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Posts Tagged ‘social technologies’

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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News Analysis: Adobe Behances The Creative Class With $150M Community Acquisition

Published on February 11, 2013 by R "Ray" Wang

Behance Empowers The Creative Cloud To Make Ideas Happen

On December 20th, 2012, Silicon Valley based Adobe Systems announced the acquisition of Behance, a digital portfolio and community site for creative professionals. Constellation sources estimate the purchase price north of $150M. Founded in 2006, the SoHo, New York based company raised 6.5M in May 2012 from Union Square Ventures prior to the acquisition. The acquisition expands two key areas for the Adobe Customer Experience set of offerings:

1. Empowers the creative class through connetivity. CEO and Founder of Behance, Scott Belsky noted that, “The creative industry has always been plagued with inefficiency and disorganization. But when we come together, we can use connectivity and transparency to our advantage. The prospect of using Adobe’s reach to connect the entire creative community is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to empower the creative world.”

Point of View (POV): Behance is LinkedIn meets Pinterest for the creative class. Since 2006, this people to people (P2P) driven creative community showcases and celebrates over 3 million projects and 30 million images. A host of curated galleries, smartly designed iPhone apps, online store, and rich developer API power the community platform. Among the design community, Behance is the dominant independent resource to showcase past projects.

2. Expands creative and design market leadership. Adobe provides the creative tools for design through Creative Suite. Behance focuses on discovery, inspiration, and collaboration. Scott Belsky stated “If the tools we use to create are connected with how we showcase and discover creative work, we can help usher in a new era of idea exchange and collaborative creation. It’s about time our tools integrated with the way we discover, inspire and collaborate. For too long, the creative world has struggled with a disconnected creative process. Creation should be inherently collaborative – and must evolve more frequently than typical software upgrade cycles.”

(POV): At this point in time, Creative Cloud has not enabled public sharing between clients and teams. Yet, Behance changes this approach and supports public sharing. Users will expect Adobe to integrate Behance with Adobe’s Creative Cloud starting with easier content sharing from Creative Cloud and Adobe apps. If Adobe successfully integrates the two products, customers will win as the synergies should lead to the empowerment and enablement of creative meritocracy.

The Bottom Line: Adobe Ups The Ante In The Battle For Customer Experience

Adobe, IBM, and Oracle are in a three way horse race to dominate the customer experience management space. Today Behance acquisition widens Adobe’s lead in the creative tools and communities space. As Adobe expands in the marketing and design side of customer experience equation, IBM and Oracle focus on the process automation, analytics, and traditional execution areas of marketing and commerce. Fortunately for the vendors and unfortunately for most customers, one can not purchase a complete suite from within one vendor. Hence, customers will be working with a patchwork of solutions in order to deliver end to end customer experience and digital marketing transformation for the foreseeable future. Early adopters and fast followers will pave the way while cautious adopters will wait or vendors to acquire and integrate the suite.

Your POV.

How are you showcasing your creative portfolio? Where do you look for design inspiration? Do you have an idea what tools are more effective than others? Will you still stay with Behance post More…

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

Published on September 23, 2012 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: Why Are Innovative CIO’s Betting Less On Cloud And Virtualization?

Published on May 7, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Innovative CIO’s Betting On Disruptive Technologies That Impact Enterprise Business Value

In the Four Personas of the Next Gen CIO published March 3, 2012, four personas of the CIO were identified: Chief Infrastructure Officer, Chief Integration Officer, Chief Intelligence Officer, and Chief Innovation Officer (see Figure 1). This research of 79 progressive CIO’s identified the key projects for each of the personas. As part of the survey, respondents were asked what key disruptive technologies would make an impact in the enterprise in the next year.

Figure 1. The Four Personas Of The Next Generation CIO

Source: Constellation Research, Inc.

In Constellation’s latest update (to be published May 2012), 105 innovative CIOs participated in the survey. The results indicate a shift away from cloud (56.4%-2012) and virtualization (29.6% – 2012) to mobile (60.2%-2012) and big data and analytics (48.7%-2012) (see Figure 2). Despite being the top projects in 2011, the drop in priority of virtualization (51.9%-2011) and cloud (69.6%-2011) doesn’t reflect the lack of interest. In fact, these projects have matured and innovative CIOs have now prioritized the next wave of innovation.

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Quark Summary: What CFOs Need to Know About SaaS and Cloud Integration

Published on April 30, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Forward And Commentary

This document addresses many questions asked by CFO’s about cloud deployments and the top integration questions often asked by CFO’s responsible for key business initiatives that involve technology.

A. Executive Summary

Organizations have escalated their adoption of cloud computing and SaaS applications in the past 3 years. As part of the broader trend in consumerization of IT (CoIT), business leaders have slowly tipped the balance of power in determining technology acquisition. However, the proliferation of adoption has led to organizational chaos in data, process and meta data integration as users adopt and deploy the cloud in silos without considering the implications of organizational silos and services oriented architecture (SOA). As cloud integration emerges as an enterprise-wide issue, CFOs must get acquainted with the cost-value equation of cloud and SaaS applications. Why? Cloud integration emerges as a key competency for successful organizations seeking to innovate while maximizing returns on investment. Consequently, CFOs should understand ten key points on why they must master cloud integration.

B. Research Findings

The rapid adoption of cloud computing by business leaders unfortunately creates a bespoke environment technically known as “best of breed cloud hell.” With so many disparate systems in a loosely federated model, data rapidly becomes siloed, business processes easily become fragmented, and coordination across functional fiefdoms quickly becomes difficult. Consequently, cloud integration emerges as a key enabler in reducing the costs and improving the benefits of cloud computing. Recent conversations with 22 CFOs addressed these ten key questions:

What is cloud integration?
Why is cloud integration a growing competency for the CFO?
Is cloud integration more or less expensive?
Which integration approach is best in the long run?
How does cloud integration mitigate project risk?
What’s the business value for cloud integration?
Will bring your own device (BYOD) policies require cloud integration?
How can I support social media?
Do big data and cloud integration go hand in hand?
What kind of projects make sense for cloud integration?

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Event Report: Clarabridge Customer Connections 2012 #cbc312

Published on April 9, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Clarabridge “Turns Up The Heat” On Delivering Context For Customer Experience

CEO, Sid Banderjee, opened up Clarabridge‘s 4th annual user conference to 350 customers at the Doral Golf & Spa in Miami, FL on March 5th, 2012. Clarabridge, a sentiment and text analytics software provider helps companies discern insight from their text based customer feedback and the growing plethora of social and mobile data points. The goal – aggregation of insights from qualitative analytics that transform key organizational processes in customer experience, new product development, and employee satisfaction.

Clarabridge has shown success with a Global 1000 customer list that spans key verticals in technology/telco, retail/CPG, manufacturing, travel/hospitality, financial services/insurance. Major clients include Bank of America, Best Buy, Cisco, Dell, Disney, Fidelity, General Mills, Hilton, IHG Hotels, Kaiser Permanente, Marriott, Siemens Sony, T-Mobile, United Airlines, Verizon, Visa, Walgreen’s, Walmart, and Zynga.

Some highlights from the event include:

Keynote from customer experience transformist Bruce Temkin. Bruce’s keynote discussed how organizations apply Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs to augment customer experience. Temkin highlighted his VoC Maturity assessment methodology that drills in on six key areas – detection, dissemination, diagnosis, discussion, designing, and deploying. The key quote from Bruce was “Customer feedback is cheap, actionable insight may be valuable, but taking action on insight is precious. VoC programs are useless unless you act on what you find”
Best practices discussions from Global 1000 companies.Leading brands such as Acer, Best Buy, B/E Aerospace, Charming Shoppes, Choice Hotels International, Inc., Dell Inc, Expedia, Estée Lauder, Fidelity Investments, GE Appliances, United Airlines, Sage, Verizon, Vodaphone, Wendy’s, Walmart, and Zynga shared best practices. Experiences from Wynn Parrish, VP Product Support of B/E Aerospace showd how customer management and warranty liability could be minimized. Michael Silverman at Silverman research highlighted how Unilver uses VOC for internal employee programs. One of the highlights was Jared Anderson (Best Buy) and Jonathan Sunberg’s (Confirmit) panel on voice of the customer at the leading edge/
Official details on the Clarabridge 5.0 launch. The launch of Clarabridge 5.0 provides the foundation for a customer insight data analytics hub (See Figure 1). As part of the launch, Clarabridge Collaborate adds integrated notifications and alerts. A new satisfaction scoring and sentiment transparency capability brings customer satisfaction scores into the equation to determine customer loyalty and retention programs. Many attendees expressed interest in the new theme and event detection capabilities which provide custom categorization models to quickly surface new trends. Last but not least, the natural language processing engine now supports Italian, Dutch, and Japanese.

Figure 1. Transforming Feedback Into Insight

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Quark Summary: What Every CMO Needs To Know About The Six C’s Of Customer Engagement

Published on March 8, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Forward And Commentary

CMO’s seeking to avoid the desensitization that comes with the adoption of new media will want to quickly deploy the Six C’s of Customer Engagement.

A. Introduction

Social media effectiveness for brands and enterprises will rapidly mirror the trends that email and web sites experienced during the late 1990′s to early 2000′s. In fact, social media adoption has passed ubiquitous usage and has mostly begun the process of relevant deployment. Avoidance of Phase 4 Desensitization can be avoided by applying the Six C’s of Engagement (Figure 1.)

B. Research Findings

Recent early adopter surveys identify five key phases of social media adoption:

Phase 1: Eager early adopters. Users eagerly experimented in the newness of the medium. Early adopters attempt to apply the medium to everything.
Phase 2: Ubiquitous usage. Rapid adoption put the medium in the hands of the masses. Adoption exceeds 50 million users.
Phase 3: Relevant deployment. Brands and enterprises apply the medium to the right business use cases and processes.
Phase 4: Desensitization and fatigue. Inundated with marketing, bombarded with irrelevant content, and tired of the newness of the medium, customers begin tuning out.
Phase 5: Rejuvenation. Maturation of the medium ushers an improved era of engagement apply the Six C’s of Engagement.

The Six C’s Of Customer Engagement provide strategies to overcome desensitization and fatigue

Community. Location for engagement.
Content. Topics that drive engagement.
Context. Relevance that create engagement.
Catalysts. Events or actions that facilitate engagement.
Currencies. Monetary and non-monetary exchange of value behind engagement.
Cadence. The frequency of interaction

Figure 1. The Six C’s of Customer Engagement Overcomes Desensitization And Fatigue

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Best Practices: From First To Worst – Continental In A Post United World, Lessons In Next Gen Customer Experience

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

Multiple Respected Research Survey Results Confirm Frequent Flyer Observations

It’s official. In multiple respected customer experience research reports that cover the airline industry, the results are in. Despite the numerous attempts by CEO Jeff Smisek to gloss over the issue with increasingly slicked up, feel good, on board welcome ads, Continental’s customer satisfaction numbers have reached the abyss of United’s. While United Holdings may tout their most admired status in the airline industry by Fortune, the award is measured by corporate executives, airline executives, boards of directors and industry analysts – basically not the customers and passengers who fly United Holdings. On multiple flights this year, I’ve personally heard Continental flyers groan and boo out loud every time they see the welcome aboard video where Jeff Smisek touts how he’s out to help customers, tells them why they are going to like this merger, and brags about how many planes he’s painted in the new livery. Flight attendants and pilots roll their eyes as well.

What was pure emotional speculation and conjecture can now be quantified. A quick glance at the latest Temkin Group: Temkin Experience Ratings shows Continental scores as bad as United – basically smack in the poor category (see Figure 1.)Travel Industry benchmark, Atmosphere Research’s US Airline sentiment shows United at the bottom with US Airways. Even legacy analyst firm, Forrester’s 2012 Customer Experience Index shows a 5% drop for United and a 11% drop for Continental (you’ll need to pay for a subscription to read the results.) Asked about Continental and United’s customer experience performance, CX Transformist & Managing Partner, Bruce Temkin (@btemkin) pointed out that, “The overall industry actually had a modest improvement between 2011 and 2012 and only two carriers had significant drops: American and Continental. As these economically challenged big airlines focus on wringing out costs, they also squeeze the soul out of their brand, their employees, and the experiences they provide to customers.

Figure 1.Temkin Experience Ratings Shows Continental Falling to United Levels of Poor Customer Experience

Source: Temkin Group

Many Continental employees agree. In a conversation with a Houston senior Flight Attendant who chose to withhold her name for fear of retribution, she stated, “It’s all ‘Jeff’ed’ up! All the goodness of Continental is going away. Since Jeff took over, they no longer care what we think and sadly, we think they no longer care what customers think.” A conversation with a few Newark Red Coats in January revealed similar sentiment as they mustered up, “It’s the worst since Lorenzo. The management team is disconnected with the staff. We’re reverting back to pre-Gordon as Jeff destroys our morale.” One of then pulled me aside and said, “We’re still Continental at heart and I’ll do the best I can while we can. Please stay with us!”

Figure 2. Atmosphere Research’s U.S. Airline Sentiment Scores From August-December 2011 Show United Near Bottom