Enterprise hits and misses - data breaches, Facebook overreaches, and Microsoft Windows fades
- Summary:
- This week: data privacy in the crosshairs due to breaches, myopic legislation, and, of course, Facebook. Plus: Microsoft Windows does a sharp turn to slow fade. Customer service FAQ blowout, and whiffs-a-plenty.
myPOV: I might as well hand over the "whiffs" section to Stuart this week. He nailed down stories that add up to a horse pill for consumers, particularly in the U.S. First up, in U.S. CLOUDy thinking will lead to data grabs, not data privacy assurance, Stuart flags more transcontinental BS, this time for a U.S. cloud lack of privacy law that Stuart dubs "highly suspect and unwelcome piece of U.S. legislation."
This is no more a well-thought out solution to a genuine problem of the digital age than the ludicrous Privacy Shield botched-job between the U.S. and the European Union. It has massive privacy and human rights implications, both in the U.S and overseas.
Ah, but the fun isn't over. Cue another tour through the business model abyss data innovator known as Facebook. Stuart's headline sums it up: Zuckerberg to US Facebook users - GDPR privacy benefits not fully on offer to you. Stuart goes for understatement with:
Other tech firms are taking a much more pro-active lead here.
Ergo:
It’s up to US consumers to pile on the pressure to get the same rights as their EU counterparts.
In other words, don't hold your breath. U.S. consumers reserve their outrage for more important things, like venting about imperfect meals on Yelp.
Grindr makes its diginomica debut as cautionary tale in Stuart's How not to handle a data sharing crisis in a digital age - Grindr's masterclass. Yeah, share HIV data and hide under your ridiculous terms of service. Good luck with that.
Data privacy fallout wouldn't be complete without a good old fashioned data breach. Yeah, Stuart's got that for you too: For Hudson's Bay's new CEO, another headache - a data breach with a claimed 5 million cards at risk.
Diginomica picks - my top three stories on diginomica this week- Disruptor or dodo? Teaching new tricks in agility and innovation - Janine with a cool roundup of hefty HR customers finding their agile groove, proving you don't have to be a lean startup to be agile.
- America’s cities are under cyberattack. That’s bad news for IoT and Smart Cities - Jerry's got a wake-up call for smart city enthusiasts: "The most frightening element of all is the general public’s complacency and blind faith that technology will somehow build a “wall” that will keep all the bad things out."
- GoDaddy influencer scoring with Nimble - Den filed a nifty use case on "what a CRM should be like in a socially moderated world."
Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here's my three top choices from our vendor coverage:
- Infor rides the retail wave - sees network effects, the sharing economy and AI as game changers - Derek sits down with the Infor retail team for a progress report. Check this from Infor: "Yeah, so we’re not really worried about the Oracles and SAPs. We’re worried about the start-ups that haven’t come out yet. The successful retail companies are the ones that become more like tech providers, more like tech companies."
- Salesforce reminds TrailheadDX of equality battles through the eyes of Betty Reid-Soskin - Denis on some notable Salesforce milestones: "But on a human level, the company is also touting how Trailhead can provide the foundation for a 21st-century middle-class existence. At TrailheaDX it showcased individuals who have gone through the training sequence to develop skills and got good paying jobs."
- Temenos and the need for core banking renewal - Angelica gets a window into banking industry disruption from an industry player. Her take: "Traditional core banking is the natural enemy of true end-to-end digital banking transformation. In the current Open Banking scenario, it has become clear that fintechs are no longer a threat but potential allies of established banks. But how can banks take advantage of these communities if their underlying technology does not allow them to do so?"
Jon's grab bag - Euan Semple's guest post on why The ideology of algorithms needs a serious discussion hit home:
People need to take more responsibility for their information environment. They need to be more aware of the risks of bias. They need to be more critical in their thinking.
Kurt has a different - but not incompatible - angle via the GTC show (GTC 2018 - ready or not, Nvidia is building an AI-centric world). Meanwhile, Derek's been all over the Brexit story. With the one year deadline hitting, this is getting real, and fast.
You wouldn't think April fools was a big enterprise holiday, but check Den's top five roundup. There's some intrepid pranksters on the beat. Madeline's got some tough love for retailers, as in: stop wasting money on incremental tech!
Finally, Phil builds on his d·book, The XaaS Effect (free with sign up) in The missing word that adds new meaning to the definition of XaaS. Hint: it's about connecting the services, or, if you like, delivering connected services.
Best of the rest
Lead story - These Are The Last 12 Questions You Had On Customer Experience – Promise! – by Esteban KolskymyPOV: I flagged this last week, but I thought a 4,000 word opus deserved a neon sign. I've got little chance of summarizing it all here, but why don't more webinars do a public roundup like this one? Regarding extracting value from customer service, I liked Kolsky's blunt answer:
Q: Can I get this done without adopting a cloud-based deployment?
A: No.
Kolsky goes on to issue sensible caveats; you may be able to expose data via apps or browsers and avoid a cloud deployment. But for brevity, you can't beat the "no" answer. Another short answer: no, Internet of Things sensors are not customers. It's always fun to try to stump the chump analyst with a tough question. I'll give that door prize to the attendee who asked: "How long does an end-to-end customer experience project take?"
Kolsky's answer: it depends. There are really two approaches. However one, which we might call the traditional build-and-maintain, Kolsky is skeptical of. He advocates a second approach where the focus is on engagement and agility, not maintaining systems:
The second answer is where you realize the above model is unsustainable and you instead focus the next 18-24+ months on building a cloud-based infrastructure like we introduced in the second webinar and let it serve your customers ad-hoc as they see their needs change and evolve, while you spend 15% or less of your time maintaining and keeping the infrastructure running.
If your question isn't answered, just ping Kolsky in the comments. I'm sure he'd love to answer twelve more.
Other standouts
- The End of Windows - Stratechery's Ben Thompson at his analytical finest, breaking down the news of Microsoft formally dismantling its Windows business unit. But as Thompson explains, it won't be easy to replace that legacy cash cow.
- Cutting ‘Old Heads’ at IBM - ProPublica with the kind of investigative tech journalism we don't see much of these days. They turn the spotlight on IBM, and its quiet (and questionable) elimination of more than 20,000 American employees ages forty and over. Via Den Howlett.
Honorable mention
Infor Innovation Analyst Summit 2018: I totally get it and yet, I don't see it - Paul Greenberg with another victim word count blowout/epic review.
How to Make Your SLAs Meaningful in SaaS Cloud Subscription Agreements - UpperEdge with timely advise on managing the new sticky wicket, the cloud SLA.
Here's How Women and Startups Can Accelerate Pay Equity in Tech - an important piece from FirstRound, but look out for their rude full screen pop-up.
As marketing data proliferates, consumers should have more control - TechCrunch's Ron Miller adds to the data privacy critique via the Adobe Summit.
10 Ways Machine Learning Is Revolutionizing Manufacturing In 2018 - readers liked this thorough compilation from Louis Columbus.
London firm revamps pay by letting staff set salaries - are you transparent enough? We're probably all re-asking that question after this one.
Under Armour App Breach Exposes 150 Million Records - From Under Armour PR to Hudson's Bay's PR: "You're welcome."
Whiffs
Let's start on the lighter side, eh? Rarely does a headline live up to its name, but this one sure does: Lifetime ban from Empress for pepperoni seagull fiasco has been lifted. You couldn't make up that story if a thousand monkeys talked into a thousand Alexas.Speaking of animals, the Detroit Zoo is giving away free buckets of animal poop, but at least it's for a good ecological cause (e.g. Earth). Oh, and if you're going to be a legislator, and you plan on being enough of an insensitive world class dork contrarian bro to oppose an anti- hazing bill, maybe don't quote from The Onion to support your argument.
Regarding venting on Yelp, I liked this turnabout:
That's one way to handle a negative Yelp review :) pic.twitter.com/iA9ULL7s6F
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) March 31, 2018
This news has a dark roasted, truly nutty aroma:
California judge orders Starbucks to add cancer warning labels over a little-known chemical in coffee https://t.co/fHPAgvqItq -> this idiocy has been brewing for a while
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) March 30, 2018
On a far more concerning note, The Shooting At YouTube Showed How Bad Twitter’s Misinformation Problem Is. Accusing the wrong people is just the edge of the morass, and what's worse, I don't see a fix. Nor do I see a spine amongst Twitter's leadership.
Nudging closer to the enterprise, we have this deconstruction from Josh Bernoff:
Without Bullshit - Dear big company. Thank you for agreeing to pay me. https://t.co/m2ggP2WBki -> deconstructing big corporate procurement which is a hoop jumping fiasco
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) April 4, 2018
At diginomica, we riff on Phil Wainewright's concept of the frictionless enterprise. Well, procurement contracts are the crust on the bottom of the digital coffee cup, the turd forever lurking in the pool, waiting, waiting, for Bill Murray to come along. Until then, we've got friction-a-plenty.
Thankfully, not all goofy things are bad:
FACT CHECK: Is There a Dedicated Hall & Oates Phone Line? https://t.co/wi9ITBu51w -> what, no "Family Man"?
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) March 31, 2018
2,000+ calls per day and counting. See you next time...
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.