IT incidents, response hurdles drive up enterprise costs, says Constellation Research survey

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Enterprises are being barraged by IT incidents, face a shortage of skilled personnel and lack the time to follow best practices or automate response processes, according to a new Constellation Research report. And major IT incidents aren't cheap.

In fact, 53% of enterprises have seen anywhere from 3 to 10 major IT incidents in the past 12 months, up from 47% in the previous year. More shocking is that 56% of respondents say at least 50% of incidents could have been avoided with best practices. In addition, 55% of enterprises say the cost of major IT incidents have cost their organizations less than $100,000 with 27% putting expenses at $100,000 to $500,000 and 12% citing costs of $500,000 to $1 million.

Those are some of the findings of Constellation Research's recent report, "An Executive Guide to Faster Incident Resolution" by Andy Thurai. The report is based on a survey by Constellation Research and Dimensional Research of more than 300 respondents. A third of respondents were incident responders, a third were their direct managers and another third were budget holders of the incident response unit.

Thurai's report is timely given Cisco's $28 billion acquisition of Splunk and expand in the observability, security and AI markets. One key finding in the survey is that 40% of respondents take 10 to 30 minutes to identify an incident (not resolve it).

One big reason for this time to identify an incident is enterprises have siloed IT observability tools. Other enterprises have legacy tools that are slow. And assuming observability tools work well, users can quickly run into alert fatigue and miss critical incidents.

Simply put, the idea that Cisco and Splunk could combine observability forces makes more sense to consolidate vendors in the field. 

It remains to be seen whether Cisco with Splunk can help enterprises respond to IT incidents. In the meantime, here are a few not-so-fun facts from Thurai's report.

• 46% of respondents said automating resolution response to IT incidents was the biggest area to improve.
• 36% said they could improve incident identification and find a resolution.
• 49% of all incidents are straightforward and responses could be automated.
• 64% said AI would be critical to identifying the root cause of incidents.
• 34% said the top reasons for major IT incidents were manual processes and human error.

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work Chief Information Officer

Microsoft's Copilot enterprise upsell begins Nov. 1, Copilot fatigue will follow

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Microsoft 365 Copilot will be available to enterprises Nov. 1 in a move that will test the limits of the add-on approach to cloud services and create a new condition: Copilot fatigue.

At an event allegedly focused on Microsoft Surface hardware, the software and cloud giant outlined plans to roll out Copilot to Windows 11 with more than 150 new features. Microsoft is also adding OpenAI's latest DALL.E model to Bing and updating Bing Chat Enterprise.

But the real experiment begins Nov. 1. Enterprises will have to start game planning for Microsoft's $30 per user per month add-on for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium customers. Do you simply add all of your employees? Pick a few core functions? Wait and see? Another possibility: Enterprises will have to start budgeting for Microsoft's Co-pilot add-ons as well as other monetization models from core vendors including ServiceNow, Salesforce, Adobe and Google.

Add it up and you can easily see how generative AI add-ons are going to be like your streaming subscriptions. You ditched cable for streaming only to find that all you created was a DIY cable subscription. Enterprises ditched software licensing for the cloud only to find more per seat charges as a subscription that you may or may not use. The real scary thought: Generative AI (Copilot) may just give Clippy more brainpower and scale.

• Get ready for a parade of domain specific LLMs
• Generative AI features starting to launch, next comes potential sticker shock

Microsoft's Copilot fiesta in Windows is one area where this new use cases have gone too far. Do I really want copilots in Paint and Notepad? Those two programs are popular because they're kind of dumb. If I wanted smart, I'd use Photoshop and Word. Sometimes you just don't want or need the overkill. I feel the same way about appliances in that I prefer dumb and dependable. Your operating system should be the same way.

Multiply Microsoft's Copilot plans with similar efforts by Google (Duet AI everywhere) and other helpful models giving you insights and recommendations at every turn and I'm already fatigued.

Next step: HR sessions talking about copilot fatigue. In a few years, we'll have therapy sessions about copilots not allowing us to think, being annoying and simply helping us too much. You can almost hear the rank-and-file workers telling HR reps that their copilots hallucinate, lie, are too demanding and won't shut up. Even worse: That copilot in FP&A almost got someone fired.

Copilot fatigue will happen. You heard it here first.  

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Cisco acquires Splunk in $28 billion observability, AI and cybersecurity play

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Cisco said it will acquire Splunk for $28 billion, or $157 a share, in a deal that will give the networking giant a big play in security, AI and observability.

On a conference call, CEO Chuck Robbins said the Splunk deal (statement, Cisco blog) will make Cisco one of the largest software companies. It also transforms Cisco by positioning the company in growth markets AI, security and observability. "The value of data only increases. That's why this deal makes sense," said Robbins. "Our combined capabilities will provide an end-to-end data platform."

Robbins added that the two companies product lines were complementary and provide "full observability for the entire IT stack." He added that Cisco has a big opportunity to expand into AI driven networks.

Splunk CEO Gary Steele will join Cisco's executive team and report to Robbins. “Uniting with Cisco represents the next phase of Splunk's growth journey," said Steele, adding that the two companies have compatible cultures and scale to invest and expand market reach.

Among the key details:

• Splunk will add $4 billion in ARR to Cisco.
• Cisco expects the deal to be cash flow positive and gross margin accretive in the first year after the close and non-GAAP accretive in the second year.
• The deal won't impact Cisco's stock buyback or dividend program.
• The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of calendar 2024.

Observability is becoming a hot space. For instance, New Relic recently went private in a deal valued at $6.5 billion.

"There's a natural synergy when you can handle threat detection and security with AI. That's what you get with Cisco and Splunk," said Constellation Research CEO Ray Wang. "Customers get better network security and Splunk gets a key home and Cisco has a better story that drives AI valuation."

Robbins said the combination of Cisco's security business and data flow from Splunk can enable the company to solve more enterprise issues. "We also think there's an opportunity to expand our global presence," said Robbins. Steele added that international expansion can also boost Splunk and expand go-to-market opportunities. Although the companies said there isn't much product overlap, Cisco does have its own observability platform in the same areas as Splunk. 

The combination of Cisco and Splunk may also help enterprises looking to improve incident response. In a recent research report, Constellation Research analyst Andy Thurai found that 57% of incident response teams have more issues than they can handle.

Here are the Constellation Research Shortlists where Splunk appears.

• Constellation ShortList™ Observability
• Constellation ShortList™ AIOps
• Constellation ShortList™ Incident Management

Constellation Research's take

Given Cisco's reach in the enterprise technology market, there are a bevy of analysts covering the company. Here's how team Constellation Research assessed the deal.

Andy Thurai, the Constellation Research analyst following AIOps and the observability markets, made the following takeaways:

• The first thought that comes to mind is that this deal is a very natural fit. Cisco entered the observability race with their acquisition of AppDynamics and ThousandEyes and has been trying to build the full stack observability (FSO) platform for a while. Adding Splunk to this mix brings a true full-stack observability capabilities between APM, DEM, Logs, other observability capabilities, and SIEM, to add to their own network monitoring.
• Given that there is very little product overlap, Cisco gets a big customer base and potential upsell opportunity. A big TAM expansion.
• Cisco's XDR is well-established and has been around for a while. Adding Splunk SIEM to the mix, assuming the companies can integrate soon, will be a huge boost. It will be hard to integrate two big platforms with considerable technical debt built over the years.
• Cisco is known for channel selling. It can push Splunk, and the FSO platform thru the channel when it is ready.
• Some nervous customers are already reaching out and asking for opinions and strategies on what to do. The pricing strategy will be a mess for a while. Splunk has recently moved to mostly consumption-based pricing. Cisco needs to figure out how to integrate this pricing model with its model soon.
• Though the deal rationale suggests taking advantage of AI, security, and observability, I don't see it as much in AI. I see the synergies in security and observability. Neither company is a leading player in applied AI in their solutions. Splunk is ahead of Cisco on that front, but both need to catch up.
• Cisco took a while to integrate AppDynamics and ThousandEyes long after the acquisitions. I hope this integration goes easier. Splunk was already struggling with too many acquisitions with TruStar, TwinWave, Phantom Cyber, and Metafor, on the security side, and Flowmil, Rigor, Plumbr, SignalFX, Omnition, and VictorOps on the observability side. My advice would be to dump the smaller, not useful ones to concentrate on the bigger goal.
• While the acquisition price seems high, this gives Cisco an opportunity to expand its TAM. The observability market is growing and if Cisco and Splunk can integrate their platforms soon they can win on observability. Overall, this deal is good for both companies.  

Constellation Research analyst Dion Hinchcliffe said enterprise buyers will be thinking about vendor consolidation and pricing:

"Cisco's acquisition of Splunk is a bold move with the potential to reshape a key new sector of the IT industry. While there is a good bit of skepticism about Cisco's ability to preserve Splunk's culture of innovation, its massive customer base and global reach will likely help Splunk achieve even greater growth. CIOs will be watching closely to see if Cisco can address their growing concerns about vendor consolidation, with resulting higher prices, and see if they deliver a successful outcome for both companies' customers."

Constellation Research analyst Doug Henschen said:

"Cisco tried to get into enterprise software and acquiring Composite Software a few years back and it didn't work out. Splunk/AppDynamics, in contrast, are closer fit to Cisco in being focused on network and log data analysis. not enterprise data integration like Composite (now part of TIBCO)."

Holger Mueller, Constellation Research analyst, added:

"Cisco has long time realzied its future canno tbe the network alone, this is the boldest move to understand what is happening in the network, and on the network. If executed right it will be a better and more vertically integrated Cisco than before, thus creating value for CxO." 

 

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Amazon's new Alexa devices get new LLM, generative AI spin

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Amazon held an event to highlight new devices and a large language model (LLM) and generative AI tutorial broke out.

In a sign that products are becoming more about algorithms and generative AI than hardware design, the star of Amazon's Devices and Services event was an LLM that makes Alexa more conversational, can absorb real-time information, and reliably make the right API calls. The Amazon LLM model is also proactive and can use the company's Vision ID to know when you're about to talk and read body language. Amazon's Echo devices are a consumer use case with an enterprise LLM behind it. 

Simply put, this new LLM should negate the need to repeatedly say Alexa. Interactions should also become less transactional. Dave Limp, outgoing chief of Amazon's devices unit, said the new proprietary LLM is built on 5 foundational capabilities.

• Conversation. Amazon was able to use data on what makes a conversation over the past 9 years. Conversations are built on words, body language, eye contact and gestures. That's why the model is built so Alexa can recognize cues on screened devices.
• Real-world applications. Alexa isn't just a chat box in a browser. As a result, it has to interact with APIs and make correct choices.
• Personalization. An LLM in the home must be personalized to you and your family.
• Personality. A more conversational Alexa will be able to have more opinions to go with jokes.
• Trust. Performance with privacy matters.

Limp's demo with Alexa and its new LLM illustrated some key upgrades. Alexa was able to stop and start a conversation and remember previous context. Amazon said the revamped Alexa will roll out early next year.

Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist of Amazon Artificial General Intelligence, said what makes Alexa's LLM unique is that it "it doesn't just tell you things but does things."

As a result, Amazon tuned the LLM for voice as well multiple points of context. Real-time connections to APIs will make Alexa better integrated into the smart home and natural.  Key points about Alexa's new LLM upgrades:

• Alexa's automatic-speech recognition (ASR) system has been revamped with new machine learning models, algorithms and hardware and is moving to a large text-to-speech (LTTS) model that's trained on thousands of hours of audio data instead of the 100s of hours used previously.
• The ASR model is built on a multibillion parameter model trained on short goal-oriented speech as well as long-from conversations. Amazon said the large ASR model will move from CPUs to hardware accelerated processing and use frames of input speech based on 30-millisecond snapshots of the speech signal frequency spectrum. 
• Alexa's new speech-to-speech model is LLM based and produces output directly from input speech. The move will enable Alexa to laugh and have conversational tools.

While the models stole the show, Amazon launched a series of features including automatic lighting, call translation and emergency assist services to go along with hardware including the Echo Show 8, Echo Hub and new Fire TV Sticks and Fire TVs with generative AI updates. 

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ServiceNow launches Now Assist across Now Platform, pricing bundles

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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ServiceNow launched Now Assist generative AI tools across its platform and offered some specifics on add-on pricing.

With its Now Platform Vancouver Release, ServiceNow launched Now Assist across its core categories. Now Assist is built on a ServiceNow domain-specific large language model (LLM).

Specifically, ServiceNow launched Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), HR Service Delivery (HRSD) and Creator.

With the move generative AI can be embedded across ServiceNow workflows. For instance, Now Assist across the ServiceNow portfolio can provide contextual summaries and incident resolution notes, curb the manual work required by agents and generate code.

The big question is how much these generative AI features will cost. Vendors have taken multiple approaches including across-the-board price increases, add-ons, new SKUs and credits for generative AI usage.

• Get ready for a parade of domain specific LLMs
• Generative AI features starting to launch, next comes potential sticker shock

ServiceNow said feedback from 150 early customers of Now Assist indicates that there are gains in productivity in weeks. CEO Bill McDermott, speaking on ServiceNow's second quarter earnings call, said the company hopes to capture some of the value customers are receiving and was upbeat about premium SKUs.

According to ServiceNow, customers can buy add-ons to get access to Now Assist generative AI. Among the details:

• ServiceNow IT Service Management, Customer Service Management, or HR Service Delivery Pro or Enterprise solution can buy Professional Plus or Enterprise Plus add-ons to get Now Assist.
• Pro Plus and Enterprise Plus add-ons are available to customers with industry-specific licenses such as Telecommunications, Financial Services and Healthcare.
• Now Assist for Creator is available with Creator Plus licenses.
• Pro Plus, Enterprise Plus and Creator Plus add-ons are purchased by seat. Each seat allows a user to execute a certain amount of "assists." More complex generative AI interactions eat up more assists. This approach sounds similar to Adobe's credit program for generative AI.
• ServiceNow didn't detail the initial entitlement of assists but noted more capacity can be purchased.

Enterprise pricing will vary based on volume discounts, the number of seats used for generative AI and complexity of interactions. The only certainty is that you'll be paying ServiceNow more for generative AI capabilities.

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Clorox hit with cyberattack, sees financial hit, product shortages

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Clorox disclosed it will see a material hit to its first quarter results following a cybersecurity attack that hampered production and led to product shortages.

The company is just the latest in a series of companies likely to see a financial hit due to cyberattacks. Caesars and MGM both had incidents that took systems offline and brought web sites down.

Clorox in a regulatory filing said it had to switch to "manual ordering and processing procedures" after identifying unauthorized activity on its IT systems. Clorox added that it has been operated "at a lower rate of order processing and has recently begun to experience an elevated level of consumer product availability issues."

Indeed, Clorox's website that sells direct to consumers notes that the site is "undergoing system maintenance." Most products on the site are out of stock.

According to Clorox, the cybersecurity incident disrupted systems across the company's operations. In response to the attack, Clorox took its systems offline and expects to switch back to normal automated order processing the week of Sept. 25.

The company said:

"Clorox has already resumed production at the vast majority of its manufacturing sites and expects the ramp up to full production to occur over time. At this time, the Company cannot estimate how long it will take to resume fully normalized operations.

Clorox is still evaluating the extent of the financial and business impact. Due to the order processing delays and elevated level of product outages, the Company now believes the impact will be material on Q1 financial results. It is premature for the Company to determine longer-term impact, including fiscal year outlook, given the ongoing recovery."

Clorox will offer more details on the financial hit after it has more visibility.

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Oracle's plan for Cerner: Cloud shift, generative code rewrite

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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This post first appeared in the Constellation Insight newsletter, which features bespoke content weekly.

Oracle has big plans for its Cerner acquisition, but it has integration work ahead including moving a customer base to the cloud and rewriting applications with a little help from generative AI.

As a refresher, Oracle closed its $28 billion acquisition of Cerner in June 2022. The plan for Oracle is clear: Use its cloud and data knowhow to transform healthcare.

But lost amid talk of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, growth rates, partnerships with Microsoft and Oracle Cloud World was how much attention Cerner integration received from CTO Larry Ellison and CEO Safra Catz. Consider:

• On the first quarter earnings call, Cerner was mentioned 30 times, second only to cloud at 71 mentions.
• Catz gave revenue growth guidance including Cerner and excluding it. Catz cited headwinds on moving Cerner customers from a license model to a cloud one. And she noted that Cerner profitability has to get to "Oracle standards." Catz said: "We are in an accelerated transition of Cerner to the cloud. This transition is resulting in some near-term headwinds to the Cerner growth rate as customers move from license purchases, which are recognized upfront, to cloud subscriptions, which are recognized ratably. Again, excluding Cerner, I remain committed to accelerating our total revenue growth rate this fiscal year as well as maintaining our current high cloud growth rate for the year."

• Ellison said that Cerner, aka Oracle Health, has been "awarded two large new contracts with a total value of over $1 billion" to be recognized in the current quarter.

Rest assured that Cerner and healthcare will get a breakout when Oracle hosts its analyst meeting at Oracle Cloud World. Oracle at its health conference tied to Cloud World being held in Las Vegas, made a series of announcements that highlight the company’s healthcare push. Oracle outlined generative AI capabilities across its health product suite, healthcare workplace optimization, financial planning and supply chain applications and customers wins such as Tenent Healthcare, Providence and Loblaw.

Ellison outlined the Cerner integration.

First, Oracle is moving Cerner's Millenium electronic health record (EHR) platform to the cloud and rewriting the software in pieces. At Oracle Cloud World, Oracle also outlined its next-generation Millenium EHR with generative AI tools and public APIs running on Oracle Cloud. 

Ellison said:

"There's a two-phase process with Cerner. The first thing is to get the lift and shift and get the existing system hardened, which we've done and moving the customers to the cloud, which we are in the process of moving everybody to the cloud. That will give them better performance, better security and new features will then start showing up with the system."

And then Oracle is replacing Cerner features with new ones. Ellison said this process will replace the old Cerner system with a new one. He added that Oracle isn't rewriting the code in Java though. It is using generative AI. Ellison said:

"We have an application generator called APEX. And we are not writing code for the new Cerner. We are generating that code in APEX, and it's going extremely well. Again, one of the great things about code generators is they don't make mistakes. Well, either they make the same mistake over and over again or once you fix the mistake, you fix it everywhere. So, the code gen -- we are using a code generator, and to write the new features in Cerner and it's coming along very, very nicely."

Finally, Oracle will transition the old Cerner business to a new model. Catz covered that point, but Ellison reiterated that the transition to a cloud model is a headwind as revenue is recognized over time. Catz also said Oracle "still has a way to go" on Cerner expenses, but changes will become more obvious in future quarters.

Related:

• 8 takeaways from Constellation Research's Healthcare Transformation Summit
• Oracle, Microsoft launch Oracle services within Azure data centers

"We are always looking to save as much as we can, and to spend as little while still really transforming Cerner into a modern system in its entirety," said Catz.

Ellison added that Oracle loves to save money. "One of the things we did with our data centers is we automated them. We saved labor costs, and we have better security and better reliability because we eliminated human error," he said. "With the rewrite of Cerner, it's not armies of programmers that are going be rewriting this. We are generating the new Millennium software using APEX. And that's also going to save us a lot of human labor and generate higher quality code and higher quality user interfaces and better security all at once."

Research

• Oracle Writes the Next Chapter of Exadata With Exadata X10M
• Oracle’s Data Platform Gets an EPYC™ Boost

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What CMOs can learn from Parent Tested Parent Approved founder Sharon Vinderine

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Sharon Vinderine, founder of Parent Tested Parent Approved, is passionate about authenticity, fending off "award washing" and rating products with reviews from real people.

On DisrupTV Episode 335, she also had advice for chief marketing officers.

Here's a look at the takeaways.

Traditional marketing is taking a hit and there's room for new models. Vinderine said traditional marketing has taken a hit because it is usually "about a brand yelling at you that we're the best and amazing."

"The reality is that when we're going out to buy something we are inevitably calling one of our friends or asking one of our peers 'hey what did you use? Was it effective and did it do what it said it was going to do?' We're typically buying based on those types of recommendations," she said.

The disruption. PTPA is focused on building a seal of approval so when you walk into the store you know it was peer endorsed. "If it was peer endorsed it's much more valuable than a brand telling you to buy their product," said Vinderine. "Right now, people are looking for authenticity. Consumers in general are much savvier than they were so fake reviews and influencer-based advertising doesn't work anymore."

"It's a trusted friend that's more important."

 

The inflection points. Vinderine, as leader of a wireless internet company, used to spend a lot of time on rooftops adjusting antennas. When she was pregnant there was an opportunity to sell the company.

"I became a new mom, and I was buying anything and everything for this perfect child. I was going to spend anything because you know what's more important than your child?" recalled Vinderine, who added she'd buy based on price and packaging.  “I would bring products home and they did not live up to expectations. They looked great but they actually didn't perform."

It became clear that Vinderine's friends had the best recommendations. "I wanted to find a way to sift through those piles of products especially at the stage where moms were doing the most research--pregnant and having first children," she explained.

A company was born. Success wasn't instant. Parents bought in, but brands didn't buy into programs. It took time, notably TV time, to build credibility. "What was beautiful was that community came about," said Vinderine. "One mom talked to another mom and then told the next one."

Challenges. Vinderine said "award washing" is a challenge in the industry. She said:

"This award-washing business kind of drives me nuts so I'm thrilled to have a platform to talk about it. These days it looks like everything is this top pick and top rated and a must have. There is a new award every single day. A lot of these other awards are either popularity contests or editorial focused. It's pay for play."

PTPA's model. Vinderine said brands pay for the opportunity to have their brand tested and researched, but if it doesn't earn PTPA's seal of approval they get a refund. "We are the only organization in North America that does that," she said. "In order to earn our seal, the product is shipped to members of our community for in-hand product testing. Families complete a detailed survey about their experience. Did it do what it promised to, and did it live up to expectations?"

"I encourage people to really research what kind of awards they are trusting and make sure there's actually a backbone behind them," said Vinderine.

Advice for CMOs and founders. "You need to start with a good product. If an entrepreneur is in it to make a quick buck it doesn't happen anymore because it's going to take about a minute and a half before somebody figures out you have a lousy product and it spreads like wildfire across social media," said Vinderine.

Simply put, a good product is the focus. Once a product is established "the way you market it needs to be different." "It's not an influencer world anymore. I want to hear from real authentic people that I can relate to," she said. "Instagram is a great medium but you will see me talking about a product not looking all glam but looking like a mom. I want to be relatable."

You will trust people in that same life stage as you and are relatable, she said.

CMOs need to keep in mind that building a business also means building an emotional connection with a consumer. Once that connection is built, consumers are "buying your product because they believe in you and your organization and what you stand behind," added Vanderine.

Venderine's advice is critical for PTPA. The community grows via word of mouth. "We haven't spent money on building our community. It has been word of mouth and television appearances," she said. "We try to act in the most authentic way possible because word of mouth is going to be how we continue to grow the community."

Marketing transformation:

• Constellation ShortList™ Customer Experience (CX) Operations Services: Global

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