Digital Business Distributed Business and Technology Models Part 5; Business Apps and Services

Andy Mulholland

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Andy Mulholland is Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on cloud business models. Formerly the Global Chief Technology Officer for the Capgemini Group from 2001 to 2011, Mulholland successfully led the organization through a period of mass disruption. Mulholland brings this experience to Constellation’s clients seeking to understand how Digital Business models will be built and deployed in conjunction with existing IT systems. Coverage Areas Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite: BYOD, Internet of Things, IoT, technology and business use Previous experience: Mulholland co authored four major books that chronicled the change and its impact on Enterprises starting in 2006 with the well-recognised book ‘Mashup Corporations’ with Chris Thomas of Intel. This was followed in…...

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The Digital Economy will consist of ecosystems participating in interactions from which multiple participants benefit. On route to this new market, most established Enterprises look to add Digital Technology to enhance their current Business model. However, unrecognized competitors in the form of startups are already establishing new Business ecosystems around Smart Services. This series started by defining a Digital Enterprise as an operating business in Part 1, and continued by exploring the technology frame work to deliver this in Parts 2,3a, 3b and 4. In this the concluding, Part 5, a real example is used to illustrate exactly how one, of the many, small startups is quietly creating a Digital Ecosystem around a new set of Smart Services in an established market.

IOTAS, a real company with the tag line ‘Smart Apartment made easy’, is creating a distributed Digital Business model integrating Landlords, Renters, Building Services, and Utility companies into a mutually beneficial Digital ecosystem. In the past all these participants had individual relationships operating in isolation, often under duress, when required by events. IOTAS ‘Smart Apartments’ proposition introduces a new Digital Business and Technology model built round an ecosystem.

Normally case studies on IoT and Digital Business feature established companies who have added Digital capabilities to extend their existing business model. The use of IOTAS as an example is to emphasis how well funded standups are quietly, often almost invisibly, creating new Digital Business models and business ecosystems. Many of these companies are not recognized as competitors simply because they don’t attack using the current business model, but instead look for the ‘white spaces’ between existing business models.

Some years ago in a Harvard Business Review article the following definition was used to describe the then popular term of White Space; “market opportunities your company may wish — or need — to pursue that it cannot address unless it develops a new business model.” Today this is definition absolutely fits these new market players’ moves.

To some Uber is seen as a one off exception to normal business exploiting a lucky fluke market condition, but as IOTAS and others demonstrate this is simply not true. By attacking the White Space between existing business models these new startup companies can build substantial positions before existing Enterprises even become aware of their presence as competitors or disruptors.

These new Digital Economy players aim to isolate the sales route to the existing market suppliers and introduce themselves as a market intermediary. This is not new; Amazon has been exploiting this strategy for many years, what has changed is consumer acceptance, plus the abilities of IoT coupled with AI over Clouds, Apps and Services to deliver. (The technologies of CAAST; Cloud, Apps, AI, Services & Things).

All successful established Enterprises should be monitoring at least three startups that are aiming to enter and disrupt some element of their market to increase their understanding of Digital Business models. It is easy to find these startups by the specialized listing companies that maintain records of Venture Capital investments and success rates.

IOTAS targets the rented apartment market in the USA, selling the capability to deploy ‘Smart Apartments’ as a commercial value proposition to Landlords as the buyer. The proposition creates an Digital Business ecosystem by providing clear value benefits to four different communities; Landlords, Renters, Building Maintenance and Utilities. IOTAS also takes advantage of a change in consumer attitudes to Lifestyle choices created by Digital Technology. The US rental market is continuously growing while home ownership rates have steadily fallen since a high in 2006. Ten years later in 2016 according to market research 13.6% of renters, approximately 5.5 million people, could afford to buy, but chose to rent to facilitate their lifestyle.

This shift is inline with similar behavior changes in other markets as the ‘Service’ economy grows around a new ‘Digital’ generation who has adopted new ‘flexible’ lifestyles. The ‘Digital Lifestyle” renter will pay a premium for an apartment that supports this lifestyle requiring not just a fast Internet connection and WiFi, but the additional lifestyle features of a Smart Apartment.

IOTAS provides Landlords with a complete package for each rental building that combines making individual apartments ‘smart’ for the renter with the increased operational benefits of a Smart Building for the Landlord. Renters gain the ability to ‘tailor’ the apartment facilities, plus gaining an IOTAS transportable profile that they can reassign to their next rental apartment. (Subject to their new landlord offering an IOTAS Smart Apartment deployment).

In addition to gaining a market differentiation plus premium pricing the Landlord also gains the advantages of reduced operating costs from using Smart Building management. IoT based sensing to improve proactive fault identification and automate maintenance responses, as well energy utilization control all increase the benefits.

The IOTAS approach brings Renters, Landlords, Building Maintenance Contractors and Utilities together in a Business Ecosystem, providing each with direct benefits from the relationship. It is important to recognize that existing traditional Business relationships to manage apartments and provide supporting services will be changed and new competitive pressures introduced.

The diagram below illustrates the four layers of the Framework developed in this series, but with the top layer illustrating the IOTAS Digital Ecosystem. (A summary of the four layers is provided at the end of this blog). There will be multiple ecosystems present and not all will be separate from each other, a building maintenance company could well be present in multiple ecosystems.

The obvious question is why start the definition of Business Apps and Services layer with Ecosystems? The answer lies in the difference between the Digital Economy and the Web Economy. The Digital Economy supports interactive ‘read’ and dynamic optimization of ‘respond’ to events, (consider Uber), amongst participating members of the ecosystem, (Taxi drivers, passengers, hotels, restaurants, etc.). In contrast an Enterprise Web site publishes static ‘forms’ to provide data entry into a constant and unchanging processing application.

A Smart Service, as opposed to a Web Service, achieves its interactive and responsive capability by orchestrating participants who have chosen to belong to its ecosystem. This is achieved both by its functionally valuable ‘Business’ Apps, and Services, as well as by its enabling ‘platform’ that provides both Technology Part 3a and Business Part 3b Distributed Services.

This leads to the question as to why different between an App, and a Service? In Business terms, as opposed to the more complex technology definitions, an App defines a Business function that is totally under the control of one Enterprise. A Service on the other hand is an orchestration of Business functions derived from multiple Enterprises and creates interdependencies. The IOTAS user App with IOTAS platform provides a Renter with Smart Apartment control in a closed bundled solution. To create a Smart Building requires the integration of products and online services from multiple vendors with the resulting interdependencies. The business benefits delivered are high for the Ecosystem integrator, as is the potential for improved customer relationships.

The downloadable IOTAS Smart Phone App provides each renter with individual Smart Apartment management through the IOTAS Apartment Building Platform. IOTAS provides a fully functioning solution using its proprietary products, and is fully responsible and accountable for the reliable operation and maintenance of App. As is usually the case with Apps all, or a majority, of the Service revenues belong to IOTAS.

The IOTAS platform is a capability that can be integrated into the Smart Building deployment, alongside Building Infrastructure Management, (BIM), Utility Smart Meters, and other IoT sensed Services. The Business beneficiary of the Smart Building, (apartment block), is the landlord seeking to both reduce the cost of operating the building as well as improving the efficiently by integrating the ecosystem of providers.

Smart Building management represents a further level of Digital Business ecosystems and for this, and again a real example, Honeywell, a tradition market leader, provides an illustration. Increased use of IoT sensing, on board digital processing in products, such as Heating and Ventilation units, combined with intelligent building control systems have resulted in Smart Buildings becoming a recognized market place. Honeywell has moved to introduce new ‘intelligent’ versions of its products as well as adding an extension of its Business model to become a Smart Building ‘Integrator’ around its EBI 500 platform.

First mover Enterprises in a range of Industry sectors, (John Deere is often used as an example), have moved to create and control an ecosystem of smaller and more specialized suppliers. In the Smart Apartment block building Honeywell can become the ‘master’ building ecosystem provider making IOTAS a member of the Honeywell Smart Building ecosystem of partners.

App providers of unique, innovative, high value specialized business add to the business value of the overall Ecosystem of solutions. Those Enterprises that can become Ecosystem owners reinforce their current positions, extend their competitive value and differentiation, as well as gain new revenue sources from their ecosystem partners.

The sources, types and amounts of data produced by these ecosystems provides the game changing inputs to Augmented Intelligence capabilities outlined in Part 4, and summarized at the end of this blog. Continuous optimization of operations becomes possible to produce the Digital Enterprise as outlined in Part 1.

The two examples; IOTAS and Honeywell, were selected to illustrate the contrast between two different approaches that are creating Digital markets; IOTAS an innovative startup creating a Digital market and Ecosystem that has not previously existed through an App; and Honeywell an established vendor repositioning to become a Digital Marketplace of Services supported by an Ecosystem of both existing vendors plus startup vendors.

Though there are common elements with the second Digital Business models, there is a third model based purely on providing ‘Service Orchestration’. As with the first two there has to be an enabling product, a big part of the difference is that it is usually, but not always, as part of the enabling Distributed Services Technology or Business layers. These Enterprises aiming to satisfy a new and emerging market for Digital Services fall into four distinctive groups, and these are explored in the next blog entitled ‘Four IoT Business models’. Once again the defining feature, as with all Digital Market places, is the creation and operation of an Ecosystem.

The combination of the Digital representation of assets and events, with the interaction between members of an ecosystem, produces not just more data, but new, previously not available, new types of context. This provides both the input and the demand for a very different form of output, both in time frames and in ability to be turned into optimized reactions. The capabilities and role of Intelligence leading into Augmented Intelligence or AI is outlined in Part 4.

The coupling between the Business Apps, and Services, with the use of Augmented Intelligence is the focal point that technology vendors are targeting, and will be the driving force for new levels of Enterprise competitive operation of their own Business, as much as those of the Digital Market place. See The Digital Enterprise Business model defined in Part 1 of this series.

 

Summary; Background to this series

This is third part in a series on Digital Business and the Technology required to support the ability of an Enterprise to do Digital Business. An explanation for the adoption of a simple definition shown in the diagram below to classify the technology requirements rather than attempt any form of conventional detailed Architecture is provided, together with a fuller explanation of the Business requirements.

 

 

 

 

Part One - Digital Business Distributed Business and Technology Models;

Understanding the Business Operating Model

Part Two - Digital Business Distributed Business and Technology Models;

The Dynamic Infrastructure

Part Three – Digital Business Distributed Business and Technology Models

1. Distributed Services Technology Management Distributed Services Business Management

Part Four – Digital Business Distributed Business and Technology Models

Augmented Intelligence and Machine Learning

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Market Move - Saba completes acquisition of Halogen

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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Things were quiet around Saba for a while, as the vendor struggled with re-stating earnings… then the vendor surprised with the acquisition of Canada head quartered Halogen.

 

 

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

Redwood Shores, CA – May 1, 2017 – Saba Software Inc., today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Halogen Software, Inc. (TSX:HGN). Saba, Vector Capital and its affiliates, and Michael Slaunwhite, Halogen’s co-founder, executive chairman and largest shareholder, have acquired Halogen for CAD$12.50 in cash per share.

MyPOV – Good summary and interesting mix of buyers – apart from Saba and Vector there is a buy back from Halogen co-founder Slaunwhite in the mix. It certainly creates a sense of ownership by Slaunwhite, who is not exiting, but staying on with Saba.

The new, combined organization is now one of the largest independent talent management companies in the world, with 1,000 employees serving more than 4,000 customers in 195 countries around the globe.

MyPOV – That’s a nice title to have, though size is not everything. Redundant product offerings need to be consolidated, customers educated, transferred etc. before Saba can really leverage the scale the size brings. It will also be interesting to see how many cross-sell opportunities the combined entity has.

“No matter what size the company, all organizations are ultimately trying to solve the same challenge, which is how to better their business performance by engaging, developing, and investing in their employees,” said Pervez Qureshi, CEO of Saba. “The combination of Saba and Halogen brings them something very powerful – the expertise of the best and brightest minds in talent management, a deep commitment to helping our customers solve new challenges in new ways, and a true passion to deliver value and innovation, better and faster. This is a unique combination, and something no one else in the market can provide.”

MyPOV – A good (and long) quote by Qureshi. Unfortunately, it does not clarify what the uniqueness on the product side is. But good to see talent, commitment, passion to help customers become better and faster.

The dynamics of the workplace are changing, and organizations that are evolving their approach to employee development and engagement are realizing more productivity and performance. Together, Saba and Halogen plan to deliver a new vision for talent management – one that combines people-centric learning, engagement, and performance in new ways, enabling organizations to meet their employees on new terms, and transform the employee experience.

MyPOV – Words matter and sequences matter. The absence of the ‘Talent Management’ buzzword vs the ranking of learning, engagement and performance may give an insight to the self-realization of the vendor. And while Learning is important, and currently going through a best practice revolution (think of video, self-published, self-paced, micro learning, flip training etc.) it is not the first thing that comes mind in enterprise. Getting the right talent to the right place at the right time is the name of the game – learning is important – but only ¼ or less of the whole automation puzzle.

[…] As pioneers in their respective areas, and with over 40 years of combined experience in talent management, Saba and Halogen share common vision, values and culture, as well as a commitment to the growth and success of their customers.

MyPOV – Always good to have cultural fit and compatibility in a merged company.

“Halogen customers selected the best performance solution in the marketplace today, and Saba acquired Halogen for the same reasons their customers use the software; the people, the products, the culture, and the innovation,” said John Hiraoka, Chief Strategy Officer at Saba. “This is something that we not only intend to continue, but to accelerate in the market. As a combined organization, we intend to rapidly deliver best-in-market innovations to both Saba and Halogen customers, with the same commitment to their growth and success they’ve come to expect.”

MyPOV – Unusual to have another vendor CxO quoted, what is missing are quotes from customers and partners, showing excitement about the new Saba. But there is only so much room in a press release.

 

Overall MyPOV

It is good see life and growth for all market participants, competition makes products better and more affordable and with that enterprises more successful. Since the acquisition of SuccessFactors and Taleo, it had gotten quiet in the very large Talent Management vendor segment. As enterprises want to leverage suites, a concentration process will play in the hands of less integration risk. But Talent Management suite vendors are in the middle – between the complete HCM suite vendor and the startups looking at single (or a few) pieces of HCM automation. Their challenge is to innovate fast enough but integrate on a Talent Management level into a suite that stays ahead of both startups as well as suite vendors. No easy task for all vendors in this category.

Saba was already a player here, now it has gotten innovation (Performance Management) and customers (SMB) from Halogen to help it scale more. But scale only helps when the tough decisions are made in regards of product overlap and the efficiencies are reaped in the go to market.

On the concern side, the new Saba has not made roadmap announcements yet. To be fair Saba has some time with this, but time is of the essence in all merger situations. The machine learning approach is a good direction, e.g. Saba was one of the first HCM vendors to apply machine learning in Compensation Management – three and more years ago. But Machine Learning (or the marketing term du jour – AI) is missing from the press release.

On the philosophical side, it is interesting that with Skillsoft / SumTotal, Cornerstone and now Saba / Halogen it is the original Learning vendors that are now the leading Talent Management suite vendors when it comes to size. Turns out that Learning can be both a blessing and curse…. We look forward to seeing the planned roadmaps of the new Saba and to analyze the direction. Stay tuned.


 

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Oracle Launches Adaptive Intelligent Apps for CX

Doug Henschen

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

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Oracle demos Adaptive Intelligent Offers app for commerce, marketing. Next up are more CX capabilities as well as ERP, HR and supply chain apps.

The biggest reveal at the April 25-27 Oracle Modern Customer Experience (CX) Event in Las Vegas was the debut of Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps for CX. Adaptive Intelligent Offers (AI Offers) is the first app in a planned portfolio of artificial intelligence applications that will eventually span CX, ERP, human capital management and supply chain management.

The introduction was no surprise. Oracle said a CX app would come first when it announced Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps last September. Since then the company has been refining the behind-the-scenes automated machine learning capabilities. Executives revealed in January that work with beta customers was about to begin.

Adaptive Intelligent Offers delivers a subset of the AI capabilities Oracle has planned for its
customer experience cloud. Sales and service features are expected later this year.

AI Offers delivers a subset of the total capabilities envisioned in the Oracle Adaptive Intelligent App for CX (see image above). AI Offers is also in limited release. For now Oracle is working with early adopter customers. Executives from Team Sportia, a Swedish retail chain, were among two early customers appearing at the Modern CX event. Another customer, an international bank, was identified under non-disclosure terms. Broader availability is expected "soon," according to Oracle, but there’s no official general release date.

Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps complement Oracle cloud applications. AI Offers, for example, is an optional (extra-cost) add-on to the Oracle Customer Experience Cloud. At launch, AI Offers is integrated with the Commerce and Marketing clouds in the CX suite, but ties will extend to the Sales and Service clouds later this year.

AI Offers taps into first-party data from a company’s Commerce Cloud instance, enriches it with third-party data from the Oracle Data Cloud, and then applies Oracle’s decision science and machine learning capabilities. The resulting contextual insights into individual customer behaviors and purchase propensities drive best-fit offers as they browse a Commerce Cloud-powered website. The same AI Offers contextual analysis also triggers real-time personalized content recommendations in the Oracle Marketing Cloud. Pricing for AI Offers is based cost-per-thousand offers or content recommendations – the same model used to pay for Oracle Data Cloud enrichment.

AI Offers is an advance over older, rules-based technologies (including Oracle’s own ATG personalization engine) in that it is both adaptive and real time. AI Offers applies and reapplies a recommendation engine and predictive algorithms with each new click and navigation step. The design point is 100-millisecond to 150-millisecond response time -- on par with state-of-the-art e-commerce and advertising systems. Even in marketing scenarios, fresh email promotions are triggered at open time, reflecting up-to-the-second analyses of the latest transactions and online behaviors.

Oracle executives insists that AI App data-collection and data-usage practices adhere to global privacy laws and principles. Personally identifiable information remains in each company’s instance of the Commerce Cloud and is not copied, stored or shared. Third-party from Oracle Data Cloud is temporarily joined to the first-party data and the combination is then run against a combination of collaborative filtering, online learning and predictive algorithms at run time to trigger optimized offers and content recommendations.

AI Apps will learn over time, and Oracle plans to connect these insights across clouds and domains. For example, AI Offers tracks outcomes in the Commerce Cloud, such as purchases by category, brand and product, along with aggregated demographics, such as age, gender, marital status and education level, and psychographics, such as interest in sports, fitness, hobbies, and so on, drawn from Oracle Data Cloud. Oracle plans to bring these aggregated, outcome-based insights into the Marketing Cloud where they will inform targeting and, thus, smarter content recommendations and promotions. Similarly, once Oracle brings Adaptive Intelligent App capabilities into the sales and service areas of CX – a move expected later this year – the company expects to be able to inform next-best sales steps by connecting insights into recent service activities to drive predictive account health insights and predictive recommendation capabilities.

Next steps for Oracle include building up the base of customer success stories, adding connectors for popular third-party commerce systems, and adding domain-specific features for sales and service.

MyPOV on Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps

Adaptive Intelligent Offers is just the first release in a rollout of AI apps that will surely extend into next year and beyond. Constellation expect to see more CX capabilities over the summer and apps in other clouds announced by Oracle Open World in early October.

I like the fact that Oracle has incorporated controls and provisions for business rules in AI Offers so humans can tweak and otherwise override “smart” offers and recommendations, as required by business requirements. Marketing agreements, for example, might dictate that competing brands cannot be shown in the same promotion while overstocks or profitability requirements might need to sway cross-sell and up-sell objectives.

Oracle’s closest competitor on the AI front – specifically in the CX arena -- is Salesforce Einstein. Salesforce has already released 20 Einstein “features” and had another 25 planned for release this year. The features are focused and are not akin to Oracle’s more expansive AI apps. For example, Marketing Cloud Einstein includes a Predictive Content & Product Recommendation feature while the Commerce Cloud has separate Product Recommendation and Predictive Email features. (The complete list of Einstein features is detailed in my Inside Salesforce Einstein Artificial Intelligence report).

Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps include multiple capabilities that roughly compare with Einstein features. The Oracle AI App for CX, for example, will eventually include at least 16 capabilities, as shown in the slide above. In the Marketing and Digital category, for example, there’s Intelligent Message and Personalized Open-Time Content. In the Commerce category there’s Personalized Product Recommendations. It’s easy to spot similar capabilities in each CX portfolio, but keep in mind that Oracle also plans to apply AI to the ERP, HCM and SCM arenas.

Who will win the great AI war? We have yet to hear in-depth customer testimonials from either Adaptive Intelligent App or Einstein customers who have really put the offerings to the test. Also keep in mind that you can’t subscribe to either Adaptive Intelligent Apps or Einstein independently; they’re both optional add-on services to underlying application clouds. We’ve all heard examples of the tail wagging the dog, but it remains to be seen whether smarter AI capabilities will lead customers to choose or switch to different core application clouds.

You can read more about Oracle's strategy and broader plans in Inside Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps.

RELATED READING:
Oracle Preps AI Apps, Next Steps for Data Cloud
Inside Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps
Inside Salesforce Artificial Intelligence

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Equifax EFXForum 2017 - More International & More DaaS

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 Equifax Insight’s EFX Forum user conference in Scottsdale, held April 25th till 27th, at the beautiful Marriott Camelback resort in Scottsdale. The conference was well attended with about 200 attendees, good partner representation and influencer selection. 

 

 

So take a look at my musings on the event here: (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)

 

No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):

 

 

Event Report Equifax EFXForum 2017 - More International & DaaS from Holger Mueller

Want to read on? Here you go: 

 

Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:

 

Opening by Equifax Insights with Trusler

International looms – Always good to software vendors taking the show on ‘the road’ or around the world. The beauty of software and intellectual property (IP) is that once something is built and / or understood you can take it to other markets. In the case of Equifax Insights, it is not so easy, as local data and assets have to be understood, acquired or licensed. And Equifax Insights has done its homework here with Canada and Australia, with immediate plans this year, with the UK to follow. The first step will be similar services to what Equifax Insights is known for in the US, “The Works Number”.

 

Hamdi shares three takeaways from BigData Research

Workforce Insights on Compensation – Last year Equifax Insights promised to live up to its name, and provide more insights. One year later the vendor has lived up to the promise and delivers help for making better compensation decisions, a popular offering these days. Though Equifax Insights does not address this from the paycheck angle, but from its credit bureau data. A classic BigData and Data as a Service (DaaS) use case that gives an important additional data (and insight) angle when making compensation decisions. 

 

Full House at EFX Forum 2017

Touch ID for Talent Acquisition – One common nuisance for applicants is to have to provide common information (e.g. address) repeatedly for each application. One common concern for employers is that the provided information is not accurate. With hiring frequency and volumes up as the economy moves into more of a gig economy, the Equifax Insights InstaTouchID service is a win / win between applicant and hiring enterprises. It’s also the option for Equifax to become a provider of individual record services, but that’s for a later time.

 

Panel Action with Jessica Wadd, Madeline Laurano, Holger Mueller and John Sumser (ltr)

 

MyPOV

Equifax Insights keeps showing good progress on its products, extending functionality and capability on a regular basis. DaaS capabilities are interesting for enterprises, who look for easy and effective solutions to improve their data quality, compliance and overall efficiency. The internationalization efforts are encouraging, and should help set the Equifax Insights business on a more steady, global growth path, reducing exposure to the USA as so far only market.

On the concern side, Equifax Insights needs to move phase and come to a strategy that moves it beyond being a ‘tactical’ provider of compliance and data quality. Compliance is a substantial challenge for enterprises with many complexities, CFOs and CHROs don’t want to add complexity by using many, maybe too many compliance and data services providers. They rather would prefer to use a single provider, but in absence of any provider stepping up for a complete Compliance as a Service (CaaS) solution, need to piecemeal the provider decisions. The player who first manages to consolidate Compliance through acquisition, partnership or organic growth, will reap the benefits of CaaS. Equifax Insights needs to work hard to stay in the game here, but has attractive starting positions.

But for now, all is good progress for Equifax Insights customers, partners and the vendor. Stay tuned for more from Equifax Insights, DaaS and CaaS on this blog soon.

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).

 

 

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NetSuite SuiteWorld 2017 - The Suite gets complete and an Oracle boost

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 NetSuite’s SuiteWorld event held at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas and happening from April 24th till 27th 2017. SuiteWorld was well attended with a new record of over 7000+, good partner representation and influencer selection. It was also the first SuiteWorld in after the Oracle acquisition and in the post Zach Nelson era of NetSuite.

 

 

So take a look at my musings on the event here: (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)

 

No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):

 

 

Event Report - NetSuite SuiteWorld 2017 from Holger Mueller

Want to read on? 

 

Here you go: Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:

Oracle pushes the gas pedal. As usual with acquisitions in the high-tech industry, a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt gets associated with them. In this case, there were irrational (no need to dig into them) and rational questions (product overlap, go to market etc.). Overall Oracle did a good job to address these concerns, as McGeever from NetSuite put it – the ‘elephant’ in the room. Oracle (co) CEO Mark Hurd was at hand to address the concerns with his usual rational, number driven style. He shared that Oracle paid approximately US$ 9.3B for NetSuite. This makes it the 2nd most expensive Oracle acquisition, shy of Peoplesoft (US$ 10.3B) (see a list of them here). Oracle will bring scale to NetSuite, selling the product in more geographies than before, as Hurd put it ‘as fast as Ewan [Goldberg] can build [Internationalization], we will sell.’ And Oracle brings more development location, as NetSuite will hire more developers. And lastly Oracle data centers will help NetSuite getting a more global technical footprint. Oracle and Hurd have done a pretty good job to address these concerns, as I could not find a prospect, customer or partner that was really concerned about the new ownership of NetSuite, with a ‘wait and see’ being the most cautionary answer. US customers were not fazed, international customers expect more coverage and support and partners were excited as they expect more revenue to be made going forward. So, a good place for NetSuite and Oracle and the NetSuite customers and ecosystems. 
 

Hurd addresses SuiteWorld

The (Net)Suite is complete with SuitePeople. For a long time, I have been chronicling the ‘slalom’ like NetSuite HCM strategy (see links below). At the end of the day (for now) it seems that the suite / platform argument is winning and with the launch of SuitePeople, NetSuite (finally) makes the suite complete. Except for a few industries, people are the largest expense for enterprises, so not managing the resources, processes and cost was a major gap in the otherwise complete NetSuite portfolio. The announced scope of SuitePeople with HR Core, Payroll and ‘beachheads’ into Talent and Workforce Management is a good start for the product. NetSuite always had a payroll offering, which was running under the Finance umbrella till now. And NetSuite quietly has already started a pilot program with about 60 customers, many of them at hand and on stage at SuiteWorld to share their (mostly positive) experience so far. And with NetSuite having acquired TribeHR some time ago (read here), and much of that team building SuitePeople, much of the Core HR capability has social elements, including newer concepts like an employee ‘score’. NetSuite’s decision to sell SuitePeople only as part of an overall NetSuite deal is the typical approach all suite vendors take to new products… the product is new, the synergies with the suite need to be leveraged and built and the stand-alone market (not sure if this ever would happen with NetSuite) is much more demanding. So, NetSuite customers looking for HR automation should definitively look at SuitePeople, most likely their account manager will make sure they don’t miss the new capability, too. The question NetSuite customers should ask are the typical ones, in regards of functional maturity, requirements coverage and roadmap compatibility with future demands. 

 

McGeever unveils SuitePeople

SuiteSuccess has a vertical angle now. Every ERP vendor has an implementation methodology, NetSuite’s us called SuiteSuccess and NetSuite recently added a vertical angle to the program. All implementation methodologies stand and fall with the quality of the preconfigured functionality, measured in speed and cost of implementation of the product. The numbers shared at SuiteWorld are pretty positive, so looking at using and adopting SuiteSuccess should be something customers facing an implementation should ask for – maybe even demand from their implementation team and possible implementation partners.

 

McGeever on SuiteSuccess Benefits

MyPOV

A very good SuiteWorld for NetSuite, in the new Oracle era and new digs in Las Vegas (all previous 4 events were in San Jose). Good to see a vendor outgrow a location (from San Jose to Las Vegas), also good to see that Oracle is firmly behind the NetSuite acquisition. Rumors of the end of the NetSuite products were never realistic, and put to bed for good.

More on the positive side, NetSuite has shown that it is pushing overall product progress forward, across the board, but most importantly closes the last horizontal functionality hole with SuitePeople. This is hopefully the last chapter of NetSuite’s winding HCM history (express run through: no HCM, but Payroll, partnership with Oracle, partnership with tons of smaller vendors, acquisition of TribeHR, partnership with NetSuite – now SuitePeople – all in 4 years). Customers seem to be unfazed and focus on the value that NetSuite creates.

On the concern side, acquisitions are never easy. It is one thing to plead support and investment into NetSuite – another thing to execute it. There is a reason there is a chasm between large enterprise and SMB offerings – not only in product, but also go to market. Customer need to listen attentively how this will develop for them in the next quarters, as Oracle has to become a little more ‘un-Oracle’ to succeed in SMB. On the flipside, this is an opportunity for Oracle to sell applications to more customers globally than they could with its existing SaaS application portfolio. But instilling the ‘cloud DNA’ into country organizations that are new to Cloud / SaaS will be a challenging.

But for now, all is well for NetSuite, that will be seen in many more geographies around the world, time for decision makers on ERP in SMBs to pay attention, even if NetSuite was not sold yet in their geographies.

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.

 

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