••• hispanic research
Hispanic entrepreneurs confident for 2019
Struggle to find, retain talent
Hispanic small business owners are confident about their 2019 business outlook, with strong majorities planning for increased revenue, growth and expansion, according to Bank of America’s third-annual Hispanic Small Business Owner Spotlight. Per BizReport’s Kristina Knight, those plans include expansion (87 percent), increased revenue (74 percent) and hiring plans (51 percent). Roughly one-third (34 percent) say their business has already grown above their original expectations. Just over half (55 percent) of non-Hispanic business owners have growth plans and only about one-fourth (25 percent) say their business has grown above original expectations.
This edition of the Spotlight finds that Hispanic entrepreneurs are significantly more optimistic than their non-Hispanic counterparts when it comes to both their business and economic outlooks. Similarly, Hispanic business owners report greater confidence in the direction of the national economy as well as their local economies.
These high optimism levels persist despite lingering economic concerns and new operational challenges. Contrasting with their overarching confidence, Hispanic entrepreneurs are more concerned about many economic issues compared to their non-Hispanic peers.
Additionally, the ultra-competitive job market has created a challenging environment for Hispanic entrepreneurs looking to find the right workers. Hispanic business owners are much more likely to have had employees leave over the last year compared to their non-Hispanic peers. As a result, they are also more likely to adjust their hiring strategies to increase their chances of retaining and landing top talent.
“Consistent with years prior, Hispanic small business owners are embracing a significantly more confident outlook toward growth compared to their non-Hispanic counterparts,” says Elizabeth Romero, Small Business Central Division executive, Bank of America. “This optimism, however, does not come without challenges. As Hispanic entrepreneurs look to augment growth plans by hiring, today’s job market has created an especially difficult environment to attract and retain talent.”
Despite these obstacles, many Hispanic entrepreneurs report that their business has grown beyond their original expectations and identify family, community and employees as their primary sources of motivation and success. With an eye toward future generations, many hope to pass their business on to their children.
GfK Social and Strategic Research conducted the Bank of America Hispanic Business Owner Spotlight survey between August 30 and October 16, 2018 using a pre-recruited online sample of Hispanic and non-Hispanic small business owners. GfK contacted a national sample of 1,067 small business owners in the U.S. with annual revenue between $100,000 and $4,999,999 and employing between two and 99 employees, as well as 303 interviews among Hispanic small business owners. The final results were weighted to national benchmark standards for size, revenue and region and, for the Hispanic augment, whether the respondents were primarily English-speaking or Spanish-speaking.
••• health care research
Retirees sweat health care costs
Early retirement = longer life?
When asked to name barriers to financial independence and early retirement, Americans are less concerned about uncertain market conditions (37 percent) or inflation (35 percent) than they are about health care costs (57 percent), according to a survey of 1,500 Americans aged 45 and older with $250,000 or more in investable assets conducted for TD Ameritrade.
“While Americans are enjoying longer lifespans, which may mean covering health care expenses and long-term care costs for extended periods of time, they also face the increasing costs of health care,” says Matt Sadowsky, director of retirement and annuities, TD Ameritrade. “The good news is that Americans do recognize that health costs should be a top priority when planning for retirement [44 percent], with 57 percent showing interest in holistic wellness planning, including financial and physical health.”
Seven in 10 (72 percent) of those who identify as financially independent say health is a motivator to retiring early. Three-quarters (76 percent) of the financially independent believe retiring early will help them live longer. In fact, only 15 percent of financially independent retirees report being stressed compared to 47 percent of their non-retired counterparts.
An overwhelming majority of Americans (76 percent) point to Medicare as the best way to pay for health care in retirement yet more than half of pre-retirees (61 percent) are not confident that it will cover the bulk of their retirement medical expenses. Other tools that Americans plan on using to tackle health care expenses include: supplemental health insurance (51 percent), health insurance (42 percent) and Social Security (41 percent). Forty-six percent of those surveyed are likely to max out their health savings account (HSA) contributions. Only 19 percent cite long-term care costs for a family member and unexpected costs to care for a family member as top worries about retiring early.
••• retailing research
It’s nothing personal
Marketers’ personalization efforts missing the mark
Modern marketing strategies are all about personalization and accurate customer targeting. While this concept is nothing new in the online retail realm, research has revealed a troubling gap between how retailers think they’re performing and how they’re actually influencing consumer purchasing habits.
Forrester Consulting, in collaboration with Listrak, has found that 94 percent of retailers feel like they’re hitting the mark in terms of customer-obsessed marketing when in reality, only 9 percent are, Power Retail reports.
According to Forrester, the main concern around this data is that retailers are viewing personalization as traditional segmentation, which looks largely at single data points like age, gender and purchase history. The flaw with this, however, is that it directs content to consumers based on past needs and isn’t necessarily reflective of current intent.
Surveying consumers in the U.S. who shop online at least once a month, Forrester found that 72 percent of shoppers are more likely to make a purchase with retailers that send relevant communications. A further 70 percent reportedly said that they’re more likely to remain loyal to a brand if they feel like the business understands their needs.
In addition to this, 69 percent of shoppers reportedly agreed they would be willing to share details about their interests and preferences if it meant they would only receive relevant communications, while 67 percent report feeling frustrated when they receive “generic” sales offers/promotions.
“The new imperative for customer obsession is driven by customer expectations for high-quality, relevant communications that add value to their daily lives,” Forrester said in the report. “Customer-obsessed companies have the largest median three-year sales growth, higher margin performance and happier employees.”
Retailers who have succeeded in optimizing the purchase journey for their shoppers have reported greater efficiency within their marketing department (63 percent), better innovation (58 percent) and improved customer satisfaction scores (49 percent). Worryingly, however, Forrester says that only 18 percent of the retailers surveyed have seen revenue growth as a result of their personalized marketing strategies.
To see better business outcomes from marketing efforts, Forrester and Listrak claim consumers should move beyond traditional e-mail marketing tools like shopping cart/browse abandonment and transactional messaging, which is used by 70 and 69 percent of retailers, respectively. Instead, the firm believes retailers will find more value by tracking key metrics like customer lifetime value, acquisitions, engagement and conversions to optimize their e-mail and digital marketing efforts.
••• IT research
Integration challenges stymie digital efforts
IT groups can’t keep up with demand
A global survey of IT leaders found that while 97 percent of organizations are currently undertaking or planning to undertake digital transformation initiatives, integration challenges are hindering efforts for 84 percent of organizations. Close to half of all respondents (43 percent) reported more than 1,000 applications are being used across their business but only 29 percent are currently integrated together, trapping valuable data in silos.
The survey of 650 respondents, conducted to help create the 2019 Connectivity Benchmark Report on the state of IT by application network platform MuleSoft, San Francisco, also reveals that IT is struggling to keep up with business demands, as 64 percent of respondents indicated they were unable to deliver all projects last year. In addition, project volumes are only expected to grow, with respondents predicting on average a 32 percent increase this year. If digital transformation initiatives aren’t successfully completed, nine out of 10 organizations believe business revenue will be negatively impacted.
Among the key results of the survey:
The IT delivery gap is widening as new technologies enter the scene. The role of IT is changing from a tactical function to a business catalyst. However, the business’ growing need for IT support is reflected in the increasing number of projects IT is expected to deliver. In addition, with a growing investment in new technologies, organizations are seeing integration challenges hinder digital transformation initiatives. Eighty-four percent of respondents claim integration challenges are slowing digital transformation progress. In particular, data silos created business challenges for 83 percent of respondents.
“Legacy infrastructure and systems” was the most frequently reported challenge to digital transformation. Furthermore, 59 percent of IT leaders say their legacy infrastructure makes it hard to introduce new technologies like artificial intelligence, big data and the Internet of Things.
The majority (69 percent) of IT’s time remains dedicated to keeping the lights on compared to innovation. Further compounding the issue, 77 percent of respondents saw a budget increase of less than 10 percent this year. In fact, nearly one-third (31 percent) of these respondents reported that budgets had either remained flat or decreased.
IT’s new role as a business catalyst. IT’s expanding role is driven by a greater need for support across lines of business. As companies race to digitally transform, what was once an IT-specific need for integration has now expanded to business units across the organization. Ninety-two percent of respondents say their company’s integration needs span beyond IT to encompass a wide range of business functions, including business analysts (49 percent), data scientists (42 percent), human resources (37 percent) and marketing (36 percent).
IT and business leaders are more aligned than ever before. Respondents who identified business and IT misalignment as a major challenge dropped from 43 percent last year to 29 percent this year. The alignment between IT and the business goes as far as sharing key performance indicators. Of the respondents currently undertaking or planning to undertake digital transformation initiatives, more than three-quarters (77 percent) cite increased business efficiency as a goal this year and 71 percent cite improved customer experience as a goal.
Preparing for the future one API at a time. For IT to become a business enabler, organizations are increasingly turning to API strategies to support reuse and self-service. By creating reusable assets, IT enables the business to increase overall delivery speed and capacity. Ninety-one percent of respondents from organizations that own public and/or private APIs are experiencing significant business outcomes as a result, including greater productivity (53 percent), decreased operational costs (33 percent) and increased revenue growth (29 percent). For 36 percent of respondents, APIs are generating more than 25 percent of their organization’s revenue.
Respondents who manage their APIs like products were more likely than their peers who own APIs to report increased innovation (49 percent versus 40 percent) and greater agility across teams to self-serve IT (58 percent versus 46 percent).
Respondents who always reuse software assets when developing new projects were more likely than their peers who own APIs to report increased productivity (63 percent versus 53 percent) and revenue growth (41 percent versus 29 percent).
The survey was commissioned by MuleSoft and carried out by Vanson Bourne. A total of 825 IT decision makers were interviewed in December 2018 across the U.S., U.K., Germany, Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, China, France, Japan and Hong Kong. To allow year-on-year comparisons, all statistics cited here exclude 175 respondents representing France, Japan and Hong Kong who were not interviewed for last year’s report. Therefore, the statistics here are derived from a base of 650 IT decision makers across the U.S., U.K., Germany, Netherlands, Australia, Singapore and China. The respondents were from enterprise organizations in both the public and private sector with at least 1,000 employees. Interviews were conducted online using a multilevel screening process to ensure that only suitable candidates were given the opportunity to participate.
••• data privacy
Amazon delivers trustworthiness
Social media companies rank last
Consumers are concerned about the privacy and security of their data, yet still want a more personalized experience from brands, according to a survey of more than 1,000 consumers from SmarterHQ, a multichannel behavioral marketing platform. The survey was undertaken to determine which companies and industries are handling their users’ data responsibly and which marketing tactics consumers feel are personalized versus creepy.
According to a report based on the survey, Privacy & Personalization: Consumers Share How to Win Them Over Without Crossing The Line, Amazon has earned the most trust from today’s consumers by a landslide – 48 percent of consumers trust Amazon to use their data responsibly, beating out banks, Apple, Google, other big brand stores, airlines and hotels. This sentiment is strongest among Millennials and Generation Z, who trust Amazon 2.1x more than their banks. Social media companies rank last on the list at 6 percent, with one major contributor to this low score being that half of survey respondents said they know someone who has had their social media account hacked.
“Digital marketers today face the challenge of confronting consumers who are increasingly skeptical of whether they can trust brands with their data and wonder if their personal information will be used wisely,” says Michael Osborne, president and CEO of SmarterHQ. “The encouraging news is that 90 percent of consumers are willing to provide behavioral data for a better shopping experience as they demand a personalized touch from the brands they interact with. Therefore, the onus is on marketers to leverage the right technology to help them recognize, understand and engage with their audiences across all channels while keeping their customer data safe. This will give brands the best chance at gaining a loyal customer base. There’s a difference between personalized and creepy marketing tactics and marketers need to make sure their campaigns fall into the right category.”
Among some of the other consumer findings in the report:
They’re skeptical: 86 percent are concerned about their data privacy and 79 percent of consumers believe companies know too much about them.
They favor e-mail over other channels: 51 percent of consumers say e-mail is the best way for a brand to communicate, with social media second in line (25 percent).
They think push notifications can be creepy: 74 percent of consumers say push is the most invasive channel because they view their phone as an everyday tool that’s part of their personal space.
They’ll banish brands who provide poor personalization: 63 percent say they would stop purchasing products and services from companies that take “creepy” marketing too far.
They value and trust brands the more often they shop and the younger they are: Those who shop more often find personalization marketing tactics 25 percent more helpful and Millennials and Gen Z trust companies with their data 47 percent more than Baby Boomers and Gen X. Interestingly, owners of smart home devices (i.e., Amazon Alexa, Google Home) are 16 percent less protective of their data privacy and 12 percent more trusting of companies collecting and using their data.