down the messages from most email marketing campaigns, they fundamentally fall into a few categorical buckets, but they tend to focus on one thing: the sender of the message and not the receiver. Let’s dive in a little deeper on this. Most campaigns can fall under […]
The Importance of Having an Online Digital Presence for Local Small Businesses
I was reminded the other day of exactly why it is important to have an online digital presence in this day and age… Even though online and digital mediums have been around for more than 20 years, it seems that many local small businesses are still slow to pick up on the trend. We do understand why, as it was not too long ago that all a local small business needed for marketing was a good Yellow Page advertisement, a good direct local mail flyer, and maybe a well-placed radio ad. These worked extremely well for decades… However, from a traditional marketing perspective, times have changed. For example, Yellow Pages have gone from the must have item for every home, to getting thrown in the […]
Salesforce.com Pushes Businesses to Adopt New Lightning Platform
On December 17th, 2018 Salesforce.com announced a strategic move to shift all accounts to their new Lightning platform on a rolling basis… Salesforce.com’s new Lightning platform actually isn’t all that new as it has been around for a few years now, officially launching shortly. We find this forced shift to the new platform a little disconcerting, as most organizations are not ready for this shift. The challenge is that Salesforce.com’s growing customer base of 3.75 million users has become extremely familiar with the existing platform. Personally, I cannot remember much of a change in the overall platform for the past ten years. With this new change, Salesforce.com is essentially forcing their entire userbase (with the exception of early adopters) to relearn this new platform… This […]