Showing posts with label business intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business intelligence. Show all posts

Information, Analytics and Speed are the New Mandates

The reality of information is entirely contained in the speed of its dissemination. ~ Paul Virilio

Information has a shelf life.  Its value diminishes quickly with the passing of time.  In a world of moving customers, employees, vehicles, subcontractors, materials, suppliers, etc., knowing what is happening at a precise time is critical for decision-making, scheduling and planning.  If some information is 90 minutes old, others 45 minutes old, and more available in real-time - you are going to have a real challenge integrating that information and forming an accurate and clear picture of reality!

Optimal efficiency and accuracy, in the scenario above, can only be achieved when the speed of information collection and dissemination is coordinated and real-time.  This means having mobile data communications and sensor technologies in place and integrating it to present an accurate impression of reality in real-time.

For many industries the quality of their information logistics systems is the new competitive playing field.  In history many of the greatest battles were won or lost based on the accuracy and timeliness of the information used to decide how best to maneuver armies, navies and air forces.  Enterprises today are in a similar position.

Legacy IT systems that are incapable of supporting a real-time information collection, communication, processing, analyzing and disseminating environment will be the reason many companies will no longer remain competitive in 2015.

In the past long-term planning was the ticket to success.  As the tempo of business increased, short-term planning became more important.  Today, nothing short of real-term is good enough to compete in a hyper-competitive global market.

Today the efficient and real-time coordination of multiple moving parts is mandatory in many industries.  That means mobile communications and sensor technologies have become an absolute requirement on the front-end, and IT systems that can support real-time on the back-end.  What needs to change in your IT environment in 2015 to support real-term planning and real-time decision-making?

For more on this subject read: http://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Virilio/Virilio_ArtoftheMotor2.html.



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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

An Interview with World Traveler and BI Expert Mico Yuk

I was thrilled to catch business intelligence expert Mico Yuk at her home office in Atlanta, GA., as she travels so frequently.  She is the founder of BI Dashboard Formula.  In this interview we discuss the state of business intelligence and the impact of real-time and SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) on BI.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/Fa_jX4-zMSo?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict Interviews SAP's Consumer Insight 365 Guru Jim Brooks

MNOs (mobile network operators) collect massive amounts of data on mobile phone usage, activities, web use and location.  SAP has 500 MNO clients around the world.  Combine the two and you have a service that can provide an incredible amount of business insight.  Jim Brooks shares the details of this new SAP service in this interview recorded with me at SAP's SAPPHIRE conference.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyoqHUEGUJ4&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw&feature=share



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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Editor
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos
Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

SMAC, Code Halos and the Good, Bad and Ugly of Tracking Data

As a SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) Analyst, I spend my days researching, writing and presenting ideas to companies and audiences.  One of the most important subjects these days is how to develop and implement the best possible information logistics systems.  That means utilizing and processing collected data in the most advantageous and efficient manner possible to further the ambitions of the business.  That goal is perfectly understandable for a business - collecting business data and transactional data is expected, but when it is your personal data (Code Halos) that is being collected we often feel differently.  For example, I love having my TripIt, Marriott and Delta mobile apps know about me, my preferences and my past, present and future travels, but I don't want that information shared with other vendors (or home burglars) without my permission.

In this article, my colleague Ben Pring, Co-Director of the Center for the Future of Work at Cognizant is kind enough to address the good and bad of having your data (Code Halos) aggregated and tracked online.  I have included two embedded videos - first, a video interview that I filmed with Paul Roehrig and Ben Pring on the concepts of Code Halos, and a second far more professional clip on the role of Code Halos in our everyday life.
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The response to our articles around Code Halo-thinking is overwhelmingly positive.   I and my co-authors, Malcolm Frank and Paul Roehrig, have spoken at dozens of client and industry events and engaged in numerous post-presentation discussions with a wide array of  senior IT and business leaders who when presented with  the Code Halo idea and follow us through our Crossroads Model tell us of  the opportunities Code Halo-thinking offers (including the risks of “extinction events”) are very real in their industry or market.  For  example, the narrative resonated with a major soft drink manufacturer that saw a new way to think about the social network around its soft drink; with an international airline which is beginning to socialize and internalize the new metaphor of a Code Halo to rethink how it moves customers from point A to point B; and with a leading financial services institution that admitted it was  only too aware of the “ionization” happening all around it as new ideas from start-ups begin to change the competitive dynamics the company faces.

Video Link: http://youtu.be/ctycYs18dyk


The second major reaction though – which may or may not surprise you, if you’ve read any of the previous pieces here, is that many people immediately internalize the Code Halo story and find “the dark side of the Halo.” Rather than focusing on the positive transformational commercial opportunities Code Halos  present, they land on the dystopian, Orwellian world of constant surveillance by Big (and little) Brother that Messer’s Assange, Manning and Snowden have brought to the fore in recent weeks, months and years.

Typically we hear a torrent of worst-case scenarios. “I don’t want to share my information with retailer x”, “I don’t want the government to have even more information on me that they do already”, “this is just going to make hackers’ lives easier”, “I get bombarded by enough advertising already; this is just going to make it even worse”, “I don’t want to live in 1984”, “I am not a number”, “how can I control who knows things about me”, “this is the final nail in the coffin of privacy”, “these ideas will never take off.”

The prism that people have is perfectly understandable.  Their concerns and fears are, of course, entirely valid and understandable. We share many of them. As digital immigrants ourselves we are at times as dazed and confused as any set of middle aged men by the emergent and volatile social mores of the new world and have to fight back the temptation to wallow in nostalgic revelries of how “this wasn’t the way we used to do it back in the day/old country.”

The grand experiment that we are all engaged in – creating a world of unprecedented hyper-connectivity of time, space, and culture - which the Code Halo phenomena is supercharging, is, by its very nature, unknowable and logically contains good things and bad.  Lots of good things are going to happen in a world of Code Halos, as are lots of bad things.

In short, we have no intention to deny that bad things will happen as a result of code meeting code. We fully expect they will. There is a very real dark side of the halo. All of the worst-case scenarios with which we are presented will happen, and are happening now.  People will get hacked. Government intrusion will grow. Advertisers will create new ways to embed advertising into every nook and cranny of our lives through every IP addressable form factor we use. Privacy will recede. The nefarious will have new opportunities to hurt us. Many innovations enabled by Code Halos will have unexpected consequences which will compound over time to produce unanticipated negative outcomes.  And yet we firmly believe these fears, concerns and objections are overblown, irrelevant or moot. Every objection is entirely the same objection that people raised as Al Gore’s Information Superhighway was entering the public consciousness in the middle of the 1990s; “I’ll never put my credit details onto the web,” Average Joe said in 1996; now Joe is routinely spending thousands of dollars online.

The Internet has been a crime scene in the last 20 years -- repeatedly. And it still is. And it always will be. But, today the Internet has 634 million websites and 2.4 billion users, according to uptime monitoring company, Royal Pingdom, and is here to stay. Nobody is going to un-invent it.
In 2013 so much of our lives are already online – shared, visible, transparent, open, all proffered voluntarily through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, et al, or less voluntarily via our credit score, phone records, movements, and key strokes that the government can impound without warrant -- that privacy is already an illusion, hackers already hack, advertisers can already advertise within our email, pharmacies already send our 16-year-old daughters coupons for diapers when neither they nor we knew they were pregnant; we are numbers, we are code.

The world that we are describing is already here. The Code Halo era is not imminent. It is now.
Just as the upside of the Internet has won over the downside we believe the upside of a Code Halo world will win over its downsides. The “give to get” ratio of the Code Halo world will be so positive that, in the same way that the cost and convenience of Internet era 1.0 triumphed over its doubters, the new Internet era of Code Halos will similarly see it detractor’s voices diminish and disappear.  

And one last thought; the ultimate value of Code Halos will originate out of the openness of data that is shared and this, of course, will mandate good behavior and accountability.  Just as lousy service that once went unpunished is now broadcast on social media with sometimes devastating impact, individuals or corporations that misuse or exploit information exchanged via Code Halos will struggle to enrich and inflate their Code Halo and to generate commercially material sparks. Bad Code Halo behavior will exist in a world of instant high visibility and will push some towards their extinction event. 

Thoughts?  



For more information on these concepts please visit www.unevenlydistributed.com.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

SMAC Expert Series: Paul Roehrig and Ben Pring

How does big data impact companies today?  How are companies competing on the use of business intelligence?  What business transformations and business model changes are taking place due to these capabilities?  Watch this interview that I recorded with Cognizant's Co-Directors of the Center for The Future of Work, Paul Roehrig and Ben Pring as they share their latest research with us.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/ctycYs18dyk


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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Video Series: Centigon's Ryan Goodman

This is an interview with Centigon's CEO Ryan Goodman.  They are using Google Maps and business intelligence to offer some interesting mobile solutions for SAP users.

Don't forget to take the enterprise mobility survey at the top of this page!  It will help us all better understand today's market.





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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Network-Centric Mobile Field Force Automation and OODA


This article explores the combination of some of the best military strategy thinking with mobile technologies, field force automation and business intelligence solutions.


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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobile Strategy, Sales and Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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M2M, Route Optimization, Handhelds and Business Intelligence

Recently I wrote about mobile software applications physically moving objects such as unlocking car doors. I have also seen interesting scenarios where mechanical objects activate mobile applications. One example is the PTO on a snow plow activates the GPS to track the routes being plowed, sprayed with deicer or sanded and this information is wirelessly updated in real-time to GIS system to view coverage areas.

Another scenario is a mini-inventory management system or a M2M (machine to machine) scenario whereby a snack vending machine wirelessly notifies the vending machine owner of current inventory levels.

I can envision a scenario where 1,500 vending machines automatically and wirelessly update the central office ERP with their inventory levels. The ERP checks inventory in the central warehouse and automatically creates shipping orders and replenishes low warehouse inventory through automated ordering rules with preferred vendors.

Business intelligence software predicts the demand for specific products for each location and vending machine based upon sales and date and time stamps. This prediction is used to load the route vans.

Next the route optimization software creates the most efficient routes for the drivers and synchronizes this with the driver's handheld computer.

M2M data synchronization is being added to more and more equipment these days.

If you would like to discuss this topic in more detail please contact me.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobile Strategy, Sales and Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Mobile Applications and Location Based Systems for Supply Chain and Inventory Management

In an article I published recently about grocery stores using LBS (location based services) on mobile devices and Smart phones, I proposed there were additional areas that large enterprises could benefit from real-time data collection, B2B integrations, business intelligence and location based services. Let's take a look at a couple of additional scenarios:

  1. 14 trucks are delivering perishable products on routes
  2. Truck #7 has a customer that has an unexpectedly high demand for a product
  3. Truck #7, using a mobile handheld computer, requests additional inventory from the SAP ERP (enterprise resource planning) software in the central office.
  4. The SAP ERP reports inventory levels on all 14 trucks based upon the real-time synchronization of data with each of the handheld barcode scanners of the trucks
  5. It is determined that truck #9 has excess inventory of the needed perishable product
  6. The GPS service in the handheld computer used by truck 9 identifies it's position and a meeting location is quickly identified so inventory can be transferred from one truck to another to enable maximum product sales
  7. The route driver for truck #7 scans the bar codes on the boxes of perishable products in truck #9 and transfer the inventory from #9 to #7 and goes on his/her way.

That is a simple mobile inventory example using GPS integration with barcode scanners. What if there was an example of products sold on consignment? Let's use pre-paid calling cards as an example:

  • The product is distributed to 500 stores
  • Some stores sell more of these products than others
  • When one store is low on these, an EDI message should be sent to the product company informing them of a need for additional inventory at a specific location
  • The product company should be able to quickly determine where additional inventory is available in other locations.
  • A representative of the product company should be able to remove excess inventory from one store to replenish another.
  • With a handheld computer that includes a barcode scanner, the product representative can check inventory back into the SAP ERP system, which removes it from one store's inventory, an EDI or B2B electronic message is sent to the stores ERP notifying them of the product's removal from inventory.
  • Next the product representative takes the excess inventory to the store that needs additional inventory, the products are scanned, using the barcode scanner and added to the local stores inventory. The barcode scanned inventory information is then synchronized to theproduct company's SAP ERP system which sends an EDI message to the store notifying them of the additional inventory at that location.

Where does LBS (location based services) fit into these scenarios? Inventory levels from various locations are constantly being uploaded via EDI/B2B and monitored. The inventory of each location, rather than being static, becomes a dynamic inventory that is able to be shifted according to local demand.

If inventories can be considered dynamic and mobile, able to be shifted according to demand, then there is the opportunity for incredible savings. Much of the guess work can be avoided as the inventory for one entire region can be moved and shifted according to demand.

I picture a scenario where a consumer can visit the website of the product manufacturer and request the location of the nearest available inventory to their moving vehicle. iPhone applications already request to use your current location. This information can be automatically passed to the product manufacturer and used to query for the nearest product location. Perhaps best prices can also be included at some point and mobile coupons.

The ROI for the distributor or manufacturer comes from avoiding loss, excess or slow moving product inventories that trap or lock-up cash flow, reduced inventory storage costs, and a reduced need to discount in order to move the products. A benefit is the ability to move product inventories to the locations where there is the most demand so sales can be maximized at the locations with the highest margins.

If you would like to discuss this topic in more detail please contact me.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobile Computing, EDI and B2B Expert and Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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Mobile Software and Mobile Business Intelligence

Business analytics and business intelligence is one of the few hot areas in enterprise IT sales now days. In fact, SAP is shifting resources from other business groups to focus more on their Business Objects solutions. All companies, executives and managers seem to be crying for more information that they can use to make faster and better decisions. In tough economic times, information is even more critical. Take this trend and consider that over 40% of the workforce is now considered mobile and you have an emerging requirement for mobile business intelligence and analytics.

In this recent article on Mobile Business Intelligence that I authored, an example of how service companies and their field service technicians can use mobile business intelligence was detailed. The bottom line, managers and mobile employees need access to critical business intelligence and business analytics while they are out of the office with customers or on remote job locations. This information needs to be published and formatted to fit the mobile devices used by these workers so this data can be used on location where ever that may be.

Today business intelligence and business analytics applications are designed for desktops and servers connected to large databases. There is also a need for better business analytics and intelligence on the mobile device. Mobile handheld computers have become powerful hardware platforms for many data collection accessories including RFID readers, barcode scanners, GPS units, data collection applications, Bluetooth to anything applications and much more. This collected data can be considered business intelligence. Business analytics is the processing and reporting of this data and what it means to the business. This information, in a mobile format is needed just as much by mobile managers as sedentary managers.

Mobile business intelligence and business analytics is an important segment of mobile software applications that needs a lot more development and thought. Other areas of mobile applications that need additional development are detailed in these articles:
If you would like to discuss any of these topics in more detail please contact me.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobile Computing, EDI and B2B Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://b2b-bpo.blogspot.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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Interviews with Kevin Benedict