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The Revolution in B2B Customer Engagement

May 8, 2018

As buyer expectations continue to grow, sellers scramble to up their game, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable. One rising star: the online marketplace. It used to be that it was all business on the B2B front. Buyers didn’t expect to find a touchy-feely environment as they trudged from site to site—and manufacturers and distributors were happy to comply, delivering the goods in a bare-bones setting. But as B2C marketers have worked hard to make it easier for shoppers to find what they need, the fallout has found its way to B2B. Buyers there are increasingly impatient with experiences that fall flat and leave them frustrated, compared with what they now expect when shopping as a pure consumer. In short, the revolution has arrived in B2B, rewriting the rules of customer engagement in both the direct and distribution channels and giving rise to a new star, the online marketplace, said a panel of experts at a recent Executive Roundtable hosted by Earley Information Science (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. The message is clear, the experts said: B2B players have to up their game in an ever-more complicated ecosystem where roles have blurred and expectations are soaring. “Think about how complex this has become for most of our business models,” said Jeannine Bartlett, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Strategist of EIS. In traditional manufacturing, for example, “it’s hard to know if you are a consumer brand or B2B. Or are you B2B2C?” In some cases, these classifications have lost much of their meaning. “What hasn’t lost its meaning, though, is that you have a lot of trading partners you are sharing the load with.” What all B2B players are after, Bartlett added, “is getting into the right customer engagement touchpoints, regardless of where they live around the ecosystem—whether we own them or they are owned by our trading partners or are out in the wild on social media. But doing that in a coordinated, choreographed way is the challenge in 2018: the trick is to make it look like a seamless, frictionless experience for the customer regardless of who’s providing the interaction.” The April 18 discussion, “What’s New/Now/Next in B2B Customer Engagement,” was led by Bartlett, who was joined by Siamak Baharloo and Nicholas Rioux, the co-founders of Labviva, a B2B marketplace in the life sciences sector. Baharloo is the company’s Chief Executive Officer and Rioux serves as the Chief Technology Officer. To offer the right B2B experience, you first have to understand that there are two personas to satisfy, with “intrinsic conflicts of interest,” Baharloo said. There are the business buyers, “driven by priorities set for them by a finance or procurement department—they want to standardize purchasing,” automate the process, cut costs and get the most leverage when dealing with suppliers and manufacturers. Then there are the consumers, who want “to have access to the widest variety and availability of products, and they may be concerned about parameters other than price.” All B2B companies must understand the differences between the two personas, Baharloo said, “and have a solution that addresses the needs of each one.” The advent of marketplaces in B2B is one acknowledgment of those differences. The marketplaces are collections of “very specific, very technical expert-level shops, manufacturers and distributors that provide large amounts of choice for the end users,” Baharloo said. They offer “a much more comprehensive set of products and solutions that goes beyond what is available in general markets and distribution chains.” Easier said than done, Labviva’s Rioux said. “One of the challenges with marketplaces is doing this in scale. You’re not just selling a single product portfolio from one manufacturer with 10,000 products. For the customer experience to be rich and have the product selection that the customer is looking for, you need a process and a system that can handle millions of products and billions of parameters because you are bringing products together from many sellers.” In Labviva’s case, Rioux said, “we need to be able to handle millions of scientific products with millions of different applications. And so we heavily automate this,” augmented by the newest techniques in natural language programming and statistical evaluation. “The secret to participating in a high-information market like this in the B2B space is beyond having operational excellence for transactions and order taking.” What’s key is grappling with “theoretically an unlimited portfolio” of product information, “so you to need to constantly improve your data quality” and that’s where automation becomes such a big part of the differentiation. Whatever the challenge, the marketplace channel is proliferating, Baharloo said. Many sectors are adopting it and “it is going to be a lot more significant in the coming years, giving the old established distributors and manufacturers a real run for their money. Customer experience, the user experience, is at the heart of it. Done right, it can be revolutionary.” All customers, whether B2B or B2C, “are looking for neutral trusted advice,” said EIS’s Bartlett. “In a way, marketplaces can act as that neutral third party,” she noted, by aggregating expertise and content that adds value for both buyers and sellers. “In effect, marketplaces are becoming the Consumer Reports of a given vertical that helps the dialogue go back and forth.” The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: In describing their approach to customer engagement, 13% said they are “customer obsessed” and in dialogue at every buying stage; 38% have “solution offerings” for key customer types; and another 38% share customer engagement with their trading partners. But 13% focus on “describing what we sell rather than on who buys.” In assessing the added value that new marketplace alternatives offer, 25% said they participate in marketplaces as an extension of their customer engagement strategy while 75% are still investigating how the channel could fit into their strategy. One-third of the attendees said they have plans to go beyond product data syndication and fund next-generation engagement strategies within the next 12 months; two-thirds are still evaluating ways to leverage their current approach. Please use this link to access the roundtable. The Earley Executive Roundtable is an educational webinar series focusing on topics of interest in the areas of digital transformation and information science. Each month, EIS leads a lively discussion with a panel of industry experts. The next Roundtable, taking place on June 20th, will explore the implications of building voice capabilities whether that is for conversational commerce, voice-based search or chat/voice hybrid interfaces. Use this link to register. About Earley Information Science: EIS is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data—making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com.

Product Data: The Great Enabler for IoT, Marketplaces and More

Apr 5, 2018

Well-organized, consistent and accessible information is not only essential for ecommerce – it also serves as the lifeblood for the Internet of Things, new marketplaces and many other digital initiatives, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable. Detailed, accurate and comprehensive product data makes all the difference in ecommerce. By improving the quality of the data, searches are more successful, user experiences are richer and cross-selling and up-selling are more likely. That’s old news, of course. But what many companies have not fully understood is how much more important product data has become to a new generation of online services, said a panel of experts at a recent Executive Roundtable hosted by Earley Information Science (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. “Yes, the foundation of world-class commerce is world-class product data,” said Dino Eliopulos, Managing Director of EIS. “But that’s just the beginning of the picture – what you have now is an ecosystem that is driven by the initial investment in the data, giving it a life outside of ecommerce.” That life is playing out in countless new directions, including supporting online marketplaces, syndicating products to different partners and breaking traditional channels with things like replacement part guides and ways to provide information at the time of need, even for people who aren’t original purchasers. But perhaps the most high-profile use is with the Internet of Things (IoT) – machines wouldn’t be able to connect and have something meaningful to say without data-driven reporting, diagnostic and analytic tools. And looking ahead to other uses, augmented reality is just around the corner. In all these cases, the information has to remain world class by being well-organized, accessible and consistent across platforms and language barriers. The March 28 discussion, “Product Data: The Great Enabler for IoT, Marketplaces and More,” was led by Eliopulos, who was joined by digital marketing managers from three manufacturers: David Bonk, Senior Product Information Management Analyst at Graco, which makes fluid-handling products, like paint sprayers, pumps and industrial processing equipment; Russ Sharer, Vice President of Global Marketing and Business Development at Fulham, a lighting sub-systems company; and Luis Marcos, Digital Transformation Leader in environmental and energy solutions for Honeywell/Home & Building Technologies, Europe/Middle East/Africa. The panelists discussed the difficulties in creating and maintaining world-class data as well as the increasing number of benefits that can accrue. Unfortunately, a lot of companies are still at the crawling stage, trying to master their data and build the platform from which they can ultimately extend the range of their business. Why is it so hard to get started? “In crossing the bridge to digitization,” David Bonk said, “product data is often overlooked or initially undervalued – it’s kind of hard to just dip your toe in the water and take on a huge initiative like a website revamp.” His company made the commitment to invest in “future proofing our product data,” and now has a PIM (product information management) solution in place. That said, “the hardest part is collecting, aggregating and normalizing all of the data and building some governance around it across the organization,” adding that change is particularly hard when legacy systems are at play. “Getting all the data to synchronize is really a key issue,” Russ Sharer said, offering his company’s experience as an example. “In the last 25 years, we’ve done some acquisitions, involving systems that used different formats and nomenclatures.” One organization used 12-digit part numbers, another used 20. And then there are the language challenges. Fulham has operations in China. Comparing data in Mandarin with data in English is “difficult,” Sharer said. Another challenge is getting buy-in. Companies have different stakeholders, Luis Marcos noted. “There is a certain investment of time to put everyone on the same page. That means working on the business case, creating awareness, making sure that everyone understands the benefits of the initiative.” The benefits for ecommerce are clear. “You have better navigation and you increase your product awareness and that contributes to channel growth and revenue growth,” Marcos said. But that’s only for starters as data initiatives multiply. “We’re going to leverage our product data for print and more effectively syndicate our data to our customers, our distributors,” David Bonk said. “We are also going to be faster to market with our products because we will have a more defined way of collecting and managing our product information.” And some industries will use the data to redefine their mission. Because IoT applications will make it possible to understand how a given light fixture is aging, Russ Sharer explained, his industry is moving from being a “consumable-oriented business to more of a service offering,” with major implications for energy use and operating costs. The great enabler in all of these contexts is “managing and mastering your data,” EIS’s Eliopulos said. “It’s not a separate silo.” The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: In terms of developing world-class product information, 19% say they are at that level and 31% are rolling out master organizing models, but 25% are only at the first stages of enrichment and another 25% are not yet making any special investments. Where is the value of master data? Fostering differentiation and innovation (38%), introducing new products and services (31%), supporting new channels (19%) and entering new businesses (6%). The remaining 6% say they have no apps to leverage yet. Are you extending your investment in PIM to support future business opportunities? 20% are doing that, and to great effect, and 10% have funding to start in the next year, but a big majority (70%) say they are still evaluating approaches. Please use these links to access the roundtable and a related article, “Analytics, Machine Learning and the Internet of Things.” The Earley Executive Roundtable is an educational webinar series focusing on topics of interest in the areas of digital transformation and information science. Each month, EIS leads a lively discussion with a panel of industry experts. The next roundtable is scheduled for Wednesday, April 18, at 1 p.m. ET, on “What’s New, and What’s Next, in B2B Customer Engagement.” For more information and to register click here: http://www.earley.com/training-webinars/whats-new-now-next-b2b-customer-engagement About Earley Information Science: EIS is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data – making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com.

Putting Your Chatbots to Work

Mar 15, 2018

Don’t obsess about the technology – focus instead on equipping bots with carefully structured content and data to give customers what they want, sometimes even before they ask for it, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable. Companies can be easily dazzled by their newest workers, the chatbots. They’re on the job 24/7, easing the load of “real” employees throughout the day and night. They never complain or get sick. And they don’t ask for raises. But companies can be just as easily disappointed when customers become frustrated by opaque and time-consuming interactions with the bots. It’s not the bots’ fault, said a panel of artificial intelligence experts at a recent Executive Roundtable hosted by Earley Information Science (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. Yes, chatbots are loaded with the bells and whistles of AI technology. But content and data are their lifeblood – and many companies are sabotaging their new armies of virtual workers by not supplying them with enough knowledge about products and processes to do their job. Too often, the companies turn to off-the-shelf software that misses the mark in packaging their information. What is needed, the experts said, are organizing principles and classification systems that are fully aligned with the unique aspects of each company’s business. Without those nuts and bolts in place, a chatbot can’t retrieve the information that a customer has asked for. Nor can it get to the next level – anticipating unasked questions about other needs. “The data and the content are more important than the algorithm,” said Seth Earley, Founder and CEO of EIS. Notwithstanding all of its AI features, a chatbot is essentially “a channel to knowledge data and content, and when you have such a channel, you must have a knowledge architecture to support it.” Companies have to “repurpose” their existing content and data, he added, “to tag and organize it consistently so that it can be used for customer self-service, to support the call-center representative and across other types of AI systems.” The Feb. 21 discussion, “Knowledge Engineering, Knowledge Management and Chatbots,” was led by Earley, who was joined by Tobias Goebel, Senior Director of Emerging Technologies at Aspect Software, a customer-engagement technology and customer experience company; Joe Gelb, President of Zoomin Software, which creates content publishing platforms; and Alex Masycheff, Co-Founder and CEO of Intuillion Ltd., a content management and software development firm. The panelists discussed how knowledge engineering supports AI’s role in improving the customer’s experience, including advances in conversational search and information retrieval. Key to the effort, they said, is putting the right information foundation in place. “Chatbots can answer user’s questions, but so can other communications tools,” said Masycheff. What sets them apart is that they are also able “to infer questions not asked and answer them as well.” But to pull that off, he said, they “must be able to capture context and be aware of the domain” in which they operate. And to make them aware in that way, chatbots have to be “fed with an ontology, a structured model of everything we know about this domain.” Another challenge is to help chatbots serve up all that information by engaging customers in “conversational AI.” Because the chatbot’s user interface is so different from the traditional graphical user interfaces of web sites, mobile apps and desktop applications, you have to make sure that the bot delivers information in discrete bite-size pieces easily understood by the customer, according to Aspect’s Goebel. Chatbots are dialogue-based, not screen-based. “It’s about gradual information discovery,” he said, “question by question, message by message.” There are great rewards in getting this right. On the flip side, though, there are great risks in getting it wrong. “If the conversational flow is not effective, the technology will be disregarded and have an adverse commercial effect,” said Zoomin’s Gelb. “Anything less than excellent is worse than nothing at all.” The panelists also discussed project costs (you can start small), governance (you really need it) and returns on investment (short- and long-term). The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: 37% said their knowledge management function was aware and another 37% said it was competent. On the high end, 18% called it synchronized and 3% choreographed. But 5% said their function was unpredictable. Bot projects are generally valued: they are a major priority drawing executive attention and funding (35%), they are in development or deployed (33%), or they are in the initial investigation stage (38%). Some projects have limited proof of concept (28%), but only 3% of the attendees said that their leadership doesn’t see the value. Which bots are under consideration? Support and customer service (66%), internal HR functions (43%), conversational commerce (37%), lead conversion (29%), other types (37%). Please use these links to access the roundtable webcast and a related article, “Knowledge Engineering: Structuring Content for AI.” Seth Earley will be talking more about knowledge engineering’s critical role in enabling chatbots and other AI-driven initiatives at the 2018 ACE (Aspect Customer Experience) event in Las Vegas, in late April. The Earley Executive Roundtable is an educational webinar series focusing on topics of interest in the areas of digital transformation and information science. Each month, EIS leads a lively discussion with a panel of industry experts. The next roundtable is scheduled for Wednesday, March 28, at 1 p.m. ET, on the topic of “Product Data: The Great Enabler of IoT, Marketplaces and More.” To sign up, register here. About Earley Information Science: EIS is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data – making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com.

Getting Serious About AI: The Year of the Tipping Point

Feb 9, 2018

It’s time to cut through the confusion and get over the hype – approached in a pragmatic way, today’s AI will deliver value to your business, and at a manageable cost, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable. Too much of the buzz surrounding artificial intelligence is coming across as noise, confusing many companies about what to do with AI and when. Some are pushing mountains of chips into the pot, betting on complicated projects to solve difficult problems – and typically coming up short. Others are sitting nervously on their hands, not sure where to start but convinced that the entry fee is prohibitive. Somewhere in the middle lies the promise of 2018. In recognizing and discounting the hype surrounding AI, companies can become realistic about what it can do, now, to add value to their business. And in building on the platforms that have already been developed by the Googles, Facebooks and Apples of the world, they can avoid the expensive exercise of inventing a rickety new wheel. “To the extent that AI projects are more narrowly focused, they are more achievable and provide more tangible benefits,” said Seth Earley, Founder and CEO of Earley Information Science (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. “When AI is employed in realistic and practical ways, companies can begin to take the steps that will lead them to powerful new capabilities.” The steps that are available today – to manufacturers, retailers and service companies – were discussed by a panel of knowledge engineering experts at an Executive Roundtable hosted on Jan. 17 by EIS. The discussion, “Enterprise Adoption of AI Technology: Looking Ahead to 2018,” was led by Seth Earley and included three EIS partners who work with clients on AI initiatives: Dino Eliopulos, Jeanna Giordano and Jeannine Bartlett, the firm’s Chief Digital Strategist. All three assessed the AI landscape at the start of the new year and identified opportunities to pursue in 2018. In looking back at 2017 from a B2B perspective, “my headline is around the value of AI for product management,” said Eliopulos. Every investment that’s made in improving the quality and structure of product data “is an investment that improves the performance of AI.” Even better, those investments turn into a two-way street: “AI can be used to improve and enrich your product information and to support the construction of relationships between products and other products.” Which gets you to 2018, he said, “the year in which information architecture and AI meet the Internet of Things – many companies are seeing that as the next level of engagement in their marketplace.” Consumers are looking for the value-added services that transcend the individual product and tap into the ecosystem that the product is part of, a connection that is largely fueled by AI. “We all want our Alexas and Pandoras.” And then there are the industrial applications. Fast-food restaurants, for example, “are instrumenting their cooking and refrigerant devices, and monitoring and building dashboards and benchmarks, restaurant to restaurant, to improve their power footprint.” On the consumer side, said Jeannine Bartlett, “the biggest sort of aha moment of 2017” was how fast voice-activated search went from being something of a novelty – Alexa, Siri or speaking to Google – to starting to have a major impact on everybody’s business. In short, voice-activated search has become a real play in determining who is going to own the customer. Consumer adoption of “voice first engagement” will transform digital marketplace models in 2018, and retailers will scramble to secure a place in the “shopping conversation.” As market leaders invest more in smartphone-enabled conversational commerce and home device platforms, the outcome will likely turn on how well companies tie together “both product and service taxonomies,” either from their own cupboard or through “really tight” mergers and acquisitions (think Amazon and Whole Foods). “When product catalogs and service taxonomies get integrated with voice-activated search,” Bartlett said, “you wind up with some pretty powerful customer-journey scenarios.” As for the services sector, said Jeanna Giordano, three trends are worth noting. First, many companies are “starting to take a much more holistic view” of AI. Instead of focusing on the technology itself, they are looking “at how AI opportunities can be brought into play at various touch points and service interactions.” Second, they are recognizing that AI requires “a lot of good data and processes” and that “being really articulate about your knowledge, and having deep understanding of your own data, is critical” in dealing with AI vendors. And third is the possibility of developing new workplace models that view AI as a tool for “augmentation,” rather than just strict automation. “People can have richer opportunities by working in collaboration with some of these technologies,” Giordano said, and in using them to solve business problems. In that respect, AI is no different from all the other tech advances that have come before it. Despite its powerful potential, it is not going to make the human factor redundant, said Seth Earley. “It’s not about replacement – it’s about putting tools in the hands of humans, and that’s the way it has always been: to improve people’s capabilities and effectiveness and reduce the cognitive load as they engage in whatever their work is.” The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Only 17% said that AI is now a crucial part of their offerings. A quarter are testing pilots or proof-of-concept projects, 42% are in “very early” stages, 10% said AI is just a glimmer in leadership’s eye and 6% said it is not even on the horizon. In terms of the projects that are under consideration or being developed, more than a third, or 36%, identify patterns in data (“cognitive insights”), 22% involve chatbots, virtual assistants or product recommendations (“cognitive engagement”) and 11% revolve around robotic process automation (RPA), enabling rote or repeatable processes like data entry. More than a third, or 37%, said leadership understands AI and is realistic about what it can do, but 23% said their managers have unrealistic expectations, another 23% said they understand AI only on a rudimentary level and 13% said they don’t understand it at all. Please use these links to access the roundtable and a related article, “Enterprise Adoption of AI.” The Earley Executive Roundtable is an educational webinar series focusing on topics of interest in the areas of digital transformation and information science. Each month, EIS leads a lively discussion with a panel of industry experts. The next roundtable is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 21, at 1 p.m. ET, on the topic of “Knowledge Engineering for Chatbot Design.” To sign up, register here. About Earley Information Science: EIS is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data – making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com.

Pulling It All Together on a Customer Data Platform

Dec 19, 2017

Many tools track one thing or another about shoppers, but a CDP reaches out to all channels to paint an integrated picture for specific marketing tasks. In unifying the data, it unifies the customer experience, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable. The good news about trying to understand your customers, and anticipate their needs, is that there’s no shortage of data to analyze. The bad news is that the data is all over the place, collected by large numbers of systems from different vendors or by different groups within a company. The formats, architectures and naming conventions typically vary, and the data models are inconsistent. What’s needed is something that can scoop up all the data, aggregate it into a 360-degree view of the customer and be designed with the marketer in mind, so that the data can be used for specific marketing purposes: to create customer profiles and predict behavior, for instance, or to develop – and test – marketing strategies. And that brings us to the best news: such a tool already exists. It’s the Customer Data Platform (CDP) and it is “one of marketing’s Holy Grails,” said David Hatch, Principal Consultant at Earley Information Science (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. “A CDP can change the game when it comes to unifying the customer experience.” The benefits and opportunities that a CDP approach can offer were discussed by a panel of early adopters and knowledge management experts at an Executive Roundtable hosted on Dec. 6 by EIS. The discussion, “The Customer Data Platform – A Path to a Unified Customer Experience,” was led by Hatch, who was joined by panelists David Raab, Founder of the Customer Data Platform Institute; Lisa Siemaszko, Director of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) at Clarks, the shoe company; and Larry Hughes, Director of Customer Data Platforms at Keurig Green Mountain, the specialty coffee maker. CDP is packaged software that gathers, stores and shares customer data in ways that are often far more effective than other tools that can unify certain kinds of data for certain purposes, such as data management platforms (DMP), data hubs and tag managers, said Raab, who coined the CDP term. “CDP is often confused with other ways of managing customer data,” he said. “We would never say that the CDP is the only way . . . but there are certain situations where the CDP is the best choice.” Hatch recalled his frustrations with other systems. “For years, I struggled with integrating data from data warehouses and transactional systems to try to fuse together customer insights. It was laborious and in the end we could only produce a limited number of insights before we had to go back and deal with the fact that customer actions in a changing world had all but rendered our data models obsolete.” Keurig Green Mountain went live with a CDP environment about a year ago. The company had been busy collecting data about transactions and demographics, Hughes said, but “we were doing these things in silos.” Plus it lacked behavorial-type data, which he called “a pretty big gap.” Keurig saw CDP as the way to “lay in the digital behavior and marry that up with our unified data.” It also decided to bring in a data management platform and link it to the CDP, creating an ecosystem in which the DMP collects source data that is used for site personalization, which, in turn, provides behavior data for the CDP. “The data feeds against each other,” Hughes said, adding, “I’m not sure we’re done” in exploring further ways to integrate and leverage information. Clarks has also been using CDP for about a year, hoping the platform could drive additional sales. “We realized there was a need to be more targeted and more personalized,” Siemaszko said, to staunch the company’s unsubscribe rate. “From an email perspective, we were in a batch-and-blast mode . . . we didn’t have a single view of the customer or anything close.” The new platform got all in-store point-of-sale transactions and all online transactions in the same place, and matched up. “It was a big step from where we were, helping us get closer to really understanding the true lifetime value of a customer.” The panelists also discussed issues related to ownership of the CDP system and challenges that companies encounter in using the platform, including when and how to add more data. “We have regular conversations about adding data,” Siemaszko said. “We walk, crawl, run – because there is so much to learn. Just having the data in one place now has opened up a world of questions and insights. We’re balancing learning and executing before we add in more.” The goal, of course, is true personalization, the kind that comes from harnessing all the existing data about a given customer, from social media activity to buying history. The ultimate Holy Grail. The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Nearly three quarters, 73%, said their organization is just starting to look into the CDP approach, while 7% have been using it for 1-3 years and 20% for more than 3 years. 64% said that CDP ownership is shared between Marketing and IT, 14% Marketing alone, 14% a team that didn’t involve either Marketing or IT and 7% Marketing with a non-IT team. 55% said that CDP is an important priority at their company but still needs a business case, 9% said it is a major priority (with funding and executive buy-in) and 36% not a priority. Please use these links to access the roundtable and a related article, “Overcoming Personalization Challenges: The Role of the Customer Data Platform.” The Earley Executive Roundtable is an educational webinar series focusing on topics of interest in the areas of digital transformation and information science. Each month, EIS leads a lively discussion with a panel of industry experts. The next roundtable is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 17, at 1 p.m. ET, on the topic of “View From the Enterprise Technology Frontlines: AI Adoption and Predictions for 2018.” To sign up, register here.

A Starring Role for Support Bots

Nov 13, 2017

The next step up in customer experience will come from better-trained bots that can pull data from all corners of a company, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable. But be patient – it is still a work in progress. Support bots are in the wings, getting ready to take a star turn. Be patient, though – it may take a little while. Driven by the latest advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, chatbots that support customers in their searches for products and services are upping their game. With stronger language skills, more sophisticated customer analytics and deeper reservoirs of company information to draw from, bots are getting better at guiding buyers on their journeys. But as good as they have become, bots are often not quite ready to take the center-stage spotlight for long stretches. They can get flummoxed by unfamiliar or complicated questions from customers. And at some companies, those reservoirs of information prove to be shallow or hard to find. More work remains to be done, and companies – and consumers – need to have realistic expectations about the current state of play, according to a panel of marketing and knowledge management experts at an Executive Roundtable hosted on Oct. 25 by Earley Information Science (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. The experts quickly added, however, that more and more companies are recognizing the bots’ potential and are on a hiring binge. They’re making the right move, said one of the panelists, Alla Reznik, Director of Customer Contact at Verizon’s Products and Services Group. “We probably overestimate what AI can do for us today,” she explained, “but we equally and vastly underestimate what it will do for us five years from now.” To that end, it’s important to understand that AI’s applications are a work in progress, the experts noted. That bots, like humans, not only require training, but retraining as conditions change. And that companies have to up their game, too, said Seth Earley, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of EIS. The goal is to give customers the information they need to use a product, make a selection, solve a problem and achieve their overall goal in a seamless and positive end-to-end experience. But at most large companies, the training platforms, knowledge bases and support apps have evolved in different ways, often making the journey a pretty bumpy ride, not just for the consumer, but for the bot, too. Thus “the need to harmonize data from different sources” and give the bots the tools to do their job, Earley said. The roundtable discussion, “Training AI-Driven Support Bots to Deliver the Next Generation of Customer Experience,” was led by Earley. In addition to Verizon’s Reznik, the panelists were Ian Collins, CEO of Wysdom.AI, whose product is an AI-based customer service solution for large enterprises, and Lisa Michaud, Director of Natural Language Processing at Aspect Software, a customer engagement company. One key tool in making the customer interactions more seamless is putting the burden of communication more on the bot and less on the human, through a Natural Language Interface. “Instead of having to learn how to use a computer interface,” Lisa Michaud said, “you express your needs in the language you use in talking to another human.” The easier the communication with bots, the more customers are gravitating to them, particularly at call centers. “We’re seeing the channels that customers want to communicate on change so fast,” said Ian Collins. “Now it’s Facebook and Twitter, but chatbots are coming on strong,” albeit still a “small portion.” The cognitive technology behind the bots is “enabling fast, effective personalized answers” for consumers. “People are in and out, quickly getting the solutions that they came for.” New channels are “not only an opportunity but in many cases a necessity,” said Verizon’s Reznik. “Enterprises and public-sector companies sometimes don’t realize how much demand there is for alternate methods of communicating with them.” Yet because today’s bots still have their limitations, and can get stumped by questions or a lack of information, “you always need to be able to escalate to humans,” Earley said. At least, for now. The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Nearly two-thirds said they have a major AI/chatbot customer service project in the works (25%) or are investigating options and building the case (39%), but 25% are not making significant changes in their technology About 44% said they have a rigorous formal process for managing knowledge assets or a reasonably well-structured informal one, but another 44% conceded that they are “very immature” in this area and need more capabilities A little more than a quarter of executives, or 27%, are well informed about AI and have realistic expectations, but 34% have only “pockets of understanding” and 18% think that AI and machine learning tools work by themselves As for where companies are on the hype curve, 48% see AI/bots as an extension of existing technologies, 30% said they are excited by the possibilities but not grounded in realities, 17% have drunk the Kool Aid and don’t grasp what is required and 4% are not buying in Use these links to access the roundtable and a related article. The Earley Executive Roundtable is an educational webinar series focusing on topics of interest in the areas of digital transformation and information science. Each month, EIS leads a lively discussion with a panel of industry experts. The next roundtable is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 6, at 1 p.m. ET, on the topic of “The Customer Data Platform – A Path to a Unified Customer Experience.” To sign up, register here.

Going Beyond Taxonomy for Ecommerce Innovation

Oct 12, 2017

To innovate in Ecommerce, manufacturers and distributors have to keep pushing the data-organizing envelope to improve the user experience, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable This is not your father’s taxonomy. In the ever more complicated and competitive world of Ecommerce, it’s been a long time since you could manage all of your product information on a spreadsheet. To survive, manufacturers and distributors have become much more sophisticated in building navigation and classification hierarchies. But to thrive, they have to go beyond thinking of the resulting data architecture, or taxonomy, as just a hierarchy and instead use it to drive advanced marketing capabilities, according to a panel of marketing, distribution and knowledge management experts at an Executive Roundtable hosted on Sept. 28 by Earley Information Science (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. Properly designed and regularly updated, cutting-edge taxonomies can improve site search, can be essential in merchandising (by assessing your product mix and by grouping products for specific targets and solutions) and can help with personalization, the panelists said. What every online company is trying to accomplish is to help website users answer their questions and solve their problems. So the goal “is to get them to the products that they need most quickly, efficiently and effectively,” said Seth Earley, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of EIS. You have to think through your products, he added, “in a way that aligns how they are organized” with how the users will deploy them in finding their solutions. And that means, Earley said, taxonomy becomes “a set of organizing principles,” destined to have an impact on “the entire user experience and the overall customer journey” in ways that are very different from its traditional role of navigational guide. The new bottom line: “It’s foundational to product management . . . it becomes the driver of consistency of all the digital machinery that runs the organization. It becomes your common business language.” The roundtable discussion, “Beyond Taxonomy: How Manufacturers and Distributors Are Innovating in Ecommerce,” was led by Earley and included Marc Shimpeno, Taxonomist and Data Specialist at Etsy, the peer-to-peer shopping site; Megan Koleff, User Experience Lead at the Genuine Parts Company, a distributor of auto and industrial replacement parts, among other items; and Noel McDonagh, Director of Information Development at Dell EMC, which provides a range of data-related products and services, including storage and security. Shimpeno described his company’s approach to aligning taxonomy’s back-end hierarchy (in Etsy’s case, how sellers classify things) and the customer-facing front end. The back end, he said, “can be very different sometimes to how a buyer actually tries to find things.” Some people know exactly what they want, including many specifications, while others are just looking for a simple pair of scissors. On Etsy’s back end, “we have been trying to pare things down to what the thing actually is, and then having our sellers answer questions and describe attributes like color, size, material,” adding, “We do a lot of one-to-one stuff, to find more flexibility between the back-end seller and the front-end buyer.” In part, becoming more effective depends on understanding “that the way people look at things internally can be very different from the way people look at things externally,” Earley said. “There are many different varieties of customers,” said Dell EMC’s McDonagh, “and we have to segment those categories so we understand what they need. We have to align that understanding to the back end, where we are actually creating the information, and also align it to the front end.” Because the segments have different needs, a variety of information components, or systems, is required, putting the burden on “the creators of the information to utilize that same information across the board for those multiple systems. It’s a matrix that we are always looking at, evaluating how it is being used.” “There’s the technical customer who wants to get into the details,” McDonagh said, “and there’s the architecture customer who wants to understand the interconnectivity of different systems. Understanding those customer profiles relates very much to the front-end hierarchies, and then we have to support those front ends with the back end.” To keep pace with the needs of different customer groups and changes in products and services, how do you handle the updating of taxonomies? How do you manage the enablers in the process: merchandisers and subject matter experts? “From a day-to-day perspective, we hire a lot of people who straddle areas of expertise,” said Megan Koleff, from Genuine Parts. They need “a good foundation of knowledge in our industries as well as technological expertise so that they are able to implement.” It is a challenge, “as we start to overlay more customer demand. How does that core taxonomy shift and change? Do we need to set up other virtual taxonomies for different users (along with different tools) because we are overlaying the customer’s mental model?” “It’s a good challenge to have,” Koleff said, although everything is getting “significantly more complex.” The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Other than a primary product hierarchy, what navigational hierarchies does your website provide? Applications (32% of respondents), standards (24%) and industries (22%), with 30% saying “nothing else” and 27% choosing “something else” How does your website leverage product relationships? Merchandising product groupings (42%), solution bundles (39%), “users who bought this also bought . . .” (39%) and qualified product-to-product tagging (related parts and accessories, etc.) (21%). Twenty-four percent said “none of the above” How do you ensure that taxonomies are effective? “We have informal reviews by our internal subject matter experts” (32%), “we perform competitive analysis and survey our customers” (18%) and “we have a rigorous formal process for testing and validation driven by use cases and compared with baseline metrics” (18%). An additional 25% said that “we perform very little, if any, testing” Please use these links to access the roundtable recording and a related article. The Earley Executive Roundtable is an educational webinar series focusing on topics of interest in the areas of digital transformation and information science. Each month, EIS leads a lively discussion with a panel of industry experts. The next roundtable is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017 at 1 p.m. ET, on the topic of “Training AI-Driven Support Bots to Deliver the Next Generation of Customer Experience.” Click this link to register for the webinar. About Earley Information Science: EIS is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data—making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com. #####

When PIM Gets Really Complicated

Sep 19, 2017

Product information management for conglomerates can be devilishly difficult, but there are ways to do it right, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable It’s hard enough to design and implement a “garden variety” product information management (PIM) program. Even at a single-line company with a straightforward structure and limited market reach, it’s just not that easy to figure out product names, determine which attributes to tout and organize everything into an effective system—and somehow also win consensus from various stakeholders along the way. But the challenges, and potential pitfalls, are exponentially greater at conglomerates and other complex decentralized enterprises, where PIM may have to function as a shared platform across numerous operating units, or even separate companies, in any number of markets or perhaps all around the world. Consensus in this context has to be reached despite yawning differences in processes, priorities, products and services. The task is formidable, so much so that you have to ask whether there are too many variations to support “one system of record,” says Dino Eliopulos, Managing Director of Earley Information Science (EIS). “What are the limits to the value of supporting a centralized system? Can so many different business units all standardize on a single PIM model?” The do’s and don’ts of implementation, and the reasons why PIM is still very much worth the effort, were discussed by a panel of manufacturing, distribution and knowledge management experts at an Executive Roundtable hosted on Aug. 31 by EIS, a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. Among other things, big decentralized enterprises have to decide “what products belong in the PIM and what data is appropriate to master for those products,” Eliopulos said, and whether to use a “big bang” approach to implementation or one that is incremental. And they have to settle on the right governance structure. The roundtable discussion, “Product Information Management for Conglomerates: The Best Approach for Complex Decentralized Enterprises,” was led by Eliopulos and included Marguerite Eddy, Principal Data Architect at National Instruments, a producer of automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software, and Jennie Yates, Manager, eCommerce Catalog and Content, at WESCO Distribution, an electronics distribution and services company. “PIM’s always a good idea,” said Yates. “It’s a very difficult journey to start, when you are looking at it from an enterprise-wide management point of view,” but the potential payoff is enormous. “It’s really part of that whole master data management [MDM], big data theory of reaping the benefits of having all of your product data in one place,” serving multiple parts of the enterprise. “The true secret sauce in starting the journey,” Yates added, “is not to look at it as technical implementation,” which is certainly involved, but rather as a chance to understand the business processes of all affected entities and operations and identify the things that need to change. Through these conversations “you begin to develop your requirements to get a shared PIM throughout the organization that would be in everybody’s interest.” Eddy agreed. “We went through strategic sessions with stakeholders across the company to define what we meant by product and to determine the scope of what we were working with. And only then did we start looking at technology.” “That upfront input,” Yates added, “defines the business process that’s going to support the PIM,” including change management and the commitment to provide more resources. The panelists also discussed the types of data that belong in the PIM, including product attributes; the considerations in deciding between the big bang and incremental transition approaches; the need for dual maintenance in making the shift from legacy systems; and the governance issues that can affect time to market. The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: When asked how they are using PIM in their organization, 20% said enterprise-wide as the system of record for all product content and 30% said across many business units or departments. But the remaining 50% said they don’t have a PIM system of any kind When asked if they are using PIM for master data, 9% said they master all of their product data across all channels, 9% use such data for digital channels and 36% said PIM is one of a number of sources of product data. Another 45% said they did not use PIM for master data management Finally, when asked if they could see their business using PIM as an MDM platform across all lines of business and subsidiaries, 17% said they are already doing just that “to great effect” and another 17% said they have plans and funding to follow suit within the next 12 months. Meanwhile, 33% said they are evaluating the various approaches and another 33% have no plans and are not interested Please use these links to access the roundtable and a related article. The Earley Executive Roundtable is an educational webinar series focusing on topics of interest in the areas of digital transformation and information science. Each month, EIS leads a lively discussion with a panel of industry experts. The next roundtable is scheduled for Sept. 28, on the topic of “Beyond Taxonomy: How Manufacturers and Distributors Are Innovating in eCommerce.” To sign up, contact Sharon Foley at Sharon.Foley@earley.com. About Earley Information Science: EIS is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data—making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com. #####

Solving a B2B Puzzle: Marketing to the Unmarketable

Jul 31, 2017

Because technical buyers have no patience for sales pitches, successful web sites draw them in with practical experiences based on a deep knowledge of who they are and what they want, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable “Skip the sales pitches and just give me what I need,” engineers, procurement managers and other technical buyers plead. They’re not like B2C shoppers. They are all business—typically facing complicated projects and inflexible deadlines—and often arrive with extremely long lists of required parts and equipment and very short fuses. But giving them what they need is not easy, and the stakes can be very high, said Dino Eliopulos, Managing Director of Earley Information Science (EIS). “Recommend the wrong component to an engineer and you could end up with a collapsed building, exploding rocket or poisoned hamburger. And yet these customers say, ‘Do not market to me.’ ” Given the suspicions that tech buyers harbor for anything that looks like merchandising and advertising, including product recommendations, getting the right products in their hands is a challenge that many marketers don’t know how to solve, and some don’t fully recognize. The answer is to deliver a customized, albeit bare-bones, online experience that is efficient, practical and trustworthy, according to a panel of marketing and knowledge management experts at an Executive Roundtable discussion hosted on July 26 by EIS, a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. What is required, the experts said, is a sophisticated soft-sell formula that depends heavily on understanding the different segments in the tech demographic and how customer journeys vary; the approaches that will engage these buyers before, during and after making purchases; and the role that analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can play in fueling the effort. The roundtable discussion, “The Secret to Successfully Marketing to the Technical B2B Buyer,” was led by Eliopulos and included Yvonne Brown, Partner and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Chief Outsiders, a marketing strategy firm focused on startup to mid-sized companies; Hayne Shumate, Senior Vice President of Internet Business, Mouser Electronics, which sells components to engineers designing circuit boards for new projects; and Michelle Fields, Senior Director of Marketing and eCommerce at Brock White, a distributor of construction materials. “While we are pleased to serve anyone who comes to our website, our target customers are design engineers or procurement professionals who have been given a list of products from an engineer,” said Mouser’s Shumate. “Engineers are not interested in sharing their ideas with us. So, we have to understand what they need and focus on getting them to their products as quickly as possible, while staying out of their way when they do their shopping.” But tech buyers come in all shapes and sizes. Brock White works with buyers involved with huge projects, Michelle Fields said, but also sells to one-person businesses and to consumers who want to work with a contractor to add stone to their home. “Kind of the whole gamut,” she noted, and the wide range in roles and products affects the buyer’s involvement in the purchasing decision. “There may be differences in the time scales and in the linearity and non-linearity of the shopping process,” Eliopulos added. How do you engage these various buyers? In other words, how do you use the site’s content and functionality? Again, the type of buyer is key. A procurement specialist wants to see a list of things to order, Fields said, while an engineer is after pieces of technical information and an architect is looking for inspiration. “It depends on the persona that comes to the web site.” One common denominator, though, is the desire for transparency and accuracy. A paramount concern for many buyers, according to Yvonne Brown, is the ability “to get information they need to a very detailed level and have confidence that the information is 100% accurate.” They want to see an image, zoom into it and examine it from different perspectives. And then there is “ease of consumption,” she said. “Not using a video when it could be simpler to use text, or using a video for demonstration purposes when it adds a lot of value.” After all, “the technical buyer in general is very pressed for time these days,” and anything that saves time is highly appreciated. Another area of confidence building is having accurate inventory online, she said, given the critical timelines often at play. “They not only need the right product, they also need it on time.” As for product reviews, those have little value, she noted, “because there isn’t confidence that the person who is reviewing the product is using it in the right way or understands it properly.” Instead, tech customers tend to prefer opinions from peers they know. The panelists also discussed the critical supporting role that big data and machine learning can play in the tech buyer’s shopping experience. Brock White is “working through data to help build segmentation,” said Michelle Fields, a process that allows companies to “find out who your core spots or core customers are” and to better understand the differences in customer journeys. That kind of understanding, Yvonne Brown added, gives you the opportunity to “provide buyers with the right information” as they try to apply product research to the project or design they are working on. That said, Hayne Shumate noted privacy concerns that restrict the collection of certain data in a number of markets around the world. The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Nearly half, or 47%, said their business as a whole depends on B2B technical buyers, and an additional 35% said such buyers are important to a portion of the business In identifying the most important factors in engaging the tech buyer, the respondents chose product selection and price (35%), rich meaningful content and product information (30%) and product findability (25%) As for using advanced analytics and AI to engage customers, 26% said they are already doing that to great effect and 16% said they had plans to do so within the next year. But more than half, or 58%, said they are still evaluating the approach to take Please use these links to access the roundtable and a related article. The Earley Executive Roundtable is an educational webinar series focusing on topics of interest in the areas of digital transformation and information science. Each month, EIS leads a lively discussion with a panel of industry experts. The next roundtable is scheduled for Aug. 31st. Click here to register for the live event, or to view a recording afterward. About Earley Information Science: EIS is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data—making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com. #####

MIT CIO Symposium: A Call to Action on Artificial Intelligence

Jul 24, 2017

Most of AI’s promise may be in the future, but companies must prepare now or risk falling behind for good, says CEO of Earley Information Science Artificial intelligence has become the “it” topic in the business news sections and throughout the tech world, commanding attention for everything from self-driving cars to predictive analytics and maintenance. But many companies are watching from the sidelines, convinced that there is little AI can do for them now and that it will be easy enough to plug in down the road, when the full power of the technology will kick in. These companies are fooling themselves and flirting with existential danger, warns Seth Earley, founder and CEO of Earley Information Science Corp. (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. “They don’t know what they don’t know, and they don’t appreciate the capabilities that they don’t have,” said Earley, issuing a call to action following his recent appearance at this year’s MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. “They are operating under the delusion that once they decide to adopt AI, it will magically do everything for them. But AI is not magic, and companies that are not putting in the time and the effort now to learn how to apply AI to today’s problems are going to lose ground, perhaps permanently, to companies that will.” At the CIO Symposium, Earley participated in a panel discussion moderated by Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab. One of the big takeaways from the panel, “Putting AI to Work,” is that the technology, at least for the immediate future, represents less of a threat to replace human workers and more of a positive change, in that it could improve, or “augment,” human activity. And even though companies may not think AI is relevant to their activities, Earley says, the processes they use to perform those activities are often ripe for AI efficiencies. “Companies that realize this and act on it,” Earley says, “will become more competitive and therefore will outperform their peers.” “AI is evolving very quickly, and organizations need to move quickly, too, to build fundamental new abilities for the new AI world,” Earley says. Ironically, they have to make the transition the old-fashioned way, “based on tried-and-true information management principles. AI tools don’t operate on junk—otherwise, it’s garbage in, garbage out. In other words, it’s the data, stupid. The AI machines have to be ‘fed’ the right data and the right content, properly structured and curated.” That structure, a company’s so-called knowledge architecture, is core to the AI process. It makes it easier to find and use information today—helping you, for instance, to deal quickly and correctly with an on-line customer’s questions—even as it positions you for the further preparations that will be needed to handle AI in the long term. “If you don’t have that right, you can’t build on top of it,” Earley says. Eventually, AI will prove very disruptive to the job market, but for now the change is more subtle: rather than replacing people, AI is shifting them into roles and tasks that will require new skills. “It’s really about making people more productive,” Earley says. “We have to look at this as a partnership, using AI to build new capabilities through really high-quality, interactive, personalized training that takes into consideration different learning styles and natural skills.” “We have to train the robots with the right knowledge architecture,” Earley says. “But we also have to train the people to use the robots.” ***** Please use these links to access the CIO Symposium discussion on putting AI to work and to review EIS resources about AI. Seth Earley’s expertise includes knowledge strategy, data and information architecture and search-based applications. For more than 20 years, he has worked with a diverse roster of Fortune 1000 companies. He helps them improve performance by making information more findable, usable and valuable, particularly with reference to analytics, eCommerce and customer experience. He has briefed many C-level executives on the principles of AI and cognitive computing, explaining the practical steps that need to be taken to cut through the noise and get value from emerging technologies. He can be reached at seth@earley.com. About Earley Information Science: Earley Information Science is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com.

Earley Information Science to Present at 2017 Mit Sloan Ceo Symposium

May 19, 2017

2017 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium to Provide Roadmap for the Global CIO Adventure: Seth Earley, CEO of Earley Information Systems, to discuss at the Nation’s Premier CIO Conference on May 24, 2017 Earley Information Science (EIS) today announced that Seth Earley, CEO of EIS will be a speaker at the at the 14th Annual 2017 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, the nation’s premier CIO conference on May 24, 2017. Earley will be speaking about artificial intelligence (AI) applications that are currently in practice or are imminent. The panel session, entitled “Putting AI to Work,” will also feature speakers from Cogito Corporation, Clearpath, OTTO Motors, and MIT. Earley is one of an elite group of presenters from a wide range of industries participating in the conference. While the fully autonomous vehicle is the poster child for AI, it is still five or more years out on the horizon. In contrast, many implementations of AI are available today or will be within the next year or so. AI technologies and AI-driven products are enabling new services never possible before, providing deep business intelligence, automating work, and cutting costs. The development and deployment of these systems also raise ethical and regulatory concerns as well as the risk of the displacement of jobs. This panel will focus on how firms are implementing or how they expect to implement AI, including effectiveness, stage of adoption, and benefits, as well as the potential impacts on unemployment and society The premier conference will bring together more than 800 global CIOs, senior IT executives, technology innovators and MIT academic thought leaders together on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a full day of networking, collaboration and discussions around building a digital organization, IT talent management, business leadership and the increasingly important impact technology is having on corporations and society. More than a dozen keynote presentations and interactive panel discussions tied to this year’s theme “The CIO Adventure: Now, Next and…Beyond” will feature more than 60 business leaders, technology trendsetters, and thought leaders from academia. In addition to “Putting AI to Work,” topics to be addressed during the conference, include: Pathways to Future Ready: The Digital Playbook Preparing for the Future of Work Trusted Data: The Role of Blockchain, Secure Identity, and Encryption Who’s Really Responsible for Technology? Expanding the Reach of Digital Innovation Running IT Like a Factory Navigating the Clouds What Comes After Digital Transformation? You Were Hacked—Now What? Talent Wars in the Digital Age Winning with the Internet of Things The CIO Adventure: Insights from the Leadership Award Finalists Measuring ROI for Cybersecurity: Is It Real or a Mirage? The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is co-organized by the MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association, the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), and the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (CISR). It will take place from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 24, 2017, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA. To register for the Symposium, please click here. About the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is the premier global conference for CIOs and digital business executives to become more effective leaders. In one day, CIOs and senior IT executives explore enterprise technology innovations, business practices and receive actionable information that enables them to meet the challenges of today and the future. The Symposium offers a unique learning environment by bringing together the academic thought leadership of MIT with the in-the-trenches experience of leading, global CIOs and industry experts. The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is organized and developed by the MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association, the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), and the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (CISR). For more information and to register for this year’s Symposium, visit www.mitcio.com. ###

The Growing Role of Chatbots in Healthcare

Apr 17, 2017

They are not doctors (yet), but well-trained bots can get patients to engage more in their care, helping to close the $300 billion ‘adherence gap’ in taking pills and following orders, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable No one would confuse them with young interns or seasoned surgeons, but chatbots are becoming the newest addition to medical teams. Hospitals and other providers, as well as insurers, are starting to employ these digital workers to remind patients to take their medicine, to monitor life signs and to track mountains of data across patient groups that could produce breakthrough insights about diseases and treatments. Already, consumers can choose from among dozens of bots that provide “care” as soon as they are downloaded. Help from the bots is critically needed – the lack of patient adherence to prescribed medications and to post-procedure instructions is putting tremendous strains on both providers and payers. Avoidable medical spending exceeds $300 billion a year, according to a recent study by CapGemini. But for bots to become major players in closing the adherence gap, and to deliver on other health-care and cost-saving fronts, their human bosses have to understand their capabilities while also appreciating their limitations, according to a panel of artificial intelligence (AI) and knowledge management experts at an Executive Roundtable discussion hosted on April 12 by Earley Information Science Corp. (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. The bots can greatly improve patient experience, the panelists said, and in the process improve adherence and outcomes. But the spread and acceptance of bots has been slowed by regulatory restrictions, insurance rules and privacy concerns that still have to be addressed, the experts added. And, they noted, because of AI’s limitations in understanding human language, the bots have to be seen as very junior members of the team, and a long way, if ever, from hanging out their own shingles. Bots can enable meaningful conversations with the care team and with patients, and encourage better patient behavior, “but they can’t provide medical advice and they can’t prescribe possible treatments,” said one of the panelists, Henry Truong, Chief Technology Officer, Teletech Holdings. Even the data that they provide about a patient’s condition, as rich as it is, can be missing the crucial nuances that a doctor’s eye, or touch, can add. The roundtable discussion, “The Role of Intelligent Virtual Assistants in Healthcare: How virtual assistants can help solve the ‘adherence gap’ and more,” was led by David Hatch, Senior Vice President for Marketing at EIS. Besides Henry Truong, the panel included Dr. Bruce Metz, Managing Partner, Bruce Metz & Associates; Michael Flammer, Partner, Life Sciences and Healthcare Customer Strategy Services, Teletech Consulting; and Richard Lynch, Vice President and Managing Consultant, Accelare Inc. The discussion was the second in a four-part EIS series, “The Age of the Chatbot Is Coming: Are You Ready?” The first roundtable, “Digital Workers, Chatbots and Customer Service: Reality Versus Aspiration,” was held on March 29. EIS held a related roundtable in January, “Virtual Assistants and Chatbots: The Next Big Thing in Customer Experience.” Bots are already a key part of the evolution of the digital healthcare ecosystem, said Dr. Metz. “Providers are increasingly getting paid on the quality of outcomes. Meanwhile, consumers are becoming more demanding and discerning. As they pay more, they want more convenient and transparent care.” Enter technology, and with it, “new directions for wellness and disease detection.” Where bots can be most usefully deployed is in the treatment of chronic illness, which consumes roughly 75% of the $3 trillion spent each year in the United States on healthcare. The next generation of bots, Dr. Metz said, will more fully interact with patients in their homes, featuring such new tools as wifi-enabled pill bottle caps to track the intake of medications. This larger role, akin to “a virtual physician’s assistant,” will result in better chronic disease management. The bots also provide extraordinary scaling opportunities, Henry Truong noted, allowing providers and payers “in non-homogeneous delivery networks” to share knowledge and increasing the ratio of patients to care-team members “without sacrificing the quality of care.” Bots can’t work alone, however, but rather in “orchestration” with the care team, extending its reach (not just geographically but also into patient lifestyle by monitoring many new things) and increasing its efficiency. But there are obstacles in the way. For one thing, said Teletech Consulting’s Michael Flammer, 75% of patients are very or somewhat concerned about the privacy of their health records. And those records will be exploding in size. The amount of quantitative data that will be collected by bots is going to be “overwhelming,” Flammer said. Yet from a qualitative standpoint, there will actually be a dearth of information. Is a patient’s skin coloring good? Is the patient depressed? How do those “data points” get collected? Are photos needed, for instance? From the provider’s point of view, “bots help to close capability gaps,” said Accelare’s Richard Lynch. “They provide new services along the care continuum,” including proactive education and support with financial questions. “They simplify the complexity, and help patients navigate the system.” In fact, he said, “chatbots are not a technology play but rather a business capability tool.” The challenge, Dr. Metz added, is for regulators and insurers to revise their rules on compliance and reimbursement. They have to catch up to the bots, he said, which are now “way out in front.” The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Nearly a fifth of the respondents, or 17%, said that bots are a major priority (supported by funding and executive buy-in) and 50% said they are important but still require a business case. The remaining 33% said bots are not a priority at this time. None of the attendees has been using bots for more than a year, but 14% have recently launched their first wave, another 14% have begun testing in one area, and nearly three-quarters, or 71%, are just starting to investigate how bots can be used. When asked where they would deploy their first bots, 100% of the participants chose extending patient care remotely. Sixty percent also identified patient or member services. Please use these links to access the roundtable and EIS resources about chatbots and AI. About Earley Information Science: Earley Information Science is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data – making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com. #####

PRESS RELEASE: Setting the Right Expectations for Chatbots

Mar 29, 2017

Armies of “digital workers” are poised to take over the front lines with customers, but they need rigorously organized data to perform well, and often a helping hand, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable The numbers are very real even if the workers are virtual. Spending on Enterprise Intelligent Assistants, aka chatbots, is now exceeding $1 billion a year and is expected to grow to $4.5 billion by 2021, according to Opus Research. And a recent survey of 100 information management professionals found that 51% are getting ready to put chatbots to work with customers. But it is still early days in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), and companies have to be realistic about the kind of work that chatbots can, and can’t, handle, and the support they need to be effective, according to a panel of AI and knowledge management experts at an Executive Roundtable discussion hosted on March 29 by Earley Information Science Corp. (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. The data that is the chatbot’s lifeblood has to be structured in a way that is fully compatible with a company’s business, humans still have to help out, and tasks that involve a lot of context and nuance may be out of a chatbot’s reach, at least for now. That said, digital workers are already earning their keep, and are taking on more and more responsibilities as they get “smarter,” the panelists said, adding that companies would do well to go on a hiring spree so long as their expectations are properly set. Chatbots “are evolving very very quickly,” said Seth Earley, founder and Chief Executive Officer of EIS. “But right now they are not necessarily easy to use. There is no magic – chatbots require human intervention and knowledge engineering. They are an access mechanism to get to information,” which has to be carefully collected and organized so that the bots can understand and accomplish their tasks and learn new ones. The roundtable discussion, “Digital Workers, Chatbots and Customer Service: Reality Versus Aspiration,” was led by David Hatch, Senior Vice President for Marketing at EIS. Besides Seth Earley, the panel included Tom Davenport, a professor of information technology and management at Babson College and author of “Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines”; Dan Miller, Lead Analyst and Founder of Opus Research; and Mark Beccue, Principal Analyst at Tractica. The discussion was the first of a four-part EIS series, “The Age of the Chatbot Is Coming: Are You Ready?” with new roundtables set for April 12, April 26 and May 10 (details below). EIS held a related roundtable in January, “Virtual Assistants and Chatbots: The Next Big Thing in Customer Experience.” At this stage of bot development, companies should target “low-hanging fruit” to start out, Tom Davenport suggested, noting that so-called transformational projects involving bots that are pushed down from the top have a low success rate, particularly if the company is the first in its industry to make such a big move. The shift to digital workers “may well have a devastating impact on the job market in the future,” but right now, Davenport said, there is little job loss and no pure automation. “It’s a hybrid machine/human process.” The highest return on investment (ROI) is coming from the most prosaic applications and technologies, such as robotic process automation (RPA), and not from layoffs. As companies bring in bots, they should find the speediest ways to produce some business results while keeping an eye on costs, said Opus Research’s Dan Miller. Think about what works out of the box, but also factor in the ongoing expenses for professional services to collect, organize and reshape the data. Try to leverage existing resources, including key data, operational personnel and subject matter experts. And, of course, figure out the right tools for development, analytics and reporting, including metrics to track success and failure. “Some fairly complex implementations are already out there,” Miller said. In some cases, bots “can do more than just low-hanging fruit.” What are the “compelling market drivers” that are opening the market to chatbots? Tractica’s Mark Beccue noted consumer desire for 24/7 support and self-service and an aversion to live interactions. The use cases are also expanding – into financial services, for example, with the onboarding of new customers and automated wealth advisors, and into healthcare, with coaching services for patients with long-term illness. Chatbots will not be taking over the world any time soon, Beccue said. Advances are being made in understanding language, “but AI will continue to be challenged by the context of human speech.” (Consider this statement: “I would kill for a cookie.”) For now, at least, the trend is toward seamless handoffs from bots to live agents when the task, or the language, becomes too difficult for the bot to handle – and back to the bot when it makes sense. The goal, in these early days of the era of the smart machines, Beccue said, is for “chatbots to live in harmony with live agents.” The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Nearly a fifth of the respondents, or 18%, said that bots are a major priority (supported by funding and executive buy-in) and 37% said they are important but still require a business case. Almost half, or 45%, said bots are not a priority at this time. None of the attendees has been using bots for more than a year, but 6% have recently launched their first wave to deal with customers, 27% have begun testing in one area of the business, another 10% are testing the business case and more than half, or 54%, are starting to investigate how they can use bots. When asked where chatbots are now being deployed at their companies, 36% cited customer/member service, making it the leading application. IT help desk/tech support accounted for 15% and selling in digital commerce 13%. Please use these links to access the roundtable and EIS resources about chatbots and AI. Finally, here are details for the upcoming one-hour roundtables in the chatbot series, all live at 1 p.m. (Eastern) and recorded for later access: April 12 – The Role of Intelligent Virtual Assistants in Healthcare: How virtual assistants can help solve the “adherence gap” and more May 10 – How Financial Services Organizations Are Using Chatbots in Customer Service: Going beyond basic banking transactions to meet the needs of new audiences June 7 – Conversational Commerce and Virtual Sales Assistants: How the age of the virtual sales agent is changing the face of commerce To register for any of these webinars, contact Sharon Foley, at sharon.foley@earley.com About Earley Information Science: Earley Information Science is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data – making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com. #####

The Expanding Role of the Chief Data Officer

Feb 28, 2017

It’s a time of increasing influence in the C-suite, but only if the CDO connects the dots by showing how data can add business value, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable The chief data officer is one of the newest arrivals in the C-suite. The title didn’t even exist until Visa coined it in 2001. But with the increasing importance of data analytics to all businesses, more companies are bringing CDOs on board – there are now about 2,000, according to the Gartner Group – and their roles are expanding. Their impact varies, however, as debates swirl over governance issues, often leaving data on the sidelines, stuck in silos. Meanwhile, many companies don’t yet see the need for a CDO, and make do with their chief information or chief technology officers. But while CIOs and CTOs are essential to keeping the lights on in a company’s data infrastructure, and to provide safeguards against cyberattacks, a strong CDO has a singular role to play in harnessing the power of data to increase business value, according to a panel of information management experts who participated in an Executive Roundtable discussion hosted on Feb. 22 by Earley Information Science (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business outcomes. “Data is the new oil, fueling everything in the virtual world,” said one of the experts, Seth Earley, Chief Executive Officer and founder of EIS. “Simply put, it provides the competitive advantage.” And it is the CDO who is best positioned to turn the spigot on to fuel that advantage, he added. Governance is certainly needed to organize and deploy the mountains of data that companies accumulate about markets, products and customers, Earley said, but the term is off-putting and CDOs often don’t help themselves by being too abstract and becoming mired in minutiae. “So don’t call it governance,” he said. Instead, “weave governance into the process and tie the data to metrics and key performance indicators to focus on the right things.” – Business objectives and strategies that are important to people in the company. In short, “cut through the noise and the distractions to get to the value.” The roundtable discussion, “The Evolving Role of the Chief Data Officer: Increasing Influence in the C-Suite,” was led by David Hatch, Senior Vice President for marketing at EIS. Besides Mr. Earley, the panel included Mark Nance, CDO at American Fidelity, and John Nicodemo, Global Leader, Data Quality, at Dun & Bradstreet. “Everything we touch turns to data,” said John Nicodemo. “The volume and velocity of data is overwhelming – instead of insights, the result can be more chaos.” The CDO’s goal, “is to find the truth among the silos, to pull together the disparate data across the entire enterprise,” and not to get stuck in the mechanics of the process and lose sight of the business value. As important as the CIO and the CTO are, it is the CDO who can help solve business problems, said Nicodemo, adding, “The CDO role is really a vocation, to connect the data with the rest of the organization.” But the CDO can’t do it alone, said Mark Nance. “It’s all about change management.” On one level, it is a top-down effort supported by senior executives, but it is also about, “lighting a grass roots fire, with all hands on deck.” The data ecosystem has to span all business units, so that the entire company becomes, “data aware and data driven.” Data needs to be used as a weapon, Nance argued, in order to capture market share, drive organizational improvement and produce, “actionable insights,” that will raise revenue, cut expenses and enhance customer engagement. The CDO will have to employ some form of governance to make all of this happen, but not one that is bureaucratic in nature, the panel agreed. “Regulation has to be natural – all about the business and doing the right thing,” said Nance. To innovate, you can’t be locked down. “You need some freedom,” he said. “But not the Wild West.” The CDO’s job, Seth Earley said, “Is to get the right people to the table,” focusing on the right metrics, and to turn data governance, “Into business as usual.” That means the CDO, “Has to be more than a cheerleader. Mechanisms have to be put in place.” The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Nearly half, or 46%, said that there was no CDO role at their organization. Just 12% of the participants’ companies had a CDO in place for more than a year. Another 19% had recently defined the role but hadn’t yet filled it and 23% were using other executives to do the work. When asked about the significance of data to their organization, 29% said it was critically important (driving almost all decisions and outcomes) and another 29% said it was important (affecting major decisions and internal and customer-facing operations). At the other end of the spectrum, 19% said that innovation comes more from market trends and 6% said that data played no role in decisions, process innovation or customer interactions. In terms of the top-most goal of CDO/data initiatives, there was this ranking: revenue growth (48%), efficiency gains (21%), innovation – new products or services (17%) and risk/security/compliance (10%). Use this link to access a recording of the roundtable. And here is a related article on digital governance. About Earley Information Science: EIS helps organizations establish a strong information architecture and management foundation to drive strategic business outcomes and enhance operational performance. EIS has more than 20 years of experience in working with Fortune 1000 organizations globally across many industries. Corporate headquarters are in the Boston metropolitan area with consultants working on projects around the world. For more about Earley Information Science, visit our website at http://www.earley.com or contact us at info@earley.com.

Artificial Intelligence at the Inflection Point: Experts Weigh “A Revolution in the Making”

Aug 2, 2016

Business, Government and Academic Leaders Meet at Earley Information Science To Discuss Where AI Is, and Where It Is Going More than 120 leaders from business, government and academia met to discuss the impact and promise of artificial intelligence at an evening “knowledge salon” held recently at the headquarters of Earley Information Science (EIS) in Carlisle, MA. The gathering was hosted by Seth Earley, founder and CEO of EIS, and Susan Feldman, founder and executive director of the Cognitive Computing Consortium.AI is gaining traction in the marketplace, with Apple’s Siri, Google’s driverless car and other high-profile products and services capturing headlines along with our imaginations. Hundreds of startups are raising billions of dollars to employ AI in every area of business and consumer life. What does this mean for companies, and for government agencies and schools? What will the impact be on technology firms? And how will the workforce be affected? Are fears justified that AI’s machine intelligence and smart applications will take away jobs? Or, as was the case with the machines of the Industrial Revolution, will AI replace old tasks with new opportunities? “AI is at an inflection point,” Earley said, noting the theme of the salon. “Or to put it another way, it is a revolution in the making.” Representing a diverse range of industries and public-sector entities in the greater Boston area, the salon participants broke into about a dozen groups, discussing such topics as AI’s implications for the workforce, the investment landscape, the public-sector impact, industry applications and a primer on cognitive computing, the cutting-edge technology that is now powering AI’s advances. Tom Davenport, Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College and co-author of “Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines,” helped facilitate the discussion on near- and long-term implications for the workforce. The conversation revolved around ways in which robots can augment what humans are capable of, just as the machines of the 19th and 20th centuries expanded our physical capabilities. Davenport noted, "I liked the fact that the session participants were all passionate about finding a way for smart humans and smart machines to collaborate in the workplace." Others who shared their perspectives included: o Katie Stebbins, Assistant Secretary for Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. “I was amazed at the range of expertise gathered at this venue and the ability to make the discussions accessible to a non-technology person. AI is going to impact all of us and it is important for the public sector to embrace and apply these new tools for serving the public interest and providing new education, growth and economic opportunities.” o Leslie Owens, former research director at Forrester Research Inc. and now executive director of the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Center for Information Systems Research. “It’s always nice to find a relaxed venue with smart, like-minded people to share ideas with. AI is going to increasingly touch all aspects of our lives and there are extremely important ramifications that business and technology people need to understand.” o Henry Truong, the chief technology officer of TeleTech, a call center and customer experience organization serving major technology players such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, as well as a who’s who of the financial services industry and companies organizations like FedEx and Ford. A $1.4 billion publicly traded company, TeleTech is already quite advanced in its use of AI in call centers encompassing 110,000 workers. But, said Truong, “Even though we leverage AI in many parts of our business, we know we have a great deal of work ahead of us. No one has the answer yet in fully leveraging AI—even the big technology firms and consultancies. The AI salon was a great place to discuss what people are doing and to see where pockets of innovation are occurring.” One outgrowth of the salon is the formation of an AI Working Group, now in the process of establishing a broad agenda to explore AI’s future. One of the group’s goals is to create a framework for evaluating potential AI projects. Another goal is to produce a policy paper, in conjunction with Governor Baker’s office, that would serve as a blueprint for the public and private sectors in Massachusetts to capitalize on AI’s ability to retrain workers and spur job growth.

How to Train Your Robot—for Today, and for Tomorrow

Jul 25, 2016

When using virtual assistants, companies need to employ the right technology but also keep humans in the loop, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable CARLISLE, MA (PRWEB) JULY 26, 2016 Companies and consumers are both captivated and frustrated by virtual assistants. They are dazzled by the ability of a Siri or a Watson to find just the right needle in the data haystack. But they are put off when other “intelligent” assistants prove to be anything but, offering searches that turn up the wrong things or leaving the user in limbo. The challenges posed by today’s virtual assistants, and the potential of tomorrow’s smarter agents, were the subjects of an Executive Roundtable discussion hosted on July 20 by Earley Information Science Corp. (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on digital transformation. The discussion, “Training the Robots: Evolving Virtual Assistants and the Human-Machine Partnership,” was led by Seth Earley, CEO of EIS, and Dino Eliopulos, Managing Director of EIS, and featured guest speakers Rowan Curran, an analyst at Forrester Research, and Manuel Ebert, a data scientist and founder of summer.ai. Today’s virtual assistants can provide huge advantages, the panelists agreed, but only if the relevant data is organized in the right way, the virtual assistants have been “trained” properly with the right technology, and humans are involved at sensitive junctures to make sure that the interaction with machines is as helpful and efficient as possible. Even if the language used by the assistant in the interaction is somewhat stilted, users will be forgiving so long as their goals are being met in a reasonable period of time. All that said, “we are at a very early stage” of development, Eliopulos noted. That makes it critically important to take full advantage of existing systems, said Curran. “We will get smarter over time,” Earley added, alluding to advances that will ultimately result in fully automated transactions conducted by intelligent agents equipped with natural language processing. The key to reducing current frustrations and producing more natural interactions is to understand that virtual assistants aren’t meant to replace humans but to augment them. Human-machine partnerships are needed, Curran said, as the systems move from “primarily taught to primarily learned” functionality. For now, “AI only gets you part way there, and the missing pieces will frustrate and alienate users,” said Ebert, the summer.ai founder. “Hybrid AI keeps humans in the loop to get to 100 percent.” Think of AI, he said, as the “extension of a human, not as a competitor,” and as a tool “to scale humans.” The roundtable included a real-time survey of the webinar attendees. Among the results: 40% of the respondents are still in an exploratory stage with AI, while an equal number are already employing it in a business process 60% use it for internal access to knowledge, while three other uses each attracted 10%: improving customer engagement, enabling self-service support and augmenting call-center workers 73% see the current value of AI as a step in an evolutionary process, but 18% say that no clear value has been identified yet To access the roundtable, please use this link: http://info.earley.com/roundtable-virtual-assistant-human-machine-partnership Also see this related blog. About Earley Information Science: EIS helps organizations establish a strong information architecture and management foundation to drive strategic business outcomes and enhance operational performance. EIS has more than 20 years of experience in working with Fortune 1000 organizations globally across many industries. Corporate headquarters are in the Boston metropolitan area with consultants working on projects around the world. For more about Earley Information Science, visit our website athttp://www.earley.com or contact us at info(at)earley(dot)com. ####

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