Is Email Dead Or Very Much Alive in Our Work and Play?

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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Some people say email is dead. Other’s know it’s not because they spend over half their day checking and responding to email. To find out how prevalent email is in our work and play life, Adobe did a study to explore how present email is in our “always on” world and to understand the opportunity their is to take this proven channel to the next level with digital marketing. To read more about the study, click here. Who Did Adobe Survey? Adobe surveyed of 400 U.S. white-collar workers and asked about their use of personal and work email. They complemented this by surveying marketers and using Adobe Digital Index (ADI) resources to answer questions about email marketing and its impact in the cross-channel environment. Adobe surveyed marketers to answer the question about email marketing and its impact in the cross-channel environment, the following reveals some of those preliminary findings.

What Did the Study Reveal?

• 9 out of 10 consumers constantly check their personal email from work and their work email at home; on average they spend nearly six and a half hours each weekday on email.
• Respondents reported commonly checking their email while engaging in other tasks such as watching TV/movies (70%), while in bed (52%), vacationing (50%), talking on the phone (43%), using the bathroom (42%), while driving (18%).
• 58% of respondents say that email is their preferred way to be contacted by a brand, however, consumers want fewer emails (39%) and fewer repetitive emails from brands to make email offers less annoying/intrusive (32%).  This suggests the customer experiences – especially on mobile – ought to be top-of-mind for marketers.
• More than one-third of respondents (34%) said they have created new email addresses to get away from spam messages, so relevance and personalization are increasingly important.
• Almost half of the respondents said they think their use of email in both work and personal communications will increase over the next two years.
• Surprisingly, Millennial consumers are even more email-dependent than the average adult. This is likely due to their mobile use; 88% of Millennials check email on smartphones, compared to 76% who use desktop or laptop computers.

MY POV: eMail is not dead. These results suggest that there is an opportunity for email as a key channel in a cross channel strategy – with relevance and personalization as guiding principles for effective email marketers.  Email marketing is at its maximum effectiveness when it’s fully integrated across all phases of the campaign strategy.

It may seem as though marketers generally play down the significance of email early in the campaigns, but the data needed to mount an effective email campaign is being collected during research and consideration phases of customer engagement. Then, as marketers follow the customer through acquisition, conversion and retention, email can kick into action to exercise its impact and power. While it can be very confusing to keep up with all the various channels, email still seems to be a very relevant one, when used wisely.

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

 

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

IOT: Salesforce Introduces Lightning Console and Wave Analytics App for Service 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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By 2020 it is estimated that there will be over 50 billion connected devices. And that means that consumers will be more connected than ever before, across mobile phones, wearables and other devices and the field of IOT will continue to expand. So if consumers are more connected, what does this mean for companies? If customers expect to be able to interact, engage, purchase and get service through any channel, companies need to step up to this challenge.

What Companies Need To Consider With the Expansion of IOT:  While we have been talking about a seamless customer experience for years, companies that want to keep their business and gain market share will have to really examine their ability to deliver a seamless experience to these ultra-connected consumers during each and every interaction, across every channel. That’s the case for customers interacting with the company. But what about when customer wants to get help from an customer service agent?

IOT and Customer Service Agents: For customer service agents to be able to support all the new channels as well as make sense of all the data being generated from all these channels, they need new, smarter solutions that allow them to better respond to customers. Customer Service agents need to know the history of the customer’s visits to various channels, purchases, customer service requests, etc.. However, often time agents don’t have access to any of that historical data or consumer behavior data to predict the next best actions.

Why Are Companies Struggling with The Seamless Customer Experience? Companies struggle to deliver on these expectations because their company and contact centers are filled with technology from 20 years ago. These legacy technologies are not connected to the products they sell or the channels their customers are now interacting win.

Bottom-line, many companies are well not equipped with the tools they need to deliver answers quickly. So when companies come to me and ask, “How do I succeed in this world where the seamless customer experience can no longer be ignored?” My simple answer (which is really a complex answer when you look under the hood) is that companies need to transform their customer service strategy, and enable agents to deliver smart and fast customer service across every channel. And we all know it is easier said than done. The great thing is the technology can deliver on these promises, but it takes people to lead and integrate the strategy and technology into their organization.

Agent Productivity Gains: New Service Cloud Lightning Console Sets a New Standard for Agent Productivity  As part of helping to solve the issues companies are facing, Salesforce’s Service Cloud is bringing to market the new Service Cloud Lightning Console. It has been reimagined with a modern, efficient and intelligent experience for agents. And the the Lightning Console is built on the Salesforce1 Platform. Lightning Console includes:

• Optimized Lightning Console: The new Lightning Console gives agents a highly-productive experience that provides everything they need at their fingertips. Agents can dramatically speed up common actions like creating new contacts, registering products and processing returns—all without losing the context of the interaction or needing to switch screens.

• Smart Productivity Tools: The new Lightning Console also enables agents to be more productive by allowing them to apply more intelligence to every case to resolve them quickly. Recommended Tools use algorithms to help agents by suggesting relevant knowledge articles, macros and recommended actions from similar cases, and are presented proactively right in the console.

• Intelligent Routing and Presence: The Lightning Console includes omni-channel routing and presence so the right work is dynamically routed to the right agent at the right time, resolving customer issues faster. Managers have transparency into what work has been assigned to which agents, each agent’s capacity and can push specific work to the most appropriate agents.

• Service Lightning Components and the Lightning Design System: With Salesforce Lightning, service teams have a platform for innovation that enables agents to connect with customers in entirely new ways. Salesforce Lightning combines Lightning Experience, Design System, Components and App Builder, extending the Salesforce1 Platform to empower anyone to easily create modern, service-specific apps. And companies can use Salesforce Lightning and Components from the AppExchange to extend Service Cloud with any app.

If you remember, (I know it’s difficult to keep up with all the new software!) last year, Salesforce launched Analytics Cloud, powered by the Wave Platform, to reimagine the entire analytics process end-to-end, and empower business users to explore any data and uncover new insights on any device. And earlier this year, Salesforce expanded its Analytics Cloud portfolio with Wave Analytics Apps. So what’s new?

Today, Salesforce is announcing its latest Wave Analytics App—Service Wave Analytics: It is the first analytics app built for Service Cloud. It arms service teams with deeper, more actionable insights that help service agents and leaders instantly optimize channels, improve agent efficiency and spot or address emerging trends. Service Wave Analytics will deliver:

• Analytics for Service Leaders: Key performance indicators—including average handling time, customer satisfaction and first call resolution—can be instantly explored through pre-configured templates developed to give service leaders with the metrics they need to take the pulse of their team’s performance. The insights can lead to a decisions so service leaders will be able to act instantly. Service Wave seamlessly connects to Service Cloud workflows and records, so managers can instantly assign a task, escalate a case, update a ticket or share best practices—right within the Service Wave App. For example, a service team leader can conduct a real-time review of each agent’s performance metrics across channels or against service cases across products to instantly improve case management, agent efficiency and channel optimization—from anywhere, on any device.

• Analytics for Service Agents: Analytics dashboards from Service Wave can be embedded directly into the Lightning Console, giving every service agent an instant 360 degree view of the customer right where they work, taking agent productivity to new heights. For example, an agent who is talking to a customer and reviewing their service case in the Lightning Console will have both traditional customer and case history data alongside Wave insights on similar cases right at their fingertips, enabling them to deliver smarter service faster than ever. In addition, each agent can have a personal scorecard to track their performance in comparison to their peers, as well as identify top performing colleagues who can share best practices.

• Native to Service Cloud: Service Wave’s native integration with Salesforce enables every service professional to be up and running in minutes to instantly explore Service Cloud data. In addition, operational data from other customer service systems? such as call logs, chat history, CTI data and web clicks can be surfaced. Now, teams can create custom dashboards and lenses to explore this data alongside traditional performance metrics to quickly diagnose problems, alleviate bottlenecks or proactively re-allocate service resources. For example, a service leader no longer has to wait for an analyst to deliver insights on operational data, or spend time cross-referencing static spreadsheets to determine the correlation between an outdated knowledge article and lengthy case resolution times for a specific product.

To learn more about this announcement, you can find more information here:

• Service Cloud at http://www.salesforce.com/service-cloud/overview/

• Salesforce SOS at http://www.salesforce.com/service-cloud/features/sos/

• Service Wave Analytics at http://www.salesforce.com/form/analytics/service-wave-overview.jsp

• Service Wave Analytics demo at http://www.salesforce.com/form/analytics/service-wave-demo.jsp

Your Next Steps: Every individual has to take a hard look at whether they and their organization is prepared for a seamless, customer experience, especially in Customer Service. It’s even more important now than ever, because, Customer Service IS THE NEW MARKETING.

Brands can’t sell to customers that are mad. Customer Service issues have to be dealt with and studies show that a customer with a problem that got solved is more loyal than a customer who never had an issue with a company.

Why is this the case? Because the customer knows the brand has their back. And that’s pretty much all customers want. They don’t want brands to be perfect, they want them to be human, responsive, relevant, helpful, concerned and fix their issues. That’s what creates loyalty.

You have to ask yourself, if your company’s Customer Service capabilities are up to speed or will your brand be left behind? And if it’s not up to spend, what can you do to change that paradigm?

@Drnatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

Bluenose: Customer Success Management for a Post-Sale, On-Demand, Attention Economy

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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In the next part of my series, I’d like to feature Bluenose. Bluenose Analytics offers a customer success platform that allows SaaS businesses to manage customers with complete visibility, a robust early warning system, and built-in playbooks.

Bluenose’s co-founders were both born in Halifax, Canada. They named the company for something they had in common. The Bluenose is a well-known racing sailboat from Halifax, a schooner with three masts that competed around 1900. The Bluenose was virtually undefeated in competition.

Before the opt-in economy, many businesses focused on the initial sale. Organizations spent a significant amount of money on advertising and marketing to potential prospects. The goal – enticing them to convert from a lead to a sale. Despite decades of research showing that after-sales service directly affects the financial stability of a company, organizations paid little attention the after-sale experience and financial longevity of the client. Consequently, organizations never should have spent millions, or in some cases, billions of dollars in advertising, marketing and sales to then drive the customer to a competitor when the after-sales service experience was horrible. Yet, poor after-sales service occurs every single day in many, many companies.

Customer Success Management (CSM) is based on the ability to deliver a consistent customer experience process – before, during, and in particular, after the sale – which results in maximized customer lifetime value and enhanced revenue that leads to increased margins and profits. A shift to CSM happened because we live in a continuous, opt-in economy, where the value of customers is determined by how long they stay customers and if they continue to increase their purchase amounts over time. Because of our opt-in economy, companies must prepare themselves to deliver great, continuous and consistent customer experiences.

This seismic shift to a post-sale, on demand, attention economy transforms the value exchange among customers, partners, suppliers, and brands. And as organizations move to digital business models, CSM plays a critical role in enabling brands and organizations to keep and deliver their brand promise as well as enhance their bottom line.

When choosing the best option for CSM software for your organization, the choice will depend on the business goals of CSM initiatives, the degree to which CSM has been integrated into your culture and how well employees have adopted this mindset. It may be that some organizations will be further along the adoption cycle, while others will need internal champions to encourage and enforce the use of customer success software, processes and best practices.

Data to Decisions Drives the Democratization of Insight

The CSM field has been spurred on by the need to provide after-sales service intelligence that can be turned into actionable insights and decisions. Holistic, data-driven decisions require a multi-disciplinary approach that incorporates performance monitoring with traditional business intelligence technologies.

A multitude of data sources can be transformed into information streams guided by business process. As context is applied to information streams, patterns emerge that provide nuggets of insight. That insight then drives the ability to take action and make better decisions. This shift to using insight not only can serve high-margin, “luxury” brands, but also should be considered for all businesses through an investment in CSM. By transforming business models to include processes that immediately turn data into decisions, brands and organizations gain the ability to provide great, loyalty inspiring experiences that reduce churn and increase revenue.

Customer Success Management Field Sees Tremendous Growth

Through conversations with clients, prospective buyers, system integrators, partners, and vendors, Constellation sees five big themes in customer success management (see Figure 1)[1]:

1. Delivering a brand promise instead of a product or service requires new approaches. The onus of delivering on the brand promise – providing great experiences with a company no matter when the customer interacts with it – is putting new pressures on brands and software vendors. This means the business model of both must shift. A company’s business model must move post-sales care to a more mature level. This evolution requires a different mindset and approach to customer lifetime value.

Figure 1. Five Areas Needed to Master Customer Success Management

2. Companies who believe in customer experience build CSM organizations. Not all CSM organizations are created equally. In an opt-in economy, the economic value of a customer is realized over time, instead of in the upfront sale. This means that organizations that want to become CSM-oriented are looking at three main areas:

• Hiring, training and rewards for employees
• Becoming a center of excellence for CSM
• Strategy combined with data

3. CSM cultivates more customers, lowers churn, and improves margins. The reason many companies have adopted the opt-in business model is that they realize, when they consistently deliver great experiences, they have loyal customers who advocate for the brand and often will make referrals. Advocating for the brand can be in the form of a post in a social network or offline in telling friends or family of their experiences.
4. Predictive analytics identify known attributes and reveal previously unknown attributes that drive customer success. The only way to preserve a company’s revenue stream is to keep customers opting in. To become a CSM organization, a company has to actively manage customer relationships to ensure the customer is getting value. This critical step requires data in the form of real-time and predictive analytics.
5. Integration of the Internet of Things and predictive analytics improves precision of decisions. The amount of data and analytics that CSM platforms provide is important, especially when data from sensors and other sources (that make up the Internet of Things) is integrated into the solution to provide a company with predictive analytics and actionable insights that drive better and more precise decision making throughout an organization.

[1] See “The State of Customer Success Management 2015” by Natalie Petouhoff, Constellation Research, December 22, 2014.

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

Cisco and Apple Partner to Drive Enterprise Sales

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 Research Inc. He…...

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Partnership with Cisco Signals Apple's Seriousness About Growing Enterprise Sales 

On August 31st, 2015 at the annual Cisco sales kick-off, Global Sales Experience (#GSX), 20,000 attendees witnessed a surprise appearance by Apple CEO Tim Cook with Cisco’s Chairman, John Chambers.  The surprise announcement brought forth a new alliance designed to boost sales for both organizations in the enterprise.

Key insights:

• Improved experiences.  Apple and Cisco are partnering to improve the experience for iPhone and iPad in the enterprise.
• Creating a technology differentiation.  By reducing redundancy and improving caching, enterprise users will experience better performance from iOS devices and Cisco Networks.
• Driving reliability.  Cisco networks will be optimized for easy connections for Apple devices to improve reliability.

Here’s the quick video analysis of the deal (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Video Analysis Of The Cisco – Apple Announcement

20150831 Apple Cisco announcement from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

The Bottom Line: Apple Is Serious About Partnering To Grow Enterprise Sales

From the IBM deal last year, to this Cisco deal, Apple shows its commitment to growing in the enterprise.  More importantly, Apple could have tried to enter the market by itself, howver, it realizes that good partnerships are key to success.  In fact, Apple knows who they are and what they are good at.  As with future partnerships, expect Apple to identify alliances where they can deliver complimentary skill sets and of course drive iPad and other iOS device sales.  Based on the rumors of a Tim Cook appearance at #BoxWorks, one can expect another announcement some time soon.

Your POV.

What do you think of the partnership? Do you think Apple has the right strategy?  Will Cisco sell more networking with the Apple partnership? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Resources

• Event Report: Oracle Open World 2014 – Day 1 #OOW14
• Event Report: Day 1 At Oracle Open World 2013: The Quest For Innovation #oow13
• 20130629 News Analysis: Oracle’s Cloud Disruption Webinar Recording
• 20130625 News Analysis: Oracle’s Cloud Strategy – Revisionist History or Cloud Genius?
• 20121231 Market Maker 1:1: Steve Miranda, Oracle Fusion Applications Update – The Inside Story
• 20121001 Event Report: The Day 0 And Day 1 Tweet Stream From OOW12

• News Analysis: Infosys One-Year After Vishal Sikka August 4, 2015
• Event Report: Sage Summit 2015 Shows A Refocus On The Future Of The SMB Customer July 29, 2015
• News Analysis: Inside The Rationale Behind @LinkedIn Turning Off Its CSV Connections Download Tool July 25, 2015
• News Analysis: How @LinkedIn Is Creating A Personal Data Hostage Crisis For Its Users July 25, 2015
• Tuesday’s Tip: Apply For A SuperNova Award – Recognize Leaders In Digital Business July 21, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 10 From Disrupting Digital Business – Segment By Digital Proficiency Not Age July 12, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 9 From Disrupting Digital Business – Deliver Intention Driven, Mass Personalization At Scale July 2, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 8 From Disrupting Digital Business – Democratize Distribution With P2P Networks June 22, 2015
• Webinar Invite: Delivering on Continuity – The Future of Marketing June 15, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 7 From Disrupting Digital Business – Humanize Digital With Digital Artisans June 14, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 6 From Disrupting Digital Business – Win With Network Economies June 10, 2015
• Product Review: Two Apple Watch Enterprise Apps Launched With IMS Health Life Sciences Wearable Platform June 7, 2015
• Event Report: Zuora’s #Subscribed15 Shows How Organizations Can Power Their Digital Transformation Initiatives May 31, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 5 From Disrupting Digital Business – Build For Insight Streams May 31, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 4 From Disrupting Digital Business – Know That Data Is The Foundation May 25, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 3 From Disrupting Digital Business – Sell The Smallest Unit You Can May 17, 2015
• Webinar Invite: Disrupting Digital Business – The Customer Experience Imperative May 16, 2015
• Quips: Networked Economy Models Emerge Should Verizon Gain Approval To Acquire AOL May 12, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 2 From Disrupting Digital Business – Keep Brand Promises In An Attention Economy May 10, 2015
• Research Summary: The Correct Way to Use Customer Data May 6, 2015
• Event Report: Insights Into The New NetSuite At SuiteWorld 2015 May 9, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 1 From Disrupting Digital Business May 3, 2015
• Personal Log: Read Chapter One of Disrupting Digital Business April 22, 2015
• Press Release: Registration Opens for Inaugural Constellation Digital Disruption Tour April 16, 2015

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy,stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website. * Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt. Copyright © 2001 -2015 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved. Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience.

 

The post News Analysis: @Cisco and @Apple Team Up At #GSX appeared first on A Software Insider's Point of View.

Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization New C-Suite Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Data to Decisions Event Report box cisco systems SoftwareInsider AR 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 Executive Events Robotics Metaverse developer Quantum Computing Social Healthcare VR CCaaS UCaaS 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 Chief Financial Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer Chief Experience Officer

Can VMWare Compete in the Public Cloud? A Pre-VMWorld 2015 Analysis

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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En route to VMWorld 2015. This will be my third VMWorld as an analyst, and it has been truly interesting to watch VMWare grapple with its biggest challenge--competing for marketshare in the public cloud.  

First of all – let’s understand the challenge. VMWare is the uncontested leader when it comes to on-premise virtualization of computing loads of enterprises. But as enterprises look for public cloud and SaaS loads – VMWare needs to change to remain relevant.

 

Coming into VMWorld 2013 – two years ago – my un-briefed understanding was that VMWare ‘did not get public cloud’. Presentations, Briefings, Q&A with Paul Maritz and the new CEO Pat Gelsinger dispelled this. It was clear that executives understood both challenge and opportunity of the public cloud.

 

Leaving VMWorld 2013 my understanding then was that it was the commercials. Similar to many on premise vendors, I thought VMWare not to be motivated to a quick acceleration of enterprise loads to the public cloud, as the switch from perpetual to subscription licensing would not be advantageous financially. Coming into VMWorld 2014 with that understanding I was convinced by strategy czar Ayyar that actually subscription revenues are better (heard that before) but that also VMWare would ultimately extract more revenue from customers in the subscription business model.

 

During VMWorld 2014 it became clear to me that VMWare had a product issues. It had to build infrastructure and products for public cloud. A very high developer number to be hired / working in the division of public cloud exec Fathers was in play.

 

But before VMWorld 2015 we have not heard much on product announcements / roadmaps. But maybe VMWare was holding back for VMWorld this year.

Anyway – we will know in a few hours …. 

 

But I wanted to share how my understanding of what VMWare is struggling with in my view – and what is holding the vendor (and thus customers) back. Stay tuned for updates from VMWorld this week. 

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

Tech Optimization vmware 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 Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer

#Socbiz #FutureOfWork News - Week Ending Aug 28, 2015

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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Here is a recap of some of the key news of the last week in the Social Business / Employee Collaboration / Future of Work world.

 

Did I miss something big? Please post a link in the comments.

 

Reference Links:

What's New in IBM Connections and Verse, August 2015

Pat Sullivan talks about Ryver and how they'll compete against Slack

Slack's new Add-To-Slack button

BetterWorks new Head of Revenue and integration with Slack, Successfactors and Jira

Clarizen's Summer Release

Workfront raises $33M

DropTask releases beta of native Window's desktop app

Redbooth releeases beta of Window's, Mac and Linix desktop app

Fuze now avilable on the US Government's General Services Administration (GSA) list

Portal Solutions Unveils OneWindow Workplace, Social Intranet Solution For Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft releases SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview and cloud hybrid search

PeopleLinx raises $3.5 million #SocialSelling

Introducing Clipping and ClipBoards on LinkedIn SlideShare

Alan Lepofsky's 5 Social Business Trends Influencing the Future of Work

 

Future of Work

Stitch Labs: Democratizing Commerce and Empowering Retailers

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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Stitch Lab’s mission is to democratize commerce and empower retailers by providing resources to improve their businesses as well as their employee’s lives. Stitch is an online inventory control solution that simplifies multichannel retail business. It automatically syncs inventory, orders, and sales across channels, providing retailers with operational efficiencies and a holistic understanding of their businesses. This enables retailers to save time, make better decisions, and grow. They are a VC backed company, with VCs: True Ventures and Constanoa.

Stitch Labs creates a central command for a business and bring all a business’s solutions together in Stitch. A business can save time by automating inventory and order information across their sales channels, shipping solutions and accounting systems. A company can know what’s in stock in real-time, track inventory quantities across their channels and warehouses from one location. And business can use various views to quickly see what products are available, running low, or awaiting to be replenished.

Businesses can managing multiple sales channels without increasing their workload. And they can save time by automatically syncing inventory availability across their webstore, marketplace and POS channels in one inventory management system. Businesses can even create and publish new listings in a snap.

Stitch Labs has many integrations, including those with sales channels like Amazon, eBay, Big Commerce, Esty, Magento, StoreNVY, Vend, Square, Shopify, SparkPay, WooCommerce as well as shipping and accounting capabilities with Shipstation, ShippingEasy, Xero, Quickbooks, Stripe, Authorize.net, Google Analytics, PayPal, Stripe, etc..

Stitch Lab’s product includes inventory, multichannel, orders, operations, reporting and pricing.  If you are not sure this is the right solution for you, they offer a free trial, which is great — so you can try before you buy!

 They also have earned a number of awards, including:

MY POV: Retail effectiveness and efficiency is key to making a business run well. And being able to know what inventory is where and having the ability to switch it to a channel that has orders versus keeping it a channel that is not performing as well, doesn’t make sense. What does make sense is to automate that process and that is what Stitch Labs does and more!

@DrNatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

 

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

Event Invitation: Come Join Us For A Silicon Valley CXO Day At Connected Enterprise #CCE2015

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 Research Inc. He…...

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Join me at the annual Silicon Valley CXO Day on the third and final day of Constellation’s Connected Enterprise.   Hear from over 200 business and technology leaders whom will discuss the future of innovation and digital transformation.

Attendees will:

• Engage with CXO panels from disruptive tech leaders across Silicon Valley
• Understand the latest digital trends affecting Silicon Valley
• Learn from the career development panel
• Network with 200+ C-level business and technology leaders
• Ensure you’re attuned to the disruptive trends affecting Silicon Valley, and connect with like-minded technology visionaries at CXO day on Friday, November 6, 2015.

Here’s a small sample of the companies attending and or presenting at this year’s event:

• Aetna
• Applebee’s
• Atlanta Falcons
• Bemis
• Box
• Capital One
• Carters
• Citibank
• Clorox
• CLP Power
• Coca Cola
• Daily Mail Group
• Disney
• Emirates
• Florida Crystals
• GE
• Harvard University
• HP Enterprise
• IMS Healthcare
• Johns Hopkins University
• Kelly Blue Book
• Keller Williams Realty
• Las Vegas Sands Casino
• LPL Financial
• Maricopa County
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• MIT
• NFL
• Pacific Coast Producers
• Phillips
• SF Giants
• Shorenstein Companies
• Stryker Corporation
• Tesla
• Tribune Media
• University of Mississippi Medical Center
• Universal Studios
• US Government
• Yahoo!

Register soon!

If you are interested in attending CXO day, and can not attend the first two days of the conference, please contact me here:

See you at #CCE2015!

Copyright © 2001 – 2015 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

The post Event Invitation: Come Join Us For A Silicon Valley CXO Day At Constellation’s Connected Enterprise #CCE2015 appeared first on A Software Insider's Point of View.

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Join Us For A Silicon Valley CXO Day At Constellation's Connected Enterprise #CCE2015

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 Research Inc. He…...

Read more

Join me at the annual Silicon Valley CXO Day on the third and final day of Constellation’s Connected Enterprise. Hear from over 200 business and technology leaders who will discuss the future of innovation and digital transformation.

Attendees will:

• Engage with CXO panels from disruptive tech leaders across Silicon Valley
• Understand the latest digital trends affecting Silicon Valley
• Learn from the career development panel
• Network with 200+ C-level business and technology leaders
• Ensure you’re attuned to the disruptive trends affecting Silicon Valley, and connect with like-minded technology visionaries at CXO day on Friday, November 6, 2015.

Here’s a small sample of the companies attending and or presenting at this year’s event:

• Aetna
• Applebee’s
• Atlanta Falcons
• Bemis
• Box
• Capital One
• Carters
• Citibank
• Clorox
• CLP Power
• Coca Cola
• Daily Mail Group
• Disney
• Emirates
• Florida Crystals
• GE
• Harvard University
• HP Enterprise
• IMS Healthcare
• Johns Hopkins University
• Kelly Blue Book
• Keller Williams Realty
• Las Vegas Sands Casino
• LPL Financial
• Maricopa County
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• MIT
• NFL
• Pacific Coast Producers
• Phillips
• SF Giants
• Shorenstein Companies
• Stryker Corporation
• Tesla
• Tribune Media
• University of Mississippi Medical Center
• Universal Studios
• US Government
• Yahoo!

Register here before August 31, 2015 to secure your early bird ticket.

If you are interested in attending CXO day, and can not attend the first two days of the conference, please contact me here: contact[at]ConstellationR[dot]com

See you at #CCE2015!

 

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Low Digital Marketing Acumen Is Hurting Brands

Partner, Sensei Marketing
Partner, Sensei Marketing

Sales & marketing veteran with almost 30 years’ experience and now 1800 digital projects to his credit for clients including Morgan Stanley, AOL, Hyatt Gaming Management, Snyder's of Hanover, Hitachi, the Home Depot, Kraft Foods, Drees Homes, American Idol, and hundreds more, including leading agencies around the North America.     ...

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There’s a discrepancy, it seems, between the amount of time marketers spend talking and blogging about digital marketing and their likelihood to actually execute digital marketing efforts.

From the volume of articles written, conferences attended, and twitter chats participated in, one would assume that all marketers and the brands they represent are completely digitally savvy and thus taking advantage of all that the medium offers. A variety of reports I’ve encountered recently seem to suggest the opposite; marketers’ low digital marketing acumen is hurting brands or maybe it’s just their lack of confidence? In either case, it’s worth exploring.

In December of 2014, CMO.com published an article that suggested 2015 would be the “year of digital transformation.” It highlighted the change in attitudes among marketers from the previous year in which marketers seemed less aware or keen about digital channels.

“These days digital transformation is top-of-mind for CMOs, and it reaches all corners of marketing,” the site reported. Many are still not putting their money where their mouths are.

Low Digital Marketing Acumen Is Hurting Brands

In a study created to better understand the reasons why digital marketing ranked below traditional media advertising in co-op programs offered by brands, Netsertive and Borrell Associates discovered that a lack of digital marketing understanding was behind the slow adoption.

82% of marketers responding to the survey indicated they preferred accessing co-op marketing dollars for newspaper advertising, 71% offered direct mail and radio. According to the study, marketers’ lack of comfort or understanding of digital marketing resulted in “$14 Billion in brand co-op marketing funds simply left on the table each year.”

In a January 2015 article on 2015 digital marketing trends for Econsultancy, Ashley Friedlein postulates that’s there’s really nothing new that will occur this year. While “there’s been a lot of investment in digital over the last decade…we are a long way from the seamless, omni-channel, personalized customer experiences we talk about.” He cites the fact that we’re all talking about customer-centricity but are failing to utilize technology to “connect-the-dots” between strategy and execution.

Measuring The Wrong Metrics?

One argument put forth in our office here at Sensei that may explain the number of marketers still unwilling to embrace digital marketing, is the lack of measurement offered by campaigns or the fact that they’re measuring the wrong thing.

Despite the amount of technology, experience, and education available, marketers still seem to gravitate towards soft metrics including impressions and clicks instead of attempting to tie activity in online engagement to long term effects on customer lifetime value. There’s a lack of vision in many marketers today that prevents them from seeing the bigger picture and the benefits such measurement could realize for their departments and budgets.

To be fair, many marketers are tied down by limited budgets and the demand for short-term results imposed on them by  company executives and shareholders. This pressure also forces marketers (and the ad procurement firms they hire) to drive CPM or Cost Per Thousand (Impressions) down, which means they’re purchasing the low-quality or risky online inventory.  While this strategy may drive short-term metrics like clicks up, it decreases meaningful metrics, such as conversions and effect of LTV, down.

The Missing Link: Customer Lifecycle and ROI

Salesforces’s 2014 The State of Marketing Leadership suggests that “86% of senior-level marketers agree that it’s absolutely critical or very important to create a cohesive customer journey.”  Yet only 17% report having fully integrated the customer journey into their marketing strategy and reporting metrics.

As reported by CMO.com, Kurt Anderson, the CMO at SAVO, suggested that marketing analytics reporting tools will become just as common as Web site analytics tools in 2015.  “The end has come for making marketing decisions based on gut instincts; everything marketers do in the digital world can now be tracked, from the first click all the way to the deal close. CMOs who do not embrace and accept this concept will likely not be CMOs for very long.”

True words, yet there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between the need for tracking and what needs to be tracked.  Until executives embrace the need for a long-term view of digital marketing, and fund customer lifetime value measurement, this disconnect will continue and the money that is invested in digital marketing will not produce the ROI it can or should.

Sensei Debates

Are brand marketers still reluctant to invest in digital marketing strategies?
If so, what’s the reason?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego.

Marketing Transformation Chief Marketing Officer