deal architect

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.