A Report from ADP Analyst Day: New UI, Vantage Talent Management, and ADP Data Cloud

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…...

We had the opportunity to attend the ADP Analyst Day in New York today, ADP commanded the 'usual suspects' to New York (though we learnt some like to be called pundits) into their amazing innovation lab in the heart of Manhattan.

I was joined by fellow Constellation analyst R 'Ray' Wang so we recorded a short video summary of the event... take a peek:

If you can't watch - here are the top 3 takeaways:

The new UI ADP showed us last year and then rolled out to paycheck and selected use cases is now been rolled out to 80% of ADP applications. That by itself is a massive undertaking, but will help customers get more out of their ADP products, which in some cases sported more than pedestrian user experiences.
The ADP Talent Management product Vantage has also received the new user interface and with that the 'grey is gone' mission has been accomplished, except for the recruiter experience which is supposed to follow soon.
The ADP Data Cloud is one of the most exciting offerings in the ADP portfolio at the moment, helping customers to make more sense of their data. It also offers 'true' analytics to users, about key HR practitioner questions. Remarkably the product supports also the capability to include 3rd party, non HCM data, thus enabling insights beyond the traditional stovepipe contained intelligence approach.

Tidbits

ADP makes progress for multinational companies (MNCs) - bringing together products and services, now for over 104 countries and 99% of global employee population.
ADP is so comfortable of its products that it let the analysts use the new Onboarding solution, which was both an entertaining as well as educational way to get to know the ADP applications.
The ADP market place is now at over 60 partners and growing fast, a good sign. Good to see business user enabled purchases options, which is the latest bastion to call in the overall IT trend to empower business users more (IT liking it or not).

MyPOV

Compared to previous summits ADP showed overall less innovation, but that's a good sign for customers, as innovations are being built into product. Mainly that's the new user interface is responsive, can be embedded in 3rd party products, so overall a very positive experience.

On the concern side ADP must now execute on the sales side. The numbers shared for customer growth are encouraging, but ADP show it can really go to cloud scale - beyond the product, but also in marketing, sales, implementation and support. Closer to product the scalability and TCO of its proprietary cloud infrastructure will also be tested (we did not get briefed on it).

But for now all signs are positive, ADP has eliminated a number of challenges it faced in the market, so time to look at ADP with a fresh mindset, it's not your father's ADP. Stay tuned.

Tata Consultancy Services Analyst Day: What Stands Out?

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,…...

TCS says it’s now among the top-four in consulting and business process services in terms of brand recognition. Here are three ways TCS differentiated itself at its annual analyst day.

Descriptions of consulting services, business process solutions and outsourcing options are often hard to differentiate from one provider to the next. Here are three things stood out to me at this week’s Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Analyst Day 2015: plentiful customer case examples, positioning around taking some of the artisanal (meaning, bespoke and costly) quality out of consulting, and the IT-focused nature of the IGNIO neural automation technology.

The theme at the TCS event was “Default is Digital,” meaning that most every enterprise now aspires to capitalize on five familiar digital trends: mobility and pervasive computing, social media, big data and analytics, cloud and robotics (a.k.a. automation). TCS surpassed $15 billion in revenue last year, and it presented third-party research here that shows that the company is now in the top tier of consulting and systems integration firms (after IBM, HP and Accenture) as measured by brand recognition. TCS has boosted that recognition in part through worldwide sponsorship of endurance running events including the New York City Marathon.

These are among the common themes TCS identified as moving us toward digital enterprises.

TCS says it’s helping its clients with two big imperatives. First, there’s industrializing software and processes so they just work in cost-effective, automated and repeatable ways. Second, and more importantly, it’s helping companies to reimagine the art of the possible by exploiting game-changing digital capabilities such as pervasive computing and big data and analytics.

We heard at length about TCS consulting, business process solutions and outsourcing services, but it’s hard to tease out clear nuances among similar-sounding services across the many consulting and systems integration firms. As I explain in the video below, I was most impressed by the real-world customer examples presented, including one presented by an “industrial services firm” executive who was there in person. Unfortunately we were asked not to share the name of his firm, but it’s an industry giant that’s strongly associated with Internet of Things innovation.

EVENT REPORT: INSIDE TCS ANALYST DAY 2015 from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

MyPOV on TCS Analyst Day

To get beyond the sound-alike buzzwords and categories of service offered by consulting and business process solutions and outsourcing firms, it’s crucial to explore customer case examples that fit the areas and kinds of challenges you’re trying to address. All the better if the firm can name the names of the firms and share executive references. TCS has lots of slick customer testimonial videos, but it’s only in conversation and in in-depth case studies that you get to the unvarnished truth and detail of an engagement.

Perhaps the most differentiating point I heard at TCS Analyst Day came from Krishnan Ramanujam, VP & Global Head, Consulting and Enterprise Solutions, who said that TCS is taking a “disruptive” approach by taking some of the “artisanal quality” out of consulting engagements. That means it’s looking to apply repeatable approaches and solutions in non-differentiating areas while applying unique expertise and customer-specific solutions at the core of the engagement.

Citing one example, Rumanujam said TCS was able to complete an engagement in less than five months at a cost of $3 million for one client where “high profile rivals” had bid $30 million and $16 million, respectively, and were looking for engagements of 18 to 24 months. One lynchpin of this strategy, says Rumanujam, is working with existing clients, so TCS has a leg up on understanding the firm’s operations and challenges and can avoid lengthy fact-finding interviews and exploratory analyses.

One other stand-out presentation at TCS Analyst Day detailed Ignio, which is this firm’s entry into the cognitive computing and artificial intelligence arena. Launched in June, Ignio is about “igniting change,” and the idea is to replace robotic automation with what it calls neural automation. Instead of having to explicitly program rules and automation – an approach that doesn’t scale and doesn’t last, due to rapid change within organizations – TCS says it has equipped Ignio with human-brain-like contextual awareness, composable skills and pattern-recognition capabilities. When you plug it into your data sources and systems, it autonomously learns about the technical functioning of an enterprise and automatically and proactively spot poor system performance and looming problems without human guidance.

What stood out about Ignio is that it’s squarely focused in the IT domain rather than tackling business process challenges. In that sense Ignio seems less ambitious than, say, IBM Watson or other cognitive computing initiatives. It’s aimed at the keep-the-lights-on challenges that consume the bulk of IT’s time, and that’s a good place to target next-gen automation capabilities. It also presents a technology solution to a technical audience first rather than expecting business people to trust and pioneer a new capability. It’s a conservative approach that just may be the most realistic way to wade into the cognitive arena.

Data to Decisions Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer

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Infographic Friday: The 2015 Marketing Rugby World Cup

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…...

It’s time for another edition of Infographic Friday. Today’s content comes to us from Synergy and @SynergyTim who put together a great set of marketing insights from the 2015 Rugby World Cup. It has a little bit of everything from broadcast rights and kit sponsors to Twitter mentions and TV ratings.

Check out the full infographic below or click here to see the original version via @SynergyTim on Twitter.

Marketing Transformation Sales Marketing Next-Generation Customer Experience Innovation & Product-led Growth Chief Marketing Officer

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Technology is changing, but what is making everything change? A summary of change factors in technology and business in 2015 Part I

Andy Mulholland

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

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

After a semi sabbatical summer; semi in the fact that I continued to actively follow the industry, its business customers and attempt to understand implications; sabbatical in the sense that I didn’t try to react to each announcement or event individually; instead I was looking for a bigger picture to form. This is the first part of three posts breaking the picture down into the natural divisions of ‘causes’; ‘responses’; and ‘good practice’.

The big picture this far into 2015 is one of strategic change in the face of increasingly obvious disruption to ‘Business as usual’. Current IT industry leaders, together with major global enterprises in multiple sectors have, and are, announcing new goals with new enabling partnerships frequently of an unlikely nature. Everywhere, in every sector, are new startups creating the disruption in previously well-defined market sectors forcing established leaders to react. (see footnote 2).

Any successful competitive positioning has to understand what is the root causes enabling, and driving, this disruption, and how can my business successfully harness them. But can this question be answered in an understandable manner?

In aggregate the totality of these changes to cover is too much to absorb, and too ambitious for a single blog piece! But there is a relatively simple set of foundations forming the starting point to building a comprehensive understanding and that’s the starting point for this blog. Once again as with the blogging format used last winter to explain emerging IoT from simple concepts through to more complex issues and deployments there will be a linked series of blogs, alternating each week between the Technology enablers, and the Business drivers. But to start with a surprisingly clear big picture, or high level, summary of what is at the heart of this change; and in a word the answer is de-centralization.

De-centralization; The transfer of decision making power and assignment of accountability and responsibility for results. It is accompanied by delegation of commensurate authority to individuals or units at all levels of an organization even those far removed from headquarters or other centers of power.

Source; the business dictionary.

Every aspect of the world, including politics, is now showing increasing sign of de-centralization arising from the low cost technology empowerment of individuals to participate in powerful informed manner. There are two important core technology elements that have brought this about;

A redefinition of Moore’s Law in 2015 would state that every eighteen months the cost of a processor of the same power will halve; Similarly redefining the lesser known Metcalf’s Law from the 1980s LAN era would state that the number of devices that can interact with networked resources is the logarithmic value multiplier rather than the original Laws focus on connectivity for application transactions.

Combine those two elements; add simplicity in usability, the increasing technology awareness and capability of the population as a whole, and the result is to see the traditional barriers, (high levels of investment, substantial support costs, and expensive training) that have prevented de-centralization all start to dissolve. (It is worth noting that both laws in their original forms actually underpinned, and supported, the path of technology towards bigger, more expensive, centralized enterprise computing using client-server in support of the then business imperatives of Back Office transformation with IT and ERP).

This is a level of disruption in the ownership, and use, of, resources to both create, and satisfy, market demands akin to the scale, though exactly in the opposite direction, of the shift in the nineteen twenties and thirties into mass production that made many products affordable. However massive investment in expensive resources to create scale certainly limited the numbers of enterprises that could compete for, and remain in control of, the new markets. The resulting affordability of many items led to the creation, or enlargement, of many markets; a popular example is the automotive industry where reducing prices exploded the overall size of the market, both in numbers of buyers and in total revenues, but diminished the numbers of automotive manufacturers.

Nearly one hundred years later the basis for many business models arising from huge centralized investments that restrict market change and competitive entry is being destroyed. Today huge resources in computing, marketing, or any aspect of business are available as a hosted service allowing new players to enter almost any market with an innovative disruptive approach. De-centralization also allows a new competitor to assemble exactly the resources required…. with little capital investment.

The side effects of affordable mass manufacturing for consumers (buyers) is increased standardization in products usually with a reduction in number of suppliers; for the manufacturer the challenge is constant price/margin erosion as price/cost is the basis of the competitive element. Whilst it is true that many business models are built around business-to-business operations, as Economists are quick to point out the end point of all business lies in consumer purchases.

Affluent consumers are seeking individuality and are prepared to pay for it, suddenly making small and personal an important part of any new product, or markets. Competitive choice and differentiation becomes as, or even more, important than price; a welcome move in re-establishing margins for successful enterprises who master the new Digital Business game.

When consumer (buyer) choice is no longer limited to locality, or a handful of previously dominate large companies; and resources are no longer expensive constraints to new competitive entrants, or products; the result is disruption to the majority of business activities. Moreover this is a disruption on the same scale as the introduction of massive scale and resources that signaled the destruction of localized and craft production based markets one hundred years ago. The very revolution that created most of today’s successful global enterprises!

The realization that Digital Business is about adding a new online capability to your existing business model, but is the disruptive recreation of your industry sector is dawning rapidly in Boardrooms as sector news and financial results are the cause of serious evaluation.

Part two of this blog will examine examples of how global Enterprises and startup businesses are creating new markets by using these change factors
In judging the awards for Constellation Research Connected Enterprise annual Super Nova competition it was extremely noticeable that new hardly known startups dominated the entries submitted by their satisfied customers. In each case the change achieved could truly be described as both innovative and disruptive, whilst the outcomes for the enterprise and its business were remarkable and substantial. See Constellation Connected Enterprise for more details on awards.

Read more about Technology is changing, but what is making everything change? A summary of change factors in technology and business in 2015 Part I

TCS "gets" disruption - invests in IaaS, BPaaS

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

We had the opportunity to attend the TCS analyst summit in Boston, the event was well attended, with over 50 analysts (my estimate) in the audience.

Before leaving Boston I recorded this short video - so take a peek:

Here are the key takeaways:

TCS understands all areas of disruption well, and has customers live in all areas from Customer Experience over IoT to digital transformation.
The provider is running its own IaaS in India, UK, US and Australia, the TCS Cloud is being rolled out further into the Nordic Countries and Canada.
TCS has made investments into enabling the BPaaS (Business Process as a Service) - with TAP - TCS Accounts Payable, supporting 40+ countries today.

MyPOV

TCS is well aware of the fundamental transformation that is happening to the consulting, system integrator and outsourcing services space. Wage arbitration is a diminishing factor, so it is good to see that TCS not only understands the new disruptive scenarios, but also masters the technologies and has customer references to show in each of them. Promising are also investments on IaaS side as well as the BPaaS side.

On the concern side we see a services vendor building more product, never an easy transformation, that so far has only happened in very few occasions. TCS executives understand that there is a one time opportunity to capitalize on in regards of building next generation products for the best practices of the infinite computing era, I missed the presentation of the ignio platform due to schedule issues.

And last but not least - a compilation of key tweets from the event:

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience Tata Consultancy Services AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Analytics Automation B2B B2C CX EX Employee Experience HR HCM business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology eCommerce Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer

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Google launches Cloud Dataproc

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

This morning Google launched the beta version of Google Cloud Dataproc - a new offering that will interest BigData projects being undertaken.

Here are the key takeaways in case you can't watch:

A combined Hadoop / Spark instance can be setup in less than 2 minutes - significant simplification for developers of BigData projects.
All embedded into the rest of the Google Cloud Platform - other tools are available (e.g. BigQuery, BigTable etc.).
All embedded with the rest of the commercial side of Google Cloud Platform - minute based bllling, presciptive instances etc.

MyPOV

A good move by Google, bringing two dynamic (and complex to tame) and popular opensource technologies. Well integrated with the rest of Google Cloud Platform - and substantial documentation and how to guides are out there, so a good launch by Google.

It is likely there will be alternatives from other cloud players soon, enterprises should check the assumptions and operations that Google (and others) plan. And a 'beta' label is always a sign of caution in the enterprise.

More about Google:

Musings - Google re-organizes - will it be about Alpha or Alphabet Soup? Read here
Event Report - Google I/O - Google wants developers to first & foremost build more Android apps - read here
First Take - Google I/O Day #1 Keynote - it is all about Android - read here
News Analysis - Google does it again (lower prices for Google Cloud Platform), enterprises take notice - read here
News Analyse - Google I/O Takeaways Value Propositions for the enterprise - read here
Google gets serious about the cloud and it is different - read here
A tale of two clouds - Google and HP - read here
Why Google acquired Talaria - efficiency matters - read here

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my Youtube channel here. Data to Decisions Tech Optimization Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Next-Generation Customer Experience Future of Work Hadoop Google developer SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer

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Tuesday's Tip: IOT and The Death Of OmniChannel Non-sense In Customer Experience

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…...

Stop Thinking In Channels And Start Thinking In Settings and Scenes

As organizations realize they are no longer selling products and services but delivering on experiences and outcomes, the shift to delivering on a brand promise requires the ability to deliver mass personalization at scale. This is the heart of delivering digital business value. However, many of today’s customer experience discussion focuses on linear customer journeys across multiple channels and often discuss the need for delivering on omni-channel.

Unfortunately, with the advent of internet of things (IOT) and customer experiences, omni-channel is not good enough for digital. The design point must deliver on channel ubiquity across a wide variety of settings and scenes. Why? Digital customer experiences:

Move from channels to settings and scenarios. Navigating experiences by individual channels creates a disjointed experience in mobile, in-person, online, chat, and phone. Settings and scenarios in IOT take into account multiple contexts and channels. Some examples of settings include an office, a conference room, an elevator, a car, and a living room. Scenarios accommodate multiple customer journeys into each settings.
Deliver rich relevance through context. Role, relationship, channel, identity, time, temperature, geo-spatial location, heart rate, and sentiment help provide the context attributes to deliver mass personalization. Expect multiple context attributes in every scene and scenario delivered from beacons and other sensors in IOT.
Provide natural user experiences based on identity. Identity provides an initial context and enables access and permissions. Ambient identity in IOT adds to user experiences by taking the friction away from validating identity.

Scene 1: A Day In The Hospital As A Visitor

Setting 1: Lobby

You walk into the hospital and it searches to see who you may be there to see. The patient has already provided a list of approved visitors and you are automatically guided on your smart phone to the nearest elevator bank. A suggestion is made as this is your first visit to go by the gift shop.

Setting 2: Gift shop

You enter the gift shop and the shop already knows you are new. A 15% of coupon is offered. You choose a bouquet of flowers and go to check out. The clerk informs you that the patient is allergic and suggests a bouquet of balloons instead.

Setting 3: Elevator bank

As you head back to the elevators, the elevator tells you that your family member is on 4th floor, the cardiac unit. As you get off, you have an option to download all the latest information materials on cardiac health.

Setting 4: Patient room

You get into the patient room to visit your family member. As next of kin, it knows to give you access to the latest chart, connect you to a chat with the physician if needed, and also alert the nurse that you have arrived.

Scene 2: A Day At The Office.

Setting 1: The Building

Imagine you start your day at work and walk into your office building. The security system already recognizes that you are in the building and as you walk into the building, you are asked if you want to go to your floor, the 10th floor, or catch up with your boss on the 8th floor, or talk to your customer who’s arrived early in the customer visit center on the 4th floor.

Setting 2: The Elevator

As you get to your floor, your admin automatically sends a request to you on your smart phone for a lunch order for the day and your meeting schedule opens up for your next 3 hours. All the relevant work files come up for viewing. A chat session with your team opens up so you can monitor any questions related to you.

Setting 3: The Conference Room

You enter your meeting and no longer have to take notes. The meeting is automatically transcribed with speech recognition and knows who is in the room and what languages they speak. A chat session automatically starts for everyone that should be in the meeting.

Setting 4: The Car

You leave work and get into the car. The car automatically pulls up your last call and asks you if you want to dial in. Related notes and presentations come up on the screen based on who you are talking to. The car notices you are out of energy so it asks if you want to go to the nearest station.

The Bottom Line: The Future of Customer Experience Delivers Intention Driven, Mass Personalization At Scale

Delivering on these customer segments of one will require a few foundational concepts:

Choose your own adventure type of journeys. With no real beginning nor end, expect these systems to work like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Funnels fall aside as customers, partners, employees, and vendors jump in across processes, make their own decisions, and craft their own experiences on their terms. Journey maps must account for infinite journeys and support the customer centric points of view.
Continuity of experience. A customer may start an experience on a mobile device, carry it with them to a car, jump into the office, and then come back to the home. Regardless of channel, device, platform, or situation, context is carried. Experiences are delivered with massive context and personalization. While customers do not expect a disruption in the experience, they do expect relevancy regardless of the context.
Intention driven design. Currently the fashionable approach is predictive. Predictive does a great job of using past history to predict future patterns. Intention driven tests for shifts in patterns by setting up hypotheses and awaiting the results. If we know a person always gets a specific type of coffee at the same time every day. that’s predictive. An intention driven system will test to see what type of coffee is purchased based on time of day, weather, relationships, location, and even sentiment gathered from heart rate or actions. The test comes from an offer or studying shifts in patterns and behaviors. This self learning and adjusting capability is powered by cognitive computing approaches.

Your POV.

Are you ready for IOT in customer experience? Will you move from linear customer journey mapping to consider settings and scenes? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Please let us know if you need help with your Digital Business transformation efforts. Here’s how we can assist:

Developing your digital business strategy
Connecting with other pioneers
Sharing best practices
Vendor selection
Implementation partner selection
Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
Demystifying software licensing

Data to Decisions Next-Generation Customer Experience Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Tech Optimization Leadership Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Experience Officer

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The hidden dark side of connected vehicles – Volkswagen’s electronic tinkering

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…...

The big bombshell news today on the IoT (internet of things) front was that Volkswagen was caught programming their diesel vehicles to behave better during emission testing. I guess that is much more sophisticated then when a car dealer would roll back the odometer on a used car! The fall out of this news was immediate. The company’s stock tumbled as much as 20%, seeing almost $17b of market value disappearing from Volkswagen AG. Unfortunately for the German automotive giant the pain is not about to end. The United States Environmental Protection Agency, warned that it could levy a fine as high as $18billion for the infractions. Ouch.

This will be a severe blow to Volkswagen, but it will have some other repercussions as well. A new reason for some to pooh-pooh IoT. I recently wrote a blog post that called out some backlash we are seeing when it comes to connected things. While some may scoff and laugh at such connected items as cat water bowls, jars and socks, I would argue the business plans behind those are not as silly as one might think. Click here for my post. But the cause of that backlash is real. Over-hyped and overpriced connected objects for the sake of it, does not make sense. There has to be a business model associated with the connected item.

It is the same with the stories that come out about someone’s connected skate board being hacked. Yes there is the potential for mischievous acts being perpetrated. But remember that over a decade ago online banking and shopping also fell under the fear mongering – your accounts and credit cards are not safe!!!!! And yes…some breaches have occurred. But as I recall Jesse James and Billy the Kid robbed brick and mortar banks long before the internet. That created a lot of fear, yet people in modern society still having bank accounts…in brick and mortar banks as well as do plenty of on line banking and shopping.

Now I am sure we will hear fear mongering about the companies that are doing the connecting finding some way to “get away” with something. And from the looks of it Volkswagen is guilty of doing so. But this just means that regulators and governments will have to do a better job monitoring. This does not mean that a connected car is now a bad thing. With all new technologies there is a learning curve: for consumers, the creators of the technology, the oversight of the usage and the business models best served. We are only beginning to scratch the surface when it comes to IoT. There will be bumps and abuses of the technology, but there continues to be great promise. Let’s not let the worry mongering detract from the possible.

Data to Decisions Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer

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What to Expect at Connected Enterprise: The SuperNova Award Gala Dinner

Find out who wins this year's SuperNova Awards for innovators in disruptive technology. The winners will be announced LIVE at Connected Enterprise! Constellation will announce the winners of the SuperNova Awards at the SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner on the second night of Constellation's Connected Enterprise.

There's still time to register for Constellation's Connected Enterprise: http://www.constellationevents.com/event/constellations-connected-enterprise-2015-3/

SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner

The SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner is an awards ceremony during which we honor SuperNova Award participants past and present, and announce the winners of this year's competition.

2014 SuperNova Award Ceremony from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

When: November 5, 2015 7:00p.m. - 10:00p.m.
Who: honorees include SuperNova Award finalists and winners; all attendees of Constellation's Connected Enterprise
Winners: official list of winners will be available November 5, 2015 on the Constellation blog

The Constellation SuperNova Awards are the first awards to recognize individuals for their courage in battling the odds to introduce disruptive technologies to their organizations.

2015 SuperNova Award Finalists

Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite

Russell Foltz-Smith, TrueCar
Daniel Hart, MEDHOST
Craig Pavia, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade & Development Canada
Martin Brodbeck, SterlingBankcheck

Data to Decisions

Rasim Manavoglu, MUDO
Joshua Marshall, State of Indiana
Alda Mizaku, Mercy Health
Jamie Oswald, Mercy Health
Mike Peterson, Neustar, Inc.
Scott Salter, Cox Automotive
Sam Savage, Barclays

Digital Marketing Transformation

Naveen Gunti, Tumi Holdings, Inc.
Tushar Patel, Innotas
Michael Seminara, Janome America
Dan Sichel, Mind Share World
Tom Vu, Atmel Corporation
John Sahagian, Baxter Credit Union

Future of Work

Asha Aravindakshan, Ashoka
Geoff Corb, Johns Hopkins University
Cris Debord/Kenny Bailey/Brandon Garner, Dollar General
Steve Nava, Luminex
Hadi Partovi, Code.org
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The New Salesforce UI, Intelligence and Integrations Help Employees Get Work Done

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…...

Last week in San Francisco, Salesforce held their annual Dreamforce conference. This year's attendance was announced at 150,000 people... regardless of the accuracy of that number, it's safe to say the event is massive. With announcements of new product features (in Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud, Service Cloud), new partnerships and ecosystem expansion (Apps Cloud), and new platforms (IoT Cloud powered by Thunder) there is far too much news to cover in one post. Luckily, Salesforce does an excellent job at making video replays of the keynotes available, so you can catchup on anything you missed. Also, at the end of this post I have provided links to several posts written by my colleagues that provide excellent analysis.

For this post, I've chosen to focus on the following three key announcements, and how they contribute to improving the way people get their jobs done.

1. The new Salesforce Lightning User Interface

2. SalesforceIQ for Small Business and SalesforceIQ for Sales Cloud

3. Future Integrations With Microsoft Productivity Applications

Modernizing The Look, Improving The Usage

While Salesforce introduced several new features, perhaps the most significant announcement was the updating of the Salesforce User Interface (UI) with what they call the new Lightning Experience. Forget about the new name and marketing, what this really means is that the almost decade old look of Salesforce has now been updated with a much more modern style. Icons for key product areas are now available down the left side, and the main screens have been redesigned to provide more information in the centre along with supporting information in a sidebar on the right side.

Employees will most likely welcome this new look, but it will take a little while to get used to. Customers should not worry about additional training costs, as Salesforce provides several resources to get people up and running quickly, such as this short overview video.

Linking Data, Finding Patterns and Making Recommendations

For me, the most interesting announcements of the week centered around the rebranding and evolution of RelatedIQ (acquired July 2014) into SalesforceIQ. What this tool does is bring "intelligence" into the sales cycle. By intelligence, Salesforce means linking together your email, calendar, personal contacts and company's CRM data, then looking for patterns and making recommended actions that could help speed up the sales cycle. For example, SalesforceIQ can help you find the people in your organization that may already be connected with a prospect listed in your pipeline. Also, SalesforceIQ introduces a new inbox that links together your email, calendar, files and Salesforce... reducing the need to switch between multiple tools. Rather than me explaining further, watch the follow two short videos:

SalesforceIQ for Small Business

SalesforceIQ for Sales Cloud

I really like the direction SalesforceIQ is going in. As my readers know, I am very focused on the intersection of analytics and collaboration, looking at ways data can be used to help people focus on the right things and connect with the right people. This is exactly what Salesforce is starting to do. Additionally, Salesforce also recently acquired Tempo.AI (smart calendar) but that has yet to manifest itself in SaleforceIQ. For now, SalesforceIQ is focused on sales use-cases, I look forward to seeing if they bring similar "intelligence" to Marketing, Community and Service clouds.

Caution: Speaking with several people at Dreamforce, there is some confusion between the two versions. When should a company use the SMB version, and when should they move up to the Sales Cloud version? Why even have the two versions? Will there be feature parity between the two? Salesforce has attempted to answer some of these questions in a FAQ, but I think it will be a while until this is al clearly understood. Pricing for SalesforceIQ starts at $25/user/month, but quickly jumps to $65, $125 or $250 depending on the features you need.

Seamless Collaboration and Business Processes

The third big announcement that will impact the daily use of Salesforce is the upcoming integration with Microsoft's collaboration and productivity tools. While today there is integration with Outlook, Excel and a few other products, Microsoft and Salesforce have vowed to further integration between their two industry leading platforms.

I've already written about this announcement in detail, but the four areas they have placed onto the 2016 roadmap are:

- Skype for Business, providing presence awareness inside Salesforce and allow for seamless web conferencing, chat and VOIP calls
- OneNote, enabling note taking to be linked directly to Salesforce records
- Office Graph and Office Delve, so surface Salesforce content inside Microsoftâ€™s new search and discovery UIs
- Salesforce1 Mobile App for Windows 10

Here is short video that talks about the planned integrations.

Helping People Get Work Done

Over the last few years Salesforce has evolved dramatically from a company that helped Sales Reps keep track of their deals to a platform that supports several business functions (such as Marketing, Support, Community) and thousands of partner applications. Each of the announcements above support the idea of improving the way people get their jobs done. From a fresh new user interface, to leveraging data to make informed decisions, to integration with the most popular productivity tools... Salesforce is focused on helping people get work done.