Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of 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 and Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras.
This time it is Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research. He pioneered coverage of the Professional Services Automation (PSA) category two decades ago.
We talk about how the pandemic has affected services firms and the PSA category. He also discusses initial findings from his annual survey of the market - way more promising than he anticipated earlier in the year.
We also discuss why just about every application vendor has developed PSA functionality but are loath to develop operational functionality for so many other, wide-open industries. As he points out when he was at Oracle in the late 90s, the PSA functionality did not require as much investment as that in manufacturing or financial services, and yet generated a nice, predictable revenue stream. Also, since then just about every industry has had a growing services revenue component - field services, training etc - what he calls embedded services and have become new candidates for PSA.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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