Enterprise hits and misses - big data needs iconoclasts, and design thinking gets real
- Summary:
- In this edition: moving past digital culture shock, and why we need "data driven iconoclasts." Plus: how NOT to botch a sales kick-off. Design thinking gets real - and speaking of real, a really bad enterprise "article" surfaces.
diginomica hit: Beyond digital culture shock lies people - and design thinking? By Stuart and Den
quotage: "If you’ve not been introduced to Design Thinking then you’re not alone. Today, Design Thinking is a relatively minor sport among buyers and practitioners. The IT services and business process outsourcing community is starting to grab the concepts with both hands as they get squeezed by the twin demons of a downturn in ‘lift and shift’ operations accompanied by a squeeze on rates." - Den
myPOV: Two digital pieces looked at how the digital push comes back to human skills - and wrestling change into results. In Beyond digital culture shock lies people-powered technology innovation, Stuart bravely waded through Accenture’s 2016 Technology Vision report. He sees parallels from last week's conversations at Davos, which brought the issue back to how human beings can persevere - or even prosper - despite job disruptions.
As Stuart says, there is "much to be gained for those who get it right." The gist? Prevent digital partner shock with a "people-first" perspective. Yeah, that sounds awfully generic - but the point of Accenture's report is to detail companies who are getting this right. Stuart runs down five key trends in the report, including intelligent automation, the "liquid workforce," and the platform economy.
Den looks at how services firms can press ahead through the digital squeeze with the still-widely-misunderstood trend known as "design thinking." In Design Thinking – the next methodology for BPO modernization? He slices and dices a new report from HfS Research on how design thinking can provide a means for services firms to push towards digital transformation. Den's contempt for "best practices" reeks off the page, and it's not just buzzword blandness he abhors. It's the reality that falling back on older templates fits badly today.
Design thinking, properly applied, can help business leaders re-imagine futures and hammer out a plan to get there. Check Den's piece for the nuance and caveats, including the need for what I call "applied soft skills" that are too often in shortly supply. Sidenote: my biggest critique of design thinking is that it's too often used to flesh out decisions already set in motion. If you can't question all business model assumptions, design thinking loses creative potency. Then it's just a fancy name for "rubber stamp."
diginomica three: my top three stories on diginomica this week- Time’s running out for Safe Harbor detente as Davos mirrors the transatlantic data divide - Does it make me a bad person - or, at least, an ugly American - if I hope the Safe Harbor detente falls apart just to watch Stuart blow an editorial gasket? But on a serious note, Stuart's been watching this data tug of war closely. Stuart won't be easily impressed even if a deal is reached. He's thinking it'll prolly be a "fudge," rather than an effective long-term solution.
- What we should really be watching: Information Technology - Brian wraps a
crankyincisive trilogy (the first two parts, on finance and HR, are linked from this one). Amongst the sacred cows Brian escorts to pasture are: "data is an asset" (it may well be a liability), and "we can do the cloud better than Amazon" (err, no, you can't). Sidenote: Brian and I are both at the Acumatica cloud ERP show this week so I'll try to get some inside dope on these pieces. - Shop Direct leaves catalogs behind, transforms to cloud - Phil is not a hyperbolic fellow, so when he writes that this use case is a "is a truly breathtaking story of digital transformation," I'll pay attention. Amazing that one of Shop Direct's family of brands had 200 brick and mortar stores as recently as 2005. There you have it - digital can be done. Perhaps not without pain, but then nothing is more painful than holding on to a declining model.
Vendor analysis, diginomica style - It was a good week for Microsoft on diginomica. In Microsoft tilts at enterprise cloud domination with Azure Stack, Kurt argues that Microsoft can now pose a "realistic threat to Amazon." That's based on the news that Microsoft will offer a private cloud version, a.k.a. "Azure Stack." As per Kurt, "Azure and Azure Stack demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to hybrid public/private clouds and together mark the most significant differentiator to its biggest cloud competitor, AWS." Stuart took the big picture view in Microsoft’s new cloud world order takes over from Windows, with a look at how Microsoft's cloud gambit is coming just in time to bail out declining Windows revenues.
Elsewhere, NetSuite set Wall Street's finicky heart a-flutter; Stuart's got the story in NetSuite beats Wall Street expectations as customer uptick increases. Pesky Phil Wainewright has some pesky questions about Saleforce's SMB strategy in SalesforceIQ unhitches from Sales Cloud to woo SMBs (net-net: Phil was skeptical, but now sees signs of clear/aggressive Salesforce SMB investment). It's not easy to get much out of a 12 minute phone interview. But Den and Rob Enslin surfaced key issues in 12 minutes with Rob Enslin on SAP’s 2016 outlook.
Jon's grab bag - Could Apple have a bigger play as a services business? CEO Tim Cook clearly thinks so - and he has one billion active devices to tap into. Stuart kicks tires on the possibilities in Apple - the billion user services company?. Derek reflects on his first local digital governance show of the year in What’s troubling local government digital teams in 2016? A lot.
Outsourcing, data privacy, leadership, and "procurement blockers" (e.g. folks with power who stifle digital progress are some of the issues Derek weighs out. And: given that consumers say that customer experience is getting worse, not better, perhaps it's time to reset your customer experience strategy? Barb shares how it's done.
Best of the rest
Big data challenges and data-driven iconoclasts - by Evangelos Simoudis and Lora Cecerequotage: "Automakers must be in the information business. To be effective in the information business, automakers must change their perspective and start thinking about an overall process for big data in and around the car." - Evangelos Simoudis
myPOV: Two pieces hit on the perils and opportunities of data this week, starting with Simoudis' The Automotive Industry’s Big Data Challenge (Part 1) . Simoudis has written extensively on the automotive industry in the past (check my Q/A with him on automotive industry disruptions). Simoudis is a breath of long-form fresh air in the world of enterprise sound bites. Simoudis pinpoints five areas of automotive industry change: Electric, Autonomous, Connected, Mobility Services (EAC+MS), and Information.
He sees good info on the first four, but not on the information side - thus this two-part series. Simoudis warns that for automakers to survive, they better get into the transportation business - their solutions include the vehicle, but also mobility services around the vehicle including parking, roadside assistance, and repair. Plus broader transportation services, such as ride-sharing, car-sharing, car rental. I see a new list of winners and losers coming our way...
Cecere honed in on the analytics shortcomings of the supply chain space in Become Data Driven: Embrace the Iconoclast in Your Organization. I'm a sucker for iconoclasts, and Cecere thinks that's exactly what's needed to get analytics moving forward on supply chain teams. Cecere argued that companies haven't solved the riddle of supply chain analytics. She has some strong words of advice, e.g. "look and build beyond the firewall" and "make master data extinct." Bonus: some gutsy words about the perils of independence and pissing vendors off. Keep on calling it like you see it, Ms. Cecere!
Other standouts
- How not to screw up a sales kickoff - OK, so technically the blog is called How to Run a Sales Kickoff, but Host Analytics CEO Dave Kellogg basically gives you everything to do if you want your sales kickoff to be really good - and not to stink. Loads of gems here, but I'll pick the open mic session: "Have an open-mic executive Q&A. These can be awkward and some CEOs hate doing them, but in a healthy organization you should be able to put the exec team in front of the company to answer questions."
- Social media made the Arab spring, but couldn't save it - Five years after the "Arab Spring" swept through the Middle East, it's about time to assess what went awry. Wired's Jessi Hempel puts a harsh light on social media hype of Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, which seemed to be vital to these emerging democractic futures. His conclusion is NOT that these social media tools aren't powerful. No, it's more disconcerting than that: "Militants have harnessed the same technology to organize attacks and recruit converts, catapulting the world into instability." Repressive governments are now cracking down on dissidents who use these channels. And governments in crackdown mode have figured out how to use misinformation and character assasination on social media as well. Hempel: "Social media, as it turns out, was not a new path to democracy. It was simply a tool."
- Artificial ‘Imagination’ Helped Google AI Master Go, the Most Complex Game Ever Invented - I'm not much of a "Go" guy. I was a chess club geek so I was much more impressed when IBM's Deep Blue defeated chess champion Garry Kasparov. So why is the victory of a program developed by Google scientists over a professional Go player being hailed as a breakthrough in AI? Well, it turns out the Go is the most complex game ever devised by humans, with 250 possible moves with each turn as an average, compared to a lowly 35 from chess. "Brute force" AI methods that powered chess programs were "woefully inadequate" for Go. Who knew?
Honorable mention
Why 77% of the C-Suite really want provider-replacement therapy - I don't know about couch time, but when your research shows 77 percent of leadership want to see their legacy service providers replaced, compared with only 27% of their middle management, you have a predicament.
Top 10 Predictions for the ERP Industry in 2016 - I'm not on board with all of these, but there's good debate fodder here on cloud ERP acceptance, the prevalence of customization (that's a mistake), and best-of-breed SaaS taking market share from incumbents.
Mossberg: Twitter Has Become Secret-Handshake Software - Another take on Twitter's woes. Shame that that most public/open social media platform has the worst business model and user experience headaches.
Why I’ve Shifted More Attention to Facebook - a popular cloud/VC blogger posts on Facebook. His reasoning is interesting and relates to my prior post on Content Strategy - why I was wrong. However he does not take into account company-level issues so his advice is only relevant to individuals.
Whiffs
So I checked into the Hyatt in Orlando to be greeted by this:
Great moments in personalization - this edition brought to you by #Hyatt pic.twitter.com/TTKLUYCm9g
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) February 1, 2016
Faux personalization is great - until a glitch exposes a big 'ol hole in the personalization matrix.
I have Brian Sommer to thank for this link to a techmarketview "UK Hot View" on the travails of Wipro's new CEO. I had to read this piece several times, which only took me 30 seconds since it's linkbait light-as-tissue paper. This, ladies and gents, is now under consideration for the worst enterprise piece of 2016. If it advances, it can compete in the all-time competition.
As best I can tell, the author is saying that the new Wipro CEO is off to an "inauspicious" start because of an admittedly unrelated news story about three Wipro employees implicated in a cybersecurity scandal. Bad luck timing? Perhaps. But how is this an inauspicious start? Not surprised the author didn't link to the story, given that the cybersecurity arrests happened BEFORE the new CEO started. Ah well, at least we can thank this meager article for the fab line "In an unrelated report from the same organ"... maybe next time let's use the brain as an organ before publishing?
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.
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Disclosure: SAP, NetSuite and Salesforce are diginomica premier partners as of this writing.