Infographic Friday: The 2015 Marketing Rugby World Cup

Russell Scibetti

Founding Editor, The Business of Sports
The Business of Sports

My name is Russell Scibetti and I have an extensive background in sports business, including CRM and database marketing, interactive and digital marketing, social media, corporate sponsorships and activation, and applied market research. From 2007 to 2014, I worked for Arizona State Athletics, Comcast-Spectacor (Philadelphia Flyers) and the New York Jets to manage and implement CRM, database marketing, market research and other technology-based sales and marketing initiatives. In 2014, I joined KORE Software as their VP of Product Strategy, where I am responsible for the strategic vision, planning and development of the KORE ProSports Ticketing, Sponsorship and Suites/Premium software products. I earned my MBA in Sports Business from the W.P. Carey…...

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It’s time for another edition of Infographic Friday. Today’s content comes to us from Synergy and @SynergyTim who put together a great set of marketing insights from the 2015 Rugby World Cup. It has a little bit of everything from broadcast rights and kit sponsors to Twitter mentions and TV ratings.

Check out the full infographic below or click here to see the original version via @SynergyTim on Twitter.

Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience Innovation & Product-led Growth Chief Marketing Officer

Technology is changing, but what is making everything change? A summary of change factors in technology and business in 2015 Part I

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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After a semi sabbatical summer; semi in the fact that I continued to actively follow the industry, its business customers and attempt to understand implications; sabbatical in the sense that I didn’t try to react to each announcement or event individually; instead I was looking for a bigger picture to form. This is the first part of three posts breaking the picture down into the natural divisions of ‘causes’; ‘responses’; and ‘good practice’.

The big picture this far into 2015 is one of strategic change in the face of increasingly obvious disruption to ‘Business as usual’. Current IT industry leaders, together with major global enterprises in multiple sectors have, and are, announcing new goals with new enabling partnerships frequently of an unlikely nature.  Everywhere, in every sector, are new startups creating the disruption in previously well-defined market sectors forcing established leaders to react. (see footnote 2).

Any successful competitive positioning has to understand what is the root causes enabling, and driving, this disruption, and how can my business successfully harness them. But can this question be answered in an understandable manner?

In aggregate the totality of these changes to cover is too much to absorb, and too ambitious for a single blog piece! But there is a relatively simple set of foundations forming the starting point to building a comprehensive understanding and that’s the starting point for this blog. Once again as with the blogging format used last winter to explain emerging IoT from simple concepts through to more complex issues and deployments there will be a linked series of blogs, alternating each week between the Technology enablers, and the Business drivers. But to start with a surprisingly clear big picture, or high level, summary of what is at the heart of this change; and in a word the answer is de-centralization.

De-centralization; The transfer of decision making power and assignment of accountability and responsibility for results. It is accompanied by delegation of commensurate authority to individuals or units at all levels of an organization even those far removed from headquarters or other centers of power.

Source; the business dictionary.

Every aspect of the world, including politics, is now showing increasing sign of de-centralization arising from the low cost technology empowerment of individuals to participate in powerful informed manner. There are two important core technology elements that have brought this about;

A redefinition of Moore’s Law in 2015 would state that every eighteen months the cost of a processor of the same power will halve; Similarly redefining the lesser known Metcalf’s Law from the 1980s LAN era would state that the number of devices that can interact with networked resources is the logarithmic value multiplier rather than the original Laws focus on connectivity for application transactions.

Combine those two elements; add simplicity in usability, the increasing technology awareness and capability of the population as a whole, and the result is to see the traditional barriers, (high levels of investment, substantial support costs, and expensive training) that have prevented de-centralization all start to dissolve. (It is worth noting that both laws in their original forms actually underpinned, and supported, the path of technology towards bigger, more expensive, centralized enterprise computing using client-server in support of the then business imperatives of Back Office transformation with IT and ERP).

This is a level of disruption in the ownership, and use, of, resources to both create, and satisfy, market demands akin to the scale, though exactly in the opposite direction, of the shift in the nineteen twenties and thirties into mass production that made many products affordable. However massive investment in expensive resources to create scale certainly limited the numbers of enterprises that could compete for, and remain in control of, the new markets.  The resulting affordability of many items led to the creation, or enlargement, of many markets; a popular example is the automotive industry where reducing prices exploded the overall size of the market, both in numbers of buyers and in total revenues, but diminished the numbers of automotive manufacturers.

Nearly one hundred years later the basis for many business models arising from huge centralized investments that restrict market change and competitive entry is being destroyed. Today huge resources in computing, marketing, or any aspect of business are available as a hosted service allowing new players to enter almost any market with an innovative disruptive approach. De-centralization also allows a new competitor to assemble exactly the resources required…. with little capital investment.

The side effects of affordable mass manufacturing for consumers (buyers) is increased standardization in products usually with a reduction in number of suppliers; for the manufacturer the challenge is constant price/margin erosion as price/cost is the basis of the competitive element. Whilst it is true that many business models are built around business-to-business operations, as Economists are quick to point out the end point of all business lies in consumer purchases.

Affluent consumers are seeking individuality and are prepared to pay for it, suddenly making small and personal an important part of any new product, or markets. Competitive choice and differentiation becomes as, or even more, important than price; a welcome move in re-establishing margins for successful enterprises who master the new Digital Business game. 

When consumer (buyer) choice is no longer limited to locality, or a handful of previously dominate large companies; and resources are no longer expensive constraints to new competitive entrants, or products; the result is disruption to the majority of business activities. Moreover this is a disruption on the same scale as the introduction of massive scale and resources that signaled the destruction of localized and craft production based markets one hundred years ago. The very revolution that created most of today’s successful global enterprises!

The realization that Digital Business is about adding a new online capability to your existing business model, but is the disruptive recreation of your industry sector is dawning rapidly in Boardrooms as sector news and financial results are the cause of serious evaluation. 

1. Part two of this blog will examine examples of how global Enterprises and startup businesses are creating new markets by using these change factors
2. In judging the awards for Constellation Research Connected Enterprise annual Super Nova competition it was extremely noticeable that new hardly known startups dominated the entries submitted by their satisfied customers. In each case the change achieved could truly be described as both innovative and disruptive, whilst the outcomes for the enterprise and its business were remarkable and substantial. See Constellation Connected Enterprise for more details on awards.

 

TCS "gets" disruption - invests in IaaS, BPaaS

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 TCS analyst summit in Boston, the event was well attended, with over 50 analysts (my estimate) in the audience. 

 

Before leaving Boston I recorded this short video - so take a peek:

 

Here are the key takeaways:

 

• TCS understands all areas of disruption well, and has customers live in all areas from Customer Experience over IoT to digital transformation.
• The provider is running its own IaaS in India, UK, US and Australia, the TCS Cloud is being rolled out further into the Nordic Countries and Canada. 
• TCS has made investments into enabling the BPaaS (Business Process as a Service) - with TAP - TCS Accounts Payable, supporting 40+ countries today.

MyPOV

TCS is well aware of the fundamental transformation that is happening to the consulting, system integrator and outsourcing services space. Wage arbitration is a diminishing factor, so it is good to see that TCS not only understands the new disruptive scenarios, but also masters the technologies and has customer references to show in each of them. Promising are also investments on IaaS side as well as the BPaaS side.
 

On the concern side we see a services vendor building more product, never an easy transformation, that so far has only happened in very few occasions. TCS executives understand that there is a one time opportunity to capitalize on in regards of building next generation products for the best practices of the infinite computing era, I missed the presentation of the ignio platform due to schedule issues.
 

And last but not least - a compilation of key tweets from the event:

 

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

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience Tata Consultancy Services AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Analytics Automation B2B B2C CX EX Employee Experience HR HCM business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology eCommerce Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer

Google launches Cloud Dataproc

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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This morning Google launched the beta version of Google Cloud Dataproc - a new offering that will interest BigData projects being undertaken.
 

 

Here are the key takeaways in case you can't watch:

 

• A combined Hadoop / Spark instance can be setup in less than 2 minutes - significant simplification for developers of BigData projects.
• All embedded into the rest of the Google Cloud Platform - other tools are available (e.g. BigQuery, BigTable etc.).
• All embedded with the rest of the commercial side of Google Cloud Platform - minute based bllling, presciptive instances etc. 

MyPOV

A good move by Google, bringing two dynamic (and complex to tame) and popular opensource technologies. Well integrated with the rest of Google Cloud Platform - and substantial documentation and how to guides are out there, so a good launch by Google. 

 

It is likely there will be alternatives from other cloud players soon, enterprises should check the assumptions and operations that Google (and others) plan. And a 'beta' label is always a sign of caution in the enterprise.  

 

More about Google:

• Musings - Google re-organizes - will it be about Alpha or Alphabet Soup? Read here
• Event Report - Google I/O - Google wants developers to first & foremost build more Android apps - read here
• First Take - Google I/O Day #1 Keynote - it is all about Android - read here
• News Analysis - Google does it again (lower prices for Google Cloud Platform), enterprises take notice - read here
• News Analyse - Google I/O Takeaways Value Propositions for the enterprise - read here 
• Google gets serious about the cloud and it is different - read here
• A tale of two clouds - Google and HP - read here
• Why Google acquired Talaria - efficiency matters - 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

Data to Decisions Tech Optimization Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Next-Generation Customer Experience Future of Work Hadoop Google developer SaaS PaaS 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 Digital Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer

Tuesday's Tip: IOT and The Death Of OmniChannel Non-sense In Customer Experience

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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Stop Thinking In Channels And Start Thinking In Settings and Scenes

As organizations realize they are no longer selling products and services but delivering on experiences and outcomes, the shift to delivering on a brand promise requires the ability to deliver mass personalization at scale. This is the heart of delivering digital business value.  However, many of today’s customer experience discussion focuses on linear customer journeys across multiple channels and often discuss the need for delivering on omni-channel.

Unfortunately, with the advent of internet of things (IOT) and customer experiences, omni-channel is not good enough for digital.  The design point must deliver on channel ubiquity across a wide variety of settings and scenes.  Why?  Digital customer experiences:

• Move from channels to settings and scenarios.  Navigating experiences by individual channels creates a disjointed experience in mobile, in-person, online, chat, and phone.  Settings and scenarios in IOT take into account multiple contexts and channels.  Some examples of settings include an office, a conference room, an elevator, a car, and a living room.  Scenarios accommodate multiple customer journeys into each settings.
• Deliver rich relevance through context.  Role, relationship, channel, identity, time, temperature, geo-spatial location, heart rate, and sentiment help provide the context attributes to deliver mass personalization.  Expect multiple context attributes in every scene and scenario delivered from beacons and other sensors in IOT.
• Provide natural user experiences based on identity.  Identity provides an initial context and enables access and permissions.  Ambient identity in IOT adds to user experiences by taking the friction away from validating identity.

Scene 1: A Day In The Hospital As A Visitor

Setting 1: Lobby

You walk into the hospital and it searches to see who you may be there to see.  The patient has already provided a list of approved visitors and you are automatically guided on your smart phone to the nearest elevator bank.  A suggestion is made as this is your first visit to go by the gift shop.

Setting 2: Gift shop

You enter the gift shop and the shop already knows you are new.  A 15% of coupon is offered.  You choose a bouquet of flowers and go to check out.  The clerk informs you that the patient is allergic and suggests a bouquet of balloons instead.

Setting 3: Elevator bank

As you head back to the elevators, the elevator tells you that your family member is on 4th floor, the cardiac unit.  As you get off, you have an option to download all the latest information materials on cardiac health.

Setting 4: Patient room

You get into the patient room to visit your family member.  As next of kin, it knows to give you access to the latest chart, connect you to a chat with the physician if needed, and also alert the nurse that you have arrived.

Scene 2: A Day At The Office.

Setting 1: The Building

Imagine you start your day at work and walk into your office building.  The security system already recognizes that you are in the building and as you walk into the building, you are asked if you want to go to your floor, the 10th floor, or catch up with your boss on the 8th floor, or talk to your customer who’s arrived early in the customer visit center on the 4th floor.

Setting 2:  The Elevator

As you get to your floor, your admin automatically sends a request to you on your smart phone for a lunch order for the day and your meeting schedule opens up for your next 3 hours.  All the relevant work files come up for viewing.  A chat session with your team opens up so you can monitor any questions related to you.

Setting 3: The Conference Room

You enter your meeting and no longer have to take notes.  The meeting is automatically transcribed with speech recognition and knows who is in the room and what languages they speak.  A chat session automatically starts for everyone that should be in the meeting.

Setting 4: The Car

You leave work and get into the car.   The car automatically pulls up your last call and asks you if you want to dial in.  Related notes and presentations come up on the screen based on who you are talking to.   The car notices you are out of energy so it asks if you want to go to the nearest station.

The Bottom Line: The Future of Customer Experience Delivers Intention Driven, Mass Personalization At Scale

Delivering on these customer segments of one will require a few foundational concepts:

1. Choose your own adventure type of journeys.  With no real beginning nor end, expect these systems to work like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Funnels fall aside as customers, partners, employees, and vendors jump in across processes, make their own decisions, and craft their own experiences on their terms.  Journey maps must account for infinite journeys and support the customer centric points of view.
2. Continuity of experience.  A customer may start an experience on a mobile device, carry it with them to a car, jump into the  office, and then come back to the home.  Regardless of channel, device, platform, or situation, context is carried.  Experiences are delivered with massive context and personalization.  While customers do not expect a disruption in the experience, they do expect relevancy regardless of the context.
3. Intention driven design.  Currently the fashionable approach is predictive.  Predictive does a great job of using past history to predict future patterns.  Intention driven tests for shifts in patterns by setting up hypotheses and awaiting the results.  If we know a person always gets a specific type of coffee at the same time every day. that’s predictive.  An intention driven system will test to see what type of coffee is purchased based on time of day, weather, relationships, location, and even sentiment gathered from heart rate or actions. The test comes from an offer or studying shifts in patterns and behaviors.  This self learning and adjusting capability is powered by cognitive computing approaches.

Your POV.

Are you ready for IOT in customer experience? Will you move from linear customer journey mapping to consider settings and scenes?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Please let us know if you need help with your Digital Business transformation efforts. Here’s how we can assist:

• Developing your digital business strategy
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

 

Data to Decisions Next-Generation Customer Experience Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Tech Optimization Leadership Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Experience Officer

The hidden dark side of connected vehicles – Volkswagen’s electronic tinkering

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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The big bombshell news today on the IoT (internet of things) front was that Volkswagen was caught programming their diesel vehicles to behave better during emission testing. I guess that is much more sophisticated then when a car dealer would roll back the odometer on a used car! The fall out of this news was immediate. The company’s stock tumbled as much as 20%, seeing almost $17b of market value disappearing from Volkswagen AG. Unfortunately for the German automotive giant the pain is not about to end. The United States Environmental Protection Agency, warned that it could levy a fine as high as $18billion for the infractions. Ouch.

This will be a severe blow to Volkswagen, but it will have some other repercussions as well.  A new reason for some to pooh-pooh IoT. I recently wrote a blog post that called out some backlash we are seeing when it comes to connected things. While some may scoff and laugh at such connected items as cat water bowls, jars and socks, I would argue the business plans behind those are not as silly as one might think. Click here for my post. But the cause of that backlash is real. Over-hyped and overpriced connected objects for the sake of it, does not make sense. There has to be a business model associated with the connected item.

It is the same with the stories that come out about someone’s connected skate board being hacked. Yes there is the potential for mischievous acts being perpetrated. But remember that over a decade ago online banking and shopping also fell under the fear mongering – your accounts and credit cards are not safe!!!!! And yes…some breaches have occurred. But as I recall Jesse James and Billy the Kid robbed brick and mortar banks long before the internet. That created a lot of fear, yet people in modern society still having bank accounts…in brick and mortar banks as well as do plenty of on line banking and shopping.

Now I am sure we will hear fear mongering about the companies that are doing the connecting finding some way to “get away” with something. And from the looks of it Volkswagen is guilty of doing so. But this just means that regulators and governments will have to do a better job monitoring. This does not mean that a connected car is now a bad thing. With all new technologies there is a learning curve: for consumers, the creators of the technology, the oversight of the usage and the business models best served. We are only beginning to scratch the surface when it comes to IoT. There will be bumps and abuses of the technology, but there continues to be great promise. Let’s not let the worry mongering detract from the possible.

 

Data to Decisions Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer

What to Expect at Connected Enterprise: The SuperNova Award Gala Dinner

Find out who wins this year's SuperNova Awards for innovators in disruptive technology. The winners will be announced LIVE at Connected Enterprise! Constellation will announce the winners of the SuperNova Awards at the SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner on the second night of Constellation's Connected Enterprise.

There's still time to register for Constellation's Connected Enterprise: http://www.constellationevents.com/event/constellations-connected-enterprise-2015-3/

SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner

The SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner is an awards ceremony during which we honor SuperNova Award participants past and present, and announce the winners of this year's competition.

2014 SuperNova Award Ceremony from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

When: November 5, 2015 7:00p.m. - 10:00p.m.
Who: honorees include SuperNova Award finalists and winners; all attendees of Constellation's Connected Enterprise
Winners: official list of winners will be available November 5, 2015 on the Constellation blog

The Constellation SuperNova Awards are the first awards to recognize individuals for their courage in battling the odds to introduce disruptive technologies to their organizations.

2015 SuperNova Award Finalists

Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite

Russell Foltz-Smith, TrueCar
Daniel Hart, MEDHOST
Craig Pavia, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade & Development Canada
Martin Brodbeck, SterlingBankcheck

Data to Decisions

Rasim Manavoglu, MUDO
Joshua Marshall, State of Indiana
Alda Mizaku, Mercy Health
Jamie Oswald, Mercy Health
Mike Peterson, Neustar, Inc.
Scott Salter, Cox Automotive
Sam Savage, Barclays

Digital Marketing Transformation

Naveen Gunti, Tumi Holdings, Inc.
Tushar Patel, Innotas 
Michael Seminara, Janome America 
Dan Sichel, Mind Share World
Tom Vu, Atmel Corporation
John Sahagian, Baxter Credit Union

Future of Work

Asha Aravindakshan, Ashoka
Geoff Corb, Johns Hopkins University
Cris Debord/Kenny Bailey/Brandon Garner, Dollar General
Steve Nava, Luminex
Hadi Partovi, Code.org
Helen Scott, Canadian Network for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health
Christian Trujillo, Western Union
Phillip Young, Dowco Consultants Ltd.
Donna Morris, Adobe

Matrix Commerce

Steve Carlson, FloraCraft 
Rodney Henson, MetLife 
Jordan Kivelstadt, Free Flow Wines
Erica Stevens, Dylan’s Candy Bar
David Tomlinson, ConAgra Foods
Ajit Sivadasan, Lenovo

Next Generation Customer Experience

John Bollen, MGM Resorts International
Dennis Bromley, Mountain America Credit Union
Mark Fordham, Central Desktop
Belinda Rushing, nTelos Wireless
Aparajita Gupta, Firstsource Solutions Ltd.
Brian Murray, CoTap 
Howard Tarnoff, Ceridian
Dan Wallis, Kaiser Permanente
Bill Zhang, SAP and the National Basketball Association (NBA)

Technology Optimization and Innovation

Erica Stevens, Dylan’s Candy Bar
Dr. David Bray, Federal Communications Comission
Jeffrey Cohen, The MENTOR Network 
Carter Maslan, Camio
Bob Moore, InterMetro Industries
Eric Quinn, C&S Companies
Julien Ramond, Club Auto Roadside Services Ltd., a CAA company 
Heather Maniscalco, Blackboard, Inc. 
RJ Smith, Venture Technologies
Keth Zecchini, Parsons Brinckerhoff
Paul Wright, Accuride

 

Data to Decisions Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth AR Executive Events AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Robotics Analytics Automation Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Quantum Computing Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service developer Metaverse VR Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Chief Customer Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Operating Officer

The New Salesforce UI, Intelligence and Integrations Help Employees Get Work Done

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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Last week in San Francisco, Salesforce held their annual Dreamforce conference. This year's attendance was announced at 150,000 people... regardless of the accuracy of that number, it's safe to say the event is massive. With announcements of new product features (in Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud, Service Cloud), new partnerships and ecosystem expansion (Apps Cloud), and new platforms (IoT Cloud powered by Thunder) there is far too much news to cover in one post. Luckily, Salesforce does an excellent job at making video replays of the keynotes available, so you can catchup on anything you missed.  Also, at the end of this post I have provided links to several posts written by my colleagues that provide excellent analysis.

For this post, I've chosen to focus on the following three key announcements, and how they contribute to improving the way people get their jobs done.

1. The new Salesforce Lightning User Interface

2. SalesforceIQ for Small Business and SalesforceIQ for Sales Cloud

3. Future Integrations With Microsoft Productivity Applications

 

Modernizing The Look, Improving The Usage

While Salesforce introduced several new features, perhaps the most significant announcement was the updating of the Salesforce User Interface (UI) with what they call the new Lightning Experience. Forget about the new name and marketing, what this really means is that the almost decade old look of Salesforce has now been updated with a much more modern style. Icons for key product areas are now available down the left side, and the main screens have been redesigned to provide more information in the centre along with supporting information in a sidebar on the right side.

Employees will most likely welcome this new look, but it will take a little while to get used to. Customers should not worry about additional training costs, as Salesforce provides several resources to get people up and running quickly, such as this short overview video.

 

Linking Data, Finding Patterns and Making Recommendations

For me, the most interesting announcements of the week centered around the rebranding and evolution of RelatedIQ (acquired July 2014) into SalesforceIQ.  What this tool does is bring "intelligence" into the sales cycle. By intelligence, Salesforce means linking together your email, calendar, personal contacts and company's CRM data, then looking for patterns and making recommended actions that could help speed up the sales cycle.  For example, SalesforceIQ can help you find the people in your organization that may already be connected with a prospect listed in your pipeline.  Also, SalesforceIQ introduces a new inbox that links together your email, calendar, files and Salesforce... reducing the need to switch between multiple tools.  Rather than me explaining further, watch the follow two short videos:

SalesforceIQ for Small Business

SalesforceIQ for Sales Cloud

I really like the direction SalesforceIQ is going in.  As my readers know, I am very focused on the intersection of analytics and collaboration, looking at ways data can be used to help people focus on the right things and connect with the right people. This is exactly what Salesforce is starting to do. Additionally, Salesforce also recently acquired Tempo.AI (smart calendar) but that has yet to manifest itself in SaleforceIQ. For now, SalesforceIQ is focused on sales use-cases, I look forward to seeing if they bring similar "intelligence" to Marketing, Community and Service clouds.

Caution: Speaking with several people at Dreamforce, there is some confusion between the two versions. When should a company use the SMB version, and when should they move up to the Sales Cloud version? Why even have the two versions? Will there be feature parity between the two? Salesforce has attempted to answer some of these questions in a FAQ, but I think it will be a while until this is al clearly understood.  Pricing for SalesforceIQ starts at $25/user/month, but quickly jumps to $65, $125 or $250 depending on the features you need.

Seamless Collaboration and Business Processes

The third big announcement that will impact the daily use of Salesforce is the upcoming integration with Microsoft's collaboration and productivity tools.  While today there is integration with Outlook, Excel and a few other products, Microsoft and Salesforce have vowed to further integration between their two industry leading platforms.

I've already written about this announcement in detail, but the four areas they have placed onto the 2016 roadmap are:

- Skype for Business, providing presence awareness inside Salesforce and allow for seamless web conferencing, chat and VOIP calls
- OneNote, enabling note taking to be linked directly to Salesforce records
- Office Graph and Office Delve, so surface Salesforce content inside Microsoft’s new search and discovery UIs
- Salesforce1 Mobile App for Windows 10

Here is short video that talks about the planned integrations.

 

Helping People Get Work Done

Over the last few years Salesforce has evolved dramatically from a company that helped Sales Reps keep track of their deals to a platform that supports several business functions (such as Marketing, Support, Community) and thousands of partner applications. Each of the announcements above support the idea of improving the way people get their jobs done. From a fresh new user interface, to leveraging data to make informed decisions, to integration with the most popular productivity tools... Salesforce is focused on helping people get work done.

 

Additional Resources

Salesforce Evolves Communities From Forums To E-Commerce, by Guy Courtin and Alan Lepofsky

Dreamforce 2015: Value for customers - but some concerns on direction, by Holger Mueller

Salesforce IoT Cloud Awaits Thunder Real-Time Engine, by Doug Henschen

Salesforce Unveils Breakthrough IoT Cloud, Powered by Salesforce Thunder, by Holger Mueller

Salesforce Unveils Breakthrough Salesforce IoT Cloud, Powered by Salesforce Thunder, by Dr. Natalie Petouhoff

Salesforce Makes Wave Analytics More Accessible, Affordable, by Doug Henschen

Dreamforce: Salesforce Unveils the Next Wave of Salesforce Analytics Cloud, by Holger Mueller

 

Future of Work salesforce Chief Marketing Officer

Instacart at the edges of the retail IoT network with help from a humble device

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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The on demand retail economy is in full bloom. Companies from AirBnB, Washio, Favor, Shortcut to Lyft are all offering consumers a new retailing experience when it comes to services or procuring goods. These new business models are also pushing the edges of the retailing envelope – changing how retailers look at servicing the end customer. One shift that is taking place as well is how the physical stores are being leveraged. eCommerce giants such as Amazon and Alibaba began to drive the conversation around why have stores at all? With large logistic networks, strategically placed distribution centers and savvy order capture systems the need for physical stores for customers to come and look at products and then purchase were a relic of the past. Not so fast. Stores are making a come back. As they should. The reality remains, that as a percentage of all retail, the dollars spent via online are still dwarfed by those spent in stores. For every $11 spent in retail, more than $10 of that sum is transacted within a physical store. However retailers are facing the challenge of how to leverage the physical stores in new ways.

An example of this is the services Instacart is offering. The basic premise for the service is to offer consumers the flexibility of having someone else do their grocery shopping and having the items delivered within a finite time. Instacart has partnerships with the likes of Whole Foods, Safeway and Costco. So the grocery store is where the inventory is being held, no carrying costs for Instacart. However, Instacart relies on their pickers as well as their mobile devices to ensure that orders are properly received and most importantly properly picked and packed. This is where problems arise for such a service. The service is similar to a warehouse pick and pack operation, but a warehouse is staffed by professional warehouse employees and is…well a warehouse! Whole Foods is not configured like your local distribution center. So how can you ensure the order is properly handled? This is where the promise of IoT comes into play.

While these grocers are not going to become fully IoT operational overnight – having sensors throughout store infrastructure (shelves, aisles, freezers, carts etc), on certain inventory as well as on other essential assets – the ground work is beginning, in large part driven by the services provided by Instacart. Instacart is really similar to a store within a store – or personal shoppers within stores. And with that they also need their own systems in place to manage their business. While they can lean on the mobile assets their pickers carry, they require a more robust and industrial strength solution. This is where they are working with Zebra Technologies to place printers within certain Whole Foods. Printers? You may look at this as a non-digital play, but on the contrary this is a perfect example of how IoT can start being infused into retail.

Retailers do not need to invest in snazzy new beacons, cameras, sensors, smart shelves or RFID but rather can look at items such as label printers as a foray into IoT. Zebra printers are being rolled out into Whole Foods where they are tied to the Zatar IoT platform. The Zatar platform is able to tie these printers into a greater IoT platform. Currently the system is handling the order processing for the pick and pack of groceries. Through simple printing and labeling, it is targeting a more efficient and proper order.

This is addressing a current need for the grocer and Instacart – making sure orders are error free. But think about how this could evolve. The printer is but one item that is becoming smarter. Instacart is able to place this smart, IoT enabled device, in the property of another entity and run their business within someone else’s store. As the printer becomes “smarter” for example adding camera technology, this innocuous looking device now becomes part of an IoT infrastructure within a grocer’s store. The platform that it is tied can now take on new IoT enabled devices – suddenly the network effect takes off.

The long-term impact of relationships between the likes of Instacart and Zebra is in the ability of companies like Zebra to begin to plant the seeds for connectivity, tied back to their platform, within these physical locations. The promise of IoT will not happen overnight, but will start on the foundation created by the infusion of connecting humble machines such as printers into a greater IoT network.

 

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

An identity glut on the Internet of Things

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 identerati sometimes refer to the challenge of "binding carbon to silicon". That's a poetic way of describing how the field of Identity and Access Management (IDAM) is concerned with associating carbon-based life forms (as geeks fondly refer to people) with computers (or silicon chips).

To securely bind users' identities or attributes to their computerised activities is indeed a technical challenge. In most conventional IDAM systems, there is only circumstantial evidence of who did what and when, in the form of access logs and audit trails, most of which can be tampered with or counterfeited by a sufficiently determined fraudster. To create a lasting, tamper-resistant impression of what people do online requires some sophisticated technology (in particular, digital signatures created using hardware-based cryptography).

On the other hand, working out looser associations between people and computers is the stock-in-trade of social networking operators and Big Data analysts. So many signals are emitted as a side effect of routine information processing today that even the shyest of users may be uncovered by third parties with sufficient analytics know-how and access to data.

So privacy is in peril. For the past two years, big data breaches have only got bigger: witness the losses at Target (110 million), EBay (145 million), Home Depot (109 million records) and JPMorgan Chase (83 million) to name a few. Breaches have got deeper, too. Most notably, in June 2015 the U.S. federal government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) revealed it had been hacked, with the loss of detailed background profiles on 15 million past and present employees.

I see a terrible systemic weakness in the standard practice of information security. Look at the OPM breach: what was going on that led to application forms for employees dating back 15 years remaining in a database accessible from the Internet? What was the real need for this availability? Instead of relying on firewalls and access policies to protect valuable data from attack, enterprises need to review which data needs to be online at all.

We urgently need to reduce the exposed attack surface of our information assets. But in the information age, the default has become to make data as available as possible. This liberality is driven both by the convenience of having all possible data on hand, just in case in it might be handy one day, and by the plummeting cost of mass storage. But it's also the result of a technocratic culture that knows "knowledge is power," and gorges on data.

In communications theory, Metcalfe's Law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of devices that are connected. This is an objective mathematical reality, but technocrats have transformed it into a moral imperative. Many think it axiomatic that good things come automatically from inter-connection and information sharing; that is, the more connection the better. Openness is an unexamined rallying call for both technology and society. "Publicness" advocate Jeff Jarvis wrote (admittedly provocatively) that: "The more public society is, the safer it is". And so a sort of forced promiscuity is shaping up as the norm on the Internet of Things. We can call it "superconnectivity", with a nod to the special state of matter where electrical resistance drops to zero.

In thinking about privacy on the IoT, a key question is this: how much of the data emitted from Internet-enabled devices will actually be personal data? If great care is not taken in the design of these systems, the unfortunate answer will be most of it.

 

Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Chief Information Officer