Enterprise hits and misses - big data infatuations and ERP's IoT problem
- Summary:
- This week: cleansing our big data infatuations. Also: can ERP systems handle the next-gen needs of IoT? Your whiffs include hard lessons for smoking punks, while Dove's marketing team gets the spank tunnel.
MyPOV: Kurt unfurls his own personal trough of disillusionment, firing up examples of data infatuation (which is different from a "data daze," as you'll learn). Major League Baseball is exhibit A, a league whose Moneyball stats obsessions have done nothing to pry disaffected viewers from NFL fantasy leagues and whatever is on Netflix that doesn't last four interminable hours.
Airlines and the real-time price adjustments of the travel industry are another, where data is precise but the customer experience is tedium, if not crud. And unlike baseball, you can't just load up Game of Thrones when you're stuck in a United hub getting price negotiated into a nickel-and-dime sardine can where "at least you got there eventually" passes for customer service. But as Kurt points out, these big data risks are ubiquitous:
The collection and analysis of vast new troves of business data often provides valuable insights. However executives shouldn’t limit its use to merely that of an efficiency tool that improves existing operations. Therein lies the path to turning Moneyball into a moneypit. As the baseball, airline and other examples illustrate, there’s a significant risk of optimizing processes at the expense of long-term profitability.
Fine, you say - so what's the point because waving a caution flag? The goal is fresh business models:
Management should spend more time on using data to inspire new products and services that satisfy unmet and previously unknown needs, improve the overall customer experience and increase loyalty and repeat business.
And that, friends, is far better than the slow motion pain of watching my Red Sox get their tails kicked.
Diginomica picks - my top two stories on diginomica this week- The Four Worlds of Work in an AI-impacted 2030 - Stuart parses a PwC survey on our techno work futures. Now, PWC's four worlds of work are kinda gimmicky, such as "Green World" (where companies care) and "Red World" (where innovation rules). And no, it's not a coloring book. But what I do like is that we can look at the different impact on human workers of each work style. For a here-and-now AI push, see Stuart's "Digital-first" Rolls-Royce powers up on AI and data.
- HR Technology Conference & Expo - four themes that should be discussed but probably won't - Brian won't be on the ground for HR Tech Vegas this year, but that didn't stop him from
dumping a load/serving cold showersraising key questions for vendors and attendees. Hopefully the "bad vendor behavior" Brian warns us about will be instamatically changed by instructive use cases (more on "instamatically" in the whiffs section).
Oracle OpenWorld, the diginomica wrap
With a few more pieces tricking in, diginomica published 17+ pieces of OpenWorld content and analysis. Here's my two final picks from our use cases and reviews:
- OOW17 - Oracle's cloud epiphany has come late, but it's no less genuine for that - Who better than Phil, who's had his share of cloud epihanies over the years, to assess Oracle's: "Of course there’s bluster — an Ellison keynote wouldn’t be complete without a good dose of competitor bashing... My take is that Oracle has finally engineered its platform to run in the cloud, and that’s a huge step."
- OOW17 - Larry with nuance, contextualizing Oracle OpenWorld's key messaging - Denis Pombriant adds surprising context to Oracle's cloudy bets.
Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here's my two top choices from our vendor coverage:
- Workday Rising 2017 - it's all about data, the platform and GDPR - In his show preview, Den tees up the fly-in-the-ointment questions from the
cheap seatsother side of the pond. Watch for his follow-ups. - SAP attempts to calm user fears on indirect access with SAP Licensing Transparency Center - Den's got key updates on an issue SAP needs to nail, if it wants to be a next-gen apps/data player and not a back office fade. Also see my retail chat with SAP Hybris.
A couple more vendor picks, without the quotage:
- Accelerating time to decision at ADAC Automotive with Vena's budgeting solution - Den
- 72 hours to doomsday - GDPR armageddon peddling from Splunk - Martin (p.s. Martin: congrats on diginomica post title of the week honors).
Jon's grab bag - Stuart's Why the era of political pride in tech ignorance has to end struck a chord with readers on both sides of the pond. Perhaps readers are weary of policy-makers who are still thumbing Blackberries, content with slapping Equifax with a wet noodle while demanding back doors in our devices without knowing what the eff that even means.
Martin gets a little professorly on us in IPExpo Europe - Brian Cox and managing the question of not knowing what he doesn’t know, but when you're assessing the viability of quantum computing, you're allowed a few extra puffs. Stuart's Europe signs up to e-government vision, and look out, I found a new way to grind my enterprise-events are-broken axe (Claim you listen to customers? Then do a live feedback session at your next enterprise event).
Best of the rest
Lead story - The rising tension between IoT and ERP systems by Joe McKendrickmyPOV: The marketing team at your friendly neighborhood ERP vendor would have you believe that IoT is as easy as signing on the line which is dotted. But as McKendrick notes via a recent IFS survey, it ain't that simple. One quote about the study:
Not even the most advanced companies were very likely to say their enterprise software did a very good job helping them consume IoT data.
But is tighter data integration the key? Or do our transactional systems need to change in a fundamental way? As McKendrick says, this is not just about integration, it's about forging new business models. Tossing out some RESTful APIs is nice, but we're going to need a lot more than data lakes and IoT demo bake-offs. McKendrick also posted This is UX: 'design developers' add new dimension to software design.
Honorable mention
- On ABAP in the Cloud - SAP Mentor Chris Paine posts one of the finest SAP-related blogs of the year, continuing a debate on SAP's recent ABAP -> cloud announcement.
- Airbnb's 10 Takeaways from Moving to Microservices - You could have gone to eleven (obscure Spinal Tap reference). Solid use case lessons via The New Stack.
- What About Them Apples? - You wouldn't know it from the title, but this is a supply chain ditty, with a ripped-from-the-headlines twist: demand management put to the test by natural disasters, which in turn impact consumer needs.
- The Enterprise Software Synergy Effect, Part II: How Acquisitions Fail To Realize Their Potential - Greenbaum ruined reams of press releases in this series on acquisitions gone awry, based on his criteria, which is: failed synergy. One demerit for bringing the dreaded term synergy back into the mix, however.
- Can Blockchain Solve The Equifax Identity Morass? Here's How - Your post isn't really about blockchain, but I think I know why you did that (clicks). I guess it worked. Warning: this is a Forbes.com piece, the worst ad tech reader experience on earth (sorry, ZDNet, I know you're trying super hard to top them).
Whiffs
It was a rough week for peeps who are partial to civil discourse, secure data, and marketing restraint. For the latter, we have Dove: Dove apologises for ad showing black woman turning into white one. The social media spank tunnel was ready for that one.For civil discourse, I can't stop watching what happened to this dude who felt like smoking while at the gas pump. Oh, and this is not a done deal yet (Congress may be stepping in), but in revenge-of-the-turds, Equifax Lands $7.25 Million Contract with IRS.
So remember that Instamatic crack? Our own Brian Sommer got the Twitter ball rolling:
new word of the day: Insta-matically. Heard a panelist at #wdayrising use this. @jonerp@fscavo#TYFYL@ZoliErdos
— Brian Sommer (@BrianSSommer) October 10, 2017
Then:
This car is hyyyydro matic! Why it's grease lightning! https://t.co/MGi0A3tzFS
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) October 10, 2017
Frank Scavo threw Brian Sommer a meatball over the plate:
Why do tech people have this incessant need to coin words?
— Frank Scavo (@fscavo) October 10, 2017
And Brian wound up for the swing:
Cuz' they're "all-in on acronyms" and "busy cloud-washing their tech dirty laundry", https://t.co/cTIFk5H5yB
— Brian Sommer (@BrianSSommer) October 10, 2017
Yep - ouch.
If you find an #ensw piece that qualifies for hits and misses - in a good or bad way - let me know in the comments as Clive (almost) always does.
Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed. 'myPOV' is borrowed with reluctant permission from the ubiquitous Ray Wang.