deal architect

Unpacking the “Great Resignation”

There is a lot of talk these days about the “Great Resignation” wave. To start off with, its not just resignations, there also retirements and relocations. But people are not staying home watching Netflix or playing golf, many of these ‘migrants” are starting a new generation of small businesses. It is in a wave of what I call micro-capitalism.

The changes have actually been happening for a while but the pandemic has significantly accelerated them. 5 years ago, when researching labor trends for my book on automation, Silicon Collar, I observed what I called the Alt-Job economy. People were glibly calling it the gig economy – there were many cross-currents underneath. Developers in the iOS ecosystem, people selling arts and crafts on Etsy, franchise owners, ethnic grocers, alternative healthcare practitioners among them – I summarized them in this blog post.

The last couple of years have only increased the fragmentation. Lots more small merchants are taking advantage of micro-fulfillment platforms that Spotify and others provide. Many savvy real estate professionals are launching syndicates with knowledge of regional markets and getting funded via sites like Crowdstreet.  VCs are broadly investing LOTS more in startups. According to CB Insights, Global venture funding reached a record $621B in 2021, more than double the 2020 mark of $294B. According to Venture Forward, a multiyear research program from GoDaddy to quantify this entrepreneurial activity, Americans created 2.8 million more online microbusinesses in 2020 than in 2019. If they are not starting new businesses, lots of them are actively trading on platforms like Robinhood.

I have seen it first-hand at home. My daughter is a global traveler and would come back and tell of “digital nomads” working from Chiang Mai and Bali.  As the pandemic started, she left her job in the hospitality sector and started a life coaching service and has clients around the world. After a long stint at psychiatric hospitals and clinics, my wife recently retired. But it is not “retire” in the traditional sense of the word. She is inspired by Tom Brady, the ageless quarterback of our home team, the Buccaneers. I am also seeing the “Great Relocation” as countless people move to our state and others like Texas. Some moved because their employers allowed them to work from anywhere. Many others did not move for a job. They are attracted by the potential for a more vibrant, entrepreneurial lifestyle. It is also fascinating to see them move to secondary and tertiary cities. Lots more people want a semi-rural lifestyle and retailers like Tractor Supply Co are growing exponentially as they provide them with poultry and other small farming needs.

Going forward, I plan to cover this trend of micro-capitalism a lot closer. Hopefully, in doing so, I can also help investors with some of their analysis. Ditto with HR and Procurement vendors and professionals who help with talent acquisition/development and supplier diversity. There are some truly profound changes happening in the entrepreneur, talent and supply chain economies. 

2022 will be MASSIVELY different!

Welcome back. Hope you had a relaxing break and are ready for a hectic, very different 2022.

Actually, “very different year” has been our annual guiding principle and reflects Deal Architect’s business model. Every year our revenue stream varies and we have learned to be flexible. Let me explain that first, then my belief why 2022 will be truly different.

Deal Architect will turn 18 this year. Back in 2004, I wrote our mission statement:

“We are a boutique advisory firm and content provider which believes in massive leverage. We use our intellectual property in small teams for disproportionate payback for our clients. Our focus is not just IT – we will also focus on energy, health, space and other STEM areas. Our consulting and research are symbiotic - our consulting clients benefit from our research, and our readers benefit from the practical, field feedback from our clients"

The mission has not changed much at all. The blend of our advice and content has, however, changed dramatically.

Our advisory work tends to be ahead of the curve. We started advising clients on India and other talent sourcing. In reverse, we started to tell some of them to rebalance that by the end of the decade given the quality and inflation issues we were seeing. We started helping clients with cloud computing and SaaS evaluations as early as 2005. Now, we are helping clients rethink business processes to reflect massive changes in every vertical industry sector and take advantage of a wide range of digital and automation technologies from robotics to wearables to machine learning. BTW, you don’t hear much about our advisory work. Some of our clients show up in book case studies or in some of our videos but I would never violate their trust - leave it up to them to share what they are comfortable publicly sharing.

Our content has similarly gone through significant change. We started off with two blogs – New Florence and Deal Architect. They have since cataloged nearly 13,000 entries in IT, but also in energy, food, space, travel and many other dimensions. We have published 7 books. Increasingly, we are helping narrate books for C level executives, even considering non-fiction. Hey, if John Grisham could make attorneys exciting, surely someone can do that to tech industry analysts, no? 2 years ago we started videos in the Burning Platform and Analyst Cam series. We have already recorded over 200 episodes.

Both for advisory and content we rely heavily on partnerships with other professionals. For each book, I have leveraged a transcriptionist, an editor and a design wiz. Most of our advisory projects are similarly with other small, highly driven teams.  

We are always being asked to evolve our services and content. We have considered launching a “lite advisory” service – by the day or even by the hour. Content wise - people have asked me how about a podcast? How about a Substack newsletter? 

All worthwhile, but to me it always comes down to form v substance. Each new delivery format takes time away from the substance. And substance wise, this year will be massively different. Here are some of our guiding principles for 2022

• Rebalancing of private and public sector

Going back to days of Keynes, government deficit spending has frequently revved economies out of recessions and other crises. But nothing like the pandemic has seen. In the US alone, our national debt in 2020 and 2021 increased over $6 trillion. That is unhealthy and addictive. Worse, it has given our politicians and bureaucrats almost autocratic power. I see a course correction and a lot more energy back in the private sector. In 2020, I ran a video series where I interviewed C- level execs. It was called “Acrobatics during the Crisis”. We expect to similarly catalog in 2022 private sector heroics and consult with them as they reshape broken supply chains, rebalance their work forces and rethink processes for a changed world.

• Upheaval in most industries

Every industry learned to do something very different during the pandemic. Telemedicine in healthcare, distance learning in higher ed, micro-fulfillment in retail, last mile delivery in food service, virtual open houses in real estate among them. These will get baked into the business fabric for these industries. Climate change is having a similar impact – the circular economy has become a design principle in product design. Digital transformations are allowing for new business models like servitization in many industrial sectors. It is a hugely exciting or frightening time, but no industry will escape untouched. 

• Ascendancy of customer service

One of the biggest casualties of the pandemic has been customer service. I have coined the terms “COVID copout” and “Brexit BS” for some of the excuses we have all experienced. It is universal - in our travels, at auto dealers, at financial institutions, at dining establishments. Here is my reaction – for the next couple of years, businesses which can provide consistent. predictable service while managing price inflation will ABSOLUTELY gain competitive advantage.

• Man-machine rethink

Five years ago I wrote Silicon Collar. The book looked at how automation – machine learning, robotics, unmanned autonomous vehicles, white collar bots, and exoskeletons – was changing the nature of work in over 50 settings – in accounting firms, on the basketball court, in banks, in the oil patch, in R&D labs, on shop floors, in the warehouse and many more. The conclusion “we are no longer white, blue or brown collar workers – we are all Silicon Collar workers since technology is reshaping all our workplaces”. The man- machine balance shifted significantly during the pandemic. People are also talking about the “great resignation”. I am also seeing the “great migration” and the “great retirement” as tens of thousands relocate to my home state, Florida. Many are technically not retiring but starting new careers. And like our quarterback, Tom Brady who at 44 continues to break the laws of aging, are inspiring others to extend their careers, and are attracting surround talent along with their own moves. Companies have long ignored age as a dimension in their diversity goals. I expect that to get rethought.   

• Further content fragmentation

For my blogs, I have always read a portfolio of magazines and watched a wide range of non-political video channels. The pandemic and climate change focus has got us addicted to lots of COVID and weather and energy related news. I am seeing lots of citizens question government propaganda, media bias and social media censorship. The old Watergate “follow the money” guidance is alive and well when it comes to trust about information.  As a result, information fragmentation has massively accelerated - I have been amazed how many fringe platforms and media personalities have gained market share.  The good news is I tend to depend more on primary research and balance out a wide range of information sources. The more the merrier.

Long and short, I believe 2022 is the true start of a brand new decade after a couple of aberrant years. As Brady likes to scream “Let’s Go” and  that is now part of his new Hertz endorsements.

Burning Platform: A Christmas musical card

In the 66^th episode of Burning Platform, we repeat another holiday tradition, this time courtesy of Bonnie Tinder, founder and CEO of Raven Intel. Last year, Sandy Lo of Zoho had contributed Christmas carols on her piano.

Bonnie is immensely gifted. We had discussed her business which monitors project management trends and SI quality metrics here.  She has written about her figure skating and about her immensely entertaining lab, Grommet in the passion series on New Florence.

Here she introduces us to her flute and to her talented, 16 year old pianist son, Wally and mother Barbara Duncan (who is also Wally’s piano teacher)

Bonnie and Barbara start with What Child is This? and at 5.07 play Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Wally plays Silent Night at 2.13. He is joined by Grommet, who is very well behaved. I suspect he is quietly scheming his next adventure.

Last week I shared the Curmudgeon Christmas Card with Dennis Howlett. That was a lot of fun. This one is pure joy - certainly has been the easiest episode for me to edit:)

What a talented family and what a beautiful gift to this series. Thank you, Bonnie.

Merry Christmas, everyone

Oracle’s Vertical “Simul” Chess game

When my daughter, Rita was younger, she was a chess fanatic and good enough to be ranked number 1 among Florida girls. She wrote a column about chess and technology for me 12 years ago here. 

I take no credit for her talent, other than I chaperoned her to countless tournaments around the country. I remember she was particularly fond of the pre-tournament activities where kids could play blitz, bughouse and other modern day variants of the game. Quite often there would be a treat where a grandmaster would play a “simul” – walk around a room and simultaneously play against 20 to 30 kids over a couple of hours. While supposedly in fun, kids would be highly motivated to beat their handicapped competitor, who in turn certainly did not want to lose face by being checkmated on too many of those boards. Indeed, the great Bobby Fischer included one of his simul games in his classic, My 60 Memorable Games.  

I have watched Oracle play a game of “simul” when it comes to vertical investments. It makes a move in an industry, then moves on to another. Its most recent move is to acquire the healthcare vendor, Cerner for $28 billion. While it has long been acquisitive, this will be its biggest ever purchase. Vendors play all kinds of games when they talk commitment to industries so one of the “Vinnie Vertical’s” filters is how many operational users and practitioners, not just back office users touch a piece of supposedly vertical software. That would include shop floor workers in manufacturing, claims adjusters in insurance etc. Cerner clears that filter. Its electronic health records are used by many doctors and nurses and it has emergency room and other clinical coverage.

I must admit I still don’t see the end game on this chess board. Maybe because I have not seen the end game for other industries even after decades. At Gartner in the late 90s, I witnessed how Oracle put together a promising consortium for the CPG industry. That included IMI for order processing, Manugistics for demand forecasting, Indus for asset management and Datalogix for Process Manufacturing. Individually, the components were impressive. As an integrated ERP offering however, as one client put it. “it looked like they had just met in the lobby and put slides together in the elevator up to see us”. Likely unfair to Oracle, but to me SAP, Intentia (now part of Infor) had far better integrated offerings for that vertical.

Starting in 2004, Oracle went deeper than partnerships. It garnered an applications foothold in several industries through acquisitions like Retek in retail, JD Edwards (via PeopleSoft) for manufacturing, i-Flex in commercial banking, Portal in media and telco, SPL Worldgroup in utilities, Primavera for project oriented industries and MICROS for hospitality and other point of sale settings among others. However, again we have not seen a “land and expand” across the application landscape in these verticals. Or tight integration with its Fusion back office applications. In fact, I wonder, to use a grocery industry metaphor, if they are just loss-leaders to allow Oracle to sell its database, tools and infrastructure to those sectors.

Oracle’s NetSuite acquisition in 2016 promised more contemporary industry functionality in the cloud especially with its services and retail capabilities. But, best as I can tell, the functionality has not spread. It continues to sell PSA functionality to project based businesses when the recent excitement is around field services in asset intensive markets and the trend towards servitization in many industrial sectors. In retail, the pandemic taught us eCommerce is necessary but not sufficient. Automated warehouses, last mile delivery and micro-fulfillment are even more important. NetSuite could have sold that functionality like hotcakes. Instead, tens of thousands of merchants have gone with services from Amazon and Spotify for their scale in fulfillment.    

So will Cerner be the launching pad for a much bigger healthcare presence for Oracle or is it a yet another one-time foray? In the US, healthcare is definitely poised for massive change. It costs a whopping fifth of our GDP and our outcomes are not that impressive. COVID has shown starkly the underlying health of many Americans is pretty poor.  Worse, the COVID politics have reduced trust in the medical community. There is growing impatience with the massive inefficiency in the sector. And yet, there are several positive signs. The speed at which the vaccines were developed and distributed through the cold chain was impressive. We learned to accelerate clinical trials and health systems learned to expand critical care capacity and make staff mobile across states. We have finally embraced telemedicine after decades of trying. Our trackers and new digital clinics are allowing us to collect tons more health data. The competitive landscape keeps evolving with every major tech vendor dabbling with digital health initiatives.  

In fairness, Oracle appears happy with its vertical investments. At an event I attended in 2014, late CEO Mark Hurd presented impressive industry metrics– 21,000 employees, 10% of total R&D, 26 industry specific acquisitions in the previous 5 years. And the payback – in the past 3 1/2 years, Oracle’s industry specific revenues had tripled, though he did not break out how the industry specific applications business had grown. 

It’s hard to tell where Oracle has evolved sector by sector. It loves to mostly highlight its financial and hr applications. As I have written before “Larry Ellison (uses) the ERP moniker in earnings calls and event keynotes, but never really discusses any operational functionality.” Larry has had other vertical opportunities, at least at a personal level. He has supercharged one of his passions, sailing with innovative technology as this article describes.  His friend Steve Jobs, gave him a front row seat as Apple launched its wildly successful retail store imitative. Not sure if Oracle has mined that advantage in the sports/entertainment and retail worlds. 

May be that is part of the strategy. Walk around the room playing at multiple industry chessboards. Smile a lot, say all the right things about "vertical clouds", but don’t disclose much. When you write a whopping big check for $28 billion, you get to write many of the rules.

So maybe, just maybe they are playing Go while everyone else is playing chess. Sun Tzu would surely approve.

Burning Platform: Analyzing the Analysts

In the 65rd episode of Burning Platform, we host Duncan Chapple, Co-Director of the Analyst Observatory at the U of Edinburgh.

He presents a summary of their 20^th annual Analyst Value Survey. It is a fascinating discussion of how the influencer space keeps evolving.

We cover dramatic shifts in technology buying centers  – verticalization and the impact of the pandemic, the growth of Asia/Pac, shadow IT and the fragmented landscape of advisers they turn to – traditional firms like Gartner, advisory firms like Everest, the Big 4, peer review sites like G2.

We discuss the changing role of the Analyst Relations functions in vendors and the likely move away from somewhat static, formulaic approach to market research to more scenario based planning.

We discuss several other topics – using analyst firms for influence v intelligence, the perception of analyst independence and the value of their content and market research.

The session ran long but we could have easily gone much longer. As an example we did not touch much on the impact of strategy consulting firms like McKinsey and BCG especially in complex digital transformations , and the advice, blogs and videos a small firm like mine brings to this landscape.

Burning Platform: Innovations and vertical trends in ERP for SMEs

In the 64th episode of Burning Platform, we host Rainer Zinow, who heads product management for SAP’s mid-market ERP offerings and Jory Lamb, CEO and Founder of VistaVu, a SAP midmarket partner which also offers their own complementary products

In the Analyst Cam episode I ran yesterday, Rainer presented the positioning of Business One v Business By Design v S/4HANA 

Here, Jory kicks it off by presenting on a customer, SEF Energy which provides Industrial Field Services in the oilfield equipment vertical. It nicely brings out IoT, predictive maintenance, employee health and safety and rental revenue angles. We next discuss the wholesale and distribution sector where they similarly have verticalized offerings which are getting increased focus given the many supply chain issues during the pandemic. He talks about how they prioritize across SAP’s many verticals. He also discusses implementations and automating labor on their projects.

Rainer talks about agriculture and the food and beverage supply chain. He also shows off a book which he says describes hundreds of SAP micro-verticals and innovations with a SME focus.  That book is available here 

The two episodes bring out nicely SAP’s strength in the mid-market contrary to the market perception as them only being a choice for large, global companies

Analyst Cam: SAP's ERP portfolio for SMEs

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ) as part of my Analyst Cam series. https://bit.ly/34eWDMD

On the best of days, it is difficult to navigate SAP’s very wide product portfolio. And from a marketing pov, S/4HANA and cloud properties like SuccessFactors get much of the attention. So, one of my goals this year was to get exposure to SAP Industries and to SAP offerings for small and mid-market customers. You can see my extensive vertical coverage summarized here.

Rainer Zinow, who heads SAP product management for its mid market ERP offerings has been very generous with his time over the last few months and presents below crisply on the positioning of Business One v Business ByDesign and also v S/4HANA. As he points out customers can be confident they will not outgrow SAP’s product portfolio.

We discuss plenty of topics of interest to SMEs including multi-tenancy, augmented reality, ML and in case of MNCs, the opportunities and challenges of two-tier implementations to blanket their smaller subsidiaries around the world.

He next invited Jory Lamb, CEO and Founder of VistaVu, a SAP B1 and BYD partner to join him to discuss innovations and verticalization for the SME market. I will run that as a Burning Platform episode tomorrow.

The two episodes bring out nicely SAP’s strength in the mid-market contrary to the market perception as them only being a choice for large, global companies

Burning Platform: Curmudgeon Christmas – Part 2

In the 63rd episode of Burning Platform, we (again) host Dennis Howlett, who retired earlier in the year from Diginomica.

In part 1 yesterday, we spent time discussing very different 2021s we have each had.

In part 2 below, he talks about his scale models – tanks and armored vehicles and the intricate detail in assembling and painting them. He had detailed more in the passion column he wrote for me earlier in the year

It is a very relaxed Dennis – other than a nagging cough. And like I mentioned earlier, he pretty philosophical. And incredibly busy for a retired man and about to host and cook for his extended family of 25 for Christmas.   

Burning Platform: Curmudgeon Christmas – Part 1

In the 62nd episode of Burning Platform, we (again) host Dennis Howlett, who retired earlier in the year from Diginomica. While we spend a lot of time talking about what keeps him busy, it is also philosophical – how the new communities he deals with are so much more collaborative than those in tech.

In part 1 today, we start off picking on Frank Scavo who missed this year’s recording - and was not there to defend himself:)

Dennis then talks about and shows plenty of photos of his prolific cooking these days. Lots of “from scratch” cuisine including grinding of coffee beans. Plenty of Italian, English and American grilled fare. He plans to host his large family – now  at 25 across 4 generations including his rock star, Judith and his faithful walking companion, Mable – in batches over Christmas.

He also shows off his new home in the country – new is a misnomer as it actually dates back to the 1850s. 

At 27.55 I take over and share some details about our 2021 – very different from Dennis’s. We then talk about what we expect from 2022.

In part 2 tomorrow, he talks about his scale models – tanks and armored vehicles and the intricate detail in assembling and painting them. 

It is a very relaxed Dennis – other than a nagging cough. And like I mentioned, pretty philosophical.

Burning Platform: Generational Shift in Content creation, distribution and consumption – Part 2

In the 61st episode of Burning Platform, we (again) host Paul Greenberg of The 56 Group, widely recognized as the Godfather of CRM and as co-host of the popular CRM Playaz video show.

In part 1 yesterday we discussed workplaces where we  now managing experiences around four generations – Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z. As Paul points out, the last two are growing exponentially in influence and purchasing power and expect very different content, media and formats

In part 2 below we discuss how Big Brands like P&G are adjusting to the power of Millennials and Gen Z and to new channels like TikTok.

Paul also provides a sneak preview of the “broadcast network” he is launching with CRM Playaz co-host, Brent Leary.

 

Burning Platform: Generational Shift in Content creation, distribution and consumption – Part 1

In the 60th episode of Burning Platform, we (again) host Paul Greenberg of The 56 Group and co-host of the popular CRM Playaz video show.

If you know Paul, you know he is a big-hearted, generous storyteller – his books and blogs deliver way more content than you pay for in time or money. Sure enough, our conversation ran long so I am running it in two episodes

In part 1, below we discuss workplaces where we are experiencing four generations – Baby Boomers, Gen Y, Millennials and Gen X. As Paul points out, the last two in particular are increasingly influential in influence and purchasing power and expect very different content, media and formats

We next discuss how enterprise vendors are adjusting to this transition – he highlights Adobe and Salesforce in particular and how they are navigation a new world where TV networks have given way to new content providers, streaming formats We also discuss how vendors have evolved their own communications with another disruptive force – the pandemic and their move to virtual formats. We discuss Zoho, Workday, Microsoft and others.

In part 2  tomorrow we will discuss how Big Brands like P&G are adjusting to the power of Millennials and Gen Z and new channels like TikTok. Paul will also provide a sneak preview of the “broadcast network” he is launching with CRM Playaz co-host, Brent Leary.

We also manage to blend in sports. Paul is a rabid Yankees fan and his firm name invokes the magical year where the Yankees not only won the World Series but also had Don Larsen pitch the only no-hitter in Series play, a perfect game, no less. 

Unit4 pioneers the “hybrid analyst summit”

Since Workday held its first Analyst Summit in 2010 - I had called their effort exhilarating - I have encouraged vendors to adopt a similar format. User Conferences are more for customers - I find analysts intrude on their time when we are invited to those events.

Since then, vendors have become increasingly creative in their summit formats. Plex used to combine them with customer plant visits. Workfront co-mingled one with a customer advisory board meeting. Others have used them to also showcase their new real estate - Infor and SAP in New York, Zoho in Austin.

During the lockdowns of the last 18 months, vendors moved the summits to virtual format. Recognizing every one’s digital fatigue, most vendors kept them short and spread them out. But as Jon Reed of Diginomica and I discussed - see starting at 26.15  here - the virtual format has been somewhat flat. I have compensated with lots of 1:1 conversations and shared over 300 of them in my Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other video episodes. 

So it was good to spent time with Unit4 executives last week, first virtually, then in person in Boston. The virtual part was broadcast from their X4U user conference. The in-person portions were a dinner, followed by a 6 hour event at the very pleasant Intercontinental which harkens memories of the Tea Party in 1773. The access to Unit4 executives in all 3 segments was impressive and they had safety protocols in place with certification requirements, masks etc. Not overbearing, just prudent.

The content in the in-person day was particularly striking. CEO Mike Ettling described how he had focused Unit4 in his 3 year tenure- as he described it they had accumulated a variety of "hot dog stands" he had cleaned out. He presented on how they adapted to the pandemic. He discussed the ‘dikes’ they raised - operating principles to keep them protected. He had described some in this episode. 

He also discussed the move from Advent to TA Associates as their lead private equity investor earlier this year. In the middle of the pandemic, they had face to face meetings and due diligence with 15 PE firms before settling with TA. Off the record, he had described to me more of the intense 4 month process. PE firms are a mystery to most of us - this would make for a dramatic book. I hope someday he writes it. Or let’s me narrate it for him.

He then invited Morgan Seigler, a Managing Director of TA and co-head of TA's Europe Technology Group to present their perspective and expectations. As he told us, they see ‘riches in niches’ and are investing in a variety of vertical enterprise software vendors.

That was a good segue for later sessions which featured the product - an update on the ERPx rollout and the Industry Mesh they announced - see image below, with plans to verticalize for Unit4's target industries. It also included a customer section which profiled Buro Happold – a global firm with 1,700 staff who consult with architects and engineers - in line with Unit4’s vertical focus on service- and project-focused businesses. 

The variety in the sessions and the generosity in executive access truly stood out. Brad Everett and Antonella Crimi who head their corporate marketing and AR efforts did a really nice job coordinating the complex logistics of the hybrid agenda. Either in virtual or in person mode, I think they managed to engage over 50 analysts. 

I think every vendor can learn from the Unit4 event, but I should point out not every vendor had bought into the in-person summit format even prior to the pandemic. In fact, I got feedback from one they were offended that I had recommended they adopt the format. This vendor also turned down my offer to profile some of their execs in my video series in the last year. They appear comfortable with having analysts wander the halls of their user events. Travel should be a lot easier next year, but I do hope the hybrid format takes off and vendors get even more creative.  

 

Burning Platform: Supply Chains - the good, the bad and the ugly

In the 59th episode of Burning Platform, we (again) host Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters.

We have a wide ranging conversation around supply chains - the challenges in the semiconductor sector, the chaos at the California ports, the labor shortages.

It's not all bad - we discuss the massive scaling of micro-fulfillment and last mile delivery. We discuss why after years of talk, we may see large amounts of manufacturing move back, why the Panama Canal widening may drive a lot more traffic to other N American ports, why the trend of direct-to-consumer is likely to accelerate.

We also discuss shifts in supply chain philosophies - away from lowest cost to resiliency focus and from just in time to just in case. We discuss sustainability and impact on supply chains, and we discuss technology - SCM software and automation in fulfillment.

Lots of ground in half an hour. More to come as supply chains will continue to dominate attention for several more months.  Hopefully, it will not be because Santa had to deliver many lumps of coal instead of gifts stuck in containers.

Analyst Cam: Sora

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 Laura Del Beccaro, Co-Founder and CEO of Sora, I was introduced to them by Workday Ventures.

As with so many companies these days, the focus is on "employee experience". However, in their case it is also about a HR "command center" (Sora is Japanese for sky, to convey that top-down imagery). Besides reducing the need for users to access multiple applications in a HR process, it helps automate tasks like sending out standardized emails and assigning tasks.

She uses the example of migrating a spreadsheet based on-boarding process which syncs data from ADP, Ultipro, Expensify and several other applications and assigns tasks to staff in recruiting, marketing, IT and other departments. The pandemic has opened up many new processes like return back from wfh, vaccination status tracking and others where Sora can act as the "glue"

I think it is the shortest presentation (under 12 minutes) and Sora is also the youngest company (founded 3 years ago, with funding so far around $20 million) in the Analyst Cam series. Laura crisply articulates the value proposition and the employee experience is indeed pleasant once you remove the need for hunting and pecking, and ensuring data integrity across applications.

Burning Platform: HR - "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger"

In the 58th episode of Burning Platform, we host Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer and Managing Partner at Sapient Insights.

I invited Stacey to present key findings from their 2021/2022 HR Systems Survey Key Findings. This is their 24th Annual survey and I am thankful she makes time every year to present to our audience.

While her survey and presentation focuses more on the technology side of HR, we broadened the conversation to process, organizational and culture issues, so it is a longish session but well worth your time.

2020 was an amazingly demanding year for HR with workforce health and safety, WFH transition and plenty of diversity and inclusion issues. 2021 was supposed to be much easier. Instead, in many ways it has been even more challenging with talent shortages, inflation issues, and mass resignations/retirements. Whether you want to credit Kelly Clarkson or the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the expression "what does not kill you, makes you stronger" comes to mind.

The HR role has grown amazingly in the last 2 years. One thing Stacey's data highlights in particular is the growing global scope of HR. Her data is gathered from 2177 unique organizations across 52 countries. Needless to say, that took an extraordinary amount of time to draw patterns from. The survey has a ton of data and she has kindly also made the 50+ page Executive Summary available for download here.

Analyst Cam: SAP Industries - Life Sciences Trends

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 have invited SAP to present updates on various verticals as I discussed here 

This time it is Mandar Paralkar, Head of the Life Sciences sector at SAP.

He discusses increasingly personalized medicine, Big Data coming from public health, personal fitness tech and other sources, and the growing impact of regulatory focus on compliance and the massive cost of healthcare.

He discusses how SAP is helping customers with digital supply chains and leveraging a growing ecosystem of startups via the SAP store. He also covers the SAP RISE offering for the sector.

I would have also liked to have heard more about the extensive SAP role in the COVID Vaccination supply chain, but you can watch an overview video of that here.

He did a nice job summarizing a wide number of trends in 20 minutes. 

Burning Platform: Flashing Red Lights around Green Policy

In the 57th episode of Burning Platform, we host Kurt Marko of MarkoInsights.  He is an IT analyst, consultant and regular contributor to a number of technology publications including Diginomica and AvidThink. Coming out of Stanford with a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering, he started as an EE developing transistors and fabrication processes, went on to Bell Labs to design integrated circuits, and evolved into an IT architect for HP designing systems and networks.

Kurt has the uncanny knack for demystifying complex technical topics and I thought it would be good to have him on the heels of the recent COP 26 Climate Change summit in Glasgow.

We discuss the slow progress at which renewables - solar and wind in particular - are scaling, Germany's disappointing decade with them (see more in my note - The road to energy hell is being paved with good intentions ) and why the new US administration thinks it can do better. We also discuss why the French model with nuclear, the Iceland (and Kenya) model with geothermal, and the Norwegian hydroelectric model are not getting more attention.

We discuss emissions in Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia China, S.Africa  and other countries which continue with plenty of fossil fuels. Kurt has an interesting perspective on CO2 emissions. We discuss why the West appears to be shackling itself when their investment and progress away from fossils is being nullified by that in the developing world. 

We discuss one bright spot - how companies are learning to design and package products more sustainability and how reuse and reduce waste processes are gaining traction. Finally, we discuss the opportunity for software vendors beyond just the analytics around carbon reporting.

Fascinating and thought provoking session.

Analyst Cam: SAP Industries - Retail 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. 

I have invited SAP to present updates on various verticals as I discussed here 

This time it is Achim Schneider, Global Head, SAP Retail Business Unit. It is a two part conversation.

In Part 2 below he discusses logistics/supply chain issues, the store of the future  and new business models, and a roadmap for further SAP innovation.

Yesterday, in Part 1 he covered customer centricity and a "Segment of One" - the front office focus.

Analyst Cam: SAP Industries - Retail 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. 

I have invited SAP to present updates on various verticals as I discussed here 

This time it is Achim Schneider, Global Head, SAP Retail Business Unit. It is a two part conversation.

In Part 1 below which runs about 18 minutes he discusses customer centricity and a "Segment of One" - the front office focus.

In Part 2 tomorrow he will cover in a slightly longer episode,  logistics/supply chain issues, the store of the future  and new business models, and a roadmap for further SAP innovation.

Analyst Cam: SAP Industries - Utilities

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 have invited SAP to present updates on various verticals as I discussed here 

This time it is Markus Bechmann, Global VP Innovation and New Business Models for the Utilities industry at SAP.

He discusses the gradual transition in the industry away from fossil fuels. The resulting intermittent energy is leading to new trading networks. The rise of the "prosumer" is also leading to more fragmentation and bi-directional business models. New entrants like auto makers are reshaping the industry. The industry is also learning to monetize data from its extensive asset base.

The utility industry has a reputation of being slow-moving. Markus will change your mind in this 25 minute conversation.

Burning Platform: Acronyms, Buzzwords and Customer Realities

In the 56th episode of Burning Platform, we host Jon Reed, a co-founder of Diginomica.

He is a fellow Enterprise Irregular who blogs and videocasts on enterprise trends. One of his most popular, regular features is Enterprise Hits and Misses. He is incisive, snarky, funny all at once.

We start off dissecting a Gartner slide from their recent Symposium, a list of 12 of what they call "Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2022" like Hyperautomation.  We use that as a launching pad for a discussion on what we think customers are looking for after the turmoil of the last 18 months. Jon makes a great point - he wishes he could see Gartner's hype cycle around each of their 12 trends.

We discuss the need for application/business process vision in addition to architectural evolution, and the need for OT (operational technology, especially industry specific) in addition to an IT focus.

We also discuss virtual events in the industry. Jon has been particularly forceful in pushing for an evolution in that format.

We also bring into the conversation a fellow analyst, Ray Wang and his new book, Digital Giants. Ray had presented about it in the Analyst Cam series here. 

It is a peek into conversations that us market watchers often have when we are away from tech vendors and buyers. Actually both of us are pretty well behaved - we can be far snarkier when there is no camera in sight:)

Analyst Cam: Altec - Connect right people at the right time with the right document

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 Don Howren, President & COO at Altec, Inc.

Most ERP, CRM and other enterprise vendors like to call themselves "books of record". More often than not, they just have the meta data. The record itself is in some document system - often messy paper files, or in an unlinked digital archive.

Don presents on his DocLink product aimed at the SME market. It could used as a standalone document management system with multiple tags, rules engine and configurable forms. However, the solution becomes much more powerful with its integration with Acumatica, Epicor, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage and SAP Business One. It is designed to support cloud and on-prem integration to give customers deployment flexibility. There is a lot of rich data which is available independently without cluttering the ERP or other enterprise system.

I particularly like the wide range of use cases he discusses including Payables, T&E, Receivables, Seasonal recruiting, Disaster recovery,  Regulatory compliance and Annual audit prep. Of course, over the pandemic, it has facilitated all kinds of remote access to documents, with appropriate security, as everyone has moved to WFH.

Connect right people at the right time with the right document. The value proposition is simple and compelling, especially for paper-intensive processes.

Analyst Cam: Workday Skills Cloud update

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 Cristina Goldt, GM Talent products at Workday who provides an update on how nicely the Workday Skills Cloud has grown.

You would think the demand and supply of talent is largely driven by the skills enterprises need, and those that employees and contractors can provide. In reality, this matching is chaotic, not the least because building a decent taxonomy of skills is daunting. The Bureau of Labor Statistics catalogs over 850 occupations and has a paragraph describing each one of them, but nowhere near the detailed skills each requires. Of course, across industries the same occupation calls for slightly different skills, and each employer in turn adds their own unique nuances. So, many enterprises fall back on traditional talent filters - educational credentials, referrals, cultural fit etc.

Workday has been on a mission to respond to what Cristina calls the "Skills Imperative" and training their machines using data from their customer community with over 55 million employees.  She does a really nice job describing their journey over the last several years, their skills "foundation" including their ontology and inference algorithms, how the Skills Cloud is being used by over 1,000 organizations over the "lifecycle" - hiring, up-skilling, retaining etc. their workforce, and the growing number of Workday products including Talent Marketplace, Career Hub, and Learning which leverage the skills infrastructure.

She mentions a press release during her comments. It is available here with a lot more detail about Workday's response to the Skills Imperative. 

Really invigorating half an hour.

Analyst Cam: SAP Industries - Servitization/XaaS

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 have invited SAP to present updates on various verticals as I discussed here 

This time it is Torsten Welte, Global VP and Head of the Aerospace & Defense IBU. He presents here on his other role at SAP - championing the exciting trend of Servitization (see an earlier discussion on the concept here with IFS executives) and the move to as-a-service models across SAP's 25 vertical focus areas

We cover wide ground:

• what he is seeing in A&D, Industrials, Chemicals, Consumer Products
• types of outcomes being measured,
• technology needed - digital twins (he distinguishes between those needed during design v that needed during operations), contract management, mixed reality to support maintenance in the field
• organizational impacts of outcome based models.

He also covers SAP's Asset Information Network (AIN) which is increasingly playing a large role in such contracts.

It is impressive how he covers so many complex topics across complex sectors in half an hour.

Analyst Cam: SAP Industries - Automotive Trends

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 have invited SAP to present updates on various verticals as I discussed here 

This time it is Hagen Heubach, Global Vice President, Automotive Industry Business Unit.

He does a nice job presenting the massive changes in the mobility sector - the emergence of EVs and autonomous vehicles, the effect of the pandemic on supply chains, direct digital sales, transformation of engineering into software cultures, the increase in services and changes in how they are delivered and how all those changes are re-shaping SAP's vertical offerings.

He also presents on the Catena-X Automotive Network (Catena-X) which focuses on creation, operation and collaborative use of end-to-end data chains along the entire automotive value chain. SAP is a founding member. It was launched in May and already has 60 participants including major German OEMs, Tier suppliers (and growing to include non-German ones as well) and a few other tech vendors.

This is SAP at its strongest - global brand names combined with vertical depth. Hagen presents the capabilities crisply in about 18 minutes.

Analyst Cam: SAP Industries - Circular Economy Trends

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 have invited SAP to present updates on various verticals as I discussed here 

This time it is Natasha Pergl, Director - Global Circular Economy Lead at SAP.

Under CEO Christian Klein, SAP is re-emphasizing sustainability and has a broad agenda focused on "zero emissions, zero waste and zero inequality". The first is going to be difficult in a world where emissions are closely tied to energy usage and are being opportunistically defined as I wrote here recently. The third is noble but SAP risks being accused of "virtue signaling". I think their best opportunity is around reducing waste in what the WEF calls our “take-make-dispose” approach.

So, it is encouraging to see Natasha focus on the second and discuss how SAP is starting to help customers reduce waste in plastics, textiles, batteries and food. As I point out during the conversation, it is a good start, and should continue to improve as SAP focuses more on operational expertise and process support - more of an OT, not just an IT, emphasis.

I commented last year "SAP tried its sustainability message a decade ago under Peter Graf. Back then, it mostly focused on SAP's internal efforts not much about how SAP was helping customers reduce their carbon footprint. Hopefully, this time it will focus on operational systems and helping customers monitor as an example, methane leaks or wind turbine performance not just on broad carbon reporting."

The road to energy hell...is being paved with good intentions

I recently read this article on climate change from a professor in New Zealand

"To stop continuously worsening climate change, we need to stop burning fossil fuels for energy. That’s a tall order, because fossil fuels provide 84% of all the energy used by human civilisation."

He believes we can all live on "4,000kWh of energy per person per year, less than a tenth of what New Zealanders currently use, and an amount easily supplied by renewable energy."

So far so good. I have been excited about wind/solar on the New Florence blog. You can see an average of 10 entries a year for 15 years here. 

But then he provides the sobering reality.

"the only two (low carbon energy sources) with the capacity to scale up to the staggering amount of energy we use are wind and solar. Despite impressive growth (doubling in less than five years), wind provides only 2.2% of all energy, and solar 1.1%."

You think at this point he would tackle the complex issues of why they are not scaling quicker, the cost of transition, how long it would take for that 3% to replace the 84% and who would pay for it. You know, all the practical realities. Nope. Not just him, way too many people talk about the "promised land" but dont address how to get there.

Well, we have a case study over the last decade which has answered some of those questions.

I started pointing out a few years ago that "in spite of spending hundreds of billions of euros on subsidizing renewables, Germany will struggle to meet its 18% renewables target for 2020. The country continues to rely heavily on its coal and lignite, and more recently on natural gas from Russia."

However, most just lauded Angela Merkel as Klimakanzlerin  or "climate chancellor". Now that she is out of office, we are starting to see sobering assessments. Here's Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and New Statesman.

The reality is Lufthansa will fly on aviation fuel, the German export engine will rely on tankers which run on bunker fuel, German auto makers will make diesel cars for a long time. Look at this site about carbon intensity (the amount of CO2 produced to generate a unit of electricity - a kilowatt per hour) across Europe. and look how stark Germany looks.

In contrast, for all the negative publicity the US gets, our greenhouse emissions have been steadily dropping. In 2020, they were below 1990 levels for the first time - helped by the pandemic slowdown, for sure, but significantly as many of our utilities have moved from coal to cleaner gas. 

Unfortunately, China, India and others are nullifying all the progress being made in the West. China now emits 2.5 times greenhouse gases as the US does. Russia, Indonesia and Brazil together equal the US.  India emits as much as all of the EU. 

And they are fairly nonchalant about it. Many of my smart Indian friends will say, "but our per capita emissions are not that high". I respond tell a melting iceberg that - total emissions are what matter. Next, they will use the guilt trip. "The West contributed a lot more to global pollution with the Industrial Revolution and other economic progress over the last couple of centuries. It's our turn". My response - you skipped the horse buggy when it came to mobility. You leapfrogged landlines and massively adopted mobile phones. You can similarly leapfrog fossil fuels.

But leapfrog to what?

The answer may come from the carbon intensity chart I pointed to above. Look at how green France, Iceland and Norway look compared to Germany. They have done so with a focus on nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric power respectively. 

It is a reminder to all of us to not just look at renewables. We should all be looking at a balanced energy strategy.

We also will need to quit demonizing fossils. Life without fossil fuels will not be a piece of cake. As these authors point out "Before fossil fuels, life was hard and dirty with shorter life expectancies. Thousands of products made from petroleum derivatives used for medications, electronics, plastics, and transportation simply did not exist. Many developing countries still don't have easy access to fossil fuels. With limited transportation systems and few petroleum-based products, they do not enjoy the same opportunities as others."

We are starting to see gas prices skyrocket and this winter we will see high heating costs. Get ready for more such spikes for the next few years. The transition away from fossils - remember the dominant 84% above - will be bumpy.

The less idealistic we are about fossils and renewables, and even less we pin hopes on the West as the mythical Atlas which can carry the whole world on its shoulders, and more realistically we plan for transition with a balanced energy strategy the better.

Analyst Cam - Zoho One update, 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. 

This time is Taylor Backman, Senior Evangelist at Zoho. He pre-briefed me on the new Zoho One bundle which was publicly announced today. This new bundle features 5 new apps, 3 new services, and 7 major platform enhancements. I am running his presentation in two parts - an overview for about 15 minutes in Part 1 yesterday, and screenshots and other product description below for about 25 minutes.

I have compared the suite to Amazon Prime "The more I heard of Zoho One and the growing apps coverage for the same price, I thought of how Amazon Prime has grown in coverage. It started off a free 2 day shipping, then added free movies and since then countless new features."

Over 40,000 organizations have chosen Zoho One since it was launched in 2017 and marketed as their "operating system". During the months of global and economic crises, Zoho says the bundle saw a 60% y-y customer growth with average number of apps used by businesses rising to 21.

Burning Platform: Servitization Trends - Part 2

In the 54th and 55th episode of Burning Platform, we host Marne Martin, President of the Service Management GBU and Mark Brewer, Global Industry Director for Service Management at IFS.

We discuss the accelerating trend of servitization which is leading a number of industrial/product companies to emphasize service units and adopt different business models.

In yesterday's episode, the focus was on case studies from various sectors - aerospace, renewable energy and reverse vending among others and the spectrum of business models, especially outcome based that are becoming the highlight of the servitization trend.

In the second episode today, we talk about how companies are dealing with labor shortages, the next-gen service worker, automation and other defining trends as digital and physical world services evolve.

IFS is better known as an ERP vendor, and a European centric one at that. This conversation will open your eyes to their field/customer services savvy and their global reach.   

Analyst Cam - Zoho One update, 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. 

This time is Taylor Backman, Senior Evangelist at Zoho. He pre-briefed me on the new Zoho One bundle which was publicly announced today. This new bundle features 5 new apps, 3 new services, and 7 major platform enhancements. I am running his presentation in two parts - an overview for about 15 minutes in Part 1 below, and screenshots and other product description tomorrow for about 25 minutes.

I have compared the suite to Amazon Prime "The more I heard of Zoho One and the growing apps coverage for the same price, I thought of how Amazon Prime has grown in coverage. It started off a free 2 day shipping, then added free movies and since then countless new features."

Over 40,000 organizations have chosen Zoho One since it was launched in 2017 and marketed as their "operating system". During the months of global and economic crises, Zoho says the bundle saw a 60% y-y customer growth with average number of apps used by businesses rising to 21.

 

Analyst Cam: SAP Industries - Direct to Consumer

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 have invited SAP to present updates on various verticals as I discussed here 

Kicking it off is Paul Smith, Global Industry Principal in their Consumer Products IBU

He presents on the trend of Direct to Consumer, which accelerated significantly during the pandemic. To be able to do so successfully, Consumer Products companies are learning to market directly and differently to a newer, younger consumer and facing up to the challenge of ecommerce and fulfillment of much smaller orders from consumers.

Paul covers a lot of industry trends and SAP's customer DTC journeys.

Burning Platform: Servitization Trends - Part 1

In the 54th and 55th episode of Burning Platform, we have Marne Martin, President of the Service Management GBU and Mark Brewer, Global Industry Director for Service Management at IFS.

We discuss the accelerating trend of servitization which is leading a number of industrial/product companies to emphasize service units and adopt different business models.

In this episode, the focus in on case studies from various sectors - aerospace, renewable energy and reverse vending among others and the spectrum of business models, especially outcome based that are becoming the highlight of the servitization trend.

In the second episode tomorrow, we will talk about how companies are dealing with labor shortages, the next-gen service worker and related automation and other defining trends as digital/physical world services converge.

IFS is better known as an ERP vendor, and a European centric one at that. This conversation will open your eyes to their field/customer services savvy and their global reach.   

Thinking outside the Magic Quadrant

First an apology, I could have it titled this post as well with the Forrester Wave or the IDC MarketScape.

Next a mea culpa, I unleashed a few MQs during my tenure at Gartner in the 90s. However, in the years since I have become much more aware of the disconnect between tech buyers and vendors about the value of such tools.

When I was at Gartner, its revenues came largely from buyers. In the run up to Y2K, my colleagues and I did thousands of calls with buyers actively making ERP decisions. Coming up with the MQs - the leaders, challengers - was pretty easy with that market driven data. We did not have a composite win/loss analysis but we could make some pretty educated guesses about market share and momentum.

In today’s much more fragmented IT marketplace, especially since analyst revenues have become more vendor centric it must be so much more difficult. Analysts have to poll vendors for what we used to gather from market signals. You hear vendors whisper in frustration at how much effort it requires on their part.

The bigger issue is how buyers use MQs or Waves. It is just the tip of a spear. It is used to come up with a short list of vendors to evaluate. Detailed RFPs, demos, site visits, reference calls, lengthy negotiations are far more influential in the final decision. Nearly 15 years ago, I wrote about the ‘1,000 points of influence’. With growth of social media, the influence points have only grown. In composite, they help buyers derive their personalized "Interactive MQ".

Also, once they have decided on a vendor, most buyers don’t pay much attention to that MQ category till their next purchase - that could be a couple of decades. Oh, if a vendor drops precipitously from the Leader to the Niche quadrant, they would be concerned, but such moves tend to be glacial.

Vendors, in contrast, get their microscopes out to measure how much they moved from one MQ to the next. It’s fodder for press releases. I especially enjoy the Triple Crown announcements. “We are a leader in Analyst A, B and C’s tools.” I want to ask them - and how many buyer steps above did that eliminate?

MQs and similar tools also tend to reinforce silos in analyst firms. That can drive what I have described as Addressable Market Myopia 

There is a whole community of very committed Analyst Relations folks at vendors. Ignoring MQs would be suicidal, but does so much talent need to be invested every year on the MQ/MarketScape process?

Some of them will ask me what would you do differently. I am happy to help them think outside the box - ok, the square - in how to directly help their sales colleagues in their pursuits. How to help their companies think about and present their products differently and much more creatively. How to look around the corner - the analyst intermediary.  

No press release needed.

Analyst Cam: Alpine Supply Chain Solutions and Warehouse automation

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 Tom Ryan, my former Gartner colleague. Along with Michael Wohlwend, Managing Principal at Alpine Supply Chain Solutions, they recently presented an hour-long webinar "Battle of the Bots" focused on warehouse automation. They kindly allowed me to excerpt about 18 minutes below.

One of the most sophisticated examples of warehouse automation has shown up in Amazon's massive fulfillment centers. I wrote about my tour to one here. I also excerpted from their virtual tour of 5 of their centers in the Analyst Cam episode here. I also interviewed the co-CEOs of 6 River Systems (now part of Spotify, both Amazon alums) last year, and also had an Analyst Cam episode on their bots here.

Tom discussed 6 fulfillment methods/use cases where robots increasingly participate. I have excerpted 3 below - Goods to Person, Order to Person and Long Distance Product Moves. He also discusses some of the vendors and models for each.  I have also included his commentary on economics of such automation.

Very nicely done in plain English and with crisp graphics.

The full webinar which contains more commentary on the evolution of warehouse automation, some polling and q&a during the webinar and 3 other fulfillment scenarios is available here. 

Analyst Cam: Aisera

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 Muddu Sudhakar, CEO of Aisera.

He presents on their Conversational AI driven workflow automation. How it helps takes conversational service requests from what he calls today's "happy hour platforms" where users are spending several hours every day like MS Teams, Slack, Zoom and from traditional IVRs, bypass human intervention and route them appropriately to facilitate as much self-service as possible.

The investment he says is easy to justify - savings in service agent (especially in large, multi-lingual settings), IT and HR time and service licenses can be significant.

He uses the term "hyperautomation" - I asked him to clarify and they support automation in the white collar world (both with on prem and SaaS applications) , not around physical world automation with warehouse bots, drones or industrial robots. 

ERP - Generation Next

I read Jon Reed's  Diginomica interview with Rondy Ng, Senior Vice President, Applications Development at Oracle. He cites some very large cloud ERP customers - Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, FedEx, Kroger and Albertsons. Encouragingly, he also cites plenty of global coverage. Good to see that traction.

But what functionality have they deployed? I saw General Ledger mentioned a couple of times along with procurement and analytics. But no mention of manufacturing, logistics, banking/brokerage functionality, micro-fulfillment, or reverse logistics. I have heard Larry Ellison similarly use the ERP moniker in earnings calls and event keynotes, but never really discuss any operational functionality. Leads me to ask: Is that the new, shrunk definition of ERP - core financials and possibly human resources?

While I was pondering that, I found myself going down memory lane to 1995 when I joined Gartner. Gartner had coined the ERP term and they had made a conscious effort to bring in several new recruits with business process expertise. Tom Ryan, as part of the ILS service, brought warehouse management and broader logistics experience. Chris Jones, part of CIM, brought process manufacturing. As part of AAS, I brought financial and hr expertise from years at Price Waterhouse. There were several others who focused on PDM, MKT and other functional areas. We definitely contributed to a proliferation in TLAs but I know for a fact we drove vendors to sharpen their process breadth and depth.  Talking of TLAs, I had coined one - AMM - Addressable Market Myopia for vendors who were narrow in their functional reach, but did not dare propose it to Gartner censors :) 

When I left in 2000, I was confident Gartner would expand its ERP focus beyond manufacturing sectors. After all, in most western economies, nearly 3/4 of jobs were in the service sector. And each has unique books of record - insurance needs those around policies and claims, health care had unique clinical and compliance requirements and so on. The manufacturing sector itself was morphing significantly. The products are smarter with embedded software and sensors. The plant was becoming more autonomous. Asset management was no longer just about calculating depreciation for the CFO. It is about predictive maintenance, more sophisticated servicing via digital twins and augmented reality.

But Gartner has only inconsistently focused on this functional evolution. Many of the process experts they had hired in the 90s were gone by the end of the decade.  If anything, it swung back to its IT comfort zone and has emphasized the architectural aspects of cloud computing. And, almost on cue, many ERP vendors made transitioning to the cloud their major focus of the last couple of decades. Functionality and process expertise took a back seat. No wonder, some vendors are shrinking their definitions of ERP to suit their limited functionality. And CRM, EAM and other categories have encroached on spaces ERP vendors have neglected.

I sense a new generation of ERP coming. The pendulum is swinging from a technology focus to a functional focus. The pandemic has sharpened industry specific needs. Telemedicine in healthcare, distance learning in higher education, virtual open houses and digital mortgages in real estate are just some of the examples.

Just last week, I had several reminders of the functional evolution. Zoho gave me a pre-briefing on its updated Zoho One suite. It will officially be announced in a couple of weeks, but the suite has now grown to 45 applications. SAP has lined up 9 briefings for me across its verticals. I met with Mike Ettling, CEO of Unit4 and we discussed how his verticals are evolving. I was part of a virtual event on Servitization and heard how automotive, construction and many other sectors are increasingly moving to "everything as a service".     

Gartner coined the term ERP just prior to when I got there. But for a couple of decades companies had already been deploying MRP and MRP II functionality. We will similarly see a next generation. It may not even be called ERP - to shed the baggage the moniker has acquired with too many delayed and bloated projects.

But the market is definitely marching forward. One thing I am fairly certain of - the next gen of ERP will not suffer from AMM - Addressable Market Myopia.

Adding from a twitter thread with Jon

In fairness many other vendors have not evolved their functionality especially during the pandemic and with recent supply chain issues. Lots of brilliant architects but few process visionaries. Need both.

With brilliant architects but no process visionaries you would never get Amazon’s fulfillment center with chaos theory models, miles of conveyors and hundreds of robots. You would deliver the old process model.

Burning Platform: AI in the Enterprise

In this 53rd episode of Burning Platform, we have Roy Altman, CEO of Peopleserv.

We draw on his recent experience editing of an issue of Workforce Solutions Review focused on AI (available here)

We cover a wide range of angles - the long history of AI , how it has under-delivered in the past and why the current iteration is more promising. We talk about abundance of data in consumer world to train machines, compared to that in enterprise settings where most data is locked up in proprietary data centers. We cover ethical issues around smart machines and whether AI will lead humanity to utopia or dystopia. 

Marc Benioff's bet on 'Trusted Enterprises"

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, used his keynote at Dreamforce to point out that we are "in a trust crisis". He coined a new term, Trustblazers, building on the successful Trailblazer community around the company. He showcased several of his customers as examples of "trusted enterprises" and promised “We want to have a playbook for this new trusted enterprise. It‘s got to start with trust. It has to.”

Watch the rerun here

To me, Marc and his team definitely have the credibility to talk about "trusted enterprises".  As far back as 2010, I wrote "I saw several signs of openness  - like its trust site which showcases performance metrics for all, including competitors, to see. How many vendors, even years after salesforce started that site, openly showcase their operational metrics?"

When Marc talks diversity and inclusion, I see it in his executives like Tony Prophet, Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh and Jujhar Singh. Not only are they competent, they are modest enough like Tony is in the interview linked to say, they themselves have a long way to go.  I hear it in the words of Tyler Prince when he describes how he has also pushed a focus on diversity in the ecosystem around Salesforce.

He has credibility as customers plan for COVID recovery with the push around his recent acquisition, Slack as a collaboration, work from anywhere, platform and as he calls it his "Digital HQ"

What I would caution Marc (and other influential executives) about is the zealots who jump on the bandwagon of "causes". I recently commented on Dennis Howlett's post on "Wokeistan" "These are do gooders who guilt us all about gender, race, sexual orientation, inequality, sustainability, vaccines and so much else. You must agree with our position - don’t dare present contrary data or else you are racist, sexist, MAGA, deserve canceling, and worse."

Let's look at sustainability, as an example. We should have been focusing on the "circular economy" which the WEF defines as “an industrial system that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design." Instead, a lot of attention has gone toward demonizing fossil fuels and building up renewables, particularly wind and solar fuel.

As Europe stares at a winter with major fuel shortages, it is useful to learn from the German experience over the last decade 

I started pointing out a few years ago that "in spite of spending hundreds of billions of euros on subsidizing renewables, Germany will struggle to meet its 18% renewables target for 2020. The country continues to rely heavily on its coal and lignite, and more recently on natural gas from Russia."

However, most just lauded Angela Merkel as Klimakanzlerin  or "climate chancellor". Now that she is out of office, we are starting to see sobering assessments. Here's Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and New Statesman.

The reality is Lufthansa will fly on aviation fuel, the German export engine will rely on tankers which run on bunker fuel, German auto makers will make diesel cars for a long time. Look at this site about carbon intensity (the amount of CO2 produced to generate a unit of electricity - a kilowatt per hour) across Europe. 

The important thing is not to just focus on Germany which looks a bit stark. Look instead at how green France, Iceland and Norway look. They have done so with a focus on nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric power  It is a reminder to other economies to not just look at renewables. We should all be looking at a balanced energy strategy. And expand the definition of sustainability.

In their fervor, fanboys actually hurt the credibility of so many other worthy causes. I can provide several more examples around many causes where they have narrowed the focus. Hope Marc emphasizes a 360 degree view as he builds the playbook. 

In the meantime, watch the keynote and Marc's passion about building trust.

A SAP vertical "Dream Team"

I have long believed navigating SAP is like going on an Easter egg hunt. You know there are lots and lots of goodies, but it takes effort to find them. That was reinforced when I wrote SAP Nation 3.0. I kept asking about CX, AIN, IBP and vertical products. Thanks to Stacey Fish, I was able to delay the book a few times and get those perspectives in the book.

I have been pushing SAP to hear more about verticals especially after seismic changes in so many industries with the pandemic last year. It took a while but Stacy Comes managed to put together a briefing for me with the following executives

• Torsten Welte - Aerospace & Defense
• Matt Laukaitis – Consumer Industries
• Hagen Heubach – Automotive
• Achim Schneider - Retail
• EJ Kenney – Consumer Products
• Markus Bechmann– Utilities 

It was exhilarating and there was very little mention of S/4HANA and cross-industry business networks, which usually get plenty of SAP coverage. 

We identified several topics where one of them will present as part of my Analyst Cam series over the next few weeks. Here are a few:

• Direct to Consumer trends
• The shifting transportation/mobility market and related networks
• Outcome based business models
• Circular economy trends
• Fragmentation in the utility sector
• Energy transition in utilities
• Personalized Medicine

SAP, of course, plays in many more sectors and it will be good to also explore those in future. SAP's backyard is full of impressive customer brands across industries and countries. Makes for a nice egg hunt. 

Burning Platform: Customer Service as Competitive Advantage

Last year, I launched a video series titled Acrobatics during the Crisis. I saw all kinds of heroics scaling up healthcare, ecommerce, last-mile delivery, millions of emergency PPP loans and many other services. This year, while the pandemic continues, I have seen a noticeable decline in service quality - supply chain disruptions and labor shortages explain much of that but I also see quite of bit of that is what I call COVID and BREXIT "copouts."

The stage is set for companies to step up with service heroics and gain sustainable advantage over their competitors. In the enterprise, industrial world, there is a clear acceleration in the trend of servitization - where product companies are selling them on "as a service" and outcome based models and service companies are moving from transactional, break-fix type services to more strategic relationships. Again, a huge opportunity to differentiate.

With this background, I invited Sarah Nicastro, Vice President of Customer Advocacy at IFS and creator of industry resource Future of Field Service to this 52nd episode of Burning Platform.  

Sarah is a keen observer of trends in customer service with her regular podcasts on the Future of Field Service which features leaders from global brands across industries such as AT&T, Peloton, Southwest Airlines, Tetra Pak and Unilever.

We cover wide ground especially around the people/work aspects of the service economy. We also discuss that IFS has become very service savvy. People still view it as an ERP player but as Sarah points out it is also a 6 time leader in the Gartner Field Service Management MQ. IFS has also gone through a major rebranding exercise with a focus on what it calls "Moments of Service" and we will be hearing a lot more about their service capabilities.