aheadCRM - Blog #IoT

Salesforce, Service, AI and ... IoT

Mon, 28 Jan 2019 10:36:22 -0500

AI, IoT, and CRM, three acronyms. However, these three belong together and should not be treated or looked at separately. One important reason for this is that companies and organizations can provide significantly better service experiences and, more importantly, results, by combining the capabilities behind these acronyms. Good field service not only gets dispatched smartly but also equipped with the right parts and, ideally, in a proactive manner. This can get delivered by the combination of Field Service, AI, and IoT data. That’s why I found Salesforce’s early December announcement of having added a component “IoT insights” to its Field Service Lightning product quite interesting. As the press release said, this capability enables service agents and representatives to see IoT signals together with other CRM data, so that the triple p of personalized, proactive, even predictive service is possible. After all, Einstein is embedded into Field Service Lightning for quite some time now. Doing so, Salesforce wisely did not implement yet another IoT platform but enabled its system to ingest data from existing IoT platforms, thus sticking to the core competencies of the company. The solution helps in three areas:

Enabling of early issue anticipation (rather than detection, which is responsive) and remote diagnosis
Providing agents with more relevant information, to speed up issue resolution
And automation via rules and workflows.

Says Paolo Bergamo, SVP and GM, Salesforce Field Service Lightning: Let me first clarify that we're not competing with IoT platforms from the likes of AWS IoT or Azure IoT. Our solution extends the value of these platforms - they provide streams of device data that then flow into our CRM to feed business processes. For example, AWS IoT gathers the IoT data from a connected machine, that then flows into our CRM. The company servicing that machine can automatically set rules to create a ticket and deploy a field technician in the event that machine requires servicing. So where we really differentiate is on two fronts - customer context and empowering employees. By providing companies a way to connect the world's #1 CRM with IoT data, we give them the ability to better understand their customers, prioritize accordingly, and provide world class service. What we see is that companies have historically only used IoT data for operational improvements, not to improve the customer experience. We're changing that, and actually helping companies connect their IoT data with business processes so they can act on that data quickly and effectively, for the customer's benefit. Secondarily we empower employees to deliver their best work, both via access to data for mobile field workers to be productive in their work and also for the business users who need to access that data. If you're looking for specifics, I'd say that:

Service agents can have a better picture of the problem with paired CRM/IoT data and previous case resolution (e.g. they can see what sort of warranty the customer has, alongside the device diagnostics, and immediately understand the type of service they should be delivering)
Dispatchers can be more efficient in dispatching (they know who to send, what equipment to send the technician with)
Automatic dispatching can be applied based on contracts and urgency of the fault, helping prioritization and alleviating rote work so the dispatcher can focus on higher level tasks

My Point of View and Analysis

Salesforce delivered a very valuable improvement of its solution. It, however, is nothing that makes people hold their breath. I’d put it into the category of keeping up with the game. Other companies are talking and acting on this topic for several years already. Think of ServiceMax. And it is nothing that the immediate competition cannot offer in a similar way. Think of SAP and, even more so, Microsoft. But then these two are not that far into productized IoT scenarios in customer service yet. So, having this functionality is important, especially as there are already more devices than humans connected to the Internet, with a trend that shows strongly upwards. Statista expects the number of IoT devices to rise to more than 75 billion by 2025. While forecasts are just that – forecasts – they all have one thing in common: predicting a steep increase of connected devices. And customer service is only the starter. The race will continue in the marketing arena. While we will not see scenarios like in Black Mirror or Minority report anytime too soon (thanks to privacy regulations) lots of scenarios that involve context can be thought of – the simplest one being the ages old fridge that reports out-of-stock to its owner. Some of Hubspot’s thinking is here. For Salesforce it is a wise move to not build an own IoT platform but building value added services on top of them. An IoT platform is just too far off Salesforce’s own value proposition and core competency. In contrast to turning the raw data delivered by the sensors into actionable insight and process. As far as I do see it, Salesforce, as well as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, now need to show and deliver a range of integrated IoT, AI, and bot scenarios that provide significant value to their customers. IoT is already an important channel to be supported. In order to be able to deliver superior experiences, companies need to make use of it. The integration of devices as sensors and actuators, in the context of real-time processes, is key here. Companies will look at their vendors to deliver best-of-breed here.

Salesforce embraces the User Microsoft like - A Dreamforce Analysis

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 07:45:35 -0500

Now that the major waves of Dreamforce 2017 have settled, the announcements and a good part of the running commentary has been delivered, it is time for me to have a look at my pre-Dreamforce predictions.

Having been briefed before the event but unluckily not been able to attend (nor having had the time to write this piece earlier, I now have the advantage of having had more ‘thinking time” and can put the main announcements that we were briefed on into a bigger picture.

On the backdrop of an IDC study (sponsored by Salesforce) that postulates 3.3 million new jobs and an overall GDP impact of 859 billion dollar by 2022 in the “Salesforce economy”, the announcements basically revolve around one single topic: How to enable the employees (of Salesforce customers and partners) to deliver to this magnitude.

They were around

Easier consumption of AI technology with Einstein, and improved IoT support,
Opening up Trailhead to Salesforce customers in order to support company specific learning maps
Enabling Lightning, as the platform to become fully themed, i.e. embrace the customers’ brands. Although technologically different I club the ability to create and easily upload branded mobile apps to the app stores into this
Collaboration using Quip, the software that Salesforce acquired about a year ago, and a new partnership with Google

And in order to emphasize on the fact that they are serious about enabling people individually, Salesforce resuscitated the dot com prefix “my”. Thus myEinstein, myTrailhead, myLightning, mySalesforce, myIOT and mySalesforce got born.

A topic that might be slightly overlooked is covered by two sentences in the announcement of the Google partnership. “Also, Salesforce has named Google Cloud as a preferred public cloud provider to support the company’s rapidly growing global customer bases. Salesforce plans to use Google Cloud Platform for its core services as part of the company’s international infrastructure expansion.” With no further elaboration I can only interpret this as Salesforce following SAP’s multi cloud strategy.

What did I predict?

Following OOW17 and the SAP Hybris Summit in Barcelona I wrote that Salesforce is in a tight spot and that it is not nearly enough to just tick off the accomplishments that were delivered to promise. Looking at the current state trend of business systems I looked at Salesforce strengthening the eco system, adding power to the platform, and leveraging Einstein.

My point of view and analysis

While it seems that I was right on some level, there are some interesting rabbits that Salesforce pulled out of the hat.

Technology needs to serve the users and not the other way round and there are tasks that every user needs to get optimal support for. These are the tasks that need to be done often and the dull tasks that no one really needs to do. Plus, probably the tasks that no one comes around doing because of the previous two. Salesforce seems to have understood this.

Salesforce, in best Microsoft manner, enables this by creating point and click interfaces around complex technologies like (advanced) predictive analytics or IoT. The Salesforce platform also seems to benefit from Einstein permeating it more thoroughly. To me it appears like the days of separate clouds are numbered and that we are moving closer to a suite again – which makes sense as business processes extend across the boundaries of silo’ed functionalities.

I also think that Salesforce did a great move further embracing and empowering the ecosystem. There is a very clear message that Salesforce wants to stand for making it easy for their customers to focus on their customers’ needs. Whether this needed the “my” prefix or not…

By enabling developers, admins, and users, to easily create the applications that they need to more effectively and efficiently meet customer needs they are giving a clear message. On top of this there is an increasing amount of industry specific (Bolt) solutions. Extending the learning platform Trailhead to embrace customers, with branding and content, augments this. It offers Salesforce customers to build and monitor their own learning maps in a corporate environment.

Improved support for collaboration is another aspect of this. Having a platform like Chatter is one thing, leveraging an integrated platform like Quip is on an entirely different level. Quip live apps offer the promise of having all relevant data and documentation for a task in one place – kind of a Slack on steroids. Here also the new integration with the G Suite and Salesforce that will help making data available where it is needed will play its role.

With all these new and enhanced features Salesforce showcases that customer happiness is the end and that the employee is the means to make the customer happy.

The (long overdue) move to allow customers to make Salesforce applications fit into their own brand is only the icing on the cake of this message. While this capability sounds like a little thing it is actually a biggie as it fosters commitment and, so far, was a distinguishing factor in favor of Salesforce competition. It is good to see this now; and it appears to be simpler than in other tools.

All in all this is very good news for Salesforce customers and for their customers. I am looking forward to seeing more of this in action.

Salesforce seemingly starting a multi cloud strategy is an interesting development. While offering customers the in their eyes best cloud alternative (Salesforce, AWS, or Google) is a good thing, it will be interesting to see how these two competing ‘preferred’ clouds will be offered. Both parties have a genuine interest in attracting serious business workloads. It remains to be seen whether there will be a regional overlap or a distinction. It also remains to be seen how AWS reacts to this announcement.

Some words of caution

Salesforce is historically very good at showcasing complex scenarios. In sales processes against competition (especially SAP) Salesforce proves this times and again. Tools like the Einstein Prediction Builder are perfect examples for this. Being able to build a custom AI model on any field or object to predict business outcomes is a great thing. However, it is unclear how the underlying algorithm got trained or how the training got tested. Further, there are still quite some limitations. Some of them one can find out using the Trailhead Einstein Prediction Builder Trail.

As usual, and as with other companies, too, customers are well advised to look under the shiny hood that sales demos are.

Edit 12/28/2020: Changed Einstein link and removed IoT Link in first enumeration as old links were broken.

AI and IoT at SAP - Yin and Yang

Fri, 19 May 2017 11:33:36 -0400

During the 2017 SAPPHIRE NOW conference SAP told the stunned audience about how they connected some dots to create better value and more intelligent business applications for their customers. In essence SAP lifted the veil on how the company will go ahead with two technologies that will dominate the next years and that are ordinarily treated as different topics. But which, in essence, are like yin and yang. I talk about AI and machine learning on one hand, and IoT on the other. SAP has been fairly quiet on the former and fairly vocal on the latter, although the first announcement was about machine learning powered intelligent business applications, back in November 2016. At that time SAP announced the availability of the machine learning platform for SAPPHIRE NOW 2017. After this, SAP announced SAP Leonardo, the bundling of their IoT portfolio back in January 2017. On day 1 of SAPPHIRE NOW SAP delivered on the November promise by announcing “it’s time for machine learning to take the work out of your work flow. It’s time for billions of devices to go from thinking, to doing. It’s time for SAP Leonardo, the SAP system for digital innovation.’ With this approach they even go beyond only connecting two technologies but they also add Blockchain, Big Data, Data Intelligence and Analytics into one single platform. Whereas one could argue that Big Data, Data Intelligence and Analytics are essentially the same. With this powerful combination, as Holger Mueller, Principal Analyst of Constellation Research, aptly observed, ‘technology for the first time can do more than business best practices want’. To accommodate for this, SAP added consulting elements into the new Leonardo brand. This makes SAP Leonardo more of a toolkit than an actual solution, but a toolkit that SAP proved to help solving specific business problems in short times. In the words of Mala Anand, president for SAP Leonardo: “SAP Leonardo is our brand variety but to deliver transformation at scale we need more than IT so we’ve expanded SAP Leonardo to be our digital innovation system that will help you, confidently, redefine your business for this digital world.”

My Take

A brilliant move. As I already indicated, AI and IoT are like Yin and Yang. They are facets of the same thing. While current ‘things’ are mainly sensors they are creating a tremendous amount of data that needs to be analysed for the patterns that allow for intelligent action and reaction. This massive amount of data also explains why SAP moved Big Data, Data Intelligence and Analytics into SAP Leonardo. In not so far future these ‘things’ will not only be sensors but also be actuators, means take action – self-driving cars are only the most discussed theme here. There will be many more. This is where the ‘things’ start the doing. And many of these ‘things’ will be inside the boundary of companies, SAP’s core domain. Although SAP also moves into consumer technologies, e.g. automated cars. Finally, SAP added Blockchain into the mix. This really rounds off the tool kit, as it is a security technology that is geared for establishing trust – first between systems and then by making the systems trustworthy to humans. More mature security technology is delivered via the SAP Cloud Platform that is the foundation of SAP Leonardo. With this set of technologies plus a methodology around them that helps in solving problems fast, SAP has something at hand that can hardly be overestimated. At this time I do not see the other big business application vendors having something of similar capability at hand, not Oracle, not Salesforce, even not Microsoft, which is probably closest to be there. Now, after these glowing words there of course are some buts. The first one is that there now can be some confusion about what SAP Leonardo stands for. Originally it was about ‘connecting intelligent devices with people and processes to achieve tangible business outcomes’. Now it is far more, and not only a technology anymore. While this shift is in my eyes straightforward, I would expect that it still needs some education. The second, and more important one, being that there are countless other IoT platforms out there in the market. There hasn’t been much of standardization yet and interoperability between those platforms is also still in its infancy. And SAP still has the reputation of being hard to work with, which is a clear inhibitor on the way to becoming the leading dog in this market. Similarly for the Blockchain technology. There are quite some groups of companies trying to get into a dominant position, with inter-group interoperation being very limited. On the other hand there are only few companies that can move with a similar thrust. One of them being Google, who just announced during the Google I/O conference that they will weave AI and machine learning into their products, around 2 billion of which happen to be the ‘things’ called smartphones. And Google has quite some interesting consumer use cases.

Another Strong Year for SAP

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 15:54:08 -0500

On January 24, 2017 SAP released its results of their fiscal year 2016 – and the fourth quarter thereof. In a nutshell SAP:

Delivered to its increased 2020 guidance
Had an increase of 31 per cent in cloud subscription and support revenue, while still being able to increase the software license and support revenue. Cloud revenue increased especially in Q4 and promises to stay at a high level with a very healthy backlog
Increased its full year operating profit by 20 per cent to 5.12 Billion Euro (IFRS)
Has a strong backlog of cloud bookings

This success has a slightly negative effect on the company profitability while it negotiates the shift from license revenue to subscription revenue while being in an investment mode. It, however, seems to be driven by an increasing adoption of S/4HANA, a strong increase of the Hybris set of CEC solutions, including e-commerce and increasing traction in the HCM space. So it is broad. Based upon the strong delivery of 2016 SAP expects the cloud business to increase by up to 34 per cent in 2017 (all numbers of course at constant currencies) and increases its guidance of revenue and profit for 2017. In line with this the company is also bullish in its mid term outlook to 2020, which it increases, too.

My Take

Of course the big increase in revenues, expressed as a percentage, is partly owed to the fairly low number. In comparison Salesforce reported 2.14 Billion dollar for their third quarter alone, as opposed to 2.99 Billion Euro for SAP’s fiscal year. Oracle reported 798 million dollars in their FY Q1 report, so should be roughly on par with SAP. Unluckily it is hard to compare Microsoft numbers as they mix their cloud and business software numbers differently and they did not give numbers other than a 13 per cent increase for the Dynamics range of products. Still it seems that SAP has finally found a strategy that the company is able to express convincingly and execute upon. I think the below diagram taken from the release slides shows it pretty succinctly. Based upon a strong platform – the SAP Cloud Platform – SAP helps its customers to use insights to fuel transactions to gain more insight. Customer experience is only one piece of this picture, which correlates with my observations over the past 15 or so years. It also correlates with what then board member to be Bernd Leukert told the attendants of the Wispubs SAP CRM event in Orlando: “SAP is a Supply Chain Company”. Very much to the dismay of the attending CRM people, I must say. The focus of SAP clearly lies within the company and its supply chain. Add security, and industry orientation then one sees a company that is all about business processes and their effective and efficient execution. Published APIs are key for a thriving ecosystem, machine learning and blockchain represent technologies that open further avenues down the road. SAP Digital Business Framework - Source: SAP Sensors and the (Industrial) Internet of things are playing a major role here. SAP acknowledges and embraces this with its massive investment into what has become Leonardo. There is a notable topic absent on this diagram. Artificial Intelligence. This is a strong statement, as I cannot imagine that this is by accident. It is also straightforward. For SAP the intelligence lies within the applications. What is important is the input – loads of data – and the ability to provide and deliver models that can be trained to support specific business processes – machine learning. In any case this absence turns the minds away from a hyped technology to being outcome driven. AI is a means to an end. Simple as that. Friend Paul Greenberg recently searched for Optimus Prime. I think SAP now has established itself as a very strong contender – although I would still be very wary of Microsoft. The company shows a vision for its customers that embraces the whole value chain, with a focus on internal processes and the supply chain, but not neglecting customer facing processes. Combining the technologies that it created (and acquired) over the past three to five years to business applications that enable a real time ‘control’ and intelligent forecasting abilities, combined with efficiency gains is a very compelling vision for business leaders. I am looking forward to observing SAP in the coming years.

Ocean Medallion - Which Customer Problem Does it Solve?

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 15:41:05 -0500

A few years ago Disney embarked on a massive customer experience journey that included the introduction of a ‘Magic Band’. Disney at that time followed (and likely still does) an idea that can be paraphrased as looking at everything through the eyes of the customer and pay attention to all details. During his 2016 CRM Evolution opening keynote Dennis Snow explained this concept and implementation in depth (see also my earlier CRM Evolution post). Dennis talked about the Disney way of creating great customer experiences, which basically follows three simple rules

Design your processes with the customer in mind, not with internal/operational priorities; look through the lens of the customer
Pay attention to details
Create little “Wow Moments”. These add up to a lasting great experience and are easier to achieve than single “big” experiences.

Why do I repeat all this?

A short time ago, on CES 2017, Carnival Cruises announced that they, supported by Accenture, have created something similar to the Magic Band: The Ocean Medallion, which will be given to customers who book a cruise in Carnival’s ‘Ocean Medallion Class’. The device will connect to and be tracked by approximately 4,000 sensors, including interactive screens etc., on board and is intended to greatly enhance the customer experience before, during, and after the cruise. Customers can provide their profiles via a web portal pre-cruise and on board use the device to open their cabins, pay for drinks/food or merchandise – or track their family members on board … It shall also help streamlining the boarding process when in harbor. On the backend the technology is driven by machine learning and an advanced analytics system that learns about preferences and over time, in order to better direct messages to the customers, based upon their preferences. Communication between the medallion and the sensor network happens in real time and it looks like, judging by the Carnival promotion video that Chris Petersen linked to his article, many processes will take advantage of this. I can only surmise that Carnival wants to create the little wow moments that are at the heart of Disney, with a little help of technology, although there is no mention of service staff involved as the technology is a support to the ship’s crew. And as Michael Lowenstein in his column as well as other people often repeat, the employee is an integral part of delivering customer experience.

A Job well Done! But Who’s Problem does it Solve?

Watching said promotional video and looking at the FAQ I personally find only gimmicks that are creating a difference. Screens now show photos relating to me when I pass a screen, I can get photos pushed to my mobile phone – oops, do I really have my cell phone with me all the time on the ship? – I can order a drink to be delivered in some time to my seat in the show, etc. Ah, yes, I can track the whereabouts of my kids on the ship. Do I really want that? Admittedly it is sometimes easier to meet as a group, although here things can become positively creepy. The rest is old wine in a new glass. Does it really matter whether I present an NFC enabled plastic card handed to me or use an admittedly more fancy gadget to open my door, or pay for a drink? Wasn’t the detection of a person being in a cabin to control the AC possible before? The Ocean Medallion along with its accompanying technology first and foremost solves a problem that Carnival may – or may not – have. It makes it simpler for the crews to do their jobs, which is commendable in itself. Additionally it serves as a tool to drive additional revenue by probably making it even easier to buy non-essential things. This also gets evidenced by a statement that comes at the end of the video: “At the core of it we are taking the burden of service delivery off the crew.” The Ocean Medallion system is an awesome piece of technology. If wisely used it can make some aspects of a cruise easier than they are without, and create wow moments. This, especially if Carnival succeeds in delivering on the more basic customer expectations, and follows simple rules, similar to the ones outlined above. It also can become very creepy. Walking this fine trail carefully is important

IoT becomes Outcome Orientated with SAP Leonardo - Finally

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 16:59:36 -0500

On January 10, 2017, SAP announced a bundling of their IoT portfolio of initiatives to focus on business outcomes instead of technology while combining the set of emerging products and solutions under the brand name Leonardo – as in Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the most forward looking artists and innovators ever. This announcement substantiates SAPs commitment to invest two billion Euro in IoT over the next 5 years. The new portfolio will combine adaptive applications, big data and connectivity as packaged line-of-business solutions, covering a range of topics. It bases upon a rebranded – and repackaged(?) HANA Cloud Platform, enhanced by the micro services for machine learning that were announced earlier and which I covered here. This enhanced platform is now called SAP Cloud Platform. As per a blog post accompanying the Leonardo announcement, the high level architecture of SAPs new offering looks like below and covers, besides a set of existing applications

an IoT adapter – SAP Leonardo for Edge Computing – which serves as a device independent data input layer, essentially a kind of middleware, probably built on or using HCI.
a foundational layer – SAP Leonardo Foundation – which includes the IoT business services that are to be exposed, enabling rapid development of applications. This makes up the functional core.
and a ‘bus’ layer – SAP Leonardo Bridge – which enables the combination of real time data with applications and processes

Leonardo High Level Architecture - Source: SAP Leonardo is accompanied by a jump-start enablement program to accompany this initiative. This program includes introductory pricing and is intended to help organizations identify and validate IoT pilots and use cases, including expert staffing and using design thinking methodologies, thus easing the first IoT steps. Of course there will be a launch event to bring together customers, partners, and experts, showcasing innovations and strategies. According to Tanja Rueckert, EVP Digital Assets and IoT SAP with Leonardo connects “things with business processes and with people”.

My Take

This was long overdue. Overdue not only from SAP, but from any and every vendor. IoT is a means, not an end! As Brent Leary very recently said in a podcast with SearchCRM, IoT is still trying to make its way to provide value for businesses. This is imho due to the IoT market being vendor- and technology driven. SAP now takes the lead in tightly integrating technology into business process, and to show a clear path to business value. This fits neatly into the core of SAPs overall value proposition as an enterprise software company and it nicely combines numerous technologies and services that have been developed by SAP in the past years into a holistic piece that can deliver business value. I see this mainly as a rebranding instead of something net new, although there are some new pieces to this solution portfolio. This is also a bit of a concern. SAP now needs to keep up the momentum and deliver new intelligent, IoT based business solutions. What is interesting is the (important) combination of IoT and machine learning, which is mentioned only in the blog post, and which has the potential to make a real difference, e.g., when it comes to distributed intelligence. As a final word of caution, SAP only announced introductory promotional pricing. This means that there are still important open questions about pricing overall, which should be a worry for customers. However, overall this is good news for customers, as with this portfolio of services and technology every IoT investment can be tied to a business case and then business value. I expect that other big vendors SAP clearly takes a thought leadership position here, if not a technology leadership position.

Omnichannel – Myth, Reality or Utopia?

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 12:14:09 -0400

Omnichannel – is it a Myth, Reality or Utopia?

Over the past 20 or so years the way products and services get sold and customer service as well as marketing get delivered changed dramatically. Gone are the times where a potential customer was addressed via a radio- or TV-spot or an ad printed in a newspaper, advertising mail in the mailbox … – well, it still happens, but the focus shifted dramatically. We started off from one single ‘channel’ – customer goes to the store and interacts with a person – and added an ever increasing number of additional ones, like the ones mentioned, plus many more. For retail businesses the store will not go away. Generally spoken, human interaction will stay important, probably increase in importance; human customer service will not vanish – but is likely to change … please hold this thought. In today’s omnichannel world we also have telephone, e-mail, web-delivered ads, mobile apps, branded and white-label communities, social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., knowledge bases in combination with self-service, chat, messenger applications like WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Snapchat, iMessage; chat supported by ‘machine intelligence’, exposed via so called chatbots, and what not. The list could virtually go on and on. This is all supported by and implemented on a platform that leverages integrated applications, which work on a joint, or at least consistent data model – with clean data – utilizing strong real-time analytics capabilities that powers both, customer segmentation and knowledge categorization for efficient search. And it delivers a great customer experience.

In Real Life

Uhhm, I am just awaking from my dream … Omnichannel is currently all the rage. Be available where your customer is, be consistent regardless of the communications channel that the customer uses at any time, and regardless of the changes of channels the customer chooses to make. Use the knowledge and information of previous interactions to the customers’ benefit. I, too, think that it is the right idea, and approach – at least for now.

The History – and a Glimpse into the Future?

We started off with just one single channel. Every interaction happened in the store – and via word of mouth. That is easy enough to handle but then changed very soon, as described above. The situation changed to being in the need to support a low number of independent channels, especially in marketing, but also in service. Content, and knowledge, were created and disseminated into these independent channels. This got somehow optimized. The information was made available for use in several channels. Born was the notion of cross channel. From there we went on to think of and to support multi-channel concepts by integrating the various applications and their data stores. We arrived at the era of suites. However, additional channels emerged and thanks to cloud computing and decentral budgets as well as lacking trust into IT departments, the pendulum swings from suites to best-of-breed solutions – all the way back to the 90s. As a consequence, platforms start to emerge. The number of communications channels that need to be supported, grew, and continues to grow. Additionally, customers increasingly demand being addressed personally and relevantly, on the communications channel of their choice. And they want to be able to get to the information themselves, be it marketing-, product information or service documentation. This is largely thanks to advances in computing technology and the emergence of smart phones, and needs to be addressed by companies. So, we arrived at the era of omnichannel, where companies feel the need to achieve a seamless marketing, sales, and service experience, regardless of the communications channel a customer uses at any given time. Including as per yet unknown channels. Again, this is a lofty goal – very lofty! Meanwhile companies start to realize that they cannot achieve this goal in its full epic breadth and depth, especially as they are also confronted with the need to be profitable, which obviously prevents them from throwing an infinite number of dollars at solving this problem. The overwhelming complexity of this scenario simply cannot be fully accommodated for at this time. Job-to-be-done thinking and customer journey maps evolved, which gave the ability to provide touch points for customers that can get offered by the companies in a manageable way. Advanced segmentation helps in limiting the offer to different customer groups, thus increasing the company’s relevance. Combined with sufficient computing power the relevance of the delivered content can be increased, too. On the service side we see communities and self-service approaches being developed and employed. Still, there are many databases with different aspects of data/knowledge that are not integrated, due to above best-of-breed approach and lacking pre-existing platforms in many businesses.

The Crystal Ball

And all this doesn’t even take into account the physical world. Talk about retail stores and people! This fragmentation harms the customer experience. Again, neither the retail store nor human customer service will vanish! But in reality, there is no real omnichannel experience delivered, with the possible exception of a few technologically very advanced brands. Nor needs to be! Companies need to prioritize. Looking at current technical trends only few channels are really important. For one the human touch. Mobile; already now a third of all web access happens via mobile devices. Conversational interfaces are increasingly becoming important, too. According to Esteban Kolsky, customer service will look totally different from what it is now in ten years’ time. He is a firm believer in automation. So am I. https://twitter.com/ekolsky/status/791046753382338560 We are facing self-service and communities as the main channels for customer service and even pre-purchase decision making. There are estimations that 90 per cent or more of customer service interactions can be automated. And I really wouldn’t disagree. What is the first thing we do when confronted with an issue? We use Google to research a resolution. Information that we receive online from companies pre-purchase (and in service scenarios, too) will increasingly be delivered by explorative algorithms (AI’s). So, where are we bound to?

Businesses will develop a strong focus on mobile delivery of digital content, be it for marketing or service; this very well also means via voice (bots), and via humans. On the longer run automated voice and interaction via other devices than the smartphone will gain increased importance. Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, and VR/AR are giving us some direction here.
We will see customers triage between branded apps that they will use for preferred businesses, ‘aggregator’ apps for needs based access (e.g., ‘I want to order food, but do not know what’, …), and finally messaging apps with their embedded company channels/bots. The latter two categories might merge. Neither category, app or messaging, will vanish; however, there will be a consolidation, as customers will not want to deal with dozens of apps on their mobile devices. This was one of the ideas behind Epikonic – maybe we just have been too early …
With the rise of messaging apps and newer protocols, especially WebRTC, the importance of telephony as a separate network/technology will fade away. Telephony, especially with businesses, will merge into the data/app stream, mainly helping both parties; with an advantage for the business, though.
Seamless interoperation of self-service or community service with human service, due to improved automation and ‘intelligent’ software; human intervention will become the exception, and if it comes to human intervention, there will increasingly be more relevant information available to be used by the agent.

This will not happen in the next few days, but it will. Watch the trends.

Customer Experience - It is all in the Data. Really?

Thu, 13 Oct 2016 14:48:17 -0400

A while after my earlier discussion with Abinash Tripathy from Helpshift about the value for customer experience of bots in customer support he contacted me with some exciting news about what he and his team are doing now. Believe me, it is interesting – but read for yourself. Our conversation, of course, led on to another vivid discussion about things to come and things that in our opinions should come. The bottom line is that we live in a data driven, always on, real-time world, where prediction of events or the ability to suggest an action is becoming increasingly a differentiator … be it in a B2B- or a B2C world. Think of Rolls-Royce selling uptime of their engines, entire airplanes nearly continuously sending telemetry data “home”, or the massive amount of data that a Formula 1 car continually sends in order for the team to take proper real-time decisions. Any car already collects a lot of data – it just needs to get connected to allow for prediction of maintenance to prevent failures. Or think of entire power grids that are already instrumented in a way that allows the operator to predict a failure several days in advance, so that the affected element can get fixed before it fails.

It is all in the data?

The secret is in having the data. And in the algorithms, be they event- and rule based, or more sophisticated and using machine- or deep learning. Neither data nor algorithms alone are the goal. Because what is needed is actionable insight. Actionable insight emerges only if the right algorithms are applied to the right data. Data and algorithms are the means to an end, and the end is a job-to-be-done. The job-to-be-done in our support context is a prediction, or a suggestion, or just a notification. But how does the customer benefit from it? Elementary, my dear Watson! A system that works like this offers an improved customer experience by avoiding failures and by offering the ability to pro-actively approach customers to get things done. Combining this with ubiquitous mobile communication it also offers the possibility to engage with customer in their context, meaning right situation, right time, right location, right communication channel. Or, formulating it the other way round: Massive computing power combined with sensors, delivered via the cloud to mobile devices, is what enables the delivery of real-time, data driven, and personalized experiences. Both, customer support and –engagement, are increasingly delivered in app or through messaging interfaces. Despite the decreasing number of apps that are getting installed, the offer of good, immediate support may well be the incentive for customers to install a branded app, especially if the backend can already work with enough data to establish the relevant context, automatically and manually delivered by the customers via their devices.

The big bright IoT- and AI future

Now by extension this works in IoT scenarios, too. As said before, the main juice lies in the data and the algorithms on the back end. Imagine a connected car that tells its owner that something critical is about to break and probably also makes a service technician initiate a call to offer on-the-spot support. There are lots of scenarios possible, including the currently hotly contested and wild-west like home automation market or multiple scenarios in predictive machine maintenance. In an –as-a-service economy most product vendors need to change their business models from selling machinery to selling outcomes. The product is only a vehicle to achieve the outcome, nothing more. The customer does not want to have a washing machine but clean clothes, not a light bulb but light, not a car but (individual) transportation (yes there are some not fully rational parameters involved, but in essence it is about the outcome). Mainly these scenarios are still in a fluid stage, but they are emerging. Technologies are being built. Ecosystems are developing around supporting them. Think of home automation and IoT scenarios where all the big names, Amazon, Google, Apple, not talking about Telcos, and others, are trying to establish themselves, offering platforms for other companies to connect devices to have them talk to each other and a control hub. Wild West, Gold Rush style, as said. But as a vendor one needs to position oneself already now and select the right ecosystems to partake in. As a word of caution: During Gold Rush times it was not the customer who benefitted most. This would be an article of its own …

But what about now?

So, looking more near term. Contextual, relevant marketing messages are best delivered based on rich customer data, too. Delivered to the right customer, at the right time and location, in the right context – and using the right, i.e. the customer’s preferred, channel. This is a good part of the secret behind companies like Krux, or Kahuna, to name but two that have been talked about lately. An increasingly important part of this the ability to deliver messages in-app, via messaging systems or as push notifications. However, the good ole e-mail is not dead, too; and it is likely to stay for some more time. Another important part is the ability to build segmentation models that get continuously evaluated in real time, over a period of time. This enables the event-based initiation of a communication, e.g. when entering a geo-fenced area during a certain time, perhaps including weather information and definitely information about the person. Add beacon support and/or integration to e.g. payment systems, loyalty systems, survey systems and a whole lot of near term opportunity arise that can lead to service automation tying into marketing automation, which in turn directly results in a sale, thus somewhat short-circuiting the traditional distribution into three functions, marketing, sales, service. It also leads into the direction of the big, bright future. Roadblocks included. Many of them. Exciting times ahead.

Clash of Titans - SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Oracle Quo Vadis?

Tue, 11 Oct 2016 22:46:00 -0400

Following all those announcements of AI, machine learning, IoT, IaaS, PaaS and what not over the past months, I was beginning to wonder where the big business software vendors are going. What is the game plan of Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP? How does newcomer Adobe fit in there? Maybe Amazon and Google, too; or Facebook. It is a time for another Quo Vadis – this time: Quo Vadis, industry?

Clash of Titans

In the last about 2 – 3 years we have seen a strong acceleration of innovation, or at least talk about it.

Cloud computing, offering nearly unlimited scalability and elasticity of computing resources has become main stream. Cloud computing also allows for nearly 100 per cent uptime
Since the advent of the iPhone (yes, I know this was earlier than 2013) the proliferation of sensors has increased a lot, resulting in them becoming cheaper and cheaper, allowing for an increasing number of data rich applications
This has also driven fast mobile connectivity, which has become nearly ubiquitous; maybe except a few blessed spots on this planet, which will be covered soon, too. Think of Google’s Balloon project or Facebook’s drone
Memory has become dirt cheap, and fast
In-memory technologies, No-SQL databases, Hadoop, Spark, and improvements of analytics algorithms make it possible to work with huge sets of data in real time
The (re-)emergence of AI technologies, progress in machine learning and deep learning, enabled by the now available computing power, help in pattern recognition that allows machine driven suggestion, prediction, and prescription of actions, based upon huge amounts of data
Data, be it machine-generated or human created in social networks, communities, business applications, etc., along with analytics and algorithms on it have become the fuel that drives businesses

Are some of these topics on the peak of inflated expectations? Clearly so. But Gartner estimates that they are maturing fast. What is clear to me is that these advances have created something akin a clash of titans. Effectively, after the cloud war we now see a heated platform war. So how does this clash affect the dominant software vendors – and how are they positioning themselves?

SAP

Let me start with the company I know best. SAP has its roots in enabling the corporate back end with their ERP solutions. From there on they moved on to “New Dimension” products like SCM, APO, CRM, BW etc., supporting many, many processes around the business core. In essence SAP has become the company that a business can be run on. SAP was/is the company that connects businesses with their stakeholders, internal ones as well as external ones. The company supports nearly all relevant industries, but still has a core in the manufacturing industries. SAP also over the years has become a very strong eco-system player. But now there is more to it. With HANA as an in memory database engine SAP now has become a technology vendor, too – again. And on top of HANA there is the HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) with an increasing number of services that it supports and which is a key component to their strategy. Notably, SAP does not talk much about AI and machine learning, nor about social media – or their possible acquisition. Instead SAP is focusing its messaging on their core and the Internet of Things, and there predominantly the Industrial Internet of Things. SAP aggressively builds outcome-focused business applications on top of HCP and also with some success invites everybody to build business applications using HCP. In their words they want to connect the enterprise with the world. From an infrastructure point of view SAP pursues a multi-ecosystem approach by supporting AWS, Azure, and their own cloud services. Given all this it appears that, coming from the strong installed ERP base, starting from the back office and from the Industrial Internet of Things, SAP wants to become the platform of choice to be the fabric that connects businesses with their stakeholders, as a key member of their ecosystem.

Oracle

Oracle comes from a slightly different angle. They are also supporting a full stack of business applications. They have started from the database side and from there entered the business applications world, mainly through applications, but then evolving their own Fusion application world. Oracle is not as much an ecosystem player as SAP, but concentrates on the own infrastructure services, including data centers and servers, and, of course, on the leading DBMSs with the Oracle DBMS and MySQL. Oracle is also not that much of an applications ecosystem player as SAP is. The messaging lately appears to be less around the Internet of Things but more about AI and machine learning, intelligent applications, as they name them. With the IaaS announcements Oracle is squarely aiming at AWS, even ignoring Azure. Oracle, of course, too, want to become the fabric to connect enterprises and their stakeholders. Same overall goal as SAP has, but catering to their own strengths, which are a bit more towards the infrastructure side than SAP’s.

Salesforce

Here again I see a strategy that is similar to the one of SAP. However, Salesforces starting point are customer facing applications. Salesforce is not an ERP company, but by origin, a CRM company. Similar to SAP they are strong on ecosystem, but are less inter-ecosystem than SAP and more into buying than partnering. From an infrastructure point of view, they are strongly using their own data centers and only recently announced a deepening partnership with AWS. From a data point of view, they naturally lean towards AI and machine learning, although Salesforce has its own IoT platform. This can also be seen by the fact that they hired Bob Stutz as CEO of the analytics cloud, who just recently delivered Einstein, Salesforces AI platform. Their focus is customer facing- and sales-enabling data, with them having a strong stake in Inside Sales, and having had a very strong interest in buying LinkedIn and now rumored to be interested in acquiring Twitter. Again, same overall destination, different strengths, so a slightly different starting point.

Microsoft

In my eyes Microsoft is the 800-pound gorilla in this game. They seem to have a bigger goal than the three other big ones. They want to become the fabric that connects enterprises of all sizes with their stakeholders, including the consumers’ personal lives. And they have all ingredients for it. With Dynamics they have a strong business applications suite. It is overall probably not as strong as SAP’s or Oracle’s but from the CRM side it is absolutely a leading one – except of marketing functionality, which I will have a word on later. They have strong database engines and a strong IaaS platform, probably the only one that near term can get close to AWS. They own strong IoT- and AI/machine learning platforms. And they have recently acquired LinkedIn, which offers very interesting synergies with Dynamics CRM, in the sales and marketing areas, and also as a training ground for their AI systems. They, too, have a strong stake in Inside Sales, just like Salesforce. On top of this there is Office365, the leading productivity platform. This gets topped up with the leading identity management system, Active Directory. On the business applications side they arguably only miss an e-commerce solution. And this business software side is about to get integrated into one single offering Dynamics365. But Microsoft doesn’t stop here. Microsoft is also one of the leading players in the consumer market, offering the most widely used operating system that includes smartphone support and a strong search engine. Ecosystem wise they are a strong player, actually the player that is most versed in ecosystem play. With one exception, and that is Azure. Microsoft naturally does not have much inclination to have its business applications run on AWS. It is possible, though, but the cloud versions of Dynamics are Azure. Microsoft’s origin is with consumer software but right now they are in the admirable position of being able to combine business customer data, consumer data, and business data, leveraging their AI offerings. IoT seems to play a secondary role for them at the moment. If I were one of SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, I would be outright scared.

Now, Who Else?

There are a few other companies around with big stakes, like IBM, Amazon, Google, and a few more. And then there is Adobe, the rising CRM star.

Adobe

Let me start with Adobe. Adobe and Microsoft just entered a strong partnership that in my eyes benefits Microsoft more than Adobe. Of course they have partnerships with SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce, too, but this one is a landmark as Microsoft so far had a distinct weakness in the marketing arena. Adobe, with its origins in the graphical and Internet content sector a year or so ago popped up as a marketing technology vendor – and thus smack in the CRM arena. So far my impression is that they have a focus on the intersection of business and customer, be it B2B or B2C, but somewhat leaning towards B2C. Borrowing the ‘customer experience’ definition (read this article, it is more than worthwhile) of friend and CRM god father Paul Greenberg they want to positively influence “how a customer feels about a company over time” by consistently enabling positive (consumable) experiences. In my eyes every experience with a company is consumable and every single one vastly contributes to a customer’s feeling about a company at any given point in time. I think they will either continue to be a cross-ecosystem partner or be plucked by one of the dominant platform players. And at this point in time this is rather Microsoft than any other.

The ‘Rest of the Pack’

This covers Google, IBM Amazon and Facebook; Google and IBM being somewhat in the business applications play as well, Google and Amazon being strong infrastructure players. Let’s start with IBM. IBM sells the servers and services. They are also invested in SugarCRM and with Watson have one of the strongest AI’s around. When it comes to an IoT platform, theirs is mainly a concept, an architecture. Amazon owns with AWS the strongest IaaS platform around. Having started from their own needs they have created a market and offer a vast array of services that business application vendors can use, including strong database-, IoT- and AI services. Their platform is open for whoever wants to use it, which makes them a strong player in the market. Google is a hybrid. They are strong on infrastructure, including services for database, IoT and AI, but they also offer a competitive suite of productivity applications and are increasingly interested in business applications. Not to mention the data coming out of their search and advertising business; and from Android. When it comes to intelligence about consumers and the ability to turn data into insights they are probably the dominant player in this group, closely followed by Facebook – for the moment. Facebook, too, sits on a ton of actionable data that they can utilize and sell. Facebook is about to enter the business productivity market with their ‘at work’ product. In contrast to Google they do not offer their platform for other companies to run on and are a walled garden as opposed to the open ecosystem that Google runs. Don’t forget about these four.

Famous last Words

The big 4.5 are on a collision course with, in my eyes Microsoft currently having an edge because of their sheer strength, including very deep pockets. They are followed by SAP due to their strength in business applications, their strong ecosystem approach, and their focus on the Industrial Internet of Things. Salesforce comes from the customer side of the house and Oracle in my eyes looks at the wrong game at the moment. But then everything is fluent. There are additional players in the game and small companies can thrive in the gaps between these players. Until too much consolidation happens this is a good time for them and for the customer experience.

Go Digital or Die - CRM Evolution 2016

Fri, 27 May 2016 17:06:12 -0400

CRM Evolution 2016 - Conference at a Glance

CRM Evolution 2016 revolved around two main topics

customer experience, customer engagement
digital transformation

As part of these three main topics many speakers were about how to get there, which includes thinking and talking about machine learning, predictive analytics, and, of course, the Internet of Things. The CRM Evolution 2016 conference, organised by David Myron and chaired by CRM guru Paul Greenberg once more had an impressive lineup of speakers, starting with two highly impressive keynotes, held by Dennis Snow, formerly of Disney on Monday, and Brian Solis from Altimeter Group on Tuesday. As before it was co-located with SpeechTek and Customer Service experience, the latter chaired by Esteban Kolski. This combination guarantees a lot of high caliber attendance and a lot of networking opportunity, something that Paul Greenberg very strongly and actively supports. It is virtually impossible to not network … According to colleague Scott Rogers, although the conference appeared to be bigger than the years before it all seemed more intimate, but not crowded, which probably can get attributed to a good choice of venue. The event being vendor independent is only the icing on the cake. In my eyes this is the one CRM related conference that one must not miss. In contrast to last year I attended CRM Evolution only, which in retrospective was a mistake. But let’s have a look at the conference themes.

There is no CRM without Customer Engagement and good Customer Experiences

In the opening key note Dennis Snow told us about the Disney way of creating great customer experiences, which basically follows three simple rules

Design your processes with the customer in mind, not with internal/operational priorities; look through the lens of the customer
Pay attention to details
Create little “Wow Moments”. These add up to a lasting great experience and are easier to achieve than single “big” experiences.

To me the most important message that Dennis conveyed is that the simple things and consistency are what matters. Consistently provide little experiences throughout the customer life cycle. He underpinned this with some examples from the ‘ordeal’ of getting out of the park and back into the hotel. Everybody is exhausted, kids may be edgy, riding the bus is usually not fun. What about the bus driver singing some songs or doing a little trivia? The rooms showing some little surprise, like specially folded towels? Another of his core messages was that a company gets loyalty and advocacy only by creating those “wow” moments mentioned above. For this to be effective, however, it must not fail at base priorities. Customer expectations can get mapped to a pyramid. Every customer expects accuracy and availability. These are just the baseline, however. If a company fails at these then there will not be a good customer experience. There is also no chance to create wow moments in these layers – only negative ones. Opportunities for wow moments lie at the top of the pyramid, where a company can become a partner or ultimately become a trusted advisor. The latter was also emphasized upon by other speakers and during the panels; e.g. when it comes to selling it is now paramount to become a part of the customer’s network of trust. Michael Fauscette provided some survey data showing that vendor sales professionals are about the last ones to be influential to purchasing decisions and they nearly 2/3 of all surveyed companies agree that they engage with a sales person only to seal the deal after the decision has been taken. On the other hand, even more would appreciate being engaged by sales persons with relevant and contextual information. This currently does not come from vendors. Denis Pombriant had some good words to say about this from a loyalty angle. He started off with the observation that due to poorly implemented loyalty programs around 6.2 trillion dollar get wasted per annum due to customer churn etc. His basic conclusion was that a company cannot buy customer loyalty anymore but needs to earn it via superior engagement and providing a superior customer experience.

Go Digital or Die

The second big topic was digital transformation. Digital transformation can be defined as ‘the realignment of, or new investment in, technology, business models, and processes to drive new value for customers and employees and more effectively compete in an ever-changing digital economy”. The consensus opinion can be summed up as ‘go digital or die’. This message was hammered home in his usual refreshing style by Ray Wang and, from a more organisational maturity point of view by Brian Solis during his day 2 keynote. Brian Solis looked at digital transformation from organisational maturity and people points of view. He started off stating that one is on the wrong end of innovation when waiting for someone else to tell what needs to get done. Innovation, also digital innovation and innovation in customer experience, starts from within: Observe, believe in it, act! Similar to Dennis Snow the day before Brian Solis makes it a strong point that innovation in customer experience is about making the company “conform to expectations and aspirations of people instead of making them conform to assumptions or legacy investments and processes”. If people look for shortcuts, then the designed experience is wrong. Ray Wang stated that digital disruption is not about a technology shift but that it is about transforming business models and how businesses engage with their customers. In his opinion products and services will become less and less important. Business models will shift to sell outcomes or customer experiences, which are fed by data that is converted to insights. This will also allow for developing business models that couldn’t be imagined before. He provided a few examples like Symmons Industries who built a business model around sensor driven shower heads. These shower heads help hotels mitigating a derailer of the experiences they provide while allowing Symmons Industries to move competitors’ parts and services out of hotels that use their shower heads.

Tying it Together

The connection between customer engagement and customer experience on one hand and digital transformation on the other hand is insight. Insight is data converted to actionable knowledge. In so far predictive analytics, machine learning, and Internet of Things are the glue. The ability to meaningfully engage with relevant, timely, contextual information (at every touch point, if it is allowed to add yet another buzz word) requires data and the ability to do real-time predictive or, in the words of Ray Wang ‘anticipatory’, analytics. Ray Wang defines anticipatory analytics as predictive analytics plus machine learning. Personally I’d rather think that this is an unnecessary distinction that probably will vanish soon. Predictive analytics will embrace machine learning instead of relying on static models. The necessary data comes from all types of sources, traditional ones as well as from an increasing number of sensors – the Internet of Things. How to strategically put all this together was covered by various speakers, including Barton Goldenberg, who places the CRM system as the hub of a number of systems that jointly implement a coherent strategy. Sheryl Kingstone looked deeper into how to use especially predictive analytics to achieve better customer engagement by delivering contextualised and personalised experiences consistently across channels. Volker Hildebrand from SAP succinctly said that “marketing has become a weapon of mass distraction” and that companies need to deliver reliable, contextually relevant, and timely information in a way that is convenient for their customers – or else they face the risk of getting out of business. A path of getting step-by-step to a very consistent and successful customer engagement in the retail world that combines online- and offline behaviour was also presented using the CRM approach of General Mills as an example. I found this one very impressive. Amy Halford and Molly Hjelm who presented also emphasised that “CRM is responsibility”, meaning that CRM is not only about getting customer data but also about giving back to customers, which nicely ties into Denis Pombriant’s findings that customer loyalty needs to be earned. They also put an emphasis on one theme that I haven’t heard much about in other tracks: Data Quality! Data needs to be invested into in terms of quality and tagging in order to be really useful for CRM processes.