Sap And Enterprise Trends Podcasts From Jon Reed (@jonerp) Of Diginomica.com

Brian Sommer makes his triumphant return to Enterprise hits and misses radio, as we count down overhyped HR tech buzzwords and field audience questions on HR projects and the future of work. Note: you can see the video version of this at youtube.com/jonathanwreed.

Let's hear Nicole's take on successful CX projects - and the buzzwords she hates. In this edition of Enterprise Hits and Misses radio, Jon also unveils a new format he'll use frequently - the whiffs and picks countdown. Plenty of audience questions factor into this one. Note: you can see the video version of this at youtube.com/jonathanwreed

Let's do a Friday free-for-all on skills development, especially the impact of AI and automation. Jon fields all your questions in the hot seat and share highlights of his prior thinking and research.

In Jon's video and podcast reboot, he talks to the man partially responsible. Brent Leary is a trailblazer in enterprise video and a driving force behind CRM Playaz. How does he pull off large scale events? Interactive chats? Let's chat him up..

In this thirty-minute podcast, Jon and Brian triumph over their last podcast's sound quality and compare notes on the new rules of enterprise software. Brian warns ERP vendors of the pitfalls of squeezing revenue with hardball tactics. Jon shares enterprise weaknesses on integration that could come back to haunt cloud-happy vendors. The guys grill vendors on their subpar virtual events, but also share success stories from vendors that are delivering for customers. 

During this 15 minute podcast, Jon Reed is rejoined by podcast compadre Brian Sommer to hash out early IT spending data and first reactions to the economic impact of COVID-19. The guys talk about comparisons with past recessions, and how CFOS and CIOs are likely to respond. Fresh IT spending data from TrustRadius is considered, along with industry impacts. Note - given that the recording quality of this Zoom session was not ideal, we've cut kept this podcast to 15 minutes, but may release another installment in the talk later. 

The vexing problem of IoT security is slowing IoT adoption and creating waves of sensational headlines, from insecure smart homes to industrial IoT concerns. Mrinal Wadhwa and his team at Ockam has an ambitious plan to address this, but how? Via open source for one. As a follow up to last year's dignomica podcast with Ockam and Den Howlett, this new podcast shares how Wadhwa's thinking has evolved. In a nutshell: "Decoupling the secure channel protocol from the transport layer protocols removes complexity, minimizes the attack surface and can enable us to build end-to-end secure and private systems." This in-depth talk breaks that concept down in real-world terms. Wadhwa explains why this is a potential IoT security breakthrough. The guys also revisit their blockchain debates, and how Wadhwa sees blockchain fitting into IoT security going forward. An invitation for others to get involved with Ockam's open source pursuits at https://github.com/ockam-network is also included. 

Continuing with their NRF 2020 on-site retail review, Jake Knowles of BJSS and Jon Reed of diginomica.com share their show highs and lows. They also talk about some retail upstarts to watch - and how some of the less glamorous innovations in logistical areas like last-mile delivery could prove crucial as retailers try to differentiate against Amazon. Jon talks about his debate with the CEO of Happy or Not, and Knowles weighs in on the missing link in Retail CX - the happy and empowered store employee. Knowles also brings up the impact of sustainability and diversity - another standout from this year's show.

Live from NRF 2020, Jake Knowles of BJSS makes his debut on Jon's diginomica podcast with part one of their review of NRF's "Big Show." The guys hit on the big questions of the show, including retailers' determination make their storefronts and competitive edge again. They react to some key retail stats from Salesforce, Adobe and others on the surge of mobile commerce and BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store). Knowles shares the high points from his moderated panel with four global retailers on harnessing retail innovation. Knowles also talks about the retail pain points he hears about from BJSS clients - and what customers are doing to modernize their retail strategy.   

After their prior podcast from Controlling 2019 on Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Jon and Kent Bettisworth move into his views on revenue recognition. How much progress have SAP/ERP customers made? What are the obstacles still ahead? They also discuss the latest regulatory timelines, and how SAP customers are approaching RAR (SAP's revenue recognition functionality). The guys hash out what Kent learned on the ground at this year's show. Before wrapping, they also discuss the degree of S/4HANA adoption at the conference, and what SAP customers are weighing when it comes to S/4HANA upgrades. 

Picking up after their podcast on the future of identity, Jon gets into blockchain with noted enterprise blockchain critic Steve Wilson. Live from Constellation Connected Enterprise 2019, Jon and Steve talk about the peak of blockchain hype in 2016, and how his views have evolved since his notorious 2016 post, Blockchain: almost everything you read is wrong. The guys cover the issues with enterprise blockchains, from industry use cases to immutability to the viability of consensus. Jon also pulls Steve into settling a diginomica reader controversy over his views. Finally, Steve explains why he is skeptical about blockchain for IoT security. He also shares the blockchain use cases he *does* like.

After several years of misadventures, Jon finally gets Tricia Wang of Sudden Compass in the podcast hot seat at Constellation Connected Enterprise 2019. After hitting on show highlights, the two dive into Wang's outspoken views on the failure of big data, the profound limitations of quantifiable data, and why an ethnographic pursuit of data is the missing link. Wang and Reed turns their attention to the overhyped CX market, hitting on the problematic gap between being "data-driven" and insight driven. More data is actually leading to less insight. That's Wang's core point - customer data can drive business growth, but only if you know how to use it. Wang shares project experiences and business model examples to illustrate how companies are getting stuck. As for getting unstuck, Wang reveals some of the Sudden Compass methodology for getting customers on a better approach to analytics - a method that is about to be open sourced. Their partnership with Google, and Wang's obsession with avaiation and automation,

In the first of his two part podcast series with Constellation's Steve Wilson, Jon asks Steve to explain the thinking behind his provocative blog post, Identity is dead. That leads into a discussion of the problem of regulating data brokers, and the ongoing issue with identity management in the enterprise. Steve critiques new approaches, including facial recognition. This discussion sets up a soon-to-be-released part two, on Steve's skeptical take on enterprise blockchains. At Steve says, "We need to keep plugging away at this because there's, they're brokering our data every single day now. So we need to figure out solutions."

Live from Controlling 2019, Jon talks with Kent Bettisworth, expert SAP consultant, about the research he's done into the relevance of robotic process automation (RPA) for auditors. Kent explains the RPA use cases that are emerging, but also the risk and downsides of RPA, and the problem auditors have with "black boxes." This topic is relevant to RPA or AI/ML projects who must also get past the risk/compliance/security threshold of the auditing team. Kent grounded his research in SAP's approach to RPA via Leonardo, but this conversation extends beyond the SAP domain. 

After her customer keynote at SAP Controlling 2019, Barb Rojas of the Discovery Channel gives listeners her view on IT - business alignment in the cloud era. How do you balance business enthusiasm for cloud with proper governance? How do you drive/support business change in an SAP environment? Jon also asks Barb about how her Discovery Communications teams approaches robotic process automation, as well as Tier 2 ERP during Discovery's global expansions. They also take analytics challenges as data becomes central to Discovery's business model shifts. Finally, during this Ada Lovelace women in tech day taping, Barb shares a few reflections on her own approach to leadership.

In part two of their talk on the dilemmas of the modern enterprise buyer, Jon Reed and Hank Barnes of Gartner dive right into Barnes' latest research on reaching enterprise buyers, and the strengths and flaws of reaching buyers with content. Other surprising Gartner data is discussed, including the surprising role of vendor responsiveness and why that is overlooked. The guys also hit on peer reviews and the problem of attempting to game buyers with positive reviews. The conversation is framed with this question: how we can serve buyers better, and reduce the amount of flawed and troubled projects? The final section includes advice for customers on navigating buying complexity.  This podcast references recent blog posts by Hank Barnes.

In part one of his first-ever podcast with Hank Barnes of Gartner, Reed and Barnes revisit their multi-year dialogue on the dilemmas of the modern enterprise buyer. Barnes has fresh research on modern buyers, including unsettling updates on project failures and buyer complacency. He also has fresh buzzwords for Jon to call out and break down, including "continuous buying" and "continuous customer behaviors." The guys also debate just how informed the modern buyer is, with Barnes landing on the side that "informed buyer" is aspirational at best. They both agree the vendors lack control - but still need to engage, but on new terms driven by customer needs. This podcast references recent blog posts by Hank Barnes.

During Jon's latest trip to Boston, he crashed the new offices of UpperEdge, an independent enterprise and IT advisory firm with strong views on the potent topics of digital transformation and getting value of out cloud. During this unscripted, 45 minute dialogue, Jon talks with UpperEdge's John Belden and Adam Mansfield about the problem of digital transformation in the real world. The guys shift into cloud issues, and why customers are wary that SaaS can be just another form of lock-in, with the same licensing headaches. The conversation wraps with a freewheeling review of the latest cloud news, from Salesforce acquiring Tableau to Google Cloud's ups and downs in its enterprise push. The Bruins game seven loss the night before is almost totally avoided, but not quite.

As PowerPlex 2019 - the Plex Manufacturing Cloud user conference - kicks off, Jon Reed and Brian Sommer claim a quiet spot for an in-depth talk on why he finally wrote a book - Digital with Impact. After pressing Brian on why he entered the overhyped book area of digital transformation, Jon and Brian turn their attention to the exercises in the book. What has Brian learned by using these these exercises on project sites? How can you use Digital with Impact as a workbook to spur the cultural change needed to make digital stick? Brian also shares his recent chat with Geoffrey Moore as they contrasted their views on digital change. The guys also get into how to balance the challenge of a long term transformation with the quicker wins needed to ensure buy-in. One key theme? Overcoming the quicksand of technical debt. Note: Den Howlett has also authored a book review of digital impact on diginomica.com.   

Taping outside this year with a fountain percolating behind them, Jon Reed of diginomica talks with Dick Hirsch about why Sapphire Now felt different this year. Hirsch talks about SAP's changing views on the cloud and their relationship with hyperscalers like AWS, Google Cloud and Azure. The guys hit on some big themes of a show with little hard news but many big storylines, from the impact of Qualtrics to why integration and master data are becoming huge topics for SAP its user groups. Issues from S/4HANA to indirect access and licensing news to the activist investor backdrop are discussed.