Tealium Announces Data Connectors to Major Marketing Clouds: Oracle Responsys, Silverpop and StrongView

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…...

Read more

Tealium is currently known as a market leader in enterprise tag management and solutions. Today Tealium announced new data connectors that allow enterprises to integrate rich audience profile data into leading marketing clouds, including Oracle Responsys, Silverpop (recently acquired by IBM) and StrongView. Tealium also announced today an email integration with the Salesforce ExactTargetMarketing Cloud.

My POV: What seems most significant about this that most Marketers probably have a number of different types of marketing applications, from different vendors. Often one vendor does not provide all the capabilities that a brand would want, so they end up having to buy several different vendors. Before this Tealium’s connector, it was more difficult to be able to integrate audience profile data into ALL of the separate applications. The connector now makes it possible to connect all the best in breed software solutions and maximize the value of their marketing cloud investments and launch more profitable and relevant remarketing campaigns.

AudienceStream is a complementary service for Tealium iQ, the company’s market-leading tag management solution, which provides a foundational data layer to sync all cloud-based marketing applications and make them more actionable.

How does this work? Tealium provides a foundation platform that enables enterprises to build their own marketing cloud, and with Tealium they can enable these best-of-breed point solutions to share data for the first time to drive more personalized and impactful marketing campaigns across channels. The new email connectors, which are built into Tealium AudienceStream, the company’s award-winning audience segmentation and action engine, provide for deeper integration with leading marketing cloud vendors, including the ability to trigger real-time marketing interactions based on cross-channel behavior and visitor personas.

Here’s Some Highlights:

• The new connectors are part of an action-focused integration marketplace within AudienceStream that includes email, CRM and retargeting vendors. Tealium will soon be announcing additional integrations with key vendors spanning content management, site optimization, and more.
• With AudienceStream, marketers can create on-the-fly segments around their most actionable triggers and events, and then distribute that information to email vendors in real time via the connectors. This enables users to set up timely email interactions based on any combination of visitor behavior or achievement, such as cart abandonment, product interest, lifetime value and much more.
• Combined with AudienceStream, the new connectors enable marketers to bring fragmented data together in real-time, as opposed to the 24-48 hour delay that most marketers face due to traditional, resource-heavy data integration approaches. This empowers marketers to drive immediate action and superior results.

Wondering What Customers Are Saying About Using the Tealium Connectors?

Ancestry.com: “With StrongView and AudienceStream, we can target and take action on our visitors within seconds, across channels, instead of having to chug through terabytes of data via traditional data processing methods,” said Jer Tippets, analytics implementation specialist at www.Ancestry.com. “This is a powerful technology integration that will help us better engage our customers, and ultimately drive more subscriptions and revenue.”

Wondering What Vendors Are Saying About Using the Tealium Connectors?

Silverpop: “Our customers want to deepen brand loyalty, deliver more meaningful experiences, and take action in real time,” said Will Schnabel, senior vice president of business development for Silverpop. “Timely insight into customer behavior is the key to successful re-marketing campaigns. By joining forces with Tealium we ensure that our customers are receiving rich, real-time, cross-channel customer data that that can be used to trigger high-value marketing interactions.”

StrongView: “Contextual marketing is the bold new frontier for email marketing, but it does require marketers to find a better way to understand and leverage cross-channel interaction data in real-time,” said Shawn Myers, vice president of marketing at StrongView. “Empowering marketers with the rich customer data available through Tealium is just another way StrongView is helping marketers understand customer context and embrace its vision of Present Tense Marketing.”

*********************

Tealium: Ali Behnam, president and co-founder at Tealium said, “The release of these integrations is a milestone in Tealium’s mission to provide enterprise customers with the ability to unify all of their marketing efforts, and maximize the value of their marketing investments.  Tealium is helping marketers to close the ‘action gap’ by providing them a platform to send the right message to the right person at the right time. We are proud to partner with these leading email marketing vendors in the space.”

If you want to follow more about what Tealium is doing, you can check out their social communities:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tealium
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tealium
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/tealium

If You Want Some Basic Details About Tealium, Here You Go:
Tealium helps savvy brands bring order to marketing chaos and engage customers in innovative ways. Using Tealium as the foundation for their digital marketing operations, smart marketers can fuel real-time unified marketing initiatives and drive more profitable customer interactions across all digital touch points. Tealium is the recognized leader in enterprise tag management, and was recently named one of Forbes’ Most Promising Companies in America for 2014. Each quarter, Tealium serves 1.2 trillion tags on behalf of its global clients, representing an estimated $75B in annual online transactions. For more information, please visit http://www.tealium.com.

SharePoint Search: Beyond eDiscovery

X1

Barry Murphy is the Senior Vice President of Product Marketing and Strategy at X1.  In this role, Barry leads X1's product marketing function, aligning X1's offerings to market needs for search and information access, eDiscovery, cloud and virtual search, and social discovery. Barry joins X1 from eDJ Group, where he was an analyst and thought leader in information governance, eDiscovery, records management, and content archiving. Previously, Barry was Director of Product Marketing at Mimosa Systems, a leading content archiving and eDiscovery software provider. He joined Mimosa after a highly successful stint as Principal Analyst for eDiscovery, records management, and content archiving at Forrester Research. Barry received a B.S. from the State University of New York at…...

Read more

I had the pleasure of conducting a SharePoint eDiscovery webinar with Patrick Burke of Reed Smith for the OLP last week.  The subject is fascinating because finding, preserving, and reviewing SharePoint content in the litigation/investigation context can be so challenging.  The metadata users add to content (e.g. workflow tasks), the web page interface that creates more native ESI than just a document, and the decentralization of SharePoint deployments make eDiscovery for SharePoint a topic unto itself.  Often lost in this topic is the issue of end-user search of SharePoint.

When I talk about end-user search in SharePoint, most people just assume that the search functionality baked in to the product (Microsoft acquired FAST Search & Transfer several years back) is enough.  In some cases, that will be correct, but in others it does not work to give business users efficient access to information.  Some companies have standardized on SharePoint as an enterprise content management (ECM) platform while others have some departments that use SharePoint for sharing files and managing specific business processes.  In either situation, the reality is that business workers store information in multiple places – SharePoint, email, network file shares, etc.  To find that information is often a frustrating task of switching from application to application only to have a subpar search experience.

Consider the screenshot below of a search experience in SharePoint:

Click to enlarge

The experience leaves something to be desired in that I have to execute several more clicks on the left to do any kind of filtering and, in the result set itself, it is very difficult to know if any of these are the document I am looking for because I can’t see the document itself.  I would need to open it first.  In addition, as a business worker, I probably don’t know if I should be looking in email, file shares, or SharePoint for the document I need.  I know I saw it somewhere, but can’t remember where.  In this search experience, if I don’t find what I am looking for in SharePoint, I now have to go search my email and then my file system.  It adds up to a waste of time.

Now, consider a unified, single-pane-of-glass approach:

Click to enlarge

In this user interface, I can search across email, files, and SharePoint.  I can see a full-fidelity preview of the attachment.  I can refine on any kind of metadata.  It is a positive search experience that is helpful and allows me to be efficient.  More and more people realize now that this unified access to information is critically important. That may be why SharePoint guru Joel Oleson said, after a X1 Search 8 product demo, “the great news is seeing unified search across the variety of platforms [email, file shares, SharePoint] in a single powerful desktop product priced very reasonably.”  It’s because business workers really do need that unified interface across all information.  To be forced to move from email to SharePoint just to run a search can be frustrating and time consuming.  For SharePoint administrators, not having to worry about a user’s search experience in SharePoint is liberating.  When business workers and IT administrators are both happy, the world is a better place.

Read Joel Oleson’s complete review of X1 Search 8 here >

The Twitter Mirror Reveals All at Vibewire fastBREAK

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

Read more

Capturing all the behind the scenes action, the official Twitter Mirror allows the fastBREAK speakers to take a quick selfie or short format video Vine before and after taking the stage. These intimate shots will be pumped out through the fastBREAK hashtag and @vibewire Twitter account.

It’s yet another way to bring a different view of innovation – all thanks to the folks at Twitter Australia.

Remember to book your tickets before they are sold out.

Infor Ming.le Provides Purposeful Collaboration

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…...

Read more

New York based Infor may not be a household name the way IBM or Microsoft is, but the tech giant has close to 13,000 employees, 70,000 customers and $3B in annual revenue. Infor's main business comes from providing business applications (such as CRM, ERP, HR) to specific industries such as pharmaceutical, aerospace, automotive and healthcare. Leveraging their expertise in these "vertical solutions", they then then develop more granular applications, or micro-verticals. For example, for heathcare they provide solutions in areas like fleet (ambulance) maintenance or nurse scheduling.

My interest in Infor is in the excellent way they have integrated collaboration capabilities directly into their business applications. Rather than just providing an enterprise social network, Infor developed Infor Ming.le, which runs seamlessly across their vertical solutions providing collaboration features directly in the context of where people are working. For example, below you can how an employee can start a conversation directly from within a Sales Order. The post will link back not only to this order, but also to the customer record in CRM and the part number in ERP.

Infor has put a great deal of work into making Infor Ming.le attractive and easy to use. In fact, they created their own in-house design firm named Hook & Loop that is responsible for the overall user experience of Infor Ming.le. 

Currently Infor Ming.le is only available on-premises, but a cloud version is planned for Q3 of this year. 

Customer Considerations 

It is clear that Infor Ming.le has been designed from the ground up to be deeply integrated not just into the look of Infor's business applications, but into the workflow of the way people use them. Existing Infor customers should certainly look at adding Infor Ming.le to the products they currently use, thus enabling employes to stop just working and start working together. 

For company's choosing a vendor, Infor is not alone at delivering collaboration capabilities within enterprise applications. Other options include SAP JAM, Oracle Social Network, Salesforce Chatter and Microsoft is starting to provide Yammer integration with Dynamics. When evaluating, look very closely at the level of integration each vendor offers with business applications, the deployment/hosting options, mobile access and extensibility for 3rd party add-on. During your technical evaluation, make sure to read about Infor ION, the architecture behind Infor's business applications and Infor Ming.le collaboration platform.   

First the Internet of Dumb Things and only then the Internet of Smart Things

We are going to quickly connect lots of things that were never intended to be connected to the Internet, to the Internet.

In essence, the phrase “Internet of Things” essentially describes a network of connected objects other than computers, tablets, and mobile devices that for the most part were never designed for the Internet.

As I furthered my studies and experiments with the Internet of Things writing “A Framework to Humanize the Internet of Things through Verbs” I landed on the question of “so what if we connected all of these things to the Internet?

Initially I was elated with excitement, and the excitement stemmed from the incorrect assumption based on my experiences of computers. I somehow automatically assumed that once we connected “things” to the Internet, these things will be smart as heck, heck they will be as smart as the things that are currently connected to the Internet, computers, tables, and mobile phones.

Well not so fast, and as I continued to study and experiment in the phenomenon designing mentally for the maturity model, the business models that will emerge, and the design of the industry that will ensue, I landed on the following two constructs.

1. There is a difference between the Internet of things already built, and things that will be built. We are going to connect things to the internet that are dumb, framing the “Internet of Dumb Things” #IoDT? and it will be a journey to the Internet of Smart Things #IoST?. Let’s not assume that because a “thing” is connected to the Internet, it will be as smart as computers.
2. There will be categories of things already built or to be built clustered by the intelligence of said things. Once connected, some things will do more than others and the level of “smartness” will vary widely. Some of the categories I am thinking through are:
   1. The Internet of DUMB Things.
   2. The Internet of CHATTY Things.
   3. The Internet of OBEDIENT Things.
   4. The Internet of USEFUL Things.
   5. The Internet of SMART Things.

And so I continue to foster the vision arriving at conclusions. Here is where my last bout of indulgence left me.

1. The Internet of Things will depend more on GE, Siemens and similar “thing manufacturers” than it will ever depend on Cisco.
2. When all things are connected, broadband will feel like my 14.4 Kbs modem from college as the pipes are simply not big enough for things, and suddenly the copper or fiber rush will be sexy again.

I write as a labor of love, in exchange I ask for comments that challenge my thinking

-Richie

Lead Like a Pro

Terri Griffith

Professor/Author/Speaker
Simon Fraser University

Terri Griffith holds the Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. She spent two decades in the Silicon Valley and, in 2012 was honored as a Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Terri helps her students and their organizations accelerate performance and prepare for the futures of work. Through her speaking, writing, teaching, and research, she brings evidence-based leadership and innovation to high-tech, education, and global agribusiness organizations. She inspires and coaches groups on negotiating change and uniquely mixing existing and new capabilities. Her most recent work uses a “bottom-up” approach to automation, including artificial intelligence. Her award-winning book, The Plugged-In Manager:…...

Read more

Light Touch for A Long Drive

Why?

What?

Event Report - NetSuite powers on with targeted innovation

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…...

Read more

As usual NetSuite has released a barrage of news releases – so let’s look at my top 3 takeaways from the event: 
 

• A new user interface – This has been an area where NetSuite has been lagging compared to other web competitors and it is good to see the company making progress on this front. While the new UI seems to be only a small improvement at first look, once looked at it in detail it delivers tangible benefits to NetSuite users. From the demos we saw we expect the Dashboards and the improved List Pages as the major usability improvements users will experience. But let’s not forget that NetSuite does something very well that most competitors do not do – support the professional users really well. The NetSuite table control remains one of the best controls out there in the market place. On the flipside NetSuite needs to probably re-think that the one size fits all user interface will be hard to maintain when having to service the professional user and the casual user really well. And NetSuite is moving more towards the casual user with its push to provide more HCM automation (more below). Lastly it’s only fair to remember that NetSuite allows probably the highest degree of customization of its apps amongst the larger web players, and that makes UI innovation and renovation a little trickier than in other places. So NetSuite has bought probably 2-3 years of time before having to come up with a completely new user interface. (Here is the UI press release). 

Picture take at new UI Demo

• Re-inventing the General Ledger (GL) – Clearly one of the most impressive areas NetSuite showed at SuiteWorld was the innovation on the GL, with its new SuiteGL offering. Finance departments and their leaders will be excited about the new capabilities to create customer GL Lines (coming with NetSuite Version 2014.2 in the 2nd half of 2014), custom Transaction Types (coming with NetSuite Version 2015.1 in the 1st half of 2015) and custom GL Segments (you guessed it – coming with NetSuite Version 2015.2 coming in the 2nd half of 2015). So quite a staggered roll out – but that will give Finance departments time to learn and implement the new capabilities). NetSuite will also have to address potential fears and concerns around compliance and performance when creating custom GL code. But that’s a good problem to have versus facing the alternative of a ‘take it or leave it – this is SaaS’ approach to GL (which is often heard in the industry) (and the press release is here). 

Goldberg presents SuiteGL

• HCM traction – It is only about 6 months ago that NetSuite acquired TribeHR. NetSuite’s HCM strategy has gone through quite some directional changes – from a multi partner approach a SuiteWorld 2013, to a partnership with Oracle Fusion HCM for large accounts (over 2000 employees, we covered it here) and then to the acquisition of TribeHR (we covered it here). And HCM is a huge potential market for NetSuite, which on its own had only covered Payroll for the USA and Incentive Compensation, now with TribeHR it covers Core HR, Recruiting and Performance Management. So quite some progress in 12 months that should give NetSuite customers enough to evaluate using more of NetSuite HCM automation. The social DNA that TribeHR brings to HCM is certainly a good differentiator – and Goldberg did not get tired in the keynote to show the benefits of running HCM together with Finance and Sales automation.
  
  And no surprise – HCM was the first area of automation Goldberg showed in his keynote. It was good to see that TribeHR functionality is already available in NetSuite look and feel -always one of the early steps after an acquisition. In meetings with the former TribeHR CEO Joseph Fung and his team it was good to see that the TribeHR talent is on board and excited to be part of NetSuite. Not surprisingly there is s a strong push to bring HCM country localization to core HR. And SuiteWorld also feature the launch of TribeHR on iOS (press release here) a good solid mobile application featuring Employee Directory, Time Off Management, Recognition Management and not surprisingly for social savvy TribeHR team – a news feed. So encouraging first steps by NetSuite in the HCM area – it will now have to chart a roadmap in the next 6 months and share it with customers and prospects to give them a chance to align their HCM automation needs with the NetSuite HCM roadmap. 

TribeHR Employee Profile in NetSuite UI

Implications, Implications

So what does this mean for... 

• NetSuite customers & prospects – Customers should be appreciative of the investment NetSuite is making. It is key that a SaaS provider keeps innovating and doing good housekeeping activities without customers noticing too much. The new user interface will be certainly an asset coming later in 2014. When NetSuite has formulated a roadmap for its HCM offering we recommend customers to evaluate the existing and coming HCM offerings. There is a lot of benefits to make from running an integrated suite in the cloud and if you look across all enterprise automation, HCM was one of the last pieces NetSuite needs to address. 

• NetSuite partners – There can be no doubt there is traction in the NetSuite platform. Now it’s time to differentiate and chart a course how to carve out an attractive niche in the NetSuite ecosystem. Cloud integration and complimentary technical and functional offerings are the looming opportunities. 

• NetSuite – Good progress and good to see the company challenging and improving its product all the way to the core. NetSuite now needs to show it can keep delivering to its many promised deliverables. But that is business as usual now. Becoming more global beyond North American and particularly how to get traction in APAC will be the overall commercial NetSuite topics to watch. 

• Competitors – If you were hoping for NetSuite to rest – that hope did not materialize. Certainly NetSuite feels the burden and responsibility of over 20k customers – but that’s what competitors also want to get. Differentiation options loom around more standard based cloud stacks, reporting, persona driven user experience and BigData, maybe even Social and Collaboration. 

MyPOV

NetSuite is showing good progress and looks to be on track with its ambitious development agenda. We welcome the aggressive hiring on the R&D side as otherwise these plans are not unlikely to all realize themselves. It’s good to see NetSuite actively tackling issues around user interface and reporting, but much more needs to be done (a year ago our key takeaway was the aging UI – read here). And it’s likewise good to see NetSuite tackling the HCM area, a huge potential for NetSuite and its customers – but NetSuite needs to chart and then communicate its course for HCM first.



More about NetSuite

• Why NetSuite acquired TribeHR - read here
• Act III the cloud changes everything - Oracle and NetSuite with a touche of Deloitte - read here
• Act III and final day - A tale of two conferences - Sapphire and SuiteWorld - read here
• The middle day - 2 keynotes and press releases - Sapphire and SuiteWorld - read here
• A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases - Sapphire and SuiteWorld - read here

Progress Report – Cornerstone completes Talent Life Cycle - what’s next?

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…...

Read more

We had the opportunity to catch up with the Cornerstone executive team for almost a day of briefings around the Cornerstone user conference in San Diego this week. And it was a packed agenda, with CEO Adam Miller kicking off, followed by Product Management leadership, Services leadership, Product development leadership and three customer success stories. 

Here are my top 3 takeaways of the briefing and the conference:

• Good fundamentals – Cornerstone is certainly showing solid to good fundamentals. The company has a clear vision – be a ‘specialist [for talent management] amongst generalists [for all of HR]’ and keeps building on that. It certainly is good that Cornerstone is one of the fewer SaaS provider to have an ambition and plan to achieve profitability soon. When polling executives on their plans and challenges in their respective functions on the path to profitability we heard good and realistic assessment of the challenges. Profitability is a key factor to watch for HCM (and all SaaS) vendors – as ultimately vendors have to turn that corner, and while turning, there may be adverse reactions for their R&D investment, which hits SaaS customers particularly hard. Not the case for Cornerstone, which is very positive news.
  
  But Cornerstone goes beyond financial health, it was good to see that the company is also addressing technology health. All vendors acquire significant technical debt over time, and it is key to address that better sooner than later. For SaaS vendor addressing technology debt is a significant challenge, as they need to innovate while keeping the lights on. We can’t share too many details but it is good to see Cornerstone doing the good and necessary housekeeping activities its customer expect and deserve. 

• Vision of Talent Management – Cornerstone has reached completion in Talent Management, with which it means the full talent lifecycle from Recruiting, over Onboarding, Learning, Performance Management, Compensation and Succession Management. The new Onboarding module completes that cycle now. Now that all key areas of Talent Automation are there – it’s key for Cornerstone to keep differentiating from smaller single automation area vendors (mostly startups) and strengthen the integrated Talent Management Suite story versus similar competitors and the ERP vendors. For that Cornerstone will have to demonstrate thought leadership and help its customers to come along for the transformation that their enterprises need to undertake to become an enterprise with an integrated Talent Management system. 

• A marketplace – These days we see marketplaces popping up left and right – but mostly by the PaaS (see IBM and HP in recent weeks) vendors – not the enterprise automation vendors. And while there have been plenty of learning and courseware marketplaces – there has not been a category (here Talent Management) encompassing marketplace. So credit to some thought leadership and innovation goes to Cornerstone. The vendor will certainly select the usual partners – that are on the marketplace already – the real value will be tapped though when customers will be sharing best practices and custom work. The intriguing element is that Cornerstone has all the assets to make such a collaborative, customer sourced market place reality. Consider a Belgian (totally coincidental country pick) tax compliance report that just got legislated: Cornerstone has the collaboration abilities for its Belgian customers to collaborate, coordinate and share the creation of such a custom report. How that could be and would be monetized is a very different story, but it all starts with the customer enablement code. 

MyPOV

A good user conference for Cornerstone, with energized customers and a vibrant ecosystem. The vendor now needs to keep innovating not only in architecture and infrastructure – but also for its Talent Management products. A new Onboarding is a good job, but Onboarding is a table-stake and will not win the integrated Talent Management battle.
 

The good news is, that management has realized this and we are eager to see what is coming next. In the meantime Cornerstone must improve its Recruiting functionality and must keep an eye on Learning to keep its strong market and functional position in that automation area. So plenty of work ahead, we will check back soon.

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here.

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

MIT Sloan Management Review: Culture Top Factor In Achieving Success With Analytics

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…...

Read more

New global study from MIT Sloan Management Review finds that companies face challenges in maintaining a competitive advantage with analytics, as more companies avail themselves of analytical tools and that culture is the most important factor in achieving success with analytics.

This is a very important finding because using the analytics that are available today can completely transform a company. However, the company has to be ready to take the information and feedback from the analytics and do something with it.

This global survey of more than 2,000 business executives and personal interviews with over 30 senior managers, also finds that companies must continuously innovate with analytics to maintain the edge it affords. This is exactly what the paper I wrote about spoke of – CMOs are no longer just marketers. CMOs are the buyers of technology and they are drivers of revenue, innovation and differentiation. There’s no hope to be a blue ocean strategy company without this. But how many companies are really taking big data, analytics and culture to heart?

“A strong analytics culture with decision-making norms include the use of analytics, even if the results challenge views held by senior management,” said David Kiron, executive editor for MIT Sloan Management Review.  “This differentiates those companies from others, where often management experience overrides insights from data.”

So the big question for leaders today is, “Do you want to know what is being said about your company and are you prepared to make changes?” I wrote about organizational change management years ago. What’s interesting is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The technology we have today has gotten more powerful and provides us with more information, knowledge and if we use it correctly, wisdom and insights.

The question is senior leadership ready and are those that use these tools and software properly trained in how to gain the insights from the software? Those are just some of the change management issues that go along with technology purchases. That’s never changed, but it seems in the light of this current study, the evidence for it being the case is being made even stronger with an actual study.