Who Should Be the Digital Disruptors? Marketing, Sales, Customer Service or CEOs?

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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In thinking about the value of the information companies can obtain about their customers, their products and services, etc… from structured and unstructured data, who do you think should lead this effort in an organization? Each department – Marketing, Sales, Customer Service / Contact Center professionals can all do their part, but often are not high enough in the organization to drive widespread change that is required to get the results from digital disruption. I had a really great conversation with some of the best thinkers in the world at IBM who are working on Watson and it got me to thinking more about the issue of getting companies started down this path and who really should lead it. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Do you think CEO’s or CFO’s or COO’s really understand the value that can be obtained by this data? Do they see the opportunity to use it to become a company that lives in an ecosystem where their are no other competitors, i.e., the competition is irrelevant?

Some of the best ways to take advantage of the digital disruption is to:

1. Change your business model to include using the structured and unstructured data to make better products and services and deliver better customer experiences and make a better workplace

2. Change how your functional departments work together using the structured and unstructured data so that the customer experience is not disconnected and actually becomes enjoyable and drives advocacy, loyalty and referrals — and long-term customer lifetime value

3. And in the end the data will change your business model and how your functional departments collaborate and your products and services will be get better from all this structured and unstructured data if it is turned into actionable insights so that you can create a blue ocean strategy where your company is in an uncontested marketplace where the competition is irrelevant.

But for that to happen, it has to be driven by folks who are not too low in the totem pole, but rather by those who have the positional power to really drive this digital disruption change.  And I believe, unless and until the CEO, CFO and COO change the metrics the functional departments get measured on, people will keep doing what they are doing.

Yes, there are some companies where marketing, sales and service work together; but those are the innovators and early adopters. The majority of the marketplace is the early majority and they are thinking about things the way they have always been thinking about things…

Who is going to be the instigators in this new digital disruption? Come join us at our Connected Enterprise Conference to hear how other leaders are dealing with the questions.

@drnatalie
VP and Principle Analyst, Covering Marketing, Sales and Customer Service to Drive Brilliant and Lastly Customer Experiences.

Case Study: Ringling College Embraces Lifecycle Marketing

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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Ringling College of Art and Design, the premier art college located in Sarasota Florida, had the same goal that every higher education institution has: to increase admissions. However, while every college may have the same admissions goal, each faces a unique set of challenges in trying to achieve that goal.

Ringling College is a private, not-for-profit, fully accredited college offering Bachelor’s degree programs in 11 majors, including Illustration, Computer Animation, Game Art, Motion Design, Fine Arts, Digital Filmmaking, Graphic Design, and Advertising Design. The college has received numerous distinctions, including being named among the top 25 U.S. film schools by The Hollywood Reporter, which has elevated its position among art colleges globally. Alumni have also been awarded many honors including Emmy® and Academy Award® wins.

The Challenge: Corporate Distrust, Peer-to-Peer Influence

However, as with other private art colleges, the admissions department is faced with studies and reports that suggest an art degree is less likely to pay career dividends, despite the proven success of Ringling College’s alumni. Further, as a private college, the average tuition is higher than that of many community colleges,  which is  serious obstacle to the admission team’s efforts coming out of a period of economic depression.

Rich Kaplan, Ringling College’s VP of Marketing and Innovative Partnerships, understood these challenges and realized that a different strategy than that embraced by most colleges was required. He tasked Sensei Marketing to design and develop an innovative solution that would increase brand awareness as well as show measurable improvements in new student acquisition.

Sensei analyzed the realities faced by post-secondary institutions: Intense competition; limited marketing budgets; and a highly-connected social audience that put more faith in peer commentary (even if anecdotal) than in facts and proof points advertised by colleges. Further, due to limited resources, most colleges take a very myopic approach to lead generation. Admissions often focus on high school students who are within 12 months of choosing a college; alumni are most often targeted for financial support, and rarely are those efforts connected or consistent from end to end.

The Solution: Life Cycle Marketing

A long-term engagement strategy was developed for Ringling College that would guide the institution toward fostering a continuing relationship with artists from the age of 14 to 100.  Specifically, the strategy would see the college facilitate relationship building among peers, mentors, and influencers, which will continue from the first year of high school to their adult lives.

Sensei mapped the “customer journey” that a typical art student would pass through during their teen and adult lives, and cross-referenced that with life events, situational factors, and relationships that might affect students’ decisions to attend art colleges.

The first phase of the strategy was launched last week, which included a new website targeting students in the college decision-making stage. The website, www.whyringling.com, and the associated social media campaigns utilizing the #WhyRingling hashtag, provide the peer-to-peer social proof that high school students have indicated they turn to when making college choices. The site was built using Responsive Web Design (RWD) because research indicated that the mobile devices were the primary tool used by the target audience for researching and discussing college-related information.

Further, the website’s content, which is managed by a content management solution so that content may be refreshed many times per week, is driven by the student and alumni’s voices, not the typical “corporate speak” created by higher education institutions.  The site features profiles of current students and alumni sharing their views about why they chose Ringling and what it has meant to their careers. In addition, the site highlights the benefits of living in Sarasota, the on-campus culture and support system, the art work developed by students and alumni, and the many awards the college’s students are winning.  The interactive,  Tumblr-style home page was designed in direct response to the research results that indicated the audience’s preference for a more visual graphical user interface than traditional website structures.

In addition, a dedicated online art community, powered by social media platform TicTalking, was also launched to facilitate peer-to-peer conversations focused around art, design, advertising, and creative culture. The community, which is open to anyone interested in these subjects, will be focused on fostering peer-to-peer relationships and not direct promotion of the college.

The primary goals of the initial social outreach program include fostering an interest in art and design, nurturing relationships, educating the community on the benefits of an art degree, and promoting profitable and fulfilling art-related careers.  Stay tuned to this blog in the future for details on the release of future phases and results from this first phase.

Demand For 3D Printing Skills Is Accelerating Globally

35% of all ads posted for engineering jobs in the last 30 days prioritize 3D printing and additive manufacturing as the most sought-after skill.

Wanted Analytics’ latest analysis of the 3D printing and additive manufacturing job market found that IT and management expertise were the second most common skill sets mentioned in ads seeking to recruit engineers.  Key take-aways from their study and the growing market for engineers with 3D printing skills are provided below:

Key Take-Aways

• The number of job ads requiring workers with 3D printing skills increased 1,834% in 4 years and 103% when comparing August 2014 to August 2013.  The following graphic illustrates the accelerating growth of 3D printing and additive manufacturing expertise needs of employers over the last four years.

• Wanted Analytics found that the most in-demand jobs requiring 3D printing and additive manufacturing expertise include the following:
  • Industrial Engineers
  • Mechanical Engineers
  • Software Developers, Applications
  • Commercial and Industrial Designers
  • Marketing Managers – High demand for marketing and selling expertise as manufacturers, software and service providers look to launch new business models that capitalize on 3D printing’s many business advantages.

• Manufacturing has the highest number of positions for 3D printing and additive manufacturing skills, with the following industries generating the majority of the jobs in this field today:
  • Other Computer Peripheral Equipment Manufacturing
  • Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools
  • Tire and Tube Merchant Wholesalers
  • Search, Detection, Navigation, Guidance, Aeronautical, and Nautical System and Instrument Manufacturing
  • Aluminum Sheet, Plate, and Foil Manufacturing

• Demand for freelance 3D printing and additive manufacturing expertise is flourishing globally.  Elance has an impressive 76,979 portfolio samples used by freelancers to promote their 3D printing, 3D modeling and additive manufacturing expertise.  There are 2,444 freelancers actively looking for 3D printing, 3D modeling and additive manufacturing projects, and 88 projects currently open.
• Freelance exchange ODesk currently has 2,395 freelancers listed as 3D printing specialists and designers and 78 projects currently open.
• Guru.com lists 367 freelancers with 3D printing expertise available and 180 open projects.
• CAD Crowd has 3,760 3D printing freelance experts and provides a global map of their locations, which is shown below.

• Job boards entirely dedicated to 3D printing are being launched this year and growing fast.  One of the fastest growing is 3D-Printing-Jobs.com, which just launched last May and already has dozens of open positions listed.  Another is 3DPrintingIndustry.com’s job portal which can be found here at the 3D Printing Industry Jobs Page. The 3D Printing Job Board includes open positions worldwide and has many located in the United Kingdom, India, Canada and the United States. MediaBistro has 89 positions listed on their job board as of today for engineering, marketing, customer service and technical professionals with 3D printing expertise. The MediaBistro 3D Printing job board can be found here.  

• Indeed.com has 474 job positions open today that require 3D printing, nine of which pay over $130,000 per year.  You can find the listings of open positioning on Indeed.com requiring 3D printing expertise here.

Must-See Sessions at Social Media Week, Sydney

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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Social Media Week, Sydney is just around the corner. It is the first time that the event has been run in Australia but the organising team, Simon Micarone, David Wesson and Will Ockenden have high hopes for it becoming a regular feature on the Australian conference landscape.

Running all week, from 22 September through to 26 September, there are a great range of sessions, keynotes and master classes to participate in. But if you are like me, you may need to ration yourself in an effort to learn but also continue delivering for clients. With this in mind, I have selected some of the must-see sessions and master classes that will impact not just the way that you think, but the way you carry on the business of social media.

Monday, 22 September:

• Opening keynote (Gavin Heaton). Yes, it’s me, kickstarting the week’s activities and reminding us all just how far we’ve come and how much further there is to go.
• The Australian Landscape (AIMIA). Get the lay of the land with a fab panel that outlines opportunities for growth and innovation.
• Online Community Management (Alison Michalk). Get serious about community management with one of the best in the country.

Tuesday, 23 September:

• Keynote – Earned Traffic and Authority (Jeff Bullas). No doubt you’ve read his blog, now here’s the chance to see him in the flesh. Sit up the front with me and be inspired.
• Social ROI (Joanne Jacobs). Always a hot topic, there’ll be plenty to take back to the office straight from the brain of Joanne Jacobs.
• Keynote – the Connected Brand (Trevor Young). The charming and ultra-smart PR Warrior will cut through the noise.
• Social data = Big Data + Profits + Purpose (Panel). I’m hosting this panel that discusses the power of social, data and profits are unleashed when you add a sense of purpose. Not to be missed
• Influencers and Online Advocacy (Panel). I’m really looking forward to this. Influence is a hot topic and these folks know what they are on about.

Wednesday, 24 September:

• Keynote – What Do Aussies Care About (Simon Crerar). Buzzfeed are so hot right now. Hear from Simon on just what tickles our fancy and why.
• Creating a Movement for Social Good (Panel). What a rockstar line up. This is not just about social good – it’s about moving people to act. And that’s what we all need help with.
• Future of Publishing (panel). Another awesome panel bringing together some of the movers and shakers in the social publishing space. Monolithic media is dead baby.

Thursday, 25 September:

• The Power of Twitter for Small Business (Suzy Nicoletti). Get the lowdown from the folks who should know. Great master class from Twitter’s head of mid-market sales.
• Has Social Changed TV Forever (Panel). One of my personal favourite topics. How do we reimagine engagement when there’s way more than one screen on at a time?
• Consumer Wearables, Where to Next? (Panel). This is the next contestable ground for consumer engagement. We’re only just scratching the surface at the moment.

Friday, 26 September:

• Keynote – Under the Digital Bridge (Venessa Paech). This will be awesome – especially for those of us who deal with trolls, ranters, ravers and other monsters in our audiences.
• Living in the Culture of Participation (Panel). Want to know what it takes to make effective change? This panel will blow your mind. You have been warned.
• Stay for the day. Ok – you may as well block out the whole day. There are some awesome sessions that you’ll want to immerse yourself in. And anyway, it’s Friday.

10 Things We Want to Know About IoT - webinar recording

Today Constellation hosted the webinar, 10 Things We Want to Know About IoT. Please find the webinar recording and additional digital IoT resources below. 

Despite the overabundance of 'experts' in IoT, many questions about IoT remain unanswered. R “Ray” Wang and Richie Etwaru address the critical questions that should be asked about IoT.

1. How mature does IoT technology need to be before it begins to significantly impact consumers and business models?
2. What impact will IoT have on consumers and business models?
3. What types of connections between 'things' will be meaningful?
4. What should we/will we do with all the data collected by these 'things'?
5. How should businesses prepare?
6. At what level of maturity is IoT technology?

and many more!

Resources:

A Framework to Humanize the Internet of Things Through Verbs by Richie Etwaru

Unanswered Questions About the Internet of Things by Richie Etwaru

Weekly Recap - September 19th 2014

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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Time to try something new - tackling the highlights of the week in video - as they flew by me...

Here are the events captured in the video:

• SAP Cloud Deep Dive - my takeaways
• Infor Inforum 14 - Day 1 Top 3 Keynote Takeaways ... read here
• HANA Cloud Platform Revisited ... read here
• Market Move - Cisco buys Metascale ... read here
• Event Report - Infor Inforum 14 - Top 3 Takeaways
• HP Helion Press Call with Saar Gillai and Marten Mickos
• Progress Report - ADP shows great vision ... read here
• Market Report - SAP acquires Concur... read here
• Larry Ellison steps down as Oracle CEO - my takeaways
• Friday Briefings with X-IO (Storage), Informatica DreamForce announcements preview, HyTrust (Security), CloudFactory (BPO) and Realm.io (Mobile DB)
• Preview on next week - Workday Tech Summit and Wipro Analyst Day

Progress Report - ADP shows great vision, delivers product innovation, now it needs to deliver adoption

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 were invited to ADP’s yearly analyst summit in their brand new Innovation Lab in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. What was an empty floor plan back during my first visit in April this year – with only the blueprints giving an impression of what it would be, the space has turned into an impressive working facility with a mix of open space floor plan, huddle spaces and of course cafeteria and snack area. Unfortunately ADP sent the developers home for the day – would have been great to see the center in action, maybe something to consider for next year.

Over 20 analysts received a comprehensive briefing starting with CEO Carlos Rordriquez all the way to an update on ADP’s Research activity. ADP was smart to have a customer speak to us, too – giving a welcome change to vendor speakers but also a great validation point. 

Tough to pick the Top 3 takeaways – but here we go:

• ADP has delivered – When I first saw the demos and mockups of ADP’s new interface and product architecture at the Meeting of the Minds (MOTM) conference this spring in Orlando, my (conservative) bet was 50 / 50 that ADP would deliver in September as promised. It’s simply too easy to show nice demos and mockups and then often too hard to build them in real software. I raised my confidence a few weeks later when visiting the Innovation Lab and talking more in detail with Roberto Masiero and Keith Fulton and their teams. Talking to some of the new hires and seeing talent and background my odds went up to maybe 80%. Often even very talented people don’t make dates. But after today’s briefings it’s clear that ADP has delivered to the vision and ideas of MOTM (what I called a front end renovation strategy back then) and delivered its new user interface, delivering new user experience with the interactive paycheck, and Benefits Enrollment this September. Both are only a start – but have good seasonal arguments for them – HR Tech is coming and Enrollment is starting for most enterprises. And naturally paycheck related innovation reaches most eyeballs in the ADP user community.
  
  What I missed back then – or wasn’t briefed on – I tend to belief the latter of course – is that the team took a platform approach to deliver the new applications. And already in April ADP published the platform to the community at developers.adp.com. This gave ADP more eyeballs and more validation, something always helpful for new platforms. On top of that platform ADP created a declarative Visual Design Language (VDL) to build systems – a good move to ensure consistency across products and developers. If all works ADP should pick up significant speed in the next quarters and deliver a very large number of new UIs for many / most of their products in 2015.  

CEO Rodriguez opens the analyst meeting

• ADP doesn’t stop here – Beyond the new user interface, ADP plans to deliver innovations in Social HCM (mostly around Performance Management), very interesting Benchmarking capabilities (both in pilot today and coming 2015, my guess it at MOTM), Data Mashups of HCM and non HCM data for true performance insights (summer 2015) and predictive analytics capabilities (later in 2015).
  
  But even before all of the above, ADP will make available its Marketplace (again my guess is for HR Tech) – that will open up for partners and customers. We have seen a number of marketplaces being more quietly (SuccessFactors) or loudly (Cornerstone) launched – so this seems to become a trend. And it makes sense to lower integration and purchasing costs for customers, but at the same time increases the stakes of the game not only from a platform perspective, but also a commercial perspective (invoicing, payment are just a few examples). 

 

The ADP Lab is in good company as Masiero shows

• New Innovation keeps coming – As if the above wasn’t enough, ADP is also actively working on their next generation architecture. It has many very compelling and modern design characteristics like a global object model that will be kept in memory, using columnar database technology, fully declarative execution and forming a backend to the existing VDL UI. We need to learn more on that asap, but definitively one of the more innovative HCM architectures out there. And the ADP team seems to be already on the way – sharing size of the object model graph and access times (no surprise, superfast) with the analyst community. And with an open source first approach the ADP team has been able to build the next generation platform at impressive speeds. It was too early – or ADP didn’t want to share yet – what the first use cases will be, but definitively an area on which we will keep a key eye on. 

 

Deliverables and design principles of the new ADP UI

Tidbits

• DaaS Opportunity ahead – It was good to catch up with Ahu Yildirmaz, the Head of the ADP Research Institute that prepares the monthly ADP National Employment Report, which turns out to be remarkably accurate. ADB is building on this capability with the launch of a new workfroce index next month, designed to provide a clearrer picure of the vitality of the U.S. workfroce and emerging trends. nd with ADP paying 1 out of 6 paychecks in the USA there is enough data to be more than ready for some benchmarking and further data related activities and services. Good to see some of those on the roadmap for 2015.
   
• Global View makes progress – It was good to catch up on GlobalView with Stuart Sackman and David McIninch. The product makes progress and has interest of prospects, but is challenged with the innovation happening both in house and at long term partner SAP. Innovation is great but you need terra firma for global rollouts. And ADP partners with SuccessFactors and Workday, with the sound directive that the customer should always win. Certainly a good bearing but it will be good to see more of an ADP product / IP strategy for GlobalView, too, creating more differentiators over pure services competition in BPO.
   
• Focus on global compliance - ADP is building on their global footpring and deep knowledge to position themselves as the leader in Global HCM compliance. For examle ADP supports the statutory rules and policies for Social Benefit managament in China, where work rules vary by city.
   
• Analytics – but really dashboards – ADP is creating a promising dashboard product, that makes suggestions to guide the path of analysis, as demoed by Richard Wilson and Vikas Saini, it is tackling key performance questions and includes non HCM data – what most users want to see. It would be good to have the product making recommendations in even stronger voice, but a good start (see my take on ‘true’ analytics here).
   
• Recruiting – shows the need for a new UI – Next we looked at Talent Management, and as briefed together with Bill Kutik and Steve Boese, not surprisingly a lot of Recruiting. The functionality is solid and good – but the user experience is a few years old. So it’s timely the new VDL powered UI is around the corner. I’d expect ADP to show mockups shortly. And then there is the alternative view, making the recruiter obsolete (read here) which isn’t reflected. I also think ADP needs ‘guerilla’ / viral ways to get Talent Management functionality into its customer base, as perception, access to decision makers and sales skills take a long time to develop.
   
• A blossoming Innovation Lab – Next we met with Roberto Masiero and Keith Fulton, the two drivers behind the Innovation Lab. If ADP customer like the new products, these are the gentlemen to send the fruit baskets to (they will share them with their teams). I was impressed that they found time and energy – despite the remarkable 9 month only ingestion time for the Innovation Lab and new user interface – to come up with the next generation architecture. Being able to disrupt yourself while disrupting ADP is remarkable.
   

• Compelling UIs are coming – Last but not least a sneak previews on the Talent Management UIs with Anna Carsen. They all look clean, easy to use and well thought through. And it should not be a surprise, as the team does robust usability and focus group testing. Good to see the progress. 

MyPOV

At Constellation we always have the customer in mind, and it looks like ADP is coming around and offering its customers (and prospects) a really compelling product vision and roadmap with early proof points coming this year. It makes sense for SAP to start with Paycheck and Enrollment related products, and most of the innovations will hit the masse of products in 2015 – which is going to be soon. Coupled with innovations around social, BigData and Analytics the future for ADP customers looks bright from a product direction.

But getting there is hard and while ADP is migrating a lot of customers, adoption of new products being the area of attention. And it’s one thing to build a great (the current approach) product or a solid product (Vantage) and then get it adopted. The slow adoption of the ADP Talent Management products may serve a warning. So ADP needs to get adoption of these new products right in its huge install base.

Last but not least we heard before the event that ADP veteran Michael Capone is leaving the company, to pursue a long term calling in the healthcare (software) industry. The team under Capone is very strong and this analyst day certainly showed that – but there is realistically a (small) cloud on the ADP horizon. It’s now to Rodriguez to find the right leader of the product organization that is currently in flight – not a walk in the park, but with a strong team certainly doable. We will be watching closely.

More on ADP

 

• Site Visit - ADP's new innovation lab in Chelsea - read here
• News Analysis - ADP announces Spin-Off plans for Dealer Services, sharpens ADP's focus on HCM - read here.
• Event Report - ADP's Meeting of the Minds - ADP has made up its mind (almost) - customers not yet - read here.
• First take - 3 Key Takeaways from ADP's Meeting of the Minds Conference Day 1 Keynote - read here.
• ADP innovates with with verve and good timing – read here.

 

And  more on the importance of the paycheck for HCM:

 

• Could the paycheck re-invent HCM – yes it can – read here.
• And suddenly, payroll matters again! Read here.

 

Marketing Led Sales – a new era for Hubspot and CRM

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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Back in the beginning of 2013, I released a research report into the field of marketing automation. It investigated the challenges faced by marketers – from the explosion in digital and social channels to the newly emerging connected consumer and sought to map out the strengths of the various marketing technology vendors and their software offerings. In this report, I had identified that:

HubSpot looks to upset the apple cart.

With the focus on inbound marketing I predicted that HubSpot was well placed to become a future category leader.

At the recent INBOUND2014 conference, HubSpot announced a bold new offering – HubSpot CRM. Now, HubSpot, along with many other marketing automation platforms have long provided a simple CRM-style database – or tight integration to dedicated customer relationship management platforms such as Salesforce. But this feels different. It is different. It is FREE – as part of your HubSpot subscription.

But it’s not the pricing (or lack thereof) that feels revolutionary. It’s the fact that the HubSpot CRM reverses the priority of CRM – from sales first to marketing first. So now, rather than CRM and sales leading the customer process, HubSpot reaches out through its marketing platform to engage customers and then automatically connects them through to the sales teams seamlessly. The CRM platform works almost behind the scenes, logging your sales emails, phone calls and leads as they are made, not after the fact. And because it is part of the one platform, the marketing data that has been accumulated through various touch points, from web, to download, to webinar and so on, is also immediately available to the sales team as the relationship moves closer to conversion.

This new extension to an already powerful mid-market solution will strengthen what is already an attractive software platform. More importantly, it presents small and medium businesses with a compelling proposition – all in one, integrated sales and marketing automation.

And while this is a welcome mid-market addition, I am most excited about what this means for those organisations actively engaged in strategic digital marketing. Sure, most companies are shifting to digital, but those organisations with a mature approach to digital will be able to quickly deploy this kind of solution to create a competitive advantage. With HubSpot CRM, customers – and the customer experience – is more tightly connected to the sales process. It’s marketing led sales, not sales driven marketing. And this is a revolution that has been waiting in the wings.

Now I can’t wait to see what the next act brings.

Simply Secure is not simply private

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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Another week, another security collaboration launch!

"Simply Secure" calls itself "a small but growing organization [with] expertise in usability research, design, software development, and product management". Their mission has to do with improving the security functions that built-in so badly in most software today. Simply Secure is backed by Google and Dropbox, and supported by a diverse advisory board.

It's early days (actually early day, singular) so it might be churlish to point out that Simply Secure's strategic messaging is a little uneven ... except that the words being used to describe it shed light on the clarity of the thinking.

My first exposure to Simply Secure came last night, when I read an article in the Guardian by Cory Doctorow (who is one of their advisers). Doctorow places enormous emphasis on privacy; the word "privacy" outnumbers "security" 16 to three in the body of his column. Another admittedly shorter report about the launch by The Next Web doesn't mention privacy at all. And then there's the Simply Secure blog post, which cites privacy a great deal but every single time in conjunction with security, as in "security and privacy". That repeated phrasing conveys, to me at least, some discomfort. As I say, it's early days and the team is doubtless sorting out how to weigh and progress these closely related objectives.

But I hope they do it quickly. On the face of it, Simply Secure might only scratch the surface of privacy.

Doctorow's Guardian article is mostly concerned with encryption and the terrible implementations that have plagued us since the dawn of the Internet. It's definitely important that we improve here - and radically. If the Simply Secure initiative does nothing but make encryption easier to integrate into commodity software, that would be a great thing. I'm all for it. But it won't necessarily or even probably lead to better privacy, because privacy is about restraint not secrecy or anonymity.
As we go about our lives, we actually want to be known by others, but we want those who know us to be restrained in what they do with the knowledge they have about us. Privacy is the protection you need when your affairs are not secret.

I know Doctorow knows this - I've seen his terrific little speech on the steps on Comic-Con about PRISM. So I'm confused by his focus on cryptography.

How far does encryption get us? If we're using social networks, or if we're shopping and opting in to loyalty programs or selected targeted marketing, or if we're sharing our medical records with relatives, medicos, hospitals and researchers, then encryption becomes moot. We need mechanisms to restrain what the receivers of our personal information do with it. We all know the business model at work behind "free" online services; using encryption to protect privacy in social networking for instance would be like using an armoured van to deliver your valuables to Bernie Madoff.

Another limitation of user-centric or user-managed encryption has to do with Big Data. A great deal of personal information about us is created and collected unseen behind our backs, by sensors, and by analytics processes than manage to work out who we are by linking disparate data streams together. How could SS ameliorate those sorts of problems? If the SS vision includes encryption at rest as well as in transit, then how will the user control or even see all the secondary uses of their encrypted personal information?

There's a combativeness in Doctorow's explanation of Simply Secure and his tweets from yesterday on the topic. His aim is expressly to thwart the surveillance state, which in his view includes a symbiosis (if not conspiracy) between government and internet companies, where the former gets their dirty work done by the latter. I'm sure he and I both find that abhorrent in equal measure. But I argue the proper response to these egregious behaviours is political not technological (and political in the broad sense; I love that Snowden talks as much about accountability, legal processes, transparency and research as he does about encryption). If you think the government is exploiting the exploiters, then DIY encryption is a pretty narrow counter-measure. This is not the sort of society we want to live in, so let's work to change the establishment, rather than try to take it on in a crypto shoot-out.

Yes security technology is important but it's not nearly as important for privacy as the Rule of Law. Data privacy regimes instil restraint. The majority of businesses come to know that they are not at liberty to over-collect personal information, nor to re-use personal information unexpectedly and without consent. A minority of organisations flout data privacy principles, for example by slyly refining raw data into valuable personal knowledge, exploiting the trust citizens and users put in them. Some of these outfits flourish in the United States - the Canary Islands of privacy. Worldwide, the policing of privacy is patchy indeed, yet there have been spectacular legal victories in Europe and elsewhere against the excessive practices of really big companies like Facebook with their biometric data mining of photo albums, and Google's drift net-like harvesting of traffic from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks.

Pragmatically, I'm afraid encryption is such a fragile privacy measure. Once secrecy is penetrated, we need regulations to stem exploitation of our personal information.

By all means, let's improve cryptographic engineering and I wish the Simply Secure initiative all the best. So long as they don't call security privacy.