Enterprise hits and misses - Workday and SAP acquire, Redditors shake up the Wall Street status quo
- Summary:
- This week - Workday acquires for employee engagement; SAP acquires for process mining (and RISE). Consumer tech intrudes on our enterprise headlines, with GameStop trading disrupting the status quo, and Apple and Facebook disrupting each other over ad tech. As always, your whiffs.
Lead story - AI fights crime and DevOps fuels transformation - financial services use cases in focus
MyPOV: Each week, diginomica adds a slew of use cases to our customer use case library. A couple standouts cropped up this week, starting with Gary's piece on HSBC - using AI to join the financial crime 'dots' . As I see it, this is one of a handful of areas where AI's strengths line up well with the use case in question. Gary writes:
There is also very much a real-time element, as the system also automatically screens all trade finance transactions against 50 different scenarios to try and find any signs of potential money laundering activity, such as hidden connections between actors and suspicious payment patterns.
DevOps takes center stage in Martin's transformation use case, Eating an elephant - Nedbank’s digital transformation, built around DevOps and mainframe resilience. Keys to success? Martin finds two: executive buy-in, and the proverbial low-hanging fruit:
From the beginning there was an understanding that this would be no 'nice to have' side project, but rather an integral part of an across-the-board commitment to the application of DevOps, 'soup-to-nuts'. Moodley acknowledges that they had the key advantage of full senior executive support for this new way of working, but despite that up-front commitment, the plan at that point was still to "eat the elephant, one bite at a time", starting with low-hanging fruit projects - the new internet applications, the web front ends for mobile application, and the customer facing access points.
DevOps - high on buzzword sex appeal. But does it translate to results? Martin was able to pull out some quantified aspects, such as the administrative time taken for an IP change management process, reduced by 95%. Notching wins along the way - that's the only type of transformation that works in 2021.
Diginomica picks - my top stories on diginomica this week
- Retail roundup - NRF 2021 - ZineOne takes up our hyper-personalization debate on AI and retail. NRF is a wrap, but a retail personalization vendor took me up on the AI-in-retail debate - that was fun. Also check Phil's M&S puts Teams on the retail frontline to streamline in-store operations, and Stuart's two part Omni-channel learnings from Sally Beauty.
- Quantum tech - big ambitions, but can the UK really lead the world? Ready for Quantum? I'm not - but I'm glad to have a hype-allergic thinker like Chris suss it out, which he did at a recent virtual event.
- HR, recruiting and your true authentic self - Brian unfurls one of the most original HR pieces I've seen in quite a while. Authenticity sounds absolutely lovely, in theory. But do your co-workers really want to know your authentic self? As Brian points out, your authentic self can get you in a lot of trouble - as in, unemployed. HR tech to the rescue? Not so fast, says Brian...
Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here's my three top choices from our vendor coverage:
- Workday buys Peakon for $700m in quest to marry employee engagement and operations - Phil on Workday's post-holiday shopping run: "I've not spoken to Peakon but I find myself warming to their employee-centric approach which seems to me in tune with today's zeitgeist. However I'd like a better sense of how they use employee feedback to guide manager responses. I'm also wondering how this employee-centered approach jibes with Workday's more dashboard-centric corporate metrics."
- Bringing sustainability in from the corporate sidelines - a post-pandemic enterprise ambition from Accenture and Salesforce - Stuart on a topic that has been swept aside a tad for pandemic urgencies - but needs to stay on our radar.
- SAP snags Signavio as it RISE-s to cloud - One thing that's missing from SAP's RISE "business transformation services"? Business process mining. Well, not anymore, explains Den, as SAP's latest acquisition fills the gap. Of course, acquisitions are a bit easier to pull off when your Qualtrics IPO frees up billions in cash. But
SAP wasn't done with Den yetDen wasn't done with SAP yet - time to assess the RISE launch, in RISE with SAP - a pivot or a pirouette? But wait, there's more: The Three Wise Men of SAP - understanding the Rise with SAP analyst call, where Den and I got in on the Q/A, and the CEO of SAP even attempted to calm me down (many have tried!).
A few more vendor picks from the earnings binge - without the quips.
- Microsoft rides COVID-19 wave as Q2 revenues soar - Derek
- IFS turns in healthy results. We talk to CEO Darren Roos - Den
- Software AG continues business shift and talks up M&A in Q4 FY2020 results - Phil
- Another stellar quarter for ServiceNow as revenues up 32% - Derek
Jon's grab bag - Derek reached a breaking point with pandemic tech overdose - in a good way. The result? It’s 2021 and we need to realise technology is not the answer. ("I don't want to hear 'we are going to be a $Xbillion company in 2025'. I want to hear 'we will create inclusive products that support our users' needs.")
These days, Friday usually means Stuart will unveil another editorial gift basket for Facebook - vinegar is typically included (Friday Rant - care in the community, the Mark Zuckerberg approach). Finally, Neil evaluates a new robotics framework in Robot empowerment - a viable alternative to Asimov's three laws of robotics? Much respect to Asimov, but we have lots of robots about these days, and they're kind of dumb, even if I do prefer them to most humans they are actually having a wee bit of trouble understanding concepts like "human" and "harm"... Neil's on the case.
Best of the enterprise web
My top seven picks
- Is the Web Supply Chain Next in Line for State-Sponsored Attacks? Given the weak links in the chain of third party apps, I fear the answer is yes.
- 3 Keys to Negotiating Successful Cloud Agreements - UpperEdge's Adam Mansfield dishes out the project tips: "Be sure to balance reference calls coordinated by the vendors with those provided by more impartial sources." Indeed.
- Five metrics for CEOs to measure digital success - McKinsey finds too many execs can't quantify their digital efforts - yikes. So how do you measure up? I like "percentage of tech budget spent on bold digital initiatives" - though we might argue what constitutes boldness (a new mobile app or loyalty program doesn't cut it).
- The state of Microsoft, with Mary Jo Foley - Microsoft's been lapping (or gaining on) the competition in a few different categories, with the exception of Windoze. Time to catch a podcast with a veteran Microsoft watcher.
- Apple and Facebook at odds over privacy move that will hit online ads - The Guardian on one of the biggest consumer tech stories of the year, one that could impact enterprises with an ad budget also.
- Can't Stop GameStop - I usually avoid consumer tech stories like dress shoes, but I don't think I can duck this one. This podcast from Planet Money is the best blow-by-blow, though the larger implications for the stock market going forward remain unanswered.
Whiffs
I hail from Oklahoma, so I get to say things like "Only in Oklahoma." As in: Oklahoma lawmaker proposes a bill that calls for creation of a Bigfoot hunting season. By sheer coincidence, I watched the gloriously wretched "Cry Wilderness" this weekend (the Mystery Science Theater satirical version, which is a hoot, and free on Netflix). If you'd like a moralizing and patronizing Bigfoot story for the whole family, look no further...
When we tally up the winners from the Reddit-GameStop saga, let's count the non-profit Robin Hood society amongst them:
Robin Hood Society gains 33,000 followers after US stock app confusion https://t.co/Zjy925mntQ
as @philww rightly pointed out, very clever use of social media by the small inundated RHS. :)
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) January 30, 2021
I have to admit: I've seen some pretty nifty AI use cases this week. However, this was not amongst them:
This App Claims It Can Detect 'Trustworthiness.' It Can't https://t.co/rpcuvq5T0w
"Determine how trustworthy a person is in just one minute." That's the pitch from DeepScore"
-> on the flip side, a really crummy AI use case
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) January 31, 2021
More AI workplace surveillance tech run amok, this one with a handy survey twist:
A wristband that tells your boss if you are unhappy https://t.co/d7BwiG3v3W
Alas, the version that indicates whether you think your boss is being an idiot or not was dropped in beta....
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) January 26, 2021
And with that, we're done here. 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.