Michael Fauscette

From e2.0 to Social Business

2009-11-09T18:08:23-08:00

We're in the early stages of a significant business transformation brought about by and through the social web. The change is being driven from several different converging factions, customers are demanding that companies interact with them in new and different ways and employees are frustrated by enterprise software and processes that are less than comparable to their personal online experiences. Web 2.0 started this change with new concepts like user generated content, wisdom of crowds, transparency, shared control, real time online conversations, etc. The recent economic downturn accelerated and added to the need for change. Companies are concerned with customer retention, increasing productivity or doing more with less, global competition, and in general challenges to their outdated industrial age processes and systems in an information driven reality.

Throughout the Internet age the concept of collaboration has haunted businesses. Tools to enable more or more effective communication has slowly gained adoption. Email, the grand online replacement of snail mail and once the golden way for people to share ideas and information has grown into an almost (and some would not add the almost) unmanageable tool. Spam chokes our inboxes with some studies placing spam at more than 80% of all email. Email marketing, once a great new way to reach prospects and customers is now mostly ineffective and is a big part of the noise that makes email so difficult to manage. IM, frankly isn't much better. Other team collab tools have made attempts at breaking down silos inside most businesses but to little effect.

All of these areas, web 2.0, collaboration, the social web, social networking, social media, social CRM and even areas like enterprise search and content management are converging into one significant business movement that is starting to drive real cultural change inside and outside of organization. This movement to social business is not about social media, social networking, collaboration, Web 2.0 or even Enterprise 2.0, although all of those have added to the knowledge base that can be leveraged to build out the social software that will be required to make the new social business function and scale. This whole movement is based on the fundamental cultural shift that leads to engaging customers, employees and partners in new and different ways. By leveraging the collective wisdom and power of shared control businesses engage stakeholders in their business processes, decisions, issues and outcomes. In this new era of information old restrictive hierarchies left over from the industrial age are flattened and silos of information are set free. This is people-centric business, or to say it another way, people become the business platform. This change impacts every area of the business, sales, marketing, product marketing / development, product design, customer service, operations, finance, human resources, management, etc. We're still defining and redefining "social business" but the basic concepts are finally in play and businesses are starting to make real attempts toward transformation. I've said this post but it needs repeating I think, as we come out of the current economic downturn it's not about recovery, we're not going back to where we were, it's about reinvention.

Social customer service

2009-11-08T07:21:10-08:00

One of the more promising areas of focus for social business transformation is customer service. This week at e2.0 I attended a panel discussion of social customer service moderated by Clara Shih. It was an interesting discussion and I think there are some good solid practices growing up, enabled by some new tools. Since I've managed support organizations for a few software vendors in the past and I've done a lot of research on social business I started thinking about some of the possibilities for changing the way we think about customer service.

You will note in the simple diagram above that there's still an underlying customer service system, which is the key to enterprise level scaleability (although there are a few variations on this idea that could create a different type of backend system, I'll explain that later). There are essentially two "new" types of channels for the development of the conversation. The first steps outside the enterprise and into the social cloud to use rapidly growing social networks like Facebook and real time conversation vehicles like Twitter to interact with customers "when, where and how" they choose. As more and more customers become comfortable with these online public communities they grow in importance in reaching customers effectively. There's a secondary use case for real time conversation tools like Twitter that has emerged from Best Buys that uses Twitter, a broad group of employees and a backend system that aggregates the Tweets into a single web page, which helps the process scale and at the same time creates a way to leverage collective intelligence to get the best answers to customer questions. I wrote about it here. The point though is that even in the Best Buys example there is a "system" and a process for scaling the interaction. Some CRM companies are starting to provide a way to integrate the conversations into their customer service systems "out of the box", for example the salesforce.com Service Cloud offering.

The second channel is growing up around public or private customer communities. The concept is to create a customer community of mutual assistance that provides the first level of "support" for customer questions. The idea is actually similar to the social cloud concept but provides a concentrated group of brand / product focused customers in a network rather than a broad public social network. The concentration yields the opportunity for knowledgeable customers to share their expertise. A lot has been written on creating and managing effective online communities so I won't spend time on that now but you might check out this post from Dion Hinchcliffe for some best practices. So the process is pretty simple, customers ask and answer questions, when a question remains unanswered or not satisfactorily answered for some period of time it is escalated to the company's customer service reps for resolution. One additional concept can be used to enhance the community experience, creating a way to collect, vet and publish customer generated content adds to the available knowledge base. There are several companies that facilitate the creation and management of online customer communities and integrate to (or offer their own) customer service systems, for example Lithium, HelpStream and Get Satisfaction.

This is a rapidly evolving area of the new social business and one that can provide very high ROI. Are there other new social customer service practices that I've missed?

Social software adoption, how are we doing?

2009-11-02T18:14:19-08:00

I was going through some IDC survey data that I got back recently and I think there's an interesting story to tell. My group does a regular survey 2-4 times a year on software applications, called Appstats. We have some fixed questions for trending and some questions that change out each time so that we can look at many different parts of the applications markets. this last survey I included some social software questions. One in particular is interesting: Which of the following Enterprise 2.0 technologies do you currently use now or plan to implement in the next 12 months? Here are the results from 503 senior business and IT personnel across businesses from mid-market to enterprise:

Some things of course are no surprise, like collaboration platforms are the most prevalent in current use (they have been around the longest after all). I was a little surprised that the use of web 2.0 tools like facebook and Twitter for customer service surveyed at 46.3% using or plan to use in the next 12 months. I suppose the current "over" hyping of success stories in the application of these tools to customer interactions has caused a bit of a bubble. As I look at each individual app I do have some reaction, blogs and wiki's are getting more main stream, Ideasourcing seems to have gained momentum this year...things like that. BUT the real story to me is the overall trend, no category is below 40% (using + intend to use) which is quite an increase from the survey's we did less than a year ago. To put it another way, at least half of the companies surveyed are using or plan to use social software tools in the next 12 months. Social software is gaining momentum and that momentum has seen a significant upsurge in only 12 months. Exciting...

Let's just face the truth, Comcast doesn't Care

2009-11-02T17:04:02-08:00

There's been a lot of talk about @comcastcares and I've heard the case used as an example of the power of the social web, the power of Twitter for customer service, etc. for probably close to a year now but I've remained skeptical that this type of heroics was really a way to become a social business. Heroics are, well, heroic but are they really a scaleable approach to solving a serious business problem? The transformation to become a social business is a basic culture change that needs a lot of management support and a serious change management effort to reach all of the employees and create fundamental difference. That's the core roadblock to this transformation and is something that cannot be bypassed.

Comcast has an abysmal reputation for customer service and that doesn't change overnight. First you need a commitment to change, something I just don't see when I look at Comcast. This story of course has a personal example to support my theory and even though I'm not particularly happy about this example its not just sour grapes, there is a real lesson here.

OK, the story:

I moved into a new apartment last month (9/17). It's pre-wired for network with a junction box in my room. We had the choice of Comcast or AT&T for Internet service provider but chose Comcast because of the Extreme 50 offering (50 mbps download). I often work from a home office so the speed is important (I often get demos from software companies, download large files, etc.).

Here's the sequence of events:

1. soon after we moved in the tech came out to install the modem / set up (very fast response btw). I came home during the install. The tech set up the modem in my room but not in the patch panel (no problem I could move it, afterall I've worked in tech for, ah, well, a long time). The install went ok, but I didn't run a speed test. After he left I moved the modem to the patch panel and installed my Lynksys router / wireless access point. I patched in the wired network so there are 4 ports available. I use a wired connection in my office set up. A couple of days later I noticed that the network was very slow so ran a speed test and could only get up to maybe 2 mbps for download. I used a local test recommended by my roommates boyfriend who is a senior network engineer (he also checked the set up, tweaked it some but basically everything was correct).

2. My roommate called and reported the problem and they scheduled another tech to come out when I would be there. He brought a new modem and rechecked all the set up. We ran the speed test and could only get around 11 mbps for download. He checked all the way to the building junction box but could do nothing to fix it. He said someone could call to schedule a more senior person to follow up.

3. No one called and finally my roommate called and complained. They told her they would credit us $20 and that a person would call to set up an appointment.

4. Appointment set but unfortunately I was away on a business trip. The tech came out and was extremely rude to my roommate. He checked the set up and used a "special" site to test that did show 50 mbps at the modem (that is the only time we've seen a test work to that speed, by the way, interesting). She ran the test at one of the wired ports and it wouldn't get above 22-23 mbps. He told her that it was because of the wiring, it attenuated the signal by 50% (technically, horribly inaccurate and frankly ridiculous, that maybe 20-25' of cable could attenuate the signal by +50% in a new building). He also told her she didn't need 50 mbps so why was she complaining anyway (he didn't say you're just a dumb girl, but he implied it and in general was very insulting to her).

5. I got home, ran the speed tests from several sites and nothing gets above 25 mbps. Mostly it runs around 11 mbps. My roommates network engineer boyfriend come and check everything and it is correctly configured and set up. He believes that either there is a problem in the Comcast operations center or that Comcast knowingly throttles bandwidth. We've reported it but no one responds. We have been billed for the full price of the extreme service but we're not getting that service. No $20 credit was even issued.

6. I tweeted my displeasure with Comcast and one of the Comcastcares agents picked it up and did respond very quickly. She asked me to email the details and them promised that someone would call us on Monday...it's a Monday later, no call.

Here's a screenshot of a speedtest run on our network:

Oh, and the fine print, which I didn't notice before, hidden in a link on the offer and on another page: "Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. Speeds shown represent proportional download times and are not actual speeds. Speed comparison between Comcast 12 Mbps, 16 Mbps, 22 Mbps and 50 Mbps service and standard 1.5 and 3.0 DSL (downloads only). PowerBoost provides bursts of download and upload speeds for the first 10 MB and 5 MB of a file, respectively, for 12 Mbps service and for the first 20 MB and 10 MB of a file, respectively, for 16 Mbps and 22 Mbps service. Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed"

What Frank and his team are trying to do is admirable, don't get me wrong. But as you can see the culture has not changed and there's no reason to think it will without management commitment and a real attempt to get the technician in the field to understand what is acceptable behavior and what is expected from a customer service perspective. The social business transformation is about culture change. I also wonder what would happen to the Comcastcares team if 50M customers started interacting with Comcast on Twitter tomorrow...scale is a real problem without an enterprise support tool behind the process. Also, charging almost twice as much for a premium service that you can't deliver (and maybe never had any intention to deliver?) is simply wrong.

****UPDATE 11/3/2009

Comcast, specifically Frank Eliason (@comcastcares) and some of his team, Steve and Bill, contacted me this morning and over the past hour or so have corrected my problem. I also got a call from Comcast Corp. apologizing, promising to look into the issues and offsetting some of the charges. I'm happily speeding along with much improved performance.

I'll rephrase some of what I said above. I do now believe that Comcast is trying to change it's corporate culture to one of good, responsive customer service. I also know how difficult that is to do. Change like this takes time and lot's of missteps and hard work to really see the changes throughout a very large organization. My experience is a perfect example of just how much work they have left. If they can continue to push this type of responsiveness and real focus on customers over time, it will make a huge difference. Bravo for the effort today!

Loyalty and mobility, getting and keeping customers engaged

2009-10-26T14:32:09-07:00

The airline industry has offered, and struggled with, loyalty programs for years. The concept is pretty straight forward, reward your best customers for being the best by giving them more privileges and free stuff. The execution though has not always engendered loyalty. I can't help but believe that some of that struggling is company culture and attitude but I'm sure some of it is also the back end systems used to manage the programs. There are all sorts of horror stories about poor program decisions that have had the reverse effect on customers, at least in the US (those stories I know, but I doubt they're unique to the US). Here's a good post from my friend and fellow analyst Paul Greenberg that demonstrates the point. I have a few stories of my own, especially with United Airlines, where I have an ongoing "relationship" (if you fly out of SFO you pretty much have to deal with United). Anyway, that's another story and someday I'll be motivated to share my experiences at the hands of what is in my opinion the worst customer service in the airline industry (have to leave out wireless companies at least, they certainly are in the running for worst customer experience ever).

Enough of the airlines though, I'm happy to say that I'm starting to see customer loyalty programs done "right". First let's talk about what I think "right" for loyalty means. I think there are a few traits of loyalty programs that combine best practices with some new tools to provide an excellent customer experience and drive mutually beneficial behavior. First, loyalty needs to be based on detailed understanding and analysis of customer behavior. CRM analytics provides the basis for an effective loyalty program and with the added potential to apply social analytics to the existing CRM data provides an opportunity to take loyalty programs to an even higher level of performance. A few thoughts on good loyalty programs:

Reward the behavior that you desire but don't design program guidelines that dis-incent that same behavior.
Real-time rewards that go beyond the normal program fundamentals have an incrementally higher impact on loyalty. Made in a public way they can even influence non-program members.
Offering additional incentives to customers for additional behavior that benefits the company, if balanced, is a win - win.
Ask the question: "How would a reasonable person react to this program change" BEFORE making the change. It's what the legal profession calls the "reasonable man" test.
Incentives that have virtually no cost to the company can actually be some of the most valuable to the customers (that on the spot upgrade for example)
Mobile
Green (e Rewards, e Tickets, e Statements, e Cards...please stop sending those over stuffed envelopes of useless information...OK, personal bias showing here)

At Oracle OpenWorld this year I had the opportunity to interview Claes Lindholt, Director of Customer Programs and Customer Analysis with Swedish Rail. Swedish Rail is an Oracle Siebel CRM customer and implemented a loyalty program as a part of the Siebel implementation. A government owned rail system, Swedish Rail is completely self sufficient and serves approximately 2.5 million passengers a year or 115,000 / day to 220 destinations. Facing deregulation next year, they realized in 2005 that they didn't know their customers and that they would be a serious risk if they didn't take some drastic actions. Their business consisted of large % of rev from small % of people, but they didn't know who they were so as competition arrived it could copy their products and prices. They realized that the relationship could be the differentiator. Through an extensive selection process they decided to implement Siebel CRM. Swedish Rail started with marketing, analytics and loyalty, then lately added call center / service modules. They launched sales in june with a BtoB loyalty program. Swedish Rail also acknowledged the importance of the initiative, seen as company transformation because of the deregulation and organizationally committed to the project by placing Claes' position at the same level as the CIO. The project had 65 integrations and was targeted with the foundation focus of developing actionable customer data. Data analysis and loyalty program management are under the same leadership.

The results? According to the survey that is conducted every day aboard the trains, of all the customers surveyed, 47% of customers say they travel more by train because of the loyalty program. The program is very active and even pushes offers to the employee handhelds on the train so that employees can use data to act directly with the customers (on the spot upgrades, for example). The analytics capabilities are advanced and Swedish Rail uses the intersection of customer data with financial data to load balance trains by incenting loyal customers to shift into less busy trains when practical. They take the fixed cost of operating a schedule and overlay customer behavior to increase profitability while giving loyal customers discounts and preferential treatment. They use the data for strategic, tactical, and operational decisions including real time data use aboard the trains in a tactical way. Claes has several enhancements on the radar including upgrading customer experience through more effective cross channel use, mobile with an iPhone app which has full account functionality including reservations and even replaces the loyalty card with an e Card, and getting involved in social networks. From a data perspective Swedish Rail plans better segmentation, more actionable data and developing greater insight depth for product development, marketing, communication and expanding to new target groups like youth and seniors.

My conversation was very enlightening and it is a pleasure to see what a well run program can accomplish. I had a few other customer conversations around the successful use of loyalty programs, which is a very hot topic especially among retailers. I'll save those for another post.

It's not about recovery, it's about reinvention!

2009-10-26T09:13:23-07:00

Ever since Lehman Bros collapsed and we went into this accelerated financial tumble I have routinely been asked by vendors, end users, the financial investment community, and well, by most everybody I talk to, when I think the recovery will start and how long it will take. And of course the analyst in me keeps trying to answer but honestly, more and more, I'm convinced that it's not the right question. I don't believe we can or maybe even should recover if that means going back to the "good old days". I am starting to believe that in a very many ways things will be fundamentally different (maybe are already fundamentally different). We've been moving toward different for a while. The promise of the web, which clearly was something different than what we thought in 1999, has started to play out. The tech industry itself has been in a different industry cycle since the "recovery" from our implosion in 2001-02. That was a surprise too, that tech is behaving much like other industries although our cycles are more compressed (but then our whole history is more compressed than other industries).

Anyway, so what do I mean? I believe that tech, especially software is taking on a different look but that's not really where I am going with this post. We're in a business change cycle that is widespread and far reaching IMHO. The social web is changing personal behavior, personal expectations that spill over into our business lives (well, maybe I should say the line between personal and business is getting very blurry, but that's a subject for a different post). Our expectations of technology and how we interact with it has changed. Face it, in general enterprise systems are just not a great experience and businesses don't generally operate in a transparent, open, social model where everyone has a voice. The old industrial age hierarchical model is suboptimal for the information worker. In the old (or is that current) model information is power so it's hoarded. In the new world information is powerful when it is set free, the exact opposite of the current status quo.

We're poised on the edge of a business reinvention. The power of the social web can and is being applied to business and will drive a substantial business change over the next few years. The software industry will exhibit some of those social changes and will also emerge with a re-focused business and refined business models. Some outward signs of the reinvention:

Software companies:

Tech mega-vendors (which I written about here) will accelerate consolidation around their ecosystems
Hybrid licensing models will prevail over pureplays balancing efficiency and profitability with customer choice (SaaS, open source and on premise)
Partners will also emerge in a hybrid model that blurs the lines between system integrator, independent solution vendor and value added reseller
Significant consolidation will continue in the partner ecosystem for the next few years
Open source software will continue to grow in acceptance and will increase it's share of the application budgets
Software companies will increase their social software offerings significantly as customer demand steadily increases. Offerings will include stand-a-lone social applications, social platforms and embedded social functionality in traditional software categories
The demand for mobile and real-time solutions will drive innovation in software products
Silo'ed products will give way to fully integrated process-based apps (the impact of SOA)
UI level integration / mashup capabilities will be embedded and commonplace in the enterprise as end users require the ability to individualize the way they interact with business systems

Social Business movement:

People become the core of the business focus (people as the platform)
Business transparency becomes the cornerstone of compliance
Shared control versus centralized control
Ongoing incremental problem solving becomes essential (versus crisis problem solving that results from centralized problem solving) as shared control starts to involve a broader range of individuals
Crowd sourced ideas (internal and external) drive innovation in products and services
Customer, employee, supplier and partner interaction becomes a conversation
Service delivered "when, where and how" customers choose
Managing becomes coaching
Information silos are broken down
Prediction is a viable tool based on the analysis of social data (applies to employees, customers and partners)

I'm sure there are many reinvention attributes I've missed but hopefully you get the idea. What should we add?

Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0

2009-10-21T16:57:18-07:00

I'm a believer and supporter of the social business transformation that is starting, that should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog. There are a wealth of concepts that could be applied to business that were learned (or at least started) by web 2.0 and the social web. Also, the nature of web 2.0 lends itself to grass roots and viral expansion so many businesses have found themselves "doing" social business without ever having made a decision to implement a change. While I applaud these heroics, I have for some time had an uncomfortable feeling about the scaleability or even the advisability of this occurrence (not that I think these efforts could or should be stopped). The point is that if a business wants to effect a true transformation to a social business there must be a broad culture shift in the organization in addition to making tools and processes that enable the change available. I spent a good deal of my early software career managing the implementation of large software projects and I can say with some authority that without a methodology, a risk mitigation approach, the correct skills and change management a project is doomed. Businesses need enterprise class, scaleable social tools, social processes and knowledgeable assistance to pull off this level of business transformation.

Earlier this week some colleagues announced a partnership that is both good news for businesses that want to do social transformation projects but also an indication that social business is growing up. The Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 is a venture / partnership between Dion Hinchcliffe (Hinchcliffe & Co.), Michael Krigsman (Asuret) and Ross Mayfield (SocialText). If you want to read the details and some analysis of the announcement check out Sameer Patel's blog, and also Paul Greenberg's ZDNet blog, they both had done a great job providing the details of the announcement. The partnership is important for several reasons:

1. This is a "grown up" approach to implementing e2.0 / social business initiatives, one of the few I've seen so far. If the social business transformation is to happen it needs this kind of robust and complete approach.

2. The partnership brings together: a. proven expertise and a methodology, b. an established and proven risk management methodology and risk management software application and c. a robust, enterprise class social platform on which to build and deploy the necessary tools.

3. The potential for accelerated evolution of methods, processes and practices as their framework, in it's new, more complete form is applied to real world problems and the learning that happens there captured and rolled back in to the approach.

4. This approach has a much greater chance of creating success and frankly, the more successful social businesses we help create the more we can make other businesses realize the power of this transformation.

Here's a graphic representation of the Pragmatic e2.0 framework:

Congratulations to the partners, we'll be looking for some compelling success stories in the near future!

Cloudy days

2009-10-18T16:32:26-07:00

Oracle OpenWorld's done for this year and I'm now spending the weekend trying to catch up from a week at the conference and get the post-conference write up and analysis started. As I think back on the week one of the most entertaining events was listening to Larry Ellison at the Financial Analysts briefing rant about cloud computing (for the 2nd year in a row). Its a well known fact that Larry is not fond of the term (frankly it took me over a year to get comfortable using it myself so I can empathize here). Last year's rant (again at the Financial Analysts briefing at OOW) yielded one of my favorite Ellison cloud quotes: "the technology industry is the only industry that's more fashion conscious than women's fashion, I'm telling my marketing people to put cloud on everything"...a classic. This year the much quoted sound bite is "cloud computing is the future, it's also the present and the past". As I was thinking back on these quotes and giggling (which I suppose could cause a scene as I'm sitting in my local coffee shop, Phil'z, really awesome BTW, you should check it out if your in San Francisco...and no I didn't get sponsored to say that) it occurred to me that there's an important point lodged somewhere inside these funny lines, have we clouded (sorry couldn't resist) the SaaS message to much with all of the hype and jargon and are we obscuring the goodness in to much marketing? Do customers understand what we mean by cloud (actually do we all understand too)? And what about the other "technical" marketing things we keep seeing like multi-tenant / single tenant (sorry to bring this up again, but it's key to my point, here's my take on that subject), do they help prospects understand and adopt SaaS or are they in the way?

SaaS applications are growing ahead of the rest of the software industry, that much we can clearly see. But why? Personally I see lot's of benefit to consuming software in the accepted SaaS model and I think that the customers that are buying it do as well. I'm starting to think though that this may be in spite of our marketing instead of because of it. OK, maybe that's not completely fair, the important messages are also there, things like pay for what you consume, easier to implement (my post on that), faster time to value, lower TCO (although that one's up for debate), don't need to maintain your own infrastructure, simpler upgrades, easier to access from mobile / multiple devices, etc. But I do think our fascination with clouds and technical jargon is doing some damage to our overall messaging. What are SaaS or cloud applications anyway? In my definition cloud apps are SW applications that are sold on a subscription basis (so the software is leased rather than purchased), maintained by the vendor (patches and upgrades are installed by the vendor or the vendor's partner) and the app is available over the internet. The SW can be located at the SW vendor's data center, a partner's data center or even the clients datacenter by the way, but the customer pays 1 fee (not 1 to the vendor and 1 to the hosting partner). As far as I'm concerned that's it, nothing else is required.

Do customers want multi-tenant over single tenant? I don't think so, although some recent IDC survey data came up contrary to that point. On drilling into that more though, I think that survey helps prove my point, we've marketed multi-tenancy so much customers have started to think it's important to them, but can they tell us why...I doubt it. Multi-tenancy is only good for the vendor unless the vendor passes the cost savings on to the end customer...do you think that's happening? Oracle's Anthony Lye has very openly stated that Oracle prices multi-tenant and single tenant deployment the same for on demand apps (and the new Oracle Fusion Apps are architected so that they can be deployed in either model, customer choice is a good thing). Given the same pricing structure which do you think a customer would choose, a shared database with other customers (and yes, I know that it's very secure) or their own database? With their own database they get more flexibility. Alright, enough on that line of thought, you can read what I've already said about that if you want. My real point is that we need to look at the messaging again and focus on the value, on the benefit to the customer, not on technical jargon that doesn't really matter to the customer. I suppose that's a good marketing lesson no matter what your product for that matter. It's very important right now to SaaS or cloud vendors though, because I believe we've over marketed things that are not important to the customer and the real message is getting lost. Let's start spending more time telling customers that consuming apps in the cloud model has all sorts of goodness that comes along with it and no more time on cloudy messages about architecture (OK, you can save those slides for the IT organization briefing part of the sales process).

Oracle OpenWorld update #3, Fusion Apps

2009-10-15T14:16:09-07:00

After several years of anticipation the curtain has finally been lifted on Oracle Fusion Apps yesterday during Larry Ellison's keynote. During the keynote the announcement was very upstaged by a lengthly (and repetitive) look at Exadata v2 and the IBM performance challenge but at least the embargo is lifted and I can now talk about what I've learned about the apps during several detailed reviews of the software over the last 6 months. Frankly I think the apps should have gotten higher billing during the keynote based on what I've seen of them, as they are quite good but I guess that's left up to the analysts that have been a part of the pre-launch reviews. The apps are code complete and in testing with an expected general release next year.

The underlying design principal was to use the best of breed processes from all of the brands but to keep backward compatibility for ease of upgrade by rationalizing the data model from EBS, JDE, PeopleSoft and Siebel. That decision was critical as it prevents having to change the data structure of any of the Apps Unlimited customers as they upgrade to Fusion Apps. In general Fusion has:

Modern user interface based on Web 2.0ish design concepts
Embedded analytics
Native SOA built in Java completely on Fusion Middleware
Event driven architecture for automating decision making where practical
Role based use

Here's an example of the UI:

Fusion Apps are architected to be deployed in three models, on premise, single tenant SaaS and multi-tenant SaaS to allow customers to choose their licensing and deployment approach. At release Fusion will have all modules available as SaaS. For current CRM On Demand customers Oracle will initially offer customer choice but gradually migrate all customers to Fusion.

So what's in the suite? The release includes 43 modules across 7 product families (including 6000 database tables, 6,500 objects, 20,000 views, and 10,000 task flows). The Pillars are:

Fusion Customer Relationship Management
Fusion Governance Risk and Compliance
Fusion Enterprise Project and Portfolio Management
Fusion Financial Management
Fusion Human Capital Management
Fusion Supply Chain Management
Fusion Procurement

In the initial release there is no support for manufacturing (discreet or process) and public sector.

Here are a few screen shots from the release:

CRM:

EPPM:

HCM:

SCM:

When available next year, Oracle believes that customers will consume the apps in 3 models:

Add 1 or several biz processes to their current deployment of EBS, PeopleSoft, JDE and/or Siebel (or SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.)
PIllar level upgrade, replacing an entire module like HCM or CRM
Single instance migration to the complete suite

The Fusion Apps also add quite a bit of embedded social software functionality throughout many of the modules. This is the start of what I believe will be a rapidly growing trend to make social concepts scaleable for the enterprise by providing tools inside the enterprise software solutions.

Overall from what I've seen, the Fusion Apps are very well designed, extremely usable, modern and offer significant value for customers throughout the different modules. They also support Oracle's strategy (articulated clearly for the last 3 years) by offering interoperability with existing brands and the chance for customers to choose what and when they want to move to Fusion while continuing to get value out of previous purchases with Oracle still investing in existing brands for the foreseeable future.

Oracle OpenWorld Update #2 - Oracle's use of social media

2009-10-13T15:22:47-07:00

It's a sign of the times I guess, I mean social media is everywhere these days and OpenWorld isn't an exception. I had the pleasure of doing an interview today on Oracle OpenWorld Live, just one of the many ways Oracle is utilizing social media to enrich the overall conference experience. As you probably know I have been live-tweeting the event along with many other analysts (here's a search of the hashtag) and attendees. Twitter is very prominent throughout with flat screens in many rooms running Tweetdeck searches of the conference stream. Many Oracle handles are actively carrying on conversations (that's how I got invited to do the interview for the live-stream) and interacting with attendees.

Oracle Mix is of course still going strong 1 year after it's launch at OOW 2008. This year they added a OOW wiki that includes pages for things like suggestions, photos, discussions and even a social media cheat sheet. There's an OpenWorld On Demand site that let's you stream keynotes and sessions with synchronized slides for things you missed.The Oracle OpenWorld Blog is being regularly updated and has posts on topics as wide ranging as keynote summaries to breaking conference news. The OOW presence extends throughout the social web to facebook , LinkedIn, and of course a YouTube Channel that has keynotes, customer and partner videos, and other interesting video content. The conversation is definitely active and relevant.

Later I'll take a look at what Oracle is doing in the social software space, there are several new offerings that should be of great interest to customers and prospects, especially on the social CRM side.