Artificial intelligence (AI) has become the dominant theme in business technology, with every tech vendor on the planet hyping new features as AI-driven this or AI-empowered that. And until recently, the noise has been just that: Best ignored when it comes time to get out the cheque book.

Often, AI capabilities have simply been embellishments of typical IT capabilities such as process automation, data analytics, or integration tools.

“AI is the new IT” I’ve said before, while also thinking, like most, that I’d better keep across what’s going on here.

While buyers remain sceptical, AI is rapidly maturing as the large language models that support it grow in sophistication and reduce in cost.

As AI gets embedded into business software platforms, this sophistication is arriving in the hands of software users and piquing the interest of both execs and IT procurement teams.

The AI translated a list of ERP product parameters into full sales-ready descriptions ready to upload to the web store, saving days and days of work.

The explosion of generative AI tools has excited users with the potential for this new breed of technology and driven rapid uptake. It has also heightened expectations that, at least in the immediate time frame, are likely to be dashed.

But there’s no doubt the cycle is trending up the enlightenment slope as AI use cases become clearer, LLMs improve, and vendors move from experimentation to embedding AI tooling into their products.

There are strong use cases emerging for ‘agentic’ AI that add genuine value to call centre staff helping customers resolve complex issues (which is why we called them in the first place, right?). And to be clear, I’m not talking the dreaded chatbots here, although they too are being improved (to avoid the call in the first place).

In CRM and online retailing, AI is delivering real value in surfacing customer insights and augmenting data collection.

I recently heard a great example where AI transformed a painful process of loading thousands of new products to an e-commerce site. The AI translated a list of ERP product parameters into full sales-ready descriptions ready to upload to the web store, saving days and days of work. Copilot can deliver some real value it seems.

We’re also seeing product recommendations and x-sell/up-sell suggestions that are actually useful, using AI’s ability to understand the semantics of the customer journey.

While the benefits of AI in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems is less obvious, AI’s ability to generate insights from data, particularly in forecasting likely or possible outcomes, is looking promising for predictive analytics.

The use of natural language in search queries or in problem statements is making it easier for users to engage naturally with systems, without technical skills or detailed knowledge of the data they are searching.

GenAI is valuable for accelerating tasks, especially in contextualising search results, and is delivering improved personal productivity, but not necessarily something that sits comfortably inside an ERP.

It has also become an asset for developers by enabling quick retrieval of relevant code blocks or open-source solutions to resolve integration mapping or complex logic, significantly enhancing dev team productivity.

It [AI] is starting to not only identify data gaps or outliers, it’s then prompting users with suggestions to resolve the issue, in some cases even asking if it should go ahead and fix it.

Despite the advancements in AI, many buyers remain pragmatic and even sceptical about its capabilities.

Believing AI magic will happen can be a distraction away from the hard work of automating or integrating processes, or from improving transactional data quality. Those things are the true enablers of digital success.

But again, AI is having an impact as vendors introduce anomaly detection, alerting users when transactions are outside of norms so they can be fixed at source thereby improving data quality.

It is starting to not only identify data gaps or outliers, it’s then prompting users with suggestions to resolve the issue, in some cases even asking if it should go ahead and fix it. The net result is better quality, where AI-driven analytics can then start to play their part.

But are these trends translating into requirements that buyers are taking to market?

From my experience, not yet. Buyers are very engaged with the possibilities of AI, but they may not know yet the specific AI features that they require. What they want to do is align with vendors that have a strong story around how AI will be incorporated into the product they are evaluating. Which explains the hype. But the story must be believable and in pragmatic terms that people can get their heads around.

In our recent work interviewing local ERP leaders as part of iStart’s 2025-26 ERP Buyer’s Guide, the use cases listed in the table below were the common threads, as an attempt to meet that measure.

I’d expect features such as these to appear more regularly in software buyer requirements lists as the market matures.

One thing is for certain, AI technology will continue to evolve and improve. As it does, its role in business technology will create tangible applications that drive genuine efficiency and innovation.

The AI news is all good for innovation and productivity, but I worry about only one thing: Who will end up paying for the massive investment that the sector is attracting? Watch this space.

EMERGING USE CASES FOR AI IN BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY

Source: iStart ERP Buyers Guide 2025-26, vendor interviews and related literature reviews

Hayden McCall is managing director of digital publisher iStart technology in business and owns Software Shortlist, a consulting business helping companies to buy better software. He has been involved with IT and the software industry for over 25 years.

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It describes the human factors that often contribute to IT support calls that have little or nothing to do with the device or the software that it is running.

“Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair” almost sums up the human condition – we are all born with frailties and idiosyncrasies that even the best technology in the world cannot eliminate.

 While your average IT genius might assume the root cause is what’s lacking between the ears of users, there’s often other factors that come into play. Bad software design definitely plays its part, but poor eyesight also contributes.

After a few too many ‘should have gone to Specsavers’ moments on the wrong end of support calls in recent times, it was time to take the advice.

Specsavers in the local mall were consulted to take up the lesser of my lost causes.

It quickly became apparent that the solution involved a whole range of technologies now at the disposal of the optometrists, of which I knew almost nothing.

Long story short, I got talking with my friendly optometrist about their practise management systems and all this fang-dangled equipment and landed on an arrangement to share it with iStart’s highly intelligent, and possibly similarly ageing, readership in the hope that you might be similarly elucidated. 

The ophthalmological equipment catalogue below provides a rundown of the main machinery your eyes will be assessed with (acknowledgements to Specsavers).

Optical Coherence Tomography

An Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is an advanced 3D eye scan which Specsavers includes as part of every standard comprehensive eye test. It takes a series of advanced 3D scans of the back of the eye, including the optic nerve, retina, and macula. The scans are highly detailed and allows the Specsavers optometrist to view the granular structures of the patient’s eye, for a more advanced and accurate examination of the individuals eye health. This helps the optometrist to detect any eye conditions in their earliest stages so the individual can see better for longer. The OCT scan used to be the exclusive domain of ophthalmologists and was only recently approved for use by optometrists. Since 2017, it has been responsible for detecting over 150,000 referrals for glaucoma in Australia, along with 0.5 million registrations for diabetes checkups.

Tonometer

A tonometer is an instrument used to measure intraocular pressure (IOP) which is the fluid pressure of the eye. Non-contact tonometer’s use a puff of air to flatten a small section of the patient’s cornea which measures IOP. This doesn’t hurt but there may be a loud click as the puff of air is delivered. Maintaining a healthy IOP will help to preserve the patient’s vision and prevent vision loss from eye conditions such as glaucoma, a sight-threatening ocular disease.

 Autorefractor

An autorefractor is a machine which measures the ability of the patient’s eyes to focus and gives an approximation of the individuals prescription. The patient will be asked to stare into a machine through two lenses at a picture, for example of a hot air balloon at the end of a long straight road. The machine focuses on the picture and makes the balloon appear to be brought closer and further away. As it does this, the machine calculates an estimation of the patient’s prescription needs with the results of how well the individual’s eyes focus on the image.

Slit lamp

The slit lamp is used to observe the health of the cornea, the iris, and the lens. The optometrist will ask the patient to place their head against a frame and chin rest while the optometrist looks through a powerful microscope at each eye. It is also used in combination with a high-powered handheld lens to provide the optometrist with a 3D view of the back of the eye.

PMS

Specsavers uses the Socrates patient management system to manage patient data linked to examination results and in New Zealand also uses Genesys for managing the patient experience. This meant that when I walked into the store, they already knew who I was, when I last had an eye exam (7 years earlier) and importantly could assure me that the gradual degradation of my eyesight and health was entirely normal. The data gathered is also put to good work. The Specsavers ANZ team has been managing a program of work to integrate Socrates into various industry referral programs such as KeepSight (Diabetes), Oculo (GP and ophthalmologist referrals) and more recently for Macular disease (AMD) referrals.

Now, with a combination of progressive lenses for general use and upgraded reading glasses for working at my PC, I am navigating my way around screen and device with much more comfort, and a lot less PEBKAC.

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The move is in response to the Covid-related mass migration from the office to home working environments and the need for higher service levels.

Chief executive Taryn Hamilton says the ISP has scrapped ‘business’ and ‘residential’ distinctions and will instead tailor technical solutions to match customer needs.

“In essence, we’re offering business grade service levels to anyone who wants it.”

“Connectivity in the home is no longer just about smooth 4K streaming. We know people run business critical applications from their home office, and there’s a need to offer more than just a straight pipe. We saw a real opportunity to create an ISP straddling the reality of a blended world and offering new and innovative solutions to modern internet problems.”

The ISP is pushing four offerings across ‘guaranteed’ home Wi-Fi coverage, fast(er) fibre, enhanced support and 4G backup for continuity in the event of a fibre failure at home.

Wi-Fi guarantee
In a collaboration with Google Nest, new customers will be taken through an onboarding workflow that uses address records to assess the size of their home or premise and recommend an optimal number of Google Nest Wifi units.

The guarantee relies on the Nest’s use of mesh technology to blanket the customer’s location in Wi-Fi signal.

The promise is backed up by Orcon’s technical team, which will provide assistance with location and set-up if needed, and will send out additional units at no cost if additional coverage is required.

Hamilton says Wi-Fi issues are the number one cause of complaints ISPs see.

“By using Google technology, house size data, and Orcon’s local technical support, these issues can easily be overcome.”

The base Nest unit is included with upgrade options for larger premises of 1 or 2 more units at $10/mth each.

The guarantee has an out clause, offering to refund customers their latest monthly bill and waiving early termination clauses in the event of sub-par Wi-Fi performance.

The ISP has worked with Google for several years offering packages using the now obsolete Google Wi-Fi range extender.

(And Dads, from personal experience, it is worth every cent to get Mum and the teenagers off your back).

Hyperfibre
Orcon will soon launch a new 2Gbps plan at $150/mth, has reduced pricing on its 4Gbps plan (to NZ$185) and is soon to introduce an 8Gbps plan.

Currently the 1Gbps (950 Mbps down, 450 up) plan is priced at around $100/mth, a no-brainer upgrade from the base 100Mbps plan at $90/mth.

Hamilton says that while the use-case for such ridiculous speeds is still outside most people’s needs, the ISP simply wants to offer the fastest plans possible.

“We’re also seeing tech-savvy businesses take up Hyperfibre and ditch expensive dedicated fibre circuits,” he adds.

Priority Support
In a new move for the Kiwi residential market, Orcon is offering a $15/mth Priority Support bolt-on which guarantees two things: if there’s a technical fault, a customer jumps the queue and is assured of having an onsite technician arrive within hours, not days. Further, customers calls and emails are routed to the next available agent.

“This provides peace-of-mind that any issues are fixed quickly for those running a business or working from home. In essence, we’re offering business grade service levels to anyone who wants it – in a smarter and cheaper way.”

4G Backup
Orcon launched its 4G Backup product in 2019 with small businesses in mind. If a customer’s main fibre connection goes down, the modem seamlessly switches over to 4G.

Hamilton says the service has proved popular with retailers and those reliant on Eftpos, but post-Covid the market is bigger than that.

“My own Covid experience confirmed that I need my internet to work, no ifs, buts or maybes,” Hamilton says. “Now people work up to five days a week from home and can’t afford downtime in the middle of a call, an online presentation, trading stocks or submitting a last-minute report. With 4G Backup, there’s an extra layer of reliability ready to kick in when you need it most.”

The announcement was accompanied with a new ‘Dream, Design, Innovate’ website and a dreamy TVC campaign that has users lost in a creative collaboration drifting into virtual orbit above earthly constraints. The campaign, says Hamilton, cost the company the ‘cost of an average Auckland house’ which, according to the latest valuations from QV, makes it upwards of a NZ$1.3 million investment, presumably with TV network placement costs still to come. The ad was directed by Joel Kefali, of Lorde’s Royals music video fame.

There was no news on Vocus New Zealand’s mooted IPO, after the parent company in Australia was lined up for sale to Macquarie and Real Assets (Mira), but indications are that this is still in the pipeline.

Vocus NZ had 226,000 broadband customers last year, making it the third-largest player in the fixed-line market after Spark and Vodafone New Zealand, and is the fourth largest telco overall, after 2degrees.

It reported revenues of almost NZ$400 million in the year to June and employs about 600 staff.

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Splashing out on a new application to run your business is a major strategic decision, but it can easily start off down the wrong track creating problems that will be with you for many years after the project is completed.

Every business, and the culture within it, is different (and we’ve seen more than a few), but most are poorly equipped when it comes to buying business software.

The reality is that it just doesn’t happen very often.

To be clear, we’re not talking here about buying small business accounting (Xero, MYOB, Quickbooks/Reckon etc). This is about proper ERP (SAP, Oracle, Infor and their ilk). Whereas small businesses tend to rely on what your accountant recommends (and is set up to handle), ERP selection and evaluation is a much more specialised skillset mapping requirements to functionality and industry credentials.

That you are here reading this, dear buyer, is a good indication you are starting in the right place – putting the groundwork in to educate yourself on the products available in iStart’s ERP Buyer’s Guide, shortlist your options and put in place the steps needed to ensure you make a decision that is right for you.

Best for project
So what is best practise when it comes to the process of ERP selection and evaluation?

Of course Google throws up plenty of good advice, but a lot of it is high level, generic and repetitive – like getting executive buy-in (check), appointing a senior project champion (check), being open-minded with your ‘to-be’ requirements (check) and resolving to do a ‘vanilla’ implementation (check) – although I never really understood what was wrong with chocolate.

The first issue to avoid?

The decision on what to buy and who from is too frequently left to chance. There’s a natural instinct to ask the nearest person that seems to know anything about IT and see what they reckon.

That’s like getting your plumber to design your next house.

Now, depending on your needs and the experience of your plumber, that might lead to a great result. As long as ‘simple’ applies only to your business process, then there’s every chance their answer will be on the right track.

“ You’re going to be recommending a partnership that you hope your business will not hate, so time invested in getting to know the software and people is well spent.”

But if you’re in the ERP game then you’ve probably left simple behind.

ERP is about handling layers of complexity and yours is likely to be a unique blend of industry, culture and markets that needs a more robust solution that can accommodate your particular nuances.

So, here’s some tips that will reduce the risk of a cock-up and save plenty of cash along the way.

TIP #1
Treat selection and evaluation as a mini-project

Decisions made early in project establishment are vitally important and so need proper resourcing.

That means a plan, clear scope and specific deliverables. These should include an updated and approved business case, appointment of a preferred vendor and budget estimates nailed down for licensing and implementation.

To create momentum, appoint a trusted project manager and a busines analyst (type) with an understanding of how your business runs at a process/systems level.

At this stage, representation from finance, IT and operational SMEs (of the subject matter expert variety) may not be necessary within the project team, but guidance and engagement with these key stakeholders will be.

If you’re lucky, the team will have some experience in software selection, but chances are they will need some help. Give them budget and autonomy to appoint a specialist independent advisor in ERP selection and evaluation.

An external consultant is not there as a hygiene factor so you can say yes to the ‘independently reviewed?’ question. Hire them early so they can contribute their experience to project establishment and ensure early work delivers value later.

Resist the temptation to engage with vendors at this stage. Their implementation methodology will be very important, but not until later.

The establishment phase is important as it lays down the groundwork that will ensure the implementation project gets off the ground smoothly.

TIP #2
Define scenarios, not requirements

If yours is like most projects, reaching this stage is not where things have started.

The business has probably been working steadfastly gathering the requirements for a system that will address long-running pain points. But that vital exercise can become a selection overhead that muddies clarity on the key areas that offer the most promise.

We recommend that requirements are kept at a high level and only be developed for areas that will differentiate one system from another. If you are searching online for the comprehensive list of ERP requirements you are off-track.

90 percent of these requirements will be delivered perfectly adequately by 90 percent of the systems you might be considering.

It’s the 10 percent that really counts and that is where your focus should be concentrated.

Identify these and express them in daily shop-floor terms (OK maybe de-coloured) that explain clearly the scenarios where you expect your ERP solution to inform decision making.

There may only be 10-20 that actually matter in a vote for one system vs the other, and these are the ones that go into your RFI document. It is up to the shortlisted vendors to explain back to you in similar terms how their system will address the scenario.

Your RFI document shouldn’t consist of a checklist of hundreds of function points that you expect the vendor to self-assess fit/gap. What does 198 versus 212 ticks out of 223 requirements tell you? Probably more about the respondents’ interpretation of the context in which the question is asked than any measure of system capability.

TIP #3
Build a pros/cons Shortlist

Using a structured approach to identify possible candidates and document the decision process will pay dividends when the Chairman says you should go with the solution his fishing buddy sells.

That means pros, cons, local vendor contacts and reference site checks to back up every yes/no decision.

This is not an exercise in collecting all the contact details for vendors so you can blast a 50-page RFP out to all and await the genius in the responses.

It is the due diligence needed to concentrate your efforts on genuine contenders and avoids you getting inundated with vendor enquiries and complex responses that all need consideration.

And while this point may not be top among your concerns, it also means you don’t waste vendor resources responding to opportunities that are unlikely to convert because they are fundamentally a mis-match from the outset. There’s probably a study somewhere tallying up the total cost to businesses responding to hopeless RFPs, but let’s just agree – it’s a substantial waste.

Aim for a maximum shortlist of five for your RFI and narrow that down to just two to invite into the detailed discovery of an RFP process. Everyone will thank you.

TIP #4
Rank the responses (and then ignore)

There has been plenty of debate over whether software procurement should use the age-old RFI/RFP process. Surely there’s something way cooler these days?

Yeah, nah. Call them what you will, but the fundamentals remain.

So let’s not try and get fancy. The RFI invites vendors into the process, the RFP produces the basis from which an agreement can be drafted to confirm your chosen ERP partner.

So how to pick a winner?

Don’t let vendors respond in freeform, be prescriptive. Direct them to respond specifically and succinctly to the questions posed inside your template.

That means sending out a Word document (no, not a PDF numpty) that contains all relevant background but is primarily structured around your 10-20 real world scenarios (ref Tip #2) that the solution must address. Under each, provide a section for the vendor to insert their response.

From there, you have the basis to conduct a structured evaluation. Assign a 1-5 priority factor to each scenario and score the adequacy of their response on a 1-3 scale.

Priority X Score = Ranking.

And the highest ranking solution wins? Ah, no. The completion of the exercise is what delivers the real value, the number that drops to the bottom is (probably) by that stage fairly arbitrary.

With the metrics in hand, your head can then have a good long chat with your gut, consult carefully with your heart and together resolve why the plumber and the Chairman’s fishing buddy are wrong.

TIP #5
Discovering proof

So you’re down to a two horse race. It’s time to get down to the knitting. You’re going to be recommending a partnership that you hope your business will not hate, so time invested in getting to know the software and people is well spent.

At the same time, vendors will be eager to drill down into your detailed operations and uncover the process steps that make you unique, and also protect themselves from an expensive mis-match.

And you both really ought to make sure you get along with one another.

All that comes together in your demo/discovery workshop(s).

These workshops signal to the business that your project is about to get serious, so don’t approach this phase lightly.

You’re asking senior execs and SMEs to assemble in a room (virtual or not) and explain to strangers the intricacy of how they do their jobs. You’ll also be asking them to endure demonstration of software that is configured for an entirely different business.

It will be a stretch of grey matter, relationships and patience. Good humour is a recommended ingredient.

Fortunately (ref Tip #4) you already have the prioritised business scenarios written up and some idea of how the solution will address your requirements, so the agenda is clear.

If all goes well, you’ll come out of the room both the wiser.

If not, then the decision has probably been made for you.

iStart provides a range of services to assist your software evaluation project. From free advice over the phone to a quick shortlist assessment or deeper advisory services through Software Shortlist, we are always happy to listen. Please get in touch with the author at hayden.mccall@istart.co.nz or 0800 928 268 or 1800 462 388

The post Best practise ERP selection and evaluation appeared first on iStart keeping business informed on technology.

Automation will play a key role too, but economic reality might stem the flow.

The turnaround is a response to the Covid-19 lockdowns around the world and impacts on offshored ‘business process outsourcing’ (BPO) operations.

“Several of our largest companies have had to urgently adjust their contact centre strategies.”

And the numbers are significant.

Telstra, as an example, is understood to have sent up to 12,000 ‘seats’ offshore in outsourcing deals, the majority based in Manila where its call centre capabilities were among those hit by the Philippines’ lockdown.

If the predictions for companies bringing 10 percent of outsourced roles back home materialise, that’s 1,200 new long term jobs being created from one employer. Some are saying the figure could be as high as 30,000 jobs being created in Australia.

Already we have seen short term impacts on contact centre services, particularly in the ‘voice’ segment. The sector enjoyed boom times over lockdown as telcos, hotels and airlines (in particular) were forced to bolster call centre operations as front line staff retreated home and customers panicked over bookings and services.

The impacts were much wider after Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, a major offshore provider, shut down the local industry overnight.

That move impacted services provided globally by millions of Filipinos in what is the country’s largest export sector, and rippled widely across the services sector worldwide.

India followed suit, but gave a week’s notice and (eventually) exempted essential workers, which included many in the IT sector which perform key back office roles to keep IT systems running.

Those back office roles, along with data entry functions, are a major segment serviced by the BPO industry.

While the contact centre impacts were short-lived and now more likely to be replaced by redundancies, the shock waves have corporates in a jitter about future geopolitical risks to their core operations.

Their response is to reduce reliance on external providers.

Grant Custance, writing in an opinion piece for InnovationAus, argues that this is an opportunity for up to 30,000 new local jobs to be created.

Custance, a supplier of workforce management solutions to the sector, explains: “With the impact of COVID-19, several of our largest companies have had to urgently adjust their contact centre strategies as the South East Asian contact centres they have relied [on – sic] have been forced to close, at least temporarily.”

It’s a trend that dovetails with the work from home movement that Covid has precipitated.

“We now have technologies which allow contact centre operators to […] ensure productivity remains high and agents are making their customers happy, but [also – sic] to ensure contact centre employees will not be restricted by where they live.”

He points to AI technologies, such as Robotic Process Automation, which were already changing the number and nature of call centre functions, playing an even more important role in future.

“AI and machine learning (ML) add enormous value by uncovering and acting on patterns which make customer and business predictions far more frequent and accurate.“

That translates to a higher-skilled local workforce being trained to provide capability in these emerging technologies. This will be both as users supporting business processes directly, as well more senior roles training and testing the systems to operate accurately. Those involved in developing and deploying process automation tools will attract even higher wages.

But the reality, say industry insiders, is that there won’t be 30,000 of them and that’s down to pure economics.

They explain that the big Indian outsourcers (the likes of HCL, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, TCS etc) charge their clients A$20-25k for a basic ops person.

While these charges are hidden inside mega-million dollar deals – Fonterra for example recently signed a NZ$100 million deal across five years – the arithmetic remains the same.

That same ops person employed directly in Australia or New Zealand would command $60-90k, or let’s say triple what the outsourcer would be billing.

And let’s not forget what the employees themselves get paid. Local wages can be anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of what the client is being charged. That translates to the operator being paid as little as $5-7k (yes that’s per annum).

How far the tide, and the efficiencies of automation, can run against the forces of economic reality remains to be seen.

ABOUT HAYDEN MCCALL//
Hayden McCall is the publisher behind iStart. Despite his natural charm he is a poor wit and lacks the requisite skills to contribute much in column inches. The occasional attempt at anything with journalistic merit is typically lambasted by the editorial team and seldom makes the cut.

The post Offshored seats coming home appeared first on iStart keeping business informed on technology.

The economic impacts will be wide sweeping, and no sector will be immune, but is the tech sector uniquely positioned to weather – or, dare we say, prosper – from the pandemic?

There are many ways digital providers of every description can ease the burden

Yes, it may be a little gauche to look for advantages in all this mess but technology is undoubtedly playing a central role in business’ survival and it is uniquely placed to keep wheels on while others are in crisis mode.

The tech sector is not the only one that will ride this out better than others. We’ve put together a list below of the ‘silver-lining’ industries which can expect to see benefits.

But firstly, what factors should give IT confidence?

Remote working
As offices and factories close, employees of all descriptions face the prospect of forced isolation. Employers formerly unwilling or ‘unable’ to offer employees flexible working arrangements are currently receiving crash courses in the possibilities of just that.

For tech workers however, that might look a lot like business as usual. Technology professionals have long known the benefits of working remotely and likely already do so regularly. For companies in the technology industry, the challenge of mandatory worker isolation is more molehill than mountain. The point being that the productivity of tech firms will be much less affected by the challenges of getting effective (read billable) work done remotely.

If selling or installing remote working solutions are your market, these are the boom times. Videoconferencing software provider Zoom has experienced a 15 percent share price spike in the last month alone, Lifesize says its usage numbers are up 100 percent, and US video tech company Bluejeans says it’s seen increases in video conferencing traffic on its network of up to 400 percent. Similarly, Microsoft Teams is reporting a massive 500 percent increase in meetings, calls, and conferences. Similarly Skype, Slack, Google Hangouts and the multiplicity of other messaging and collaboration tools can all expect usage to head stratospheric as the western world locks down.

In China, Alibaba’s remote work app, DingTalk, was downloaded 670,000 times in the first half of January. Since then, the app has been downloaded an additional 17 million times. In fact, downloads in general from China’s App Store are up almost 50 percent compared with last year as citizens forced into isolation use tech to fill their time on and off the clock.

Of course those vendors are all global cloud software providers, so the local benefit is limited to related services. Many businesses do not have an IT function at all and need help to decide on and set up solutions that will work in their environments.

On-premise risk
As the great migration home gets underway and businesses are, like it or not, forced to adapt, business solutions that don’t work remotely are being scrutinised. Where they’re found lacking, urgent, secure solutions are needed. Businesses of all descriptions are scrambling to keep their operations running, and it will fall to ICT service providers to ensure remote access methods are functional and secure.

A blowtorch will be on IT teams who need to explain why staff can’t work remotely due to access issues to the systems needed to do their jobs.

Cloud software and infrastructure, remote desktop software and network access tools are de rigueur for most tech support firms from local IT support shops to national managed service providers, and those services are in heavy and urgent demand.

Healthcare infrastructure is being tested
The legion of healthcare providers currently scrambling to prepare for – and respond to – the Covid-19 pandemic as it unfolds need technology to play its part.

First the good news: Globally, healthcare providers have already started investing in modern health tech solutions, most notably virtualised care and remote diagnosis systems. Whatever the outcome of the Coronavirus pandemic, the new healthcare solutions that emerge from it are likely to have telehealth and virtualised care at their core. Overloaded healthcare systems are simply faced with no choice but to reduce the human burden, and, right now, contagion risk, from physical facilities.

Now the bad: Local health authorities and medical practitioners have been glacially slow to endorse the use of virtual healthcare solutions. Despite the availability and uptake of technologies in other markets, clinicians here are not set up to deliver services digitally. With primary healthcare facilities already being stretched to breaking point, the current modus operandi is slowing health delivery, impacting outcomes and putting health workers and patients at risk.

The potential for sweeping, digital upgrades to healthcare is vast, as governments, the private sector and providers themselves come together to aid in rapid diagnosis, monitoring and management of Covid-19 cases as the virus spreads.

As we’ve seen with the rapid and comprehensive introduction of government economic support packages, the urgency of a crisis can make the wheels of bureaucracy spin.

Health tech providers can expect business to tick upward as a result.

Business interruption is an opportunity to take stock
Accompanying all of this, of course, is the almost certainty of significant, global economic downturn, with hospitality, travel and education among the most vulnerable industries in this region. The tech sector is better positioned than most to actively support those worst hit and do everything they can to help those businesses get through.

Still, as business slows there is a real – if, perhaps, slightly optimistic – opportunity to play technology catch-up. Blowtorches aside, projects that might otherwise have been placed on the figurative back burner may get more attention as day-to-day operations slow. The benefits of ‘cloud’ can now expect to be crystallised and gain yet higher priority again. But non-urgent technologies – think automation, ERP, e-commerce, DX etc – should get more (and often overdue) attention as senior executives get time to think more strategically about how complex implementations can be progressed to make good of the disruption. Countering that, no doubt, is the uncertainty of future revenue streams.

Tech hardware distributors hit by Chinese supply disruptions are already seeing manufacturing starting to return to life, and as supply chains start moving again, clearing the order backlog will provide both an early spike in recovery and an opportunity to levy ‘urgency premiums’ for those demanding immediate service.

The greater good
Across all of this there is a greater opportunity, the kind that sees the tech sector, as a collective, coming together to help the worse-affected sectors. There are many ways digital providers of every description can ease the burden caused by the Covid-19 pandemic – we’ve already seen the removal of usage/data caps, but delayed payment plans and philanthropic help to roll sleeves up and deliver services to clients in sectors hit hardest are all in play.

Longer term, that spells business opportunity. Managed well, those concessions can be turned into loyal new clients, and a more resilient economic environment for everyone, both tomorrow, as we struggle to slow the spread of Covid-19, and the day after that, when, hopefully, life starts to return to normal.

And what other sectors are likely to see benefits? Our predictions below:

Sectors to economically benefit from Covid-19 

1. Health sector generally (and providers of PPE mask + sanitisers specifically)
2. Cleaning/sanitation (related products and service providers)
3. E-commerce (esp supermarket and meal delivery)
4. Couriers (with e-commerce spike)
5. Supermarket/FMCG and particularly canned and dried goods manufacturers (not to mention toilet paper manufacturers)
6. Remote meeting/video conferencing/collaboration software and related ICT services
7. Home entertainment (Netflix, X-Box etc)
8. Virtual healthcare technology
9. Medical insurance (even though the pandemic probably isn’t covered)

The post Tech sector well placed to ride out virus appeared first on iStart keeping business informed on technology.

Last week at the vendor’s annual client conference in Sydney, on a welcome summer retreat from a chilly Minnesota, Paul Farrell was pleased to say one of them was back asking for his old job.

“It takes two to tango in the integration game, especially when it comes to sensitive financial data.”

The pair had wanted no part of another Larry-wash at what, until then, had been a high growth entrepreneurial software startup-come-unicorn hitting its straps.

They were not alone in their fears. Clients and partners alike had seen previous acquisitions by big red go the way of hard-nosed corporates before it, and worried that some of the free spirit of the company would be subsumed.

What they didn’t factor in was that Ellison, already a majority shareholder, had been an insider on NetSuite’s vision from the outset. Far from another corporate raid, the acquisition would give his engineering team access to learnings from NetSuite’s cloud-based SaaS experience. With Oracle already firmly on a move-to-the-cloud-or-die path, aggregating cloud expertise made a lot of sense. It also made sense to add NetSuite’s rapid growth to Oracle’s mixed successes in the enterprise software space, where it continues to outstrip anything else in the stable.

The grand plan has now gone full circle, as Farrell announced several initiatives that will see NetSuite leverage the best bits of Oracle’s massive investment in cloud technology in recent years.

Specifically, he pointed to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), of which NetSuite is now a part, which provides benefits through a truly global multi-tenancy architecture and via Oracle’s autonomous database tools.

How that translates to NetSuite’s community of users gets technical fairly quickly, but Farrell explained that ‘autonomous database’ means that a client database will self-tune its indexes based on the way that a business uses the solution, rather than to how the community as a whole uses it. Result? Faster application performance and less speed complaints from users. Truly multi-tenancy? Administrators will now be able to choose an optimal time to accept upgrades into the system, rather than having that optimal time decided for them.

OCI? This is the whole cloud architecture, but includes Oracle’s integration engine, the much-maligned Oracle Fusion. For NetSuite users and sales execs alike, this opens up a very important differentiator that other competing cloud accounting solution providers such as Xero and MYOB have been able to offer for quite some time – bank reconciliations.

When questioned, Farrell clarified that in fact what has been built is an API layer that facilitates the exchange of banking data and that the API has been set up with, currently, only US institutions. He could not provide any detail on when that integration might be available for local (A/NZ) customers, but, as other ERP providers have found, it takes two to tango in the integration game, especially when it comes to sensitive financial data. What priority will be given to setting up commercial negotiations and delivering bank feeds between NetSuite and our friendly local banking oligarchs, as well as what influence Open Banking regulatory changes will have, remains to be seen.

Farrell heads up a team that grew at 26 percent YOY to over 2,000 employees today who collectively clocked 3.8 million hours of development effort in the past 12 months. It’s a formidable capability when focussed as it is on a single version of a single product. As a result there is a raft of updates announced in the latest (v20.1) release. No doubt release notes will detail these better than space allows here.

What was refreshing was the openness provided, particularly to media and analysts, on where NetSuite is headed with its product roadmap. Albeit wrapped in the usual cautions around forward looking statements, what was unveiled was (in yachting parlance – we are talking Oracle here) a full skirt lift.

Customers must have left with some confidence that they are nowhere close to any sunset in their backing of the NetSuite boat, even in its new Oracle livery.

Farrell’s ex-staffers, however, may feel a bit differently.

Hayden was hosted at SuiteConnect Sydney by Oracle NetSuite.

The post NetSuite lifts skirts on Oracle jewels appeared first on iStart keeping business informed on technology.

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It’s a start, and it does send a signal, but world powers need to align around similar changes, in particular the US where it could be as simple as changing a single word from ‘don’t’ to ‘do’.

The legislation passed as all sides of the house in Canberra seek to make sure social media companies do not become platforms for promoting such atrocities as the March 15 Christchurch mosque attacks.

Motivating lawmakers has been Facebook’s defensive stance to date, restating ad nauseum how it successfully removed or blocked 80 percent of the uploads, but avoiding the fact that decade-old technology was the reason the video was for all intents publicly available.

“Mainstream media that broadcast such material would be putting their licence at risk, and there is no reason why social media platforms should be treated any differently.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison weighed in saying “Big social media companies have a responsibility to take every possible action to ensure their technology products are not exploited by murderous terrorists.”

He says Australia will encourage other G20 nations to hold social media companies to account, and has added the topic to the upcoming G20 summit in Osaka, Japan at the end of June.

While the looming Federal election may not see Scott Morrison at the table, he would do well to put forward New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as an invited speaker.

Under the new laws, it would be a criminal offence for platforms not to quickly remove hate related posts such as terror attacks, and other acts of violence. Social media executives could face up to three years in prison for failing to remove offensive content while their platforms would also face fines of up to 10 percent of their annual turnover.

While some have called the proposed laws kneejerk and draconian, Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter says social media needs to be held to account along similar lines to broadcasters.

“Mainstream media that broadcast such material would be putting their licence at risk, and there is no reason why social media platforms should be treated any differently,” he says.

The government held meetings with the big tech players after the attacks, and was reportedly underwhelmed by Facebook’s response.

Ardern was similarly unimpressed by Facebook’s sluggish response.

“They are the publisher, not just the postman. It cannot be a case of all profit, no responsibility,” she says.

In the face of the global brouhaha, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg finally responded to criticisms. In a letter published in the Washington Post he said “I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the internet, we can preserve what’s best about it – the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things – while also protecting society from broader harms.”

With Facebook now seeking better engagement with lawmakers to combat this issue, the G20 Summit must take up the opportunity to express their resolve to seriously address what is undoubtedly a global problem.

They must seize upon Zuckerberg’s acknowledgment that his company has some responsibility, saying “Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree.

I’ve come to believe that we shouldn’t make so many important decisions about speech on our own. So we’re creating an independent body so people can appeal our decisions.”

While Zuckerberg’s sentiments sound positive, there is a risk that Facebook takes control of the narrative away from governments and regulatory bodies around the world who should be very wary of similar platitudes.

Morrison’s tough stance on social media regulation sends a strong message that might sit well with Australian voters, but the practicalities of the proposed legislation need to get publicly and widely debated so its probable shortcomings can lead to better regulation across all jurisdictions.

The G20 has an opportunity to send a co-ordinated message that regulatory settings around the world will be established. It is only when these are in place that social media companies will be properly motivated to take their social responsibilities more seriously, as Zuckerberg to his credit has come to recognise.

US lawmakers should rightfully be the centre of the G20’s attention. US laws currently enshrine online social platforms with immunity from the usual rules of decency that publishers must adhere to.

In particular, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the US says platform companies don’t have responsibility over the content users post.

The time has come, G20, to send a message to President Trump – please remove the n’t.

The post Aussie social media law needs G20 teeth appeared first on iStart keeping business informed on technology.

The transformation project, beginning this month, will include upgrading its core SAP financials environment to the latest version (S/4HANA) along with SAP’s SaaS solutions for HR (Success Factors) and procurement (Ariba).

With Coles employing 115,000 staff, and engaging with 7,000 suppliers, the deal represents a major global signing and vote of confidence in SAP’s cloud strategy.

“This partnership with SAP will allow us to innovate more to ensure we are as efficient as possible across our retail environment.”

Coles, which completed its demerger from Wesfarmers in November 2018, is a long-standing SAP shop, and the new upgrade is designed to simplify and streamline business processes and achieve cost savings, while gaining access to insights to help identify market opportunities and improve productivity.

Coles is understood to have been running an IT environment independent from other entities in the Wesfarmers group, but the project will provide an opportunity to review and unravel any historical process complexities, and simplify its systems.

“Making life easier for our customers and team members is a key focus for Coles, says Roger Sniezek, Coles’ chief information and digital officer.

“This partnership with SAP will allow us to innovate more with both groups to ensure we are as efficient as possible across our retail environment,” he says.

The upgrade will focus on improving consistency of processes, removing duplication and supporting delivery of more efficient services for Coles 115,000 staff and 7,000 suppliers, as well as partners and customers.

While SAP S/4HANA is expected to enable Coles to simplify and streamline its business processes and gain new insights into the business, Ariba will be used to gain cost and efficiency savings in procurement through improved supplier management, risk management and cost management. Invoices and payments will be digitised and automated, with automation, network connections and data-driven insights expected to also enable Coles to build stronger relationships.

The third prong of the transformation, SuccessFactors, will help Coles keep track of key HR information, manage performance, benefits and remuneration (the payroll function itself will continue to run on SAP Payroll), improve employee self-service and ensure compliance, while gaining real-time insights across HR functions.

Damien Bueno, SAP Australia and New Zealand president and managing director, says Coles is putting a focus on simplifying the experience for its people and customers.

“The retail industry is focused on continuous innovation and anticipating customer needs. To be successful in this era of change and build for a digital future, it is critical to get your digital business framework right,” says Bueno.

No implementation partner nor timeline has been named, yet. Coles did say that implementation partners would be confirmed in a separate announcement.

The upgrade follows announcements in October 2018 that Coles had signed contracts with Witron Australia to develop two new automated distribution centres to extract savings from a modernisation of its supply chain over the next five years.

The post Coles buys in to SAP future appeared first on iStart keeping business informed on technology.

But it wouldn’t be hype if it wasn’t also accompanied by plenty of bluff and bluster.

Here’s what grabbed our attention at iStart among the tech stories of 2018 that were spruiked by the PR and marcomms folks without passing any sort of reality test.

#1 Cryptocurrency spiked

The world erupted in a frenzy over a new form of currency that didn’t need any national treasury behind it, just a bank of CPU and a bit of mining know how and you’d be rolling in riches. Bitcoin, Ethereum and other altcoins started featuring in dinner party conversations as yet more were formed on the back of ICO raises. Values skyrocketed and predictions of a new world order proliferated.

And then the old world order woke up.

ICOs were banned, countries refused to recognise cryptocurrencies as official. The speculators ducked for cover, selling in droves, values plummeted and the crypto phenomenon was consigned back to whence it had come – the currency of choice for East European ransomware agents and dark web traders.

#2 Blockchain mousetraps

With cryptocurrency was heralded an almost equally fanatical promotion of distributed ledger technology. What began life in the high integrity waters of crypto trading was now being touted as technology’s gift to transactional security.

Forget firewalls, databases, two-factor authentication and encryption, the blockchain would solve it all.

Except it didn’t.

The learnings from multiple pilots and smoke & mirror startups is that it’s really very hard to do quite basic things when they’re done on a blockchain.

For no real benefit. If it says BC on the tin, it’s probably BS.

The writing is on the wall (although the way Aussie politicians are rewriting the laws of encryption, maybe they know something we don’t).

#3 Hyperloopy

Elon Musk spent the end of 2017 amping up his Boring Company’s incredible new hyperloop technology. Hyper-capsules would soon be delivering inter-city commuters to their destinations with staggering speed and efficiency. Aussies lapped up promises of travel between Melbourne and Sydney in just 50 minutes for the 880km journey. The media went nuts over the vision of Aussies zipping interstate at 1,000 km/h using magnetic levitation and vacuum tubes to reduce friction and increase speed.

In 2018 all of that came to…nought.

Trouble was, no one had done the numbers on construction costs, or checked flight schedules.

While trials continue, our prediction is that when the VC funding dries up so too will the massively expensive experimentation projects in the face of economic and physical reality.

With Elon also going a bit loopy over the course of the year, Hyperloop’s demise is nigh.

#4 Big Data-a-go-go

In an industry beset with buzzword bingo, ‘Big Data’ entered the year as the top headline act of 2017, but was quickly found out. Trouble was, no one actually knew what it was.

Everyone agreed data was important, and most big companies had some big data projects on the go. Data and it’s close cousin analytics were (and are) definitely big.

But ‘Big Data’ never really got it’s feet on the ground beyond oft-repeated explanations of what it was (or could be).

To their credit, Gartner had removed it from its Hype Cycle way back in 2015, but PR folks were not letting that get in the way of a good story.

Nope, these days, it’s just data.

Actually, no, these days it’s AI already.

#5 Google minus

The year also saw the tumbleweed that was Google+ finally spat out of the search engine’s data centre cooling systems, condemning the social media platform to a painless death. The tech giant announced in October that they were shutting the doors on the much-hyped and much-ignored platform.

The announcement was met with indifference which at it’s height elicited responses as reactionary as “Wait, you mean there were actual people using Google+?” and “Woah hang on what happened to our hangout (…oh here it is over here)”.

Quite what its UX designers ever intended to achieve will sadly only ever be known to those inside their circle.

#6 Virtually ass’ed

2018 will surely go down as the year of Artificial Intelligence and it’s personification, the humble but oh-so-helpful Bot (not). Both will no doubt continue to dominate headlines in the coming year.

But the year heralded the rise and fall of a particularly antipodean interpretation – the humanised virtual assistants, where bots come in a human/digital form.

After global headlines regaled the birth of Baby X, adult versions were soon spawned to help front the customer-centrification efforts of corporates and government departments, and divert attention away from the automation of their workforces.

With the glint of a glassy eyeball and a smile from the depths of the uncanny valley, these automatons promised to delight customers with self-learning intellect.

A virtual assistant near you could help you book flights, solve your banking problems, fix your phone and even navigate the respective warrens of disability insurance and trade documentation.

They could do anything.

Including get right up your nose with stupid one dimensional answers to the very real human problems you bothered engaging with them to solve.

Watch this space in 2019. We reckon ‘wow that sounds pretty cool’ curiosity will peter out in the face of the ‘I could have googled that myself’ experience.

#7 Cambridge Analytica’d

Last, but by no means least, we celebrate the 2018 debacle that signaled the end of humanity’s naivety toward things Facebook and privacy settings on social media networks.

This one has it all. Trump, political interference, Russian spies and The Zuck.

While possibly not strictly meeting our hyped-technology-that-failed criteria, it was too big to not deserve a mention in the tech landscape that was 2018.

Notable mentions

As far as pie-in-sky goes, Uber Air has to be right up there. The idea that you’ll Uber up a personal flight is complete nonsense beyond its novelty value. Driverless cars are also never going to be a reality in busy city streets off the predictable and controlled motorways or airport loops. The complexity of the last mile, and regulators’ risk aversion, will mean a human will always be behind the wheel. After all, if you’ve got the incredible capabilities of a commuter’s human brain available, why not use it? Virtual and Augmented Reality continued their hype over the year, but there’s one big issue – the form factor sucks, condemning the tech to gaming consoles, architectural studios and PR stunts.

With artificial intelligence and machine learning at peak hype going into 2019, will they be on next year’s list? It’d be a brave prediction, but the tech sector’s ability to dream up in-credible ideas, pitch them to wilfully ignorant investors and foist them on an unsuspecting and ever hopeful populace will not stop.

Expect 2019 to herald yet more tech wackery looking for problems to solve and scientific realities to ignore.

The post All the tech that wasn’t: 2018’s over-hyped, under-delivered tech appeared first on iStart keeping business informed on technology.

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“Honest communication about which data is being used for what, and why, will be essential for future value exchange”.

The 2018 Deloitte Privacy Index looks to account for the reality that, as technology, consumer demands, and business models continue to evolve, brands are collecting vast amounts of personal information, which increases exponentially each year.

“Each brand will use this personal information differently,” says Viljoen. “Some will commoditise it, others will use it to create a more customised experience. In either case, transparency with the consumer on how their personal information will be used and protected is critical.”

Deloitte conducts an assessment of the public face of the privacy practices of the top 100 Australian brands each year, ranking each sector according to its stated actions.

“There were some big changes in the sector rankings this year given the focus on transparency of personal information processing,” says David Batch, Deloitte’s new national privacy and data protection lead.

“This meant that brands that offer primarily digital goods and services ranked better on transparency measures and Information technology operations was the stand out rising from 9 out of 10 to #1 and top of the index.”

“Honest communication about which data is being used for what, and why, will be essential for future value exchange”.

“Despite all the media attention for the financial services sector, the good news for them is they stayed close to the top, ranking #2. Government which is also highly regulated, came in at #3 on the rankings, and Telecommunications and Media was a close #4. The biggest fall was in the energy and utilities sector which fell to bottom of the list #10 from #4.”

“We also asked 1,000 Australians over 18 years old, across regions and genders, to tell us what data they provided to the brands in return for goods and services,” says Batch. “And what factors influenced their decision to share their personal information. We wanted to understand the trust relationship and what factors influence the increase or decrease of consumer trust in brands.

“We also asked consumers to consider their knowledge of privacy and tell us how they would feel if their data was involved in a breach and what their expectations were for the brands to respond to such incidents.”

Key findings:

• 69 percent believe that trust in the brand is most important when making a decision about sharing personal information, followed by the benefits received, such as discounts, personalised service and rewards.
• Brands are more likely to lose consumer trust and damage their reputation if customer data is used for cross-selling of personal information (68 percent), inappropriate marketing (58 percent), and trading data to enable sales (54percent).
• Consumers are aware that their personal information may be shared with third parties and 41 percent are comfortable allowing a brand to transfer their data if they trust the brand and there’s a benefit for them.
• 58 percent of consumers are unaware of the requirement by law to notify them of any data breach under the 1988 Privacy Act if their data is likely to be misused.
• 90 percent of consumers still expect to be notified if their personal details are involved in a breach.
• 76 percent of respondents indicated that they would be more likely to trust a brand after a breach if there was timely notification of the breach, a detailed explanation, detailed remediation plans, and ongoing notifications on progress.

Viljoen says that as the relationship between brands and consumers constantly evolves “brands have to amend their privacy practices to meet both consumer expectations and regulatory change. The increasing emphasis on consumers ‘owning and having control over’ their data is a seismic change to the status quo.”

This year’s Deloitte Privacy Index results clearly establish that trust and transparency play a vital role in determining the strength of any potential symbiotic relationship between the brand and its consumers.

As the Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said when commenting at the commencement of the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme: “The success of an organisation that handles personal information, or a project that involves personal information, depends on trust. People have to trust that their privacy is protected, and be confident that personal information will be handled in line with their expectations.”

Download the full Deloitte Privacy Index Report.

The post Data, privacy, transparency and trust: The Deloitte Privacy Index 2018 appeared first on iStart keeping business informed on technology.

And the result may be a strengthening of the role of the CIO into managing internal and external experience delivery for customers and staff alike.

In choosing to make the announcement in front of 18,000 customers, employees and partners at the annual Knoweledge18 conference in Las Vegas, the ITSM vendor is signalling a drive beyond IT into HR processes as a core strategy as it seeks to maintain 35-40 percent year-on-year growth.

The study of 500 ‘CHROs’ – or senior human resource executives – is no doubt an important first step on the path, because it shows that HR managers are motivated to digitise their processes.

As in all facets of life, digital experiences have made life simpler, easier and more convenient and ServiceNow has recognised the opportunity to provide the same for employees as a differentiator.

The research across 12 countries, including 45 CHRO’s from Australia and New Zealand, reveals that providing a technology-enabled employee experience is becoming an important tactic in the war for attracting and retaining talent.

But indications are that HR leaders in Australia and New Zealand are lagging behind their global peers when it comes to adopting technology to improve experiences at work. One in six (16 percent) of local HR leaders say they do not use technology to improve HR outcomes, compared to just one in 50 (2 percent) in Japan.

More broadly, less than half (47 percent) of HR leaders across A/NZ say that the HR function is a driver of digital transformation at their company, behind global peers at 57 percent on that score. Globally, 78 percent of CHRO’s believe HR strategy is an important differentiatior for the company, yet in A/NZ this falls to just 51 percent.

Asking CHROs about the criticality of their role in transforming the organisation might be expected to yield a predictable response, so the measure perhaps says more about Antipodean humility, than any lesser desire to digitise painful processes.

Retaining talent however is undoubtedly an issue for A/NZ managers, with only half of HR leaders (51 percent) saying they are successful at doing so, despite 82 percent saying it is a top strategic priority for the business.

“The best talent today expects great digital experiences at work,” said ServiceNow Chief Talent Officer Pat Wadors. “Top talent can work anywhere, and they are choosing companies that embrace advanced technology to make work simpler, faster, and better…companies that don’t offer this will find themselves losing out on, or struggling to hold on to, the best talent.”

“Top talent can work anywhere, and they are choosing companies that embrace advanced technology to make work simpler, faster, and better…”

And Wadors should know. She was the HR lead at LinkedIn during its acquisition by Microsoft and specifically responsible for keeping attrition below the benchmark 20 percent. Wadors, using ServiceNow, implemented an early release of ServiceNow’s virtual assistant (also announced at the show) and used it to rapidly listen and learn about employee concerns via an FAQ portal. As it turned out, despite hitting her KPI target, Wadors was one of the 18.1 percent that departed.

According to the survey, the largest movement that has occurred over the past three years is in digitising the lifecycle of the employee experience, indicating a need for a holistic approach to transitioning staff through the “moments that matter” as Wadors puts it.

And the future is clear: more than half of CHROs surveyed (56 percent) say the ability to create a digital, consumerised employee experience will define their roles in three years, compared with only 6% who say their role will continue to be defined by traditional human resources activites.

The question, then, is if CHROs are up to the task.

Chris Bedi, CIO at ServiceNow, suggested that there is an emerging role he calls the “Chief Experience Officer” where the CIO and CHRO roles merge to deliver digital experiences across the enterprise. While Bedi’s role is internal, and in this context eating one’s own dogfood comes to mind, he has a very outward view on digital transformation and the buzz words that are prevalent: Artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation. His perspective is that delivery of these technologies needs to be made meaningful: “These days the focus is speed over cost, there’s a sense of urgency and success is defined by three key factors – speed, intelligence and experience.”

One gets the sense that digitisation of the ServiceNow employee experience will have a lot to do with Bedi’s success in rolling out these capabilities. “Analytics and dashboarding are yesterday’s needs. If you are not employing data science to provide users with human suggestions on next actions to take, you are falling behind.”

Given the long suffering IT department is likely also the owner of the original ServiceNow implementation through its use to support ITSM functions, Bedi may be prescient in terms of where the responsibility for digital delivery of HR functions will rest.

The global report The New CHRO Agenda: Employee Experience Drives Business Value, commissioned by ServiceNow from Oxford Economics, details trends across North America, Europe and Asia, as well as looking at specific industries such as finance and health care.

The full APAC report can be accessed here.

Note: The author attended Knowledge18 courtesy of ServiceNow.

The post ServiceNow takes on next least popular department appeared first on iStart keeping business informed on technology.

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The past year has seen further industry consolidation, increasing pressure from ‘cloud-native’ ERP products and the allure of well designed user-oriented point solutions unencumbered with the constraints of financial or supply chain integration requirements.

The net result is pressure on ERP vendors to transform user experience, and extend their suites to deliver capability such as integrated analytics, forecasting and visualisations.

Software market observations
Despite ongoing consolidation across the business software industry, the era of cloud and software-as-a-service still presents software buyers with multiple options.

Buying software has become a complex task. Beautifully crafted but often simplistic point solutions compete alongside more established, comprehensive and integrated solutions that would be better described as operational, if not ugly.

ERP vendors have been fighting a battle to compete and remain relevant in an environment of hype around cloud-based software and mobile apps. They are somewhat conflicted by persistent requirements for complex functions versus user expectations of simple software that works well with prices that often start at free.

If the hype around some cloud solutions were to be believed, ERP as a software category would already be resting with the dinosaurs.

“ERP vendors have been fighting a battle to compete and remain relevant in an environment of hype around cloud-based software and mobile apps.”

Two realities are ensuring their survival. The first is that there are significant benefits from the integrated financial accounting and operational processes that a well-matched and well-implemented ERP system delivers.

The second is that building solutions that handle the complexity of multi-channel, multi-device, end-to-end physical and financial processes is difficult and expensive.

As an example, look to Oracle’s recent purchase of NetSuite, which happens to also be Xero’s chosen management platform. Neither, Oracle nor Xero, it seems, could build what they needed for themselves.

Our ranking of ERP solutions by Feature versus Price provides some insight into the cost of accessing this integrated functionality.

To Cloud ERP or not?
Cloud capability used to be a distinguishing characteristic through which buyers could eliminate options. No longer. Full browser-based capability is now the norm. The ‘cloud wash’ is over and there has been a huge shift toward web capability in user interfaces.

‘Cloud hosted’ has been over-hyped and simply means locating compute power in premises better resourced to run it as has long been the case, if perhaps not with the elegance now available.

Modern development techniques have enabled a web-based user interface to be overlaid on existing client/server applications, with HTML5 providing ‘responsiveness’ across multiple devices. While several vendors have not yet completed that journey, for those that have, the next big challenge is simplification of screens and processes to match designed-for-web apps, without sacrificing functionality or configurability.

Full browser-based capability is now the norm. The ‘cloud wash’ is over and there has been a huge shift toward web capability in user interfaces.

But a web overlay as an afterthought is quite distinct from a natively built web application. Indeed, from a user experience perspective, HTML5 running across a cloud-hosted application is often a retrograde step (to which I can attest from personal experience).

Market share is moving toward the pure-play vendors such as arch-rivals NetSuite (along with its cut-down younger sibling JCurve), MYOB Advanced (aka Acumatica in the US) and Financial Force. This is acting as a significant motivator for traditional vendors to re-architect their solutions around web-native code, user-centric and simplified design.

Open source solutions are also sniping at the heels with solutions appealing to the more technically literate among the buying community. Options such as Odoo and ERPNext are among the leaders, and have substantial developer communities around them. But, as with all such solutions, they come with a cautionary tale (or perhaps tail) that ongoing IT development skills are required to install and support such solutions.

This is acting as a significant motivator for traditional vendors to re-architect their solutions around web-native code, user-centric and simplified design.

Software – a service or a competitive advantage?
The arguments for and against designed-for-web software and a pure software-as-a-service model are too numerous to cover here, but the decision boils down to whether you believe your chosen vendor(s) will provide you with the best software to run your business.

Or, can you do things smarter, and gain competitive advantage, with solutions tailored to your exact requirements?

Certainly, removing the chores associated with server maintenance and software upgrades is a significant benefit for most businesses, but at what cost? Vanilla software, lowest common denominator product development, difficult customisation and complex integration across cloud providers all weigh in to the decision.

As a buyer, you need to understand exactly what you are getting when it comes to ‘Cloud ERP’.

Cloud ERP – a matter of definition

Refer to the Cloud ERP Guide for insights into the architecture on individual applications, but also seek out a demo for your own experience using the product.

Make sure you understand how it is being delivered to whatever screen happens to be in front of you.

Industrial design
Industry specialisation is the other trend driving ERP product strategy. Many vendors are providing pre-configured versions tailored specifically to industry requirements, while others are buying solutions to address a particular vertical, and then later integrating them into the wider product stack.

Our guide to ERP Solutions by Industry provides some insight into industry capability, but also review closely the vendor’s websites for pre-configures options by industry as these can accelerate your implementation timeframes.

Once the excitement of the deal and ensuing project wears off, this is what will really deliver the value to the power users in your business.

Regardless of the direction you choose, it always pays to understand the heritage of the solution you are buying. Where has the code base originated from? Where did the software ‘cut its teeth’? Through the layers of cloud and web-enablement, most solutions are running the same engine underneath, and once the excitement of the deal and ensuing project wears off, this is what will really deliver the value to the power users in your business. In other words, there is still validity in the argument that form follows function.

Download the complete ERP Buyer’s Guide

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The reference relates to the Nakatomi Plaza in classic Hollywood blockbuster Die Hard, where Bruce Willis’ character John McClane finds alternative ways to navigate the building’s architecture to achieve his mission.

“They don’t want to go there, but are forced there by security policies that prevent them doing a better job.”

US-based Scotsman Farmer cut his “decision support” teeth in the land of Microsoft, building SQL Server’s analytics tooling, and then sharpened them on Qlik’s product management, innovation and product design – all in the years before big data, cloud and data lakes were ‘things’. He also introduced iStart readers to the ‘uncanny valley’.

He cautioned attendees to “beware the illusion of control”.

Farmer harked back to a story of the ‘The Cappuccino File’ of which he learned when doing some consulting work for a stock broking firm. “The best brokers all wanted to work with high wealth individuals and so needed detail of who those people were and their portfolios. We discovered they had access to a mysterious .csv file that included every pertinent detail.”

Why Cappuccino? That was to remind them of the cost of thanking the sysadmin guy who had hacked the mainframe to get his hands on the data – a daily cup of his favourite brew.

Farmer noted that you’ve got to decide if you want security (“a better lock on the front door”) or privacy (“better curtains on the windows”).

Security, however, wasn’t the theme of his presentation. The door and curtains analogies were about emphasising the importance of talking in terms that people can understand when discussing the realm of data, cloud and analytics – topics that are on the agenda of most organisations in one form or another.

“There’s too much ‘cloudiness’ in how things are discussed around the cloud. There isn’t such a thing as a ‘cloud’ – it’s just too vague to be useful,” Farmer said.

He also drilled in to the notion that data preparation needs to precede data analysis – a knot that many a data project has failed to unravel.

In Farmer’s view, data analysis is preparation and vice versa – one leads to the other in a loop of self-discovery, resolution and incremental improvement.

Using visualisation tools on imperfect data is often seen as a business risk, but Farmer argued that allowing self-service facilitates easy visualisation of complex patterns or outliers that are otherwise very hard to define and address.

His message to data project teams is to “be more literate, be more literal and strive to be clear and specific when you are discussing these complex issues.” Fail to do that, and you could be forcing business users keen to leverage data analysis tools into their Nakatomi space.

Farmer’s co-presenter in the Q&A, Wherescape founder and president Michael Whitehead – never one to shy from a sales plug – had some advice of his own. “While we all struggle with the latest hyped terms from Gartner or others, they are useful. They help build a business case; your boss will probably think they need some of that, is more likely to sign off on spend, and they help build a definition around what you’re trying to achieve.”

The meet-up was organised and hosted by Wherescape’s BI & data services arm NOW Consulting, and Farmer’s trip down under was sponsored by Qlik.

The post Will they bend or break? Avoid contorting knowledge workers appeared first on iStart keeping business informed on technology.

But while cloud computing has become mainstream, customer experience and return on big-data-dollar spent have delivered mixed results. In essence, the underlying technology and the skills base of the people running it have struggled to keep up with business expectations.

Or, as Gartner put it upon release of its Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms: “The business intelligence and analytics platform market’s shift from IT-led reporting to modern business-led analytics is now mainstream. Data and analytics leaders face countless choices: from traditional BI vendors that have closed feature gaps and innovated, to disruptors continuing to execute.”

In the A/NZ region, projects have remained tech-heavy inside IT departments, and self-service aspirations have been elusive for business users. At the same time, massive growth in data volumes from telemetry systems installed across billions of devices and applications have weighed down those ambitious enough to try to include them.

While the carrot remains dangling enticingly in the future, the data cart is approaching a crossroads as serious computing horsepower and increasingly sophisticated solutions come to market.

So the attention on vendor movements and arrivals on Gartner’s quadrant are closely watched, as companies seek solutions to gain competitive advantage.

Among the new breed of vendors is a first-time entrant to the Magic Quadrant, Zoomdata. A former ‘cool vendor’, Zoomdata now features as a Gartner ‘visionary’ on the back of an architecture that dispenses with traditional data warehousing and data modelling, instead directly streaming micro queries across self-discovered data to an app on the user’s device of choice.

“To be recognised by Gartner, first as a cool vendor last year and now in the Magic Quadrant as a visionary, is a high honour indeed,” said Justin Langseth, founder and CEO in a statement from the San Mateo headquartered vendor. “The days of the monolithic Business Intelligence model are gone. Customers want end-user ease of use, embeddable in their own applications, with fast access to big and real-time data.”

To seasoned big data technologists the problems are recognised, but similar promises from vendors such as Zoomdata are viewed with scepticism. Indeed, Gartner analysts agree – rating the young vendor about as low as it goes on the ‘ability to execute’ scale. Runs on the board will be an important measure for the vendor if it is to improve this rating in 2018. This will, no doubt, be helped by a recent US$24m funding injection led by client-cum-investor Goldman Sachs, and recent announcements of expansion into the APAC and Japan region.

In response to sceptics, Zoomdata states that it is an open platform natively architected for both cloud and on-premise deployments, with a design that can deliver visual analysis of huge datasets in seconds. Its patented ‘data sharpening’ technology delivers “the industry’s fastest visual analytics for real-time streaming and historical data.” This is made possible through the use of micro-services using Apache Spark as a complementary high performance engine. The vendor says its ‘Fusion’ product enables users to perform analytics across disparate data sources in a single view – without the need to move or transform data.

Zoomdata (APJ) will work through offices in Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney and deliver projects through partners such as Cloudera, MapR and CBIG Consulting targeting verticals such as finance, government, manufacturing and telecommunications. Cameron Price is APAC managing partner at CBIG, one of the largest specialist big data analytics consultancies in the region. “We have already seen the value the product brings in client engagements.” Price participated alongside Zoomdata at this week’s Gartner Data & Analytics event in Sydney.

John Goode, MD of Zoomdata (APJ) noted, “Gartner estimates that the Asia Pacific business intelligence market will grow from US$2.5B in 2016 to more than US$4B in 2020.  That growth will help us expand the footprint of Zoomdata in this region.”

Readers are invited to download a complimentary copy of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms – compliments of Zoomdata (registration required).

Acknowledgement: The author was a guest of Zoomdata at the Gartner Sydney data and analytics event.

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