A Model for Anticipatory Analytics

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I hope you read my last post about what’s wrong with Predictive Analytics – that’s the basis for this post.

I would like to explain how Anticipatory Analytics should work – and give you an idea of what the value is.  This is, in essence, what predictive analytics should’ve been in generation 1.0, and how we evolve from that definition of predictive to today’s model.  As I mentioned before, I see predictive as being badly implemented more than anything and am hoping this model can improve and replace those faulty implementations.

The outcome for this model: explore the art of the possible.  Let’s start with a theoretical example to illustrate better the art of the possible.

A consumer purchases an airline ticket to a tropical destination. In today’s world of traditional marketing the email confirmation would contain links to typical tourist attractions with whom the airline has established relationships. If the consumer buys, they get a percentage of the purchase price – but the number of consumers that take those offers is extremely low.

Any incentive to purchase, or any special offer, will not be customized to that specific consumer to augment the chance of purchase.

Fast forward to predictive analytics events, and the airline may do better than just offer a bunch of random attractions, they might even filter by age and gender of the consumer – or even look at past events and see if they opted for one of the previous offers and then make the offer to the consumer. Since the confidence of these offers is greater, and the recipient is thought to be better known, the offers the consumer gets may be more customized and even addressed to their individual preferences (based on information the airline captured before).

In a world where everything is possible we see a different scenario. The airline would use data from their own repositories, but also from other sources. Compiling information from social channels, communities, partners and alliances, even accessing credit card information from the past they can, close to real time, construct a very effective profile of what offers would or wouldn’t attract the interest of the consumer and extend deeply discounted, but almost guaranteed, offers customized to the preferences of the consumer. Not necessarily based on information that was stored before, but based on analytics conducted ad-hoc on the many data streams related to the consumer.

Each choice the customer would make would then change the potential outcomes of the many other options – which would then be recalculated and the most likely chosen – not the next best, but the next most likely.

In this example we see a consumer that instead of getting an email with 10-12 “opportunities” would get a highly customized package of offers that are almost guaranteed to be interesting and appropriate. Further, if the airline could obtain financial information from a partner about the user, the offers could be of higher or lower value appropriate to each user and further increase the chances of adoption.

Even more interesting, any choice that the consumer makes would alter the calculations for the many other options – in real time resulting in better offers being tendered instantaneously.

This new model, from expecting a consumer to repeat a behavior from someone else in the past to foretelling what a consumer may do based on his or her individual data and needs, and adapting it along the way based on their choices and other data, is the art of the possible today.

Great, you say – so how do I make this work?  That’s next week’s third and final post on this series… stay tuned, once more.

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The True Value of Social Business is Still to be Unlocked

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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Realising the value of any business initiative – especially when it involves some form of transformation or change management – can take months or even years. In fact, the benefits of some changes can continue to accrue for decades. Little wonder then, that business is taking time to bring its social media / social business programs to account. After all, it’s not just about allowing Facebook access through the firewall and launching a new Fan Page.

For business to generate value from their investments in social initiatives, integrated programs need to be rolled out across five dimensions:

• Goals – it’s essential for your program to set goals. These goals will, over time, become more refined, but even ad hoc programs should establish clear parameters
• Commitment – understanding how your teams will use social media helps determine the level of resourcing, governance and support that will be needed. Essentially, you need to determine your organisation’s accepted level of commitment
• Ability – how will social be deployed within your organisation and by whom? What level of training and best practice sharing will be put in place? How will you formalise this?
• Measurement – are you achieving your goals? Are you failing? And are you even measuring the right things?
• Scalability – who’s job is social? Thinking through this question will help you confront the challenges of scaling social within your business.

To understand the way that organisational maturity can be built over time, I created this social business maturity model. But when it was first developed back in 2011, there was a paucity of data available on the impact of social business. This is now beginning to change.

The Sloan Review/Deloitte’s findings from their 2014 global study on social business reveals that as social business matures, value begins to build across the enterprise – not just within the marketing and sales divisions. Almost 60% of B2B companies are finding that social business initiatives are “positively impacting business outcomes”. And that central to the realisation of business value is the support of the C-suite.

Those experienced in the world of change management will know the importance of “top down” support. And social business transformation is no different.

Read the full report here – and then roll up your sleeves. With only 51% of business sitting in the early stages of the maturity model, there’s plenty of opportunity to grow and create value.

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Rethinking Marketing: From Media to Experience

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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In the marketing industry, we have been talking, writing and even creating a shift in the way that we do business for over a decade. Early blogs and (what is now called) social media provided an inkling into where the shift was going – away from paid media into “owned” and “earned” media. This was a difficult, but relatively understandable transition because we were essentially talking the same language – the language of media. Accordingly we shifted from media planning and strategy towards “content planning and strategy” – we were still talking about the same processes behind the brand curtain – it’s just that some of those activities happened on the other side:

• Paid media – traditional advertising like print, television, radio, direct mail, retail/channel and the kind of placement that you have to pay for. The benefits of paid media is that you get (mostly) what you pay for – control over the context, content, use of your logo and other branding, messaging, focus and tone of voice.
• Owned media – your own properties like your website, microsites and blogs, forums or branded communities. To an extent, your Facebook fan pages, Twitter profiles and YouTube channels etc fall into owned media – though you have less precise control over interaction/commentary, overall look and feel (ie your Facebook page is always going to look like it belongs to Facebook).
• Earned media – the word of mouth, social mentions (tweets, status updates, mentions, reviews, blog posts) and so on that are produced about your brand by your fans. You have little influence over the structure, timing or even appearance of your messaging or branded assets – but it ranks as one of the most influential forms of media.

But while we (marketers) were talking about the different kinds of media, technology companies and startups were out there changing the form and function of that media. They weren’t interested in the marketer’s view of media – looking instead for ways that technology could extend, enhance or accelerate the flow of that media from brand to consumer. Accordingly they focused their efforts on four technology trends – creating an enterprise-scale IT model known as SMAC which combines Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud. And while this works from an inside-out point of view, it must be revisited and reframed to deliver value and relevance to our customers.

Experience as the beating heart of brands

It’s easy to rant about poor customer experience. We see it on social media all the time. Sometimes it is warranted. Sometimes it isn’t. But SMAC has removed the barriers to entry for the vast majority. All we have to do is take a photo upload it to Facebook or Twitter and tag it with #fail and it will reach not only our friends and connections but others who monitor and amplify these kind of failures of brand experience (yes, these people really do exist).

Take a look at this single tweet from Mashable about a “Valentines Day flower failure”. With over 5 million followers and hundreds of retweets – a poor customer experience can turn a bad day into an unfolding disaster.

Received equally bad from Proflowers. 1-800-Flowers doing major damage control after Valentine’s Day #fail http://t.co/t3U1kdxETK @mashable

— Dolores Burks (@doloresburks) February 16, 2015

The point, however, is that we – as consumers – experience brands at a very personal level. With this in mind, it is worth reframing SMAC and media from the outside-in. It’s time to understand the behavioural triggers that arise out of SMAC and create engagement that works for our fans, customers, and advocates.

• Social: The Social dimension has the potential to deliver powerful, personal yet scalable CONNECTION. It offers a single conversational channel, builds trust and offers a way to accelerate a resolution or conversion process
• Mobile: The Mobile dimension delivers LOCATION. With a connected device in your pocket (close to your beating heart), a mobile phone is the convergence point where the digital and the “real” worlds collide
• Analytics: The power of big data is not in crunching everything known about a customer. The real value is in delivering AWARENESS to a network. This effectively means creating USER context from the social, mobile and business data signals available
• Cloud: And the cloud provides the mechanism for SERVICE. To remain relevant to customers, brands must re-acquaint themselves with the value of service. And Cloud provides the mechanism to do so.

Combining SMAC with an understanding of customer behaviour means that SERVICE can be delivered conveniently at the right time, in the right space in the right context. And even in the right environment.

Is it the future of marketing? Don’t look too far towards the horizon, for this future has already happened. Only some heard it knocking on the door.

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How Many Security Breach Notices Have You Gotten? Time Cloud Providers Step Up

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 don’t know about you, but I do worry about cybercrime. I just got another notice in the mail from a company saying that they “may have had a security breach.”  The security of CRM or customer data is clearly something that customers care about. It has become so common that it’s almost not a shocker when I get letters like this. CRM vendors, especially those that put customer records, data and customer analytics in the cloud must step up their security. I was relieved to hear about the independent auditors that verified that Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, and Intune align to ISO/IEC 27018, which provides a uniform, international approach to protecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in the cloud.

The company hit other privacy milestones last year, including confirmation from European data protection authorities (Europe tends to have stricter regulations than the US) that its enterprise cloud contracts are in line with “model clauses” under EU privacy law, and was among the first companies to sign the Student Privacy Pledge. In a blog post by Brad Smith, General Counsel & Executive Vice President, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft, he said the privacy standard, known as ISO/IEC 27018, was developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to establish a uniform, international approach to protecting privacy for personal data stored in the cloud.

What does this mean for companies and their customers? Adherence to ISO 27018 assures enterprise customers that customer privacy will be protected in several ways.

• Companies are in control of their data. If they use the Microsoft products that adhere to ISO 27018, that adherence to the standard ensures that Microsoft only processes personally identifiable information according to the instructions that a company provides to Microsoft. So if you are a Microsoft customer, time to make sure the CRM folks and the IT/ Security folks are having lunch and meetings to discuss, plan and execute on their privacy strategies.

• Companies know what’s happening with their data. Adherence to the standard ensures transparency about Microsoft’s policies regarding the return, transfer, and deletion of personal information the company stores in the data centers. Microsoft will not only let the company know where their customer’s data is, but if Microsoft works with other companies who need to access your data, Microsoft will let the company know who Microsoft is working with. In addition, if there is unauthorized access to personally identifiable information or processing equipment or facilities resulting in the loss, disclosure or alteration of this information, Microsoft will inform the company of this.

• Microsoft provides strong security protection for a company’s customer data. Adherence to ISO 27018 provides a number of important security safeguards. It ensures that there are defined restrictions on how Microsoft handle personally identifiable information, including restrictions on its transmission over public networks, storage on transportable media, and proper processes for data recovery and restoration efforts. In addition, the standard ensures that all of the people, including Microsoft’s own employees, who process personally identifiable information must be subject to a confidentiality obligation.

• Your customer’s data won’t be used for advertising. Enterprise customers have been expressing their concerns about cloud service providers using their data for advertising purposes, especially without consent. The adoption of this standard reaffirms Microsoft’s longstanding commitment not to use enterprise customer data for advertising purposes.

• Microsoft will inform companies about government access to data. The standard requires that law enforcement requests for disclosure of personally identifiable data must be disclosed to a company as an enterprise customer, unless this disclosure is prohibited by law. Microsoft already adheres to this approach, and the adoption of the standard reinforces this commitment.

So as a consumer, do you feel safer or not? That’s the important thing. It’s a very good step in the right direction for Microsoft and it’s products. Now what to do about those cybercriminals?

@drnatalie

VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Customer Experiences that Engage, Empower and Ensure High Customer Lifetime Value

 

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What Does Plugged-In Mean? Computers In Class & Conference Rooms

Terri Griffith

Professor/Author/Speaker
Simon Fraser University

Terri Griffith holds the Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. She spent two decades in the Silicon Valley and, in 2012 was honored as a Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Terri helps her students and their organizations accelerate performance and prepare for the futures of work. Through her speaking, writing, teaching, and research, she brings evidence-based leadership and innovation to high-tech, education, and global agribusiness organizations. She inspires and coaches groups on negotiating change and uniquely mixing existing and new capabilities. Her most recent work uses a “bottom-up” approach to automation, including artificial intelligence. Her award-winning book, The Plugged-In Manager:…...

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A colleague recently shared this Washington Post article with me: This year, I resolve to ban laptops from my classroom. Yes, I have seen the studies about long-hand versus typed notes (long-hand wins). But that is comparing across one dimension -- something everyone in any of my classes or workshops knows is not what you want to do.

Your learning experience or meeting is not about lecture and taking a test... or at least it shouldn't be. It should be about the full process: The best course design or collaboration using the best tools (electronic or not), designed to work in the best way with your own skills, context, and needs.

Mixing Human, Technical, and Organizational Dimensions in Your Work

Being plugged-in is about the mix of human, technical, and organizational dimensions. If all we did were listen to lectures, take notes, and then take tests, I might suggest you keep the computer in your bag. If you simply don't have the self-control to stay off of your social streams, then too, maybe leave the computer in the bag until we need it for a specific task.

But, if the computer is giving you a way to link what we're doing in class or in a meeting to how it's going to help you at work, or how it relates to other material -- or if it's the way you're co-creating the learning experience or work product -- then I'm going to ask you to have an "internet enabled device" as part of your toolkit.

Learning By Integrating

I'm just back from a conference where a colleague said he'd banned computers in the classroom. I said I'd have to drop his course. My notes, even those from that conference, are a combination of what's being said plus links back to other material. I think I even sent follow-up emails to colleagues not at the conference so we could take a related action. I'm fully engaged, both with the inflow of the information in the room, but perhaps more importantly, with how that information relates to my own work. Yes, I could create those links after the class or conference session, but few of us get the chance for that kind of reflection. I'll also admit that I may have missed a talking point while integrating a previous point with a possible action item. (Might a different session design have pauses built in to allow for this integration?)

I'm also at a loss when a meeting kicks off with a request to close the laptops or put down the tablets. There is a presumption that all the information we'll need to do our work is in our heads, that we don't have the self-control to stay focused on the topic, and/or that we couldn't be leveraging our tools to do the work of the meeting (taking group notes, getting information from others not present, starting the draft of the report while we can all be looking at the result, etc.) Rarely can I as a meeting leader guess at the best way for the session to go. I need to be confident that my colleagues are making good choices - and of course I want to provide a clear agenda in advance so they can.

The Answer

Plugged-In doesn't mean always connected. It means engaging appropriately with all the human, technical, and organizational dimensions of your work and learning.

• Stop and consider the context and goals of the session, both for you and your colleagues.
• Build your approach to match these goals. Think of it as as negotiating change, even if it's just for yourself.
• Share (think out loud) with your colleagues and look for improvements to your practice. They'll appreciate you're aware of the issues and you may co-create a better overall approach for reaching your goals.

And if you are checking Facebook rather than engaging with your colleagues, realize that the camera documenting the course or meeting, is also pointed right at your screen....

Future of Work Chief Executive Officer Chief People Officer

Marketing and Dating: How to Get a Date by the Numbers

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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Dating is big business. There are generic dating sites designed to help you find a date, a life partner or someone just to hang out with. There are also incredibly focused dating sites that are designed to introduce you to other people who have the same particular passions and interests as you. Maybe you are looking for a “sea captain” or perhaps you just hate it when Movember finishes and need to sate your passion for the tache. Whatever the case, if you look hard enough you’re bound to find a dating site designed just for people like you (yes, you crazy cat lady).

In many ways, the challenge of dating is the same challenge that marketers face. We’re all looking for that one-to-one connection – though often we struggle to a way to meet and start a conversation. In both cases (marketing and dating), digital disruption is creating both opportunities and challenges. And at the heart of this is data.

Inga Ting reveals that what we say in our dating profiles and what we want are often completely different. Dating sites – just like data-driven marketers – are less interested in “stated intentions” and more interested in actual behaviour. By looking at online behaviour – the things that we like, connect with, share and return to – marketers can adjust their profiling to reach and more deeply engage potential customers. This algorithmic approach relies not on focus groups and market research but on an adaptive approach which operates between your stated profile (self designed) and the actions you take online. In the world of online dating it means operating in-between spaces:

Behaviour-based matching is adaptive. It compares what you said you wanted with how you behave to work out things you might not even know about yourself.

For example, you said you wanted a partner with a steady income but you keep messaging “pro-bono computer game testers” and “freelance writers”, so the algorithm changes its recommendations.

But, of course, while there can be volumes of data about ourselves online – we are also highly visual. The rise of photo based apps like Tinder for example shows that sometimes dating (and even marketing) is only skin deep. Relying on your photo and your location information, Tinder matches people based on whether they are close and interested (you swipe a prospective date’s photo to the left to reject and to the right to connect).

For those who are serious about dating, perhaps a single app is not the answer. The “multichannel” approach that works for marketers may yield better results. Take for example, the data from Axciom’s infographic (ht Will Scully-Power) that reveals that, in Sydney:

• Single females outnumber males at all ages except the 18-24 age group
• Potts Point is home to the most singles
• Wine enthusiasts are most likely to reside in the Eastern and Inner West suburbs

If you were a male in the highly competitive 18-24 age group, a multichannel (or omnichannel) marketing approach to maximising your chances would include:

1. Establishing your base profiles on high traffic sites
2. Create a profile image that shows your passion for fitness and interest in fine wine (please be tasteful)
3. Spend time in cafes in Potts Point using Tinder

Of course, you could pepper your profile with quotes from Shakespeare, but that may be overkill. Remember, that the algorithms will override your stated profile anyway – so your true intentions will always be revealed in the data – based on who you swipe right and who you swipe left, who you message, like and connect with. And like all good marketing, the question comes down to ROI, engagement and outcomes. I hope you get your algorithm right!

Marketing Transformation Chief Customer Officer Chief Marketing Officer

News Analysis: Rumors On Apple's Foray Into Cars "Project Titan"

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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Project Titan May Put Apple Into The Auto Business

The February 13th, 2015 Wall Street Journal story spotlighted many of the rumors around the developments behind Apple going into the car business.   Framed around challenging Tesla Motors, the story discussed how Apple may be putting together an Apple branded electric vehicle.  Vice President Steve Zadesky of iPod and iPad fame is said to be leading the charge with a mandate to hire up to 1000 folks both internally and externally for the code named Titan project.  Apple has neither confirmed nor denied any elements of the Wall Street Journal story (see Video 1).

Video 1: CNBC Interview on Prospects Of An Apple Car

The Bottom Line: Apple Seeks Continuity Across The Digital Lifestyle

While there have been key hires across the board with auto experience and that’s one part of the equation, the other part is reimagining the broader digital lifestyle in new pallettes. Stripping away the hype and focusing on the Apple core, Constellation believes this is about finding new markets for Apple’s operating systems.   Similar to how mobile put Apple back on the map for not just a device, but also an operating system with an ecosystem, Apple sees cars, homes, and other areas of the digital lifestyle as opportunities to embed the operating system and build out new networked economies.

The focus on continuity of experience is at the heart and soul of Apple.  This is the foundation behind health kit, home kit, watch kit, and car play.   Apple is focused on delivering its ubiquitous experience from walking outside, checking your wrist, to hopping in the car, making a payment, to the in home experience.  The car puts Apple’s OS in the proverbial driver’s seat.

Unfortunately, putting together an auto company is not an easy thing to do. The barriers of entry are high for most prospective entrants. Tesla couldn’t pull it off without all the government  subsidies and tax write offs, including carbon credits in California.  Apple is one of the few companies in the world who have the cash and the  ability to pull the know how together.

However, the car may be the concept  that becomes a platform others build on.  Apple may not get into the car business but they may provide all the pieces required to deliver the new digital experience for auto makers to build on top of.  If they choose this route, they can create another area of the Apple OS to grow market share and increase and already impossibly high total addressable market.

Your POV.

Ready for a car from Apple, Google, or someone else?  Think Apple can disrupt the auto world with a car?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Resources

The post News Analysis: Rumors On Apple’s Foray Into Cars “Project Titan” appeared first on A Software Insider's Point of View.

 

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Fixing The Suckiness of Predictive Analytics

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You have been so nice to respond to my publishing of “old” work that was never shown that I want to continue doing that.

What follows is the fist of a three part series (when you are breaking down a 3-4 page writeup into pieces three parts seems to be about ideal).

I was tasked last year to focus on how to make predictive better.  I was never a fan of how predictive analytics was implemented (I am fine with the concept, but I don’t think anyone cares about the concept – instead deteriorating it into a parrot-act of repetitiveness with no good results).

In conducting the research came upon come long-forgotten concepts and ideas, and mulling through them gave me a new idea: the one you will read about in next week’s installment

First, let me set the playing field.

Predictive analytics is finally changing.

An art form of sorts, revived by the recent interest in Big Data and analytics shown by global corporations in the past decade, predictive was never intended for the current uses.

The definition of predictive analytics puts it at odd with the current usage.

Predicting a behavior was not intended to be used as a harbinger of a customer’s intention to purchase but rather as a lagging indicator of an occurrence or event so that the knowledge could be used to build better analytics models.

The thought that an occurrence will repeat many times over because of past data points indicating a similar setup is criticized by many analytics experts – even when adopted by most organizations.

The difference is the narrowness of what predictive can do today. We are simply focused on one path, one way to get from point A to point B. If last time we were at point A we took a bus to get to point B, we will do the same today. The complexity of today’s world makes those “guesses” just about impossible. What if, for example, it is raining heavily and I am in a rush? Could I take a taxi instead? Or, what f I have time and it is a beautiful day? Could I walk? Or, what if I am with someone who owns a motorcycle? As you can see, the many variables that are traditionally ignored by predictive (we look for a pattern, and then try to repeat it when similar data points are recognized in the same sequence) are what make the new models far more interesting.

Keep in mind, this is not what predictive intended to be – but what became from the poor implementations along the way.

A successful bad implementation will  be repeated.  A failed good implementation never sees the light of day again.  This is how Twitter came be used for Customer Service (but I digress)

Instead of trying to predict behavior step-by-step as most predictive applications do, why not use the pattern as a loose guideline of a sought outcome, break down the steps, and consider the many options available at each step. What yonder could’ve been a monumental step in calculating and analytics is very possible today thanks to advances in data capture, storage, management, and analysis.

The “Big Data” era brought the capabilities to analyze just about any data set in real-time and add many more variables as part of the analysis yielding far more interesting insights.

And it is within this new approach that we find not predictive analytics – but anticipatory analytics: the ability to dynamically and actively generate insights at each step of the way based on previously impossible to include variables and elements: intent, decision-making by users in real time, and untold goals and objectives.

As a result, my phone may hail a taxi for me (and maybe offer me a discount) if it detects rain or nudge me towards walking on a nice day – not because I did it before, but because I am about to do it. This is where predictive transforms to become the art of the possible.

What does anticipatory analytics look like?  Come back next week to see…

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Obama's Cybersecurity Summit

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 White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection was hosted at Stanford University on Friday February 13. I followed the event from Sydney, via the live webcast.

It would be naive to expect the White House Cybersecurity Summit to have been less political. President Obama and his colleagues were in their comfort zone, talking up America's recent economic turnaround, and framing their recent wins squarely within Silicon Valley where the summit took place. With a few exceptions, the first two hours was more about green energy, jobs and manufacturing than cyber security. It was a lot like a lost episode of The West Wing.

The exceptions were important. Some speakers really nailed some security issues. I especially liked the morning contributions from Intel President Renee James and MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga. James highlighted that Intel has worked for 10 years to improve "the baseline of computing security", making her one of the few speakers to get anywhere near the inherent insecurity of our cyber infrastructure. The shocking truth is that cyberspace is built on terrible foundations; the software development practices and operating systems that bear the economy today were not built for the job. For mine, the Summit was too much about military/intelligence themed information sharing, and not enough about why our systems are such a shambles. I know it's a dry subject but if they're serious about security, policy makers really have to engage with software quality and reliability, instead of thrilling to kids learning to code. Software development practices are to blame for many of our problems; more on software failures here.

Ajay Banga was one of several speakers to urge the end of passwords. He summed up the authentication problem very nicely: "Stop making us remember things in order to prove who we are". He touched on MasterCard's exploration of continuous authentication bracelets and biometrics (more news of which coincidentally came out today). It's important however that policy makers' understanding of digital infrastructure resilience, cybercrime and cyber terrorism isn't skewed by everyone's favourite security topic - customer authentication. It's in need of repair yet it is not to blame for the vast majority of breaches. Mom and Pop struggle with passwords and they deserve better, but the vast majority of stolen personal data is lifted by organised criminals en masse from poorly secured back-end databases. Replacing customer passwords or giving everyone biometrics is not going to solve the breach epidemic.

Banga also indicated that the Information Highway should be more like road infrastructure. He highlighted that national routes are regulated, drivers are licensed, there are rules of the road, standardised signs, and enforcement. All these infrastructure arrangements leave plenty of room for innovation in car design, but it's accepted that "all cars have four wheels".

Tim Cook was then the warm-up act before Obama. Many on Twitter unkindly branded Cook's speech as an ad for Apple, paid for by the White House, but I'll accentuate the positives. Cook continues to campaign against business models that monetize personal data. He repeated his promise made after the ApplePay launch that they will not exploit the data they have on their customers. He put privacy before security in everything he said.

Cook painted a vision where digital wallets hold your passport, driver license and other personal documents, under the user's sole control, and without trading security for convenience. I trust that he's got the mobile phone Secure Element in mind; until we can sort out cybersecurity at large, I can't support the counter trend towards cloud-based wallets. The world's strongest banks still can't guarantee to keep credit card numbers safe, so we're hardly ready to put our entire identities in the cloud.

In his speech, President Obama reiterated his recent legislative agenda for information sharing, uniform breach notification, student digital privacy, and a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. He stressed the need for private-public partnership and cybersecurity responsibility to be shared between government and business. He reiterated the new Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center. And as flagged just before the summit, the president signed an Executive Order that will establish cyber threat information sharing "hubs" and standards to foster sharing while protecting privacy.

Obama told the audience that cybersecurity "is not an ideological issue". Of course that message was actually for Congress which is deliberating over his cyber legislation. But let's take a moment to think about how ideology really does permeate this arena. Three quasi-religious disputes come to mind immediately:

• Free speech trumps privacy. The ideals of free speech have been interpreted in the US in such a way that makes broad-based privacy law intractable. The US is one of only two major nations now without a general data protection statute (the other is China). It seems this impasse is rarely questioned anymore by either side of the privacy debate, but perhaps the scope of the First Amendment has been allowed to creep out too far, for now free speech rights are in effect being granted even to computers. Look at the controversy over the "Right to be Forgotten" (RTBF), where Google is being asked to remove certain personal search results if they are irrelevant, old and inaccurate. Jimmy Wales claims this requirement harms "our most fundamental rights of expression and privacy". But we're not talking about speech here, or even historical records, but rather the output of a computer algorithm, and a secret algorithm at that, operated in the service of an advertising business. The vociferous attacks on RTBF are very ideological indeed.

• "Innovation" trumps privacy. It's become an unexamined mantra that digital businesses require unfettered access to information. I don't dispute that some of the world's richest ever men, and some of the world's most powerful ever corporations have relied upon the raw data that exudes from the Internet. It's just like the riches uncovered by the black gold rush on the 1800s. But it's an ideological jump to extrapolate that all cyber innovation or digital entrepreneurship must continue the same way. Rampant data mining is laying waste to consumer confidence and trust in the Internet. Some reasonable degree of consumer rights regulation seems inevitable, and just, if we are to avert a digital Tragedy of the Commons.

• National Security trumps privacy. I am a rare privacy advocate who actually agrees that the privacy-security equilibrium needs to be adjusted. I believe the world has changed since some of our foundational values were codified, and civil liberties are just one desirable property of a very complicated social system. However, I call out one dimensional ideology when national security enthusiasts assert that privacy has to take a back seat. There are ways to explore a measured re-calibration of privacy, to maintain proportionality, respect and trust.

President Obama described the modern technological world as a "magnificent cathedral" and he made an appeal to "values embedded in the architecture of the system". We should look critically at whether the values of entrepreneurship, innovation and competitiveness embedded in the way digital business is done in America could be adjusted a little, to help restore the self-control and confidence that consumers keep telling us is evaporating online.

 

See Part 2 of my coverarge of the summit here. 

Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity New C-Suite Tech Optimization Security Zero Trust Chief Customer Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Privacy Officer

Progress Report - SAP HCM makes progress and consolidates - a lot of moving parts

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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SAP had their first anual analyst meeting in San Francisco and it was a good time to catch up on overall progress almost 6 months after SuccessConnect in Las Vegas (my takeaways here).
 

Before we embark, here is a great slide on the history of both SAP HCM and SuccessFactors:

 

Future of Work Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Marketing Transformation Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Oracle ADP SuccessFactors workday SAP AI Analytics Automation CX EX Employee Experience HCM Machine Learning ML SaaS PaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Enterprise Software Enterprise IT Leadership HR Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Human Resources Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer