5 Major Trends Affecting Human Capital Management

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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Here are the five major trends affecting human capital management right now. Watch the short video below for a more in-depth explanation from Holger Mueller

5 Major Trends Affecting Human Capital Management

1. Aging workforce
2. Globalization
3. Efforts to make talent management work
4. Five generations of workers. Is your organization prepared to accommodate millenials?
5. Real analytics. Analytics that take an action or make a recommendation. 

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?5 Major Trends Affecting HCM - Holger Mueller

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ServiceSource®: Customer Success Management for a Post-Sale, On-Demand, Attention Economy (Part 1)

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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I'm in the process of writing profiles of vendors in the customer success management industry. These vendor profiles are a tool for buyers to evaluate their customer success management options before selecting a vendor. In addition to an overview of the vendor, these documents identify key differentiators, product offerings, and provide a short list guide for buyers. 

The first vendor I profiled is ServiceSource®. Stay tuned, as more profiles will be published in the weeks to come. 

Customer Success Management: ServiceSource® provides B2B companies with technology-enabled services, cloud software and best-practice processes to improve customer success, drive revenue growth and decrease churn from existing customers. It began as a managed services firm and evolved by adding a software platform. ServiceSource had $272.2 million in revenue in 2014.

What Does ServiceSource Do? ServiceSource’s solutions help companies manage the end-to-end customer revenue lifecycle, including onboarding and adoption, upsell and cross-sell, retention and renewals. With more than 15 years of experience focusing on customer success and revenue growth, ServiceSource has the depth of expertise companies need to manage their revenue lifecycle. With deployments across 40 languages and 150 countries and a recurring revenue technology platform, ServiceSource manages billions of dollars of recurring revenue for clients annually.

Why Customer Success Management Important Today: Today’s cloud businesses have unprecedented visibility and data on customers that can be harnessed with a customer success management platform. This opens up new opportunities and smarter ways to connect and engage with customers to maximize revenue and to determine what customers need and want so they remain loyal and provide high customer lifetime values.

An Overview of Customer Success Management: Before the opt-in economy, many businesses were focused on the initial sale. A great deal of money was spent advertising and marketing to potential prospects, enticing them to convert from a lead to a sale. However, little attention was paid to the after-sale experience and financial longevity of the client, even though poor customer experiences and churn still exist today after decades of research showing that after-sales service directly affects the financial stability of a company. In fact, it never made sense for companies to spend millions, or in some cases, billions of dollars in advertising, marketing and sales to then drive the customer to a competitor when the after-sales service experience is horrible. Yet poor after-sales service occurs every single day in many, many companies.

Before, During and After the Sale: Customer Success Management (CSM) is based on the ability to deliver a consistent customer experience process – before, during, and in particular, after the sale – which results in maximized customer lifetime value and enhanced revenue that leads to increased margins and profits. A shift to CSM happened because we live in a continuous, opt-in economy, where the value of customers is determined by how long they stay customers and if they continue to increase their purchase amounts over time. Because of our opt-in economy, companies must prepare themselves to deliver great, continuous and consistent customer experiences.

This seismic shift to a post-sale, on demand, attention economy transforms the value exchange among customers, partners, suppliers, and brands. And as organizations move to digital business models, CSM plays a critical role in enabling brands and organizations to keep and deliver their brand promise as well as enhance their bottom line.

What’s the Best Option for Your Company? When choosing the best option for CSM software for your organization, the choice will depend on the business goals of CSM initiatives, the degree to which CSM has been integrated into your culture and how well employees have adopted this mindset. It may be that some organizations will be further along the adoption cycle, while others will need internal champions to encourage and enforce the use of customer success software, processes and best practices.

Data to Decisions Drives the Democratization of Insight: The CSM field has been spurred on by the need to provide after-sales service intelligence that can be turned into actionable insights and decisions. Holistic, data-driven decisions require a multi-disciplinary approach that incorporates performance monitoring with traditional business intelligence technologies.

A multitude of data sources can be transformed into information streams guided by business process. As context is applied to information streams, patterns emerge that provide nuggets of insight. That insight then drives the ability to take action and make better decisions. This shift to using insight not only can serve high-margin, “luxury” brands, but also should be considered for all businesses through an investment in CSM. By transforming business models to include processes that immediately turn data into decisions, brands and organizations gain the ability to provide great, loyalty inspiring experiences that reduce churn and increase revenue.

Make sure to stay tuned for the next part of the mutli-part study!

Check out my vendor profile of ServiceSource®. An excerpt of the profile including the table of contents is available to download.

@drnatalie

VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research, Covering Customer Success Management, IOT, Analytics and Customer-facing Applications that Deliver Enhanced, Trust-building Customer Experiences via Customer Service, Sales and Marketing

Why GIS is still stuck in the 1990’s

Founder, capioIT
calitolIT

Phil is the founder of capioIT, a research analyst firm focussed on driving change in the analyst and research market through innovation and collaboration, with a strong focus on IT services and BPO strategies in the Asia/Pacific region. He has 17 years' experience in corporate strategy, consulting and market intelligence, gained in a diverse range of organisations and industries. Prior to founding capioIT, he established the Australian and Services business units at Springboard Research. Prior to Springboard Research, Phil was responsible for driving analyst firm IDC's research in the services marketplace across the Asia/Pacific region. During his 6 years at IDC, Phil led a large multi-national team of analysts across a range of IT related services with a particular focus on IT…...

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When I was doing my undergraduate degree and started working as a (Geographic Information Systems) GIS professional over 20 years ago GIS was considered cutting edge across a range of industries from retail, to environmental management and defence. It drove so many issues from store location, weed management and mining analysis.

At Lend Lease back in the late 1990’s we were able to differentiate ourselves as leaders in the retail property sector because of the GIS investments and prowess particularly around trade area analysis and competitive modelling. It enabled us to have a point of difference against the larger Westfield group for leasing managers and fund managers alike.

We are now in 2015 and the best use cases of GIS are still store location, environmental location and demographic analysis. Every vendor case study I see has store location and resource management just as it was in the late 1990’s. Every user and even (sometimes with a gentle arm twist) laments the lack of progress in GIS.

The contrast to the explosive growth of other technology is overwhelming. In that time we have seen the rise of the laptop, Microsoft Office, email, the Internet, iPhones, Tablets, SaaS, Cognitive Computing yet GIS still appears to be stuck in a time warp of the 1990’s.

Even though I was primarily an Atlas GIS user, I was smart enough to realize that ESRI dominated then as it does now from an enterprise perspective; it has many challengers across the environmental, education and broader enterprise industries perspective but no-one has been able to match the depth of ESRI. For mine, that is the heart of the problem. I am a big believer that innovation comes from competition. Too many GIS markets that lack innovation, lack competitive scale from the platform, data and users and this is the central handbrake from the industry.

Of course there is Google Maps. Alongside ESRI this has been both a blessing and a curse for the industry. It has opened up location and mapping to be a central part of professional life and of course personal activities, but it has not lead to enough evolution.

Focus Point

The promise of mobility, analytics, IOT and many other facets of the Digital experience rely upon location as the central core. The location industry needs to wake up from the peak 20 years ago and help drive the relevance of GIS and location for enterprises large and small. Without it, the digital experience will not be enough.

If you require further information, please contact Phil Hassey,  Founder capioIT. capioIT is an advisory firm focused on helping organisations to understand emerging technology as the world becomes Digital. Phil may be contacted by email below,

[email protected]

The secret lesson for corporates from the world of startups

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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• Unnecessary competitive disruption – smaller businesses can easily capture mindshare, momentum and a raft of unhappy customers simply because companies don’t have the agility to address emergent threats.
• Higher levels of customer dissatisfaction – if customer experience projects are subject to this same lack of responsiveness, then customer satisfaction is more likely to quickly result in customer churn and lower NPS.
• Market irrelevance – today’s customer is hungry for differentiated experience. Slow response to market challenges simply means that your market moves elsewhere. And they do so “at the speed of digital”.

But all is not lost. There are four key lessons that corporates can learn from the world of startups. And they can all be easily implemented, trialled and scaled with a minimal investment. I explain more here.

Jive Circle: Useful Employee Directory App That’s A Secure Way To Quickly Search, Discover And Connect With Colleagues

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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Jive Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: JIVE), announced a new mobile application with the release of Jive Circle.  Jive Circle is a secure app for employees to quickly search and discover other employees in their organization. Jive Circle seamlessly integrates with the Jive Chime real-time messaging app, which provides employees a fast way to connect with colleagues.

I generally don’t write about the future of work or employee-facing applications. However, I see the importance of them. Why are they so important? I cover the customer-facing applications. And how an employee treats a customer is directly related to how they feel about the company they work for, the tools they have to work with and how easy it is to get their work done. If the employee experience is bad, it’s difficult to expect the customer experience to be good.

With the world increasingly mobile and with workforces are more dispersed than ever, people are looking for new ways to instantly reach colleagues. Jive Circle, is driving innovation in the way employees connect. And when employees connect, customers get the help they need, and the customer experience is better. It’s really that simple.

What is Jive Circle? It’s a:

• A dynamic employee directory for quick search, discovery and connection with teammates. Employees can quickly search a visual organization chart and identify subject matter experts across the organization. A simplified browse feature allows employees to easily filter and find information about their colleagues. Once a colleague is identified, a press and hold feature prompts connection icons for immediate contact via click-to-call, email or Jive Chime. Soon, Jive Circle will also feature a new calendar sync function that gives insight into who within the organization is joining meetings.
• Enhanced security with the ability to add, edit and deactivate users. An ISO 27001 certified company with more than fourteen years of experience in the communications software space, Jive developed Circle with industry security best practices such as third-party testing and leverages the security of the Amazon Web Service environment. Additionally, IT administrators can easily import employee information to create accounts and build out their organization for the app, plus Jive Circle is built as SaaS, cloud-based software, which does not require any IT maintenance or installation.

If you are really curious, go see more at www.jivesoftware.com/circle. You can subscribe to updates regarding the Jive Circle early access program. It is available across iOS and Android devices.

How are your employees connecting to make better customer experiences?

@DrNatalie VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Articulate Your Business Case or Lose Customers To Competitors

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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We Are Out of The Hype Cycle: Digital and Social Applications Must Solve Business Issues: I know when I first started to learn about social media and digital applications, I could see how they could change business. It made sense to me. I think because I am an early adopter. I’m referring to Geoffrey Moore’s technology adoption curve. There’s the innovators, who create all this cool new software. And then there’s early adopters like me, that look at those innovator’s inventions and realize the impact they can make.

Having been in this business for a long time, one of the things that I realized was that not everyone can see the value of social and digital. It’s not an intuitive thing for them. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It just is what it is. And that’s why businesses (vendors) who are in the business of selling products and services really need to take a look at their product management and product sales teams. Are they organized to sell to those that “already” get the value? That’s like selling ice to Eskimos. The people who get it, already bought your product.

MY POV: Where the rubber is now meeting the road is learning how to articulate the business value that digital and social applications, products and services provide. I am lucky to hear a lot of briefings on new things. However, what I am finding is that some companies need to really look at where the marketplace is in adoption of the new technology and perhaps shift some of their marketing messaging, but even more important to look at who are the persona(s) that they are developing products and services for? Are they for the early adopters? It’s a small part of the marketplace. Or is is for the early / late majority? That’s a much larger part of the marketplace.

Early Majority Want Your Help to Say Yes: And that part of that part of the marketplace (early majority) requires something different to convince them that they need this “new” product. They want to know what business challenges does it solve? They want to be shown how someone else had a “burning issue” and this product or service solved it and what the outcomes were.

If your sales pitch is not lined up that way, you maybe missing the market on the largest part of the marketplace. Don’t take it from me; reread  Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm— it’s all about changing how you market and sell as the marketplace matures. Those who do, will find prosperity and those that don’t, won’t.

What Do You Need To Do Now? The key is to be able to articulate the business value. What is the business issue that your product or service solves? To know that, a business has to be really clear on who they are selling to. That means they need to define various personas and know what those personas face as daily challenges. They need to map out the-day-in-the-life of that professional. And they need to do this by going and talking to 10 or 20 or 100 of them. Don’t assume anything. Then align the challenges those professionals face with the solution you offer and can show an early majority person how your new “product or service” can solve their issue better than anyone else.

References, References, References: And having customer references is key, especially early majority customer references. Why? Because early majority folks convince other early majority people to take a chance at these new technology, processes and services. They believe each other more than they believe the vendor or even sometimes an analyst.

Watch Your Language: There’s lot’s of language issues in the current marketing of software and products / services. Almost everyone can claim to be influencing some aspect of customer experience. And by not articulating the business case of how that product or service clearly affects the bottom line, the buyer is confused and that slows the sales cycle down.

Understand Buying Signals: Your potential customers probably won’t say anything; they might say things like, “Hmmm looks interesting. Call me in a few months.” or “Send me a brochure.” NOTE TO SELF: Those are NOT buying signals. They are polite ways of saying, “I don’t have time for this; I don’t see how this applies to why my hair is on fire; I am not sure how I would apply this to what is happening in my department or company and I certainly have no idea how I am going to explain this in a business case to get my boss to say yes.”

Do The Work: Don’t make your customer do the hard work. Create those business use cases. Create scenarios that the early majority can see themselves in. Articulate, even if it’s a back of the envelope calculation, the return on their investment. If you do this, it will make all the difference in your sales cycles, in your revenue and profits and your market position. If you don’t, someone else will.

Time to take another look at where the marketplace is in the maturity of the digital disruption and stop all the fanatical “speak” and get down to business. At least that’s my take. What’s yours?

@Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Hootsuite and the Instagram Integration You’re Still Waiting For

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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Instagram has been wildly successful in building an alternative and deeply connected community of users. And I say “community” for a reason. Far more than the one-to-one-to-one connection that has made Facebook so popular and adoptable, Instagram’s connection architecture provides an easy way to connect people with similar interests and passions. And it does so whether that passion lasts only an instant or a year.

And while some brands have been able to build vibrant communities around their Instagram accounts, it’s often a hit and miss affair. It’s hard to keep track of the growth of a community base, almost impossible to gather key metrics, and even the simplest publishing functionality is notably missing.

Until now.

Hootsuite has announced that Instagram will now be integrated into their social media dashboard. This means that Hootsuite users will be able to:

• Schedule and publish Instagram content
• Monitor and engage with conversations on Instagram
• Create team based workflows.

With content marketing becoming an ever-more important component of marketing strategy, this new integration provides marketers with a simple and easy way to bring that content marketing strategy to life.

To get started:

• Ensure you have the latest version of Hootsuite installed on your smartphone
• Turn on Instagram notifications in the Hootsuite Settings
• Start publishing.

Now, for the bad news.

While you can schedule Instagram posts, you still need to manually post to Instagram from your device. The Hootsuite integration just notifies you at the appropriate time that the post is ready to go. So, unfortunately, those wanting to seriously engage with Instagram as a brand and marketing channel will need to struggle with the lack of API integration.

This means Instagram will remain a promising but ultimately immature channel for most serious brand marketing activities. At least for now.

Card Not Present fraud trends (sadly) back to normal

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 Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) releases card fraud statistics every six months for the preceding 12m period. For years, Lockstep has been monitoring these figures, plotting the trend data and analysing what the industry is and is not doing about it. A few weeks ago, statistics for calendar year 2014 came out.

As we reported last time, despite APCA's optimistic boosting of 3D Secure and education measures for many years, Card Not Present (CNP) online fraud was not falling as hoped. And what we see now in the latest numbers is the second biggest jump in CNP fraud ever! CY 2014 online card fraud losses were very nearly AU$300M, up 42% in 12 months.

Again, APCA steadfastly rationalises in its press release (PDF) that high losses simply reflect the popularity of online shopping. That's cold comfort to the card holders and merchants who are affected.

APCA has a love-ignore relationship with 3D Secure. This is one of the years when 3D Secure goes unmentioned. Instead the APCA presser talks up tokenization, I think for the first time. Yet the payments industry has had tokenization for about a decade. It's just another band-aid over the one fundamental crack in the payment card system: nothing stops stolen card numbers being replayed.

A proper fix to replay attack is easilt within reach, which would re-use the same cryptography that solves skimming and carding, and would restore a seamless payment experience for card holders. See my 2012 paper Calling for a Uniform Approach to Card Fraud Offline and On" (PDF).

Abstract

The credit card payments system is a paragon of standardisation. No other industry has such a strong history of driving and adopting uniform technologies, infrastructure and business processes. No matter where you keep a bank account, you can use a globally branded credit card to go shopping in almost every corner of the world. The universal Four Party settlement model, and a long-standing card standard that works the same with ATMs and merchant terminals everywhere underpin seamless convenience. So with this determination to facilitate trustworthy and supremely convenient spending in every corner of the earth, it's astonishing that the industry is still yet to standardise Internet payments. We settled on the EMV standard for in-store transactions, but online we use a wide range of confusing and largely ineffective security measures. As a result, Card Not Present (CNP) fraud is growing unchecked.

This article argues that all card payments should be properly secured using standardised hardware. In particular, CNP transactions should use the very same EMV chip and cryptography as do card present payments.

News Analysis: Infosys One-Year After Vishal Sikka

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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With heavy contributions from Sachin Gosavi, VP of South Asia

Infosys Makes Strides In Its Own Digital Transformation Journey

On June 12th, 2014, Infosys announced the August 1, 2014 appointment of Dr. Vishal Sikka to the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director (CEO & MD) role.  At the time, Constellation believed this appointment marked a significant industry development and gave Infosys an opportunity to embark on a much needed transformational journey.

Constellation’s analysis of Sikka and his executive team’s first year shows significant progress in not only the structural transformation, but also the market perception of Infosys.  By all accounts Vishal Sikka and his team have succeeded in:

• Revitalizing the sagging employee morale.  Employee morale had tanked to an all time low prior to Sikka’s arrival.  In fact, the annual numbers indicate a sizable drop in attrition rate (from Annualized Consolidated 26.4% in June 2014 to Annualized Consolidated 19.2% in June 2015).  .
  
  Point of View (POV): Turning around the sagging employee morale and readying them for a product and platform thinking is no doubt the highlight of the new CEO’s first year at Infosys.   Measures such as massive-scale design thinking training, internal crowd-sourcing of ideas through Murmuration, dress code relaxation and a shift in self-directed management style have already made an impact.  Improved performance has also mitigated most nay-sayers who now see a clearer direction for not only their own careers, but also the future of Infosys.  Constellation expects the organization to fully change the internal culture from a command and control structure to one where employees are empowered to make more impactful self directed decisions.

• Focusing on IP creation and platforms.  A renewed focus on software and platforms included the creation of Infosys Information Platform (IIP) and Infosys Automation Platform (IAP) to complement existing Edge products and platforms.  The arrival of Silicon Valley software expertise complements the brain trust in Bangalore and around the world.  On the inorganic front, the acquisitions of Panaya and Skava (*subject to statutory approvals) in quick succession showed vision in automating through software.
  
  (POV): Constellation believes that the focus on IP investment is much needed and also required to compete in the shift to digital.  The IIP platform is one of many more to come where software provides economies of scale over hours.  The other big area is how Infosys competes.  It now goes into the market more unafraid to reach for more strategic deals and also more of the technology budget.   Going forward, Constellation believes that creation of successful platform architectures, continued acquisition and integration of IP assets, and a customer focus on continuous innovation will help Vishal achieve the scale required to achieve the escape velocity required to stand out.  While Infosys still has a lot of work to transform itself into a true product & latforms player, Vishal and his team have solidly placed the required foundational blocks in place to change the narrative from time and materials shop to IP creators.

• Revitalizing the brand.  Often seen as a “has-been” success story, Infosys faced a crisis of client confidence with a series of high-profile departures prior to Sikka’s arrival.   The new Infosys has changed the tenor of client conversations with a focus on innovation, board room and CXO level issues, and the impact of technology on business.
  
  (POV): Vishal’s impact was immediate.  CEO’s of major Global 2000 companies who never met with past CEOs were eager to meet with Sikka about deals.  A series of successful Infosys Confluence customer events, high profile wins, and shift in customer engagement, have helped transform the brand perception.  While much has to be accomplished to compete for the time and attention of CXO’s, the current trajectory is promising for clients, employees, and shareholders.

The Bottom Line: Clients Have A Credible Option For A Technology Partner

For clients, the year has cleared the uncertainty emanated from multiple exits at the top prior to June 2014.  When organizations are in transition, they need strong leaders who can show what is possible and how one can get there.  Sikka's arrival brought hope that Infosys could make the transition into the digital age and move from has been to relevant player.

More importantly, steering a large, T&M-model IT Services shop on an IP and Product driven path while transforming culture and brand takes time.  Infosys is making the move from advisor to innovator (see Figure 1).  While the transition will take 18 to 24 months to complete, this transition reflects a 3 to 5 year journey.   While the outside world has seen the improvement in morale, the move to design thinking, the shift to innovation, and the push towards IP over services, what’s to come remains the long term structural changes required to build a future in a services company.

As with all big changes, it’s hard to tell what’s changing when you are in the midst of it.  Constellation beleives most Infosys employees will realize that they had gone through the biggest transformation the company has ever seen by the end of 2017

Existing clients and prospects should:

1.  Take advantage of the Design Thinking workshops Infosys is hosting and start the discussions around newer areas of engagement. “Start small and scale as per the success metrics” is the appropriate approach for them as of now.
2. Use this opportunity to find a partner to co-create and co-innovate with.
3. Determine opportunities to achieve scale in optimizing costs to fund innovation

Figure 1: Creators and Innovators Trump “Trusted Advisor” in Next-gen IT services

Your POV.

Have you changed your view of Infosys? Do you agree with our assessment?  Let us know your experiences.  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR(dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Will Instagram’s Advertising Platform Hurt Its Popularity?

Partner, Sensei Marketing
Partner, Sensei Marketing

Sales & marketing veteran with almost 30 years’ experience and now 1800 digital projects to his credit for clients including Morgan Stanley, AOL, Hyatt Gaming Management, Snyder's of Hanover, Hitachi, the Home Depot, Kraft Foods, Drees Homes, American Idol, and hundreds more, including leading agencies around the North America.     ...

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Instagram announced this week that it will open up the advertising flood gates to businesses seeking access to its 300 million monthly users.

The illusive Instagram ad, which previously required personal contact with an Instagram sales person, lots of advance planning, and large budgets will soon be less, well, illusive. Using 3rd party advertising apps, marketers and adverting agents will soon be buying and managing advertising in the same manner they do on Facebook, Instagram’s sister network.  Further, they will be able to do so through a single interface instead of being forced to flip through different devices. It’s this cross-platform integration that makes this news all that much more interesting for marketers.

As reported by Business Insider, the Instagram Ads API is the latest in a series of moves the platform has made to start opening up the money jets. Back in June, alongside announcing the API test, Instagram announced that all of Facebook’s ad-targeting tools will be opened up to Instagram advertisers. In the same month it also launched “Shop Now” buttons and other messages for advertisers to link outside the app. And earlier this year Instagram introduced “carousel ads,” allowing marketers to fit more images into one single ad.

This is truly major news; Instagram’s users share over 70 million photos and videos each day. Further, the majority of users are 16 and 24 years old (41%), the mecca of target audiences for advertisers (35% of users are between the ages of 25 and 35).  The value of Instagram’s audience is undeniable, a fact that was not lost on Facebook, which purchased the social media network in the spring of 2012 in a deal valued at over a billion dollars.

Marketers Ruin Everything

Reaction has been swift; “marketers ruin everything” seems to be the most common sentiment among users and pundits. The new advertising rules on Facebook have been drawing similar criticisms, both for the increasing number of paid posts showing up in peoples’ news feeds and its inaccurate targeting.

Facebook has also been under attack for its “double-dipping” advertising policy when it comes to business pages. The social network asks businesses to increase follower counts by purchasing Facebook ads but then throttles the business’s posts so that less than 5% of the followers earned organically or through paid advertising actually see the business’s posts. You want to get your message to those followers you paid to acquire? No problem, give Facebook even more money and they’ll gladly oblige.

Few consumers will condemn a social network that is offered free of charge to users for attempting to make money through inline advertising, yet most will jump to criticise marketers for doing a poor job executing those campaigns or the networks for intrusive and irrelevant ad placement.  Consumers accept advertising as a necessary evil in their social engagements but are also quick to ignore campaigns and ads that become too intrusive. In fact, a study by Adobe and PageFair found that the number of people using blocking software, for example, rose 70 per cent last year in reaction to the increasing number of ads being shoveled at us online.

Will Instagram’s Advertising Platform Hurt Its Popularity?

Consumer opinions may not matter; analysts predict Instagram’s new advertising API to be a windfall for the social network.  EMarketer suggests that Instagram will earn almost $600 million from advertising in the next year.

To Instagram’s credit, they have found a way to make their ads less obtrusive than those found on other digital platforms including news sites, YouTube, and Facebook. There are no “page take over” ads (yet), no forced viewing of advertising video content (yet) as seen on Google, and no auto-play of videos from paid posts (yet) as seen on Facebook.  Yet.

Instagram’s “swipe to view” posts are effective ads in that the user does not see any additional content or calls to action (CTAs) until they choose to swipe left or right on an image.

The key for Instagram and marketers alike will be to ensure that their targeting algorithm and content mix is bang on. For example, my Instagram posts (and those of the people I tend to follow on that network) are predominately cigars, single malt whiskey, and Liverpool football club. If sporadic advertising within my Instagram stream introduced me to Cigar Aficionado’s latest article or Laphroigh’s latest whisky, I’d would most likely welcome the posts.

If, on the other hand, the network follows Facebook’s lead and presents advertisements for cheap rum or Middle East travel destinations (yes, that happened), Instagram and I may have a short term future.   Worse, if they co-mingle usage data among social networks and present ads on Instagram based on my usage pattern on Facebook or other networks, Instagram and I (and I suspect many others) will plan a “conscious uncoupling” with the social media giant.

I’m not optimistic.

Sensei Debates

What are your thoughts? Will the increased advertising soon to be seen on Instagram hurt its popularity?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Eg0

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