Highly Competitive - software industry insights

MDM – Speaking the “Language” of Business

 

Part 5 of a six part series on the "New Age of Master Data Management"

 

Data management continues to take on an ever-growing range of activities as the role of data has evolved and expanded for many organizations. Business agility and real-time insight are inherent requirements for many organizations. To meet such requirements organizations need right-time data on a continuous basis, where master data management initiatives are integral to processing business-ready data.

MDM software solutions are evolving as well, to better meet business needs. The new directions of MDM software obviously carry a heavy package of sophisticated technology. Analytics processes now utilize numerous disparate data sources that need context and relationship information that comes from trustworthy and relevant master data. Some MDM solutions are utilizing technologies like graph databases to take advantage of multi-dimensional capabilities to more expansively and agilely handle relationships across all data types. More analytics processes are now providing information and insight primarily for business users who aren't necessarily highly adept at hands-on technology or data management, which opens up new challenges and opportunities for MDM vendors.

The value of these solutions is heavily tied to business needs and objectives. And this value must be clearly and honestly communicated to a growing array of business roles -- in the language of those business users.

In the 'New Age of MDM', with greater business participation, should IT and data management team members utilize more of the language of less technical business roles when in discussions related to MDM purchases, implementations and usages?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The "Languages" of MDM

Often conversations regarding master data management have been among IT and data management professionals, including more tech-savvy business roles involved in data management. The "language" of MDM started off primarily related to the worlds of IT and data management teams – in other words "techy talk".

But it's likely that this original "language" of MDM is now insufficient for meeting current business objectives and requirements, with the increased (and necessary) involvement of business roles, and the importance of selling the value of MDM to business managers and non-IT decision-makers. A growing lineup of business roles are increasingly involved in data governance discussions regarding practices, policies, cultural changes, and processes, as well as how to develop cross-functional teams and remediate silos for systems and data. Discussions with business roles also focus on the many ways that MDM can underpin important business initiatives and desired outcomes for objectives.

Conversations about the purchase of MDM software solutions can involve less technical roles. High level managers and C-level roles may be part of the decision-making processes: deciding if master data management itself should be adopted; understanding how MDM supports business requirements and goals; choosing which MDM software technologies to utilize; determining metrics and assessing outcomes related to MDM initiatives. Obviously these conversations also involve IT and data management teams, who now must be prepared to communicate well with different business roles.

 

Communicating in Customer Business Language

Those of us who work with software vendors (no matter which "side") are clearly aware that marketing and sales efforts for software solutions can deviate linguistically from technical terminology when communicating with less technical business users. But with the recent evolutionary changes for MDM software offerings, there is an increasing need for software vendors and practitioners of MDM to speak the language of the business.

When marketing and selling their MDM software to business roles, some vendors are dropping the use of the term "master data management" in order to bypass the "negative baggage" of traditional MDM solutions. Software vendors with new approaches to MDM are utilizing 'new language' to better describe what these new approaches really do, and how they better align the value with Business. Beyond simply being marketing efforts, most changes in 'language' are fairly honest attempts to more clearly connect MDM practices and solutions to real business needs, desired outcomes and advantage – in terminology that conveys realistic meaning to business users and decision-makers.

Business roles involved in buying decisions may not know what MDM is, can get confused or lost in the terminology and technology, can see it as too complicated – all of which can interfere with the prospective customer's understanding of why MDM is important for making competitive use of data. It's legitimate for vendors to focus on the high level of what MDM contributes to improve data and business processes, and what the business benefits are for each organization. Focus should also cover how the MDM solution handles business needs relative to existing organizational infrastructure, along with business practices and processes – and ultimately business objectives and desired outcomes.

If MDM software vendors demonstrate clearly how the technologies connect to achieving business objectives and outcomes, it better enlightens prospective customers on the benefits and essential nature of master data management – both in terms of the MDM practice and the supporting technologies. And very importantly, business language is essential to uncover business problems to be solved and how data management fits into overall business strategies.

Obviously there is a danger of over-simplification. MDM implementations can take time, both for setting up the technologies, and to institute cultural changes, data governance practices and new cross-functional processes. These aspects of MDM practices and solutions must be honestly communicated. Fortunately we are seeing great advances by different vendors to more quickly get MDM implementations up-and-running, and to take new approaches to how MDM programs are run in order to more clearly show the benefits of MDM and to produce them in a timely manner.

 

How MDM Software Vendors Speak the Language of Business

Often the "buyers" of enterprise software consist of multiple roles in an organization. No longer is software purchasing solely the domain of IT or other technical teams. There is frequently a composite "buyer" that draws on both influencers and decision-makers. Obviously technical teams perform a very important role in the purchase of software, more often as influencers rather than the final decision-makers. Business roles involved in enterprise software purchases can include: mid-level managers and business unit managers whose teams will be impacted by the use of the software; VPs who approve purchases; CEOs and CFOs who influence or dictate purchase decisions; and even staff in accounts payable who enact purchase transactions.

There are numerous software vendors with various flavors of MDM solutions who are leaning further into the language of business to conduct marketing and sales activities, and discussions about implementations and usage. Here are a couple of examples:

Enabling Content Management and Digital Interactions

Data and analytics have become essential components of the marketing efforts of most organizations. As a natural evolution, certain marketing technologies have embedded master data management capabilities to provide a more seamless application for business users. Some vendors of such marketing technologies don't call out MDM per se as a component of the solution.

A company that started as a traditional PIM vendor evolved its software into a solution for managing complex product information and multichannel content, for multiple roles in the information supply chain. For the user, the MDM / PIM part is "invisible". Prospective customers see this solution as an application that supports multichannel interactions, sophisticated content management and digital communications / marketing. The vendor places a strong emphasis on business user access to solution capabilities which further encompasses the business user perspective and language.

The solution provides a means to help resolve the "information fragmentation" that plagues organizational efforts to address the complexities of content management and usage, including highly variable sources (user-generated content, outside experts, brand) and diverse distribution channels (corporate website, mobile, social). The solution supports efforts to reconcile brand consistency and customer experience requirements that are necessary for successful digital marketing.

These are all very much business problems that are being addressed by business teams: digital marketing, ecommerce, content management, product strategy, and so on. The vendor reveals the value of the solution in the language of both business buyers and users. In marketing the solution, the software vendor focus isn't on data / information per se, but on what business users need to do with information and content, and how solution capabilities help them manage these activities in support of digital business needs.

 

Breaking Free from Traditional MDM through Data-Driven Business Applications

A vendor has introduced a relatively new "master data management" platform that is designed to break away from the traditional aspects of MDM software solutions. Instead of basing MDM and other data-related capabilities on relational databases, which has been a common choice until recently, this vendor loads combined and curated data into a NoSQL graph database. This allows the vendor to provide a scalable multi-tenant platform-as-a-service to innovate the creation of 'data applications' that are frequently closely tied to business functions and initiatives.  

On the technical side, this approach supports oversized datasets and accommodates rapidly evolving schema, something most relational databases find difficult. Graph databases provide a greatly improved method to delineate relationships between people, data, and things.  

For business users, this data management solution provides the means to build data-driven business applications that align with the goals and functions of the business. Business users can construct applications that are industry-specific to perform exactly the processes that are needed.

Business users don't need to know that the platform is based on an MDM infrastructure. This vendor wants to give business users the equivalent of "consumer apps" that produce information and analytics results quickly and easily. The vendor frequently speaks "business language" to help business users grasp these concepts.

For business users to successfully take advantage of this platform, the software capabilities and processes will have to be couched in the language of the business. The platform will have to carefully manage business user access based on guidelines and activities that make sense to less-technical business roles. As with any data management software solution that strives to support usage by business roles, IT and data management teams must be partners with the business to ensure successful outcomes. Collaborative capabilities enable such partnerships. So it will be interesting to see how successfully this vendor empowers and protects business usage of its MDM-based platform.

 

Going Beyond the "Traditional Language" of MDM

In the 'New Age of MDM', we are seeing great diversity as to how vendors, practitioners and organizations talk about MDM. Changes in language are essential to better connect MDM practices and solutions to real business needs, desired outcomes and value – in terminology that conveys real meaning to business management and decision-makers.

We'll continue to see a broadening variety of solutions that build on MDM, while deviating from traditional MDM implementations, in order to offer more business-relevant capabilities. Realistically, even the term "master data management" can be confusing for business roles in many organizations that could benefit from implementing MDM practices and technologies. It can be advantageous and helpful when vendors use new but honest terminology to better demonstrate business value and help prospective customers understand the 'why' and 'how' of implementing master data management initiatives.

It seems that the more innovative the MDM-related software solution, the greater the need for new ways to work directly with business roles and to communicate in the language of business. One of the stumbling blocks for such innovation of software and language comes from analyst firms that cover MDM software solutions. Increasingly certain analyst firms have become trapped by their inexact definitions of what kind of solution constitutes an "MDM offering", when evaluating MDM vendors for benchmark reports. Many vendors with MDM-related offerings are trailblazing new directions for MDM, but are excluded from certain industry benchmarks because of the narrow definition held by these firms. Analyst firms following such a path are performing a disservice to buyers who are interested in the right approach to MDM for their organizations, or who are in need of an MDM-based offering that provides business applications tailored for immediate needs.

 

Image source: hastac.org

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

How Does Technology Enable Effective MDM?

 

Part 3 of a six part series on the "New Age of Master Data Management"

 

No Room for "Tech for Tech's Sake"

Many organizations have routinely made technology purchases based solely on the predilections of IT groups. This approach to technology decisions has often proven to be a limited path in terms of providing the technology infrastructure imperative for business needs in today's world, one that has become faster and more complex for many organizations. More organizations are now working to better connect business requirements and strategies to the selection of technologies. After all, most of these technologies should tie directly to the core aspirations and strategies of the company and provide beneficial means for improvement, even changing how the organization does business. That said, the selection of technologies still requires serious input from technical teams, particularly for integration and interoperability of systems, depending on the architectural strategy of the organization.

Frequently technology decisions must include many different stakeholders working together. This is especially the case for selecting the technologies for MDM initiatives that are meant to fully support numerous business objectives and functions. MDM is the "poster child" of the critical need for business strategy to meet and mingle with technology strategy. In a sense MDM technology is a conundrum. The technology should take a back seat to all of the non-technical activities, objectives and requirements for MDM implementations. But technology can also be a game-changing component of MDM initiatives.

The start of any MDM discussion should be core questions like "What data and analytics problems are you trying to solve?" -- where "you" encompasses diverse stakeholders in the organization. One MDM imperative is to eliminate silos in the organization. Not just to eliminate silos for data repositories, systems and processes, but silos of people, objectives and functions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Technologies Improve MDM Effectiveness

Sometimes an examination of the relationship of technology to business needs becomes a "chicken and the egg" question: which came first? While technology definitely should be in the service of business requirements, innovative technologies can change how businesses operate. The reality is that many MDM activities couldn't be accomplished without the right software technology. My previous post on new approaches should communicate clear implications that technologies are very important to the successful execution of "new age" MDM initiatives.

Vendors are transforming MDM offerings, old and new, to better serve organizations and their business objectives. We are seeing more vendors incorporating business realities into their technology platforms. Newer iterations of MDM solutions have expanded access for roles in business and technical groups. Several MDM offerings concentrate on ways to speed up implementations, and provide templates for quickly "test driving" projects, to demonstrate in shorter time frames that MDM does work and can make a difference.

Just like everything else "data", real time access to continuously updated master data is increasingly important. The variety of data needed for master data processing continues to grow. And more organizations need multidomain and multivector data to derive the data connections and context necessary for relevant insight for complex business conditions. Most MDM software solutions have sophisticated capabilities to collect, process, create connections and relationships, and provide context for increasingly difficult data sources.

To do a better job of deriving different aspects of context, MDM solutions now include graph repositories, visualizations, and analytics capabilities. Business cases are often the starting point for contextual explorations of data. Different technologies generate data views in response to business needs and objectives. An initiative like improving the customer experience will cross all data repositories and then travel beyond organizational data to include customer behavioral and social information from sources outside the firewall. "New Age" MDM solutions must be able to handle all of this.

Businesses are finding that various MDM capabilities are effective for connecting real business impact to MDM activities, better aligning MDM metrics to business outcomes and goals. Further alignment comes through data governance processes that track the compliance of master data to governance policies, again with an over-arching connection to the outcomes and goals that are achieved (in the context of the MDM contribution). A more effective – and real – assessment can be conducted to show the value of MDM and data governance where it matters.

 

Meeting Business Needs: MDM Platform Overhaul

A well-known data management and analytics vendor spent the past few years revamping and simplifying its MDM software platform. Basically the vendor looked at what MDM can accomplish from the perspective of business use cases and how to increase the business value of MDM. The framework provided by the platform starts with the desired end state (usually business-related) to ensure that the MDM project will deliver what is needed to support business requirements. The framework also enables the participation of business roles to bring in their extensive knowledge to accelerate the development of MDM processes.

Various teams will then work back from the end state to build all that is needed to attain it. The platform helps these teams create the models that achieve a particular end result, and then automatically generates the processes that will carry out the appropriate MDM tasks, as extensions of the models. Reusability is well-supported both for the creation of services and the utilization of pre-built components, and through an iterative development framework. The purpose of this new approach is to shorten and automate as much of each implementation or project as possible, while creating powerful MDM components.

With this new platform, departments within larger organizations can also initiate their own MDM efforts. The MDM solution provides capabilities to prevent master data silos and to map department-level master data into higher organizational levels. Any work done has to map into existing practices and processes for data governance, data quality, and other centralized data management functions, which obviously provide a fail-safe.

 

How Cloud is Changing MDM

Cloud has had a tremendous impact on every software category. Many technology solutions are now exclusively developed for the cloud. Adoption of cloud-based MDM or MDM-as-a-Service is on the rise, opening up new dimensions for how organizations take advantage of MDM and data governance. Access for different user roles improves with cloud-based MDM services.

MDM often has to provide solutions for complex business problems. These days the technologies of cloud services are well able to support sophisticated software solutions that are capability-rich. The key word is sophisticated, meaning smoothly-performing software made possible by thoughtful design that enables the right experiences for diverse users.

Cloud platforms for data and application integration have proliferated greatly, many of which are cloud natives. Vendors for cloud-based integration solutions have shown clearly how to address sophisticated requirements for security; connectivity; movement and management of data between cloud and on-premises as well as cloud to cloud; and well-managed services. These vendors also offer a range of pricing models that should be helpful to vendors developing cloud-based MDM.

Cloud-based MDM solutions can also open the door to MDM usage by mid-sized organizations. This usage can come from more affordable offerings that streamline MDM activities. Or such usage can come from managed services providers (MSPs) who can bring both MDM expertise and pre-built services tailored to the needs and budgets of mid-sized organizations. Cloud-based MDM solutions enable MSPs to quickly develop services that can be reused by different organizations.

 

Different Stakeholders Working Together

MDM and data governance activities usually involve diverse stakeholders from both the business and technology camps in an organization. While many of these activities are non-technical, capabilities in MDM solutions can help manage, store and coordinate such activities. Well-constructed role-based access to software solutions can protect and guide less technical users in the tasks they need to complete for MDM initiatives.

When organizations recognize the importance of all stakeholders, they can then do a better job of selecting MDM technologies that will meet the needs of all end users, not just the highly technical ones.

If a company is buying software technology to improve performance and competitiveness, then the company had better focus on key contributors to success: empowered end users who deserve to have high quality reliable tools to carry out the work of the company, without wasting a lot of time each day on software that is difficult to use and doesn't meet requirements.

Several MDM solutions support different kinds of collaboration between stakeholders, including interactive work. In a way, data governance has been a strong trail-blazer for technology solutions that better serve different roles and the interaction that needs to take place between different users. For example, intelligent workflow structures are strong technology tools for empowering and enabling improved collaboration and communication.

One of the major challenges to overcome is the difficulty of orchestrating many different teams to work as one. On the technology side, harmonizing and automating MDM activities require strong orchestration capabilities, considering all of the moving pieces that can be in play. The same applies to the non-technical aspects of MDM initiatives, with the added "difficulty" of orchestrating diverse humans.

 

MDM: Always a Holistic Venture

The increasingly complex strategic and tactical needs of organizations have put more focus on the value and benefits of master data management. MDM is a core function for trusted data and more efficient business processes, which are must-haves for most organizations. A successful MDM initiative comprises a holistic endeavor to provide strategic organizational and infrastructure change, as well as manage complex data processing. Part of MDM holism is the intertwining of business, people and technology in the most effective mix possible.

There is a wide range of MDM technologies available to organizations. This variability of MDM and data governance offerings should again drive home the critical point that MDM initiatives must start with thorough strategy design and development of the non-technology aspects of what MDM should accomplish for the organization. The strategic framework then provides the key elements that should guide organizations to select the best-fit MDM technologies.

MDM technologies are evolving to better support modern MDM requirements -- but "traditional" MDM software solutions still abound. These are increasingly unwieldy platforms that aren't able to handle many of the new approaches to MDM. On the other hand, several vendors that have offered traditional MDM solutions in the past now have revamped their offerings to better support new approaches. And, of course, there are new vendors with new MDM solutions that are often cloud native technologies and offer new ways to address MDM and data governance.

Stand-alone solutions for PIM (Product Information Management) and CDI (Customer Data Integration) are still part of the mix, especially for organizations not considering a comprehensive MDM initiative. PIM in particular is offered by several vendors, with specialized products for industries like retail and eCommerce. PIM solutions can be sharply business-oriented, providing broader native access to business users.

Organizations must be prepared to develop a well-structured MDM vision that addresses not only how business is done today, but what organizations want to accomplish further down the road. Such a vision will better inform which technologies are the best investments to enable effective MDM.

 

Image source: feng-shui

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Cloud Integration: One Platform, Diverse Users

 

Final article of a six-part series on the essential interwoven nature of Business and Modern Data Integration

 

When we're talking about diverse categories of users for data management software solutions such as data and application integration, it's essential to understand the perspective of each group of users and their needs and abilities, in order to develop the most suitable user interface and the right capabilities for each category.

The future of cloud integration platforms may belong to vendors that step up to truly understand diverse users and then deliver what they require to be successful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today cloud-based integration platforms are opening access to different categories of users including less-technical business users. Business users have begun to assume more hands-on use of integration capabilities to run pre-built integrations, profile datasets, perform data prep functions, and even create basic integrations through wizards and pre-configured components. This is a very important means to an equally important end: taking advantage of the availability of more data to help these users do their jobs better, to benefit the organization.

Vendors for cloud integration platforms are also beginning to recognize and support diverse technical users. There can be quite a bit of difference between a technically-adept line-of-business developer who lacks deep experience for creating integration processes, and a developer who is a data integration expert and likely tackling complex integration scenarios. Each category of developer requires the right user interface and capabilities to create, run and manage integrations, in order to accomplish work requirements and support business objectives.

I recently talked with a vendor that is focused on providing a single cloud integration platform for diverse user categories. The vendor is building out a framework of ten different categories of technical and business roles with a clear view to how the platform would be used by each category. This exploration of how different users make use of integration capabilities should help this vendor streamline and perfect what it takes for different users to work well not only on their own but with other user categories when needed. This requires the platform to guide each user category to the appropriate capabilities, including a role-responsive or adaptive UI.

Another cloud integration vendor is developing a vision for multiple categories of users with schematics for how they may continuously interact during several aspects of typical integration phases. For each category of user, the appropriate platform capabilities are pinpointed along the integration phase continuum. The vendor wants to expand the solution platform to shepherd and enable this symbiotic approach to business and IT working together for more effective integration processes.

When we're talking about different categories of users for data management functions, it's essential to understand the perspective of each group of users and their needs and abilities, in order to develop the most suitable user interface and the right capabilities for each category. In that sense, it takes an outside-in perspective, working from what different users need from data management functions like data integration, and how they are comfortable working. This is a very different approach for most integration vendors – the focus has long been solely on the technology (which obviously is still important). However usability from the user perspective has been a critical topic for software vendors for quite a while.

 

The Technologies Behind "Simple" User Interfaces

A cloud integration platform that is designed to support a variety of user access options clearly requires the development of sophisticated technologies that essentially make the complex seem simple to the user. Different categories of users often require variable versions of the same user interface that are streamlined for ease of use, and that provide access to role-appropriate capabilities.

As such, the integration solution can be distinctly shaped by the variety of user roles that are provided access to the platform.

Often the work done to enable less-technical users can also benefit UIs and capabilities for more technically-adept users, providing faster paths to creating integrations. More technical users can take advantage of pre-built integrations, shared services and components that require little or no coding, just as less technical users can. For those who need it, most cloud integration platforms include the ability to customize and extend pre-built integrations through coding and other methods.

Obviously to keep less technical users on the straight-and-narrow, monitoring and management by centralized IT teams behind the scenes are essential elements. Setting up the right balance of management and freedom for business users will take some hard work, but will pay off as certain integration activities can be handed off to business users. This is another area of business-IT collaboration that requires IT to enable business users to work with integration processes, not to prohibit them.

Cloud integration platforms provide other technologies to guide all categories of users to more quickly and confidently build, test and run integration processes. Such technologies include role-aware, interactive "tooltip" constructs that pop up in the UI in response to an action or choice. The influence of mobile apps and digital games can be seen in the better "tip systems".

UI-based guidance techniques include "crowd-sourced" recommendations that are derived from the analysis of all integrations in multi-tenant platforms. Analysis processes look at how similar integrations have handled certain steps or are constructed overall, elucidated by the context of what the user is trying to accomplish. Equally helpful, interactive assistance tools focus on quickly resolving errors by showing the most likely solutions in order of relevance.

The UI has become an essential element for usability in cloud integration platforms and obviously has inspired a great deal of innovation to benefit all users.

 

The User Experience of Data

In a sense, diverse business roles and different kinds of developers have both been "underserved" by integration solutions. All too often non-IT users are lumped into the single blob of "business users" which is pretty useless for understanding much about who those business users are or how they want to – or even should – use integration solutions. And developers are usually seen primarily as data integration experts, rather than acknowledging the diversity of developer categories that need to create integrations regardless of the extent of their knowledge about integrations.

Diversity of users for cloud integration solutions isn't going away. More roles in organizations want and need to work hands on with data management functions to help generate the datasets that they need for their jobs and their business objectives. So the vendors that step up and deliver what different users require will take cloud integration platforms into the future.

Just like any user experience challenge, the gateways to integration solutions - user interfaces – have to work well for each category of user. So vendors have to understand a lot more about the different kinds of users who want access to integration solutions and about the user experience they should have, to ensure the success of all users. For cloud integration platform vendors, providing outstanding user experiences – for diverse users – is an invaluable differentiator

 

Image source: http://synergy.kuniv.edu/

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Knocking Down Silos: Connecting Technology to Business

 

"Knocking down silos" to ensure the critical role of data strategies and solutions -- from the perspectives of business needs, buyers and users, and software vendors.

 

 

A Passion for Software Technology

I have two great passions when it comes to software technology. My tech career and first source of passion for software began many years ago as a developer in the IT group of Texas Instruments, working on systems that supported the semiconductor division. From the very beginning, end users (or customers) were always in the back of my mind, both for the work I did in software development and for the system user guides that I wrote.

When I did analysis for a new software project, my frame of reference included: is this something that the people who do the work really need? Does it help them in the ways that they want to be helped? Will this improve the overall quality and productivity of work done? And, unlike many at the time, my user manuals were created from the user perspective, in a flow that followed how they would use the application for actual work. It seemed natural to me to connect technology to real business needs, and to people. Still does.

Unfortunately to this day, software vendors and in-house developers often put too much focus on technologies and features, and fail to connect with the right potential customers or users to create solutions that help customers solve their business problems. Software vendors and buyers alike need strategies and expert guidance to optimize today's integrated enterprises: how different software applications fit together, how to evolve practices and processes for users to best take advantage of new technologies – even cultural changes for the internal enterprise.

 

An Equal Passion for Data Applications

My second long-time passion comes from working with a data management software vendor for several years. Obviously data impacts most companies and their systems; functions like data integration and data quality matter a lot for successful outcomes. I'm concerned that many businesses and IT teams still come up short on understanding the importance of connecting data management processes to business needs.

I've worked with other software vendors with offerings for web content management, marketing automation and eLearning, to name a few. These solutions almost always include an increasing number of data-oriented capabilities, including analytics, and metrics.

Data runs through an entire organization and beyond -- connecting employees, customers, partners, systems, processes, actions, and outcomes. Unfortunately silos of all sorts also run through organizations, with horrific consequences for important business initiatives. For business software to work well, it's rarely only about the technology.

 

A Data Story for Digital Marketing: Silos and Integration

Successful digital marketing initiatives with an authentic customer focus are only possible with the substantial aid of sophisticated technologies. But the right technology isn't enough. All sorts of silos and stumbling blocks can plague marketers working with digital marketing. These hurdles mirror company-wide challenges to becoming customer-focused, business-agile and market-savvy. Integrated data management and analytics are crucial but so is the integration of many kinds of silos.

• Silos of information and content, business processes, and corporate functions continue to debilitate many organizations. Digital marketing will not happen if Marketing is a silo. The essentials of digital marketing are cross-team collaboration, bi-directional sharing of data and analytics results, cross-functional customer focus and support, relevant quality content. All of these pieces are needed to continuously update a strong understanding of customers and their journeys – across the organization.  
• Data and analytics are mission critical to everything in digital marketing, for successful outcomes. Data from many sources, inside and outside the firewall, is requisite to create and continuously update a multi-dimensional customer view – as well as analytics for buying trends, future customer behavior, understanding which products and which target markets, and better tracking of different customer journeys.

Data analytics initiatives are no small undertaking, especially since many of the sources and analytics processes don't originate in the Marketing 'silo'. As part of the effort to integrate silos, centralizing analytics can eliminate redundant effort to pull together intelligence to benefit all functions in the company. Centralized customer-focused analytics also contribute greatly to nurturing relevant customer experiences across channels by sharing the right insight with all customer-related functions in the business.

• It's very tempting to focus too much on technology and tactics. While technology is essential to make a lot of digital marketing happen, many marketers find themselves too enamored of the tools, thinking that's all it takes. Outcomes: no strategies, no customer focus, the wrong goals, and the wrong metrics. Often the mechanics of working with the technology pull marketers away from the actual customer experience and how to improve it – which are pivotal elements of digital marketing.

    

The Biggest Silo of Them All

If top management doesn't yet understand who their customers are and why they do or don't buy from the company, then it's crazy to expect marketing to conjure miracles and save the business. Company leaders must build corporate strategies that revolve around customers, delivering what they need and want – and they must pursue marketing as a strategic function. For most businesses, customers drive the sales process -- meaning that an organization will only succeed when marketing is empowered to provide the highly personalized and relevant interactions that help customers want to buy products.

 

Image Source: netsrv-consulting.com

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

 

 

Meet Your New Cybersecurity Partner: The CFO

 

 

As with other data management and analytics processes, Chief Financial Officers are increasingly becoming an integral part of the management of cybersecurity initiatives. This is primarily due to the huge financial impact that cyber attacks and data breaches can have, seriously threatening the financial health of the organization. CFOs are also beginning to align their oversight of risk and compliance with the proliferation of cyber threats, providing an added imperative for CFO involvement in cybersecurity strategies.

A broad range of organizational information underlies everything that the CFO and his team do on a daily basis, and much of that information is both highly sensitive and crucial to the business strategies of the organization. The CFO must have constant knowledge of where this information resides, who is working with it, and the plans to keep it secure. And now CFOs must have heightened awareness of where cyber threats are coming from and the many ways that intruders can get to that information.

Besides working to ensure the safety of corporate information, CFOs also must assess the risk and potential impact to the organization should a hacker successfully breach security measures. The damage to an organization is not just determined by the direct cost of the cyber attack. As many well-known corporations have demonstrated all too often, there are often long-term negative consequences related to the loss of trust and a tainted brand reputation.

Investments in cybersecurity technology solutions and services are increasing each year. Managed services providers are finding that their clients want and need a partner who combines knowledge and expertise for cybersecurity itself with the implementation of effective technologies that can keep pace with fast-changing methods of attack. And MSPs must understand the responsibilities of a corporate office like the CFO and the mandate for secure corporate financial operations. For MSPs to do well, understanding business objectives, processes and corporate behavior is every bit as important as top-notch technology skills.

Every new technology development translates into new ways for hackers to digitally threaten organizations. The in-depth and broad range of MSP expertise for many technologies and business processes is invaluable for helping CFOs not only grasp the current state of security in their organizations, but better visualize what the future may hold for new kinds of cyber attacks. As organizations adopt new technologies, they should also develop new plans for protecting digital corporate assets.

The future of managed services depends on these new ways of working with an organization, to best support the goals and business outcomes that the organization seeks. MSPs can no longer simply look to traditional IT roles and ways of working. Sophisticated technology and the digital era demand that managed services and solutions always look at the bigger picture and work with more non-IT roles. Innovation calls for new approaches to help organizations attain success.

 

Image source: IBM

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

 

 

Connecting the Cyber-Threat Dots through Big Data

 

The managed security services market has been in play for more than a decade. Not surprisingly, it continues to show vibrant growth, fueled in part by cloud-related factors. Research and Markets, in a January 2015 report, estimated that market growth will run from $14.3 billion in 2014 to $31.9 billion by 2019 (with a CAGR of 17.3%). Growth for security services touches just about every industry, and all sizes of organizations.

Managed services providers are tasked with marrying expertise in cybersecurity and cloud with big data analytics to deliver comprehensive protection and proactive measures to their clients. Proactive cybersecurity services call for the implementation of far-reaching and sophisticated data and event management technologies and services, to improve the aggregation and analysis of security event big data. Managed security services should address the imperative for integrating many disparate sources, including big data sources, to derive event correlation that can be aligned with other analytics to continuously improve alerts, preemptive processes, and real-time reporting.

Today's cyber security threats frequently operate as patterns that usually deviate from the expected behavior for most authorized users or for activity on particular devices or IP addresses. To identify and fight such attacks, security teams need technology services that can find and analyze deviant trends. This is a natural fit for big data mining and analytics combined with state-of-the-art cybersecurity programs.

Machine-generated data provides fertile ground for using big data analytics to root out cyber security threats. Machine data lives in the IT infrastructure: network logs, event logs, firewall and security system data, web logs, email logs – anything and everything operating in the infrastructure. But machine-generated data can be quite problematic for aggregation, data mining and analytics. Such data must be processed very quickly, frequently in real-time and usually exists in large volumes that are continuously proliferating. Machine data sources are quite variable, many of which are multi-structured formats that further challenge data mining efforts.

Once data has been extracted from machine-generated sources it can be enriched with other kinds of data to establish context, and elicit patterns and trends related to cyber attacks. Managed analytics services can take on a forensics quality while searching through data for patterns of irregular or unexpected activity. For instance, realtime endpoint forensic data capture and analysis is on the rise to plug yet another hole in systems infrastructure, in order to block data breach entry points.

Situational awareness is another important aspect of fighting cyber attacks. The overarching value of situational awareness is continuously knowing what is going on around the organization, to "instantly" respond to certain events. Big data analytics strengthen situational awareness primarily through fast real-time assessments that can reduce time to decisions and actions in response to potential threats and certain anomalies. These sorts of analytics also require corroboration from subject matter experts, to help make the best decisions based on the data at hand. And this opens up yet another "cybersecurity frontier" for managed services providers where knowledge and expertise are just as important as optimally running technologies.

 

Image source: platfora.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

 

Designing for the ‘Anywhere’ Mobile Workplace

 

For most organizations, business today has a fast pace, is global in nature and relies more and more on virtual networks of employees, partners, supply chains, and outside consultants. Mobile has a critical role here. Mobile is no longer just about devices, it's a catalyst for changing corporate culture that must evolve to ensure the competitive survival of the organization. Mobile is becoming a critical path for providing the workforce with streamlined and secure access to the right data, tools, and applications to do their jobs effectively - anytime anywhere.

Managed services providers have long had expertise for optimizing technology infrastructure, mostly focusing on the technologies and the operations that use them. Mobile is different. MSPs should not only handle the tech services but must understand the big picture culture of a mobile workforce. The underlying services must match all the different ways that a workforce utilizes mobility. End-to-end design services for this new world of work would be an invaluable offering for many organizations.

An outside-in approach to designing the entire mobile experience, including infrastructure, will ensure highest returns to clients in terms of productivity, security and the benefits for desired business outcomes. MSPs can be expert advisers for helping organizations understand the change in "culture" that comes with the 'anywhere' mobile workplace.

 

Who are Mobile Workers? Everyone

Mobility is rapidly becoming a critical element of business technology for many workers around the world. Mobile work activities happen just about anywhere. The classic example has been the "untethered" employee hunkered down in a Starbucks, working away. But today all kinds of employees are actually accomplishing mobile work everywhere: at home, commuting, at client sites or in the field, in libraries or parks. Some are rarely in the office and may not even be working from home. Even traditional corporate office-based employees are shifting more work to mobile devices, and carrying on work "anywhere".

What kind of work flourishes when the mobile office is anywhere? An obvious area is all kinds of services work performed at customer or client sites. Mobility has revolutionized the productivity of such workers in the field. Another category: employees heavily involved in creative work often seek out unconventional sites where mobility connects these employees to the tools they need and to their collaboration partners. Innovative work requires interactions with the world, new ideas, people who are not part of the corporate mindset or even the employee's corporate world. At the other end of the spectrum, effective mobile workers can be those whose jobs focus primarily on well-defined tasks or results-oriented work that fit a fixed set of metrics to show completion and value.

For all of these mobile employees, the work itself will probably become more project-focused. Ever-changing teams of employees, partners, contractors, and consultants will come together as needed, contributing to the needs of such projects.

 

The New Mobile Workplace Still Needs the Human Touch

With the advent of mobility the corporate office environment has started to change. At corporate sites, traditional offices and cubicles are giving way to an increase in casual meeting spaces to support the need for face-to-face meetings and collaborations when truly mobile workers come into the corporate office. Relationships and the focus on corporate goals are strengthened with regular in-person contact. Management and others need to personally interact extensively with mobile workers to understand the value they bring to work communities and business outcomes. While virtual collaboration is on the rise, it's still essential for mobile workers to physically re-connect with fellow workers and partners to take advantage of in-person sessions that tap into the group dynamic.

With this need for in-person contact, the office experience must undergo change. Management must support, encourage and allot more time for interactions between office-bound regulars and mobile workers. Such activity should be considered part of the job. Some of the space that was allocated to offices and cubicles will give way to a variety of meeting areas. But 'untethered' mobile workers also need private work areas at corporate sites. These areas need to have a human touch, again to reconnect these workers with the company that employs them.

 

 

Image source: itbusinessedge.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Data Profiling Services: Putting Business Data to Work

 

 

Image source: itbusiness.ca

 

Within each business there are many people who possess the knowledge of how data needs to be used for business processes and particularly for how the right data can improve business agility, revenue growth and help meet customer expectations. Such employees are invaluable for examining business data: first, to determine its value in context, and second, to understand how it contributes to intelligence being gathered for the organization. The need to analyze data is at the foundation of every effective data management strategy, whether the analysis is handled from the business perspective or the technology side of the equation.

To connect savvy business people to the data they need requires the right technology tools. One tool that is still not easily made available to business users is data profiling. Data profiling is the process of analyzing data to determine things like its structure and meaning. Users set up a variety of methods and processes to reveal patterns of data usage, metadata matches, value completeness, degree of data quality, and so on.

Unfortunately data profiling has primarily been a tool for IT and data management teams working with data repositories and the systems that produce and consume data. But data profiling should be an important tool for business users to gain full value from data assets. Aided by data profiling, business users can quickly identify inconsistencies and problems in the data, before it is used for intelligence and decision-making purposes. They can also continuously learn more about different data sets to understand how such data fits business needs. Until data is understood in relation to various systems and processes, it's not possible to fully and reliably use the right data for the business.

Here's where managed technology services can put an interesting spin on connecting business users to tools like data profiling that have mostly been the domain of IT teams. Providers can package business user access into managed services for data management, to open up easy usage of data profiling for business purposes. In addition, providers that bring a specific industry focus for such managed services create even greater value for the business.

For example, there are services firms that consult with corporate legal departments and offer managed services packages that blend data management expertise with legal and regulatory expertise. Such managed services include pre-built data profiling services for areas such as risk management and eDiscovery for litigation and compliance. Many organizations are overwhelmed by the complexity and volumes of data that must be monitored and assessed, particularly in light of the challenges of meeting compliance and eDiscovery deadlines. Managed services, backed by industry expertise, can provide a sustainable and scalable solution while reducing the demand on internal resources.

But these firms usually provide these services only for IT and data management teams. Such managed services could and should include expanded data profiling packages tailored for business users who are less technical but are business data savvy. Data profiling processes are almost always recurring, to support continuous efforts to gain more value from data and to ensure that data quality is reliable; as such, managed services have a 'natural' fit with the creation of tailored data management services for business users.

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic visit IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

 

Cloud Expands Value of Purpose-Built Data Management Services

 

The ongoing value of purpose-built technology products stems from the savings in productivity and cost that come from delivering only the features and functions needed to get a certain job done. Purpose-built software solutions are an opportunity for cloud service providers to deliver well-differentiated services that are built on domain expertise for explicit problems related to specific industry scenarios. This approach often results in a strong competitive market presence for the cloud services provider.

As data management platforms and solutions continue to emerge as cloud services, purpose-built data management capabilities can be an important area both for the providers and consumers of cloud services. Data integration, in particular, has taken on immense importance due to the continuously proliferating data silos in the cloud and the need to integrate cloud data with on-premises systems. Purpose-built data integration is usually designed to meet a well-defined business need, with specific capabilities bundled in the solution, frequently delivered as an appliance.

Taking the purpose-built route for data integration services aligns with top advantages of cloud computing:

• Up and running quickly to handle integration tasks
• Enterprise-quality capabilities available to organizations of all sizes
• Always-on availability from any device or location
• The most current capabilities, without the need to purchase new licenses or new versions
• Pay-as-you-go, pay for only what is used

There is clear advantage for cloud services that support specific point-to-point integrations that can be performed easily and inexpensively, enabling less-technical business users to handle certain integrations between applications. A common integration need involves CRM and ERP systems, such as data flows between Salesforce.com and SAP. Services are built for focused use cases where business users do not have to make lots of decisions about how the integrations will be accomplished. Wizards are often employed to walk users through the process. However, business users must have good knowledge of the source and target datasets, and basic understanding of the data integration task, to work confidently and accurately through the purpose-built approach.

Cloud services for integration usually include data replication, migration, and synchronizations for customer data. Typically integrations involve certain cloud / SaaS applications as "pre-set" sources and targets, as well as on-premises systems. Data integration cloud services should also include data quality tools to involve business users in this important task.

Data integration solutions that can handle data located anywhere, as well as security and on-demand considerations, are important for connecting cloud services to on-premises systems. For many companies, the business technology that underpins those organizations is going through a transition from an infrastructure of all systems inside the firewall to more of a "hybrid" infrastructure comprised of part cloud-based services and part on-premises.

However, not all integration processes can be reduced to "simplicity". That's why data integration is still a tough nut to crack. In these situations, integrations will require the help of IT teams, consultants, and/or managed services using more sophisticated approaches. For organizations with broad needs, purpose-built data integration quickly becomes less useful as business needs change and the types of projects fluctuate. For such needs, a comprehensive and flexible data integration platform usually provides the best approach to handle current projects and to scale to address future integration challenges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image source: pomeroy.com

 

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic visit IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Gaining Advantage through Multi-Cloud Services

 

Cloud computing has opened up tremendous possibilities for any kind of business, whether it's a company taking advantage of cloud solutions, or vendors and custom developers using the cloud as a platform. Due to the proliferation of cloud services providers (CSPs), there is now a robust ecosystem of options for doing just about anything in the cloud.

Right now there are numerous choices in terms of solution delivery models, types of cloud architectures, and value-add services. Lots of choices translate into value for businesses -- but come at the price of complexity for choosing services, particularly since many organizations maintain a mix of cloud services. Companies wanting to gain the most advantage from multiple cloud services must weigh all the capabilities for each service, and what it will take to integrate each service into the overall systems infrastructure. With so many factors for making decisions, companies can turn to third parties to navigate a frequently difficult path.

 

 

Cloud services brokers (CSBs) have become an important arbiter of the desire to take advantage of cloud services. Cloud brokers act as an intermediary service between cloud service offerings and the business consumers of those services. CSBs assist with individual cloud strategies, and usually provide services for integration, aggregation and customization to pull together multiple cloud offerings to better meet business needs. As they currently exist, CSBs are expected to act as trusted advisors, without any preferences for particular cloud vendors.

 

 

With the growth of cloud brokering, supporting technology solutions are on the rise. The use of CSB enablement technologies provides essential capabilities for dynamic management and monitoring of cloud services. These solutions focus on centralized governance of multi-cloud services, including provisioning new services or reducing services usage as needed. The CSB-related technology market is quite vibrant, with analyst David Linthicum providing this assessment of potential market growth:

The CSB-enablement market focuses on those technologies that broker private and public cloud services, including the capabilities defined in this report. This market will grow from $225.42 million in 2013 to $2.03 billion by 2018, at a CAGR of 55.3 percent. The overall global CSB market will grow from $1.57 billion in 2013 to $10.5 billion by 2018, representing a CAGR of 46.2 percent, according to MarketsandMarkets.

To gain advantage from cloud services, companies have to overcome technical and strategic challenges to move work to the cloud in the first place. But the challenges continue after initial deployment and require the support of those who understand how the different services function, and interoperate with other cloud services. Often this support is provided by cloud services or managed services providers.

Debate continues as to whether cloud services brokers should offer more value-add services related to specific cloud offerings or should remain at arms-length from such offerings. Another wrinkle relates to the increasing number of existing cloud services providers that are delivering cloud brokering services. For either party, the obvious issue is conflict of interest. And in the case of cloud brokers who partner with CSPs, there is the issue of direct competition.

Some analysts maintain that brokers should stick to expertise in unifying services for businesses, helping them put together the best pricing while fulfilling needs with the right services. Understanding disparate solution architectures and licensing models is an important function that sets brokers apart from cloud services providers.

 

 Image Source: baquia.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective