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

Global outsourcing and Bangalore Infotech bellwether Infosys (NASDAQ:INFY), announced its agreement to purchase Zurich-based Lodestone Management Consultancy for $350M.  A quick analysis of the news reveals:

• Infosys strengthens its EMEA and SAP vertical presence. Lodestone brings 850 employees which 750 are front line delivery personnel. Lodestone’s 200 clients span industries such as life sciences, consumer goods, automotive, financial Services,  banking and industrial equipment. across a profitable and strategic SAP customer base.
  
  Point of View (POV): The Lodestone acquisition gives Infosys a profitable and strategic SAP customer base.  While some may say this acquisition, which has taken some time to complete, is a late response to the July 2009 HCL – Axon acquisition, Constellation believes this is part of a larger but more conservative approach to shore up Infosys’ EMEA strategy.  In the short term, the economics of EMEA will work against Infosys as Eurozone concerns amplify into 2013.  Long-term, the acquisition may prove itself out as Infosys gains a greater foothold through consolidation.  Constellation estimates $1B in revenues from SAP alone post merger.

• Lodestone methodology and culture will transform Infosys. Lodestone brings it’s trademark IDEA methodology.  IDEA represents insight, design, execute, and achieve.  This approach aligns with Six Sigma standards and SAP ASAP to improve the quality of implementation outcomes.
  
  Point of View (POV): Infosys can gain from learning the IDEA approach in achieving business transformation across the project life cycle.  More importantly, Infosys gains deep local expertise in a wide range of SAP dominant industries.  Constellation believes the goal is to build out the Infosys 3.0. strategy, which is about expanding into management consulting and systems integration and away from outsourcing.

The Bottom Line: Traditional BPO Models Have Run Their Course and Traditional Outsourcers Must Act Quickly Or Suffer

With the growing backlash on outsourcing in the US elections spreading to continental Europe, traditional BPO models may no longer provide growth.  India’s info-tech giants must take the path to the next level and focus on IP innovation and creation (see Figure 1).   While these are new skill sets required to deliver the next generation of IT services, the shift will take time and a cultural revolution.  Can India’s infotech companies make the shift to a cloud meets subscription economy?  Will the shift from trusted advisor to innovation partner happen quickly enough?  Every global outsourcer faces these same questions amidst consumerization of IT, the rise of cloud computing, and oppression and domination by the mega software ecosystems.

Figure 1.  The Path From Body Shop Provider to High Value Creator

Your POV.

Are you ready for the new Infosys? Do you think they can make the shift from outsourcer to management consultancy?  Let us know your experiences.  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Related Constellation Research

Wang, R. “Best Practices – Three Simple Software Maintenance Strategies That Can Save You Millions” Constellation Research, Inc. March 8, 2012

Scavo, Frank & Wang, R. “Big Idea: Constellation’s Business Value Framework” Constellation Research, Inc.  January 31, 2012.

Wang, R. “Best Practices: Why Every CIO Should Consider Third-Party Maintenance.” Constellation Research, Inc. August 7, 2012.

Wang, R. “Market Overview: The Market For SAP Optimization Options” Constellation Research, Inc. May 11, 2011.

Wang, R. “Best Practices: The Case for Two-Tier ERP Deployments” Constellation Research, Inc. February 28, 2011.

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!

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: 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

If there were a secret sauce to organizational success, then you would find “Effective Talent Mobility Program” as one of its first ingredients.

From addressing the top concerns of CEOs to the daily challenges of line of business leaders and the concerns of individual employees – an effective talent mobility strategy can have significant positive results at all levels, and on the business as a whole.

What is Talent Mobility?

Fundamentally, talent mobility is about the movement of talent across the organization (across projects, roles, teams, divisions, locations, etc.).  Based on the driving party, these workforce initiatives are typically called succession planning (employer-initiated) or career planning (employee initiated), but at the end of the day it all comes down to the readiness for and actual movement of talent in the enterprise.

When I refer to talent mobility as part of the “secret sauce”, I’m not talking about  yesterday’s strategies – where succession plans are based on senior job titles;  where “internal recruiting” means a job is posted internally for five days and then routed to the external job sites; or an employee seeking career growth is handed a listing of the next three job titles up the ladder and the associated required training and tenure for each role.

Instead, I’m talking about talent mobility for the future of work  – what works in an environment where five generations are converging on the enterprise but bringing divergent perspectives on work, rewards and motivation; where hierarchies give way to networks, and influence is the new social currency; where virtual teams and mobile devices drive expectations for an always-on, always-connected, always-informed experience.

What’s The Risk?

You can hardly view a blog, tweet or magazine article without hearing the extent to which employees are disengaged, mistrustful of leadership, and open to being poached by competitors. Consider the following stats:

• At any given time, more than 2/3rds of a company’s workforce is disengaged¹ – workers are essentially sleepwalking on the job.
• 65% of employees are looking – either actively or passively – to leave their organization.²
• Only 18% of Millennials expect to remain in their current job for the long term;³ 37% say they do not trust “big business” (read this one as “we’re recruiting challenges for big firms!”)

Improving employee engagement is paramount, as study after study correlates improved engagement with improved retention, productivity and business outcomes such as customer satisfaction, profitability and brand.  According to the Corporate Leadership Board⁴,

Employees most committed to their organizations put forth 57 percent more effort and are 87 percent less likely to leave their company than employees who consider themselves disengaged.

By incorporating a few key design tenets into their talent mobility strategies, organizations can propel engagement and bottom line results across the organization.

Five Tenets for Effective Talent Mobility

1. Focus on people, not titles.  Succession plans focused on replacements for certain titles and roles fail to account for the valuable hidden talent of the organization.  Such an  approach also fails to plan for the departure of critical employees who, despite being in individual contributor roles or holding nominal titles, nonetheless serve pivotal roles in greasing the wheels of success in the organization.  Uncovering your hidden talent is possible when social tools are part of the enabling technology of your mobility programs:  expanded profiles allow for greater talent insight, while social network analysis can uncover critical connections and impacts previously undetected.
2. Eschew the corporate ladder; embrace the corporate lattice.  The latest generation of worker is less motivated by factors such as pay and job titles, and more by recognition, engagement at senior levels, and the ability to work on projects of high interest. However, lateral or even downward moves in the organization may be required to access these opportunities.  If your company culture only values upward mobility, then your development, retention and mobility strategies can have limited results at best.  Embracing and celebrating moves anywhere along the corporate lattice will foster corporate agility while engendering improved trust and motivation from individuals. (Note: embracing the lattice also means embracing the actual movement of talent…an increased volume in transfers and cross-team assignments, or some level of ambiguity around corporate hierarchies, will be standard in such a culture.)
3. Broaden the focus beyond “jobs” to include “opportunities”.  Expanding one’s skills and experiences should not always require an official job change.  Temporary project assignments, virtual teams assembled for a defined period of time, dynamic org structures that constantly reform around strategic initiatives: these are the emerging realities of workplace structures in the future of work.  Beyond support for managing job openings, tools are emerging that enable users to share these more project-based initiatives across the enterprise social network.  Instead of staffing ad-hoc or short-term projects with the same resources again and again, extend visibility of the opportunities across the enterprise, creating new options for employees and improving communication, transparency, trust and engagement.
4. Incorporate mentorship and coaching. Process-wise this is a no-brainer, but many organizations still do not officially support mentor/coaching programs as part of talent mobility programs.   Today’s technologies support mentor and coaching relationships that range from highly informal and unstructured conversations to richly choreographed relationships with milestones, tracking, reviews and more.  The use of social technologies makes finding and connecting to mentors or coaches easier than ever before, and matching algorithms in the technology can further automate the mentor/mentee connection process, refining its calculations over time.
5. Give employees the tools they need to drive their own success. With today’s technologies, talent mobility does not have to remain a top-down process managed in complex systems.  Today’s social-infused tools foster employee engagement throughout the mobility program; recommendations of potential job or opportunity matches (for “passive” internal candidates) are delivered to employees’ devices of choice; individuals can scan or search across opportunities, engaging in conversations with opportunity owners and others; employees are able to promote their ‘brand’ by communicating successes, soliciting feedback and engaging visibility across the enterprise.  Intelligence in the form of recommendation engines, analytics and visualizations are part of the experience to drive employee self-sufficiency.

Internal mobility programs that continuously engage the workforce will also have beneficial effects on external recruiting initiatives, as members of your engaged workforce become positive brand ambassadors for your organization.

Want to hear firsthand how one Silicon Valley leader is doing it?

Join us for an exclusive luncheon in Palo Alto on Wednesday Sept 12. 

If you’re going to be in the Silicon Valley on Wednesday, September 12, please join me as I talk with Michael McNeal, Intuit’s VP Talent Strategy & Acquisition, and senior executives from UpMo, innovators in social talent management, on this topic of talent retention and mobility.  You’ll hear about Intuit’s path to creating a talent mobility culture and engage in an interactive session with peers from across the Valley on the cultural, technological and business implications of these initiatives.  This is a complimentary event, being held at the Four Seasons Silicon Valley in Palo Alto.  Register here

Exclusive Luncheon sponsored by UpMo.

Data sources:

¹ US Employment Engagement Survey, Gallup Management Journal 2012
² Deloitte “Talent Edge 2020, Building the Recovery Together” 2011
³ PWC “Millennials at Work: Reshaping the Workplace” 2012
⁴ Corporate Leadership Council “The Role of Employee Engagement in the Return to Growth” 2010

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

Digital Media Luminary to Launch Constellation’s Newest Research Theme, Digital Marketing Transformation

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – Constellation Research, Inc., the award-winning research and advisory firm focused on helping clients navigate emerging and disruptive technologies announced today the addition of esteemed digital media pioneer, Gavin Heaton to the research team as Vice President and Principal Analyst. Heaton will lead Constellation’s latest business-focused research theme, Digital Marketing Transformation. Heaton’s research, which focuses on the changing role and expectations of CMOs, the fusion of marketing channels and change-driven marketing innovation, expands Constellation’s ability to provide digital marketing research and advisory services to its early adopter clients worldwide.

Heaton’sresearch and advisory will enable clients to take advantage of the convergence of media, technology, brands, and business. Specifically:

• Understanding where social media fits within the business landscape
• Aligning business and online engagement strategies
• Channeling the passion of employees toward the achievement of business goals

Heaton commented: “We are seeing a dramatic shift in the role of marketing. Advertising is under pressure, social is changing our customer relationships and the Consumerization of IT is changing the way we do our work. There has never been so much change or opportunity. I’m excited to help chart the course between marketing, technology, customers and vendors.”

Heaton has been at the forefront of technology driven marketing innovation for the past 20 years. Recently Heaton served as Social Media Director for SAP’s Premier Customer Network. He is also the co-instigator of the ground-breaking crowdsourced marketing book series The Age of Conversation.

“The move to digital changes how quickly, effectively, and relevantly we listen, test, engage, and anticipate,” says Constellation CEO, R “Ray” Wang. “Gavin is among a handful of people who not only understands this shift to digital marketing, but also brings a converged experience from agency, enterprise, and client side. Our clients expect an experienced and trusted advisor who can speak their language and translate to the IT folks. In fact, our clients seek outcomes, not technologies. Consequently, Gavin’s experiences take them one step further towards this objective. As Constellation builds out our business themed research, expect us to serving more and more of the C-Suite.”

DIGITAL MARKETING TRANSFORMATION

Digital Marketing Transformation is the newest business-focused research theme at Constellation Research, Inc. The C-suite is realizing the futility of remaining analog in a digital world. CMOs can no longer live in the campaign to lead process – CMOs must also involve themselves in big data and analytics, social and community building, reputation, and loyalty. The future is real time convergence and its name is digital.

COORDINATES

Twitter: @servantofchaos

Website: www.servantofchaos.com

Linkedin: au.linkedin.com/in/servantofchaos

Geo: Sydney, Australia

ABOUT CONSTELLATION RESEARCH

Constellation Research is a research and advisory firm focused on disruptive and emerging technologies. This renowned group of experienced analysts, led by R “Ray” Wang, focuses on business themed research including the Future of Work; Next Generation Customer Experience; From Data to Decisions; Matrix Commerce; Technology Optimization and Innovation; and Consumerization of IT and the New C-Suite.

Constellation’s collection of prestigious analysts bring real world experience, independence, and objectivity to client solutions that span cross-role, cross-functional, and cross-industry points of view. Clients join Constellation Research for a fresh and business focused perspective.

Unlike the legacy analyst firms, Constellation Research is disrupting how research is accessed, what topics are covered, and how clients can partner with a research firm to achieve success. Over 100 clients have joined from an ecosystem of buyers, partners, solution providers, c-suite, board of directors and vendor clients.

For more information about Constellation Research, visit www.ConstellationRG.com

***

Constellation Research, Constellation SuperNova Awards and the Constellation Research logo are trademarks of Constellation Research, Org. All other products and services listed herein are trademarks of their respective companies.

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: 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

Salesforce.com will be unveiling its HCM platform, Work.com, at Dreamforce in San Francisco later this month. What can we expect?

• Work.com is a rebranding and redevelopment of Rypple. This comes directly from CEO Marc Benioff, who adds that the new version and future directions will be demonstrated at Dreamforce.
   
• Rewards and recognition feature prominently in next-gen workforce applications. Following its December 2011 acquisition of Rypple, Salesforce acquired corporate perks management platform ChoicePass in June 2012. With messaging that Work.com will “let managers set organizational goals and recognize employees,” we can expect a broader approach to rewards and recognition in this next iteration. In fact, the new Work.com platform will highlight a trend that we at Constellation Research have been seeing in our research: the convergence of goal/task management, rewards and recognition, performance support and analytics. Combining these elements delivers contextual social engagement in the context of Getting Work Done  – the next evolution of talent management through systems of engagement
   
• Work.com is a platform play – at least for now. Benioff recently had this to say with regard to the human resources space: “We’re working hard to integrate with [Workday] to deliver a full HR suite to our customers between Salesforce.com’s Work.com, and Workday….And you’ll also see Workday’s integration with Chatter as well. We’re very excited about our initial focus here into HR.”

  Delivering a comprehensive HCM suite is time consuming, to say the least. The delivery of a social framework in support of  goals, feedback, recognition, collaboration and other core networking concepts is one thing; support of complex regulations that vary by locality/state/province/country, core employee recordkeeping, payroll, benefits and time keeping processes…these are something else entirely.  So it is no surprise to learn that Salesforce will focus on “rewards and recognition” in this first iteration and partner with Workday to bring its Work.com platform to market.

  Whether this will be a long term play or an interim step along each vendors’ development path (Salesforce’s development of the broader suite; Workday’s social enablement) has yet to be revealed. In the meantime, the combined offering will deliver end-to-end cloud based HCM with social enablement, and another blow to rivals Oracle and SAP.

With its years of experience in customer relationship management (CRM), coupled with its recent acquisitions of Buddy Media and Radian6 (forming the Salesforce Marketing Cloud),  I wonder if Salesforce will take the bold step and apply its expertise and lessons learned in CRM to future directions in “ERM” (employee relationship management).   The current positioning of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud is to be the “platform of choice for brands to listen, engage, gain insight, publish, advertise and measure” social marketing programs.  Imagine the possibilities if Salesforce applied these concepts to their talent technologies.

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

Convergence In The Five Forces Of Consumerization Of Technology Drives The Next Big Thing

Social has given us the tools to connect.  Mobile has given us the ability to interact any time and anywhere.  Cloud delivers access points to us with a rich array of content and information.  Big data provides us with the context and information to make decisions.  Unified communications and video transform how we share ideas.  This convergence of the five forces of consumerization drives the next shifts in technology.  The move from transaction to engagement and from engagement to experience is happening now.  The era of transactional apps rapidly makes way for the era of engagement.

If Business Value And Outcomes Are The Goal, Then We Need An Engagement Platform For The Enterprise

The arrival of engagement platforms does not signify time to throw out the transactional systems. In fact, those systems provide the foundation required for engagement.  The engagement layer exposes transactions and allow for deeper interaction and richer sources of information.  However, the transactional systems lack the ability to support engagement.

In fact, organizations around the world struggle with building the right engagement strategy for their customers and employees.  While crafting the right strategy should be designed prior to any technology selection, once completed, the technology to support the strategy does not exist out of the box from ANY solution provider.  Unfortunately, the technologies to achieve engagement remain disparate and hodge podge.   Many solution providers seek to achieve the engagement layer from different heritages:

• Pure play social solutions morph to engagement apps.  Vendors such as Broadvision, Jive, Moxie, Lithium, Tibco, and Yammer have delivered many elements of the engagement layer.  These horizontal offerings provide an opportunity to assimilate disparate offerings across multiple processes and roles.  The challenge is finding the tools that support consistent integration at the process, meta data, and data layer.  Gamification vendors such as Badgeville, Bunchball, BigDoor, Crowdtwist, and Gigya play a key role in delivering outcomes and influencing behavior through engagement.  Platforms such as Atlasian, Box, GoodData, and Tidemark open the door to a new era of engagement apps.
• Legacy transactional systems in transition to engagement. Major ERP and CRM vendors seek to address engagement with “social” and “mobile” features.  While many of the vendors have the components for engagement, the struggle will be to embed a sense and respond design point into both the interaction layer and process flows.  Salesforce embraces the social enterprise and uses Chatter as its entry point in creating engagement.  SAP attempts this with its CubeTree/SuccessFactors acquisition in Project Robus.  Oracle attacks this problem through a customer experience suite.  Microsoft acquired Yammer to create this layer inside Office and its Business Solutions portfolio. IBM embraces social business with a series of acquisitions and product enhancements to its IBM Connections product.  More importantly, IBM has built and acquired a portfolio of software solutions that sit on top of the legacy transactional systems, delivering high value and high impact.
• Consumer offerings could enter the enterprise. With consumerization of IT increasing, platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter provide a rich engagement platform that could be adopted in the enterprise.  Meanwhile, solutions providers such as Adobe blend consumer with enterprise as they provide the tools for engagement on the web and in mobile.  The challenge is dealing with societal norms between work and personal information.  The challenge is meeting enterprise class requirements for safety, security, and sustainability.
• Vertically integrated prosumer platforms already deliver engagement. Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have the unique capability of delivering an end to end solution from hardware, consumer device, operating system, database, applications, and partner ecosystem.  Engagement platforms form the basis of future business models as consumer and enterprise blend into prosumers.  The challenge is meeting the disparate needs of enterprise and consumer.
• Marketing and advertising networks provide rich profiles and targeting.  The ad networks are moving fast to shift engagement and offers.  While daily deal sites play one role, companies like Glam Networks also now deliver key components for ad targeting and optimization that compete with Google, Apple, Yahoo, and other media properties.   Marketing automation platforms such as
  Eloqua, Hubspot, InfusionSoft, Marketo, NeoLane, Pardot, and Parature already have may key components.  The challenge is engendering trust among the users or consumers to share more information in exchange for deemed value.

Figure 1. Technologies Will Evolve  From Transactions to P2P

The Engagement Platform Requires Nine Main Technology Components

Mapping engagement requires a series of core components and platforms that span across business processes, disparate applications, and myriad of user roles.  As many organizations face cloud/SaaS best of breed integration hell, the principles behind SOA ring truer than ever. Constellation’s identified nine core components that should be standardized across apps to support this engagement layer and allow for an engagement platform to emerge (see Figure 2).  Some components will come off the shelf, others from existing technologies, and many will have to be pieced together.  Why? An out of the box engagement platform does not exist in the market.  The nine components include:

1. Multi-channel bi-directional sensors. The engagement layer serves a sense and respond design point.  Feedback loops drive the engagement strategy.  Real time response requires a new level of information gathering and capability to respond. Bionic API’s will emerge when we shift to the experience layer.
2. Listening and sentiment engines. Sensors require intelligence.   Listening and sentiment analysis provides insight into the larger unstructured world.  As sensors pick up more and more unstructured information, listening and sentiment allow us to categorize patterns which can later parlay to insight and provide input into context.
3. Decision management and analytics. The engagement layer enables better decision making.  Data on its own is just dumb data.  Data will transform into information.  Information leads to insight.  Insight will drive our ability to make better decisions.  Experience layer will shift to predictive models.
4. Context engines. Relevancy comes from context.  The shift from real time to right time requires relevancy and drives a major component of engagement. Context comes from roles, relationships, location, time, business process, sentiment, and intent.  At some point, context enables prediction when we shift to experiential systems.
5. Complex event processing (CEP). Mastering mass information requires pattern recognition. CEP delivers the intelligence to recognize and anticipate behaviors. CEP assists in determining context and also modeling event hierarchies.  CEP supports the deliver of segmented value chains and networks. Expect the CEP layer to detect and verify trust in the network.
6. P2P architectures. More than just identity management, systems must account for the people to people (P2P) interactions.  An individual may play multiple roles and each role needs to be modeled and supported in a P2P architecture. Going forward a machine to machine (M2M) architecture will emerge in parallel with similar attributes and characteristics.
7. Interaction histories. Every touch point, both physical and digital, requires tracking.  Interaction histories provide a repository for storing, surfacing, and serving up this information.  Engagement is tracked in the interaction history. Engagement is exposed in the interaction history.
8. Business process management (BPM) and adaptive case management (ACM).  Organizations will model processes across many disparate systems and integration points.  BPM provides the glue to connect systems to people to outcomes.  Defined outcomes will map back to metrics, which map back to business processes, which tie back to individuals accountable for outcomes.  Variants such as adaptive case management play a critical role in addressing unpredictable run-time scenarios.
9. Master data management (MDM). Common objects such as people, resources, assets, location, contracts, channels require a centralized repository for update and tracking.  MDM serves as a key foundation for ensuring consistency and veracity in the engagement layer.

Figure 2. Nine Components Of The Engagement Platform

The Bottom Line: The End Game Is Driving Business Value Through Outcomes

The move to engagement platforms is not about a technology shift but a business value shift to achieving outcomes.   Sophisticated organizations now buy business value through SLA’s. The solution provider who can deliver outcomes will win in the shift to engagement platforms regardless of whether its software, services, or delivery models.  Thus, the business challenges will focus on engagement for:

• The Future of Work
• Next Generation Customer
• Matrix Commerce
• Data to Decisions
• Digital Marketing Transformation

Your POV.

Am I missing any components?  what else should be included? Do you have an engagement layer? How are you putting this together?  What’s next for your engagement strategy?  Have a story on how you’ve achieved engagement? 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 business strategy efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing social business/social CRM readiness
• Developing your social business engagement strategy
• Designing a data to decisions strategy
• Create a new vision of the future of work
• Deliver a new customer experience strategy
• Crafting a new matrix commerce strategy
• Moving from classic marketing to digital marketing transformation

Related Research:

• Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real-Time, Achieve Right-Time
• Monday’s Musing: Avoiding Social Media Fatigue Through Engagement
• Friday’s Features: Using Attensity Analyze 6.0 To Compare Customer Sentiment For @united @southwestair @virginamerica
• Event Report: Lithium Network Conference 2012 #LiNC
• Best Practices: From First To Worst – Continental In A Post United World, Lessons In Next Gen Customer Experience
• Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business
• News Analysis: Lithium Technologies Adds $53M in Financing
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
• Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business
• Product Review: Google+, Consumerization of IT, and Crossing The Chasm For Enterprise Social Business
• Monday’s Musings: Using MDM To Build A Complete Customer View In A Social Era
• Monday’s Musings: Mastering When and How High End Brands Should Use Daily Deal Sites Such As Groupon
• News Analysis: Salesforce.com Acquires Radian6 For $316M
• Monday’s Musings: Q1 2011 State of Social CRM and CRM From An EMEA Point Of View
• Best Practices: Applying Social Business Challenges To Social Business Maturity Models
• Research Summary: Software Insider’s Top 25 Posts For 2010
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business
• Research Report: Constellation’s Research Outlook For 2011
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Research Report: Next Gen B2B and B2C E-Commerce Priorities Reflect Macro Level Trends
• News Analysis: Jive Fills Warchest, Ready to Battle Enterprise Software Giants And IPO?
• Tuesday’s Tip: Applying The Five Stages Of Adoption Towards SCRM Projects
• News Analysis: Lithium’s Acquisition of Scout Labs Ups The Ante in Social CRM
• News Analysis: Biz360 Acquisition Signals Attensity Group’s Move Into Social CRM
• Monday’s Musings: Avoiding Failure In Social CRM Projects Requires Ecosystem Coordination
• Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management
• News Analysis: Siperian Acquisition Vaults Informatica Into An MDM Leadership Position
• News Analysis: Jive and Radian6 Partner – Great For Business, But Could Fragment IT Systems
• Event Report: Salesforce.com Pushes Social CRM Technology — But Don’t Expect Companies To Be Successful With Tools Alone
• Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone
• Personal Log: Altimeter Group – Helping Organizations Bridge The Technology Obsolescence Gap
• Monday’s Musings: 10 Essential Elements For Social Enterprise Apps

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!

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

The Real Deadline To Consider Third Party SAP Maintenance Is September 30th

In conversations with hundreds of SAP customers, many have not realized that they must act now in the next 30 to 45 days if they want to move off of SAP customer specific maintenance from extended maintenance for older products. Despite the support window ending in March 2013 for extended maintenance, SAP is requiring organizations to serve notice by September 30th, 2012 (see Figure 1). Key products impacted by this deadline include:

• SAP ERP 2004 (ECC 5.0)
• SAP NetWeaver 7.0
• SAP CRM 6.0
• SAP SCM 5.1
• SAP SRM 6.0
• SAP SRM 5.0
• SAP CRM 5.0
• SAP SCM 5.0
• SAP Netweaver 2004
• SAP SRM 4.0
• SAP SCM 4.1
• SAP R/3 Enterprise (4.7)
• SAP R/3 4.6C

In past experiences, SAP has taken a hard line on the notification date and customers need to immediately take action should they wish to have the maximum support options available to them.

To be clear, those on SAP’s Business Suite 7 have a longer maintenance support window (see Figure 2.) Those products will be supported with mainstream maintenance until 2020.

Figure 1. SAP Maintenance Strategy and Support Time Lines For Older Releases (2010) Revised With 2012 Version

Figure 2. SAP Business Suite 7 Innovation Road Map Provides Longer Maintenance Until 2020

Customer Specific Maintenance Comes With Many Disadvantages

While SAP will tout many benefits of Customer Specific Maintenance, most customers can expect the following downsides:

• Increase to 22% support fees* Same rate as existing maintenance program with no lower rate*
• No new tax and regulatory updates
• No new fixes
• No new support packages
• No direct upgrade path for new releases
• No SLA’s for service and support

The benefits of the increase in support fees for most customers do not justify the benefits delivered by SAP maintenance.

*(Updated August 30, 2012)

Constellation was approached by SAP on this issue and was given an official response from SAP on a few key questions:

• Can SAP Standard Support Customers Remain at the 18% in Customer Specific Maintenance? Customers who remained as an SAP Standard Support customer at the 18% price point, carry on to 18% in customer specific maintenance
• Can an SAP Enterprise Support Customer downgrade to Standard Support in Customer Specific Maintenance? Customers with SAP Enterprise Support at the 22% price point can downgrade to the SAP Standard Support at 18% for all products and releases that the customer owns and not just the ones moving into customer specific maintenance
• Are there any lower maintenance rates than the existing maintenance rates a customer pays today when they go to customer specific? Customers pay their rate based on the maintenance program.  The only exception would be for a Standard Support customer who has elected to receive extended maintenance for a specific release.  In this case, they would pay a 4% uplift on top of their 18% during the extended maintenance period. the uplift only applies ot the release they are covering with extended maintenance.  When the extended maintenance period for the particular release ends, the 4% uplift also ends and the release transitions to customer specific maintenance at the Standards Support price point of 18%

The Bottom Line:  Give Notice, Leave Your Options Open.

In numerous advisories and inquires with SAP customers, Constellation recommends that all customers with the impacted products give notice before the September 30th deadline for four key reasons:

1. Explore third party maintenance. Filing notice allows organizations to consider and evaluate third party maintenance providers.  Arrange for a meeting or appointment right away to assess your current scenario. See how vendors are providing tax and regulatory updates and improving the operational efficiency of legacy applications.
2. Improve negotiating leverage for 2013 maintenance contracts. Use the third party maintenance option discussion to create leverage in contract negotiations.  Take the time to negotiate credits for shelfware, park licenses, or plan upgrade paths.
3. Avoid bundling of contracts. Keep existing contracts separate. Resist the temptation to consolidate contracts.  Consolidation means you can’t renegotiate licenses in increments.  Consolidation also eliminates options to sell your used SAP software in europe for credit.
4. Stop playing contract support window games. Most customers face endless negotiation cycles that just pushes the issue into the future.  Every day a company is not on third party maintenance, is money wasted for stable products.

Your POV.

Need help with your SAP software contract?  Contact us throughout the vendor selection process.  We can help with a quick contract review or even the complete vendor selection.  We provide fix-fee and gain sharing arrangements.  We can also help you with your third party maintenance provider evaluation.

Let us know your experiences.  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Related Constellation Research

Wang, R. “Best Practices – Three Simple Software Maintenance Strategies That Can Save You Millions” Constellation Research, Inc. March 8, 2012

Scavo, Frank & Wang, R. “Big Idea: Constellation’s Business Value Framework” Constellation Research, Inc.  January 31, 2012.

Wang, R. “Best Practices: Why Every CIO Should Consider Third-Party Maintenance.” Constellation Research, Inc. August 7, 2012.

Wang, R. “Market Overview: The Market For SAP Optimization Options” Constellation Research, Inc. May 11, 2011.

Wang, R. “Best Practices: The Case for Two-Tier ERP Deployments” Constellation Research, Inc. February 28, 2011.

Related Resources And Links

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20100308 Monday’s Musings: Decoupling Support From Maintenance – What Apps Vendors Can Learn From Microsoft Dynamics

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20091222 Tuesday’s Tip: 10 Cloud And SaaS Apps Strategies For 2010

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20091102 Best Practices: Lessons Learned In What SMB’s Want From Their ERP Provider

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20090504 News Analysis: Oracle Waives Fees On Extended Support Offerings

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20090910 Tuesday’s Tip: Note To Self – Start Renegotiating Your Q4 Software Maintenance Contracts Now!

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20090127 Tuesday’s Tip: Software Licensing and Pricing – Now’s The Time To Remove “Gag Rule” Clauses In Your Software Contracts

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!

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

CRM Continues To Evolve In A World Of Engagement

The CRM industry’s major non-vendor customer focused event kicked off at the Marriott Marquis in New York from August 13th to 15th.  Conversations with prospects and practitioners at the event highlighted a few emerging trends:

• Shift from transaction to engagement. CRM traditionally focused mostly on the management, a bit on the customer, and very little on the relationship.  Major shifts in engagement strategy reflect a move towards two way conversations, unstructured information, and influence models.
• B2B and B2C are dead. The notion of forced fit silos to represent a customer no longer applies. The world is rapidly move to people to people models and new systems must reflect this.
• The rise of customer experiences. Prior to the coining of the CRM term, front office was the term which defined marketing, service, eCommerce, and sales force automation.  The move back to integrated customer experiences reflects a renewed interest in all the front office touch points and all the support in the back office required to support the customer experience.
• SaaS/Cloud Best of Breed hell is a real issue. Rapid and random deployment of best of breed solutions versus mature suites results in some basic architectural deficiencies.  These deficiencies result in inefficiencies that impact the delivery of customer experience as  process, data, and meta data integration increase in complexity and cost.

The Bottom Line: Customers must focus on delivering a single source of truth in the fundamentals

Customers making the shift to next generation customer experiences realize that the basic laws of physics must not be violated.  Regardless of where key components reside, a single source of truth must be delivered to support next generation customer experiences.  This requires a strong blue print and engagement platform that delivers:

1. Listening and intent
2. Interaction history
3. Master data management (customer master)
4. Business process management
5. Complex event processing
6. Security and identity management
7. Integration

Your POV.

Are you ready for the new shift to front office? What are you doing to deliver an integrated customer experience?  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 business strategy efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing social business/digital marketing readiness
• Developing your social business/digital marketing  strategy
• Designing a data to decisions strategy
• Create a new vision of the future of work
• Deliver a new customer experience and engagement strategy
• Crafting a new matrix commerce strategy

Related Research:

• Trends: The Battle for CMO Mindshare
• Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real-Time, Achieve Right-Time
• Monday’s Musing: Avoiding Social Media Fatigue Through Engagement
• Friday’s Features: Using Attensity Analyze 6.0 To Compare Customer Sentiment For @united @southwestair @virginamerica
• Event Report: Lithium Network Conference 2012 #LiNC
• Best Practices: From First To Worst – Continental In A Post United World, Lessons In Next Gen Customer Experience
• Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business
• News Analysis: Lithium Technologies Adds $53M in Financing
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
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• Product Review: Google+, Consumerization of IT, and Crossing The Chasm For Enterprise Social Business
• Monday’s Musings: Using MDM To Build A Complete Customer View In A Social Era
• Monday’s Musings: Mastering When and How High End Brands Should Use Daily Deal Sites Such As Groupon
• News Analysis: Salesforce.com Acquires Radian6 For $316M
• Monday’s Musings: Q1 2011 State of Social CRM and CRM From An EMEA Point Of View
• Best Practices: Applying Social Business Challenges To Social Business Maturity Models
• Research Summary: Software Insider’s Top 25 Posts For 2010
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business
• Research Report: Constellation’s Research Outlook For 2011
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Research Report: Next Gen B2B and B2C E-Commerce Priorities Reflect Macro Level Trends
• News Analysis: Jive Fills Warchest, Ready to Battle Enterprise Software Giants And IPO?
• Tuesday’s Tip: Applying The Five Stages Of Adoption Towards SCRM Projects
• News Analysis: Lithium’s Acquisition of Scout Labs Ups The Ante in Social CRM
• News Analysis: Biz360 Acquisition Signals Attensity Group’s Move Into Social CRM
• Monday’s Musings: Avoiding Failure In Social CRM Projects Requires Ecosystem Coordination
• Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management
• News Analysis: Siperian Acquisition Vaults Informatica Into An MDM Leadership Position
• News Analysis: Jive and Radian6 Partner – Great For Business, But Could Fragment IT Systems
• Event Report: Salesforce.com Pushes Social CRM Technology — But Don’t Expect Companies To Be Successful With Tools Alone
• Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone
• Personal Log: Altimeter Group – Helping Organizations Bridge The Technology Obsolescence Gap
• Monday’s Musings: 10 Essential Elements For Social Enterprise Apps

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 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

Customer support organizations strive to deliver exceptional customer experience but often fall short of meeting the expectations of today’s media-savvy socially connected customer.  While it is important to deliver the right response to customers in a professional manner, this alone is not enough to retain customers over the long term.  To be a front runner in customer support, companies need to engage customers more proactively and personally by creating a sense of connectedness with them.  Although key performance indicators provide insight into how well agents are doing and surveys reveal customer satisfaction levels in general, socially engaged customers expects companies to recognize them and deliver a fast response regardless of channel used to initiate contact.  As customers continue to use their social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs to request service or to post a complaint, it is time to evaluate if your customer support organization has what it takes to meet the demands of the socially connected customer.

First class customer engagement requires that support teams have the right skills and leadership to drive higher performance and defined processes to reduce call handling time. It also involves an integrated infrastructure that recognizes and responds to customers with the same information across all channels.  Customers exert more power today by posting online comments and blogs and have a much stronger influence with potential new buyers. The good news is that socially engaged customers tend to be better customers and spend more than those who are not. However, companies need to consider a new strategy that will fully engage its customers and deliver a personalized connection across all communication channels as social customer will also use other channels to communicate.  The following lists six steps that will improve your customer support portfolio to deliver the next generation customer experience.

• Incorporate social response with customer support operations.  Social media response needs to adhere to the same business processes, workflow and business rules as other channels for customer engagement. This will ensure that customers will receive the identical level of support as other channels and obtain consistent information regarding their request.  Social media support cannot be an isolated marketing function but must be aligned with customer support departments for shared access to customer databases and adherence to business rules for supporting customer response.   
• Gather cross channel analytics for insight into total customer experience.   Gathering customer information from traditional channels does not deliver a comprehensive view of your customer.  Effective analytics provides customer insight from structured and unstructured data to deliver a complete customer view.  Cross channel analytics include gathering relevant information from voice, email, chat, web usage and importantly social media.  Timely cross channel reports identify emerging trouble spots, provide competitive insight and detect trends early.
• Customize responses with contextual insight.  Gathering contextual information allows companies to fine tune their response and provide relevant information to the caller. This may include location information, time, customer relationship and other information that provides a more individualized a response.  Contextual response creates a sense that the company has the customer’s best interest in mind and wants to deliver products and services that align with their preferences.
• Integrate agent desktop for rapid information retrieval.  Regardless of the complexity of customer support systems and aging back office data bases, companies need to provide agents with a seamless flow of customer information that not only brings up information without toggling back and forth among applications but also recommends next steps based on current activities and past history.  The desktop needs to support all contact channels and auto-populate information across all databases.  This greatly reduces account handling errors, shortens call duration and also provides an opportunity to upsell an account with relevant offerings.
• Use chat for contacting customer at time of peak interest.   When a potential customer is browsing web sites for information, certain triggers may suggest that this is a buying opportunity.  Web chat is a way for companies to engage customers and get them to the right level of support to facilitate an actual sale.  Web chat also reduces live calls for assistance by proactively sending customers the information needed to solve their problems.  It is important that responders have the right skill sets and information available to handle Web chat conversations for it to eliminate live calls.
• Support mobile applications with assisted service.   Although marketing departments create most mobile apps, handling mobile requests for service should take place within the app itself and not require the customer to leave the app and make a call.  This requires an integrated application that will link directly to customer support where responders can help the customer immediately.  As mobile apps begin to become a dominant source for customer contact, efficient handling of mobile apps will create a positive experience for the customer.

All of the above applications offer a means to provide customized support that engages customers.  Although there are costs associated with adding new applications, the payback can be relatively fast. Savings occur by call avoidance, shorter call duration and faster times for problem resolution, as well as an improved customer experience.