deal architect

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.

New Normal: A repeat conversation with Daniel Pullin of TCU

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 a list of growing interviews in the series.

This time it is a revisit with Dean Daniel Pullin at the Neeley School of Business at TCU in Fort Worth, TX.

He describes acrobatics as they moved from on-campus to on-line classes in 10 days. I asked him to send me some photos of the "new normal". Those are at the front of the video - classrooms with masks, distancing and other protection, classrooms moved outdoors and Zoom classes.  

He also describes how they rapidly launched a new Master of Science in Business Analytics, how they scrambled to help students with alternatives to internships and job offers which disappeared in the weak economy, the protocols they have in place as students and athletics return to campus, the various verticals they keep launching to help business graduates get a nice grounding in supply chain, energy, healthcare and other industry nuances.

Higher education is deceptively calm looking from the outside. Dean Pullin, in his measured way, describes the intensity his team has shown in the last few months.

 

Burning Platform: Why does my software not have its own passport?

In episode 10 of the Burning Platform series, Brian Sommer and I talk about talk about the slow pace at which software vendors globalize their offerings. We also talk about the pandemic and impact on global strategies.  We also discuss software options for customers - two-tier solutions, specialists and others.

 

New Normal: A conversation with Jeremy Bloom of Integrate

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 Jeremy Bloom, CEO of Integrate, a B2B marketing software company. Impressively, he is the only athlete in history to ski in the Olympics and be drafted into the NFL. He was also a founder of Wish of a Lifetime foundation, which recently joined forces with AARP.

It was good to get an elite athlete's point of view with so much chaos around us. "Focus on what you can control, attack that with gusto, everything else is noise". Having already accomplished so much at a young age he says he has become a "life experience" junkie. He has a curiosity and a sponge like quality we could all emulate.

Asked about heroics, I liked that he singled out ordinary workers working at grocery stores and in last mile delivery. He calls out a customer, Carbon 3D which repurposed its printing technology for face shields and other PPE. He talks about how their cloud solutions have allowed customers to easily scale with WFH formats.

He also talks about a series of town halls he has organized over the last few months. Athletes from his network, but also sleep scientists, economists, even a police sergeant from the town where George Floyd was killed. There is an authenticity to these sessions which is calming in these polarizing times.

Overall, very inspiring and amazing humble for all his accomplishments.

The Analyst Cam: Workday VIBE

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. 

Barbry McGann, Executive Director, Office of the CHRO, Solution Marketing at Workday presented on their new VIBE Index and VIBE Central offerings. VIBE is acronym for Value Inclusion, Belonging, and Equity.

Their definition of diversity includes a wide range of dimensions like ethnicity, generation, even political affiliation. Employees self-identify, and Workday functionality across every stage from the hiring process to promotions and Prism analytics allow you to generate the Index. Surveys allow you to quantify sentiment - the employee sense of belonging. What's powerful is they offer  "intersectionality" so you can filter, for example, by "Native American, Male, Veteran, Frontline Worker". Dashboards make up VIBE Central and allow for drilldown across the detail.

She describes how the product originated internally at Workday and how customers have rapidly embraced it especially with a heightened focus on diversity and inclusion this summer. Workday continues to actively partner with customers, with response very positive so far – 300 customers signed up to participate in VIBE Central workshops immediately after launch, and three early adopter customers are now underway with their VIBE Index pilots.

Very crisp presentation and demo - look forward to bringing her back with one of the early adopter customers.

 

 

The Analyst Cam: Salesforce Industries Part 3

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. 

Salesforce recently had a Industries Summit where they showcased 12 "industry cloud" tracks. Each track had 8 to 10 customer, partner and product episodes. I attended sessions across most of  the tracks.

I am showcasing lightly edited episodes in each of the Cam entries this week. Here are Tuesday's  and Wednesday's  Each of my videos is about half an hour in length. I have tried to balance industries and geographies across my entries. I gave preference to those which highlighted their handling of the pandemic. Fair warning - what I present is my small sample from a very broad Salesforce portfolio on display during the Summit

Today, it starts with Utilities and Rory Briggs of Centrica Business Solutions. They provide services to utilities across the UK and Ireland, Europe and North America and he discusses complex quotes and proposals to customers

At 10.06, the focus shifts to Insurance and executives from Generali Group in Switzerland. They discuss marketing through a network of agents and related customer data management complexities.

At 22.29, it is Life Sciences. Theresa Zataveski of Merck discusses how they digitally engage through multiple channels with health care providers. I was particularly interested in her comments about digital experiences in Japan and how content in a highly regulated industry has becoming increasingly customized to channels and personalized.

The Analyst Cam: Salesforce Industries Part 2

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

Salesforce recently had a Industries Summit where they showcased 12 "industry cloud" tracks. Each track had 8 to 10 customer, partner and product episodes. I attended sessions across most of  the tracks.

I am showcasing lightly edited episodes in each of the Cam entries this week. I posted one yesterday. Each of my videos is about half an hour in length. I have tried to balance industries and geographies across my entries. I gave preference to those which highlighted their handling of the pandemic. Fair warning - what I present is my small sample from a very broad Salesforce portfolio on display during the Summit.

Today, it starts with the Healthcare sector. Dr. "Romi" Chopra at MIMIT Health describes how the Salesforce platform helps with what he calls the Amazonification of healthcare. Most doctors tell the same story - they have invested lots in Electronic Health Records (EHR) but that has not helped the patient experience much. He also describes how they were able to move to Telehealth in a mere 3 days at the start of the pandemic.

Next at 16.40, we move to Financial Services. Mark Murphy, CEO of Salesforce partner, Fenergo describes their Client Lifecycle Management solution for banks. I especially liked the discussion on the on-boarding experience that banks can improve for customers.

At 25.17 we feature a very different partner, Amazon Web Services. Mary Wilson, lead for the Power and Utilities sector, does not just talk about hyperscaler "speeds and feeds". AWS brings much more strategic value to their utilities as they prioritize de-carbonization, predictive maintenance and digital transformations. It's not just bookish knowledge - AWS and Amazon broadly are innovating around energy efficiency, renewables etc.

Another episode tomorrow

The Analyst Cam: Salesforce Industries Part 1

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. 

Salesforce recently had a Industries Summit where they showcased 12 "industry cloud" tracks. Each track had 8 to 10 customer, partner and product episodes. I attended sessions across most of the tracks.

I am highlighting lightly edited episodes in each of the Cam entries over the next 3 days. Each of my videos is about half an hour in length. I have tried to balance industries and geographies across my entries. I gave preference to those which highlighted their handling of the pandemic. Fair warning - what I present is my small sample from a very broad Salesforce portfolio on display during the Summit.

Today, it starts with the CPG sector and Dan Moisan, Chief Commercial Officer of PepsiCo, Latin America. It is a $ 7.6 billion unit. In addition to discussing the challenges of homogenizing and scaling operations across 40 countries, he tells a great story about how 25,000 route sales reps who are used to weekly visits to 3 million customers (most of them small stores) have coped with COVID-19 travel and other restrictions.

At 15.21, the focus shifts to the public sector and a discussion of  the recently launched Salesforce offering, Work.com for Vaccines. It is designed to help governments and healthcare organizations manage vaccine programs at scale, from patient registration and appointment scheduling to inventory management, outcome monitoring and public health notifications. Obviously, the immediate opportunity with be around vaccines being developed for COVID-19, but the applications should be broader

At 22.28, we move to Renee Newman, Chief Strategy Officer at a community bank, First Interstate Bank. At the start of the pandemic, the US initiated the emergency PPP (Payroll Protection Program) loan program. The SBA approved over 5 million PPP loans over a couple of months. Many community banks handled these much better than larger banks in this intense phase, and Renee discusses the program among other operational topics.

More episodes coming later this week.

The SAP hiccup

I am a market analyst, not a financial analyst. I worry about economic health of vendors, not their daily market cap. So I tend to not write about quarterly results. But a 20% stock price drop in a session is a wake up call, so here are some thoughts

First the "this too will pass" reaction. The market is even more volatile than usual - no US stimulus in sight, COVID-19 cases spiking again in Europe, uncertainty about the US elections. Did SAP deserve a 20% hit? In a calmer market, probably would have been much less. The fundamentals have not deteriorated much. It still has a blue chip customer base across countries, across industries. In the last few months, its Amplify initiative has done pretty well. Its Commerce capabilities have done well as companies scampered to new B2C markets.

The problem is more about adjustments. SAP is not the only guilty vendor which keeps trying to sell what was selling in January and pretending the world has not turned upside down. They continue to push S/4HANA when the market has been desperate for what I call vertical "edge" applications - telemedicine, distance learning, PPP loan processing, last mile delivery and many others which has allowed some to survive and others to thrive during the pandemic. When SAP talks industries, S/4 core functionality looms large. When they talk CX, they talk about why integration with inventory availability is important. It is but so are robotic warehouses and efficient last mile delivery. That is a reason many companies go with 3PLs and sell through Amazon and Shopify. SAP also continues to rely heavily on larger SIs. That has been a turnoff and big ticket item for customers for years, but even more so these days with travel and budget restrictions.

In contrast, Marc Benioff of Salesforce has called for vendors to be "market relevant". I was recently part of their Industries Summit (see a write up here). I heard about Work.com for vaccines, I heard customers talk telemedicine, I heard MNCs talk about visiting small stores on a weekly basis across countries even with lockdowns. Salesforce could have just talked about what they had in the bag in January but this was so much more compelling.

The good news is SAP has lots of bite-sized products - Qualtrics, IBP, AIN, Ariba and many more. But they don't make it easy for customers to find them. When I wrote SAP Nation 3.0, I had to push to be introduced to customers on these secondary products. They kept showing me S/4 customers. But they do have many of those customers. And they have many markets they did not develop properly in the last decade - I had a whole chapter on smart products, digital advertising, Industrial Internet, automation, vertical functionality and others they can still develop.

My book was sub-titled "Manifest Destiny". Drawing on US history, I wrote

"In his inaugural address in 1801, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson had talked about a nation “with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation.” A couple of years later, Jefferson instructed Lewis and Clark as they began their pioneering westward trek: “Those who come after us will fill up the canvas we begin.” Jefferson was an optimist and helped fire up a country’s imagination for a massive westward expansion. SAP needs a similar call to action."

SAP has the best enterprise customer base - bar none. They just need to broaden out their product portfolio. For too long they have emphasized HANA, now S/4HANA.

Westward, ho!

Burning Platform: Software - Feast or Famine

In episode 9 of the Burning Platform series, Brian Sommer and I talk about the inconsistency of software availability. Some categories have too many choices and specialists; on the other hand, many business functions, geographies and industries have hardly any modern, robust choices. We also talk about alternative customer choices - ring-fence legacy, look at specialists, look at outsourcers etc.

The Analyst Cam: SuccessFactors Analyst Day

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. 

SuccessFactors had an analyst update this week. I have excerpted from the session.

I left out 3 big chunks, the first two of which were under NDA

-  The new Chief Revenue Officer, Maryann Abbajay presented metrics for the year to date and presented logos of over 100 big global brands with over 100k users.

- Amy Wilson, SVP, Products and Design, presented on an expanded vision of 'Learning". She wanted that kept under wraps for now

- Lots of questions from fellow analysts. I did not want to include them without their permission.

Still, there is plenty of interesting content in the video below

Jill Popelka, President kicks off with a confident State of the Business. She shares they now have 164 million global users, discusses SAP Work Zone for HR, Litmos learning business unit and their "back to work" services as companies reopen physical work sites (and what Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday and others have also been emphasizing)

At 8.07 Amy talks about HXM - Human Experience Management leveraging the Qualtrics unit and a focus on the "whole self" of employees. She also spends a fair amount of time around the journey for on-prem customers to the cloud. As she says their legacy payroll dates back 4 decades - how to plan for the next 4? BTW, at 6.28 I ask a question about CIOs looking to stay with their legacy HCM software but moving that to a hyperscaler and to third party maintenance. They answered that. I also asked what automation SAP was investing in to make migrations to the cloud less people dependent especially in a world of travel restrictions. They did not have enough time to respond to that.

At 26:30 Meg Bear, SVP of Products and Brian Ellison, CTO have a fireside chat around various architectural topics. Brian covers 5 themes that are driving their technology vision.   

Overall, they covered lots of ground. I saw plenty of focus on employee experiences, Learning and on SAP's hybrid on-premise/cloud customer base.

The exponential growth in Salesforce Industries coverage

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings and events, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. You are about to see a wave of industry specific episodes. 

I have been called "Vinnie Vertical"  because I am always haranguing vendors to develop industry-specific operational functionality - shop floor related in manufacturing, field service management for asset intensive industries, core banking functionality, claims processing in insurance, retail merchandising, student administration in higher ed  etc. etc. Not for the fun of it - legacy vertical apps are old in the tooth. Most are on-premise and caused enterprises lots of heart burn as they moved to WFH formats, as they looked to quickly scale up or down.

Unfortunately, few vendors have developed deep industry functionality in the cloud. Those that have made investments often do a poor job showcasing their industry strengths or expect their SI partners to speak for their credentials

The pandemic has opened up even more vertical opportunities as enterprises have scampered to new markets, new business models including

• 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

Given all that, I was pleased that Salesforce showcased 12 "industry cloud" tracks this month, and invited me to basically "walk around". Each track had 8 to 10 customer, partner and product 30 minute episodes. I watched 2-3 sessions in each, and selected 10 sessions to profile in my Analyst Cam. I made my selections prioritizing contemporary, pandemic-influenced functionality. I looked for global diversity. I was attracted to unique partners.

Salesforce has sent me video files totaling over 2.2 gigabytes (yes!). I am in the process of narrowing them even more - excerpting about 10 to 20% from each session. I will run them over the next week.  

So, fair warning - it's my "small" sample from the Salesforce portfolio.

Salesforce is obviously focused more on the revenue side of the house. I would have liked to also see vertical operational functionality, especially developed by its partners. After watching the Apple iPhone 12 launch last week (I wrote about the gorgeous production nuances here), I would have liked to have seen fewer interviews, and more customer location settings, especially outdoors.   

But I nitpick. I was actually blown away by the breadth of what Salesforce showcased. The Vlocity acquisition has accented their focus.  I have been impressed with their executives who are leading the industries coverage especially David Schmaier, Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh and Jujhar Singh.

Salesforce is well on its next wave of evolution. The competition will have to get serious about at least a couple of industries each going forward.

On a personal note, I hope this also sends a message to vendors that I will invest plenty of time and energy if you make an effort to showcase your industry operational capabilities. Vinnie Vertical is ready to listen when you are!

The Analyst Cam: Zoom Zapps

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

One of the biggest winners from the WFH economy has been Zoom. The scale at which they have grown in the last few months is mind boggling. At their user conference, Zoomtopia, last week, CEO Eric Yuan shared that Zoom now supports more than 3 trillion annualized meeting minutes and handles 300 million daily meeting participants.

We have been glad to do our little part :) Most of the sessions in the various series in our blogs - Business Acrobatics during the crisis, Burning Platform and this one - Analyst Cam have been recorded on Zoom. Most of my book interviews and case studies over the last few years have been recorded on this platform.

At the event, they announced Zapps, which are best of breed applications integrated into the Zoom experience for seamless productivity and engaging experiences. My friend, Ross Mayfield has long been a pioneer in the collaboration category (what was called Enterprise 2.0) and has helped Zoom develop this initiative. In the video below, Ross presents a company update, then a demo of Zapps. He showcases some of the 35 launch apps to ship by the end of the year - some are horizontal like Rev for transcription, others are aimed more at verticals like Kahoot! for high school education.  

VC Shervin Pishevar has announced a ZappFund and tweeted "There will unicorns built as Zapps. So many categories up for grabs. This feels like f8 and Apple App Store (2008). So many possibilities!" So, the Zapps ecosystem should grow rapidly - everything about Zoom has shown it can scale at phenomenonal rates.

Burning Platform: The Post-Pandemic world of the CIO

In episode 8 of the Burning Platform series, Brian Sommer and I discuss how the world of the CIO has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We cover a lot of ground around how on-premise and cloud applications fared as employees move to WFH, the many application holes they had to fill as business models evolved rapidly, the changing world of CIOs in a travel challenged world.

This episode is part of a trilogy which ran this week. The last couple of days we have run one on the impact on the CFO and one on the CHRO.

The Analyst Cam: Avasant Research study of COVID-19 impact on IT

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

Computer Economics, now part of Avasant Research, has benchmarked IT spending for over two decades. Frank Scavo, President, Avasant Research presented to me an abridged version of their recent benchmark survey of the impact of COVID-19 on IT Organizations.  

He presents fascinating trends in the 20 minute conversation below. You can also get a 70 page executive summary of the survey by signing up here. 

As he describes towards the end, they are working on another checkpoint survey to be released in December. If you like to be part of that or other surveys they are constantly conducting, sign up here and you will qualify for their research publications valued at over $6,000 at no charge. 

The Analyst Cam: Rimini Street - the "secret sauce"

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.

Rimini Street has provided third party maintenance to Oracle and SAP customers for 15 years now. They now support 3,500 customers in most global markets and says they have delivered $5 billion in customer savings.

During the pandemic, we have heard about many frustrations with on-prem applications supporting WFH, scaling etc, and significant IT cost pressures. I invited Rimini to give me an update on what they are seeing in the market. Two Rimini execs presented to me.

Jason Kotsaftis, Sr. Director Product Marketing presented about a recent survey of 200 PeopleSoft customers. I ran that segment last week 

Hari Candidai, GVP, Global Thought Leadership and Research provided a corporate update and shared some of their "secret sauce". Rimini is known for much lower cost than the publishers. I have always believed their superior customer service and their support of customizations to the core software is even higher value. So, I am glad Hari spent plenty of time describing how Rimini delivers

He kicks off with a Q2 update.

He next describes how Rimini delivers tax and regulatory updates earlier than the software publishers. Starting at 5.10, Hari describes their TLR group of 200 CPAs and other professionals which monitors tax and other regulatory sites for updates that apply across 200 countries. In reaction to COVID, most governments introduced measures like PPP loans, tax relief for specific industries, for tele-working, etc. Rimini delivered 3,500 COVID related updates during Q2.

At 12.18 he describes how their processes, increasingly assisted by AI, are helping them deliver to an SLA of 10 minute response time for Priority 1 tickets. He also says the AI has helped reduce resolution time by 23% - by making smarter allocations of tickets to the most qualified support staff.

Starting at 17.27 he compares Rimini support to that from the software vendors. It's not even close.

Hari makes a compelling presentation. I could only joke I would rather pay twice as much for much slower, poorer customer service!

Burning Platform: The Post-Pandemic world of the CHRO

In episode 7 of the Burning Platform series, Brian Sommer and I discuss how the world of the CHRO has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have talked for a long time about HR becoming strategic. The pandemic may not have elevated it that high but it certainly made HR essential.

This episode is part of a trilogy which will run this week. Yesterday we ran one on the impact on the CFO and tomorrow we will run one about the CIO.

Our unusual client: Citizen Vinnie

Deal Architect has advised hundreds of clients on their software and outsourcing decisions. We run a tight ship, we diligently coach our clients, we keep it unemotional and quantified, we force vendors to follow our scripts, present their positives not their competitor's negatives, we take clients to far corners of the world on due diligence trips, we are tough negotiators on their behalf.

Every 4 years we work with an unusual client - Citizen Vinnie. He hires us early August through middle of October to research political candidates. He forwards all the political mail and email he gets, their voice mails, their text messages. He asks us to tabulate how many TV commercials they run, how many newspapers endorse each candidate, we conduct social media sentiment analysis on them. He asks us to summarize policy papers from their websites and speeches, to grade their debate performance. He asks us to drive around and summarize how many lawn signs support each candidate, recommend the best way for him to vote, the best place to vote in person.

We just presented to him our findings for this year. Here are a couple of tidbits of what we shared with him. We told him this was the most amount of marketing he has even ever been subjected to. We also tabulated our cost of all that marketing. It is sickeningly high for just one citizen. For that, we told him the quality of the mail, TV commercials, social media messages were the poorest quality ever. Mostly negative about the opposition, little about their own qualifications. We told him our staff were traumatized by the material they had to review on social media. Almost as bad as being paid to moderate Dark Web content.

He does not ask us for opinions, just data. So, we apologized for expressing some of our dismay at the materials we reviewed. 

He is a registered Independent. He does not share with us what he does with our findings. He has a policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He does not even tell us if he voted.

We help enterprise customers with extremely complex, global decisions. They have plenty of technicians, attorneys and accountants who help them with those choices. The average citizen has little of that help. No wonder so many of them do not bother to vote or vote based on emotion. Those who vote spend hundreds of billions of hours watching politicians spew nonsense, then they agree or argue among themselves especially on social media.

Yes, it is considered a civic duty to vote. A far more urgent duty for each of us is to clean up our political campaigns. Even more important to our economy is for each of us to dramatically lower the time and energy we give to media which thrives on outrage and career politicians whose egos thrive on our attention.  

Like we apologized to Citizen Vinnie, we should do same for every citizen this election year. There has to be a much better, way more efficient way to run this railroad.

Burning Platform: The Post-Pandemic world of the CFO

In episode 6 of the Burning Platform series, Brian Sommer and I discuss how the world of the CFO has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the opportunities to be impactful as more changes appear on the horizon.

This episode is part of a trilogy. The next two episodes which will run this week focus on the impact on the CHRO and the CIO.

The Analyst Cam: Rimini Street - PeopleSoft Customer 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.

Rimini Street has provided third party maintenance to Oracle and SAP customers for 15 years now. They now support 3,500 customers spread across global markets.

During the pandemic, we have heard about many frustrations with on-prem applications - how they supported large number of WFH employees, how difficult they were to scale up or down, and about increased scrutiny on IT costs. I invited Rimini Street to give me an update on what they are seeing in the market. Two Rimini execs presented to me.

Hari Candidai, GVP, Global Thought Leadership and Research provided a corporate update and shared some of their ‘secret sauce‘ - how they deliver regulatory updates earlier than the publishers can, and how their customer service is so much more responsive, even at their much lower cost. I will run his segment in another episode of The Analyst Cam.

Below is the presentation from Jason Kotsaftis, Sr. Director Product Marketing about a recent survey of 200 PeopleSoft customers. He talks about their grudging move to PeopleSoft Release 9.2 and experience with Oracle's move to "continuous innovation" in the form of frequent updates. Many customers are reporting effort of 3-5 resources for 4 to 6 weeks for integration testing and other tasks for each update.  They also describe limited functionality they get from this "treadmill". They do so to stay current and not have tickets rejected when they do need Oracle support. In addition, most are also paying an AMS vendor for support in addition to the Oracle annual maintenance. 

He also discusses interest in PeopleSoft customers about moving to the cloud. Interestingly, many are reporting interest in IaaS, not SaaS. And even when they are moving to SaaS they are taking a best of breed approach not just evaluating Oracle's SaaS offerings.

Lots of interesting insights in this 20 minute presentation. Many of the survey insights also apply to other packaged applications from Oracle and those from other on-prem vendors.  

BTW You can download the survey by registering here 

 

The Analyst Cam: Apple Hi, Speed event

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings and events, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments, as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

I watched the Apple iPhone 12 launch event live

While the focus of the event was on speed and the highlight was 5G compatibility of the iPhone, to me the camera, the imagery, the MagSafe and other accessories, the Home Pod mini, the music, the overall production quality (see more on that at New Florence) kept me totally engrossed, taking screenshots on my iPad and even watching a replay.

Below is just an excerpt of roughly 2 minutes. I would highly recommend watching the whole show of over an hour here.

 

The Analyst Cam: Unit4 ERPx 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. 

The Unit4 product team gave me a sneak preview of their ERPx product being showcased today at their virtual customer event, X4U.

I have excerpted about 30 minutes in the video below from the 75 minute briefing. 

Matthias Thurner, Chief Product Officer kicks it off with a corporate overview, the people centric industries and geographies Unit4 focuses on

At 9:26, Dmitri Krakowsky, ex-Google who has been advising Unit4 on future product directions, runs through some of the ERPx design principles. They leverage the Microsoft stack and reflect contemporary thinking like easy communication with the digital assistant Wanda which interacts via Slack, Teams or Skype instead of traditional e-mail.

I also liked his modesty - it has a realistic acknowledgement that for most customers today ERP represents Enterprise with a small e - it only delivers 25% or so of the total wall to wall functionality they need.

At 21.32,  Dimitri runs through a quick demo of Smart Invoices and the Extension Kit

At 26.10, Claus Jepsen, Chief Technology Officer and Dimitri go through some of the architectural and functional components and availability of ERPx.

I found it a very crisp briefing. I am sure as a result of X4U plenty of customers will want to learn much more. And I am sure analysts will have questions about migrations, feature parity across releases, hyperscalers beyond Microsoft.

According to Unit4: 

"New capabilities will now be developed in cloud. This enables us to make use of the Microsoft Azure technology stack for building, testing, deploying, and managing our ERP and additional cloud services.
The benefit of releasing capabilities via cloud is that they will not affect our customer’s ERP core installation, significantly reducing the impact of onboarding new functionality.

New capabilities can be made available for ERP 7 if specific features are deemed necessary or of particular interest for our on-premise customers."

Look forward to more conversations with them. 

The Analyst Cam: Zoho Workplace

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. 

Zoho launched Workplace last month - it is a suite of 9 applications to compete against Office365 and Google tools. The positioning is Workplace allows you to "seamlessly collaborate with your teams, no matter where you are, and get more done in less time."

I got an hour long briefing - I have extracted 20 minutes below

Vijay Sundaram, Chief Strategy Officer kicks it off with some background on what he calls Zoho's "hidden gem". The suite has been evolving for 15 years and has adapted to the changing nature of work as it has become more remote with WFH, has become mobile-first etc.

At 11.25 Aarthi Elizabeth, Product Marketing Manager provides an overview of the 9 components that make up the suite.

Finally, my favorite part - at 13:36 Aarthi shows how the suite is not just horizontal. She does a nice walkthrough of use cases for the suite in the construction industry.

Burning Platform: Episode 5 - The need for new management science

In episode 5 of the Burning Platform series, Brian Sommer and I discuss what we have seen in the last few months about analytical tools and talent. We also talk about the need for a next generation management science to take it to the next level.

You may also find useful 12 trends in analytics in the last few months I had described here.

 

An epidemic (of content) during the pandemic

My two blogs, Deal Architect and New Florence have averaged 800 posts a year over the 15 years they have been running. 7 books have added another 2,000 pages.

A subtle shift occurred during the last two quarters which reflect the pandemic. The bulk of the posts are showing up in thematic series I have launched or accelerated. And a lot more of their content is in the form of videos and images.

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. Index of those posts is here. 

Acrobatics during the crisis

I have been interviewing (mostly via Zoom) 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. 

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. 

Passion Play

In this series, guest writers have written about their passions - hobbies, charities etc and how they have evolved with technology. I started this series a decade ago, and accelerated it this year to give people positive things to talk about and read. Index here. 

The Pandemic Diary

It would be nice for all of us to contribute to a time capsule about the pandemic. For some of us it would mean painful memories. Ours would be a bit more positive. Below is an extract from our Google Drive focused on the pandemic months.  I have long written copious notes about our family's travels. It started off as a tool to entertain my kids. During the pandemic, I have kept weekly notes and taken 000s of photos and videos on various COVID distancing and other signs, Johns Hopkins and other public health graphs but mostly as my wife, daughter and I have explored local places, cooked new meals etc. We share a few on Instagram and Facebook.  You may end up seeing another series titled "The West Coast of the East Coast" - living as we are on the Gulf Coast of Florida.  

A reader left a comment on New Florence this week

"Vinnie, I am constantly amazed on the variety of subjects you talk about."

and I responded

"Thank you! Better than politics:)"

The pandemic has allowed me to open up a fire hydrant of new content. Hopefully, it helps many stay somewhat positive in the troubling times we live in. 

The Analyst Cam: Neeley Board of Advisors, TCU

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 time it is not a vendor, but a Business School. The world of higher education has been turned upside down as campuses cope with the challenges of COVID-19, budget crunches, the loss of summer internships and job offers for students and the accelerated focus on diversity and inclusion this summer.

I am on the advisory board of the Neeley Business School at Texas Christian University. I had interviewed Dean Daniel Pullin as part of the acrobatics series in May 

Last week, we had our bi-annual board meeting. This one was virtual and with the Dean's permission, I have excerpted about 10% below. You will get a better sense for the "acrobatics" this school and many others around the world have had to perform during the crisis

It is in four parts:

• Dean Pullin kicks off with a nice summary of some of the accomplishments and challenges

• At 4.10, Associate Dean Bill Moncrief describes in fair detail the complexities of moving from campus to on-line education in 10 days and the challenges of teaching in hybrid mode - some students in-class and some on-line.

• At 11.13, Associate Dean David Allen describes the growing number of graduate level offerings. Given what the pandemic has done to supply chains and to our healthcare, I was particularly excited to hear of the verticals Neeley has branched into. Similarly as I have written here, the world of analytics is going through an exciting new phase so nice to see the new Business Analytics offering 

• At 15:58, Stacy Graub and Ann Tasby present on what they call Return on Inclusion. Neeley has been pioneering around diversity and good to see how their accomplishments keep growing.

Neeley is a relatively small school but it consistently punches above its weight. I left out some very impressive student presentations during the session - very poised and polished. I myself had a wonderful time there as a student. It has since become much more picky - not sure I would get in today:)  

For your recruiting and training needs, I would highly recommend you check out Neeley.