Analytics and morning coffee

Data can sometimes speak very loudly. The difficulty comes in interpreting what it means. As we become inundated with more and more raw information, the threat of "analysis paralysis" becomes all too real. Despite those pitfalls, there are signs that marketing teams are becoming much more skilled in the use and interpretation of analytics.

This article in Fortune discusses the rapid growth of analytics. Companies are expected to increase their spending by as much as 66% over the next three years. One of the main beneficiaries are companies like Quantifind--a new startup focusing on marketing analytics. 

Fronted by longtime marketing executive David Karnstedt, Menlo Park, Calif.-based Quantifind tripled its customer list last year to 30 brands, including beverage makers Pepsi  PEP -2.29%  and Heineken. Its specialty is sorting social media “signals” and correlating them with sales data. “(Our) platform allows marketers to explore, understand, and change their impact on revenue by serving up the most likely correlations and letting human judgment ultimately discern what to study further and where to take action,” he said.

Mr. Karnstedt goes on to give a demonstration of how their software works:

How does Quantifind’s software work? Without disclosing the name of the customer, Karnstedt offers the example of a quick-serve restaurant that was seeking ways to increase breakfast sales among teenagers. Despite the addition of several menu items catering to that demographic, the company saw very little impact on results.

Using Quantifind analytics, the company dug deeper and discovered a pattern of negative feedback—not from teens, but rather from their mothers. It turns out they didn’t care for the coffee on the restaurant’s menu. “More data also revealed that teens were relying on moms for a ride for breakfast. So the answer to the question ‘How do we sell more breakfast to teens?’ was to offer moms better coffee,” Karnstedt said. The strategy worked. Coffee sales, in particular, doubled.

Sometimes you find things where you are least likely to look!

Here is the link to the full article:  Marketing Analytics Specialist Quantifind Doubles Backing - Fortune 

Foster a sense of purpose

For most of us, there always seems to be an urgent project that demands our attention. Emergencies seem to pop up out of nowhere and force their way to the top of our priority lists. Despite that reality, this article by Kimber Lockhart in Medium discusses a different way to approach the issue that may achieve more lasting results.

Here is how she opens her piece:

I lead software teams. Part of the territory is people (CEOs, stakeholders, customers) wishing we could go faster. I’m often asked — “do you think the team has a strong enough sense of urgency?” or the direct “can you make the team feel a stronger sense of urgency?” More often, the request is more subtle, but just the same — “I’d really like to get this one project done, but it’s not a top priority. Can you hustle to make it happen?”

So, to all those out there wondering, no. I am not going to try to create a stronger sense of urgency on the team. And you shouldn’t either. A sense of urgency isn’t the goal. Trying to create urgency reflects the age-old confusion of hurrying with speed — the misguided notion that if you’re not always hurrying, you’re already behind.

If you’re not working on the product every day (and frankly, even if you are), it’s easy to believe progress should be faster. After all, we all want fast. There’s always more to do than we could ever accomplish, and moving faster would get us there. If the team just hurried a little more, we wouldn’t have to make tough choices.

As anyone who has ever forgotten their keys in an effort to get out of the house on time knows, hurry often backfires. The panicked, frantic pace values action over results and has consequences.

She goes on to point out the many flaws in rushing--shortcuts, sloppiness, lack of creativity. Most of all, she notes that this type of effort is not sustainable in the long run. 

Let’s retire sense of urgency and instead look for sense of purpose. A sense of purpose is a deep understanding of the reasons behind our efforts and a desire to pour in time and energy because that purpose resonates with the impact we’d like to make on the world.

A sense of purpose is immersion in our cause, and allowing that exposure to motivate action. A sense of purpose is about going faster and smarter toward a mission we all see clearly. It’s about using good judgment because we all understand the short and long term implications of our actions on what we’re creating together.

A strong sense of purpose manifests when a software engineer watches a potential customer struggle with a workflow and stays late to make the changes that make it easier. It shows itself when a designer spends their weekend on a few extra iterations because they felt engaged with the problem at hand and want to produce a better solution.

Turns out when you stop looking to create urgency, the passion and purpose latent in your team might just cause the right things to get done at just the right pace.

This one paragraph seems to encapsulate her philosophy:

Your primary job as a leader is to hire the right team, and then to spend time inspiring this sense of purpose. Help people understand the impact of their work, and speed will follow.

Here is the link to the full article:  https://medium.com/@kimber_lockhart/don-t-create-a-sense-of-urgency-foster-a-sense-of-purpose-724e309ecdb0#.9do5qcftc 

How Millenials (Almost) Killed the Wine Cork

Fascinating article in the Atlantic talking about wine corks. They served well for hundreds of years but have (in recent years) come under attack from screw caps and plastic alternatives. More recent industry attempts to preserve the market seem to be working.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/wine-cork-comeback/470961/

Tips and Myths on Smartphone Battery Life

Smartphones are an essential component of modern life. These handheld devices are vital pathways to communication and information. Outside of their fragility, their one major weakness lies in the batteries that power them. With most models, it's exceedingly difficult to get more than ten hours out of even the largest integrated battery--especially if the device is used for intensive tasks. External battery packs can sometimes double the charge, but at a tremendous penalty in weight and bulk.

Most of us have tried some of the strategies outlined below to help minimize our drain and maximize our time between charges. This article from the New York Times discusses actual testing of each of these key strategies to help separate the myths from the useful tips.

The first paragraphs discuss the current state of battery technology:

So why is battery technology still underwhelming? Plenty of companies have been developing smarter battery technology for years, including methods to increase battery capacity tenfold or charge devices by pulling energy from the air. But lithium ion, the technology that most mainstream batteries are based on, is low cost and easily reproducible while being safe — so we’ll be stuck with it for the foreseeable future, said Charlie Quong, an executive at Mophie, a battery accessory maker, in an interview.

“There’s a lot of investments on all fronts for improving the technology above and beyond that, but I don’t think we’re going to see that hitting any kind of mass market for several years out,” Mr. Quong said. In general, lithium ion improves about 10 percent a year in terms of the amount of energy that can be stored in a given space, which is partly why consumers perceive batteries as being far behind other technologies.

The article goes on to describe the testing they did on the various tips and tricks. They recommended eight tips. I found these two to be most useful:

• Use auto-brightness for the screen (dimmer screens save energy--unfortunately, they are harder to read)
• Turn off wi-fi when reception is poor (an established connection is no problem; the constant search for wi-fi is very draining)

I found a few of the myths very surprising.

• Closing unused apps doesn't always help. This one shocked me. I thought that you had to shut them down to stop them from draining resources. For most programs on your phone, apps in the background are frozen and do not draw power! In fact, force quitting forces the app to reload from scratch which could end up using more power.
• Don't assume turning off wi-fi will always help. As noted above, established connections can actually save power. It's far more efficient to use wi-fi than cellular data!

Here is the link to the full article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/technology/personaltech/tips-and-myths-about-extending-smartphone-battery-life.html?

Intermountain's Big Bet

The Advisory Board printed an article outlining Intermountain Healthcare. This Utah-based system is at the leading edge in many ways. They have made a bold proclamation:  they will pass on $2 billion in savings to their patients or lose money! Here is an excerpt from the article:

The 22-hospital system is guaranteeing that SelectHealth Share, its new health plan, will cap annual rate increases at about 4%—one-third to one-half lower than typical rate hikes for employer-sponsored plans.

Most health systems would have to skimp on care quality in order to provide such a deal, Abelson says. However, Intermountain stands apart because of its innovative efforts to track and analyze care quality. And many of its contracts are value-based: the system is reimbursed a fixed amount to care for about one-third of its patients, providing an extra incentive to keep patients healthy and costs low.

Intermountain says it will reduce SelectHealth Share's rate increases through $2 billion in savings over the next five years, including about $500 million in 2016.

The article goes on to quote Brent James talking about the program. Full disclosure, I have met Brent James at many conferences in the past and worked with him directly on a few projects.

Some of the tactics will have direct impact on Medtronic. I believe that we were one of the companies mentioned in this excerpt from the NY Times article:

Intermountain’s plan is “the first innovative thing we’ve seen in a long time,” said Dave Jackson, managing partner for FirstWest Benefit Solutions in Orem, Utah. “Share has got everybody at the table — everybody’s got accountability and got things to do.”

Intermountain has already saved money by renegotiating the cost of surgical staplers, pitting a cheaper manufacturer against another and saving $235,000 a year. It saved $639,000 a year by ensuring that heart attack patients get into the catheterization lab within 90 minutes of emergency room contact, thereby helping patients recover faster.

Here is the Advisory Board summary of the overall program (Ben Umansky):

Predictability is huge for employers right now. The idea of tying premium increases to something close to overall inflation is really attractive to a market that's seen health costs far outpacing the costs of other inputs. In fact, much of what employers are doing these days is predicated on a drive for predictability; take, for example, the move to defined contribution benefits: an employer who goes that direction knows exactly what it will pay no matter what happens downstream. Intermountain is responding to that same desire, but in a different way.

Select Health Share is the sort of provider-sponsored play so many systems are dreaming about, and this may be a lesson to other health systems about what they would have to offer in order to demand exclusivity. Select Health Share isn't trading on Intermountain's quality reputation alone, strong though it may be—this credible guarantee of predictable (and reasonable) cost growth is what many others aren't willing (or able) to offer.

This isn't something that happened overnight. If Intermountain hadn't spent years aligning governance, incentives, strategic planning priorities, and so many other factors across both the provider and insurer arms, they wouldn't be able to make this kind of play today.

I've always been impressed with how Intermountain designs its financial incentives to reflect and reinforce the system's strategic goals—from overall financial targets all the way down to individual incentives. It's a system that exemplifies "systemness"—everyone's in step—and that's so important for being able to offer this kind of value proposition to the market.

Here is a link to the Advisory Board article: https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2016/02/19/intermountains-big-bet-pass-on-two-billion-in-savings?WT.mc_id=Email%7cDailyBriefing%20Headline%7cDBA%7cDB%7cFeb-19-2016%7cintermountain%7c%7c%7c%7c&elq_cid=348425&x_id=003C000001GLXTHIA5

Here is a link to the NY Times article quoted by the AB:   http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/business/a-novel-plan-for-health-care-cutting-costs-not-raising-them.html?_r=3

4G? No, 5G!!

Mobile applications require bandwidth. Generally speaking, speed is a necessity. As the internet becomes more pervasive and we ask our smartphones and devices to perform ever more sophisticated tasks, the demand for greater capacity grows. The planned "Internet of Things" will add billions of new connections. Google's dream of self-driving cars will need near instantaneous responses that can only occur with vastly improved infrastructure--especially in wireless communication.

The current state-of-the-art is 4G LTE. Top speeds can hit about 15 megabits per second. When available, it allows the user to download a high definition movie in about eight minutes. There are lab tests underway on the next generation of access called 5G. At top speeds in excess of 10 gigabits per second, that same movie will download in about five seconds!

Today, this technology is confined to the lab and highly controlled tests. It could be many years before you start to see this in full production. Major companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Cisco are working on plans to invest billions of dollars in the quest for ways to differentiate themselves.

Here are some articles that give more background on the subject.

General overview:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/technology/what-5g-will-mean-for-you.html?ref=technology

Cisco, Ericsson, and Intel:  Cisco, Ericsson and Intel to work on 5G networks - Business Insider

CNET review of Verizon's plans:  Inside Verizon's vision of smokin' 5G speeds - CNET  

Blame it on the climate

We may soon have a new excuse for being late to an international event. Climate change is modifying the patterns of the jet stream. Strong winds in the upper atmosphere are intensifying. For eastbound flights, the resulting extra tailwinds will help to shorten the flights. Unfortunately, the penalty induced for westbound flights will add time to the flight. That will lead to more time for your round trip and additional fuel costs for the airlines.

The study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, looked at the effects of doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, which will occur within the next few decades unless emissions are cut quickly.

The average jet-stream winds along the flight route between London’s Heathrow airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International airport are predicted to become 15 percent faster in winter, increasing from 77 to 89 km/hr (48 to 55 mph), with similar increases in the other seasons.

As a result, London-bound flights will become twice as likely to take under 5h 20m, implying that record-breaking crossing times will occur with increasing frequency in future. On the other hand, New York-bound flights will become twice as likely to take over 7h 00m, suggesting that delayed arrivals will become increasingly common.

The article goes on to point out why the airlines can't offset this effect efficiently:

Williams says airplanes can’t just fly faster to compensate because of another effect, air friction that builds up as the plane gets closer to breaking the sound barrier.

“Airplanes fly at about 550 miles per hour, or 75 percent speed of sound (767 miles per hour),” he said. “The closer they get to 80 percent, the fuel efficiency drops off a cliff and the airline has to put an afterburner, real gas guzzlers. That’s why they don’t go any faster.”

Here is the link to the full article:  Climate Change May Delay Flights : Discovery News