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Microsoft #Env16: Underwriters Lab: Transitioning from a Legacy to a Digital Company

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…...

Underwriters Lab is transitioning from a legacy to a digital company.

Source: Microsoft

You may not recognize the name “Underwriters Laboratory,” but “UL” is a mark you’ve seen everywhere. In fact it’s on 22 billion products, systems and materials from drywall to fire extinguishers to lamps to mattresses. The company got its start more than a century ago at the Chicago World’s Fair, where the “White City,” built to host the event on the shores of Lake Michigan, was one of the first to be illuminated entirely by electricity.

Insurance underwriters of the World’s Fair asked William Henry Merrill, a 24-year-old electrical engineer from Boston to come to Chicago and investigate how to deploy this new technology safely. Merrill never went back to Boston. He stayed in the Windy City and with $350, formed a new company that would test and develop safety standards for electricity and other new technologies entering the marketplace at the turn of the 20th Century. He called it “Underwriters Laboratory.” Today, UL uses Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure to securely store and share scientific findings and other information between employees, researchers and clients who collaborate around the world.

It wasn’t an easy transition for a company worried about security. Initially, UL was leery of trusting its intellectual property outside of the four walls of their Chicago-based headquarters. But now that they’ve enthusiastically embraced the cloud, UL can’t imagine doing business any other way. The cloud has changed the speed the company moves and helps clients, and ultimately, made it a leading innovator today, in the 21st Century. Here’s more in a video.

@drnatalie Petouhoff

Covering Customer Experience and IOT

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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Microsoft Digital Transformation #Env16 Conference: AccuWeather

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

AccuWeather is delivering access to vital, up-to-the minute information around the world.

Source: Microsoft

AccuWeather gets up to 10 billion data requests from over 200 hundred countries in 100 different languages, every day. The Microsoft Cloud gives AccuWeather the power to instantly deliver information and businesses to people when they need it most.

Lowe’s, Motorola and LiveNation are just a few examples of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions customers who use hyper- local severe weather insights to help them protect people, property and profits worldwide. Services include site-specific and customized weather warnings, short- and long-range forecasts, and weather-triggered analytics. Here’s the link to learn more.

@Drnatalie

Covering Customer Experience and IOT

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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Microsoft #Env16: Sports and Digital Transformation of Real Madrid Futbol

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Sports is the new playing field is the world of business. Real Madrid is one of the most storied futbol clubs in history. Over 113 years, the club has won 116 official trophies. FIFA has recognized Real Madrid as the best futbol club of the 20th century. Since then, they’ve won the Champions League 10 times as well as the European Cup.

And fans of the Real Madrid futbol club are some of the most passionate and loyal in all of sport. These fans, 450 million of them, are spread around the world. In fact there are more Real Madrid fans in Indonesia and the U.S. than in Spain. And more than 120 million are connected through the digital ecosystem, following the club on social networks. Soon, they will have even more ways to connect with their beloved team on and off the pitch.

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft and Real Madrid are working together to revolutionize the club, and the futbol experience, through technology. This four-year vision will change the way people engage with the game, while enabling fans to have a unique two-way conversation with the team.

A digital platform, built on Microsoft Azure, will give supporters of Real Madrid access to content and exclusive digital services at the stadium, at home or on the go. The app provides access to these experiences on phones, tablets and wearable devices, while connecting the Real Madrid faithful to the virtual pitch before, during and after the game.

Jose Angel Sanchez, the club’s chief executive officer, sees the team’s digital transformation as the next step to embracing the fans of the future. He explains that the club belongs to the people — the cloud gives the club the opportunity to connect with fans in a personalized way. Here’s a video.

@Drnatalie Petouhoff

Covering Customer Experience and IOT and Digital Transformation

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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SAP HYBRIS -Commerce, IOT, CRM Event 2016

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

After attending the SAP Hybris IOT/ CRM event, I was very impressed to see a vendor really connect the dots between commerce and customer service and customer experience. Commerce is really where the rubber meets the road. At the end of the day, if the customer experience is poor, customers will abandon shopping carts and revenue will suffer. But SAP Hybris is helping customers handle this. SAP Hybris is looking to become partners with brands in their digital transformation. They deliver customer data management, context-driven marketing tools and unified commerce processes for all a brand’s channels.

SAP Hybris Commerce Solution: This solution helps brands to target and engage with your customers better, wherever they are. As the world of commerce continues to change, this can give customers a consistent and meaningful experience – across every channel, every time. The core hybris solution ranks consistently among the top commerce software platforms worldwide. Their B2B and B2C commerce applications include an Omni-Channel Offering, Product Content Management (also known as Master Data Management or Product Information Management), Order Management, hybris Marketing Conversion, and powerful search and merchandising. And Hybris, at its core, is omni-channel. The commerce software helps integrate all digital and physical customer touchpoints onto a single platform – including online, mobile, point-of-sale, call center, social media and print. Regardless of your industry, SAP can help to create contextual, personalized and relevant customer experiences that boost loyalty and increase sales. Brands can kick-start their commerce project in just a few months through the hybris Commerce Accelerator. Omni-channel solutions are pre-configured for B2C and B2B, and for specific regions and industries.

SAP Hybris Marketing: This solution combines superior customer insight with a highly agile and scalable platform. Brands can reach their customers at all points of their journey, and boost loyalty by responding to real-time data to deliver the best possible customer experience. Note that traditional marketing campaigns can fall short at engaging the individual customer. They can lack the basic knowledge of customer’s wants and needs and blast indiscriminate messages to the masses. However, Hybris Marketing enables marketers to develop a deeper understanding of customers; i.e., to know what they have done, what they may do and most importantly what they are doing now. Brands can gain real-time insights into the context of each customer and leverage these insights to deliver highly individualized customer experiences across channels. Here are some of the benefits:

Understand Real-Time Customer Intents. Dynamically capture and enrich customer profiles across all sources into a single view, leverage implicit customer signals to gain insights into customer’s real-time intents
Deliver Unique Customer Experiences. Convert ‘in-the-moment’ opportunities to dynamically deliver contextually relevant customer experiences across channels. Create new engagements to increase online community participation and customer loyalty
Market with Speed and Agility. Proactively react to customer opportunities with increased visibility and alignment of the marketing process, resources, and performance.

Products for Billing: SAP Hybris Billing helps brands to monetize their digital transformation and renovate their revenue management processes with a highly agile and scalable platform. SAP allows customers to build flexible pricing models to meet their B2C and B2B customer needs as well as share revenues with partners of their business network.

SAP /IOT: Devices of all types now communicate over the Internet, creating unprecedented potential for sales and service in the utilities industries. IoT items include smart home appliances, thermostats, meters and monitoring software, cars, alternate power devices, irrigation technology, fleet vehicles, store sensors, networked sensors, and software integrated with machinery. All of these support a new and diverse collection of customers and consumers: more aware, expecting individualized service, and a radically changing the supplier/customer relationship. The connectivity and communication abilities of devices of all sizes will vastly change every aspect of marketing, delivery, and support of utilities, as it has done with other industries. Countries, cities, and individual consumers are making significant changes in their consumption and usage of utility-related resources. Some of these include:
>> More reliable connectivity, increased data availability, and lower price points make virtually anything connectible
>> Every business must now consider itself a digital business, regardless what product or service is being sold
> Every business must own its data and make it available across the organization and to consumers
Businesses are preparing for a future where software becomes more important than hardware and data becomes more important than products. A new generation of consumer (the prosumer) is becoming an active partner in the production and distribution cycle. What are the benefits?
Better use of a utility’s products and services, making consumption and customer relations healthier
The opportunity to upsell and/or to offer upgrades for newer, better, and more effective products and services
Predictive service based on warnings, alarms, or analytics sent by the devices themselves
Tailored pricing – flexible entitlements based on usage, frequency or time, and metering
Wider range of services– extension into new service areas
Enables direct conversations between customer devices and business platforms
Analyzes large quantities of data in real-time against defined business KPIs
Lower regulatory risk and cost of compliance through increased visibility and response.
The event was a very important one in the history of SAP. These are key aspects to the digital transformation of any company and SAP’s ability to help their customers transform key aspects of their business are critical. This is certainly not your grandpas’ CRM.
@Drnatalie Petouhoff
Covering Customer Experience, Marketing, IOT and Digital Transformation.

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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Microsoft #Env16: Digital Transformation of Growing Underground Crops

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Source: Microsoft

Digital transformation is growing an agricultural revolution 100 feet under the streets of London. British startup Growing Underground saw an abandoned air raid tunnel under the streets of London as an opportunity to experiment with ways to feed a growing population without increasing our carbon footprint. The tunnels were never built for the production of food, yet they are an ideal place for growing greens that are water and energy efficient, and pesticide free. Designed with insulation to keep people safe, the climate in the tunnels also enables the space to retain optimal heat. The urban farmers use a program from an environmental software company called Priva that runs on a Microsoft operating system and it controls everything: from the LEDs to the ventilation system to the humidity. Every element that’s needed to control the environment. They also use Surface Pros and OneNote to share information as well as everything from Excel for spreadsheets to PowerPoint for investor presentations.

Source: Microsoft

“For a start-up like ours, Microsoft Office is the essence of how we communicate.” If you ever find yourself at a farmer’s market in London, grab some fresh peas and consider a future that no one could have imagined in 1941. And imagine the benefits of growing food anywhere: abandoned mines, under the desert, anywhere.

@Drnatalie petouhoff

Covering Digital Transformation, IOT and Customer Experience

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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Will Microsoft's Hololens transform the Future of Work?

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…...

Last week we had the opportunity to take a look at the latest release of Microsoft's last version of the Hololens, the same device the vendor is now releasing to developers to build applications for the platform.

My Constellation Research Colleague Alan Lepofsky and me recorded a video earlier, take a look:

No time to read, here are my key takeaways and views in two slides:

Musngs - Will the Microsoft Hololens change the Future of Work? from Holger Mueller

MyPOV

It's the first time Microsoft has completely built and designed a enterprise platform, contrary before where it partnered, provided know how etc. And probably such a radical 'wearable' - I like to call it 'headable' requires close ownership. And all the tools are there to build Hololens apps, as Microsoft was able to show developers present at the Build conference.

On the concern side it looks like Microsoft isn't fully sure what can be done with it. At points our interactions were like that of an adventure racer who made it to stage two and now needs to figure out what to do in stage two. Fair enough, as it was far from clear if Microsoft could pull this off 15 months ago. The device was fidgy, needed a portable 'life support unit' and was tough to use. 12 months made a big difference, it can now be used as a platform.

On the positive side Microsoft has garnered large interest from enterprises. Now it comes back to get the business case right and get developers going on building the applications for the platform. There is more game development in these applications than traditional enterprise software development so it will be interesting to watch in the coming quarters where the protypical Hololens developer will come from.

But for now definitively a platform that is relevant for the enterprise space, High end productivity situations, education, engineering come to mind first. We will be watching.

Future of Work Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Tech Optimization Microsoft Chief People Officer Chief Experience Officer

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#Env16 Microsoft: Empowering People Sight Loss to Experience City Life

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

What is Microsoft up to now? Empowering people with sight loss the opportunity to experience city life.

Source: Microsoft

Everyone has a right to independence, but not everyone has the capacity. Cities Unlocked aims to set people with sight loss free to experience city life like never before. The pilot program is a unique collaboration between Microsoft, the U.K. charity Guide Dogs, and urban innovator Future Cities Catapult as well as other partners from business and academia. Even local travel is difficult and daunting with vision loss, which could be part of why of the two million people in the U.K. who have registered their visual impairment, 180,000 rarely if ever go outside, according to Guide Dogs. In the U.S., about 65 percent of people with vision loss are unemployed.

The partners worked together to create a prototype headset and mobile app that works with Bluetooth beacons placed along a given route to provide audio turn-by-turn directions, nearby points of interest (“Chiropractor, about 10 meters”), transportation updates (“No. 9 bus is approaching”) and even polite warnings (“Be aware: This is a main road”).

MS-Stories-Cities-Unlocked-Users-Train-117.jpg
(Moderate)

Source: Microsoft

@drnatalie petouhoff

Covering IOT, Customer Experience and Digital Transformation

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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Card Not Present Fraud up another 25% YOY

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

The Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) releases card fraud statistics every six months for the preceding 12m period. For a decade now, Lockstep has been monitoring these figures, plotting the trend data and analysing what the industry is doing - and not doing - about Card Not Present fraud. Here is our summary for the financial year 2015 stats.

Card Not Present (CNP) fraud has grown over 25 percent year-on-year from FY2014, and now represents 84 percent of all fraud on Australian cards.

APCA evidently has an uneasy relationship with any of the industry's technological responses to CNP fraud, like the controversial 3D Secure, and tokenization. Neither get a mention in the latest payment fraud media release (PDF). Instead APCA puts the stress on shopper behaviour, describing the continuing worsening in fraud as "a timely reminder to Australians to remain vigilant when shopping online". Sadly, this ignores that fact that card data used for organised criminal CNP fraud comes from mass breaches of databases, not from websites. There is nothing that shoppers can do when using their cards online to stop them being stolen, because they're much more likely to get stolen from backend systems over which the shoppers have no control.

You can be as careful as you like online - you can even avoid Internet shopping entirely - and still have your card data stolen from a regular store and used in CNP attacks online.

APCA says in its media release: "Financial institutions and law enforcement have been working together to target skimming at ATMs and in taxis and this, together with the industry’s progressive roll-out of chip-reading at ATMs, is starting to reflect in the fraud data". That's true. Fraud by skimming and carding was halved by the smartcard rollout, and has remained low and steady in absolute terms for three years. But APCA errs when it goes on with "Cardholders can help these efforts by always protecting their PINs and treating their cards like cash". Safeguarding your physical card and PIN does nothing to prevent the mass breaches of card data held in backend databases.

A proper fix to replay attack is easily within reach, which would re-use the same cryptography that solves skimming and carding, and would restore a seamless payment experience for card holders. Apple for one has grasped the nettle, and is using its Secure Element-based Apple Pay method (established now for card present NFC payments) for Card Not Present transactions, in the app.

See also my 2012 paper Calling for a Uniform Approach to Card Fraud Offline and On" (PDF).

Abstract

The credit card payments system is a paragon of standardisation. No other industry has such a strong history of driving and adopting uniform technologies, infrastructure and business processes. No matter where you keep a bank account, you can use a globally branded credit card to go shopping in almost every corner of the world. The universal Four Party settlement model, and a long-standing card standard that works the same with ATMs and merchant terminals everywhere underpin seamless convenience. So with this determination to facilitate trustworthy and supremely convenient spending in every corner of the earth, it's astonishing that the industry is still yet to standardise Internet payments. We settled on the EMV standard for in-store transactions, but online we use a wide range of confusing and largely ineffective security measures. As a result, Card Not Present (CNP) fraud is growing unchecked.

This article argues that all card payments should be properly secured using standardised hardware. In particular, CNP transactions should use the very same EMV chip and cryptography as do card present payments.

With all the innovation in payments leveraging cryptographic Secure Elements in mobile phones, perhaps at last we will see CNP payments modernise for web and mobile shopping.

Matrix Commerce Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Security Zero Trust Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Privacy Officer

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Microsoft Build 2016 - Event Report

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

A platform vision and plenty of tools for next generation applications

We had the opportunity to attend Microsoft's developer conference Build in San Francisco, held (where else) at Moscone. Attended by other 5000 participants, it was a different Microsoft Build, with crystal clear focus on developers, tools to increase their productivity and most importantly - build for the new platform CEO Nadella unveiled, Conversations as a Platform.

My colleague Alan Lepofsky earlier recorded this video on our key Day #2 keynote and overall event takeaways - so have a look (if you haven't seen it - Day #1 can be found here):

Our video went already way too long, I did not get to the IoT announcements that Microsoft shared - the Azure IoT Hub Device Management (in preview) and Azure IoT Gateway SDK (also in preview). In combination with the Azure IoT starter kits both offerings make it easier for enterprises to build their IoT applications, so a good move.

Event Report - Microsoft Build 2016 - All about building next generation applications from Holger Mueller

MyPOV

A clear focus on what Microsoft thinks is the emerging, next platform, Conversations as a Platform. Microsoft shared the vision and importantly, had the tools available already to build the applications for the new platform. A welcome difference to vendors putting out a vision only at first, and then a road map to when things will be delivered.

Hololens has made great progress in the last 12 months (see my First take from Build 2015 here), and for the first time Microsoft has created a new platform in the market, for a new type of applications. And it's no surprise - it is a PC - an it is a headable (if you didn't get it combination of header and wearable, I made this up).

In the past Microsoft has often been behind the market innovators on platform changes, so its a welcome difference to see Microsoft laying out an innovative vision for a software application platform (Conversations as a Platform), and creating a new hardware platform with Hololens. Now it needs to execute on both, we will be watching.

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity New C-Suite Microsoft ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Information Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer Chief Experience Officer

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CEN Member Chat: Shifting Sands of Retail

pending

Guy Courtin was formerly Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Matrix Commerce and how the Internet of Things drives the evolution of commerce.  Guy has over 15 years experience in the technology space and specifically in the supply chain space. Most recently he was the Vice President of Research at SCM World. Where he focused on the service providers that empowered supply chains. Prior to SCM World, Guy held numerous senior positions. He was responsible for product marketing at RSi, a retail supply chain solution provider. There managed RSi’s go to market strategy around their leading cloud based supply chain solutions. He also spear headed Progress Software’s supply chain group. Where he was responsible for driving revenue and market share as well…...

Constellation's Managing Editor, Chris Kanaracus, offers tips on hot upcoming research coverage. Constellation Research VP & Principal Analyst, Guy Courtin, provides his take on what's essential about the dynamic retail sector and provides plenty of ideas related to popular brands and the business outcomes enabled by technology.

Matrix Commerce Chief Supply Chain Officer

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Microsoft #Env16: Underwriters Lab: Transitioning from a Legacy to a Digital Company

Microsoft #Env16: Underwriters Lab: Transitioning from a Legacy to a Digital Company

Microsoft Digital Transformation #Env16 Conference: AccuWeather

Microsoft Digital Transformation #Env16 Conference: AccuWeather

Microsoft #Env16: Sports and Digital Transformation of Real Madrid Futbol

Microsoft #Env16: Sports and Digital Transformation of Real Madrid Futbol

SAP HYBRIS -Commerce, IOT, CRM Event 2016

SAP HYBRIS -Commerce, IOT, CRM Event 2016

Microsoft #Env16: Digital Transformation of Growing Underground Crops

Microsoft #Env16: Digital Transformation of Growing Underground Crops

Will Microsoft's Hololens transform the Future of Work?

Will Microsoft's Hololens transform the Future of Work?

#Env16 Microsoft: Empowering People Sight Loss to Experience City Life

#Env16 Microsoft: Empowering People Sight Loss to Experience City Life

Card Not Present Fraud up another 25% YOY

Card Not Present Fraud up another 25% YOY

Microsoft Build 2016 - Event Report

Microsoft Build 2016 - Event Report

MyPOV

CEN Member Chat: Shifting Sands of Retail

CEN Member Chat: Shifting Sands of Retail

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Microsoft #Env16: Underwriters Lab: Transitioning from a Legacy to a Digital Company

Microsoft Digital Transformation #Env16 Conference: AccuWeather

Microsoft #Env16: Sports and Digital Transformation of Real Madrid Futbol

SAP HYBRIS -Commerce, IOT, CRM Event 2016

Microsoft #Env16: Digital Transformation of Growing Underground Crops

Will Microsoft's Hololens transform the Future of Work?

#Env16 Microsoft: Empowering People Sight Loss to Experience City Life

Card Not Present Fraud up another 25% YOY

Microsoft Build 2016 - Event Report

MyPOV

CEN Member Chat: Shifting Sands of Retail