Adapting Our Minds to Perpetual Change

Customers' expectations continue to grow. They want instant, convenient, personalized, customized, predicted, recommended, rewarded and private. They want their own curated lifestyle mirrored back to them. They want control. They want mobile and fast. They desire digital experiences that are simple, consistent, beautiful and elegant. They want massive quantities of information – but in bite size quantities. They want to manage their lives from a smart phone anywhere at any time. The want to work from a coffee shop and be 100% productive.

Most of the world has already embraced the digital revolution. Our lives and behaviors are changing. The way we think and act are evolving as we integrate digital tools into our habits and processes. We constantly reach for our second brains (i.e. Wikipedia, search engines, apps) to access all of the information needed to both survive and thrive in the digital age. Our memories have been altered. We remember how to find information, rather than knowing the information itself.

These changes are rapidly impacting marketplaces, industries and even global economies. We use our smartphones for everything from meeting romantic partners, finding jobs, investing our money, ordering food, finding a ride, remembering to breathe, paying the water bill, monitoring our health, analyzing our DNA and even finding and buying our homes.

John Boyd, a renowned military strategist, taught that life is a process of adaptation, and that winners/survivors will find ways to exploit change and to adapt to it in order to survive and win. He taught that adapting and winning requires three things:
  1. People - must be trained to think, and act in ways conducive to winning in their environment
  2. Ideas - learn ideas (doctrines, strategies and tactics) conducive to winning in their environment
  3. Things - utilize the best technologies, equipment, materials, design, etc. available to exploit change and win

The Power of Knowing

Throughout history military leaders have suffered through the “fog of war" - the desperation of not knowing critical information.  Information as basic as where are my people and resources, and where are my opponents' people and resources?

The answers to these questions were and are critical for implementing the right strategies and tactics to win. Likewise, the absence of answers to these questions are equally impactful. Leaders spend enormous amounts of time and energy defending against all the possibilities represented by a lack of data. Think about a scenario of being lost in a dark forest at night with an unknown dangerous predator lurking about. Which direction would you face? How would you defend yourself? It is difficult in the best of times, but the absence of data can make it even more excruciating!

A Deep Dive Interview with SAP Ariba's Gretchen Eischen

In this interview recorded at SAP Ariba Live, I have the pleasure of sitting down with and learning from Gretchen Eischen, SAP Ariba’s VP of Corporate Marketing. She gives us a behind the scenes views into what it takes to organize and manage large event’s like SAP Ariba Live, and discusses SAP Ariba’s focus for 2019. We also take a deep dive into what is really meant by the term intelligent spend, and how spend-choices can be used for global good.



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Kevin Benedict
SVP Strategy, Regalix Inc.
Online TV Channel RegalixTV
Website Regalix Inc.
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***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.

A Digital Winner's Playbook

Winners know how the game is played. When rules change, so do their game plans. In this article I have created a customer experience playbook on what it will take to win in 2019.

1. Information dominance is a key goal. Throughout history conquerors gained by capturing territories, bridges, resources and key cities. Today’s conquerors gain with data insights that can be applied to customer experience.

2. Combinatorial data is key to understand customer experience. Data gathered from many different sources then combined and analyzed will provide unique insights into patterns, activities and behaviors invisible to competitors without.

3. Operational blind spots are a minefield for businesses. Blind spots must quickly be replaced with visibility through all kinds of data capture - automated data capture, surveys, digitization, sensors and RPA (robotic process automation).

Marketing Insights and the Battle Against Cyber Evil with Vasu Jakkal, CMO, FireEye

Vasu Jakkal, CMO of FireEye, shares her insights from the frontlines of the battle against cyber villains, and also her experiences and strategies marketing the solutions and services developed to protect democracy and the global digital economy.

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Kevin Benedict
SVP Strategy, Regalix Inc.
Online TV Channel RegalixTV
Website Regalix Inc.
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***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.

My Interview with RAF Air Commodore John Wariner on Digital Transformation

In this special interview, I am honored to have as my guest John Wariner, Air Commodore for the Royal Air Force. John has served 36-years in the RAF and has seen and experienced incredible changes, served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and led digital transformation initiatives involving tens of thousands of users. In this delightful interview, we dig deep into organizational changes, agile operations, military strategies, and running an IT organization from tents in combat zones in the desert.

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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
***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.

Kevin Benedict's 15 Strategies for Career Advancement in 2019

From time to time people have asked me for career advice. I certainly don't have all the answers, but here is my best advice from 33-years in high tech.

Kevin Benedict’s 15 Strategies for Career Advancement:

1.     Be an Expert - Create opportunities to be recognized by your employer’s leadership team. Become an expert in your field. Experts get recognized for their contributions by their communities, industries and employers. Be the person that has read more books, studied more industry reports, attended more training classes and networked with more experts. Become THE expert.

2.     Contribute Content – Product, marketing and sales organizations are always desperate for more content - content that informs, educates, influences, advises and explains. If you contribute content that helps different departments achieve their objectives you will be a hero in the company.

3.     Carry a Load – Step up and take responsibility for tasks and projects and follow through. The world needs people, and will promote people, that are willing to carry a load.

4.     Build a Network – As your network of contacts grows, so will your insights into more industries and businesses, trends, sales and career opportunities. Don’t be lazy and make excuses to not be on LinkedIn and other business oriented social media platforms. It’s important to your career.

5.     Generate Leads – All for-profit companies want more qualified leads. If you bring qualified sales leads to your company via your network and industry contributions, they will be VERY impressed! Find ways to be active in your target markets. Attend industry events, meet potential customers, contribute to online discussion groups, publish “how to” articles, etc., all for the purpose of creating more opportunities for discussions.

6.     Seek Strategies – Purposefully look for and research ideas and strategies successfully applied in different industries, markets and geographies. Study a wide variety of use cases, and ask yourself how they could be abstracted and applied in your company. Genius is often the reapplication of an existing idea or strategy in a new way.

7.     Understand Systems, Markets and Processes – In today’s fast changing world it is highly likely you will change jobs, industries and careers routinely. The best way to prepare for the unknown is to understand how organizations, industries, markets and companies operate. With this understanding you can quickly fit into new environments and roles.

8.     Innovate – Be the innovator not the resistor. New investments, growth and business expansions rarely come from traditional legacy environments, rather they come from the new and unproven. Be the person studying the latest technologies, trends and strategies. Find reasons to support new innovations, business models and strategies, not excuses to resist them.

9.     Share – Having a brain full of knowledge and expertise is wasted unless shared and applied. Be the person always willing to teach, mentor, contribute and apply.

10.  Be Enthusiastic – Be the person always eager to help, and always looking for new ways to succeed, improve and to meet team objectives with a positive attitude.

11.  Personal Development – Education and experience might initially open doors, but having the right tools are required to advance in your career. These tools include things like learning to write well, speak in public, write a business plan, create and manage a budget, organize and run a meeting, lead a team, and be the person in the room who knows how to utilize business tools, utilities and software solutions from companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Zoom, Webex, Slack, social media platforms, etc. Invest an appropriate amount of time to learn the tools that make you the professional you are.

12.  Be Disciplined – Success is most often the result of purposeful, disciplined living and working. Purposeful means you make choices about what to sacrifice, and what to invest in in order to achieve a goal or objective. It also means identifying and practicing concepts, principals and rules that contribute to success like responsibility, commitment, dedication, hard/smart work, honesty, loyalty, cheerfulness, positive attitude, dependable, kind, ambitious, organized, etc.

13.  Build Confidence – Confidence has a big impact on a career. Many a person chooses lesser roles and responsibilities, and lesser lifetime earnings because they lack confidence. How do you replace a lack of confidence with an abundance? You invest in knowledge, gain experience, develop your skills and collect the right tools. When you have all these things in your possession - confidence comes easy. Go get'em!

14.  Make a Personal Business Plan – Treat your career and money-making potential as a business. Make a personal business plan. Give it a name. Design a logo. Make investments in the business-of-you. Market yourself and your abilities like a product. Regularly develop new products. Know the markets that most need your products and are willing to pay the most for them. Develop a personal brand, and look for ways to enhance your brand and brand recognition.

15.  Drink from the Fountain of Eternal Youth – Explore, celebrate, cheer, invent, take risks, be curious and embrace change. Purge grumpiness, cynicism, skepticism, bitterness, pride, resentment and jealousy from your life and place of work – they are poison to the soul and career. It’s not age that disqualifies many older people, but poisoned souls. Take naps. Smile, teach, build, pioneer and charge ahead with enthusiasm!

Tune in and watch my latest leadership interviews on RegalixTV.

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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.

A Deep Dive Interview with Marketing Expert Chandar Pattabhiram, CMO of Coupa Software

In this interview Coupa Software’s CMO, Chandar Pattabhiram, shares his thoughts on marketing strategies, frameworks and insights.  He then looks into the future and provides his thoughts and predictions for the future of marketing.  Enjoy!

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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.

Deep Dive with SAP Ariba's GM and SVP, Patrick McCarthy

In this episode, we take a deep dive with Patrick into the world’s largest business network and marketplace. We explore the value of digital transformation, cloud-based procurement, standardizing processes around sourcing, supply chains, payments, contract negotiations, compliance and much more. We then discuss the power of networks and explore SAP’s strategies for marketing and selling SAP Ariba. I find this subject fascinating and hope you will too.



Watch more interviews on www.Regalix.TV

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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.

The Power of Influencer Marketing in B2B

When many of us hear the term "Influencer Marketing" we immediately think of B2C examples involving celebrities on Instagram with exaggerated appendages hawking wares, but what about influencer marketing in a B2B context?  I've recently had the privilege of learning from and interviewing many experts on the matter - including the Global Head of Influencer Marketing at SAP, Ursula Ringham.  Influencer marketing is about showing that other credible people, outside of your company, have similar views of the world.

Influencer marketing in B2B often involves a company reaching out to associate themselves with a recognized person in an industry or market that has a high level of credibility, respect and positive influence.  Astute companies surround their brands and messaging with influencers that share similar views.

Influencers are not just important in a marketing context, but companies have long chose influencers to join their board of directors, and/or become company advisors, because of the credibility that travels with them. 

Employing influencer marketing is often far more subtle than found in the B2C arena.  Often an influencer simply shares a similar view of industry trends, company values and required strategies.  For example, the bestselling author Nir Eyal was recently invited to speak at SAP's CX Live 2018 conference in Barcelona.  Nir advocates purposefully designing products to be habit forming - his book is titled Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.  I doubt he has any experience or interest in using SAP's enterprise software or cloud solutions, but Nir and SAP both share an interest in creating great customer experiences.

Influencer marketing can be used to bring credibility to many different things:
  • Companies
  • Leadership teams
  • Business plans
  • Projects
  • Initiatives
  • Products
  • Product direction
  • Specific innovations
  • Methodologies
  • Technologies
  • Strategies
  • Values
  • Brands
  • Business model
  • View of the future
  • Events
I spent several years working for the large consulting company, Cognizant.  I worked in their think tank, the Center for the Future of Work.  The purpose of the Center for the Future of Work was to bring credibility to Cognizant's view of the world, the future, emerging business trends,  strategies, etc.  They recruited a team of influential technology analysts, academics, authors and speakers to be influencers on their team. 

Regalix.tv
In Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work, we found the more customers and prospects would read the books our group members published, the research reports we wrote, and videos we filmed, the more Cognizant's credibility as a digital transformation thought leader increased and we closed more business.  It was a great market and branding success for Cognizant with a multi-billion dollar ROI.

Today at Regalix, where I serve as SVP of Solution Strategies, we also believe and invest in influencer marketing.  In fact, we have even invested in a specialized influencer marketing platform for sharing thought leadership videos, and the insightful opinions of industry influencers in a manner that maximizes its presentation, flexibility and social media reach.  I will share more about Regalix.tv soon.

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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.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict