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Monday's Musings: Four Elements for A #SharingEconomy Biz Model In #MatrixCommerce

Monday's Musings: Four Elements for A #SharingEconomy Biz Model In #MatrixCommerce

Hard Times And Good Will Drive The Disownership Movement

From car sharing in the late 1990?s, to vacation rentals, to collaborative financing, the sharing economy has been inching it’s way into the forefront of the consumer’s minds.  Since the late 2000?s, thought leaders such as Rachel Botsman, Lisa Gansky, Anne-Sophie Novel, have been chronicling the forces, underlying trends, and players behind the movement. During the past five years, several poster children have emerged including AirBnB, DogVacay, Fon, GetAround, LendingClub, Liquid (Spin Lister), Lyft, Neighborgoods, Poshmark, Relay RidesSideCar, Task Rabbit, Zaarly, and ZipCar.

Also known as collaborative consumption, an April 2013 study by SunRunHomes, a solar leasing company, and Harris Interactive shows that more than half (52%) of a 2252 surveyed group of Americans, have rented, leased, or borrowed traditionally owned items in the last two years.   These items include cars, white good appliances, vacation homes, heavy tools, house hold tools, solar panels, books/textbooks, and children’s apparel (see Figure 1).  The survey reveals a uniform view that cuts across age groups and coastal biases.  In fact, the top reasons people rent, lease, or borrow traditionally owned items were saving money (53%) and cutting down on maintenance and/or storage (39%).

Figure 1. Disownership Is Now The New Normal



Source: SunRunHomes and Harris Interactive Study

Future Matrix Commerce Models Must Account For New Mega Trends Such As The Sharing Economy

Matrix Commerce analyzes the disruptive pressures influencing the commerce paradigm. Commerce faces rapidly changing business models, societal norms, and new payment options that are often misunderstood and poorly integrated.   Matrix commerce (TM) means the fusing of demand signals and supply chains in an increasingly complex world of buyers seeking frictionless buying experiences.  Friction in this new world originates from new regulatory requirements such as sustainability, taxation, and privacy.  As the world revolves around the buyer, channels, demand signals, supply chains, payment options, enablers, and big data will converge to create what Constellation coined in 2011 as Matrix Commerce.  Matrix Commerce spans across disciplines as people, process, and technologies continue to transform today’s commerce models.

The mega trend shift for certain market segments to a sharing economy and collaborative consumption will transform many existing business models in the same way the internet and mobility transformed the bricks and mortar world of retail and services.  In accounting for buyer centric behavior, organizations must factor in how these trends impact business models in existing customer segments.

The Bottom Line: Four Elements Required For A Successful Business Model

Preliminary Constellation Research studies identify four key elements required to create a sustainable business model around the sharing economy:

  1. Identification of underutilized assets. High value, high capital but underutilized personal assets provide prime opportunities.  Common examples include homes, heavy equipment, motor vehicles, furniture, and solar panels.  Assets utilized for fleeting life events or temporary usage also provide opportunities.  Children’s goods, wedding apparel, and roaming wifi top the lists.
  2. Optimization of value through renting, leasing, or borrowing. The sum of the parts will yield much greater value than the whole.  As with fractional ownership of jets, condos, and medical equipment, the goal is to maximize profits and revenues by selling slices of usage.
  3. Trading on good will and generosity of others. Social good provides a driving market force.  Economic hardship has created opportunities where individuals wish to share or monetize excess capacity.  In the case of auto, sharing reduces carbon emissions, provides car pool lane access, and reduces commuting costs.  For vacation properties owners pay for their mortgage while leasing out excess capacity. 
  4. Building a big data treasure trove for the reputation economy. Trust is the social currency. Transparency is the holy grail.  Data on participants in the sharing economy will emerge as the new credit score in this reputation economy.  Third party data aggregators will pay for this information.  Trust Cloud and Trust You are already jockeying to provide reputation as a service.

In the classic B2B world, cloud computing, equipment leasing, air craft financing, and medical device leasing have already pioneered these business models.
Your POV

Are you ready to support a sharing economy? Will collaborative consumption optimize your profits?  Is this trend just relegated to hipsters in metropolitan markets?   Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

Related Resources

Reprints

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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.

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A Date with Lindsay Lohan. Or How Celebrity Adds Punch to Your Brand

A Date with Lindsay Lohan. Or How Celebrity Adds Punch to Your Brand

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If there is one thing I love, its when people are publicly honest. Or self-deprecatingly honest. Or self-deprecatingly honest in public. But I love this even more when the person at the centre of the confession is famous. Or hyper-famous, like Lindsay Lohan.

So, imagine that you are the brand manager for eHarmony, the dating site, and you notice that your social media mentions are going through the roof. What could it be? A crisis? A catastrophe? Another cat picture?

Maybe it’s a parody by Funny or Die. Featuring Lindsay Lohan.


 

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SuccessConnect – Where Talent and Social Collide at the SuccessFactors Conference

SuccessConnect – Where Talent and Social Collide at the SuccessFactors Conference

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Passwords – One for the Money, Two for the Show

Passwords – One for the Money, Two for the Show

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I am always going to love an Elvis quote. We don’t see enough of it in the world of business. And we should. After all, he was “The King”.

So this quick guide to unhackable passwords from McAfee and Intel caught my attention straight away.

The guide points out that you need multiple passwords:

  • One password for banking
  • A different password for email
  • Another password for social media

Unfortunately, we all have more than three needs, right?  So one idea is to add the account information into your password:

  • Facebook: your Facebook password can become my_facebook_password
  • Twitter: your Twitter password can become my_twitter_password

Or variations on that theme.

mcafee-passwords

HT Lindy Asimus’ pinterest collection.

 

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Ten Things CIOs Need to Know About WebRTC webinar wrapup

Ten Things CIOs Need to Know About WebRTC webinar wrapup

Today we presented the webinar "Ten Things CIOs NEED to Know About WebRTC". Here are a few highlights from the event:

WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications) is a technology that enables point-to-point or multipoint voice, video, and data communications without plugins.

  • WebRTC is the next disruption
  • WebRTC is native and built into web browsers. Currently being developed by Google, Mozilla, Opera, and a handfull of other communications companies. 
  • Voice, video, and data become part of the fabric of the internet; no longer a plugin or application. This technology will be embedded in everything we do on the internet.
  • WebRTC is enabled through JavaScript programming 
  • WebRTC will be compatible across browsers. 
  • WebRTC makes voice, video, and data ubiquitious across the devices we use
  • Think of WebRTC as an enabler--like HTML; not a market

WebRTC creates opportunities

  • Customer service
  • Training
  • Conferencing/collaboration
  • Maintenance, break/fix services
  • Gaming
  • more...

Watch the webinar 

Download the deck

Contact Dr. E. Brent Kelly

Constellation Research has published a report about the coming WebRTC revolution, "Ten Things CIOs Should Know About WebRTC". 
Included in this report:

  1. Where's the money for me in WebRTC?
  2. How WebRTC will disrupt the current communications industry
  3. The timing of the WebRTC standard
  4. The islands WebRTC will create (for better or for worse)
  5. Why offerings like Skype may not go away
  6. Why Microsoft opposes WebRTC as it's presently constituted
  7. How WebRTC will play into the world of mobile devices including smartphones and tablets
  8. Why WebRTC may not disrupt all complex collaboration, only most of it
  9. The millions of interfaces that will emerge to invoke WebRTC capabilities
  10. Identifying and classifying the WebRTC players
  11. Eight recommendations organizations can take now to prepare for WebRTC's disruptive capabilities
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Forget your raison d’être. What’s your raison pour le faire?

Forget your raison d’être. What’s your raison pour le faire?

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I am a fan of deep thinking. Really I am. And I am a fan of long copy advertising. Documentaries. And books. Those old fashioned paper products that immerse you in other worlds. I love them and collect them and will continue to do so.

Each of these sing to my soul. They ground me in a way that other things cannot. And they tap into my sense of self. My sense of purpose. My reason for being.

But while I love ideas and the way that they can inspire others, what happens when the energy of that moment wanes? What happens when the talk stops and you find yourself alone and unguarded. What then?

That’s when your reason for doing takes over.

Where the raison d’être – your reason for being – speaks of life, raison pour le faire- your reason for doing – speaks of action.

On the one hand you have thought. On the other hand, life.

We seem to have plenty of ideas, thought and inspiration. They abound in life, art and work. We attend conferences devoted to them.

But inspiration doesn’t create change. That’s hard work beyond the realm of ideas. It’s the realm of life. And you can only change life through doing.

So stop reading.

Architect of Your Future - Tattoo Design

Creative Commons License - = Duke One = - via Compfight

 

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Comparing the Various Flickr Account Types

Comparing the Various Flickr Account Types

On May 20th Flickr announced their new design as well as new account plans and storage options. As a long time Flickr Pro user, there are a few things I wanted to understand before making a decision about how I'll use Flickr in the future. Since I was finding it difficult to understand the changes, I created the following spreadsheet and asked the world to help me fill it in. (go crowd-sourcing!)
 
I had always used a Pro account because of the need for more than 300MB of storage, but now with a 1 TB available in the free account I (along with almost everyone I've heard from) will most likely switch to the new free account. Yes, there will be ads, but I live with them in Gmail, Facebook and other free services. What I don't like is that it appears the detailed analytics will be going away. I enjoyed being able to see which of my photos, sets and collections were being viewed, liked and commented on.

I am sure Flickr has been feeling the heat from competitors like 500px, Facebook/Instagram and Google+ Photos (Picasa) so I assume we'll see tight integration between Flickr and Yahoo's recently acquired Tumblr as an attempt to increase usage of Flickr.

Hint: scroll around the table, it is not all displayed in the initial view. If you'd like to edit the chart click here.

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NetSuite Manufacturing Moves on Down the Highway

NetSuite Manufacturing Moves on Down the Highway

NetSuite held its annual user conference, Suiteworld, last week, and in his day one keynote, CEO Zach Nelson highlighted "NetSuite for Manufacturing."

I wrote about NetSuite's manufacturing functionality last year in my post, NetSuite Manufacturing: Right Direction, Long Road Ahead. Returning to this subject one year later, it is encouraging to see the progress that NetSuite has made. At the same time, there will be twists and turns that NetSuite will face in continuing down this highway.

If NetSuite is going to continue its growth, reported at 28% last year in its core business, it really has no choice but to pursue manufacturing customers. Manufacturers are the largest market for ERP systems and therefore an attractive target for NetSuite's development efforts. Although manufacturers have been slower to embrace cloud computing than many other sectors have, the situation is rapidly changing. In our ERP vendor selection services at Strativa, we find manufacturing companies increasingly open to cloud ERP. Sometimes, in fact, they only want to look at cloud solutions. In other words, NetSuite is at the right place at the right time.

Balancing New Functionality with Need for Simplicity

To more fully address the needs of manufacturing, NetSuite continues to build out its core functionality, with basic must-have features such as available to promise (ATP) calculations, routings, production orders, and standard costing. In some of the breakout sessions, there were indications of that NetSuite is also exploring functionality that goes well beyond the basics: for example, supply chain management (SCM) and demand-driven MRP (DDMRP).

This leads to the first twist and turn that NetSuite will need to navigate: filling out gaps in manufacturing functionality while not over-engineering the system. Oracle and SAP are famous for having manufacturing systems that are feature-rich, requiring significant time and effort from new customers to decide which features to configure and to implement them. Part of the attraction of NetSuite is its relative simplicity and ease of implementation. If NetSuite wants to remain an attractive option for the likes of small and midsize manufacturers, or small divisions of large companies, it will be wise to pick and choose where to build out the the sophistication of the product.

For example, the availability of multi-books accounting (which I discuss briefly in the video at the top of this post) is a good move, as it has widespread applicability to both small and large companies in the manufacturing industries as well as other sectors. But does DDMRP fall into the same category? Moreover, how much SCM functionality do prospects expect from NetSuite, and where does it make sense to partner with best-of-breed specialists, who can better bridge a variety of SCM data sources?

Netsuite's recent success with manufacturers such as Qualcomm, Memjet (discussed later in this post), and others give it real-world customers to validate its product roadmap. It will do well to prioritize new development efforts to the areas where those customers deem most needed. NetSuite may choose, ultimately, to fully move up-market, to become the manufacturing cloud equivalent of SAP or Oracle. But if it does so, there are already a number of other cloud ERP providers, such as Plex, Rootstock, Kenandy, Acumatica, and Keyed-In Solutions, that will be ready to take NetSuite's place serving small and midsize manufacturers.

NetSuite's PLM/PDM Strategy Needs Openness

NetSuite also announced a new alliance with Autodesk to integrate its PLM 360 offering for product lifecycle management with NetSuite's ERP.

By way of background, PLM systems manage the entire life-cycle of product development, from ideation and requirements gathering, through design and development, to release to manufacturing, service, engineering change, and retirement. PLM systems take an engineering view of the product and are generally under the domain of the client's product engineering function. PLM systems generally include product data management (PDM) systems as a subset, to manage all of the product data, such as drawings, specifications, and documentation, which form the definitions of the company's products.

Over the past 20+ years, the integration of PLM and PDM systems with ERP has been a difficult subject. In organizations where engineering and manufacturing work well together, basic roles and responsibilities can be defined and proper integration of data can be accomplished. In organizations where such cross-functional processes are weak, PLM/PDM and ERP often form separate silos.

Autodesk's PLM 360 shows very well, and the story about its cloud deployment matches well with NetSuite. However, it is my observation that the majority of manufacturers would do well simply to establish simple integration between their engineering bills of material (within their PLM/PDM systems) and their manufacturing bills of material (within their ERP systems). Making engineering documentation within the PLM/PDM system available to manufacturing ERP users is also highly desired. Furthermore, there are few engineering organizations that have not already standardized on a PLM/PDM system (e.g PTC's Windchill, Solidworks, and others), and they will seldom be willing to migrate to Autodesk just because the company is implementing NetSuite's ERP.

This is another turn of the highway that NetSuite must navigate: will it offer standard integration to a variety of PLM/PDM systems, or will its answer to engineering integration be, "Go with Autodesk?" I do not believe that an Autodesk-only, or even an Autodesk-preferred, strategy is the best.

Case Studies Encouraging

To validate its progress in the manufacturing sector, NetSuite reported on several case studies.

  • At the large end of the spectrum there was Qualcomm, the $19 billion manufacturer of semiconductors and other communications products. Although Qualcomm has Oracle E-Business Suite running throughout much of its operations worldwide, in 2011 CIO Norm Fjeldheim chose NetSuite for use in smaller divisions, based on the need for implementation speed and agility. As part of that strategy, Qualcomm  has now gone live with NetSuite in a newly launched division in Mexico. This is a nice "existence proof" for a two-tier ERP strategy in a very large company.
  • At the smaller end of the spectrum there was Memjet, a manufacturer if high-speed color printer engines. Martin Hambalek, the IT director at Memjet, did a short on-stage interview during Nelson's day one keynote. Although the company has just 350 employees, it has engineering and manufacturing operations in five countries. Unlike Qualcomm, Memjet runs NetSuite as its only ERP system worldwide, showing NetSuite's capabilities for multinational businesses. Notably, Memjet is also a customer of Autodesk for its PLM 360 system, mentioned earlier. In my one-on-one interview with Hambalek later during the conference, I learned that he is the only full-time IT employee at Memjet: evidence that a full or largely cloud-based IT infrastructure requires many fewer IT resources to maintain.

Customer stories are the best way to communicate success, and these two NetSuite customers substantiate NetSuite's progress.

Rethinking the Services and Support Strategy

As much as ERP functionality is important to manufacturers, there is another element of success that is even more important: the quality of a vendor's services and support. It struck me during the keynotes that, apart from an announcement of Capgemini as a new partner, there were no announcements about NetSuite's professional services. 

More ERP implementations fail due to problems with implementation services than because of gaps in functionality. Functional gaps can be identified during the selection process: but problems with the vendor's implementation services are more difficult to discern before the deal is signed. Furthermore, functional gaps can often be remedied through procedural workarounds. But once the implementation is underway, failures in implementation services are difficult to remedy. Sometimes, such failures wind up in litigation.

In this regard, NetSuite's rapid growth has a downside: it stretches and strains the ability of NetSuite's professional services group to spend adequate time and attention on its customers' implementation success. In advising prospective ERP buyers, I have much more concern about what their implementation experience will be than I do about any potential gaps in NetSuite functionality.

One solution is to build a strong partner channel of VARs, resellers, and implementation service providers to complement or even take over responsibility for post-sales service and support.

During the analyst press conference, I asked Zach Nelson about this point. NetSuite is building its partner channel, but how does it decide what work should go to its implementation partners and what part should be retained for NetSuite's own professional services group?  Nelson's answer reflected a traditional view, that whoever brings the sales lead to NetSuite should get the services. In other words, if a lead comes through NetSuite's own sales team, NetSuite should get the services work. If the lead comes through a partner, the partner should get the services.

As an advisor to prospective buyers, my own view is that NetSuite should rethink this strategy. The party that happens to find the prospect may not be the best party to deliver the services. In fact, NetSuite may be better served by passing off implementation services to local partners that are willing to spend more time with the customer on-site than NetSuite's own professional services group may be able to provide.

At the end of his answer, Nelson indicated that he would actually prefer that NetSuite not be in the professional services business. If so, this is good news. Let NetSuite focus on developing and delivering cloud ERP, and let a well-developed partner channel compete to provide hands-on implementation services. What professional services NetSuite does provide would be better focused on providing support to those partners. 

Just before leaving the conference, I gave Dennis Howlett my initial thoughts in this video interview on NetSuite Manufacturing and multi-book accounting.

Disclosure: NetSuite paid my travel expenses to attend its user conference. They also gave me a swag bag.

Related Posts

NetSuite Manufacturing: Right Direction, Long Road Ahead.

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Emerging Technologies for Customer Experience Report Published by Constellation Research

Emerging Technologies for Customer Experience Report Published by Constellation Research

The case for investing in five emerging technologies for extraordinary customer service

SAN FRANCISCO CA – May 16, 2013 Constellation Research, Inc. the research and advisory firm focused on disruptive technologies announced today the publication of “Compelling Investments for Extraordinary Service”, by Constellation Vice President and Principal Analyst, Elizabeth Herrell. This report helps customer service organizations identify quantifiable value for deploying emerging technologies and steps to build a business case for justifying new investments

This report highlights five key technologies that all customer service organizations should evaluate as these technologies create new revenues, lower service costs, and positively enhance customer experience. Importantly, these customer service investments demonstrate quantifiable business benefits and provide valuable customer insight.

Emerging customer service applications include:

  • Mobile Web - deliver customer support directly from mobile app
  • Automated Web chat -uses advanced natural language speech for Web support
  • Real time analytics -mines data from all types of customer interactions for insight
  • Big Data -collects and analyzes customer data for informed decisions
  • Video mobile- supports visual communications to support smartphones and tablet service

“Although emerging applications offer a tremendous potential, the reality is that business decision leaders need to fully appreciate how these applications will transform their business and provide better customer engagement.  To build a business case, it is necessary to identify the key pain points of the current operations and quantify the cost of not doing anything.” - Report author, Elizabeth Herrell

This report is designed to assist customer service organizations in moving forward with advanced applications that provide much deeper insight into their customers to improve their customer’s experience and also to more successfully automate a higher percentage of interactions to reduce costs.

This report fits into Constellation’s business research theme, Next Generation Customer Experience

 

THE REPORT
Compelling Investments for Extraordinary Service: http://constellationr.com/research/compelling-investments-extraordinary-service
Download the report snapshothttp://constellationr.com/content/report-snapshot-compelling-investments-extraordinary-service

ABOUT Elizabeth Herrell
Elizabeth Herrell is Vice President and Principal Analyst covering customer service and support, contact centers and related customer support applications. Elizabeth’s current research focuses on next generation customer experience.

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Contact our sales team at [email protected].

 

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Interactive Intelligence Cloud Services Grow Substantially

Interactive Intelligence Cloud Services Grow Substantially

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Interactive Intelligence’s recent analyst event provided insight into their successful strategy for contact center cloud solutions. While continuing strong growth in their core premise based Customer Interaction Platform (CIC), its cloud-based solutions achieved impressive growth in new sales orders and have increased from 5% of orders in 2009 to 35% in 2012.  During 2013, Interactive Intelligence forecasts 50% of sales orders will come from its cloud-based offering.  Interactive Intelligence’s platform offers a comprehensive all-in-one software solution that supports contact center solutions resulting in faster time to market for its customers.  Its tiered pricing model makes it an attractive choice for both small and large customers that want to either upgrade their legacy platforms or are just getting started and find cloud-based services are both simple to deploy and scalable.

 During the last few years Interactive Intelligence has progressively attracted larger sized accounts, while continuing to market successfully in the SMB and mid-market segment.  The company reinvests a larger than average percentage of its profits into R&D enabling it to continue to enhance its product line and introduce new products for value added services. Recent product announcements include its Interaction Mobilizer for publishing mobile apps and linking directly them to agents and Interaction Analyzer for speech analytics.  Additionally, Interactive Intelligence’s functionality has expanded through new acquisitions including Latitude, Bay Bridge (formerly Centerbridge), and AcroSoft.   It also has forged partnerships with Salesforce.com, Oracle RightNow and Microsoft Lync to round out its product line and improve its cloud offerings.

Another milestone for Interactive Intelligence is its international expansion that now includes presence in 35 countries across 5 continents.  This expansion has also lead to adding more international data centers for global cloud services.   Its geographical footprint includes countries such as Canada, UK, Germany, Japan, ANZ and Benelux.  In addition to geographical expansion, it also has achieved success in in key verticals, such as insurance, collections and utilities and plans to increase its foot print in banks and credit unions, outsourcers, healthcare and government going forward.

While many of its contact center competitors stalled or lost market share last year (with the exception of Cisco), Interactive Intelligence kept gaining ground.  I believe that part of its success is due to identifying the market potential for cloud services several years ago and going to market with its CaaS offering ahead of its competitors.  The simplicity and speed of deployment for cloud contact center services offers a good alternative to continued investment in premise solutions and attracts companies who realize that they need to upgrade to meet the demands of customers who expect seamless omni-channel personalized support.  However, the cloud is not right for every company, and Interactive Intelligence wisely continues to offer premise based solutions as part of its core product line.  Another factor that I think is important to its growth is continued large R&D investments in improving its product line across many of its applications to deliver increased value to its customers. 

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