Microsoft Acquires LinkedIn: Connecting Professionals With Business Process

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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This morning Microsoft announced they are acquiring LinkedIn for $26.2B. Microsoft is one of the largest providers of business and productivity software and LinkedIn is one of the largest professional networks. The combination of the two, bringing LinkedIn data and connections (social graph) to Office365 and Dynamics could have major impacts on personal productivity, team collaboration, social selling, human resources, marketing and customer experience. 

Here are my thoughts on what this deal means for daily users and developers.

Call Me Baby. Slack Adds Integrated Voice Calling

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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On June 6, Slack added the ability to place voice calls directly from Slack, without needing to add a 3rd party integration. 1:1 calls are available to everyone, and team calls of up to 15 people are available for paid plans. This is just voice calls, video chat and screen sharing are not yet available.

This is a good move for Slack, as this starts their customers down the path of needing one less integration. As highlighted in my report "Why Your Organization Should Buy a Collaboration Platform Instead of a Best-of-Breed Solution” , the more core functionality a software vendor provides the better, as it results in a simpler, more consistent, and more secure environment.

The group chat market is a very competitive one, and while Slack gets a majority of the media attention, several of their competitors also offer voice integration, and some offer features Slack does not yet have.

In the video below I show how the new voice calling feature works, and share my thoughts on the points mentioned above.
 

I'd love to hear your feedback on this new feature, Slack in general, or any of their competitors that you are using.

Thrilled to be a part of Constellation Research

Cindy Zhou

CMO
Level Access

Cindy Zhou is a practicing CMO.  Prviously, she was Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Digital Marketing Transformation and Sales Effectiveness. With over 18 years of practitioner experience in corporate marketing, product marketing, product management, and sales operations, Zhou has spearheaded marketing transformation at multiple technology companies. She advised Constellation’s clients on strategies to light-up demand generation, prove revenue contribution, and maximize sales productivity. Prior to joining Constellation, Zhou was Global Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales Operations at BackOffice Associates, a global provider of data quality and information governance solutions to the Fortune 1000 and SAP SolEx partner. Before…...

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After 18 years with roles across the spectrum of Marketing and Sales Operations at companies with sizes ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500, people asked me why join an analyst firm?  My passion for marketing transformation and sales effectiveness allowed me the privilege of being able to share ideas and expertise with other executives through groups such as Forrester's Marketing Leadership Council in the past and currently with the Sales Enablement Council.  I enjoy helping other marketers and sales professionals by sharing my real-life battle scars from building, growing, or turning around brands, demand generation programs and sales enablement initiatives.

The marketing and sales tech landscape keeps growing exponentially.  My mission is to go beyond theory to help Constellation's clients sort through the noise, and implement the most effective strategies, technologies, and ideas to engage their customers, power sales productivity and ultimately prove results in revenue growth. 
I’m going to kick-off my research with a focus on sales effectiveness.  If you have a story to share on sales on-boarding success or how your company increased sales rep productivity then let's talk.  You can schedule a briefing here or email [email protected].

I’ll have a draft of my overall research agenda posted soon and always open to suggestions/ideas. Send me your ideas in the comments or tweet me at @cindy_zhou.

Lastly, I'm honored to work with my new colleagues at Constellation, a high-caliber group of futurists, industry luminaries, authors, and speakers that I will learn a tremendous amount from. (This has already started with me knowing more about #Blockchain from Steve Wilson). I thank them all for the warm welcome! 
 

Workday Release 26 Beefs Up Cloud Software for Financial Management - Research Summary

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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Oracle Data Cloud Powers Pinterest, Goes Mobile

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 partners with Pinterest on ad measurement, adds Crosswise for cross-device tracking. Here’s why CMO spend trumps tech synergies – for now.

Oracle’s ambitions for the Oracle Data Cloud extend beyond marketing, but for now it’s focused on growing its share of chief marketing officer spend. That much was clear at this week’s Oracle Cloud Data Summit in New York, where all the announcements and panel discussions were geared to marketing and media types.

The biggest announcement at the Summit was a partnership with Pinterest through which advertisers on the social network will be able measure the effectiveness of promoted “Pins” in terms of influence the offline buying behavior. Oracle Data Cloud is doing the anonymous matching of Pinterest visitors to their offline buying behavior. It also creates control populations, so it can accurately measure the lift (sales increase) generated by Pinterest campaigns. Measurement services will start in the consumer packaged goods category and will eventually extend to retailers.

Inside Oracle Data Cloud Summit '16

Interviewed on stage at the Summit, Pinterest President Tim Kendall said users of the social network spend more than half of their time on the site shopping. He added that Oracle Data Cloud measures of CPG campaigns on Pinterest demonstrated significant lift in earned media and in-store sales. Oracle already has similar ad-measurement programs in place with Facebook, among others.

What Is Oracle Data Cloud?

Oracle started building its Data Cloud more than two years ago with the acquisition of the BlueKai marketing data management platform. In early 2015 Oracle added data broker Datalogix, which gave it data from more than 1,500 CPG and specialty retailers across 110 Million US Households. AddThis, acquired early this year, tracks and build behavior profiles on more than 2 billion unique visitors per month across more than 15 million Websites. A key driver of the deal was the company’s strong presence in international markets, where Oracle is seeking to build its data footprint.

The latest addition to the Oracle Data Cloud arsenal is Crosswise, acquired in April for its machine-learning based ability to track consumer behavior across platforms including mobile devices. Mobile is the only growing category in media, according to a slide shared by Oracle (see chart below), yet it’s very difficult to track mobile activity. If the same person visits the same website using two different desktop browsers, a tablet and a smartphone, the site will see four unique visitors. Crosswise can make the connections among all those cookies and device IDs to help marketers see that it’s one-and-the-same prospect or customer.

The cross-channel tracking and profiling capabilities of Crosswise and AddThis are now a part of Oracle ID Graph, a capability of Oracle Data Cloud that helps marketers understand consumer behavior across channels so they can improve targeting, personalization and campaign effectiveness.

MyPOV on Oracle Data Cloud

I’m impressed by the growing capabilities and breadth of data available in the Oracle Data Cloud, but we have yet to see deep synergies with the rest of Oracle. Thomas Kurian, Oracle’s president, earlier this year hinted at opportunities such as data-enrichment for better sales initiatives and better customer service. But for now it’s all Oracle Data Cloud executives can do to keep up with the needs of marketers; they have their hands full integrating AddThis and Crosswise and plotting further expansion into international markets.

A more immediate synergy between Oracle and Oracle Data Cloud might be a content personalization play, hinted Eric Roza, senior VP of Oracle Data Cloud. This effort would bring ID Graph and data-enrichment capabilities together with Oracle content and customer experience technologies to deliver the right content to the right people in the right context.

The blurring of the tech and data worlds has been a long time coming. I covered the direct marketing business back in the mid 1990s, so I was somewhat surprised to discover that some of the “giants” that I covered back then remain comparatively small. As measured by 2015 revenues, Experian is a $4.8 billion company, Equifax $2.6 billion, Dun & Bradstreet $1.6 billion and Acxiom $1.0 billion.

By contrast, Oracle is a $38 billion company, and others in the tech-meets-data game include IBM ($81 billion) and Adobe ($4.7 billion). For now, Oracle might seems like a deep-pocketed parent with a data side business. But I have no doubt that synergies with sales, service and the end-to-end customer experience will create a more holistic appeal across the C-suite for Oracle customers.

Related Reading:
Oracle Data Cloud: The Data-as-a-Service Differentiator
Oracle Open World 2015: Three Important Cloud Services

#DisrupTV: The Future of Customer Loyalty, Digging into the Good, Bad and Ugly of Customer Experiences

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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What is your favorite loyalty program? Is your first thought “I don’t know”?

On #DisrupTV last week, we had the opportunity to interview Kevin Nix, CEO of Stellar Loyalty, a company with a mission to “bring delight and value to every consumer experience.” He explained, and we all see it, that we are inundated with too many emails, terrible marketing campaigns, spam and bad loyalty programs.

The reason? Companies are approaching it the wrong way - my competitor has one, so I need one. No wonder I have so much email to delete or save for later (aka forgetting it until I delete it six months later)!

Stellar Loyalty is working to help companies think from a consumer’s view of the brand and their entire experience. During the interview, Kevin shared some great examples, and one that stood out to me included many people’s coffee “addiction” (and maybe mine).  

Think about being able to walk into a store, such as Starbucks, get an option on your phone to order your specialized drink, an alert that your favorite muffin is (finally!) in stock, and a process to easily pay and pick it up without even waiting in the line… This can be a reality thanks to your loyalty app.

While it’s not to that level yet, technology is advancing to make each experience frictionless. You get loyal customers not by points and gimmicks, but by the customer service and experience that drives a customer to want to spread their like (or dislike) by word of mouth.

Check out the full interview below. Be sure to also follow Kevin on Twitter (@Kevin_Nix).

 

DisrupTV Startup Spotlight: Featuring Kevin Nix, CEO of Stellar Loyalty 6.6.16 from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

From the Field: Lithium Technologies and Microsoft Dynamics Partner To Create A Total Community Digital Strategy

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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Is social CRM dead? Depends on what you consider social CRM to be. With the partnering of Lithium Technologies and Microsoft Dynamics, we will see yet a new and more extensive version of intelligent customer engagements. The partnership includes Microsoft Dynamics and Lithium’s community data, social customer intelligence and analytics.

The expectation of the value of an online community is often associated with cost savings – just as call deflections can reduce the costs of customer service. While many cost savings are possible, there also are six major areas that my research has found through which an online community can contribute to a company’s revenue, profits and margins. The six areas are: increased revenue through new products and services; enhanced communications, marketing and public relations; improved employee engagement; better business cost efficiencies; expanded business value in customer service; and heightened senior leadership and board member business guidance. With this paper, leaders can create a basic blueprint to embark on a discussion about whether to create an online community, the value the community can provide, and how best to lead this key strategic initiative in their organization.

Back to the conference, @jasonlsilva gave a wonderful talk on perception, change and our ability to redefine the meaning of a billionaire to one that helps a billion people. That I think is quite different than most of the start-up wanna-be billionaire’s who are in tech to become the next billionaire. You can see more of the videos from Jason’s show BrainGames on youtube called Shots of Awe. He talked about how the smart phone is the most powerful tool to get people out of poverty. And that it’s important to step back and understand where we are in time with respect to technology. 100 years ago we were electrifying the world – today we are cognifying the world via technology. In cognitive psychology, after a signal reaches the brain, the instant when we are aware of a change in our environment, but it is before the brain is able to identify and codify what the change is. The key is to not only not be afraid of change, but to embrace it with a positive mindset. The book Mindset was recommended by Lithium’s CEO Rob Tarkoff @rtarkoff by Carol Dweck. And lucky me – got a selfie with @jasonlsilva – 

Speaking of great customer service, I got this note from Claudia Kardzair & Nena Gadingan who are Guest Care Managers at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis:

The days of loyalty driven by customer care are here. Some analysts think companies will be competing on customer experience in the future. I believe they always have been. It may not have been as measured as it is now, it may not have been as obvious as now — but customers have been making mental note of their experiences. If it is bad, they will take themselves out of your marketing funnel, regardless of the number of emails, tweets or other communications a brand sends. It is the era of customer experience being the number one metric all CEOs and CFOs need to pay attention to.

And at the conference we got to hear about the wonderful total community results from customers like @USAA and Renee Horne and Mark Nichols from Skype.

The keynote on the future of CRM and intelligent customer engagement by Jujhar Singh, General Manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, provided a deeper understanding of what the partnership means to customers.  He shared key insights into how businesses can maximize customer data to create more personalized brand experiences. The combination of online communities and the power of CRM is an amazing capability. Rob Tarkoff, president and CEO of Lithium Technologies, explained that with the partnership Lithium will be able to expand what they now offer, the power of Total Community across Microsoft’s intelligence and data infrastructures.

By working closely with Microsoft, they together bring a much broader solution to their our customers. The strategic alliance will allow the integration of Lithium social interactions and community data into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft Dynamics customers now have a community platform that offers businesses greater insights from the wealth of customer signals embedded in communities.

What does the future of CRM hold? Perhaps it will finally go from it’s former capabilities – a customer contact management system to actually become the more aspirational customer RELATIONSHIP engagement system that enrolls a brand’s customers and never looses sight of what is important to THEM and is always there when their customers need them with the things that are important to them. When companies do this they become truly customer-centric.

@drnatalie petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering customer-facing applications

NGA HR unshackled with new HR service offerings

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 NGA HR’s analyst summit held in Chicago, on June 8th 2016. The summit was well attended with over a dozen analysts there, check out my Storify below for more details. Also good to see that NGA HR (in contrast to 2015) flew out UK based executives, starting with CEO Al-Saleh. 

 

So take a look at my musings on the event here: 

 

 

 

No time to watch – here is the one slide condensation: 

 

Progress Report - NGA HR off to new HR services, unshackled from Holger Mueller

Want to read on? Here you go: 

 

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

Unshackled – Northgate Information Solutions, the back then holding company For NorthgateArinso (now NGA HR) was a KKR company. Despite valiant answers from executives before the recent debt for equity transaction in November 2015 (see Reuters here), it is now clear that debt load hindered investments at the vendor. The transaction reduced leverage from 8 to 4.5 – a much more manageable load. Nonetheless the vendor keeps up its 4 fold HR services offering with HR Consulting, Application Management, Payroll and BPO offerings. And while the number of customers and serviced employees is up, the NGA HR employee count is down, which at constant revenues is an indication for improved efficiencies.

New HR services Offerings – The question of course was now what NGA HR would do with the new freedom, for me especially on the product side. And while the vendor maintained that the R&D investment is constant, not too much was shown in these regards. Good to see that the venerable ResourceLink product has received a new user interface. NGA HR is also jumping on the PaaS bandwagon at large partner SAP, with launching two Hana Cloud Platform (HCP) based applications. Both NGA HR Request Central and NGA Case Management Central are good early offerings here. What was surprising was that the vendor plans 50 more of these, we look forward to learn more on the scope of these. And good to see continued investment in Payroll Exchange (PEX), the ‘core’ of NGA HR’s global payroll offering. Beside Product, NGA HR is investing into Marketing and Sales, a good decision see why below.

Process Standardization progress – NGA has worked on process standardization for a long time, so it is good to see that the effort is now in Version 4.0, all the way down to Level 5 (physical mapping to system functions, though I will get more details later hopefully). Every service provider prides themselves of these processes, but few have them to this level, and putting them into place is hard, applying them to existing customers even harder. It is good to see NGA HR is working at all these three levels, and has over time created a substantial differentiation over the competitors in the field. It will be interesting to learn what will come in version 5 of the Service Maps machine learning, bots etc. are knocking on the door of advanced best practices for HR services.
 

MyPOV

Good to see the signs going upwards again at NGA HR, which were a little more a concern 12 months ago. Kudos to executives to candidly address the challenges in regards of sales performance (in 2015, 2016 looks much improved), restructuring (once again) HR consulting, and operating at a lower overall headcount. The focus is now on sales execution as NGA HR is one of the few HR BPO vendors that have been able to preserve their offshore execution capacity, now it’s time to get more utilization towards these centers, with large, long term BPO deals (like this one with ThyssenKrupp). NGA HR cannot create those from thin air, but overall signs and forces are pointing to a HR BPO revival, the questions is when that will be. As shared and recorded by us many times, HR executives often get ‘cold feet’ – even after having selected a vendor for a global payroll BPO and then tend to delegate rollout decision back to the different regions. The sooner the industry and NGA as a key vendor can tackle this phenomena, the better for enterprises and players in the market. Global processes in Finance and Procurement are already best practice and reality in most enterprises today, so the question here is – when will the hammer drop for HR?

On the concern side the vendor should use its new financial freedom to rethink where it wants to build its next generation BPaaS product. The Payroll Exchange product could become a HR Core system, including employee usage. NGA HR could also look at redundant payroll offerings it has in the UK, and certainly there are innovation opportunities both for the UK centered ResourceLink and ANZ focused Preceda product. To be fair we did not get briefed in detail here, so we will be happy to revise our view on the topic when we learn more.

Overall good progress at NGA HR, the vendor now has to execute on the sales side, never easy, but something that has been done and can be done. Stay tuned.

More on NGA HR:

• Progress Report - Progress Report - NGA sees Global Payroll BPO as the future - as other businesses are under pressure - read here
• Progress Report - NGA moves on - but in many directions - read here
• NGA executes - but what is the ultimate positioning? Read here

[Disclosure: I had the honor and pleasure to run Products for NGA from Summer 2010 till Spring 2012]

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below.

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

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

#DisrupTV: Beyond MOOCS, the Transformation of Personalized Higher Ed

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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When it comes to technology advancements and disruption, what better place to start than in college? The face of the student is changing, and with technology impacting nearly every job and every individual, it’s time to rethink the traditional learning curriculum. We had the pleasure of having Phil Komarny, chief digital officer, and Marni Baker Stein, chief innovation officer, from one of the world’s largest educations systems, The University of Texas System, join DisrupTV to discuss the trends and initiatives to promote big changes in education.   

The Institute for Transformational Learning was formed in 2012 with the goal to answer the questions around influence, accessibility and affordability. As an alumna of UT, I’m proud to see my school leading the charge in the next generation of education, bringing more opportunities for students of all ages in a “lifelong ecosystem of learning,” as Phil and Marni nicely explained.

Their team is focused on a student-centric approach to tear down the typical semester, four-year degree, mid-term tests, goals and achievements normally found in colleges and universities. They are piloting programs to offer personalized experiences based on data collected from each student, which will enable him/her to move at his/her own pace while in school. The data analysis also helps the schools better understand what’s working and what’s not in order to alter programs and provide the best success rates for students at any stage of the education track. To quote UT’s fight song “The eyes of Texas are upon you” (but in a non-creepy way). The pilot programs and successes to date are highlighting a major, positive change for education.

For the full interview, check out the video below.

Be sure to also follow our guests on Twitter: Phil Komarny (@PhilKomarny) and Marni Baker Stein (@marnibstein).

DisrupTV Episode 0018: Featuring Phil Komarny, Marni Baker Stein & Kevin Nix from Constellation Research on Vimeo.