You know how every now and again you go to a talk that you weren't that fussed about - but it totally blew your mind?  That happened last night with Ben Hammersley's (BBC cyber journo) talk on tech in 2015.

One of his themes was that 2015 would be the year that Artificial Intelligence would start to be truly useful to every day lives.  For me, the moment truly hit home when he introduced us to Amy - the artifically intelligent PA.

Not sure about you, but I find it such a faff scheduling meetings.  Well, copy in Amy and she takes over, liaises politely with your meeting counterpart and then pops the confirmed meeting in your diary.  I think she's due to launch in 2015 - and is backed by heavy hitters in the tech world including Softbank Capital, IA Ventures, Lerer Ventures, FirstMark Capital Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and CrunchFund.


Read all about how Amy schedules meetings, developed by A.AI

They should teach this in schools.  I'm going to make an idiot proof version for my friends and family!  I use -in almost every search I do.  And I didn't know about ~ which just shows you really can learn something new every day.

Thanks to @MaxCRoser on Twitter for sharing this.  He's definitely worth following if you are interested in data and trends of living standards.  
 

Shopping on mobile remains cumbersome.  Even mobile enabled sites for market leaders such as ASOS are still time consuming and give too many reasons for a shopper to bail before they finalise their purchase.  
The Think at Google team have released a super new interactive tool, which you can drill down into by country or industry - for retail it hammers home the importance of mobile in the purchase journey.  Check out these stats above which speak for themselves. 
Get mobile and get enabled for fast, pain free check out.

I've just joined the board of Vrumi.com a new start up which is a marketplace for renting rooms during the day and yes, my house is on it!

Got a room and want to make some money whilst you're not using it? List it on Vrumi!
Need a room? Check out the rooms currently available.  A roof top apartment a stone's throw from Leicester Square with roof terrace? Check.  A super-cool space in Notting Hill? Yep, got that too. 

Dilbert nailed bid data, SEVEN years ago!!! ROLF.

Me and my little shadow, Tiggy walked 14 miles this weekend, raising over £500 for Earl Mountbatten Hospice on the Isle of Wight.  Her little legs did very well, she still had bounce left by the end, I certainly did not!

We were also cover girls on the Isle of Wight County Press website.  

Joining over 7,000 other walkers, many of whom were in fancy dress, we set out at 6.30am and finished the very hilly course at 11.30am.  

Never have fish and chips at lunchtime been more richly deserved or tasted so scrumptious!

I recently wrote an article for Beyond Analysis on why actionable insights from data matter and how the obvious isn't always apparent.








My favourite quote from the article and something every retailer should ask themselves:

"Retail is detail, yet the obvious isn’t always apparent.  Can you answer these questions?  

• How many shops does it take for a new customer to become a lifetime customer? 
  
• What outreach are you doing to encourage that new customer to reach the magic number of lifetime loyalty? 
  
• Are your new customers simply topping up a ‘leaky bucket’ and plugging the hole left by customers who’ve deserted you, or are you truly growing?"
  

It's not difficult to sort this out and come up with a data driven strategy to drive business and profit performance.  Start with segmenting your customer base, so you know who/how/where and when your customers shop with you.  Once you know who your customers are, then you can focus on what matters - protecting your most valuable clients, intervening and saving those about to churn and avoiding those that were never profitable in the first place. 

London-based mobile shopping app SHAREIGHT has closed £662,050 through equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs, overfunding its original target by 190%.   (I am non-exec director and the first angel investor in the platform.)

The campaign attracted 334 investors across 12 countries who will now receive a share of 18.08% equity in the m-commerce start-up.

SHAREIGHT “takes the pain out of shopping on mobile” through its m-commerce interface which has been built solely for mobile to allow users to find and share retail products on their smartphone “more easily”.  You can download the app for both Android and IOS.

Listing over 8,000 retail brands, the app enables shoppers to find what they want “in just three taps” using its 500 image search terms, and also offers “easy comparison”; letting users save their favourite items from all the major stores in one place.

This was a remarkable achievement and shows just how powerful a well-executed equity crowdfunding campaign by a highly appealing business can be.

A few stats that give a sense of SHAREIGHT’s achievement:

• 95 investors came from eight different countries, with over £100,000 coming from outside the UK.
• Average investment size was £3,684.21, and the median was £300.
• The largest investment was £79,000, and the smallest was £10.

Delighted to announce that Sophie Neary is part of The Next Women business mentoring and advice scheme.

Read their interview with Sophie here.

The NextWomen's goal is to advise, inspire & connect a global & local community of ambitious entrepreneurial women specifically on their business needs - online & offline. 

It's not every day you can say that the Chairman and CEO of Visa is your warm up guy, but this week I can!  Peter Ayliffe gave a brilliant overview at the Beyond Analysis breakfast seminar last week.  Diana Hunter the new CEO of Conviviality PLC was also on hand to share her thoughts - after only being in her role for eight months Diana has led the float of Conviviality (AKA Bargain Booze) on AIM and also acquired Victoria Wine.  

After that impressive warm up, the audience then got me, which hopefully wasn't too much of a let down.

Here are a few key messages from my presentation.

1. Analysis Paralysis is a 21st century disease when it comes to big data and retail.  I often find that the more data thrown at a problem, the less common sense is applied to resolve the issue.

2. Data does not, can not and never will supplant killer retail instinct.

3. The obvious isn't always apparent, and actionable insights from data can help with that.  

4.  The mere fact you can measure something, divide one number by another or report on something regularly does not make it useful. Bring everything back to the four quadrants of retail improvement.

5. Manage by measuring - you can not optimise what you do not measure.  Think big, start small.

6. It's not just about why customers DO buy, it's about why the DON'T buy too.

And finally...

7. Done is better than perfect - i.e. A Good Plan today is better than a Perfect Plan tomorrow!