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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.

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 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.

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. 

New Normal: A repeat conversation with Bill Berutti and Jerry Foster of Plex

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 the growing list of interviews.

This time it is Bill Berutti, CEO and Jerry Foster, CTO of Plex Systems. I had interviewed them in this series way back in April and invited them back to hear about how they have seen manufacturers have navigated the crisis. 

It is a very positive conversation. Bill talks about customers and recovery scenarios across several sectors - automotive, food and beverage and aerospace. Jerry talks about augmented reality, cobots, sensors and how automation is gathering momentum on the shop floor. They both talk about how Plex has continued to sell and implement remotely - Jerry describes an innovative GoPro example as his salespeople collected information from a prospect and Bill talks about several projects delivered with minimal customer site presence.

In addition, Jerry spent another 20 minutes going through anonymized customer manufacturing data from March to September. The Plex cloud collects data from 8 billion transactions a day across customers in 29 countries. That segment is in the Analyst Cam post here 

Both sessions left me feeling upbeat. They show a pretty sharp, V-shaped recovery in N. America. It also shows the manufacturing sector been highly efficient in labor utilization and about to become much more so as we increase automation on the shop floor. Very different from what we are hearing in the press.

New Normal: A conversation with Bill Hewitt of Aternity

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 the growing list of interviews.

This time it is Bill Hewitt, President and CEO of Aternity which offers a Digital Experience Management platform to help enterprises manage digital productivity and minimize digital disruption.   

Previously Hewitt was a partner at Beacon Equity Partners in Boston. He has had significant enterprise software experience at Exari Systems, Novell, PeopleSoft, and IBM.

Earlier this year, just before the pandemic arrived to the US, he had described his experience remotely designing and supervising an extension to a summer home in Rhode Island. It was prophetic as we have moved to "remote everything" since. 

He describes CIO and IT heroics like how IBM managed to get 100,000 employees online from home over a weekend. WestPac compressed a 3 month rollout into 5 days.

We discuss CIO experience with on-premise applications as they moved to WFH. We also discuss leadership during the crisis and how the economic recovery is shaping up.

He is always a positive, optimistic executive. I learn something new from every conversation with Bill.

New Normal: A conversation with Eric Dirst of DeKonsultere

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs 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 the growing list of interviews. 

This time it is Eric Dirst. He is President of DeKonsultere LLC, providing CIO/COO/Board level services to small/mid-size companies & portfolios of VC/Private Equity firms, Chief Technology Advisor at Align Capital Partners, CTO at Cloud5 Communications, and CIO at Renew Corp.

He previously had executive positions at Adtalem and DeVry, which are leading for-profit trade and tech educational institutions and was CIO at Sirva (Allied Van Lines)  President of DeKonsultere, LLC.

Given his long background in higher education, we talked about heroics as universities, colleges rushed to migrate from campus to distance learning and massive scaling demands on tech providers like Blackboard. We discuss likely business model changes as education moves more on-line and about changes in labor needs post-COVID and how the education sector needs to evolve to support more trade and blue collar skills. We also discussed the elaborate testing, contact tracing and other protocols as campuses re-open.

We also talked about pivots and acrobatics in the startups he advises.

Very pragmatic point of view.