Business Transformation Involving Mobile and Social Technologies

Over the last few weeks I had a chance to read a number of interesting books and articles on transformative trends and technologies and wanted to share some of my notes.  I hope you find them useful and interesting as well.

Mobile and Social Transforming Power Structures

By 2010, 70 percent of all information generated every year in the world came from e-mails, online videos, and the World Wide Web. This dramatic change in the linked technologies of computing and communications is changing the nature of government and accelerating a diffusion of power.  ~ The Future of Power by Joseph Nye

World politics is no longer the sole province of governments thanks to social media and mobile technologies.

The real challenge is acting strategically enough to matter. ~ Social Business By Design

As Facebook and Twitter become as central to workplace conversation as the company cafeteria, federal regulators are ordering employers to scale back policies that limit what workers can say online.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/technology/employers-social-media-policies-come-under-regulatory-scrutiny.html?_r=0       

Media Transformation Caused by the Internet and Mobility

The Financial Times said it would try to eliminate 35 editorial jobs through voluntary means and add ten jobs as part of its focus on "digital" and a move away from news to "a networked business."  Lionel Barber, Editor of the Financial Times, wrote that a trip to Silicon Valley in September had "confirmed the speed of change" and added, “We must also recognize that the Internet offers new avenues and platforms for the richer delivery and sharing of information.”

More from ZDNET, “Google's content production costs are small and so are its distribution costs, which means it can sell advertising at very low rates and still make large profits.  The FT, or any type of traditional media organization, cannot compete against a Silicon Valley media company that can thrive on such low advertising rates.”

http://www.zdnet.com/media-disruption-continues-to-hurt-newspapers-7000010112/   

A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that in the past 12 months, 13 percent of survey participants visited a library website using a smartphone or tablet.  The overall number of library users has shrunk.

Transforming IT Infrastructures and the Cloud

In a recent survey of 2,000 CIOs, a Gartner report revealed that the execs' top tech priorities for 2013 include cloud computing in general, as well as its specific types: software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS).

Here are comScore’s Top 10 Burning Digital Issues for 2013:

1. Big Date
2.  e-Commerce
3. Social Media
4. Shift of Ad Spending to Digital
5. Audience Targeting vs. Media Location
6. Measuring Digital Media Campaigns
7. Growth of Smartphones and Tablets
8. Multi-Platform Media Planning and Analysis
9. Real-Time Marketing Insights
10. Privacy

http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/The_Top_Ten_Burning_Issues_in_Digital

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit 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 and Social Businesses are Changing Management

In the picture to the right, would it really matter if you took one small step to the left or right, or even one step back?  Probably not.  You are squashed either way.  I found this quote in the book Social Business by Design, "The real challenge is acting strategically enough to matter." ~ Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim.

That quote resonates with me.  I don't think many companies have yet to understand the enormity of change happening in our society right now.  Aberdeen Group calls it SoMoCo (social, mobile, cloud), Gartner calls it the "Nexus of Forces" (social, mobile, information and cloud), Cognizant calls it SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud).  The combination of these forces, all on your smartphone and tablet, are transforming entire industries and markets.

I speak with companies on a regularly basis that have mobility strategies that look like this:

• Pilot mobile CRM apps
• Pilot mobile HR apps
• Pilot mobile BI reports for managers

The question I would ask again is: "Are these apps strategic enough to matter, and are you deploying at a fast enough pace to matter?"  

The pace of change is happening many times faster than most budget cycles and three-year plans support.  Businesses must recognize the pace of change, so they can know the pace they must respond.  The following quote I found in an article titled, Can Social Media Sell Soap? by Stephen Baker, "The impact of new technologies is invariably misjudeged because we measure the future with yardsticks from the past."

What does this quote mean to you?  To me it means we are measuring mobile ROIs with yardsticks, when we should be measuring in miles.  SMAC must be recognized for the importance and revolution it is.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit 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.

The Role of a Mobile Strategist

Tomorrow, Wednesday January 16 at 2 PM EST, I will be discussing "9 Reasons Every Business Needs a Mobile Strategist" on a live webinar with Jim Somers, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, with Antenna Software.  This is an interesting topic to me as nearly every executive team I meet is struggling with the development of a mobile strategy.

I think the reason developing a mobile strategy is so difficult may be related to this excerpt I came across recently in the book Social Business By Design, "The real challenge is to act strategically enough to matter."  Mobility matters, it really, really matters and this means uncomfortable change.  Let's think about this excerpt together, "The real challenge is to act strategically enough to matter."  What does that mean to you?  I think about companies just slowly dipping their toe in the water of mobility and supporting simple HR apps on smartphones.  Is that strategic enough to matter?

In the NFL (national football league) and in college football there is an evolving trend to use a different offensive strategy that involves playing the game at a much quicker pace than is generally played.  This strategy also involves using players with different body types, new formations and plays, and using players with more endurance than is typical.  It is a different way of playing the game and it has proven quite successful.

The football teams that succeed with this new strategy have not just changed one player, or one play, or one formation.  They have developed a whole new philosophy that impacts every part of the organization and strategy from recruiting, to teaching, to workouts, practices, and the way the game is managed and played.  Companies that act "strategically enough to matter" will embrace change in much the same way.  They will recognize how strategically important mobility is and will review all aspects of their business to understand what needs to change to truly matter.

Join us on the webinar - register here.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit 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 Strategies - Time, Place and Waste

Wasted Food

The economist, philosopher and theorist of markets Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) wrote, "The knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place - To know of and put to use a machine not fully employed, or somebody's skill which could be better utilized, or to be aware of a surplus stock which can be drawn upon during an interruption of supplies, is socially quite as useful as the knowledge of better alternative techniques."

I love the way Hayek describes the value related to "the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place," as being "socially useful."  It is also very useful for businesses and can deliver competitive advantages!  I, of course, read this as a call for mobile strategies, mobile technologies and location-based services to support the real-time exchange of information, even though Hayek may not have lived long enough to have used them himself.

Hayek goes on to write, "And the shipper who earns his living from using otherwise empty or half-filled journeys of tramp-steamers, or the estate agent whose whole knowledge is almost exclusively one of temporary opportunities, or the arbitrageur who gains from local differences of commodity prices, are all performing eminently useful functions based on special knowledge of circumstances of the fleeting moment not known to others."  

If you have ever wondered as to the competitive advantages available to your company by implementing real-time mobile communications and business analytics, this is it.  I found it profound that Hayek described the ability to optimize productivity and improve efficiencies as being as socially useful as new innovations and inventions.  Hayek was talking about sustainability and environmentally friendly before we knew the terms.

Today I read a CNN article titled World Wastes Half of Its Food, Study Finds.  The article explains where food is wasted."  This, at a high level, is due to the following:

• production inefficiencies in developing countries
• market and consumer waste in more advanced societies

The article referenced a report by the British-based independent Institution of Mechanical Engineers.  They claimed about 4.4 billion tons of food is produced annually and roughly half of it is never eaten."

Why is this food never eaten?

• inefficient harvesting
• storage problems
• transportation problems
• wasted by markets or consumers

I see an application of the words of Hayek, "The knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place - To know of surplus stock which can be drawn upon... is socially quite as useful as the knowledge of better alternative techniques."  It's time we look at using mobile strategies and solutions, real-time business intelligence and analytics to reduce waste and improve sustainability.
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit 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.

Aberdeen Group, SAP and Mobile, Social and Cloud

"Over the previous 12-24 months the silos of social, mobile and cloud gradually began to overlap and converge with the use of cloud-enabled social technologies, or cloud-based mobility allowing enterprise workers to connect with one another across secure networks via their mobile devices." ~ Service Organizations and SoMoClo report, Aberdeen Group

Over the past 12 weeks I have met with nearly 20 large companies across Asia, North America and Europe on the subject of mobile strategies.  In all cases social and analytics were also brought into the discussion.  I agree with Aberdeen Group's findings and their belief that SoMoClo (social, mobile and cloud) are converging technologies.  Here is another excerpt from Aberdeen Group's report, "the three disruptive technologies [social, mobile, cloud] act as a unified construct: cloud is the core, mobility its edge, and social the connection through the cloud between mobile endpoints."

Gartner expands this notion by adding a fourth element, social, mobile, information and cloud to the mix.  They call these four converging technologies, "The Nexus of Forces."  My job title at Cognizant is Head Analyst for SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud).  The same four elements, but with a catchier acronym.  I can talk SMAC all day long.

The one additional element to all these acronyms that seems to be missing though is IoT (the Internet of Things or M2M).  This is an important emerging area of focus.  SAP now has dedicated executives and departments focused on M2M (machine-to-machine) interfaces to SAP, and analysts are predicting there will be 25-50 billion connected devices by 2025.  SAP partners with companies like ILS Technology to be the platform and interface between connected devices and SAP solutions.

These connected devices have cameras, barcode scanners, RFID scanners, accelerometers and an endless number of other sensors on them.  These sensors are collecting data in real-time and wirelessly sending it to a central service for analysis.  This massive amount of new data, plus the ability to operate machines remotely from great distances [think UAVs/Drones for example] will soon change the way many businesses operate and will provide many areas of competitive advantages.
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit 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.