deal architect

On the road again - Part 2 - the Wild West of business travel

In part 1 last week, I described our family's experiences on a trip to Mountain States - 3 airports, 5 flights, 9 hotels, 2 rental cars, plenty of restaurants. While I was balanced and  reported what worked well, we saw a bunch of what I call "COVID copout" excuses for poor, even scary, service and often predatory pricing. And they are doing so while expecting sympathy for a poor 2020, neglecting that many of them qualified for bailouts and PPP loans. 

To check if our experiences were outliers, I polled a few executives I know who have taken several (at least 3) business trips in the last few months and a few analysts who have ventured to vendor events. Here are some of their comments. Interestingly, many have adjusted their travel patterns to compensate for the poor service. We are also starting to see them evaluate new competitors emerging in different travel categories.

Many executives I talk to complain of the fatigue from all-day Teams and Zoom calls. They cannot wait to get on the road again. Hopefully the experiences in these two notes will help you prepare for your own trips after 18 months of "lack of practice"

Airports

• If you don’t have it already, get Global Entry, TSA Precheck or Clear. Much of airport traffic for now is tourists without any of those pre clearances and regular TSA lines are long and chaotic.
• Have your coffee and snack before you get to airport. Airport facilities are understaffed and have long lines.
• If you are checking bags, not every airport has reopened curb side check in.
• If you use an airport and airline regularly, pay for a one time visit to their lounge. If they are less crowded and less noisy, if they offer WiFi and food and drink that would definitely justify an annual membership. But many still are not at full service, so check before you sign up.
• With most traffic for now being tourists and families, at some airports, long term parking may be in short supply.
• Allow 30-60 minutes more than that you did before the pandemic.

Airlines

• Expect significantly shrunk choice in flights. Read those airline emails and text messages more carefully - schedule and gate changes are way more common these days. Don’t be surprised with nonstops revised to those that require plane changes, frequent delays and cancellations .
• My one stop, no plane change was changed to a 2 stop, 2 plane itinerary. One layover was 4 hours, the other so tight I may not have made it
• International flying is chaotic as hell. You get contrary advice on quarantine requirements, COVID tests and vaccine requirements. Flight cancellations are very common. Major hubs like London Heathrow have become especially unpredictable
• On the positive side, international business class fares are much more competitive but be prepared to wear a mask for that long flight.
• I used to see a lot more consultants on flights on Monday mornings and returning Thursday nights. I think clients are telling them it is fine to work virtually.
• There are many changes in the airline landscape.  The ex founder of JetBlue has started a new airline, Breeze servicing secondary cities. Southwest has opened service to several new secondary cities including Sarasota, FL and Bozeman, MT and to even major airports like Miami and Chicago O’Hare.
• Delta, United, American are flying their larger planes meant for international routes on US trunk routes.
• Ask for a full can of a beverage to last the flight - the choices in flavors are likely much smaller. Many airlines are not serving alcohol. Or serving food, even for sale.
• I brought a sandwich to eat on the plane but felt awkward eating it 6 inches from my neighbor so waited till we landed
• I ate a sandwich I had brought on the plane and got many looks - some jealous, some hostile because I had my mask off
• The airline hygiene has improved somewhat during the pandemic - most are deep cleaning planes overnight, have newer air filters. But still take your own wipes, sanitizer as back up.
• They have social distancing and mask warnings everywhere in the airports, then they pack the planes so full, you are just inches away from strangers?
• Honestly, I am not ready for business travel, or any air travel for that matter, at this point.

Hotels

• Hotels miss their business travelers. They are more polite, less crazy and more savvy than tourists, especially families
• Many have moved to no cleaning of rooms or clean towels or sheets between stays. I guess if you yelled enough they would comply.
• They used to offer you reward points or discounts if you did not ask for clean towels each day. Or position it as "green" - less wasteful for the environment. Now the standard excuse is "labor shortages"
• Most of the large hotel chains used to tier their brands into logical price groupings based on breadth of services. Now even their low-end brands are shockingly priced. They are just being opportunistic
• I think I am going to ask my travel group to renegotiate our hotel contracts. I will make sure rates guarantee hot breakfast and daily cleanings. I will also ask them to negotiate a boutique or independent hotel in the cities we frequent, so our employees have options beyond the big chains.
• They brag about improved COVID hygiene then don’t clean rooms for days? I shudder to think how unhygienic the exercise room and pool have become.
• Hot breakfast has taken a huge hit. You may get a brown bag with a muffin and a bottle of water.
• There appear to be very few staff - tough if you need help with luggage, arrive late, need cleaning etc.
• I tried to get room service. Called several times. Went into an IVR - never spoke to a human. Gave up and raided the minibar. Fortunately my room had one.
• Hotels are struggling to reopen their dining. Hot food of any kind is a luxury.
• I was in a suite hotel, and the kitchen cabinets were completely bare. No plates, cutlery or towels. Defeats the value proposition of a suite hotel if you cannot make your own meals.
• I avoid the giant hotel complexes these days. They don’t have decent amenities  and you add a dependency on Uber since nothing is within walking distance. I try to find a boutique or smaller chain hotel with restaurants within walking distance
• Use electronic checkin and checkout. Most lobbies are understaffed
• The hotel check in kiosks were shut down and it took me 30 minutes to check in with a human. Not a great experience at 1 am.

Rental Cars

• They significantly reduced their fleets in the last year and it is showing at most airports. If you don’t have negotiated corporate rates the cost can be crazy.
• If you don’t have status with a car company, they may take your reservation but you may still not get a car. You should consider pre paying.
• The car hygiene is often unacceptable. You may have to stop at a store and buy some wipes and air freshener
• I know people who take Uber to a neighborhood Enterprise Car location. Or try lesser known car companies like SIXT.  They may have newer cars and more reasonable rates
• We ended up having to rent a U Haul truck. Reminded me of rental car chaos after 9/11.
• Airport shuttle buses for rental cars are unhealthy, how crowded they are

Uber/Lyft

• My Uber driver stayed off the freeway and didn't talk to me, so I would rate him an A+
• Long waits are common, surge pricing is increasingly common.
• Lots of Uber drivers appear to have switched to food or grocery delivery
• Seems like more ex-taxi drivers have moved over and brought their bad habits - loud music, complaining how lousy things are
• In my town, I have noticed they congregate at a certain mall near the airport, and you can see on your app, they don't move for 10 minutes. I think they have learned to game the system - they are waiting for a better fare.

Taxis

• In Paris, a taxi service took advantage of the pandemic to launch a mobile app, cleaned up their cars, and their driver attitudes. They regained market share from Uber.
• In most other cities, taxis have become even less reliable.
• I think airport authorities and mayors of cities should start monitoring taxis and Uber/Lyft more closely. I am afraid we have many gypsy/unprofessional drivers and crime will start to increase.

Dining

• Book ahead. Many places have much fewer spaces due to distancing. Many also close couple of days a week due to staffing shortages
• You are competing for reservations against locals and those who are driving, not flying, in to town. We tried to book at a restaurant a month out and all they could offer was 10 pm slots for several days. They open their schedule 3 months out and local patrons tend to grab the best slots.
• It’s annoying how Starbucks happily takes your money but have not opened up their restrooms or sitting space with WiFi.
• Even takeout places expect tips these days .What’s that about?

Events

• We went to an event which need a positive COVID test even if you were vaccinated. They had so many show up without test results they had to get a clinic to set up a test facility at the hotel
• We went to an event in Vegas with NO vaccine or test requirements. Only about 15% of attendees were wearing masks.
• I see that a lot of conferences are starting to push in-person options ("don't you miss getting together?") but hopefully don't drop the online/hybrid things that they learned during the past year and a half.

Bottom Line

The travel and hospitality sector is seeing an uptick but a large portion of that is leisure travel especially summer family trips. For business travel to return, service will have to dramatically improve and pricing become far more predictable and reasonable. If not, most travelers will after a couple of trips come to the conclusion "this is not really a better alternative to the digital fatigue of the last 18 months".

On the road again: Pandemic travel experiences - Part 1

Many executives I talk to complain of the fatigue from all-day Teams and Zoom calls. They cannot wait to get on the road again. So, I thought I would share our family's recent experience - 3 airports, 5 flights, 9 hotels, 2 rental cars, plenty of restaurants. I had described our journey across the US states of Colorado, South Dakota and Wyoming in this note here. 

Accenture's design agency Fjord, coined a term "liquid expectations" — "when you experience a service in one industry, it raises the bar for what you expect from other industries." I like the term and additionally like to benchmark against my experiences from competitors within an industry. I also benchmark against past experiences with a company.

Marriott tells me I have slept over 4 years in their hotels. Avis told me a couple of years ago some similarly crazy number of times we have rented from them. I have qualified for Southwest's highest level - Companion Pass - for nearly a decade. I am a Delta 3 million miler. Been to 75 countries. I have plenty to benchmark against.

This time I broadened the benchmark even further. I ran a survey of fellow analysts and business execs who have done multiple trips in the last few months. I will share that in Part 2.

Long and short - there is a noticeable decline in service across all travel categories I list below. While some of that is explained by labor shortages/supply chain issues plaguing the economy, there is also what I call "COVID copouts" - using the pandemic as an excuse for lowered service

Airports

All 3 of us (my wife, Margaret daughter, Rita and I) flew on different Southwest flights from Tampa (TPA) to Denver (DEN) and back. In addition I had a weather diversion on the way back and we had to land in Orlando (MCO) for a couple of hours.

With TSA Precheck, both Margaret and I found TPA and DEN security lines actually friendlier and quicker than before the pandemic. My daughter does not have it, and found her lines chaotic.

All 3 airports required masks, but the Southwest terminals were overcrowded. I tried to listen to a vendor presentation at DEN airport and it was so noisy I gave up.  The food outlets at their terminals also had long lines.

Southwest at DEN took inordinate amount of time delivering bags - almost 45 minutes both for our flight and for Rita's

Southwest at TPA did not have curbside baggage check-in (when we asked they said "COVID"). DEN did. Southwest had kiosks in both airports which generate tags which speed up the luggage check in process somewhat - however, many first time users find the UX confusing.

TPA usually has a taxi dispatcher. I waited 20 minutes - his handheld radio was crackling at the booth but he was nowhere in sight. One taxi asked for my destination and said it was not on his way home and he drove off. The next one tried to force me to ride share. A taxi! I refused. Even though the car showed the official United Cab logo, he appeared to be a gypsy driver. There was no identification, no fare meter - he quoted me a "take it or leave it" fare. He would not take a credit card or provide a receipt. As we were exiting the airport he nearly had an accident. At that moment, I briefly panicked and was about to call 911 to have him arrested. I have heard that in some cities, taxicabs have used the pandemic to clean up their cars and their acts to regain market share from Uber and Lyft. Clearly, not my experience at TPA, which in other ways still is one of the best airports in the country.

Airlines

Southwest reservations (including a call to upgrade), check-in, wifi on board all worked smoothly. Other than my weather diversion, flights were on time.

The in-flight experience was disappointing. They have quit serving alcohol because of unruly behavior on flights. No problem, but their COVID copout has been to reduce the choice in drinks down to only Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Coffee or Water. I had told some kids while boarding they had could have a treat onboard - Hot Chocolate. Before the pandemic, I have ordered that on many Southwest flights. I had to walk back and apologize to them. No hot tea - if you had a tea bag, they could offer you hot water, With the extra time from simpler orders, the flight attendants appear to have more time for monitoring for mask compliance. If you had it off for more than a few seconds while you were eating or drinking you would feel a tap on your shoulder. In contrast, I was surprised that the announcements made no mention of the HEPA filters, the electrostatic disinfectant and daily deep cleaning the planes go through. To me, making passengers relax is far better than tapping them on their shoulders.

More positively, the upgrade to Business Select was much more affordable than it used to be before the pandemic.   

Hotels

We stayed at 4 different Marriott brands - Gaylord, Residence Inn, Springhill Suites, Fairfield Inn, a Xanterra property (Old Faithful Inn), a Best Western and independent properties in smaller towns. Each had their good and bad but using the liquid expectations thinking you wonder why the Gaylord and the Best Western had superb buffets, but the Residence Inn and Springhill Suites had excuses why they could not host breakfast buffets. Old Faithful Inn had NO hot food at all. Across all the hotels we saw insufficient staff - my wife has a bad back and we would have appreciated some help with the bags.  Our worst experience was at the Old Faithful Inn. Margaret was looking forward to the historic property and we were paying Four Seasons type prices. She is not one to complain but was so disappointed that she went with a long list of issues to the manager who, without hesitation, knocked 50% off our bill. 

Rental Cars

I rented a SUV from Avis at DEN at an average rate $75 a day (we got a break for a week long rental). Not bad considering someone told us when we were in Jackson, WY the rates there were $500 a day. But ours had 45,000 miles, was all scratched up, did not have a toll tag (so we will see what that means in tolls and Avis add-ons). The Avis bus drivers at DEN airport were like the Southwest flight attendants - more eager to bark about masks than help people with bags. So bags were rolling all over the buses. Unsafe experience. On the positive side, the reservation online, the Express checkin and checkout were pretty smooth.

Rita rented a car from Thrifty at DEN and the checkin line was an hour long. She paid $100 a day for a compact car.   

Uber/Taxis

My taxi experience described above was scary. Rita used Uber/Lyft and found them fine. I have heard from others of long waits and that surge pricing is increasingly the norm for both services.

Dining

The best advice we picked up - ask locals. Some of the best meals we had on the trip came courtesy of our son, Tommy who works in the Denver area, and knows what is open, how long a wait etc. Thanks to COVID copouts at Starbucks and McDonalds we discovered that in smaller towns some of the gas stations have decent comfort food. We asked each if we could use their restroom and they pointed us to the gas stations :)

Mobile service

T-Mobile claims to have largest, fastest, and most reliable 5G network in the country. I would say in 1,800 out of the 2,000 miles we drove across the 3 states there was no 5G coverage. In fact, in half the distance there was NO coverage at all. I am glad we had backup AAA paper maps. The most shocking was at the Old Faithful geyser that we stayed near. It is estimated to get 4 million visitors a year and the best we could do was text each other. 

Bottom Line

While GE has adopted a new tag line "Building a World that Works", I don't get the same sense from travel executives that there is a focus on the "world that works" part. They are looking for sympathy because they had a crappy 2020. They conveniently ignore all the bailouts and PPP loans they got.

As the new CEO of Marriott recently said "I’ve described this phenomenon as the friction that exists between the short memory of our guests and the long memory of our owners.” Translation - "we need to take care of our investors/franchisees, sure customers will put up with the lowered service"

I am afraid the travel industry is the one with the short memory. They appear to have forgotten they desperately need to bring business customers back in droves. These executives may initially be excited to hit the road but after a couple of trips come to the conclusion "this is not really a better alternative to the digital fatigue". I heard some really interesting adjustments executives are already making. Will discuss them in Part 2 next week.

Ironically, Whole Foods opened a 48,000 square foot store in my town last week. It has a salad bar with 15 soups and 50 salads (not just individual items, specialty salads). They have gloves, disposable plates and cutlery for patrons, so the hygiene concerns are lowered. They have a decent sized sitting area where you can reasonably distance. Think of the chain of liquid expectations that is setting in motion. If they can do it, why not you, Mr. Hotel or Restaurant operator?     

Vertical Velocity

While there is a lot of noise about "Industry Clouds", I have been encouraged to see specifics in the form of new product launches and M&A/ownership changes in the last few weeks. They promise to bring a lot more industry focus and functionality.

Admittedly, the valuations in the transactions below are frothy - but one way to look at it - you have to believe they are serious about the market segment if they are willing to pay that much for it.  

Rockwell Automation is acquiring Plex Systems. As I have been reporting for the last few years Plex, has been increasingly investing in plant level and sensory/IoT capabilities. Infor is selling its EAM product line to Hexagon AB, a Swedish vendor focused on asset-intensive energy, construction and manufacturing sectors.

Both Rockwell and Hexagon should bring operational, industrial depth to products which have been positioned for broader ERP markets.

Unit4 is separating its Higher Education Student Information System into a new entity called Thesis. Again, it should allow a sharper focus in a segment which was turned upside down last year as campuses shut down and online education took off.

I have requested briefings with each of these vendors and as the transactions formally close, hope to be able to line up those sessions.

I was also part of two briefings this week:

Christopher Dean, GM of Salesforce's Media Cloud presented on their Advertising Sales Management offering. Listening to him, I was fascinated by how complex advertising world has become. The definition of a media company keeps morphing - everybody from traditional broadcasters to telcos to gaming companies to digital agencies and many others can lay a claim. From a brand pov, clearly digital advertising is exploding but traditional print, billboard, radio and other channels are not exactly dead, especially in major markets around the world. Good to see Salesforce help both sides navigate the complexity.

SAP ran its annual Industry Analyst Base Camp event. I recently ran two Analyst Cam episodes on their Industry Clouds and RISE offering aimed at 5 of those industries - see here  and here. The Base Camp did not add much new coming so soon after SapphireNow. But, frankly, the more SAP talks about industries the better. The verticals market is theirs to lose, after establishing leadership with their IS solutions two decades ago. And as we are seeing new, serious players are starting to focus on deep vertical capabilities.

Analyst Cam: Zoho's new Business Intelligence platform

When they held ZohoDay in February, Zoho had briefed me in detail on their BI roadmap. I had given them some feedback. So did several other analysts during the day. They took that input and managed to work through the chaos of the recent COVID surge in India and launched their expanded BI platform this week.

Zoho Analytics is already used by more than 50,000 organizations. Interestingly, Zoho says 60% of existing users have chosen it as their BI tool even when running on non-Zoho applications and data sources.

I have excerpted below 3 new components demoed by Chandrashekar LSP, the Chief Evangelist for that product area. There is a definite emphasis on self-service.

It starts off with DataPrep, an AI-driven data preparation tool.  Next at 4.35, he walks through Data Stories. It includes a portal builder (Zoho Sites) and presentation software (Zoho Show). Finally at 8.37, he presents on the augmented analytics layer which leverages Ask Zia, Zoho's conversational interface.

The recent enhancements make it even more intuitive to end users and should make it even compelling for use either with Zoho data (especially if an enterprise is using many of nearly 50 integrated Zoho One apps) or from other sources.

The Timeline of Next

A few weeks ago, Cognizant invited a few of us to look at the future of world over the next few years. We considered trends that were already in motion and were accelerated by what happened over the last year.

They have put together a nice composite report titled the "Timeline of Next". It looks at the impact on education, work, economies and life itself.

It asks questions like: How will we live and work with technology all around? How will we design cities in the future? How will a year of home-schooling reshape the feelings of this generation and the next about capitalism?

On July 28, they are hosting a webinar at 11 AM ET. Beth Porter, CEO of Riff Analytics and Managing Partner of Esme Learning, Manish Bahl, AVP of the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work and Clay Griffith, Director of Product Marketing, Cognizant Softvision and I will be part of it.

The agenda includes:

• 16 intriguing ideas that will shape the future of work and society

• How machine-learning based software, artificial intelligence and big data will transform our lives

• What digital fail-safes will become commonplace as we emerge from the pandemic

• How the future of mental health services and personal wellness will be more accessible and effective than ever before

• The purpose of the office when work can be done from anywhere

Register here. Look forward to seeing you.

Analyst Cam: Sapphire Now - Industries perspective, Part 2

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

SAP's annual event - Sapphire Now - is usually about drinking from a fire hose.  Content for customers across so many industries and global regions, and so many products in the SAP portfolio screaming for attention. This year, the second year where COVID restrictions have precluded travel to Orlando where it is normally held, the event was again virtual. I took a industry viewpoint, especially since a major announcement this year was the verticalization of its RISE initiative for an initial set of 5 sectors - utilities, consumer packaged goods, automotive, industrial machinery and components (IM&C), and retail.

In part 1 yesterday, I excerpted from CEO Christian Klein's keynote and from an interview of Dr. Hasso Plattner.

In Part 2 below, CMO Julia White leads off with a nice summary across industries. At 4:41, the focus shifts to changing business models - an increasingly common trend as industries morph. It is a discussion with Peter Maier, President of SAP Industries and with executives from Discovery Limited which is a South African-founded financial services firm in healthcare, insurance, banking, and wellness markets. Lots of discussion around outcome based models. Finally at 11.47, Georg Kube, Global Vice President of the Industrial Machinery & Components vertical drills down into his sector and details the RISE offering there.

 

 

Long live long-form content

I have just finished work on my eighth book. Correction - it’s NOT my book. I have narrated it for a visionary tech CEO and his incredibly innovative team. We interviewed over 50 of their customers, partners, executives and industry watchers. You will hear more about the book and the impactful trends they are driving in the next few weeks when they finish the imagery and other production details.  I have also contributed a foreword to a book about automation in SAP world. You will similarly hear more about that shortly.

Every one of these books has been written since Mashable declared ‘How Twitter conquered the world in 2009’. Yes, social media has taken off exponentially in the last decade - and I have contributed thousands of blogs, videos and tweets to the world. But I am here to tell you books continue to be a far better format for storytelling. If you want entertaining, yet logical, content there is nothing like the long, written and graphical form.

The recent project showed me a book can be written in a few weeks, not years. We created the first draft in roughly 3 months. I have used Zoom interviews for previous books, but this time every single conversation (across 12 countries) was digital thanks to Teams and Zoom. The transcripts, by themselves, totaled over 2,500 pages. Then there was plenty of other industry research.

The intensity reminded me books are hard work and authors, editors, transcriptionists, project managers and designers deserve plenty of kudos. My way of saluting is to invite them to my video series. Here are some authors I have profiled in the last few months.

Sabrina Horn: Make it, don't fake it 

Ray Wang: Everybody wants to rule the world 

Ben Pring: Monster 

Robin Gaster: Behemoth - Amazon Rising 

Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway: The Startup Community Way 

Rich Karlgaard: Late Bloomers 

Evangelos Simoudis: Transportation Transformation 

Many more coming. If you are an author or a publisher, happy to consider profiling your upcoming book. And if you have long thought about writing a book, I am here to cheer you on. Please drop me a note.

Analyst Cam: Sapphire Now - Industries perspective, Part 1

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

SAP's annual event - Sapphire Now - is usually about drinking from a fire hose.  Content for customers across so many industries and global regions, and so many products in the SAP portfolio screaming for attention. This year, the second year where COVID restrictions have precluded travel to Orlando where it is normally held, the event was again virtual. I took a industry viewpoint, especially since a major announcement this year was the verticalization of its RISE initiative for an initial set of 5 sectors - utilities, consumer packaged goods, automotive, industrial machinery and components (IM&C), and retail.

I reviewed hours of video and have excerpted in Part 1 below, from CEO Christian Klein's keynote. He nicely lays out how 2020 turned the world upside down and the impact on most industries. I found fascinating CMO Julia White's interview of Dr. Hasso Plattner, one of the co-founders, who for me is still the "Chief Enterprise Architect" at SAP (for legal reasons, he does not have a formal executive position).

Starting at 9:40, the conversation is partly a history lesson, and partly a "state of the possible" when it comes to business processes facilitated by technology. Let's face it, most vendors, SAP included, have done much better with horizontal, cross-industry processes. Most vertical operational processes are still done by custom applications or by specialist vendors, so it is interesting to hear what may be different going forward.

In Part 2 tomorrow, CMO Julia White will lead off with a nice summary across industries. Next the focus shifts to changing business models - an increasingly common trend as industries morph. It is a discussion with Peter Maier, President of SAP Industries and with executives from Discovery Limited which is a South African-founded financial services firm in healthcare, insurance, banking, and wellness markets. Lots of discussion around outcome based models. Finally, Georg Kube, Global Vice President of the Industrial Machinery & Components vertical drills down into his sector and details the RISE offering there.

 

Analyst Cam: Salesforce Industries Summit, Part 3

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Salesforce held an Industries Summit earlier this month. They invited me to an analyst pre-briefing and gave me access to keynotes and sessions across 8 sectors - Communications, Energy and Utilities, Financial Services, Government and Public Sector, Healthcare and Life sciences, Manufacturing, Media, Retail and Consumer Goods.

I have excerpted segments across the sectors and am posting them into three parts.

Part 1 covered 3 "mega-trends" I heard during the sessions, around sustainability on the energy sector, servitization on the industrial sector and the impact of "everything from home" on the communications and media sectors.

Part 2 yesterday profiled Jujhar Singh, the EVP and GM of Salesforce Industries with the theme of "industry success from anywhere" as we move into hybrid work and shopping world. There is a demo of a new Salesforce offering for investment bankers. Next, Kristen Jensen of the Utah Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity brought a public sector perspective on change. Finally, there were demos relevant for channels in retail and consumer goods covering rebates, incentive management and trade promotions.

In Part 3 below Bret Taylor, President and COO of Salesforce touches on the "digital first" and "transform now" themes in every industry. He also covers industry specific AI and Hyperforce - Salesforce's infrastructure architecture that allows customers to scale rapidly and securely using its public cloud hyperscaler partners. Next at 5.34 is a demo of a local government application - the use case revolves around licensing of a day care facility. We next switch at 10.09 to a telco and the opportunities 5G is opening up.  Mallik Rao, CTIO at Telefonica Germany is certainly qualified to describe that. Finally there are two product discussions - one around wealth management at 18.42 aimed at financial services customers and the other at 21.54 on patient appointments aimed at healthcare customers.

While every vendor is talking up "industry clouds", the breadth of vertical processes covered during the Salesforce Summit was truly impressive. I have excerpted only a small fraction of what I saw and heard. You too can sign up and watch the full range of sessions or an industry specific track by registering here

 

Analyst Cam: Salesforce Industries Summit, Part 2

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Salesforce held an Industries Summit earlier this month. They invited me to an analyst pre-briefing and gave me access to keynotes and sessions across 8 sectors - Communications, Energy and Utilities, Financial Services, Government and Public Sector, Healthcare and Life sciences, Manufacturing, Media, Retail and Consumer Goods.

I have excerpted segments across the sectors and am posting them into three parts.

Part 1 yesterday covered 3 "mega-trends" I heard during the sessions, around sustainability on the energy sector, servitization on the industrial sector and the impact of "everything from home" on the communications and media sectors.

Today in video below, Jujhar Singh, the EVP and GM of Salesforce Industries leads off with the theme of "industry success from anywhere" as we move into hybrid work and shopping world. At 4.48 there is a demo of a new Salesforce offering for investment bankers. Next, at 10.06, Kristen Jensen of the Utah Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity brings a public sector perspective on change. Finally, at 16.26 there are demos relevant for channels in retail and consumer goods covering rebates, incentive management and trade promotions.

In Part 3 tomorrow, Bret Taylor, President and COO of Salesforce will touch on the "digital first" and "transform now" themes in every industry. He also covers industry specific AI and Hyperforce - Salesforce's infrastructure architecture that allows customers to scale rapidly and securely using its public cloud hyperscaler partners. Next is a demo of a local government application - the use case revolves around licensing of a day care facility. We next switch to a telco and the opportunities 5G is opening up.  Mallik Rao, CTIO at Telefonica Germany is certainly qualified to describe that. Finally there are two product discussions - one around wealth management aimed at financial services customers and the other on patient appointment aimed at healthcare customers.

While every vendor is talking up "industry clouds", the breadth of vertical processes covered during the Salesforce Summit was truly impressive. I have excerpted only a small fraction of what I saw and heard. You too can sign up and watch the full range of sessions or an industry specific track by registering here

 

Analyst Cam: Salesforce Industries Summit, Part 1

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Salesforce held an Industries Summit earlier this month. They invited me to an analyst pre-briefing and gave me access to keynotes and sessions across 8 sectors - Communications, Energy and Utilities, Financial Services, Government and Public Sector, Healthcare and Life sciences, Manufacturing, Media, Retail and Consumer Goods.

I have excerpted segments across the sectors and am posting them into three parts.

The part in the video below covers 3 "mega-trends" I heard during the sessions. The first is around sustainability - while the desire for clean energy is affecting every sector, it is especially impactful on utilities. I have excerpted from a conversation with Yves Le Gerald, EVP at Engie, the French multinational electric utility company and Megan Lorenzen, Sustainability Manager at Salesforce. It is nice to hear the perspectives of both a procurer and a producer of energy.

At 13.10, the focus shifts to "servitization" - a growing trend in the industrial sector as product makers get more revenues from services and move to as-a-service, subscription and outcome based business models. It features Thomas Gocke who heads digital business transformation at Koenig and Bauer, the German company that makes printing presses and is very well versed in servitization trends.

At 21.19, focus is on "everything from home" - the impact of working, dining, studying, entertaining at home and the impact on broadband and media. Linda Yaccarino, Chairman of global advertising sales and client partnerships at NBCUniversal has a front row seat watching the massive changes that the pandemic accelerated.

In Part 2, Jujhar Singh, the EVP and GM of Salesforce Industries will lead off with the theme of "industry success from anywhere" as we move into hybrid work and shopping world. Then, there is a demo of a new Salesforce offering for investment bankers. Next, Kristen Jensen of the Utah Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity brings a public sector perspective on change. Finally there are demos relevant for channels in retail and consumer goods covering rebates, incentive management and trade promotions.

In Part 3, Bret Taylor, President and COO of Salesforce will touch on the "digital first" and "transform now" themes in every industry. He also covers industry specific AI and Hyperforce - Salesforce's infrastructure architecture that allows customers to scale rapidly and securely using its public cloud hyperscaler partners. Next is a demo of a local government application - the use case revolves around licensing of a day care facility. We next switch to a telco and the opportunities 5G is opening up.  Mallik Rao, CTIO at Telefonica Germany is certainly qualified to describe that. Finally there are two product discussions - one around wealth management aimed at financial services customers and the other on patient appointment aimed at healthcare customers.

While every vendor is talking up "industry clouds", the breadth of vertical processes covered during the Salesforce Summit was truly impressive. I have excerpted only a small fraction of what I saw and heard. You too can sign up and watch the full range of sessions or an industry specific track by registering here

 

Burning Platform: Leading with authenticity

In the 49th episode of the series we have a repeat appearance by Sabrina Horn, CEO of Horn Strategy

We discuss her new book "Make it, don't fake it". The book shows how authentic leadership eliminates the need for the shortcuts that sabotage success. “Fake it till you make it” just doesn’t work—at least not long enough to build a sustainable business.

It is being released this coming Tuesday. She sent me an advance copy and it has great quotes and monikers  - Fake-o-meter, "Work-life balance? Here’s why I gave up on it" and " Leader and loser both begin with the letter L" but overall it is about values in  the tech industry which is overwhelmingly driven by unicorn valuations and Wall Street attention. 

It is part autobiography, part thank you to mentors like Dave Duffield and Geoffrey Moore,  her parents, her employees and kids, but chockfull of examples on how to behave ethically in a variety of situations.  She must identify "50 shades of lies"  - some of the 'white lies" variety, some of the other extreme, fraudulent kind. She has spent a lifetime in PR, so this must have taken plenty of introspection on whether she and her firm(s) advised clients on doing the right thing, not just hyping what they had in their bags. 

We also discuss activism around so many "causes" these days - racial/ gender matters, equality, climate change etc.

I particularly like the fact that she wrote the book during the pandemic. While so many of us were so distracted by the crisis and the politics of 2020 she managed to concentrate on her first book, and it is an excellent one.

Get a copy of the book, in the meantime, enjoy the sneak preview below.

SAP SapphireNow: An early report

Let's start with the positives from the keynote last week: I loved Julia White's (the new CMO who has joined from Microsoft) omnipresence and bundle of energy. Christian Klein has come of age in the age of digital keynotes. He is so comfortable in the format. It was good to see Hasso Plattner again - wish we could have had our annual (unscripted) session with him.

However, this split schedule over 3 weeks has been tough to work with. I have asked for replays of several sessions for the Analyst Cam series so will get a chance to watch them in detail. Not sure when SAP can deliver those. I do miss not driving to Orlando and blocking out a few straight days on my calendar. Hopefully next year, Lufthansa will bring back its gorgeous 747-8 to Orlando - as a thank you to SAP executives for holding a live event.

3 themes from the keynote and my questions

a) Five Vertical RISE with SAP offerings

When RISE was announced earlier in the year, I thought it was too ambitious as I wrote here and here. I also thought it glossed over the SI/implementation portion which has been SAP's Achilles Heel for a long time. Books have been written about that:)

So, now they announce 5 vertical versions of RISE - for utilities, consumer packaged goods, automotive, industrial machinery and components (IM&C), and retail. I would like to understand how those 5 rose to the top. Given all the activity in Life Sciences around the COVID vaccine and therapeutics and SAP's strong presence in that industry, that would have been high on my list. Ditto with oil and gas which has been building a cloud for upstream functionality.

The good news is SAP (appears) to have taken a stand on the 5 verticals. In the past, going back a decade or longer there has been vague talk about "we are strong in 20+ industries" or "we are working with one of our large partners". My big question is what is new functionally for these 5 industries? So much changed in 2020 - hopefully RISE is not just a pricing package, but a major feature/function leap forward. Look forward to learning more about each of these industry solutions.

b) Business Networks

Christian summarized it well "Our new vision will build the world’s largest business community, enabling customers to easily connect with companies across supply chains and creating networked economies across industries.”  With so much supply chain chaos last year and continuing this year (Google for PPE, toilet paper, cold chain, Suez Canal) , it is bound to catch executive attention. But much of SAP's networks - Ariba, Fieldglass, Concur, AIN - deal with indirect spend - pencils, temporary staff, travel,MRO. I would love to spend some time with John Wookey and hear how direct suppliers and their tiers will become part of this network given those relationships tend to be tight and very proprietary in terms of contractual and IP protection details.

c) Sustainability

A decade ago, SAP was hot on sustainability. My concern back then was they were mostly focused on analytics and reporting of carbon data. Now you can argue "you cannot manage what you cannot measure". My point to SAP was don't stop there - work with your vast ecosystem and look for ways to get to the "source" - in factories, R&D, data centers and reduce the emissions, not just report on them. They did not back then. I hope they do this time, as they try again.

The other thing to watch is how they will navigate the politics. To me, renewable energy has hijacked the sustainability conversation, when the circular economy with reuse, better product design, packaging and other topics deserve as much attention. Christian brought up EVs a couple of times. There is much to like about the early wave of EVs. They have a much lighter BOM. With web sales, OTA updates, mobile techs they are redefining the auto experience. But I don't think we have asked the tough questions - what will happen to used batteries? How much will ubiquitous charging infrastructure cost around the world? Why are EVs still so much more expensive than internal combustion cars even with the much lighter BOM and direct sales models? And lets face it, an EV is only as clean as your public utility. The vast majority of utilities around the world still run on gas, oil and still way too much coal and in Germany, even dirtier lignite. So, I hope the analytics SAP presents reflect the TCO of EVs not just the positive angle that is being presented in our current infatuation with them. 

The good news is you can at least have these conversations with SAP. Not too many vendors I can even ask - how did you decide to prioritize those 5 verticals?

Burning Platform: Not your grandpa's Services economy

In the 48th episode of the series we have Peter Bendor-Samuel of Everest Group, a research firm focused on IT, business process, and engineering services since it was founded in 1991.

I enjoy catching up with Peter on a regular basis to get his perspective on trends in outsourcing and the broader IT, BPO, strategy services market.

He says the market is broadly strong - "rising tide raises all boats" - with the confluence of digital transformations, modernization projects/ related legacy outsourcing and pent up demand from projects slowed down or postponed in 2020.

What's different is the influence of hyperscalers like Google and Amazon and strategy firms like McKinsey, BCG and Bain. We also discuss the trend of "servitization" - where industrial and other sectors are generating more service revenues around their products and moving to "as a service" models with subscription revenues and outcome based models.

BTW, on the last point about servitization, I have been researching that trend in detail over the last few months. You will hear more from me on that in the next few weeks. In the meantime, enjoy this conversation.  

We cover wide ground, as is common with my conversations with Peter. I always learn something new from him.

Burning Platform: The end of ERP?

In the 47th episode of the series we have Patricia Harris of Workday

Workday has coined a new category, Enterprise Management Cloud and is distancing itself from the ERP moniker.  Makes a lot of sense to highlight their cloud and analytical strengths. Besides, the market started looking more during the crisis in 2020 for bite-sized applications, not intergalactic commitments. So, we have a fun few minutes on Magic Quadrants.

But most of the time is spent on her solution marketing focus and Workday's path as it paces toward a $10 billion revenue goal. We also discuss how her background at IHS Markit and their extensive research on various industries is going to help Workday's vertical moves. We spend some time about her time at Hitachi Vantara, how the world of IT infrastructure is changing and how to navigate the growing influence of hyperscalers.

Nice, broad ranging conversation. 

The Analyst Cam: Monster: A Tough Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule our Jobs, Lives, and Future

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Ben Pring of Cognizant makes a repeat appearance, this time giving us a sneak preview with couple of themes from his new book with regular co-author, Paul Roehrig.

The book is about the beast that technology has become in our personal lives and how to tame and regulate it. He makes a great point. In the early days of the automobiles, roads did not have lane markings, street signs, traffic lights. Within a couple of decades they were common place. He says we need the same on the information highway.

I tell him my libertarian instincts are suspicious of government regulation. I am already bothered by the censorship social media giants are engaging in. And from a productivity and sanity pov, I am worried about how much time and energy we waste on social media. To me, personal responsibility as parents and good citizens should kick in. 

They raise a number of troubling points. It is a short book, but a long letter at 176 pages:) Check it out on Amazon here.  

Burning Platform: More work anywhere

In the 46th episode of the series we have Monty Hamilton of Rural Sourcing.

While the COVID-19 pandemic and related WFH protocols have turned many of us into recluses, the big realization is you can WFA - as in Anywhere. We have seen an significant acceleration in relocations - for tax, weather, safety, many other reasons. We had Mark Brooks who has been working and living for ages across the world - Shanghai, Bali, Malta, now Dubai.  Next, we had Tammie Hilend, CIO at Maxar who discussed how she has done her demanding job on the road in her RV  Then we had Raju Vegesna of Zoho Software talk about secondary and tertiary city locations in India, Japan, Netherlands, Mexico, the US 

I had written about Rural Sourcing in my 2010 book, The New Polymath, and I periodically get an update from Monty. They keep growing in secondary US cities - he talks about his 7th and 8th locations, the "features list" they use to decide on locations, how his practice has evolved a lot more to cloud deployments, product engineering and analytics.

I have always loved his approach - go to where the talent is, don't force them to relocate, unless they want to. Of course, after last year, many of them do want to relocate.

Analyst Cam: Everybody wants to rule the world

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

I know the title suggests it is about the Tears for Fears hit. Sorry, click here for that:)

My good friend Ray Wang makes a repeat appearance, this time giving us a sneak preview of couple of themes from his upcoming book due out on July 13. You can pre-order it here.

He talks about how delivery services like DoorDash became the interface to customers during last year's lockdowns/everything from home and are reshaping the restaurant sector. I have pointed out many industries had a similar reshaping in 2020 as "edge" applications like telemedicine took off in healthcare, distance learning in higher education, 3PLs took over ecommerce fulfillment, virtual open houses transformed real estate.

I am looking forward to my advance copy and especially what he thinks of policy changes we should be considering as what he calls new Digital Giants emerge. Ray is one of the few analysts who I can talk to freely on those topics. We had a lively session a few months ago here 

We also don't spent much time on Magic Quadrants or Waves. The business world is changing way too fast for old categories and acronyms. We need new ones like Ray's DDDN.

Burning Platform: Data-Infused Apps

In the 45th episode of the series, we have Pete Schlampp, EVP Product Development at Workday.

Last week, I had the chance to present to some Chief Data Officers. I made the point that 2020 was an inflection point for data and analytics. We saw countless new data streams - related to COVID-19 data, the new census, shortened sports seasons stats, polls from the turbulent US elections, countless supply chain disruptions and many more. We also saw a new generation of players that leverage enterprise data go public and otherwise gain prominence - Snowflake, Palantir and C3.ai among them.

Workday is better known for its transaction capabilities in finance, hcm and procurement but it has gradually become an analytics powerhouse with acquisitions like Adaptive, Platfora, Gridcraft and others. During the pandemic they launched several bite sized apps which leveraged their analytics which I profiled in the Analyst Cam including VIBE for diversity management  and Vaccine Management. 

As Aneel Bhusri, the Co-CEO recently said "the future is about data, insights and predictions" 

So it was nice to spend time with Pete, who has been the key architect of Prism Analytics which is the cornerstone of many of the apps. We also discuss his expanded role which extends beyond analytics, his world view of "data-infused applications", machine learning and the role of Workday partners and their domain knowledge in the creation of many more bite-sized apps.

 

Analyst Cam: Tercera

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

This time, it is Chris Barbin, presenting on his new fund and advisory firm, Tercera. Chris was one of the co-founders of Appirio, a pioneering cloud systems integrator. They built practices around Salesforce, Google, Workday and others starting in 2006. A decade later they were acquired by Wipro, the large global outsourcer.

His focus now is SIs who are building practices around what they call the "third wave of the cloud" - ISVs like Okta, Snowflake, Splunk, Slack and others while also those focused on new  markets for Salesforce, Workday etc. He has also put together a nice board of advisers to help these firms navigate the changing cloud landscape.

Many investors still avoid professional services startups and that becomes Chris's opportunity.  It is an invigorating conversation with one of the savviest services executives I have known.

In fact, 12 years ago he was profiled in this blog as a "cloud pioneer". He continues to be one.

 

Burning Platform: Workday Nation

In the 44th episode of the series  we have Webb Armentrout, Group VP, Global Partners at Workday.

Workday has historically done a better job managing its SI ecosystem than many other vendors including some I have written books about. They certify at the individual consultant level and require re-certifications with every new semi-annual release. They have also kept their partner count relatively small to allow for better collaboration and management at the firm level.

We discuss how the pandemic, related WFH and need for virtual implementations severely tested the SIs, and how they have collaborated with Workday, its customers and often with each other during the trying period. Emily McEvilly, Chief Customer Officer had given me a preview in our conversation in November. (Toward the end, Webb brings up meeting at Concourse B at Atlanta Hartsfield airport. We had spent a few minutes before the formal conversation discussing our respective admiration for Delta Airlines which is based there)

We also discuss the likely changes as Workday partners leverage its Extend development platform, as Workday evolves to more solution selling, more verticals and countries as it marches toward a major milestone of annual revenues of $10 billion. The addition of Chano Fernandez as Co-CEO, the promotion of Emily McEvilly and other executive moves reflect the increased scope Workday is taking on.

Clearly the ecosystem will need to step up, and I will keep pushing for more automation in their delivery but the Workday track record to date has been reassuring and bodes well for a smoother evolution.  

 

Burning Platform: Industry Clouds

In the 43th episode of the series  we have Jujhar Singh, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Salesforce Industry Clouds.

Salesforce has had significant vertical momentum, especially in the last year. See my interview with Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh last May, my Analyst Cam posts from their Summit last June where they showcased 12 "industry cloud" tracks - Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3 and my October note about Salesforce's "acrobatics"

Jujhar Singh does an amazingly rapid-fire update across many of those industries in the video below.

Bob Evans of Cloud Wars recently placed Salesforce as # 1 in his listing of Industry Clouds. He used revenues, vision and other rating factors.

I was already convinced of Salesforce vertical momentum last year, and Jujhar reinforced it this week, so I agree with Bob for 3 additional reasons

1. Salesforce's industry functionality is in a multi-tenant cloud. Most of the other vendor industry functionality and customer bases are still largely on-prem or in private clouds and other single tenant settings
2. Salesforce functionality reflects a more modern state of industries. Most other vendor industry functionality was developed over a decade ago or even further back and has been updated only mildly - spray painted as I like to call it. Their industry apps looked dated before 2020. With the pandemic forcing so many changes (see the many episodes of industry specific interviews I did in this series last year) many of their industry offerings look outright ancient now. 
3. Salesforce has leveraged vertical application partners on its platform better than the others (and frankly, I would like them to do even better with these focused partners) - with players like Veeva, nCino, Vlocity and many others

Jujhar invited my audience to this year's Industry Summit coming up in  June. I would highly encourage it - you can register here 

The Analyst Cam: Acadian Ventures

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission), as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Jason Corsello who presents on his fund Acadian Ventures, an early-stage venture firm investing in "future of work" - the talent/HCM part of that rapidly changing world especially after the turmoil of 2020.

I have known Jason for years both as an industry analyst, and then in his role as an executive at Cornerstone OnDemand.

He is very well connected in HCM world and it shows in the portfolio he has already invested in, and in the limited partners/advisory board he has put together.

Burning Platform: Work Anywhere - Tertiary Towns and Rural Revival

In the 42nd episode of the series we have Raju Vegesna of Zoho Software.

While the COVID-19 pandemic and related WFH protocols have turned many of us into recluses, the big realization is you can WFA - as in Anywhere. We have seen an significant acceleration in relocations - for tax, weather, safety, many other reasons. We had Mark Brooks who has been working and living for ages across the world - Shanghai, Bali, Malta, now Dubai. Next, we had Tammie Hilend, CIO at the space tech company, Maxar who discussed how she has done her demanding job on the road in her RV 

Zoho has long had a very different approach to talent - they build it versus buying it from other companies or prestigious universities. They have long located themselves in secondary cities in Japan, Netherlands, Mexico, the US. The CEO, Sridhar Vembu has long had a passion for Rural Revival - see my interview with him last year after he relocated from Silicon Valley to rural India. 

Raju describes their move from Pleasanton, CA to Austin, TX. Quality of life and cost of living for employees are far more important to him than universities and airports are to other companies. Now, with Austin attracting so many other companies, he describes how they are shifting focus to even smaller towns in Texas and even more so in India.

In keeping with the rural revival theme, even the Austin location has become more of an organic, employee-nurtured farm.

He compares this distributed talent model to the move we have seen in computing - from a centralized, mainframe to a network model.

It is a fascinating conversation. He readily admits they don't have all the answers or that it will work for others, but post-pandemic, if we all don't explore such models and changes in lifestyle shame on us.

Coding + Farming just may be a winning combination!

Analyst Cam: Unit4 ERPx Briefing Part 2

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Below is Part 2 of the presentation, Dmitri Krakovsky, Chief Product Officer of Unit4 made about the rollout of the ERPx version announced last October. Part 1 ran yesterday here. 

Burning Platform: More work from Anywhere

In the 41st episode of the series we have Tammie Hilend, CIO of Maxar Technologies

While the COVID-19 pandemic and related WFH protocols have turned many of us into recluses, the big realization is you can WFA - as in Anywhere. We have seen an significant acceleration in relocations - for tax, weather, safety, many other reasons. Couple of weeks ago, we had Mark Brooks who has been working and living for ages across the world - Shanghai, Bali, Malta, now Dubai.

This time is Tammie Hilend who has been working from her RV as she travels around the US. Her company, Maxar is in space technology. Her COO, Jeff Robertson had presented at the start of the pandemic last year about the complex protocols they had to consider during the lockdowns especially when it comes to some of their sensitive, classified work.

Tammie describes her personal experience managing her demanding job from the road. With Starlink and many of Maxar's telecom customers generating excitement about satellite internet, it is timely to hear about her bandwidth around the road. As she says, managing around extreme weather has been more of challenge.

She also describes how in her other role managing facilities they are reimagining their "future of work" including work locations and hybrid formats.

It is a fascinating conversation. Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. We can ALL be digital nomads.

Analyst Cam: Unit4 ERPx Briefing

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Dmitri Krakovsky, Chief Product Officer of Unit4 spent a generous hour briefing me about the rollout of the ERPx version announced last October. I am running Part 1 today and Part 2 tomorrow.

Dmitri starts with an update on the TA Associates investment in Unit4 with a valuation in excess of $ 2 billion.

Several things I liked in the presentation

• The new architecture reflects the seismic changes in the industry since Unit4 launched its first gen cloud in 2017 - lot more focus on microservices, ML etc. From a user point pov, there are digital assistants, smart automation, instant mini apps and a lot more mobility. You can see a lot of his influence from recent time at Google.

• There is a lot more thought on migrations and upgrades. His Intuit background shows up in a lot more user controlled destiny versus dependence on IT or SIs.

• I like that the first 15 early adopters are a microcosm of Unit4's global differentiation and focus on services verticals like nonprofits, higher education etc. I particularly liked the portion around industry specific "mesh" architecture.

Next up - hope to interview some of the early adopter customers.  Well, Part 2 before that, tomorrow.  

 

Burning Platform: The future of "as a service"

In the 39th (yesterday) and 40th (today) episode of the series  we have Phil Wainewright of Diginomica and Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies, two of the pioneering influencers in the SaaS/cloud marketplace.

In part 2 below we talk about how business models are evolving and how servitization has become a significant trend in every industry vertical, not just in enterprise technology - as Phil calls it Everything as a Service.

In part 1 yesterday we had taken a walk down memory lane on how the SaaS, cloud infrastructure and platform economies have evolved over the last 25 years.

Burning Platform: 25 years of "as a service"

In the 39th (today) and 40th (tomorrow) episode of the series  we have Phil Wainewright of Diginomica and Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies, two of the pioneering influencers in the SaaS/cloud marketplace.

In part 1 below, we take a walk down memory lane on how the SaaS, cloud infrastructure and platform economies have evolved over the last 25 years.

In part 2 tomorrow we will talk about how business models are evolving, new entrants, and how servitization has become a significant trend in every industry vertical, not just in enterprise technology.

Burning Platform: Digital Nomads

In the 38th episode of the series we have Mark Brooks, CEO of Courtland Brooks.

While the COVID-19 pandemic and related WFH protocols have turned many of us into recluses, the big realization is you can WFA - as in Anywhere. We have seen an significant acceleration in relocations - for tax, weather, safety, many other reasons.

Mark Brooks has been working and living for ages across the world - in Shanghai, Bali, Malta, now Dubai. He explains his checklist on how he decides on places to call office and home for his family. He also describes the creative way he does virtual schooling for his daughters with tutors from around the world.

He also spends some time on his specialty - advising dating sites and how technology keeps helping that sector continue to grow at a nice pace and how those technologies will affect the future of work for all of us

It is a fascinating conversation. And one for employers and politicians everywhere to factor. People do vote with their feet. And their choices keep expanding around the world

Analyst Cam: Zimit CPQ for Services

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

James Cramer, CEO of Zimit, a Workday Ventures portfolio company presented to me about their CPQ (configure, price, quote) capabilities aimed at the enterprise services markets. The majority of CPQ tools in the market today are aimed at product makers.

Zimit CPQ is not just a quote generator, it functions as a proposal engine and can embed text like staff resumes, customer references and methodologies.

They have an impressive range of customers - services arms of software vendors, digital agencies, embedded services in industrial companies. Also telling that their customers are not just project oriented but are also using other business models like outcome based pricing, pass-through hyperscaler charges etc.

Listening to James present, you marvel at how rapidly the enterprise services economy has evolved in the last decade. Add to that the virtual deployments the pandemic accelerated last year. Not your Dad's service economy.

Analyst Cam: Salesforce Vaccine Cloud

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Over the last year, I have been impressed with a variety of pandemic and related crisis -driven applications Salesforce and its partners have launched. They have helped with contact tracing of 200 million people, source over 60 million pieces of PPE, helped process millions of SBA PPP loans. I have profiled them here, here, here   

In that tradition, it was nice to have Meredith Flynn-Ripley, SVP Product Growth and GM at Salesforce present on their Vaccine Cloud. It is designed to help 3 broad constituencies - public health authorities, healthcare providers and employers with the whole lifecycle of vaccine management including education, communications, scheduling, inventory management and certifications.  

Meredith does a nice job in 20 minutes covering a lot of ground. As she mentions, Salesforce is starting to deliver a similar scale of results to over 150 customers and millions of vaccinations in this critical endeavor.

 

Analyst Cam: Unit4 Executive Briefing

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Mike Ettling, CEO and Dmitri Krakovsky, Chief Product Officer of Unit4 joined me for a corporate and product briefing.

Mike spends time on the recent announcement that they have received a  majority investment from TA Associates, a leading global growth private equity firm and about the exit of the previous majority investor, Advent International.  He discusses what TA liked in the services verticals they are focused on to value them in excess of $2 billion

Last May, I had interviewed Mike about leadership during a crisis.  I asked him to provide an update and starting around 10.45 he invokes the Zulu philosophical concept of Ubuntu which roughly translates to 'I am because of who you are'. That has guided him through life and especially in the crisis that started last year. Later in the conversation, in keeping with the recent spat between two much larger competitors , I asked both of them if they wanted to take shots at any competitors. I joked they were 'boring" but I like their high road - "we focus on customers, not competitors"    

Dmitri provided an update on the ERPx release. In October, he had presented (starting around 28.00 here) about the rollout. They are on schedule with 15 early adopter customers across industries and geographies he describes.  Dmitri also addresses my point that the hyperscalers have gained momentum not just at the infrastructure layer, but also at the platform layer. How does an application vendor like Unit4 navigate this major shift in the industry?

We cover lots of other ground during the session. Dmitri will be back to present more details in a session later this week. 

 

Enterprise La La Land

I wrote last week we would likely hear more detail around application modules and customers and subsidiaries to explain Larry Ellison's claim during his earnings call about Oracle snatching customers from SAP. Bob Evans has interviews with executives from each on Cloud Wars. 

SAP's DJ Paoni's responded "Of the 100 or so customer names cited by Oracle, 80% are planning to make “significant investments” with SAP in 2021"

Steve Miranda of Oracle is more specific. But in some ways they both raise even more questions.

Steve primarily talks about HCM, SCM and EPM applications, three of the most fragmented enterprise application categories. HCM is still heavily outsourced, particularly in the payroll and benefits area. So is SCM to 3PLs and increasingly by merchants to fulfillment by Amazon or Shopify. The whole analytics space was turned upside down last year as I wrote here with many new data streams and many new players like Snowflake, C3 and Palantir, each of which had successful listings. 

I realize Steve did not have hours with Bob but when you are talking "ERP replacements" I would think you would talk major chunks like core financials, manufacturing etc. And if not manufacturing, vertical applications like retail banking, utility billing etc.  

Similarly with customer scope. He mentions Marriott, a company I know pretty well as a consumer, having spent over 4 years (yes!) of my life sleeping in their rooms. Many of their properties are run by franchisees who often have their own systems. They have a number of brands like Springhill Suites and Courtyard which have unique processes. Besides, a global company like Marriott has "one of each". Steve had them on a panel in 2014 (see here), Salesforce profiled them even more fully at their event in 2018.  If anything, it makes Paoni's point that customers continue to buy from SAP AND Oracle AND many others.

So, after reading the earnings call transcript,  my question was which modules and at which customer subsidiaries did Oracle replace SAP? Now I need to narrow that expectation much further - which features and how few users did they manage to move?

The good news is most customers realize Magic Quadrants and vendor marketing are the equivalent of a satellite snapshot when you are shopping for real estate. You use them to narrow the neighborhoods you should be looking at. The hard work comes later - lots of house tours, inspections, paperwork etc.

I was even more puzzled by Steve's point about speed at which the enterprise market is moving as he tries to explain how they stole customers from SAP    

He says "But in the past few years, that has changed dramatically, and I think the big reason behind that change is the speed of innovation the cloud offers." “But now, with the cloud, it happens every 90 days. That’s an enormous difference.”

I think Steve is conflating the pace at which SaaS vendors deliver multiple releases a year -  bite-sized collections of fixes and features - with complete modules. The pace at which application vendors have delivered modular functionality in the cloud is actually disappointingly slow. Salesforce and NetSuite were some of the earliest SaaS vendors in the late 90s. In the 20 years since, if you chart a grid of available SaaS functionality by industry and country, we are not even at 20%. Try finding many insurance claims processing or fintech applications in SaaS mode. Try finding many which support regulations in Indonesia, Russia and Nigeria.

Over the same period look at what Amazon has done to shake up so many sectors. Watch my interview last week with Robin Gaster, author of a new book, Behemoth, Amazon Rising.

The problem is while both SAP and Oracle have brilliant enterprise architects at the top, they just don't have process or industry visionaries like Amazon does to completely reshape sectors. They are much more comfortable talking nuances of databases.

If anything, 2020 completely changed the definition of "speed" in every industry. We have all seen the amazing speed at which COVID vaccines have been developed, approved and distributed. Watch Jack Barrett, CEO of a community bank describe how they processed more PPP loans in a little over a month what usually takes them years  Watch Lou Von Thaer, CEO of Battelle describe how quickly their vaporized hydrogen peroxide-based Critical Care Decontamination System scaled when N95 masks were in critically short supply in March. In 4 months, they had disinfected and extended lives of over 2 million masks.  I had plenty more such sessions last year.  

So many new applications came to life in 2020 as I wrote last week.

"Telemedicine in health care, distance learning in higher education, mobile banking, PPP loan processing. vaccine management, HR diversity analytics, virtual real estate tours, remote field service, digital mortgages, eCommerce, warehouse automation, last mile delivery and so much more in every industry."

I would love to hear both Oracle and SAP talk about those applications. It's been a year since the pandemic started. That to me would be a better showing of speed.

Even better, Oracle and SAP should quit looking at each other. In the last decade, it wasn't just Amazon which grew much faster. Google, Facebook and agencies ran away with the digital marketing spend. Contract manufacturers like Foxconn and design firms dominated the product innovation space. GE, Siemens and others are leading the industrial IOT game.

Time for both to dramatically expand their TAM. Their market share of corporate technology wallets has been dropping for a long time. Sniping at each other only highlights they are living in the past. 

Burning Platform: Amazon, automation and society

In the 36th (yesterday) and 37th (today) episode of the series we have Dr. Robin Gaster, President, Incumetrics Inc. and Visiting Scholar, George Washington University Institute of Public Policy. We discuss various aspects of Amazon's growing empire from his new book, Behemoth, Amazon Rising.

In part 2 below we talk more about Amazon and other automation trends which accelerated during the pandemic. Throughout both episodes, we cover Amazon's amazing growth and its impact on retail, book publishing, data centers, ecommerce and many other industry sectors. The discussion is part admiration especially from a consumer pov, part concern from a societal pov about Amazon's ruthless efficiency.

 

Analyst Cam: Vida Health

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Stephanie Tilenius, CEO of Vida Health, a Workday Ventures portfolio company presents on their solution leveraging a network of therapists, nutritionist and coaches in every one of the 50 US states.

Vida focuses on "holistic health" - physical and mental with a focus on chronic conditions such as diabetes and anxiety. Chronic conditions drive 90% of US healthcare spend. A whopping 41% is spent on 12% of the population who have 5 or more such conditions.

She provides several examples of improved patient outcomes when they get what Vida calls "integrated, polychronic" treatment such as a 33% greater improvement in A1c when diabetes and mental health were treated together.  Their key message is point solutions often miss the mark.

The pandemic dramatically accelerated adoption of telemedicine. Personal health data grew significantly as we adopted digital fitness equipment and trackers. Add to that digital networks like this one. It is a symbiotic relationship - plenty of data for Vida's machines to create more personalized support and matching with providers.

They have grown nicely in the last 5 years - with 1.9 million covered "lives' and a network of over a thousand service providers with the fees paid for by employers and healthcare payers. 

Burning Platform: Relentless Amazon

In the 36th (today) and 37th (tomorrow) episode of the series we have Dr. Robin Gaster, President, Incumetrics Inc. and Visiting Scholar, George Washington University Institute of Public Policy.

We discuss various aspects of Amazon's growing empire from his new book, Behemoth, Amazon Rising.

In part 1 below we cover Amazon's amazing growth and its impact on retail, book publishing, data centers, ecommerce and many other industry sectors.

The discussion is part admiration especially from a consumer pov, part concern from a societal pov about Amazon's ruthless efficiency.

We also talk about Amazon and other automation trends which accelerated during the pandemic.

Part 2 link

Analyst Cam: Plex acquires Kors Engineering

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Ben Stewart, VP of Product Strategy and Dave Mofars, VP of Product Marketing at Plex Systems presented on their recent acquisition of Kors Engineering and its MACH2 integration platform that interacts with shop floor machines.

Plex and Kors have partnered for nearly two decades and the combination made even more sense as we see increased automation in the shop floor with enterprises bringing more manufacturing back in the face of blue collar labor shortages.

It blends well with the Industrial IoT strategy Plex has been pursuing. MACH2 focuses on the What, the IOT detail allows for pursuing the WHY such as details on machine health.

 

Burning Platform: Entrepreneurial Trends

In the 34th (yesterday) and 35th (today) of the series we have Brad Feld, Founding Partner, Foundry Group and Ian Hathaway who leads the global ecosystems business at Techstars,

In this episode, they discuss new opportunities they are investing in, the challenge of mental health and new opportunities they see there, and the changed environment for startups with a new administration in the US.

Burning Platform: Startup Communities

In the 34th (today) and 35th (tomorrow) episode of the series we have Brad Feld, Founding Partner, Foundry Group and Ian Hathaway who leads the global ecosystems business at Techstars,

In the episode below, they discuss their book, The Startup Community Way  

They also discuss how the pandemic has led to population shifts away from several urban centers and the resulting opportunities and challenges for new startup communities. They discuss how things are likely to shake out as we come out of the pandemic. Brad describes the trajectory the city of Boulder, CO has seen over the last few decades in its evolution as a startup magnet.

In tomorrow's episode, they will discuss how the world has changed for entrepreneurs with the pandemic and with the new administration in the US.