Tag: software

  • COVID as catalyst for digital transformation 

    COVID as catalyst for digital transformation 

    tweet describing how digital will become the core of businessesIt’s both hard and easy to believe that the sentiment “Digital will become the core” still attracts a lot of attention in 2020. It’s hard to believe: Isn’t that the pivot we have all been making for more than twenty years? But it’s easy to believe when we experience interactions with enterprise companies that are mired in literal paperwork and cumbersome processes that clearly require a digital rethink.

    COVID will be a catalyst for the companies who have been holding back fully integrating digital initiatives into core operations. Rapid shifts in consumer behavior and heightened expectations created by organizations who are digital leaders will put pressure on the laggards to advance. Three examples of the kinds of changes playing out today:

    • Distance or remote learning will dominate. Higher education is in the midst of a major transition to online learning: a little later than Clayton Christensen predicted, but with devastating effect. This shift translates into learning and credentialing for employees, where everything from new employee onboarding to advanced product training will take place online with in-person as the exception. Rather than forming separate divisions of online learning, learning software and expertise will be required everywhere from HR to Marketing Operations. There’s potentially huge upside here for companies to better identify and understand the verifiable skills in its employee base.
    • Anything that can be sold online, will be sold online. We’ve seen online viewing rooms for art sales, virtual house tours for residential real estate, and of course the mass migration of thousands of Americans to buying their groceries online. Many of these new consumer habits will stick, and require enterprises still siloing their digital experience teams and customer data to shift them to the core. In many cases, the traditional experience will also need a complete rethink — for the times you will go to a physical grocery store, what should the new product layout look like? In a time where supply chains are, for now, intermittently disrupted, how might digital be used to signal availability of goods?
    • Healthcare needs to deliver digital consistently. The term “telemedicine” has been around for decades, but until very recently it was a grudging exception to the in-person visit. Appointment scheduling and prescription refills have shifted online, but the digital patient experience is disjointed. At my own healthcare provider, for example, you can schedule visits with physicians you have seen through an app, but not new visits. Until very recently, many insurance companies refused to cover the video visits healthcare providers were actively promoting. These gaps in digital experience were felt by the consumer, and reflected the internal disconnect between different components of healthcare industry embracing digital at different speeds. Consumers will be reluctant to return to long telephone wait times and in-person visits where video would suffice, so real collaboration will be required to deliver digital in a heavily regulated industry. 

    Nothing about moving digital to the core is easy, particularly for enterprises with robust analog businesses slower to be disrupted. The COVID crisis shifts the equation dramatically:

    • Pressure from customers and consumers for digital-first experiences accelerates
    • Executive leadership / divisional silos reduce in the rush to adapt and serve the customer
    • Employees working from home drive rapid adoption of collaboration software (and disrupt long evaluation periods / cost:benefit analyses led by IT)
    • Tolerance for the kinds of quick experimentation that informs digital strategy is higher

    The never waste a crisis rule applies here: for the enterprise organizations still operating with digital as an adjunct, it’s time to align data, technology, and culture to move digital to the core.

  • Translating startup-speak for the corporate buyer

    Startups salivate at the prospect of entering the enterprise — and for good reason. The enterprise is rife with legacy systems and circuitous processes that frustrate employees and hinder results — and the startup has just the perfect product to fix the problem.

    Too often though, the pitch to the enterprise falls flat or a promising pilot gets sidelined. Sometimes there’s a clear obstacle, like a mismatch between product and problem to be solved, an inability to scale or the loss of an internal sponsor. But more often than one would expect, the startup’s value is simply getting lost in translation.

    Read the full article on TechCrunch.

  • Friday 5 — 9.18.2015

    Friday 5 — 9.18.2015

    design tools survey

    1. A survey of >4,000 designers revealed the most commonly used design tools, from brainstorming to wireframing to project management. As a big user of different project management platforms, I found it interesting to see the fragmentation of the market.
    2. In a similarly complicated arena, Growthverse is an interactive visualization of marketing technologies, a tool for marketers who have a need and want to browse solutions. A recent update makes the information easier to access, with direct links to categories like social content analytics or workflow collaboration.
    3. Imagine the meanest email you ever wrote, searchable on the internet. Security expert Bruce Schneier paints a sobering picture of our vulnerability to organizational doxing in an era of cloud computing.
    4. If you were hiding under a rock this week, you may have missed the Ahmed Mohamed, a 14 year old Muslim boy who was suspended for bringing a homemade clock to school in Texas. #IStandWithAhmed generated well over half a million tweets, serious invitations to the White House and to Facebook, along with the inevitable funny responses.
    5. 18F launched Federalist, a platform for quick creation of static government websites. Web platform solutions for website or mobile apps are notoriously hard to propagate in a world where people gravitate toward the bespoke. Federalist is an excellent example of combining open source software, canny feature tradeoffs, and excellent design to deliver a platform users will adopt.

    Don’t miss: HUBweek is a weeklong series of events celebrating the innovative work happening at the intersection of art, science, and technology in and around Greater Boston. Check out a masterclass in Fenway Parkflying robotics in Harvard Stadium, all the Harvard events, or the full listing. The week starts October 3: most events are free or low cost, and open to all.

    Weekend fun: Worried about our robotic drone overlords? Consider befriending some professional ice hockey players.

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.

     

  • Friday 5 — 6.12.15

    Friday 5 — 6.12.15

    What is code?

    1. Cancel all your meetings today and read: “What is code?
    2. Finished with item number 1? Then turn your attention to the Nieman Lab’s elegant explanation of Apple’s news initiatives announced this week at WWDC.
    3. Here’s why we should stop designing for millennials as if they were an entirely homogeneous generation, alien to the ones that preceded it. Instead, design for personas that represent attitudinal and behavioral traits, and then combine these with social, market, and emerging technology trends.
    4. Many recent changes affect how we use Twitter and are designed to entice newcomers, including abandoning the 140 character limit for direct messages and making conversations on the tweet age easier to follow. In an effort to cut down on harassment, Twitter enabled sharing of block lists.
    5. VR is here: Microsoft is releasing a real live consumer Oculus Rift headset with Xbox One controller. Gaming may be the first use case for virtual reality, but it’s certain that broader, transformative applications from health/wellness to education will soon follow.

    Weekend fun: We send about 42 texts a day, and receive what feels like a million, some of which are inevitably personal and awkward. Now there’s a way to crowdsource suggestions how to respond.

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.

     

  • Friday 5 — 9.20.2013

    Friday 5 — 9.20.2013

    1. Upworthy, a curated service providing a “steady stream of important and irresistibly shareable stuff” received another $8M. Here’s the post.
    2. Irresistible stuff of a more tangible nature remains wildly popular at Pinterest, which now claims 70M users. Unsurprisingly, Pinterest announced ads are coming in the form of promoted pins.
    3. Measurement is beginning to catch up with the way we consume media today — which is less about traditional TV time than mobile screen time. As of September 2014, Nielsen will include TV viewing on a smartphone or tablet to capture new viewing behaviors.
    4. Are we suffering from the Dribbblisation of design? Meaning, are we too focused on the superficial look and not enough on the ugly work of designing systems for the job to be done?
    5. So long, skeuomorphism: iOS 7 came out this week, ushering in an era of flat design. The update improves multitasking, access to settings, and even lets Siri be a guy. Not every iOS app is updated yet, but here’s a rundown of some apps that made the most of the relaunch.

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Please let me know what I’ve missed in the comments below.