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Posts Tagged ‘customer engagement’

Trends: Seven Priorities In The Shift From CMO to Chief Digital Officer

Published on March 6, 2013 by R "Ray" Wang

Shift From CMO to CDO Is In Progress

Today’s marketing strategies increasingly depend more on digital and on data than in the past. With more data, marketers can measure against a new set of metrics that matter including:

calculating return on promotional investment (ROPI),
performing multivariable testing (beyond A/b)
driving conversion rates and optimizing efforts,
fine tuning customer segmentation, and
managing omni-channel diversity

Unfortunately the shift to digital requires a greater reliance on technology. Historically, CMOs relied on IT for help on the database or CRM system or even the website. However consumerization of technology and the cloud have now given marketers more control on their technology destiny. In fact, a recent post by fellow analyst Gavin Heaton on “CMO to CIO, It’s time we talked” highlights many of these new challenges.

Expect Seven Strategies To Emerge In The Shift To CDO

Consequently, many marketing leaders are making the shift from CMO type roles to Chief Digital Officers as marketing leaders align technology closer with strategy. This shift from analog marketer to a Chief Digital Officer role will result in seven trends for 2013 (see Figure 1.)

Figure 1. 2013 Trends Signal Shift From Classical CMO to Digital CMOs or Chief Digital Officers

Drive relevancy with context not content. Context trumps content as relevancy required to break channel fatigue. Relevancy will improves engagement metrics.
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Tuesday’s Tip: It’s Time To Consolidate Social Business Platforms

Published on March 5, 2013 by R "Ray" Wang

Greater Adoption In Social Business Signifies A Move To Consolidate Platforms

Constellation’s buy-side clients tend to fit in the market leader or fast follower categories when it comes to organizational personas of disruptive technology adoption. Since 2010, respondents have progressed through the DEEPR framework and the latest results from 2012 indicate that most survey respondents have moved to Level 3 (see Figure 1). Changes between 2010 and 2012 show the following top three priority shifts as users move from Level 2 (Experimentation) to Level 3 (Evangelization):

The top challenge among respondents is choosing the right platform (63.8%) among the many inside an organization.
Over half (56.8%) of the respondents have incorporated social into business models.
Respondents fostering internal collaboration (53.5%) now must worry about adoption challenges.

Figure 1. Respondents Shift to Level 3 in DEEPR Framework for Social Business Adoption

The Bottom Line. Its Time To Scale The Technology While Pushing Ahead On Innovation

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Event Report: 2013 Capgemini India Analyst & Advisor Day #CGAR2013

Published on February 17, 2013 by R "Ray" Wang

Capgemini India Plays A Key Role In The Global Delivery Model

Analyst and advisors gathered on February 12th, 2013 at Capgemini’s India headquarters located near the trendy and upmarket Powai suburbs of Mumbai. Capgemini India’s CEO, Aruna Jayanthi welcomed guests with a perspective on Capgemini India’s progress. With more than 40,000 people, the team plans to grow to 70,000 people in 3 years at almost a 20% CAGR year-over-year. Aruna sees the potential for up to 70% of Capgemini’s infrastructure services delivery to come from India.

As part of the non-linear growth plan, Capgemini intends to rely on a shared services model and platform between multiple delivery centres critical for scale and growth. The good news – Capgemini India expects a reduction in the double digit wage inflation of the past 24 months. Forecasts call for 5 to 9% for 2013. Her three focus areas include growth, continued investments, and building end-to-end capability in India.

The analyst and advisor day was hosted in Capgemini’s Accelerated Solutions Environment (ASE). The ASE combines a patented methodology with a unique, open work environment to deliver large scale facilitated sessions geared at accelerating timelines, gaining alignment and mitigating risks. ASE’s provide a safe and effective place for collaboration and innovation.

Under this year’s theme of transforming customer experience, sessions touched on nine key areas:

Portfolio transformation. Capgemini India is playing a key role in aligning with the consulting team’s digital transformation efforts. If successful, the team will gain synergies across consulting, infrastructure, and bpo as part of a broader portfolio transformation. One example of a focus on IP creation and innovation is Sogetti’s product engineering capabilities delivered in Capgemini India for aerospace and defense. Product Engineering is a priority for Capgemini in 2013. European service providers Altran, Alten, Safran will have some competition from Capgemini going forward.
Digital utility transformation. With 80% of meters in EU to be converted to smart meters by 2020, Capgemini sees a role in guiding this shift from analog to digital for utilities. The utilities segment is expected to grow 4% & related software services are expected to grow about 7-8%. Despite a perceived slow growth in utilities, smart metering is the base for transformation. Early investment by Capgemini will play a key role in growing out this industry as a shortage of energy production and an upgrade of legacy transmission and energy production technology drive future growth.
All channel experience. Customer centricity is changing as businesses focus on an “All Channel” and “Affordable” value proposition. The firm focuses in on digerati as a key target for digital transformation. Why? Digerati are 26% more profitable than their peers. The shift to all channel is a key part of the move to digital transformation and customer experience strategy for clients.
Demand driven supply chain. Demand driven concepts are not new, however, customers seek to improve their ability to deliver on perfect orders. Organizations also seek to get as close to the consumer as possible. Capgemini’s work at one client helped a stagnant retail gain achieve 23% increase in customer satisfaction and gain 96 basis points of margin. Constellation sees this buyer centric shift to matrix commerce as a key trend for 2013.
Tax and welfare. Global governments face a $2.4 trillion USD tax revenue every year. Consequently, Capgemini’s efforts in tax and welfare focus on the fraud and compliance equation. The Capgemini’s India team has over 400 employees in their center of excellence complementing 8,000 onsite personnel at clients. The mission is to improve revenue and increase compliance. Constellation expects this market to grow as big data technologies improve the ability to manage both structured and unstructured data sources.
Global in house centers. The team shared a success story on the factory franchise approach for testing services at ANZ bank. The global in house center provided a strong alternative to BOT or captive acquisition. Capgemini intends to selectively grow this model over the next few years. Constellation believes this approach is smart but will deliver low volume.
Service integration. Opportunities exist to move operational responsibility for IT provisioning to Capgemini to drive cost savings. The goal – manage sophisticated IT supplier frameworks. If successful, service integration will prove to be the PMO account control model of the 2010′s.
Mobile testing. Most organizations face a need for a comprehensive mobile QA strategy. Building upon Neoload’s Neotys solution offering, Capgemini India opened a mobile testing CoE in Mumbai in December 2012. The range of mobile testing opportunities has grown as the group seeks to expand from 250 to 1000 FTEs globally. Constellation sees this as a bold move to jump into an emerging and growing market.
Big data and analytics. As one of the earlier CoE’s, business information management (BIM) was launched in September 2010 as Customer BIM Experience showcase or (CUBE). With the advent and hype of big data, the BIM team is now playing a key role in using BIM to improve customer experience. Constellation sees the future with BIM and the support of big data business models.

Figure 1. Cap Gemini’s ASE Uniquely Creates Visual Story Telling Via Graphic Recorders

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The Bottom Line: Capgemini India Taking Key Steps To Support Nonlinear Growth Opportunities

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Monday’s Musings: Trends In The Top Software Insider Posts of 2012 (#softwareinsider)

Published on January 3, 2013 by R "Ray" Wang

Thank You For Your Support

SoftwareInsider.org generated almost 10 million page views in 2012 (see Figure 1). This does not include syndication through Constellation Research, Forbes (discontinued in 2012), Enterprise Irregulars, Computerworld UK, and other great media partners.

Figure 1. Software Insider Achieved 9.8M Page Views for 2012

Classic Posts Address The Key Fundamentals In The Disruptive Technology Shift

Four posts have made the all time favorite list and address the 5 consumer technology forces that influence enterprise software.

2012 Top 40 Reflects A Broader Shift To Business Outcomes And Technology Adoption

Analyst Relations and the World of Influence - The top blog post of 2013 discussed the future of the industry analyst versus legacy analyst firms.

1. Event Report: IIAR UK Forum – The Future of the Industry Analyst (Legacy vs Disruptive)

Consumerization of Technology and The New C-Suite – The impact of technology on the C-suite has never been greater. As business strategy relies more on technology, CMOs, CFOs, and other line of business heads can expect to work more closely with the CIOs and CTOs.

7. Trends: The Battle For CMO Mind Share

13. Monday’s Musings: Why Are Innovative CIOs Betting Less On Cloud And Virtualization?

21. Monday’s Musings: Understand the Four Personas Of Disruptive Tech Adoption

22. Quark Summary: What CFO’s Need To Know About SaaS And Cloud Integration

25.Quark Summary: What Every CMO Needs To Know About The Five C’s of Customer Engagement

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Monday’s Musings: Understand The Four Organizational Personas Of Disruptive Tech Adoption

Published on December 2, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Pace of Innovation Exceeds Ability To Consume

Rapid innovation, flexible deployment options, and easy consumption models create favorable conditions for the proliferation of disruptive technology. In fact, convergence in the five pillars of enterprise disruption (i.e. social, mobile, cloud, big data, and unified communications), has led to new innovations and opportunities to apply disruptive technologies to new business models. New business models abound at the intersection of cloud and big data, social and mobile, social and unified communications, and cloud and mobile.

Unfortunately, most organizations are awash with discovering, evaluating, and consuming disruptive technologies. Despite IT budgets going down from 3 to 5% year over year, technology spending is up 18 to 20%. Why? Amidst constrained budgets, resources, and time limits, executives are willing to invest in disruptive technology to improve business outcomes. Consequently, successful adoption is the key challenge in consuming this torrent of innovation. This rapid pace of change and inability to consume innovation detract organizations from the realization of business value.

Organizations Fall Into Four Personas Of Disruptive Technology Adoption

A common truism in the industry is “Culture trumps technology”. As organizations apply methodologies such as Constellation’s DEEPR Framework in improving adoption, leaders must first determine which of the four personas best fits their organization’s appetite for consuming and innovating with disruptive technologies.

The personas of disruptive technology adoption assess organizational culture in two key axes (see Figure 1). The first is how incremental or transformational an organization looks at applying disruptive technology to business models. The second assesses how proactive or reactive an organization is in carrying out new initiatives. Based on these dimensions, the four personas include:

Market leaders. Market leaders prefer to drive transformational innovation. They look at technologies as enablers in disrupting business models. They see competitive differentiation in delivering outcomes to customers. Market leaders accept failure as part of the innovation process. They fail fast and move on.
Fast followers. Fast followers prefer to react to the success of market leaders and their experiments. When they sense success, they tend to jump in. Fast followers do not like to fail and rapidly apply lessons learned from market leaders into their road maps. Fast followers tend to deliver scale in the markets as a counter balance to arriving later in the market.
Cautious adopters. Cautious adopters proactively deliver incremental innovation. They tend to take a more measured approach and spend more time studying how they can improve an existing success than creating a transformational change. Cautious adopters often come from regulated industries where security and safety are paramount objectives.
Laggards. Laggards tend to procrastinate on applying innovations to their business models. They prefer not be bothered by trends and will only react when the trends have moved beyond mainstream. They see value in waiting as prices will drop over time as success rates increase over time. Laggards enjoy waiting.

During the interviews and discussions with the 2012 Constellation SuperNova award participants, key questions emerged in the decision process on whether to adopt or pass on a disruptive technologies. These questions aligned well with the four personas of disruptive technology adoption.

Figure 1. Organizations Should Understand Which Persona Of Disruptive Tech Adoption Describes Them Best

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Event Report: The Tweet Stream From #DF12

Published on September 23, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Enjoy the tweet stream from #DF12. It’s all in here.

The Storify Tweet Stream

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Event Report: Dreamforce X (#DF12) Emerges As The South By Southwest (#SXSW) For The Enterprise

Published on by R "Ray" Wang

Dreamforce Represents The Mecca For The “Art Of The Possible” In The Enterprise

Whether Salesforce.com’s flagship conference at Moscone Center was the most attended conference (~48,000) or the most registered for event (~90,000), matters not. When examined in context of the magnitude of what was accomplished, the impact of this 10th annual event transcends attendance numbers. Business folks and the converted IT brethren converged on the week of September 18th, 2012, to see what the future could be inside the enterprise. They left with inspiration and the gospel of what was possible, as told by those before them. The event represented the intersection of where aspiration meets innovation for the enterprise.

Key takeaways from interviews with over 100 attendees reflect the following trends:

Attendee sentiment signals the return of the front office. 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. Attendees walked in with questions about how to integrate their legacy ERP and expose their transactional systems into the front office.
Customers seek knowledge and case studies on business transformation. Delegations arrived to see how they could change their business. Most came with both business and IT to learn from the best practices of others. Almost every customer case study session was packed and common questions revolved around, “How did you do that?”
Product announcements and pre-announcements bring the enterprise closer to the consumer experience. Pre-announcement of Salesforce Identity for Winter 2013 will provide users with Facebook-like single sign on and identity management services. The availability of the Touch Platform services will provide a write once, deploy anywhere touch based mobile UI Experience. The pre-announcement of the Force.com Canvas provides a UI layer to run any other application within the Salesforce.com environment. The App Exchange Checkout delivers out of the box billing for developers and improves the users app store experience. Geolocation capabilities in the pilot of database.com in the Winter 2013 release will improve mobile experiences. Chatter communities pilot in Fall of 2012 and pre-announcement addresses the issue of multiple group management.
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Press Release: Gavin Heaton Joins Constellation Research to Provide Digital Marketing Research and Advisory Services

Published on September 6, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

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.

Monday’s Musings: The New Engagement Platform Drives The Shift From Transactions

Published on August 27, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

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:

Figure 1. Technologies Will Evolve From Transactions to P2P

The Engagement Platform Requires Nine Main Technology Components

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Event Report: CRM Evolution 2012 #CRME12

Published on August 14, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

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:

Listening and intent
Interaction history
Master data management (customer master)
Business process management
Complex event processing
Security and identity management
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:

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