General Accounting Quantitative Finance For Dummies Cheat Sheet Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-26-2024 No matter if you're a quantitative finance novice or an expert, this Cheat Sheet can make sense of some equations and terms that you'll use on a regular basis. The following demystifies and explains some of the complexities and models. You can refer regularly to this information to help you in your quant adventures. View Cheat Sheet

Data Management Five Must-Have Features of Data Observability Article / Updated 01-26-2024 In this article you will learn: What is data observability? Why is data observability necessary for your data platform? What are the must-have features of a strong data observability platform? What is data observability? Data is increasingly important to today’s businesses — and ensuring the quality and reliability of that data is critical. High-quality data is the fuel for everything from building new products to driving accurate decision making. Data observability was created to make ensuring the quality of data easier, faster, and more scalable over the long term. Data observability gives organizations a complete view of their data's health at every stage — from data pipelines to infrastructure — as well as delivering at-a-glance views of dependencies and relationships between datasets. By leveraging data observability, data teams can quickly identify and resolve data quality issues before they reach data consumers, effectively reducing costs, minimizing impact, and driving confidence in the data products it protects. Why is data observability necessary? Data downtime — time when data is incomplete, erroneous, missing, or otherwise inaccurate — can be disastrous for organizations. From misallocated budgets to broken AI models, data quality issues can wreak havoc on organizations of all kinds. While data quality testing and monitoring are relatively common practices, data observability goes beyond the traditional methods of testing and monitoring. Data observability manages and improves data quality at scale by leveraging automated monitoring, custom rules, root cause analysis tools, and impact analysis to not only catch and resolve known data quality incidents faster but to detect and resolve unknown data quality issues as well. Five must-have elements of a strong data observability platform Choosing the right data observability tool can help your company avoid a menagerie of serious and costly data quality incidents, so it’s important to know what features you should have on your shopping list. Below are five features you should look for when considering a data observability solution for your data stack. ML-powered deep and broad data monitoring — both out-of-the-box and custom monitors A key aspect of an effective data observability platform is its use of machine learning (ML) for data monitoring. Platforms with ML enable teams to programmatically identify data quality and performance issues, such as data freshness, volume issues, and schema changes out-of-the-box. Data observability platforms also offer the ability to create custom monitors that are tailored to your specific business needs and applied to your most critical tables, providing deep monitoring where you need it and allowing you to tackle recurrent data issues that can crop up within specific data environments. End-to-end integrations across cloud and on-prem tooling An effective data observability platform should work with tools both in the cloud and on-prem. This necessary integration allows for comprehensive oversight of your data platform, from ingestion and storage to transformation and consumption. This integration helps track data movement across a variety of settings, which improves the platform's ability to find and fix quality issues quickly and effectively. Incident triaging and resolution workflows To reduce the impact of data problems, it's important to have effective workflows for triaging and resolving incidents. A good data observability platform simplifies the steps to detect, triage, resolve, and measure data quality issues. This usually involves automatic alerts, tools to prioritize issues by severity and impact, and robust integrations with messaging and project management tools that complement existing workflows. Efficient prioritization means data teams can concentrate on the most urgent problems, which helps decrease delays and keeps the data accurate and reliable. Root cause and impact analysis via field-level lineage Identifying the underlying cause of a data quality issue is essential to preventing it in the future. An effective data observability platform will provide field-level lineage, which provides an at-a-glance view of where the data came from, how it was changed, and what dependencies or data products are impacted by it. This information allows data teams to quickly understand the root-cause of an issue upon detection, decide who’s responsible for resolving it, and determine who should be informed to minimize cost. Performance monitoring — query optimization and cloud cost management A key part of a strong data observability platform is performance monitoring, which includes improving query efficiency and managing cloud costs. This function helps you find and fix inefficient data queries and processes that could raise operating costs or slow down performance. By making queries more efficient and optimizing cloud resources, organizations can make their data operations more cost-effective and deliver greater value from their data platform at a significantly lower cost. Pioneering the future of reliable data with data observability Implementing a data observability platform that includes these five elements will empower your organization to reduce data downtime, improve data reliability, deliver more value for stakeholders, and foster an environment of data trust across your organization. Download Data Observability For Dummies to discover how data observability can help you improve your data reliability, build organizational trust, and deliver even more value from your data products. View Article

Operations How a Quality Management System Boosts Product Excellence and Success Article / Updated 01-26-2024 In this article you will learn: What is a quality management system? What are the benefits of a good quality system? Why is data important in quality management? What is a challenge in implementing a quality management system? How does a good quality management system impact decision-making? What is a quality management system? A quality management system (QMS) is a strategic discipline that requires a framework, significant financial and resource investments, and an enterprise-wide commitment. Companies today recognize that quality isn’t just a vague attribute to claim in marketing materials or on a website. Quality is a key business driver that is essential to success. What are the benefits of a good quality system? It helps organizations to: Improve their processes and products Reduce costs Boost the customer experience Meet key compliance requirements Organizations are turning to digital solutions to automate quality management. A quality management system enables organizations to: Automatically document, manage, and control the structure, processes, roles, responsibilities, and procedures required to ensure quality management Centralize quality data enterprise-wide so that organizations can analyze and act upon it Access and understand data not only within the organization, but also external data residing with suppliers and other partners Why is data important in quality management? The key to leveraging a QMS for better business outcomes is data. Even the most advanced QMS is useless without effective data. Data gathered across the connected ecosystem – from manufacturing floors to business offices – provides the insights to boost efficiency, productivity, and quality. An effective QMS can help companies more easily collect, integrate, and act upon data to automate best practices and processes and boost quality enterprise-wide. This is crucial since, with all the different systems in use from product design to delivery, sharing data to derive insights can seem like an insurmountable task. What is a challenge in implementing a quality management system? Many organizations don’t have sufficient data or the processes in place to get insights on the products they build to make informed decisions or mitigate risk. They’re delivering what they think they should provide, or what’s required by law, but without the data-driven insights to help them reach the next level. How does a good quality management system impact decision-making? The next evolution of effective quality management is connected quality that arms companies with the data and automation needed to improve decision-making at every stage of the product lifecycle and empower employees to deliver the highest quality. Today’s quality management systems can enable companies to more easily and accurately automate quality processes to reach new levels of product excellence, brand reputation, and competitive leadership. And it requires an approach that involves the entire organization in order to succeed. References 10 Steps to Using Data to Improve Business Decisions Data Analysis and Decision-Making Tips for Making Good Business Decisions About the Book Wiley has recently published Advanced Quality Management for Dummies, ETQ Special 2nd Edition. The book provides a dynamic introduction to comprehensive quality management and helps business leaders discover the steps required to select and implement a QMS that can bring a quality culture to an organization and create more satisfied customers. Download ETQ’s Advanced QMS For Dummies eBook to discover more about the operational and business impact of a QMS, plus best practices for selecting and deploying the right QMS for your organization. View Article

Project Management How to Apply the Agile Principles of Project Management Article / Updated 01-23-2024 Agile principles are designed specifically to increase the success of your projects. Agility in project management encompasses three key areas: Making sure the development team can be productive and can sustainably increase productivity over long periods of time Ensuring that information about the project’s progress is available to stakeholders without interrupting the flow of development activities by asking the development team for updates Handling requests for new features as they occur and integrating them into the product development cycle An agile approach focuses on planning and executing the work to produce the best product that can be released. The approach is supported by communicating openly, avoiding distractions and wasteful activities, and ensuring that the progress of the project is clear to everyone. All 12 principles support project management, but principles 2, 8, and 10 stand out: (2) Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage. (8) Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. (10) Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — is essential. Following are some advantages of adopting agile project management: Agile project teams achieve faster time-to-market, and consequentially cost savings. They start development earlier than in traditional approaches because agile approaches minimize the exhaustive upfront planning and documentation that is conventionally part of the early stages of a waterfall project. Agile development teams are self-organizing and self-managing. The managerial effort normally put into telling developers how to do their work can be applied to removing impediments and organizational distractions that slow down the development team. Agile development teams determine how much work they can accomplish in an iteration and commit to achieving those goals. Ownership is fundamentally different because the development team is establishing the commitment, not complying with an externally developed commitment. An agile approach asks, “What is the minimum we can do to achieve the goal?” instead of focusing on including all the features and extra refinements that could possibly be needed. An agile approach usually means streamlining: barely sufficient documentation, removal of unnecessary meetings, avoidance of inefficient communication (such as email), and less coding (just enough to make it work). Creating complicated documents that aren’t useful for product development is a waste of effort. It’s okay to document a decision, but you don’t need multiple pages on the history and nuances of how the decision was made. Keep the documentation barely sufficient, and you will have more time to focus on supporting the development team. By encapsulating development into short sprints that last one to four weeks or less, you can adhere to the goals of the current iteration while accommodating change in subsequent iterations. The length of each sprint remains the same throughout the project to provide a predictable rhythm of development for the team long-term. Planning, elaborating on requirements, developing, testing, and demonstrating functionality occur within an iteration, lowering the risk of heading in the wrong direction for extended periods of time or developing something that the customer doesn’t want. Agile practices encourage a steady pace of development that is productive and healthy. For example, in the popular agile development set of practices called extreme programming (XP), the maximum workweek is 40 hours, and the preferred workweek is 35 hours. Agile projects are sustainable and more productive, especially long term. Traditional approaches routinely feature a death march, in which the project team puts in extremely long hours for days and even weeks at the end of a project to meet a previously unidentified and unrealistic deadline. As the death march goes on, productivity tends to drop dramatically. More defects are introduced, and because defects need to be corrected in a way that doesn’t break a different piece of functionality, correcting defects is the most expensive work that can be performed. Defects are often the result of overloading a system — specifically demanding an unsustainable pace of work. Priorities, experience on the existing project, and, eventually, the speed at which development will likely occur within each sprint are clear, making for good decisions about how much can or should be accomplished in a given amount of time. If you’ve worked on a project before, you might have a basic understanding of project management activities. In this table, you find a few traditional project management tasks, along with how you would meet those needs with agile approaches. Use the table to capture your thoughts about your experiences and how agile approaches looks different from traditional project management. Contrasting Historical Project Management with Agile Project Management Traditional Project Management Tasks Agile Approach to the Project Management Task Create a fully detailed project requirement document at the beginning of the project. Try to control requirement changes throughout the project. Create a product backlog — a simple list of requirements by priority. Quickly update the product backlog as requirements and priorities change throughout the project. Conduct weekly status meetings with all project stakeholders and developers. Send out detailed meeting notes and status reports after each meeting. The development team meets quickly, for no longer than 15 minutes, at the start of each day to coordinate and synchronize that day’s work and any roadblocks. They can update the centrally visible burndown chart in under a minute at the end of each day. Create a detailed project schedule with all tasks at the beginning of the project. Try to keep the project tasks on schedule. Update the schedule on a regular basis. Work within sprints and identify only specific tasks for the active sprint. Assign tasks to the development team. Support the development team by helping remove impediments and distractions. On agile projects, development teams define and pull (as opposed to push) their own tasks. Project management is facilitated by the following agile approaches: Supporting the development team Producing barely sufficient documents Streamlining status reporting so that information is pushed out by the development team in seconds rather than pulled out by a project manager over a longer period of time Minimizing nondevelopment tasks Setting expectations that change is normal and beneficial, not something to be feared or evaded Adopting a just-in-time requirements refinement to minimize change disruption and wasted effort Collaborating with the development team to create realistic schedules, targets, and goals Protecting the development team from organizational disruptions that could undermine project goals by introducing work not relevant to the project objectives Understanding that an appropriate balance between work and life is a component of efficient development View Article

Project Management How to Use the Agile Principles of Customer Satisfaction in Your Project Article / Updated 01-23-2024 Agile approaches focus on customer satisfaction, which makes sense. After all, the customer is the reason for developing the product in the first place. While all 12 principles support the goal of satisfying customers, principles 1, 2, 3, and 4 stand out for us: (1) Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. (2) Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage. (3) Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale. (4) Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. You may define the customer on a project in a number of ways: In project management terms, the customer is the person or group paying for the project. In some organizations, the customer may be a client, external to the organization. In other organizations, the customer may be a project stakeholder or stakeholders in the organization. The person who ends up using the product is also a customer. How do you enact these principles? Simply do the following: Agile project teams include a product owner, a person who is responsible for ensuring translation of what the customer wants into product requirements. The product owner prioritizes product features in order of business value or risk and communicates priorities to the development team. The development team delivers the most valuable features on the list in short cycles of development, known as iterations or sprints. The product owner has deep and ongoing involvement throughout each day to clarify priorities and requirements, make decisions, provide feedback, and quickly answer the many questions that pop up during a project. Frequent delivery of working functionality allows the product owner and the customer to have a full sense of how the product is developing. As the development team continues to deliver complete, working, potentially shippable functionality every four to eight weeks or less, the value of the total product grows incrementally, as do its functional capabilities. The customer accumulates value for his or her investment regularly by receiving new, ready-to-use functionality throughout the project, rather than waiting until the end of what might be a long project for the first, and maybe only, delivery of releasable product features. This table shows some customer satisfaction issues that commonly arise on projects. Use the table and gather some examples of customer dissatisfaction that you’ve encountered. Do you think agile project management would make a difference? Why or why not? Customer Dissatisfaction and How Agile Might Help Examples of Customer Dissatisfaction with Projects How Agile Approaches Can Increase Customer Satisfaction The product requirements were misunderstood by the development team. Product owners work closely with the customer to define and refine product requirements and provide clarity to the development team. Agile project teams demonstrate and deliver working functionality at regular intervals. If a product doesn’t work the way the customer thinks it should work, the customer is able to provide feedback at the end of the sprint, not before it’s too late at the end of the project. The product wasn’t delivered when the customer needed it. Working in sprints allows agile project teams to deliver high-priority functionality early and often. The customer can’t request changes without additional cost and time. Agile processes are built for change. Development teams can accommodate new requirements, requirement updates, and shifting priorities with each sprint, offsetting the cost of these changes by removing the lowest-priority requirements — functionality that likely will never or rarely get used. Check here for a blank template of this agile form. Agile strategies for customer satisfaction include the following: Producing, in each iteration, the highest-priority features first Ideally, locating the product owner and the other members of the project team in the same place to eliminate communication barriers Breaking requirements into groups of features that can be delivered in four to eight weeks or less Keeping written requirements sparse, forcing more robust and effective face-to-face communication Getting the product owner’s approval as functionality is completed Revisiting the feature list regularly to ensure that the most valuable requirements continue to have the highest priority View Article

Marketing Content Marketing Strategies For Dummies Cheat Sheet Cheat Sheet / Updated 01-23-2024 Lots of moving parts make up a successful content marketing strategy. Make the effort to complete all the content worksheets, and you will be on your way. This cheat sheet provides some tips for making your content marketing efforts successful. View Cheat Sheet

Calculation & Analysis Business Statistics For Dummies Cheat Sheet Cheat Sheet / Updated 12-21-2023 Statistics make it possible to analyze real-world business problems with actual data so that you can determine if a marketing strategy is really working, how much a company should charge for its products, or any of a million other practical questions. The science of statistics uses regression analysis, hypothesis testing, sampling distributions, and more to ensure accurate data analysis. View Cheat Sheet

Mergers & Acquisitions What Are Mergers and Acquisitions? Article / Updated 12-05-2023 Mergers and acquisitions (or M&A for short — the M&A world is rife with acronyms and initialisms) is a bit of a catchall phrase. For all intents and purposes, M&A simply means the buying and selling of companies. When you think about it, mergers and acquisitions aren’t different; they’re simply variations on the same theme. In the strictest sense, a merger is a combination of two or more entities where each merging entity has an equal stake in the new enterprise and each merging entity has a very clearly defined role in the new entity. This ideal is the vaunted merger of equals. Daimler’s 1998 combination with Chrysler was a merger of equals. In a more practical sense, so-called mergers of equals are rare; one side usually ends up controlling the enterprise. For example, the years following the Daimler-Chrysler merger showed that Daimler executives planned all along to control the combined entity. Although actual mergers do occur, most of the activity in the M&A world centers on one company buying another company, or the acquisitions category. Using the word merger keeps the uninitiated on their toes; plus, talking about combining two companies as equal partners rather than about committing a hostile takeover sounds much more egalitarian. Mergers are far less common than acquisitions. An acquisition is when one company buys another company, a division of another company, or a product line or certain assets from another company. Actually, an acquisition is when any kind of business purchases another part (or all) of another business. Although some companies grow organically (from within by creating and selling products or services), an acquisition allows a company to bypass the growth stage by simply buying existing sales and profits. Starting up a new product line may be less expensive than buying an existing one, but the market may take a while to adapt to the new product, if it does at all. For this reason, buying other companies rather than relying on organic growth may make sense for a particular company. The fact that one can transfer a company’s ownership through a sale often comes as a bit of surprise to many people (including many business owners, believe it or not). Business owners, especially owners of middle market and lower middle market companies, have spent their careers building a company, so the process of selling a business is often something new and foreign to them. Business with revenues between $250 million and $1 billion are considered middle market. Those between $20 million and $250 million are lower middle market. View Article

Business Communication How to Create Truly Engaging Presentations Article / Updated 10-30-2023 It’s in our nature to tell stories and share our life’s events. And you probably use hyperboles (exaggerations) to make your stories more engaging — peppering them with statements such as, “I nearly died of embarrassment” or “My feet were killing me.” While this casual sharing is different from being in front of an audience, you do know how to tell stories. You have lots of them. After all, you started telling stories when you made babbling sounds as a baby. You can use this innate storytelling ability to create presentations that engage your audience, rather than put them to sleep. Don't have time to read the entire article? Jump to the quick read summary. What do we think of when we hear "presentation?" PowerPoint slides. And, yes, slides are helpful — but they're helpful as visual aids, not as the main storyteller. Good storytelling can make your presentations sizzle in ways that slides can’t. An introduction to storyopia When people ask or search for "how to create a presentation," or "how to create a PowerPoint presentation," they're focusing on the technical aspect of the process. Of course, that's important. However, there's something even more critical to consider before you get down to creating your slides: Storyopia. My concept of Storyopia represents the ideal. It's marriage of the words "story" and "utopia." It’s the ideal story that takes the audience on a journey from what is to what could be; a journey to where they see themselves as heroes along that same path. Try to recall presentations you’ve attended. What drove the presentation? Bullet points? Charts? Tables? The monotonous drone of a facilitator plodding through a dry rendition of data? My guess is all of them. (A pretty tedious experience.) Since people began to communicate, storytelling has been the lifeblood to getting points or ideas across and making them memorable. Stories make ideas and words come alive. They explain examples or points of view in a way that resonates. People naturally connect emotionally with stories, associating their feelings with their learning. Stories aren’t meant to be objective. They’re meant to sway emotions, generate suspense, add surprise, create wonder, facilitate the call to action, and take your audience on a journey to success. Using the story arc When you create a presentation, keep the story arc in mind. The figure below shows the typical story arc (also known as dramatic arc or narrative arc). It represents storyopia. When creating a story using the arc as a guide, your story will have a natural, connected flow: Cite the incident (the plot) telling what is. Build rising tension toward the climax. Work towards the resolution, which is what could be. Always create tension in your story. It’s critical but often overlooked. If the tension isn’t obvious, this is a good opportunity to embellish with a story. After you’ve filled out a start-up brief — a tool for identifying your audience — you’ll have a good idea of your audience’s pain and what matters to them. Focus on storyopia: the gap between what is and what can be. Take them on that journey so they see themselves as heroes on the same path. To learn more about the start-up brief, as well as storyboarding and other helpful tools for preparing excellent presentations, grab a copy of my book/eBook Storytelling in Presentations For Dummies. As part of creating presentations, your story will have characters: people, companies, or things, such as processes or equipment. There will be goals, struggles, challenges, and a positive or negative outcome. Either outcome serves as a valuable lesson. Let’s see how beginnings, middles, and ends can become a story: Beginning: Introduce characters with the same challenge, problem, complication, or issue your audience is facing — the reason they’re attending. You’ll hook them because they’ll feel like they’re in the same situation. Edit the details to keep the story simple and relatable. You may start with, “One of my customers was dealing with your exact issue(s).” Middle: You’ve already sparked their curiosity. Now focus on the characters’ problems and how your solution brought the change they needed. Don’t merely go from Point A to Point B. The long cuts and shortcuts are what make the journey interesting, worthwhile, and relatable. End: This is where you tie it together, targeted to the CTA. Deliver the main takeaways and lessons your audience should remember based on the success of your characters. Let your audience see the happy ending where they imagine themselves as heroes achieving these same positive outcomes. Always give your characters names to make them more relatable, but change the names for the purpose of anonymity. People don’t identify with words such as attendee, coworker, colleague, or manager. Also, provide a vivid description of your main character and the setting so your audience can envision the scenario and place themselves in the situation. For example, if you’re presenting to a group about sales strategies because sales have been slumping, you may share a story of [name] who worked for [company for x years] and how he was able to bring his sales and commissions up to a much higher level by [strategy]. Pitting the heroes against the villains From bedtime stories when we were kids to great novels and movies as we became older, a good story draws us. We love heroes. They display qualities we admire. They show us how to overcome challenges. We can recall superhero caped crusaders: Batman, Batgirl, Superman, Zorro, Shazam, Wonder Woman, Scarlet Witch, Thor, and others. We all want to be superheroes and live happily ever after in our worlds of family, friends, and business. Are there heroes in business presentations? Absolutely — the audience! This is how heroes and villains play a role in happy endings: Heroes: Think of the character Yoda from the Star Wars series. Yoda was the legendary Jedi Master who trained Jedi Knights for 800 years. Yoda was cool. He was a hero in addition to being a mentor and instructor. He unlocked the path to immortality in characters such as Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and others who became heroes in their own rights. You can be the Yoda in your presentation, unlocking the path to slaying the villain and guiding your audience toward success. Heroes can even be antiheroes — people who display true human nature. People who make poor decisions that may harm those around them, intentionally or not. Some are even well intentioned, such as Robin Hood, the classical literary antihero. He stole from the rich (bad) and gave to the poor (good). Even Donald Duck has been labeled antihero for his short and often explosive temper. Villains: Without villains (often the most interesting characters) there would be no stories and no heroes. For example, if not for Cruella De Vil, 101 Dalmatians would merely feature lots of spotted canines running around. Without Scar in The Lion King scheming to be next in line to seize the throne, there would be no story, and Simba wouldn’t have become a hero. In business, the villain is the problem or challenge. That can be unscrupulous people, anti-technology diehards, a combative person, the competition, and so on. A villain may also be a non-person: a specific event, befuddled communication, meager lead generation, declining customer base, poor cash flow, inability to retain valuable employees, failure to balance quality and growth, software that isn’t producing as expected, and so much more. Happy endings: You don’t want the victory to be too easy or too predictable — it kills the interest and suspense. At the beginning of every story the villain must be strong, the victim’s problems must seem insurmountable, and the hero’s task must seem challenging. Your story needs an imagined future where the audience puts themselves in the place of slaying their villain and making themselves heroes. Perhaps your audience will use the knowledge they learned from you to: Add $$$ to their bottom line Become more innovative Discover the right tools or technology Take a leadership position Communicate with impact Get the big contract signed Procure a grant Quick Read Summary In our daily lives, we often use hyperboles to add zest to our stories, making them more engaging. But when it comes to presentations, we tend to default to bullet points and charts, which can be monotonous. However, there's a better way to captivate your audience: the art of storytelling. Think of a presentation, and you might envision PowerPoint slides. While slides have their place as visual aids, the real storyteller should be you. Good storytelling can infuse life into your presentations, leaving a lasting impact on your audience. Before diving into creating slides, consider "Storyopia," a concept that merges "story" and "utopia." Storyopia is the ideal narrative that takes your audience on a journey from the current reality to what could be, casting them as heroes along the way. Storytelling is a timeless means of communication. It breathes life into ideas and words, resonating emotionally with your audience. Stories are not meant to be objective but to evoke emotions, generate suspense, and facilitate the call to action. When crafting a presentation, keep the story arc in mind: Cite the Incident (What Is): Start by presenting the current scenario, laying out the facts. Build Tension: Create rising tension, keeping your audience engaged and curious. Work Towards Resolution (What Could Be): Guide your audience toward a better future, making them see themselves as heroes on the journey. To make your story relatable, introduce characters facing the same challenges as your audience. In the middle, highlight their struggles and how your solution brought positive change. End with the takeaways and lessons your audience should remember. Heroes and villains play a crucial role in your narrative. Your audience becomes the hero, looking to you as their guide (like Yoda in Star Wars), helping them overcome the villain (the problem or challenge). The villain can take various forms, from uncooperative individuals to technological obstacles. To ensure an engaging story, make the victory challenging but achievable. Your audience should envision themselves slaying their own villains and becoming heroes in their respective narratives. Incorporate storytelling into your presentations to inspire your audience and leave a lasting impact. Whether it's increasing profits, fostering innovation, or solving challenges, your storytelling can guide them to success. Unleash the power of Storyopia and transform your presentations from mundane to unforgettable. Make your audience the hero in their own story of triumph. Hungry for more? Go back and read the article or check out the book. View Article

Marketing Dummies Custom Solutions: Your Smartest Content Marketing Choice Article / Updated 10-24-2023 If you’re responsible for your company’s B2B marketing strategy, you face the ongoing challenge of reaching new prospective clients and explaining your products and services. In today’s business world, where most marketing is digital, simply posting ads is not enough — it’s a short-term solution to what should be a long game plan, especially for businesses with complex products and services. That’s why most marketing leaders turn to content marketing. Reaching your target audience with content marketing Content marketing involves producing and distributing educational information on topics your target audience finds valuable and interesting. This can include blogs on your website, social media posts, videos, podcasts, white papers, infographics, and ebooks. These strategies help establish your business as a thought leader, get the attention of potential clients, and strengthen connections with your existing partners and clients. Why does content marketing work? Most decision-makers these days research companies online and take more time to make their buying decisions. Custom created, educational content that is of high interest to your audience, written in a straightforward and no-nonsense way, answers their questions, offers something new, and is an excellent way to establish your expertise. Custom content makes the all-important connection breakthrough. And, once you have the attention of a potential client, you’re able to further explain your company, its specialties, and why it’s better than the competition. Dummies Custom Solutions: Great value for boosted recognition Social media, blogs, and email marketing campaigns are important tools to stay on top of, but if you’re looking for a truly unique way to distinguish yourself in today’s competitive marketplace, consider Dummies Custom Solutions, a Wiley offering. You know Dummies — everybody does. People around the world turn to Dummies books and eBooks when they want Learning Made Easy. We’ve been around a long time, and our brand awareness and book sales continue to grow. That’s because Dummies specializes in translating complex subject matter into content that is accurate, straightforward, and easy-to-understand. Working with the Dummies Custom Solutions editorial team, you get a fully customized Dummies eBook (and printed book, if needed) for your company or product that you can distribute in a variety of ways, including: Sign-ups on your website Webinar attendance Professional conferences and other events Email marketing campaigns Dummies Custom Solutions also creates infographics, iPapers, animated videos, audio, cheat sheets, and branded graphics for social media posts. All of these tools complement your eBook and drive traffic to your website, and they create an integrated content marketing approach. Dummies Custom Solutions distinguishes your business among the noise in the market with something unique — increased exposure through the Dummies network of properties, a book, and other materials that help you: Boost awareness of your company or product Nurture relationships with current clients Establish your company as an authority/expert/thought leader Generate leads We help you make that all-important connection to your audience in ways that build confidence in your brand and deliver results for you. What’s more, Dummies is a brand of Wiley, a multinational publisher and global leader in research and education. You can boost your sales, leads, and recognition as an authority by co-branding with Dummies and Wiley. a.drops-article-callout.callout-mobile{display:none}[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout.drops-callout-generic{padding:35px 0 40px 0;margin-bottom:35px;border:0;border-bottom:1px solid #d8d8d8;background:#fff;width:100%}[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout.drops-callout-generic:focus-visible{outline:none}[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout.drops-callout-generic img{margin-bottom:0}.drops-callout-col.has-drops-callouts[data-v-d27f2bfe]:after{content:"";display:block;margin:40px 0 35px}.drops-callout-col.has-drops-callouts[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout{background:none;border:none;padding:0}.drops-callout-col.has-drops-callouts[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout img{max-width:100%;height:auto}@media only screen and (max-width:1023px){[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout.drops-callout-generic{padding:32px 0 30px 0;margin-bottom:28px}.drops-callout-col.has-drops-callouts[data-v-d27f2bfe]{padding:0!important}.drops-callout-col.has-drops-callouts[data-v-d27f2bfe]:after{margin:32px 24px 27px;border-color:#d8d8d8}.drops-callout-col.has-drops-callouts[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout{background-color:#f2f2f2;width:100%}.drops-callout-col.has-drops-callouts[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout img{width:66.7%}}@media only screen and (max-width:767px){[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout.callout-desktop{display:none}[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout.callout-mobile{display:block}[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout.drops-callout-generic{background:#ffd200;padding:0;margin:22px 0 60px;position:relative}[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout.drops-callout-generic:after{display:block;border-bottom:1px solid #d8d8d8;position:absolute;padding-bottom:35px;width:100%;content:""}.drops-callout-col.has-drops-callouts[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout{padding:0 16px}.drops-callout-col.has-drops-callouts[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout.callout-mobile{width:100%}.drops-callout-col.has-drops-callouts[data-v-d27f2bfe] a.drops-article-callout.callout-mobile img{width:414px}} Case Study: Thron Key objectives: Increase awareness of Content Intelligence and the THRON brand, thanks to the proven authority of the Dummies books Become recognized experts on Content Intelligence, thanks to the easy way to explain difficult things that characterizes the Dummies books Find new companies interested in our Intelligent DAM How were the assets used? Free e-book to download from our websites to inform and develop people on CI Free promotional materials for events to widen the audience and make them aware of the topic Gift for our clients and THRON employees to strengthen engagement What results did you see? 8,000 e-books downloaded 750 print books given out How have your customers reacted to the book and what feedback have they shared with you? The book was really welcomed. It helped the customers to improve their usage of the software; on the other hand, it speeded up the onboarding process of new clients. Some of them even chose Content Intelligence For Dummies as their summer reading! “The proven experience of Dummies was a great lever for us to spread the voice about an increasing strategic topic, like Content Intelligence.” –Nicola Meneghello, founder and CEO of THRON, author of Content Intelligence For Dummies View Article