Enterprise hits and misses - Black Friday results, and the revenge of the storefront
- Summary:
- In this edition: assessing early Black Friday results and the stubborn viability of the storefront. Plus: a hard look at diversity initiatives. How AI is impacting supply chain - and why an early social media proponent now issues a warning. Your whiffs include Twitter suspending itself, and the perils of icons and gurus.
diginomica hit - Black Friday retail learnings – mobile matters and offline stores still appeal by Stuart Lauchlan
quotage: "The lessons I take from the weekend so far are:
- Mobile investment is money well-spent in the retail sector.
- In the US, despite the closure of stores by the likes of Macy’s, there’s still a lot of value to be had from the offline retail experience.
- Outside of the US, the cultural appropriation of Black Friday isn’t as significant as we’re led to believe. And where it is in evidence, it’s online, not offline."
myPOV: Black Friday came and went in a flurry of discounts and some tragic bad behavior. So what did we learn? Well, the stats are still coming in, but Stuart's immediate takeaways are noted. My view is that we're moving away from the "death of stores" into the pursuit of who-has-the-best online/offline experience. In that context, the real estate still matters - and not just an Amazon locker in the back of a seedy convenience store.
If nothing else, as Stuart says, "Friday consumers are probably at the point of desperately needing to escape their families for some retail therapy!" The great Friday dysfunctional-family-escape is one American tradition that will never die.
diginomica pick - Diversity programs and how to do them – some tips from tech leaders by Cath EverettCath rocked it with two strong posts on diversity programs. Turns out 81% put innovation and creative thinking at the top of the list of benefits for diversity programs. Cath also filed on on Microsoft's unflattering headlines in in Microsoft’s drop in women employees is only part of the tech gender diversity gap, with Microsoft's percentage of female employees dropping for a second consecutive year. Microsoft isn't alone - Cath sees issues across UK companies. Alas, "untapped potential" is still the phrase du jour, but Cath has ideas on where to go from here.
Other top picks:
- The need for speed – cloud demands from Folk2Folk - Maxwell with a potent use case on cloud agility for upstarts, and his warning: cloud providers ignore SMEs and startups at their peril.
- Debate – ‘This house believes that innovation labs will not save traditional banks’ - Jess contrasts a live debate on financial tech upstarts versus banks, and the looming giants (Google, Apple) that may add another twist.
- Securing the Olympics – lessons for enterprise cyber security - Kurt draws security insights from pulling off a massive event.
Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here's my three top choices from our vendor coverage:
- SAP UK&I User Group on IoT licensing and S/4HANA - Derek was on the ground at the UK&I SAP User Group annual meeting and came back with his usual batch of intrepidness. UK & Ireland SAP User Group – 48% of members have no current S/4 HANA plans sheds light on a notable survey. The importance of design – Sanctuary Housing goes all-in with SAP shows how this non-profit uses SAP as a platform. Then, in Internet-of-Things licensing needs attention, says UK&I SAP User Group, Derek raises key IoT licensing questions that pertain to so-called "indirect" data usage. This is an issue all vendors - not just SAP - need to get out in front of, or it will bite them in the tuckus as customers push back.
- New Relic in 2016 – bridging the gap between the suits and geeks. A massive win - Seems Den liked what he saw at the New Relic show, eh? Den: "It is that ability to provide data upon which everyone can readily agree which provides the essential bridge between IT and the business in a way I have not seen in the past. Put another way, when you get to meet people with the title ‘SVP digital transformation’ who talk both tech and business scenario building then something different is happening."
- Sage CFO on culture change from product sales to subscriptions - Phil's a bit jaded by old Sage encounters but he sees a change in the air: "Hare’s account is a classic summary of the big challenges companies face when shifting from conventional sales to subscription. We’ve seen it a lot in the software industry, but enterprise leaders need to be aware that the spread of servitization and the subscription payment models that go along with it are coming to every other industry."
A couple more vendor picks, without the quotables:
- Okta CEO Todd McKinnon and the importance of digital identity - Derek
- IBM’s tripling of UK cloud capabilities tells a long story - Martin
- HPE, HP Inc – first year done, what’s the progress? - Stuart
Jon's grab bag - Phil nailed uncomfortable truths in How the Right got its hands on all the best data – and paid Facebook to call the tunes. Killer line: "Should the outcome of an election depend on who has access to the best data algorithms?" Derek continues our Brexit coverage with a digital skills imperative in Tech London Advocates Founder on Brexit – ‘Prepare for the worst situation’.
Derek asks if Could blockchain disrupt the telecoms industry? (answer: a very qualified yes). Den scored the deets on Bluefin's use of Slack in Letter from Slack – learnings and success at Bluefin via Bluefin chief-dick tarmac-titan fashion-maven enterprise star John Appleby. Den finds Sameer Patel in rare form as he crosses over to the dark side B2C in Solving for right time in B2C marketing – a conversation with Sameer Patel, CEO Kahuna. And yeah, Denis is Still optimistic about the future of jobs in a bot driven world. Kickass week eh? Whew!
Best of the rest
Five (Supply Chain) Trends That Excite Me! by Lora Cecerequotage: "My recommendation is for companies to stabilize their ERP spending and divert the funds into cognitive learning and artificial intelligence pilots. I think these solutions will fill in the current gaps in master data management and will be the basis of the next generation of supply chain planning. The future is autonomous planning. Today there are three primary providers: Enterra Solutions, IBM, and RuleX, but look for more competitors in this space in the near future." -
myPOV: Stalwart supply chain blogger Lora Cecere takes a look ahead. Just in case ERP vendors need one more wake up call, I picked the quotage above to underscore how much IT is quaking now. This doesn't render prior ERP investments irrelevant, but it sends a strong motivational signal. Not all customers are thinking AI yet, but this is where we're headed.
Other standouts:
- Everything you ever wanted to know about the Energy sector but never dared to ask -
Take a nice deep dive into the future of energy via a Q/A with HfS Research Analyst Derk Erbé. Sidenote: note sure why more firms don't publish these informal chats with their own analysts... - Social Media: Threat to Democracy? - This stinging piece by Maggie Fox was going to be my feature pick but I figured you needed a break from post-election dramatics. This is a big deal moment - Fox, a co-founder of Social Media Today, has been a proponent of social media from the get-go. So when she sounds the WTF alarm, we'd best pay attention: "Little did I think we would end up more isolated than ever, thanks to software features that were initially intended to give us more of what we liked, but which have driven us instead into blind alleys where we have no exposure to differing viewpoints."Yikes!
- How I Detect Fake News - Tim O'Reilly with one of his best pieces in years, a primer on his own BS detector applied to fake news, and also a challenge to Facebook and other algo-driven media sites to add BS filters like source verification to their algos.
Honorable mention
What a Visit to an AI-Enabled Hospital Might Look - Has a giddy optimism that is foreign to me, but absolutely prods thinking.
Memo to cloud providers: Stop selling pipe dreams - A brief, cold shower.
Microsoft Connect: On diversity of platforms, code and humans - On open source, diversity, and a behemouth in transition.
The Enterprise Persona Matters Most in B2B Tech Markets - Lose track of the enterprise context, lose the sale.
Coming Out in Tech: Communication is Key - Gutsy posts make us all a bit braver.
Whiffs
So Black Friday was marred by multiple shooting deaths - one involving a parking space dispute. Plus sobering/dystopian comments from shoppers: "Anytime someone loses their life, it’s very traumatic, especially on a holiday,” said Christina Tabarrini, 44. “It doesn’t prevent me from shopping. " Not 100 percent sure, but I don't think Twitter's new anti-abuse features were supposed to result in the suspension of their own CEO... Maybe we should trust algorithms.
I'm not going to call this a whiff exactly, but email does seem to be a veritable fountain of insular hyperbole these days. Via Den Howlett I got this lovely What the Most Iconic Tech Investors Read Each Morning.
To be fair, the list is interesting, in a drinking-from-the-same-horse-pond groupthink kind of way. But I got hung up on: how you define iconic? I've actually never met an iconic investor - I guess I hang out at the wrong coffee shops. Or maybe I'm just a snob when it comes to elevating those who create things over those who buy them.
Anyhow I guess these 'icons" all appeared on this podcast series, so kudos to them for sharing their know-how. They probably didn't ask to be called icons - anymore than you and I asked by be called "enterprise gurus."
Over to you, Clive.
Which #ensw pieces of merit did I miss? Let us know in the comments.
Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed. 'myPOV' is borrowed with reluctant permission from the ubiquitous Ray Wang.