deal architect

2020 - filter out the bad, preserve the good

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

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

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

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

Have a safe and uneventful New Year's Eve!

The Analyst Cam: IFS Service Management Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Analyst Cam: IFS Service Management Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Analyst Cam: Cognizant on State of Voice Interfaces

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

This insight from a Cognizant survey caught my eye

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the topics covered include:

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

Lots to think about when it comes to voice interfaces.

The Analyst Cam: Suplari briefing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nice, crisp presentation

The Analyst Cam: TealBook briefing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Analyst Cam: Workday Ventures

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

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

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

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

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

The Analyst Cam: Rimini Street Database Support Survey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.