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First Insight, a company that adds science to the customer voice, has released the newest version of its Virtual Customer Viewpoint (VCV) Solution, which will redefine how retail industry leaders make key decisions related to product design, buying, assortment planning, pricing and marketing. The Virtual Customer Viewpoint Solution uses information gathered through online communities (email, intranet /extranet websites, social media, etc) and applies predictive analytics to give users a real time, ahead-of-the-trend view of consumer behavior.

Available on a software-as-a-service basis, VCV provides users with a secure platform to test hundreds of items among thousands of influential consumers with unprecedented speed and accuracy. To accelerate users’ decision-making, the newest version of VCV features a breakthrough investment summary screen.

The investment summary includes a scorecard for each tested item, clearly outlining those items that performed “high” or “low” based on consumer preference and pricing. First Insight has created this new tool within its solution to explicitly conclude whether any item is “worth the investment.”

In addition, Version 7.0 includes a new, multifaceted preference graph. The new graph highlights both a quantitative scale as well as a qualitative summary of customer sentiment. By showing this information side-by-side, users gain a more holistic view of how each item was evaluated.
First Insight’s VCV utilizes online gaming technologies to attract consumers in an engaging way wherever they may reside. These games yield data, which is then applied to the First Insight’s predictive analytics. As a part of the new release, First Insight’s games can now be customized to better fit the look and feel of a specific brand or retailer. Having this advantage offers a strong marketing tool to promote brand awareness and to build creditability among customers who participate.

For more information, visit firstinsight.com.

Company News
• Jive, the Social Business Software leader, recently announced the next generation of the Jive Market Engagement solution.

• Jive Market Engagement now includes:

o Complete integration of Filtrbox technology, the powerful social media monitoring, softwareJive acquired earlier this year. Reflecting both companies’ flexible architectures, the integration was completed in less than 90 days.

o Tight integration with the recently introduced Jive Ideation module, enabling companies to tap the power of crowd-sourcing and social networks to identify and nurture the best ideas.

Market Perspective

• Today most enterprises have only focused on the role the social web plays in brand disruptions. Even the most sophisticated use cases – where companies have used the social web to promote products and build the brand – fall short of truly engaging and driving the power of real-time conversations.

• Because of their complexity and cost, social media monitoring software has been confined to a handful of power-users within an organization – the social media “gurus.” The rest of the organization is dependent upon these individuals to filter, interpret and draw attention to key trends and conversations.

• Given the increasingly strategic role the social web is playing in product development, customer service and support, a broader set of users want and need easy, cost-effective access to social intelligence in a way that feels as familiar and easy as Googling.

Product Detail
• With Jive Market Engagement, companies can now harness the power of the social web to change the way they develop products, go to market, and engage with customers, prospects and brand influencers.

• In addition, a broader set of users are now able to tap the power of the social web, having instant and easy access to real time market research, sentiment and idea generation. Now, brand owners, knowledge workers and company spokespeople can identify key content and engage with the social web – instead of relying on one or two social media experts – quickly and easily.

• Jive Market Engagement helps organizations proactively monitor brand or product issues and competitive threats; enables quick collaboration on appropriate responses or interventions; and elevates and broadens the social conversations with a company. The solution provides organizations a foundation for building a comprehensive social media strategy:

o Marketing teams use an integrated social media monitoring platform to listen across the social web for real-time dialogue about and around a brand. The monitoring platform locates these discussions on blog posts, videos and photos, forums, mainstream online news, and micromedia like FriendFeed and Twitter.

o Using these findings, the right people can come together instantly in a secure area, what Jive calls a “Market Space,” to take action in that moment of pain or opportunity. In addition to the observations from the monitoring platform, users can bring in observations from individual tweets, blogs, or other media into the Market Space. This “war room” environment allows for rapid decision-making from the right people within the organization.

o These observations are then consolidated into market summary reports, what Jive calls “Viewpoints.” Viewpoints can be shared broadly within an organization to foster collaboration and to develop and implement appropriate responses. Jive Market Engagement also provides the ability to analyze the effectiveness of those responses.

For more information, visit jivesoftware.com.

Net neutrality, now called Open Internet, rules will redefine the business model in profound ways at the Webinar on Wednesday, April 21, at 1 p.m. ET. Network operators can no longer count on sufficient revenue streams from simple access to justify the deployment of more capable network infrastructure. In order to be successful, operators need to adopt a service-centric approach which provides well-integrated service bundles
Recent research conducted by Frost & Sullivan reveals that consumers are attracted to services which work seamlessly in a multi-model environment. This presentation will explain these preferences and will disclose the results of numerical modes that disclose the consequences of not building services that conform to those preferences.

This briefing will benefit network operators and vendors who provide infrastructure technology to them. It will also be illuminating to public policy developers and advocates who are currently looking at the consequence of net neutrality.

For more information and registration, visit frost.com.