Digital Transformation, Code Halos, Analytics and Mobility

A retailers' mantra throughout history has been location, location location.  This is always important, but perhaps of less value than other innovations caused by digital transformations today. The ongoing digital transformation of many industries has created new competitive playing fields that are increasingly related to data.  The winners are those that can more quickly collect, analyze, report, make data driven decisions and capture value from the data.

The data that surrounds customers, partners, companies and individuals is called "code halos™" by my colleagues at the Center for the Future of Work in their new whitepaper Code Rules.  It is their analysis that companies that understand and manage code halos most effectively will be the winners in their industries.

Let me paint two scenes for you.

1) A brick and mortar retail operation is located on Main street, advertises in the local newspaper and via the Yellow Pages.  Greets their anonymous customers at the door with a cheerful "hello" and waves goodbye when they purchase their products from the store.  The store does not know or track their customers' names, preferences or the products they purchase.

2) A brick and mortar retail operation recognizes the value of being on Main street, but also in having a strong web and mobile presence, tracking their customers via loyalty and opt-in online/mobile marketing campaigns and providing customized experiences and marketing that meet the preferences of each individual customer based on collected and analyzed data.  As a result, they have mobile apps, websites and enable customers to document their preferences, likes and favorites.  Each customer has an account that enables the retail store to see their personal details and track their purchases, interests and buying habits, etc.  The retailer analyzes the data, and then provides a customized and personal buying and marketing experience for them.

This is a simple illustration of the differences in how retail companies may engage their customers before and after they recognize the value of code halos.  Store number 2 recognizes that each customer has a code halo of data about their demographics, buying habits, history, preferences, neighborhoods, lifestyles, etc.  Store number 2 collects the data and uses the data to improve their marketing and customer engagements, while store number 1 does not.  Which store do you think is going to be more competitive?  I believe store number 2.

In most military organizations today, they believe the effective use of data or the "Fifth Dimension" of warfare is critical.  The first four dimensions are land, sea, air and space.  Recently the fifth dimension has been added to emphasize that organizations and nations must now learn to effectively use data defensively and offensively in times of conflict.  Military organizations, much like companies in the commercial sector, must now compete in the fifth dimension and the management of code halos.

Recognizing the importance of code halos and the fifth dimension of warfare is not enough, however.  Organizations must employ what is called a "logistics of information" systems capable of supporting a competitive environment.  This is not easy.  Store number 1 mentioned earlier does not have a code halo strategy or the logistics of information system in place to be competitive.  They are not even capable of putting a team on the field.

What must be included in order to successfully employ an effective "logistics of information" system that can process and utilize code halos?  Let me list a few:
  1. Effective data collection strategies - often in the form of mobile apps, loyalty programs and online commerce sites that enable a customer to opt-in to various programs, campaigns, preferences and deals.  This is how you begin to add to and harvest useful data from your customers' code halos.
  2. The ability to recognize a unique customer, their code halos and to cater to their preferences and customize their marketing and buying experiences based on analyzed data.
  3. The ability to recognize patterns, find meaning and to spark new ideas and innovation by analyzing multiple code halos is valuable.  Here is an example - Store number 2 recognizes that a sub-set of their customers' all share similar code halos - product preferences, lifestyles, demographics and buying habits.  Store number 2 also has visibility into the code halos of their suppliers' products, brands and target customer profiles.  As a result, Store number 2 can introduce new marketing campaigns and products that very closely align with the preferences and tastes of their individual customers and sub-sets of customers.
  4. Following each marketing campaign or program roll-out, the data is analyzed and optimized to improve precision and future results. 
These four steps require an effective "information logistics" system.  Do you have it?

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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.

What Does Research Say is the Competitive Advantage of Data?

The explosion of mobile devices, e-commerce and "The Internet of Things" is introducing massive amounts of new data into our ecosystem.  Some companies ignore this data for all but the most tactical explorations, but others are revolutionizing entire industries by recognizing the value of this data and taking advantage of it.

My colleague, Ben Pring, has been conducting a lot of research this year on the impact of business analytics, big data and other fast emerging business strategies on a company's ability to compete.  In this guest post Ben shares his latest findings.

What one key characteristic separates today’s high-flying outperformers – such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix and Pandora – from fast-followers, wannabes, and laggards? It’s a precision focus on the information that surrounds people, organizations, products and processes – what we call Code Halos ™ – to build new business and commercial models. These leading companies have realized that the data – or Code Halo – that accompanies people, organizations and devices contains a richness of business insight that far outstrips the value of physical assets that have historically underpinned market leadership. Conversely, companies that have missed or misunderstood the Code Halo phenomena are now struggling to cope in markets that are moving at warp speed; some, in fact, have already succumbed.

We are in the early stages of an exciting and important new era in which Code Halos radically reshape the rules of business competition. Built on the SMAC Stack ™ (social + mobile + analytics + cloud technologies), Code Halos are being harnessed to help enterprises advance from old-world industrial models (premised on physical assets) to new structures informed by by digits.  Our study of Code Halos, in fact, reveals a new “crossroads” that businesses across industry must navigate to achieve sustained market prosperity and avoid what we call an “extinction event.”

From Personal to Business Code Halos

Each one of us is creating our Code Halo with every click or swipe of our phone, tablet, laptop, Glass, Nest, FuelBand, dashboard, or other smart device. Every transaction we make, every “like” we record, every preference we note, is building a digital fingerprint of who we are and what makes us tick. Our Code Halos, which have been building and deepening as more and more of our lives have become digitized, contain a multiplicity of attributes that reveal our likes, dislikes and behaviors, from recommendations of  great new books to  personalized radio stations that play our favorite  songs, many of which haven’t left their CD cases for a million years.

The Code Halos that exist around individuals are unlocking incredible new value for all of us and for the companies that we do business with.  But the Code Halo story doesn’t end in the consumer world. More and more smart companies are realizing that the concept of Code Halos isn’t confined to (relatively) simple B2C activities, such as book selling or online music. Instead, they’re recognizing that their very organizations have a Code Halo and that within their organizations they have hundreds, thousands, millions of Code Halos, made up of every digital interaction with every smart device they touch across “the Internet of Things”  (all of which of course have their own Code Halos).

This realization is sending profound shock waves through board rooms, as forward-thinking business and technology leaders begin to see the impact that the management – or mismanagement of Code Halos – has on corporate fates. In fact, many are now coming to grips with Code Halo intersections and how they can impact every meaningful aspect of their business operations, from design, to production, to selling, to talent management.

Winning in the New Code Rush

Whether it be the hipster in San Francisco using Square Wallet on his morning latte run or the engineering conglomerate getting its turbines to Tweet or the Singaporean government establishing its homeland as a “living analytics” test bed, the leverage of Code Halo thinking is making businesses big and small think about how the code they generate can collide with the code generated by other people, devices, and organizations. And, perhaps more importantly, how this data can be mined to create new products and services that are genuinely innovative.

To learn more about Code Halos, download our white paper at unevenlydistributed.com.

Ben Pring co-leads Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work. He joined Cognizant after spending 15 years with Gartner as a senior industry analyst researching and advising on areas such as cloud computing and global sourcing. Prior to Gartner, Ben worked for a number of consulting companies including Coopers & Lybrand. His expertise in helping clients see around corners, think the unthinkable and calculate the compound annual growth rate of unintended consequences has brought him to Cognizant, where his charter is to research and analyze how organizations can leverage the incredibly powerful new opportunities that are being created as new technologies make computing power more pervasive, more affordable and more important than ever before. Ben graduated with a degree in philosophy from Manchester University in the UK. He can be reached at Ben.Pring@cognizant.com.
*************************************************************
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.

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


*************************************************************
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: Florian Ganz

In this short video interview with mobility expert Florian Ganz, recorded in Lisbon, Portugal last week, I ask his opinions on how to select the most appropriate mobility platforms, cloud mobility and when to use HTML5.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/6DKgCoHX_bA

*************************************************************
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.

Gartner's Latest Thoughts on Enterprise Mobility and SMAC

ClickConnect Europe 2013
I had the good fortune to attend a session this morning at ClickSoftware's ClickConnect Europe 2013 with Gartner's Research Director Dr. Richard M. Marshall.  Here are some of the notes I took from the session:

  • By 2017 Microsoft will sell as many mobile operating systems as Apple.  This is a bold prediction, but Gartner insists their projections are on track.
  • Enterprise collaboration tools will be the source of "huge" productivity gains.
  • By 2017 82% of handsets shipped will be smartphones
  • Mobile security, mobile device management and mobile app management are only going to get more complex.  Recognize how each additional app adds to the complexity and develop a strategy now that will keep the TOC manageable.  No wonder the MDM (mobile device management), MAM (mobile application management) and EMMP (enterprise mobile management platform) vendors are getting all the investor attention this year.
  • The Internet of Things (IoT) is a big deal.  Smartphones will be the end-points of choice for the connected device data.  Smartphones will enable you to view the meaning of connected device data and to act on it.
  • Gartner is using a new phrase at this conference - The Nexus of Disruptive Forces (social, mobile, information and cloud).  They added the term "disruptive" for added emphasis.  I agree.
  • The more people that work virtually or are remote and mobile, the more important it is to have social bonding between employees through collaboration tools.
  • Gartner is also talking about different technology layers in an IT environment moving at different "paces" of change.  The system of record may have a very slow pace of change, but the top "Innovation" layer may evolve and change at a very fast pace.  This "Innovation" layer is well suited for mobile solutions and cloud based apps.  Having different paces, however, requires each layer to be abstracted from the other to permit different paces of change.  This is a good way to think about technology stacks and how to design and develop your IT infrastructure.


*************************************************************
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.

Connecting the Dots Between Enterprise Mobility and IoT

Lisbon, Portugal
I had the privilege of having breakfast with Dr. Moshe BenBassat, Founder/CEO of ClickSoftware, on a deck overlooking the Mediterranean this morning.  Over an English breakfast, Dr. BenBassat shared that back in 1985 his team had developed software tools to diagnose equipment for the military.  It seems two thirds of all parts replaced were unnecessary.  The parts were being replaced in an effort to find and fix a problem without having first properly diagnosed it.  His team was tasked with designing an artificial intelligence system to process and analyze data in order to properly diagnose problems so only the required parts would be replaced.

In 1985 there were huge challenges to this task.  There were not wireless data networks commercially available.  There was not a lot of data available.  There were no IoT (Internet of Things) solutions deployed to gather data, there were not "big data" systems that could crunch numbers in seconds and there were no IBM Watson artificial intelligence systems available to diagnose problems and come up with answers in seconds.  Dr. BenBassat's team was successful, but the final solutions could only be used in areas where there was a lot of time available to come up with an answer.  The system couldn't work in a real-time environment.

A lot has changed since 1985.  Today, equipment/assets, using embedded wireless chips and sensors (M2M), can report on itself and wirelessly send data to a server.  This data can be processed in real-time, analyzed and the diagnosis can be shared wirelessly to the mobile device of a service technician.

Today, with big data analysis, service companies don't have to just rely on manufactures' data to understand when maintenance or repairs are required.  If you have thousands of wind turbines operating and reporting their sensor and system data to your server, it does not take a lot of time to start seeing patterns using big data analysis.  These patterns can help you diagnoses problems, and better plan your future maintenance and repairs in a manner that does not result in unplanned shut-downs.  This results in improved productivity and output.

Dr. BenBassat's system designs, math and algorithms for artificial intelligence were accurate and powerful in 1985, but the technology was not there.  It is a different story today.

Today, it is not the lack of technology that prevents these productivity gains, rather it is the lack of management connecting the dots to existing systems and technologies.  I teach SMAC (social, mobile, analytic, cloud) strategies just about every week somewhere in the world.  Most of my work is not teaching about new technologies, but rather helping CIOs connect the dots to what is already available today.

*************************************************************
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.

SMAC Expert Series: SAP's Sameer Patel, Part 3

This is the third part of an enlightening interview with SAP's GM for Enterprise Social Software, Sameer Patel recorded at SAPPHIRENOW 2013.  In this segment we talk about the value of enterprise social platforms and how enterprise mobility fits into it.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/kDYDmrXaCR8

Watch Part 1 here
Watch Part 2 here



*************************************************************
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.

SMAC Expert Series: Sameer Patel, Part 2

In Part 2 of my interview with SAP's GM for Enterprise Social Software, Sameer Patel, we discuss specific collaboration scenarios and value propositions around CRM, SCM and enterprise learning platforms.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/Uyqf1Dt-i7o

Watch Part 1 of this interview here.
Watch Part 3 of this interview here.




*************************************************************
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.

SMAC Expert Series: SAP's Sameer Patel

Is your company thinking about enterprise social collaboration platforms?  Many CIOs are in the process of testing collaboration platforms today, but not quite knowing what to do with them.  In this short video interview, recorded at SAPPHIRE NOW 2013 a couple of weeks ago, SAP's GM for Enterprise Social Software, Sameer Patel answers my questions on social platforms.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/8nUf5NXF-go

Watch Part 2 of this interview here.
Watch Part 3 of this interview here.



*************************************************************
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: Senthil Krishnapillai

In this short video interview, I corner SAP's VP of Product Management, Mobile Security, Senthil Krishnapillai and ask him about the latest developments in mobile security both on-premise and in the cloud.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/6t1Kr6q6El4


*************************************************************
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.

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