Your best chances fo success involve a thorough conversion optimization and new focus on mobile.

Improving your conversion rates should not be left to chance. With help from some great data from Econsultancy’s Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011, our latest infographic explores how a structured approach to turning website visitors into customers can impact stagnant conversion rates and end a sales slowdown as you head into the new year.

By: Rob Yoegel is the Content Marketing Director at Monetate. A creative visionary, content strategist, skilled writer, effective communicator and marketer who embraces and enjoys new technology, Rob spent more than a decade developing successful content, sales and marketing initiatives online for a leading business-to-business and consumer enthusiast publishing company as its Vice President of E-Media.

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Read more: http://monetate.com/2011/11/infographic-whos-your-chief-conversion-officer/#ixzz1pFIHxIuaInfographic: Who’s Your Chief Conversion Officer?

Is This the Era of DIY Manufacturing?

 
The traditional principles of mass production today are being challenged by concepts of radical customization and highly personalized goods. As a growing number of do-it-yourself inventors and small-scale industrialists find creative ways to modify, reconfigure and fabricate products from the ground up, the manufacturing industry must adapt to this new future.

by Ilya Leybovich Traditional models for manufacturing are rapidly evolving, as increasing demand for customized, individually-oriented products and the desire for “personal fabrication” capabilities are driving a revolution in do-it-yourself production. Coupled with the latest advances in 3-D printing and digital fabrication, which are bringing sophisticated technologies into the home, the world may soon be entering a new era of DIY manufacturing.

March 13th, 2012



“The technologies could, in fact, bring about an Industrial Revolution in reverse,” according to the Institute for the Future. “In this scenario, rapid fabrication (or molecular manufacturing) will turn every home into a personal, flexible factory. Companies and users will sell or share designs that can be manufactured at the point of use: instead of container ships carrying processed goods, the Internet will circulate blueprints and CAD files.”

A report last May from Wohlers Associates found that the additive manufacturing and 3-D printing industry reached a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.1 percent in 2010, following a 9.7 percent decline in 2009. The CAGR for the 23-year history of the industry as a whole averaged 26.2 percent. The rapid product development consulting firm also forecasts that the industry will grow to $3.1 billion by 2016 and $5.2 billion by 2020.

Much of the growth in at-home manufacturing is being driven by rapid advancement of the technology itself. The majority of 3-D printers work by depositing successive layers of different materials to form a real-world object. These systems have been around for almost two decades, but MIT’s Technology Review recently reported on the “growing interest” among manufacturers in 3-D printing.

The technology has grown beyond the domain of hobbyists and do-it-yourself enthusiasts and its applications are now garnering commercial interest. For example, last summer General Electric announced it would “intensify focus” on additive manufacturing to develop a variety of products, from aircraft engine components to parts for ultrasound machines. The company has added a new laboratory to its GE Global Research Division that will be solely devoted to additive manufacturing.

Major manufacturers aren’t the only ones taking advantage of 3-D printing and additive manufacturing. The process of highly customizable production is creating a fundamental shift in innovation and design, opening up new channels for smaller companies to diversify their offerings.

“Perhaps traditional manufacturers should also consider mixing mass production with individual production,” Product Lifecycle Stories advises. “Listening to customers and allowing them to make improvements and customizations to products may seem overwhelming and unwieldy for some, but digital fabrication tools make it much easier to swap in new features, change the production line or restart production of old products if demand resurfaces.”

Product development can be considerably more fluid and flexible when incorporating these principles. Instead of designing and manufacturing products that are separately launched, companies can rely on a continuous stream of collective information about product adaptability, use and appeal to better meet customer needs. This versatile approach can also have distinct economic benefits.

“The printing of parts and products has the potential to transform manufacturing because it lowers the costs and risks. No longer does a producer have to make thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of items to recover his fixed costs,” the Economist explains. “In a world where economies of scale do not matter anymore, mass-manufacturing identical items may not be necessary or appropriate, especially as 3-D printing allows for a great deal of customization.”

Of course, any new business model based on an emerging technology will also open up a wide range of challenges and new problems to confront. When the barriers collapse between conventional mass production and systems that enable more individualized, customizable and smaller-run fabrication, legal issues and questions regarding business standards will likely arise.

“Disruption has its downsides. A diversified supply chain, more widespread manufacturing literacy, and changing intellectual property practices will inevitably bring new forms of abuse and mishap,” strategy+business explains. “Regulations and conventional law enforcement might not be agile or thorough enough to keep up. Manufacturing as an industry will need to promote new best practices and professional norms — in collaboration with a more engaged customer base and a wider range of manufacturing, distribution and reclamation partners.”

The technologies involved in 3-D printing, digital fabrication and additive manufacturing are becoming increasingly sophisticated. As desktop manufacturing units become more compact, efficient and inexpensive, we can expect to see them appearing in more homes, workshops, small businesses and manufacturing facilities. The proliferation of these systems will not only lead to newer, innovative products, but also more creative ways of shaping them to fit customer demand.

“The next level will be things that are exclusively producible through new technology,” Peter Weijmarshausen, founder of 3-D printing service Shapeways.com, told Forbes. “With 3-D printing you can get feedback and improve design after producing just one object. Your minimum run is one. So products can evolve much quicker. Mix this with the opening up of design — what open-source did for software, 3-D printing can do for product design. I don’t know what we’re going to create, but it will be amazing.”

Source: http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/2012/03/13/is-this-the-era-of-diy-manufacturing/ 

The 4 Forces That Will Shape IT Economics in 2012

By Howard Rubin, CEO & Founder, Rubin Worldwide

@wallstreettech

 

While most firms in financial services are focusing on the “headwinds” of global market uncertainty and regulation, there also is a real need to look “under the hood” at the enterprise/business technology engines that drive operational efficiency, enable product innovation and deployment, and enact risk/regulatory compliance.

 

Since the economic upheaval began in 2007-8, it has been clear that the historical models of managing a firm’s technology and related economics don’t fit with the new economy or the “new normal.” Now it is even clearer that four major forces are at work to blow them apart as the winds of change in the technology economy:

 

1.Relentless Demand for Technology

2.Upward IT Spending Pressure

3.The Need for New Management Models

4.Transition Business Models

 

1. Relentless Demand for Technology

The demand for "computing" -- processors, storage, network bandwidth, access via alternate devices -- is growing faster than the global economy and faster than can be offset by Moore’s Law.

 

2. Upward IT Spending Pressure

With the force of technology demand blowing by the economics of Moore’s Law, we now have entered an era in which such upward technology pressure (and expense) will continue to increase in all possible business scenarios -- whether revenue increases, decreases or stagnates. Add to this the new demands of risk management and regulation, and there just is no escape from the pressure of rising IT costs.

 

3. Adapting Management Models to the New Rules of the Technology Economy

Neither technology nor business management (or government) are prepared to operate under the "rules" of the new technology economy (or know how to):

 

•After four to five years of cost cutting initiatives, the IT playbook is exhausted. (And with everyone using the same playbook, there is no competitive differentiation.)

 

•After four to five years of throttling back, discretionary spending demand is pent up.

 

•After four to five years of rapid innovation in consumer devices (e.g., the iPad and Android devices) and social networks, as well as the introduction of “Big Data," new options/capabilities are pressuring the IT portfolio.

 

4. Transitioning Business Models/The Need for Urgent Change

Current models by which companies manage the dynamics of their technology economics are failing. Moore's Law is being matched by the demand for computing and increasing computing complexity, and as such, most companies are "victims" of their technology economies and not the "masters" of their technology economies.

 

So what does this all mean? 2012 is the year that your organization needs to become the master of its technology economy. The new models by which organizations will accomplish this have 10 basic attributes. They:

 

1.Offer full business transparency ("IT Savvy”) as a foundation.

 

2.Focus on value production, risk management and cost optimization simultaneously and continuously.

 

3.Drive business innovation with technology and drive technology innovation based on business aspirations.

 

4.Are cognizant of the role of "data" in driving technology and business operations costs and business opportunities.

 

5.Tune fixed versus variable costs to the performance profile of the enterprise and tune staff distribution -- employee, contractor, outsourced, onshore, offshore, near-shore.

 

6.Place extreme value on talent --- in-house, external or in a network (or labor “cloud”) .

 

7.Use ongoing "mark to market" analysis for opportunity seeking while leveraging the marketplace, mega-scale technology "commons" and perhaps even "exchanges" for commodities, technology and labor.

 

8.Seek, explore and implement new/discontinuous models of computing, technology and labor to enable breakthrough economics (e.g., cloud).

 

9.Foster incubation of and investment in innovation.

 

10.Measure and navigate success from a business outcome perspective.

 

Distilling what is ahead into four forces of change and ten associated attributes is perhaps an oversimplification of what lies ahead in 2012. But think ahead to 2013-2015 -- without these basics in place, a new force will be evident. But it is likely that it will be more than a force; it will be a barrier -- a barrier to business success in the constantly growing and evolving globally driven economy.

Manufacturing Job Loss is Not Inevitable

February 22, 2012 —



Despite small gains during the last two years, the trend in U.S. manufacturing jobs for the last 30 years has been downward, leading some to argue that long-term manufacturing job loss is inevitable. But our research shows otherwise.

High wages cannot be the culprit; because wages in U.S. manufacturing are not especially high by international standards. As of 2009, 12 European countries plus Australia had higher average manufacturing wages than the United States. Norway topped the list with an average manufacturing wage of $53.89 per hour, 60 percent above the U.S. average of $33.53.

High wages cannot be the culprit; because wages in U.S. manufacturing are not especially high by international standards. As of 2009, 12 European countries plus Australia had higher average manufacturing wages than the United States. Norway topped the list with an average manufacturing wage of $53.89 per hour, 60 percent above the U.S. average of $33.53.

Moreover, the United States lost manufacturing jobs at a faster rate since 2000 than several countries that paid manufacturing workers more. Among the 10 countries for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks manufacturing employment, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden both had higher manufacturing wages and lost smaller shares of their manufacturing employment than the United States between 2000 and 2010.

Nor is technology to blame. Factories have become more mechanized, so fewer workers are needed to produce the same amount of manufactured goods. If that were the end of the story, then technology-driven productivity growth would indeed reduce manufacturing employment. But it’s not the whole story. When productivity grows, manufactured goods become less expensive and the market for them expands. The expanding market creates a demand for more workers, and that extra demand usually outweighs the labor-saving impact of mechanization. The result is more manufacturing jobs, not fewer, when productivity increases in manufacturing.

U.S. Manufacturers Are Hurting Themselves by the Way They Hire

The United States is at a dangerous juncture: Manufacturing jobs are on the rise, but the growth is still fragile. Given the hypercompetitive nature of global manufacturing, it wouldn't take much to kill this momentum and put the U.S. back to where it was a couple of years ago. That's why it's critical for American manufacturers to maximize the return on all their assets — including their workforces.

U.S. manufacturers have always been at the forefront in making efficient use of physical capital, but human capital is a different story. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that for decades, companies have thought of workers as essentially interchangeable, somewhat like machine parts — if one doesn't work out, replace it with another. Managers typically assume that a worker who meets minimum qualifications can be taught pretty much any job in a short time.

If companies continue to follow that approach, they risk becoming less competitive and putting an early end to the growth of the American manufacturing sector, which has generated more than 330,000 new production jobs over the past two years. Instead, they need to recognize that not everyone is cut out to work on today's factory floor.

Production lines don't look much the way they used to. Robots and computer-operated tools are everywhere. But that doesn't mean human workers are less valuable — quite the opposite. In this environment, profits come from the company's ability to make the best use of technology to flexibly create high-quality products with continual process improvement and few accidents. Making all that happen is ultimately the responsibility of the army of one who is monitoring the robot, recalibrating as needed, watching for signs of trouble, troubleshooting, making timely technical adjustments, and proposing new and better ways of doing things. Whether the output is cars, furniture, plumbing supplies, or optical products, manufacturers increasingly need bright, technically sophisticated, adaptable, engaged workers who are self-motivated to learn. In other words, they need a world-class workforce.

To get this workforce, companies need to be as forward-thinking about their talent sourcing, hiring, and retention as they are about the technology on their production lines. That means carefully defining what capabilities are required in each hire, creating methods for determining which candidates will function best, establishing effective performance measures, and ensuring continual improvement of talent-management processes.

Of particular importance is the hire. A high hit rate on getting the right people the first time will set U.S. companies apart in the global marketplace. To achieve that, companies should be using new hiring processes that are technology driven and more relevant than the unstructured interview and résumé review of yesterday. A number of automated pre-employment assessment methods are available that include sophisticated simulations designed to measure the most relevant skills for working on a technology-driven production line. But many companies still don't use these systems; although manufacturers have become expert at process automation, most are still novices when it comes to automating the hiring process.

I'm always amazed at how many businesspeople believe the accepted wisdom that in manufacturing, American workers are a liability — that compared with their counterparts in China or India they're expensive and unmotivated. That's simply not true. The recent economic hardships have made the U.S. workforce hungry — hungry for stable, well-paying jobs, hungry for training, and hungry to compete at a global level.

For manufacturers, the key to success is thinking of the U.S. workforce not as a liability but as a competitive asset. Companies that learn to hire and partner with an engaged, savvy workforce will ensure a viable American manufacturing sector and prepare the way for long-term growth.

This post is part of the HBR Insight Center on American Competitiveness.