IBM: How the Three Biggest Letters in Tech Have Become the Smallest

[IanInsights] – When I was growing up, the word technology conjured three prominent letters: I B M. Big Blue had been dominant in computing for decades, continued to innovate and, frankly, lead the industry. Its computers powered the U.S. space program, revolutionized the retail check-out process and in 1981, took computing mainstream with the first commercial PC. IBM essentially kicked off the present day computing era… (read more)

Forget HAL 9000, R2D2 or even RoboCop. AI Takes Off with CRM

 
[IanInsights] – Where AI is making inroads is not where you might expect it. Despite flashy concept videos, it’s not really happening in the kitchen, on the phone or even in the car – all the self-driving hoopla aside. Where we see AI adding real value is actually for enterprise business. Specifically for Customer Relationship Management (CRM). That’s actually a great sign, since CRM has been the trailblazer to usher in many of today’s value-adding technologies. CRM was the first commercial application to embrace the cloud. Big data and data analytics were then vetted by CRM technologies before making their way to analyzing your latest tax returns through companies like H&R Block or TurboTax… (read more)

Easy Strategy to Cut Compliance Costs by One-Third: Integrated WFM

[IanInsights] – Let’s face it; Workforce Management (WFM) is not exactly the sexiest software in the enterprise. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) helps you get closer to customers and sell more. Analytics provides insight to boost productivity. Even Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is helping companies build competitive advantage. They all show tremendous value that improves the bottom line.

But what if WFM software could save money while streamlining operations? Would cutting overall compliance costs by say 33 percent make WFM a little more attractive? (read more)

Shiny Object Syndrome or When Cool Tech Isn’t Enough

The Numbers that Drive Decisions

[IanInsights] – It’s not just about having data – it’s about having the right numbers to make the best decisions. Unfortunately, most technology analyst firms focus on vendor market share data and vendor roadmap plans. Not to say that market share has no value, but we’ve seen numerous firms come out of nowhere and shake up the industry with a radically better solution that delivers more value. I’d argue that businesses need to look at different numbers… (read more)

The Boy Who Cried IoT

[IanInsights] – It’s harmless enough when well-intentioned friends hype up a movie or a restaurant. But when marketers and spin doctors start to oversell promising technologies, it creates great industry risks. Take the Internet of Things (IoT), for example. What was an exciting concept nearly a decade ago has been very slow to transition into commercially viable, real-world products. The biggest successes to date are remote control thermostat apps. And yet I keep reading statistics that IoT is poised to be a multi-billion dollar business by 2020. (Same analysts that said Windows Phone would have a 40 percent share of the market by 2012, I’m guessing.)… (read more)

The Rise of Corporate Performance Management (CPM)

[IanInsights] – One of the biggest and most beneficial trends in enterprise software over the past 25 years has been the ever-accelerating pace of innovation. We no longer wait years for the next rev of a product in order to get beneficial new features. In fact, we increasingly see seismic shifts in the landscape as nimble new challengers shake up the status quo on nearly a quarterly basis now… (read more)

Don’t Be Fooled by Apple’s Latest Earnings Announcement – It Still Needs to Get Its Innovation Groove Back

[IanInsights] – It’s almost too easy to criticize Apple these days. After years of enviable growth, the Cupertino Wonder has been in a slump lately. And while Tuesday’s earnings call will give the fan base something to cheer about, it hardly signifies a return to Apple’s heyday… (read more)

Consumer Technology is No Longer Driving the Tech Agenda

[IanInsights] – For the past 10 years we’ve been hearing how consumers are driving business technology development. Take BYOD, for example. Despite CIO protests, the unrelenting Millennials brought their own devices and impressively changed the game in less than two years. Fun chat applications such as Yahoo! Messenger and AIM inspired enterprise collaboration features like today’s Slack and HipChat. Even the Internet of Things has been primarily focused on consumer use, with home thermostat control apps among the first (and to date only real) commercial successes… (read more)

Micro-Marketing Reshaping Business in 2017

[IanInsights] – Marketing and sales teams have been at each other’s throats since I can remember. It seems every new business generation has a new strategy to get these two important functions to work together. We’ve seen the marketing team report into sales, with little success. We’ve seen sales incentives tied into support for marketing initiatives, also to poor results… (read more)