Posts

Showing posts with the label digital strategy

Will Force Win Wills?

Image
Technology is giving life the potential to flourish like never before - or to self-destruct. ~ Future of Life Institute  As Russian military forces invaded the Ukraine in an unconscionable act of violence and devastation, their armies of social media operators joined in and were deployed to the internet to digitally influence the opinions and will of the world watching in horror.  The goal of these operators was to influence their own people to support their aggressions through disinformation, while demoralizing their adversaries, and confusing a worldwide audience with disinformation to prevent them from acting or interfering. Kyle Chayka recently wrote in the New Yorker, “the invasion of Ukraine is by no means the first conflict to play out over social media, but it is perhaps the first war to be mediated primarily by content creators and live-streamers rather than by traditional news organizations.”  Because social media operators are now the major source of news for many if not m

What is the Destination of Technological Progress?

Image
Definition of Progress – a forward movement toward a destination. I have spent several decades working in and around the Silicon Valley where progress is measured by how many new ideas you can get funded, developed, scaled and sold.  The problem is Silicon Valley’s definition of progress is controlled by a relatively small group of investors focused on ROI.  I don’t think it’s such a good idea for investors to be the guardians of our progress or its destination.  Human progress is more than investor returns.  It should include a longer and better-quality life for a larger proportion of people, equality and justice.  Many of these qualities, however, don’t attract a lot of VC money. When the destination for progress is good - humanity benefits.  We must all remember that the past wasn’t so great, and progress helped us improve it.   Analyst Marian L. Tupy described it as follows, “For most of human history, life was very difficult. People lacked basic medicines and died

A Deep Dive into Influencer Marketing and Strategies with SAP's Ursula Ringham

Image
In this interview I recorded with SAP's Ursula Ringham, she shares her insights and experiences operating in one of the largest and most sophisticated influencer marketing organizations anywhere. She details SAP’s thinking around influencer marketing and how it operates. If you are a marketer wanting to organize an influencer marketing effort, this interview is for you. br /> ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict SVP Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc. Website Regalix Inc. View my profile on LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Digital Expert Interviews: Ian Bresnahan, CEO Itential on Digital Transformation in Networking

Image
In this episode, I have the privilege of interviewing the co-founder and CEO of  Itential , Ian Bresnahan, on the role of networks in helping and/or hindering digital transformation initiatives.  Digital transformation is often closely related to making a company more agile – able to act and react to changing customer and market requirements quickly.  Networks are what connects all the different systems and processes together, so having the ability to quickly change systems and processes utilizing networks takes special planning, solutions and strategies.   I found this topic fascinating and am sure you will to. ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict SVP Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc. Website Regalix Inc. View my profile on LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opin

Digital and Marketing Leadership: SAP Hybris' Global VP, Strategy and Solution Management, Jackie Palmer

Image
In this episode we discuss digital marketing strategy and SAP Hybris with Jackie Palmer, Global VP, Strategy and Solution Management at SAP.  If you are not familiar with SAP Hybris, it is SAP’s platform for customer engagement and commerce that includes five distinct areas: marketing, sales automation, customer service, commerce/e-commerce and customer data cloud.  Enjoy! ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict SVP Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc. Website Regalix Inc. View my profile on LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Digital and Marketing Leadership: SAP's CDMO Mika Yamamoto

Image
In this episode, I have the privilege of interviewing SAP’s Chief Digital Marketing Officer, Mika Yamamoto about SAP’s marketing strategies.  We discuss why SAP decided to separate the CDMO role from CMO, and what each of their responsibilities are.   Spoiler Alert – The CMO watches after the SAP brand and aims to make it a top-10 global brand, while the CDMO focuses on demand generation and customer retention.  We also explore how SAP supports the EU requirements for GDPR, the global data protection regulation, and how it can actually be turned into a competitive advantage.  Enjoy! ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict SVP Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc. Website Regalix Inc. View my profile on LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enoug

Next Gen Digital Transformation Shakes Things Up Again!

Image
What if you could closely measure your retail competitor’s in-store sales every day?  What if you could be alerted when competitors were increasing or decreasing production at different factories or ordering more materials?  Would that be valuable?  If it were possible, how would it change your strategies and the way you operated? Intelligence capabilities that in the past were available only to nation-states are now available to commercial organizations through services provided by companies like Orbital Insight .  They partner with a wide range of satellite and other geospatial data collection companies to aggregate and analyze data, using artificial intelligence and data science to provide near-real-time insights. One of their products monitors over 260,000 retail parking lots from space. They use artificial intelligence to count and measure the number of cars in the lots and analyze time sequences to understand how the number of cars fluctuates over time.  This helps them under

Digitally Transforming the Customer Experience

Image
We have been traveling a lot lately. Why? Here at Regalix, we help large global companies with their customer success and sales enablement initiatives, which include things like digital marketing, knowledge management, customer experiences, sales operations, customer service and support, rewards and loyalty programs, etc., all of which are critical to the business and are today being digitally transformed. While helping businesses transform themselves in these areas we have seen and learned a great deal. Let me share some of the lessons we have learned.

Leadership: The Plan for Winning in Digital Transformation

Image
Last year the World Economic Forum labeled 2017 as the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. What value do we gain from defining industrial revolutions? I believe it is to define new sets of rules for winning in business. Let’s review the three previous industrial revolutions. Industrial Revolution #1. We move from reliance on animals, human muscles and biomass to the use of fossil fuels and mechanical power. A caveman/businessman wishing for a competitive advantage might be the first to use mechanical power fueled by fossil fuels to build cave-condos faster and cheaper than other Neanderthals. Industrial Revolution #2. Electricity is harnessed and distributed, both wireless and wired communication is developed, the synthesis of ammonia provides new fertilizers and harvests increase, and new forms of power generation are developed. A farmer wishing for competitive advantages could adopt mobile phones to communicate wirelessly with their workers, use lights around the far

An Executive's 2018 Checklist for Digital Transformation

“The size of competitors and the longevity of their brands, are less predictive of future success than the importance they give to data, the quality and speed of their information logistics systems, and the operational tempo of their business.” ~Kevin Benedict More data is being generated today than ever before, and in 2018 leaders should be laser focused on investing in and implementing the following digital systems/solutions: Data collection Big data analytics AI/Machine learning Automation (RPA) Security Real-time contextually relevant personalized experiences There is a new sense of urgency today as businesses realize data is the blood that runs through the veins of a successful business in this digital era, and that data has a shelf life, and the value of it diminishes rapidly over time.  In an always-connected world where consumers and their needs are transient, timing is everything and a special type of data is needed – real-time data. In order to capture competitive

Rethinking Education in the Digital Age

Image
Center for Digital Intelligence™ Have you considered how the traditional textbook author/publisher, teacher, student and parent relationship should change as a result of digital transformation?  In this article let's explore how this traditional process can be greatly enhanced with digital technologies.  Traditionally a physical textbook is published in one format for all students.  Sometimes, at a great expense, they can be translated to another language.  There are several challenges with that.  Not all students learn in the same manner or language, physical textbooks can only use images and texts on paper, and today's students are more accustomed to accessing, reading, watching and listening to content in a digital format on smartphones, tablets and laptops. Digital formats, however, can be integrated with all kinds of digital media.  The devices or hardware that reads digital formats (smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc.) also mostly support GPS and mapping.  With GPS

Making the Hard Decisions in Digital Transformation

Image
How can an organization with decades worth of accumulated ERP customizations and configurations, IT systems and customized software applications digitally transform fast enough to keep up with the rapidly changing behaviors of digital customers? That is a hard question most organizations are wrestling with today.  Often complex custom IT environments served a purpose in a past era, but today where IT speed and agility are required, they serve as anchors restraining an organization from moving forward and digitally transforming fast enough to compete. Like a CEO that closes down or sells a profitable business unit because it no longer fits with where the organization is going, CTOs and CIOs must rapidly shut down or replace IT systems and processes that no longer support the reality of today, or the vision of the future based on the best information available today - not yesterday. Keeping an outdated IT system or business process for the purpose of achieving a positive return on th

New Rules for Start-Ups in the Age of Digital Transformation

Image
I have had the opportunity to work for and around a good many start-ups during the course of my career.  Often the start-up founders would simply define a problem, develop a solution and launch a company.  The marketing department would then do their very best to identify the individuals in each target company that experienced the problem and had a budget to fix it.  This was always a challenging task, but it is even harder today. Today, start-ups must not only identify a problem that needs solved, but they must compete against "digital transformation" initiatives in both the business and IT organizations that are trying to reduce complexity through the elimination of applications, customized software solutions, IT systems, multiple instances of ERPs and vendors. The goal of many organizations today is to simplify the IT environment, and to make business processes much faster and agile.  I see many companies seeking to standardize on a handful of platforms like Salesfor

Combinatorial Nature of Digital Technologies and Legos

Image
I came across the brilliant  blog  site of Futurist Frank Diana this week.  In one of his most recent articles he discusses the concept of  combinatorial nature .  He states, " We are seeing exponential convergence across the areas of science, technology, economics, society, ethics, and politics. The  combinatorial nature  of an overwhelming number of building blocks drives an accelerating intersection across these areas."  As an expert Lego player, I can appreciate the concept of building blocks, and the near infinite number of combinations these blocks can be used to form.  The idea that we have now reached a critical mass of digital building blocks, and that we will now experience exponential growth through the combinatorial nature of them is compelling. The World Economic Forum also describes the future in similar ways,  “We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to o

Digital Transformation Crunch Time

Image
Consumer behaviors are changing at speeds never before seen in many industries, which is impacting how businesses operate and bring products to market. In fact, more than a dozen retailers have closed this year as a result of having business and IT systems, and supply chains that are unable to meet the speed requirements of digital consumers. Most companies report they have 
IT systems in their inventory that are too slow or incapable of supporting real-time digital consumers.  That spells trouble.  Consumer and competitive changes are forcing enterprises to rethink their strategies in order to speed up in just about all areas: R&D, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and sales. Enterprises that I speak with today seem to understand that the need for digital transformation is being driven by advances in mobile technologies, automation, cloud computing, sensors, big data analytics and artificial intelligence.   They realize they must upgrade their IT syst