In his fifteenth post in the series, Marshall Kirkpatrick focuses on the intersection between artificial intelligence and social media. By way of reminder, Marshall launched a 30 day series that explores the intersection between AI and the various innovation components on my emerging futures visual.
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Digital Enterprise Road Map Series: Part 6 – Insight
Part six wraps up our Digital Enterprise road map series with a focus on moving insight delivery from descriptive to prescriptive. Throughout this series, I have stressed the importance of analytic excellence to long term success. But current methods such as traditional business intelligence (BI) focus on reporting and analysis that seeks to answer questions related to past events – what happened. Advanced analytics seeks to answer questions such as: why is this happening, what if these trends continue, what will happen next (predict), and what is the best that can happen (prescribe). There is a growing view that prescribing outcomes is the ultimate role of analytics. To accomplish this, analytic initiatives need to leverage an insight-action-outcome framework that starts by defining outcome-enabling insight and ends with a focus on data provisioning.
Digital Transformation
A new short Video featuring Tonya McKinney and I is now available on the TCS website. The focus of the video is the broadening role that Digital will play in the future enterprise. It’s no secret that I still see too many companies limiting their digital perspective to Marketing. Digital will eventually be viewed as the biggest disruptive force business has ever seen. Yet so many companies still have a business as usual view of the world. You can read about our perspective on the critical path forward via this Blog or through the TCS Perspective Series.
Digital Enterprise Road Map Series: Part 4 – Systems of Engagement
Geoffrey Moore introduced the Systems of Engagement concept about two years ago. This vision for the future of Information Technology is gaining broader acceptance – but a surprising number of executives are blind to the coming sea change. Is it hype or reality? For me, this question boils down to one certainty: traditional companies must infuse their organizations with digital DNA – and I believe systems of engagement accomplish this. They raise Digital DNA quotients by using consumer technology to make companies more effective. This notion of effectiveness is a key shift from a two decade long focus on efficiency. That’s not to say the importance of efficiency has diminished, in fact I’d say the next phase in the search for efficiency gains is upon us. But at the same time, effectiveness will headline a decade long journey focused on growth. The same platform that enables next generation efficiency – Mobile, Social, Big Data, Analytics and Cloud Computing – forms the foundation for effectiveness through systems of engagement.
Review of 2011 and Thoughts on 2012
2011 in my mind will be viewed as the launching point of a digital revolution. The momentum started in 2010 and kicked into overdrive in 2011. The rapid adoption of tablets and Smartphones fueled an aggressive development of mobile applications, while E-Book sales increased at a remarkable pace. Meanwhile, the world continued to go social in ways that few would have imagined. World leaders felt the power of Social Media, as revolutions expanded through the organizing power of Facebook and Twitter. Business leaders came to grips with the power of social media, as skepticism waned and social business turned the corner. Data continued to grow exponentially, expanding the gulf between available data and meaningful insight. Lastly, 2011 marked the year that cloud computing burst onto the enterprise landscape – In fact, 2011 may eventually be viewed as the year of the Cloud.
These factors combined to drive an aggressive digital expansion that in most cases happened through isolated initiatives driven by marketing. Businesses with indirect channels to market looked towards direct to consumer models. Regulated industries embraced the opportunity of social media, while addressing its risk. Customer experience became the mantra for many businesses, as re-inventing customer relationships topped most priority lists. New digital executive positions were created in response to growing questions about effective governance models. The notion of holistic digital strategies was in fashion again, and innovation and operating dexterity rounded out the top priorities for most executives in 2011.
Digital Governance
Governance is a rapidly growing area of interest. Although social media is driving most of this discussion, broader digital initiatives are just as important. Without governance across all digital initiatives, companies will fail to achieve the most critical objectives facing them: rapid and better innovation, re-inventing customer relationships, and operating dexterity. Because of these stakes, digital governance must have teeth. Companies cannot let their efforts remain fragmented and must address what some at Forrester have called “Distributed Chaos”. Personalization is just a pipe dream if data cannot be lifted from silos to create a comprehensive view of the customer. Today, the Marketing and Communication function is a common place to find some element of digital governance, and some companies may elect to leave it there. However, the current digital expansion is cross functional and much broader than Marketing and Communication.
From Social Listening to the Prescriptive Enterprise
I find myself talking a lot lately about the slow evolution from basic social listening to a more robust use of analytics to truly gain actionable business insight. I have long felt the evolution was inevitable – of course I often think these things and they take years to materialize – a story for a different day. This Recent Forrester Blog Post touches on the notion of moving from social listening, to integrating social and customer data. It also presents a roadmap for how to move through the crawl-walk-run-fly stages.
I am sure the authors realize that although this is a piece of the evolution, there are other steps along the path to actionable business insight. I’m already seeing the movement from basic social media monitoring to the broader use of text analytic platforms. Companies that started their journey focused on brand mentions are evolving to new use cases that deliver considerable business value. One of the signs that we are reaching an inflection point can be found in a growing move towards evaluating text analytics software for a broader set of use cases.
Digital Strategy 2.0
I have visited with companies over the last couple of months and the term “Digital Strategy” has come up many times. It started me thinking about the last time the term was very popular – the late 1990s and early 2000 time period. I saw a reference to Digital Strategy 2.0 last week and thought it was a perfect way to describe this latest phenomenon. Several factors are driving this renewed focus on digital strategy:
Evaluating Listening Platforms
In this report – The Forrester Wave Listening Platforms – Forrested evaluates several listening platform vendors. Using 76 evaluation crtieria, Forrester found that Converseon, Nielsen, and Radian6 are the leading vendors. As the need for social intelligence intensifies, companies will continue to invest in listening platforms, while expanding the number of use cases addressed. In evaluating nine vendors, Forrester focused on the strengths and weaknesses of each vendor. The key areas of focus were: user experience, dashboards, data quality, consulting, text analysis, data source coverage, and social media outreach tools.
Reimagining the Future 
