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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Event Organizers Must Exercise An Abundance Of Caution

Source: Constellation Research, Inc. Ambient Experience Summit 2020 Atlanta

Amidst the backdrop of coronavirus fears and the spread of COVID-19, event organizers must make the tough decisions on whether or not to host their events or cancel.  The decisions are not easy to make  Given the lack of good information on how the virus is transmitted and how contaigous the virus can be, most event organizers have opted for an abundance of caution.  A few have declared cancellations given their business models or the spread of outbreak among their core demographic.  In fact, a few mega events such as Mobile World Congress (large number of chinese based vendors) and Italy’s Carnival and the Greek Aporkies (recent country specific outbreaks) have been cancelled.

The fears and realities of hosting events amidst a rising epidemic and a potential global pandemic require new guidelines and procedures for all event organizers.  Once the fears subside, business must continue and events will continues, but short of hosting virtual rooms and zero human contact, organizers will have to consider rules based on a number of factors:

1. Apply Pre-Event Pre-Cautions

• Develope strict and precautionary attendance policies and restrictions.  Use the latest trackers to determine whom to limit attendance from.  At the time of this blog post, most event organizers suggest a limitaion for potential attendees whom have visited within the past 60 days the coutnries of China, Italy, UK, UAE, Iran, South Korea, and Hong Kong.  However, targeting individual countries may become futile.  Use the Johns Hopkins live-tracker to determine which countries may pose the greatest risk as these changes happen in real-time.
• Screen guests based on where they have visited.  Ask international attendees to produce their passports.  Any guests that have visited the targeted list of high risk countries in the past 60 days should not be cleared for entry into the event venues.   US based events should adhere to the travel restrictions and guidance of the U.S. Department of State
• Apply generous cancellation policies given the current situation. Most event organizers have provided attendees the ability to apply their fees to the next year’s event. Some have provided refunds.  A very few have not provided any refunds.
• Discourage attendees who have any flu-like symptons to attend.  Attendees who have a runny or stuffy nose, fever, cough, sore throate, symptoms of diahrreha, and symtoms of vomittting within the previous two weeks of the event should not attend the event.  Event organizers should make no exceptions.  Keep in mind with spring allergy seasons ahead of us, this will be a tough call.
• Establish data collection waivers  in order to enable public health tracking.  Secure waivers for global privacy regulations to track any incidents.  Most organizers are implementing GDPR and PDPA waivers.
• Partner with local authorites and health agencies.  Closely monitor World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines and all new developments.  Apply new policies based on disease transmission etiologiies. 
• Update all attendees on the latest developments.  Send frequent updates to attendees on attenendance criteria and  on site health and safety rules.  Most send a notice two-weeks in advance, one-week prior, three-days prior, one day prior, and throughout each event day.

2. Enforce Day Of Event Pro-Active and Cautionary Measures

Source: Constellation Research, Inc. Ambient Experience Summit 2020 Atlanta

• Conduct temperature screenings at the event venue.  Most event venue operators or event organizers will screen using thermal scanners outside the venue.  All attendees will be subject to passive temperature screening measures.  Indiviuduals with temperaturs higher than 100 F (38 C) should be escorted to an isolation holding room.  Medical personnell will interview and quarantine the person if necessary.
• Establish an isolation holding room with local public health authorities.  Event organizers should work with health agencies to staff a isolation holding room for supsected cases and implemention of standard operating procedures for disinfection.  The isolation room should be staffed with trained medical professionals and follow proper infectious disease protocols.
• Require rigorus physical cleaning of the venue.  Require wipe-downs for all microphones and speaker monitors.  Increased frequency of physical cleaning and usage of appropriate disinfectant agents for door knbos, lecturns, escalator hand rails, trash recepticles, water stations, elevator bottons, chairs, registration tables, and bathrooms.  Prepare for a provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) and roll out restricted entry and exit plans as needed.
• Provide hand sanitiers and masks.  Ask all visitors to use hand sanitizers before entering the event and make sanitizer available throughout the event.  Make face masks available for all attendees if they feel unwell.
• Display of health advisories at event venue. Remind attendees to keep personal hygiene high, provide notices on hand washing and also minimizing physical contact.
• Implement a “No Hand-Shake: policy at the event.  Use fist bumps, elbow bumps, virtual hugs, waves, and other mechanims to replace the handshake during the crisis.   Wash all hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after any eating, blowing of the nose, coughing, sneezing, and using the bathroom.
• Reques all attendees and exhibitors evaluate their own health and that of those they're in close contact with.  Feel free to report to any event organizers anyone that feels unwell you come in contact with.  Encourage attendees whoa re sick or showing symptoms of illness to stay home.
• Increase medical personnel and security on-site.  Staff up to handle medical emergencies, provide on-site diagnosis, prepare the event venues, and oversee event medical operations.

3. Follow-up Post Event

4. Use These Resources To Track The Coronavirus Spread

• Use the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) recommendations for traveling.
• Find the latest live-tracker of disease transmission from Johns Hopkins University
• Apply the WHO’s recommendations for reducing exposure to the public
• Catch the latest rolling updates from the WHO on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
• Download the WHO’s event planning guide that includes recommendations for event organizers.

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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The world of the digital workplace has long been dominated by two major divisions of applications. The first is the system of record, such as ERP and CRM platforms, which have had a long and storied history, only now reaching robust maturity in the cloud. The second are systems of engagement, which have seen a tremendous blossoming and growth in the Internet era. These started off as relatively general purpose communications and collaboration tools that we still use to work together today as teams and organizations, but have since branched into countless niches.

This second category of application has seen long and sustained evolution over the last 30 years, starting with e-mail, groupware, and content/document management, then exploding into social media and enterprise social networks, and then finally re-emerging downstream and smaller scale, first as enterprise instant messaging and now team chat, like Slack or Microsoft Teams.

However, one of the most serious and long-standing criticisms of the often less than transformative impact of systems of engagement -- which were supposed to literally revolutionize how we function as enterprises --  is that they were too often put off to the side of the actual work and unconnected from core applications. The systems of record then took the resulting data describing the outcome of a collaborative activity and thus the credit, even though much of the actual work was carried out -- in fact most of it -- in the systems of engagement.

This is not a new realization, and we've been discussing ad nauseum in the industry for years that most collaboration and communications tool were too generic and disconnected to get into the specifics of our work and business data, despite that they're being general purpose is what make it possible to use them in the largest number of situations. Instead, there was an artificial gap between the structured world of systems of record and these potentially highly useful collaborative systems. But try as we might to resolve over the years, we ultimately could not contextually connect the whole picture together into a single source of truth or place to work.

Now a major new category of collaboration software is actually making substantial progress in enabling a more integrated and connected collaboration ecosystem, one with more profound impact. This is accomplished by situating lightweight structure and business process templates around coordination systems that rapidly gets us working together on the details of important business process, while keeping all (or at least many) of the dots connected in underlying systems.

Known as Work Coordination Platforms, or occasionally Work Management Sofware, this category of digital workplace application has steadily grown as it has become more effective at connecting the people, application, and data silos of our organizations into a more coordinated work model. Constellation has been tracking the category closely in recent years, and we now observe an inflection point in growth and maturity, as leading players like Smartsheet have gone on to become full blown industry unicorns with successful debuts on the stock market and several of the players have become unicorns (Silicon Valley-speak for reaching billion dollar valuations.)

Work Coordination Now a Top Level Digital Workplace Category

The result is that I have determined that the category has moved from a powerful niche that some departments will use (typically marketing, operations, or project management), to one that has general applicabilty for most workers. The heart of a business is teamwork, and we've either had too focused and specific vertical or industry solutions to help us, or far too generic and broad communication and collaboration tools to aid our work.

What work coordination tools have gotten right at last is coming in at the right level of complexity, while riding on a revolution in composability, customizability, and easy integrations that make Work Coordination Platforms an example of what I call a true digital workplace hub, albeit not always the primary center of gravity that I've been talking about for a while now.

Who then are the top vendors in the space? What's happening with them and how do they break down? This brings us to my just-released new ShortList of the top nine Work Coordination Platforms:

As we considerably expand coverage of this space throughout 2020, here is a recap of the latest developments with each of these companies, to get a sense of how the Work Coordination Platform segment is evolving and maturing today:

Billed as part spreadsheet and part database, one of the most compelling aspects of Airtable is its ability to organize a cumbersome list of to-dos in different ways for specific uses or for the way individual members of the team work best. Now a unicorn in its own right, the product has seen steady evolution including ever more improved integrated digital workplace apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive. The mobile app is frequently updated and is one of the stand-out features of the platform. Customers use Airtable for everything from career devleopment tracking to UPC scanning for retail scenarios and editorial planning.

Aimed at more robust, process-centric work coodination in the enterprise, Asana has been making inroads at the high end of the market. A third member of the unicorn ranks of the segment (and considering a direct listing like Slack instead of an IPO), the firm has lately added features that help with the automation of rote tasks including a new rules builder to avoid reptitive tasks, as well as voice transcription to speed information input. Smart project templates are also a new addition that builds on top of Asana’s robust templates library. When using a template, like an event plan or campaign launch, a complete work schedule will be instantly layered on. When a conflict arises between tasks, Asana will now automatically resolve the issues. This helps teams to spend less time managing projects and processes and more time getting work done.

Podio focuses on task management with content, conversations, and processes structured and together into a single tool. Its highly-rated mobile app gets excellent marks and is updated fairly regularly. Notable features including automated workflows, data visualization, connected CRM, and project management. One of the platform's notable features is it very level of uptime and strong security, designed to appeal to customers where those needs are paramount.

More of a team-based tool as part of Office 365, Microsoft Planner has nevertheless grown in popularity as it has evolved and added features. It provides collaboration around tasks and visual mapping of them into buckets. Charting features were recently added to the popular mobile app for the service, which is routinely updated. New prioritization and content integration features round out recent additions.

Designed expressly for managing  your projects, workflows, and everyday work, Monday.com bills itself as a "Work OS." The company offers work templates for a variety of use cases and business functions. It also offers a robust and growing set of application integrations that connect various work systems together. One of the more recent additions is a new beta program that lets you build your custom widgets, workflows, integrations, and apps right on top of the Monday.com service. The mobile app is very frequently updated and adds important new features regularly.

One of the most extensive and enteprise-grade work coordination offerings, Smartsheet has a dedicated fan base and an excellent set of case studies. Using the spreadsheet as the model, the company rapidly evolves the product and most recently has incorporated new navigation experiences, new integrations such as with Microsoft Teams, contextual conversations, accelerators for GDPR, powerful new formula features, and much more. The mobile app is the most highly rated of its competitors and is regularly updated.

More consumer-focused than some of the others on this list, Trello is well-known for its boards, lists, and cards that enable users to organize and prioritize projects in a flexible and visual manner. The product offers a robust set of templates, and it has a mobile app that routinely offers significant new features including document scanning, bulk item creation, new board organization features, and a continuous stream of improved usability features.

Taking the integrated digital workplace concept to heart, Workfront advertises that it is "the one place for all enterprise work." Users can automate workflows across teams and departments, integrate their applications into one place, and streamline activities like digital asset management. The mobile application is update regularly and has received a recent complete overhaul that includes special features for the iPad as well as the addition of custom conditions.

Aimed specfically at enhancing enterprise-wide productivity, improving team collaboration, and focusing work with a more integrated workspace, Wrike addresses most of the top organization functions and industry verticals such marketing, creative, and operations teams, professional services, and project management, among others. Wrike also has over 400 application integrations, make it leading class in this vital feature category. These integrations make it easy to bring in information from systems of record and organize processes and projects around up-to-date data.  The mobile app receives regularly updates and has added features like customized navigation, new dashboards, and project widgets.

A Deeper Story Coming Soon

To help enterprises select the right Work Coordination Platform for their needs, I am developing a comprehensive new market overview with key features and differentiations that will be published in the second quarter of 2020. It will delve into the complex but powerful new features, templates, integrations, and use cases of this important new digital workplace category with an eye towards each platform's strengths and value proposition. Please contact me if you believe you have a Work Coordination Platform that should be included.

Additional Reading

2020 Predictions for the Future of Work

RPA Evolves into End-to-End Intelligent Automation

Creating the Modern Digital Workplace and Employee Experience

Transforming the Abilities of Workers with Online Learning Platforms

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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It wasn't that long ago that the Learning and Development department of a Human Resources group had a paper course guide that one could order through interoffice mail. This guide was matched nicely with a set of physical classrooms and slowly changing learning content provided at facilities around the organization. Onboarding and keeping up to date with one's career skills was fairly straightforward

For better or worse (and fortunately, it mostly seems the former), those days have completely disappeared in the face of a near-total revolution in learning technologies. Driven by rapidly changing digital capabilities, a faster, more complex pace of business, and the rise of the Internet, we are witnessing the emergence of potent new models for learning that seem to either work better, can fit more easily into workers' lives, or are much cheaper. Or all three. Online learning platforms, adaptive learning, peer-based learning, MOOCs, and other advances are now all the rage in corporate learning circles, matched by new consumer-style learning solutions that look a great deal more more like Netflix or YouTube than a traditional LMS.

While creating a beta version of my new Astrochart on Digital Learning Trends (see below), I am amazed at the innovation and energy in the space. And the economics: Digital learning is a huge global business today, on track to be a $139 billion industry by 2023, with a 29% annual growth rate, faster than the not all that much bigger cloud industry itself. In short, digital learning in its numerous present forms is currently a very in-demand resource for both individuals and enterprises to help prepare hundreds of millions of people to enter and stay in the modern tech-centric workforce today. 

Coursera's Multi-Product Offering Fits Into a Number of Categories on the Digital Learning Trends Astrochart

Like so many other industries touched by technology, digital learning is very much disrupting the old industries of education (universities, business schools, and traditional corporate learning and development, to name just three), while creating whole new ones. To further add to the confusion to education departments and L&D teams seeking to modernize what they offer to employees or the general public, is that the terminology in the space is quickly evolving and/or shifting, as well as overlapping and duplicative in many cases. For example, the difference between a learning management system (LMS) and an online learning platform (OLP), forming the main core of the digital learning experience today for many learners at businesses just isn't that clear today. One is perhaps more aimed at educators and older learning models while the other is arguably more aimed at the student experience and uses newer models of learning. Yet there is litlte consensus on what to call these so-called next-generation LMS systems.

The educational challenge in organizations today is very real and truly profound: Today's skills have the shortest lifespan of any time period in human history. Educational needs have increasingly become situational and just-in-time. Sometimes a skill might need to be acquired and used only over a matter of months, then a new replacement skill comes along, especially in the tech industry. Continuous learning has thus become a matter of top importance to workers and businesses, far beyond a nice-to-have. The bevy of new learning tools, techniques, and technologies that exists now -- with more emerging all the time -- make it a very exciting time, as well as a challenging one, to navigate in order to provide an effective and sustainable enterprise learning program that will meet stakeholder needs. Fortunately, as we'll see, more a strategic sensibility -- with matching capabilities -- is appearing in today's digital learning platforms to meet modern needs.

Related Reading: My 2020 Predictions for the Future Of Work

A Snapshot of Coursera: A Pioneering Leader in Digital Learning

I recently had a chance to get an update on one of the top online learning platforms in the industry today, Coursera. The company was founded in 2012 by Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller as a massively open online courses (MOOCs), and has since evolved to offer a sophisticated multi-product learning system that provides online instruction, certificates, applied learning, and degrees backed by assessments that verify what a student has achieved.

As of 2020, the company has 47 million registered learners, 200 university and industry partners, and over 2,200 entities using its Coursera for Business, Coursera for Government, and Coursera for Campus offerings. These last three are relatively new however, and launched in 2016,  2017, and 2019 respectively, demonstrating a steady and sustained rate of growth and product innovation.

The company offers a variety of business models, which range from its original fee-based model for completion certificates, a subscription model that lets learners use as much as they want, to more costly master's degrees. Coursera offers its products at a wide range of prices. There are thousands of courses that are free to audit, as well as so-called "Signature Tracks” that cost up to $100. Coursera's Specializations, which are a series of courses on a specific topic like data science (the single most popular category of Coursera specializations, by the way), typically range from $39 to $89 in the form of a monthly subscription. The company's more traditional online degree programs range from $15,000 to $30,000, while its Coursera for Business has a standard price of $400 per employee per year, although these are likely starting points for negotiation with larger customers.

Coursera is proud of its connection to top traditional educators like Duke University and Yale, as well the cutting-edge addition of what it calls applied learning, basically hands-on education, with its Coursera Labs and Rhyme projects.  While education has always tended to be data-driven, Coursera is also driving differentiation and network effects by wielding the insights that it's gathering from its 47 million learners, who can take over 240,000 different assessments, providing a rich tapesty of learning data that the company can turn into useful insights for individual learners, corporate customers, and its own product development. Coursera is a full digital platform intended as a modern answer to what organizations need today to develop, measure, and track skills. It has centralized learning program management capabilities like you would expect from a more-traditional LMS. It also has student progress tracking and analysis, as well as integrations back into three other types of associated systems: LMS platforms, the emerging category of learning experience platforms (LXPs), and HRIS systems, to build bridges to other parts of the organization that also manage or track learning.

The Coursera course catalog spans over 1,000 business courses, 700 technology courses, 380 data science courses, and hundreds more in health, social sciences, art, and the humanities, totaling over 3,700 courses covering 70,000 lessons and growing. While many of the company's competitors offer the equivalent of specializations or courses, Coursera also offers MasterTrack Certificates, Professional Certificates, degrees, as well as something called projects, which are learning courses specifically focused on end-to-end, outcome-based activities like building a new business or developing a finished software application. When compined with its applied learning offerings, Coursera offers numerous formats and several key modalities of education that will please most learning and development departments, excepting those looking for the most cutting-edge education technologies.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing capabilities of the Coursera platform is its Skills Graph, an aggregate data model of its courses plus its tens of millions of learners, its taught skills universe, millions of annual question attempts, and 7,000 participating companies. It's a mineable graph database (which are all the rage lately) to which Coursera applies a set of machine learning algorithms that they use to identify key skill trends and gaps in learner ability, as well as tailored, company-specific benchmarks to help the latter understand the current state of learning in their organization. Given the richness of this data and taking the size and longevity of the company compared to many competititors, I believe the Skills Graph is a vital strategic differentiator that can help companies analyze and understand the totality of their learning status across the workforce, then take proper advantage of the available opportunities. In other words, companies looking to maximize the potential of their workers can use the Skills Graph to build highly tailored, yet mass-customized learning programs that fit their workforce like a custom-made glove. These insights have real industry credibility and are being used today by numerous organizations, from the World Economic Forum to the MIT Technology Review.

Rounding out the firm's newer offerings are Coursera Academies in a number of popular subjects, with their Data Science Academy, which launched last year, leading the pack. This academy is designed to help organizations develop the ability of individuals to fill out important roles on a data science team (including data scientist, AI/ML engineer, data engineer, and data analyst), the academy starts with a basic foundational course called Data Literacy for Everyone. It then devles into specific functions and roles, from hands-on analysis to data-driven leadership for managers and executives. Academies are directed learning programs aimed at creating practical, functioning abilities and capable teams based on new skills, and then keep them skilled. Given the tremendous shortage of data scientists today, many organizations are being forced to develop their own in-house talent. Bottom line: Coursera's Academy is a more advanced model that is aimed directly at filling the talent gap in critical new skills in an enterprise-class way using existing staff, structured in a more sophisticated and effective way that's intended to address the inevitable doubters.

What's Next for Coursera and Digital Learning?

In a relentlessly crowded field that is getting harder to differentiate in, Coursera has a number of strong advantages going for it. First and foremost, Coursera stands out for its size (both in learners and content), maturity, and depth. It's also becoming authoritative enough that companies like Baidu are increasingly using Coursera's assessments as a definitive proof point when it comes to recruiting talent. The company is evolving its products to address the topical needs of the day for businesses (creating dynamically skilled employees that are kept current effeciently), while building a long-term data-based advantage with its Skills Graph that will be very hard to match for most other competitors.

As long as the company can maintain their topical appeal and keep its vast dataset fresh, it will be able to maintain its status in the industry as well as its price points, as one of the few "go to" online learning platforms in the industry. In an era of easy, informal, essentially free learning content that saturates the Web, Coursera has carved out and continues to maintain a leadership niche in that most important of traits in a pure digital educational institution, that of proven prestige and authority.

The challenge will ultimately be in navigating the rapidly innovating industry of educational technology as well as commoditization. If a new disruptive competitor discovers more effective ways to deliver learning, or the closes in with the same quality of offerings, but at a commodity price point, then it may be challenging for the company, especially as competitors like LinkedIn Learning and Udacity attempt to close the gap. It was impressive to see their latest progress however, and I do believe they will keep up the pace of innovation enough to ward off most competitors for the foreseeable future.

Additional Reading

How the Gig Economy is Transforming Work in the Enterprise

Creating the Modern Digital Workplace and Employee Experience

The Digital Transformation of Learning

Read all of my Future Of Work Tweets

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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This morning, new broke, originally over the Wall Street Journal, that Kronos and Ultimate Software are merging. Long rumored, asked for and denied, this merger is now happening. Time for a merged Market Move and News Analyis blog post.

So let's dissect the press release in our customary style, it can be found here:

Creating Company Valued at $22 Billion
Merger brings together world-renowned best places to work, with plans to add 3,000 employees over three years
LOWELL, Mass. and WESTON, Fla. , Feb 20, 2020
Kronos Incorporated and Ultimate Software today announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement to form one of the world's largest cloud companies. By bringing together two industry leaders, the transaction will create the world's most innovative human capital management (HCM) and workforce management company to help organizations across all industries manage their people more effectively with an unparalleled combination of cloud solutions. The combined company will have enhanced scale and an even stronger position in the fast-growing HCM marketplace.

MyPOV – Good headlines on what is happening and nice work to get in the hiring ambition, right away deflating the fire that a merger between two PE firm owned entities is all about cost cutting. 

News Facts
Kronos and Ultimate each have a proven track record of delivering the industry's most innovative solutions to help organizations around the world drive better business outcomes, achieve a competitive advantage and create engaged workforces. The new company will bring together the best of each company's award-winning solutions – Ultimate's UltiPro HCM and Employee Experience products with Workforce Dimensions from Kronos, Kronos Workforce Ready, and other solutions from Kronos – with an unwavering commitment to delighting customers and exceeding their expectations.

MyPOV – Good to bring in the products- that's what it's all about.

Combining two exceptional, highly compatible cultures will create a company that is People Inspired. Kronos and Ultimate have been consistently recognized around the world as great places to work – including both being multi-year winners of the prestigious Glassdoor Employees' Choice Best Places to Work and Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® honors. This reflects both companies' belief that people are at the core of an organization's success, and that prioritizing the employee experience is the most effective way to help customers succeed.

MyPOV – Culture merger will be hard – even though both vendors agree on people centricity. Ain and team will have to get this tricky one right to keep key talent. Good news for the competition – one spot less that is given out in the coveted workplace rewards game… 

Upon closing, the combined company will have revenues of approximately $3 billion, more than 12,000 employees worldwide, and an enterprise value of $22 billion, with further plans for growth including the addition of 3,000 employees over the next three years.

MyPOV – That may make Kronos / Ultimate one of the top 3 – if not the largest HCM player (LinkedIn is #1 in my guestimates). Amazingly there is very little overlap in the customer base, the CMOs expressed their disbelief when the number was first shared (still NDA at the moment). 

Aron Ain, longtime Kronos chief executive officer, will be the chief executive officer and Chairman of the combined company – guiding an experienced executive team comprised of leaders from both Ultimate and Kronos.

MyPOV – Congrats to Aron Ain, one of the longest serving and most accessible HCM CEOs out there. Most of all he tells things how they are and is honest. He now has the challenge of his management career ahead. Solve the integration and merger issues, keep the teams motivated, make a difference for customers and shape the HCM industry. The combined entity is tangling product revenue wise close to Oracle, SAP (both don't disclose HCM revenue) and Workday. 

The new company will be jointly headquartered in Lowell, Mass. and Weston, Fla., with dozens of offices around the world.

MyPOV – Wise choice for continuity and culture. Merger watcher will count days spend by Ain where… Weston is a weather draw over Boston…  but then dual HQ structures usually don't last. And we don't know which Ultimate executives are reporting to Ain. 

Hellman & Friedman LLC (H&F), the controlling shareholder of both Kronos and Ultimate, will be the controlling shareholder of the newly formed company. Following H&F, private equity funds managed by Blackstone will be the largest minority investor, followed by GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), and JMI Equity. 

MyPOV – H&F in the lead, but a good selection of PE owners who will want to see value in 3-4 years. The question is if this reset the 'fabled' clock for Kronos / Ultimate – or not. 

Supporting Quotes
Aron Ain, chief executive officer, Kronos
"I have never been more excited in my 40 years at Kronos! Combining our passionate and extremely talented Kronos and Ultimate teams will create a company that is truly People Inspired. Together, we will expand the value we deliver to customers and create the industry's most comprehensive human capital management and workforce management solution for organizations around the world. With a combined 70 years in business, we are poised for tremendous success. For our employees, customers, and partners there is an even better future ahead. Our top priority as we complete this merger is to ensure a smooth transition for our people and continue to exceed our customers' expectations."

MyPOV – Good quote by Ain. Ultimate has what Kronos for the long time did not search – very good HR Core and Payroll offerings. That only changed recently. And the maturity of the Ultimate product is a key asset for the combined entity. 

Adam Rogers, chief executive officer, Ultimate
"The combination of Ultimate and Kronos paves the way to deliver the next generation of employee-facing solutions that will set the standard for the workforce of the future. This merger will enable our more than 12,000 inspired people around the world to deliver innovation in human capital management faster than ever before. Both companies remain fully committed to their core strengths as well as to the combined benefits that the new company will bring to employees and customers."

MyPOV – Good quote by Rogers, looking at the future… but he has decided to leave the company.

David Tunnell, partner, Hellman & Friedman, lead director, Kronos, and chairman, Ultimate
"The merger of Kronos and Ultimate brings together two exceptional, industry-leading companies that are dedicated to delivering great technology services and – just as importantly – creating outstanding employee cultures of their own. After many years of a growth-oriented partnership with Kronos, and a more recent, successful relationship with Ultimate, we have strong conviction in the deep compatibility of these two companies and the unlimited growth potential of this sector. We know that by creating an inspiring place to work and putting people first, this combined company will thrive for years to come."

MyPOV – It's the H&F serenade of love to the HCM investments. Payroll continuity and workforce management stickiness make HCM vendors steady and predictable investments. 

Martin Brand, senior managing director, Blackstone
"We believe the combination of Kronos and Ultimate will create a cloud industry leader in human capital management and workforce management software, and one of the best companies to work for in technology globally."

MyPOV – Short and sweet – and the mission as well. 

1 Slide Summary

As usual for key events - here is the 1 Slide summary:
 

Implications, Implications…

Implications for Kronos customer

Nothing changes in the short term here. As usual, customers should seek reassurance on roadmap commitments critical to them. Expect a new roadmap at KronosWorks in fall. If you get a new executive contact or sales rep, build the relationship asap. Relationships matter.
Implications for Ultimate customers
Nothing changes short term as well. Secure the executive relationship with Kronos. If your Ultimate executive sponsor is no longer there, see replacement immediately. Reach out to them today. If you have more than 5k employees, reach out to Ain. Relationships always matter…. But even more in mergers. If implementing and depending on Infor's Workbrain product then actively look for implementing / using Kronos Dimensions – which will be the long-term solution. Proactively plan the switch, it will be painful but worth it.

Implications for partners

While it may look like less vendors to partner, in the short run this is a massive opportunity. Migrations all over the place in the future. There will be a new product. There is the immediate need for putting in Kronos Dimensions in Ultimate customers using Infor Workbrain. If you are an Ultimate partner with no Kronos skills, time to get them and become a partner – or you will wither down in the combined ecosystems. 

Implications for competitors

One less competitor… yes – but in the longer run a combination that will be stronger than Kronos and Ultimate could have been standalone in North America. At the moment a combined product strategy will be announced (earliest KronosWorks 2020), Ceridian will feel validated with its single suite. Practically, Ceridian has where Kronos and Ultimate combined want to be – one single architecture based HCM suite that spans from Benefits to Payroll. It will also give more space to the SMB ambitions of Oracle, SAP and Workday – and also will get ADP more often to the table, by sheer elimination of one slot. Enterprises shortlist 2-3 vendors and even though executives of Kronos and Ultimate maintain they did compete much…  they will and would have more and more.

MyPOV

The writing was on the wall… Someone at H&F calculated growth vs R&D and other costs and reached the conclusion that the combined entity will be more successful. Size matters in enterprise software and Kronos / Ultimate have it now – effectively we estimate they are a top 3 vendor. A lot of work ahead for Ain and his team, clearing product direction is very high. So far, a good job on that and Ultimate Connections is coming up in … 10 days. The joint CMOs on today's call were quick to point out that execs from both vendors will be there. This will help also the internationalization ambitions of both vendors, who individually have moves relatively slowly, with a preference of English-speaking countries… the PeopleDoc being the notable exception. One sales office and one sales team are more efficient, and I expect Kronos / Ultimate to speed up its internationalization efforts. 
On the concern side, even though both vendor are very people focused, there is a culture merger to be solved. Ultimate had stellar benefits (100% employer paid) and who would not like that at Kronos. just to start the challenges. A roadmap must be there soon, though I would not exclude a secrecy project on products as Kronos pulled with Falcon aka Dimensions. Both vendor have no experience in high talent / low cost locations and need that to be long term competitive. And Kronos / Ultimate will have to convince customers to move from a very mature UltiPro product to a nascent Kronos / Ultimate (likely Dimensions based) HR core suite. For the payroll fans – Ultimate's payroll with its atomic collection of payments / services that made it the market leader in pro sport franchises – will be a cliff for any new payroll. But maybe its time to build a new payroll for the combined entity?

But overall congrats and exciting times ahead – the HCM market is getting more competitive. Players become more viable. All good news for enterprises who in the era of enterprise acceleration need to move faster than ever before and need better people software than what they have today. 

David Chou

CIO Harris Health Systems

Title: About David Chou David Chou is vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, covering the intersection of the healthcare systems’ stringent processes and regulations and the transformational power of technology. With nearly 20 years of experience as a senior IT executive across various health systems, David brings a CIO’s practicality to his advisory practice on emerging technologies and disruptive innovation. He offers guidance to healthcare institutions and practitioners navigating digital mega trends and how to strategically apply them to hospital operations to maximize their technology investments. David’s expertise is helping a health system transition toward becoming a digital enterprise in the healthcare setting. He has worked on building a digital…...

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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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Security is top of mind for the CIO. But security involves the entire organization and demands that everyone takes security seriously… hand washing as a priority and second nature seriously. Often, we find that hospital system CIO and CISOs have been more focused on budget battles with the board as security and core infrastructure has historically been under-funded. Changing behavior and influencing a healthy security mindset as core to hospital operations and corporate culture has not been a top priority.

Frankly, organizations should be placing security above all else. Security is not just about avoiding data breaches. It is not just about changing passwords or updating patches. Security is not just about technology. This is likely the steepest education curve organizations must overcome…understanding that security is about patient safety and social responsibility. Yes, the financial ramifications of a data breach are high, but when you factor in the loss of personal health information and having a community lose faith in the organization, the costs are exponentially higher.

At Constellation we come at this from two distinct vantage points: From that of an experienced CIO in the Healthcare industry and that of a consumer (who moonlights as a marketing and brand security analyst.) Let’s start with an example…one that potentially put patient privacy at risk and highlights how easy it can be too loose both security posture and brand trust in an instant.

A patient visited a new health network. In providing the network with her email, something went wrong. Maybe the patient provided the wrong information…or the intake administrator accidentally mistyped one letter…either way, the wrong email was attached to the patient’s record. This was 100-percent human error. Upon receiving email reminders for upcoming visits, recaps of past visits, recommendations for lifestyle modification and notifications for pharmacy pickups, the email’s actual owner looked for a way to notify the health network that emails were being sent in error.

After multiple digital communication attempts, the email owner picked up the phone to speak with someone at the hospital. After bouncing around from member services to finance to customer support, an agent informs the email owner that there is nothing that can be done...the team can only help with web site usability problems and can’t address contact details. The agent explains that while he isn’t allowed to make changes to patient data, but since there isn’t a registered account, maybe the email owner should go ahead and register for an account and then change contact permissions…”Maybe that way you can stop the emails all together?”

For the record, Liz Miller (co-author of this post) was the email’s owner…and she did NOT follow this suggestion. But the service agent did little to resolve the issue and showed little regard for the greater security issue at hand. As of today, emails from doctors, secure messages from the pharmacy and follow-up care details for three procedures, including information about a post-op stay and well wishes from the nursing team are still being sent. Links to opt-out of communications have proven no match for the system’s insistence on delivering patient communications to a total stranger.

Had security been instilled as a mindset and part of the culture across every touchpoint with the patient, this suggestion…that a total stranger attempt to create an account and potentially access a trove of even more personal information and detail…would never have happened. In fact, the reaction would likely be what we had expected: shock, horror and an immediate suspension of emails to a stranger. It is abundantly clear that not only is security not part of the culture, it is also not part of training or education.

Security risk exposure is at an all-time high. A single person’s personal health information is worth at least 25x more than a credit card’s information on the black market, turning healthcare organizations into a prime target for attack. Hospitals are often considered to be a ripe target for hacks as they are often seen as large, bloated systems, open 24/7 and teaming with sensitive data, especially financial data. Headline grabbing horror stories about medical device vulnerabilities and “what-if” scenarios of hacked heart valves to MRI machines have put security on the radar of every CEO and Board. Yet discussions around simple human error inviting bad actors and attacks typically does not make the agenda when discussing what must be done to secure patients and personnel.

While everything must be done to boost and augment the technology in place to proactively protect and effectively maintain a robust security posture, comprehensive education and security training must also take place for every team member…from doctors to the front desk. Everyone should know what part they play in protecting the patient and the brand reputation of the hospital itself.

Security won’t be resolved by technology alone. It will take partnerships across the C-Suite and participation from every member of the team. It will take a very low-tech path of education, cooperation and a foundational belief that a patient’s health and well-being extend to their data.

It was another thought-provoking and insightful analyst summit with the Zoho team outside Austin last week. No, they haven’t got every feature and function perfectly formed, yes there are plenty of spots in the portfolio that still need work. Even so, as I’ve said elsewhere, Zoho’s leadership has the audacity to dream big, the skills to focus that vision, and the tenacity to see it realized.

That combination of ambition, strategy, and ability to execute came through particularly clearly in Raju Vegesna’s overview of Zoho’s product strategy. In order for Zoho to be “the operating system for business,” the company must, he explained, own the full technology stack, from data center and networks through data, platform, and applications. In Zoho’s view, only by owning and managing the full tech stack can the company deliver a seamless, superior customer experience.

Source: Zoho Analyst Day, 2020

Note that in this context, “customer experience” refers to Zoho’s customers. In effect, this is really the Zoho “user experience”—and for the sake of clarity, that’s how I’ll refer to it from here on out. Because there’s an important connection between how Zoho is building a superior experience for its customers (UX) and how that enables those customers to do the same for their customers (CX).

This is Raju’s point: Purpose-built systems are always more efficient and effective. No matter how “cheap” and accessible things like generic compute capacity and storage have become, they will never beat the performance of systems designed for a particular use. That’s equally true for data center and network design, hardware and software interfaces, even software platforms, applications, and (my addition) business processes. For Zoho to realize the objective of being the operating system for business, all of these layers must be considered and designed together as part of a holistic system. Importantly, this includes things like a unified data model, databases, microservices, and a development platform.

Here is mine: If you want to grow a business through durable customer relationships built on great customer experiences, purpose-built systems are essential. In order to operate an entire business that is centered around customers, your applications and systems must be designed specifically to support a shared, consistent understanding of customers. Every employee in the organization can make the best decisions and take the right action to support customers when they have the information and insights they need. Where applications are easy and intuitive to use (UX), adoption isn’t an issue. Individual employees benefit directly from using these applications because they help them do their jobs better (CX). Merely using such tools validates and updates the data they contain. This is how systems become self-reinforcing and self-sustaining—essential to delivering consistently great customer experiences over time.

What’s so compelling about Zoho’s “full stack” approach to building business applications is that for customers (users), it just works. Zoho has tackled the challenge of creating a unified data model, along with a custom database, that feeds all of its applications. This solves the biggest problems that most companies face when either creating a unified view of their customers or integrating additional applications. Crack this nut and everything else becomes relatively easy.

Source: Zoho Analyst Summit, 2020

The common data model issue alone makes Zoho a strong contender for any company that wants to change the way it operates in order to be truly customer centric. The range and depth of Zoho’s application portfolio, as well as the ease of integration with other applications outside of Zoho, increases the value considerably. Catalyst, Zoho’s recently announced serverless development environment, should add another multiple as well. Both independent developers and Zoho customers now have the means to develop their own microservices and apps, for themselves and for the wider community of Zoho users.

There are some drawbacks of course. Zoho’s comfort zone is still small and medium-size businesses. The company has the scale to support larger companies, but it is in the early days of developing the support infrastructure for these customers. The challenges here are less about the technology implementation and much more about issues of internal coordination, managing politics, and change management—on a much larger scale.

Creating a whole technology stack also limits some of the benefits of broader development communities as well. There will undoubtedly be developers attracted to the opportunities within the Zoho customer base, but those opportunities today are nowhere near the size and scale of other ecosystems.

Here’s the bottom line: Zoho’s leaders understand what’s required to operate a business in the experience economy and they design their offerings to deliver it. It won’t be the right fit for every business, but for those it does, Zoho offers the potential to redefine best practices in business operations—and what it means to be customer-centric—well into the future. The direction Zoho’s taking will undoubtedly influence many others in the enterprise application market as well. I’d say that’s a pretty compelling proposition.

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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For most executives looking at digital advertising optimization, personalization, retargeting or programmatic buying, Criteo is likely on the consideration list. A Wall Street darling in the heady days of rapid ad tech investment, it would be easy to assume that Criteo had fallen into the disruptor-now-the-disrupted category.

Admittedly, Criteo has been on a bit of a roller coaster ride. Amazing capacity for retargeting and programmatic. Rough headlines over the past five years have rocked the brand from allegations around ad fraud to hits on stock price. Now, the cookie could be Criteo’s biggest blow in the wake of Google’s public pondering of a ban of 3rd party cookies a couple years down the road.

But the big black advertising box showed signs of embracing the needs of today’s marketing leader, showcasing innovation outside of its traditional advertising lane and into the cluttered realm of buyer/shopper intelligence. There is a delicate balance that needs to be struck in understanding the needs of the brand-building, precision marketer and the privacy-aware value-driven consumer. The question will become if Criteo can understand both of those needs.

Top thoughts from my time with the team in Boston:

• Bringing on a strong CEO with serious street cred in marketing, media, operations and security isn’t an accident. Megan Clarken, a seasoned veteran of Nielsen, News Corp and Akamai, is credited as an operational leader with successes in massive transformation including the Total Audience Measurement strategy shift at Nielsen. But it isn’t just her impressive background that got me leaning in—it was her refreshing honesty about where Criteo is today and the new attitude Criteo will need to be a bigger player in the marketing technology game. Don’t discount her insights into video measurement and her savvy with mobile…or the fact she is a battle-tested partnership builder. If you can change measurement at Nielsen, I’m pretty sure you can sell ice to an Eskimo.
• Criteo is talking—a LOT—about its plans to enable brands to engage with consumers in the “upper funnel”. To be frank, I am not sure this is Criteo being ironic or Criteo not seeing its own potential to help marketers looking to move beyond the archaic vision of a linear funnel that neatly organizes customers into buckets that predictably exit a highway in a uniform, orderly, standardized model. Criteo’s legacy in understanding behaviors, intent and motivation triggers and signals is powerful, regardless of where in the “funnel” a customer sits. It will be interesting to see just how the solution comes together and how much value it brings to the CMO looking to better orchestrate the chaos of a profitable journey instead of trying to classify customer buying stages in a straight line.
• As a public company, Criteo is exceptionally susceptible to big hits when big alphabets make even bigger announcements. The reality is that nobody in the industry ever thought the cookie would ever crumble. In the same way the single point of attribution has given way to something more powerful, elegant and meaningful to the business, so too will go retargeting, and dare I say, personalization in advertising. I wouldn’t count Criteo out just because of a 3rd party cookie. I was especially interested in the capacity to tap into 1st party data, including the import of CRM data and enterprise customer listening intelligence, as brands seek to refine the relationship and not bombard a target.
• Criteo will need to get transparent and plant a stake in the ground about ethics in their machine learning if they are going to be truly trusted. Criteo is pushing their Shopper Graph along with their ability to apply machine learning and deep learning to data to best understand and act. In today’s conversation of Ethics in AI and the inherent trust in transparency, Criteo will have to take a stand. This could be an uphill perception climb with old rumors of alleged ad fraud continue to populate news feeds, despite Criteo taking steps to deliver trusted traffic. But trust in traffic and metrics is vastly different than ethics and trust in AI and ML based intelligence. Transparency in HOW decisions and calculations are made could go a long way, especially as the world (read: legislative bodies) continues to regulate AI and data on the fly. It just won't be enough to be certified for ad metrics...marketers will want to understand how intelligence is being compiled and calculated.

I’m certainly not ready to make a definitive ruling about Criteo—will it sink or will it soar—not entirely sure. There is an awful lot on the roadmap that was confidential and, ergo, the burning part of what this marketing gossip wants to share. But, in the end, after a day in Boston, I fully understood that the Criteo of old won’t be the Criteo of tomorrow. And THAT, ladies and gents, could be one heck of a story to track.