Event Report: The Transformation of Finance #Davos16 #WEF

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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The Shift From Apologetic Regulatory To A FinTech Transformation

While the regulatory pressures have not subsided for the financial sector, concerns mount legacy financial and insurance providers as fin tech startups disrupt the existing landscape.   The transformation of finance panel included insights from one mature disruptor among the panelists of traditional financial services providers (see Figure 1):

Figure 1. The Transformation Of Finance Panel

• John Cryan, Co-CEO, Deutsche Bank AG
• James P. Gorman, Chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley
• Tom de Swaan, Chairman of the Board and Group CEO ad Interim of Zurich Insurance Group
• Christine LaGarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
• Dan Schulman, CEO of Paypal Inc.
• Gillian R. Tett, Managing Editor in the US of Financial Times

Key takeaways from the panel include:

1. Fintech startups will continue to drive innovation.   Traditional institutions must learn to embrace the innovation or face stiff disruption.  The goal should be to embrace the innovation to win and no just take a defensive stance.
2. Block chain tech is nascent but has huge potential.  While the amount in crypto currencies is at $7B US dollars, this represents a fraction of the $12T of US dollars in the overall money supply (M2).  Block chain tech will emerge to encompass more than just payments and incorporate digital identity, orchestration, and security.
3. Financial service firms still fighting the regulatory requirements war. Regulatory environments around the world remain overbearing.  Regulatory environments will dictate how banks behave and the amount of profits achieved.
4. Panelists feel cash will be history in 10 years.  Bankers see cash as inefficient and untraceable.  Consumers will have to fight hard to ensure that an anonymous payment mechanism remains or face a trespass of privacy despite the digitization of money.
5. Financial services institutions hoping to remove as much human interaction as possible.  Machine learning and artificial intelligence will play a role in automating human interactions.  Financial services firms seek a reduction in labor force while augmenting human decisions for those that remain.

The Bottom Line: Business Models Will Change As Legacy Institutions Face Challenges From New Disruptive Technologies

Despite the huge regulatory burden since the Lehman Brothers crisis, the financial services market shows signs of optimization among the innovations emerging from fintech startups.   The combination of IOT, robotics, artificial intelligence, and block chain tech provide the foundation for the next transformation in finance. (see Figure 2).  As digitization continues, expect the greatest changes to come from a shift in how regulators will approach innovations.  Sandboxes and consumer led disruptions may ultimately influence regulators.

Figure 2. Constellation’s 2016 Disruptive Technologies

Your POV.

Where do you see the future of jobs?  Should we aim for decreasing populations to improve quality per capita? What are your questions from the report?

Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

 

The post Event Report: The Transformation of Finance #Davos16 #WEF appeared first on A Software Insider's Point of View.

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HighQ Raises $50M To Continue Growth In Social Business Market

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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There was some big news today in the highly competitive enterprise social business market. By big, I mean $50 million big: 
HighQ completes $50 million growth financing round from One Peak Partners, Morgan Stanley Merchant Banking and Goldman Sachs Private Capital

You may not be familiar with London, UK based HighQ, but they are a leading vendor of collaboration software in the legal and financial services industries. With the money from today's funding round, they hope to expand their presence in North America and into several other industries.

Some of the strengths of the HighQ are:

• Seamless integration of social networking, content creation (blogs and wikis), tasks, events and file sharing
• Extremely granular permissions/security model including viewing, editing, printing, saving, even watermarking
• iSheets, which is an online spreadsheet/database tool that enables people to easily create applications with structured, or organized data. So rather than just putting information into a document or wiki, you can create records, sort, filter, run reports, etc.
• Very clean, modern design
• Private messaging/chat

Areas I'd like to see HighQ improve:

• Real time communication, including video chats/conferences and screensharing
• Analytics to help both users and administrations gain insight into the content and conversations
• Developer ecosystem for business add-ons and extensions
• Deeper enterprise software integrations with products like Microsoft Office, Salesforce, ZenDesk, Workday, etc. 

To get a quick overview of one of their three products, HighQ Collaborate watch the following video. 

 

By the way all vendors should take note, this is how a product video should be done. It explains a problem and how HighQ solves it, shows the actual product (not just a fake animation), and it is just a few minutes long.  Well done.

 

HighQ is a Constellation Research customer. I look forward to continuing to advise them as they improve their platform and expand their customer base.  Congratulations on today's news, it is well deserved.

 

 

 

 

Future of Work Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Tech Optimization Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Experience Officer

Why Customers Get Frustrated and What You Can Do About It

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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Even though there is must talk about customer excellence in customer experience, many companies, according to customers don’t hit the mark. Intelliresponse identified 5 things brands need to do to make customer experience work. Here they are:

Why? 87% of customers believe brands need to put more effort into seamless experiences.

89% of customers get frustrated having to repeat when they called in and all the information about why they are calling.

77% of strong omnichannel companies use data across customer channels, compared to 48% who do a poor job of using data across customer channels.

 Customer say customer agent fail to answer questions 50% of the time.

70% of customers would prefer to use a companies website if the self-service delivered on the promise and they could get their answers (Rather that using the phone or email.)

So as you can see, there’s a big difference between what customers think and brands think they are providing. What can close that gap? It’s really about putting customer experience at the top of the corporate priority list. CEO’s are you listening? It’s not Customer Service’s job any more! It’s everyone job to think like this. What will it take. A whole lot of change. The number one thing companies are competing is customer experience. Period. You are a customer. Think about it. When you have a bad experience, what does it feel like? What do you feel about the company after that? Do you tell your friends what an awful experience it was? Word of mouth matters. Zaps built a billion dollar business on word of mouth and great customer experiences. Just do it.

@Drnatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Customer-facing Customer Experience Capabilities – People, Process and Technology

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

IOT; Creating Innovative Business Apps And capturing business requirements for Technology Deployments

Andy Mulholland

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Andy Mulholland is Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on cloud business models. Formerly the Global Chief Technology Officer for the Capgemini Group from 2001 to 2011, Mulholland successfully led the organization through a period of mass disruption. Mulholland brings this experience to Constellation’s clients seeking to understand how Digital Business models will be built and deployed in conjunction with existing IT systems. Coverage Areas Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite: BYOD, Internet of Things, IoT, technology and business use Previous experience: Mulholland co authored four major books that chronicled the change and its impact on Enterprises starting in 2006 with the well-recognised book ‘Mashup Corporations’ with Chris Thomas of Intel. This was followed in…...

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The first stage in any technology build and deploy project is to capture a well-structured business requirement to work from. The more innovative, and the higher the business value, the more difficult this becomes. Finding common ground between business and technology in respect of IoT based Smart Services deployments is particularly challenging.

When business values and technology capabilities are new and truly innovative market-disrupting moves are being sought then finding a method to focus ideas, capture and translate into technology requirements is difficult.

Many enterprises have been searching for methods to develop innovative ideas as the pressure for new revenues from Digital and Services products intensifies. Anyone who has taken part in such exercises will testify placing people in a room with the instruction to look for innovation does not guaranteed a World beating outcome. The normal result will be some good outcomes that increase the competitiveness, or effectiveness of current positioning.

A previous post on IoT deployments suggested obtaining focus by concentrating in turn on possibilities to Improve, Innovate, Partner or Disrupt. This blog post is concerned with creating and capturing prospective innovative business ideas for Improve and Innovate. The planned follow on blog post will examine how to achieve the more complex market impacts that Partner or Disrupt can provide.

Improve is always an easier option as the possible challenges to address are usually recognizable. In many cases IoT is needed to do little more than provide increased data on previously untracked aspects. New ideas to improve an existing capability should mean that an experienced business team will quickly be able to identify options to pursue. In this case the challenge will be to capture the options for a technology feasibility study.

To Innovate is always tough as, by definition, it means radically different activities from existing actions, therefore usually outside the direct experience of participants. In a workshop this challenges the basic knowledge and experience available to come up with innovative business valuable offerings. The degree to which this can challenge the accepted wisdom was the topic in the blog on Smart Cities and local government management.

The use of tools, or methods, that create, or drive the refinement, of Innovative ideas is an important aide. The recent blog post entitled executive summary of IoT functionality introduced some important elements that are common to IoT solutions, and can act as a focusing mechanism for developing ideas. The concept of three time frames, and four attributes, is a key principle in defining an IoT Smart Services Solution, but can equally be used to assist innovation creation and business requirement capture. This blog will not repeat the details of the Three by Four reference model again, but will add an example of mapping Uber to the model.

A three x four model provides up to 12 functionality points of definition for an IoT Smart Service. Said this way it seems to increase complications, but laid out in the table below as a worksheet it makes the point simply.

This worksheet can be used in two different ways; firstly to capture an idea for an IoT Smart Service, and then break down the idea into distinct requirements; Alternatively to populate boxes with recognizable existing enterprise, or market place capabilities, with the goal of stimulating ideas by reference to existing capabilities.

Innovative thinking is always difficult to ‘spark’ so a focusing method is important. Resulting Smart Services are usually easy to define in terms of the Business Proposition and value delivered, but notoriously difficult to define in terms of what Business Assets are required to make the idea possible.

The Constellation Research Report Implementing a Business Workshop on the Internet of Things how to develop and execute IoT focused workshops for researching market competition, defining enterprise resources, and to create strategic milestones for building a market disruption. The following is two snap shots examples rather than full explanations.

Without the rest of the report giving the broader context and explanation as well as significant material to build up the level of understanding this may be difficult to follow.  The intent is merely to illustrate that there are methods to focus thinking and develop truly innovative Smart Services using the full capabilities of IoT.

IoT based Smart Services use an entirely new set of technology capabilities that the World Economic Forum annual Davos meeting will debate, together with other issues, under the heading of the ‘The Fourth Industrial Age’.

Finding ways for your Enterprise to understand and re compete against new competitors in new markets makes developing tools and methods for an essential target for 2016.

Two Outline Examples

Outline example 1; Requirement to Improve;

Adding factory floor progress data to provide faster updates to an Enterprise Production Planning Application. Method; Populate the four headings in Transaction Time with the details of the Enterprise Production Planning Application and now consider if this requires quasi real time, or near time updating as an IoT requirement, before deciding exactly what is required under each of the four headings to provide the required inputs.

Outline example 2; Requirement to Innovate

By creating a new Smart Service. Method; Decide if the Smart Service is Quasi Real Time, or Near Time, then populate the four boxes with the necessary business functionalities required. It might sound complicated so perhaps using Uber Taxi Smart Service to illustrate might be helpful. Note there is no requirement for Quasi Real Time in this Smart Service Example

New C-Suite

Reputation Even Over a Resume: Why Personal Branding Matters in 2016

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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1

Take a moment to look back over your career. Even if you are “new” to the workforce, you’re likely to see a hotchpotch of connected experiences. There will be paid and unpaid work, some volunteering maybe. You’ll have passion projects that took weeks or months of your time – like the time you decided to build your sister’s website to save her money, only to find that after it’s all up and working, she took a new job and was no longer interested in “going freelance”. There may even be whole folders of documents filled with words that one day will become your great business, breakthrough book.

Now, take a look at your LinkedIn profile and ask yourself – what’s the story it tells?

I have been saying this for years – but it’s a fact that grows stronger over time. Your resume is as dead as the tree it is written on.

In 2016, you are what you publish.

LinkedIn as an inbound channel for your personal brand

I used to think of LinkedIn as a place of business, connection and social selling. It was a vastly under-utilised space where a strong profile and a good network would help you stand out from the crowd. But a crowd it certainly is. It is the place where careers and connections collide.

In short, LinkedIn has become the “internet of careers” – the internet that we look at when we are looking to find a job, an employee or a customer.

But these days, LinkedIn has a broader agenda, transforming from a massive database of resumes to a business publishing platform and a social selling engine.  Every person with a profile can publish their thoughts, ideas and status updates just like Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Google’s Blogspot (remember that?!). And with the opening up of the LinkedIn Pulse publishing platform, there has literally been an explosion of content – some of it written by individuals and some of it written by ghost bloggers. Some is pure PR spin. Some is heartfelt and personal. There are even birthday notifications (as a side note, I find this mildly disconcerting).

And while this has made it more difficult for the average person to attract and engage potential business collaborators, clients or employers, there is still a great opportunity to use LinkedIn as an inbound channel for your personal brand. What does this look like?

• Share the message, own the destination: Ever noticed how everyone’s profile on LinkedIn looks the same? Makes it hard to stand out, right? Like all good strategy, I suggest you share the message – post your insights, presentations, speeches and updates on LinkedIn by all means, but own the destination – have a website or a portfolio that keeps track of all you do. Use that destination to more fully contextualise your work, purpose and outcomes. I use gavinheaton.com as a catch-all for my activities and ServantOfChaos.com as a showcase. DisruptorsHandbook.com focuses marketing-led innovation and practical strategy. And everything that is posted on one of these sites is cross-posted to LinkedIn.
• Treat your LinkedIn summary like an elevator pitch: Can you describe your job, best projects and outcomes in 30 seconds? Rather than writing a career summary for your LinkedIn profile, write a summary of how you can help clients, employers and business partners. Make it less about you and more about the value you create.
• Write case studies on your best projects: Sure LinkedIn’s publishing platform is a hot mess of content, but every time you publish an article, it reaches into the feeds of your network. That means that people you know, or would like to know, are learning more about you. So give your networks something worth reading – warts and all case studies of the projects you’ve worked on. Include the passion projects, the skunkworks and even elements of your day job that is reasonable to share. Showcase not just the results, but the workings of how you delivered value. Connect the dots, tell the story and bring the dull parts to life with anecdotes, quotes and images.
• Treat yourself like your #1 client: Imagine you are writing a brief for a client – except that client is you. Determine your value proposition, key message and proof points. Put your best storytelling foot forward and explain just why you are the best person for the job/project/collaboration. Just remember, it’s hard work. Keep refining your message. Get feedback. Listen honestly and always seek to improve.

For more great ideas on building your personal brand, take a look through this presentation from Leslie Bradshaw. It’s chock full of practical suggestions that can help you shift from being a “thought leader” to a “do leader”. And in a world where you are what you publish, it’s not about the what you say, it’s all about who believes it.

IBM Connect 2016 - A New Hope Awakens

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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Next week IBM is holding their annual conference focused on collaboration software. However, this year things are going to be a bit different.

The conference’s roots date back to the early 1990s in what was originally called Lotusphere. That event focused on products like Lotus Notes/Domino, Sametime, Quickplace and others. Over the years as IBM evolved their collaboration portfolio the conference added sessions around the more “IBMish” technologies like WebSphere Portal and DB2. These additions did not resonate well with the faithful Lotus customers and business partners. In 2013 the event was renamed IBM Connect and added the IBM Kenexa portfolio of Human Resource and Learning Management products (which they combine under the term, Smarter Workforce). This change was also not met with universal acceptance. With market momentum shifting away from IBM to competitors like Microsoft, Google and Salesforce, many people believed that last year (2015) would be the final incarnation of the conference. The event was much smaller than previous years (down from several hotels to just one), but to the joy of the faithful, was much more focused on the core collaboration technologies that customers and partners wanted to hear about. Due to the success of the 2015 event, IBM Connect is back for 2016, but for the first time in 20 years will not be held at the Walt Disney Swan and Dolphin resort, instead taking place at the Orlando Hilton. 

In my opinion, the change is a good thing. It’s time to break the ties to the past. It’s time for a reboot. With that in mind, here are the main areas I’d like to hear about at IBM Connect 2016:

Vision - First and foremost, I want to sit in the audience and pretend I have no previous knowledge and see if I leave with a clear understanding of how IBM helps personal productivity and team collaboration (both internal and external). I want to hear how the IBM collaboration tools fit into the larger IBM vision, not just how other parts of IBM (like Watson and BlueMix) are helping collaboration. How does collaboration fit into cognitive computing? How does collaboration fit into application development? Not the other way around. Microsoft has made their vision clear, "Reinvent productivity and business process in this mobile-first, cloud-first world”. I’d like to see something like that from IBM.

UPDATE: I know IBM's company vision revolves around the Cognitive-era, so I expect we'll be hearing a lot about this at Connect.  I'd previously mentioned on Twitter that to make the keynote more fun, we should all take a shot each time IBM says Cognitive. :-)

Customers - I want to hear new customer references. Big ones. Name brands. Not upgrades. New customers. Nothing proves success like customers.

Business Partners - One of the keys to Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and even Slack’s success is size and momentum of their business partner ecosystems. These vendors have a large number of companies building add-ons and integrations for their tools. Those vendors each have robust application catalogs/stores/marketplaces that enable people to extend their products with a few simple clicks (and maybe a credit card). In almost every product briefing I am in new products support “Exchange and Gmail” or “work with Office365”, but I very rarely hear IBM mentioned. I’d like to learn if IBM Verse and/or Connections has made any progress in these areas.

Platform - Similar to the point above about add-ons, what is IBM doing to help developers build stand-alone collaborative applications? The IBM application platform is BlueMix, I hope to leave with a good understanding of how developers use it to build collaborative applications. Vice versa, what components of IBM collaboration can be embedded into other applications? What incentive do developers have to build on IBM technologies versus Salesforce1, AWS, Azure, etc?

Investments - IBM’s largest investments these days are around data and analytics. Their various acquisitions and partnerships with companies like Twitter (which they should buy now since the stock is so low), The Weather Company, and Box are all part of a strategy to get their hands (well algorithms) on as much data as possible. That data is then fed into IBM Watson to hopefully derive insights which can help improve business outcomes. I’d like to see IBM show similar commitment to analyzing the vast amounts of employee interactions that take place in email, calendar, contacts, social networking, etc. Google (with Google Now), Microsoft (with Delve Organization Analytics), and Salesforce (with SalesforceIQ) are far ahead of IBM in these areas. Microsoft is on a productivity/collaboration buying spree lately, having acquired Accompli, LiveLoop, Sunrise, Wanderlust, VoloMetrix, MileIQ and most recently Talko. I’d like to see IBM show some sign of investment in collaboration.

Business Outcomes - One of the strengths that SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft and Infor have is that their social tools are deeply integrated with their business process software (such as CRM, HR, ERP, Finance, Legal, etc). IBM has done a good job integrating social into Kenexa, but what are they doing in the other areas? How does IBM’s collaboration software help a sales team close a deal or a supply chain discuss a shipment? Will IBM be partnering in any of these areas? Acquiring? Building? Will IBM provide any templates for specific business processes and/or integrations? Similarly, what about industry verticals? IBM has always had strong sales/services around verticals, so how about having tailored collaboration offerings for healthcare, manufacturing, energy, media, etc.?

Innovation - When I think back over the last decade or so of the tours I've had of IBM Research's Innovation Labs, I can’t think of anything that has made it into shipping software, or even into the hands of the public to look at. Microsoft on the other hand releases new “garage" products all the time. Microsoft is also rapidly adding new products such as Delve, Sway, Planner (beta) and GigJam (beta) that truly change the way people work. IBM Verse has done a nice job at integrating frequent contacts, email and calendar on a single screen, but it’s time to do more than just make a better email client. I’d like to see IBM redefine the way we create content, share information, connect with colleagues/prospects, plan/attend meetings, organize and execute projects, etc. I’ve not seen any improvement in calendar nor IBM Activities in many years. That needs to change. For more on this topic, see my report: Collaboration Vendors Shaping the Future of Work. 

Marketing - Is IBM still going to push “A New Way To Work”? I’ve been pretty vocal with my dislike for this phrase, as I’ve not yet seen anything from IBM that really changes the way people work. They have improved email (which is a good thing) but I have yet to see how they change the way employees do their jobs. This is tied into innovation above. I also don't like the conference theme "Make every moment count". That seems like the type of thing you say when you're worried about the future. Perhaps I'll change my mind when I see how it is used at the show.

Let's Get Personal - Let’s stop wishing IBM would have a consumer play. IBM is not good at consumer offerings. They do not have a web search engine, map/navigation, news, social network or file/photo sharing service that people use in their personal lives. They failed miserably at trying to provide a public version of Verse for email. It’s time to lay this hope to rest. The B in IBM is business, they should focus there.

 

UPDATE - I didn't mention IoT.  I wonder what role IBM sees IoT playing in the future of collaboration.

Moving On

Let’s all go into this event with an open mind, and accept that the days of Lotusphere are over. The show is going to be smaller than in the past. It will be more like a customer conference, not an industry event. That’s ok, IBM needs to keep their current clients happy, but I don’t think a lot of new client prospects will be in attendance. Also let’s try and not put too much focus on personnel changes. Yes of course they matter, but they are not telltale signs of the apocalypse. I look forward to this new rebooted IBM Connect. I believe it will pay homage to the past, while forcing an awakening for the future. I hope IBM addresses the things I’ve mentioned above. Finally, I hope to see you there.

 

Feedback Please

Are there areas I’ve missed? Are there things you disagree with? Do my thoughts echo your own? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

 

Future of Work Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Tech Optimization IBM Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Experience Officer

Workato’s Workbot cuts business users some slack with Slack integration

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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I have written about Workato before, the startup that makes it easier for business users to integrated business applications with each other – with no coding skills. But there is more than interfaces that connect systems with each other, there is also a need for business users to access information on an ad hoc, single transaction, atomic data level.

 

So let’s take a look what Workato just announced, the press release can be found here:

Today we see a new trend emerging how business is done. Instead of working with single, siloed information systems, most prominently email and enterprise solutions, business people are gravitating towards more ad hoc, informal ways of communicating, chat being one of the communication platforms of choice… one of them capturing a lot of mind and market share is Slack, which recently has passed two million users. One of the many things the Slack team has done right is to make the chat platform open and extensible for partners and third parties.

This openness has allowed Workato to build a ‘microservice to interfaces’ a workbot that operates on a single interface item level, e.g. a customer, a lead, an opportunity or a service request. Instead of the business user having to switch context – from the collaboration application (here Slack) to the business application (e.g. Expensify, Salesforce, ServiceNow, QuickBooks, Zendesk, etc.) – Workbot does that work for the business user, as part of the chat.

Take a look at the following example, where Workbot gathers more information to provide the business user a richer content in a more productive way:


 

The above chat between Maddy and Workbot makes Maddy’s work life not only easier – but also more productive:


 

• Alert Function – Workbot alerts Maddy of an event (from Zendesk).

• Information Gathering – Workbot gathers more information as Maddy requests it (from Salesforce, Zendesk).

• Action Support – Workbot adds information to the systems on Maddy’s request (into Github, Salesforce and Zendesk).

• Collaboration Support – On Maddy’s request Workbot sends a SMS message to alert a colleague of the situation (using Twilio). 

Note that Maddy never had to leave Slack, staying in one and the same user interface, on one and the same platform. Assuming Maddy is a customer service representative and tuned to reasonable multi-tasking speeds, she will likely have 3-5 of these conversations open, but resolving them more efficiently thanks to Workbot.

As mentioned Workbot is built on top of the Workato integration platform, that build on user friendly recipes for integration. This is why how the first version of Workbot supports a substantial number of applications with Saleforce.com, Zendesk, Eventbrite, Expensify, ServiceNow, Intercom, QuickBooks Online, Jira, Github and Mailchimp.

 

Implications for the Future of Work

We already know that the enablement of the business end user is key for success of an enterprise. Central IT functions react too slow and often too late to support business users whose workday gets more and challenging year over year. More work needs to get done with less people and less time available, so business users are clamoring for any productivity gains they can get a hold of.

We recently took a look how Workato enables the integration of different business applications in an easy, no technology understanding requiring way (see here), now Workato uses the same technology, not only to transport data en masse, but to interface business information as the business user is ‘in flight’, in a business transaction or collaboration scenario.

At the end of the day this means

 

• Information goes from bulk load to atomic data item – Interfaces become more granular, resolving latency and recency challenges as well as addressing performance and scalability questions.
   
• Information finds the business user – not vice versa – Instead of switching context and searching for relevant information, information ‘finds’ the business user as needed.
   
• Collaboration is where the work is done – At the end people solve business problems, to do so they need to collaborate. Breaking down traditional moats between e.g. enterprise applications and collaboration tools is a key move to make business users more productive.
   
• Conversation becomes the new interface technology – Instead of thinking in IT dimensions such as interfaces, files and processes, the conversational query of data and creation of actions will make business users more effective than ever before. And different users are doing different things in an enterprise, use a different lingo, all things a conversational approach can reflect well.
   
• The Robots are coming – and business users will love it – A lot has been said and abundant fear has been mongered about the arrival of robots. And concerns may be valid in the long run, in the short term robots like Workato’s Workbot will be highly welcomed by business users – making them more productive and allowing them to focus on what matters, their business’ success. The robot’s ability to learn and suggest actions will be highly welcomed – as long as they work as expected and delight the business user. 

MyPOV

Workato has created a new product, Workbot, effectively a smooth ‘scale down’ of its interface capabilities, with full re-use of platform, recipes etc. – while achieving what ultimately matters – making business users more productive and with that more successful. Workato can implement Workbot on other open chat platforms (e.g. the also popular HipChat) and bring more of its interface repertoire to the market in the near future.

Workato Workbot should do well in the market, as it makes every party a winner: Slack gets more actionable chats, more loads on its platform, Workato re-uses existing capabilities and gets more eyes on its software, partner apps of Workato find more usage beyond their traditional user interface and thus increase value for their customers, but most importantly business users win, as they become more productive. And it’s the latter that really matters. We will be watching… 


More on Workato


 

• First Take - Apple wants to change the Future of Work. Works with cloud apps vendors and Workato - read here

 

More Musings Posts

• Musings – Time to re-invent email – for real! - Read here
• The Dilemma with Cloud Infrrastrcture updates - read here
• Are we witnessing the Rise of the Enterprise Cloud? Read here
• What are true Analytics - a Manifesto. Read here
• Is TransBoarding the Future of Talent Management? Read here
• How Technology Innovation fuels Recruiting and dsrupts the Laggards - read here

 

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.

2012, 2013, 2014 & 2015 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience ipaas PaaS SaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Experience Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer

Unify makes progress, needs to close the circuit

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend the Unify analyst summit, which happened this week in beautiful Bermuda (a surprisingly convenient location from NYC). Over 40 analyst were there to get updated on the state of transformation and product progress of Unify (the former Siemens Enterprise Communications, if you like go even more back to Rolm). 

 

 

Fellow colleague Alan Lepofsky joined me, and we recorded a short takeaway video, so take a peek:

 

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No time to watch – here are my top 3 takeaways:

Unify transformation is WIP – After the launch as Unify, the vendor has gone through some difficult times to right-size the operation. Executives were surprisingly open on progress and challenges, based on the numbers shared it looks like the vendor has started to turn a corner. Customer references were all Avaya takeaways, so it is clear where Unify is trying to grow from going forward. The vendor claims around 30M seats and seems to be able to win business at usual call center attrition rate (5-8% p.a.), all key vital signs.

Unify is now Atos (but keeps operating under the Unify brand) – It was a first that an acquisition closed live during an analyst event – and so did the acquisition of Unify by Atos. It was good to see that Atos’ head of Managed Services, Eric Grall was in Bermuda, as the services part of the Unify business will report into him. Grall said that Atos intends to follow the same playbook as with the recent acquisition of Bull, separate the acquired vendor in services and the rest. It will be interesting to see how Atos will harmonize its portfolio e.g. with existing assets like BlueKiwi. If you haven’t seen it yet – take a look at my blog post on the acquisition here. Lastly Unify brings to Atos a key ability, channel savviness, which Atos needs for its Bull offering and does not have currently. Sure different partners are needed for call center vs hardware / security, but it makes Atos / Unify a more attractive partner, allowing for the capture of more share of wallet at customers. And keeping Unify’s channel capabilities intact will be key for Atos.

Circuit needs adoption – The Circuit product by now has all the ingredients to become a driver for more growth for Unify. Kudos to Unify for letting the analysts use the product during the event, and at first look it worked well. Behind the scenes capabilities are positive, too, the offering is Openstack based, uses Opensource offerings like e.g. Cassandra and operates (for now) in two data centers on both sides of the Atlantic. Unify has spent a lot of time to take cost out of the infrastructure, allowing the vendor to offer Circuit under a freemium model. The product is open and can be extended by developer, a must have capability for any collaboration player, given the ‘zoo’ of collaboration products out there.
Overall Circuit is offered under 4 different licenses. Now the product needs adoption, that 11+ months after launch has not yielded more than 1k users / month. Given a 30M install based even a subpar upsell / cross-sell effort. But Unify wants to do more with Circuit, so will be good to see what happens on the adoption side in the next quarters. Switching to a more viral marketing, ‘land & expand’ model as well as aggressively going after enterprise software ISVs who seek collaboration capabilities are potential strategies. 

 

MyPOV

A good event for Unify, but the vendor realistically now has to layer one more transformation on top of its own core business transformation. Both are important but the latter even featured prominently in the press release this week, so more challenges Unify executives have to rectify. As usual with acquisitions, one can expect executive changes, buffering the ripple effects of organizational change will be key for Atos. And while Atos is becoming more and more global, it is still a French company en coeur, and mixing that with the Teuton / American culture is an experiment that can up as well as not so well. The opportunity is there, as no player on the communications / collaboration space has offered one common, easy to use application and end user experience. Just look at the challenge of the average enterprise employees to launch and run a web collaboration challenge. While practice makes champions here as well, the industry has for too long offered disjointed user experiences, hard to run products (plug in anyone?) – leaving productivity behind. The synchronous capabilities (and to make phones ring) is a key differentiator for Unify, as when push comes to shove in the real world, people pick up phones. But till we see a unified communications and collaboration platform, seamlessly integrated to where business is done – the enterprise applications, with ease of use like the point solutions that are popular today, it will be still a while and is Unify’s (as competitors) opportunity to grab. We will be there to analyze.


More on Unify

• Market Move - Atos completes acquisition of Unify - gets more into IP - read here

 

More Musings Posts

• Musings – Time to re-invent email – for real! - Read here
• The Dilemma with Cloud Infrrastrcture updates - read here
• Are we witnessing the Rise of the Enterprise Cloud? Read here
• What are true Analytics - a Manifesto. Read here
• Is TransBoarding the Future of Talent Management? Read here
• How Technology Innovation fuels Recruiting and dsrupts the Laggards - read here

 

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.

 

2012, 2013, 2014 & 2015 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

Tech Optimization Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Data to Decisions Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer Chief Revenue Officer

NRF16 – The Store Strikes Back

pending

Guy Courtin was formerly Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Matrix Commerce and how the Internet of Things drives the evolution of commerce.  Guy has over 15 years experience in the technology space and specifically in the supply chain space. Most recently he was the Vice President of Research at SCM World. Where he focused on the service providers that empowered supply chains. Prior to SCM World, Guy held numerous senior positions. He was responsible for product marketing at RSi, a retail supply chain solution provider. There managed RSi’s go to market strategy around their leading cloud based supply chain solutions. He also spear headed Progress Software’s supply chain group. Where he was responsible for driving revenue and market share as well…...

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Another cold January in New York City and another NRF Retail Big Show survived! As I have found with the countless times I have attended NRF the event is a whirlwind of insanity, but it is over before you know it. The insights, meetings and seeing old friends makes the entire adventure well worth it. So here are the take aways from the NRF16:

• The STORE IS BACK – okay maybe that is a tad dramatic, the store never went away, but the store in recent years has been down played. No longer is that the case. Many vendors and retailers I met with made a point of discussing their plans and initiatives for transforming their stores. The store is no longer viewed, by most, as simply the physical location that I want to go to in order to transact for an item. It is taking on a host of new responsibilities in the new commerce environment. At the crux of these new characteristics is the focus on the customer experience. Salesforce took us on a two site visit at Design Within Reach and Suitsupply, both in the Soho part of New York City. Other than the “cool” factor of the stores, what was discussed was how each store had meticulously thought of how to maximize the real estate they had and more importantly how they could leverage technology to better address their customers’ needs and experience once in the store. That experience has to go beyond offering you free cappuccinos or coupons, but how to ensure that the customer needs and untapped wants are addressed at the right time and with the right product. Other examples were of how True Religion is working with Aptos to empower the store associates to provide consumers with better experiences when it comes to finding that right pair of jeans. Putting the entire inventory catalog on the wrist of the store associate (via an Apple Watch) allows True Religion to be able to meet that customers’ demand, literally at the touch of a finger. There was also Avanade that had a smart grocery store shelf on display. Customers could simply pick up items and the smart displays would provide a host of information from nutritional content to where the food was sourced from. These were some intriguing examples of how retailers were working with service providers to bring exciting new technologies into the store – allowing the store to find its voice in the new commerce landscape.
  ?
• What is more important – perfect view of the order or the client? When we say perfect view of the order it really entails having a better understanding of your inventory levels across all channels. When it comes to the client is about truly understanding the context for the customer, what is driving their current, past and future demands. Having that 360 degree view of the customer has been all the rage recently, but are we missing the key element – the view of the order and of the inventory? This question kept ringing in my head as I went from meeting to meeting. What resonated with me was the need to address both, that the success of each was inevitably tied to the other. Service providers ranging from IBM to IFS are challenging the market on how to approach the need to have greater inventory and order visibility. It is not simply about the creative understanding of the customer, but also the ability to truly understand what products where and when that are available within the supply chain to fulfill the customers’ demands. Bottom line – regardless of how sophisticated and creative a retailer is in getting the customer to engage, if the product is not there at the moment of truth, then all those efforts are in vain.
   
• Smarter and dynamic fulfillment is the key – A major component of modern retail, driven by the consumer, is the push towards accessing orders wherever and whenever they desire. We already see the variety of methods we can access our orders – order on line delivery in store, order on line deliver to home, buy in store deliver to home, browse on line ship to store to name a few. As these forms of delivery continue to take on new dimensions, the business processes and technologies that support these new forms of last mile fulfillment will have to keep pace. This is continuing to place a strain on retail supply chains to meet these demands. Companies like 1800Flower are looking at all the nodes in their supply chain to assist in fulfilling their customer needs, in particular how their warehouses can play a more active role in the customer journey. We are seeing a growing number of retailers looking to redefine how they can meet the last mile in the retail supply chain. 2016 will continue to see these parts of the supply chain being leaned on to meet growing customer demands.
  
  
• Cool technologies are the future: smart displays, IoT, virtual reality and robots – Last year there were lots of 3D printers on the floor, they seemed to have disappeared this year. Which I found surprising since in 2015 we have seen tangible examples of how retailers are leveraging 3D printers. For example Lowe’s is using the technology to offer customers the ability to procure items, such as door knobs and fixtures, that are no longer being produced. A great example of how retailers can expand their product offerings for their customers.  Of course there remained plenty of examples of disruptive technologies on display on the floor of the Javits Center. Vendors such as Zebra Technologies, IFS, Avanade, Aptos to name a few were showcasing smart displays and how their customers were leveraging the technology. From greater view into their inventory to displaying information or being able to transact view the monitors – these smart displays are only beginning to find an important role within the store. Robotics were on display from the likes of Wipro – assisting with store navigation and shelf maintenance. IoT also was a theme that ran throughout the meetings I attended – companies like Checkpoint are continuing to add increased sensors and beacons within the store. They highlighted a timely use case in leveraging RFID and readers within a meat department of a grocer to allow greater and more efficient monitoring of the high margin but perishable product. In light of the recent news with Chipotle the use case is addressing headline news. Look towards 2016 as a continuation of disruptive technology growth within the retail landscape.

Once again I survived NRF and the cold New York City weather…it was actually a great trip…albeit I am still fighting some germs I picked up from the trip. I am very excited with the prospects for 2016 in the retail and supply chain space. Evolution is continuing to emerge at a rapid pace. Retailers cannot afford to take their eyes off the ball, they have to look internally to ensure they have the right business processes and mentality to keep pace. Service providers and vendors must also strive to act as true partners for this journey.

It is not going to be any easier in 2016, but it will continue to be exciting times.

You can also view my video from the show – click here.

Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Marketing Transformation Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Data to Decisions B2B B2C CX Customer Experience EX Employee Experience business Marketing eCommerce Supply Chain Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Social Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service AI Analytics Automation Machine Learning Generative AI Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Growth Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Product Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Technology Officer

The 2016 Marketing & Tech Innovation Awards

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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DMN and The Hub have combined forces this year to present the Marketing&Tech Innovation Awards, which honor the most innovative strategies, platforms, and people in marketing today. I was thrilled to be a judge in this year’s selection. The winners will be announced on March 10^th, but take a peek at the finalists below and let me know who you think should win!

Case Study Categories

Analytics Innovation

evolve24
Sales Predictions Using Social Conversations

Experian Marketing Services and Golfsmith
Analytics for the Holidays

Grapeshot and Sawyer Studios
Lila & Eve

Merkle
Connected Attribution Solution

Visual IQ and BuildDirect
Marketing Attribution Solution Implementation

Content Marketing Innovation

Aflac
One Day Pay

gen.video
How Scalable UGC Video Content Catapulted Crest Pro-Health HD to #1

New York International Auto Show
Virtual Tour

Stein IAS
The Digital Marketing Maturity Campaign

Verifone Media and Aria Resort & Casino
Verifone Media helps Aria Resort & Casino Enhance Tourist Engagement on the Vegas Strip

Email Marketing Innovation

Experian Marketing Services and Finish Line
Finish Line: College Fleece Program

Experian Marketing Services and Delta Air Lines
Delta’s Flight Cycle Program

Merkle and Samsung
SUHD Product Launch

Merkle and Marriott
Marriott Drives App Engagement Through Email

netCORE Solutions Pvt. Ltd. and Reliance Life Insurance Company Ltd.
Connecting the Dots and Humanizing Email Experience See Faster Email-to-Sale Conversions

Mobile innovation

Event Marketing Strategies and Nationwide
Nationwide: Make Safe Happen Safety Experience

FORENSIQ
Mobile Ad Fraud Study – Mobile Device Hijacking

Harte Hanks and Samsung Mobile
Samsung Note 4 Product Launch with Harte Hanks  

Stein IAS and Key Technology
Mobile Virtual Reality Experience

Omnichannel marketing innovation

Experian Marketing Services and American Eagle Outfitters
Reserve, Try and Buy: An Omnichannel Shopping Experience

FordDirect
ConsumerConnection

RedPoint Global and Xanterra Parks & Resorts
Xanterra Parks & Resorts – A Journey to One-to-One Marketing Excellence

Belk Inc., iCrossing, and Kenshoo
Driving Triple-Digit Increase in Conversion Rates

WIT Strategy and Selligent and Extra Space Storage
Selligent/Extra Space Storage

Social innovation

Grey Global Group and Volvo Cars North America
Volvo Interception

LEWIS Pulse
#Trending: Raising the Bar on Cross-Channel Social Media Coverage for Events

Plat4orm PR and Metia
Microsoft in Health

Principal Financial Group
See Your Retirement

W2O Group
Nothing can be perfect

Platform Categories

Most Innovative Analytics Platform

Brandwatch
Brandwatch Analytics

Experian Marketing Services
The Intelligence Manager of the Experian Marketing Suite

Fluid PR, Inc.
AppsFlyer

Merkle
Citizens Big Data Platform

Origami Logic
Marketing Signal Measurement Platform

Most Innovative Customer Experience Management Platform

MaritzCX
MaritzCX Platform

Epsilon
Epsilon’s Agility Loyalty

Influitive

Kitewheel
The Kitewheel Customer Journey Hub

Qubit
Qubit Visitor Cloud

Most Innovative Integrated Marketing Suite

Act-On Software

Blanc & Otus
Oracle Marketing Cloud

Blueshift
Blueshift Segment-of-One Marketing Automation

Experian Marketing Services
The Experian Marketing Suite

Salesforce
Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Personalize and Optimize 1:1 Customer Journeys

Most Innovative Mobile Marketing Platform

BLANC & OTUS
DoubleDutch

Comunicano, Inc.
FollowAnaytics’ Enterprise Mobile Analytics Platform

HookLogic
The HookLogic Platform: Powering Mobile Ads with Attribution Data, Anti-Ad Blocking, and Awesome Results

Button
Button

Swirl Networks, Inc.
Swirl Network’s Beacon Marketing Solution

Most Innovative Social Media Platform

500px
500px, photo sharing’s underdog, swings big in 2015

Sprout Social

Tracx
Tracx Social Business Cloud

Stars of Martech Categories

Content Marketing Scribe
Cassandra Jowett, Senior Content Marketing Manager, Influitive

Craig Vore, Insights Manager, Strategy & Optimization, Outsell

Denice Surjan, Senior Marketing Manager, Experian Marketing Services

Dr. Maruthi Viswanathan, Managing Director, RxPrism Health Systems

Steve Sachs, CEO, OneSpot

Data Scientist

Christopher S. Penn, Vice President of Marketing Technology, SHIFT Communications

Jonathan Smalletz, Lead Analyst, Merkle

Stacey Hawes, Senior Vice President, Data Solutions, Epsilon

Digital Ace

Chad Blodgett, Senior Vice President of omnichannel, Rakuten Marketing

Tuomas Peltoniemi, President, Asia, Digital Arts Network

 

Marketing Technologist

Emad Georgy, SVP & Global Head of Software Development & Product, Experian Marketing Services

Francis Wallinger, Chairman, Alchemetrics Ltd

Gwendolyn Lefevre, Vice President, Marketing Operations & Digital Marketing, Bottomline Technologies

Programmatic Prognosticator

Amy Good, Adaptive Media Investment & Technology Lead, Nestle Purina Pet Care

Lewis Gersh, CEO, Founder and Chairman, PebblePost

Victor Wong, CEO and cofounder, PaperG

Social Strategist

Michael Rusten Gabriel, Marketing Manager, Envision Creative Group

Stephanie Capouch, Social Media Manager, WP Engine

 

For more information about the finalists and the event, click here.

 

@Drnatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Customer-facing Customer Experience Capabilities – People, Process and Technology

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer