It’s time to “Niche Down.” Find your Different at CCE 2019

Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

Aubrey (Levinstone) Coggins manages Constellation's marketing and communications programs and is the producer of DisrupTV, a weekly Web series on innovation and the enterprise.  She previously served as a senior manager of corporate communications at Egnyte and held account roles at Access Communications and The Hoffman Agency. Born and raised in Texas, she received a bachelor's degree in Public Relations from The University of Texas at Austin – Hook ‘em!   ...

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Most of us are tricked into believing that achieving personal and professional success means fitting in. What it really takes is the courage to stand out. How do you become legendary and make a big impact? By being different.

Christopher Lochhead and Heather Clancy, authors of “Niche Down,” will take the main stage at Connected Enterprise in a few weeks and share inspiring stories and themes from their new book. How do we exploit the exponential value of what makes us different vs. the incremental value of what makes us better? We will be challenged with new ways of thinking and problem solving. Whether you are an entrepreneur, moving up in your career or shaking things up, there’s something for everyone in this. I personally can’t wait to watch their keynote. 

Connected Enterprise is just a few weeks away – November 4-7 at the Half Moon Bay Ritz-Carlton! This year’s lineup of keynotes, fireside chats, panelists and attendees is one not to be missed. Here’s a quick snapshot:

• Vint Cerf, "Father of the Internet" and Chairperson at The People-Centered Internet
• Annie McKee, Author, Speaker, Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania
• John Hagel, Management Consultant, Speaker and Author
• Alan Beaulieu, Principal at ITR Economics
• Marie L. Wieck, General Manager at IBM Blockchain
• Tricia Wang, Co-Founder at Sudden Compass
• Aneel Bhusri, Co-Founder and CEO at Workday

Beyond the main stage and official sessions, CCE offers many opportunities to network during the dinners, golf, receptions and other breaks before, during and after the sessions. I’m always blown away by all of the lessons I personally take away from the non-structured portions of the event. If you are new this year to CCE, be sure to look for one of the Constellation team members. We’ll be happy to make introductions. 

A few highlights to mark down on your schedule:

• The welcome reception happens on the first evening of the event. Come ready for a mocktail or cocktail and networking!  
• The agenda is almost finalized. All sessions are on the main stage, and while we’d love for you to make every session, we get that things come up. Try to schedule meetings and unofficial networking talk around the panels and talks. There’s plenty of time to squeeze it all in. 
• BT150 winners will be inducted for 2019-2020 at the conference. 
• The results are in, and hopefully I won’t spill the beans before the SuperNova Awards Ceremony. We had so many great case studies this year.
• Golf and spa options are available for attendees. 

Be sure to register as soon as possible since space is filling up fast. Check out the agenda, and get ready for a fast and mind-expanding experience.

Save the date for next year - Oct 26-29, 2020. Our 10th anniversary is going to be awesome! 

As Barney" Stinson in “How I Met Your Mother” would say, it’s going to be “Legen… wait for it…dary… Legendary." Let’s explore our differences at the conference and Niche Down. See you in a few weeks! Looking forward to meeting/catching up with you.  

Order out of chaos

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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Why is blockchain the way it is? Why should any storage system ? no matter how distributed it is, or “immutable” ? need to consume such a lot of the world’s electricity?  The answer is more political than technological.

I don't mean party-political, but more basically blockchain is always about power. Blockchain is rooted in the rejection of fiat currency and centralised administration. Cryptocurrency advocates generally oppose the way that traditional money is organised, and favor an unorthodox and expensive way of organising electronic cash. And most other blockchain applications seek essentially to change the way that shared data is managed; that is, they want to alter power structures. 

By better understanding its unusual objectives and starting assumptions, you’ll improve the chances of success when planning new blockchain applications (experience shows at least 90% of blockchain pilots are failing to proceed to production).  The reality is that most proposed extensions of blockchain beyond cryptocurrency are not good ideas, as I hope to show.

Can we generalise from cryptocurrency to data management?

The Bitcoin blockchain takes an exorbitant approach to solve the well-understood Double Spend problem in cryptocurrency.  Bitcoin started from a desire to remove some of the management structures of conventional money systems (structures which happen to simplify transactions and save costs). When considering non-currency applications for blockchain platforms, we have to first check whether the same approach is warranted, and whether the same assumptions are even sensible. Most real-life data management is much more complex than the rarefied world of cryptocurrency.

Thousands of nodes are needed to support Bitcoin’s blockchain and the like ? not because storage of transaction logs really needs to be distributed, nor because account holders don’t trust other computers ? but in order to crowd-source a special decision-making process which could be done by a single system administrator if it were trusted to do so.  The goal of the original blockchain was to arrive at a chronological order of accepted transactions, as a means to stop Double Spend.

The importance of order

A core feature of all practical cryptocurrency systems is cryptographic private keys, possessed by account holders. Private keys are used to digitally sign transactions, to prove that someone is in control of an account and that they consent to move some of their balance to another account. The Double Spend problem arises simply because using the same private key to sign the same transaction (e.g. “Transfer 10 Clams from A to B”) results in the same cryptogram.  So if we see the same transaction more than once, how can we tell if it’s real before anyone takes advantage of a bogus balance? There needs to be a mechanism for watching each transaction and deciding if it’s legitimate or an attempted Double Spend.

For decades it had been assumed that the oversight of cryptocurrency movements would have to be done centrally, by a digital reserve bank or some scheme operator (akin to the private credit card systems).  The idea of a non-fiat cryptocurrency seemed a fantasy ? until Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin and the blockchain. 

Arguably the most ingenious aspect of Nakamoto’s blockchain is the way it crowdsources the oversight.  The outcome of the blockchain algorithm is a public history of accepted transactions, which is updated periodically and shared across many nodes. The famous “consensus” process underlying the blockchain delivers agreement about just one thing: the time order of transactions ? for that is enough to detect and reject attempted Double Spends.

Cryptographic security systems usually require key lifecycle management to ensure certain private keys are in the hands of certain registered users.  But blockchain was designed on the basis that no authority registers the account holders.  And yet it pretty much guarantees that Bitcoin will move from one account to another, with nobody knowing anything about who is in control of the essential private keys.  Blockchain is the only cryptographic system I know of that provides such certainty without centrally organised key management.  It literally produces order out of chaos.

Is there anything (else) like cryptocurrency?

So there’s really only one question to ask before qualifying a potential application for most blockchains: Is your use case truly devoid of key lifecycle management?  Do you want a situation where nobody knows which private keys go with which user accounts? 

Foregoing key lifecycle management is highly unusual, which explains why beneficially generalising blockchain to regular data management is so rare. Most business systems have an intrinsic order: there’s a scheme by which users, accounts and/or devices all go together.  Strangely, some of the strongest interest in blockchain lies in environments that are otherwise highly organised, such as supply chain, asset management, and the Internet of Things, yet in these settings, key management and user or device registration are normal. 

If Key Lifecycle Management is necessary, rethink blockchain

If there are other reasons for needing key lifecycle management, then you should rethink blockchain or crowdsourcing consensus. IoT and supply chain are widely touted blockchain use cases, which fall into this problematic category.  

Some futurists envisage swarms of autonomous robots self-organising to achieve some sort of outcome, but all industrial IoT today is far more orderly.  Devices come with serial numbers and IP addresses!  There is no uncertainty whatsoever where any given cryptographic keys are located.

Likewise, there’s no crypto-chaos in any supply chain. Growers, makers, distributers, agents, warehouse personnel and couriers are all employees or contractors; they’re all formally registered, and they interact with supply chain records via specific accounts and terminal equipment. There’s nothing about this sort of environment that requires you crowd-source consensus as to the order in which transactions take place.

Encryption for confidentiality also creates erodes the blockchain proposition.  Almost everybody agrees that personal information should never be held on a public blockchain, but many pundits presume that encryption will make it OK.  But encryption for confidentiality requires key lifecycle management: you need assurance of which key pair goes with which intended recipient of the encrypted data, so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. And if you can organise that, then decentralizing any other aspect of the ledger is futile. 

Blockchain brings a heady basket of benefits: extreme tamper resistance, decentralisation, synchronisation, and ultra-high availability.  But none of these are unique to blockchain.  Blockchain’s only special trick is it delivers security in the absence of key lifecycle management, and that’s the explanation for its weird and wonderful and inefficient architecture.  In the real world, most use cases require user registration, and then blockchain loses its reason for being.

Constellation Releases Q3 ShortList Updates: Who’s New to the List?

Doug Henschen

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

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With more than 70 lists to choose from, the Constellation Research ShortList library offers an invaluable (free) resource for technology buyers.

What vendors should be on your short list when considering technology purchases? The Constellation Research ShortList offers our take on that very question, and we now offer 74 lists across enterprise software and services. These ShortLists are updated twice yearly, in Q1 and Q3, ensuring fresh insight for your upcoming purchase decisions.

What sets ShortLists apart? For starters they’re free to all, as are our AstroCharts on that latest trends in business and technology. The second differentiator of ShortLists is that they’re focused on emerging technologies and capabilities that pioneers and early adopters are looking to exploit to drive innovation.These are spelled out in "Threshold Criteria" included with each list.

To share one example, among the 14 ShortLists that I personally oversee, the Constellation ShortList for Smart, Augmented BI and Analytics looks at computer-aided features that help users with data-preparation, discovery and analysis, natural language interaction, and trending, forecasting and prediction. Aided by heuristics, machine learning, natural language processing and automation features, these emerging augmented features can be helpful to novice business users and advanced data analysts alike.  

Which vendors and products made it onto our Q3 Constellation ShortLists? There are dozens of new names across all our lists, but here are a handful of examples from my own ShortLists:

• Qlik and SAP are new to my Smart, Augmented BI and Analytics ShortList for Q3. Qlik Sense was added in the wake of Qlik’s January 2019 acquisition of Crunch Data and subsequent integration of its CrunchBot and natural language understanding capabilities. Qlik also added an Associative Insights feature that spots correlations, patterns and outliers related to selected measures. The SAP Analytics Cloud has a range of smart capabilities, including ML-assisted data prep; Smart Insight, Discovery, Grouping and Predict features; Conversational Analytics; and Forecasting and Value-Driver Tree analysis for planning.

• Stibo Systems is new to our Q3 Master Data Management ShortList on the strength of its multi-domain MDM platform and growing cloud partnerships, including, most recently, MuleSoft, Tenovos and Tenzing.

• Dataiku made our Q3 update of the Self-Service Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning ShortList on the strength of growing customer adoption and continued development of Dataiku DSS. The DSS platform addresses the needs of data-analyst “clickers,” through a visual user interface, as well as data scientists and data engineers, who can code and use a range of notebooks, languages, ML libraries and APIs.

• The Q3 2019 Self-Service Data Preparation ShortList added Informatica on the strength of cloud data lake, prep, data quality, collaboration and autoscaling advances in Informatica Data Preparation 10.2.2 along with maturation of its suite-based approach, supporting catalog and CLAIR AI engine.

There aren’t just new vendors to consider. A few of my colleagues introduced entirely new ShortLists in Q3, like Holger Mueller’s DevOps ShortList and R “Ray” Wang’s Innovation Services and Engineering ShortList. Be sure to check out the entire collection and consider the threshold criteria for inclusion in each ShortList. These are the leading-edge capabilities that should be on your buying radar.

DisrupTV: Diving into Data Science to Build Trust and Innovation

Sharon Lee

Marketing Intern
Constellation Research

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“Data science isn’t new. What we’re doing with it is.” 

On episode 160 of DisrupTV our host Vala Afshar and guest host Dion Hinchcliffe interviewed Anushka Anand, Senior Product Manager at Tableau Software; Xiao-Li Meng, Author and Data Scientist at Harvard; and Jon Reed, Co-Founder at Diginomica to discuss the growing possibilities in the data science frontier. Here are a few takeaways from the episode:

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will Transform the Data Analytics Space

“Analysts spend 80% of their time preparing data and only 20% analyzing it,” according to Anushka Anand. Currently, the most challenging part of data analytics is data cleaning. Anand said machine learning has the potential to clean data to allow people to perform more meaningful analysis- a major opportunity. It won’t replace the old task but rather complement the analyst’s job interacting with data. 

Machine learning and artificial intelligence can also be used to build trust with customers who use smart products. Customers are often skeptical when there are automated functions in a system, such as an information filtering system that gives recommendations, as they pertain to individual privacy. The ability to explain these functions behind the algorithm is key to building trust with customers and ensuring success of the product.

2019 Conference Focus on Data Quality in an Enterprise Context and Other Hot Topics

With Fall conference season just around the corner, there are multiple enterprise tech trends to keep an eye on. Jon Reed gave tips on how to approach these trends by turning it into a fun interactive game. Vendors are expected to hype up 5g, Cloud, and DevOps. When vendors promote 5g, you ask “What are the use cases?” When vendors promote the cloud, you ask “What about cloud security?”. Reed reminded us that with each of these trends, it is important to look at each industry specifically and remember that all trends have a dark side we must discuss. Be sure to check out his full interview for hilarious and educational takeaways.

Data Science has Innovative uses in Producing Governmental Data

Xiao-Li Meng joined the show to share his work on governmental data and the unexpected law of large populations. His primary teaching method attempts to demonstrate how one can quickly learn a large amount about a topic using statistical analysis. Meng explains the power of representative sampling. All current statistical techniques are based on the idea that data is mixed well enough. The real problem is that the natural population, especially in self reported polls, do not provide randomly reported samples.

Meng’s work focuses on how small data actually is, and he explains this in the context of the 2016 elections and how the negative effects were exacerbated because the data was not well mixed. It’s much easier to measure the quantity rather than the quality of data. Quality depends on which questions you ask. Data quality is crucial, and this is where AI and data cleaning comes in to aid the process.

As we make our way further into the data science space, there are countless new discoveries and challenges that arise. The solutions aren’t certain, but what is certain is that enterprises must use data science to stay relevant.

This is just a small glimpse at the great insight shared during the show. Please check out the full discussions in the video replay here or the podcast.

DisrupTV Episode 160, Featuring Anushka Anand, Xiao-Li Meng, Jon Reed from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

DisrupTV is a weekly Web series with hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar. The show airs live at 11:00 a.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m. ET every Friday.

DisrupTV: Building Human Connection in a Digital World

“In this very digital world, the greatest disruptor is the human emotion.” While modern technology can enable advanced forms of interpersonal interaction, it must be used thoughtfully to produce meaningful results.

On episode 159 of DisrupTV, our hosts Vala Afshar and R “Ray” Wang interviewed Melanie Katzman Ph.D., Author of CONNECT FIRST: 52 Simple Ways to Ignite Success, Meaning, and Joy at Work; Les Ottolenghi, EVP & CIO at Caesars Entertainment; and Brian Fanzo, Speaker & Change Evangelist. Here are a few quick takeaways from the episode:

Connect with Colleagues to Enhance Worker Productivity

Whether technology is a helper or a hindrance for workplace communication all depends on how it is used. In her new book, CONNECT FIRST, author Melanie Katzman Ph.D. emphasizes the importance of establishing meaningful connections with your coworkers and business partners. Technology can certainly assist on this front by bringing people together from all over the world; unfortunately, as more people rely on computers to communicate, they can forget to form those fundamental human-level bonds with their associates.

Melanie’s book is grounded in the idea that maintaining human connection is essential to create meaning and joy at work. If you can create a meaningful experience for your employees, the spillover benefits will be immense: people will come to work engaged and motivated to do more for the organization. Conversely, Melanie warns that disengaged employees don’t produce at the level that they could. For those seeking to create a more connected workplace, Melanie’s book has several helpful tips to read up on.

IT Development is All About Finding and Solving Business Problems

Some big changes are occurring in sin city. Les Ottolenghi has led Caesars Entertainment down the path of digital transformation by overseeing the creation of a modernized IT infrastructure and software suite for all their properties, which has allowed Caesars to implement an entirely new customer engagement model. This massive transformation initiative epitomizes the process of establishing business goals first and using technology to reach the desired outcome.

In Caesars’s case, the underlying goal of their investments was to deliver a superb and innovative customer experience. To achieve this, they first needed to reach a deeper understanding of their customers’ individual needs. Using advanced data collection and analytics technologies, they have been able to determine consumer preferences for entertainment and subsequently create the standout customer experience that they had been striving for.

Les is one of the newest members of Constellation’s BT150. Each year, Constellation Research recognizes innovative executives who are leading business transformation efforts and making an impact within their industries.

Create Content Strategically to Build Trust

As brands realize the importance of creating content to engage with their customers, Brian Fanzo says that the key to connecting with modern audiences is developing trust. Companies need to be strategic with the content they choose to produce, focusing specifically on building and scaling trust. Brian says that podcasting has emerged as the most intimate medium for digital content. Almost like reading a book, people can listen to others’ stories while applying their own vision to what they are hearing. Being able to foster this kind of personal connection to the organization’s content can make a huge difference when attempting to reach diverse audiences.

While businesses face complex macro problems, concern for technology should never supplant concern for the individual. Thoughtfully forming connections with people is a good practice that won’t go out of fashion.

This is just a small glimpse at the great insight shared during the show. Please check out the full discussions in the video replay here or the podcast.

DisrupTV Episode 159, Featuring Les Ottolenghi, Melanie Katzman, Brian Fanzo from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

DisrupTV is a weekly Web series with hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar. The show airs live at 11:00 a.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m. ET every Friday.

Patient IDs: safety in numbers

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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The state of healthcare is often compared with banking. For 20 years we've had Internet banking; for ten years mobile banking. Why can't we access our health records and prescriptions just as seamlessly using digital technology?  It's a great question but as we embrace mobile and electronic health, let's not forget the basics. 

If I go to an Australian general practitioner, I might like her to upload a copy of my medical event summary to the national My Health Record (MyHR). To make this happen, the practice needs to know my Individual Health Identifier (IHI), the national index number for MyHR.  But I don't carry my IHI; it's an administrative number alloacted to all Australians, and is made available from a Dept of Health server. The way MyHR works is that I need to provide proof of identity to the GP's front desk so they can retrieve the IHI. They will typically need my full name with middle name, my Medicare card number, and date of birth, which are transmitted to an identity matching server in Canberra, which tries to find my IHI. Matching accuracy is a bone of contention with the government and reports vary, but some claim it's only around fifty percent. Sometimes it's possible to disambiguate multiple matches with additional data like postal code or residential address. 

Suppose I visit a department store to buy a three thousand dollar TV set. I'll dip my credit card into the merchant terminal and enter my PIN. That unlocks the chip, which then mutually authenticates itself with the terminal, and subsequently digitally signs the trasaction details, to prove it's really me in possession of the account, and that the card is genuine.  It all happens in a second. Secure, accurate, private, fast and universally familiar.

Heaven forbid retail payments was like healthcare. I wouldn't have a clue what my account number was, it wouldn't be written down anywhere, but instead the merchant would ask me for my full name, date of birth and so on, and would try to run these against a database to locate my account. The matching wouldn't always work so the clerk might ask me if I have other proof of ID. I'd probably find myself taking my passport with me whenever I go shopping.  Every transaction would involve extraneous and invasive personal information.  The system would be open to rampant fraud.  

If we really want to bring ehealth up to contemporary digital UX standards, then let's start with identity and privacy. Let's put healthcare IDs and entitlements into chip cards and mobile phone secure elements, with the same technical care as we apply to payment card numbers.  Let's empower patients to hold their IHI and Medicare details safely in personal cards and mobiles, so they can present them directly and privately, peer-to-peer at healthcare services. 

Australian readers might notice that we are half way there already in this country, with the "HICAPS" point of sale system.  Private health insurance details are presented by swiping one's membership card at the POS terminal at most private hospitals, dentists and allied health facilities, and rebates are applied automatically on the spot. Why aren't we reading the Medicare card in the same way, and presenting the IHI automatically, along with all the other human services IDs and entitlements? 

My thanks to Dr Tony Sara, Medical Adviser in the South East Sydney Local Health District (NSW Health) for a deep conversation about health sector identification at the HIMSS Asia Pacific networking event, Aug 29, and to Sukhjit Singh, HIMSS Community Engagement Manager for making the introductions. 

Constellation ShortList Portfolio Final Updates for Q3 2019

Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

Aubrey (Levinstone) Coggins manages Constellation's marketing and communications programs and is the producer of DisrupTV, a weekly Web series on innovation and the enterprise.  She previously served as a senior manager of corporate communications at Egnyte and held account roles at Access Communications and The Hoffman Agency. Born and raised in Texas, she received a bachelor's degree in Public Relations from The University of Texas at Austin – Hook ‘em!   ...

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Today, we launched the final set of updates to our Constellation ShortList portfolio, including 25 new and updated lists. The full set will be reviewed and updated again in Q1 2020.

Check out the update:

• B2B Marketing Automation
• B2C Marketing Automation
• Customer Loyalty
• Data Cataloging
• Data Lake Management
• DevOps -NEW
• Digital Asset Management (DAM) for DX
• Digital Asset Management (DAM) for High Volume Commerce
• Digital Canvas Workboards
• Enterprise Group Messaging
• Enterprise Low-Code Tools and Platforms
• Healthcare Clinical Communication
• Hybrid- and Multi-Cloud NoSQL Stores
• Integration Platform as a Service (IPaaS)
• Marketing Analytics Solutions
• Master Data Management
• Next-Gen Databases - RDBMS for On Premises
• Next-Generation Computing Platforms
• North American Talent Acquisition
• Partner & Alliance Relationship Management (PARM)
• Payroll for North American SMBs
• Quantum Computing Platforms
• Robotic Process Automation
• Social/ Digital Media Listening/ Monitoring/ Engagement Platforms
• Virtual Care Platforms

This portfolio highlights the key players when considering investments across all of our coverage areas, including digital asset management, healthcare, DevOps, RPA, marketing, customer experience, analytics, quantum computing and more. Each offering meets the threshold criteria as determined by our analysts through client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share and internal research. These reports are part of Constellation’s open research library and are free to download.

For more information, visit https://www.constellationr.com/shortlist.

Creating the Modern Digital Workplace and Employee Experience

Dion Hinchcliffe

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Title: About Dion Hinchcliffe Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized business strategist, bestselling author, enterprise architect, industry analyst, and noted keynote speaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in digital strategy, the future of work, and enterprise IT. He works with the leadership teams of large enterprises as well as software vendors to raise the bar for the art-of-the-possible in their digital capabilities. He is currently Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. Dion is also currently an executive fellow at the Tuck School of Business Center for Digital Strategies. He is a globally recognized industry expert on the topics of digital transformation, digital workplace, enterprise collaboration, API…...

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How should we design the modern employee experience? Some form of this query is perhaps the leading question I get today from IT and HR teams as they grapple with the sweeping forces of technological and societal change happening all around us.

Many questions abound: Why isn’t tool adoption happening faster? What can I do to maximize the impact of existing technologies and investments? What is the design focus of the digital workplace today? How can I measure my employee experience? Is the intranet still relevant?  What do I do about Shadow IT? What about the super suites like Office365 and Google Suite? Are they inevitable or should we pick and choose? How do I design and integrate all of this into a more cohesive whole? Is low-code, no-code an end-user technology that I should be rolling out? Where does artificial intelligence (AI) fit into an overall digital workplace strategy? What else am I missing to stay ahead of the curve?

These and many other issues are top of mind in digital workplace teams this year. Such teams are a relatively new construct I’ve only seen emerging in the last half-decade or so. Created well, they can bring order to the complexity and confusion that often reigns in the overall digital employee experience today, and they tend to be found more often in larger, well-funded IT organizations. The responsibility of such groups, which in their best form are integrated into a center or network of excellence with HR and other groups, has become profound as it drives forward employee engagement with technology, improves worker effectiveness, and even contributes directly to the competitive stance of the organization as a whole.

To help digital workplace teams in IT as well as employee experience specialists in HR groups, I’ve assembled a brand new report containing what I see are the top trends coming together today that must be addressed and/or are becoming unignorable bottom-up issues in these vital domains for workers, especially knowledge workers that drive the growth in today’s global economy. 

The reality on the ground is that support groups that enable workers with technology are often simply overwhelmed and underbudgeted with a deep bench of legacy technology to manage, too many new systems, applications, and digital channels that need to be deployed, and are often well behind where they want to be to become a best-in-class organization, which has become crucial in an increasingly winner-takes-all digital operating environment.

Titled Modern Digital Workplace Trends and Emerging Practices, this just-published report aims to bring together a single view of the major issues and concerns that digital workplace and employee experience practitioners must face successfully to help their organizations thrive in the digital age. I believe this view, shown in summary in the visual above, can form a blueprint and checklist for how practitioners can not only succeed, but get ahead in their efforts today.

Modern Digital Workplace Issues and Key Topics

Here is a summary of the issues and topics addressed in this report, highlighted in red dots in the visual above:

• Users caught between best-of-breed vs. large digital workplace suites.
• Local tool choice trumps one-size-fits-all.
• Design thinking and principles guide the overall realization of the digital workplace.
• Building employee skills with just-in-time digital workplace training.
• Employee experiences move to integrated digital workplaces.
• Every employee is becoming a citizen developer.
• Digital workplace hubs unite experiences.
• Solutions are increasingly shaped by use cases and business processes.
• Design and measurement take advantage of workplace analytics.
• The digital workplace is extended and automated by intelligent technologies.
• Work is more deeply digitized and coordinated. 
• The digital workplace experience extends to more audiences.
• Experience design drives a more effective and relevant digital workplace.
• The employee experience is connected to the devices that drive the business.
• Employee experiences will be guided by voice.
• Digital transformation of the workplace gets more investment and organization.

Those using this report for their digital workplace and employee experience planning are recommended to adapt these ideas and trends to their organization. While I’ve attempted to cull the cumulative experience from dozens of digital workplace initiatives and projects that I’ve had the priveldge to lead, work on, or review, almost all strategies, concepts, and technologies must be shaped for a particular organizations’ culture, inclinations, and sensitivities.

Please contact me at [email protected] to discuss how these issues and topics can best be addressed in your organization.

New Report: Modern Digital Workplace Trends and Emerging Practices

DisrupTV: Establishing Sustainability as a Core Value

“If we can go out and try to drive this kind of change, I think it’s possible for anyone.” Pursuing sustainability, much like digital transformation, can have its short-term risks, but there is value in being a purpose driven company for those who seek it out.

On episode 158 of DisrupTV our hosts Vala Afshar and R “Ray” Wang caught up with Tim O'Keeffe, Chief Executive Officer at Symmons Industries; and Heather Clancy, Editorial Director at GreenBiz Group, to discuss the pairing of business objectives and goals for sustainability. Here are the top 5 takeaways from the episode:

Improving Efficiency Goes Hand in Hand with Improving Sustainability:

Tim O’Keefe is pushing Symmons Industries into the future with an innovative and efficient water management solution, demonstrating that improved products can also be greener. Symmons’ breakthrough business model centers around the use of sensors and software to provide advanced insights into a building’s water management system. With their new solution they are targeting the hospitality sector and offering a vastly improved guest experience. The Symmons platform can predict problems with a building’s water system before they occur, ensuring that water at the right temperature is delivered to guests at the right time. Increased efficiency also reduces the massive amounts of water and energy wasted while guests wait for their water to get hot. Consequently, hotels save on their energy bills and can declare sustainability as an element of their brands. In the future, automation may even allow Symmons to offer a water-as-a-service business model.

Old Businesses Can be Taught New Tricks:

Only a few years ago, Symmons Industries was a traditional plumbing manufacturer. To push for innovation within the organization, Tim says it took perseverance and curiosity. When faced with hesitant stakeholders and the breakneck pace of technological change, Tim advocates “Firing bullets instead of cannon balls”. He says that Innovation is an iterative process of taking small shots, learning from the feedback, and pushing forward. Furthermore, Tim described Symmons as a purpose driven company. He was personally motivated to reimagine how water is managed and spread this vision across the entire company, inspiring a culture of change and innovation. It takes bold and visionary leadership to explore new possibilities and move the needle. Tim’s advice for others: “be comfortable being uncomfortable”.

C-suite Champions are Required to Shift Organizational Culture:

Pursuing sustainability not only requires a change in processes, but it also requires a culture shift that everyone in the organization must be bought into. Heather Clancy says that often the actions required for sustainability are basic; however, organizations need a C-suite champion to operationalize a culture of sustainability and make real change happen.

Long Term Thinking Delivers Lasting Rewards:

Smart, long term investments are necessary to survive in our rapidly changing world. To illustrate this fact, Heather detailed the redevelopment of Kearny point, a historic shipyard. The site’s developer decided to completely reimagine the location after Superstorm Sandy. With support from the public sector, they have worked to build green infrastructure, repurpose older facilities to house sustainable businesses, and encourage new jobs to move onto the site. The underlying goal of the project is to rebuild the area as a model for sustainable economic development. Although oftentimes passed up on, the opportunity to think in the long-term can help differentiate a product and extract sustained rewards. You can read up on Kearny point here: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/new-jersey-developer-charts-course-urban-resilience-historic-shipyard.

Sustainable Development Goals Should be Tied to Business Goals:

As companies reevaluate their objectives for the next 5 to 10 years, sustainable business goals could make a global impact. When organizations discuss sustainability, it should be established as a core value - not just a marketing gimmick. According to Heather, companies used to cherry pick a few peripheral initiatives that they could carry out for sustainability. In the future, when sustainability efforts have proven value, more companies may incorporate sustainability into their core business objectives.

Sustainable development, as with digital transformation, doesn’t happen overnight. These are challenging yet rewarding processes that will become more intertwined over time. Eventually, delivering excellent experiences must include delivering a sustainable future.

This is just a small glimpse at the great insight shared during the show. Please check out the full discussions in the video replay here or on the podcast.

DisrupTV Episode 158, Featuring Tim O'Keeffe and Heather Clancy from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

DisrupTV is a weekly Web series with hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar. The show airs live at 11:00 a.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m. ET every Friday.