deal architect

Burning Platform: SAP projects in Asia/Pac

Brian Sommer and I recorded the first 12 episodes in this series. Since then, we have had several guests - Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras, Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research, Holger Mueller of Constellation Research, Tamas Hevizi of Automation Anywhere, Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters, Sabrina Horn of Horn Strategy, Sandra Lo of Zoho and Bob Evans of Evans Strategic Communications. See the index here

Kicking off this year in the 25th episode of the series is Paul Coester of Big Blue Ventures. He has played a role in 20 SAP ECC and 12 S/4HANA projects  - most of  them in the Asia Pacific region. We discuss how 2020 played out for SAP in that region and how 2021 is likely to shape up - around S/4HANA, its cloud properties and its industry applications.

We also discuss how SIs and hyperscalers have evolved over the last couple of years. Finally, we discuss the growth in "fractional IT" - he is a prime example of that with his simultaneous hand in enterprise architecture, quality assurance and other roles on multiple projects.

I have always known Paul to call it as he sees it.  He appropriately calls himself a "SAP Whisperer"  Nice to get his perspective from "Down Under".

2020 - filter out the bad, preserve the good

Most people I know cannot wait to say good riddance to 2020. Very understandable - so many have lost friends and family to COVID, others have lost friends to ugly politics, it was financially devastating to so many of us.

But 2020 also saw unbelievable business heroics, innovation, digital acceleration and so much else which will define this decade. My personal hope is continue with all that goodness.

In an episode I recorded with Frank Scavo of Avasant and Dennis Howlett of Diginomica last week, I presented some of my personal positives from 2020 - it is about 2 minutes long. In there I mentioned I have uploaded 3,000 minutes of video across the various series I launched during the pandemic - Acrobatics during the Crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform. That was from 20 gb of raw video.

Over the next few days, I will run an even tinier excerpt on the New Florence blog. About a hundred minutes of highlights - unbelievable scaling up/down, rapid innovations, business pivots, leadership. And also basic decency - humor and humanity. That is the side of 2020 I hope we continue in 2021 and beyond.

Have a safe and uneventful New Year's Eve!

Burning Platform: Cloud Wars!

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here  Last few weeks, we have had several guests - Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras, Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research, Holger Mueller of Constellation Research, Tamas Hevizi of Automation Anywhere, Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters, Sabrina Horn of Horn Strategy and Sandra Lo of Zoho

This has been the year of the cloud - unbelievable scaling of ecommerce, wfh etc - so nice that I can wrap up the year with an episode with Bob Evans who authors the Cloud Wars site. As you can see, both of us are basking in the sun - helps the mood at the end of this crazy year.

We cover a lot of ground - how the hyperscalers have picked up momentum as companies look at lifting and shifting on-premise, legacy apps to their clouds. Google, Oracle, Microsoft and AWS in particular get a fair amount of time during the session.

We discuss the increasing focus of both the infrastructure and application vendors on the platform layer and the likely turf wars there.

We cover recent public offerings from Snowflake, C3, Palantir and momentum of vertical players like Teladoc, Shopify, nCino and what that means for the incumbent players. 

Bob also talks about every company in every vertical becoming more of a software company and what that means to the industry as a whole. The SaaS, IaaS etc definitions of the last few years look increasingly dated. 

More episodes to come in the New Year!

New Normal: A conversation with Jerome Dubois and Rylan Hamilton of 6 River Systems

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews. 

This executives profiled in this series (and those in Analyst Cam and Burning Platform series) have talked about all kinds of human heroics - in healthcare, vaccine development, diversity moves; in IT, in HR, supply chains and more during the crisis. They have talked about massive scaling up/down, rapid innovations, pivots etc. In the huge ecommerce volumes of the last few months, the unsung heroes are, in addition to humans, warehouse robots.

Guy Courtin of 6 River Systems had demoed here their Chuck collaborative robots and how they can be deployed in smaller locations, closer to customers, without needing to invest much in traditional conveyors or large warehouse infrastructure. While Amazon and its Kiva robots get much of the attention, 6 River (now part of Shopify) and Chuck robots also deserve plenty of kudos.

So, I was really pleased to have Jerome Dubois and Rylan Hamilton, co-founders and co-CEOs of 6 River join this series - they were pioneers with Kiva, and now with the smaller, more agile Chuck robots. We talk about changes coming as more companies move to "micro-fulfillment" (as compared to very large Amazon fulfillment centers - see my tour report here)  to accommodate new models like flash sales, order on-line, pick-up in stores, regionalized inventories, last-mile delivery expectations and constraints while keeping warehouse workers safely distanced, quickly trained and incredibly productive. We have a wide ranging conversation around how supply chains and the cold chain have stepped up during the pandemic and why we will need more automation to keep supply chains sustainable. We also have a philosophical segment about accelerated automation in every sector and the likely impact on society. As I described in Silicon Collar, automation has historically taken over "dull, dirty and dangerous" tasks and they describe how Chuck helps both employers and workers.

It is a fascinating conversation. Watch it and the demo of the Chuck bots. Acrobatics for sure.  It's a nice way to wrap up this series on business heroics we have seen so much of this year!

The Analyst Cam: IFS Service Management Part 2

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

Yesterday, in Part 1, I ran a presentation by Mark Brewer of IFS on their Service Management offering for complex, asset-intensive industries and trends in those industries, especially during the pandemic.

Below is a 30 minute demo by Jonathan Hyden and Paul White which covers 4 segments:

• Workforce Forecasting (across real-time and longer time horizons)
• Appointment Booking (with chatbot assistance)
• Scheduling Optimization (constrained based, machine assisted)
• Remote Assistance (which has been especially handy during the pandemic)

Lots going on in this demo - road maps, heat maps, GANTT charts, merged reality (using a iPhone 8 cam, not an elaborate AR headset), simulations and dashboards

I have invited them back to demo some of their asset management/predictive maintenance capabilities.

Burning Platform: A Christmas Carol

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here  Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras, Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research, Holger Mueller of Constellation Research, Tamas Hevizi of Automation Anywhere and Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters.

This time it is Sandy Lo of Zoho. Not an analyst but an amazing musician and a wonderful AR executive - read here how talented she is

She sent me a beautiful holiday gift - a video of her playing carols on the piano. I asked her if I could share with the world. She kindly agreed.

Last week I shared the Curmudgeon Christmas Card with Frank Scavo and Dennis Howlett. That was a lot of fun. 

This one is pure joy - certainly has been the easiest episode for me to edit:)

Enjoy and Merry Christmas! 

 

Burning Platform: Pandemic and Tech AR/PR

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests  -Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras, Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research, Holger Mueller of Constellation Research and Bob Ferarri of Supply Chain Matters

This time it is Sabrina Horn of Horn Strategy Consulting. She has been a tech industry pioneer - I called her a "marathoner" in this 2018 interview.

We cover a lot of ground in the video below about what she has seen in tech marketing during the pandemic.

She talks about the initial wave of empathy that guided vendors to focus on customer problem-solving and not come across as "ambulance chasers". We discuss how some vendors still want to pitch what they had in their bag in January, not reflective of how dramatically most markets have changed. We talk about "influence v intelligence" when it comes to industry analysts in changed markets, and whether AR would be better positioned in product development v marketing. We also talk about changed messaging as the whole world has moved to video communication and a much more digital world.

She shares a few details about her upcoming book with a working title of "Make it, Don't fake it". It is part autobiography about her leadership style, and part philosophy about her integrity and "getting to the truth and sticking to it".  Should be a fascinating read and timely given some of the crazy expectations we are seeing on Wall Street. I look forward to bringing her back to present on the book in much more detail.

In the meantime, enjoy this really invigorating session.

The Analyst Cam: IFS Service Management Part 1

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

When I interviewed Darren Roos, CEO of IFS in September (see here), he provided examples from several complex, asset intensive businesses like aerospace and engineering/construction. He also pointed out how important field service is to them, and how complex that has become during the pandemic.

IFS is better known as an ERP vendor but its asset management and service capabilities are increasingly a differentiator. So, I invited them to present in this Analyst Cam series on their Service Management offering.

Mark Brewer, Global Industry Director for the Service Management product line presents below for about 15 minutes. He says Service Management accounted for over half of IFS's revenues in the first half of 2020.

He covers several industry trends including a shift in business models - he showcases Rolls Royce, Tomra and Kyocera and their outcome-based contracts in aviation, recycling (reverse vending) and copiers. He also discusses how aging field workers are being moved during the pandemic to remote, often from home, service guidance roles.  

Tomorrow I will run Part 2 with a demo of the functionality.

Burning Platform: Supply Chain Resilience and Renewal

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras, Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research, Holger Mueller of Constellation Research and Tamas Hevizi of Automation Anywhere.

This time it is Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters.

We talk about how the pandemic severely stressed so many supply chains – PPE, toilet paper, anything China sourced, the cold chain for food and now vaccine distribution among others. Yet, we somehow coped and moved so much of the flow from brick and mortar to ecommerce. Bob describes the war rooms many companies set up to cope.

We discuss how many companies have reacted to both the demand and supply shocks - rethinking historical demand forecasts, simplification and reduction of product choice with rationalization of multiple product SKUs and BOMs. How companies are  rethinking global supply chains (with strategies like China+1 or 2 or 3) and re-location of manufacturing to increase resilience.

We next talk about the cold chain which has been challenged all year - first with food distribution challenges now with the daunting COVID vaccine logistics, while simultaneously coping with the holiday shipping load.

Bob describes several of the supply chain planning and execution technologies he has been impressed with, that have helped enterprises cope with the unprecedented stress.

It truly is a riveting conversation about the acrobatics it has taken the supply chain community to keep us hundreds of millions of us fed, sheltered, entertained during 2020 and the many changes we are likely to see in 2021.    

Burning Platform: Digital Acceleration

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras, Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research and Holger Mueller of Constellation Research.

This time it is Tamas Hevizi, Global Head of Private Equity at Automation Anywhere. I had interviewed him in May about acrobatics he was seeing early in the pandemic. In June, he had invited me to his show to summarize some of the acrobatics I had seen. He also wrote a guest column for me in July describing his unbelievably disciplined digital work habits. 

So I invited him to update me on more of the Digital Acceleration he has seen in the last few months. He also talks about the 7 C's of excitement he is seeing in the private equity world he lives in - commerce, cloud, collaboration, cybersecurity etc. Finally he provides many examples of acceleration in "citizen developers", especially in small businesses.

We may never become as digitally disciplined as he is, but the examples he shares shows that as millions of us have moved to WFH, as small businesses have moved to digital commerce, we are individually feeding the digital acceleration of the last few months.

It is a truly invigorating, rapid-fire session. 

Burning Platform: Architectural Trends in Enterprise Software

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here . Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras and Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research

This time it is Holger Mueller of Constellation Research. He follows architectural, platform and other technological underpinnings of application vendors like SAP and Workday and of hyperscalers like Amazon and Google.

He talks about how the public cloud has scaled amazingly during the pandemic. He also says first-generation SaaS players will have to adjust to the growing strength of the hyperscalers. SAP has been talking about its 4+1 strategy and Salesforce has announced Hyperforce. He sees an opportunity for application vendors to not emphasize their platforms but to re-imagine business processes. Traditionally, they have relied on customers and SIs to help them codify business process logic - now they can lead using new technologies like ML that their traditional sources of guidance are not that familiar with as yet.

We talk about AWS, Azure and Google and why Europe still does not have a player like Alibaba. We discuss the prospect for Oracle in this segment.

We talk about how it has been an amazing year for new data streams - COVID-19, election polling, census, shortened sports seasons, all kinds of planning/forecasting scenarios, video streams and new players like Snowflake and Palantir. In the enterprise world, we routinely talk about "single source of truth" Yet the citizen on the street is actually cynical of much of the data because definitions are inconsistent and the media has been cherry picking data to suit its narrative. It's the Mark Twain's quote updated for today - Lies, Big Lies and Big Data. We talk about how to build trust in data.

We discuss developer communities - Salesforce Trailblazers, SAP breathing new life into ABAP, Apple, Microsoft and Google expanding their developer communities and what that means in the meta context of building v. buying enterprise applications.

Finally, we have some fun. You can see his playful side and how he convinced a Starbucks barista to brand my cup as "Sugar Daddy". I was the only one on the Southwest plane who did not realize it, even though they were laughing at me. He finally showed me a photo of my cup. No more freebies for him:)

Really invigorating session.

Burning Platform: Services and other Industry solutions

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica and Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras.

This time it is Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research. He pioneered coverage of the Professional Services Automation (PSA) category two decades ago.

We talk about how the pandemic has affected services firms and the PSA category. He also discusses initial findings from his annual survey of the market - way more promising than he anticipated earlier in the year.

We also discuss why just about every application vendor has developed PSA functionality but are loath to develop operational functionality for so many other, wide-open industries. As he points out when he was at Oracle in the late 90s, the PSA functionality did not require as much investment as that in manufacturing or financial services, and yet generated a nice, predictable revenue stream. Also, since then just about every industry has had a growing services revenue component - field services, training etc - what he calls embedded services and have become new candidates for PSA. 

Nice, crisp discussion.

Burning Platform: Diversity Trends in Tech

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests like Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant and Dennis Howlett of Diginomica.

The BLM movement this summer has brought more urgency for HR and procurement groups to diversify employee and supplier bases. Related to this, I did interviews with two prominent African-American tech executives, Tony Prophet, Chief Equality Officer at Salesforce  and Charles Phillips, Chairman at Infor. Also a presentation by Barbry McGann of Workday on their new VIBE product which allows companies to better visualize employee diversity from multiple dimensions.  The Tech sector should be proud of its efforts.

While the recent intense focus is nice to see, it would be remiss to not point out we have been making steady progress for a long time. I invited Cindy Jutras, President of Mint Jutras to talk about her 45-year career at software vendors and analyst firms, and draw from her experiences on how gender and ethnic-based diversity have evolved in the industry. I add my own experience as an immigrant and someone who has worked in and traveled to 70 countries and seen the US "from the outside in" in the video below.

I particularly liked Cindy pointing out the movie, "Hidden Figures" about a team of female African-American mathematicians who served a critical role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program. As she says "we have come so far"

We also touch on age discrimination. Silicon Valley and outsourcers tend to be focused on young recruits, but even corporate IT tends to be ambivalent about older employees. The pandemic has resulted in many older employees who are traumatized or those who finally having spent more time at home with families and have relished the experience. Both categories are opting for early retirements. These accelerated (and unplanned) exits may also bring more of a focus on the age attribute as companies refine their diversity policies.

It is a not a "woke" conversation. It is a realistic discussion about why a system of meritocracy, more enlightened executives and driven individuals work better than forced mandates for diversity.

Burning Platform: A Curmudgeon Christmas Greeting Card

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of weeks, guests Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting and Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel have joined us.

This time it is a special episode with two of the longest tenured players in IT world - Frank Scavo at Avasant and Dennis Howlett of Diginomica.

We cover three major topics:

- At 0.40, we take a walk down memory lane going back over 15 years when each of us was pioneering blogs focused on enterprise tech - you will enjoy the photo archive we banter around

- At 7.08, we look back at 2020. Hint - it is not all negative.

- At 17.52, we look ahead to 2021. Fair warning - none of us is dumb enough to make forecasts after a year like 2020:)

As a special episode, it runs twice as long as others in the series.  But I promise there are plenty of laughs, and lots of name dropping. Watch it, you may have a mention!

Burning Platform: Project Management in the Age of COVID

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here 

For the next few episodes, I will be joined by guest analysts and industry observers. Last couple of weeks Rob Kugel of Ventana and Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting have joined us.

This week, it is Bonnie Tinder, founder of Raven Intel which monitors project management trends and SI quality metrics.

We discuss how project management has undergone a major transformation during the pandemic. The accelerated clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccines have certainly raised the bar. In IT projects, especially HR projects she tracks, the key word as she says is "shift". Some have been postponed, some shortened, a new category of projects has been fast tracked,

We also discuss how SIs have been doing during the pandemic. Many smaller and midsized SIs are being squeezed out by the larger SIs as bigger projects disappear.

She provides a nice Raven's - bird's eye - view of the state of project and program management.

The Analyst Cam: Cognizant on State of Voice Interfaces

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

This insight from a Cognizant survey caught my eye

"When we look back on the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ll realize that one of the unhailed victims of the devastating virus is the touchscreen. Not only did the virus make us wary of unhygienic surfaces, but the lockdowns and social isolation that followed also spurred renewed interest in interacting with a human-sounding voice. Both realities have served to catalyze the beginning of a large-scale shift toward the voice interface."

So, I looked forward to their webinar titled "From Eyes to Ears" featuring Jason Pedone, SVP Mobile Banking and Emerging Channels at Truist, the 6th largest US bank and Mark Taylor, SVP at Cognizant Interactive. It was moderated by Manish Bahl, AVP at the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work.

I have excerpted below about a third of the webinar. I would encourage you to watch the whole session by registering here  - it has audience polls and questions in addition.

Manish organized the session into three sections and my excerpts follow his guidance:

• State of Voice, at the beginning
• Challenge of Voice,  starting at 8.55
• Future of Voice, starting  at 18.24

Some of the topics covered include:

• why voice interfaces have accelerated during the pandemic
• the brand challenge when Alexa or Siri becomes the "channel master" 
• privacy, trust issues
• how voice can invoke empathy that visual interfaces cannot
• blending of voice and visual content
• many vertical examples - particularly in banking, healthcare and retail

Lots to think about when it comes to voice interfaces.

The Analyst Cam: Suplari briefing

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

During the pandemic, a lot of attention has gone to the CHRO and the CIO as companies moved to WFH, as they plan on safely opening physical sites and as companies accelerate digital transformations. The Chief Procurement Officer, in some ways, has had to perform even more spectacular cartwheels. Most have helped to conserve cash and minimize supplier risk. Many are being asked to help find suppliers in new global locations and those for diversity and sustainability initiatives.  

With that background, I had a chance to catch up with Nikesh Parekh, co-founder and CEO of Suplari. I first met him two years ago when the company had just started. He walked me through a 20 minute presentation and demo below on what is branded as the Spend Intelligence Cloud.

Their service allows for aggregating supplier data to allow you to see spend across subsidiaries/locations/other tags. It aggregates spend from different sources - via PO and AP data from various ERP systems, via services like Ariba and Coupa, via procurement card etc.

I really like their library of 175 machine-driven insights. Some insights are tactical - for t&e compliance or potential fraud alerts. Other insights are more strategic - for supplier base consolidation, as an example. Nikesh mentions a relationship with consulting firms like Kearney for more of the strategic sourcing projects. New insights are being developed with a supplier diversity pov and for budgeting and forecasting processes.

At the start of the pandemic, specific insights identified opportunities to conserve cash, prevent non-essential spend, predict and forecast large cash payments, extend payment terms and enforce new policies. The service also allows for easy "case" set up and assignment to specific individuals and teams. That brings collaboration and project management to the sourcing/procurement function.  

I had expected they would mostly be focused on indirect spend. I was pleased to hear him say customers are starting to use services like his for their more complex, and clearly more strategic, direct spend with their Tier 1 and 2 suppliers.

Nice, crisp presentation

New Normal: A conversation with Stephany Lapierre of TealBook

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews. 

This time it is Stephany Lapierre, Founder and CEO of TealBook. The Toronto based company is helping companies with what they call "Universal Supplier Profiles". Traditionally procurement has mostly relied on portals to collect information directly from suppliers and that gets stale quickly. With TealBook, the data layer is constantly maintained through AI and machine learning (harvesting data from 400 million websites), so customers don't have to spend so much time maintaining their data, relying mostly on supplier-provided data or searching for new vendors via their own web searches.

Matt Palackdharry, VP of Strategy had presented here in the Analyst Cam series about Discovery, Diversity, Sustainability and other use cases they help many of the Fortune 100 customers and many other organizations with.

Stephany has many examples of heroics. In the first few weeks of the pandemic she describes how the UK government, desperate for PPE supplies and looking for choices beyond China, leveraged TealBook for information on 60,000 ISO certified PPE makers. She describes 170 other requests in the first 3 weeks from around the world to help source N95 masks or their components (Matt shows that use case in the video above)

During the BLM crisis and the many diversity initiatives since customers have leveraged TealBook's 800,000 certificates for black and minority owned businesses. More impressively they have helped a number of smaller businesses self-certify (she says 95% of them find formal regulatory certification too cumbersome or too expensive) and become more visible to companies. As a result, companies have reported they found $30 to $100m in spend with minority businesses they had not identified from their existing records.

The focus is next switching to sustainability initiatives and similarly finding suppliers with appropriate focus and certification on green matters.

We also talk about shifting global chains - the "China +1 initiative" in many companies. She says it is "China +2 or 3" for some customers.

We next talk about trust in data. While in enterprise world, we routinely talk about "single source of truth", the reality is Mark Twain's comment today would be about 'Lies, Damn Lies and Big Data". The person on the street has little faith in data because so much of media has cherry picked data to suit its narrative. She has some thoughts about how to build trust.

Finally we talk about data science and careers for our young. She says "we are just beginning" and clearly is a role model and recruiter for a number of young data and ML graduates.  

She is a very impressive entrepreneur and we cover a lot of ground as you can see below.  

Burning Platform: Mediocre, Myopic or Merry?

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here 

For the next few episodes, I will be joined by guest analysts and industry observers. Last week Rob Kugel of Ventana joined us.

This week, it is Josh Greenbaum of Enterprise Application Consulting.

We start off talking about a note he wrote a couple of years ago titled Mired in Mediocrity. I have written about vendor myopia - they have missed out on several large markets as I wrote here 

There have been several moves during the pandemic which make both of us a bit more positive about the industry  - and feel merry in keeping with the holiday season.

I have a great slate of analysts and industry observers lined up who will bring other nuanced perspectives on enterprise tech in the next few episodes

The Analyst Cam: TealBook briefing

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

During the pandemic, a lot of attention has gone to the CHRO and the CIO as companies moved to WFH, as they plan on safely opening physical sites and as companies accelerate digital transformations. The Chief Procurement Officer, in some ways, has had to perform even more spectacular cartwheels. Think of how many supply chains have broken down (think PPE, toilet paper, meatpacking plants, anything sourced from China etc). Or how many customers have entered new markets to survive or thrive during the pandemic and how many new suppliers they have had to explore. Think also about new demands as companies accelerate diversity and sustainability initiatives.

I had a chance to catch up with Stephany Lapierre, Founder and CEO and with Matt Palackdharry, VP of Strategy at TealBook. The Toronto based company is helping companies develop what they call "Universal Supplier Profiles". Traditionally procurement has mostly relied on portals to collect information directly from suppliers and that gets stale quickly. With TealBook, the data layer is constantly maintained through AI and machine learning (harvesting data from over 400 million websites), so customers don't have to spend so much time maintaining their data, rely mostly on supplier-provided data or search for new vendors via their own web searches. The supplier job is also easier as they can build on what TealBook has already harvested.

I especially like that their focus is not just on indirect spend. With so many companies re-shoring or entering new markets, there is growing interest in new Tier 1 and 2 suppliers.

In the presentation/demo below Matt provides a product perspective (especially what he calls Autonomous Data Foundation in their stack)  with a number of very nice vertical (particularly biopharma) and global examples. Lots of discovery, diversity, sustainability support. As he says just about every Fortune 100 company is now a customer.

Later in the week, I will run an interview with Stephany about megatrends and heroics in the procurement function.

The Analyst Cam: Sapient Insights Group 2020-2021 HR Systems Survey

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

Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer and Managing Partner at Sapient Insights Group presented highlights from their "2020–2021 HR Systems Survey White Paper, 23rd Annual Edition” As she says, there is a lot of conjecture about how HR groups have reacted during the pandemic, so it's nice to have results from a huge sample polling 1,900 organizations in 64 countries, representing 27 million employees.

Stacey provided more background on the survey: "The survey stands alone as a global view of the current and future plans for HR Technology adoption, crucial practices, and emerging technology trends from. The research covers organizations in all ranges of size, industry, and location and is focused on capturing the Voice of the Customer - reaching  beyond over sampled early adopters and global brands; to gather realistic data from HR and HRIT leaders working every day, often in anonymity, to achieve outcomes for their organizations .This is a valuable resource for anyone making critical decisions about HR Technology and its value to organizational outcomes and the future of HR Tech."

The research shows lots of shifts in HR systems spend and direction in a year dominated by COVID-19 and WFH in a year where the world turned upside down. One example: "15% of organizations are planning on decreasing traditional HR Technology Spend in 2021, by an average of 23% of their current budgets. In contrast 28% of organizations are planning to increase spending in non-traditional HR Technology areas like infrastructure and remote working tools."

As we discuss, HR may not still not be considered strategic by many, but nobody will argue with the point that it has become Essential with a capital E. We cover a lot of ground - how talent management tech has paid off during the crisis, automation trends, moving from WFH to blended models,  

Watch the video below, and also download the full report here. The report is about 100 pages, but skimming the graphics - almost one to a page - is just as rewarding. You will find it is one of the most realistic looks at the day in the life of the new, dramatically changed HR function.

 

The Analyst Cam: Workday Ventures

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

I have had two Workday Ventures portfolio companies present as part of this series. I have two more scheduled. So, I invited Leighanne Levensaler, Co-Head of WD Ventures  (she is also EVP of Corporate Strategy at Workday) to present on the complete portfolio in the fund of $250 million with 24 active investments.

She does a very nice job in under 20 minutes walking through the portfolio (most aligned with Workday's hcm, financial and supply chain focus). She also explains the fund's investment philosophy and approach and the benefits it brings both to portfolio companies and to Workday customers.

The fund is only 3 years old and has already had 6 exits. You get the sense of a nurturing environment for startups with its strong management team with plenty of previous operational Workday experience and with the access it provides to the Workday customer base and its product organization.

I have never been a big fan of vendors who brag about ecosystems with hundreds and thousands of partners or startups. I like to tell them show me your 50-100 best successes. I like the gradual, yet influential, pace at which WD Ventures is growing.

The Analyst Cam: Rimini Street Database Support Survey

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

Dan Ashton, Senior Director, Product Marketing covers multiple databases at Rimini Street - Oracle, SAP, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server.

He presented to me results of a recent survey across 18 countries. It is focused primarily on Oracle databases, but there are plenty of nuggets that likely apply to those from the other large vendors.

Some of the interesting points that I picked up in the session:

• There is significantly more dissatisfaction about the value from databases than the last time Rimini ran such a survey in 2017. Not surprising especially given IT cost pressures during the pandemic.
• Beyond the fees they pay vendors, customers feel they are on a treadmill - "the constant pressure to upgrade in order to remain fully supported not only disrupts business, but wastes funds and resources"
• The different types of support available from publishers may actually be confusing customers. Some support levels don't include critical fixes and certifications.  As a result, some customers may have a false sense of security they are covered by the maintenance they are paying for but actually be exposing themselves to risks.
• Customers have tens, if not hundreds, of database instances. While trying to manage the sprawl, they are still looking at a growing number of open source and cloud options to lower their exposure and cost of those from the larger vendors. The survey shows MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB as getting the most looks.

Dan makes a crisp presentation with lots of specific survey data in about 13 minutes. You can also get the fuller report by registering here

Burning Platform: Wall Street and Enterprise Software

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here.  For the next few episodes, I will be joined by guest analysts and industry observers.

Rob Kugel, SVP & Research Director of Office of Finance and Business Research at Ventana Research is the first guest and he talks to me about the wild ride on Wall Street during the pandemic. Nice to get his perspective which reflects his earlier career at Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street firms and his CFA certification.

We talk about whether the market is in synch with the state of the economy and how much attention enterprise buyers should be paying to Wall Street impressions of vendors in their tech spend analysis. We discuss how Wall Street innovations like SPACs and the increasing level of M&A activity will influence the tech economy and why Wall Street has been tough recently on certain vendors. We also talk about the pandemic's effect on financial and planning software he now tracks

Look forward to more guests who will similarly bring nuanced perspectives on enterprise tech.

New Normal: A conversation with Bruce Bond of Common Ground Committee

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level executives about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 and related financial, diversity and other crises and the "New normal" they can expect going forward. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews.

This time it is Bruce Bond, Co-Founder & CEO, Board Chair of Common Ground Committee which promises to bring light, not heat to public discourse.

Personally I have little interest in politics. I am a registered independent and don't spend much time watching or reading political media on either the left or the right. My heroes are innovative business executives and hard working common people. However, this series is about heroics during various crises and I have been wondering who is trying to do something to reduce the polarization we have been seeing in the country. The recent elections have made our differences even more intense.

Well, I found such a hero in Bruce, my former Gartner colleague (shame on me, I have not kept much in touch with him for two decades). He kindly appeared in this series and blew me away as he described how his organization has brought politicians and policy makers from extreme positions together on stage including Condi Rice and John Kerry on global leadership, Barney Frank and Larry Kudlow on tax policy, Donna Brazile and Michael Steele on racial justice. 

His organization is also helping ordinary citizens like me with scorecards which emphasize common ground. As I mention during the talk, it would be nice if political media did not just focus on fact checks but also positively rated candidates when they discuss consensus. We cover other areas like bias in media, voter fraud and impact of political differences on friends and families. 

I was particularly touched by his episode of musician Daryl Davis, a Black man who has spent the past 35 years on a remarkable quest of speaking with, and at times befriending, members of white supremacist groups. He has helped more than 200 KKK members to renounce their racist ideology. You can hear a podcast with Daryl here.

Overall, very inspirational conversation. Not sure I will become politically active as a result, but it certainly left me more optimistic that at least at a grassroots level we can move to more civil discourse.

The Analyst Cam: Model N Revenue Execution

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. 

In June, I had interviewed Jason Blessing, CEO of Model N. He had described how 24 out of 25 of his largest customers have worked on some life-saving COVID-19 related products or services. 

Suresh Kannan, Chief Product Officer and Dave Michaud, Chief Marketing Officer presented to me about revenue "leakage" which comes from poor pricing and regulatory compliance especially in pharma and high-tech markets - excerpts in the video below.

5 months since the Jason interview has been a lifetime in the COVID-19 race. You can see in the recent presentation how influential Model N customers have become - in diagnostics (like Abbott), therapeutics (like Gilead) and vaccines (like Pfizer).

Even without the COVID-19 growth spurt, pharma and high-tech companies have complex customer pricing scenarios. In pharma, President Trump has announced plans for a "Most Favored Nation" paradigm and removal of rebates which will have a significant ripple effect on global pricing (see Model N's blog describing some of the complexities.)

While they have their hands full with their two verticals, I imagine their pricing algorithms, CPQ and other functionality will continue to attract customers from other industries. No CEO or CFO will turn down tighter revenue execution.

Fascinating presentation.

The Analyst Cam: Workday Talent Marketplace

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

David Somers, GM, Talent Optimization at Workday (and co-founder of Rallyteam that Workday acquired) presented and demoed to me about their Talent Marketplace. It connects jobs and job seekers—giving you a place where can you mix project and gig employees into your talent strategy, and put the right skills on the right projects.

He kicks it off with their skills ontology - the Skills Cloud which they launched in 2018 has clearly come a long way. I had expected an explosion in skills as more customers added their own definitions but the ontology and machine learning is allowing for crisper definitions, and a focus on more relevant ones as skills rapidly evolve.

The initial use case for the marketplace is internal to Workday customers. To me, the real excitement would be to allow cross-customer sharing of talent. During the pandemic, we are seeing a bifurcated economy where some employers cannot find enough talent to hire alongside significant unemployment.

Even more ambitious would be something I had written about in one of my books. Singapore's Workforce Development Agency had an initiative over a decade ago called "Individual Learning Portfolio". It allowed citizens career planning tools and resources and in turn benefitted employers by providing visibility to talent sources and skills preferences workers were showcasing.

I have no doubt Workday customers will use its Talent Marketplace for innovative, even more challenging scenarios.

David covers a lot a ground in under 20 minutes. Very nicely done.

New Normal: A conversation with Brett Hurt of data.world

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level executives about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews.

This time it is Brett Hurt, who is the CEO and co-founder of data.world, a Public Benefit Corporation (and Certified B Corporation) focused on building the world's largest collaborative public data catalog. He has always been a data guy - prior to this he founded Bazaarvoice (which went public) and Coremetrics (which was acquired by IBM)  

Brett is also the co-owner of Hurt Family Investments (HFI), alongside his wife, Debra. They are involved in 93 startups and counting and 29 VC funds, mostly based in Austin, TX

It has been an amazing year for new data streams - COVID-19 related, the census, the election polling, shortened sports seasons - see others I had identified here. So, it was nice to have someone who has been a lifelong data guy. 

He says "data is one of the least networked resources". At one extreme, online advertising data has been highly optimized to help companies market and sell. He hopes vast troves of cancer, climate change, nutrition, poverty and other data which are highly siloed can evolve on that trajectory. His mission is help those data silos, make cost of accessing that data much lower and to democratize the traditional world of analytical tools which were designed by "IT people for use by IT people". He talks in terms of "data philanthropists"  - bringing open source concepts to data world.

He talks about data as facilitating "story telling" and also has advice for young data scientists. We spend some time on the Certified B entity format which prioritizes purpose alongside profit. We also spend time talking about the phenomenon which is Austin, TX where he was born and raised and where he is obviously very well connected.

Bit of trivia - he missed explaining the Owl icon on his swag. Owl is acronym for Web Ontology Language, which helps with knowledge representation. 

Wide ranging, very optimistic conversation. Ontology, Knowledge Graph - data geeks will especially enjoy listening to him. 

The Analyst Cam: Constellation Research CIO Priorities for 2021

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

The weekly Burning Platform with Brian Sommer is taking a break, so it was timely that I invited Dion Hinchcliffe, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research to walk me through results of his CIO 2021 survey.

We have a lot of back and forth around his wide ranging survey which includes impact on IT budgets, WFH trends, a significant spike in interest in automation, trends in security and data privacy, digital transformation with a major shift - much quicker projects and a focus on workplaces and customer experiences and thoughts on coming organizational changes.

A fuller report is available for download here courtesy of WalkMe, which offers a Digital Adoption Platform.

The Analyst Cam: ASUG interview of SAP CEO Christian Klein

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

Geoff Scott, CEO of ASUG, interviewed Christian Klein, CEO of SAP, on a wide range of topics for an hour. While the entire interview is only available to ASUG members, he kindly allowed me to excerpt a few sections. I selected roughly a fifth of the interview— you really should beg, borrow or pay for access to the full hour. (You can go to ASUG.com to see if you’re company’s a member—if you run any SAP software, chances are you already might be. For those interested in becoming a member, please go to ASUG.com/membership to find out more information.)

First of all, I was impressed how relaxed Christian comes across given the stress of recent announcements and the stock market reaction. At 12.08 in video below you can see how playful he is. 

Right off the bat, Geoff asks Christian to explain the announcements in his own words. 

At 4.22, Christian nicely summarizes SAP's commitments and details executive and other employee presence in N. America.

At 6.55, Christian tackles the thorny issue of slow S/4HANA adoption - makes couple of interesting observations.

At 8.44, Vinnie Vertical, as some call me, likes the discussion around industry applications

Finally, as I mentioned at 12.08, a bit of fun.

BTW, Christian's comments align with my pov when I interviewed Greg Tomb of SAP here

Like I said, get your hands on the full interview. Nicely done.

 

A turning point for Oracle?

I must admit I did a double take when I read this from Bob Evans

"On top of that, Ellison mapped out Oracle’s desire to offer a massive portfolio of industry-specific solutions that fuse (no pun intended) the broad capabilities of his Fusion enterprise apps with unique industry-specific capabilities for vertical markets."

So I checked out the video where Rob Tarkoff, EVP Oracle CX Cloud and Oracle Data Cloud banters with Larry about the future of CX. From 22.06 to 29.55 they do talk about verticals, particularly around telecom. Larry adds "more to come" as he paints a vision of a "closed loop" enterprise connecting the front and back office and everything in-between.

Since the early 2000s, when Oracle went on its acquisition binge I have waited for them to start to dominate with industry applications. Retek, Portal, Primavera, I-Flex, Opower, ClearTrial, JD Edwards and many others gave Oracle a nice foothold in many large sectors of the economy.

At a personal level, Larry knows so much about oceanography, architecture, aviation and so much more - he is a Polymath. He helped Steve Jobs launch Apple's retail foray and look how well it has blossomed.

While they sell plenty of database and horizontal financial, hcm and CX applications to every sector, industry specific applications have been not been as prominent in Oracle marketing.

In April 2018, I wrote about Netsuite's industry approach

The reality is the verticals NetSuite and its cloud ERP and CRM peers have developed “books of record” for leave massive sectors such as utilities, insurance, hospitality and healthcare mostly untouched. That’s a lot of white space for new entrants to target. 

In March 2019 I wrote about Oracle verticals

I would love to see details - to me vertical applications do operational stuff - merchandising in retail, claims processing in insurance, net metering in utilities, support robotics and wearables on the shop floor etc. If it has those, why is Oracle not aggressively showcasing these capabilities?

I hope they are much more serious this time. During the pandemic, in all the C level interviews I have been conducting (see index here ), I have heard how vertical applications have helped some companies survive and others to thrive. They mention applications like:

• Telemedicine in healthcare
• PPP loan processing capabilities and mobile apps in banking
• Distance learning in higher education
• Drive-thru processing in food service and retail
• eCommerce and robotic warehousing in retail
• Last mile delivery in groceries, restaurants even car buying
• Remote home buying and digital mortgages in real estate

Should Vinnie Vertical (as some call me for constantly asking about industry functionality) be excited about Oracle Industries this time around? I would like to catalog their progress like I did with 3 posts on Salesforce Industries in the Analyst Cam series couple of weeks ago. 

I owe my soul to the YouTube store

"You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt"

I love Tennessee Ernie Ford's 1955 hit -   the horn section and his colorful description of a coal miner's life. The amazing work ethic (to which the straw boss says "Well, a-bless my soul") has inspired mine during the pandemic.

Since March, I have recorded, spliced, edited almost 16 gigabytes of video. It's been heavy lifting - the prep, editing, propagation takes 10X each video's elapsed time - but it has kept me immensely positive. The videos have ended up in 4 series:

Acrobatics during the crisis

I have been interviewing C-level execs across industries about business acrobatics during the crisis. They have talked about heroics in healthcare, moving thousands to work from home, diversity initiatives, pivots, rapid innovation, massively scaling up or down. Has kept my spirits - and that of my audience - positive in the midst of the doom and gloom. It has also given me an amazing number of data points on changing markets to share with my advisory clients. Index here of 75 executives/practitioners interviewed so far. 

The Analyst Cam

I have been excerpting videos from events, briefings, demos, presentations I have been invited to in my industry analyst role. As most of these have moved to virtual format, it has allowed to embed a shortened version with my commentary. Gives readers a bit of a "being right there" feel. These have been the largest files I have worked with. Salesforce, for example, allowed me to download 2.5 gb of video from its Industries summit last month. I excerpted about 10%.  Index of those posts is here. 

Burning Platform

Weekly commentary with my colleague, Brian Sommer on trends we have been seeing in enterprise world such as: Are we finally seeing a end of life for on-premise applications? How will work from home formats evolve? These are a roughly 10 minute video format - meant to be both entertaining and educational. Index here. 

My interviews on other platforms

As with Tamas Hevizi, Paul Greenberg, Ton Dobbe, ASUG and many others.

On my New Florence blog, I have mined YouTube for years to embed thousands of videos. When I hear of something innovative, I write it up, embed an article and a video. I am following a similar format on Deal Architect. I take notes as I am editing the video and use that for my commentary. Lots of my readers still prefer written words.

My videos have been recorded across Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, ON24, BlueJeans, StreamYard, Skype, Wonder and other platforms, but they all end up on the Deal Architect channel on YouTube.

And I have a feeling the volume is about to grow even larger. I just got an iPhone 12 Pro. Cannot wait to try out its amazing camera. Have talked to some clients about using a GoPro to record processes at their shop floors and other physical sites. On my Christmas wish list is a drone. Lots of confidential, NDA stuff and blips and bloopers will be left out but there should be plenty of share. It feels good to give back to YouTube.

To twist Tennessee's lyrics

Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the YouTube store

Burning Platform: Career advice for new Tech World

In episode 12 of the Burning Platform series, Brian Sommer and I talk about career advice we would give to the younger Brian and Vinnie if we were starting our careers today. We also discuss changes employers should be making to attract younger recruits.

New Normal: A conversation with Emily McEvilly of Workday

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to all the interviews in this series. 

This time it is Emily McEvilly, Chief Customer Officer at Workday. Aneel Bhusri, co-CEO of Workday has been one of the early guests in this series so it was good to get Emily back to provide an update. 

Emily talks about more customer heroics and also those at partners. Every project implementation, training etc. has been virtual during the last few months. Not just small projects - she mentions payroll/HCM projects tackling up to half a million employees.

She talks about how the CHRO's world has turned upside down during the pandemic and how Workday has helped them - work from home, remote training, social justice, physical site protocols, employee mental health issues among other demands. As I have written here there have been at least 12 major disruptions to the world of analytics and we discuss how Workday and its CFO customers have similarly coped. She describes "record number of plans", external auditor remote access of records etc. 

I had interviewed Emily in January about her SI partner ecosystem, so it was good to hear her compliment how they have since adjusted to a world of restricted travel. She describes that but goes on to say virtual deployments are increasingly "table stakes". She is as impressed with the "tooling" and automation they have invested in and passing labor savings on to customers.

I did not expect her to talk much about Workday internally but I am glad she does about how they have "led with transparency and authenticity" and how they have been inspired by customer creativity, while continuing to themselves inspire customers.

Very symbiotic how Workday, customers and partners have coped together during the crisis. Emily does a nice job describing multiple dimensions of those relationships.

 

New Normal: A conversation with Dr. Patti Fletcher and Grant Beckett of Workhuman

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to all the interviews in this series. 

This time it is Dr. Patti Fletcher, VP Brand Marketing and Grant Beckett, VP Product Strategy at Workhuman whose platform "connects teams and strengthens global workforces through gratitude, feedback, and celebration."

They provide plenty of examples of leadership, collaboration and workplace dynamics during the last few months, particularly in the pharma, healthcare and banking sectors. They mention Maslow's hierarchy a couple of times - during the crisis, gratitude and rewards have to aim much lower given fear, grief, loneliness so many of us have encountered. Also, reach low in the organization - Grant provides a great example of a senior doctor complimenting a gardener for the impact of his work on the well-being of patients, while healthcare workers rightly get much of the credit.

Patti also provides some sobering input on how ladies, especially minorities, have slipped significantly in their diversity and equity progress during the last few months. She quotes a BCG study that women are putting in 15 more hours a week than men on "unpaid labor" as they work from home. She says 1 in 4 are thinking of leaving their jobs. I had reviewed her book Disrupters, and Michelle Turman's Jumping the Queue a couple of years ago. Both had described the struggles and the progress and were optimistic in their tone - clearly this year has stalled the progress. So it was good to have Barbry McGann of Workday present on tools like VIBE which help quantify how much further we have to go - see my post here.

Overall, a very interesting perspective on how organizations are dealing with a new set of challenges when it comes to traumatized and yet heroic human beings in the workforce. 

 

The Analyst Cam: 6 River Systems Fulfillment

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

Guy Courtin, Head of Global Alliances at 6 River Systems (acquired by Shopify but run as an independent unit) gave me a crisp presentation on "Chuck" - their collaborative mobile robot and the machine learning and other software which makes up their warehouse automation/fulfillment offering. During the pandemic, we have all seen how ecommerce has skyrocketed. Fulfilling that massive volume has accelerated the automation of warehouses and the need for much more efficient last mile deliveries.

He does a nice job explaining the agility of the solution. You can start in small locations, closer to customers, without needing to invest much in traditional conveyors or large warehouse infrastructure. Chuck can be easily be reconfigured for up to 6 levels of inventory and payloads up to 200 pounds. The bot minimizes physical worker walking and lifting effort across put-away, picking, counting, replenishment and sorting tasks. The UX is intuitive - they promise "your associates will be picking efficiently and accurately in 15 minutes". You can scale the solution rapidly up or down - especially with incremental, seasonal units 6 River can provision.

He says people get enamored with the bot, but the software and the data/insights the solution generates are even more important. Final bonus - with COVID protocols, Chuck also helps with safe distancing of employees. 

Burning Platform: COVID morphing of Digital Transformations

In episode 11 of the Burning Platform series,  Brian Sommer and I talk about how the pandemic has accelerated Digital Transformations. We have both written books on the topic and point our the subtle and not so subtle changes in what is happening to such projects.

New Normal: A conversation with Phil Fersht of HFS Research

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to all the interviews in this series.

This time it is Phil Fersht, Founder, CEO and Chief Analyst of HFS Research which covers global sourcing strategies.

He talks about acrobatics at Cognizant as they tackled the pandemic, a ransomware attack and are still delivering impressive results. He also mentions leadership and unique practices at Accenture, IBM, Infosys, Mphasis, Wipro and other firms.

He discusses practices around Digital Transformation, Cloud Computing and Automation.

We cover wide global ground - we discuss Brexit, the lockdown in India and Philippines, and of course England, where he is based.

Fascinating discussion of trends in a human intensive industry which has been significantly impacted by travel and work from home trends during the pandemic.

New Normal: A conversation with Greg Tomb of SAP

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to all the interviews in this series.

This time it is Greg Tomb, President, Global Sales and GTM, SAP Cloud, Platform and S/4 Portfolio at SAP.

My session with Greg was planned much earlier, but took place a couple of days after SAP announced its Q3 results. I called the results a hiccup, but the stock market punished SAP far more. And I since have heard and seen reports which make it sound as if SAP is on its deathbed.

While his colleagues, Peter Maier and Bob Stutz have in earlier episodes talked about customer heroics, I am glad Greg talked about how SAP and its partners have themselves pivoted in the last six months to sell much more "market relevant" solutions - ecommerce, virtual learning, supply chain management etc. And how they have delivered these solutions remotely given travel restrictions.

As you can see in the video, SAP has a very broad portfolio of cloud solutions across the enterprise, and SAP has emphasized them as part of its Amplify initiative in the last few months. The reporting has made it sound as if SAP is just getting serious about cloud applications.

I have invited Greg to present more details next week on Amplify as part of the Analyst Cam series. He did the interview below on the road on his phone and did not have the Amplify slides or I would have included them here.

 

New Normal: A conversation with M.R. Rangaswami of Sand Hill Group

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. The index to the growing list of interviews is here

This time it is M.R. Rangaswami. He is the ultimate networker. I met him in the late 90s when he was angel investing and running events at Sand Hill Group. He has since founded the Corporate Eco Forum which focuses on sustainability, and Indiaspora which has allowed him to bring tech entrepreneurs and policy makers together from around the world.

He describes heroics across each of the networks he has helped build. In tech, he talks about the digitization trend which has accelerated during the pandemic. In sustainability, he talks about how the definition has extended beyond renewables and climate issues to also cover diversity and inclusion. Around Indiaspora, he talks about charitable efforts like distributing millions of meals both in the US and to migrant labor in India affected by lockdowns.

He comments that the increasingly likely scenario of a new President offset by a split Congress should reduce risks of a radical turn. It may also bring some clarity on climate accords and help tone down social upheaval. 

He ends with an immigrant's gratitude and optimism for future of the US economy.

High-energy, inspirational conversation.