Bill’s Thoughts on Google Apps

What Would You Do If SharePoint Never Existed

SharePoint Doesn’t Suck. You Suck!

Event Report: Customers Very Happy At Ultimate Connections 2013 (#ulticonnect)

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

Partnership Announcements Enhance Ultimate Software’s Offerings

Amidst a crowd of 1500 customers, partners, and attendees, Ultimate Software held their annual gathering from March 12th to March 15th, 2013 in Las Vegas.  Geared towards the medium sized to enterprise markets, Ultimate Software has steadily taken market share from ADP for payroll and expanded out into operational and strategic human capital management (HCM) capabilities.  New mobile access, generation 4 cloud architecture, and timeline features for employee’s highlight Ultimate’s growing ambitions and customer requirements.

At the event, Ultimate announced two strategic partnerships that bode well for customers and prospects facing an increasing level of customer complexity and growing need for global capabilities:

• Celergo partnership adds global payroll capabilities to internationalization efforts. Celergo’s founder and CEO, Michele Honomichi, and Adam Rogers announced on stage global payroll services support for 110 countries and the ability to process payroll in over 150 countries.  In addition, Ultimate’s Spring and Fall 2013 release of the flagship UltiPro includes support for 28 country specific localizations such as Australia, Brazil, China, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, and Thailand.  Other key features include, global compensation management, localized compliance for data and employee privacy rules, and additional language translations.
  
  Point of View (POV): Ultimate’s customers operate in 144 countries.  As organizations follow the growth overseas, the global payroll connector and Celergo partnership gives mid market and enterprise customers a competitive option as they expand their presence abroad and usage of UltiPro.  These proactive steps to address global capabilities now, provide a key differentiation among potential competitors and places Ultimate Software in a potential position of international expansion.

• Informatica partnership paves the way for future cloud partnerships.  At the conference, Informatica announced a self-service solution for HCM data connections.  Built on top of UltiPro Carrier Network (UCN), customers have access to over 100 packaged connectors to benefits carriers and third party solutions.
  
  (POV): Customers and prospects do not want to worry about integration of their employee records or people management solutions with medical, dental, vision, and other benefits providers.  In the long term, customers seek worry free integration platforms to third party applications, cloud ecosystems, and mobile ecosystems.  The partnership with Informatica solves the needs of complex integration scenarios.  However, Ultimate may want to consider offering a lower cost alternative for more point to point integration scenarios.

The Bottom Line: Focus On Customer Success Pays Off In Continued Growth

Ultimate has done a great job establishing themselves as the ‘people company’ in the cloud HCM space.  From the opening keynote to hallway conversations with customers, executives, and Ultimate employees, its focus on people is clearly a big part of the company’s long track record for success.  In every client interaction, it’s clear that Ultimate has built strong partnerships with customers.

Ultimate continues to dominate its payroll niche of  200 to 1000 and 1000+ employees.  This puts them above Intuit and below Ceridan and Workday in size of customers.  In fact, many of the customers have already expanded from HR, payroll, benefits and payments into recruitment, planning, on boarding, performance management, succession management, and time and attendance.  The next opportunity will include more strategic HCM, identity management, improved mobile access, and payment technologies.

Your POV

Are you an Ultimate customer? Do you plan to invest more or less with them in 2013?  What do you think about their strategy?   Are you ready for strategic HCM? Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

Please let us know if you need help with your apps strategy.  Sign up for a Constellation Academy Workshop or let us assist with:

• Assessing readiness
• Designing your strategy
• Assessing integration capability
• Vendor selection
• Connecting with other pioneers

Reprints

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 – 2013 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!

Are Microsoft and Nokia Tightly Aligned Over VP8 Intellectual Properly Infringement?

Alumni: Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Dr. Brent Kelly is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research and President of KelCor, Inc. He focuses on the unique intersection of unified communications, social business, cloud services, video and mobility.  Dr. Kelly provides strategy and counsel to key clients including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, technology policy executives, sell-side firms and technology buyers. Prior to joining Constellation, Dr. Kelly served for 10 years as a partner at Wainhouse Research where he was the primary author of most of the firm’s unified communications reports and forecasts. Dr. Kelly is a regular presenter at Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon), the communications industry trade show where his well…...

Read more

On March 21, Nokia came out swinging directly at Google and indirectly at the emerging WebRTC standard when it claimed that VP8, the video codec within WebRTC, contains Nokia intellectual property. Nokia's action complicates the issue of the default video codec within WebRTC because Nokia has stated that it will not license any of its patented technology to the IETF.

In 2010, Google paid $123 million to buy On2 Technologies, which gave Google rights to the VP8 codec, and it promptly turned around and licensed the codec at no charge to the IETF for use in WebRTC. Later Google and the MPEG LA consortium agreed to terms that further unencumbered the VP8 codec for free distribution (no word on how much this cost Google).

Nokia's unwillingness to license its intellectual property threatens the use of VP8 in WebRTC. Nokia would prefer to see the royalty laden H.264 codec (and subsequent derivatives) used in WebRTC.

But, this is also what Microsoft would prefer. Microsoft has offered a CU-RTC-Web standard, which allows the use of other codecs besides VP8, to the standards bodies. However, CU-RTC-Web has been rejected by the IETF. Microsoft's motivation is, in part, to save its $8.5 billion investment in Skype, the usefulness of which WebRTC may seriously damage.

One has to believe there is alignment, or at least discussion, of some sort between Nokia and Microsoft on this issue. Stephen Elop, Nokia's current CEO, was the former president of Microsoft's Business Division. He joined Nokia in 2010, and shortly thereafter Nokia and Microsoft announced a partnership in which Nokia "bet the farm" by changing its smartphone operating system to Windows Phone software.  The two companies stand to lose big to Google if Google Chrome becomes widely accepted as an operating system and as Android continues its momentum as the market leading operating system on smartphones and tablets.

Large companies forming alliances to thwart other companies is not new, and Google is clearly doing this itself as it joined HTC in fighting against Nokia's lawsuit claiming intellectual property infringement in HTC's use of VP8 in its Android-based phones.

Microsoft's Derek Burney, Corporate VP Skype Division, told the audience at Enterprise Connect 2013 in March that Microsoft would adopt WebRTC as soon as the standard is ratified. Nokia's action further delays WebRTC ratification, giving Microsoft more time to suggest protocol alternatives to WebRTC and/or suggest the ability to place alternative codecs within the WebRTC framework.

Having had long experience in the video communications market, I have thought for some time that alternatives to VP8 need to be possible in WebRTC to make it a living standard. The reason is that every five years or so the video codecs get incrementally better, and it would be a shame not to be able to use the very best codecs as they become available. However, the downside of this approach is that new codecs typically have royalties associated with them and they would not be free for use in the browser. Proprietary extensions of WebRTC would certainly emerge, complicating widespread use of WebRTC. VP8 is intended to be an all-purpose video codec that is "good enough" for most video applications. Google is working on VP9, which will likely be licensed to the IETF for use in WebRTC at no charge, but overcoming the current hurdle Nokia just erected for VP8 is key to making this a reality.

Microsoft Dynamics Move Up-Market: What’s Missing?

President, Computer Economics and Strativa, Inc.
Computer Economics and Strativa, Inc.

Frank Scavo is skilled at formulating and communicating IT strategy, developing the business case for new systems, and facilitating the selection of enterprise systems, such as ERP, CRM, and supply chain management. He is also an expert in benchmarking IT spending and staffing levels for end-user IT organizations. Frank was one of the first tech bloggers, beginning in 2002 with his launch of the Enterprise System Spectator providing independent analysis of issues and trends in enterprise applications software and the strengths, weaknesses, advantages, and disadvantages of the vendors that provide them. Frank has been quoted as an IT expert in numerous business and industry publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, CIO Magazine, ZDnet, eWeek, Datamation,…...

Read more

In December 2012, I wrote about four market forces that are pushing Microsoft Dynamics onto large enterprise turf. I also outlined several case studies in which Microsoft was having success with large multinational organizations. Now, more recently, I attended the Microsoft Dynamics annual user conference, Convergence, and had an opportunity to interview Microsoft executives and customers to see what further progress Microsoft was making in its move up-market.

Bottom line: Microsoft has many of the necessary elements in place to continue its move into large enterprises, but it still needs to fill several major functional gaps in its product offerings.

Continued Evidence of Success

In recent years, Microsoft has had several implementations of its Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM systems in large enterprises. These include Carrefour S.A, the world's second largest retailer, Nissan Motor Company, Shell Retail, and others.

Now, at its Convergence conference, Microsoft highlighted two more large company success stories:

• Dell Computer is the world's third largest PC manufacturer as well as a leading provider of a variety of IT products and services, with revenues of $57 billion. Dell is in process of consolidating its manufacturing ERP systems onto Microsoft Dynamics AX, with Oracle E-Business Suite continuing to run in headquarters and for certain corporate shared services.
    
• Revlon is the well-known cosmetics company with worldwide revenues of nearly $1.5 billion. Revlon consolidated 21 ERP systems to a single instance of Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Another key success factor for the large enterprise market is the ability to provide direct support. In this regard, Microsoft's reliance on its partner channel is often not sufficient for large companies. To address this need, Microsoft has been building up its Microsoft Services unit, which provides consulting and premier support not only for its Dynamics business applications but also for Microsoft's entire portfolio of offerings. The Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) Dynamics unit has reportedly doubled its headcount over the past year, and it can provide everything from high level program and partner management services to hardware support in conjunction with its large OEM partners, such as IBM and HP. For large customers, Microsoft can even take responsibility for service levels of the deployed applications.

Three Major Functional Gaps

These case studies, along with Microsoft's direct services capabilities, indicate that Microsoft has had some success in the large enterprise market. But are these exceptions, or are Microsoft's offerings mature enough to routinely take business away from the Tier I ERP and CRM players?

The answer is, not yet. Microsoft as an organization has the global presence and the resources to do so, but the Dynamics business applications at present lack functionality in three critical areas. Until these are filled, Microsoft will be limited in the number of deals where it can be short listed against Oracle and SAP.

1. Human Capital Management (HCM). Microsoft today has no offering for core HR, talent management, workforce management, learning management, recruiting, and workforce analytics, payroll, or other HCM applications. In the SMB market, Microsoft could get away with this omission, as many prospects either do not include HCM in their acquisition plans or are satisfied to work with a Dynamics partner for this functionality. In the large enterprise space, however, this is often not an acceptable strategy. This is especially true when the Microsoft partners for HCM are only regional players.
    
2. Customer Service. The Dynamics team prides itself on the success of its Dynamics CRM offering, built from scratch to be a serious competitor to Salesforce.com, SAP, and Oracle. However, Dynamics CRM is not a full CRM offering. Its functionality is limited largely to sales force automation and now marketing automation (thanks to the 2012 acquisition of Marketing Pilot). Dynamics CRM lacks a full set of functionality for customer service and field service. So, when prospects are looking for a solution that gives them a 360-degree view of the customer—both new customers and existing customers, for both sales and for after-sales services—they quickly scratch Microsoft from their short lists. If they really want to go with Microsoft, they look to Microsoft partners to provide the needed functionality. Again, this approach may work for Microsoft's traditional SMB market—although even there, the lack of a customer service module is still a limitation.  But in large global enterprise deals with thousands of users, most prospects take a quick look at Microsoft and move on to more robust providers.
    
3. Supply Chain Management (SCM). Microsoft Dynamics AX today only offers traditional material planning functionality, so-called MRP and MRP-II systems. There are no supply chain execution modules for warehouse management, transportation management, or logistics. Neither is there supply chain planning functionality for demand forecasting, sales and operations planning, constraint-based scheduling, supply chain optimization, or event management. Again, in the SMB market, many prospects are doing well if they can implement basic MRP, and those who need more are often happy to consider partner solutions. But in the large enterprise space, prospects often expect this functionality to be part of the core offering.

Partner solutions work best when they address narrow industry needs—for example, law firm practice management from Lexis Nexus, or complex manufacturing functionality from Cincom. But for broad horizontal systems, such as HCM, customer service, and supply chain management, prospects expect the ERP or CRM system to be able to provide that functionality directly. Partner solutions at this point are simply a band aid.

The good news is that Microsoft recognizes these deficiencies and intends to deal with them over the course of the next few years, although, for the most part, it is not giving out details publicly. The one area where Microsoft has indicated specific plans is in the supply chain area. Later this year, it intends to announce new capabilities for Dynamics AX for warehouse and transportation management, along with demand management. This is a good start. In the other two areas—HRMS and customer service—Microsoft executives only indicate that they realize these needs and intend to address them in future releases of Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM.

Priorities, Priorities

The large company case studies illustrate that Microsoft Dynamics has an expanding presence in the large enterprise market. Nevertheless, it would be unusual to see Dynamics fully replace Oracle or SAP for customers in this space. That said, Microsoft still can be successful in the large enterprise space, if prospects see SAP and Oracle playing a restricted role: pushing them back into a corral to serve only their core financials and perhaps core HRMS needs. Outside of this corral, Microsoft Dynamics can then become the operational system platform for such organizations.

If this is the case, the lack of HR functionality does not need to be an immediate impediment for further Microsoft progress up-market. Baring some major acquisition by Microsoft, it is unlikely that Microsoft Dynamics will have the richness of HCM functionality needed to displace SAP or Oracle in the HCM space. Any future Microsoft development in HCM will be more appealing to midsize organizations than to the large enterprise market.

Likewise, Microsoft’s lack of supply chain functionality does not need to be a major impediment. Manufacturing, distribution, and retail prospects will still need to fill their SCM requirements with a third-party solution. Fortunately, there are good offerings from Microsoft partners for warehouse management and transportation management. Furthermore, even many SAP and Oracle customers look to best of breed solutions, such as E2Open and Kinaxis, for supply chain planning systems. So, the lack of Microsoft SCM offerings does not need to be a show stopper.

The weakness of Microsoft’s customer service and field service features in the CRM product, however, is more problematic. When looking at CRM, most large enterprises want more than salesforce automation. Microsoft’s acquisition of Marketing Pilot for marketing automation fills one gap. A similar acquisition or internal development of after-sales service functionality is probably the most urgent need if Microsoft is to further succeed in the large enterprise market.

A Fiercer Battle

What could go wrong with Microsoft's up-market ambitions? First, SAP and Oracle are not going to let themselves be passively corralled within corporate headquarters. Both vendors have major programs to further develop and serve line of business system requirements: SAP with its acquisitions of SuccessFactors, Ariba, and its line of business cloud applications; Oracle with its Fusion Applications.

Second, there are other providers that have the same up-market ambitions as Microsoft. For example, Infor, which is headed up by former Oracle co-President, Charles Phillips, fully intends to be a credible alternative to SAP and Oracle, and it already has a much broader footprint of applications than Microsoft has. Likewise, Workday from the very beginning took aim at the large enterprise market for HCM, financials, and operations management for services firms, and it is already a major thorn-in-the side for SAP’s and Oracle.

Microsoft’s success in the large enterprise space, therefore, is not guaranteed. But its success so far is encouraging, and if it continues to fill out its functional footprint, it will become a strong contender.

Postscript: Other analysts have good reporting on the Convergence conference. Ray Wang has an event report summing up the main news. Esteban Kolsky's has a good post on Microsoft Dynamics CRM as well as a good video interview with Dennis Howlett.  

Related Posts

Four Needs Pushing Microsoft Dynamics into Large Enterprises

In Google We (Don’t) Trust

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

This week Google made two product announcements that generated a lot of press. The first is that it would be shutting down Google Reader on July 1, 2013. The second was the introduction of Google Keep, which people are referring to as the evolution of Google Notebook and a competitor for Evernote. (more on that below)



The closing of Google Reader has infuriated many people the tech community who have in turn stated they won't look at future Google offerings (like Keep) because they no longer have any faith that Google will maintain various (non-core) products. I understand and respect that position, but I don't share it. Google has a long history of shutting down products, perhaps most notably (among techies) Wave and Buzz. Just Google "Google Graveyard" and you'll find dozens of sites that track the vast array of products that are no longer being developed.

In my opinion Google has the right to shutdown any service (that people don't pay for) they would like, provided they do so in a professional manner. That means providing adequate warning and instructions on how to export your data. With Reader they are giving more than two months, and they are providing Google Takeout as a way to export your RSS feeds. Many alterantives are already jumping on the "Replace Reader" bandwagon. Personally, I use Zite on my iPad to get most of my news.

While I am not pleased that Google would shut down a product used (and loved) by so many people, it will not affect my decision to continue using Gmail, maps, Google+, Drive, and a dozen other products that I pay Google $0 for. I will take a look at Google Keep and future products, but do so with the knowledge that they may go away at any time. The need for long term stability is one of the reasons I pay for Evernote Premium, but still that's no guarantee.

So, getting back to Google Keep, my opinion is this is very early beta code, not nearly ready to replace anyone's use of a more powerful note taking tool like Evernote or OneNote. That's ok though, GMail was in beta for how many years? I am sure Google will get lots of feedback, release updates quickly and end up with a pretty good tool that integrates with many components of the Google platform.

The following are the issues I've had with Keep, listed as I discover them. I will continue to add items.

• Extremely simple, no rich text (tables, fonts, etc)
• Choose an image to upload does not provide an option to choose from your pictures from Google+/Picasa, it's only upload from computer
• When a new note is created the cursor goes into body field instead of title, which I find very annoying
• The icon to select the note colour is different on mobile (looks like a painter's palette) than on the web (it's a paint can)
• I created a voice note on mobile, but when I view it on the web, there is no embedded player (in Chrome at least), you have to download the file to listen to it
• You can't change the note colour from the main view, you have to open the note
• No folders/notebooks to help organize your content
• No tagging
• You can't reorder the individual items in lists
• In Keep the icon for "Insert An Image" is a picture of a mountain. In  Google+ it's a picture of a camera and uses the hover text "Add Photos". I'd like to see consistency across all products please.
• No way to sort notes.  (ex: title, created, modified, etc.) This is the biggest blocker for me so far.
• When I update a note, it does not resort to the first note

What do you think is missing and what would you like to see?  I imagine one of the first things they will do is enable people to share information in Keep with their Google+ Circles. You'll also probably be able to display Keep notes in Hangouts. The UI for Google Drive is quite "1990s file-manager-esque", so I'd like to see Drive evolve to have a Keep like UI, where you can see thumbnails of content. Stay tuned, I expect Keep will evolve quite quickly.

Have you looked at Google Keep, or are you staying away from Google due to lack of trust?  
 

BT Audio Conferencing Based On Dolby Voice Technology: Stereo Headset Requirement Could Introduce Launch Distortion

Alumni: Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Dr. Brent Kelly is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research and President of KelCor, Inc. He focuses on the unique intersection of unified communications, social business, cloud services, video and mobility.  Dr. Kelly provides strategy and counsel to key clients including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, technology policy executives, sell-side firms and technology buyers. Prior to joining Constellation, Dr. Kelly served for 10 years as a partner at Wainhouse Research where he was the primary author of most of the firm’s unified communications reports and forecasts. Dr. Kelly is a regular presenter at Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon), the communications industry trade show where his well…...

Read more

BT is the first conferencing service provider poised to roll out audio conferencing services based on Dolby voice technology. Slated to appear in Q3 2013, this service promises to offer a super audio conferencing experience by providing spatial audio capabilities that allow conference attendees to hear and interact with one another in much the same way as if they were present in the same conference room.

            Traditional audio bridges “mix” the audio of the participants together and then send it out to everyone. The problem this creates is that the verbal cues we use to break into a conversation and regulate its flow are mixed out causing people to talk over one another.

Dolby’s spatial audio keeps the individual voices separated so that people can hear these cues just as they would if they were in the same conference room – individual voices can be heard, even if people happen to begin speaking at the same time. In addition, Dolby signal processing provides noise suppression and echo cancellation that can significantly improve the quality of an audio conference.

The key to success, however, will be whether people will change their behavior enough to wear stereo headsets. The BT/Dolby audio solution requires participants to have stereo speakers or wear a stereo headset.

BT claims that nearly all of the companies it has spoken to about this offering are quite gung ho about it, especially after they hear it. The BT pitch is that not only does it make meetings more productive, but it may save companies money to boot. The reason is that BT/Dolby audio is available only over IP, not PSTN connections. Traditional audio conferences have two cost components: 1) the cost of the PSTN access (toll free or long distance charges), and 2) the cost of the actual audio bridging service. A company using BT/Dolby audio conferencing has much lower access costs because that company’s users and external participants join a conference using an IP network, which is less expensive than joining using the PSTN. This lower access cost will offset the slightly higher bridging cost BT will charge for the enhanced audio capability.

I initially experienced the difference between regular audio conferencing and Dolby audio conferencing firsthand about two years ago and again last year at Enterprise Connect 2012. Since then, Dolby has made great strides by tweaking its audio algorithms to get even better performance and by creating a tabletop conferencing phone/speaker phone that looks sort of like a black flying saucer. This disk shaped device has numerous mics and speakers, and provides those actually sitting at the conference table the spatial audio listening experience.
Those joining a conference using a PC, smartphone or a tablet client will be required to wear a stereo headset if they wish to have the spatial audio capability. Anyone using a single ear headset or Bluetooth device or that has a single desktop speaker will still have the benefit of the noise suppression and the echo cancelation, but the spatial audio will not work through a single speaker.

Dolby claims that its research shows that people who have experienced the spatial audio conferencing have indicated, through post-listening surveys, that they would indeed be willing to wear a headset with speakers over each ear on order to have the high quality audio experience. For BT’s and Dolby’s sake, I hope they are right, but I believe it will be very difficult to get mobile users who have laptops, tablets and smartphones to pack a dual speaker headset with them when a small Bluetooth device is so much more convenient.
Dolby said a few years ago that it prefers to license its technology rather than make devices itself. Well, this has clearly changed with a Dolby-branded audio conferencing phone. Perhaps the company could enhance its chances for success with its audio conferencing technology by considering making Dolby-branded Bluetooth (wireless) stereo headsets that have Dolby’s excellent sound fidelity with a small, but cool looking, form factor. Or perhaps Dolby could convince Jabra, Plantronics or Logitech to make such a headset for it.

Mobile Customer Service Leaps forward with [24]7 Visual Speech

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

Read more

Smartphones have become pervasive and more than half of all customers use their mobile device when contacting a company for service.  Currently, the majority of smartphone customers encounter rigid IVR menus, as their initial step prior to accessing information or conducting transactions.  This situation totally ignores the enormous capabilities found in today’s smartphones and does little to enhance a company’s image.  Fortunately, there is good news for customer engagements, as [24]7introduced a major breakthrough in customer service with Visual Speech that links the call to an HTML5 mobile experience.  Visual speech combines screen, touch and speech to deliver a totally new experience to mobile users and does not require the user to download a mobile app.  Additionally, its big data platform employs predictive analysis and real-time decisioning to provide a more meaningful customer engagement by better understanding the users’ intent and interests.  Visual Speech simplifies an interaction by pushing relevant content to the mobile device and empowering the user to take control of the interaction.  

Visual Speech supports simultaneous voice and data interactions, so a caller can see view a schedule, lists or other relevant data at the same time as they are talking. This significantly streamlines its use and results in higher adoption for self-service transactions. However, it also supports assisted service, as the full context of the engagement within the Virtual Speech application is sent to an agent when the caller requires  live assistance. This is especially important for smartphone users who will not need to repeat the information already provided to the Visual Speech application when transferred to an agent.  Visual speech supports both iPhones and Android devices. 

[24]7, a multi-channels customer service provider, greatly increased its visibility in the intelligent speech self-service area when it acquired from Microsoft its interactive self-service assets (Tellme and many of its former employees) and its purchase of Voxify for its predictive business logic platform in 2012. The combination of predictive analysis and innovative speech self-service platform offers a compelling solution for delivering next generation mobile customer experience in the cloud.

Event Report: Microsoft Dynamics Convegence 2013 (#conv13)

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

Customer Success, Acquisition, And New Features Drive Day 1 Headlines

Almost 12,000 Microsoft faithful converged in New Orleans for the flagship Dynamics event.  Wayne Morris (@WayneMorrisOz), CVP kicked off the event reiterating the theme of “A World Ahead”. Meanwhile, Kirill Tatarinov (@KirillTatarinov), President of Microsoft Business Solutions Division, led the session with a series of impressive brands and compelling customer success stories.  Highlights from the day include:

• Impressive Global 2000 customer wins. Kirill hinted at wins at SpaceX and followed with live customer presentations from ShockDoctor, Chobani, Weightwatchers, and Revlon.  Dennis Goetz (CFO) of Shock Doctor shared how they grew their business moving away from spreadsheets to Microsoft Dynamics GP.  Maureen Hurley (VP of IT) and James McConeghy (CFO) explained how Chobani installed Microsoft Dynamics AX in their main New York plan in less than a year and then implemented Dynamics AX at a new plant in less than 27 days. Christine Butler (VP of CRM and Business Development, and Loic Vienne (VP of Systems) at WeightWatchers discussed how they put in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage with 500 million customer touch points a year.  David Giambruno (SVP and CIO) and Steven Berns (Executive VP and CFO) of Revlon, made the impressive move to consolidate 21 ERP systems into one on Microsoft Dynamics AX.
  
  Point of View (POV): The Microsoft Dynamics team has successfully moved up market from a previously SMB centric message.  The rise of global 2000 customers in the $500M to $5B revenue range shows the growing presence, success, and scalability of Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM.  Though the business is estimated to bring $1.4B in revenue, Microsoft Dynamics still represents a small fraction of Microsoft’s overall revenue ($73.72B 2012).  However, success in the Microsoft Dynamics business improves attach rates and cross-sells into Sharepoint, Office, SQL Server, and Azure.  Microsoft’s small investment in Dynamics reduces customer fragmentation and plays a key role in long-term growth.

• Acquisition of Netbreeze for social analytics. The Netbreeze acquisition brings data mining, natural language processing (NLP), and text analysis to social signals such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, 6,000 online news websites, 500,000 message boards, and 18M blogs.   The system supports 28 different languages including Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. Direct language translation beats translation back to one language.
  
  Point of View (POV): Netbreeze and Marketing Pilot address a growing need among the customer base for marketing automation and management.  Netbreeze is key to merging both the structured CRM information and the unstructured social signals.   As the CMO role continues to reclaim its technology destiny, we are moving away from transaction integrity and moving towards surfacing insights.  Netbreeze provides insight into marketing spend effectivity.

• Announcement of Marketing Pilot 15.  MarketingPilot 15 adds improved user experience and analytics.  In addition, the long awaited connector to Microsoft Dynamics CRM arrives on March 2013.  International general availability is planned for later 2013.
  
  (POV): Marketing Pilot provides core marketing capabilities that were missing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.   Customers seeking an integrated marketing solution should consider Marketing Pilot.  However, the technology platform is dated.  For those customers seeking a cloud based approach, Silverpop, InfusionSoft, Aprimo, and Marketo may serve as better alternative today.  Compared to CMS marketing products like SiteCore or Adobe CQ, Marketing Pilot remains a distant second in features, but a top contender when cost is considered.

• Windows Azure partner hosted offerings for ERP. Partner hosting for Dynamics GP 2013 and NAV 2013 will be available in June 2013.  Dynamics AX will see an Azure hosted version in 2014.
  
  (POV): Among the Dynamics ERP customers, partner hosting remains a popular option for dipping their toes into cloud ERP.  A key barrier to Azure hosting has been the performance issues with SQL Server for Azure.  Resolution of those issues will free Dynamics to deploy more of its capabilities in Azure.  The go forward architectural model for Dynamics AX resembles Dynamics CRM where a VM is assigned per tenant but all management is done by Microsoft.

• New mobile applications for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.  New mobile apps will address key horizontal functions such as expense management, time tracking, and approvals.  The expense management offering will capture and reconcile expenses, time allows the completion of time sheets, and approvals allows managers to complete business requests.  Microsoft intends to support Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets, Windows Phone 8, Android phones, and iOS phone devices
  
  (POV): Customers are increasingly asking for a mobile experience.  The move to address mobility focuses on “in-between time” tasks that improve productivity for employees and bolsters offerings for services based industries and public sector.

Figure 1. Ongoing #Conv13 Flickr Stream

The Bottom Line:  Progression In The Dynamics Product Line Results In A Competitive Alternative For Customers

On December 21, 2000, Microsoft announced the intention to acquire Great Plains.  In July 2002, Microsoft bought Navision A/S, the foundation of Dynamics NAV and AX.  Until 2007, Microsoft Business Solutions had struggled to find and grow beyond its SMB niche. Over the past seven years, the team has focused on deepening vertical capabilities, improved integration with Microsoft components, expanding partner programs, and making strategic acquisitions for product and technology features.  The process has been slow but steady but increased investment in Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM has paid off.

Fast forward to 2013, Microsoft now has a strong portfolio of solutions that Global 2000 organizations can deploy with confidence.  The MBS team is not afraid of tuck in acquisitions nor purchasing common IP from trusted partners.  The rearchitecture efforts and gradual hosted capabilities have helped move the product forward.  Consequently, customers and prospects seeking a newer architecture, Microsoft footprint, and deeper micro-vertical capabilities now consider the core Dynamics products for both ERP and CRM in short lists.  Key use cases include the consolidation of ERP, move to Two-Tier ERP, and primary CRM system of record.   However, customers should be cautioned that success will require selection of the right Microsoft Partner.  Selection of the right partner is never an easy process as many partners exist and validation of capabilities still remains a challenge for prospects and existing customers.

Your POV

Are you Microsoft Dynamics customer? Do you plan to invest more or less with them in 2013?  What do you think about their strategy?   Are you ready to consolidate on Microsoft? Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

Please let us know if you need help with your apps strategy.  Sign up for a Constellation Academy Workshop or let us assist with:

• Assessing readiness
• Designing your strategy
• Assessing integration capability
• Vendor selection
• Connecting with other pioneers

Resources and Related Research

Event Report: The Sentiment At Microsoft Convergence 2011

Friday’s Feature: Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010

Research Report: Microsoft Partners – Before Adopting Azure, Understand the 12 Benefits And Risks

Monday’s Musings: The Hidden Value In SaaS Deployments

Trends: 2011 Cloud Computing Predictions For CIO’s And Business Technology Leaders

Research Summary: Best Practices – The Case For Two-Tier ERP

Tuesday’s Tip: When To Go With A Two-Tier ERP Strategy

Strategy: 5 Lessons Learned From A Decade Of Naught

Tuesday’s Tip: 10 Cloud And SaaS Apps Strategies For 2010

Tuesday’s Tip: 2010 Apps Strategies Should Start With Business Value

Best Practices: Lessons Learned In What SMB’s Want From Their ERP Provider

Reprints

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 – 2013 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!