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As I noted last year when describing the emerging Product-to-Consumer (P2C) category, as the e-commerce sector has grown to high levels of maturity it accumulated "ever-growing overhead in time, resources, and management attention on making the many moving pieces -- product catalogs, commerce systems, feeds, channels, and marketplaces -- fit together and properly operational in a way that is truly sustainable as a business." E-commerce will be
Analyst Blog
It was Albert Einstein who said, “the measure of intelligence is the ability to change.†With apologies to Einstein, I’d say the ability to change is also the measure of a good business intelligence (BI) platform and vendor. I had changing customer needs and expectations very much in mind when I attended Tableau Conference 2022 (TC22), May 16-19, in Las Vegas.
Analyst Blog
Driving Product Innovation, Talent Cloud, and Customer Experience | DisrupTV Episode 280
In DisrupTV Episode 280, hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar are joined by three leaders shaping enterprise innovation:
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Monday's Musings: Davos Report - The Five Uber Forces Impacting The Global Economy
rwang0 Sun, 05/22/2022 - 01:08
The Davos Set Convenes For A Broad Set Of Progressive Policies and Positions
Over 2,000 official and 4,500 unofficial attendees will descend on the alpine village of Davos for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. After a two-year hiatus of the annual event, these "elite" leaders from business, academia, politics, and cultural celebrities will meet to discuss key globalist topics such as:
Securing economic recovery
Shaping a new era of growth
Fostering cooperation at the global and regional level
Driving transformation of industries
Addressing ESG topics around climate, food, and nature
Enabling society to improve health and equity
As in past years, more than 1300 private jets will leave their footprint into the event amidst discussions on sustainability. Moreover, expect a cadre of business leaders making the shift from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism to justify to shareholder's their initiatives and the coming year's corporate messaging on environment, sustainability, globalism, diversity, inclusion, and lobbying efforts.
Five Uber Forces Weigh Heavy On Attendees
While many of the proposed topics have good intentions, the underlying market and public sentiment have shifted due to five uber forces underpinning almost all discussions:
Inflation. The IMF predicts an average of 8.7 percent inflation for developing countries ,and 5.7 for developed nations. Inflation has robbed any wage gains achieved during the "Great Resignation" and continues to impact the poor and middle class around the world. A great source of the blame arises from the cost of energy and the price of the accelerated green transition.
Pragmatic leaders realize that the timeline must be extended to inflict less pain on the populace despite many idealistic objectives. Targets for green energy and emissions by ambitious dates will be challenged as no longer realistic. Carbon based transition timelines must be shifted to avoid global poverty and downturn. Pragmatic ESG approaches that consider total cost will emerge as the norm over the next five years.
Interest rates. The era of cheap money has ended. Rising interests rates with the US 10-year treasury note topping 3 percentage points has compounded the effects of inflation and is creating a drag on economic growth. The unexpected strong dollar is creating chaos for world leaders as they accommodate new exchange rates. As a result, public market valuations for growth companies have been cut in half as startups struggle to gain funding amidst this turbulent market. A shift to value stocks have not taken off and the result has been a blood bath in equity markets. The crytpo winter has entered a crypto ice age.
The death of modern monetary theory (MMT) is near as nations grapple with rising public debt. A return to rational monetary theory is about to take stage and government leaders who continue to overspend will be punished by investors and world banks. We have shifted from a culture of abundance to a self-inflicted culture of scarcity.
Inventory. Supply chain and logistic challenges continue to hamper growth in every market. Tight labor markets coupled with a naive Zero-Covid policy in China have left global market vulnerable and brittle. The impact of lockdowns in China has compounded inflation, especially for re-open economies. China's push for global dominance has been halted for now.
Business leaders and governments will push for de-globalization in order to ensure both supply chain resiliency, and national security. Expect more efforts to encourage the creation of jobs in region as opposed to the massive supply chains of decades past.
Infection. With over 6 million reported deaths and an estimation of over 25M non-reported death, the toll of the pandemic has been broad and deep. Lock downs have decreased mortality rates, increase mental health issues, raised suicide rates, impacted a generation of education among the youth, increased the wealth divide, and bankrupted many businesses. The wrath of Covid19 continues with China's lock down policies, potential new variants, and an assault on individual rights amidst public health emergencies.
In spite of these scenarios, global leaders continue to push for more authority and reform at the World Health Organization with a proposed new treaty to expand the unchecked powers of public health. Expect citizens around the world to rise up with a backlash against the expert class for their list of continued failed policies. Moreover, expect a demand to uncover the origins of Covid-19 despite the coordinated coverups by public health authorities and world governments. Corporations and organizations will shift to a caring economy as the need to address the welfare of employees rises in priority amidst a shortage of workers.
Invasion. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has created a refugee crisis in Europe and driven up food prices. Fertilizer production, wheat yields, sunflower oil production, and an energy crunch from Russian oil sanctions has created massive ripple effects. Food security in Africa is threatened, and overall food costs have risen as carbon based energy prices have tripled, driving up inventory and logistic costs. War is never beneficial for the populace, though beneficial for a few powers that be.
Global leaders must band together with economic, diplomatic, military, political, and cultural strategies to keep bad actors at bay. Preventing an invasion of Taiwan by China, nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, annihilation of Israel by Iran, state sponsored terror, and Russian expansion will continue as top foreign policy priorities. A rise in defense spending from cyber security to physical security will continue, creating a drag on investment in domestic programs.
The Bottom Line: De-globalization, Populism, and Nationalism Challenge Today's World Leaders More Than Ever
The past two years of the pandemic have created a "Great Refactoring among the citizens of every nation. Trust and faith in the expert class has been shattered. The policies of globalism no longer resonate with the populace as middle class jobs have been exported, individual rights trampled on by global agendas. Faith in tech companies continue to decline as privacy is traded for convenience and security. DEI efforts and ESG will face massive backlash as nationalist sentiment has emerged despite all the efforts to influence mindshare at the cultural, educational, and societal level. A new world order is coming, but not the one imagined by the global elite.
This Great Refactoring is here, and the story has yet to be written. Hopefully the Davos class will be awakened to the interests of their constituents and collaboratively shape this new world. There is hope but this time it requires a public discourse, not forced policies in order to convince the general public.
Your POV
Are this year's topics in line with the general populace? Do you feel the Davos set have lost their way? What outcomes do you anticipate from this meeting?
Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org. Please let us know if you need help with your strategy efforts. Here’s how we can assist:
Developing your metaverse and digital business strategy
Connecting with other pioneers
Sharing best practices
Vendor selection
Implementation partner selection
Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
Demystifying software licensing
Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales.
Disclosures
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.
Constellation Research recommends that readers consult a stock professional for their investment guidance. Investors should understand the potential conflicts of interest analysts might face. Constellation does not underwrite or own the securities of the companies the analysts cover. Analysts themselves sometimes own stocks in the companies they cover—either directly or indirectly, such as through employee stock-purchase pools in which they and their colleagues participate. As a general matter, investors should not rely solely on an analyst’s recommendation when deciding whether to buy, hold, or sell a stock. Instead, they should also do their own research—such as reading the prospectus for new companies or for public companies, the quarterly and annual reports filed with the SEC—to confirm whether a particular investment is appropriate for them in light of their individual financial circumstances.
Copyright © 2001 – 2022 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 Executive Network
Analyst Blog
A "power panel" of analysts including Tony Baer, Doug Henschen and Sanjeev Mohan join Dave Vellante of The CUBE for coverage of the Couchbase Application Modernization event.
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ConstellationTV is here to bring you the latest in what is disruptive and reshaping business and technology. In every episode, you’ll hear from our fellow analysts, from leaders across our network of business transformation experts and influencers, as well as from cutting-edge vendors.
ConstellationTV is a twice monthly Web series with Constellation Research analysts via LinkedIn & Twitter. The show airs live at 9:00 a.m. PT/ 12:00 p.m. ET every other Wednesday. Follow us on Twitter @CRTV_Show & #CRTVShow.
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Innovating at the Edge: Tech Leadership, New Venture Models & Responsible Scaling | DisrupTV Ep. 279
Innovating at the Edge: Tech Leadership, New Venture Models & Responsible Scaling—DisrupTV Episode 279
In DisrupTV Episode 279, hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar engage with four innovators navigating different facets of the tech and venture ecosystems:
Video
Monday's Musings: Decision Velocity Will Determine Winners and Losers In A Digital Age rwang0 Mon, 04/11/2022 - 10:35
Speed Provides Exponential Advantage
Speed has always been a critical success factor in winning wars on the battlefield. You need to move troops faster, reach targets more quickly, and strike with speed and precision. However, what is often not talked about is how the speed with which decisions are made plays a role in claiming victory. Alexander the Great’s success on the battlefield is often credited to the rapid decision-making capabilities of his armies. Enabled by trust and a decentralized command structure, his troops were able to beat their enemies by “out-decisioning” them. In most cases, his opponents had bureaucratic decision architectures, where minor decisions would travel up multiple levels of command before traveling back down to be executed. In the 330s BC, that could mean it took days to make a decision on the battlefield. Such a centralized control and detailed micro-management approach was no match for Alexander the Great’s nimble teams. British military strategist J. F. C. Fuller, writing on Alexander the Great, explained, “Time was his constant ally; he capitalized every moment, never pondered on it, and thereby achieved his ends before others had settled on their means.”1
The speed of decision making plays a similar role in the age of digital giants. Any organization that can make decisions twice as fast or one hundred times faster than its competitors will decimate them. Time is a friend to those who make can make faster, more accurate decisions. While the human brain may take minutes to make a decision and it takes hours for a decision to work through an internal organizational structure, in the digital world machines and artificial intelligence engines can make a decision in milliseconds. Whomever masters these automated decisions at high velocity will have an exponential advantage over those who don’t.
To succeed, businesses must achieve decision velocity: First you have to amass a huge number of users and collect rich data and insights about their interactions—what I call data supremacy. Then you must train artificial intelligence to recognize patterns in that data and automate decisions, processes, and tasks based on those patterns. The higher the number of users, the higher the number of interactions, the higher the amount of data, the higher the quality of insights that AI can learn from, the higher the level of automation of your decisions in your organization. The higher the level of automation of the organization’s decisions, the higher chances you’ll rule your market.
It All Starts With Quality Data - Lots of It
Data is the foundation and the first priority for every organization’s growth and development. You must find and harvest all relevant sources of data and control, if not own, the upstream raw data sources. On the downstream side, you must control access to how the data is shared, monetized, and controlled. This means identifying where the biggest pools of quality data reside and understanding how data is consumed inside the organization.
However, the battle for data is often misunderstood. Many think data supremacy is only about accumulating the greatest troves of data. But having the most data does not necessarily mean you win. This is a battle for the most insight from well- curated, highly contextual data. Quality trumps quantity. The real goal is to understand the relationships among data. You want to learn how the data interacts with each other and what patterns arise from these interactions.
Where does the raw data come from? Successful organizations mine their organizations top to bottom, harvesting data from enterprise transactional systems like their accounting systems, supply chain, operations, and performance data. Then they pair their baseline back office data with front office data that includes customer interactions from sales, marketing, service, and commerce. They also mine “machine-generated data”—log files from equipment—and external sources such as social media feeds and feedback surveys.
The next source of data organizations rely on is user-generated. Every organization gets excited whenever users provide data on their own, whether through an online resume, a social profile, a customer account for a website, payment information, location data when they “check in” to a restaurant or shop, or photos that can be used for facial recognition and image recognition. The more organizations drive engagement with their users, the richer the data sets they collect and the more opportunities they have to find insight in the data.
These insights come from correlations, associations, and relationships—their “interactions”—among all the data produced and captured. Successful organizations are masters at identifying “signal intelligence,” the meaningful patterns or trends that emerge from the cacophony of data interactions. And they use this signal intelligence to make all sorts of “precision decisions,” from how much to charge for a product, to what customers ought to be targeted for what marketing campaign, to what product should be recommended to what customers.
Thus, the combination of good analytics, automation, and AI will help organizations improve decision velocity and carry this forward the learnings throughout the enterprise
Your POV
Have you organized your enterprise to optimize for decision velocity? Ready to move from data to decisions?
Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org. Please let us know if you need help with your strategy efforts. Here’s how we can assist:
Developing your metaverse and digital business strategy
Connecting with other pioneers
Sharing best practices
Vendor selection
Implementation partner selection
Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
Demystifying software licensing
Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales.
Disclosures
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.
Constellation Research recommends that readers consult a stock professional for their investment guidance. Investors should understand the potential conflicts of interest analysts might face. Constellation does not underwrite or own the securities of the companies the analysts cover. Analysts themselves sometimes own stocks in the companies they cover—either directly or indirectly, such as through employee stock-purchase pools in which they and their colleagues participate. As a general matter, investors should not rely solely on an analyst’s recommendation when deciding whether to buy, hold, or sell a stock. Instead, they should also do their own research—such as reading the prospectus for new companies or for public companies, the quarterly and annual reports filed with the SEC—to confirm whether a particular investment is appropriate for them in light of their individual financial circumstances.
Copyright © 2001 – 2022 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 Executive Network
Analyst Blog
News Analysis: Inside Disney's Earnings and Streaming Wars Among A Tech Market Rout rwang0 Thu, 05/12/2022 - 10:44
Disney's Performance Shows Strength and Depth Of Portfolio
Quality balance sheets, predictable revenues are key to sustaining stock prices during this current market rout. Investors only care about future forecast guidance despite current quarterly performance. While Disney's Q1 2022 showed 23% YoY gains with $1.4 billion in operating profit, guidance has been muted in spite of the near pandemic comparables.
Disney+ Continues To Grow While Netflix Falters
Subscriber growth slowed in Q1, but Disney's streaming offering still grew revenue 5% and added 7.9M subscribers to a total of 137.7M total subscribers. Disney+ as a standalone offering is the clear #3 in the market. When the complete Disney streaming offerings are tabulated, they now now surpass Amazon prime with 205 million total subscribers.
Good news for investors as Disney contemplates a new ad supported subscription tier and continued international expansion. International expansion will definitely drive down average revenue per user. However, the streaming player faces additional headwinds with content libraries being pulled back. Lack of content availability may have an impact on near term subscriber adds. Further, costs are up as Disney plans $32B in content spend
Figure 1. The Key Streaming Players
Netflix 221.8M
Amazon Prime 200M
Disney 137.7M
HBO Max 73.8M
Paramount+ 56M
Hulu 45.3M
Discovery+ 22M
Apple+ 20M
Parks
The park business showed massive demand for revenge travel. Disney doubled its revenues to $6.8B as hotel, cruise, and concessions showed growth. Disney’s parks business is a shining light for reopening but inflation will impact Disney later in the year as labor costs, energy costs, and supply chain costs will eat at profit margins. Disney could see more growth upside if Asia finally opens up as Hong Kong is open but Shanghai is closed.
Studios
Movie openings will be a bright spot thought as this is one revenue stream that has room to grow as Americans flock movie theaters for openings this summer. Disney could see upside with future box office hits.
The Bottom Line
Meanwhile, the culture wars continue to roil Disney internally as 200 employees are protesting a move to Florida and the war with the state continues as backlash. Overall, Disney has weathered the streaming wars well during lock down and is poised for success with more re-openings. Add potential Metaverse opportunities, expect Disney to move from media giant to tech giant in the next five years.
Your POV
Who do you think will win the streaming wars? Where do you see Disney in the future of the metaverse?
Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org. Please let us know if you need help with your strategy efforts. Here’s how we can assist:
Developing your metaverse and digital business strategy
Connecting with other pioneers
Sharing best practices
Vendor selection
Implementation partner selection
Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
Demystifying software licensing
Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales.
Disclosures
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.
Constellation Research recommends that readers consult a stock professional for their investment guidance. Investors should understand the potential conflicts of interest analysts might face. Constellation does not underwrite or own the securities of the companies the analysts cover. Analysts themselves sometimes own stocks in the companies they cover—either directly or indirectly, such as through employee stock-purchase pools in which they and their colleagues participate. As a general matter, investors should not rely solely on an analyst’s recommendation when deciding whether to buy, hold, or sell a stock. Instead, they should also do their own research—such as reading the prospectus for new companies or for public companies, the quarterly and annual reports filed with the SEC—to confirm whether a particular investment is appropriate for them in light of their individual financial circumstances.
Copyright © 2001 – 2022 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 Executive Network
Analyst Blog
The return to live tech conferences is heating up, and so, too, is competition in the always-competitive business intelligence (BI) and analytics market. At its May 9-12 Beyond.2022 event held in Las Vegas, ThoughtSpot made it clear that it is accelerating growth by focusing on companies that are moving to modern cloud data platforms offered by the likes of Snowflake, Databricks, Google and AWS.
Analyst Blog
Case Study
At a Glance
This case study describes the rollout of more than 70 low-code/no-code applications at Infraserv Höchst, built on the Neptune DX (digital experience) Platform (Neptune DXP).
Driving Enterprise Strategy, IT Resilience & Changing CIO Roles — DisrupTV Episode 278
In DisrupTV Episode 278, hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar convene with three leaders who bring fresh perspective on tech leadership and strategy:
Video
The field of Verifiable Credentials is one of the hottest topics in the digital identity industry today. Commonly associated with blockchain and the Self-Sovereign Identity movement, Verifiable Credentials are in fact an old idea. It is instructive to break down their essential properties and examine the pioneering examples.
Analyst Blog
Visibility across marketing, navigating the cookie-less future, implementing a strategy of privacy by design...these are just a couple of the convo's in this installment of Constellation Research's CX Convos. Liz Miller sits down with Prashanth "PVK" Krishnaswami, Global Head of Market Strategy & Thought Leadership at Zoho to discuss where and how marketing and the marketers behind the strategies and actions continue to evolve.
Video
Economic uncertainty sends shock waves throughout businesses, with service organizations seeing its brunt. The recent drastic drop-off in Netflix subscribers is a case in point. Services CFOs say there is an urgent need to track how well their overarching planning strategies linking finance and operations perform. However, getting the data to analyze has been challenging for even the largest services businesses.
Analyst Blog
Transforming Enterprise Marketing, IT Strategy & M&A: Insights from Akamai, Unstoppable Domains & Deloitte – DisrupTV Episode 277
In DisrupTV Episode 277, hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar engage with four industry leaders to discuss the evolving landscape of enterprise marketing, IT strategy, and mergers & acquisitions:
Video
We are excited to announce our annual Ambient Experience 100 (AX100), an elite list of global executives focused on transforming both customer and employee experiences across their markets and their organizations. These leaders represent an exclusive cadre of rule breakers, peers and influencers willing to rethink possible.
They know what it takes to redefine business models, craft authentic experiences, break barriers and then some.
Analyst Blog
Constellation Research Recognizes Global Executives Championing Disruptive Digital Initiatives
Press Release
Reimagining Enterprise Strategy: Insights from Publicis Sapient, Domo & McKinsey – DisrupTV Episode 276
In DisrupTV Episode 276, hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar engage with three prominent leaders to discuss the evolving landscape of enterprise strategy:
Video
Through nominations from peers, industry influencers, technology vendors, analysts and reference checks, we are thrilled to unveil the annual ESG50 in celebration of Earth Day.
The ESG50 is an elite list of the top environmental, social, and governance executives championing pragmatic ESG strategies. Each executive demonstrates excellence in establishing and building new business models, implementing emerging technologies and leading in an ethical and humane manner.
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Premium Research
Executive Summary