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White Paper Critique: Oracle's Social Media Analytics WP—Almost a Winner
How Brands Can Optimize Social Strategies with Analytics
Sponsor: Oracle
Link: click here
Grade: 57 out of 100 (it is better than the raw numbers indicate)
Strengths:
- Credible tone
- Easy to read and scan
- Clear call to action
- Numerous graphics
Weaknesses:
- No user quotes
- No third-party expert insights
- Chart designs
- A few small writing/text issues
- Author credentials are missing
Date of white paper: August 2012
Why You Should Care About the Grade and What I Think:
After more than 20 years of research, writing and editing reports on the use of technology, I’ve learned a lot of lessons about what resonates with senior IT and business decision-makers. I’ve interviewed more than 250 senior executives of large organizations about technology during my career and understand what they want to know and what motivates them to invest in technology. Furthermore, my peers agree, which is why I was nominated and served as a judge of a major white paper contest for many years. For more information on my background and credentials to critique white papers, please visit the About Us page of the Triangle Web site.
Critique: Excellent scores in seven of 10 quality categories should have made this white paper a winner, but weaknesses in three areas robbed Oracle of a home run. The tone and style are appropriate and engaging. The length and structure also help to keep the reader's attention. It just needed a few key improvements.
Given the subject matter, there must be a lot of users out there who can comment on how they've used analytics to improve their social media strategies. The white paper would have benefitted enormously if Oracle had interviewed a few of them or repurposed comments from case studies. The dearth of user comments also sends a message, one that Oracle may not want out there—if no users are mentioned in the piece, does that mean it is new and untested?
Furthermore, several assertions about the value of analytics in improving not just social media results but overall business impact would have been enormously helpful. Instead, the author (an Oracle marketing manager) is left with touting the technology's praises. Imagine the improvement in credibility if a third-party expert on social media would have described the importance of analytics, where and why they can help, and the overall impact?
Smart editing would have improved the credibility and impact of the report. Specifically, tone down the hype a bit. Two examples are in the introduction:
- This sentence leading the second paragraph of the introduction—If you have 100,000 fans but all you know about them is that they appear to like your brand, you might be in trouble.—needs a tweak.
It might have been more credible to use the words missing opportunities or leaving money on the table or unaware of some hidden dangers.
Note that I know a lot of companies, including my own, that would be thrilled to have 100,000 likes.
- And instead of just making a product claim in the introduction—Oracle Social Marketing Cloud service provides one of the most robust analytics components in the social marketing industry.—Oracle should have used a more subtle approach that provided a more compelling argument: A robust analytics suite can identify and highlight key demographic trends, uncover slowly brewing issues and help optimize marketing spend.
Better design and art direction would also improve this white paper. Although the infographic on page 2 is excellent, the pie charts on pages 3 and 4 would be easier to read with a more sophisticated approach. The percentages and values should be a bit larger, too. And printing a white paper before posting it would have alerted the designer to several other issues.
The grade of 57 is the result of quantifying the level of compliance of this white paper with the 10 Key Attributes of a Successful White Paper.
Caveats: Personal disclosure: I, and colleagues on the Triangle team, have done a lot of work on CRM for SAP and other vendors over the years. And we are currently working on several projects that involve CRM for other vendors.
Was I unfair? Too tough? What do you think? Send a note and weigh in.
White Paper Critique: Salesforce Failure—Where Is the Customer Knowledge?
Meet Customers Where They Are: Incorporating Social Media Into Your Customer Service Strategy
Sponsor: Salesforce.com
Link: click here
Grade: 44 out of 100 (extremely disappointing)
Strengths:
- Credible tone
- Easy to read and scan
- Clear call to action
- Visually engaging
- Innovative use of hyperlinks
Weaknesses:
- Excessive vendor quotes, minimal user quotes
- Hardly any data as proof points
- Who is the author? His/her credentials?
- One chart/infographics set, and it's poorly done
- No copyright or other date indication
Date of white paper: unknown
Why You Should Care About the Grade and What I Think:
After more than 20 years of research, writing and editing reports on the use of technology, I’ve learned a lot of lessons about what resonates with senior IT and business decision-makers. I’ve interviewed more than 250 senior executives of large organizations about technology during my career and understand what they want to know and what motivates them to invest in technology. Furthermore, my peers agree, which is why I was nominated and served as a judge of a major white paper contest for many years. For more information on my background and credentials to critique white papers, please visit the About Us page of the Triangle Web site.
Critique: More than a decade ago, a wise sales and marketing veteran warned me that my pitches to prospects should focus on what they want to know, not on what I want to tell them. And, typically, prospects want to know what other prospects and customers are doing with my product—this point has been proven through numerous surveys and studies by IDG, TechTarget and others. It should be a given that thought leadership that is all about me is far less appealing than thought leadership that is all about them.
Salesforce.com needs to learn this, judging by a new "white paper" it recently distributed via TechTarget. I put the words white paper in quotes because Salesforce did something novel—it designed the white paper in landscape format, as if it were a PowerPoint. And it decorated the pages as if they were PowerPoint slides, too—more than half of each page is filled with icons, white space or nine balloon quotes from Salesforce execs, beginning on page 3. The first customer quote is on page 9.
The tragedy is that there is a lot of good information about the importance of social media for customer service, but I wonder how many prospects will get through the vendor quotes to read the hidden nuggets. Note that because I and my team have spent several years writing reports, books, case studies and other research on customer service, I didn't see anything new here. But it was well written and provided a real action plan.
Once, and if, you can get past the errors of editorial judgment.
In addition to prominently positioning nine quotes from four Salesforce executives at the beginning of the report, it suffered these other miscues:
- No copyright or date.
- Survey data that justifies the topic is buried on page 22—the next to the last page.
- The infographic displaying the survey data is poorly done—one pie chart with four or five slices has only one slice labeled, raw values and percentages are indiscriminately mixed, etc.
- No third-party experts to give the report credibility.
- Customer quotes are few and far between, which is especially odd considering the number of Salesforce customers and the company’s position in the market.
- Poor choices in font colors and other layout issues—the body type font is too light in the printed version and many senior execs prefer to print white papers.
The grade of 44 is the result of quantifying the level of compliance of this white paper with the 10 Key Attributes of a Successful White Paper.
Caveats: Personal disclosure: I, and colleagues on the Triangle team, have done a lot of work on CRM for SAP and other vendors over the years. And we are currently working on several projects that involve CRM for other vendors.
Was I unfair? Too tough? What do you think? Send a note and weigh in.
White Paper Critique: Oracle: Knowledge Infused Customer Relationship Management: A Game Changing Investment for Customer Support
Sponsor: Oracle
Link: click here
Grade: 49 out of 100 (the low score is due to a variety of weaknesses)
Strengths:
- Right length
- Covers the right issues
- Conversational tone
- Not as bad as other Oracle efforts
Weaknesses:
- Riddled with clichés
- Numerous data points and quantitative assertions are neither sourced nor otherwise substantiated
- No third-party references
- Many debatable assertions
- No information about the author's credentials
- Three poorly conceived graphics
- Poor editing—several obvious errors
- No clear call to action
Date of white paper: October 2011
Why You Should Care About the Grade and What I Think:
After more than 20 years of research, writing and editing reports on the use of technology, I’ve learned a lot of lessons about what resonates with senior IT and business decision-makers. I’ve interviewed more than 250 senior executives of large organizations about technology during my career and understand what they want to know and what motivates them to invest in technology. Furthermore, my peers agree, which is why I was nominated and served as a judge of a major white paper contest for many years. For more information on my background and credentials to critique white papers, please visit the About Us page of the Triangle Web site.
Critique: This white paper is marginally better than a recent report on big data, but it still is a poor excuse at a white paper. Although it lacks the typical in-your-face approach to marketing that Oracle is known for, the white paper has numerous other weaknesses.
The second paragraph serves notice that the author will play fast and loose with facts. It claims that most customer service organizations have recently seen operational budgets cut by amounts in the neighborhood of 20 percent. That may have been true during the economic downturn of 2008–2009, but it is unlikely to be true in a growing economy. Also, the author fails to provide a source for the data point. And each time the author includes other proof points, there is no source or substantiation for them, either.
And the sad collection of clichés on the first few pages:
- The show must go on.
- This is what it comes down to.
- Try to do more with less.
As usual with an Oracle white paper, poor copy editing left several confusing sentences. And one text error buried in the white paper—a spurious sentence in an odd typeface just appears in the middle of a page.
Another problem with this white paper is the three graphics. Each looks like it was cut and pasted from a PDF. The text is fuzzy, a clear indicator of borrowing. And, as usual, there is no source line, no explanation of where the charts came from. There is no indication that these charts are credible at all.
Another bit of lousy editing—the author inserts the only user/customer comment at the end. It is an anonymous reference with a few impressive proof points. A great example of burying the lead.
The grade of 49 is the result of quantifying the level of compliance of this white paper with the 10 Key Attributes of a Successful White Paper.
Caveats: Personal disclosure: I, and colleagues on the Triangle team, have done a lot of work on CRM for SAP and other vendors over the years. But never for Oracle. And we are currently working on several projects that involve CRM for other vendors.
Was I unfair? Too tough? What do you think? Send a note and weigh in.
White Paper Critique: How to Choose a Technology Platform That Drives Real Business Performance Improvement
Sponsor: Actuate
Link: click here
Grade: 45 out of 100 (one of the worst white papers I've ever seen)
Strengths:
- Reasonable Length
- Focused topic
- Some good information (though somewhat buried)
Weaknesses:
- No date or copyright notice, so anyone can steal this intellectual property
- Actuate product information/hard sell on the first page
- Who is the author? What are his/her credentials?
- No customers or users or hypotheticals
- No charts or graphics—very little thought put into the look and feel of this document
- No table of contents, executive summary or clear target audience
Date of white paper: Not clear—it was promoted in March 2012, but no date on the document
Why You Should Care About the Grade and What I Think:
After more than 20 years of research, writing and editing reports on the use of technology, I’ve learned a lot of lessons about what resonates with senior IT and business decision-makers. I've interviewed more than 250 senior executives of large organizations about technology during my career and understand what they want to know and what motivates them to invest in technology. Furthermore, my peers agree, which is why I was nominated and served as a judge of a major white paper contest for many years. For more information on my background and credentials to critique white papers, please visit the About Us page of the Triangle Web site.
Critique: Well, I've seen worse. Unfortunately, this white paper from Actuate will rank as one of the five worst white papers I've read in more than a decade of writing and judging them. (The worst was a 63-page tome on networking devices that read like a doctoral thesis.) In addition to the weaknesses noted above, there are several questionable statements.
One of the purported benefits of this white paper is a series of questions that buyers should ask suppliers. Although many of them are valid and, of course, most are designed to just highlight Actuate's benefits, a few are downright silly. Here are two of my favorites:
- Is the technology easy to use?
- Is the solution business-user driven?
How many technology providers will say their products are not easy to use? And in the BI space, how many vendors will say their software isn't business-user driven?
This text -heavy document clearly was created with no consideration of look and feel or how the target business audience reviews documents. The lack of an attractive design, no graphics (not one chart, table or other eye-catching element) and only one third-party citation (also poorly executed) deprive this white paper of much value.
The grade of 45 is the result of quantifying the level of compliance of this white paper with the 10 Key Attributes of a Successful White Paper.
Caveats: Personal disclosure: I, and colleagues on the Triangle team, have done a lot of work on business intelligence for Microsoft, SAS, Business Objects, Cognos and other vendors over the years.
Was I unfair? Too tough? What do you think? Send a note and weigh in.
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