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…...

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Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Leadership Chief Analytics Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Experience Officer

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…...

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Innovation & Product-led Growth Leadership Chief Experience Officer

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…...

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Innovation & Product-led Growth Leadership Chief Experience Officer

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…...

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Innovation & Product-led Growth Leadership Chief Experience Officer

Dion Hinchcliffe

Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Title: About Dion Hinchcliffe Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized business strategist, bestselling author, enterprise architect, industry analyst, and noted keynote speaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in digital strategy, the future of work, and enterprise IT. He works with the leadership teams of large enterprises as well as software vendors to raise the bar for the art-of-the-possible in their digital capabilities. He is currently Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. Dion is also currently an executive fellow at the Tuck School of Business Center for Digital Strategies. He is a globally recognized industry expert on the topics of digital transformation, digital workplace, enterprise collaboration, API…...

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Over the last year, the world has undergone a true work revolution the likes of which has never quite happened before now, as it did in 2020. What’s more, this revolution took place more quickly than just about anyone thought it could or would. Accompanying the many changes that have happened are new business contingency methods which have employed during the pandemic that were only possible because of recent technology trends like widespread Internet connectivity, the cloud, and mobile devices.

46 million people in the U.S. alone have been able to rapidly shift physical work location over the last year due to these new digital tools. This now marks the moment in history as the first time the impacts of a pandemic have been addressed so thoroughly with a rapid and pervasive digital response. Digital transformation of work, at least during a crisis, was achieved in an incredibly short period.

The majority of knowledge workers have now shifted their primary employee experience to their residence or remote office. They’ve also largely stayed productive , despite their dislocation and physical disconnection from the office. In a remarkably short time, the resulting work upheaval in the real world has been considerably resolved, enabled and buffered in most cases by technology in a way that has prevented far worse economic damage which could have resulted (and that we’ve seen across other areas of the global economy).

Nevertheless, this year’s challenges remain, both complex and interconnected. New and countervailing trends have also come intoat play, as the rapid global expansion of working from home has simultaneously created millions of appealing new -- but poorly-protected -- digital targets for bad actors to exploit. Cybersecurity threats and budgets will be at an all time high in 2021, just as workers and organizations seek to minimize disruption in their lives and surroundings.

Staying abreast and getting a handle on these momentous shifts is a daunting task for those charged with navigating this rapidly unfolding new future of work for their organizations. Just tracking the changes that happened to the way people worked during 2020 has been an ongoing challenge. Yet it’s an urgent subject to monitor and understand so that organizations can intelligently manage their present situation, as well as guide their future direction. This is specially true as we prepare to address the future of work needs and unlock potential in 2021 and beyond.

The Digital Big Picture of Changing Work

There are three major trends influencing the future of work at this significant moment in history:

1. Rapid shifts in business operations, due to aforementioned global pandemic situations combined with secondary impacts from the resulting economic downturn and social unease.
2. A convergence of global technology and business trends, most significantly high-speed Internet access to most homes, widely available new cloud computing services, fast yet inexpensive wireless mobile devices and the recently-arrived debut/proliferation of 5G.
3. A continued exponential tech evolution in the background driving continued steady and often disruptive change, regardless of other trends.

Collectively, these shifts are fostering one of the most dynamic environments in history for dramatic changes and improvements in the future of work, which was highlighted in recent the “Work 2035” research report by Citrix in conjunction with Coleman Parkes.

• High-speed Internet access. The era of remote work is unequivocally divided into two historical epochs: Before fast Internet connection was widely available to most people and after. The latter was when virtually any amount of data needed to do one’s job could be easily tapped remotely or when a worker could readily engage in multipoint video calls. This has made remote work possible for most knowledge workers today. Soon, new so-called satellite “megaconstellations” launched by Elon Musk and others will soon bring the Internet to virtually every corner of the earth, truly revolutionizing many areas of employment.
• Cloud computing services for digital work. For businesses, the industry has now reached the definitive breakthrough for the cloud as the pre-eminent delivery platform for the digital workspace and employee experience going forward. Cloud-hosted services now makes it possible to put a digital employee experience anywhere in the world there is moderate Internet connectivity, and keep workers effective, engaged, and productive there.
• A better digital work experience. A  new, rapidly-evolving employee experience has emerged that is more integrated, available anywhere, multi-channel, assistive, automated, personalized, and contextual. Substantial changes are continuing to come to most workers' day-to-day journeys to make their digital lives far more streamlined, proactively enabled, and better organized.
• A better focus on and organization of digital work. Businesses are now busy deploying new tools and programs for worker learning, skill building, retraining, and upskilling. Digital work skills have become a top new priority as a core talent retention and sustainability model. This is especially true of next-generation digital literacy in the face of the recent mass global moves to remote work/work from home. Many companies are preferring to downsize or cut costs through natural attrition, and then use digital education to bring existing workers up to speed quickly or augment the missing workforce with just-in-time automation programs.
• A better focus on and organization of digital work. Businesses are now busy deploying new tools and programs for worker learning, skill building, retraining, and upskilling. Digital work skills have become a top new priority as a core talent retention and sustainability model. This is especially true of next-generation digital literacy in the face of the recent mass global moves to remote work/work from home. Many companies are preferring to downsize or cut costs through natural attrition, and then use digital education to bring existing workers up to speed quickly or augment the missing workforce with just-in-time automation programs.
• A more proactive IT support model. Endpoint management has become one of the top challenges as organizations go from having a few locations to many thousands of operational locations, mostly at workers’ homes. Waiting for workers to experience support issues and deal with cybersecurity incidents on their own is no longer acceptable. Organizations are increasingly taking a proactive stance to ensure workers have uptime and quality functioning of their remote digital workspace.
• A digital replacement of the physical workspace. There were useful qualities in the in-person workspace, such as ability to have a shared awareness and culture, as well as the ability to quickly engage in impromptu collaboration. New means of replicating these features are being explored by enterprises in the latest virtual meeting and event capabilities, seeking to recover the loss of the physical workspace.
• More holistic employee experience programs. There is a renewed interest and effort by many organizations to more comprehensively encompass the entire employee journey in a consistent digital environment.  These efforts seek to take a worker’s well-being, personal growth, contribution awareness, and personal/business purpose much more into account in the digital work experience. These aspects are increasingly being woven into and across the main work experience by applying digital analytics, process tracking, sentiment measurement, and other feedback mechanisms, from and to the worker. The goal, as with preventative medicine, is to proactively measure, detect, diagnose, and address the real-time conditions of the worker more effectively in a systemic and overarching way. Examples include digital employee recognition programs that automatically identify major achievements and distribute congratulations to co-workers appropriately. Another example is wellness surveys that detect physical and mental health conditions early enough to intervene. Such programs would not have one or two such capabilities, but a larger interlocking set aimed at the worker’s overall condition.
• Acquiring resiliency and avoiding fragility. Organizations now seek a new emphasis on making the workplace more resilient to change and major exceptions, through new digital strategy, planning, operations, and especially, security programs. More proactive reviews of digital capabilities and governance are being put into place so that disruptions are less likely to create impact. Example include stronger and more dynamic cybersecurity defenses and better funded, staffed, and regularly tested contingency and disaster recovery plans.

Watch Constellation's New Future of Work Reality Show Above To Explore the Trends Described Here

Where to Uplevel for the Best 2021 Digital Workspace

The world has learned a tremendous amount in 2020 about the strengths and weakness of our current digital workforce capabilities. The top technology considerations — along with their priorities — which have emerged and likely to be prioritized to support the remote or more distributed workforce are:

• Remote work “dial tone”. Bandwidth and access considerations have made new work practices like all-day multipoint video sessions for all workers, no matter where they live is still creating challenges that will drive companies to more rapidly adopt next-gen connectivity including 5G and emerging satellite solutions to ensure business continuity. Priority: Highest
• Protection and safety of worker endpoints. Cybersecurity regimes in most organizations will continue to require rather substantial upgrades and reinforcements in the face of worldwide shifts in endpoints, worker locations, major new exploits, and changes in equipment. Consequently, new highly intelligent and dynamic cybersecurity capabilities and enabling the (either partially or fully) remote workforce built on a zero-trust model and/or VPN-alternatives approach such as low-footprint yet high performance digital desktops will be a major focus area though 2021 ad beyond. As such cybersecurity regimes in most organizations will continue to require quite substantial reinforcement. Priority: High
• A more enabling employee experience. Next-generation employee experience platforms are being widely sought to deliver the new all-digital, 100% remote workspaces that have emerged. These will be much more integrated, seamless, contextual, and personalized, as well as infused with artificial intelligence (AI) assistants and digital adoption features, as well as other wellbeing and health monitoring features in best-in-class organizations. Priority: High
• Mobile channel parity. A continued push to make the digital workspace for mobile devices have full parity with PCs for remote workers. Priority: Medium
• Measurement to drive digital work performance. Talent analytics will become a new major management capability in many organizations to make performance visibility and management much easier in remote work digital silos. Priority: Medium
• Improved remote work. A new generation of applications designed to address the potential downsides of remote work will continue to emerge and be adopted. These will include worker status dashboards, meeting tools that return the feel of intimacy in a physical office, the first great VR/AR meeting and collaboration tools, and many other innovative advances. Priority: Medium
• Hybrid, no-compromise digital worker enablement. Next-generation hybrid employee experience platforms designed to deliver the new all-digital, 100% remote workspaces that have emerged. Most organizations will now will likely realize a maximally flexible work model, which is distributed between in-office for those returning, work-from-home and the growing remote option from anywhere. Priority: Medium

The digital transformation of knowledge work has been profound for many of those impacted by COVID-19. While the changes have been challenging, many are ultimately welcome and needed in an increasingly distributed and diverse world. While digital technologies are not a universal panacea for the widespread and difficult challenges of a global pandemic, organizations have been able to build a working digital foundation in short order.

But a basic digital work foundation is not enough. More must be done by the average organization to make a more livable, sustainable, and flexible digital work experience. The solution space outlined here is a strong beginning from which to start. Ultimately, it will be the organizations willing to make the necessary steps to increase the maturity of their newfound state of digital work -- along the lines laid out above -- that will reap the most substantial benefits in terms of talent acquisition, retention, and business growth. Next-generation employee experience platforms will have to be much more integrated, seamless, contextual and personalized. In the next part in this series we’ll take a pragmatic look at how to truly rebuild our disrupted digital employee experience, with the digital workspace as a foundation of those endeavors.

Additional Reading

Reimagining the Post-2020 Employee Experience

It's Time to Think About the Post-2020 Employee Experience

How Work Will Evolve in a Digital Post-Pandemic Society

Revisiting How to Cultivate Connected Organizations in an Age of Coronavirus

Working in a coronavirus world: Strategies and tools for staying productive | ZDNet

A Checklist for a Modern Core Digital Workplace and/or Intranet

Creating the Modern Digital Workplace and Employee Experience

The Challenging State of Employee Experience and Digital Workplace Today

New C-Suite Future of Work Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer

Liz Miller

Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

About Liz Miller: Liz Miller is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation, focused on the org-wide team sport known as customer experience. While covering CX as an enterprise strategy, Miller spends time zeroing in on the functional demands of Marketing and Service and the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer, the rise of the Chief Experience Officer, the evolution of customer engagement, and the rising requirement for a new security posture that accounts for the threat to brand trust in this age of AI. With over 30 years of marketing experience, Miller offers strategic guidance on the leadership, business transformation, and technology requirements to deliver on today’s CX strategies. She has worked with global marketing organizations to transform…...

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This week, Salesforce unveiled its new stand-alone Loyalty Management solution, promising a unified platform able to manage programs in both B2B and B2C environments. While intentionally designed to manage loyalty schemes end-to-end within the platform, as with all things Salesforce, the story comes to life when the loyalty solution is integrated into the entirety of the Salesforce arsenal.

On the surface, the product looks to make loyalty programs easier to manage and operate and more profitable. It enables brands to execute campaigns and initiatives on a single pane of glass and empowers those touch points to be more personalized and relevant to the customer. The goal, as Salesforce states in their announcement, is to “evolve loyalty programs to stay current with customer expectations and help drive business value by creating loyal, lifelong customers.”

This is an incredibly ambitious goal…and one that for too long has felt out of reach for many brands AND consumers.

Since the time of gamified stamps and sticker booklets to capture the attention and competitive nature of consumers, loyalty programs have been both intensely lucrative and mind-bogglingly complex to administer. In 2009, the CMO Council fielded a survey of 600 marketing executives and 700 consumer loyalty program members on the topic of loyalty programs. This was a time when $2 billion was being spent annually on operating loyalty programs and the average American household was enrolled in 14.1 loyalty programs but only active in 6.2. The obvious question was: is the organization’s (and the consumer’s) investment of budget, time and resources was worth it?

The overwhelming majority of marketers said that these programs were critical to driving more loyal and profitable engagements…which wasn’t a surprise. What was astounding was that for the most part, there was little if any strategy around what to do beyond the confines of the earn and burn mindset of a points-based scheme. Few were leveraging the data coming from these programs to craft new initiatives, products or services. Even fewer had the ability to connect the dots between actions and transactions in their loyalty program with engagements tracked and recorded in other systems let alone departments.

What happened in loyalty STAYED in loyalty!

Consumers were happy with the value of participation but had a distinct definition of what value was to them. That differed from how marketers defined value. Consumers valued savings, they valued exclusivity, but most of all, they valued the freedom to engage as people and not as ‘accounts’ or ‘transactions’…instead, they were esteemed, known and recognized as individuals. 

The assumption SHOULD be that 11 years later EVERYTHING had CHANGED. However, in a 2019 report, Bond and Visa reported that consumers belong to an average of 14.8 loyalty membership programs but are active in 6.7…and, according to McKinsey, US companies are spending upwards of $40 billion annual on their loyalty programs. So…there is that.

Why has loyalty stagnated?

When I consider the conditions and context of that survey – the height of the global recession when consumers were on the hunt for savings and uncertain about financial futures, headlines across the industry shouting about the “new normal of commerce” and the “acceleration of digital transformation”—I can’t help but feel we are in familiar territory.

What both marketers and consumers admitted in 2009 was that loyalty programs are great when they are great, but they can also feel impossible to navigate and extract real value. Rather than leveraging loyalty programs to extract a higher quality signal from customers with a vested interest in advancing a deeper relationship, brands saw loyalty program lists as an open invitation to spam. Loyalty was something given by the customer in exchange for a perk…a reward from a transaction. Yet the very word loyalty is defined as a feeling of attachment. Somehow, through the course of navigating the operations of a loyalty program, all feeling and attachment has been stripped out in the interest of optimizing the monopoly money ledger of earn and burn points balance.

Here we are again in 2021, looking to apply new tools to solve old problems while seemingly ignoring the pesky reality that loyalty is a feeling – an attachment – and not an exchange or automated transaction.

So why did this announcement catch my eye? Sure, the solution is clean, chuck full of “easy button” features that make standing up and managing a program quickly a real possibility, and well thought through from a business strategy. Salesforce has leaned in hard to its stable of integration partners with Loyalty Services and Loyalty Strategy. These folks are well versed in the complexity of the loyalty market. What really caught my eye was the extension of loyalty from a scheme into a strategy that could be applied for more than redemptions. The foundation of the solution is grounded in the lifecycle of the customer, the robustness of the partner ecosystem partaking in the program and an emphasis on relationships that build from loyalty to advocacy.

At the core of the Salesforce announcement is an invitation for any organization to first rethink what loyalty means for their business. That in turn lets them develop strategies to enable and empower the entire organization to embrace loyal customers in a new, far more durable relationship. Activating membership communities of loyalists and influencers has also been thought thru with strategies and tactics to reward customers for connection and conversation within a network. Honestly…the simplicity of the cross-industry partner management functionality alone makes me lean in for more.

Salesforce has also gone the extra mile to elevate the importance of loyalty in B2B settings, capitalizing on a key trend I have seen charging hard into this new year. As the B2B marketer is driven to humanize and contextualize relationships for the individual beyond the account, replicating experiences more often associated with splashy, “sexy” B2C experiences, reimagining loyalty schemes that reward advocates with service, training and peer-to-peer networks is a timely discussion. The B2B business case for loyalty management is perhaps the greatest opportunity for differentiation, especially for existing Salesforce customers already bought in to the Salesforce Customer 360 vision.

With this new introduction, expect to see more buzz and more products focused on loyalty emerge from Salesforce competitors. We’ll see a wave of “We Too” product introductions in a diverse yet largely stagnant loyalty marketplace. Bottom line is that loyalty programs aren’t for the faint of heart. They can threaten great experience in the name of gamification and quickly put profitability on the line. But, customers are keenly aware that the new currency of business includes their influence and advocacy and that they, in this digitally accelerated world, are free to set their own exchange rate for their loyalty. It is time for organizations to rethink loyalty at both the tool and the tactic level.

Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Marketing Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Revenue Officer

Customer data. It’s increasingly viewed by businesses as the valuable asset it should be. But there’s a persistent problem I keep bumping into when it comes to talking about and describing customer data: misuse of terms.

Call me a pedant if you will, but getting the terminology right matters. With all of the complexities involved in collecting, managing, and using this asset effectively, no one can afford to be confused about the sources of customer data. Where customer data comes from has major implications for data compliance regulations as well as reliability and accuracy.

Let’s focus on three important and related terms that are bandied about a lot these days—far too often incorrectly: first-party, second-party, and third-party. In any sort of transaction, there are two parties: the buyer and the seller. Or, for our purposes here, the customer and the business. Anyone who is not directly involved in a given transaction between the customer and the business is a third party.

With these distinctions in mind, the sources of customer data become much clearer. Getting them right comes down to perspective—the perspective of the business.

First-Party Data

First-party data refers to any and all data gathered by a business from all of its interactions, communications, and transactions with customers. That includes direct observations of customer behaviors, for example, on a website or commerce site. As anyone who has taken even the smallest of baby steps toward building a unified view of the customer can attest, that covers a dizzying array of systems and data types.

Second-Party Data

In a business transaction, if the first party is the business itself, the second party is only ever the customer. There’s a reason we don’t see the term “second-party data” used very often. Although customers, both consumers and companies, collect and manage some of it, they rarely if ever sell it. As a consumer, I keep track of which companies I’ve made purchases from, for example. The company I work for does as well—we usually consider those suppliers. In either context, the data I manage as a customer serves my own needs. And just to complicate matters, as a separate business entity, all of that data is first party to me or my company. (Isn’t this fun?!)

Second-party data does NOT refer to data from partner organizations. Partners organizations may also have direct interactions with many of the same customers a business does. While the first-party business may consider partners a reliable source of accurate customer data, that data is still third-party data. More on this in a moment.

Neither does second-party data refer to data from other divisions within a business. As long as those other divisions are part of the same legal entity, it’s still first-party data.

Third-Party Data

Any data that comes from an outside organization—that is not either the customer or the business in question—is third-party data. That covers many different sources and types of data. It could indeed include partner organizations that have complementary relationships with the same customers. It also includes data brokers whose sole business is to collect and sell customer data. It includes publishing platforms and search engines. And the list goes on.

One particularly confusing use of the term “third-party data” is when technology vendors use it to refer to data that comes from outside their own systems. While this may be a useful distinction from an engineering standpoint, it does little to clarify customer data sources within an enterprise. I would argue that, with the possible exception of discussions within an engineering or development team, this usage of the term third-party data is incorrect.

Practically speaking, ALL companies that collect customer data do so through multiple systems. That means that there will always be customer data that comes from outside any given system. Indeed, finding workable strategies for consolidating and using customer data across different systems is one of the most important priorities for companies working to improve customer experience and operational excellence. So to refer to such data as “third-party” borders on the nonsensical. If you ever hear a technology vendor refer to third-party data, make sure they clarify what they mean by that.

Why Do These Distinctions Matter?

Beyond clarity, there are two big reasons why it’s important to get these terms right: regulatory compliance and operational effectiveness.

When it comes to issues of data privacy regulation and compliance, the sources of customer data make a huge difference. Liz Miller’s excellent blog post on California’s Consumer Privacy Act offers useful insight into how types of customer data, its sources, and the way it’s gathered influence what companies can and cannot do with it. And that’s just one state’s legislation.

The issue becomes even more complex on the topic of third-party cookies used to collect customer data. This type of data collection works through a particular kind of cookie that is embedded into websites that allows a third-party organization to observe and collect data on customers who visit those websites. As regulations on what kind of third-party data collection is allowed continues to evolve, many website browsers have either already eliminated support for such cookies (Safari) or have announced they will be sunsetting it (Google). These moves have big implications for what third-party customer data will be available for sale over the next several years. (Liz goes into some of those implications for advertisers in her post on Criteo’s analyst day in 2020.)

Most importantly, when businesses understand the variety of first-party customer data they already collect, they are in a much better position to make effective use of it. Unlike just about any kind of third-party data, you as a business know exactly how, where, and when your own first-party customer data was collected. You have clear visibility into its quality and reliability. You determine how to manage it and how to use it.

Bottom Line

First-party customer data is perhaps the most valuable data asset a business owns. Recognizing it for what it is, understanding where it comes from (and where it should), and determining how to use it effectively constitute three fundamental pillars to underpinning great customer experience and sustained business success. Only when we’re clear on the terms we use to describe customer data can we make the advances we need toward mastering all three of those pillars.

Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Analytics Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Revenue Officer

Raffaella Camera

XR (AR/VR) Strategist The WXR Venture Fund, Accenture XR

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As it’s always been the case with emerging technologies, consumers adopt them in small increments. Aside from rare groundbreaking new products like the iPhone, consumers are looking for simple, small improvements to digital solutions and devices that they are already familiar with. Because for the average consumer, the barrier to experience – or unfamiliarity with a new technology - is more costly and disruptive than its potential benefit.

At the closing of 2019, the common belief was that new digital tools and new immersive technologies like AR and VR, visual search, or AI-powered virtual assistants were going to be adopted slowly in the consumer sector. Starting to really get traction in 2023, with the projected mass launch of multiple types of AR glasses and proliferation of 5G. But the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly accelerated consumers’ need to interact with one another, with products, with information and with entertainment - remotely, in a more immersive way.

Anywhere/Anytime Redefines Omnichannel as Consumers’ Behavioral Changes are Here to Stay

Consumers behaviors have forcefully and abruptly changed and will keep modifying future interactions between brands and consumers. Consumers are often unable or unwilling to go to a store, more cautious about germs, crowds and travel. They are rediscovering and adapting to a life lived much more at home. So product interaction, brand interaction, impulse buys have to be delivered anywhere, anytime. Expanding the definition of omnichannel to fully include immersive technologies like AR and VR, delivered seamlessly through AI-powered applications. They need to try-on, try-out or at least feel like they can interact with products virtually – from make-up, to shoes, to cars, to clothing, to furniture. They need to step into a brand’s world and get a sense for what it represents without walking into a perfectly set up flagship store. Brands have also clearly identified their needs.

Virtual music, sports and gaming are showing incredible user growth. They are blending with commerce and are the most promising platforms to develop experiential shopping. Travis Scott’s concert on Fortnite – attended by 12 million people – grossed him $20 million, in large part due to the in-event sale of merchandise.

A recent Accenture study points out that 47% of consumers say that immersive tech makes them feel connected with products and that they would pay extra for a product if they could customize it or personalize. Their motivations for trying out immersive technologies when shopping online include:

• 52% - viewing products without visiting the store
• 42% - assessing product features and capabilities
• 42% - experiencing products before purchasing
• 39% - increasing confidence in purchasing decision
• 29% - changing, customizing or personalizing products

Cross-Platform Solutions Address Gap in Current Tech Capabilities

Unexpectedly, the demand has surpassed the offer. Since XR devices, and the infrastructure needed to deliver those experiences are still not main-stream, the ecosystem is rushing towards the production of cross-platform solutions in learning, communication, shopping, gaming. The purist view of XR gives way to the quick integration of AR/VR in web and mobile, with solutions no longer developed to run only on fully immersive devices – like the Quest or Hololens. And consumers are responding very well, being more than willing to give up a deeper level of immersion in exchange for using a more familiar and accessible device. So AR and VR, first thought of as separate tools or disciplines, are merging with more traditional digital solutions and are becoming common place. We now expect AR elements and functionality in communication tools through filters or lenses, in any gaming app, when shopping for furniture (Wayfair), when trying on make-up or hair colors (11 beauty brands offering AR try-on), when trying on sneakers of any kind (Gucci). We expect to purchase from an AR pop-up store while communicating with friends on Snapchat (American Eagle). Similarly, we expect web-based VR functionality when browsing through a store (Dior), watching a virtual concert (Travis Scott on Fortnite), or virtually participating to a fashion show (Balenciaga).

Gaming and Social Media Platforms Will Compete with Pure Commerce Platforms

A new competitive landscape and digital partner ecosystem is emerging. Large experience-led consumer platforms like Snapchat, Facebook, Epic, Niantic, Apple, Steam seem to be perfectly positioned to create the future of digital consumer interaction, expanding from their leadership in gaming, entertainment and communication. These platforms can rely on:

• Their large user base
• The social interactions and the influencers
• The integration of AR/VR elements
• Their proprietary game engines or AR development tools
• The hardware (most of them)
• A pre-established integration with eCommerce and payment systems
• A library of 3D assets, created or crowd-sourced
• The partnerships with infrastructure players for heavy content distribution
• An established developer ecosystem
• Access to users’ behavioral data

The Bottom Line – What does this mean for brands and XR ecosystem players?

The real transformative future of commerce and advertising is not just based on adding AI enabled AR/VR functionality to an old and tried list of products. But in truly bringing shopping and ads inside any experience that a user might be immersed in. Virtual music events, virtual sport events and gaming in particular are ripe to be the feeding ground for the development of these new commerce interactive solutions and experiences.

To start, brands need to create a 3D library of their unique assets – products, stores, manuals, but also manufacturing facilities and machinery. Then use and distribute the assets internally – for product design, training, digital catalogs – as well as externally for ads and commerce on entertainment, sport or social media immersive properties. Easy-to-use tools to create 3D objects are becoming common place. For example, Unity is integrating RestAR – an AI-based 3D capture tool – in Unity Forma. Obsess helps recreate high quality, shoppable interactive 360 stores. Amazon Made For You helps shoppers create a 3D virtual body double to purchase made-to-measure clothing. Snap is partnering with Unity to bring its Snap Kit tools to game developers and increase reach of in-game ads

Experience-led social media and gaming platforms need to capitalize on their audience and events – like virtual concerts, virtual sports, gaming and influencers – to grab part of the ever-growing digital commerce market. They need to integrate new functionality on top of their gaming and communication engines to provide seamless in-event commerce and advertising. And create a new paradigm for shopping and advertising, where users’ full immersion in an experience leads to themed, impulse purchases.

Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience

Unless your field workforce is composed of goats, these days you’re contending with a mix of workplace safety guidelines, employee health priorities, and customer preferences that complicate how, where, and whom you can dispatch. At the same time, the massive shift to digital commerce and remote or touchless interactions has forever altered the expectations of customers. We all want interactions that are informed, effective, and immediate—and we want them to be equally good in our personal and our professional lives.

If nothing else, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of customer service—and especially field service—in keeping important aspects of our lives up and running. Everything from cold chain logistics, hospital equipment, and manufacturing systems to utilities, home appliances, and consumer electronics has become even more critical as many of us find ourselves living our whole lives from home. Where and how field service is being delivered is changing rapidly, and not just in the short term. With a “field” that is increasingly—but certainly not exclusively—virtual, companies need new tools and different ways of thinking about how to service products and assets wherever they might be.

Expertise Is Going Virtual Too

Part of that change centers on the workforce of technicians, at all skill levels, and how to deploy them. Take the example of electric utilities. They’ve faced the simultaneous challenge of a big drop in revenues and new difficulties ensuring normal operations. As industrial production dropped and office workers stayed home, commercial demand for electricity declined. Distressed business and residential customers stopped paying their bills. To compound the problem, utilities tend to have a high proportion of older workers, especially among specialists and skilled technicians—essential workers they can ill afford to put at risk. For those working directly in power plants, that has meant sequestering for weeks at a time. But that still hasn't addressed the need for servicing equipment in the field. Or the increasing pressure to do so more cost-effectively.

Tools to help teams communicate and collaborate remotely are filling the breach. Secure mobile apps designed specifically for field service existed before the pandemic, but they’ve proven invaluable during it. These apps push important messages—say localized updates on travel restrictions or an urgent service call that’s just come in—to everyone who needs to know. They make it easy for field technicians to reach other colleagues with additional expertise. Technicians can follow a workflow, search for relevant information, or initiate a video call with another expert quickly and easily. Although they operate without the need for specialist devices, these mobile apps provide augmented reality through annotation capabilities in live video.

Fixing what may seem like a short-term problem is leading to substantial improvements in both customer experience and productivity. The ability to access expertise beyond just that of the technician on site increases the first-time fix rate and improves time to resolution—both key factors influencing customer satisfaction. Expert technicians who may be highly vulnerable to COVID-19 can work remotely, supporting on more callouts than they could handle in person over the same elapsed time. Calling on other experts facilitates knowledge transfer among technicians and helps new hires get up to speed more quickly.

The Next Step: Putting Customers in Charge

Customers themselves have begun to play an even more critical role in this new approach to field service. The latest innovation in field service mobile apps extends to putting them directly into the hands of customers, particularly business customers. As with mobile apps designed for technicians, they allow customers to directly access service history, product manuals, guidelines, and videos. They incorporate the ability to request and schedule service callouts as well as to get real-time notifications and communicate directly with technicians. More importantly, these mobile apps also give customers the same augmented reality capabilities to work directly with remote experts through video, deferring or limiting the need for an on-site technician.

Although it’s early days for customers using field service mobile apps directly, the results so far are promising. Giving customers more power to manage their assets, and increasing the likelihood of preventing or resolving problems, gives them greater control. In time-sensitive operations where the stakes are high, that has huge potential to improve outcomes for customers.

Empowering customers to be more hands-on in managing their assets also helps to close a critical part of the feedback loop for manufacturers. Customers are best placed to validate information about assets in the field. Validating and updating that data increases the odds of getting the right fix the first time and improving preventive maintenance. It also ensures that customers have better visibility into their equipment and are more educated users.

Technology has changed the way we make purchases—and the way we maintain those tangible assets. There will always be a need for field technicians, even as the “field” becomes an increasingly virtual one. And that means we can leave the weeding to the goats.

Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer

Liz Miller

Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

About Liz Miller: Liz Miller is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation, focused on the org-wide team sport known as customer experience. While covering CX as an enterprise strategy, Miller spends time zeroing in on the functional demands of Marketing and Service and the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer, the rise of the Chief Experience Officer, the evolution of customer engagement, and the rising requirement for a new security posture that accounts for the threat to brand trust in this age of AI. With over 30 years of marketing experience, Miller offers strategic guidance on the leadership, business transformation, and technology requirements to deliver on today’s CX strategies. She has worked with global marketing organizations to transform…...

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Three weeks ago, I stepped on a rock in the parking lot and sprained my ankle. As I examined the aftermath of my tumble, I decided it must be my shoe’s fault so I went online for a new pair of shoes. Without any plausible explanation about WHY I neither saw the rock nor avoided the rock, the only thing my brain could land on was a need for another pair of shoes to avoid slipping and twisting on a rock the next time it happened.

Last week, on the road to recovery, I went to go put my new shoes on. Buried deep inside one of my fancy new Asics was a fist full of rocks and the broken prong of a fork. I jammed my recovering foot in, prong got me, embedded into my toe thru my sock. My daughter had decided that my new shoes needed some extra “fairy magic” to make sure I wouldn’t hurt my ankle again. Gotta throw everything at a problem, right?

Neither the new shoes nor the magic fairy treasure could stop an injury. The best I could hope for was having all the supplies and skills to bring on a speedy recovery and maybe learn a couple of lessons.

Why tell you this?

It is literally the only way I can think to explain the issue facing security professionals today. Imagine that your CISO is literally racing through the parking lot on her way to solving a completely unrelated problems. Rock > slip > sprain > recover…only to jam her foot into a shoe and be injured by another completely unrelated incident. The goal is to have the right tools BEFORE you get to the parking lot and even more tools and the right talent to recover AFTER you fall...because you ARE going to fall.

It isn’t unreasonable to say security teams are playing the most exhausting game of multi-dimensional whack-a-mole where at least four stacked game boards are popping digital moles at the same time and you only get 1 mallet. From the attacks themselves to the strategies of protection to the constant demand to justify spend, the pace is exhausting and the cracks created by the strain of responsibility is starting to show.

Let’s just look at SOME of the issues and numbers:

• Cybersecurity budgets have grown, on average, from $6 million to $31 million annually. (Ponemon Institute) So yeah…spending is WAY up.
• Attacks are accelerating and growing in double digits. 90% of executives surveyed by security vendor Tanium said they experienced and increase in attacks due to the pandemic. 93% said they had to delay key security projects to prioritize work-from-home security measures.
• The SOC (security operations center) is a key point of investment as some 70%+ executives say it is essential. (Ponemon Institute)
• The teams running the SOC are exhausted. 67% of SOC team members found information overload is a massive problem. 78% of team members say working in the SOC is “very painful” and 75% say the increased workload is the #1 reason for burn out. This pressure has led 60% of team members to actively consider changing careers…that’s right…LEAVING security all together!
• Then there is the turf war between IT and security. 70% of SOC team members told the Ponemon Institute that they lack visibility into IT infrastructure. 64% admit that the silos between IT and the SOC are adding to the pain of addressing key security issues.

The sobering reality is that for every positive move we make, the adversaries are moving faster and with more intention. And today, every move requires security professionals to carry more baggage along with them. The recent revelation of the massive and exceedingly dangerous SolarWinds hack is a testament to that.

To the non-security and even non-IT leader, this attack has started to be boiled down to “Who didn’t pay enough attention?” This was an intrusion that happened 8 months ago and went unnoticed by some 18,000 companies that accessed a corrupted Orion update. “Who didn’t see it? Who was on watch when it happened? Who should get sued?” are all comments and questions I’ve seen on message boards, social and in conversations.

The truth is we ALL missed it because it was purpose-built to be missed. It was architected and deployed by a well-oiled, well-funded, sophisticated machine that lay in wait, carefully executing a supply-chain attack with precision and intention…and then they just watched. Nation-state attacks of this magnitude are planned…they are cultivated. This isn’t some faceless dude wearing a hoodie in his mom’s basement.

If we want to figure out who to blame…I’d suggest we ALL start by picking up a mirror. Yes, that face you see could share the blame in how we got to this. Bad actors count on all of “us” to brush off any accountability as part of their fog of war. We don’t consider the impact of clicking on that link to that email about a PayPal account…we just “call IT” and they can “handle it.” We don’t tell anyone and we just go change our passwords to call it a day. We don’t even know we fell for a phishing scam. We are to blame for not understanding that our own fallibility is a key ingredient to the hacks and attacks out there.

Adversaries aren’t getting slower, less intelligent, or less sophisticated. Now that SolarWinds is part of our pop-culture lexicon of the moment, we have an opportunity to STOP being part of the problem and START being part of the solution.

• First and foremost, stop looking around for someone to BLAME. Blame culture in security gets us nowhere FAST. Hold people accountable…but blame tends to be a destination and rarely gets us to solutions.
   
• Second, ask better questions. The reality is that the complexity of digital transformation is being dumped onto security teams like a nasty sweating onion that is just stinking up the joint. We must be allies to security…something I have encouraged CMOs to do more publicly and more purposefully. For me it boils down to two questions every C-Suite leader should be asking their CISO colleague right now:
  • Ask what you do to inadvertently create vulnerabilities and enrage the security team.
  • Ask what you can do to help.
• Third, pick a side and grab a shovel. The sides are simple: left of bang and right of bang. Left of bang is the team working their butts off to prevent incidents from happening. Right of bang is the team working their butts off to address, mitigate and remediate once something DOES happen. We need both sides…and we need more people holding shovels on both sides to be part of a holistic solution. Regardless of function, we are all part of the value chain here. We need to understand what our role is based on which side of bang we find ourselves. Take part in a attack simulation to best understand what happens AND what could be and will be asked of you. Design think the whole thing and see what it would be like in other shoes. To even begin to understand the speed, scale and scope an attack can have, you need to sit in the belly of that beast. Think of it as the most twisted corporate executive retreat to someplace like IBM's X-Force cyber range. 

I know that for my security peers and IT allies, this advice might seem ridiculous. But here is the hard, harsh truth…our security posture is weakening while we play corporate don’t touch my button. Security needs allies. Our businesses are at risk. Full stop. With every engagement, sale and transaction, we are making a promise to our customers, rooted in trust…breaking that promise puts our business at risk. And believe me…a security incident is the fastest way to break a promise and loose trust forever.

Security needs allies. Pick a team. Play hard. Play to win.

New C-Suite Marketing Transformation Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Privacy Officer