Creating a VBA-free Excel dashboard

This post discusses the use of VBA in Excel dashboards and links to a VBA-free Excel dashboard

via Creating a VBA-free Excel dashboard.

Cheers,

Nick www.scenario2.com

Are Excel Charts Hurting Your Business? 10 Mistakes You Should Avoid.

To squeeze some competitive advantage of using Excel in your business, you must avoid several basic mistakes everyone makes. This is a short list of 10 of them.

via Are Excel Charts Hurting Your Business? 10 Mistakes You Should Avoid..

Cheers,

Nick www.scenario2.com

How To: Excel at Excel for SEM Applications, Part 1

Simple and practical way to use Excel to measure your effectiveness and provide guidance for your Search and Media focus and spend.

How To: Excel at Excel for SEM Applications, Part 1  Posted using ShareThis

Cheers,

Nick www.neuropersona.com

Spying On Your Paid Search Competitors

Older article, still meaningful, that highlights the contribution and value of Amazon’s Alexa search platform.

Spying On Your Paid Search Competitors  Posted using ShareThis

Cheers,

Nick www.neruopersona.com

Manga, Prediction and Neuropersona

Manga is very, very popular and illustrates the value of stories and masks brilliantly.

Consider the common facial expressions and what they convey relative to a product or service.

Consider how the common Manga images convey change in emotion or perspective, almost the same way as a person removing one Neuropersona mask and replacing it with another. 

 Cheers,

Nick www.neuropersona.com

P2 Go or No?

I just saw the promotion for the new WordPress Theme P2 and it got me thinking about innovation.

The keyboard controls are just about right, but not quite, almost like comparing a Blackberry to a Motorola, Nokia, Sony or any Microsoft based device.

How is this story connected to NUMBERS which are the raw material of choice for the NUMERATI?  Innovation is mostly painfully slow if you are a manufacturer.  Very few, like RIM the Blackberry maker, get it right and so the numbers cut, chopped and sliced in a anemic attempt to convince customers there is market traction are just not available to the marketing blowhards.  Or the NUMERATI.

Marketers, accountants and the NUMERATI would be better served to understand the stories behind the success of RIM and other very rare companies who get it right.  Check out how winners observe and serve Peronae.

P2, heck NO!

Cheers,

Nick www.neuropersona.com

Microsoft Anhialates adCenter Analytics

Microsoft anhialtes adCenter analytics or as posted here Microsoft Kills AdCenter Analytics

This is HUGE as analytics acts as an on-ramp to adCenter–see the Story Lens where we make the connection between Story, Process, Software, Brand and Metrics/Analytics.  Unless customers understand which words impact the Story to Analytics continuum they don’t know the most effective way to spend their money or event focus their attention.

MISSING LINK  –> Search words uses change at a rate of 30% daily

WHAT NOW? –>  Understand the Persona Behaviours and you will succeed by being in their ‘word proxity’

Word proximity means that they will understand that the search word combinations that you selected COMBINED with the story you have linked to the words will serve their needs BETTER than their other options.

PREDICTION –>  Microsoft will buy another analytics provider, soon, whether it is Yahoo, Omniture or other…IMHO

Cheers,

Nick

The LENS WEARER Persona

 

MAGIC LENS

 

GRYO Analytics is the ability for the numbers and the stories used in Analysis or Analytics to adjust according to the needs of the user without programming or modification.  This is done with the concept of the MAGIC LENS.

A LENS provides the wearer PERSPECTIVE for CLARITY in their environment.  LENSES may be combined according to the need of the wearer, time, place and people which are being viewed.  This is a LENS WEARER…

 

 Cheers,

Nick www.scenario2.com

NeuroPersona and Story Lenses

A NeuroPersona sees the world through LENSES and WE BUILD LENSES!

 

NeuroPersona LENSES

To understand the NeuroPersona or Persona behind the LENSES please see:

http://numerati.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/chanel-no5-and-neuropersona-behaviour/

Stories make up the mask of a NeuroPersona and are important to Numerati as they also are at the core of numbers.

Comments on LENSES that you may use are appreciated here:

http://numerati.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/neuropersona-and-story-lenses/

Cheers,

Nick www.scenario2.com

Introduction to Lenses–Story, Time, Value & Persona Lenses

A storyteller is a ‘lens maker’ and provides tools to help people understand where they are and where they can go.

The atomic elements of any lens are Stories and Numbers as highlighted in the Story Lens below and found here:

Sample Lens STORY PERSONA PROMISE TIME MODEL

1. Story Lens: 
Story<->Process<->Software<->Brand<->KPI

A lens provides a unique way of using stories and numbers to provide perspective to its wearer and may be used in may ways.  From a commercial perspective a lens provides assessments of current state of an enterprise and its market environment and supports the alignment of content (sell side) to Customer or Persona needs (buy side).

2.  TIME Lens: C,C,E,S,S

Clock Time–Past, Present, Future (most common way of viewing Time)
Cycle Time–Relative Time based on intereaction of Processes (some flowers only bloom when Salmon are running)
Event Time–Event and Time only starts when participants arrive (party, cultural event…)
Story Time–Stories may be used to change Value of past, present and future data
Scenario Time–Time unfolds according to interaction of stories

3.  PROMISE Lens –> see bottom of this post for a Promise Lens diagram
Sell Side–Value Promise and Deliver
Buy Side–Persona Need and Ability to use or Accept the product

4. PERSONA Lens
Buy Side–Persona Needs and Content Navigation requirements
Sell Side– Company Product or Content creation and deliver

5. MODEL Lens
This lens provides a description of the relationships, mathematical or stories, that exist in a business environment. It can provide details or a high level view depending on the wearer’s need or the speed by which the wearer must apply the lens.  In our experience higher level views of models are generally sufficient and detail can be provided by using the other lenses available much more quickly than building detail models and structures.

My speciality is connecting the big picture to small details.  Sometimes this means Strategy to Action, which is difficult for most Strategy or Scenario Analysis people.  I do it with stories, lenses and with an understanding that stories are at the core of all numbers.

Cheers,
Nick  www.scenario2.com

PROMISE Lens Example

 

Promise Lens

It was created when I was mappng Buy vs Sell side objectives about 15 years ago in San Francisco.

 

In the simplest case a buyer will deliver a Promise story to a Buyer.

The Buyer interacts with the Seller because there is a Desire.

Once there is enough alignment for the Buyer to buy the Seller then must Deliver.

After delivery the Buyer consumes or will ACCEPT the product according to their capacity.

 

Using the two hands helps me quickly describe the combinations possible between buyers and sellers.

KPIs or measures can be created or enhanced according to how the lens is applied for each client.

 

Analysis can highlight examples of:

 positive states — under promise+over deliver OR under deliver+over accept …

negative states — over promise+under deliver OR under promise+under accept …

 

Overlaying other lenses provides superb clarity, for example:

Story Lens — aligns Promise to process, Scenario or other buyer values

Persona Lens — aligns Promise to appropriate Desire

Time Lens — provides differentiator to competitors by shifting time and value derived