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: @alanlepo<br>LinkedIn:&nbsp;https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo &nbsp; &nbsp; , Title:&nbsp;Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The… Read more

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SAN FRANCISCO – January 16, 2013 Constellation Research, Inc. the research and advisory firm focused on disruptive technologies today announced the publication of “Introducing Matrix Commerce” by Constellation Principal Analyst and CEO, R “Ray” Wang. This Big Idea report, on the heels of NRF 2013, explains and establishes the concept of Matrix Commerce as the force that will shape the future of ecommerce and internet retailing. The report informs decision makers about basic commerce concepts, trends to expect in 2013 and beyond, and provides tips about how to prepare for the impact of Matrix Commerce.

This report reveals:

• The rationale for Matrix Commerce
• How Matrix Commerce addresses issues with Perfect Orders
• How Matrix Commerce can simplify the growing complexity with buyer-centricity
• 10 steps to prepare your organization for Matrix Commerce

Amid the proliferation of new technologies, business models and economic conditions, a new buyer-centric world has emerged. Consumerization of technologies, manifested in trends such as social networking, mobility, cloud services and Big Data, has raised the expectations of buyers as to the art of the possible. The result - a growing digital divide has emerged between organizations that adopt disruptive technologies and those who fail in creating business transformation.

Matrix commerce describes the processes, technologies and business models emerging at the intersection of omni-channel distribution, payment technologies, demand signals, supply chains, frictionless enablers and Big Data to deliver on a buyer’s expectations. Matrix commerce addresses the emerging complexity of meeting perfect orders in a buyer-centric world. Internal organizational silos of yesteryear must be broken down and re-integrated in order to deliver a seamless buyer experience.

“Sellers must move quickly to a buyer centric design point or face continue failures in interaction, engagement, and loyalty” noted report author, R “Ray” Wang

THE REPORT

Introducing Matrix Commerce

Press Contacts:
Contact the Media and Influencers relations team at contact[at]ConstellationR[dot]com for interviews with analysts.

Sales Contacts:
Contact our sales team at sales[at]ConstellationR[dot]com.

Alumni: Constellation Research Constellation Research

Yvette Cameron was VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc. focusing on next generation HCM processes and technologies, and is founder of NextGen Insights. Yvette is now a Constellation Research alumna. , Title:&nbsp;Big Ideas CRM concepts will transform HCM processes for new levels of Employee Engagement and Business Results Companies are investing heavily to understand and optimize their customer relationships, but less so with their employee relationships. We must apply the tenets of CRM to HCM processes to understand, engage and align the workforce, because customer success begins with employee success. From “Command and Control” to “Engage and Inspire” Traditional work practices and business structures are evolving at an unparalleled rate. New thinking and… Read more

An impressive number of IT and Business leaders from across EMEA have converged upon Dubai this week to participate in Oracle’s CloudWorld, an executive event focused on the disruptive technologies of social, mobile and, of course, Cloud.  The Dubai event is the first in a series of conferences that will take place in select cities across the globe through April 2013.

One of the common conversations taking place amongst conference delegates is the impact of these technologies on the IT organization – fundamentally, is cloud making IT irrelevant?

The reality is actually just the opposite: embracing cloud and other disruptive technologies enables the IT organization to rebalance its investments in core infrastructure to embrace more strategic investments in integration, intelligence and innovation.

Constellation Research has published extensively on this topic, and I presented on it as well throughout 2012. Embedded below is one such presentation, taking a look at the evolving role of IT organizations as the Future of Work unfolds, including top priorities, key challenges and required shifts in thinking. Whether focused on Infrastructure, Integration, Intelligence or Innovation, the “I” in the “IT” Organization is morphing to match the needs of the organization, taking a more business-focused point of view.

Click here to view the presentation:  The Evolution of IT Organizations in the Future of work

For additional thoughts on the hybrid IT environment that is likely emerging in your organization as a result of partial cloud adoption, check out this article and published research, also by Constellation.

Contact us at Constellation Research if you would like to discuss our research on this topic in more detail.

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,&nbsp;Everybody Wants to Rule The World&nbsp;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… Read more

Next Stop On The Road To HANA: SAP Business Suite

In a global announcement in Palo Alto, New York and Frankfurt, SAP’s top executives Dr. Vishal Sikka, Rob Enselin, Jim Haggeman Snabe, and legendary founder and chairman Dr. Hasso Plattner announced availability of SAP’s Business Suite powered by SAP HANA.  SAP has rewritten the Business Suite to work on SAP’s HANA platform and believes that customers will benefit for four reasons:

• Smarter. The embedding of intelligence at the transactional level opens up new business models and process transformation.  SAP’s customer Derek Dyer, Director of Global SAP Services for Deere and Company, emphasized that SAP ERP powered by SAP HANA has “revolutionized” how products and services are introduced to the market, especially in the MRP world.  They see some transformational innovation as a result to faster MRP runs.
  
  Point of View (POV): Embedded intelligence has been a key failure in today’s existing transactional applications.  Customers have sought access to not only real time reporting, but also prediction.  The goal is to get to smarter decisions at all levels of the organization. Customers will benefit from embedded intelligence.  However, this will require people and technology training of the system to identify the patterns and algorithms required to serve up insight on demand.  This will require intelligence at every vertical and micro vertical business process.  Moreover, right-time requirements for in-context computing will turn out to be the surprise benefit as relevancy becomes more important through time, location, role, relationship, sentiment, and intent.  Relevancy and context provide the smartness that is missing in today’s systems.

• Faster. SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA addresses the need for speed.  The in-memory columnar database reduces the input/output (I/O) time and allows for fast access to information.  The result – faster processing and faster scenario evaluation.  Fast transaction management times lead to faster decision making.
  
  (POV): The analytics and crunching capabilities is what’s driving organizations to seek faster speed.  Speed is the difference between a five day drug recall and a five minute drug recall.  Speed is the difference between a 30 day supply chain plan versus the ability to reroute 2 iPhones to your store in 30 seconds.  The impact is huge for customers if SAP does succeed.  SAP’s not the first to do this as Workday has already done this for HR and Finance.  However, for the entire SAP suite and given SAP’s market share, this is a big deal as this reduces the need for separate business intelligence systems.  The performance difference will create a huge competitive advantage for those who adopt versus those who do not.

• Simpler. SAP Business Suite on HANA delivers consumer grade user experiences.  The goal is to embed live insight into business processes to drive immediate action.  Today, people expect consumer-grade user experiences and the power to translate their live insight into immediate action. Enzo Bertolini, CIO, Ferrero Group expects to improve the trade promotions and supply chain planning process through both better simulation and mobile access.
  
  (POV): SAP Business Suite on HANA provides SAP an opportunity to rethink how information is created, consumed, and shared.  The push to a design thinking focus within SAP has led to significant improvement of the user experience throughout their portfolio of products.  SAP Business Suite on HANA will be an opportunity to show case this new user experience.

• Open. SAP plans to support database technology and vendor choice for its customers.  Many database partners have committed to work with SAP support in-memory optimizations and provide the necessary support to ensure that customers will succeed.  SAP is providing rapid deployment solutions, trained implementation consultants, and a comprehensive set of services to help clients make the migration to SAP HANA.
  
  (POV): SAP has the opportunity to drive down database costs and improve performance.  While the pricing model will be based on the percentage of application value, SAP must find a way to drive down overall costs if it is serious about improving adoption.  This licensing requirement must be addressed as it will emerge as the most significant barrier to adoption.

SAP Faces A Challenge of Adoption Not Because of Technology, But Because of Customer Vision

The benefits of SAP Business Suite on HANA are clear.  However, SAP faces a tough challenge convincing customers that these benefits will deliver more than incremental innovation.  Why? As currently announced, many of SAP’s customers will face barriers in adoption due to:

• Pricing and incentives. Customers will need to understand how the pricing and licensing models will show a significant benefit in value. If SAP keeps pricing parity with existing database license costs, customers will not immediately make the move.  Training, migration, and other performance tuning incentives are key to success.
• Inertia of existing business as usual. Existing customers have had challenges with upgrades to Business Suite as well as instance consolidation. Most customers must move beyond the keep the lights on mentality and seek new business cases for their business suite.
• Inability to visualize the benefits. SAP must push hard to show the value of transformation.  Design thinking sessions can help leaders make the leap in seeing why and where SAP HANA can play a role in transforming their business models and creating new disruptions and competitive advantages.

Success requires SAP to rapidly address these issues if it wishes to see faster adoption.  If addressed, SAP will see a renaissance in the Business Suite and reduce the impact Best of Breed Cloud vendors have had on chipping away at its user base.

The Bottom Line: Customers Should Take The Time To Evaluate SAP Business Suite On HANA

The shift to SAP HANA mirrors the shift to SAP on NetWeaver as a platform.  However, this shift to in-memory computing should be evaluated on the basis of business value.  Customers should start by:

• Evaluating the case for innovation. In areas where speed matters and new business models can be created, customers should seek SAP’s resources on design thinking to identify both incremental and transformational innovation.
• Understanding the true cost of ownership. Parity with existing database licensing costs should be the norm.  However, customers should carefully weigh the  investment cost of adoption, migration, and integration with the benefits and incentives provided by SAP to make the move.
• Reclarifying the overall apps strategy. Organizations should redesign or refactor plans to see where SAP HANA plays a role in the upgrade and go-forward SAP strategy.  Plan and budget for a shift whether in 2013 or beyond.

Your POV

Will you make the shift to HANA for your SAP Business Suite?  What’s the compelling business use case and when would you do it?  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 enterprise apps strategy efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Reviewing your Apps Strategy
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Designing a next gen apps strategy
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

Related Research:

Wang, R “Ray”, ‘Quark Summary: Does SAP HANA Change Your Database Strategy for SAP Apps?”, Software Insider, April 18th, 2012

Wang, R “Ray.” “News Analysis: The Implications of Oracle’s Taleo Acquisition.” Software Insider. February 9th, 2012.

Wang, R “Ray.” “News Analysis: SAP Buys SuccessFactors for $3.4B Signals SAP’s Commitment To Cloud, HCM, and Social.” Software Insider. December 3rd, 2011.

Wang, R “Ray.” “Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT.” Software Insider. December 3rd, 2011.

Wang, R “Ray.” “Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation.” Software Insider. October 4, 2010.

Wang, R “Ray.” “Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Technology Budget Part 1.” Software Insider. July 27, 2010.

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!

Alumni: Constellation Research Constellation Research

Yvette Cameron was VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc. focusing on next generation HCM processes and technologies, and is founder of NextGen Insights. Yvette is now a Constellation Research alumna. , Title:&nbsp;Big Ideas CRM concepts will transform HCM processes for new levels of Employee Engagement and Business Results Companies are investing heavily to understand and optimize their customer relationships, but less so with their employee relationships. We must apply the tenets of CRM to HCM processes to understand, engage and align the workforce, because customer success begins with employee success. From “Command and Control” to “Engage and Inspire” Traditional work practices and business structures are evolving at an unparalleled rate. New thinking and… Read more

What can you cover in 20 minutes on a radio show with a provocative host?  A lot, apparently.

I had the pleasure of joining Bill Kutik, well-known HR industry analyst and founding Co-Chair of the annual HR Technology Conference, on his biweekly program, the Bill Kutik Radio Show, sponsored by Knowledge Infusion. It was Bill’s 118th radio show to date, but his first show of 2013, marking the second time in a row that I’ve been honored to be Bill’s guest on his “New Year kickoff” episode.

For 20 minutes, and with no-holds-barred, Bill peppered me with questions spanning some of the hottest topics in HCM:  SaaS, Social, Mobile and Hybrid HCM.  A few of the questions we discussed – and at times, debated – were these:

• Are social technologies delivering business value?  Have they found their place as ‘real tools’ or are we still just connecting and sharing?
• Is SaaS winning because we’re doing less diligence? Are switching costs really less for SaaS vs. OnPremises solutions?
• Is Hybrid HCM (the combination of OnPremises and SaaS deployments) part of the journey to the Cloud, or a destination in itself?  Why would you go that route?
• Mobile – is there real enterprise value here, or is mobile really just for a few targeted processes such as time & labor?  Where is it making a difference?

Click here to listen to this highly interactive session.  For a full roster and links to Bill’s many other radio interviews, visit KI OnDemand.

Disclosure: neither Bill Kutik nor Knowledge Infusion are clients of mine or of Constellation Research, Inc., but I am not above buying them (or letting them buy me) a drink, coffee or other refreshment when our paths cross in exchange for great industry conversation and insights. 

Filed under: Cloud, Global HCM, Hybrid, Mobile/Social, Social Tagged: Bill Kutik, Cloud, Cloud computing, Collaboration, future of work, HCM, HR, HR Tech, Knowledge Infusion, Mobile, SaaS, Social, Social Enterprise, Trends, yvette cameron

Alumni: Constellation Research Constellation Research

Yvette Cameron was VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc. focusing on next generation HCM processes and technologies, and is founder of NextGen Insights. Yvette is now a Constellation Research alumna. , Title:&nbsp;Big Ideas CRM concepts will transform HCM processes for new levels of Employee Engagement and Business Results Companies are investing heavily to understand and optimize their customer relationships, but less so with their employee relationships. We must apply the tenets of CRM to HCM processes to understand, engage and align the workforce, because customer success begins with employee success. From “Command and Control” to “Engage and Inspire” Traditional work practices and business structures are evolving at an unparalleled rate. New thinking and… Read more

A few weeks ago, I participated in a virtual panel focused on “The Future of Work”, providing my views into the changing landscape of work, not just as we enter 2013, but looking further out to 3, 5 or even 10 years from now. The discussion, sponsored by Cornerstone OnDemand, is available here for playback.

I began the session by sharing my view that the future of work, first and foremost, is already here. Organizations have long been affected by and responding to the dramatic changes coming from disruptive technologies, rapidly shifting worker demographics and dynamics, and new competitive pressures from an especially dynamic business climate. The challenges are real and taking place today. Looking to the future of work, one could sum up the anticipated impacts in a single word: More. More intensity. More pressure. More change. More risk. But also, more opportunity. More engagement. More transparency. More impact.

This “more” concept translates to a change in all aspects of work: namely, the Who, Where, When, What, How and even Why of work needs to be rethought:

• The “who” of work: Who are your workers?  What generation do they represent? Are they employees or free agents? What is the composition of your workforce from a diversity perspective and how are practices in attracting, engaging, motivating, developing, measuring and rewarding the workforce evolving?
• The “where” and “when” of work: Work takes place at the office, at home, on the go; in connected or disconnected modes from laptops, tablets, smartphones and desktops; face-to-face with our local colleagues or virtually across the globe; in shared coworking spaces where our cubicle neighbor may not even work for the same company. What systems are we using to ensure access to the people and information necessary to get work done? To drive engagement and crank up innovation?  In today’s business climate, are we fostering results from any place, at any time, from any device, or constraining people and results with a traditional mindset to work?
• The “what” and “how” of work: The very nature of work is changing as the lines between employees, customers and suppliers blur and technology transforms work to more interaction-based engagements.  Big data insights and predictive analytics provide new views of influence and impact while social network analysis helps us understand the flow of knowledge in the enterprise and how work is getting done.  We’re just scratching the surface on better insights into the what and how of work in today’s social enterprise; what role will HR play in this new world of big data?
• The “why” of work: Motivations differ by generation and by individual; they span pay and benefits, career advancement, skill development, recognition and increasingly,  social responsibility and altruism.  Are the rewards and recognition systems used in corporations today resonating with these very diverse workforce motivations? Do our company cultures sustain the drivers of the emerging workforce?

I riffed a bit on the sweeping changes required in business due to the above and received my favorite response of the hour from Cornerstone’s VP of Corporate Development and Strategy, Jason Corsello.  His comment?

“Ok, now you’ve scared me.”

Jason is wicked smart. And he is anything but ‘scared’ about the future of work, as he and his colleagues work to guide Cornerstone’s strategy and disrupt the legacy market with cloud, social and mobile technologies. But his off-the-cuff comment was a good one, highlighting that despite all the advances we’ve made in processes and technology, there is still much more to do; more to plan for, to learn from, to capitalize on,  to embrace.

More.

Are you ready for the future of work?

Read a summary of the full panel discussion or listen to the event directly.  Be sure to catch the latest research on the Future of Work, Consumerization of IT and the New C-Suite, and other critical business themes at Constellation Research, Inc..

Disclosure: Cornerstone OnDemand is a client of Constellation Research, Inc.

Filed under: Future of Work, NextGen Workforce Tagged: bigdata, Cornerstone OnDemand, Disruptive technology, future of work, Getting Work Done, HCM, HR, HR Tech, Human resources, Millenials, Next Generation, Next Generation apps, Social Enterprise, Social network, Talent Management, Work, Workforce, Workforce Technologies, yvette cameron