Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Measuring the Pace of Change in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Technologies help us deliver on a business strategy. Without a strategy, there is no rationale for deploying technologies. In addition, there is no rationale for digital transformation, unless there is a need for business transformation. If you believe this as we do, then strategy development will be a priority. Strategies, however, are developed under the guidance of a doctrine. The purpose of a doctrine is to create a high level understanding of what we we want to achieve with our strategy, and the concepts that must be employed to achieve it. An organization’s doctrine will guide strategy development, and the tactics needed to achieve a goal.

An example of a doctrine is, "We will be a fast follower, and excel at quickly manufacturing and delivering popular fashions." With this doctrine, the company can now develop strategies that align with the doctrine.

Many executives consider digital transformation important, but an IT issue. We, however, believe IT serves only one purpose – supporting the needs and strategies of the business. If the business doesn’t perceive a need, or have a business strategy that requires digital transformation, then there is no transformation role for IT to play. All of our research, however, concludes that organizations must be engaged in business and digital transformation or they will fail at winning in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Digital doctrines and strategies must come from the top, as they require an intimate understanding of the goals, doctrines and strategies of the organization, and the resources available to achieve them. Grassroots efforts to transform a company will fail, as they are too slow to compete against engaged, focused leaders.

Leaders must have an intimate understanding of how markets are changing, by how much, and the technologies that are supporting these changes. We all watched as advertising and sales expanded quickly from brick and mortar locations, to search engines, to online auctions, mobile retailer apps/websites, and now to online classified, online markets and sharing economy platforms. Do we fully understand consumers' path-to-purchase journeys in these evolving digital environments? Do we understand where traditional path-to-purchase journeys intersect with digital journeys? One thing we do know for certain, as a result of our research, is that consumers are altering their buying habits to take advantage of the convenience, market feedback and in-depth product information available in these mobile and digital markets. The need now is to measure how fast buying habits and shopping behaviors are changing, which is not easy. Many new behaviors and trends are outside of traditional measurements.

An additional challenge for leaders is measuring the pace of market change, and aligning resources and priorities to ensure we are changing, if not at the same pace, at least at a pace ahead of our competition. What units of measurement will capture the speed of change? What data sources will provide the data necessary for analysis, and how do we capture the data? Once we have a methodology in place for measuring the pace of market change, how do we then measure the pace of our own changes inside our organizations and in those of our competitors so we know how we are doing?

Download my latest report, "How Digital Thinking Separates Retail Leaders from Laggards."

Watch the 3-minute video on digital thinking in retail.

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:

************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

How Digital Thinking Separates Retail Leaders from Laggards

George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, once said, “You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.” In our latest research on the future state of work in the retail sector, we find many industry executives struggling to imagine where the future is leading them and their organizations, not to mention the role digital technologies will play along the way.

Traditional retailers are challenged by rapidly emerging new business models, such as Amazon Go and Facebook’s launch of its digital commerce platform, Marketplace. Moreover, pioneering companies in the sharing economy (i.e., Uber) are expanding from their initial markets into areas such as food delivery, while insurgent retailers, such as Sun Basket, are combining digital and social media platforms, mobile apps and massive volumes of new data to encroach on retailers’ territory. These nontraditional competitors are changing the rules of the retail game via disruptive strategies.

To better understand the strategies and technologies that digital transformation requires, Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, surveyed 500 executives from the retail industry across 18 countries, in partnership with renowned economist Nouriel Roubini. Sadly, our research shows a significant number of retailers making decisions and forming strategies based on outdated attitudes, fears and misunderstandings. Given all the hype around digital, and the available data on its increasing importance, it is surprising to see enormous and persistent differences in thinking between retail’s digital leaders and laggards.

Digital leaders tend to experience higher revenue growth, and their attitudes about digital technologies suggest they will keep their leadership position. Their perspective on how retail jobs and work will be transformed as a result of digital is also more evolved, as are their ideas on the vastly new and enhanced skills that will be needed to support tomorrow’s retail environment.

Digital laggards see an alternate reality. They place far less importance on digital technologies and their future role, and they show higher levels of fear and concern about digital overall. Our findings reveal a reluctance among laggards to digitally transform their thinking, IT infrastructures, doctrines and business strategies. If they remain on this track, their companies could find themselves in dire straits.

This report digs deeply into the differences in thinking between digital leaders and laggards, as well as between high- and low–revenue-growth retailers, and highlights strategies that can be employed to achieve and maintain digital leadership. We also delve into the role that “mental constructs” and personal attitudes play in separating retailing’s digital leaders from laggards. We explore how the thinking of digital leaders results in differentiated strategies, greater returns and improved results. We reveal the differences between leaders and laggards in their digital technology investments, and then analyze how leaders believe digital implementations should be sequenced between now and 2025. We also scrutinize the perceptions of frontline retail managers in terms of the mistakes they believe are being made by executives when it comes to digital transformation.

Download the full report, "How Digital Thinking Separates Retail Leaders from Laggards."

Watch the 3-minute video on digital thinking in retail.

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his strategies and thoughts here:

************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Reporting on Industrial IoT Platforms and AI from MWC17

As part of SAP's IoT Influencer program, I had the honor of interviewing Hitachi's Rob Tiffany on Industrial IoT platforms, mobility platforms and the role of artificial intelligence at Mobile World Congress 2017.
************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Rejecting Systems of Intelligence has Consequences

Amazon knows me. Oh boy, do they know me! Our dog thinks the deliveryman is part of our family. Amazon knows what I like, and does their very best to create a wonderful and personalized experience for us by using their "system of intelligence" to provide it. Amazon Prime membership now offers movies, music and audio books in addition to other membership services all tailored to my family and me. Alexa, Amazon’s hit home bot, can be set-up to automate my home and much more to enhance convenience and comfort. All of these offerings and services are designed to improve and personalize my experiences so I will feel inclined to increase my business, loyalty and commitment to Amazon.

Airlines, on the other hand, seem determined to drive their users away in 2017. From personal experience, airlines don’t seem interested in your welfare or quality of experience, or what you like, what kind of trip your are on, or how much current and future business you can provide them. They are not using "systems of intelligence" to provide wonderful and personalized experiences. As a million-miler quickly heading toward a 2 million-miler status, my legacy airline does not seem interested in considering my short or long term business value in any of their algorithms or considerations. This seems to be a rejection of systems of intelligence.

It’s not just me whining (I swear)! I did some research on many different travel sites this week and travel experts are advising many of their readers to abandon rewards programs and airline loyalty as the value has disappeared for most travellers.

Let me provide a few examples. A couple that is traveling together on a romantic holiday must reject all upgrades (upgrades they earned) in order to stay together on a flight, or pay full price for an upgrade – that doesn’t feel right. They are now being told to pay for upgrades, even if they are potentially eligible for free ones – just for the opportunity to sit together. And if one of the couple accepts an upgrade leaving the other in the back of the plane, there goes the romance!

One airline recently dropped a level of elite status, from being considered a “real” status level (changed late in 2016). So the money and loyalty that helped them earn their status has now been devalued to nothing – that treatment doesn’t feel right.

One of the key benefits of earning status is the ability to select better and more comfortable seats, and to manage your experience at time of booking. In 2017 that is gone, and you must now pay to play. If you wait for an potential upgrade based on status, you may be placed in an uncomfortable center seat that you had no role in choosing. Your upgrade becomes the source of discomfort and inconvenience. In order to ensure you are not placed in the center seat between two overflowing travelers, you must reject automatic upgrades, and pay for any upgrades even though you are eligible for free ones. You now have less control, less predictability, less personalization and less comfort because of your elite status – that doesn’t feel right.

It is not hard, using analytics and algorithms, to estimate the lifetime value of individual customers - that is a basic function for a true system of intelligence. Many of us frequent travelers represent many hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, euros, etc., worth of real and potential lifetime value to an airline. To reject that data and its intelligence in their decision-making and customer service treatment – just doesn’t feel right.

In a digital age where real-time contextually relevant personalization is the gold standard of market leading customer service oriented companies, airlines have rejected it. This rejection of intelligence, I predict, will ultimately open up a competitive gap, an opportunity, for new kinds of airlines and/or service models willing to treat their customers as individuals with names, wallets, significant others, lifetime business values and butts.

Read more about "systems of intelligence" in the great new book "What to Do When Machines Do Everything."

I invite you to watch my latest video on digital technology trends and strategies:

Download the full report with charts and data sources here: https://www.cognizant.com/FoW/twa-hyper-digital-transformation-codex2478.pdf

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:

************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Micron on the Role of Memory in Digital Transformation, AI, VR, Mobility and IoT

Have any of you spent time considering how digital transformation, artificial intelligence, IoT, mobility and virtual and augmented reality are impacted by computer memory? Me neither until this week at GSMA's Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona. I had the privilege of interviewing Micron Technologies' Gino Skulick, II and getting educated on it. Very cool information!!!

Download my latest tech trends report with charts and data sources here: https://www.cognizant.com/FoW/twa-hyper-digital-transformation-codex2478.pdf

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:

************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Sensors and AI in the Kingdom of Robots

Fingerspitzengefühl: Is a German word used to describe an ability to maintain attention to detail in an ever-changing operational and tactical environment by maintaining real-time situational awareness. The term is synonymous with the English expression of "keeping one's finger on the pulse". The problem with traditional fingerspitzengefühl, in addition to pronouncing it - is it is hard to scale. Today, however, in a world of sensors, GPS and mobile devices, having real-time situational awareness is far easier than ever before. In fact, today the challenge is not how to do it (answer: sensors), but what to do with all the information.

There are many dimensions of data that are available for work outside the four walls, which is mobile, remote and dynamic. We all know about 3 dimensional (longitude, latitude and altitude), but there are many more. We contrive:

Time
Start and stop tasks times
Travel times
Traffic conditions
Available workforces and associated costs
Available equipment
Activities
Events
Business process steps
Expenses
Security steps
Transactions
Compliance tasks
Performances against KPIs (key performance indicators)
Actors (customers, partners, suppliers, contractors, employees, etc.)
Relationships
Contract/Agreements
Supplies, materials and equipment tracking
Etc.

All of these data points can be bundled together as Performance Impact Variables (PIVs). PIVs are the data points that can be used as inputs to algorithms that can be used by AI systems to optimize and manage the performance of the business in real-time.

All of this data can be used as overlays to simple GPS coordinates on a map. Each of these additional layers of information exponentially increases the complexity, decision-making options and possible combinations. This enormous volume of data quickly overwhelms humans. That is why non-humans (AI/software robots) can be used to such great effect to maintain productive situational awareness and strategic advantages in complex environments demanding real-time decision-making and action.

During the period between WWI and WWII, Western countries all developed new tanks and military aircraft to support their infantry. The Germans, however, went three steps farther by developing strategic advantages in:

Radios and frequencies for communicating between forces (tanks, infantry and aircraft) in real-time
Strategies for coordinated actions between the three groups
Mission oriented command structures – Commanders define the mission “intent”, but the details of how to accomplish them were left to frontline officers.

In today’s world, companies seeking strategic advantages in field services operations can learn from these three additions.

The modern equivalent of “radios and communication networks” is OILS (optimized information logistics systems) that sense, collect, securely and wirelessly transmit data, analyze and report on it, and support artificial intelligence (AI) and automation.

The modern equivalent of “strategies for coordinated action” is the ability to collect and analyze vast quantities of real-time data to automatically and dynamically manage and adjust (using AI and software robots) a whole series of activities and events such as: schedules, tasks, jobs, orders, transactions, etc.

The modern equivalent of “mission oriented command structures” is an algorithm. Once the algorithm is developed, it can operate without human intervention.

When massive amounts of real-time data are automatically collected and analyzed, they can feed algorithms and AI systems to optimize real-time activities and events. The speed at which data can be processed through OILS and AI systems today far exceeds human decision-making capabilities – so automation that works in digital-time is required. This is where AI excels. AI can analyze all the inbound data in nanoseconds and instantly adjust and optimize operations.

AI does not just impact field services. It impacts many business processes by supporting:

New ways of selling
New business models
New ways of managing
New business processes
New ways of collaborating
New ways of making decisions
New ways of engaging customers
New ways of working with products
New marketing and growth strategies

My mantra is, "Digital technologies without digital strategies are wasted." Having digital technologies without a digital strategy is like having tanks, mobile infantry and aircraft, but no coherent plan for combined action. In a recent report, 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation, digital laggards were found not to receive as good of return on investments (ROIs) on their digital investments as digital leaders do. The difference I believe is in their digital strategies, or lack thereof.

In the book, Stray Voltage, War in the Information Age, author Wayne Michael Hall defines two more PIVs - cyberspace and cerebral. "Information superiority is firmly connected to making decisions that are superior to an adversary's and combines information technology and intellectual power to create conditions with which to make better decisions…human beings will need to improve their thinking capabilities to cope with the increasing complexities of the world...people will depend more on visualization to help understand complexity quickly. Visualization will fuse data and information and display the result in a multimedia format. Visualization will allow the integration of data, information and knowledge from all sources and will allow for the integration of numerous contributors." Visualization, although helpful to humans, is far less relevant once algorithm-consuming AI systems take over.

Sensors, already powerful, are being developed with more capabilities to sense more things every month. Each year when I attend GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, I am astonished to see what additional capabilities sensors have added. Here are some examples:

Sensors able to identify and classify vegetation - natural and artificial
Sensors able to identify and pinpoint distressed crops
Sensors that can identify soil moisture content
Sensors that can detect heat sources and leaks
Sensors that can detect movements and changes in defined objects
Sensors that can detect the chemical make-up of make-up

Each of these sensors and their real-time data collection capabilities adds to decision-making complexity, but they can also be the very PIVs that give you the competitive advantage you need to win.

Watch my latest video on digital technology trends:

Download the full report with charts and data sources here: https://www.cognizant.com/FoW/twa-hyper-digital-transformation-codex2478.pdf

Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Measuring the Pace of Change in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

How Digital Thinking Separates Retail Leaders from Laggards

Reporting on Industrial IoT Platforms and AI from MWC17

Rejecting Systems of Intelligence has Consequences

Micron on the Role of Memory in Digital Transformation, AI, VR, Mobility and IoT

Sensors and AI in the Kingdom of Robots

Featured Post

Leadership Advice from a Futurist - A Reading

Get new posts by email: