End-of-course reflection

Digital hello one more time!

As the title says, the time has come to write the end-reflections of the spring's digital business course. It's just crazy how fast time has passed. It feels like we just a moment ago picked up the exchange students from the airport and were writing our first blog posts. But as cliché as it sounds: time flies by when there's a lot of fun.

Presentation day at SSM

On Tuesday 18th of April, right after Easter holidays, our whole class had the honor to visit our client company SSM's office in Helsinki and give our final presentations. The staff of the company welcomed us very warmly, and all the students seemed to be really exited about the day's program.

All the teams worked hard throughout the spring to bring to the table as useful, original and fresh ideas as possible. Therefore, at least our team had prepared very carefully for the day.

Before the final presentation we had got a lot good tips on how to develop it even further. Insipred by the tips came up with even more concrete ideas and examples about what kind of content SSM could share in their social medias and what kind of campaigns would be useful for them.

Team Di6i Brainiacs and our lecturer Anna Ikonen on the right.

I think that those who took care of the talking part in our team's presentation, did it very great and showed their excellent presentation skills. Thanks Cath, Joni and Olli, you didn't seem to be nervous at all! 

We didn't get verbal feedback from SSM's representatives, but at least I hope they got something out of our ideas and can use them in their marketing in the future.

Showing skills through the project

During the course I learned a lot about the theory of digital marketing and the basic elements of a good blog and website. Thanks to the international students, I also grew a lot in my English language skills during the spring.

What I learned this spring also is that brainstorming is much easier and productive by discussing in teams and sharing your ideas with each others.

In digital marketing course, I think it's much better to show skills through this kind of project like we did. Unlike a normal exam, project work can show your skills in team work, presentation and creative thinking. They're all very important skills in digital marketing as well as in today's working life in general.

In addition, by writing a blog I could highlight my own insights about digital marketing and the themes the weeks. It's also a much more practical way of showing competence in this kind of course than a regular exam.

Highlights of the course

1. Company visit to a marketing agency TBWA\Helsinki office.

2. E-commerce fair trade in Helsinki. I also wrote a post about my visit at the fair.

3. Final presentations for SSM's CEO, Marketing Director and Sales Director.

I think it was really rewarding and instructive to write your own thoughts every week during this course. I believe that the ability to write blog regularly may well be useful in the future. At the moment, I don't think I have enough time to report my thoughts in the form of a blog, but who knows if someday I set up a blog for some other topic maybe.

Now I want to thank you very much for your time and interest in reading my blog. Special thanks to our great teacher Anna Ikonen, encouraging digicoaches and our brilliant project team Di6i Brainiacs. You made this course as awesome as it can be! Have a nice summer full of experiences ☀

Digitalization changes the working methods and requirements for experts

Hi all! This is a compensate task that I write for the lecture on Monday 3rd of April. The lecture had been about digitalization, so I think that it's the thing which I'm going to study this time. Sounds pretty interesting subject in my opinion.

Working at Google

I decided to watch Jonna Toikka's speech at WANTED! Tulevaisuuden työntekijä (engl. Future employee) #2016 -seminar. Toikka is an executive vice president at Google Finland and she's responsible for partnerships, in other words for marketing agencies, with which Google makes a lot of cooperation. Toikka thinks that Google as a company is at the heart of digitalization, and that's why she wanted to tell what does Google require its employees and  how have the working methods improved and what are they like today.

According to Toikka, Google is quite a demanding employer, but on the other hand it also gives to employees quite a lot. At the core of Google's work there is innovation. Innovation is important because the world is changing all the time, and also the pace of change is accelerating all the time.

The world is largely about managing change and being in standby mode for the change. At Google these things are especially present all the time. Adapting to change is really important, and it's true for every company, and also for all of us as individuals and job seekers.

Key elements of innovation culture

From Toikka's view, Google is actually an innovation business. She listed 6 points that are the key elements of innovation culture at Google, and also such things, all of which are related to how does digitalization change the requirements for experts and how it will change the way of working:

• The experts in the field. HR strategy at Google is pretty simple; to hire the best talent in the industry and let them fulfill their dreams. Google wants to ensure that its employees are type of "Googley". Also other companies increasingly want to employ right kind of personality types. At Google it means: fits to the culture, is curious, original, team player, doesn't be afraid to question things. One of the principles of the work at Google is, that while it is demanding, it has to be fun. Google pays a lot of attention, for example, to working environments. Not only because it would be fun, but because of the great potential for cooperation and innovation, and discovery of new ideas.

• Ideas can arise anywhere. Brainstorming is every single human's duty and responsibility at Google. Employees have the opportunity to innovate and it's also required. Google has an international open to all idea list, where everyone can vote. Google encourages to risk-taking and ownership. The fundamental at Google is that "Don't wait obtaining permits, but make progress rightly and apologize afterwards if something went wrong". Google follows innovation also in employee satisfaction surveys to follow if Google is an innovative company enough and if the employees think so too.

• Openness. To share as much information as possible. In principle, all shared information is confidential, unless otherwise stated. It is believed at Google that when a lot is shared, there will also be a lot more new ideas.

• Rely on data. Data is the only thing that can solve things, not the opinion in the corner room. Data is non-political, and the only one which can explain why the second option is better than another. 

• Quickness. It is better to be always fast than slow. Google's strategy is to launch frequently and quickly. It means that you have to put up with uncertainty and imperfection. On the other hand it leads to the fact that at Google they innovate and iterate constantly and listen to the users all the time.

• Managing chaos. The mayhem is really ok. When you have a lot of projects, a chaos is inevitable. Ideas must be allowed to fly in the organization up to a point. Quickness and constant brainstorming really will inevitably lead to a certain way of chaos. It is about how can we manage the chaos. Not everything can be processed in advance, after going through culture, which for example, Google has now.

These points sum up very well what does digitalization mean in today's businesses. One thing unites all the six parts of innovation culture. It acts as a binding ingredient, without it, the cake does not rise nor innovation culture work as expected. It is collaboration between the people and teams. Companies agree that the importance of collaboration is growing all the time. It dues to the fact that it usually means better business. It helps in faster and better decision-making, and it's also a generally recognized thing.

Social interaction generates better ideas

Google has done a lot of work to identify what are the factors that lead to successful cooperation. In practice, when we talk about innovation, and innovation and disruption are the aim, it obviously means that you need a lot of creative ideas. What Google found as a catalyst for change, is social interaction. In order to provide a lot of creative ideas, we need to have a lot of social interaction, because without it, the ideas just don't occur. 

So, how can we create the environment for a better social interaction? According to Jonna Toikka it's worth thinking of three trends:

1. People make more and more collaboration outside the offices. Collaboration will take place at home, in taxis, cafes, restaurants, airports, airplanes, and the number of places will only grow.
2. People collaborate in a number of different devices. Laptops, mobile phones, tablets, watches what is it to 5 years from now? Number of devices is currently 3-5 per person and the number will only grow. People have recognized the need to produce and share information and material to each other by any device at any time. It is worth noting in how work habits are changing.
3. People like the apps they use on their free time more than ones that they use at work. Companies nowadays take this into account  more and more by creating more and more social networks inside the company. Companies try to get more sociability, because productivity needs sociability and it is actually a prerequisite these days.

Readiness to change is one of those big things that are expected from all of us as employees. One can not know what is happening in your organization 2-5 years from now, at least not exactly, because it is not known exactly what the world looks like at the time. "How do you know how to see the continuous change in a positive light?" is one of the most essential questions to the employee nowadays.

Collaboration: The most important thing. You should think about what kind of a partner you are and how do you actually collaborate, because collaboration has a very essential role. 

One of the main requirements for both companies and employees is attitude. The attitude that even the impossible is achievable, or "seemingly impossible" is achievable. There are many examples of how we think and what we believe. It really greatly affects to the final results. But what is possible, is also achievable. In the end, it's just about that you have to have the courage to take a risk and jump!

Web designing and presentation skills

Hi dear reader!

It's once again time to return to the past weeks happenings at school. As I attended to the LOB student cruise, on Monday I was happily having a good time and shopping in Stockholm. Because of that, I missed the class that day. But Thursday's one I didn't, and I think I have got something interesting to tell about it!

Breakfast in Stockholm.

Web designing

So on Thursday we had a lecture held by Kwame Afreh. He is Laurea's former student and nowadays works as a system specialist at Webropol. Afreh is an IT professional with many years' experience in software project management and product development. We had an excellent opportunity to hear his tips for website design. That's pretty good, because soon, just in couple of weeks we should give our finished digital marketing ideas for the client company SSM in the final presentations.

User research

At first Afreh reminded of the importance of user research. It helps to understand the users of the company's webpage and why and how they want to vist there. User research is necessary, as your website's main goal is to help existing and potential customers to find the information they need as quickly and efficiently as possible. 

Probably the most popular agile technique to capture product functionality are user stories. They are short, simple descriptions of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new capability, usually a user or customer of the system. Cleverism webpages article gives really illustrative and comprehensive tips for writing good user stories.

User stories are agile technique to capture product functionality.

Afreh also recommended to create a sitemap and a wireframe. They aid your visitors in finding what they’re looking for within 3 seconds on their visit and avoid the tendency of your users having to click multiple times just to figrure out what your page offers. By creating a wireframe for your website, you can lay out the desired conversion paths for each persona. Sitemap and wireframe stimulate each customer’s journey throughout your home page by including resources and tools to help them learn about your company quickly.

Responsive design

These days a very important part of web designign is its responsiveness. Responsive website serves the same HTML with all static assets such as CSS, Java Script and images in the browser on any device. 

Jeff Cardello have listed in his blog some tricks & tips for responsive web design. I put his useful tips in brief:

• Pay attention to navigation. Try to simplify your navigational choices and use icons paired with text, in-page links, collapsible menus, and dropdowns to get people where they need to go.

• Your buttons should be easy to identify and understand. Generally, circular and rectangular elements are the most recognizable as buttons. Getting too creative with the shape of your buttons can confuse a user, so stick with familiar forms.

• Start your design with mobile in mind. If the organization of your content, navigation, and graphics all make sense on a smartphone, they’ll also be clear on a tablet or on a larger device like a desktop. This is one of the advantages of responsive design.

• Plan your content organization before you design. Content and design flourish when developed in tandem. Design around the content, and base your navigation on its organization. A linear path will keep someone engaged with your website and lead to better conversion rates.

• Use only the words you need. With mobile devices, you must work within the confines of smaller screens. That means writing more economically, ensuring that every word helps move your story forward. Consolidate copy, use bullet points and other structural devices, and trim the fat wherever you can.

• Typography matters even more on smaller screens. Use a highly legible font, especially for vital bits of text like navigation labels. Spacing is also a factor on smaller screens. Make sure that your line height is set to an appropriate amount.

• Embrace negative space. Make use of negative space (aka, whitespace) to create breaks in your design and highlight those areas of content that you don’t want anyone to miss.

• Create and test responsive prototypes. Make sure to test your prototype on the actual devices to ensure that the website will work without problems. This will save you time and hassle — and spare you snarky tweets reporting that your site’s “broken” on mobile.

• Stick to the fast lane with responsive images. Keep your website moving with images that load quickly, on every device. Responsive images offer a powerful and effective workaround, but are laborious and painful to hand code.

Responsive design allows your website to adapt to the device your users are viewing it on. 

Designing User Interface (UI) principles and usability guidelines

User Interface (UI) Design focuses on anticipating what users might need to do and ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate those actions. UI brings together concepts from interaction design, visual design, and information architecture. Consistency is one of the most well known principles of user interface design. Having more consistent UI or interaction is simply a great way to decrease the amount of learning users has to go through as they use your page. 

Afreh shared us Jakob Nielsen's 10 heuristics for user interface design:

• Visibility of system status (Application should always keep users informed)

•  Match between system and the real world (Speak the users' language)

• User control and freedom (Provide exit when users make mistake)

• Consistency and standards (Follow platform conventions)

•  Error prevention (Eliminate error-prone conditions)

• Recognition rather than recall (Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions and options visible)

• Flexibility and efficiency of use (Allow users to tailor frequent actions)

• Aesthetic and minimalist design (Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed)

•  Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors (Error messages should be expressed in plain language, precisely indicate the problem and constructively suggest a solution.)

• Help and documentation.

As a conclusion Afreh noted that there are no wrong and right designs until it has been established that the design does not serve its purpose then we can qualify it as wrong.

Presentation exercises

After the morning's lecture and lunch, one of our digi coaches, Viliina held us very functional lesson to exercise our presentation skills. It was also a very useful lesson keeping in mind the exciting presentaions that waits us after a couple of weeks. 

Improvisation exercises improve essential story telling skills, develop trust, communication and confidence.

Viliina reminded us how important it is to be able to improvise and laugh to yourself. When presenting, anything is possible and everything should be taken as it comes. Therefore you also should accept yourself as you are. In Francine Stevens' blogpost can also be found good tips for learning improvisation skills and how to use them to unlock innovation creativity.

Viliina's note worth remembering to me and all of us: "Be yourself, so you can be anything!" ❤

Entering the market

Hello all and happy 1st of April! Nice to have you reading my post of this week. As I promised in my recent post, this week's client company was previously unknown to us, which made the week very interesting and refreshing. I think it's always fun to get to see things from a different kind of company's point of view.

Heinon tukku entering a new market

So, on Monday morning we got guests from a Finnish food wholesaler, Heinon Tukku Oy. The company was founded in 1899, being thereby one of the oldest family businesses in Finland. Heinon Tukku employs 500 people, it has 30 000 products in its range and totally two cash & carry stores in Helsinki and Vantaa. The latest turnover was 230 million euros. The company is not very familiar for consumers, because at the moment it focuses on so called HoReCa (hotels, restaurants and catering) business. Heinon Tukku's main target group are almost all of the restaurants especially in the Helsinki metropolitan area.

The company's sales and marketing director Jukka Koivu told us that this year Heinon Tukku is going to enter to a new market, which is in addition to HoReCa companies, all the other companies in Finland. The situation now is that there is the demand but there's not the market yet. So the first step for Heinon Tukku is to establish the business in the capital area. After that, the plan is to be a dominant player in this field in Finland. Koivu reminded, that there's already some companies delivering this kind of services to other companies than HoReCa, for example to offices. They mainly operate in the capital area, but they are really small companies. Koivu also thinks that Heinon Tukku probably will be from now to eternity the only wholesaler entering  this business.

Heinon Tukku's sales and marketing director Jukka Koivu

Briefly their business idea, and unofficial slogan is "Convenient way to supply drinks & snacks". For the customer companies it means in practice that they can order what ever snacks or drinks to their workplace, and Heinon Tukku delivers them there. Customer company pays the price of the food and the delivery. Delivery costs are only 10 euros per time, which make it really cheap way to get coffee, fruit, beverages or anything, directly to your office.

The service will be mainly based on a mobile app. It's not done yet, but probably it's ready by June or July, and Heinon Tukku is aiming to enter the market latest in September. The idea will be that it's a subscription based model, but you can also modify the order by that and get push notifications that reminds you to make a new order. Via the app company can ask Heinon Tukku to deliver them for example every week, bi-weekly or what ever they like.

According to Koivu, this kind of business is possible because Heinon Tukku already have everything in one place and they're already serving hundreds and thousands of restaurants. This new idea is not to offer all the 30 000 products, but it will be kind of a limited edition including for example fruit, cakes and coffee. Key point is that only 10 euros delivery costs and the price of the ordered goods, is the cheapest and easiest way for any office, whether there's 15 or 50 employees.

Marketing plan workshop

The actual reason why Heinon Tukku visited us this week was that they don't have a clear concept yet and they wanted our teams' ideas to help them in that work. There were two different tasks which of all the teams could choose one. First one was to define the customer path for Heinon Tukku's new business, and another one was to create a marketing plan for it.

Our team, Di6iBrainiacs choose to create a marketing plan. In other words we were asked to think how to exactly enter the market and create awareness, and how to create kind of a new market. We started working with a brainstorming right after the lecture. Once again, we made powerful and productive teamwork, so we got the marketing plan and nearly the whole presentation done already on Monday.

Our first idea was about the website and ordering platforms.We all thought that instead of plain app, Heinon Tukku should consider making it available for all devices, including mobile, tablets and computers. This would make the ordering more user friendly. We would also like to change the webpage so that any customer could view the selection of the service without registration.

Because the company asked after some crazy ideas, we thought that Heinon Tukku should organize big and eye-catching event to promote their new service. For example drive Heinon Tukku's truck to Narinkkatori in Helsinki, and promote the service with a campaign including some videos, pictures and/or flyers. Bypassers would get free coffee and some snacks from the truck. Another way to promote the service would be to attend upcoming events and fairs.

In our opinion direct marketing is one of the most powerful ways to create awareness also in B2B, so our recommendation to Heinon Tukku was to use email and telemarketing and mail or flyers. What comes to digital marketing, we thought that LinkedIn advertisment would be the most powerful in this field. There Heinon Tukku could use geographically, by company size, titles and industry optimized ads. Search engine optimization and serach engine marketing would create even more visibility. Other possibilities are ads on Finnish labour unions magazines like PAM, TRAL and TEK.

On Thursday all the teams got to present their ideas for the company's representatives and got feedback and questions from the projects marketing director. It was again so lovely to see how different ideas, but so good work all the teams had done. Heinon Tukku's guys seemed to be impressed and they told that all the teams brought a lot of new ideas to use in their upcoming customer path and marketing plan.

All in all, I really liked this week. I love teamwork and marketing planning. Mucho bueno 😗

Tomorrow me and many other fellow students will head to the LOB cruise to Sweden, so it's time to get ready!