Podcasts about forrester wave

What happens when accessibility transcends from a legal obligation to a strategic business advantage? That's exactly what Gina Bhawalkar, Principal Analyst for Digital Accessibility at Forrester Research, illuminates in our fascinating conversation about the evolving digital accessibility landscape.Gina brings two decades of experience to the table, having started her journey testing products with people with disabilities before moving into leadership roles where she championed accessibility within major organizations. Now at Forrester, she researches how companies effectively scale accessibility practices and evaluates the leading accessibility platforms through the influential Forrester Wave methodology.Our discussion reveals a critical disconnect that exists in many organizations today - while 60% claim executive commitment to accessibility, fewer than half implement proven best practices like including people with disabilities in research or making accessibility a formal project requirement. This gap between intention and action represents both a challenge and an opportunity.The conversation takes a particularly illuminating turn when Gina outlines the four categories of business benefits beyond compliance: increasing revenue, reducing costs, enhancing organizational resilience, and building trust. From competitive advantages in procurement to designing for changing demographics, these multidimensional benefits offer a compelling case for accessibility that goes far beyond legal requirements.We also explore how different regions approach accessibility - from the compliance-driven motivation in the US to the European focus on privacy connections and Australia's integration with customer experience initiatives. The growing influence of the European Accessibility Act is creating a global ripple effect that will impact procurement decisions worldwide.For anyone leading digital initiatives or interested in creating better products for everyone, this episode offers invaluable insights into how accessibility can become a catalyst for innovation rather than just another compliance checkbox. Listen now to discover how the "curb cut effect" means that designing for accessibility ultimately creates better experiences for all users.Support the showFollow axschat on social media.Bluesky:Antonio https://bsky.app/profile/akwyz.com Debra https://bsky.app/profile/debraruh.bsky.social Neil https://bsky.app/profile/neilmilliken.bsky.social axschat https://bsky.app/profile/axschat.bsky.social LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniovieirasantos/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/axschat/Vimeohttps://vimeo.com/akwyzhttps://twitter.com/axschathttps://twitter.com/AkwyZhttps://twitter.com/neilmillikenhttps://twitter.com/debraruh

Trevor Dearing and Joe Lynch discuss zero trust in action: Illumio's approach to ramsonware defense. Trevor is the Director of Critical Infrastructure Solutions at Illumio, the most comprehensive Zero Trust solution for ransomware and breach containment, protects organizations from cyber disasters and enables operational resilience without complexity. About Trevor Dearing  Trevor Dearing has been at the forefront of new technologies for nearly 40 years. From the first PCs through the development of multi-protocol to SNA gateways, initiating the deployment of resilient token ring in DC networks and some of the earliest use of firewalls. Working for companies like Bay Networks, Juniper and Palo Alto Networks he has led the evangelisation of new technology. Now at Illumio he is working on the simplification of segmentation in Zero Trust and highly regulated environments. About Illumio Illumio, the most comprehensive Zero Trust solution for ransomware and breach containment, protects organizations from cyber disasters and enables operational resilience without complexity. By visualizing traffic flows and automatically setting segmentation policies, the Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation Platform reduces unnecessary lateral movement across the multi-cloud and hybrid infrastructure, protecting critical resources and preventing the spread of cyberattacks. Key Takeaways: Zero Trust in Action: Illumio's Approach to Ramsonware Defense Illumio specializes in Zero Trust Segmentation, focusing on breach containment and preventing the spread of ransomware across hybrid attack surfaces. The company's platform provides real-time visibility into all communications between workloads and devices, offering granular control to segment and isolate critical assets. Illumio's solutions are designed to protect cloud applications, workloads, and on-premises environments, ensuring security across both cloud and data center infrastructures. Its products, such as Illumio Core and Illumio CloudSecure, support various industries, including banking, government, healthcare, and manufacturing. The company is recognized as a leader in microsegmentation, with a strong reputation for improving security and operational efficiency. Illumio has been named a leader in the Forrester Wave for Microsegmentation Solutions, Q3 2024. The platform is highly scalable, helping organizations reduce risk, enhance resilience, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. Learn More About Zero Trust in Action: Illumio's Approach to Ramsonware Defense Trevor Dearing | LinkedIn Illumio | LinkedIn Illumio The Global Cost of Ransomware Study Why Illumio Page Is Smart Manufacturing Leaving Your Operations Vulnerable? Utilities Attacks Are Becoming More Disruptive: What Operators Can Do 9 Reasons Why Manufacturers Should Implement Zero Trust Segmentation Critical Infrastructure: Stop Focusing on Preventing Breaches From Silos to Synergy: How Zero Trust Bridges the IT/OT Security Gap The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube  

In this episode of Leaders in Tech, host David Mansilla interviews Richard Billington, CTO of Netcall, to explore the cutting-edge advancements in customer engagement and intelligent automation. Richard delves into how Netcall's innovative platforms empower businesses to meet the modern demands of digital transformation while creating a seamless experience for customers and employees alike. From his early days in web development to becoming a technology leader, Richard shares valuable insights on leadership, innovation, and the evolution of the tech landscape.Here's more about Richard Billington:“I thrive on working with new technologies, many self-taught, and have proven my ability to define strategy, manage significant programs and lead teams. Throughout my career I have focused on web development and have over 20 years' experience in this speciality.If you're a c-suite looking for technology to improve customer experience, fast, Liberty is where it all comes together. An all-in-one cx platform that includes all the low-code and contact centre solutions you need to make huge, transformational changes, fast.Enter Liberty Create. A solution that has revolutionised the way we work, and our customers. I'm proud to have been involved in its development from the start. It's a new breed of “low-code” tech that's quick to learn, easy to use and requires less IT. You can configure and deploy new applications in days rather than months, without coding. And while we designed Create for business users, we didn't skimp on tools for career developers. So there's something for everyone across the business.Don't just take my word for it. I've worked with customers to successfully deliver many low-code and digital transformation projects. Companies like Vodafone, Nationwide Building Society, Thomas Cook, Department for Education, ITV, Network Rail and many others. And more recently we were named a “most significant platform in the Forrester Wave™ report: Low-Code Development Platforms for AD&D Pros, Q1 2019.A self-confessed sports/festival and romcom nut, as CTO for Netcall I'm responsible for ensuring our solutions maintain their recognised industry-leading positions. I'm always interested to hear from other like-minded CTOs to share experiences that drive transformation, so get in touch. “Company description: Our quick app development, smart automation, and user-friendly tools are a hit with business leaders and front-line teams. Seamlessly connect systems, break down data barriers, and make processes work better and faster – all on your own timeline.

This week on the Revenue Insights Podcast, Guy Rubin, founder and CEO of Ebsta, speaks with Joe McNeill, Chief Revenue Officer at Influ2. In this episode, Guy and Joe explore the shift towards person-based advertising, the importance of genuine connections with decision-makers, and the evolving landscape of B2B sales cycles. They also discuss the need for a collaborative culture and the significance of long-term customer relationships over short-term gains. Joe McNeill is the Chief Revenue Officer at Influ2, a person-based advertising platform. Influ2 was named as a challenger in the B2B Advertising Solutions category of the Forrester Wave. Capgemini, Chargebee, Hexaware, and hundreds of other enterprise and mid-market accounts use Influ2 to generate and close the pipeline. Joe is also the Executive Member at Pavilion (2019 - Present).

In this episode, host Raghu Nandakumara sits down with Thomas Mueller-Lynch, Global Director Digital Identities at Siemens to explore Siemens' ambitious zero trust program. They delve into the challenges of implementation and the strategic benefits of zero trust in bolstering product security and streamlining IT architecture. Thomas highlights the essential role of identity management and the importance of collaboration between IT, cybersecurity, and business units in advancing zero trust effectively.--------"You cannot run a Zero Trust program exclusively out of IT. You cannot run it exclusively out of cybersecurity. And also if the business, or at least our organization, which is quite big and lots of different business units, if everybody of these business units starts by their own something, it will also not work. It will only work as teamwork all together. So IT typically brings in the services and the service operational model. Cybersecurity brings in the rules and partly also kind of architecture, as well as IT by the way, and business obviously owns all of these assets. So if you don't have them on the same table, at the same table it won't work at all."--------Time Stamps *(03:56) Thomas' journey at Siemens*(08:59) Challenges in Zero Trust implementation*(16:08) Business benefits of Zero Trust*(27:32) Balancing big vision with tactical steps*(34:06) Identity's role in Zero Trust*(43:10) Collaborating across IT, security, and business for zero trust success*(44:59) How Zero Trust drives competitive advantage --------SponsorAssume breach, minimize impact, increase resilience ROI, and save millions in downtime costs — with Illumio, the Zero Trust Segmentation company. Learn more at illumio.com.--------LinksConnect with Thomas on LinkedInDownload your copy of The Forrester Wave for Microsegmentation Solutions: Illumio is a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Microsegmentation Solutions, Q3 2024.  

In Episode #136 widmen sich Daniel Höhnke und Tim Schestag der Forrester Wave zum Thema E-Mail Marketing Service Provider. Darin wurde Bloomreach als einer von nur 2 Leadern ausgezeichnet und wir haben uns die Analyse etwas genauer angesehen und den Vergleich zu den bekannten Mitbewerbern von Salesforce, Adobe und vor allem Emarsys gemacht. Auf Basis der Forrester Bewertungskriterien gibt es dann auch keine 2 Meinungen, warum Bloomreach ein Leader ist und z.B. Emarsys gerade so ein Contender. Hört unbedingt rein, wenn ihr mehr erfahren wollt und wenn ihr ganz tief eintauchen wollt, dann schaut Euch die Analyse kostenlos direkt selbst an: https://visit.bloomreach.com/forrester-email-wave-q3-2024 In den News der Woche: - Esprit schließt aufgrund der Insolvenz alle stationären Geschäfte in Deutschland bis Ende des Jahres - Zalando intensiviert seine Zusammenarbeit mit OpenAI und will durch Tech Standort in China Europa erobern - TikTik Shop in UK feiert ersten 2 Mio Dollar Umsatz Stream - Die Q2 2024 Earnings Calls von Klaviyo und Shopify Zudem hat Tim noch einen echt guten Consulting Tipp der Woche auf Lager. Unbedingt reinhören und uns jetzt auch auf YouTube folgen! Daniel: www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-hoehnke/ Tim: www.linkedin.com/in/tim-schestag/

Lots of news an updates after being a few weeks since last episode. Fear not however, they are all linked below. Plenty of really detailed and helpful articles from Microsoft of late, especially around security. All of which I highly recommend you spend time working through and implementing the recommendations. Also plenty of new features and products to cover so dive in and take a look. Resources @directorcia Join my shared channel CIAOPS merch store Become a CIAOPS Patron CIAOPS Blog CIAOPS Brief CIAOPSLabs Support CIAOPS Granular RBAC permissions for endpoint security workloads  How to break the token theft cyber-attack chain Microsoft Incident Response lessons on preventing cloud identity compromise How Copilot for Microsoft 365 Works From pixels to presence: new features coming to Microsoft Mesh How to unlock new experiences on your Copilot+ PC Introduction to Cross-Tenant Mailbox Migrations Copilot is now available in classic Outlook for Windows Microsoft Incident Response tips for managing a mass password reset Set default organization version limits for new document libraries and OneDrive accounts (Preview) The guide to Microsoft Intune resources Email Protection Basics in Microsoft 365: Bulk Email Data security in Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 Moving from AI experimentation to business breakthrough Update on the Recall preview feature for Copilot+ PCs Secure your business: Four ways Microsoft 365 for Business can help The new Microsoft Planner is here! Streamline the planning, management, and execution of work Announcing new Windows Autopilot onboarding experience for government and commercial customers AI jailbreaks: What they are and how they can be mitigated How Russia is trying to disrupt the 2024 Paris Olympic Games Microsoft is again named the overall leader in the Forrester Wave for XDR  What's New in Copilot | May 2024 Exploring Copilot for Security to Automate Incident Triage Demystifying Microsoft Entra ID, Tenants and Azure Subscriptions Moonstone Sleet emerges as new North Korean threat actor with new bag of tricks Automatic attack disruption in Microsoft Defender XDR Introducing Team Copilot Missing devices in Windows Update for Business reports?

Over the years, BRAVE COMMERCE hosts Rachel Tipograph and Sarah Hofstetter have made it a point to focus on the experiences and stories of their guests, and not themselves. As a result, they have never used this platform to highlight the work they do in their day-to-day roles: Rachel as the Founder and CEO of MikMak and Sarah as the President of Profitero. This episode, recorded on stage at the recent BRAVE COMMERCE Live event in NYC, features the professional wisdom these two industry leaders bring to their work every day. Rachel launched MikMak with the strong belief that the boom in D2C did not signal the end of retail, but instead the need for enterprise brands to connect more directly with their consumers. As many challenger brands have moved into stores, their legacy competitors feel an even greater need to show up where their customers are spending time, and convert them effectively. MikMak creates shoppable experiences that put brands in the driver's seat with consumers. In turn, MikMak provides the data needed for these brands to make smarter marketing decisions. Additionally, this data strengthens brands positioning with the 7,000+ retailers in MikMak's network. After a year that included two major acquisitions and several new partnerships, MikMak is better positioned than ever to empower the world's brands to grow commerce-first, and to succeed in the emerging era of intelligent commerce. Sarah's company, Profitero, is the leading global commerce acceleration company offering a flexible suite of intelligence-driven solutions so that brands can grow profitably. Their integrated digital shelf analytics, shelf-intelligent activation and advisory services empower brands to optimize product availability, discoverability, and maximize conversions across 1,200+ retailers in 70 countries. With Sarah at the helm, Profitero has been recognized as the #1 Digital Shelf Provider by DCG, deemed a customer favorite on G2, and identified as an integral part of Publicis Groupe's recognition as a commerce leader in the Forrester Wave™. After [finally] introducing their companies, Rachel and Sarah shift the discussion to the trends they are seeing in commerce and in the market including: ● The consumer is more digitally connected than ever before – 8 in 10 consumers say retail purchases are influenced by digital touchpoints (Profitero)● 66% of traffic (as measured by MikMak) comes from Social, and the majority of that is from Meta● Amazon is losing against Walmart when it comes to grocery, 50% decline in Amazon grocery traffic in the past 90 days (MikMak)● There is a clear trend of shrinking basket size (MikMak), but profitability remains a priority with brands reporting a 116% increase in a dedicated focus on pricing and promotions (Profitero) The market is different. To succeed in the era of intelligent commerce requires brands to beat the market where it is today. You've got the information and collaborative partnerships will help you understand what to do with it. Stay tuned for future episodes from BRAVE COMMERCE Live featuring the superstars of commerce. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 Eric Williamson is the Chief Marketing Officer at CallMiner. As CallMiner's Chief Marketing Officer, Eric oversees all global marketing functions from brand and events to demand generation. Eric's marketing team works very closely with channel and sales to drive pipeline and CallMiner's explosive growth. Eric has over 20 years of experience in both technology and consumer products marketing from both the vendor and agency side.  Before joining CallMiner, Eric was VP Brand & Digital Marketing at Acquia - an open DXP platform built around Drupal - where he led brand, creative services, webops, editorial, and demand generation. Prior to Acquia, Eric was on the agency side of marketing working as SVP Digital & Social Media at MullenLowe, and before that as VP Digital Strategy at The Martin Agency.  During his career, Eric has worked with a variety of B2C and B2B brands including Google, Microsoft, Intel, GEICO, Walmart, P&G, Pizza Hut, Acura, Royal Caribbean, and Hyatt. He earned his undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from The University of Texas at Dallas.    Questions ·      Could you share in your own, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today? ·      Now, could you share with our listeners what is CallMiner and what exactly do you do? ·      The CallMiner CX Landscape Report, could you share with our listeners, I would say maybe three to five of the top themes or insights that we were able to garner from that data and that report? ·      What are your views as it relates to how leaders are actually utilising the CX data? Are they supporting and using it to make data driven decisions? Or is it just one of those reports that's generated and is there as a KPI but you're not really doing anything with the information. ·      Now, could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? ·      Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but to this day, it still has had a great impact on you. ·      Now, could you also share with our listeners, Eric, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. ·      Where can listeners find you online? ·      Now, Eric, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or you got off track, this quote kind of helps to get you back on track.   Highlights Eric's Journey Me: Now, before we jump into the conversation, I always like to give our guests an opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. So, could you share in your own words, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today?   Eric shared that Yanique did a pretty good job of covering his bio and in her intro, so thank you for that. So, he started his career out as essentially a BDR or an SDR is what they're called, typically, at least in SaaS, which he thinks is one of the best first jobs you can have, especially if you have aspirations of doing something in either sales or marketing. So, you talk to a tonne of CMOs, who that was their first job as well, so that's where it started.  He spent a lot of time working in digital advertising and then ultimately integrated big agency advertising for a lot of big brands and then flipped over to the client side and worked at a tech company called Acquia, which was covered just briefly in that intro. It's an open DXP player, built on top of Drupal, which is an open source project. And essentially, think of it is an open source competitor to something like Adobe Experience Manager. So, spent three or four years at Acquia.  And after that was introduced to the CEO at CallMiner, and had a lot of great discussions and he has been at CallMiner as their Chief Marketing Officer since 2020. And they've had a really nice run so far, they've gone from about 40 million ARR to a little over 80. And they're still seeing some nice growth despite maybe some of like macroeconomic headwinds.   What is CallMiner? Eric shared that CallMiner, they are the leader in conversation intelligence, specifically focused in more on customer service. So, if you think of any large company that has one or more large customer service agents, contact centres. So, they'll utilize their platform to ingest, so record and analyze every single customer interaction, whether that be a phone call to a customer service agent, texts to and from an agent, chats with an agent, survey data, all of that gets analyzed, and it's able to then turn around in real time and provide that customer service agent with guidance on to how to be able to deliver a better customer experience, guidance on how to answer the questions or access resources better. And then ultimately, if you're able to mind through millions of customer interactions, there's extremely valuable insights that can be discovered. And so, through machine learning in their artificial intelligence, their platform delivers that which is the larger value proposition.   The CallMiner CX Lanscape Report and the Insigts Garner From That Data Me: Alright, thank you for sharing that information on CallMiner. In leading up to the interview with you, Eric, I was shared a copy of the report, The CallMiner CX Landscape Report, and I'm sure you're familiar with it right as the Chief. So, could you share with our listeners, I would say maybe three to five of the top themes or insights that we were able to garner from that data and that report?   Eric stated that first and foremost, the CX Landscape Report that Yanique's referencing, it's an annual report that they publish so, it's original research for them. So, they do a survey of 700 plus CX and contact centre leaders across the globe and then what they'll try to do is keep a lot of those questions the same year over year as new trends and topics tend to emerge, they'll introduce a few new questions, but that way they're able to ultimately keep a pulse on what is important, and what sort of trends they're seeing with CX and contact centre leaders across the globe.  In this particular one, so in the one that they published in late 2023, obviously, and this is not going to shock anyone but one of the biggest topics that was not new but he would say the focus on it was extremely heightened, is around artificial intelligence, you'd have to be living under a rock to not notice just the media firestorm around artificial intelligence, in particular generative AI in 2023 and even today.  A lot of the typical data that they'll look at in that report, and the findings have to do with, like he said, trends that contact centre professionals and CX professionals are seeing within their own organizations. But he would highlight a few specific findings around artificial intelligence since that seemed to be the dominant theme. What's interesting is couple of themes would be that nearly this is not going to shock anybody, but nearly all of them are looking to implement some aspect of artificial intelligence in the next 12 to 18 months. The interesting sub stat to that is of those, over half aren't really sure what they're supposed to do basically, they know they need it, whether they were told this or whether they inherently think they need artificial intelligence in some way. So, they're investigating it, but they are a little bit lost in terms of where exactly to apply it. So, that was one of the first overarching thematics is everybody wants it, but they're not sure what to do with it.  The next is, now that we've moved a little bit beyond, maybe like the hype cycle of all of this, where he thinks everybody is rushing to go do something, and you've got a little bit of fear of missing out. Now they've started moving into the stage where companies are actually starting to try and implement some of these things. And what they've moved into now is sort of the reality stage, which is they're starting to realize that there's some risk inherently with this, largely around compliance, around the protection of their brand. Because sometimes these generative AI models can have hallucinations, etc. So, he thinks they're getting into the reality stage of actually trying to implement it and realizing that you have to take a much more responsible approach to how we think about this, and that there is no AI silver bullet out there that's going to solve all of your CX problems.  The last one, and the underlying aspect of this is actually something that they have heard, even before they started digging deeper into AI trends for CX leaders, and that has to do with how CX is positioned among the entire company/organization. So, in many cases, CX is disconnected from the contact centre, which is never good. Or you've got CX that is its own central thing, your meeting, you've got CXO, you've got a team. And then in other cases, CX is sort of sprinkled in multiple departments. And so what this kind of leads to is a bit of a disconnect, in terms of how you can roll out properly something as expansive as artificial intelligence within a piece of software across all these different pieces that are somewhat disconnected within the organization.  The other thing it leads to is let's say you've got a contact centre, and you've got all this amazing data, because of the disconnections here, some of that incredible data coming out of all these customer interactions is never actually making it further than the contact centre because of those disconnects. So, the last theme has to do with how companies typically will measure CX or a voice of the customer programme. He thinks as everybody who might be listening to this podcast know CX when it all comes down to it is largely has grown up and is still inherently based on surveys. So, whether it be an NPS or CSAT survey, but these are solicited surveys, solicited answers from a survey which sometimes can be very polarizing.  The big opportunity and where he think the industry is going is to combine that survey data with unsolicited data. And so this would be the data that comes out of contact centres and customer service centres, actual conversations that have a motion that we can measure versus solicited questions and answers. So, he thinks the combination of those two is where CX in general is going. And what you'll find is companies that are a little bit more mature and have a better org structure are already tapping into some of that data out of their contact centre.   Me: Wow, that's amazing. I think that's a great idea to merge the data that is collected from people who are actually talking to customers on a daily basis. I mean, the reality is, in a contact centre, customers only call for two reasons, right, to make a complaint or to make a request, there is no other reason why they're calling.   Eric agreed, that's correct. So again, you think of like, put it in the consumer perspective, other than the major influencers, when you go put something on a review about a hotel you stayed at or about some restaurant you went to on Yelp, largely it's because it was either an amazing experience that you just can't help yourself, or it was such a bad experience that you just can't help yourself. So, it becomes polarizing, which is why using surveys only is flawed to truly measure CX.   How Leaders Utilize CX Data Me: Now, what do you think leaderships' role is? Being in the industry and also being in marketing with a lot of exposure working with different organizations, what are your views as it relates to how leaders are actually utilizing the CX data? Are they supporting and using it to make data driven decisions? Or is it just one of those reports that's generated and is there as a KPI but you're not really doing anything with the information.   Eric stated that if you look at their CX landscape report or talk to most large companies, for the most part, they're using CSAT score which is survey based, or an NPS score as kind of a one metric, if you got all the way up to the CEO level that they're looking at on a regular basis to measure sort of the barometer of where their customer experience offering is at this point.  He thinks to the question as a whatever a marketing leader in his case, one of the main things that they're responsible for is helping to better align the organization to where the right data is making its way up, helping to make sure that data is organized in a way that a CEO or a Chief Product Officer, which is another beneficiary of a lot of this unstructured data and the insights from it, or even in many cases, the CMO for him isn't able to get the insights, the root cause of understanding what some of these issues might be that they're trying to solve for.  So, he thinks aligning the organzsation so that the data can reach the right people, and then making sure that data is packaged up in the right way to where it is executive friendly in some of the things that a leader should be thinking about and trying to make this better.    Me: And I can imagine also not just spitting out scores in terms of X percent of this type of customer feels this way, but linking it to tangible things, especially for leaders who think in dollars and cents, if we have a decline in this particular area over x period of time, what will this mean for our bottom line? What does it mean for future initiatives and innovation that we may need to implement? So, I would imagine that would be the kind of mindset they'd have to have.   Eric agreed, absolutely, excellent point. And even if as a first step you're continuing to just use NPS and CSAT, you should have an understanding to your point, by looking at all of your forecasting and previous years financials, you should be able to point to an increase in one point is going to result in this much the bottom line. So, he definitely agree with that point.   App, Website or Tool that Eric Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about an online resource that he can't live without in his business, Eric shared that sadly, probably the calculator on his phone just because he's constantly needing to tally up the percentages in different stats as he's doing some of his own reporting at an executive level, he must open that thing up several times a day.  From a website standpoint, they utilize the analyst reports quite a bit. So Forrester, who is one of the top tier analysts and the one who issued out the Forrester Wave that they're a leader in, so, he utilize them quite a bit from a research standpoint so that they can get a better understanding of where they predict the industry is going. So, he definitely tap into Forrester and Gartner quite a bit for that.  And then from a marketing standpoint, and Demand Gen. So, they have several vendors that they work with, so 6sense for their ABM intent platform, Outreach for their BDR platform. And he finds that some of the best resources that they can utilize for training for those particular teams. So, he spent some time looking through their most recent thought leadership and training materials to try and identify how he can help his team get better.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Eric When asked about books that have had a great impact, Eric stated that he would say from a business standpoint, so separate out fiction from a business standpoint, he thinks some of the classics like Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins, probably some of the ones that resonated with him the most and still, you can go back and reference. When he flip over to that sort of pleasure reading fiction, Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has always been his favourite book. It's not a long read probably one of the reasons why, but he thinks he must have read that book 50 times.    What Eric is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's excited about, Eric stated just keeping it focused around CallMiner, his company and his team. He thinks one of the things that he's really excited about is all of them that are in tech SaaS, they really had a rough 2023, whether it be, layoffs in terms of correction on over hiring and 2021. But mostly, a lot of this is coming from just general macro conditions, macroeconomic conditions globally.  He thinks what he's excited about is towards the end of 2023, they started to see a light at the end of the tunnel and sent some positive signals that they're turning the corner a bit, which he thinks anyone who works in tech should be excited about. He'll be interested to see how Q1 and maybe Q2, go for 2024 to see if that continues to more positive signals, and they start to see their prospects and their customer base be a little less cautious with their budgets and a little less conservative and be willing to maybe do some expansion and some testing within the platforms that they offer. So, he's excited about that. And he thinks most tech companies are right now.   Where Can We Find Eric Online Website – www.callminer.com LinkedIn - CallMiner   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Eric Uses When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Eric stated that he doesn't know if this would be adversity, but they're constantly he feels like they're in the midst of adversity when they're trying to roll new campaigns out, roll new products out to the market. And something that he and several of his other C level peers, “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” So, he thinks it's very easy to get in your own way, and try to make something so perfect that you know it's going to be success and that's just a fallacy. And it's much better to do all the due diligence, do all the work to make it as good as you can. But get it out there and then learn from it early and make some changes to it than it is to just be unrealistic that you're going to be able to perfect something before you launch it. Me: True. That's a very good quote. Excellent point. Eric stated that he doesn't know who to attribute that quote to, by the way, but somebody wrote it.   Me: Well, Eric, I just want to tell you, thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on our podcast, and sharing all of this great content as it relates to what CallMiner does, about the report that your company had published that you publish on an annual basis and the great insights that were able to be derived from it, as well as moving forward what organisations can look towards in terms of where they should be placing their energy in order to be yielding the greatest success as it relates to customer experience. So, just want to extend greatest level of gratitude. Thank you so much.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •     Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins •     Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks to the Co-Founder & CEO of Influ2, Dmitri Lisitski.Dimitri unveiled the intricacies of Influ2, a platform that's not just another advertising tool but a specialized solution crafted for the unique challenges of B2B marketing. He explored how Influ2 stands out by enabling targeted advertising to specific individuals within large organizations, a game-changer for sales teams looking to connect with key decision-makers.One of the critical themes Dimitri discussed was the importance of aligning marketing efforts with sales strategies, especially given the lengthy sales cycles typical in B2B transactions. He highlighted Influ2's prowess in targeting decision-makers by name and tracking ad engagement, which can significantly enhance conversion rates and bolster the sales pipeline.Traditional advertising platforms often need to catch up regarding B2B applications. Dimitri delved into the challenges businesses face and the pivotal moment when a solution like Influ2 becomes essential. He stressed the need for a repeatable sales process and how strategic marketing can accelerate sales outcomes.Key Points from the Episode:Overview of Influ2 as a B2B advertising platform for enterprise salesUnique aspects of B2B advertising and the importance of aligning marketing with sales effortsInflu2's capabilities in targeted advertising to specific individuals within large organizationsChallenges of traditional advertising platforms in meeting B2B needsUse cases for Influ2, including prospecting, building credibility, and engaging buying group membersInflu2's self-serve design and focus on customer understanding and leverageResources available on the Influ2 website, such as webinars, podcasts, and reportsAbout Dmitri Lisitski:Dmitri Lisitski is a seasoned entrepreneur and the co-founder/CEO of Influ2, pioneering the first person-based advertising platform. With two decades of expertise in online marketing and advertising, Lisitski has spearheaded the development and growth of several IT-powered companies in the U.S. and E.U., notably contributing to the success of GlobalLogic, acquired by Hitachi for $9.6B. Serving as the Global Head of Delivery & Services at Gett before Influ2, Lisitski brings a wealth of experience to the B2B marketing sphere. His educational background includes Executive MBAs from prestigious institutions, Columbia Business School and London Business School, highlighting his commitment to continuous learning and leadership in the dynamic landscape of technology-driven enterprises.About Influ2: Influ2 transforms advertising into a strategic component of sales conversations with its person-based advertising platform. Enabling precise targeting within target accounts, Influ2 facilitates direct engagement with key decision-makers and provides insights into ad interactions. The platform equips sales teams with the contextual information needed to secure valuable accounts by delivering tailored content and tracking contact-level intent.The impact is significant, as evidenced by Influ2's ability to drive a 2.26x increase in pipeline by consistently engaging decision-makers throughout their journey. Recognized as a challenger in the B2B Advertising Solutions category of the Forrester Wave, Influ2 has gained traction among enterprises like Capgemini, Chargebee, Hexaware, and numerous others. This platform stands out for its effectiveness in generating and closing pipelines for mid-market and large-scale accounts.Links Mentioned in this...

Send us a Text Message.I recently read the The Forrester Wave  SSPM Report for Q4 2023. This episode summarizes  the key points from the report and my personal views on the report.Support the Show.Google Drive link for Podcast content:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10vmcQ-oqqFDPojywrfYousPcqhvisnkoMy Profile on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashantmishra11/Youtube Channnel : https://www.youtube.com/@TheCybermanShow Twitter handle https://twitter.com/prashant_cyber PS: The views are my own and dont reflect any views from my employer.

In episode 155 of our SAP on Azure video podcast we talk about the Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation, Forrester Wave for Low-Code Development Platforms, Generative AI use-cases with SAP and an Open Source Framework for uploading Excel files in UI5 made easy. Then we talk with Dennis and Ralitza about using Virtual Machine Scale Sets flex with SAP workload. Typically VMs can be deployed regionally using Availability sets or zonal using Availability zones. VMSS Flex for SAP can now combine these two deployments by logically grouping platform managed virtual machines. Find all the links mentioned here: https://www.saponazurepodcast.de/episode155 Reach out to us for any feedback / questions: * Robert Boban: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rboban/ * Goran Condric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gorancondric/ * Holger Bruchelt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/holger-bruchelt/ #Microsoft #SAP #Azure #SAPonAzure #HA

A golden age is a time of great achievement in a society or industry — a time of innovation and the furthering of new ideas via new mediums or technological advancements. Email security is now entering a golden age after stagnating for the better part of a decade. Is it time to celebrate? Customers have more choice than ever when it comes to protecting how employees, customers, and partners communicate and collaborate. Often, those customers are choosing more than one email security partner in a layered or multilayer approach to protection, as it provides greater efficacy — and peace of mind. But is that sustainable in a consolidating market? Jess Burn, Senior Analyst from Forrester Research, joins us to discuss the results of The Forrester Wave on Enterprise Email Security for Q2 2023. Segment Resources: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/announcing-the-forrester-wave-enterprise-email-security-q2-2023/?ref_search=604835_1688574622533 In the leadership and communications section, CISO as a Business Executive: 5 areas to focus on and 5 actions you can take to run cybersecurity…, How to win the battle for cybersecurity budgets, Mastering Effective Communication Skills with the Dale Carnegie Method, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes! Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secweekly  Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/bsw-311  

A golden age is a time of great achievement in a society or industry — a time of innovation and the furthering of new ideas via new mediums or technological advancements. Email security is now entering a golden age after stagnating for the better part of a decade. Is it time to celebrate? Customers have more choice than ever when it comes to protecting how employees, customers, and partners communicate and collaborate. Often, those customers are choosing more than one email security partner in a layered or multilayer approach to protection, as it provides greater efficacy — and peace of mind. But is that sustainable in a consolidating market? Jess Burn, Senior Analyst from Forrester Research, joins us to discuss the results of The Forrester Wave on Enterprise Email Security for Q2 2023. Segment Resources: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/announcing-the-forrester-wave-enterprise-email-security-q2-2023/?ref_search=604835_1688574622533 In the leadership and communications section, CISO as a Business Executive: 5 areas to focus on and 5 actions you can take to run cybersecurity…, How to win the battle for cybersecurity budgets, Mastering Effective Communication Skills with the Dale Carnegie Method, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes! Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secweekly  Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/bsw-311  

A golden age is a time of great achievement in a society or industry — a time of innovation and the furthering of new ideas via new mediums or technological advancements. Email security is now entering a golden age after stagnating for the better part of a decade. Is it time to celebrate? Customers have more choice than ever when it comes to protecting how employees, customers, and partners communicate and collaborate. Often, those customers are choosing more than one email security partner in a layered or multilayer approach to protection, as it provides greater efficacy — and peace of mind. But is that sustainable in a consolidating market? Jess Burn, Senior Analyst from Forrester Research, joins us to discuss the results of The Forrester Wave on Enterprise Email Security for Q2 2023.    Segment Resources: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/announcing-the-forrester-wave-enterprise-email-security-q2-2023/?ref_search=604835_1688574622533   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/bsw-311 

A golden age is a time of great achievement in a society or industry — a time of innovation and the furthering of new ideas via new mediums or technological advancements. Email security is now entering a golden age after stagnating for the better part of a decade. Is it time to celebrate? Customers have more choice than ever when it comes to protecting how employees, customers, and partners communicate and collaborate. Often, those customers are choosing more than one email security partner in a layered or multilayer approach to protection, as it provides greater efficacy — and peace of mind. But is that sustainable in a consolidating market? Jess Burn, Senior Analyst from Forrester Research, joins us to discuss the results of The Forrester Wave on Enterprise Email Security for Q2 2023.    Segment Resources: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/announcing-the-forrester-wave-enterprise-email-security-q2-2023/?ref_search=604835_1688574622533   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/bsw-311 

In this episode of the Contract Heroes Podcast, we are thrilled to feature Alla Valente. Alla is a senior research analyst at Forrester, a leading global market research company that helps organizations exceed customer demands and excel with technology. Alla specializes in security and risk management and with a focus on GRC, TPRM, CLM, and supply chain risk, she assists clients in strategy development, best practice adoption, and technology selection. Her research delves into digital transformation ethics, ERM, and brand protection. With 25 years of B2B marketing experience, including leadership and strategy, product marketing, and digital and customer marketing, Alla brings a unique perspective to risk management. She holds a BA in English from Hofstra University and has excelled in the Business Analytics Program at Harvard.In our conversation, we focus on Forrester's latest Wave Report concerning the CLM space that looked at 26 different criteria for every vendor, including their use of AI, ease of finding information in the contract repository, and integration with upstream and downstream technologies. We explore the significance of understanding the risks associated with commercial transactions and the methodology behind Forrester Wave reports. Additionally, we touch upon the evolving role of CLM in the digitalization of commercial relationships and the key considerations that organizations should prioritize when selecting a CLM provider.WHAT WE DISCUSS:[00:19] - Who is Alla Valente? [00:56] - Alla's position at Forrester and the Forrester Wave Reports [05:29] - The evolving role of CLM in the digitization of commercial relationships[09:16] - Trends in pre- and post-signature processes in CLM software[10:30] - The collaboration and benefits of CLM within organizations[15:26] - Industry-specific CLM requirements [18:00] - The 26 different criteria used to evaluate CLM vendors[20:18] - Workflow and visualization [22:20]- AI Capabilities in CLM[26:38] - Important considerations for choosing a new CLM provider NOTABLE QUOTES:[00:01:18] - “Understanding the risks that come with commercial transactions, with how organizations acquire, sell, and deliver the goods and services that they have; we need to understand how contracts are really at the heart and at the core of those commercial transactions and interactions.” -Alla Valente[00:07:49] - “In the world of contract management organizations, and especially contract management professionals, wherever they sit, where they sit in the legal department, or they sit in procurement, maybe they sit in sales, maybe they're part of compliance wherever they understand that to be able to have that organization move as fast as its strategy dictates, they need to also then accelerate that transformation by digitizing contract management. And so it's a super exciting time to be in CLM.”- Alla Valente[00:23:34] “There are some organizations that are nervous about AI in contract management. They are reluctant to use it because it's new, and they don't have experience with it. Maybe they think that it might replace them and threaten perhaps what they do, none of which or both of those are not true.” Alla ValenteUSEFUL RESOURCES & LINKS:ForresterThe Forrester Wave™: Contract Lifecycle Management, Q2, 2023Alla Valente on LinkedInThe Contract Heroes Podcaston Apple Podcastson SpotifyThe Contract Heroes Official WebsiteMarc Doucette on LinkedInPepe Toriello on LinkedInPepe Toriello on Twitter

Beth Torrie and Guest Elena Hutchison discuss best practices in major evaluations like Forrester Wave and Gartner MQ, and answer why these evaluations are so important. The duo breaks down the key pillars and shares best practices in the evaluations processes and even recommends ideal team formation. Show your support for the Bendy Show by becoming a monthly supporter or buy us a coffee Follow us on Social: The Bendy Show Website: https://www.thebendyshow.com/ Beth's contact info: Email: beth@torriecommunications.com Twitter: @bethtorrie Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/workingmom/ Wendy's contact info: Email: wendy@canopycommunication.com Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendyshlensky/ Elena Hutchison https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenahutchison/ Elena is taking taking on a limited number of Analyst Relations consulting clients, either to directly help with AR programs or for executive presence coaching for AR professionals - find her on her website: https://www.uprightar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thebendyshow/support

Today's episode of Let's Talk Loyalty celebrates Epsilon's success as a Leader in The Forrester Wave (TM) Loyalty Technology Solutions for Q1 2023. This is one of the industry's most respected reports, designed to help marketers around the world assess loyalty technology providers. To help share this success story, I'm joined today by two senior executives from Epsilon based in the UK. Valerie Popeck is Epsilon EMEA's Senior Director of Strategy & Insights and we are also joined by Dave Allen, Epsilon's Group Commercial Director - both across the EMEA region. In today's conversation, we discuss key global challenges for loyalty professionals, including the all-important topic of measurability for loyalty investments, as well as the importance of managing expectations with internal stakeholders on what a loyalty program can deliver and when! Listen also to hear details of your FINAL opportunity to enter our “Loyalty Lab competition” for the chance to win a complimentary workshop with Epsilon's loyalty experts. Show Notes: 1) Valerie Popeck 2) Dave Allen 3) Epsilon 4) The Forrester Wave (TM) Loyalty Technology Solutions for Q1 2023 5) “Loyalty Lab competition” 6) Book: The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Josh Walker is the Co-Founder and President of Sports Innovation Lab where he oversees the company's innovative and proprietary market intelligence platform. Through market analysis and unbiased research, he empowers brands to develop and implement game changing, breakthrough experiences in a new age of sports and entertainment fandom. His work at Sports Innovation Lab represents the convergence of his career as a researcher, advisor, entrepreneur, and sports journalist. A former Vice President of Research at Forrester, Josh was responsible for launching the company's Forrester Wave evaluation framework, designed to accelerate innovation by connecting technology buyers with the best vendors. After Forrester, Josh spent time as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at General Catalyst advising fast-growing companies including Brightcove, Kayak, and Demandware. He soon became a serial entrepreneur himself, using his passion for technology and data to launch and grow several venture-backed companies such as CityVoter, Comlinkdata, and Stattleship. Josh is a graduate of Middlebury College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the conversation Josh mentions the book Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are, which can be found across book retailers.

How does Code Coverage for Automation work for Game Test Automation? What are some of the top Continuous Automation Testing Platforms? Have you seen this excellent method to help troubleshoot Java Applications? Find out in this episode of the Test Guild DevSecOps New Show for the week of January 15th. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea, and let's do this.   Time News Title Rocket Link 0:19 Applitools FREE Account Offer https://applitools.info/joe  0:53 Code Coverage for Automation https://testguild.me/721vh1 2:06 Ensure Seamless Audio-Visual Quality for iOS Apps https://testguild.me/9q5b3v 3:15 LambdaTest announces Test Analytics to improve decision making https://testguild.me/qg2rpw 3:50 My Q4 2022 Forrester Wave evaluates the top 15 CAT platform players https://testguild.me/45tqvr 5:45 Cognizant Intelligent Test Scripter https://testguild.me/urnhjj 6:43 Microsoft's 49% stake worth $10 billion in OpenAI https://testguild.me/3m74bz 7:36 Komodor goes Freemium! https://testguild.me/o8p4qa 8:18 Troubleshooting Java Applications using Dynamic Instrumentation https://testguild.me/devvw2

Hallo zusammen, in der 30. Episode von GEDANKENSPLITTER war ich etwas verpeilt (und krank), aber ich habe trotzdem für euch ein paar Themen zusammengekehrt ;-) .- Weniger Intensivbetten frei als jemals zuvor (https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/so-wenig-intensivbetten-frei-wie-nie-101.html)- Cyber Security: Weiterbildung ist King (https://www.zdnet.de/88405689/cybersecurity-trends-2023-weiterbildung-bleibt-entscheidender-erfolgsfaktor/)- Resilienz in der Datensicherung in neuer Forrester Wave (https://blocksandfiles.com/2022/12/09/commvault-leads-rubrik-and-cohesity-in-forrester-data-resilience-study/)- App 'Lensa' macht Deep Fakes möglich (https://www.wired.com/story/lensa-artificial-intelligence-csem/)- IBM dreht saftig an der Preisschraube in 2023 (https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/02/ibm_storage_prices/) GEDANKENSPLITTER erscheint auf YouTube und als Podcast und ist ebenfalls in allen großen Podcast Verzeichnissen zu finden. Die Verfügbarkeit der neusten Episode kann dabei je nach Aktualisierungshäufigkeit des Podcast Verzeichnisses variieren. VLOG auf YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@itcamperPodcast: https://gedankensplitter.buzzsprout.com/ (UND auf fast allen Podcatchern deiner Wahl wie Apple Podcasts, Spotify oder Google Podcasts uvm. unter GEDANKENSPLITTER)

Analyst relations…a useful path to establishing your reputation, or an outdated, overpriced avenue not worth exploring? In this episode of Demand Gen U, Jason Widup, VP of Marketing at Metadata, is joined by colleague Alex Virden, Senior Product Marketing Manager, to discuss whether analyst relations are worth it in 2022. Jason and Alex break down analyst relations in layman's terms, detail Metadata's experiences with the Forrester Wave and outline the alternatives they are exploring to maximize their exposure. Listen to find out: Jason's summary of analyst relations About Metadata's category challenge How Metadata became involved in the Forrester Wave For more analyst relations advice from Jason and Alex, tune in to the full episode. 0:00 – 0:27 – Introduction 0:27 – 1:55 – Alex Virden introduces herself 1:55 – 4:20 – Jason and Alex's work on a Forrester Wave 4:20 – 6:08 – Jason's first exposure to analyst relations 6:08 – 11:50 – Analyst services 101 11:50 – 13:20 – Analyst relations – don't do it? 13:20 – 16:28 – Metadata's category challenge 16:28– 17:19 – The dangers of waves 17:19 – 26:06 – How Metadata got involved in the Forrester Wave and how companies get included 26:06 – 28:12 – Changes Metadata made for the Forrester Wave 28:12 – 39:25 – Thoughts on responses to the Forrester Wave 39:25– 42:14 – Alternatives to dedicated analyst relations 42:14 – 43:40 – Outro

What do you need to provide a great digital employee experience? In today's episode, one of the foremost experts in EUEM technology provides the definitive answer to that crucial question. We're chatting once again with Andrew Hewitt, senior analyst at Forrester and the author of The Forrester Wave™: End-User Experience Management, Q3 2022. This report delivers deeply researched analysis of the top EUEM vendors in the world – and Andrew's brought the same level of illuminating insight to his appearance on the DEX Show. Join us as we break down the top 5 capabilities you need from your DEX technology in order to provide the best possible digital experiences. Andrew's stellar analysis will answer all your questions about: How experience data and qualitative feedback has evolved in recent years. What separates a must-have capability from a commodity in your tech stack. The tactics that make or break a support model in today's EUEM market. For more amazing DEX content, including podcasts, articles and exclusive research, head over to the DEX Hub (dex.nexthink.com) Click here to download the full Forrester Wave™report. To hear more interviews like this one, subscribe to the Digital Employee Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform. Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for Digital Employee Experience in your favorite podcast player.

The first step to overcoming an obstacle or barrier is admitting the problem and building a base from which to grow. For women in data and technology, it is understanding the potential for change in which the gender gap continues to close.In this episode of CDO Matters, Malcolm interviews the President and COO of BlueConic, Cory Munchbach. Cory is a fellow recovering analyst and runs one of the top Customer Data Platform, or CDP, solutions available in the market today. In her role, Cory is at the forefront of some of the biggest customer experience and digital transformation initiatives of many of the best-known brands on the planet. During their discussion, the two focus on the role of women in technology and how we can improve on the many gender imbalances that continue to persist both in their companies, and society at large. They also discuss the role of CDPs in the digital transformation landscape, and how those solutions differ from other customer-data management solutions – such as MDM or analytics platforms. If you are one of the 25% of CDOs tasked with executing your organization's digital transformation initiative, this episode of CDO Matters will help bring you to a higher-level understanding of how CDPs ‘fit' into a broader MarTech and IT technology stack, and the value they bring to the organization. The conversation closes with a dialog around the possibility of a coming recession, and what CDOs and other senior leaders can do to best prepare for some form of economic slowdown. Cory shares her experience in working with major consumer-facing brands over the last recession, and how many ‘doubled down' digital transformation investments as a means to improve customer relationships and drive competitive advantage. Key Moments 01:56-4:43 The current market of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) 04:56-6:30 Activating customer data throughout the organization with CDPs 6:35-7:35 How do Chief Data Officers (CDOs) benefit from CDPs? 8:00-11:31 How CDPs can co-exist with master data management (MDM) 11:42-14:22 Thoughts on the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions in tech 15:04-18:05 Pay transparency as a catalyst for equality in the workplace 18:15-18:58 Being the only woman on the leadership team 19:06-21:58 The impact of tech companies on expanding access to benefits 22:10-24:33 How CDOs can respond to economic uncertainty 24:35-26:22 Building a data strategy around a clear business objective 26:24-31:43 How GDPR, CDPA and other regulations will continue past 2022 Key Takeaways The Coexistence of CDPs and MDM (9:15-9:37)“I would have conversations…with IT leaders...about this false perception that it was either CDP or MDM. My answer always was both.” - Malcolm Hawker The Underrepresentation of Women in Technology (12:06-14:04) “...this is much less of a tech problem and more of a social problem...we've always had an underrepresentation of women in technology, so there haven't been enough people to go to battle for the kind of things that will make more women come.” - Cory Munchbach Pay Transparency in the Workplace (15:38-17:08) “If you have a certain role...then everyone in that role should be within that pay band...over time, your value for the organization grows and we don't make a lot of adjustments for that internal expertise...” - Cory Munchbach Responding to Economic Uncertainty (23:19-25:24) “I am a big believer that you should plan for the worst and hope for the best...this should be transformational because it changes how you work...the thing that you need to have is the relationship with your customer.” - Cory MunchbachAbout Cory Munchbach Cory is the current President and COO of BlueConic. She previously worked as an analyst for Forrester supporting marketing technology and the former author of the Forrester ‘Wave.' While being an early-stage startup investor and advisor, Cory also serves as a member of Chief – a private network designed for the most powerful women in executive leadership. EPISODE LINKS & RESOURCES: Visit BlueConic's official company website Follow Cory Munchbach on LinkedIn

As a leading location intelligence platform provider (Forrester Wave 2020), Esri empowers leaders with innovative tools to help create sustainable prosperity. Esri's customers drive digital transformation by embracing the power of location, Stuart Penninger, a Solution Engineer at Esri, tells us about the ArcGIS GeoAnalytics Engine. He discusses how their tool allows users to access massive amounts of data from virtually anywhere. His demonstration walks us through an analyst's workflow and emphasizes the speed and ease-of-use of their system and how impactful it is for analysts in the industry. He also explains the skillsets needed to work with the application and the learning curve users may face. THIS EPISODE IS RECORDED WITH VISUAL AUDIENCE IN MIND. SEE VIDEO FOR MORE DETAILS. Watch or listen to more episodes by Project Geospatial at www.projectgeospatial.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/projectgeo/support

Justin and Jack surf on the recent Forrester Wave for Global Cybersecurity and end up hanging ten on some of the criteria, but wiping out on its usefulness. Some links we referenced in this episode can be found here: Bullsh*t Generator Alinea Restaurant Forrester Lead Analyst, Jeff Pollard PWC Link to Forrester Report McDonald's in Paris Top 10 Accounting Firms in the US If you have any questions or suggestions, send us an email at pwned@nuharborsecurity.com. If you like our content, please like, share, and subscribe! We'll catch you next time. Check out NuHarbor Security for complete cyber security protection for your business and a security partner you can trust. Website: https://nuharborsecurity.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nuharbor/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/NuHarbor@nuharbor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nuharbor/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nuharborsecurity/  

In this episode, Rachael is joined by Mary Shea, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach, the first and only sales execution platform that helps revenue teams bring intelligence to workflows, unlock full visibility across the entire revenue cycle, and commit forecasts with confidence. Previously she was a Principal Analyst at Forrester, where she led research and authored the inaugural Forrester Wave for the Sales Engagement category. Now with Outreach, Mary conducts thought-provoking research on the sales technology landscape, the future of buying and selling, and the criticality of having a diverse, equitable, and inclusive B2B sales organization. She is also the co-host of the Revenue Innovators podcast. She joins us today to share insights on the new era of sales and why leaders are focused on new strategies, technology, training, diversity, equity, and inclusion to set their organizations up for success.

How can you drive an analytics-driven business operation? One important element is to solve the challenges of the last mile of analytics. Organizations must also ensure that the technology, people, process, and data architecture dimensions of an analytics-driven strategy are aligned. Listen to this second podcast conversation with Forrester Wave author Boris Evelson and Jose Villacis, Head of Oracle Analytics Product Marketing, in this second podcast of a two-part series.

While businesses are collecting large amounts of data, they also continue to have a lot of data silos either by buying or building separate analytical applications. A cross-functional enterprise-grade analytics solution provides businesses with a single version of the truth and enables them to gain a competitive edge. Listen to this conversation with Forrester Wave author Boris Evelson and Jose Villacis, Head of Oracle Analytics Product Marketing, in this first podcast of a two-part series.

Season three of Digital Transformation & Leadership kicks off with Danny Levy talking to Paul Harapin, the Head of Asia Pacific & Japan at Stripe. They discuss why CX is more important than ever when it comes to retail, the current state of the internet economy, why businesses are currently losing crucial revenue growth, where customers currently sit when it comes to business operations, and how to put them at the center, and what steps you can take to ensure customer centrality and drive revenue and growth. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Stripe - Businesses of all shapes and sizes choose Stripe as their payments platform to gain a competitive advantage. With Stripe, you can easily optimize your conversion rates, simplify your expansion plans, protect yourself against fraud, automate taxes on your transactions, and future proof your business. Those are just a few of the reasons why retailers like The Iconic, Carousell, and Shopify look to Stripe to power their payments. Whereas legacy payments technology will slow you down in a fast-changing world, modern payments technology can help you speed up and stay ahead of the curve. It's no surprise then, that Stripe ranked the highest for strategy, and current offering in the 2020 Forrester Wave report on Merchant Payment Providers. So whether you're an online or in-person retailer, software platform, marketplace, or subscriptions business, visit stripe.com to learn more about how Stripe can support your business today. That's stripe.com, to learn more and get started today. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/danny-levy/message

i speak with MVP and Digital Workplace expert Rebecca Jaskson. Rebecca is fascinated by what makes people and organisations tick. She specialises in the digital workplace, employee experience and change management. We do a  deep dive into the main collaboration tools that Microsoft provides such as SharePoint, with an especial focus on the value of the modern Intranet. There is also a round up of the latest Microsoft Cloud news at the front of the episode. This episode was recorded using Microsoft Teams and produced with Camtasia 2020. Brought to you by www.ciaopspatron.com Resources Rebecca Jason - Linkedin, Twitter, Blog, Instagram Mirosoft Ignite AI-based Privacy Management for Microsoft 365 [VIDEO] 3 ways to support frontline workers in a hybrid world  Introducing Android™ Apps on Windows 11 to Windows Insiders  Microsoft achieves a Leader placement in Forrester Wave for XDR  Windows 11 security: Protect it all with Windows 11 chip to cloud security  Sysinternals in the Windows store Sysmon report in virus total

We're back! In this episode Alexander and Simon try to remember how to podcast, and discuss the Power BI August update, the implications of Azure Government being rated for Top Secret information in the US, Power BI named the leader in the Forrester Wave, Windows 11 being imminent, the dangers of preconceptions and finally titles and privileges. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this week's episode of Analytics Neat we discuss SMS messaging, mobile Banking, and a Firefox privacy update on the Undercard. For the Main Event, we go over the high-level results of a recent Forrester Wave on Independent Campaign Management systems. All this and more in this week's episode of Analytics Neat. Thanks for listening! iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analytics-neat/id1350608276?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2DIz7pDt5IYA2VJ86LbaK3 Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Iaeur7hjizv7s654nbcsfgtxsmq?t=Analytics_Neat Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/3f77907d-81b7-46ff-a9cd-12c3c539a2ad/Analytics-Neat Continue the conversation on Twitter with #AnalyticsNeat https://twitter.com/BillBruno https://twitter.com/AnalyticsNeat Visit BillBruno.com

Founder and CEO of Brandwatch, the worlds leading social intelligence company, and currently serving as the Chief Growth Officer at Cision, Giles Palmer, discloses not only what it's like having a boss for the first time in 15 years, but also gives a glimpse into the challenges of leadership when it comes to old school business mindsets clashing with new generations of work ethic. On this tell-all episode of Radically Transparent, brought to you by Oktopost, Giles takes us on a journey from accountant to entrepreneur and everything in between, from co-founding Runtime Collective in 2000 - an agency that built systems for a variety of clients and how he spun Brandwatch out as a product company in 2006 and launched the first version of ‘Brandwatch Analytics' in August 2007. In February 2021 it was announced that Brandwatch had been acquired by Cision, the leader in news distribution and media monitoring and analysis for $450 million. Over the last 14 years, Giles has led Brandwatch through multiple fundraising events, international expansion, 3 acquisitions and a merger with the other leading technology in the Social Media Listening space - Crimson Hexagon. Brandwatch recently achieved the number one ranking in the highly regarded Forrester Wave report for social listening technology and Giles sits on several start up boards as NED or observer and is a Governor of Clifton College. Giles holds a Physics degree from Durham University and is a qualified Chartered Accountant.

About JamesJames is the Redmonk co-founder, sunshine in a bag, industry analyst loves developers, "motivating in a surreal kind of way". Came up with "progressive delivery". He/HimLinks: RedMonk: https://redmonk.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MonkChips Monktoberfest: https://monktoberfest.com/ Monki Gras: https://monkigras.com/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Cloud Economist Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of Cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Your company might be stuck in the middle of a DevOps revolution without even realizing it. Lucky you! Does your company culture discourage risk? Are you willing to admit it? Does your team have clear responsibilities? Depends on who you ask. Are you struggling to get buy in on DevOps practices? Well, download the 2021 State of DevOps report brought to you annually by Puppet since 2011 to explore the trends and blockers keeping evolution firms stuck in the middle of their DevOps evolution. Because they fail to evolve or die like dinosaurs. The significance of organizational buy in, and oh it is significant indeed, and why team identities and interaction models matter. Not to mention weither the use of automation and the cloud translate to DevOps success. All that and more awaits you. Visit: www.puppet.com to download your copy of the report now!Corey: And now for something completely different!Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I'm joined this week by James Governor, analyst and co-founder of a boutique analysis shop called RedMonk. James, thank you for coming on the show.James: Oh, it's my pleasure. Corey.Corey: I've more or less had to continue pestering you with invites onto this for years because it's a high bar, but you are absolutely one of my favorite people in tech for a variety of reasons that I'm sure we're going to get into. But first, let's let you tell the story. What is it you'd say it is that you do here?James: We—industry analysts; we're a research firm, as you said. I think we do things slightly differently. RedMonk has a very strong opinion about how the industry works. And so whilst there are plenty of research firms that look at the industry, and technology adoption, and process adoption through the lens of the purchaser, RedMonk focuses on it through the lens of the practitioner: the developer, the SRE, the people that are really doing the engineering. And so, historically IT was a top-down function: it required a lot of permission; it was something that was slow, you would make a request, you might get some resources six to nine months later, and they were probably the resources that you didn't actually want, but something that was purchased from somebody that was particularly good at selling things.Corey: Yes. And the thing that you were purchasing was aimed at people who are particularly good at buying things, but not using the things.James: Exactly right. And so I think that RedMonk we look at the world—the new world, which is based on the fact there's open-source software, there's cloud-based software, there are platforms like GitHub. So, there's all of this knowledge out there, and increasingly—it's not a permission-free world. But technology adoption is more strongly influenced than ever by developers. That's what RedMonk understands; that's what makes us tick; that's what excites us. What are the decisions that developers are making? When and why? And how can we tap into that knowledge to help everyone become more effective?Corey: RedMonk is one of those companies that is so rare, it may as well not count when you do a survey of a landscape. We've touched on that before on the show. In 2019, we had your colleague, Rachel Stevens on the show; in 2020, we had your business partner Stephen O'Grady on, and in 2021 we have you. Apparently, you're doling out staff at the rate of one a year. That's okay; I will outlast your expansion plans.James: Yeah, I think you probably will. One thing that RedMonk is not good at doing is growing, which may go to some of the uniqueness that you're talking about. We do what we do very well, but we definitely still haven't worked out what we're going to be when we grow up.Corey: I will admit that every time I see a RedMonk blog post that comes across my desk, I don't even need to click on it anymore; I don't need to read the thing because I already get that sinking feeling, because I know without even glancing at it, I'm going to read this and it's going to be depressing because I'm going to wish I had written it instead because the points are always so pitch-perfect. And it feels like the thing that I struggle to articulate on the best of days, you folks—across the board—just wind up putting out almost effortlessly. Or at least that's how it seems from the outside.James: I think Stephen does that.Corey: It's funny; it's what he said about you.James: I like to sell his ideas, sell his work. He's the brains and the talent of the operation in terms of co-founders. Kelly and Rachel are both incredibly smart people, and yeah, they definitely do a fantastic job of writing with clarity, and getting ideas across by stuff just tends to be sort of jumbled up. I do my best, but certainly, those fully formed, ‘I wish I had written that' pieces, they come from my colleagues. So, thank you very much for that praise of them.Corey: One of the central tenets that RedMonk has always believed and espoused is that developers are kingmakers, to use the term—and I steal that term, of course, from your co-founder's book, The New Kingmakers, which, from my read, was talking about developers. That makes a lot of sense for a lot of tools that see bottom-up adoption, but in a world of cloud, where you're seeing massive deals get signed, I don't know too many developers out there who can sign a 50 million dollar cloud services contract more than once because they get fired the first time they outstrip their authority. Do you think that that model is changing?James: So, ‘new kingmakers' is quite a gendered term, and I have been asked to reconsider its use because, I mean, I don't know whether it should be ‘new monarchmakers?' That aside, developers are a fundamentally influential constituency. It's important, I think, to say that they themselves are not necessarily the monarchs; they are not the ones sitting in Buckingham Palace [laugh] or whatever, but they are influences. And it's important to understand the difference between influence and purchase. You're absolutely right, Corey, the cloud is becoming more, like traditional IT. Something I noticed with your good friends at GCP, this was shortly after the article came out that they were going to cut bait if they didn't get to number two after whatever period of time it was, they then went intentionally inside a bunch of 10-year deals with massive enterprises, I guess, to make it clear that they are in it for the long haul. But yeah, were developers making that decision? No. On the other hand, we don't talk to any organizations that are good at creating digital products and services—and increasingly, that's something that pretty much everybody needs to do—that do not pay a lot more attention to the needs and desires of their developers. They are reshoring, they are not outsourcing everything, they want developers that are close to the business, that understand the business, and they're investing heavily in those people. And rather than seeing them as, sort of, oh, we're going to get the cheapest possible people we can that have some Java skills and hope that these applications aren't crap. It may not be Netflix, “Hey, we're going to pay above market rate,” but it's certainly what do they want? What tools do they want to use? How can we help them become more effective? And so yeah, you might sign a really big deal, but you still want to be thinking, “Hang on a minute, what are the skills that people have? What is going to make them happy? What do they know? Because if they aren't productive, if they aren't happy, we may lose them, and they are very, very important talent.” So, they may not be the people with 50 million dollars in budget, but their opinion is indeed important. And I think that RedMonk is not saying there is no such thing as top-down purchasing anymore. What we are saying is that you need to be serving the needs of this very important constituency, and they will make you more productive. The happier they are, the more flow they can have, the more creative they can be with the tools at hand, the better the business outcomes are going to be. So, it's really about having a mindset and an organizational structure that enables you to become more effective by better serving the needs of developers, frankly. It used to just be the only tech companies had to care about that, but now everybody does. I mean, if we look at, whoever it is: Lego, or Capital One, or Branch, the new insurance company—I love Branch, by the way. I mean—Corey: Yeah. They're fantastic people, I love working with them. I wish I got to spend more time talking with them. So far, all I can do is drag them on to the podcast and argue on Twitter, but one of these days, one of these days, they're going to have an AWS bill bigger than 50 cents a month, and then, oh, then I've got them.James: There you go. But I think that the thing of him intentionally saying we're not going to set up—I mean, are they in Columbus, I think?Corey: They are. The greater Ohio region, yes.James: Yes. And Joe is all about, we need tools that juniors can be effective with, and we need to satisfy the needs of those juniors so they can be productive in driving our business forward. Juniors is already—and perhaps as a bad term, but new entrants into the industry, and how can we support them where they are, but also help them gain new skills to become more effective? And I just think it's about a different posture, and I think they're a great example because not everybody is south of Market, able to pay 350 grand a year plus stock options. That's just not realistic for most businesses. So, it is important to think about developers and their needs, the skills they learned, if they're from a non-traditional background, what are those skills? How can we support them and become more effective?Corey: That's really what it comes down to. We're all trying to do more with less, but rather than trying to work twice as hard, how to become more effective with the time we have and still go home in time for dinner every day?James: Definitely. I have to say, I mean, 2020 sucked in lots of ways, but not missing a single meal with my family definitely was not one of them.Corey: Yeah. There are certain things I'm willing to trade and certain things I'm not. And honestly, family time is one of them. So, I met you—I don't even recall what year—because what is even time anymore in this pandemic era?—where we sat down and grabbed a drink, I want to say it was at Google Cloud Next—the conference that Google does every year about their cloud—not that Google loses interest in things, but even their conference is called ‘Next'—but I didn't know what to expect when I sat down and spoke with you, and I got the sense you had no idea what to make of me back then because I was basically what I am now, only less fully formed. I was obnoxious on Twitter, I had barely coherent thoughts that I could periodically hurl into the abyss and see if they resonated, but stands out is one of the seminal grabbing a drink with someone moments in the course of my career.James: Well, I mean, fledgling Corey was pretty close to where he is now. But yeah, you bring something unique to the table. And I didn't totally know what to expect; I knew there would be snark. But yeah, it was certainly a pleasure to meet you, and I think that whenever I meet someone, I'm always interested in if there is any way I can help them. And it was nice because you're clearly a talented fellow and everything else, but it was like, are there some areas where I might be able to help? I mean, I think that's a good position as a human meeting another human. And yeah, it was a pleasure. I think it was in the Intercontinental, I guess, in [unintelligible 00:11:00].Corey: Yes, that's exactly where it was. Good memory. In fact, I can tell you the date: it was April 11 of 2019. And I know that because right after we finished having a drink, you tweeted out a GIF of Snow White carving a pie, saying, “QuinnyPig is an industry analyst.” And the first time I saw that, it was, “I thought he liked me. Why on earth would he insult me that way?”But it turned into something where when you have loud angry opinions, if you call yourself an analyst, suddenly people know what to do with you. I'm not kidding, I had that tweet laser engraved on a piece of wood through Laser Tweets. It is sitting on my shelf right now, which is how I know the date because it's the closest thing I have to a credential in almost anything that I do. So, congratulations, you're the accrediting university. Good job.James: [laugh]. I credentialed you. How about that?Corey: It's true, though. It didn't occur to me that analysts were a real thing. I didn't know what it was, and that's part of what we talked about at lunch, where it seemed that every time I tried to articulate what I do, people got confused. Analyst is not that far removed from an awful lot of what I do. And as I started going to analyst events, and catching up with other analysts—you know, the real kind of analyst, I would say, “I feel like a fake analyst. I have no idea what I'm actually doing.” And they said, “You are an analyst. Welcome to the club. We meet at the bar.” It turns out, no one really knows what is going on, fully, in this zany industry, and I feel like that the thing that we all bond over on some level is the sense of, we each only see a piece of it, and we try and piece it together with our understanding of the world and ideally try and make some sense out of it. At least, that's my off-the-cuff definition of an industry analyst. As someone who's an actual industry analyst, and not just a pretend one on Twitter, what's your take on the subject?James: Well, it's a remarkable privilege, and it's interesting because it is an uncredentialed job. Anybody can be, theoretically at least, an industry analyst. If people say you are and think you are, then then you are; you walk and quack like a duck. It's basically about research and trying to understand a problem space and trying to articulate and help people to basically become more effective by understanding that problem space themselves, more. So, it might be about products, as I say, it might be about processes, but for me, I've just always enjoyed research. And I've always enjoyed advice. You need a particular mindset to give people advice. That's one of the key things that, as an industry analyst, you're sort of expected to do. But yeah, it's the getting out there and learning from people that is the best part of the job. And I guess that's why I've been doing it for such an ungodly long time; because I love learning, and I love talking to people, and I love trying to help people understand stuff. So, it suits me very well. It's basically a job, which is about research, analysis, communication.Corey: The research part is the part that I want to push back on because you say that, and I cringe. On paper, I have an eighth-grade education. And academia was never really something that I was drawn to, excelled at, or frankly, was even halfway competent at for a variety of reasons. So, when you say ‘research,' I think of something awful and horrible. But then I look at the things I do when I talk to companies that are building something, and then I talked to the customers who are using the thing the company's building, and, okay, those two things don't always align as far as conversations go, so let's take this thing that they built, and I'll build something myself with it in an afternoon and see what the real story is. And it never occurred to me until we started having conversations to view that through the lens of well, that is actual research. I just consider it messing around with computers until something explodes.James: Well, I think. I mean, that is research, isn't it?Corey: I think so. I'm trying to understand what your vision of research is. Because from where I sit, it's either something negative and boring or almost subverting the premises you're starting with to a point where you can twist it back on itself in some sort of ridiculous pretzel and come out with something that if it's not functional, at least it's hopefully funny.James: The funny part I certainly wish that I could get anywhere close to the level of humor that you bring to the table on some of the analysis. But look, I mean, yes, it's easy to see things as a sort of dry. Look, I mean, a great job I had randomly in my 20s, I sort of lied, fluked, lucked my way into researching Eastern European art and architecture. And a big part of the job was going to all of these amazing museums and libraries in and around London, trying to find catalogs from art exhibitions. And you're learning about [Anastasi Kremnica 00:15:36], one of the greatest exponents of the illuminated manuscript and just, sort of, finding out about this interesting work, you're finding out that some of the articles in this dictionary that you're researching for had been completely made up, and that there wasn't a bibliography, these were people that were writing for free and they just made shit up, so… but I just found that fascinating, and if you point me at a body of knowledge, I will enjoy learning stuff. So, I totally know what you mean; one can look at it from a, is this an academic pursuit? But I think, yeah, I've just always enjoyed learning stuff. And in terms of what is research, a lot of what RedMonk does is on the qualitative side; we're trying to understand what people think of things, why they make the choices that they do, you have thousands of conversations, synthesize that into a worldview, you may try and play with those tools, you can't always do that. I mean, to your point, play with things and break things, but how deep can you go? I'm talking to developers that are writing in Rust; they're writing in Go, they're writing in Node, they're writing in, you know, all of these programming languages under the sun. I don't know every programming language, so you have to synthesize. I know a little bit and enough to probably cut off my own thumb, but it's about trying to understand people's experience. And then, of course, you have a chance to bring some quantitative things to the table. That was one of the things that RedMonk for a long time, we'd always—we were always very wary of, sort of, quantitative models in research because you see this stuff, it's all hockey sticks, it's all up into the right—Corey: Yeah. You have that ridiculous graph thing, which I'm sorry, I'm sure has an official name. And every analyst firm has its own magic name, whether it's a ‘Magic Quadrant,' or the ‘Forrester Wave,' or, I don't know, ‘The Crushing Pit Of Despair.' I don't know what company is which. But you have the programming language up-and-to-the-right line graph that I'm not sure the exact methodology, but you wind up placing slash ranking all of the programming languages that are whatever body of work you're consuming—I believe it might be Stack Overflow—James: Yeah.Corey: —and people look for that whenever it comes out. And for some reason, no one ever yells at you the way that they would if you were—oh, I don't know, a woman—or someone who didn't look like us, with our over-represented faces.James: Well, yeah. There is some of that. I mean, look, there are two defining forces to the culture. One is outrage, and if you can tap into people's outrage, then you're golden—Corey: Oh, rage-driven development is very much a thing. I guess I shouldn't be quite as flippant. It's kind of magic that you can wind up publishing these things as an organization, and people mostly accept it. People pay attention to it; it gets a lot of publicity, but no one argues with you about nonsense, for the most, part that I've seen.James: I mean, so there's a couple of things. One is outrage; universal human thing, and too much of that in the culture, but it seems to work in terms of driving attention. And the other is confirmation bias. So, I think the beauty of the programming language rankings—which is basically a scatterplot based on looking at conversations in StackOverflow and some behaviors in GitHub, and trying to understand whether they correlate—we're very open about the methodology. It's not something where—there are some other companies where you don't actually know how they've reached the conclusions they do. And we've been doing it for a long time; it is somewhat dry. I mean, when you read the post the way Stephen writes it, he really does come across quite academic; 20 paragraphs of explication of the methodology followed by a few paragraphs explaining what we found with the research. Every time we publish it, someone will say, “CSS is not a programming language,” or, “Why is COBOL not on there?” And it's largely a function of methodology. So, there's always raged to be had.Corey: Oh, absolutely. Channeling rage is basically one of my primary core competencies.James: There you go. So, I think that it's both. One of the beauties of the thing is that on any given day when we publish it, people either want to pat themselves on the back and say, “Hey, look, I've made a really good choice. My programming language is becoming more popular,” or they are furious and like, “Well, come on, we're not seeing any slow down. I don't know why those RedMonk folks are saying that.” So, in amongst those two things, the programming language rankings was where we began to realize that we could have a footprint that was a bit more quantitative, and trying to understand the breadcrumbs that developers were dropping because the simple fact is, is—look, when we look at the platforms where developers do their work today, they are in effect instrumented. And you can understand things, not with a survey where a lot of good developers—a lot of people in general—are not going to fill in surveys, but you can begin to understand people's behaviors without talking to them, and so for RedMonk, that's really thrilling. So, if we've got a model where we can understand things by talking to people, and understand things by not talking to people, then we're cooking with gas.Corey: I really love installing, upgrading, and fixing security agents in my cloud estate! Why do I say that? Because I sell things, because I sell things for a company that deploys an agent, there's no other reason. Because let's face it. Agents can be a real headache. Well, now Orca Security gives you a single tool that detects basically every risk in your cloud environment -- and that's as easy to install and maintain as a smartphone app. It is agentless, or my intro would've gotten me into trouble here, but  it can still see deep into your AWS workloads, while guaranteeing 100% coverage. With Orca Security, there are no overlooked assets, no DevOps headaches, and believe me you will hear from those people if you cause them headaches. and no performance hits on live environments. Connect your first cloud account in minutes and see for yourself at orca.security. Thats “Orca” as in whale, “dot” security as in that things you company claims to care about but doesn't until right after it really should have.Corey: One of the I think most defining characteristics about you is that, first, you tend to undersell the weight your words carry. And I can't figure out, honestly, whether that is because you're unaware of them, or you're naturally a modest person, but I will say you're absolutely one of my favorite Twitter follows; @monkchips. If you're not following James, you absolutely should be. Mostly because of what you do whenever someone gives you a modicum of attention, or of credibility, or of power, and that is you immediately—it is reflexive and clearly so, you reach out to find someone you can use that credibility to lift up. It's really an inspirational thing to see. It's one of the things that if I could change anything about myself, it would be to make that less friction-full process, and I think it only comes from practice. You're the kind of person I think—I guess I'm trying to say that I aspire to be in ways that are beyond where I already am.James: [laugh]. Well, that's very charming. Look, we are creatures of extreme privilege. I mean, I say you and I specifically, but people in this industry generally. And maybe not enough people recognize that privilege, but I do, and it's just become more and more clear to me the longer I've been in this industry, that privilege does need to be more evenly distributed. So, if I can help someone, I naturally will. I think it is a muscle that I've exercised, don't get me wrong—Corey: Oh, it is a muscle and it is a skill that can absolutely be improved. I was nowhere near where I am now, back when I started. I gave talks early on in my speaking career, about how to handle a job interview. What I accidentally built was, “How to handle a job interview if you're a white guy in tech,” which it turns out is not the inclusive message I wanted to be delivering, so I retired the talk until I could rebuild it with someone who didn't look like me and give it jointly.James: And that's admirable. And that's—Corey: I wouldn't say it's admirable. I'd say it's the bare minimum, to be perfectly honest.James: You're too kind. I do what I can, it's a very small amount. I do have a lot of privilege, and I'm aware that not everybody has that privilege. And I'm just a work in progress. I'm doing my best, but I guess what I would say is the people listening is that you do have an opportunity, as Corey said about me just now, maybe I don't realize the weight of my words, what I would say is that perhaps you have privileges you can share, that you're not fully aware that you have. In sharing those privileges, in finding folks that you can help it does make you feel good. And if you would like to feel better, trying to help people in some small way is one of the ways that you can feel better. And I mentioned outrage, and I was sort of joking in terms of the programming language rankings, but clearly, we live in a culture where there is too much outrage. And so to take a step back and help someone, that is a very pure thing and makes you feel good. So, if you want to feel a bit less outraged, feel that you've made an impact, you can never finish a day feeling bad about the contribution you've made if you've helped someone else. So, we do have a rare privilege, and I get a lot out of it. And so I would just say it works for me, and in an era when there's a lot of anger around, helping people is usually the time when you're not angry. And there's a lot to be said for that.Corey: I'll take it beyond that. It's easy to cast this in a purely feel-good, oh, you'll give something up in order to lift people up. It never works that way. It always comes back in some weird esoteric way. For example, I go to an awful lot of conferences during, you know, normal years, and I see an awful lot of events and they're all—hmm—how to put this?—they're all directionally the same. The RedMonk events are hands down the exception to all of that. I've been to Monktoberfest once, and I keep hoping to go to—I'm sorry, was it Monki Gras is the one in the UK?James: Monki Gras, yeah.Corey: Yeah. It's just a different experience across the board where I didn't even speak and I have a standing policy just due to time commitments not to really attend conferences I'm not speaking at. I made an exception, both due to the fact that it's RedMonk, so I wanted to see what this event was all about, and also it was in Portland, Maine; my mom lived 15 minutes away, it's an excuse to go back, but not spend too much time. So, great. It was more or less a lark, and it is hands down the number one event I will make it a point to attend. And I put that above re:Invent, which is the center of my cloud-y universe every year, just because of the stories that get told, the people that get invited, just the sheer number of good people in one place is incredible. And I don't want to sound callous, or crass pointing this out, but more business for my company came out of that conference from casual conversations than any other three conferences you can name. It was phenomenal. And it wasn't because I was there setting up an expo booth—there isn't an expo hall—and it isn't because I went around harassing people into signing contracts, which some people seem to think is how it works. It's because there were good people, and I got to have great conversations. And I kept in touch with a lot of folks, and those relationships over time turned into business because that's the way it works.James: Yeah. I mean, we don't go big, we go small. We focus on creating an intimate environment that's safe and inclusive and makes people feel good. We strongly curate the events we run. As Stephen explicitly says in terms of the talks that he accepts, these are talks that you won't hear elsewhere. And we try and provide a platform for some different kind of thinking, some different voices, and we just had some magical, magical speakers, I think, at both events over the years. So, we keep it down to sort of the size of a village; we don't want to be too much over the Dunbar number. And that's where rich interactions between humans emerge. The idea, I think, at our conference is, is that over a couple of days, you will actually get to know some people, and know them well. And we have been lucky enough to attract many kind, and good, and nice people, and that's what makes the event so great. It's not because of Steve, or me, or the others on the team putting it together. It's about the people that come. And they're wonderful, and that's why it's a good event. The key there is we focus on amazing food and drink experiences, really nice people, and keep it small, and try and be as inclusive as you can. One of the things that we've done within the event is we've had a diversity and inclusion sponsorship. And so folks like GitHub, and MongoDB, and Red Hat have been kind enough—I mean, Red Hat—interestingly enough the event as a whole, Red Hat has sponsored Monktoberfest every year it's been on. But the DNI sponsorship is interesting because what we do with that is we look at that as an opportunity. So, there's a few things. When you're running an event, you can solve the speaker problem because there is an amazing pipeline of just fantastic speakers from all different kinds of backgrounds. And I think we do quite well on that, but the DNI sponsorship is really about having a program with resources to make sure that your delegates begin to look a little bit more diverse as well. And that may involve travel stipends, as well as free tickets, accommodation, and so on, which is not an easy one to pull off.Corey: But it's necessary. I mean, I will say one of the great things about this past year of remote—there have been a lot of trials and tribulations, don't get me wrong—but the fact that suddenly all these conferences are available to anyone with an internet connection is a huge accessibility story. When we go back to in-person events, I don't want to lose that.James: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that's been one of the really interesting stories of the—and it is in so many dimensions. I bang on about this a lot, but so much talent in tech from Nigeria. Nigeria is just an amazing, amazing geography, huge population, tons of people doing really interesting work, educating themselves, and pushing and driving forward in tech, and then we make it hard for them to get visas to travel to the US or Europe. And I find that to be… disappointing. So, opening it up to other geographies—which is one of the things that free online events does—is fantastic. You know, perhaps somebody has some accessibility needs, and they just—it's harder for them to travel. Or perhaps you're a single parent and you're unable to travel. Being able to dip into all of these events, I think is potentially a transformative model vis-à-vis inclusion. So, yeah, I hope, A) that you're right, and, B) that we as an industry are intentional because without being intentional, we're not going to realize those benefits, without understanding there were benefits, and we can indeed lower some of the barriers to entry participation, and perhaps most importantly, provide the feedback loop. Because it's not enough to let people in; you need to welcome them. I talked about the DNI program: we have—we're never quite sure what to call them. We call them mentors or things like that, but people to welcome people into the community, make introductions, this industry, sometimes it's, “Oh, great. We've got new people, but then we don't support them when they arrive.” And that's one of the things as an industry we are, frankly, bad at, and we need to get better at it.Corey: I could not agree with you more strongly. Every time I wind up looking at building an event or whatnot or seeing other people's events, it's easy to criticize, but I try to extend grace as much as possible. But whenever I see an event that is very clearly built by people with privilege, for people with privilege, it rubs me the wrong way. And I'm getting worse and worse with time at keeping my mouth shut about that thing. I know, believe it or not, I am capable of keeping my mouth shut from time to time or so I'm told. But it's irritating, it rankles because it's people not taking advantage of their privileged position to help others and that, at some point, bugs me.James: Me too. That's the bottom line, we can and must do better. And so things that, sort of, make you proud of every year, I change my theme for Monki Gras, and, you know, it's been about scaling your craft, it's been about homebrews—so that was sort of about your side gig. It wasn't about the hustle so much as just things people were interested in. Sometimes a side project turns into something amazing in its own right. I've done Scandinavian craft—the influence of the Nordics on our industry. We talk about privilege: every conference that you go to is basically a conference about what San Francisco thinks. So, it was nice to do something where I looked at the influence of Scandinavian craft and culture. Anyway, to get to my point, I did the conference one year about accessibility. I called it ‘accessible craft.' And we had some folks from a group called Code Your Future, which is a nonprofit which is basically training refugees to code. And when you've got a wheelchair-bound refugee at your conference, then you may be doing something right. I mean, the whole wheelchair thing is really interesting because it's so easy to just not realize. And I had been doing these conferences in edgy venues. And I remember walking with my sister, Saffron, to check out one of the potential venues. It was pretty cool, but when we were walking there, there were all these broken cobblestones, and there were quite a lot of heavy vehicles on the road next to it. And it was just very clear that for somebody that had either issues with walking or frankly, with their sight, it just wasn't going to fly anymore. And I think doing the accessibility conference was a watershed for me because we had to think through so many things that we had not given enough attention vis-à-vis accessibility and inclusion.Corey: I think it's also important to remember that if you're organizing a conference and someone in a wheelchair shows up, you don't want to ask that person to do extra work to help accommodate that person. You want to reach out to experts on this; take the burden on yourself. Don't put additional labor on people who are already in a relatively challenging situation. I feel like it's one of those basic things that people miss.James: Well, that's exactly right. I mean, we offered basically, we were like, look, we will pay for your transport. Get a cab that is accessible. But when he was going to come along, we said, “Oh, don't worry, we've made sure that everything is accessible.” We actually had to go further out of London. We went to the Olympic Park to run it that year because we're so modern, and the investments they made for the Olympics, the accessibility was good from the tube, to the bus, and everything else. And the first day, he came along and he was like, “Oh, I got the cab because I didn't really believe that the accessibility would work.” And I think on the second day, he just used the shuttle bus because he saw that the experience was good. So, I think that's the thing; don't make people do the work. It's our job to do the work to make a better environment for as many people as possible.Corey: James, before we call it a show, I have to ask. Your Twitter name is @monkchips and it is one of the most frustrating things in the world trying to keep up with you because your Twitter username doesn't change, but the name that goes above it changes on what appears to be a daily basis. I always felt weird asking you this in person, when I was in slapping distance, but now we're on a podcast where you can't possibly refuse to answer. What the hell is up with that?James: Well, I think if something can be changeable, if something can be mutable, then why not? It's a weird thing with Twitter is that it enables that, and it's just something fun. I know it can be sort of annoying to people. I used to mess around with my profile picture a lot; that was the thing that I really focused on. But recently, at least, I just—there are things that I find funny, or dumb, or interesting, and I'll just make that my username. It's not hugely intentional, but it is, I guess, a bit of a calling card. I like puns; it's partly, you know, why you do something. Because you can, so I've been more consistent with my profile picture. If you keep changing both of them all the time, that's probably suboptimal. Sounds good.Corey: Sounds good. It just makes it hard to track who exactly—“Who is this lunatic, and how did they get into my—oh, it's James, again.” Ugh, branding is hard. At least you're not changing your picture at the same time. That would just be unmanageable.James: Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. I think you've got to do—you can't do both at the same time and maintain—Corey: At that point, you're basically fleeing creditors.James: Well, that may have happened. Maybe that's an issue for me.Corey: James, I want to thank you for taking as much time as you have to tolerate my slings, and arrows, and other various vocal devices. If people want to learn more about who you are, what you believe, what you're up to, and how to find you. Where are you hiding?James: Yeah, I mean, I think you've said already, that was very kind: I am at @monkchips. I'm not on topic. I think as this conversation has shown, I [laugh] don't think we've spoken as much about technology as perhaps we should, given the show is normally about the cloud.Corey: The show is normally about the business of cloud, and people stories are always better than technology stories because technology is always people.James: And so, yep, I'm all over the map; I can be annoying; I wear my heart on my sleeve. But I try and be kind as much as I can, and yeah, I tweet a lot. That's the best place to find me. And definitely look at redmonk.com. But I have smart colleagues doing great work, and if you're interested in developers and technology infrastructure, we're a great place to come and learn about those things. And we're very accessible. We love to talk to people, and if you want to get better at dealing with software developers, yeah, you should talk to us. We're nice people and we're ready to chat.Corey: Excellent. We will, of course, throw links to that in the [show notes 00:37:03]. James, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really do appreciate it.James: My pleasure. But you've made me feel like a nice person, which is a bit weird.Corey: I know, right? That's okay. You can go for a walk. Shake it off.James: [laugh].Corey: It'll be okay. James Governor, analyst and co-founder at RedMonk. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an insulting comment in which you attempt to gatekeep being an industry analyst.Announcer: This has been this week's episode of Screaming in the Cloud. You can also find more Corey at screaminginthecloud.com, or wherever fine snark is sold.This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Data ethics and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are increasingly critical issues for organizations. In research conducted for our Forrester Wave™ evaluation of customer database and engagement agencies, we uncovered an important mandate for CMOs: The convergence of these two practices is central to a brand's customer engagement strategy.  In this episode we're joined by […] The post 259: Everyone Benefits When Data Ethics And Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion (DEI) Converge appeared first on The CX Cast ® by Forrester.

As brands look to the future, how can their recent experience of being ultra-responsive help to develop a more agile business and marketing model? The answer lies in multi-faceted, multi-scenario planning to inform better decision making and enabling businesses to respond to future adversity. Multi-scenario planning utilises data to narrow in on most likely scenarios and the outcomes of each, allowing businesses to respond to uncertainty. Taking a fully agile approach to planning by adopting multi-scenario simulations can seem like a daunting task from the outset. But it is one that can create true, transformational change within a business and lead to a new operating model that sees lasting competitive advantage. The result is the ability to move forward with defined routes in an agile and responsive plan that delivers board room and investor confidence. And perhaps makes the annual plan a relic of the past. Listen as Matt Andrew, partner and UK managing director at Ekimetrics speaks with senior managers at Ekimetrics, Sona Abaryan and Calin Panzar, about the role that data and analytics can play in overcoming uncertainty to drive business recovery and growth this year. Ekimetrics is a pioneering global data science consultancy, enabling companies to build powerful data and analytics capabilities to drive marketing and business performance. Recently named a strong performer in the 2020 Forrester Wave report for its marketing measurement and optimisation solutions, Ekimetrics helps brands unlock unique audience and market insights to drive efficiencies and return on investment. To stay ahead of the latest podcasts from Ekimetrics, subscribe now in your podcast platform.

In a world of systemised risk – influenced by pandemics, economics, and the climate – data mastery has become essential for the sustainability and performance of private equity businesses. For those PE Funds operating in the SME markets, data science has a crucial role to play in driving performance across the investment cycle. Listen as Matt Andrew, partner and UK managing director at Ekimetrics, and Sona Abaryan, senior manager at Ekimetrics, explore what this looks like in practice.   Ekimetrics is a pioneering global data science consultancy, enabling companies to build powerful data and analytics capabilities to drive marketing and business performance. Recently named a strong performer in the 2020 Forrester Wave report for its marketing measurement and optimisation solutions, Ekimetrics helps brands unlock unique audience and market insights to drive efficiencies and return on investment. To stay ahead of the latest podcasts from Ekimetrics, subscribe now in your podcast platform.

In the 35th episode of our unofficial SAP on Azure video podcast we are looking at the new Solution Diagrams from SAP for the Business Technology Platform, Azure Functions in the Forrester Wave, Microsoft Learn with Graph and the MSAL Authentication Library, upcoming Partner Roundtabels and DSAG 2021. Then we have Martin Pankraz again on the show continuing the Azure DevOps & BTP story with Blue/Green Deployment strategies. https://github.com/hobru/SAPonAzure

Nesse #CloudNews, você vai ouvir sobre: a expectativa Clubhouse pro Android e a negociação da Microsoft na compra do Discord. Também vamos falar do pix e da nomeação do BigQuery no The Forrester Wave.

In Today's episode we will go through the 14 most significant ones from the recent Forrester Wave: Robotic Process Automation Q1 2021 report.  Do you have any questions? Would you like to give us feedback? Are you interested in workshops on the topic of automation? Are you an expert in the field of automation and would like to be on the podcast? LinkedIn Arno: https://bit.ly/3aABArd LinkedIn Sascha: https://bit.ly/36Jd31T Velocity-IT: https://www.velocity-it.com/about-us/ convedo Group: https://www.convedo.com/about-us

In the 33rd episode of our unofficial SAP on Azure video podcast we are looking at the Availability Zones in every country, Low-Code/No-Code Development, Forrester Wave for RPA, openSAP hitting 5 million course enrollments, RISE with SAP and a new SAP on Azure Talk podcast. Then we drill into the backend behind the Power App that is used by the Azure FastTrack team to manage SAP systems. https://github.com/hobru/SAPonAzure

In this episode of the Ekimetrics podcast, we explore how businesses can maximise the impact of their Facebook campaigns. An audio companion to a recent report, Executing for Effect, produced by Ekimetrics in association with Facebook. This episode is hosted by Matt Andrew, partner and UK managing director at Ekimetrics, and features interviews with key experts at Facebook. Guests include: Verity Gill, Director, Marketing Science EMEA, Agencies; Peter Buckley, Connections Planner; and Igor Skokan, Marketing Science, EMEA. Ekimetrics is a pioneering global data science consultancy, enabling companies to build powerful data and analytics capabilities to drive marketing and business performance. Recently named a strong performer in the 2020 Forrester Wave report for its marketing measurement and optimisation solutions, Ekimetrics helps brands unlock unique audience and market insights to drive efficiencies and return on investment. To stay ahead of the latest podcasts from Ekimetrics, subscribe now in your podcast platform.

5G promises to be a revolutionary technology that will impact all aspects of our lives. But how much of that is real? And how much of it is just hype? To get to the bottom of this, I wanted to bring on a seasoned technology expert to show and I couldn’t think of a better person to invite than my friend, Rob Tiffany! Rob Tiffany is the Vice President and Head of IoT Strategy at Ericsson. In his role, Rob drives the Internet of Things strategy and execution. Additionally, Rob is also a best-selling author; a frequent keynote speaker; and serves on the boards of SmartCitiesWorld, the Washington State IoT Council, and Kapios Health. He is also routinely ranked as one of the top IoT experts and influencers in the world by Inc Magazine, Onalytica, and many more! In this episode, Rob and I discuss the value proposition of 5G from a business perspective, why 5G promises a new era of expansion for the Internet of Things, and the steps you can begin to take as a Product Leader to plan for 5G as part of your innovation roadmap. We also talk about some of 5G’s hurdles, including some of its complexities, the cost of switching to this technology, and the pressure it is under in competing in both price and functionality with more established technologies, such as Wi-Fi. This is a fun and informative episode that no Product Leader should miss!   Episode Details: The True Business Value of 5G with Rob Tiffany: “Start planning for [5G] right now. It’s already starting to roll out.” — Rob Tiffany   About Rob Tiffany: Rob Tiffany is Vice President and Head of IoT Strategy at Ericsson where he drives Internet of Things strategy and execution. Rob joined Ericsson in 2018 from Enterprise IoT, where he was Founder and CEO. There, he created an Edge computing system powered by Digital Twins that targeted enterprises and industrials. As CTO and Global Product Manager at Hitachi, he received the Presidential “Product of the Year” award for designing the Lumada Industrial IoT platform. This product landed in Gartner’s “Visionary Quadrant” and was a “Strong Performer” in The Forrester Wave. Spending most of his career at Microsoft, Rob was the Global Technology Lead for IoT where he incubated the Azure IoT cloud platform and co-authored its reference architecture. Prior to Microsoft, Rob was the Co-Founder of NetPerceptor where he developed one of the industry’s earliest Mobile Device Management (MDM/EMM) platforms for smartphones.   Topics We Discuss in this Episode: Rob Tiffany’s career background and his current role at Ericsson What 5G is, who it is for, and what problems it is trying to solve Why 5G promises a new era of expansion for the Internet of Things The business value of 5G Various industries that 5G can have an impact on Why you need the agility that wireless gives you (beyond Wi-Fi) What CBRS is and how it will help facilitate 5G Why 5G is better than Wi-Fi for enterprises 5G’s hurdles and complexities What Product Leaders should consider when they’re thinking about 5G for their innovation roadmap   Product Leader Tip of the Week: As a Product Leader, you should start planning for 5G today. The capacity, speed, latency, etc. make it all worthwhile. Research it some more, think about the use cases, and plan for all that it can bring you.   To Learn More About Rob Tiffany: Rob Tiffany’s LinkedIn Ericsson   Related Resources: DanielElizalde.com/Template — Download Daniel’s free IoT Product Strategy Template here!   Want to Learn More? Sign up for my newsletter at DanielElizalde.com/Join for weekly advice and best practices directly to your inbox! Visit DanielElizalde.com/Podcast for additional information, show notes, and episodes. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts so you don’t miss out on any of my conversations with product and thought leaders!  

This week, we welcome back Taylor McCaslin, Sr. Product Manager of Secure at GitLab, to discuss Reading Industry Analyst Tea Leaves To Predict The Future! It's analyst season with the new Forrester Wave on SAST recently published as well as Gartner's Application Security Testing Magic Quadrant publishing in April. We'll talk about what are analyst reports, how should you use them, and how should you interpret placement on them as as I like to call it, reading the analyst tea leaves.   In the AppSec News, an overflow and a flawed regex paint an RCE picture for Kindle, messaging apps miss the message on secure state machines, three pillars of a data security strategy for the cloud, where DoH might fit into AppSec, and all the things that can go wrong when you give up root in your Kubernetes pod!   Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw137 Visit https://securityweekly.com/GitLab to learn more about them!   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secweekly

This week, we welcome back Taylor McCaslin, Sr. Product Manager of Secure at GitLab, to discuss Reading Industry Analyst Tea Leaves To Predict The Future! It's analyst season with the new Forrester Wave on SAST recently published as well as Gartner's Application Security Testing Magic Quadrant publishing in April. We'll talk about what are analyst reports, how should you use them, and how should you interpret placement on them as as I like to call it, reading the analyst tea leaves.   In the AppSec News, an overflow and a flawed regex paint an RCE picture for Kindle, messaging apps miss the message on secure state machines, three pillars of a data security strategy for the cloud, where DoH might fit into AppSec, and all the things that can go wrong when you give up root in your Kubernetes pod!   Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw137 Visit https://securityweekly.com/GitLab to learn more about them!   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secweekly

It's analyst season with the new Forrester Wave on SAST recently published as well as Gartner's Application Security Testing Magic Quadrant publishing in April. We'll talk about what are analyst reports, how should you use them, and how should you interpret placement on them as I like to call it, reading the analyst tea leaves.   This segment is sponsored by GitLab. Visit https://securityweekly.com/GitLab to learn more about them!   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw137

It's analyst season with the new Forrester Wave on SAST recently published as well as Gartner's Application Security Testing Magic Quadrant publishing in April. We'll talk about what are analyst reports, how should you use them, and how should you interpret placement on them as I like to call it, reading the analyst tea leaves.   This segment is sponsored by GitLab. Visit https://securityweekly.com/GitLab to learn more about them!   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw137

One of the most common struggles for sales leaders is forecasting, understanding what is going on with the business and how to get predictable revenue.  In this episode of the Modern Selling Podcast, my guest, Kevin Knieriem, CRO at Clari, talks about using Artificial Intelligence for sales forecasting. Clari’s Revenue Operations Platform automatically gathers data from across your emails, meetings, marketing campaigns and CRM data, and then uses its AI to create dashboards and execution insights. Kevin brings more than 20 years of experience driving revenue growth and building successful sales teams for leading enterprise giants and high-growth startups. Most recently, he spent more than four years at Oracle where he held several leadership positions, including CRO at DataScience.com (acquired by Oracle in June 2018).  In this role, Kevin led DataScience.com’s demand generation, field marketing, sales and customer success initiatives from pre-revenue through acquisition by Oracle. During this time, DataScience.com helped define and then lead the Forrester Wave for Predictive Analytics & Machine Learning Platforms. Prior to that, he spent over a decade at SAP where he led regional and national organizations. Don’t miss this exciting conversation to learn how to use AI to predict revenue. This podcast is brought to you by Postal.io. A Sales and marketing engagement platform that generates leads increases sales and improves customer retention. Request a demo to learn how to integrate direct mail and gift into your existing strategy by visiting Postal.io. Why is predicting revenue a challenge for sales leaders? The market has changed significantly in the last few years, where buyers don’t engage with reps at the top of the funnel, but later in the sales cycle.  Modern buyers are consuming content and finding information on their own about the solutions they are seeking. And although there are many touchpoints in this process, CRMs don’t gather data from them, but only from those interactions between the buyer and the sales rep. The customer journey is not linear, anymore, especially in B2B enterprise sales, where sellers deal with multiple buyer personas within the same company in long sales cycles.  Furthermore, most sales reps are not trained to gather and interpret prospects’ buying signals correctly. That’s why sales leaders need data to understand everything that is happening in the sales process to identify risks and opportunities. Traditional B2B sales forecasting are often inaccurate and lead to missing sales targets, but many sales AI-based predictive analytics tools are now available to help sales organizations obtain predictive revenue. AI-based forecasting methods are the most accurate, such as Clari’s technology. The Impact of Missing your Sales Forecasts Kevin says that the single most important number to any company is their ability to forecast. The forecast is a direct input into the operating plan of the company. If you know what you are able to overachieve, you can make investments to accelerate the business; and if you can predict where you will underachieve, you can forego some investments and figure out how to close that gap so you can hit the numbers. Data Needed to Forecast Revenue Every seller is different and every manager is different. That is why sales don’t have a consistent way to be measured or a consistent process. In traditional forecasting, the sales manager interrogates every sales rep in the team, enters some data into a spreadsheet and forecasts future sales from that data. Kevins says that sellers should be savvier when analyzing data to get a clear view of their opportunities. For example, they should ask themselves if the customer is actually engaging with them, replying to emails and opening documents. By the way, the best way to achieve engagement is with the right sales methodology. “All that is a signal of where you’re going,” Kevin says. “With that data available, both the manager and the rep will know where they are and what to do to change the narrative and assess whether it is worth pursuing a deal or not. We need a process to tell us what a healthy opportunity looks like as it goes through the funnel. With years worth of history, AI can make predictions of what a good opportunity is.” Instead of relying on intuition or the sales pipeline stages, sellers need to focus on engagement and activities that show that the deal is moving forward. For example, are they engaged with the executive buyer? Do they know where the budget is coming from? Where are they in the paperwork process? In the security process? Kevin says that companies need to establish what a good deal looks like, what a bad deal looks like and what one in between looks like. Data is vital in a sales forecast. The right data can help sellers know where they are and what they need to do to close the deal.  “You need the ability to look forward,” Kevin says, “to look at the pipeline and know if you are building the right kind of pipeline with the right persona moving through the sales stages the way they should. In other words, having visibility up the funnel, see how it moves and use that information to predict if you have enough pipeline to hit your target for the quarter.” Good sellers will know how to use this data to their advantage, to figure out where they are; and managers and leaders will lead differently, knowing where to invest their time. According to Kevin, a sales forecast must have these three inputs: Current quarter opportunities: What does a healthy opportunity look like? Collect the data in your CRM and non-CRM systems to get a view of healthy opportunities. Renewals business: Most SaaS companies have renewals as part of their business model. Collect data for healthy customers, customers impacted by COVID or customers booming and categorize them. Activity across the board: Review if sellers are building the pipeline they need to reach the forecast.  “If you have the data in real-time,” Kevin says, “you can know which deals are going to slip and not wait until the end of the quarter to find out. Then you can take action immediately.” Predicting revenue is an art and you must get good at it and have consistent wins. Forecasting well starts the quarter before.  You should be able to forecast the quota of Q4 while still in Q3. The earlier and more accurate the forecast, the more valuable it is to the company to make decisions.

In this episode of the Ekimetrics podcast, we'll be looking in detail at the evolving luxury customer and how brands can respond to market changes. What are the steps businesses need to take to respond to the evolving customer audience? How can luxury brands embrace disruption and digital transformation? And how can businesses engage with new generations of customers? Matt Andrew, partner and UK managing director at Ekimetrics, and Sona Abaryan, senior manager at Ekimetrics, are joined by leading voices in luxury fashion to answer these questions. Guests on this episode include: Tom Meggle, founder of luxury brand consultancy Momentom 8. Tom has had a storied career in the luxury sector, including stints as regional general manager for Cartier and regional CEO for Louis Vuitton Germany and Louis Vuitton UK, Ireland and South Africa. He had been the chair of the Luxury Club at the French Chamber of Great Britain since 2017. Georgie Hyatt, CEO and co-founder of Rotaro Fashion Rental. Georgie co-founded Rotaro with a mission to make fashion more circular, forever. The company rents the most innovative and cult brands, letting shoppers experiment with luxury style without creating waste. Kiran Dhall, CMO at PSYKHE. PYSKHE is a shopping platform built on psychology and personality. It uses personality tests and AI to create accurate predictions of a shopper's preferred pieces from leading luxury fashion retailers. Pavel Ulyukaev, Export Director at Beluga Group. Beluga Group is the largest spirits company in Russia. Its Beluga Noble Russian Vodka is the leading super- and ultra-premium vodka in the country. Ekimetrics is a pioneering global data science consultancy, enabling companies to build powerful data and analytics capabilities to drive marketing and business performance. Recently named a strong performer in the 2020 Forrester Wave report for its marketing measurement and optimisation solutions, Ekimetrics helps brands unlock unique audience and market insights to drive efficiencies and return on investment. To stay ahead of the latest podcasts from Ekimetrics, subscribe now in your podcast platform.

The grocery world is changing fast – with new challenges that retailers, manufacturers and brands must all learn to navigate. Listen as Matt Andrew, Ekimetrics UK MD, discusses the essential factors for every grocery business to consider – with plenty of advice from Facebook's Tom Priestman and Kraft-Heinz's Ash Anzie thrown in for good measure. Find out how unique data insights and marketing optimisation can give you the edge in the New Economics of Grocery. Ekimetrics is a pioneering global data science consultancy, enabling companies to build powerful data and analytics capabilities to drive marketing and business performance. Recently named a strong performer in the 2020 Forrester Wave report for its marketing measurement and optimisation solutions, Ekimetrics helps brands unlock unique audience and market insights to drive efficiencies and return on investment. To stay ahead of the latest podcasts from Ekimetrics, subscribe now in your podcast platform.

Coming soon: the New Economics of Grocery – the new podcast from Ekimetrics. The grocery world is changing fast – with new challenges that retailers, manufacturers and brands must all learn to navigate. We'll discuss the essential factors for every grocery business to consider – with plenty of advice from the likes of Facebook and Kraft-Heinz thrown in for good measure. Find out how unique data insights and marketing optimisation can give you the edge in the New Economics of Grocery. To be the first to listen, subscribe to the Ekimetrics channel now. Ekimetrics is a pioneering global data science consultancy, enabling companies to build powerful data and analytics capabilities to drive marketing and business performance. Recently named a strong performer in the 2020 Forrester Wave report for its marketing measurement and optimisation solutions, Ekimetrics helps brands unlock unique audience and market insights to drive efficiencies and return on investment.

Diese Woche sprechen wir mit André Christ von LeanIX über Legacy Systeme. Im Detail schauen wir uns an was Legacy Systeme sind, wie man diese analysiert und optimiert und für wen die Nutzung von Legacy Systemen sinnvoll sind. Außerdem beschreibt uns André, wie die Marketingstrategie für spezifische B2B Produkte und auch SAAS Produkte aussehen kann und welche Bedeutung Veröffentlichungen wie der Gartner Magic Quadrant oder die Forrester Wave auf das Marketing haben. André ist Mitgründer und CEO der LeanIX GmbH. 2012 gründete er das SAAS Unternehmen gemeinsam mit Jörg Beyer. Die Software unterstützt Organisationen bei der Verwaltung und dem Management ihrer IT-Landschaft und ermöglicht so schnellere und datengetriebene Entscheidungen in der IT. Vor der Gründung von LeanIX arbeiteten die beiden gemeinsam als IT-Berater bei DHL. Mehr über LeanIX: https://www.leanix.net Was ist überhaupt Enterprise Architecture? https://www.leanix.net/de/enterprise-architecture Unsere eigene Konferenz – diesmal im May auch virtuell: https://www.eaconnectdays.com/

Finding the motivation to get work done can be hard, especially after a long Christmas break. But our guest today has demonstrated that even in the toughest of circumstances we can achieve great things with the right mentality. Born in a remote village of 6000 people in the middle of The Great Thar Desert in northwest India, Rakesh Soni has gone from no running water to running a multi-million dollar startup as the CEO and co-founder of LoginRadius, an industry leader in the Digital Identity space. In this episode, you will learn what motivated him to leave his home, how he worked to build LoginRadius to the company it is today, and what advice he has for other entrepreneurs with limited resources. And for our Neuron to Something piece, we have fresh research analyzing what female pick up lines work best on men. Soni's Tech Vancouver presentation: Rakesh Soni of LoginRadius presents From a Dusty Village in India to the Forrester Wave

How do you market a company that is selling something fundamentally new and different? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, John Rougeux of Flag & Frontier talks about category design. It's not a tactic for every company, but when used strategically, category design can drive truly remarkable marketing results. John digs into who category design is right for, how long it takes, what a category design go-to-market plan looks like, and how to gain organizational support. He also shares examples of companies and marketers who've successfully created new categories. Highlights from my conversation with John include: John is an experienced category designer who has also owned and exited a business. He says that compared to traditional inbound marketing strategies, category design requires a much larger lift when it comes to educating the market. Every business has a choice to either compete in an existing market or create a new market.  If you're creating a new category, you have three choices: 1) try to fit your product within an existing category; 2) ignore category in your marketing and focus on the product's features and benefits; or 3) create a new category. John says options 1 and 2 don't work. When considering whether category design is right for you, you need to honestly evaluate your product and determine whether its simply a niche within an existing category or something that has truly never been offered before. If its the latter, then category design is really the only logical solution. Category design takes time. John says you should expect to spend six to nine months just designing the category behind the scenes, and then once you roll that out publicly, it can take another few years before it really takes hold. Category design needs to be a business initiative, not simply a marketing strategy, because it affects product roadmaps, sales and more. When executing a category design strategy, it is critical to focus marketing messaging on the problem that your audience is experiencing and the outcomes that they will experience as a result of your solution rather than how the product itself actually works. The companies that have been most successful at category design have evangelists whose job it is to go to market and talk about the problem and why there is a new solution. Its also important to build a consistent conversation around your new category. That might mean holding a big event (like HubSpot's INBOUND or Drift's HYPERGROWTH) or building a community, like Terminus's FlipMyFunnel.  If your company is venture-backed, it is also important to get your investors on board with the idea of category creation so that you have the funding to support the strategy. There are examples of category design all around us. Some of the bigger and more visible ones are minivans and music streaming services. The category wasn't created overnight, and in many cases, people don't even realize its a new category, but we see it is as fundamentally different from the status quo, and that is what successful category design looks like.  Resources from this episode: Visit the Flag & Frontier website Email John at John@FlagandFrontier.com  Visit John's personal website Purchase a copy of Play Bigger Listen to the podcast to learn more about category design, when it makes sense, and how you can use it to dramatically improve your marketing results. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is John Rougeux, who is the founder at Flag & Frontier. Welcome, John. John Rougeux (Guest): Hey, Kathleen. Thanks for having me on. John and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: Yeah. I'm really excited to have you here for completely selfish reasons. I am deep, deep into the weeds, trying to learn everything I can right now about category creation because it's something that I'm kind of working on for a little project at work. And I stumbled across your name. I think it was in a LinkedIn post mentioned by Sangram Vajre at Terminus, and he mentioned you as somebody who's doing a lot of work on category creation. And I immediately thought, oh, I need to have him in on the podcast. And here you are. I am so excited, so welcome. John: Thanks. Thanks. I actually want to come back to something that you said a minute ago. You mentioned this was a little project for you, so I'm going to pick your brains about why it's not a big project. Kathleen: I think I might just be downplaying it. John: Okay, all right. Kathleen: It's a huge project. John: All right. Kathleen: Yes, yes. It is a giant. In fact, it's probably bigger than I think it is. No, it's- John: Well, Sangram told me a few weeks ago. He said, "If you're not doing something that scares you a little bit, then you're not setting your sights high enough." So I think you're on the right track there. Kathleen: Yeah, no, I think my whole career has been a succession of choices that consistently terrify me. So hopefully, that means I'm on the right track to somewhere. So you have an interesting story. You started out or your career really grew in B2B tech, and you worked in some companies that were looking at category creation as a potential strategy and it seems that that wet your appetite and led you to where you are today. Can you just talk a little bit about your background and how it got you to where you are now and what you're doing now with Flag & Frontier? About John Rougeux and Flag & Frontier John: Yeah. Yeah, happy to. So the thing that I like to tell people is that I always wish that I knew about category design earlier in my marketing career. I think it would have helped me be more successful and make better choices and think through the strategy of what I was working on at the time a lot more thoroughly. So the reason I say that is in 2013, I co-founded a company called Causely. And I won't get too far down into the weeds of what Causely does and the business model, but we were basically using cause marketing as a way to incentivize people to take action. And specifically, we were looking at incentivizing referrals on social media. And at the time, I was looking at marketing through a fairly narrow lens, like a lot of people do maybe when they are kind of earlier in the middle of their marketing careers. We were looking at things like you know how do you improve the performance of an advertising campaign? How can you write a better better blog post? All of those kind of tactical things. And I didn't realize at the time that what we were doing was something categorically new. People didn't have context for what that meant, what they should compare it to, what value they should expect, what things should it replace or not replace? And so we had a reasonable trajectory. We scaled the business to a few thousand locations. It was acquired. But when looking back on it, I know that if we had had this lens of category design of how do you describe something when it's different than anything else out there, I think we could have gone even further. And so when I joined a company called Skyfii in 2018, I had started to kind of understand what that meant, so I had read Play Bigger. I read some, the works by Al Ries and Jack Trout that talk about how if you can't be first in a category, design any category you can be first in. And at Skyfii, that business, it's a publicly-traded SaaS company out of Australia and they found that they were participating in a fairly commoditized space. Or I guess to be more accurate, the perception was that they were a competitor in a fairly commoditized space. And their business had evolved past that and the product did all sorts of other things that were much bigger than the category the market thought they participated in, but they didn't really have a framework for talking about that. And so we went through a repositioning exercise where we defined a new category that better reflected what they were all about and and how people should kind of relate to that. And that was a really, I think, powerful and challenging exercise to think through.We've got something new in the market, but how do we describe that? How do we tell the right story? How do we tell the right narrative so that people know how to relate to it? Why category design is a fundamentally different approach to marketing Kathleen: This is so interesting to me. There's so much I want to unpack here. I guess, starting with something that you kind of started with, which is that there is this typical marketer's playbook, right, where people come in and they think, "Oh, we need to top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. We need to create content and attract people," this and that. And when it comes to category creation or trying to market something that is different than anything else people are used to, that playbook doesn't really work. Because as I'm quickly learning, especially looking just at the top of the funnel, traditional top of the funnel marketing, it's like well what is that problem that people are having and they start to look for a solution. And the challenge you have is that if the solution you're offering is something they've never heard of, it's such a steeper climb to try and gain their attention. It's like they don't know the right questions to ask even, if that makes sense. John: No, that's absolutely right. And I always like to mention a really thoughtful post that Mike Volpe, the founding CMO of HubSpot wrote a few years ago because it lays such a great groundwork for any discussion around category design. And the blog post simply says that look, every marketer has two choices on their strategy. They can pick an existing category and try to carve out a niche within that category. Maybe they can dominate that category. But basically, they have to pick a space and then do the best they can within that space. Or they can try to design a new category. And when you look at kind of the underlying product or business model and you really take a close examination of what it is and whether it's different or whether it's something better, you almost don't have a choice. If you're doing something that is new that people don't have a framework for, you really have three choices. So I want to pack these for you. So choice number one is you can try to shoehorn this new thing you've built into an existing category. And we'll come back to why that doesn't work in a second. Number two is you can just talk about the products, like features and benefits but not really think about a more underlying narrative for that. And then number three is you can design a new language, a new framework, which is called category design. And so here's why number one and number two don't work. So again, number one is if you try to shoehorn something new into an existing category. The reason that works against you is that people will make the wrong comparisons for what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to be priced, how you deliver value. That just works against you. Secondly, if you just try to talk about the product itself but don't provide a larger context, you're not giving people, you're not giving them really any framework, and it makes it difficult to understand what you're all about and why they should be interested in you. I'll give you a great example. A friend of mine works at a company and I won't mention the name of the company, but they combine two different categories kind of in an existing platform. So one of these is VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol communication software, very established, known space. The other thing they do is they have these marketing automation functions that they add to their software to at least in my view very disparate types of software, but they combine them together. And so far, they haven't really given their buyers a context, a category for what this thing means. And so they're basically letting people to their own devices to understand and come up with their own conclusions about what that is. And that just puts a lot of work on your buyers when they have to think about who they should compare you to when they need to think about what department is this even for, or what products does this replace or not replace? That's generally too much work for people when they're trying to understand something new. And like you said, Kathleen, if you're not telling them what questions they should ask, then chances are they're just going to be too confused before they'll even really be interested in having a conversation with you. Kathleen: Yeah, and there's two other aspects to what you just said that I think are really interesting, which I'm beginning to appreciate more with the work that I'm doing. One is that human nature is such that people want to slot you into something that they already understand. They don't want to have to think outside the box. So when people hear about something new, that their natural inclination is to try and categorize it in with things that they already know. And that's a hard thing to battle because you are literally battling human nature. And the second thing is if you do allow yourself to be put into a category that already exists that maybe isn't really truly what you're doing and you are actually successful in selling your product, you will wind up having a lot of problems with churn once you do sell it because people are still going to be thinking that you are like that other thing that you're not actually like. And they're going to be looking for your product or your service or whatever it is to solve for them in the same way that other thing does, when in reality your thing does not solve those problems. So it's like you're setting yourself up for a very long horizon of failures that you might not see at the outset, but it's kind of a you're failing before you've even begun. John: Yeah, that's a great point. And yeah, people do... They tend to... The world is so complicated, and there's so many things that we have to deal with and try to understand that we use this rule of thumb of categorizing things. Sometimes we do it explicitly, like smartphones are a great example of a category we all know about and buy them and we know why they're different than a mobile phone. Sometimes we just do it implicitly. We don't necessarily have the language or the terms to describe that category, but we know that we try to group likes things together because it makes it easier to understand the world. Kathleen: Yeah or we use analogies. So many times, you hear things like, "Well, that's just the Uber of," and then they list a different industry. Or, "That's the Airbnb of something else." John: Yeah, that's right. Kathleen: And so we're constantly trying to put these things into comfortable mental frameworks, which I think is fascinating. So you mentioned there were three things. The first two, I think you covered. And then the third is really designing a new category. John: The third is designing a new category. That's right. That's right. When does category design make sense? Kathleen: So how do you know... I guess the first question is how do you know when that's the path you should be taking? John: That's a great question because I've heard from some people that they have this idea that every company should try to design a category, and that's really not the case. It applies to some companies. But for many other companies, like if you're developing a CRM, a better version of a CRM, don't try to build a new category around that. So yes, so the way you would look at that is there's no formula you can put into Excel and calculate and churn all this out, but it really comes down to does the thing that you've built, does it solve a problem that has not been solved before? Or does it do so in a way that the world isn't familiar with? So is there a new business model behind that? Is there a new delivery mechanism behind that? It really comes down to those two things. And maybe if you want to look at it at a more fundamental level, you could ask yourself do the existing categories that my market is familiar with, do they accurately capture the type of thing that I'm offering? If they do, then one of the reasons you may want to choose to carve out a niche in an existing category is that people are looking for established products in established categories. People are looking for marketing automation software, they're looking for smartphones, they're looking for video communications tools like Zoom, like we're using today. And so, if you say, "Hey, we have the right tool within this category for this specific market or for this specific need," that can be very powerful. And arbitrarily forcing yourself out of that category just because you like that idea of category design is going to work against you. Now, that being said, again to kind of flip it around, if you find that the categories and the language that are used to describe existing products your market is familiar with just don't capture what you're doing or they limit it in some way, then ultimately you need to find a way to break out from that and that's what the process of category design is all about. What does it take to create a new category? Kathleen: Now, one of the things that I've come to appreciate just the more I look at this is what a big lift creating a category is. As you said in the beginning, this isn't a little project, right? I would love it if you could just talk a little bit about sort of expectation setting. If somebody is listening to this and they're thinking this really sounds like it could make sense for me, from your experience and what you've seen and you've talked to people who've been involved in category design, how long does it take before you can really expect that the market will recognize a new category? John: Yeah. It's a pretty long-time horizon. And so I mentioned Mike Volpe at the beginning of the call and I'll mention him again and Kipp Bodnar, the following CMO of HubSpot mentioned the same thing I'm about to tell you. And they told me that when they first started talking about inbound marketing, it was like standing in the middle of a town square on a soapbox just shouting into the wind with nobody paying attention. And that was the case for two to three years before that phrase really started to work its way into the lexicon of marketers. Salesforce, they pioneered, not so much CRM but cloud-based software. And even today, they still talk about other applications to cloud-based software that's 20 years later. And another example might be... So at Terminus, they talk about the account-based marketing gospel. And maybe this kind of hints to the challenge of how difficult it is to build a category. Sangram used to be there, I think he was their head of marketing if I'm not mistaken. He's definitely a co-founder, but his role is chief evangelist. And so they recognize that to really get people to be aware of and to understand and use this terminology around account-based marketing, they've had to invest very heavily in evangelizing that market or that message out in the market. Kathleen: Yeah. The other story that I've always found interesting... I followed all the ones you just mentioned really closely. And then the other one that's been fascinating to me is Drift because they came on the scene. And if they're listening, they may take issue with what I'm about to say, but look. A big piece of what their product does is live chat, website live chat, and then they have chatbots. Well, those things have been around for a while. That was not anything new, but they were really smart and they coined it as conversational marketing and they really focused more on, not so much the how and what the technology does, as what it enables the business to do, and kind of wrapped a methodology around existing technology in a way that made it feel fresh and new. And it was pretty genius. And I feel like they actually moved really quickly by comparison to a lot of the other examples I've seen. So it's interesting to me why in some cases, businesses are able to gain traction faster than others. John: Yeah. I would have to think that a lot of it has to do with the culture and how quickly or rapidly that business has gone through change in the past. And the other thing we should probably discuss is just the timeline of everything that happens before you share your new category with the world. I was talking with... There's an interview I did with, let's see, Anna and Cassidy at a company called Narrative Science. And they expected just the category design process itself to take about six to nine months. This is before they released language out publicly. And at Skyfii, that was our experience as well. And for that situation, that company, I think they were founded in 2012 or 2013. So they were five, six years into the business and there had already been a lot of discussion around the space that they started in, which was Wi-Fi marketing or Wi-Fi analytics. And so anytime that you're going into a space where the culture already kind of thinks and has a mental model for what their business is, the process of reworking all of that and getting everyone on board, especially the leadership team and perhaps even investors, getting them on board with that new message in a new way of thinking about the business, it takes time. And I would argue it should take time. Because if you rush the process and you ask your team to start using maybe even radically different language about what you do, people need time to really think through that and maybe they need to push back or challenge you a little bit or ask questions or provide suggestions. There's just this change management process you have to go through. And if you rush through that, people are not going to feel like they're a part of that process. And then ultimately, that's going to undermine your efforts in years one, two, three and further as you're asking your team to help you share that message. And at Skyfii, Skyfii is publicly traded in the Australian market and so they have investors and they have a public... They're very thoughtful about the message they put out into the market. And so they really wanted to take the time to make sure that message was right and that it made sense. And so, yeah, it took us, I don't know exactly how many months, but yeah, around six to nine months to really start that discussion and then get to a point where we were comfortable with the category name and the underlying narrative to support it. Why category design needs to be a company-wide effort Kathleen: Yeah, and I think there's... To me, one of the most important things is consistency because you kind of said if everybody is not on board and everybody isn't speaking from the same playbook, all it takes is one or two people to diverge and talk about your thing and language and terms that puts it squarely back in with all of the other things out there that... And it destroys your effort. John: Yeah. Well, and this is probably a great segue into another really important point about category design, which is that it's not a marketing project. Sometimes, it can be spearheaded by marketing, and marketing will often do a lot of the legwork, but it's not something that's relegated or exclusive to marketing. It has to be something that that CEO is involved in. It affects the company vision and is affected by the company vision. They kind of play off of each other. It affects the product roadmap. It affects what the sales team says. It affects what you might tell investors. So if your CFO is in charge of investor relations, he or she, they have to be on board and educated on the message. That's another misconception I heard a few times and it was... Personally, I thought it was a marketing initiative when I first read about it. But the more I dove deep into it and the more people I talked to, I realized it's actually a bit more of a business initiative, more so than a marketing one. Kathleen: Yeah, that's a great point. Having that buy-in top to bottom, it's really important. John: Yeah. What's been your experience at Prevailion in kind of leading your team in that discussion? Kathleen: So it was interesting because I came in really excited to make this a category design play. And shortly after I came in, we hired a head of sales, who also had some experience with category design and saw that that was a really strong play for us. He and I had both read Play Bigger, and we just kept talking about it until we basically beat the rest of our leadership team down into buying copies of the book. They've all now read it. They're all super excited about it, and it's great because it's given us a common language and framework around which to talk about what it is we're doing. So we're still really early stage, but I think we have that excitement and that buy-in in principle at least is there. And now, we're at the stage where we have to figure out our plan. What does a category design strategy look like? Kathleen: So along those lines, let's talk a little bit about somebody who's listening and they think, "Yep, this makes sense for me. Okay, I'm going to set my expectations. I understand I need to get top to bottom buy-in." What are the elements that you've seen in your experience from the companies that you've studied that have done this that contribute to successful category design efforts. In other words, what would be a part of a company's plan if they were looking to move forward with this? John: Yeah. So I'll mention two things that come to mind. So one I touched on a moment ago, but it's making sure that the CEO and the leadership team are involved and to the extent that they feel like they have a stake in the success of the project. What I mean is it's not enough for them to say, "Sure, that sounds great. Category sounds great, Mr. or Mrs. CMO. Go for it. Let me know how it turns out." That's not sufficient for getting buy-in. So getting them to be a stakeholder and have a real level of participation, that's absolutely key. And there's an interview I did with Chris Orlob of Gong.io, where we talk about that in more depth. So if you want to link to that, I'm happy to- Kathleen: Yeah, that would be great. I would love that. John: Yeah. The second thing is category design, it's all about talking about a problem that you're solving and less about the product. And so one thing I always like to say is that problem... Let's see, so your solution, your product. Solutions don't exist without problems, right? And then problems don't exist without people. And so you have to go back and understand the people that you're trying to work with and serve, and understand the problem you're trying to solve and the language they use to describe that problem, and the context for which they're trying to solve that problem or maybe they're not even aware that it is a problem or they think it's unsolvable. The point is you have to really understand the problem first and use that to lead your messaging. If your category is all around, here's why this specific product is so great and it's called this category, you're kind of missing the point. When you look at the language and the marketing that companies like Drift, for example, do, 80% of it is on the problem. Drift likes to talk about how the buying process has changed. Buyers are not interested in waiting hours or days or weeks for someone to respond to them. They want a response now. And you even see that word, "now", used.  Kathleen: Yes. That word, that one word... I went to HYPERGROWTH. I think it was not this year, but the year before. I went this year too. John: Okay. Kathleen: The year before, their whole keynote at HYPERGROWTH was all about the one word, "now." And it was so powerful, the way they distilled that down I thought, really, really simple but effective. John: Yeah, yeah. And they've written a book around conversational marketing. If you've used Drift products, you can kind of see some tie-ins but it's really about the problem that they're trying to solve. And people smarter than me have said lots of times that if you can articulate that you understand the problem better than anyone else, then people will assume you have the best solution. You don't have to work so hard to talk about every single little feature or benefit that you offer. Showing that you understand the problem creates empathy with your audience, and then again, they'll assume that you have the best solution to address that problem. Kathleen: Yeah, that's interesting that you talk about that because I think that's a really easy mistake for marketers to make, which is to say that, especially when you talk about B2B technology, it's really easy to fall into the trap of talking a lot about what the product does, how the product works. And I think many times, that's facilitated or even encouraged sometimes by the customer asking, "What does the product do? How does it work?" John: Right. Kathleen: And yet, I think the challenge as a marketer is to try to really get ahead of that and take control of the conversation and steer it towards not only the problems as you say and really deeply understanding them, but the outcomes that come from the use of the products. There's problems, and then there are what is the outcome for the user? How does it make their life better? How does it change them for the better? If you think of those as two different poles, and in the middle, lies the product and all the stuff it does, if you can keep the conversation more at the periphery on those poles, then I think you can be really successful. But that's tough. John: No, I've never heard it described that way, but that's a really clear way of describing that. And it's funny you mention that because I was having the opposite experience just this week. I was there was looking for a new email client for my computer. And that's a pretty established category. There's a million email clients. And in that context, you don't need to talk about the problem of communicating with people. Kathleen: Right. John: You know what email is. You don't need to talk about the outcome so much. There were a few features I was looking for and I was trying to find a client that had those features. And so you can talk about that a little bit more upfront when the category is established and people know what the category is, what it isn't, what it's supposed to do. But to your point, Kathleen, if that category doesn't exist and you're really trying to sell a vision around solving a problem, emphasizing what the problem is and then emphasizing the outcomes are really what's necessary to get people interested in just having a discussion around this new idea. And then from there, they're probably going to ask, "Okay, this sounds really good. Tell me about that product itself. What does it actually do?" Then you're in a perfect position to go into those details because they're ready for it. And they get the larger idea. Kathleen: Yeah, and that's where I think the traditional framework of top, middle, and bottom of the funnel comes back into the discussion, right? When you do get towards that middle to bottom of funnel stage, you can get into the weeds of how it works. And I know in our case, for example, it might not even be the same person we're having the conversation with. Our ultimate buyer isn't going to ever care so much how it works. They're going to hand that part of the decision off to somebody on their team and say, "Validate this for me." And it's almost like we've talked about it. We just need a spec sheet, but that... It's kind of like when you're going to a conference and you get the convince your boss letter, but in reverse. We're selling to the boss and the boss needs a convince their engineer letter that they can just hand to them and say, "Here, take this. It's in your language. It'll answer all your questions." Right? To me, that's the steps that we need to go through, but if we get too stuck in the weeds of convincing the engineer early, we're never going to get to convince the boss. John: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Building your category design go-to-market plan Kathleen: Yeah. Well, have you seen... So there are those foundational elements of how you talk about what it is you're doing, how you talk about the category, how you begin to gain share of mind. And then there's the actual go to market. And I've seen a lot of information written. For example, in the book, Play Bigger, which we've mentioned a few times, which is kind of like the Bible for category creation and other places. They talk about the concept of a lightning strike, which is just really a big kind of splashy go to market. It could be an event. It could be some other, something else that really makes an impression on the market and gets it talking about your thing. What have you seen or have you seen anything that has worked really well as far as like quick, well, I don't know if quick is the right word, but very high impact kind of strategies for really making an impression on the market? John: That's a great question. I'm not sure that I've seen a ton of really great examples beyond the few that we've discussed. So back to HubSpot, I don't recall a big... They have their INBOUND event, right? I don't recall that having a huge kind of blow up the world moment at the time when that conference first came out, but they've certainly been consistent and they made it a very conscious decision not to call it the HubSpot User Conference or even put the word HubSpot in there. It was about inbound, something bigger than themselves. I've seen Terminus, they have focused on this idea of a community of people who are interested in account-based marketing. Sangram told me they started with a fairly small event, relatively small event. And they've kind of built it from there. But that's more of an ongoing exercise, I guess, an ongoing process. Drift has their HYPERGROWTH conference. They came out with a book called Conversational Marketing. That's probably the biggest kind of high profile thing they did that was explicitly around that category. I think one of the things around lightning strikes is that, at least the way they're described in the book, is that they feel like they could be appropriate for a VC-backed company, or maybe a publicly traded company who's launching a new category and wants to really make that big splash and can afford to do that. I would say if you're earlier on and you don't have millions to drop on a big event or a massive campaign of another nature, it seems like other companies can can be successful with more of a process-driven approach of who are we trying to get to care about this category? What are they interested in? Where do they spend their time? And how can we just have these conversations with them on a repeatable basis? Because, like we were talking about earlier, it's not like once you name your category, the whole world suddenly cares about it and there's all these... Gartner doesn't give you a ring and say, "Hey, I guess we're going to create a Magic Quadrant because we saw your lightning strike. That's good. This is so great." Everyone who I've talked to anyway, who's done it well, has had to dedicate consistent resources over time to really get people to understand it and think about it. Kathleen: Yeah. You're talking about something that strikes very close to home for me because I've looked at those examples too and I had an opportunity... I've interviewed Kipp Bodnar. I've interviewed Nikki Nixon, who was one of the first leaders of the FlipMyFunnel community for Terminus. I interviewed Dave Gerhardt at Drift. So I've had a little bit of an inside peek into some of those companies. We didn't talk about this topic specifically, but what did strike me about all of those conversations and all of those examples is, as you say, consistency but also not just consistency, volume. There's a difference between, "Hey, we're going to consistently blog once a week, and it's going to be a great blog," and that's just an example. All of these companies not only have been super consistent, but they have turned the volume dial way up in terms of the amount of content they're creating around their category. I think every one of them has written a book actually, because Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah wrote the book, Inbound Marketing. You mentioned the book that Drift wrote. Sangram has written a couple of books. I don't know if that's a requirement or it's just a coincidence, but I think it certainly has helped. But it's also a reflection of that turning up the volume. We're not just going to write a bunch of blogs and use this keyword on them. We're going to write the book on our topic and really own it. And to me, there's something to that. If you're going to do a category creation play, you don't necessarily have to have the biggest budget in the world. Maybe you're not going to throw a HYPERGROWTH type conference, which is a cool conference. But you are going to need to really be prepared to just saturate the market with content, flood people with educational content around what is that problem you're solving, why it matters, why it's new, and why the new approach is better than the old one. John: Yeah. And that comes down to having patience and the right time horizon. And like you were asking about earlier, if your expectation is that category design is something maybe you can do for a few months and then you can go about business as usual, that's a wrong time horizon. And it will take months or probably years for people to really get what you do and talk about it, independent of conversations with you. And you have to have the content to support that, whether that's an event or a blog or a book or a podcast. And I think you also have to make sure that your investors understand that vision. They understand that you want to create something big, you want to create a category that you can dominate and design to your favor. And then if you do that, five to 10 years from now, you will be in a very good position. But also understanding that the first few years will have a different trajectory than someone who's just really trying to scale growth right off the bat at a very high level. Kathleen: Yeah, I feel like you just brought the conversation perfectly full circle because we started talking about how important buy-in was, top to bottom. And you can think of top to bottom as like CEO to the bottom of the organization. But honestly, if you have investors, that's really the top. Your board has to be totally bought-in because you'll get a ton of pressure. I mean we do have investors. We just got a series A round, so I'm dealing with this right now. And we're very fortunate that we have a really bought-in board, but I completely agree with you. It's also fascinating, you mentioned earlier analysts. That's another thing. If you're working with the analysts, what are the expectations you should have there? Because I recently read a quote that was like, "Gartner will never create a new market if there's only one player in it." Right? Because what's in it for them to build a Magic Quadrant for one company? They're not going to do it. So by definition, if you truly, truly are creating a new category, your thing is new and different and not like anything else and you "don't have any competition" which is like the bad words to ever say... Because even if you don't have competition, you have perceived competition. There's nothing in it for an analyst to say, "Well, this is a new category because a lot of work to produce a Magic Quadrant or a Forrester Wave." They're not going to do it for one company. So that goes back again to the conversation around time horizon. So it's such an interesting play and not for everyone certainly. You mentioned a couple of really good examples from the marketing world, Drift, HubSpot, Terminus. Can you think of any examples from outside of the marketing technology world that are really great examples of category creation? So if somebody is listening and they want to kind of look out in the wild and see who's doing this well, who would you point to? Examples of category creators John: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. Once you understand what category design actually means, you start to see new categories all over the place. So I'll mention two. So in high school, Kathleen, I drove a minivan. It had wood siding, I hated it, and it was just the dorkiest car you could drive. But at the time, I didn't know- Kathleen: We have to come back and have a conversation about that in a minute. John: So at the time, I didn't know that minivans were actually representative of a new category in the market. And I can't remember when they first came out. I think it was maybe the mid-80s, and I mean there were these full-size work vans, but people didn't conceive of this van that you would use to haul your family around. It was a completely new category. And it continues to be... I've come full circle. We've got a minivan today, another one. And so anyway, that's kind of a great example. You see that in automotive all the time, so hybrid cars. The Prius was a great example of designing that category. Tesla now for electric cars, SUVs as well. So that's one. And then another one is, I was actually thinking about this on the way to work this morning, the way that Apple and Spotify have really created, I guess, a new category around how music is distributed, I think, is another interesting example. And I think it's a... The reason I bring it up is category design isn't so much about a specific name or a specific taxonomy or a word that Gartner has capitalized. It more has to do with the business model and the way people look at a space. So when Apple launched iTunes, they completely changed the way music was distributed from buying a full album to buying individual songs and to needing to have the physical copy of the media to having a digital copy you could take anywhere. And now, I would argue that maybe Apple or iTunes created that category. They are the first to do that. But I would also argue that it's really Spotify, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think their user number is larger than Apple's for Apple Music, they're the ones who have actually designed the category. They're the ones who said, "This is what streaming music looks like. This is what you're supposed to pay. This is about how many artists or songs we're supposed to have available. This is how we're going to curate music to you." And that's a completely new way of using music or listening to music. I don't know what the official name for that category is. Maybe it's just called streaming music. It's not something I'm an expert on, but that was a very long answer to your question but those I think are two that come to mind for me. Kathleen: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I do feel like we're surrounded by category creation. And it's happening even faster than I think it used to because of the pace of technological change. We just don't necessarily recognize it as such. But when you have that framework through which to think about it, you do start to see it everywhere and it's really interesting to watch. And I think it's kind of like the whole frog that boiled in the water analogy, which is actually a terrible analogy when you really think about what you're talking about. But the notion that- John: Who's actually tried that by the way? Do you know anyone? Kathleen: No, God, I hope not. That's like, don't they say serial killers start by torturing animals? No, no, no. Do not boil any frogs. But the whole idea being it's happening to us. We are experiencing category creation. It's just that it's happening at a pace that we don't like see it. It's not like a yesterday it didn't exist, and today it does. That by the time the category has happened and has become commonplace, it just feels like it's been there all along kind of. It's really interesting. I think there's probably a whole psychological aspect to this that hasn't even been mined in a way that it could. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: But all right, shifting gears because I could talk about category creation forever, but we don't have forever. Inbound marketing. We talked about really what the podcast is about, and I love talking about category creation as part of it. Because when you talked about consistency and HubSpot and Drift and Terminus, really they were all phenomenal examples of companies that really did inbound marketing well. So when you think about inbound marketing as it is today, is there a particular individual or company that you really think is killing it? John: I'm going to say that it's really like a style of inbound marketing that I think is starting to get a lot of attention and it's this idea of having an evangelist be a voice for the company. And the reason I think this is so interesting is because, like our world is, there's so many messages we get from brands today, both on the consumer side and on the B2B side, that I think people have a real... They started to see that you can have a brand say anything, right? It's a construct. But when you have a person who's a real human being talking about the vision and the values and what their brand represents and how it might be able to help, to me, that's a much more authentic way and it's just very relevant in the world today because I feel like people just crave more human-to-human interaction. So a three examples of that. We've mentioned a couple already, so Sangram and Terminus does that very well. Dave Gerhardt does that. He doesn't have the title of evangelist, but he's much more of the face of the company I think even than David Cancel or others. And then, Ethan Beute at BombBomb is doing that really well. Kathleen: Yeah. John: I know you had him on a previous episode, and yeah. I know there's others out there, but those are the three that come to mind. I see their content very regularly. They all do a different job. They have their own styles. They have their own voice, but they're very authentic. And I think they're adding a lot of value for the respective companies through what they do. Kathleen: I totally agree. Those are three great examples. And picking the right person or settling on the right person to fill that role is such a critical decision for the company. It has to be somebody that truly, deeply understands, as you said, the problem that the audience is experiencing, but that also can come across as charismatically and passionately believing in that shift that needs to occur to create that new category. So it's an interesting mix of skills that you look for when you try to find your evangelist. John: Right, right. So does this mean you're going to step up and be the evangelist at Prevailion? Kathleen: I don't know. We actually... I'm really lucky. And one of the reasons I joined the company is that we have this amazing team of really smart people, who are also very invested in participating in marketing. So our CEO is unbelievable. He could sell ice to the Eskimos, not that he would. That makes him sound like he's a smarmy sales guy. He is so smart and he really has been in the market a long time and knows it, and he's also incredibly well-spoken. So while I would love to get up and talk about it, I think I'm really lucky that I have an executive team that is full of people who could probably fill that role better than I could. John: And you know what? I don't think it's entirely an either or situation. Some of those companies I've mentioned, they have someone who's maybe has the largest following or the loudest voice, but there's others on the team who can contribute to that. And I think that's what's really exciting, is it's not just one person, but you can have a whole series of people on your team evangelize for the company. And I don't know about you, there's something about when I just see the people behind a product that I'm thinking about using. I feel so much more comfortable having that conversation and and exploring what they do than I would if I was just reading pure brand messages. Kathleen: Absolutely. It all comes down to trust, right? And if you feel like you can trust that person who is the chief spokesperson, somehow or another there's a halo effect from that that shines down on the brand. And it really saturates the brand with that feeling of trustworthiness, that makes you want to buy from them. John: Yeah, that's right. Kathleen: Yeah. I love it. Well, digital marketing is changing so quickly. This topic of category creation is so fascinating because conceptually it seems like something that will stand the test of time, but then how you implement it obviously will change over time. With everything changing so quickly, how do you personally stay up to date and stay educated on all things marketing-related? John: Yeah. For me, both listening to and hosting podcasts has been a big driver of my growth. And so conversations like this one with you are really helpful because you and I could swap ideas. The episodes I've done... So I co-host a series on the B2B Growth show around category creation. I also did a series on FlipMyFunnel. That's given me the chance to talk to people who have done more category design work than I have and learn from them in the process. And for me, that's been so much more valuable than anything I could read or stumble across in a newsletter, not that those things aren't valuable. But having one-to-one access to experts, there's few things that are... I'm not sure if anything is going to beat that. Some of those conversations have led to ongoing relationships, where I've been able to ask questions and dive deeper into other topics. And so that's where I found the most valuable use of time, is just having conversations. I love to read, love to listen to podcasts, but anytime I could just talk to people and listen to them and then talk through my own ideas, man, I'd do that every day if I could. Kathleen: Amen. I just filmed a LinkedIn video about this, about how I learn. And the number one way I learn is through hosting this podcast, which when I say that to people, I know that that's not something that's going to be feasible for everyone. Let me just spin up a podcast so that I can learn. But it is the most amazing vehicle because you get to meet such incredible people like yourself, pick their brains, really get into detail that you can't get into in other ways. And it's amazing how much I take away from it. Second for me is I love to listen to Audible business books on 2X speed as I do my commute. John: What are you listening to right now? Kathleen: I am finishing Crossing the Chasm. And then before that, it was Play Bigger, From Impossible to Inevitable, and I come back. I'll listen multiple times to books because I feel like you absorb more the second time. John: Right. Kathleen: So yeah, lots of good ones. There's never too many books to read or never too few books, I should say. I always have more. John: Right, no shortage of content, yeah. How to connect with John Kathleen: Thank you. That's what I was trying to say. Well, if somebody has questions about category design and they want to reach out, learn more about what you're doing, or ask you a question, what's the best way for them to get in touch? John: Sure. So you could email me at John@FlagandFrontier.com. So that's J-O-H-N@FlagandFrontier.com. You can also just put in John.Marketing in your browser, and it'll bring up a really simple page with just my contact info. Sometimes that's easier to remember. Kathleen: So smart. That's great. I love that. John: I can't believe no one bought that domain, but it was there so why not? Kathleen: Genius. John: It's easier than spelling my last name. And then you can find me on LinkedIn as well. I won't attempt to spell my name here, but if you want to link to it in your episode- Kathleen: I'll put that in the show notes, absolutely. John: Yeah. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Great. Well, I have really enjoyed this. I've learned so much. I feel like I probably could have made this podcast three hours long, but nobody wants to listen for that long. If you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learned something new, I would really appreciate it if you would take a minute, go to Apple podcasts, and leave the podcast a five-star review. That is how other people discover us, and that is how we get in front of a bigger audience. So take a minute and do that. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Thank you so much, John. This has been fun. John: Yeah, my pleasure, Kathleen. And hopefully, we can have another conversation later on as you go further into your own category design process. Kathleen: Yes, about that and also about the minivan that you drove in high school. John: All right, sounds good.

Curtis & Prasanna greet their special guests Chris Mellor (Editor, The Register) and Chris Evans (Storage Unpacked Podcast), and talk about The Forrester Wave: Data Resiliency Solutions, Q3 2019. If you want to download the report yourself, you can do so here: https://resources.druva.com/analyst-reports/the-forrester-wave-data-resiliency-solutions-q3-2019

Our guests Matthew Tamsett and Ravi Upreti join Gabi Ferrara and Aja Hammerly to talk about data science and their project, Qubit. Qubit helps web companies by measuring different user experiences, analyzing that information, and using it to improve the website. They also use the collected data along with ML to predict things, such as which products users will prefer, in order to provide a customized website experience. Matthew talks a little about his time at CERN and his transition from working in academia to industry. It’s actually fairly common for physicists to branch out into data science and high performance computing, Matthew explains. Later, Ravi and Matthew talk GCP shop with us, explaining how they moved Qubit to GCP and why. Using PubSub, BigQuery, and BigQuery ML, they can provide their customers with real-time solutions, which allows for more reactive personalization. Data can be analyzed and updates can be created and pushed much faster with GCP. Autoscaling and cloud management services provided by GCP have given the data scientists at Qubit back their sleep! Matthew Tamsett Matthew was trained in experimental particle physics at Royal Holloway University of London, and did his Ph.D. on the use of leptonic triggers for the detection of super symmetric signals at the ATLAS detector at CERN. Following this, he completed three post doctoral positions at CERN and on the neutrino experiment NOvA at Louisiana Tech University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York, and the University of Sussex UK, culminating in a EU Marie Curie fellowship. During this time, Matt co-authored many papers including playing a minor part in the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Since leaving academia in 2016, he’s worked at Qubit as a data scientist and later as lead data scientist where he lead a team working to improve the online shopping experience via the use of personalization, statistics and predictive modeling. Ravi Upreti Ravi has been working with Qubit for almost 4 years now and leads the platform engineering team there. He learned distributed computing, parallel algorithms and extreme computing at Edinburgh University. His four year stint at Ocado helped developed a strong domain knowledge for e-commerce, along with deep technical knowledge. Now it has all come together, as he gets to apply all these learnings to Qubit, at scale. Cool things of the week A developer goes to a DevOps conference blog Cloud Build brings advanced CI/CD capabilities to GitHub blog Cloud Build called out in Forrester Wave twitter 6 strategies for scaling your serverless applications blog Interview Qubit site Qubit Blog blog Pub/Sub site BigQuery site BigQuery ML site Cloud Datastore site Cloud Memorystore site Cloud Bigtable site Cloud SQL site Cloud AutoML site Goodbye Hadoop. Building a streaming data processing pipeline on Google Cloud blog Question of the week How do you deploy a Windows container on GKE? Where can you find us next? Gabi will be at the Google Cloud Summit in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Aja will be at Cloud Next London. Sound Effect Attribution “Small Group Laugh 6” by Tim.Kahn of Freesound.org

In this episode, hosts Elias and Mark (both from Marketing Guys) have a 15 minute chat on how to select the right marketing automation platform for your organization. During the podcast we discuss the first step: find out how your vendor compares in the marketplace. To find this out we use 3 grids: Forrester Wave on Marketing Automation Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM and lead management G2Crowd grid on marketing automation Next, we discuss aspects that affect the specific choice for your organization: Features Size of your marketing team Support offering Integrations Price   Contact details: Website: https://www.marketingguys.eu If you want to be on this Podcast or would like to know more about Marketing Technology, contact Elias Crum at e.crum@marketingguys.nl

This episode will be brought to you in association with Reltio, a leader in the Forrester Wave for Machine Learning Data Catalogs. With this in mind we have put together a panel of knowledgeable figures within the industry to have a discussion around the future of data including AI and Machine Learning. These speakers include John Telford (Head of Data Architecture - The Trainline), Ramon Chen (Chief Product Officer - Reltio), and our very own Mike Evans (Chief Technical Officer - Comma). Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't quite make an appearance, but there was definitely some interesting discussion about how far technology is going to take us into the future! We had a great time making this happen, we hope you enjoy it! Thank you to everyone who came and participated. If you have any questions you wish had been answered feel free to get in touch! And if you enjoy the #CommaPod please like, share, and rate us on here and in iTunes.

In this episode, Olaf Kowalik -director of product management at Act-On Software) shares his vision on the future of marketing automation. Being one of the leaders in the Gartner Quadrant, Forrester Wave and G2Crowd, Act-On has a strong vision on the developments in this field. Act-On Software is one of the Gold Sponsors at marketing Technology Day (www.marketingtechnologyday.com). As a podcast listener, you can visit this event in The Netherlands on October 11th 2018 with a 40% discount, using the voucher code mentioned in the podcast.

In this episode, we talk to Category Leader, Peter Isaacson, CMO at Demandbase about How to Manage Influences, Analysts and More!  You can read the full transcription of this episode on the Heinz Marketing Blog starting Monday, 7/2/18.   Here's just a taste of the converstation: Matt: The easy thing to do on this conversation would be to talk about account based marketing. Demandbase is one of the leading providers of account based marketing technology to B2B companies. You guys do some amazing work in the space, but I've been particular impressed with the work you and your team have done with influencers and to create influence among third party experts in the market. So I wanted to spend a little time talking about that because I know a lot of our listeners on the sales and the marketing side, there's a lot you can do in terms of direct marketing, but every one of us we're marketing to people where there is a network of organizations, of individuals, of analysts, and others that are influencing their decision making as well. I think probably the best example of that for you guys more recently is the Forrester Wave that recently came out. Can you just kind of level set what was the wave about and how was Demandbase placed there? Peter:  Sure. So this is a real milestone I think certainly for Demandbase but also for ABM as a category and certainly want to get into kind of category creation and the role influencers play in that. But this has been a multi-year journey for us, not just overall within ABM certainly but also with Forrester to really kind of work with them, to help them understand account based marketing, why it's getting so much traction, why customers are getting engaged in it, things like that. Really for a category to really stand as a true category, you need a lot of things to happen, but one of the key milestones certainly is Gartner doing a magic quadrant and/or Forrester doing one of their waves around the category. That's what happened. They just published it about three weeks ago. ABM platforms specifically and Demandbase thankfully was established as the clear leader up into the right for the ABM platform category. So very exciting. Listen in for much more!

John is the author of the Forrester Wave 2017 Configure-Price-Quote Solutions Report.  In this interview he shares how he works with CPQ Solution Providers, what role configuration and pricing plays for ecommerce and CPQ, where he expects the CPQ Market to go and much more Send John an email @ JBruno@forrester.com  or contact him on Twitter @John_Bruno See John @ B2B Next in Chicago from September 24-26 

We discuss a recent Forrester Wave: “The Forrester Wave: Continuous Delivery And Release Automation, Q3 2017.” See more detailed notes here.

We discuss a recent Forrester Wave: “The Forrester Wave: Continuous Delivery And Release Automation, Q3 2017.” See more detailed notes here.

We discuss a recent Forrester Wave: “The Forrester Wave: Continuous Delivery And Release Automation, Q3 2017.” See more detailed notes here.

Tricentis is a software testing startup with dual headquarters in Vienna and Silicon Valley. The continuous testing platform accelerates testing to keep pace with Agile and DevOps. Armed with the industry’s most innovative functional testing technologies, the company breaks through the barriers experienced with conventional software testing tools—achieving test automation rates of over 90%. After hearing how Tricentis is recognized as the Continuous Testing leader in both the Forrester Wave and the Gartner Magic Quadrant combined with the fact they have over 400 customers including global names from the Top 500 brands such as HBO, Toyota, Allianz, BMW, Starbucks, Deutsche Bank, Lexmark, Orange, A&E, Vantiv, Vodafone, Telstra and UBS, I invited Tricentis CEO Sandeep Johri onto my podcast to find out more. Earlier this year Tricentis hit the headlines after securing a $165 million funding round from a single investor, Insight Venture Partners. But, this is unlikely to phase the CEO who should know all about the software testing space considering he led HP's acquisition of industry leader Mercury Interactive in 2006 for about $4.5 billion. But this is not a tech podcast is not about the past, but the tech startup journey to the future. Recently Triscentist also acquired Australia-based load-testing platform Flood IO too which some heavyweight clients such as AT&T, NEC, ABC, and Bloomberg. “Times have changed. Old performance testing approaches are too late, too heavy, and too slow for today’s lean, fast-paced delivery pipelines,” explained Sandeep Johri, CEO of Tricentis. “Yet, releasing updates without insight into their performance impact is incredibly dangerous in today’s world—with competitors just a click away. Flood’s technology offers DevOps teams unparalleled flexibility for load testing early and continuously. This acquisition enables us to take our mission of ‘transforming testing for DevOps’ to the next level.” On this episode, I chat to Tricentis CEO Sandeep Johri about the opportunities and challenges around Continuous Testing and Test Automation for large enterprises.  

In the age of the internet -- where information is freely available online, and connections between sellers and buyers of software products are visible on LinkedIn -- do analysts really matter? Do they play a role in decision-making for purchases from smaller vendors like tech startups, especially given the rise of the developer as a buyer? Or what if you're trying to create a new category ... do you need to be on a Gartner Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave or similar? We answer these questions and more in this episode of the a16z Podcast, featuring former analysts, client managers, and/or product marketing veterans Stacy D'Amico (who joined a16z after a decade at Gartner), Michael King (director of enterprise product marketing at GitHub), and Aneel Lakhani, in conversation with Sharon Chang of the a16z market development team. The conversation covers everything startups should know about analyst relations, from why and how and when to engage with analysts to whether to consider pay-for-play (no!) or more boutique/niche analyst firms. Most importantly: given their limited resources but big market visions, how can startups get the most out of analyst relations?

Tune in for David’s agnostic perspective and learn how he uses The Gartner BI Magic Quadrant.  In This Episode, You'll Learn: Get full show notes and more information here:  The many tools David and Aldo’s BI team are currently working with and why. What people should really use Gartner Quadrant for and why. David openly compares the Forrester Wave vs Gartner BI Magic Quadrant – who’s the leader? (19:00) The importance of data governance. David’s jaw-dropping take on the visionary quadrant. What Shocked David the most when he first looked at The Quadrant. Why David believes that Gartner should rename the quadrant and why. Why customers should never select a tool based on The Gartner Magic Quadrant or The Forrester Wave. Get full show notes and more information here: http://analyticsonfire.com/9  

In this audio event we speak with Craig Le Clair of Forrester Research, co-author of The Forrester Wave: Business Process Management for Document Processes, Q3 2007 report. Craig discusses Forrester’s definition of Business Process Management and BPM Suites, document-intensive types of processes and their requirements, the type of functionality that is important within a [...] Related posts:The Total Economic Impact of EMC Documentum: Interview with the Analyst Jeff North of Forrester Consulting, author of the commissioned study...Automate Manual Processes with Transactional Content Management Learn about solutions and strategies to effectively manage your paper...Enterprise Content Management in your IT Infrastructure An in depth conversation with Forrester EMC analyst Kyle McNabb,...