Webb Insights: Business & Technology

This year, I have the incredible opportunity to attend Dreamforce 2016 ( many thanks to Marc Benioff ) Taking a step back for a moment: this year, dubbed the " Year of Tech M&A ," has the potential to really shake up the industry. Over $260 billion of tech deals have been announced so far in 2016 - and the year is not yet over . As cloud, data and connectivity continue to come to the forefront of growth and the next generation of business, the technology major players are flexing their muscles and taking out their wallets.  It's not just Oracle and NetSuite shaking up the game, nor Microsoft and LinkedIn's wedding either. Salesforce has also been on the hunt, compiling a remarkable list of perhaps obscure but strategic acquisitions:  Date     Organization Amount Sep 7, 2016 HeyWire Unknown Sep 1, 2016 Spree Commerce Unknown Aug 15, 2016 BeyondCore $110M (terms undisclosed) Aug 1, 2016 Quip $750M in Cash & Stock Jul 21, 2016 Coolan Unknow...

Digital transformation is a company-wide initiative to leverage technology to drive "cross-channel" transformational change. Typically "Digital Transformation" involves efforts to: Increase Revenue Decrease Cost Remove friction from internal systems Enable a new end user consumption model Enhance an existing end user consumption model This may be within or outside an organization, front office or back office.  If these points seem like "generally sound business objectives" -  they are. Digital Transformation is nothing new in the sense that the term implies a steady string of reinvention throughout an organization's lifecycle to adapt and grow to changing demands of internal and external customers. Technology has always been a key part of this. If we look back to historical manufacturing, it was advances in "people, process and technology" that enabled new milestones to be achieved from a production, revenue and innovation...

If you've been following Microsoft lately, you'll note Microsoft's self proclaimed, "mobile first, cloud first" strategy. In my opinion, there is no better beneficiary of this new direction than Microsoft's Power BI offering. Power BI, a self-service BI solution allows you to create and author slick reports and publish them to a a web portal to share with users inside your organization, outside of it or even the general public. An added benefit of the solution is its rapid release schedule, providing updates on a monthly basis, coupled with a growing user community providing support and custom visuals. Custom visuals allow you to extend the solution and visualize your data in new and unique ways specific to your business requirements.  While this at a high level is designed for mass adoption, what puts the solution over the top is the disruption pricing - free to 9.99/user/month. The price schedule provides you with additional features and functionality mostly...

Self Service "BI" (business intelligence) is one of the biggest technology trends this year. In this blog, I'd like to explain why this is more than just a trend - and why it's something that can provide a competitive advantage within a department, a business unit, an organization and an industry. In the traditional sense, BI is composed of an IT gatekeeper who architects and maintains a data warehouse through development (sorting, querying and blending data, defining facts and dimensions, creating cubes), testing, deployment (report server, access groups, policies, documentation), analysis (creating measures, defining parameters) and performing enhancements (DB upgrades, system maintenance, end-user requests). The business accesses these insights in a very controlled and decisive manner - commonly through reports or dashboards. The ability to perform ad-hoc analysis as well as share and collaborate on insights is typically quite limited. Furthermore, the abilit...

I'm a proponent of user engagement throughout the SDLC. I think you should be too. Taking a people first approach to understand key stakeholders, their workload, workflows and processes today is a foundational piece of any technology project at the enterprise level.  People are an organization's greatest resource and, thoughtful engagement and utilization of your human capital is essential to your organization's growth and sustainability. After you take care to understand the current state of affairs and its various inputs,  you can effectively partner with an organization to due-fully plan, chart, organize and execute a technology initiative.  Critical to this phase is understanding what you wish to change: what works today, what doesn't, and what may be made more efficient or beneficial. Where does your organization want to be? A beneficial approach here is to take a step back and look at processes from a Pareto Optimal or Lean approach: who...

Here is another way to think about the question: Once you hit a certain level of scale, there is no way you can effectively manage your business without having connectivity in your processes. Not having an ERP can lead to: 1. Late deliveries 2. Poor quality 3. Poor responsiveness 4. Poor support All of this will ulitmately lead to dissatisfied customers and that might cost your company customers and new business! Truly, the kind of ERP you choose and how you implement it determine its usefulness in your business. Yes, ERP generally enables you to keep track of inventory and automatically updates you on changes therein. There are other ways that ERP can save your business money for the long haul, as well. Because every operation within the business in monitored and recorded on a central system, administrators can get a much clearer picture of the strengths and weaknesses within the business' systems - aka what's working and what needs improvement - so they...

In my last few blogs I've discussed integration on a more technical level. I now want to approach it high level. Why are new-generation companies like Apple, Salesforce, Google and prosperous start-ups like AirBnB and Uber more successful than the majority of (traditional) businesses? True, a major part of their success is their courage to leave the beaten path and adopt different, often disruptive business models. However, the other real commonality is their understanding that, nowadays, business success is dictated by customers rather than operations. If companies want to be successful in this era, it is high time to shift focus from internal processes (operations, ERP) to external activities (customer marketing, CRM), not in an isolated, siloed approach, but integrated into all disciplines. An effective strategy in this regard needs to be the foundation for your organization's execution in the 21st century.