Last week in San Francisco at Dreamforce 2015, I took some time to explore a couple of dozen important digital and social trends that most organizations should at least be thinking about in their forward looking IT and technology plans. These aren't necessarily things that organizations must consider today, but they will likely impact currently plans in some important ways, so are worthy of closer study.
Vital Trends in Digital & Social Impacting Your Business in 2015 & Beyond
1. Vital Trends in Digital & Social Impacting
Your Business in 2015 & Beyond
Dion Hinchcliffe
Chief Strategy Officer
7Summits, Inc.
dion.hinchcliffe@7summitsinc.com
@dhinchcliffe
WHAT’S NEXT IN EMERGING BUSINESS TECH & WHAT IT MEANS TO THE ENTERPRISE
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What we’ll answer today
• What emerging technologies should organizations
be considering?
• With an emphasis on digital/social engagement
• Why should you be evaluating these technologies
and trends
• What are the key takeaways, actions, and
preparatory tasks?
But must still prepare for the fast arriving digital future
Most organizations are still grappling with digital basics
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The Rate of Tech Change Continues to Increase Exponentially
Mobile Traffic through 2020
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We Live in Exponential Times
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And Our Organizations Must Face These Changes to Survive
Primary Cause of Failure: Lack of Tech Adaptation
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What Should Most Organizations Be Focusing on Today?
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And the next generation of technology will be
different than today’s tech.
Forcing us to:
• Learn all new platforms and technologies
• Think about even more novel new ways to engage
• Tap into very different forms of value creation
• Find new ways to adapt to digital change more
sustainably
Because Tomorrow is Coming Quickly
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New Platforms and Technologies that Orgs are Still Largely Unfamiliar With
mobile/social payment platforms
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That Require To Engage with Stakeholders More Deeply than Ever Before
Our integrated
digital
stakeholder
journey:
That most of
us still have
to build.
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Creating and Unleashing Value Creation in All New Ways
Key properties of new tech/business
• Decentralized
• Network-centric
• Asynchronous
• Scalable
• Emergent
• Connected
• Continuous
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New Models for Tech Change, Adoption, and Adaptation
New Modes New Structures
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Novel New Models for Tech Change are Now Fast Emerging Today
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So What’s
Coming
Next in
Digital and
Social?
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Digital Transformation must go Hand-in-Hand with Human Transformation
Co-Evolution
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Wearables
Key Events
• Apple Watch
• Watch OS 2
• Healthcare Wearables
Why to Prioritize
• Always on the person of key
stakeholders
• More opportunities to
engage
• Essential vector in
omnichannel CX
• Healthcare use cases
digital tech
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Digital Assistants Key Events
• Watson
• Siri
• Cortana
Why to Prioritize
• Frictionless UIs
• Work shifts from DIY
to do-it-for-you
• More productivity
• High leverage use
cases
digital tech
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Robotic Process Automation Key Events
• Effective new
solutions
• New AI techniques
Why to Prioritize
• Next avenue of
automation of mid-
level tasks
• Accuracy and speed
• Lower cost
• Less workforceKey Industries: Financial Services and Healthcare
digital tech
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Mind/Machine Interfaces Key Events
• Technology working in
the lab
• Cost point dropping to
mass market level in 36
months
Why to Prioritize
• Immersive new UX
• More productivity
• Powerful new types of
applications
• Path to 4th Platform
digital tech
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Virtual Reality Platforms Key Events
• Oculus Rift
• Google Cardboard
• Apps
• Low cost
Why to Prioritize
• Path to mind/machine
interfaces
• Enable unique applications
not otherwise possible
• New modes of
communication and
collaboration
digital tech
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Microframeworks Key Events
• Critical mass of new micro
frameworks
• Need for must faster digital
solutions
• Enables stunningly fast
digital development
Why to Prioritize
• Digital transformation
accelerator
• Rapid innovation and
pathfinding
• Enable rapid digital
experiments: Better
hackathons
digital tech
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Low Code Platforms Key Events
• First mass market low
code models arrive
• Zapier, IFTTT,
Hooks
• Nearly everything has an
API now
Why to Prioritize
• Enables citizen developer
• Shortest path to digital
value
• Tool for widespread
digital transformation
digital tech
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Applied Machine Learning
Key Events
• Maturity of open source and
commercial offerings
• Weka, Mahout,
DeepLearning4J, dozens of
others
• Increasingly impressive real-world
examples
• Roboadvisors
Why to Prioritize
• Unleashes innovation and
opportunity capacity
• Scalable new resource for
analytics and business insight
• Competitive advantage: Make
decisions based on all data faster
than competitors
digital tech
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The Blockchain Key Events
• Proof of effectiveness in Bitcoin
• $3.5B market cap
• A reliable way to do social
transactions with no central
authority
• Experimentation and adoption
by many in the traditional
financial services in 2015
Why to Prioritize
• New form of distributed record
keeping
• Creates transparency and trust
in digital ecosystems
• Will be used by many new digital
competitors as proof of life
digital tech
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Future Skilling
digital human
Key Events
• Increasing digital skill gaps in the
workforce
• Need to position for faster digital
change
• Need to get ahead of workforce
learning
• Often using learning
communities
Why to Prioritize
• Ability to reskill workforce for
digital change
• Seize opportunities better and
faster
• Increase and sustain employee
engagement
• Better results and productivity
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Citizen Developer
digital human
• Comfortable and conversant with new
technology
- But not usually a coder
• Has deep subject matter expertise in the
business that can be tapped into for new
apps
• Is familiar with several major SaaS
platforms that are easy to customize to
meet new needs
• Is willing to experiment and try new things
• Has typically worked closely and
collaborated with the IT department in the
past
• Is usually a team player willing to learn a
few basic rules and guidelines to keep
Citizen Development safe and controlled
Key Events
• Increased rate of new apps
and tech
• Growing backlogs in the
traditional IT department
• Rise of new Low Code
platforms
Why to Prioritize
• Solve more business problems
with local experience
• Faster application
development
• Better fit to business needs
• Improved scale of digital
transformation
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Work Hacking
digital human
Key Events
• Proliferation of complexity,
technology, rules, and
regulations
• New user shapable
technologies that can be
used to get things done
Why to Prioritize
• Empowering of workers to
fix what’s ‘broken’
• Easily tapped pool of
innovation
• Improved employee
engagement
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Networks of Excellence + #changeagents
digital human
Key Events
• Limits being hit on Centers of
Excellence for new technology
• Urgent need for digital
transformation
Why to Prioritize
• To better enable digital
leadership bottom up and top
down
• Scales better, more cost
effective, and more
sustainable than old CoE
model
• Emerging naturally from many
existing CoEs, so better to go
right to the desired outcome
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TriModal IT and Beyond Key Events
• Bimodal not sufficient for larger
and/or more complex projects
and organizations
• Evidence that tri-modal and n-
modal IT matches right rate of
change to right model
Why to Prioritize
• Better way to adopt new digital
technology
• More realistic model to match
different types of IT and
innovation to models that better
support them
• Get rid of one sized fits all tech
adoption that holds progress
back
digital human
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Beyond DevOps: Adding Innovation + Security
Continuos Innovation
Continuos Security
Key Events
• DevOps has proven a
success, with more than
half of all orgs using in
2015
• But it’s not yet a complete
enough model
Why to Prioritize
• Ensures security, the top
issue of the digital era, is
baked into all tech
enablement
• Ensures innovation efforts
are directly and
continuously connected to
the tech development effort
digital human
All Digital
Activities in
a Single Stack
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Digital Management Models Key Events
• Traditional industry age
management not up to task
of managing in flatter,
faster, networked digital era
• New models emerging and
experimented — and
enabled by collaborative
tech and communities— by
thousands of organizations
Why to Prioritize
• Adopt faster, more effective
forms of management
• Enable productivity,
efficiency, innovation, and
faster action against
opportunities
digital human
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SocBizOps: Sustained functional engagement
social human
Key Events
• Social media fragmentation
makes acting on social data
and events disconnected to
key business functions
• Push to close the gap between
events and action to create
continuous engagement
• Happening in community
management teams
Why to Prioritize
• Better connect stakeholder
engagement with company
operations
• Produce faster and sustained
results in customer care,
marketing, sales, operations,
and innovation
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Holistic Social Business Key Events
• Aging pre-networked
processes not working
well in many
organizations
• Large orgs seeking more
collaborative, open, and
decentralized processes
Why to Prioritize
• The usual KPI benefits
• More sustainable change
processes
• Better tech adaptation
and route to digital
transformation
• 280,000
employees
• 25 top level
use cases
• Redesigned
core
business
processes
for social
social human
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Social HR
and Sales
Key Events
• HR seeking to adapt and
provide value in new
operation environment
• Sales processes move to
social channels in most
orgs
Why to Prioritize
• Better talent and
resource management
• Especially recruiting
• Ability to meet customers
and employees in the
channels they use the
most
social human
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Swarm Working
Key Events
• Rise of crowd everything in
the wild
• Lack of equivalent
capabilities in the enterprise
• Tools emerging in the
enterprise to make swarm/
crowd working possible
• Office365 Groups
Why to Prioritize
• Faster activation on key
business challenges
• More effective resolution of
exception scenarios and
high priority business
events
social human
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Social
Performance
Management
Key Events
• The emerging of tools to
better monitor and guide
our stakeholders
• Growing number of orgs
using process
improvement using social
business tools
Why to Prioritize
• More comprehensive and
guided approach to
ensuring performance
results using network
engagement
• Shortest route to
optimization and value
creation
social human
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AI-Based Social Analytics
social tech
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Community Management as a Service
Key Events
• Orgs discovering a
paucity of community
management resources
• Rise of social media and
community in many
business functions
Why to Prioritize
• A cost-effective way to
ramp up vital resources
to make digital
engagement successful
• Faster way to increase
capabilities for managed
digital engagement
social tech
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Social Integration between Apps, Silos, Community
Key Events
• Too many collaboration
and communication tools
in our orgs now
• Apps like Slack that bring
them all together
Why to Prioritize
• Get ahead of and
manage digital channel
fragmentation
• Deliberately design a
collaborative and
community architecture
instead of ‘letting it
happen to you’
social tech
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Notable Vertical Dimension: Healthcare
Wellness Tracking Social EMRs Healthcare Communities
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Notable Vertical Dimension: Financial Services
Cryptocurrency Digital Advisors Partner Networks
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Notable Vertical Dimension: Higher Education
Adaptive Learning Student/Alumni
Communities
Learning Spaces
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What Does it Look Like When It’s Done? An Ecosystem
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Let’s Learn to Continuously Design Our Futures Together in Scale