deal architect

Burning Platform: Cloud Wars!

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

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

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

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

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

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

More episodes to come in the New Year!

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 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 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.