A LOYALTY CLUB BECAME AN IT WINDOW TO SUCCESS

TESCO is an innovator in technology; clear examples are as follows;
• Computerized checkout systems
• The implementation of the first UK supermarket loyalty program in 1995,
The Tesco Club Card.
• TESCO and banking
• Tesco.com
Digital Store Fronts
Online Grocery Shopping

One of TESCOS most outstanding traditions is its vigorous pursuit for expansion, signs of this date back to its foundation at the start of the Second World War when it reached an eye-opening number of stores, 100. Tesco has differentiated from its competition by having low prices but this strategy was impaired by laws, but Tesco found a loophole by introducing Green-Shield trading Stamps, a loyalty program, which has later put down by law thanks to lobbying by its competitor.

Finally in 1995 an electronic investment of £300 million over 3 years gave birth to “the blue card” a loyalty program aimed to provide discounts and privileges to the customer. This IT investment gave TESCO something unimaginable, INFORMATION ABOUT THE CUSTOMER. It gave a window to what the customer buys and wants letting TESCO increase its profits by concentrating in its customer’ needs. Then investing in Teradata that amplified the view of its customers. This resulted in a huge advantage over the competition placing it over its competitors and becoming UK’s biggest retailer.
GO InformationTechnologies !!!!

I refer to TESCO as a bank because a great advantage of having ties with the banking system gives a zero friction to a lot of products thanks to technology innovations. It started with cash back and then went to double point purchases, credit card loyalty, and other usual banking products.



Another I.T. investment that put TESCO inline with innovation and the Internet era was tesco.com Practicality for working moms or singles can be a good market. They also ventured into selling books, electrical appliances, and even cloths. This provided the company with not that big of a revenue but a complementary product to there business that in the future can bring bigger percentage. You can recharge cellphones, pay for your groceries, buy an airline ticket, almost anything in tesco.com

ERP Implementing vs. staying divided, if you dont your r out of the game!!

Implementing ERP?

What is ERP? I get confused with so many abbreviated phrases EBIT (Earnings Before Income Tax), FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond Any Recognition), OK (Zero Kills), but wait I’m a manufacturing engineer and this I know = Enterprise Resource Management. It is a system that centralizes all the company’s information, if we were talking about a car factory this system would have all the departments linked. This is done to control, standardize, synergize, and ultimately reduce costs.

It is a very painful and complicated journey to get into this system. There’s a Hershey’s case study of how they went wrong with the ERP implementation. You have to gather the information, input it into the system, teach the users (employees) to use and maintain the system, and at the end you might see the profit. The vision of a perfectly implemented ERP would be the CEO of a company checking the back orders from sales, the prototype design of the new car, the day capacity of the assembly line, the inventories, all a click away, and all lower management inputting and sharing information to work more efficiently. I have never seen it work 100%, but it’s a nice dream that soon will be possible with the right technology that would make it simpler and less tedious to do.

That was the manufacturing context, since this is Information Systems related lets talk about IT ERP. ERP is quite old already and its popularity has decreased because companies start implementing it and get stuck or just don’t get results. BUT now its alive again, OPEN SOURCE ERP. Yeahhhh!!!! Its easy, adaptable to any business and its already offered by many. I would have to see it to believe it.

2005 A hard year for DELL

Dell Hell!!!
Learn this: SOCIAL MEDIA IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!!! This article gives a good explanation of what the Dell Hell mistake cost the company and what the company learned. A company growing like crazy (rising earnings per share) with an impeccable reputation for customer service and satisfaction, suddenly gets battered by a single customer communicating through a blog his dissatisfaction. Dell was shortsighted by neglecting such a powerful, influential tool as a blog post. It took the founder of the company, Michael Dell, to return as the director and take matters into his owns hands to fix the huge mess. Of course he could not do without a 14 year employer and blogger called Menchaca that by admitting the company’s mistakes consequently stopped the media harassment and gained the respect of fellow bloggers like Jeff Jarvis that formerly helped destroy Dell’s reputation.

I could picture myself being the Dell’s Customer Service Manager watching my stock value plummet just because some fxxxxing unsatisfied customer wrote a blog post that reached Financial Times and Business Week. I would start packing my office and get ready for the boot.

In October 2005 we can see Dell’s reaction by investing and restructuring the costumer service department. This is a sign of how it is fixing the cause of the problem, but the most important fix is the MEDIA, that’s the one that going to help DELL. In this other article we can see how Business Week is writing about how Dell is fixing its problems but at the end of the article you can see the negative comments posted by unsatisfied customers. Is there a way to control this? I doubt it, but you can add positive comments or influential comments from IT critics or influential bloggers such as Jeff Jarvis.

Another point is the size of the company. DELL sells countless number of PCs and satisfied customers are not commenting how wonderful there computer is. It’s the unsatisfied customers that have a powerful voice, especially in social medias where info spreads exponentially.

Lets keep on blogging!!!!! If I had a big company, especially if IT related, I would be friends with bloggers.

Future of Facebook

Facebook in 2012?

It’s a huge database of people; where they are from, where they went for high-school, college, masters, where they are, where they have been, when they were born, when they graduated, when they traveled, when they are going to travel, who they are friends with, who they love, who’s there family, who likes them, what they like to do, what makes them happy, I could go on for ever and that’s just what I think I have showed there.

This is a result of the market, what we felt like putting there, it made us visible, it made us connectable to others, SOCIALIZING!!!!!! What a powerful word, it gives us a sense of belonging, its an easy way to sell ourselves, its an easy way to go look for interesting people, I enjoy ours of looking at other’s pictures, comments, gossip, hehehehehe!!!

A friend of mine who is constantly going to internet conferences told me a secret (now public) he was told by person from “facebook”; CIA pays facebook for its data base. This was quite alarming to me when first heard but later I reasoned and seemed perfectly reasonable. Then I heard it was also available for companies when evaluating potential employees. This at first worried me for all those indecent pictures I had put of having euphoric fun which I erased shortly after. The final point is: facebook connects us in the most intimate way, I feel naked.

I dont think most people will get tired of exposing themselves or stop using such an easy way to communicate as facebook. There is a chance of another social network to come up with a different way to communicate with old friends, see what they are up to, or plan visits to their hometowns. Asmallworld.net is a more exclusive social network that brings a only invite membership, which invites are only possible after a period of time, but it is in no way comparable to facebook numbers.

I cannot picture a mayor privacy lawsuit against facebook. There are so many social networks complememnting each other. So I see facebook continuing to grow as it is now and some how connect the whole globe in one network. It has already overpassed google visits reaching 7% of market share.

3 Issues on Google? oh please if you add a “d” it’s a verb already

I’m a positive person that prefers to see the bright side of life. I think there are enough negative thoughts, comments, etc. in this world to be looking at the empty half of the glass. Today I heard a very fulfilled and successful person say “I never learned to subtract or divide, I was only interested in adding and multiplying”, I had to laugh but I valued the message. My point is that I will give two positives and only one negative issue on Google.

My friend Nicolas has a internet company with a revenue of a little over $4 million per year and its all thanks to Google. It took me a month to understand how the hell he was making so much money just working 4 hours a day and living in a furnished apartment in Miami, traveling every 3 weeks to where ever. That’s my first point; Google provides a platform in the internet with tools, access, information to a market of buyers generating internet marketing advertising revenues of $5.5 Billion very 3 months in the U.S. alone.

It’s overwhelming, crazy, eye opening, $$$$$$ even our professor couldn’t resist getting a tiny piece of that market. So there is no criticizing GOOGLE for making it possible with Adwords , Adsense , Google Analytics , and all the other applications that help you LINK THE SEARCH TO THE PRODUCT.

I recently bought a scooter to move around Madrid, I really don’t know the place that much but Google Maps has saved me. I go into the google maps of my cellphone and I search for restaurants, gas stations, or specific addresses and GOOGLE gives me estimated time of arrival (ETA), mileage, and best of all = real time directions. Google maps has saved me when I’m lost in cities I don’t know, whether I’m walking, driving, public transportation, God bless Google. Things like this makes Google a company to be thankfull for.

Here comes the negative; Google makes us vulnerable. It has put so much available in the internet (somebody else would have done so otherwise) that there is no boundaries to privacy/copyrights and all related. So be careful because you might get googled!!!

Bill's Chocolate Factory

Microsoft 2010

I’m a Mac user from when I was uhmmm….. 12 years old. I first saw the computer in my uncle’s house and I was fascinated by the cool fonts the word processor had, from then on Macs have been around me. I did have few disappointments when I couldn’t play Flight Simulator, but I did have Civilization. It made me a computer addict for many nights, quite worrisome. So I tell you this to anticipate you that I am not a big fan of Mircosoft.

I always thought of Microsoft as a big and ordinary money making machine that was gathering force by numbers to crush the authentic, elegant, and friendly Mac. I saw how Microsoft was growing big by selling its operating system with Word and Excel, then PowerPoint and suddenly the whole world was using Microsoft office, what happened?

This proved one thing; Bill Gates is a very smart man with a very smart team, that is on top of technology and demand. I have read three different introductory outlines for Microsoft conventions and they always mention “see how Microsoft can help you design, build and deploy robust Business Intelligence applications for everyone in your organization while controlling costs”. So that’s what it does; it offers technological advanced products for your business at a low prize.

So Microsoft has a huge focus in technology to be on top of its competition. Its headquarters has 265 acres with 100 buildings full of brains inventing our future. It even came up with the IPad but did not know how to sell it. In this video we see an example of one of Microsoft’s latest invention: “Microsoft Surface”

I believe Microsoft will continue to surprise us with its inventions always trying to make our lives easier, more efficient, and more connected.

My first email account was Hotmail!!!

4[] FOURSQUARE

Foursquare……..what is it? Another time consuming network in the internet? What’s happening to the way people interact today? Isn’t facebook, twitter, linkedin, and a dozen other enough? Never enough!!! It's just how the world keeps on going round and round till it spins off, the digital era is just starting, 4 to 5 years ago youtube was launched and today 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, yeap 48 hrs. per min. CRAZYYYY (I got that Carlo's blog). Oh yeah, what about blogging? Is foursquare a blog? In the past month I have learned too much about internet network tools that I am just a little confused….uhmmm….passwords….etc.

“FIND PLACES, PEOPLE, TAGS” that’s what foursquare says in one of its menus. So yes, it’s a social network to communicate with people and share information on about anything, just go to foursquare.com and read what people write to get an idea. “It’s one of the most successful business models in recent internet history, its one of the sites that lets users post comments of there own appreciation of all kinds of services: trips, movies, songs, and above all leisure spots,” that’s a quote from the ETC blog. Foursquare works with GPS too, you’ll know where everything that’s being talked about is, even your friends.

Where does foursquare get its money? When people start sharing info about where to go? what to do? those places/stores/webpages/cities/people are getting advertisement through foursquare, Starbucks has discounts too from foursquare. So no, I dont think its getting money right now but, its an important asset which has a potential to make a lot of money, pretty much like twitter.

We'll keep coming back!!!

Animals, an Admiration!!

All my life animals have been around. I admire this creation, I appreciate all those who respect and love them too.

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." ~ Anatole France

"The purity of a person's heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals"

A LITTLE ABOUT DANCING

In this BLOG I have posted several dancing clips from movies. I entertain myself immensely watching this actors dance. Here's a quote about dancing,

"Dating back to the beginning of recorded history dancing has been a vital area of society. Dance was engaged in celebrations and preparations for war. Dance was area of rituals and ceremonies of worship. Dance was part of life and we live in a society right now that seems to increasingly label dance as a sort of entertainment more than a way of life. Physical age that's area of the reason we have a growing cognizance when it concerns depression because fewer people are experiencing the delight of dance."

Dancing Through History

By Jerry Hahn

The Sneezing Baby Panda