Enterprise hits and misses - the UK rules against Uber, while robots deliver... Pizza?
- Summary:
- In this edition: the UK rules against Uber, and diginomica steps into the fray. But is ideology obscuring solutions? Plus: Walmart does open source and Jaguar does cloud HR. Robotic automation meets its match in... pizza delivery? Your whiffs include a fight with a pop-up purveyor that finally does the impossible: silences PR.
diginomica hit: UK’s gig economy Uber ruling - the digital platform debate by Stuart and Den
quotage: "In the new post-ruling Uber world, the drivers would have their holiday pay, but they’ll now have to book that in advance and be governed by statutory limits. They’ll get the minimum wage regardless of whether they pick up enough passengers or not to earn that. So Uber qua ‘employer’ will have to sort out National Insurance and take a higher commission and those costs will be passed on to passengers, so the consumer will lose out." - Stuart, The UK’s gig economy Uber ruling is a car crash of digital denial
myPOV: The ruling against Uber has potentially far-reaching implications for the so-called "gig economy," as Stuart reports. Diginomica ended up in the fray; Den's follow-up, The UK tribunal ruling against Uber is unworkable - Here's why, sparked debate and critique from one of the protagonists. It gets wilder - yours truly, the diginomica Yankee, knows this UK Uber driver, as does Den and perhaps others on our team. Den issued another follow-on to those critiques, Uber’s UK Tribunal problem – another take.
I'm not qualified to delve into the nuances of UK labor law, so I'll refer you to the pieces in question. But I will offer some meta-views:
- diginomica will take positions on the stories of the day. We owe it to our readers not to sit on the sidelines or pretend we don't have individual and, sometimes, organizational convictions.
- diginomica writers will rethink our positions based on persuasive debate and/or counter-arguments. We'll offer updates on our views and we may even change our minds.
I like to think that sets us apart in a good way, but you can be the judge. Some might prefer a pseudo-objectivity I've always found farcical. Others may be too ideologically rigid to appreciate evolving viewpoints.
That's a shame because one thing I feel certain about: if we are to make this "gig economy" a win for the drivers/giggers as well as the consumers, we must move beyond the rigid ideologies of the past, both on the capital and labor side, and come up with collaborative solutions.
I do have concerns about the status in the UK these two drivers are pushing for, a "worker" status that is somehow distinct from a full "employee." At least in the U.S., I don't think laws - or people for that matter - could wrap their heads around a third distinction.
I'm not an Uber fanboy from a management standpoint, though this issue goes far beyond Uber. My own views on driver status in the U.S. have changed; I used to think they were exploited employees under a bogus contractor status. But having talked with 40-50 Uber and Lyft drivers, I've spoken to no more than two I would consider an employee.
There should be a way for those who want to be employees and/or qualify based on criteria like controlled schedule to be employees, and those who want a part-time gig status to maximize their rates. But that's me from the U.S. - that might not fly in the U.K. For that I'll defer to Den/Stuart, but is there any doubt that "Uberexit" is a vital debate?
diginomica four - my top four stories on diginomica this week- A look at how retail giant Walmart is becoming open source first - Derek scored a revealing interview at the OpenStack Summit in Barcelona. The open source went legit a long time ago but surely this is "case closed" for open source enterprise viability. I still can't find an actual store employee but to be fair; that's beyond the scope of open source...
- Jaguar Land Rover put HR in the cloud. Here’s what it learned - Another spiffy use case, this time from Phil at HR Tech World Paris. Bonus points for sober thoughts on data science (data silos must be overcome first) and cloud as a business transformation, not a technology injection.
- Epilepsy care boosted by wearables and machine learning - Sick of machine learning hype? Yeah, me too, but as Jessica reports, the use of machine learning to potentially help medics anticipate seizures before they occur - and proactively offer advice - is a winner of a use case.
- Vodafone’s £4.6m CRM fine – when IT projects attack - Wouldn't be good to get too warm and fuzzy about digital tech. Fortunately Stuart is handy with the cold shower, in this case a whopper of a CRM sinkhole. Oh, and that fine is payable within 30 days,
fr@ckthank you very much. "Long-running problems with a massive Siebel migration and consolidation program" - sounds delightful. Makes you feel better about your own project, don't it?
Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here's my three top choices from our vendor coverage:
- Bank of Ireland wants rid of “watermelon SLAs” using ServiceNow - Derek's trip to ServiceNow's London event resulted in a fresh use case: "As much as I hate the term ‘uberization’ – you can think of ServiceNow as Uber for the enterprise. What is Uber when you drill into it? It’s a service app that allows consumers to make a request, declare their preferences for that request, and follow that request to completion. You can apply that to endless tasks in a company – tasks that currently rely on email and using endless follow up emails to chase." Also see Derek's The future success of ServiceNow lies with its platform and data.
- Five ways to transform – the VMware countdown - Don't be fooled by Martin's title. This is a conference retrospective: "Last comes the need for real agility, which he sees as the predominant way that VMware can help customers bring in business differentiation. It is also, however, the point where the challenge can vary wildly. They need the agility to be able to deliver what the customers are looking for, but that is only a part of the process."
- The definitive guide to making a successful SAP S/4 HANA business case - Den finally gets some answers from SAP that add up to business case thinking: "One point in all this that is easy to miss. Hybris is a world class omni-channel solution that commands a good chunk of market share. Fieldglass comes at the right time as companies consider re-shaping their workforce. EC/SuccessFactors is starting to deliver impressive results. Those are excellent assets with which to complement an S/4 HANA story. I’ll let you know my thinking about Ariba once I’ve had upcoming briefings with that group’s leadership. My point is that this portfolio play now makes sense to a customer base that has, in the past, been sold piece parts."
Jon's grab bag - Derek weighs in on a new report that raises concerns in the UK (and beyond, if you ask me) in Digital government “at risk” and platform approach needs rethink, says think tank. Janine takes on a provocative keynote in Kill bureaucracy and you’ll unclog the arteries of business (sidenote: bonus points for offering practical examples to back up keynote hyperbole).
Denis Pombriant continues a thoughtful future of work series in Beyond the K-wave – a new infrastructure jobs perspective. Essence of the AI/automation/jobs debate: "Even if you are optimistic, what kind of jobs will those be and will they provide a ‘living wage?’" Pombriant advocates skills planning over passive optimism. Falling out of love is brutal, Den's the latest casualty of the Apple laptops are for losers iPhones are all that really matters innovation "strategy" - Weekend woe: Dear Apple, your latest MacBook Pro is pathetic.
Best of the rest
Pizza, AI and customer loyalty by Denis Pombriant and Bob Dormonquotage: "The roadmap for robotic deliveries is now back under debate, at least if you were expecting arms and legs. But how about an autonomous delivery box on wheels or an airborne drone instead? These are all at the prototype stage but they’re definitely coming; in fact, there's a wide range of innovative technology under investigation by retailers to achieve a competitive edge, from drones to chatbots to redesigned Mars rovers and slasher robots." - Bob Dorman, Pizza, the unsung agent of the robot revolution
myPOV: Who knew that pizza would provoke one of the most substantial AI pieces of the year? Sponsored by SAP, Dorman's piece is a five-page monster that probes deep into robotics use cases and road blocks. Can't sum that up here, but bonus points for combining real-world thinking with honest admissions of when human cleverness is still indispensible to process (like "pick and pack").
Denis Pombriant takes a different angle in AI and customer loyalty, where he argues how automating loyalty programs in the present could pay off. Caveat: "Many of AI’s early deployments will be like this, not very sexy but useful." That might be Watson's obstacle in a nutshell; more on that shortly.
Other standouts:
- 60 days in, 6 things I learned about Marketing Automation - Sameer Patel, now CEO of Kahuna, flexes his blogging chops, including a blistering take on so-called omni-channel, you know, the place where expectations of seamless experiences go to die.
- Event Report - IBM World of Watson - IBM's bets its future on Watson - Speaking of machine learning, Constellation's Holger Mueller has the update on IBM's Watson gala. IBM is surely all-in on Watson. Now we have to find out if this can scale in customer adoption. Sex appeal galore, but live projects with results are sexy also. Mueller wants to understand how much of Watson is product and how much of it is
eye-watering billable hoursservices. Fair question.
Honorable mention
IoT's moment of truth -- who can secure the data flows? - Banging the drum of IoT security, and for good reason.
'Thanks for Using Containers!' ... Said No CEO Ever - A brilliant title about a seemingly brilliant presentation. Too bad there's no replay link as the article itself is cotton candy.
Oracle's Mark Hurd: Company has made 'best and final' offer for NetSuite - Come November 4th, this is either going to be a huge enterprise story - or an acquisition to watch.
Tesla shows off solar roof and energy ambitions at Los Angeles event - Can't fault Tesla for world-changing ambition.
Notes from Reality: The Philosophy of AI Ethics. An Interview with Dr. David Bray - Best installment yet in a fruitful series.
Microsoft's Dynamics 365: Tiered pricing, discounts will be key - A Microsoft expert with specifics on Microsoft's key enterprise play.
Whiffs
I can think of worse ways to screw up a marital dispute over the value of lottery picks than accidentally winning $1,000,000. Also, when you're the Australia Post and you deliver a postcard 50 years late, maybe something a tad stronger than "apologies for the inconvenience" is in order, given the sender and recipient are likely not receiving incoming mail?
How to get dropped from a PR list: sometimes I just type in the word "unsubscribe", but when I got an invite from BounceX, the purveyors of the lowest common demonimator Internet scourge pop-ups known as Bounce Xchange I've mocked in the past, I knew that something more was in order. The PR email (excerpt):
Following the launch of BounceX into the UK last month, Co-founder Cole Sharp will be visiting the UK next week from the 10th October. The US headquartered business has opened a UK operation in London headed up by ex-Oracle Maxymiser industry veteran, Nick Keating... We would love to set up a call or meeting with yourself and Cole to talk more about the company and how BounceX are hoping to help UK businesses accelerate growth, please let me know if this sounds like it might be of interest.
To which I replied:
I am opposed to Bounce Exchange's confrontational pop-ups which I find seriously detract from the user experience. That's fine if it works for them and their clients but I am an active critic of it. I don't know if you've seen some of their pop-ups and how they take up the whole page and literally insult the reader if they want to opt-out, e.g. "no, I prefer to suck at optimization" - a real life example I experienced, one of many. but I think it's deplorable... I'm actually intent on proving that at least in B2B businesses, such tactics backfire and alienate key influencers.
For once, I didn't get a reply back... Was it something I said? LOL. Speaking of which:
Den Howlett sent this cartoon along to me which raises the question of whether I could write a diginomica article in emoticons. Could be a good challenge for 2017:
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.