Digital Transformation Project – The Marketing Association EUR

14

October

2016

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The Marketing Association EUR (MAEUR) is a study association active at the Erasmus University Rotterdam that organizes events for marketing minded students. Aside from the main events which are organized by the committees of the association, the MAEUR also organizes guest lectures for the ESE and RSM and interfaculty social events with other study associations.

The main goal of the MAEUR is to enable marketing minded students to develop themselves in socializing, learning and networking, the three pillars of the association. Next to that the MAEUR wants to be a platform where students and the business world can connect with each other. The Marketing Association wants to facilitate students to make the next step, finding a job, internship or a traineeship and offer companies the best marketing minded students of the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Based on several interviews with the president, vice president, the marketing coordinator and the career coordinator of the MAEUR board,  Mr. Luijten, Ms. van Klooster and Ms. de Winter and Ms. Ernest several IT problems were brought to the table regarding the current website, CRM system, and the member database.

In order to create an efficiently working IT system for the MAEUR, we recommend using an all-in-one solution that manages the website, CRM system, and membership database altogether. Integrated software systems are increasingly popular, to enhance the efficiency of doing business both in time and in costs. An integrated system minimizes or eliminates boundaries between components of the business environment (i.e., systems, applications, media). (Brady et al., 2005)

In conclusion, we developed the following managerial recommendations for the board;

  • A project team should be composed of students and one IT specialist. The MAEUR should use its student network to select a few motivated and IT-orientated students. These relatively cheap team members should be accompanied with an IT specialist who will lead the team during the project.
  • The project should be divided into different and clearly defined stages. By dividing the designing, developing and implementing phases of the project in smaller and specifically defined stages, supervisors can easily keep track of the progress of the project. When a problem arises during an early stage of the project, this will be noticed right away.
  • A development method should be used which involves the most important stakeholders. The MAEUR should be organizing regular meetings with these stakeholders. They should be involved in the evaluation of the stages mentioned in the previous recommendation. This way, the feedback of the shareholders can be used and their expectations can be managed
  • Make sure the integrated platform is stable and has a very low downtime. Implementing the fully integrated platform will increase the dependency of MAEUR on software. Therefore, downtime should be reduced and the system should frequently make back-ups.

 

 

Bibliography

Bonaccorsi, Andrea, and Cristina Rossi. “Why open source software can succeed.” Research policy 32.7 (2003): 1243-1258.

Brady, Tim, Andrew Davies, and David M. Gann. “Creating value by delivering integrated solutions.” International Journal of Project Management 23.5 (2005): 360-365.

 

 

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Technology of the week – Platform mediated networks Facebook versus Myspace

30

September

2016

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Platform mediated networks are overtaking the way business is done. In this blog and in our video, we want to elaborate on why Facebook has become the winner that took it all in comparison with a comparable platform, Myspace.

Myspace was founded in 2003, before Facebook even existed. It is, at first sight, a very similar platform as Facebook. People can subscribe and they have their own page and can connect with each other. Myspace was very popular and the company News Corporation purchased Myspace. Professional managers were assigned to develop a strategy for Myspace and lead the platform to more growth.

In the meantime, five Harvard students were thinking of the same kind of platform and Facebook was born. How come that Facebook eventually took over the market and Myspace failed to do so?

On first sight, Facebook and Myspace look like they are quite alike. They are both platform-mediated networks where advertisers and users are connected. Users can benefit from their free subscription and the advertisers are happy as long as the number of users is growing. Network effects have the chance to create a lot of value.

However, there are many differences between the platforms. The three main differences are the newsfeed, the use of real names versus nicknames and the customization of the newsfeed. The newsfeed of Facebook is interactive; you can see the updates of your friends immediately. On Myspace, you have to visit your friend’s page to see their posts and update. Next to that Facebook uses a layout that you cannot change, only your profile picture. Myspace offered users the freedom to customize their page, all fonts, backgrounds, and HTML included.

On a more business perspective, the both platforms differ significantly. Facebook followed the market needs and Myspace was managed in a stricter way, with strategy plans and set rules and goals. Next to that an important point was the introduction of mobile technology. Myspace was rather slow with launching a mobile app, while Facebook already introduced a mobile app a year earlier. Facebook kept a close eye on the trends and moved fast when apple introduced the iPhones. The result was that Facebook got a lot of subscriptions through mobile technology and Myspace was running behind.

Finally, both platforms have different privacy settings, on Facebook, everything is private at first and you can make it public, and Myspace is the other way around, you get encouraged to connect with people you don’t know. Facebook had a more positive reputation on the privacy topic, and users trusted the platform more. Eventually, Facebook created a better name for themselves, and the number of users kept growing. Increasing popularity and positive word of mouth diminish the privacy issues, research has shown, and Facebook benefited maximally. Currently, the privacy of Facebook is more questioned.

Overall, Facebook chose a more proactive strategy, they differentiated themselves on features like the news feed, the real names, and the privacy topic. When introducing the mobile app on the right time they gave Myspace the last push over the edge. And in the end, Facebook was the winner that took it all.

 

.Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., and Van Alstyne, M.W. 2006. Strategies for Two-Sided Markets. Harvard Business Review 84(10) 92-101.

Li, T., and Pavlou, P. 2016. What Drives Users’ Website Registration? The Network Externalities versus Information Privacy Dilemma.

(https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/)

(http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2011/01/14/why-facebook-beat-myspace/#4bd2b7dc7023)

(http://www.diffen.com/difference/Facebook_vs_MySpace)

(http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-strategy/6-lessons-learned-from-the-demise-of-myspace/)

(http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/former-myspace-ceo-reveals-what-facebook-did-right-to-dominate-social-media/)

http://www.pymnts.com/news/2012/pymnts-daily-roundup-august-1-2/

http://platformsandnetworks.blogspot.nl/2011/07/business-model-analysis-part-2.html

Making sense of Internet Platforms: Network Effects and Two Sided Markets

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Data is art

24

September

2016

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Last week I attended the event the Commercial Break organised by the Marketing Association EUR. During this event, four speakers shared their knowledge regarding their own marketing campaigns. As a BIM student, one speaker appealed to me the most and I want to share his story with you.

Daan de Raaf, Executive Strategy Director of J. Walter Thompson, a renowned advertising agency, told us about a campaign they developed for ING. With this campaign, they won several awards at the Cannes Lions Festival 2016.
They worked together with different professionals throughout the field for 18 months on what they called; “The next Rembrandt. Using big data, they wanted to create the next painting that Rembrandt would have painted next. Microsoft, Delft University of Technology, the Mauritshuis and the Museum Het Rembrandthuis also collaborated with JWT on the initiative.

The first step of the process was analyzing all the paintings of Rembrandt. Each painting was scanned using 3D scans and digital files based on an in-depth learning algorithm to determine the painting style of the old master. Secondly, facial recognition software was designed to determine new facial features like the nose, mouth, eyes and ears. These features were based on the geometric proportions that Rembrandt used in his paintings. Next, a height map was designed to determine the thickness of the layers of paint that Rembrandt applied with his brush 347 years earlier Finally,the painting was brought to life using a 3D printer that printed 13 layers of paint based ink. A new Rembrandt, the portrait of a bearded, 17th-century man in a white collar and black hat was created “out of zero’s and ones“.

The opinions upon this campaign varied from “amazing and impressive” to “It still is a fake painting and Rembrandt would never have painted this”. Personally, I think this use of data is incredibly innovative and beautiful and I am curious to see where these types of innovations will take artwork in the future.

What do you think of the next Rembrandt?

https://www.jwt.com/en/amsterdam/work/thenextrembrandt/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmvTcY_HEtk

 

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Do humans become unnecessary?

18

September

2016

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What if there existed a technology platform that could reveal insights from large amount of unstructured data? Guess what, it already exists. IBM introduced Watson, an artificial intelligence technology that can actually learn to extract insights out of huge amounts of unstructured data.

80% of today’s data is unstructured. This unstructured data consists of for example news articles, research reports, social media posts and information system data. Watson can extract the key elements of this data in minutes.

But how does this work? Watson uses natural language processing to understand the grammar and context of the data. You even can ask Watson questions, these questions are evaluated by Watson thoroughly until every possible meaning is covered.

Watson is like an over motivated student. It is eager to learn a subject, it will go through all the data that is uploaded about a certain subject. The next step is training. Watson can be trained by asking questions and revealing the answers afterwards. Finally, Watson can answer every possible question about the topic by searching through millions of documents. The answers, usually thousands of them, are ranked by Watson using a scoring algorithm to rate the quality of these answers. You end up with a structured overview of evidence.

But the question is, does this make humans unnecessary in the process of analysing big data? I do not think so because all the data that is used is provided and developed by humans. Watson will always be subject to human thinking patterns. Is the technology intelligent, yes, but only because of the intelligent people behind the technology. However, less people are needed in the process because Watson is somewhat quicker than us humans.

Do you think Watson will take over big data analysis?

Sources

http://www.ibm.com/watson/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xcmh1LQB9I

http://www.voanews.com/a/scientists-warn-artificial-intelligence-can-be-dangerous-as-well-as-helpful-to-humans/3326045.html

 

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