--- title: HTM News & Views description: Market viewpoints and project updates from HTM Solutions --- # HTM News & Views ## [Data Quality - and How to Improve It](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/data-quality-and-the-crm) Posted by: [Steve Christian](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/author/steve-christian) | Sep 29, 2021 5:08:13 PM I'v been wrestling recently with data quality issues in several client CRM systems. It's always a challenge and only gets worse as time goes on. So how do we as marketeers stay on top of this issue? [ Continue Reading ](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/data-quality-and-the-crm) ## [Sailing and Marketing Project Management](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/sailing-and-marketing-project-management) Posted by: [Steve Christian](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/author/steve-christian) | Dec 1, 2020 4:00:00 PM Those who know me understand some of my passions - travel, food, history and - most of all - sailing. There are few better ways to clear those cobwebs out than a day behind the wheel of a sailboat... [ Continue Reading ](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/sailing-and-marketing-project-management) ## [Working With the Cloud](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/working-with-the-cloud) Posted by: [Steve Christian](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/author/steve-christian) | May 4, 2020 11:45:00 AM The business advantages of a cloud application platform are seen everywhere. But the new, most innovative steps in cloud computing revolve around the deployment of serverless applications. My recent... [ Continue Reading ](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/working-with-the-cloud) - - [1](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news) - [2](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/page/2) - [3](https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/page/3) - ```json { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "articleBody" : "I'v been wrestling recently with data quality issues in several client CRM systems. It's always a challenge and only gets worse as time goes on. So how do we as marketeers stay on top of this issue? When using Salesforce in past lives, I've spend the long darks nights of between Christmas and New Year working on data cleanup issues. My only tool aid during those times was RingLead. I've just been introduced to an option that woks well for my HubSpot -based projects - Insycle Data Management - and my first experience of how it can help ease the pain or CRM maintenance is very positive, I've always felt that HubSpot's insistence on a unique email address for each contact was a distinct advance on the management process I'd encountered in previous roles. But this still doesn't eliminate the duplicate issue - it just rears its head in different places! Things like subdomains and alternate top level domains, as well as company mergers and rebrands start to undermine your database integrity. And the native tools often just report, but don't really help solve a problem of any size. Issues multiply rapidly when HubSpot is used in a configuration with another CRM such as Salesforce. If your issues are big enough, then you’re probably considering an 3rd party tool to help batch up the fixes and run automated processes in the background. While you need to think about the specific needs of your CRMs and your data organization, maintaining a single customer view is critical for delivering good experiences to customers and prospects. That single viewpoint gives your teams — marketing, sales, and support — a single source of truth for engaging with customers. Insycle definitely seems to attack this problem - and the broader issue of managing data integrity with an intelligent and incremental set of configurable tools, My experience is that, give a very negative initial data grading by the tool, I was able to drill down to the key issues and start a fix process pretty rapidly. Progress was mapped on a daily basis to give a sense of achievement. Does deduplication work seem like too much of a drag? Yes, it causes you to scratch your head quite a bit. But with good tools on your side, all is not lost and you can regain your Christmas holiday for something more like fun!", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Steve Christian", "sameAs" : "", "url" : "https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/author/steve-christian" }, "dateModified" : "29/09/2021", "datePublished" : "29/09/2021", "headline" : "Data Quality - and How to Improve It", "image" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 400, "url" : "https://info.htmsolutions.biz/hubfs/Images/logo-150x80-trans.png", "width" : 750 }, "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/data-quality-and-the-crm", "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4419403/HTMSolutionsLogo(web).jpg" }, "name" : "HTM Solutions", "url" : "info.htmsolutions.biz" } } ``` ```json { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "articleBody" : "Those who know me understand some of my passions - travel, food, history and - most of all - sailing. There are few better ways to clear those cobwebs out than a day behind the wheel of a sailboat with the wind in your hair. Why do I mention this here? Because there's a mindset of a sailboat captain that has a distinct influence on how I approach a marketing project - and I might term it as part of a useful philosophy. I learn something every time I go out sailing - and every time I undertake a new project with a new team. Never assume that all the lessons are already learned! In marketing that would be called hubris - on a boat it would run counter to good seamanship. So I had this learning experience in mind when I got myself involved in a recent sail from Cabo San Lucas to San Diego - the so-called Baja Bash. While this trip is not perhaps the same kind of big deal as a trans-Pacific crossing, it certainly a wake-up call for those of us more used to the San Diego day sailing scene. And thats perhaps why I'm writing about it here on a marketing blog - we are moving from very familiar territory to a landscape that requires a different level of planning. Doing the bash may well remain a significant rite of passage simply because it feels like such a different experience from day sails without going half way around the globe. Geographically, the route is almost a natural part of the Socal/Mexico sailing scene, but it presents challenges that take the average fair weather Socal sailor way outside their comfort zone. And it that sense, it’s a test of the sailboat and its crew that very clearly offers an object lesson in mental and logistical preparation for a medium range trip. So, what are the considerations for the crew when considering this trip back from Cabo? Wind direction: Unless good fortune shines, it’s a trip that’s relentlessly into the eye of the wind. As one sailor remarked, if all instruments failed you would be able to get home by simple following the directional pointer of the masthead windex. There are few options for actual sailing here – the engine will likely be running continuously and noisily as you beat upwind. Fuel consumption: When considering fuel capacity, it’s not just the distance that needs to be considered. Heading into the wind – and the waves – will likely increase your fuel consumption per hour by up to 50% and reduce the SOG significantly. Can you use all the fuel in your on-board tanks? Running them low may expose the slime garden that you have been cultivating in the balmy SoCal weather for the last several years. Spare parts: There’s no option on this trip for emergency parts purchases along the way, so stashing at least one spare of all the obvious vulnerabilities is essential. Consider fuel, cooling and rigging issues etc. And don’t forget the propane! Provisioning: Again, there’s little in the way of re-supply options along the route so it’s important to cover the bases for up to 10 days. But don’t assume you will be cooking – the sea state will probably make that hard - so make sure that keeping well fed and hydrated doesn’t require much more than boiling a kettle. Plan B anchorages: The choices are limited and far between. The coastline is more remote and rugged than you would imagine. Communication: Even in this day and age, you can basically assume there is no real cell phone service available from a little after you leave Cabo until you are nearing Ensenada. This is not an exaggeration. Even though a few towns along the way do seem to offer a few bars, messages and app data support definitely can’t be counted on to work. A satellite tracking and text system seems like a good backup option, even though this is hardly a blue water route. Mental and physical stress: It’s important to face the fact that you and the crew are likely to be motoring 24hrs a day for more than a week in fairly rough conditions with little in the way of a break. It’s a potential test of relationships and friendships, with no place to leave the bus. And the basic challenges don’t seem to have changed much over the years. Reviewing articles form 1992 and onwards reveal very few changes in the infrastructure available along the Baja coast, the potential of rig or boat failure and the distinct possibility of the loss of a crew’s sense of humor - which is definitely bad news. Bringing this back to the marketing project context - my motto is not to assume that projects are all projects are similar, but actually to assume the opposite - that they end up being different in more ways than you anticipated. And that they need to be approached with a unique perspective. The full story of the Baja trip is ready for publishing elsewhere with some of the pictures of life on board. Contact me if you feel like a longer version. Thanks for reading!", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Steve Christian", "sameAs" : "", "url" : "https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/author/steve-christian" }, "dateModified" : "01/12/2020", "datePublished" : "01/12/2020", "headline" : "Sailing and Marketing Project Management", "image" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 400, "url" : "https://info.htmsolutions.biz/hubfs/Images/Sailing_432034173.jpeg", "width" : 750 }, "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/sailing-and-marketing-project-management", "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4419403/HTMSolutionsLogo(web).jpg" }, "name" : "HTM Solutions", "url" : "info.htmsolutions.biz" } } ``` ```json { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "articleBody" : "The business advantages of a cloud application platform are seen everywhere. But the new, most innovative steps in cloud computing revolve around the deployment of serverless applications. My recent work with some of the innovators in this space demonstrated to me how a serverless approach exemplifies what the cloud can deliver. The essence of this is an opportunity to create an extreme focus on addressing core enterprise business value, while eliminating most low-value aspects of development along with traditional operational overhead. Whereas in the distant past I might have rather flippantly described cloud deployments to just be a useful way to reduce fan noise levels in the server room, it's now obvious that the serverless cloud presents a very fundamental paradigm shift. Serverless can be hard to define. No one can brand the term, so everyone uses it in different ways. But what just about everyone agrees on is that although there are, of course, servers running code out there somewhere, what makes something “serverless” is that IT teams don’t actually have to worry about those servers. At first this might sound “nice to have,” but not revolutionary, but taking the argument several steps further, we can see that its not only the physical servers that vanish, but also large elements of a typical application architecture that are essential, but almost totally generic in function. That’s why serverless is more than just a technology, but can also be seen as a movement. Barriers to entry are never more apparent than when a new technology comes along and knocks them down, and serverless achieves just that. It’s providing simple ways for IT teams to build new software, with a focus on writing business critical code, instead of managing servers or sharding databases. The business application becomes a flow diagram of sorts that connects your business specific core logic to an ever expanding range of common infrastructure component services. And these services are themselves scalable, highly available and continuously improved. Enterprise teams can now use a serverless cloud-native paradigm of modern application implementation that eliminates traditional and costly operational responsibilities of capacity-provisioning and system maintenance. But as transformational as these new services components and design freedom can feel, making them work for your organization is anything but magic. To deliver business positive outcomes, serverless platforms require key capabilities across the entire software life-cycle: from designing applications, to developing and testing them, to delivering them predictably across successive deployment tiers. It doesn’t make sense in most cases to just take today’s monolithic enterprise applications and foist them onto a serverless platform. First of all, it might not even work: The big name serverless platforms have some resource constraints that would probably stop most large applications from even running in their environments. But that’s beside the point. Serverless platforms aren’t designed to be yet another place to run the same old applications. They’re a way to build software in a different, more efficient way. But even for greenfield applications, there’s still plenty to think about, like how new applications will talk to existing technology within an organization, like datastores and compliance tools. Making the leap into microservices will mean more than just telling developers to start writing functions that can run on AWS Lambda or Azure Functions or some other service. It will mean rethinking the development process. The modern software delivery life-cycle requires agility to iterate fast, automation to deploy continuously, and strong governance to ensure security is enforced consistently. The challenge to improvements on these fronts comes from the unnecessary infrastructure drag of common functional blocks, ever tighter security, flexible capacity scaling, and continuous maintenance cycles. But the good news is that serverless makes it easier to do all of this than it’s ever been. And there are plenty of organizations that are already leading the way. Thanks for reading!", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Steve Christian", "sameAs" : "", "url" : "https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/author/steve-christian" }, "dateModified" : "04/05/2020", "datePublished" : "04/05/2020", "headline" : "Working With the Cloud", "image" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 400, "url" : "https://info.htmsolutions.biz/hubfs/Stock%20images/Business%20teamwork%20in%20action%20creating%20a%20puzzle%20on%20the%20cloud.jpeg", "width" : 750 }, "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://info.htmsolutions.biz/news/working-with-the-cloud", "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4419403/HTMSolutionsLogo(web).jpg" }, "name" : "HTM Solutions", "url" : "info.htmsolutions.biz" } } ```