Event Report - ADP Meeting of the Minds - Wisely front and center and the rest?

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend ADP yearly user conference  "Meeting of the Minds" (MOTM), held from March 31st till April 3rd, 2019. Attendance with over 1100 attendees, the usual attendance of MOTM, held at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. An ideal location for conferences of this size, given the short distances between venue, rooms and entertainment. 

 

Future of Work Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Data to Decisions Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness AI Analytics Automation CX EX Employee Experience HCM Machine Learning ML SaaS PaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Enterprise Software Enterprise IT Leadership HR Chief Customer Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer

Event Report: Google Next 2019 - Google puts more arrows in the cloud quiver

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend Google Next 2019, held from April 9th till 11th 2019 at the Moscone Center and adjacent hotels in San Francisco. Attendance with over 30k registrants (my estimate about 20k present, comparing to Dreamforce and Oracle OpenWorld), and a large mix of exhibitors across Moscone South makes Google Next a major player in the cloud conference circuit. What a difference to the initial event held on a San Francisco pier with maybe 1000 attendees at best – in 2016 only three years back. 

 

 

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Google SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer

Event Report - Oracle Modern Business Experience - MBX - the Future of Work Takeaways

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend Oracle Modern Business Experience (MBX) event, held in Las Vegas from March 18th till 21st at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. A new event for Oracle, that is combining a number of separate events (e.g. HCM World) into a single event and focusses on ERP, HCM and SCM applications. Accompanied by Oracle Modern Customer Experience (MCX), the event almost felt like an AppsWorld (the event that Oracle rolled into its mega event, Oracle Open World about 10 years ago). For a first event it was well organized and attended, also showing some novel ideas, like a CEO keynote in the afternoon / early evening. But enough about the event, let's look at the HCM / Future of Work key takeaways. 

 

 

 

 

 

Want to read on? Here you go:

UX push in a mobile finale – Oracle has been criticized for a long time for a laggard user experience, but the vendor has addressed this well in the last 1.5 years. What remained was a disjointed mobile experience and Oracle tackled it this MBX. Interestingly for the technologists, not with native apps, but a responsive app, that has the same look and feel across the popular Android and iOS platforms. Oracle chose an innovative and confident stance with the new mobile app, creating a mobile challenge for conference attendees as well as analysts. There is an implicit wow effect in being able to launch an application with pointing your phone to a QR code – almost instantly, that still has the rich user experience of a proprietary mobile app. Giving the analysts the app to play with is a sign of confidence by Oracle and maturity in the app. It works well, is responsive even with spotty conference Wifi and provides all key capabilities of the ESS / MSS functional realm as well as the employee and manager exposed part of Talent Management. 

 

 

 

 

Oracle HCM UX

 

 

 

 

HCM Experience Studio empowers HR – Rollout times are always a concern for software vendors, and configuration required while an enterprise system is live is often overseen. Functional departments, here HR departments, often struggle with getting systems setup and (re-) configured as needed (and possible). Often key business information gets lost in the process of bringing the technical resources up to speed (or whoever does the configuration work. Oracle attempts to stop that with the HCM Experience Studio – enabling HR professionals to configure and extend their Oracle HCM system. If the product proves itself at scale in practice, it can have a material benefit of going live with Oracle HCM as well as enabling a fast, efficient and low-cost way to keep an Oracle HCM system configured and setup as required and desired by the HR and the business. That will be a substantial contribution to enterprise acceleration, something all CxOs clamor for. 

 

 

 

 

Oracle's Top 10 investment areas in HCM

 

 

 

 

Oracle works to become more human – We have said and written before that the biggest detriment for Oracle HCM success is not its product maturity, functionality and usability anymore – but the way how Oracle has reacted in the market with customers and prospects, and the related image of that behavior. In many cases CxOs just don't 'want' to do business with Oracle. It's good to see Oracle has realized and acknowledged that (to some point even publicly) and is now trying to address this with a new, more human centric marketing campaign. The campaign and messaging are well done, but it needs to overcome years of less human and customer centric behavior by Oracle in the market. Not easy, but possible and likely necessary for Oracle to get an adequate or even better than expected return on the massive R&D the vendor has invested into HCM.

 

 

 

 

Oracle's HCM Experience Design Studio

 

 

 

 

 

MyPOV

 

 

 

As always good progress by Oracle, which is adding capabilities en masse to the HCM Cloud, making HCM Cloud one of the most complete and functional rich HCM suites in the market. Having now overcome the usability challenges of the past, Oracle also performs well with vendors. It now has to address 'likeability' a specific wrinkle in the HCM market, where decisions makers value the 'human' side of vendors, their 'people centricity', their Top x of something rank much more than in any enterprise automation area.

The good news is that Oracle is trying to address this, and when Oracle addresses this challenge successfully it will do really, really well in the market. But decades of 'bad buy' image are hard to overcome, but it needs to get started, and Oracle is starting the process. We will be watching.


Want to learn more? Checkout the Twitter Moment below (if it doesn't show up – check here).

Future of Work Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Data to Decisions Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness AI Analytics Automation CX EX Employee Experience HCM Machine Learning ML SaaS PaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Enterprise Software Enterprise IT Leadership HR IaaS Disruptive Technology Enterprise Acceleration Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Human Resources Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer

10 Signs You Have a Customer Understanding Deficit and Three Things to Do About It

We talk a lot these days about the “experience economy” and that fact that any business, regardless of what it sells, is competing on the experience it creates for customers. As a business, you’re shaping those experiences, whether you do so consciously or not.

If that doesn’t strike pangs of fear in the hearts of customer-focused leaders, this should: most companies, especially large ones, face far more fundamental challenges than designing great customer experiences. In all likelihood, your organization doesn’t have a consistent view of who your customers (real or potential) are and why they come to you. Marketing, sales, and customer service may think they do, but it probably isn’t the same view.

Without a shared understanding of customers across the organization, it’s impossible to design consistent experiences—much less the ones you want.

Here are 10 common symptoms of the problem and why it happens:

Three Things To Do About It Right Now

So how do we fix it?

1. Define What It Means to Serve Customers Well in Your Business

The first step is to concentrate on the most important business objective: serving customers. What does that look like for you? What should or could it look like? (Warning: If you don’t buy into the principle that the best way to serve your business is through serving your customers, this blog isn’t for you. And no, I’m not interested in that timeshare.)

To serve your customers well, you need to know them well enough to anticipate their needs. Get it right and you’ll not only have a clear idea of why and when customers are most motivated to buy what you offer, you’ll also know how, when, and where to communicate with them most effectively. Your service will be timely and even preemptive. Your marketing, sales/commerce, and service organizations will work together like a well-oiled machine to build durable, mutually sustainable customer relationships based on great experiences.

With customer understanding at the heart of your business, it’s then possible to build the organizations, processes, and technology infrastructure that power insight-driven experience design (IXD).

2. Think About Your Employees—All Your Employees—Differently

IXD is all about enabling employees with the right tools so that they can create workflows that cross departmental boundaries to support actual customer journeys, not the mythical ones we might like them to follow. It’s also about empowering those same employees with the information they need—in context—at the appropriate moment in time so that they can make the best decisions to serve customers, whether they’re in marketing, sales, service, or any other part of the organization.

The best people to tackle the myriad challenges inherent in serving customers better are the ones directly involved in doing it. That means everyone, regardless of their role or seniority. We have technology tools today that make it possible, now we need to empower employees, give them clear direction on the objectives, and trust them to make the right decisions.

The combination of digital communication, cloud services, APIs, data analytics, AI and machine learning, and low-code/no-code apps makes it possible to design customer experiences that convey the sincerity and relevance of the best in-person interactions in any context or channel. Even so, the best tools in the world will never make it happen without a clear—and very human—understanding of customers.

3. Decide Where To Start

If history has taught us anything, it's that a big-bang approach to major change will likely fail. Establishing the principles of customer understanding and building the capabilities for IXD require a strong vision but an interative process. Where to start depends on the unique circumstances of your organization. How much direct influence do you have personally? Who weilds the greatest influence in your organization, individually or departmentally? Who are the most capable and dynamic leaders? Who has the greatest short-term interest in making the requisite changes?

Cherry-pick your starting points and use cases or customer journeys based on what will generate the best initial results and the greatest interest internally. Build an action plan designed to make the most of opportunistic interest, build momentum, and create a steady rate of change. With the right support and constant, clear communication on the goals, it's easy for people to buy into serving customers better. It not only feels like the right thing to do, it usually is. 

For more on how customer understanding and IXD make it possible to compete and win in the experience economy, read Customer Understanding: The Key to Insight-Driven Experience Design.

 

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Getting Your Weekly Dose of Knowledge Thanks to DisrupTV

Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

Aubrey (Levinstone) Coggins manages Constellation's marketing and communications programs and is the producer of DisrupTV, a weekly Web series on innovation and the enterprise.  She previously served as a senior manager of corporate communications at Egnyte and held account roles at Access Communications and The Hoffman Agency. Born and raised in Texas, she received a bachelor's degree in Public Relations from The University of Texas at Austin – Hook ‘em!   ...

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Have you checked out our weekly show DisrupTV? We bring together some of the smartest leaders across industries to get their advice and discuss the biggest trends impacting businesses today. With over 300 unique guests and nearly 150 episodes, it’s been a wild ride, and we are not slowing down. Be sure to catch up on episodes you may have missed and check out the upcoming lineups – all listed on our website.

In recent weeks, leadership advice has been a key theme, all from pretty unique perspectives. If you are looking to move up in your career or build a stronger skillset, be sure to check out the full interviews. Here’s the high-level points:

Be creative.
Dickson Tang, Speaker and Author of “Leadership for future of work: 9 ways to build career edge over robots with human creativity,” reminded us that we are all born creative. Unfortunately, traditional schooling sometimes stifles this quality. His advice is to always look for ways to inspire creativity, lead in a positive manner, and give space to make mistakes for the best path for growth.

Focus on Quality.
It’s not about the sheer numbers but the depth of your connections that creates true impact, explained Erica Dhawan, Keynote Speaker on Collaboration & CEO at Cotential. It’s important to network and build teams with quality. Look to combine knowledge, ambition and human capital to exponentially improve. She also reminded us to always be patient, adaptable, and consistent over a long period of time. When your team knows what to expect, they will follow by example.

Continue to learn.
Meagen Eisenberg, Chief Marketing Officer at TripActions and successful startup executive, shared important factors when it comes to scaling a company – people, process and technology. This nicely aligns with important leadership and career growth factors. Always ask questions to fully understand your customers’ wants and needs, for example. If you continue to connect with those actually using your offerings and keep an open mind to learn in the evolving environments, you will be more successful in achieving your end goals in business and personally as a leader.

We’ve also heard some interesting news commentary and healthcare trends this past month. Be sure to check out the interview with Heather Clancy, editorial director at GreenBiz, to learn about the latest in green tech and sustainability. Her interviews never disappoint!

Don't miss your chance to learn from these great leaders each week! Tune in every week for DisrupTV, hosted by Vala Afshar and R “Ray” Wang, on Fridays 11 AM PT/2 PM ET.

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IBM Goes Short on Customer Experience

On April 4, IBM announced an agreement to sell its portfolio of marketing and commerce software to private investment company Centerbridge Partners. The size of the deal, which is expected to close by mid-2019, was not disclosed.

Mark Simpson, vice president of offering management and strategy for the IBM marketing platform and commerce offerings, will lead the new entity as CEO. The new company’s name, as well as how many and which employees will transfer along with Simpson, are yet to be determined.

The scope of the agreement includes:

• Campaign Automation
• Marketing Assistant
• Media Optimizer
• Customer Experience Analytics
• Content Hub
• Real-Time Personalization
• Personalized Search
• Universal Behavior Exchange
• Intelligent Bidder
• Price & Promotion Optimization
• Payments Gateway

Constellation’s View

This announcement comes close on the heels of IBM’s agreement in December 2018 to sell a portfolio of software to HCL for $1.8 billion. It’s clear IBM is actively packaging up discrete capabilities and offerings that it can sell to interested buyers. In our view, this is as much about replenishing the coffers as it is refocusing the main business. Given how hot all things “customer experience” are there days, this particular deal makes sense all around.

Pros:

Because of both its engineering heritage and its size and scale, IBM doesn’t really have a strong brand association with customer experience and marketing tools. This new entity has the opportunity to build a much stronger market presence and reputation around customer experience.

Pulling together this set of marketing and commerce capabilities—some of which are underpinned by IBM Watson’s AI—makes it much easier to manage as a coherent, integrated portfolio. It also helps clarify for customers how these pieces might fit together. Under the terms of the deal, core Watson capabilities and APIs are not in scope (they'll be subject to a partnership agreement) but AI tools developed specifically for marketing products will transfer to the new company.

The combination of products and know-how give the new entity an opportunity to build a better analytics presence that connects strong analytics capabilities to feedback loops that make that output actionable for employees.

For customers, there’s likely to be more, and more focused, investment in helping solve the big problems companies have with building great customer experiences. A single entity that’s wholly focused on tools and technologies to support customer experience doesn’t have to compete with all the rest of IBM for investment dollars.

Cons:

According to what’s been announced so far, this new entity will focus on serving CMOs and marketing organizations. This runs counter to what most enterprise customers want and what most other major competitors in this market are moving toward: connecting marketing technologies with the rest of enterprise IT. Rump IBM has strong ties to the enterprise IT department. The new entity won’t.

It’s unclear what proportion of the new entity’s capabilities will be selling products (including SaaS services) vs. consulting, implementation, and other services. We see a clear trend toward a greater and greater embedding of best practices within products and tools. Nevertheless, the ability to support enterprises in building customer experiences is critical to helping customers succeed. It’s certainly part of what sets IBM apart from other competitors.

Bottom Line

This deal makes sense for IBM and for the new, as-yet unnamed entity that will become a stand-alone company. Its prospects are good, but challenges remain. This is a competitive, rapidly changing market in which critical mass plays a major role in success.

The growing priority for enterprises is to support customer journeys across all parts of the customer lifecycle. It’s about breaking down departmental silos and creating a holistic, enterprise-wide view of customers. Whether and when this new entity figures that out remains to be seen.

For customers, there’s substantial up side. If nothing else, the new company will have a clear focus and investment strategy. And there’s nothing like clarity of purpose to ensure good follow-through.

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News Analysis - SAP keeps re-organizing, Fox-Martin in charge of world-wide sales, Enslin out, replaced by Morgan

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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Late on a Friday night in Germany SAP issues a press release that Robert Enslin is leaving the company. The organizational consequence was that of Jennifer Morgan taking over the Cloud Business Group, Enslin's previous responsibility. Her go to market activities are no completely with Adaire Fox-Martin – who now solely owns go to market for SAP.

 

 

Overall MyPOV

[For additional reference checkout my analysis of SAP's last major board reorg, in April 2017, which created the cloud business group - here.]

 

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

Progress Report - SAP Cloud Analyst Summit 2019 - Intelligent Suite and Moving to SAP Tech Stack

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend the yearly SAP Cloud analyst meeting, held from March 6th till 7th in Salt Lake City. It was co-located with Qualtrics X4 Summit user conference, a good move to get the analysts up to speed on the newest 'sister' (as I call the SAP cloud businesses). Much of the summit was under NDA and we had to go through a reverse factual review – sharing with SAP before we published… then more work happened, and I am belated with this post… but better late … than never. 

 

 

Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn't show up, check here):

 

 

Want to read on? Here you go:

The big SAP cloud business re-platform is under way. With this I refer to the effort of moving the 'sisters' to the SAP technology stack, meaning SAP HANA, SAP Cloud Platform, SAP Analytics and Leonardo. That effort is under way and seems to be going well. Fieldglass – the smallest sister – is already on HANA. Work at SuccessFactors and hybris is under way. Not sure where the Ariba efforts stand. As I learnt a week later at Concur's Fusion – the Concur efforts are excused from the effort, going "all in" with Amazon's AWS Cloud. Customers want to know where the effort stands – so SAP is well advised at giving some updates and timelines at some point in the near future.

Concur and Qualtrics - clarity and questions. The Concur decision makes a lot of sense, as likely HANA is punitively high for products like Tripit. And to be fair – HANA was never designed to be a travel expense / travel management database with millions of users. The big question is now what SAP will do with Qualtrics. Let the new experience management acquisition "daughter" run by itself for a while, move it to the SAP stack or maybe also to AWS (where it largely is already)? It was too early to get firm answers of this. But the question is pertinent to make the SAP desire of a new software category with "Experience Management" going – as customers and prospects will want to know what this new software will run on. Personally, I am sceptic HANA can be the database for capturing and continuously querying digital exhaust to predict and create superior experiences. That's more of a Hadoop job. Future will tell.

Reduced functional progress is the price. As with any re-platform – this must be an all hands effort at all the daughters. They almost all picked Oracle and have heavily optimized on that platform. When you do that on Oracle, you write a lot of stored procedures, and those cannot be migrated to another database – also if its HANA. This means that a decade + of code that has been built e.g. at SuccessFactors and Ariba will have to be re-written and tested. If SAP shares the effort publicly it will likely make customers a little nervous and open the install base up for FUD from the competitors. So likely SAP will have to undertake the effort behind closed doors. The consequence is less functional progress for the 'daughter' as developer across the product are busy re-coding and testing functionality. I am not covering Ariba in depth, but SuccessFactors and we can see that slow down on the SuccessFactors side. Pretty much since Spring of 2018 the major piece of innovation coming from SuccessFactors is … a mobile version. Building mobile versions while re-platforming the core offering is a proven strategy for vendors in that phase – mobile is separate technology (especially when you move to HANA) and there are well defined interfaces to the rest of the product. So, it was not a surprise the demo of SuccessFactor's Amy Wilson in Salt Lake City was about – mobile, with SAP Cockpit and the future what Qualtrics can be doing in combination with SuccessFactors for the employee experience. We will see what SAP will share soon.

A new role for SAP technology. SAP has long invested into HANA, SAP Cloud Platform and more. Executives have adamantly insisted that both are strong products, that stand alone and compete with e.g. the Oracle database. That seems to be history now, though SAP has not officially stated it is changing the role of its technology products to focus less on independent, best of breed competition, but making its technology support its application products and ambitions. Certainly, a valid approach, but a lot of investment that will not capitalize. The litmus test question: What is SAP had banked on Oracle only its database – how much SaaS product could have been built? Certainly, more than SAP has been able to build so far. It would have been the reverse takeover of the sisters' decision to standardize on that database. In the past SAP always mentioned the license payments that had to go to Oracle – but SAP does not have a principal issue with it – as we see with its multi-cloud strategy: Here SAP uses the IaaS partners the same way as it uses / used to use its database partners.

But What Ifs are nice scenario plays – it is what it is – and SAP seems to have made that decision. Data points into that direction. It would be good for SAP to make it public.

MyPOV

Let's focus on the good news first: The SAP Intelligent Suite messaging, unveiled at the very first meeting of this group one year ago – is still the true north for S/4HANA, C/4HANA and the sisters. It takes time to build product and keeping the vision and strategy the same is vital for delivering successful enterprise products. I may have missed the plans on the integration side. SAP is creating a distributed system landscape and this time owns the integration between these automation islands. At Sapphire 2018 executives were aware of owning this and committed to it. By now its time to see more specifics on how SAP wants to enable that integration for its customers.

On the concern side, every re-platform is risky business. It must work, must happen likely behind the scenes (as it happens in the cloud world - to not make customers nervous) and means a functional pause for the products undertaking the effort… But the train has left the station, certainly for SuccessFactors, maybe for Ariba, maybe for hybris. The big question now is what the plan for Qualtrics will be. Given SAP's complex development organization (see here) – customers need to plead for transparency by SAP in the form of roadmaps.

But overall kudos for SAP to give insights on its overall state of the cloud products. It was good to see three board members (Enslin, Klein and Mueller) as well as their key lieutenants (e.g. Faerber, Saueressig, Wilson) coming to Salt Lake City to speak with the analysts present there. Now all eyes are on Sapphire.
More on SAP

 

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DisrupTV: Driving Disruption for Real Impact

Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

Aubrey (Levinstone) Coggins manages Constellation's marketing and communications programs and is the producer of DisrupTV, a weekly Web series on innovation and the enterprise.  She previously served as a senior manager of corporate communications at Egnyte and held account roles at Access Communications and The Hoffman Agency. Born and raised in Texas, she received a bachelor's degree in Public Relations from The University of Texas at Austin – Hook ‘em!   ...

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Autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, value-chain disruption and podcasts. We had a phenomenally entertaining and mind-expanding episode of DisrupTV recently. Here’s the quick takeaways.

Technology Disruptions Taking Over Markets

We caught up with Tasha Keeney, analyst at ARK Invest, to discuss the major headways in autonomous vehicles. There’s substantial cost savings and value promise for these types of taxis, semi-truck long-distance shipping and daily driving without an actual person at the wheel. While we are still a few years off, the work in place to get this going shows the reality will be here before we know it.

Keeney also shared some of her takeaways from her recent interview with Elon Musk, noting that they are three years ahead of the competition, especially for efficiency, battery production and autonomous hardware and data! The traditional automaker industry needs to step up its game by making major business model changes, or it’s predicted that those brands will be out of business with where the market is headed.

She also drove the conversation into what’s happening in 3D printing. While the consumer side has been somewhat disappointing, there are big advancements happening in healthcare and aerospace. Eyewear is a great example. There’s a program where you pick a design, and it will scan your face, tweak it to fit your face, and print it! Talk about true customization and instant gratification. This is just one example, but the opportunities are endless.

Disrupting the Value Chain by Chipping Away at the Competition  

The show switched gears just a bit and caught up with Thales Teixeira, Author & Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, where he discussed findings from his book, titled “Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption.”  

The true disruptors aren’t the companies that come out with a similar, slightly better product. The ones that don’t try to copy but look at a missing piece, the inefficiencies, or some small weak aspect of the value chain from that big giant is key.

Let’s look at an example. How do you traditionally buy beauty products? You go into a store, like Sephora, look at all the different products, test them out, ask questions at the store, and then purchase a product. If you like it, you will go back and buy it again. Along the way, there are usually hiccups though, explained Thales. There’s no parking close at the store, customer service agent is rude, out of the product you want, dissatisfaction when you get home and then having to go back to get more...

The true disruptors are chipping away at certain aspects of the buying process and making that piece exemplary. Want samples but hate crowds? Have them ordered to your house! Already love a product, sign up for subscription and avoid the lines. Thinking differently at ways to build an offering is how to make a big dent and impact.

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, and Podcasts

Well, that changed lanes quickly! The show closed out with an interview with Dr. Janice Presser, Founder & CTO at Teamability.com. She shared what’s happening with the "podcast revolution." Podcasts are broadcasted out in a one-way communication. They share interesting topics but aren’t necessarily getting millions of live viewers. We are in the middle of this challenge. How do you speed around the weak piece in the value chain? The true disruption and game-changer will be real engagement. We are team oriented and being able to engage in the conversation during and even after the podcast is completed will truly change the game.

This is just a high-level take on the great advice shared during the show. Please check out the full discussions in the video replay here or the podcast.

Tune in every week for DisrupTV, hosted by Vala Afshar and R “Ray” Wang, on Fridays 11 AM PT/2 PM ET. Drive (or let your car do it) straight toward the end goal and don’t let the pot holes slow you down.

 

 

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#AppleEvent announcement and the potential in #healthcare

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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Big announcement by Apple with new subscriptions for news, tv, gaming, and a credit card offer that may impact the credit card industry. This can be a great play and set up for the healthcare industry as Apple looks to keep the 1.4B devices users in the ecosystem. The top three areas that healthcare vendors and providers can think about are:

1. Home care health — We can all agree that the future of healthcare will be at a setting that is convenient for the patient and the home is definitely a great option. The TV streaming ecosystem is the perfect platform for telemedicine. For the last few years, I have seen the cable tv providers attempt at a play to provide telehealth to their members but it has not been a core strategy, therefore it did not gain the market traction. Now with the Apple TV ecosystem, the market is ripe for a telehealth vendor or hospital organization to take advantage of the platform to offer healthcare services. Quick virtual consultation, remote patient interaction, and other forms of patient engagement as a strategy for population health is an area to consider to take advantage of the platform.

2. Credit card — Health systems are still catching up to accept apple pay as a mechanism to pay for your healthcare bill. With the apple credit card, health systems can still focus on accepting apple pay. Another offer can be loyalty rewards when you are using the apple credit card. Healthcare organizations focusing on wellness can set up partnerships with a gym membership and grocery store to promote a healthier lifestyle in order to drive down healthcare cost. This partnership can then provide incentives for consumers that use the apple credit card for payment.

3. Gaming — Healthcare has not tapped into the gamification strategy yet. This is a perfect platform to enhance clinical training as well as a platform to engage with the patients. Think pelaton for healthcare where you are promoting a healthy lifestyle.

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