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

Social communications improves business agility and delivers numerous benefits that directly impact how employees work.  It supports real time collaboration and sharing of information among business teams, which result in fewer business communication delays.  Social communications also lessens the time it takes to complete tasks and helps employees make faster and more informed decisions.  However, with many changes occurring in the workplace, even positive changes may find employees who resist modifications in their work habits.  Many companies add social tools one by one and it is not unusual for employees to start resisting using new applications due to the need to remember separate passwords and managing several different user interfaces on their desktop.  To increase adoption rates for social communications, companies need to take several steps to ensure high adoption for social communications in order to achieve its expected benefits. Steps to improve adoption for social media by employees include:

Support social applications across multiple mobile devices.  A key feature for using social communications is that it is accessible for users.  With more employees using a mix of smartphones and tablets it is important to provide employees social communications access on the devices of their choice.

Deliver a simplified user experience.  Simplicity and ease of use are two critical factors in making social communications popular for employees.  Many employees are often too busy to take the time to adequately learn how to use social applications.  To improve adoption rates deploy applications with an intuitive user interface across all devices

Provide easy access to shared content.  Social communications supports online document sharing applications that allows members of a business team to review, read and annotate their documents and those from others.  It gives employees immediate access to files that support their job functions and reduces time spent searching for this same information from other sources. The search capabilities on document sharing applications need to be accurate and fast to encourage user participation.

Implement online communities. These may be communities of interest or discussion forums, directories of employee profiles and interests or microblogging sites that enable employees to reach out to a broader population of colleagues and quickly find answers to questions or relevant information from co-workers in other departments.  Information that may have taken days to discover can now be found quickly saving employees many hours of searching for content.

Promote social adoption internally. Create an internal awareness of how social communications is used by other employees and encourage employee participation.  This may be as simple as encouraging employees to post personal information or specific skills they have on a community site to encourage cross functional conversations.

Engage top management.  When senior executives start using social communications as a major channel for sending information to employees or receiving comments from workers, the adoption for social communications will increase rapidly, as more employees will use these applications to communicate with others.

To find more about how to gain and justify the many advantages for social communications and learn more about how other companies using social communications in their business please check out Constellation Research’s new report, “How to gain competitive edge for social adoption”, October 23, 2012 by Elizabeth Herrell.

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

I just attended Cisco’s annual summit for analysts, consultants and partners, which highlighted this year’s achievements.  While there was little new with its core collaboration portfolio, Cisco emphasized its accomplishments in implementing and executing on its strategy to deliver its broad suite of collaboration solutions to its customers.  Cisco made a lot of progress in integrating its voice, video, WebEx and social products and making the user experience across its portfolio simpler to use and easier to maintain.

There was a good discussion with analysts and consultants on how to help customers better identify the business value of its social business strategy.  Validating the ROI for collaboration investments is essential to grow this business.  This is similar to the issue that vendors and service providers faced when introducing unified communications several years ago.  The challenge will be to direct its sales channel to expand its marketing efforts beyond the IT department and into business units and clearly demonstrate how social business improves business processes and agility.

Cisco has made several advancements to deliver an integrated offering to its customers.  Among this year’s announcements that highlights its integration efforts was the single unified client for voice and video that supports multiple endpoints and results in a simplified user experience.  Additionally, Its WebEx product now offers an integrated solution for conferencing, instant messaging, telepresence and social, which can be delivered either as a premise or cloud solution.  These integration efforts, as well as the move to the cloud, are important steps to engage the next generation workforce that is highly mobile and social.  Several customers spoke convincingly on the benefits for implementing its collaboration solutions to reduce costs and increase employee productivity.

A wonderful locknote speech by Dir. Michio Kaku, a renowned physicist and futurist reminded us all that we are in for profound changes in technology and to be ready for the ride.  Cisco has done well in marketing itself as a company that embraces the future while delivering quality support to its existing customers.  With formidable competitors such as Microsoft, Google and IBM also trying to capture leadership in social business, Cisco needs to continue to clearly differentiate its value, business relevance and capabilities in this space as it goes forward.

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,… Read more

Tablet computers, such as Apple's iPad, are making inroads into corporate settings, but only a small percentage of corporate employees today are using them. This will likely change, however, as tablets and tablet-like devices evolve in their capabilities and form-factors.

Market Definitions Blurring

The market for tablet and tablet-like devices is developing quickly, but there is still quite a bit of confusion. For example, in Intel's most recent quarterly conference call, CEO Paul Otellini wondered out loud about the definitions of the various types of new tablet-like computers coming on to the market.  He said,

When you start seeing an ultra book with a detachable touch screen, is it a tablet? And [if] it's based on [Intel's next generation processor] Haswell, is it a tablet, an ultra book or a convertible? I don’t know. We’ll have to invent some names for these things as we go along but what I can tell you is the level of innovation there is unbounded.

Later in the call, he answered a question the potential for tablets to cannibalize sales of personal computers and laptops.

Pressed by one analyst on how much of the slowdown in consumer PCs was related to timing of Windows 8, versus how much was related to cannibalization by tablets and phones, Otellini said that “I think it’s a bit of each.” Otellini said that once Windows 8 ships, and consumers begin to try it out, “and we have all of the touch-based ultrabooks out there, we’ll know a lot more so we’ll try to quantify that a bit more for you in 90 days.”

In other words, the line between laptop computers and tablets is blurring. Moreover, tablets themselves are evolving in their form factors and capabilities, enabling them to begin to encroach on sales of laptops.

Corporate Penetration of Tablets Low But Growing

When considering the issue of cannibalization, Intel and other suppliers are considering both consumer sales and business sales. But the evidence so far shows adoption of tablet computers is much stronger on the consumer side than the business side.

As shown in the figure nearby, our research at Computer Economics indicates that about one-third of business organizations are supporting tablet computers to some extent among their user populations. However, the percentage of corporate employees actually using tablets is quite low. At the median, less than 5% of business users carry company-supported tablet computers today. These statistics vary, of course, by industry and size of organization.

Although tablet penetration into the corporate workforce is quite low, there are signs that the usage rate will increase sharply in the coming years, based on the percentage of organizations considering these devices or planning additional investments. 

Tablet Capabilities to Mature Rapidly

To this point, corporate PC makers have not had much to worry about in terms of tablets taking market share away from personal computers. Today, most tablet computers, specifically the market-leading iPad, do not have the capabilities of laptop computers. For example, cutting and pasting text on an iPad is cumbersome.

iPads today, therefore, supplement laptops and desktop computers rather than replace them. As the market leader, Apple can afford to deliberately limit the functionality of the iPad so as to not cannibalize sales of its own MacBook laptop computers. However, as other tablet manufacturers catch up and even surpass the functionality of the iPad, Apple is likely to expand the capability of its tablet computer line.

The maturation of tablet computer capabilities will come sooner rather than later. Microsoft's introduction of Windows 8, a touch-enabled operating system that will run on PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphone and other handheld devices, is a full-featured platform. It will be able to run Microsoft Office, the core desktop application suite for most business organizations, as well as single-purpose mobile applications that are so popular on today's tablets. Tablet manufacturers will leverage these capabilities to introduce devices that are much more capable of replacing laptops than the iPad is capable of today. This will force Apple to follow suit if it wants to continue to make inroads in corporate settings. Makers of Android-based tablets will no doubt do the same, as has been rumored.

Tablets Will Begin to Displace Laptops in Corporate IT

Corporate IT organizations are not the ones taking the lead today to push tablets, or tablet-like devices, into the workforce. In most cases, it is individual business units that are forcing the IT organization to support these devices. The pressure generally is coming from sales organizations, field service, or top executives directly, who want these devices to perform simple tasks while traveling, such as checking email, scheduling appointments, entering expenses, and performing workflow approvals.

Tablets are just the latest example of the "consumerization of IT." In this regard, adoption of tablet computers in business will likely take a similar path to the adoption of personal computers over 30 years ago. When personal computers first made their appearance in business organizations, IT organizations were quite happy with having employees use IBM 3270 green screen terminals. It was business leaders that bought those first PCs and then turned to the IT organization to support them. Ultimately, IT organizations took over the procurement and management of desktop computers and addressed issues of connectivity with the corporate networks.

Likewise, today, it is business leaders who are buying tablet computers and pushing their IT organizations to support them. As these devices mature, they will become a standard part of the IT portfolio of most business organizations. At that point, we will see tablets and tablet-like devices take a serious bite out of laptop and desktop sales.

That day may come faster than IT leaders imagine.

Related Posts

Laptops Displacing Desktops: Impact on Support Costs (Computer Economics)
ERP in the Lead, But Mobile Apps Gaining Ground (Computer Economics)

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… Read more

Think TED Meets Enterprise For The C-Suite – Constellation’s Connected Enterprise.

Constellation’s flagship event, Connected Enterprise 2012, starts November 9th to 11th, 2012.  This intimate innovation summit in Dana Point, CA (www.stregismb.com) is designed for senior business leaders who are attempting or successfully using disruptive technologies such as social business, cloud computing, mobile enterprise, big data and analytics, gamification, and unified communications/video to drive business value and transform business models.

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 – 2012 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!

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… Read more

Key Themes Include Mobility, User Experience, and Innovation

Over 1100 IFS customers convened October 15th to 17th, 2012 in Gothenburg Sweden for the IFS World Conference.  The conference brought together the world of projects, service and asset, manufacturing, and supply chain.  The conference highlighted the:

• Massive move to mobile. IFS continued their push into their mobile apps portfolio with seven touch apps.  Martin Gunnarsson director of research and development, discussed how the mobile solution addresses three personas: casual, professional, and transactional. IFS Time Tracker addresses project time and attendance reporting, confirmation, etc.  IFS Trip Tracker simplifies travel expense reporting.  IFS Sales Companion helps sales professionals manage their accounts, tasks and opportunities. IFS Quick Reports provide the ability to create and view ad-hoc reports on a mobile device.  IFS Quick Facts enables fast keyword search of any object in IFS Applications.  IFS Flight Log allows the management of platform operational data in the aerospace and defense industry.  IFS Support Companion delivers interaction with IFS support centers.
  
  Point of view (POV): The move to mobile continues the user experience emphasis of IFS.  These new Touch Apps address specific work processes and allow for quick to complete tasks.  By calling on services running inside IFS Cloud, users gain direct access without having to talk to the ERP back end.  IFS should be lauded for support of the three key mobile apps ecosystems: Google Play Store, Apple App Store and Windows Marketplace.  pushing out to public apps stores provides customers with an easy and frictionless experience.  Customers and prospects can expect more touch apps to address areas in CRM, HR, reporting, search, and projects in 2013.

• Launch customers on IFS Applications 8. Customers on hand at the conference provided upfront honesty of the migration to IFS Applications 8Early adopters, Remmele Engineering, Portsmouth Aviation, VBG Group, Bright Point, and Teracom shared insights on their move to IFS Applications 8.  Some customers moved from IFS 2003, others from IFS 7.5.  Right now 40% of the customer base has made the move to 7.5 or 8.  IFS has 34000 users are live or implementing and expect 25 customers by year end to be live on IFS applications 8.
  
  (POV): The different release paths, industries, and use cases reinforced the marketing messages that the move to IFS Applications 8 was worth the trouble.  Customers cite the user experience, business intelligence, and the move to mobility as the key reasons for the shift.  Regulatory compliance and new industry specific features also played a significant role.

• Beefed up partner program. IFS announced a multitude of partnerships supporting Touch apps.  The partnership with Honeywell brings IFS’s field service, supply chain, and asset management with Honeywell’s scanning and mobile devices to address asset up-time and reliability.  The NEC partnership will extend the reseller relationship and deliver smartphone apps for NEC’s customer base. Norwegian Addovation will provide user access and shared documents in IFS Document Management for smartphones.  TimeZynk will deliver social task management solutions for personnel planning, time management, and social networking.  Cedar Bay delivers an inventory and quality assurance processes.  Cooper Software provides customer and supplier reports via email, fax, and EDI.
  
  (POV): IFS is intent on building out its mobile ecosystem.  Using the IFS Cloud as the connection point, partners no longer have to worry about keeping up to date with the ERP backbone.  Thus, Honeywell provides many rugged mobile devices for Android and Windows for asset-intensive industries such as energy, utilities, and oil and gas.  The NEC relationship helps provide access to the Japanese market.  Cedar Bay provides access to UK, France, Spain and the Americas.  Cooper Software reaches out to the UK, Sweden, an France.  Given that many prospects cite security as a key barrier to adoption, IFS may want to establish partnerships with mobile enterprise management vendors to head off this concern.

The Photo Stream From #IFSWoCO2012

<iframe align=center src=http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?user_id=35408001@N04&set_id=72157631774362823&detail=yes frameBorder=”0″ scrolling=no width=”600″ height=”500″></iframe>

Source: R Wang. All rights reserved.

The Bottom Line: Users Seek Innovation In Enterprise Software That Aligns With Industry Specific Solutions

Conversations with over 35 IFS customers confirms recent survey work that shows mid-market customers seek turn-key, last mile solutions.  Users turn to IFS as an alternative to SAP or Oracle for its innovation in mobile, user experience, and purpose built solutions.  Over the next 24 to 36 months, prospects and customers can expect more innovation to be driven by vendors who deliver industry specific solutions.  The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech (e.g. social mobile, cloud, big data, and unified communications) will continue to play a key role in driving enterprise innovations.

Your POV.

Have you considered a purpose built industry solution? Does user experience and mobility matter in your vendor selection? Ready to upgrae your ERP?  How important is mobile for your organization?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Related Resources

News Analysis: IFS Acquires Metrix To Boost Mobility And Service Management

Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation

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 – 2012 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!

Constellation Alumni

"I am fascinated by understanding technologies, then explaining how to apply these within enterprises -- while still retaining common sense." Charles Brett is VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc..&nbsp; His primary focus is on all aspect of mobility and the use of mobile technology in the enterprise. &nbsp;For 25+ years Charles Brett has focused on delivering common sense to the application of technologies, especially software ones, in organizations of all sizes around the world. While concentrating at Constellation Research on&nbsp;mobility and its management in the enterprise&nbsp;(sometimes known as MDM or Mobile Device Management) he also addresses: mobile app development and deployment mobile apps and associated data management BYOD (Bring or Buy Your Own… Read more

Mobile 2013 was held this week in Tel Aviv. From some 150 original companies, 20 were exhibiting and 10 were chosen to make a final short list for a winner for 2013. What follows is an eclectic selection of 8 solutions presented at Mobile 2013. It shows just how much room there is for innovation in mobility, and not just for the consumer marketplace.

To start, take two extremes. These were:

Paparazit (www.paparazit.com): this is a “social celebrity app” where the app reports online the location of a celebrity (if you see one) or where you can check on your favorite celebrity’s latest location; while I cannot think of anything quite so surplus to my own needs it is astonishing in its focus (perhaps real celebs. will pay to have this app removed but, on second thoughts, would-be celebs. will probably (sic) celebrate).
Neomatix (www.neo-matix.com) offers a stark contrast — an app which exploits electro-optic methods based on image processing algorithms for monitoring tire pressure by using the camera on a smartphone — without needing to attach anything to a tire and without needing to dirty your hands; this is definitely a useful innovation (and the app is available for free this week on the iTunes store, and available later for Android, etc.).

CellBuddy (www.cell-buddy.com) is a work-in-progress but with intriguing possibilities. It addresses the excessive cost of international data and voice roaming (where, for example, costs outside your home carrier can exceed Euros 11 or US$14 per MB of data sent or received). By adding a sleeve to an existing phone, which includes an additional unique GSM identifier, all roaming is then handled by CellBuddy at a substantially reduced cost. For travelers to many countries this could be a welcome substitute for having to buy and then use the right SIM for each individual country. With CellBuddy you buy once, set up an account and then use where you need. (Personally I could use this now and with c $45B likely to be spent on roaming in 2012 one can see the attractions for all except greedy telephone carriers.)

Navin (no URL given) is a start-up which proposes to use crowdsourcing techniques to improve positioning within buildings (given that GPS locations within a building are generally not practical). An app, downloaded to smartphones, gathers position information using a combination of signals (including WiFi, cellular, RF, magnetometers, accelerometers and gyroscopes, etc.) to send back compact data to Navin which can then provide more accurate positioning to these within buildings. It is a ‘learning’ model: the more people use it, the better the information about that building.

BrightSpots (www.brightspots.net) combines gamification and rewards for those seeking to improve brand awareness. The company seeks to make it easy to create games or reward-based HML5-based apps (for example electronic scratch-cards) that can be sent to customers or potential customers. People play the games and the reward may have to be picked up in a store or at a branded location (an event or conference or some such). By introducing gamification to smartphone users BrightSpots hopes enterprises and brands will have a means to use the modern technologies in everyone’s hands to attract the attention of customers.

BuzzJourney (www.buzzjourney.com) is similar but different to carpooling.com. The difference is that a driver can describe a journey to BuzzJourney and would-be passengers can express interest — and pay to BuzzJourney the equivalent of what public transport might cost them for that journey. The driver receives 75% of that public transport fare from BuzzJourney, with the latter keeping 25%. With 2-3 passengers a journey might pay for itself. BuzzJourney is already operating in Israel. It expects to expand beyond Israel in 2013 — and one can see the attraction.

Finally, two different approaches to security on mobile devices:

the first will be familiar from a Constellation Report and past blogs (http://www.constellationrg.com/blog/2012/02/mpv-multiple-persona-virtual… and http://www.constellationrg.com/blog/2012/02/mpv-multiple-persona-virtual…) – Cellrox (www.cellrox.com): Cellrox offers Multiple Virtual Personas on Android devices, with each Persona being made securely separate, via virtualization.
the second comes from Zimperium (www.zimperium.com) with its zCore IPS (Intruder Prevention System) for smartphones and tablets which claims to recognize and prevent network-based attacks in real time, along with pre-emptive prevention of widespread worm attacks and vulnerability patching. What Zimperium aspires to is the establishment of an essential layer of security for smartphones and tablets. Enterprises should be interested, along with Zimperium’s zAppliance — a smart security console to monitor and manage an organization’s policies.

There were plenty of other participants and well more than 500 attendees. Interest was high. But, in the view of Constellation Research, originality seems to know no bounds when it comes to mobility, and it does not matter if this is aimed at the consumer, the enterprise or a combination.

Update 2012-10-16: Zimperim won 1st Place and Cellrox 2nd Place from the Final List of 10

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,… Read more

Earlier this month, I gave a keynote presentation on the subject of ERP optimization, at the Manufacturing ERP Experience conference in Cleveland. This post provides a quick introduction to the subject of ERP optimization and a video of my complete keynote.

Not Enough Just to Select and Implement the Right System

When it comes to ERP, most business leaders realize that it is critical to select the right system and implement it successfully. Likewise, when it comes to advice about ERP, most analysts and consultants focus on their attention on best practices for ERP vendor selection and implementation. 

But very few analysts pay attention to what happens after the implementation. An organization will spend many more months using an ERP system than it will selecting and implementing it. A company might take three to six months to select a new ERP system and another year or two to implement it: but it will be using that system to support its business operations for seven years, 10 years, or hopefully even longer.

How ERP Systems Become Sub-Optimized and What to Do About It

There are many opportunities for ERP system to no longer fully serve the needs of the business--even ERP systems that have been correctly selected and implemented. Business requirements may change, due to organic growth, mergers and acquisitions, introduction of new products and services, changes in business models, new demands from customers, or any number of other factors. As a result, organizations frequently become dissatisfied with their ERP systems.

Business leaders, therefore, need to periodically optimize their ERP systems, both on the benefits side and the cost side. This ERP optimization effort encompasses four main tasks:

1. Analyze Root Problems. Trace each ERP problem according to a four-way framework, that is, problems related to (1) the software itself, (2) how the software was installed, (3) the business not using the system, and (4) the business not using the system effectively.
    
2. Identify Corrective Actions. By understanding the root causes, the corrective action often becomes clear, and it often does not mean an expensive and disruptive exercise in selecting and implementing a new system. Rather, the existing system can be optimized.
    
3. Identify Potential Cost Savings. After three years, the majority of ERP total cost of ownership is not in the up-front implementation costs: it is in ongoing support. Therefore, it is essential to optimize the ongoing support costs for ERP, considering a number of practical recommendations.
    
4. Execute the ERP Optimization Roadmap. Finally, the recommended actions need to be prioritized, planned, and carried out with just as much discipline as the original implementation demanded. If done correctly, optimizing ERP can effectively extend the life of a current system to better serve the business for years to come.

You can watch my full presentation on optimizing ERP by clicking on the image at the top of this post. 

If you'd like a full copy of the presentation slides, just email me. My email address is in the right hand column.

Related Posts

Factors that Affect ERP Implementation Cost 
Twenty Years of ERP Lessons Learned
Optimizing ERP Support Staffing in Smaller Organization
 

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

In the run up to this year’s annual HR Technology Conference, I’ve been meeting with HCM technology vendors large and small. As expected, almost every vendor articulates an interest in, if not full vision for, social enablement of its offering. Some offer social capabilities today, some are expanding beyond initial forays in recruiting or learning, and others point to future directions with social based on customer demand. The path to social is also varied, coming through native development, partnership or even acquisition.

The Social HCM market is nascent, with vendors evolving their strategies and customers wrestling with questions ranging from business applicability to internal ownership of “social” in the enterprise (should these initiatives be driven and owned by IT, Legal, HR, Marketing, or…?)

Applying a different lens to the definition of Social HCM – one focused on employee enablement, engagement, and knowledge acceleration – brings another class of vendors into view: social business software providers. These vendors deliver on the foundations of social learning and social talent management, and have been doing so for years. They’re just not top of mind when shopping for those solutions because they don’t typically market to an HCM audience with an HCM messages.

Consider players like Atlassian, Jive, NewsGator, Socialtext, Telligent, IBM and the many others that serve the social business software market. By their very nature of being social collaboration tools, they support many foundational processes such as social learning and social talent, with companies routinely reporting measurable benefits across employee and business performance. Yet for various reasons – including the fact that HR is not usually a driver for social technologies – you don’t see these players at the HR Technology Conference. But you should, as they routinely deliver on these and many other social use cases that are of direct interest to HR leadership:

• Social Onboarding: establishing and assigning new hires to communities and groups; ability to follow people/content; system-driven recommendations on who to follow, groups to join, content to review.
• Social Performance: informal and social feedback via activity streams; badges or other recognition feedback and social rewards;      granting “skills” or “expertise” levels to others in the social network; improved engagement through gamification.
• Social Goals: broadcasting activities and goals (including status and completion); soliciting feedback on goals and projects; granting badges or other recognition; task management for shared goals and objectives and identifying related work of others.
• Social Learning: creating, posting, sharing, rating, tagging and following content; informal learning through micro blogging and activity streams, often with embedded and actionable content; expertise identification; ideation and crowd sourcing innovation across the enterprise.

Looking at the list of Exhibitors at the HR Tech Conference, I found only two pure-play social networking providers exhibiting this year: NewsGator¹ and Yammer¹. (I say only two, as Socialtext is now part of Talent Management provider Peoplefluent, and other solutions like Saba and SuccessFactors are already broader talent management providers with embedded platforms. In fact, even Yammer is now part of the broader Microsoft stack and can no longer be considered “pure play.”)

NewsGator in particular is an interesting addition to the list of exhibitors this year. If you’re not familiar with them, NewsGator has been delivering social business applications for many years through their Social Sites offering. They also integrate directly into Microsoft SharePoint – a solution in use by an estimated 75% of organizations.

Recently, NewsGator launched a new offering called NewsGator Enrich, which goes beyond the core use cases above and focuses on specific learning use cases to power informal, social learning across the enterprise. This latest offering includes a socially driven knowledge base for collaborative knowledge development and exchange, and interactive video learning capability for complex learning scenarios. A few of the core tenets of the Enrich Knowledge Base (KB) are described below.

• Create knowledge base (KB) items in context of business workflows. Conversations in the activity stream, or specific question and answer      activities are readily tagged and saved to the knowledge base. A bookmarklet enables any web page to be referenced to the KB with a single click, and documents of any type are quickly added as well. Content can also be created directly within the knowledge base, turning any employee into a contributor to organizational know-how.
• Quickly access the right knowledge. In addition to filtering KB content based on the most recent, most viewed or other categories, user-added metadata such as titles, tags and descriptions facilitate searching, discovery, and categorization of the knowledge base content.
• Turn unstructured Q&A into a powerful resource. Answers can be accumulated, with the “accepted” answer identified for clarity and consistency.
• Drive engagement with embedded gamification. Award badges and provide recognition to users based on their contributions and activities.

The HCM technology market is undergoing a significant shift. As we move from systems of transactions to systems of engagement, traditional “HCM” processes will be redefined, and it is only natural that new solution providers emerge from outside the HCM space. The move by NewsGator to deliver on highly targeted social learning use cases is the latest case-in-point, as well as a broader signal to the market that HCM technologies can come from non-HCM vendors.

While you’re checking out the many vendors at this year’s HR Technology Conference, I encourage you to stop by the booths of “non-traditional HCM” vendors as well. The door is open for social technology vendors to expand beyond their social collaborative networking foundations and deliver next-generation approaches to traditional learning, talent management and other “people” processes. I expect we’ll see more from NewsGator and others like them in the future, as “HR Technology” gives way to more business outcomes focused “Work Management Technology.”

¹(Disclosure: NewsGator and Yammer are both clients of Constellation Research client).