Avaya Unveils Customer Engagement Innovations

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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• 90% of people move between different devices[i]
• 52% of customers are less likely to engage with a company because of a bad mobile experience[ii]
• 89% of companies will compete primarily based on customer experience – up significantly from the previous two years[iii]

• A flexible, robust foundation provided by Avaya Aura® and Elite contact center solutions, which continues to lead the industry now as a 100% virtualized, 100% software-based platform that eliminates the need for hardware-based media gateways to perform important call center functions.
• Software-defined customer engagement that makes it possible to communication-enable sales and service workflows and processes through Avaya Breeze which can significantly enhance the customers’ experience.
• A full stack, turnkey solution in Avaya Pod Fx (formerly Collaboration Pod), providing  everything needed to run an advanced virtualized contact center (applications compute, storage, networking & management) all racked, stacked, cabled and configured to remove complexity and streamline operations.
• Maximum evolution flexibility through the new Avaya Secure Delivery offer which provides hosted private cloud communications for security conscious organizations (US).

• Customer defined experiences for all channels and devices – traditional voice, web & mobile chat, social, email, WebRTC-enabled, one-click mobile video and calling from any device, guided co-browsing and advanced customer service applications that simply snap-in without massive technical support.
• 360 degree customer context that makes it easy to map customer journeys across automated and assisted service channels.
• Minimized effort on behalf of the customer or business to obtain or deliver optimal service by combining analytics and automation.
• The ability to easily design workflows to create smart customer journeys that easily tap into enterprise CRM systems and bring other data into a single business process.
• Unparalleled flexibility and scale for today’s multi-modal environments that allow companies to easily adjust to changing demands.
• Simplified transition to new technology and refocus on core business advancing projects by leveraging a more secure, hosted cloud based delivery.
•  Customer choice of deployment options, including public, private or hybrid cloud, premises-based and managed services to match business policies and objectives.

What’s Your CEO Going to Do About Customer Service? Is your company ready for the next generation of customer experiences? Customers are more fickle than ever. Who can blame them? Customer Service has not been an important aspect of many brands initiatives – at least they didn’t want to put the money behind it… so it did not met customers expectations. With customer expectations rising even fast in this always-on world, companies need their CEOs to get the message and support customer service.

Does your CEO get customer service yet?

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Remembering Raymond Tomlinson: Email Trailblazer

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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Raymond Tomlinson is noted for establishing person-to-person email as we know it. He was the one that allowed people to send emails to users on other computers by choosing the @ symbol. He considered an obscure keyboard character — the @ symbol —  to separate usernames from email hosts. Tomlinson came up with the idea while working for Bolt Beranek and Newman, the software company that developed the Internet precursor ARPANET, in 1971. He passed away died Saturday at age 74.

Tomlinson said in a 2012 profile in Wired, said “I looked at the keyboard, and I thought: ‘What can I choose here that won’t be confused with a username? They were all test messages, and whatever came to hand as I put my fingers on the keyboard is what I would send.”

The innovation earned him a place in the Internet Hall of Fame earlier in 2012.The Hall of Fame wrote when he was inducted, “Tomlinson’s email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate, including the way businesses, from huge corporations to tiny mom-and-pop shops, operate and the way millions of people shop, bank, and keep in touch with friends and family, whether they are across town or across oceans.”

There have been many articles on email is dead. But from my experience, most people in corporate America still use email. Today, tens of millions of email-enabled devices are in use every day. Email remains the most popular application, with over a billion and a half users spanning the globe and communicating across the traditional barriers of time and space.

What’s your thoughts on email? Is it hear to stay or not?

Adobe and Google Partner to Create a Better Mobile Experience

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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What is the mission of Adobe?  To change the world through digital experiences.  The pace of change in how consumers engage with content is accelerating. So their mission is more relevant than it has ever been before. Consumers expect to connect with content immediately no matter where they are or what they are doing. In the personal, always-connected mobile world we now live in, the inability to deliver the right experience to the right person at the right time directly impacts engagement and the consumer relationship.

Why Did Adobe Partner with Google? Adobe has partnered with Google, alongside many others in the technology and publishing industries to support the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project and help solve the problems that are adversely affecting the mobile web experience –  namely the slow speed at which content loads and understanding audience engagement with mobile content. AMP will enable content to load instantaneously and provide a better mobile web experience for all.

What will Adobe Analytics Be Able to Measure? It will be able to measure the reach and impact of AMP experiences for publishers, while providing blazing fast speed for mobile web user experiences. For publishers, Adobe Analytics has become a fundamental part of understanding audiences, creating loyal viewers, and monetizing content, and Adobe is committed to making sure that publishers have access to the best data possible. A better mobile user experience means more browsing and content discovery for users, and quality revenue streams for publishers.  Additionally, Adobe Analytics will enable publishers to link up AMPs with their existing web data for deeper cross-channel audience understanding, and integrate this insight directly with the rest of Adobe Marketing Cloud for content and advertising optimization.

Adobe Analytics customers interested in getting started, you can download their How to Guide now: Adobe Analytics for Accelerated Mobile Pages Project

@Drnatalie petouhoff, VP and Analyst, Constellation Research Covering Customer-Facing Application

The Best Cloud Computing Companies And CEOs To Work For In 2016

Employees would most recommend Zerto, FusionOps, Google, OutSystems, AppDirect, Sumo Logic, Cloudera, HyTrust, Tableau Software and Domo to their friends looking for a cloud computing company to work for in 2016. These and other insights are from an analysis completed today to determine the best cloud computing firms and CEOs to work for this year.

To keep the rankings and analysis completely impartial and fair, the latest Computer Reseller News list, The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors Of 2016 is the basis of the rankings. Cloud computing companies are among the most competitive there are about salaries, performance and sign-on bonuses and a myriad of perks and benefits. They are also attracting senior management teams that have strong leadership skills, many of whom are striving to create distinctive company cultures. The most popular request from Forbes readers are for recommendations of the best cloud computing companies to work for, and that’s what led to this analysis.

Using the 2016 CRN list as a baseline to compare the Glassdoor.com scores of the (%) of employees who would recommend this company to a friend and (%) of employees who approve of the CEO, the table below is provided. You can find the original data set here. There are many companies listed on the CRN list that doesn’t have than many or any entries on Glassdoor, and they are excluded from the rankings shown below but are in the original data set. If the image below is not visible in your browser, you can view the rankings here.

The highest rated CEOs on Glassdoor as of February 3^rd, 2016 include the following:

• Ziv Kedem, Zerto, 100%
• Gary Meyers, FusionOps, 100%
• Christian Chabot, Tableau Software, 100%
• John Burton, Nintex, 100%
• Rob Mee, Pivotal, 100%
• Rajiv Gupta, Skyhigh Networks, 100%
• Ken Shaw Jr., Infrascale, 100%
• John Dillon, Engine Yard, 100%
• Ramin Sayar, Sumo Logic, 99%
• Sundar Pichai, Google, 98%
• Lew Cirne, New Relic, 97%
• Daniel Saks, AppDirect, 96%
• James M. Whitehurst, Red Hat, 96%
• Marc Benioff, Salesforce, 96%
• Tom Kemp, Centrify, 95%
• Jeremy Roche, FinancialForce, 95% 

The Privacy Shield - another blunt weapon

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…...

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For many years, American businesses have enjoyed a bit of special treatment under European data privacy laws. The so-called "Safe Harbor" arrangement was negotiated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) so that companies could self-declare broad compliance with data security rules. Normally organisations are not permitted to move Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about Europeans beyond the EU unless the destination has equivalent privacy measures in place. The "Safe Harbor" arrangement was widely derided by privacy advocates outside the USA, and for some years had been questioned by the more activist regulators in Europe. And so it seemed inevitable that the arrangement was finally annulled, last October.

With the threat of most personal data flows from Europe into America being halted, US and EU trade officials have worked overtime for five months to strike a new deal. Today (January 29) the US Department of Commerce announced the "EU-US Privacy Shield".

The Privacy Shield is good news for commerce of course. But I hope that in the excitement, American businesses don't lose sight of the broader sweeper of privacy law. Even better would be to look beyond compliance, and take the opportunity to rethink privacy, because there is more to it than security and regulatory short cuts.

The Privacy Shield and the earlier Safe Harbor arrangement are really only about satisfying one corner of European data protection laws, namely transborder flows. The transborder data flow rules basically say you must not move personal data from an EU state into a jurisdiction where the privacy protections are weaker than in Europe. Many countries actually have the same sort of laws, including Australia. Normally, as a business, you would have to demonstrate to a European data protection authority (DPA) that your information handling is complying with EU laws, either by situating your data centre in a similar jurisdiction, or by implementing legally binding measures for safeguarding data to EU standards. This is why so many cloud service providers are now building fresh infrastructure in the EU.

But there is more to privacy than security and data centre location. American businesses must not think that just because there is a new get-out-of-jail clause for transborder flows, their privacy obligations are met. Much more important than raw data security are the bedrocks of privacy: Collection Limitation, Usage Limitation, and Transparency.

Basic data privacy laws the world-over require organisations to exercise constraint and openness. That is, Personal Information must not be collected without a real demonstrated need (or without consent); once collected for a primary purpose, Personal Information should not be used for unrelated secondary purposes; and individuals must be given reasonable notice of what personal data is being collected about them, how it is collected, and why. It's worth repeating: general data protection is not unique to the Europe; at last count, over 100 countries around the world had passed similar laws; see Prof Graham Greenleaf's Global Tables of Data Privacy Laws and Bills, January 2015.

Over and above Safe Harbor, American businesses have suffered some major privacy missteps. The Privacy Shield isn't going to make things better.

For instance, Google in 2010 was caught over-collecting personal information throughts it StreetView cars. It's well known (and perfectly acceptable) that mapping companies use the locations of unique WiFi routers for their geolocation databases. Google continuously collects WiFi IDs and coordinates via its StreetView cars. The privacy problem herewas that some of the StreetView cars were also collecting unencrypted WiFi traffic (for "research purposes") whenever they could find it. In a dozen countries around the worl, Google admitted the breach of local laws, apologised, and deleted the collected WiFi contents. The matter was settled in just a few months in places like Korea, Japan and Austraia. But in the US, where there is no general collection limitation privacy rule, Google has been defending this practice. The strongest legislation that seems to apply is wiretap laws but their application to the Internet is complex. And so it's taken years, and the matter is still not resolved.

I don't know why Google doesn't see that a privacy breach in the rest of the world is a privacy breach in the US, and instead of fighting it, agree that the collection of WiFi traffic was unnecessary and wrong.

Other examples of European privacy law being deeper and broader than the Privacy Shield some from social networking. Over the years, many of Facebook's business practices have been found unlawful in the EU. Recently there was the ruling against "Find Friends", which uploads the contact details of third parties without their consent. Before that there was the long running dispute over biometric photo tagging. When Facebook generates tag suggestions, what they're doing is running facial recognition algorithms over photos in their vast store of albums, without the consent of the people in those photos. Identification of people without consent may be an unlawful collection of personal information about them.

In 2012, Facebook was required to shut down their photo tagging in Europe. They have been trying to re-introduce it ever since; whether they are successful or not will have nothing to do with the "Privacy Shield".

The examples cited here are special cases of the collision of Big Data with data privacy, which is one of my special interest areas at Constellation Research. See for example "Big Privacy" Rises to the Challenges of Big Data.

Capgemini Collaborates with Celaton on Artificial Intelligence in the Cloud

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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Microsoft - New Hybrid Offerings Deliver Bottomless Capacity for Today's Data Explosion

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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Earlier this week, Microsoft announced new hybrid capabilities in its storage and database offerings, which are remarkable in the way the products and offerings are set up and offer the existing Microsoft install base a path to the cloud.

 

 

So let’s take apart Mark Jewett’s blog post in our customary style (it can be found here). 

 

Applications and data are at the heart of how organizations drive competitive value and improve efficiency. However, this digital transformation is resulting in an explosion of data. Enterprises have to figure out how to get a handle on this data – how to increase their storage capacity and keep their data safe and secure, without drastically increasing IT costs.

MyPOV – Good point and in line with what we have been seeing and then saying for a while. All seven of the next generation application use cases that we track across the industries involved an explosion in data, resulting in challenges to both the database and storage tier.
 

Microsoft believes a hybrid cloud approach can offer unique ways to manage this data proliferation. We believe you should be able to take advantage of the best of the public cloud and the best of your on-premises technology. Hybrid solutions should enable mission critical, recent, or latency-sensitive data to remain on-premises, while backups and archival data can seamlessly move to low cost and nearly-limitless cloud storage. Applications and tools can access the data transparently, no matter where it is - so that it’s always available to you. And you can do it all without investing in new infrastructure, saving you time and money to focus on driving innovation.

MyPOV – Good description of the strategy. It offers enterprises an outlet to not expand infrastructure on premises, but, instead, to skip the investment cycles while satisfying the additional demand and load by moving it to the cloud, here Azure. This may be a win-win for customers and vendors; customers cannot necessarily afford to re-architect for cloud but may want to take advantage of new use cases that need to be automated. For vendors like Microsoft, this creates a way to grow cloud revenues substantially.

Microsoft is investing in building hybrid capabilities across our product portfolio to help you take advantage of all that hybrid has to offer, simply and cost effectively. Today, we are extending that commitment with new offerings in SQL Server 2016 and StorSimple that make it even easier for you to leverage a hybrid cloud model to put you in control of how you store and protect your applications and data.

MyPOV – Microsoft is executing a two-pronged approach. It brings its Azure technology stack to on premises with the Azure stack, and it allows customers to keep older Microsoft products operating on premises while extending them to the cloud. We see the latter here for SQL Server 2016 and StorSimple.

Leverage the infinite capacity of Azure with SQL Server Database updates 

This week we are introducing the SQL Server 2016 Release Candidate with new hybrid enhancements available in preview. These capabilities make it easier than ever for you to choose whether you store your data on-premises or in the cloud. These new features integrate hybrid capabilities into the market-leading Microsoft data platform product you use today, empowering you to leverage the cloud to extend capacity for your massive data growth, while ensuring your data is protected.

MyPOV – We have given Microsoft a hard time around SQL Server scalability for a long time (looks like the longest time), but now there is a clear path to extend capacity…
 

SQL Server 2016 with SQL Server Stretch Database service, a new Azure companion service, enables you to dynamically stretch your on-premises warm and cold data to Azure for virtually endless compute capacity and storage. Now you can keep as much data as you need in the cloud, up to 60 terabytes per database in preview, without the high costs of traditional enterprise storage. The Stretch Database service makes remote query processing possible by providing compute and storage in a way that’s completely transparent to the application. SQL Server Stretch Database also works with Always Encrypted technology, which encrypts data before sending to Azure and the encryption key remains on-premises to give you added piece of mind that your data is protected no matter where it’s stored. SQL Server 2016 with the new Stretch Database service enable you to keep more data accessible for deep insights at significantly lower cost.

MyPOV – We learn a new ‘Azure companion service,’ SQL Server Stretch Database, is the enabler on the Azure side. Enterprises will be happy to learn that they can move data to the cloud based on application scenarios and data temperature. It’s very good to see the support of an external (on-premises) local key, addressing the security/privacy challenge in the post- Snowden/ NSA/PRISM age.
 

Another new hybrid capability available in SQL Server 2016 is support for Transactional Replication toAzure SQL Database which expands on the existing option for replicating data to SQL Server in an Azure virtual machine (VM). With this feature you can now replicate data directly to Azure SQL Database and benefit from a fully managed database. This extends the options you have to back up your data to the cloud to ensure it’s protected in worst-case scenarios. You can also migrate data from SQL Server on-premises to Azure SQL Database – providing a simple mechanism to move data to the cloud without downtime to an on-premises database.

MyPOV – SQL Server (to the days back of Sybase) always had very good replication capabilities; it’s good to see these capabilities now put to work for moving/replicating data from on premises to Azure – there, next generation applications can be built. Being able to go from SQL Sever in an Azure VM to an Azure SQL DB is a major step and way forward out of the (older) SQL Sever code (which we have seen as an issue for many years). Giving customers a scalable cloud-based DB outlet is a major step by Microsoft and a truly good move for customers.

Simplifying hybrid storage with Azure StorSimple Virtual Array 

Azure StorSimple is another great example of how Microsoft has increased the hybrid capabilities of its products. Designed to help you increase storage capacity and data availability without investing in new infrastructure, StorSimple offers economical cloud storage or on-premises storage so you can choose where to store your data.

MyPOV – Microsoft had a precursor of the Azure stack on the storage side with the (relatively) newer StorSimple offering. Good to see that the on-premises and cloud StorSimple are now coming together.

Today we are extending the StorSimple offering with StorSimple Virtual Array, a version of StorSimple offered in a virtual machine form, now generally available. The VM enables additional scenarios, in particular environments with minimal IT infrastructure and management, for customers to take advantage of StorSimple. The virtual array is built on the success of existing StorSimple technology, which uses a hybrid cloud storage approach for on-demand capacity scaling in the cloud and cloud-based data protection and disaster recovery. The hybrid approach centers around your choice to store the most used data on the virtual array and optionally tier older data to Azure. The virtual array can be run as a virtual machine on your Hyper-V or VMware ESXi hypervisors and can be configured as a File Server (NAS) or as an iSCSI server. It also provides the ability to back up your data to Azure.

MyPOV – Wait, now it reads more like Microsoft is bringing capabilities of StorSimple from Azure to on premises via virtual machines. That makes management easier for customers who have a number of VMs to manage already. Supporting not only Hyper-V but also VMware ESXi gives customers familiar choices. So a small component of the Azure cloud stack (though Microsoft does not stake it explicitly, so I am speculating a bit here) is coming to on premises.
 

Both SQL Server 2016 and StorSimple enhancements are available for you to try out today. We hope that you’ll test drive these exciting new offerings and let us know what you think.

MyPOV – Sand boxes, pilots, test drives – always a good way to get customers on board and learn about scale.
 

Overall MyPOV

We are seeing an overall industry-wide move by the established IT giants to hybrid. Last week, it was IBM partnering with VMware (see here); this week Cisco acquired CliqR (see here); and Oracle offers to move mainframe storage out of the mainframe and/or to the cloud (see here). As mentioned above, Microsoft announced the Azure stack for on premises (see here), and now important storage and database offerings are ‘stretched’ (pun intended) to the cloud.

It’s a win-win for vendors and customers as customers can avoid discretional investment on premises. Move the investment to building new (cloud based), next generation applications, and vendors can also repurpose R&D investment and grow cloud revenue.

Closer to Microsoft’s announcement, customers need to look at the potential license and operational implications. We are sure Microsoft will get the pricing right, but the operational cost of ‘bursting’ or replicating to the cloud can be expensive, starting on the networking side.

But overall a good move by Microsoft. We will be watching for adoption and further developments – stay tuned.


More about Microsoft:

• News Analysis - Welcoming the Xamarin team to Microsoft - read here
• News Analysis - Microsoft announcements at Convergence Barcelona - Office365. Dynamics CRM and Power Apps 
• News Analysis - Microsoft expands Azure Data Lake to unleash big data productivity - Good move - time to catch up - read here
• News Analysis - Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015 - Good for joint customers - read here
• News Analyis - NetSuite announced Cloud Alliance with Microsoft - read here
• Event Report - Microsoft Build - Microsoft really wants to make developers' lives easier - read here
• First Hand with Microsoft Hololens - read here
• Event Report - Microsoft TechEd - Top 3 Enterprise takeaways - read here
• First Take - Microsoft discovers data ambience and delivers an organic approach to in memory database - read here
• Event Report - Microsoft Build - Azure grows and blossoms - enough for enterprises (yet)? Read here.
• Event Report - Microsoft Build Day 1 Keynote - Top Enterprise Takeaways - read here.
• Microsoft gets even more serious about devices - acquire Nokia - read here.
• Microsoft does not need one new CEO - but six - read here.
• Microsoft makes the cloud a platform play - Or: Azure and her 7 friends - read here.
• How the Cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
• How hard is multi-channel CRM in 2013? - Read here.
• How hard is it to install Office 365? Or: The harsh reality of customer support - read here.

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

Infographic Friday: Sports on Live TV

Russell Scibetti

Founding Editor, The Business of Sports
The Business of Sports

My name is Russell Scibetti and I have an extensive background in sports business, including CRM and database marketing, interactive and digital marketing, social media, corporate sponsorships and activation, and applied market research. From 2007 to 2014, I worked for Arizona State Athletics, Comcast-Spectacor (Philadelphia Flyers) and the New York Jets to manage and implement CRM, database marketing, market research and other technology-based sales and marketing initiatives. In 2014, I joined KORE Software as their VP of Product Strategy, where I am responsible for the strategic vision, planning and development of the KORE ProSports Ticketing, Sponsorship and Suites/Premium software products. I earned my MBA in Sports Business from the W.P. Carey…...

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It’s time for another edition of Infographic Friday. Today’s content comes to us from Statista (with data from Nielsen) who put together this simple yet powerful chart to demonstrate the dominant position that sports now holds when it comes to live television consumption.

Click here to see the original post on statista.com.

You will find more statistics at Statista

Enterprise Connect 2016: Genesys Showcases Next Generation Omnichannel Customer Experience at Enterprise Connect

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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Enterprise Connect 2016 is a  leading conference and exhibition for enterprise communications and collaboration in North America. It is being held March 7-9th, 2016 in Orlando, Florida. Genesys, a market leader in omni-channel customer experience (CX) and contact center solutions, will be particpating in the event.
Genesys and Microsoft Working Together:  The event will feature Genesys leaders in key industry discussions on topics that include contact center technology trends and managing customer journeys, as well as how Genesys and Microsoft are working together to enable collaboration between contact center agents and employees across the enterprise. Attendees can visit booth #609 to learn more about omnichannel customer engagement, take the Omnichannel Challenge and tour the possibilities of the Genesys Omnichannel Engagement Center solution with live product demonstrations.

A Note from the Executives: 
Scott Kolman, Vice President of Portfolio Marketing at Genesys said, “As the digital transformation revolution continues, many companies are searching for how to best modernize and enhance their contact center and customer experience. At Enterprise Connect, Genesys will show why omnichannel will be the standard in customer experience excellence and how companies can move toward an Omnichannel Engagement Center solution.”

If You Want to Hear from Them, Here’s the Schedule:
Genesys CX experts will share insights. Genesys leaders will participate in the following Enterprise Connect panel sessions and a joint presentation at the Microsoft booth to share insights and best practices on managing omnichannel customer journeys, cloud contact centers and market updates for the enterprise.

Monday, March 7 :  9:00am – 10:45am Eastern Time  Location: Sun B —Contact Center Market Update & Executive Forum and the participants are:

• Scott Kolman, Genesys
• Sheila McGee-Smith, McGee-Smith Analytics
• Paul Weber, Interactive Intelligence
• Chris Botting, Cisco
• Paul Jarman, inContact
• Karen Hardy, Avaya

Tuesday, March 8 : 1:15pm ET Location: Microsoft booth #162 Genesys and Microsoft – Delivering a Best-in-Class Omnichannel Customer Experience and the speakers are:

• James Skay, Microsoft
• Kay Phelps, Genesys

Wednesday, March 9 : 8:00am – 8:45am ET o Location: Osceola B Managing the Customer Journey and the participants are:

• Chris Connolly, Genesys
• Brandon Knight, Corvisa
• Sheila McGeeSmith, McGee-Smith Analytics
• Laura Bassett, Avaya
• Barry O’Sullivan, Altocloud
• Richard Kenny, Plantronics

Is Your Company Omnichannel Ready? Omnichannel engagement center solutions allow companies to more effectively manage workloads, empower their agents, and gain valuable insights that help drive business objectives—including new customer acquisition, product sales, and customer support. For companies, this move forward will provide the immediate benefits of higher customer loyalty, increased revenue, and better business outcomes, while paving the path for continued success.

The time is now to make sure you can serve your customers. Or they will be somebody else’s customer soon enough. It’s now or never.

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research, Covering Customer-facing Applications That Drive Better Business Results

NICE Systems Announces the Launch of Total Voice of the Customer (TVOC)

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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What is NICE Systems Voice of The Customer Announcement Mean to Your Company? The announcement the launch of Total Voice of the Customer (TVOC) is the latest addition to the NICE VOC suite of solutions. TVOC leverages NICE’s Voice of the Customer solution, alongside NICE’s unique Interaction Analytics capabilities and vast experience in recording calls and making sense of that information through analytics. The solution enables enterprises to listen to and register what their customers are saying — directly and indirectly — in calls, chats, emails, on the web and in any other channel and analyzing the interactions to extract implicit feedback data. With the acquisition of  Nexidia Interactive Analytics, NICE’s VOC capabilities will be even further strengthened, creating a true Customer Analytics Powerhouse. 

What is Included in NICE TVOC? NICE TVOC adds voice recordings, social engagement, chat logs and other digital channels to multi-channel surveys, in order to deliver a complete picture of customer disposition. It also leverages the power of the reams of data captured during millions of conversations to yield valuable, actionable insights into customers’ thoughts, including those not obtained in surveys.

What Should Your Brand Be Striving For Around Single View of the Customer? Achieving a single view of the customer across multiple channels is among today’s top challenges for customer experience management. NICE TVOC helps solve this pain point with its unique ability to deeply analyze the unstructured content of the customer communication across all channels. The insight derived can be used in conjunction with other data to map emotional expression to observed behaviors in order to understand customer desires, motivations and actions.

How Does Nice’s Integration of VOC Affect Quality & Performance Management? NICE’s portfolio integration allows the organization to drive VOC into areas such as Quality Management, enabling it to make the maximum impact on its customer experiences, and with Performance Management, so that companies can reward their employees for creating the desired customer experience and coach those who are falling short.

Miki Migdal, President, NICE Enterprise Product Group:
“There are many ways to survey, but in a multi-channel world you need more than just survey questions. Instead you need to listen at key inflection points in the customer lifecycle so that you can understand problems that result in a lower customer satisfaction score and may ultimately lead to customer churn. With NICE Total VOC not only can you understand customer emotion, you can see which actions you need to take to build customer loyalty and brand advocacy.”

My POV: There’s nothing more important than the voice of the customer. This integration makes it easier to really understand customers and be able to deliver awesome customer experiences. What are branding competing on? Customer Experience. Period. Seriously. You are a customer, you tell me. When you have a good experience do you buy from that company again? And when you have a bad experience, do you hesitate to buy from them again? I made my point.

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research