Thank you for reading! Please see “Why 5W?” for context, methodology and disclaimers.
SaaS-Based Payroll Overview
Managing payroll is a critical yet complex process for businesses of all sizes. SaaS-based payroll solutions offer a cloud-native alternative to traditional, manual payroll systems, providing automation, compliance, and seamless integrations with Human Resources (HR) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platforms. By leveraging cloud technology, organizations can process payroll accurately, reduce administrative burdens, and ensure compliance with tax and labor regulations—all without maintaining costly on-premise infrastructure.
SaaS-Based Payroll Business Benefits
Companies adopting SaaS-based payroll solutions can expect:
Automated Payroll Processing – Reduce manual calculations and errors with real-time processing.
Regulatory Compliance – Stay updated with evolving tax laws, labor policies, and compliance requirements.
Scalability – Adapt payroll operations for businesses of any size, from startups to enterprises.
Seamless Integration – Sync payroll with HR, time tracking, and financial systems for efficiency.
Cost Savings – Lower administrative costs by reducing manual effort and infrastructure expenses.
SaaS-Based Payroll Capabilities
A robust SaaS payroll system should include:
Automated Payroll Runs – Calculate wages, deductions, and taxes with minimal human intervention.
Tax Filing & Compliance – Generate accurate tax reports and submit filings in compliance with local regulations.
Direct Deposit & Payment Processing – Enable secure and timely payroll disbursement via multiple payment methods.
Employee Self-Service Portals – Allow employees to access pay stubs, tax forms, and update personal information.
Analytics & Reporting – Provide real-time insights into payroll expenses, tax liabilities, and workforce trends.
SaaS-Based Payroll Use Cases
Small Business Payroll Management – Automate payroll for growing teams, reducing administrative time and costs.
Multi-State & Global Payroll Compliance – Ensure adherence to payroll regulations across different jurisdictions.
Contractor & Gig Economy Payments – Seamlessly manage payments and tax reporting for freelancers and gig workers.
HR & Payroll Integration – Sync employee data across HR, benefits, and time-tracking systems for accuracy.
Payroll Processing for Remote Teams – Ensure timely salary payments across multiple locations and currencies.
SaaS-Based Payroll Providers
Several providers offer SaaS-based payroll solutions, enabling businesses to optimize their payroll processes:
ADP Workforce Now A cloud-based payroll and HR platform designed for businesses of all sizes, offering automation, compliance tools, and seamless integrations.
Gusto An intuitive payroll solution catering to small and mid-sized businesses, with built-in benefits administration and compliance support.
Paychex Flex A flexible payroll system with tax filing, direct deposit, and workforce analytics, serving businesses of various scales.
Rippling An all-in-one workforce management system that integrates payroll, benefits, and IT for streamlined employee administration.
Workday Payroll An enterprise-grade payroll platform that offers real-time reporting, global payroll capabilities, and compliance management.
SaaS-Based Payroll Audiences at Target Companies
SaaS-based payroll solutions provide value across multiple roles within an organization:
Finance & Accounting Teams – Gain better visibility into payroll expenses and tax liabilities.
Small Business Owners – Simplify payroll without hiring dedicated HR personnel.
IT & Operations Teams – Ensure seamless integration with business applications.
Conclusion
SaaS-based payroll solutions eliminate the complexities of payroll management by automating processes, ensuring compliance, and reducing administrative workload. Businesses that leverage these platforms benefit from scalability, efficiency, and cost savings, while employees enjoy seamless access to their payroll information.
From a Technical Sales Strategy (TSS) perspective, positioning SaaS payroll solutions effectively involves:
Clarifying their value to different stakeholders (HR, finance, IT).
Addressing objections related to security, integration, and cost.
Highlighting measurable business benefits such as automation, compliance, and accuracy.
As organizations continue to shift to digital workforce management, SaaS-based payroll solutions provide a competitive advantage by simplifying payroll operations and allowing businesses to focus on growth.
Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to build strong connections within my city’s Chinese technical business community. This group has been quietly shaping an impressive venture capital and startup ecosystem, fostering innovation and growth in ways that continue to inspire me. As someone who can fulfill the roles of CIO, CDO, CSO and CTO, I’ve had the privilege of assisting these startups where they need this leadership.
Beyond my professional role, I’ve found something even more rewarding .. as I call it, “The English-speaking friend of the family.”
This role has allowed me to support these families in navigating daily challenges due to living in an English-speaking country. Something as simple as a restaurant reservation, an auto registration, school enrollments, or simply describing how local services work.
.. and yes, a traffic ticket (or two).
This volunteer work has helped me become a bridge between cultures, families and the government, helping to make life a little easier.
Recently, this trust led me to an experience that gave me a front-row seat to my own government in action: a trip to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) facility to assist a family member with their green card renewal biometrics appointment.
Walking into the USCIS facility was nothing short of eye-opening. The sheer scale of the operation was impressive .. a supermarket-sized room filled with about 500 people, all waiting to complete an essential step in their immigration journey. And yet, what struck me most was the precision with which everything was run. The USCIS staff moved people seamlessly through the process, from initial check-in to biometric data collection. Groups were efficiently organized, directed to their respective stations, and guided through each step professionally and carefully. It was an incredible example of a government system working precisely as it should: efficient, fair, and respectful of the people it serves.
In an era where government efficiency is often questioned and complaints about immigration are loud and sometimes cruel, it was refreshing to witness an operation running like clockwork, ensuring people could renew their documentation in a safe and structured environment. For many, these moments are life-changing .. the ability to stay, work, and build a future in the United States depends on these processes working smoothly and fairly.
As I watched, I couldn’t help but feel a deep appreciation for the people behind the system .. the staff who make it function and the immigrants whose perseverance and patience define the experience. It was a brilliant reminder for me: at its best, government service can be a powerful force for good.
Thank you for reading! Please see “Why 5W?” for context, methodology and disclaimers.
Agent Overview
The rise of AI-powered agents powered by large language models (LLMs) and generative AI offers transformative potential for a wide range of stakeholders. Businesses, end-users and developers all stand to benefit. For businesses, these agents represent an opportunity to deliver exceptional customer experiences, automate repetitive tasks and deepen engagement. For end-users, they promise unprecedented convenience, enabling them to accomplish complex tasks with simple, conversational inputs. Developers, meanwhile, can leverage this technology to create highly specialized solutions tailored to niche markets or use cases.
Imagine you’re planning a trip. Today, you would navigate separately to an airline site, a hotel booking portal, and a car rental service .. all with separate logins. Or, you can work through an aggregator .. while convenient, potentially introduces other challenges (surcharges, cancellation options, etc.) with the booking.
Tomorrow, an AI-powered agent will streamline this activity, offering a unified interface where you simply describe your needs: “I want to travel from Atlanta to Seattle on February 12th, departing before noon. Please find flights, book a rental car for my arrival, and reserve a room at the Westin in Downtown Seattle for two nights, returning to Atlanta the afternoon of February 14th.” The agent can ask you to clarify preferences (learning along the way) and respond with options based on your plain-language prompt. Further, the Agent will create stickiness for the website, suggesting account and profile creation and storing preferences and payment options from the interaction.
Extend this example to multiple B2C and internal use cases (examples below), all of which eliminate complexity and streamline processes.
AI-powered agents act as intermediaries between users and complex systems, translating natural language inputs into actionable requests. Underpinned by LLMs and generative AI, these agents:
Understand Context: By analyzing the user’s input, they determine intent and parse details into actionable components.
Coordinate Across Systems: They interact with multiple APIs or backend systems to gather and process information, presenting options to users or completing tasks autonomously.
Learn and Personalize: Over time, agents improve by learning user preferences, optimizing recommendations, and tailoring responses.
In the travel booking example, the agent queries airline, hotel, and rental car systems, consolidating data to present options in a coherent format. It eliminates the friction of juggling multiple platforms, freeing up the user’s time and attention.
Business Benefits
AI-powered agents provide businesses with several key advantages:
Enhanced Efficiency: Automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, freeing employees to focus on higher-value activities.
Cost Savings: Reduce operational costs by handling tasks traditionally managed by humans.
Personalized User Experiences: Tailor interactions to individual preferences, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Availability: Operate around the clock, ensuring continuous availability and support.
Improved Decision-Making: Leverage real-time data and insights to provide accurate and timely responses.
The agent will increase user loyalty, making it the go-to method for completing tasks.
Agent Capabilities
An effective AI-powered agent should be able to execute tasks such as:
Understanding Complex Requests: Parse and respond to multi-step queries, like planning a trip or managing logistics.
Providing Contextual Responses: Leverage user history and preferences to deliver personalized solutions.
Integrating with Systems: Seamlessly connect with various tools, platforms, and APIs to complete tasks.
Learning and Adapting: Improve over time by analyzing past interactions and feedback.
Ensuring Data Security: Handle sensitive information responsibly and securely.
Note that the agent does not need to be built to execute these capabilities by itself .. the first integration with the agent will be with underlying LLMs and back-end systems through the use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), automation and Web Services.
Agent Use Cases
Use cases for agents are everywhere. Beyond the travel booking sample, the capabilities of engaging through plain-language requests and backend integrations can enable myriad use cases such as:
Customer Support: Automate responses to FAQs or escalate complex issues to human agents.
E-Commerce Assistance: Help users find products, compare prices and complete purchases.
Healthcare Scheduling: Manage appointments, send reminders and answer patient queries.
HR Onboarding: Guide new employees through onboarding processes, from document submission to training schedules.
Recruiting: Guide candidates to roles that match their skills and job preferences.
Use your imagination .. what kinds of processes did you execute today? Which processes repeat themselves, only with different data? Which ones lend themselves to agent automation?
Agent Providers
Agent enablement platforms are already here, requiring only integration and agent training. Several companies provide platforms enable businesses to create and deploy AI-powered agents. If a business doesn’t have the skills to do the integration, each of these companies has a robust partner ecosystem to perform these services:
The OpenAI Platform provides foundational LLMs that power intelligent conversational agents.
Many, many more partners out there that can enable virtually any use case you can imagine. Please reach out to me if I may assist in platform and partner selection.
Agent Audiences at Target Companies
Some audiences you can consider when you approach companies about deploying AI-powered agents. Note there are many diverse stakeholders within these organizations, including:
Customer Service Teams will benefit from agents that automate support tasks and enhance customer interactions.
Sales Departments use agents to qualify leads and handle routine inquiries.
Operations Managers leverage agents to streamline workflows and improve efficiency.
IT Departments deploy agents to assist with system queries and troubleshooting as part of their ticketing system.
Marketing Teams utilize agents to gather customer insights and personalize campaigns.
AI-powered sales agents are my favorite at the moment as a means to extend my Technical Sales Strategy engagements.
An agent seller needs the ability to recognize, expand and document end-customer use cases / need states that enable them to secure a solid prospect. An agent sale will cross multiple audiences, engaging Sales, Marketing, IT, Operations, Developers and Executive audiences.
Conclusion
An agent campaign is a storytelling campaign. It may will likely not begin with a prospect with an enhancement story already in mind. Target audiences need to be guided to consider extensions to their current processes with an agent front-end to facilitate better end-user experiences. Agents are a paradigm shift .. engagements will involve several technical and business audiences, as well as reaching from operations and technical audiences all the way to the executive suite of an organization. Product Owners and Developers will present as useful influencers, but the ultimate decisions must be enabled across the organization.
Thank you for reading! Please see “Why 5W?” for context, methodology and disclaimers.
ChatGPT Overview
You’ve heard all about it! You’ve heard it is either the greatest thing ever or will usher in the age of The Terminator. It is either the ultimate Cliff’s Notes or the means for students to rescue homework their dog devoured at the last, life-saving moment. You might hear it is going to eliminate jobs or create a new class of workers. You might even believe it is an all-knowing oracle, preparing to unleash digital doom upon humanity.
It’s not. Or is it?
Some might say it is stunted, relying only on trained data, or data obtained prior to a specific date. They might cite a lack of accuracy or it is unable to apply common sense reasoning. They might say it takes too many prompt attempts to get an acceptable answer or the results are dry, or robot-like. You might hear cries of plagiarism .. a genuine concern, given how ChatGPT is populated and trained.
No argument from me on any of these points. I feel the time is ripe for a healthy discussion about these concerns, capabilities, restrictions, and more. This is the first of a larger document set that will address practices and use cases companies should consider when adopting and rolling the use of ChatGPT within their organization.
By way of overview, ChatGPT wrote the following paragraph with the initial prompt: “Write a paragraph for a blog post about ChatGPT with the following section heading: ChatGPT Overview.”
Introducing ChatGPT, an advanced language model powered by OpenAI’s cutting-edge GPT-3.5 architecture. ChatGPT has revolutionized the field of Conversational AI, enabling human-like interactions and opening up endless possibilities for businesses and individuals alike. In this blog post, we will delve into the various aspects of ChatGPT, exploring its business benefits, capabilities, use cases, providers, audiences, and ultimately, its impact on the world.
Dry, and accurate. It appears that ChatGPT has no lack of ego .. it is quite happy to be writing about itself. To further my statement, it titled the post-to-be: “Unleashing the Power of ChatGPT: Revolutionizing Conversational AI”. I softened it a wee bit.
Ways I think of ChatGPT:
She is the smartest ‘friend’ that I have. A friend to whom I can pose any question at any hour of the day or night.
This friend listens. Even if I’m not fond of the first response, I can simply clarify without having to retype my entire prompt. I just tell it what I don’t like about it, or to make it funny, or to lengthen or shorten, adding (or removing) the level of detail.
She is a resource on which I can rely for step-by-step instructions from PC support, recipes, research tracks, and more.
She can replace using a search engine (YMMV, based on the age of the content) .. rather than a list of links, it can provide an article that addresses my request criteria.
With an appropriate prompt, she can deliver excellent first-draft content .. this puts me more into editing, rather than writing mode.
She has a wicked sense of humor .. something of which I pride myself.
ChatGPT is early stage, but eminently functional. There is a growing ecosystem of companies working with it to extend the functionality to yield real business results, provide guardrails and integrate the capabilities into applications.
Caveat: Be aware of the results. OpenAI does not guarantee the content is fresh or positively accurate. This will improve over time, or when you start to work with released versions.
ChatGPT Business Benefits
Even at an early stage, and without integration, ChatGPT adoption brings numerous potential benefits to businesses by offering a scalable, automated and cost-effective solution across a wide variety of use cases. For the average user, ChatGPT is ‘free’, at least at the moment. An end user need only sign up with OpenAI, confirm their email address and they’re ready to write prompts. Bear in mind, they’ll be working with the ‘default’ version of ChatGPT, as offered at that moment. The good news: you can simply prompt “What version of ChatGPT are you?”, to which I received the response:
I am an AI language model based on the GPT-3.5 architecture developed by OpenAI. My responses and capabilities are derived from the training data and knowledge available up until September 2021. It’s worth noting that I don’t have access to information or updates beyond that point. If there have been any newer versions or updates to ChatGPT released by OpenAI since then, I may not be aware of them or have knowledge about their specific features or improvements.
Once a company starts to integrate ChatGPT into its product offering or into its infrastructure, it’ll need a more formal (read: paying) relationship with OpenAI. This will get the company access to more current language models, enable the ability to train the model, provide API access, and more.
I view ChatGPT as a platform, an enabling technology and a means to extend existing offerings in ways we’ve yet to imagine .. hence I’m pressing ‘pause’ on Business Benefits here, as I’ll go more deeply into Use Cases (below) to spark a discussion on how companies can reduce their bottom line, improve their top line and enhance their offerings using ChatGPT.
ChatGPT Capabilities
From ChatGPT with the prompt “Please provide a paragraph describing the capabilities of ChatGPT”:
ChatGPT’s capabilities are truly remarkable. It possesses a vast knowledge base, drawing upon a wide range of topics and domains. It can answer questions, provide explanations, and even generate creative content such as blog posts, articles, and product descriptions. ChatGPT can understand context, maintain conversational coherence, and adapt to different conversational styles, making interactions feel more natural and dynamic.
.. I could barely have described it better myself. The proof is in the Prompt. Here are a few things I’ve asked ChatGPT prior to, and when researching this article .. links (provided by ChatGPT) for each prompt (try these at home!) :
Prompt: “write a HIIT workout for me” .. a nicely-formatted High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) workout, describing warm-up, timings and eight exercises. Now, as I didn’t recognize most of the exercises on the list, I followed on with Prompt: “update this request with a link to each exercise” .. ChatGPT provided the same output, but with a link to a video for each exercise.
Last: Analyze Blog Post Request, where I first ask for instructions on how to request the analysis and them make the actual request .. this was the most fun: ChatGPT was very kind about my writing.
Note the value of specificity, including number of paragraphs, output formatting (tables or step-by-step) and so on.
Nothing formal herein .. just hoping to give you a taste. I’ll release a number of specific use-case articles as we go.
ChatGPT Use Cases
The public version of ChatGPT can satisfy a wide variety of use cases across various industries. Please see my examples, above for general usage.
For specific company use, i.e., tailored technical support or company-specific processes, ChatGPT will need to be trained on the company background data. Once trained, ChatGPT enables application across numerous use cases.
Customer support: answer frequently asked questions, troubleshoot common issues and guide users through self-service processes.
Virtual assistant: common tasks like scheduling appointments, making reservations or offering personalized recommendations.
Language translation and content creation across internal and external domains.
E-Commerce: Act as a virtual sales assistant, guiding customers through their purchasing journey, answering product-related queries, and offering personalized recommendations. With training and connections to E-Commerce systems, the model can understand customer preferences and historical data, enhancing the shopping experience and driving sales.
Healthcare: Assist medical professionals with information on symptoms, suggesting potential diagnoses and offering treatment guidelines. Depending on training, It can act as a reliable source of medical knowledge, supporting doctors and nurses in their decision-making processes.
Mental health: Engage in empathetic conversations, providing a sense of companionship and offering resources for self-care.
This automation can help companies to handle a larger volume of inquiries efficiently. The instant responses will reduce customer wait times and enhance overall satisfaction.
ChatGPT Providers
Several providers have already integrated ChatGPT into their platforms, making the technology readily accessible to businesses and developers. OpenAI offers an API that allows developers to build their applications and leverage the power of ChatGPT. The API provides easy-to-use integration options that enable businesses to integrate conversational capabilities quickly and seamlessly.
I typically provide a list of partners in this section, but the market is moving so rapidly, I will defer this to a later post. In the interim, I found a very useful article on CRN: 8 Partners Weigh In On The ChatGPT, GPT Generative AI Hype. Published in February 2023, it provides a pragmatic view of various partner use cases.
ChatGPT Audiences
In a word: diverse. Businesses of all sizes and domains can leverage ChatGPT to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences and gain a competitive edge. Individuals can benefit using it as a personal productivity tool, creative writing assistant or, a companion for learning and exploration.
Developers and researchers can utilize the ChatGPT API to build new applications, conduct experiments, and advance the field of Conversational AI.
I will cover specific audiences in future use-case articles.
Conclusion
ChatGPT represents a significant leap forward in Conversational AI, unlocking new possibilities for businesses, individuals and developers. Advanced capabilities, diverse use cases and availability through various providers make it a game-changer in the world of natural language processing. As ChatGPT continues to evolve and improve, we can expect even more exciting applications and opportunities to arise, shaping the future of communication and human-AI interaction.
By harnessing the power of ChatGPT, we embark on a journey of innovation, pushing the boundaries of what is possible and redefining the way we engage with technology.
5W is my chance to riff off the classic journalistic methodology of the “Five Ws” (‘Who What, When, Where and Why’) to describe a technology offering and potential impact to a business. Note that I’ve re-alliterated, co-opted, abused and reordered these to suit my evil purposes. I drop the commonly-added ‘How’, as I am seeking to provide prescriptive business guidance for technology selection and implementation. Happy to engage in online / offline discussions .. send me a note.
Thank you for reading! Please see “Why 5W?” for context, methodology and disclaimers.
Edge Computing Overview
Edge Computing (EC) is a distributed computing paradigm where highly-scalable and efficient computing resources are made available closer (physically or through optimized network enhancements) to an end user, providing a superior application experience. EC offloads processing that would otherwise make round trips to a primary datacenter / cloud resource, thereby reducing latency and improving application / workload performance. Applications that can benefit from Edge Computing include mobile, web or thick client (locally installed on workstation).
The concept of ‘edge’ (in earlier days was known as ‘content delivery network‘ (CDN) as early as the 1990s. Companies like Akamai recognized a business model in providing improved end-user performance by serving static binary assets (images, videos and files) from geographically-dispersed data centers, closer to the end user than the central data center. Content and website owners uploaded large (videos, binary / file-based content) and a plethora of smaller, oft-used images (icons and web page graphics) to these servers to help the end-user avoid the latency of downloading these assets from central servers. Before the cloud, these servers were originally positioned in major data centers in the cardinal regions (AM, APAC, EMEA), but soon expanded into even more geographically-dispersed edge sites to improve end-user performance.
As you may surmise, companies who deployed assets on CDNs demanded policy-based content management (availability, expiry, etc.), unified upload / addressing for application access and consumption (storage, bandwidth) cost optimization from the CDN vendors. The winners in this early space sorted this through lookups, automation and dynamic addressing, methods deployed to this day.
Also to be expected, functional capability requirements evolved well beyond managing static content to include distributed interim storage, processing and expanded integration capabilities to third-party systems from the decentralized site, hence EC emerged. Early EC implementations were IoT-focused, especially for location-bound services that required increased computing performance to manage the output from sensors, machines and other monitorable / controllable assets.
The EC use case landscape is quite broad. Early deployments supported near-line collection and processing, enhancing data collected from IoT devices. These data were aggregated and correlated to provide a broader picture of the captured data. Next-stage deployments required highly-customized efforts by offering owners (i.e., a lot of code) to integrate these data. As with other emerging technologies, vendors stepped into the gap, providing platforms that reduce the level of effort (and code) enabling offering owners to engage in the new paradigm. Please see some of these in ‘Technology Providers’, below.
EC can be part of, and benefit from, a robust SD-WAN implementation, where devices, on-premises assets and cloud resource connections are managed and optimized centrally through policy. Most importantly, the benefits of an Edge Computing implementation can be measured by improved end-user / customer experience (CXM).
Edge Computing Business Benefits
Before modern browser-based and mobile-enabled capabilities, many applications were delivered to users in a client-server model, leveraging fast bandwidth and the computing capabilities of a local PC to do last-moment processing, dynamic presentation (sorting, graphics generation, etc.), in addition to relying on local temporary storage.
These applications were typically deployed in on-premises environments and connected to the central application server via a Local Area Network (LAN). Application developers / product owners relied on local PC capabilities to enhance the end-user experience for improved data navigation and management. When applications moved to browser-based implementation (with no access to local system resources), extended to mobile devices (multiple operating systems, introducing separate mobile-only code lines) or engaged with ‘dumb’ devices (devices lacking local processing, like sensors or cameras) the need for data aggregation and processing shifted back to the server. This introduced latency as entire data sets had to be transported over a slower connection for heretofore simple operations like sorting or graphics manipulation. As you may surmise, user experience suffered and bandwidth costs increased.
EC enables many of the same types of user experience enhancements through pre-processing content to thin-client implementations (web browsers, mobile devices, thin PCs and embedded endpoints), all without the need to write native client software for each of these devices. EC processing enhancements and close proximity avoid round trips to the central application server, leveraging capacity much closer to the end user, reducing latency and improving functionality. Further, EC enables call-outs to external services without the need to route them through the central application server, enabling application owners to leverage external services far more efficiently.
An EC DIY effort isn’t as easy or as seamless as an organization might hope. Establishing an edge infrastructure is beyond the typical product organization as it requires securing computing capacity close to your end users. Modern cloud vendors have enabled this capability by offering remote capacity in a pay-as-you-go model (please see ‘Technology Providers’, below). The short bit: aligning with an Edge provider with a platform is a far safer path.
Companies with existing applications encountered challenges getting to the edge as well, as, in short, many older applications were built with a single source server in mind. Companies discovered that off-loading tasks to remote computing capacity required refactoring application code or extra infrastructure into the new paradigm. While significant value can be achieved from this effort, companies had to balance the value against the investment. Again, modern cloud vendors and direct-to-edge platforms streamlined prompting application owners to review their existing applications to make them more edge-friendly / cloud-native applications.
EC is still early enough that many clear standards and verified strategies have yet to emerge. At a high level, there are some (emergent and hyper-simplified) EC offering methodologies:
Edge Capacity: IaaS-like computing resources enhanced with the means to perform automated deployments. Code must be written to be deployed across central and Edge servers, as with a distributed application.
Edge Platform: A PaaS-like platform that reduces manual deployments and code refactoring by enabling developers to ‘write to the platform’. This makes deployments simpler, but requires developers to refactor their code to Edge-Native standards.
Microservices: This option typically requires a significant re-write of application code, including provisioning services that enable standardized access to back-end resources. This is not for the faint of heart, nor those who do not have access to significantly-capable technical resources within their organization.
The first enables lift-and-shift code deployments, but at the cost of increased, remote management efforts. The second provides a far more robust and scalable implementation, but potentially creates vendor lock-in for the end customer. The third requires a code rewrite, all the way from the UI to the backend services. Note that in practice, an implementation may include any of these three, all combined into the final product.
As of this writing, there is a notable lack of codified EC standards and practices, with companies deploying workarounds to accommodate dated application standards and ‘not-quite-right’ edge toolsets. EC concepts are solid .. expect other paradigms to emerge as EC matures. The larger technology companies are the most mature, most notably, Akamai, IBM and Amazon.
Edge Computing Capabilities
The EC Platform paradigm solves significant application operability and performance use cases by enabling offering owners to get computing power closer to the end user. This is especially important when aiming to provide a thick-client user experience to cloud-hosted applications or aggregate and process data from thousands of IoT devices. While EC deployments will reduce latency, they will introduce levels of complexity in application design. As yet early, capable EC offerings may include:
EC as a Service: the edge platform is offered via provider-owned and operated assets, requiring little to no edge infrastructure on the part of the customer. This can be IaaS or PaaS. If the latter, will likely have one or more software platform components to which the application owner must comply.
Hardware Abstraction and Vendor-Independent Architectures: enables ‘Write Once / Deploy Broadly’ capabilities for developers to write code to a platform that can be deployed through automation, governed by policy.
Cloud Independence: EC intermediary systems can provide an abstraction layer to work with multiple clouds simultaneously or switch between clouds if business needs / opportunities warrant.
Given the diversity of platforms and to-be-defined Edge standards, ISVs and SIs are filling the gap more so than Enterprises .. in short, organizations don’t really want to ‘roll their own’. This will shift as Edge-Native development paradigms become the norm for various application patterns. Open-Source platforms are clearly ahead of Edge development, albeit in a less-cohesive fashion. At the least, Edge-interested companies can cobble together an implementation from an impressive set of tools that will reduce their overall code and deployment challenges.
When defining EC capabilities, certain realities will come into play that will drive vendor selection and application considerations for organizations. In no particular order, these may include:
n-layer / n-tier, rather than flat, application architectures will lend themselves well to EC, especially if some of the layers / tiers are already defined as services-oriented implementations.
Services-oriented architectures (alluded to, above) enable broad application distribution, whereby services can be located and referenced to avoid duplication of code, capacity and effort.
Microservices architectures with policy-based deployment and connectivity models.
Configurable Process Orchestration.
Dynamic workload placement agility.
Aggregation and processing layers placed closer to data collection assets creating simplified inline real-time feedback to local monitoring assets.
Centralized processing tiers aggregating content for historical reporting.
Always-available connectivity, including 5G networks to ensure data can flow between tiers.
EC makes it possible to collect, process, augment and deliver data and content to end users. Besides improved user experience, EC enables thousands of real-time use cases that were simply infeasible before. Please see Use Cases below for examples of use cases that can benefit from EC.
Edge Computing Use Cases
EC lends itself to a wide variety of use cases, typically described as stories when engaging prospects. A few described below for reference.
Mapping and Directions:
An end user makes a request from a mapping application to obtain directions to their destination.
The request is authenticated by the main site, providing a processing token and redirection to the nearest edge site.
The token validates the request between the user device and the edge site and allows access.
The edge site processes the request independently, adding additional (and hyper-local) ephemeral assets like maps, weather, specific driving directions and more, sending the response to the mobile device.
The edge site performs lazy updates to the main site to update user history while the trip is in progress.
The end user receives the directions from the edge site, monitoring their progress locally via their mobile device.
While navigating, the mobile application updates the edge site and receives localized updates on traffic, weather or other local travel factors.
The user arrives at their destination and the edge site lazy updates user history on the main site.
To summarize: the main site offloaded parts of the services delivery to the edge site based on user location. The edge site performed localized outreach to manage changing conditions, informing the end user. The edge site updated the main site in the background during, finalizing user history at the end of the trip.
Image Acquisition / Manipulation for Social Media upload:
An end user snaps a picture on their mobile device with the intent to upload it to their favorite social media site.
The request is authenticated by the main site, providing a token and redirection to the nearest edge site. The token validates the request between the user device and the edge site and allows access.
The mobile device opens the raw image file in the social media application, which is uploaded to the edge site. The main site is notified of the activity in the background, however the raw image is not uploaded to the main site just yet.
The user edits the image in the social media application (cropping, filters, enhancements, etc.). The mobile application prepares to send the delta of these changes (not the image file itself) to the edge site.
The user confirms their changes and when satisfied, commits them on the mobile device.
The edge site dynamically allocates computing capacity to manipulate the image to user specifications.
The edge site uses computing capacity to finalize the image, notifying the user when complete.
The edge site lazy writes the final version to the central server for permanent storage.
The main site offloaded processor-intensive image manipulation tasks to the edge site. Note the image was only uploaded once, and only to the edge site. Only after the end user approved changes did the final optimized image be uploaded to the main site for permanent storage.
TMS: Vehicle Monitoring and Management through processing telematics. 5G enablement opportunity.
Manufacturing: ‘Smarter’ Sensors for Monitoring and Management.
“Smart Buildings” Monitoring and Management through embedded systems.
EC use cases number in the thousands. No customer buys ‘Edge Computing’ by itself .. they will have at least one (and likely several) use case goals in mind. It is the seller / SME task to understand the target use case proposals to the point where we can suggest appropriate solutions from our client offerings. Note that while adopting a platform can satisfy a priority use case, the same platform can be used for additional use cases to achieve more ROI from an end-customer investment.
Edge Computing Providers
As use cases vary far and wide, these are all ‘some assembly required’ .. where these companies provide the hardware and / or software platforms requiring connecting and orchestrating systems and services. It is highly unlikely widely-accepted standards will emerge across all platforms.
A mature Edge platform with server-less code execution, deployed on the Akamai global CDN network. “Edge Computing” is the new Akamai marketing tagline. Offers a free trial.
A feature of Amazon CloudFront, Lambda enables serverless code execution closer to the end user. On-demand capacity, AWS does not charge the customer when the code is not running. IoT-specific use cases for connectivity and management.
Secure Edge Platform for Developers, which enables the deployment of Edge-Distributed applications.
ED: As Article Publish dates are frozen in time, it is quite possible reviewed vendors and their capabilities may have advanced beyond those presented herein. Please accept my apologies for my shortcomings. A note to vendors: please reach out to adviseyour current offering capabilities and I will update.
Edge Computing Audiences
Most IT audiences will recognize Edge by name .. but all will have different definitions and a wide variety of understanding and expectations for Edge use in their organization. Ditto for Executive audiences. The majority of these audiences will need to be engaged through education on the performance and cost savings aspects of EC, tailored to their role in an organization. IT can be engaged through potential cost savings where an offering can be decentralized, shifting processing to remote locations, saving processing and bandwidth.
Surprisingly, Product Owners (POs), who are typically hungry for new features to improve their products are not seen as primary audiences for EC as of yet .. the PO audience must also be educated, relying on ‘what if’ scenarios and stories that will improve their offering. Given virtually infinite use cases, engaging POs through discovery is an important part of an engagement. A seller can approach prospective POs by describing the value of EC to add new features and enhance performance to end-customer audiences. This will require sellers to take a close look at the company offering, understanding the use cases the offering enables and extrapolating offering enhancements they can present to the PO. Not all ideas will land with POs .. this engagement will require thick-skinned ‘idea hamsters‘ working with outreach agents to ensure a credible impression in an initial contact.
EC is not a technical sale at the outset. It is creative and educational, relying on sellers identifying, researching and offering use cases that align to prospect roles within the target organization.
A company should consider EC for:
Adding new features to their offering that can be optimized via the end-user location.
Improving end-customer experience with new features and better performance.
Localizing customer experiences.
A seller needs the ability to recognize, expand and document end-customer use cases / need states that enable them to secure a solid prospect.
An EC sale will cross multiple audiences, engaging PO, IT, Operations, Developers and Executive audiences.
Conclusion
Edge Computing is a storytelling campaign. It may not begin with a prospect who has an enhancement story already in mind. As noted above, no company will buy ‘edge’ .. they will consider new features, better customer experience, faster performance, application stability, cost savings and so on. Edge Computing is a paradigm shift .. engagements will involve several technical and business audiences, as well as reaching from developer audiences to the executive suite of an organization. Product Owners and Developers will present as useful influencers, but the ultimate decisions must be recognized across the organization.
Thank you for reading! Please see “Why 5W?” for context, methodology and disclaimers.
BSS Overview
In a rapidly-evolving business landscape, businesses require support services to keep operations running smoothly. The Business Support Services (BSS) domain consists of vendors who provide Line of Business (LOB) packaged services to businesses, integrated through services to provide a common data infrastructure. This bears some explanation, as the definition above also applies to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems .. the previous generation of Business Support Systems.
By contrast, modern SaaS-based ERP and BSS systems are significantly easier to deploy, enable mobile functions out-of-the-box and are better-received by end users. Through services-based API integration, these systems don’t require the rip-and-replace of any incumbent systems. My purpose for drawing this correlation is to point out that ERP and BSS essentially perform the same functions in an end-customer environment. However, legacy ERP is monolithic and tightly-connected to captive modules, whereas BSS achieves the same functionality through built-in integration, interoperability and mobile capabilities.
BSSs encompass a wide range of essential services, from accounting and bookkeeping to administrative tasks such as data collection, customer service and human resources management. By outsourcing these tasks to systems, businesses can focus on their core competencies and achieve growth and success.
Business Benefits
One of the significant benefits of leveraging BSS is the cost-effectiveness. Small and medium-sized enterprises often lack the resources to hire full-time employees for various roles, such as accounting and IT support. Outsourcing these tasks to BSS providers saves these businesses significant amount of money, where they will pay for only the services they require and reduce the need for dedicated internal support. The best part: BSS can enable businesses to access expertise and technology outside their core competencies, allowing them to do what they do best without worrying about LOB system overhead.
The segment BSS serves is full of business customers with a lot of LOB needs, including financial (AR / AP / Payroll), E-Commerce (OM / WM / Fulfillment), HCM (recruiting / talent management / project time tracking), Sales (CRM / MAP) and many more. Businesses can select from well-enabled, self-service vendors who have massive feature / benefit overlap, but few differentiators. The market is broad and confusing, but businesses need to explore it. Vital LOB functions in these spaces have their own challenges:
Financial processes demand automation and errors can be expensive.
Payroll rules are constantly changing, and businesses need to keep up to avoid incurring fines for non-compliance.
Consumer payment functions require PCI compliance and the fulfillment paradigm is complex.
HCM is a set of complex and manual processes for companies .. not without potential legal exposure.
CRM and MAP systems are typically ad-hoc and disconnected in the SMB space.
BSSs can formalize manual processes, and where incumbent systems exist, extend these functionalities through interoperability and integration.
BSS Capabilities
BSSs encompass all of the functions SMBs and MMEs require .. an easy target, as most of these functions are standard business processes, required by all businesses in most any space. As noted above, these include a wide variety of ‘standard’ business systems in the accounting realm, as well as extending into systems that a BSS customer may be performing manually, like recruiting, on-boarding, off-boarding, payroll .. as well as end customer-facing functions like E-Commerce, Marketing Automation (MAP) and so on.
BSS vendors bring all the benefits of SaaS right out of the box: modern architectures with built-in integration, SLA-based uptime, pay-as-you-go pricing, mobile device access and more. Services offerings, typically delivered by partners enhances the implementation experience and ensures businesses are functional in short order with predictable cost.
BSS Use Cases
The low-hanging fruit is payroll .. most all the vendors in the space offer it as table stakes. From there, other offerings emerge as vendors leverage their respective LOB experience to create a larger portfolio. As the space is broad and deep, please refer to ‘Companies in the Field’, below, for expansion on vendors and the services they support. Other BSS use case offerings include:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System:
Manages customer interactions and lead tracking.
Generates activity reports, sales reports and forecasts.
Monitors / Manages customer service and support requests.
Analyzes customer behavior and preferences.
Manages customer segmentation and activities for marketing campaigns.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System:
Integrates and automates core business processes like finance, inventory, procurement, order management, fulfillment and more.
Manages and tracks inventories.
Streamlines order processing and fulfillment.
Generates financial statements and reports.
Facilitates resource planning and allocation.
Human Resources Information System (HRIS) / Human Capital Management (HCM):
Manages employee records, including personal information, job history and performance evaluations.
Tracks inventory levels and optimizes stock levels.
Manages supplier relationships and procurement processes.
Plans and optimizes transportation and logistics.
Integrates with order processing and fulfillment.
Analyzes supply chain performance and identifies bottlenecks.
Financial Management System (FMS):
Manages financial transactions and accounts payable / receivable.
Generates invoices and tracks payments.
Creates and manages budgets.
Conducts financial forecasting and analysis functions.
Ensures regulatory compliance and generating financial reports.
Project Management System:
Create and manage project schedules and timelines.
Assign tasks and track progress.
Facilitate collaboration and communication across team members and connected teams.
Manage project resources and budgets.
Monitor and evaluate project performance.
IT Service Management (ITSM) System:
Manage IT service requests and incidents.
Track and resolve technical issues and outages.
Manage software and hardware assets.
Implement change management processes.
Monitor and analyze IT service performance.
Collaboration and Unified Communication Systems (UCaaS):
Facilitate team collaboration and communications.
Share documents and files in real-time.
Enable virtual meetings and video conferencing.
Manage and assign tasks.
Facilitate internal and external communication.
These are just a few examples of the various BSSs in the marketplace. Specific use cases will vary depending on the needs of the organization and any incumbent systems / processes to augment or replace.
The more an organization can integrate BSSs with other systems, the better the opportunity for reliable data collection. Quality, correlated data collections provide the means for an organization to significantly improve Business Intelligence and Data Governance efforts. These are compelling bonus opportunities to consider when assessing the costs and benefit to engage in a BSS implementation.
BSS Providers
Follows a list of BSS vendors with use case, vertical and media mapping. It is by no means complete, but provides offerings to support SMB / MMB space. The BSS story can be used as a vendor entry point for any of the underlying use cases, leading to BSS implementations.
Last, note that several of the offerings below are labelled ‘ERP’ .. but the differentiation from BSS functions (as described above) is largely semantic.
Solid Integration story .. lots of smaller applications; some standalone, others as integration kits.
ED: As Article Publish dates are frozen in time, it is quite possible reviewed vendors and their capabilities may have advanced beyond those presented herein. Please accept my apologies for my shortcomings. A note to vendors: please reach out to update your current offering capabilities and I will update.
BSS Audiences
A BSS implementation is not industry-specific. Virtually every industry need this toolset. Some highlights:
Retail and E-commerce:
Manage inventory, track sales and streamline order processing and fulfillment.
Facilitate customer relationship management, marketing campaigns and loyalty programs.
Manufacturing and Supply Chain:
Track and optimize production planning, inventory management and procurement processes.
Appointment scheduling, staff scheduling and electronic health records (EHR) management.
Billing and insurance claims processing as well as supporting inventory and supply chain management.
Telecommunications:
Customer relationship management for service providers.
Billing and invoicing, service provisioning and network performance monitoring.
Professional Services:
Project management, time tracking and resource allocation in consulting firms, law firms, and other professional service organizations.
Client billing and contract management.
Education:
Student enrollment and registration, academic records management and grading.
Course scheduling, resource allocation and learning management systems.
Transportation and Logistics:
Optimize route planning, fleet management and shipment tracking.
Warehouse management, inventory control and transportation logistics.
These are just a few examples of industries that can benefit from implementing BSS. The specific needs and requirements may vary within each industry, but the underlying goal is to streamline operations, improve customer satisfaction and improve the bottom line.
BSS implementations will benefit for a wide range of audiences within a business organization. Some key audiences that can consider the value:
Executive Leadership:
Access to accurate and real-time data for making strategic decisions.
Insights into the organization’s performance, financial health and market trends.
Operations and Business Managers:
Streamline and automate core business processes.
Enhance efficiency, reduce manual work and improve process visibility, allowing managers to optimize resource allocation, monitor performance, and drive operational excellence.
Sales and Marketing Teams:
Track and manage customer interactions, leads and measure campaign effectiveness.
Provide a centralized customer database, sales forecasting tools, and marketing analytics, empowering teams to enhance customer engagement, improve conversions, and drive revenue growth.
Customer Service and Support:
Manage and track customer inquiries, complaints and service requests.
Access to customer activity, ticketing systems and facilitate knowledge sharing to improve response times and better issue resolution.
Human Resources:
Manage employee records, automate HR processes and improve workforce management.
Streamline recruitment, onboarding, time and attendance tracking, payroll management, performance evaluations and training, all leading to increased efficiency and employee satisfaction.
Finance and Accounting:
Streamline financial operations, manage accounts payable / receivable and generate accurate financial reports.
Automate invoicing, payment tracking, budgeting, expense management and regulatory compliance, thus improving financial visibility, accuracy and control.
IT Departments:
Provide self-service IT capabilities, manage IT service requests, incidents and assets.
Automate ticketing, asset tracking, change management, performance monitoring to improve IT services.
Specific audiences may vary depending on the organization’s structure, industry, and specific business needs.
Conclusion
Whether CRM, ERP, HRIS, OM, MAP, EC, WM, FM, SCM .. or a variety of other BSS alphabet soup, an appropriate BSS implementation will result in improved processes, error reduction and smoother operations. BSS plays a crucial role in enabling businesses to thrive and adapt in today’s competitive and dynamic business environment.
Thank you for reading! Please see “Why 5W?” for context, methodology and disclaimers.
Technology Overview
Customer Data Platforms are recent aggregation / expansion capabilities realized through the integration of customer interaction support software, enabling a company to compile a 360-degree view of customers and prospects. Armed with this information, Marketing and Sales can make relevant and personal connections to prospects to increase conversion rates.
Companies will recognize the usual suspects of potential component systems that can contribute to a CDP effort:
Social Media Engagements
Marketing Automation Platform (MAP)
E-Commerce Systems
Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM)
Customer Support Systems
Customer Experience Management (CXM)
Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)
Order Management Systems (OMS)
Fulfillment Management Systems (FMS)
CDPs provide a configurable means to connect, aggregate and combine data across disparate systems guided by business-facing definitions from Sales and Marketing. Once deployed, a CDP should require minimal IT intervention, provided the CDP enables business users the capability to combine and view real-time data to test and confirm hypotheses on their own.
Note that CDP integrates with on- and off-premises systems and cloud providers. CDP is an emerging technology use case and will require education and nurture efforts to engage end customers.
Business Benefits
Companies store customer data and interactions in an ever-growing variety of disparate systems, most of which are marginally, or not connected to each other at all.
As an example, Marketing and Sales recognize the value of having the latest customer transactions, preferences and communications data available to them, along with current inventory levels, order and delivery statuses, account balances, credit status and so on. While these data can be combined through manual system search and interaction, a manual effort is time-consuming and represents risks, not only security (through multiple system exposure to out-of-department audiences) but contextual data inaccuracies (relating the wrong data to transactional events, ensuring the data is up to date, and so on). CDP helps to manage this by making connections through configuration .. not coding, automating data retrieval, assembly and presentation of the most current data to the business user.
Determining which data to combine requires visibility into the business processes and customer / prospect interaction goals of the target audiences .. the people who can benefit the most from aggregated business data. Note that all companies have these interaction goals, but they may not necessarily be stated, reviewed, aligned or published. Further, helping non-technical audiences understand the business benefits of CDP in their environment will require education, mostly through use-case based engagements, where offering sellers present use cases demonstrating how a CDP can enable business benefits in their environment.
In short, a CDP combines these data, enabling thousands of business of use cases to improve customer service, accelerate conversions, document performance and more. Some examples are presented in Use Cases, below.
CDP Capabilities
To play in the CDP space, a vendor offering must:
Provide configurable connectivity to organizational systems, whether cloud, on-premises, database, LOB, etc.
Collect and transform data from connected systems, storing as necessary (not all systems will allow real-time access, nor may it meet necessary performance requirements to do so).
Create / Associate Data Consumer identifiers across these systems to surface customers in context.
Define:
Consumer profiles and groups, assigning appropriate permissions and workflows.
Internal audiences, role-based access control and the depth of data to view when published.
Segment Consumers into meaningful ‘buckets’ for workflow activities and content distribution.
Provide the capability to switch on / off connections across systems as business needs / opportunities emerge .. without IT assistance.
Manage and expand Consumer / Audience profile over time to improve views and visualizations.
Ensure connection and end-to-end security / privacy / auditing of acquired / stored data.
Publish Customer and Audience Data across tools for consumption by appropriate audiences within an organization.
Through these capabilities, a single source of truth will emerge, along with enabling a 360-degree view of a specific customer or group. This increases confidence within the consuming audiences and empowers them to make better, data-driven decisions when working with customers.
Some examples are presented below.
Use Cases
While each company will have specific use cases to fulfill, many aspects will fall into semi-standardized buckets. The real impact of CDP is in connecting across systems, enabling out-of-application audience users to see data from other systems in a controlled and secure manner.
Some samples to get creative juices flowing .. the sub-bullets in the first example are the discrete steps and systems with which a user would engage manually to create the outcome:
Customer Support – Customer Complaint: Address a product complaint and create a CRM Task, assigning to a Customer Service Agent for resolution. The source of the complaint could be a call, a tweet, an email, an online form, etc. The CDP can perform the following discrete steps:
Look up the customer ID in the customer database (note this could be in the Customer Support CRM or in a separate Customer CRM). This may require the Twitter handle, email address or customer name to identify the customer.
Retrieve the customer invoices from the Invoicing System using the Customer ID.
Identify the proper invoice based on the product in question.
Confirm the product was ordered in the Order Management System (OMS).
Confirm the product was shipped in the Fulfillment Management System (FMS).
Identify if the product is still under warranty and can be replaced.
If the product can be replaced, check the Warehouse Management System (WMS) to see if the item is in stock and can be shipped.
Create a task containing the data above in the Customer Support CRM and assign to a Customer Support agent.
Executing these steps enables a Customer Support agent to reach out to the with a specific resolution to the customer issue, the ability to address the issue directly and provide a solution in the first contact with the customer. This level of personalized interaction ensures customer satisfaction.
A CDP provides connectivity and automation, designed and configured by a business analyst (not IT) for each of these tasks. This enables customer- and agent-friendly resolutions to customer support issues. Further, the data collected across all these systems provides massive Business Intelligence opportunities for an organization.
The remainder of these use cases are referenced right-to-left, without the intermediate steps. A CDP offering should be sold by presenting use cases that resonate with a target customer, likely leading to a Discovery Call.
Marketing – Improve Marketing Orchestration: Capture feedback in real-time across all channels (MAP, Sales, E-Commerce) by collecting data aligning to MAP outreach to determine marketing effectiveness.
Marketing – Improve Marketing Communications: Capture real-time feedback from marketing campaigns as potential customers are engaging with marketing content. Marketing can gauge which messages are more effective.
Marketing – Perform / Streamline A/B Tests: Drive marketing moments / capture the results of product enhancements in real time by initiating multiple (two or more) actions simultaneously, capturing the results and feedback in real time to determine which combination of messaging and the channel is more effective.
IT Governance – Improve Customer Data Quality: One source of truth .. the process of connecting and correlating disparate data systems enables CDOs with a solid foundation of tracking internal audiences with access, and controlling the data these audiences can see.
Operations – Improve the Customer Journey: Integrate with CXM and MarTech systems to isolate and clarify how a customer got into the stages .. how quickly and how effectively .. all the way through conversion and fulfillment.
Sales – Current state of the Customer: Present an all-up customer view for a seller on their way into a customer meeting. Captures content across systems: confirming the latest orders have been shipped, invoices have been paid, customer support issues have been resolved, etc., all prior for the seller arriving in a face-to-face meeting with the customer.
To assemble the data In all of these (and other) use cases, internal systems must be accessed by out-of-audience entities, which, if performed manually is time-consuming, creates security risks and could be filled with outdated / erroneous data. A CDP standardizes these interactions and provides a unified view, by audience for these data.
Hidden Gem: Besides enabling Operational and Business Intelligence opportunities, a robust CDP implementation creates a framework for Data Governance use cases.
CDP Providers
A great many companies claim CDP capabilities (CDP Vendor Segment cites ~80), but most are add-ons to their existing LOB systems and not ‘pure’ CDP plays. These include the bulk of the larger ERP companies, as well as more than a few Integrated Platform as a Service (iPaaS) / Hybrid Integration Provider (HIP) vendors.
Companies making a CDP claim run the gamut of functionality from configurable connectivity, accessing in-flow data streams, reporting and / or creating persistent, referenceable repositories to ensure interactivity and access to aggregated data. A partial list follows, where only ‘pure’ CDP plays are included:
Presents as a unified customer data management, compliance and customer journey orchestration platform, including analytics and machine learning to drive personalized engagements.
Focuses on using CDP to personalize experiences for every step in the Customer Journey. Includes several customer-centric us cases, including acquisition, engagement, upsell, win-back and renewal. Integrations for the retail, CRM and MAP spaces. Looks more like enlightened MAP.
Focuses on CXM and improving the Customer Journey. Rich integration framework and SDK to support beyond MAP and CRM. Offers a 60-day services engagement to get started and a Gated Demo.
Frequent updates to this section as new vendors emerge.
ED: As Article Publish dates are frozen in time, it is quite possible reviewed vendors and their capabilities may have advanced beyond those presented herein. Please accept my apologies for my shortcomings. A note to vendors: please reach out to advise your current offering capabilities and I will update.
CDP Audiences
A few enlightened prospects will recognize CDP by name, slightly fewer will recognize it by the integration opportunity CDP provides. As per, the majority will need to be engaged through education, tailored to their role in an organization and the benefits of exploring CDP for business benefit.
Most customers will not recognize an immediate need for a CDP, likely citing their CRM or Customer Support Systems present these data. To a point, they’re accurate. These systems provide the present customer / prospect state to the primary audience of the system .. but not to the secondary audiences who could benefit the most from knowing all the data about their customer.
CDP connects a wide variety of business platforms creating virtually infinite use cases, so discovery is an important part of an engagement. A seller can approach prospective CDP client by describing the value of CDP integration to create Business Intelligence Use Cases, enabling a seller to map a story to prospect systems do demonstrate business value, including:
Value of configurable system integration and the virtuous cycle enabled thusly.
Data Governance (hidden gem .. solves two business challenges with one implementation) benefits, where CDP exposes access and management control opportunities across systems.
Dashboards and Beyond, delivering relevant, interactive and secure information to the proper people at all levels in an organization.
Agility and Flexibility, enabling Citizen Analysts / Marketers to review data that is most relevant to them.
Speed to Business Value: data-driven business benefits can be realized with the first connections between systems.
Important note: CDP is not ‘rip and replace’ .. CDP integrates with incumbent systems, databases and file-based repositories.
CDP is not a technical sale .. it is creative and educational, relying on sellers identifying, researching and offering use cases that align to prospect roles within the target organization.
As the CDP space is early stage at the time of this writing, opportunities within are mostly greenfield .. but will require discovery, education and nurture to make an effective case to decision makers in a target organization. CDP prospects will already be combining some of these data, albeit manually. It is important to demonstrate the value to the specific audience in time savings and improving the quality of data presented to users.
Note there will be a fair bit to unpack as customer environments will contain incumbent systems, most of which store customer data. On this, please recognize that access to any systems containing customer data must be managed appropriately, as GDPR and CCPA constraints may be in play. A seller must inventory the present state to realize the scope of the existing environment, recognizing incumbent systems and integration opportunities therein .. all while pointing out how CDP will manage any potential privacy breaches.
A company should consider a CDP for:
Consolidating / presenting an all-up view of a customer in a single place, securely, and to relevant audiences.
Capturing a more granular understanding of customers.
Consolidating / switching analytics or marketing systems / vendors.
Personalizing customer experiences.
Unifying messaging across all channels.
A seller needs the ability to recognize, expand and document end-customer use cases / need states that enable them to secure a solid prospect.
Primary CDP audiences include:
Marketing
Product Owners
Customer Support Organizations
Sales (capturing an all-up customer view)
Analytics
Expect these audiences to expand through digital-driven CDP engagements, which will surface hand-raisers and other interested entities within end-customer organizations.
Primary Targets for CDP implementations are not necessarily aligned to specific industries. Targets include companies who:
Have connections between ‘some’ systems across ‘some’ non-primary audiences. This will manifest itself with companies that have connected MAP and CRM systems to power active outreach. Note that Sales and Support are left out, presenting the opportunity for us to advance use cases when other systems can be connected. Treat this as gap analysis, where other systems can be brought in to improve customer context and relevance.
Can recognize the business value to be gained by connecting disparate systems. This is use-case specific, and should be workshopped with prospects to demonstrate value.
Are expanding from tribally-supported Sales / Marketing use case feedback loops to their audiences, but don’t expose content to audiences beyond the bits a data consumer already ‘knows’ about their customer base. It’s important to advance the concept of exposing these data to identify gaps in the customer knowledge base.
Seek to formalize an approach to exposing end-customer data across multiple, incumbent systems, mapped to specific internal audiences. This represents a longer sales cycle, but enables a seller to demonstrate expertise in the space.
Again, CDP is in the educational phase. CDP is a combination of existing systems and use cases .. many of which companies may be doing manually on their own. CDP provides the connectivity, automation, data aggregation and presentation layer to get the right data to the right audiences at the right time.
Conclusion
CDP provides an interesting and accessible means to integrate across multiple systems, securely exposing integrated data within a single interface through low-code and configuration, versus code, multiple logins and reporting capabilities requiring manual manipulating to gain business value.
Thank you for reading! Please see “Why 5W?” for context, methodology and disclaimers.
Quote to Cash Overview
The Quote-to-Cash process (also known as Q2C or QTC, the latter I am using as the acronym in this article) is a set of business processes that includes product / offering selecting, quoting, pricing, up-sell, contracting, invoicing, integration with payment systems, contract renewal and more. We should all recognize that reducing friction after the sale is a critical component to engaging delivery, achieving revenue targets and getting paid. In an ideal world, QTC would be automated and heavily integrated with all component systems and dependent systems.
Given the importance of streamlining revenue-associated business processes, it is surprising to note that many companies have not effectively automated or standardized their QTC processes. While some businesses have standardized some of them .. others have selected or inherited multiple SaaS-based systems over time, and still others rely on separate processes. However, there is a significant lack of end-to-end integration for QTC in most businesses.
You might also have heard of Order to Cash (OTC). While the terms may be used interchangeably, OTC and QTC are different:
OTC likely does not include configuration capabilities for the product / offering, like setting the price, creating a quote, or any bits associated with Contracts and Contract Renewal. OTC tends to be at the order level, where these items are simple (quantity, color, etc.), or already identified.
QTC encompasses a much larger set of business processes and as noted above, may well include OTC bits for scoping, pricing, logistics and delivery.
An effective QTC implementation will be tightly bound with company Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Configure Price Quote (CPQ), inventory and Point of Sale (POS) Systems for brick-and-mortar establishments. If the organization transacts business online, an E-Commerce System acts as POS, and a Customer Experience Management (CXM) System can provide significant Business Intelligence (BI) value by tracking customer interactions on the site, capturing buying patterns and interest in other products for future cross-sell / up-sell outreach.
If the organization lacks native (or effective) integration across systems, it can consider deploying Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as an effective stopgap to connect other systems to a QTC system while integrations are built.
QTC Business Benefits
QTC falls on the right-hand side of a Supply Chain Management (SCM) diagram, where an end customer has selected / described a finished product / offering and is entering purchase / contract / services negotiations. Note that in a retail E-Commerce transaction, there is typically little complexity on this: select the item, customize, click the quantity, enter payment and shipping information and the product shows up. For more complex offerings, scoping, customization, integration with external systems, current-customer discounts and much more will require much more detail when finalizing an purchase.
Consider QTC enabling / automating a complex set of transactional steps, including:
This list is not complete and will vary widely across companies.
ED: As Article Publish dates are frozen in time, it is quite possible reviewed vendors and their capabilities may have advanced beyond those presented herein. Please accept my apologies for my shortcomings. A note to vendors: please reach out to advise your current offering capabilities and I will update.
QTC Capabilities
Many E-Commerce transactions automate the early stages of this (Product / Offering / Configuration / Scoping, some quoting), but as the bulk of these processes involve disparate systems (including internal systems like Contracting, Financial and Warehouse Management), E-Commerce can (and should) only go so far in the overall QTC scope.
QTC transactional steps touch multiple systems in the Seller environment:
Order Management
Configuration Management
Quoting (CPQ) Management
Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)
Credit Management
Warehouse Management (WM)
Accounts Receivable (AR)
Payment Management.
.. and so on. Automation is the first step, but integration is the real key to accelerating the entire scope of QTC to business benefit.
The QTC process is comprised of discrete steps, a subset of which are described above. A QTC system that integrates, automates and governs transactions, including policy-based logic, approval routing, notifications, and providing an all-up process view is a major benefit to an end customer. A quote from the Aberdeen Group (provided by BlackCurve) cites QTC ROI is significant, resulting in:
105% larger deal sizes.
49% higher proposal volume
28% shorter sales cycle
26% more sales representatives meeting their targets
17% higher conversation rate
These benefits are largely due to streamlined, interconnected and error-free automated processes. Please note the numbers above were extracted from QTC systems across multiple sales organizations and across all industries. End customers should take a serious look at QTC to achieve this kind of reporting alone .. most organizations can search across systems to validate these findings in their present environment.
Addressing the automation and interconnectivity use cases in the ‘Business Challenges’ section above will aid in the selection of a QTC offering, as each represents a checklist item to be confirmed in an end-customer environment during discovery.
Organizations with robust Supply Chain Management systems will recognize the opportunity to improve in-chain payment processes by expanding the scope of the QTC process to include Trading Partners for whom they are a Provider or a Seller.
QTC Use Cases
QTC is effectively its own use case, speeding the process between initiating, configuring, pricing and closing on a sale to receive revenue. Granted, you’ll note a lot of complexity across a large number of systems that describe a complete solution.
QTC Providers
The major ERP, CRM and SCM players have a QTC offering or integration / implementation:
CRM provider. Acquired SteelBrick in 2015. SB built QTC as an SFDC application.
ED: As Article Publish dates are frozen in time, it is quite possible that reviewed vendors and their capabilities may have advanced beyond those presented herein. Please accept my apologies for my shortcomings. A note to vendors: please reach out to update your current offering capabilities and I will update.
QTC Audiences
A QTC engagement is unlikely to be greenfield, as some automation, on-premises or SaaS silos will likely exist. It will also cross multiple audiences within an organization, including:
IT
Contracting
Quoting
Finance (AR / AP)
E-Commerce Platform Owners
Logistics and Fulfillment Roles
.. and all the way to the executive suite.
A modern QTC offering should have no issues connecting with modern SaaS silos via API or RPA. This is a solid benefit to call out as end customers will be rip-and-replace averse when engaging with critical legal and financial systems. Initial engagement will include:
Discovery of the current order, fulfillment, payment systems, plus business workflows.
Capture integration points (by name and integration method).
Document the present workflow as part of solution planning.
Some reluctance will surface as many will cite some of their processing components are working well enough to suit their needs. This posture will manifest itself early in a conversation, especially among operators of ‘in the chain’ components. While a company-wide QTC effort will be driven from the top, there is still value in engaging with operational entities within an organization to ascertain process, performance and contract intelligence.
Common Customer Objections include:
QTC is expensive: Cost is relative, and like any investment in business technology, a customer must examine the ROI of the purchase against the potential value the technology and disciplined business processes will bring to the company. There are many SaaS-based QTC offerings with robust integration points offering process improvement without a rip-and-replace requirement.
QTC is complicated: The short version: it is. As QTC requires discipline both in process management and integration, suggesting a dedicated resource or a partner to assess and execute. QTC is connecting, configuring and NOT coding in over 75% of the use cases, and creates huge time savings when deployed. It is not all sunshine and roses .. if systems that cannot be integrated (siloed, lacking APIs or are paper-based) are in the process, you may not be able to eliminate some manual steps in the first iteration.
QTC is overkill: Many organizations may feel they’re too small or not complex enough for QTC. Tease this out in Discovery .. if the customer has a quoting and approval process, they will benefit from QTC capabilities.
We lack the bandwidth to deploy QTC: See ‘complicated’, above. There are companies who can assist with this.
We already have QTC: I appreciate it when an organization has an existing implementation as it results in a shorter education cycle and lets us engage more directly. Through Discovery, unpack the extent of their implementation, any components are getting old / need updating, or don’t play well (integration or reporting) with others. You may also be able to expose opportunities for QTC within their SCM implementation, as noted in ‘capabilities’, above.
Not an objection, but a QTC implementation isn’t typically do-it-yourself. Most organizations will recognize this, so it is important to have engaged Partner Sellers to provide Services in these engagements.
Conclusion
You may surmise QTC is a less common implementation in companies and not likely a greenfield solution. Companies will have manual or semi-automated processes, each with a process discipline. QTC is an enabling technology within E-Commerce, Logistics and Fulfillment platforms, so industry / vertical is less important than how the customer transacts business.
Some offerings are more end-to-end than others .. but note: as flexible Integration is a requirement for a QTC offering, an end customer can select and right-size a solution that has just the features they seek at a price point they can afford. Most of these are SaaS-based, allowing for a low barrier to customer entry and flexible entry / escape paths.
Thank you for reading! Please see “Why 5W?” for context, methodology and disclaimers.
Supply Chain Management Overview
The term Supply Chain describes the planning, sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, order management and fulfillment of products / services from points of origin to delivery.
Supply Chain Management encompasses the planning and management of all activities involved in sourcing and procurement, conversion, and all logistics management activities. Importantly, it also includes coordination and collaboration with channel partners, which can be suppliers, intermediaries, third-party service providers, and customers. In essence, supply chain management integrates supply and demand management within and across companies. Supply Chain Management is an integrating function with primary responsibility for linking major business functions and business processes within and across companies into a cohesive and high-performing business model. It includes all of the logistics management activities noted above, as well as manufacturing operations, and it drives coordination of processes and activities with and across marketing, sales, product design, finance and information technology.
SCM software captures information flow about products, from raw materials through delivery in a digital format. SCM is a very common, yet very complex set of business processes that relies heavily on digital, physical system and human integration .. more so than most other organizational processes. SCM:
Requires complex digital and physical implementation, with myriad endpoints as it must manage aspects of the physical world in the form of raw materials, sources, inbound shipment logistics, manufacturing plants, assembly sites, warehouses, distribution centers, commerce / Commerce, fulfillment and so on.
Manages the people engaged with the Supply Chain, including source facility operators, distribution center operators, drivers, warehouse operators, forklift operators, manufacturing operators, assembly, kitting, pick-pack, fulfillment and shipping.
Provides alerting and reporting at all stages as materials are acquired, flow through the pipeline and finished products are shipped.
SCM connects multiple business processes enabled by modern technology. Managing the Supply Chain is essential to ensure the availability of materials, manufacturing, assembly, management and fulfillment of products to consumers. Modern Supply Chains are evolving to be more dynamic and data-driven, seen as a key competitive advantage for companies. This evolution impacts how efficiently and profitably companies can plan, source, make and deliver products to their customers. It’s not just inputs and outputs in motion .. SCM also manages and tracks inventory, costs and assets that contribute to overall efficiencies and profitability.
SCM Business Benefits
SCM has become increasingly important for businesses as it offers a range of benefits that can help companies to improve their operations, reduce costs and stay competitive in a rapidly changing market.
SCM provides businesses with real-time visibility into their supply chain operations. This allows companies to monitor everything from inventory levels and shipments, further helping to identify potential bottlenecks or delays. With this information, businesses can make informed decisions about their operations, quickly responding to changes in demand or supply chain disruptions. This visibility helps companies to optimize their inventory levels, reducing the need for excess stock and minimizing the risk of stockouts.
Process automation in SCM provides increased efficiency and productivity. SCM helps businesses to streamline their operations and reduce manual workloads, thus reducing errors and delays.
SCM enhances collaboration and communication between different stakeholders in the supply chain, such as suppliers, distributors and retailers. Sharing these data in real-time enables businesses to work together more effectively, identifying potential issues earlier and responding to changes more quickly. This leads to better relationships between suppliers and customers, and ultimately, better business outcomes.
Companies with robust SCM implementations enjoy a competitive advantage over those with manual processes. SCM allows faster response to changes in the market. The increased visibility and control over supply chain operations enables companies to be more agile and adaptable .. better positioned to capitalize on new opportunities. This is especially important in industries where competition is keen, and margins are thin.
SCM Capabilities
SCM can drive both direct business impact by reducing costs and improving the bottom line through operational efficiencies. It can also drive indirect business impacts in a variety of ways:
Improved access to information across the entire Supply Chain through integration and collaboration.
Simplified alerting and reporting through silo aggregation and automation.
Insights from AI and reporting using data that is available as close to real time as possible.
Increased agility in supplier interaction.
Data-driven forecasting.
To restate the obvious: a successful Supply Chain relies on high levels of system integration and appropriate levels of knowledge dissemination.
Note there’s a lot of interaction between Supply Chains and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, as many of the processes that serve the Supply Chain fall under the ERP bailiwick. Again, integration is key, versus adapting non-compatible ERP processes into SCM components. This is an ongoing discussion (and process improvement opportunity) with many companies, as ERP likely picks up the slack of many process operations prior to a company deploying SCM.
SCM Use Cases
SCM is effectively its own use case, purposefully serving the need for end-to-end movement of raw materials through finished product and into distribution. However, the deployments will vary widely and bear review. When working with prospects in an SCM engagement you should expect to find:
Companies with an integrated and automated Supply Chain, but lacking centralized monitoring, alerting and reporting.
Companies with mature manufacturing and logistics components, but falling short in integration.
Companies who recently went through an acquisition of a supplier, manufacturing or assembly facility.
Companies in the process of adding new, or removing old Trading Partners.
Companies with the need, but lacking a durable Supply Chain.
.. and every case in-between. SCM sales engagements will consist of Discovery and iterative discussions. Implementation will include a substantial Services component, as deep assessment is required to understand the breadth of the Supply chain (does it extend all the way to Warehousing, Order Management and Fulfillment?), where shortcomings in operations and integration exist, and which components of an SCM vendor will fulfill the requirements.
SCM Providers
All the major software providers claim some sort of SCM implementation .. some actually have one:
Appears to be SaaS-based (they’re cagey). Good coverage across Procurement, Invoicing, Expenses, Spend Analysis and Supplier Management. Light on manufacturing.
Primarily ERP. A number of industry-specific packaged like Automotive, Aerospace / Defense, Industrial Enterprise, Fashion, Healthcare, F&B. Includes Distribution and WMS, HCM and CRM.
Planning to Delivery, including full SCM capabilities from Manufacturing, Supply, WMS, OMS, Channel, Fulfillment, and more. Has a SaaS option for a large portion of the offering.
The Big Dog for SCM, SAP expanded their ERP capabilities into MRP, Spend, HCM, CRM, and more. Note that SAP is moving all implementations to SAP HANA, an in-memory database for real-time processing.
IBM offers end-to-end supply chain visibility and provides Watson Insights for process and logistics improvement. Supports OM, WM, Integration, and Connect.
Financial, operational, SCM and fully-customizable, SaaS-based application.
There are thousands of smaller SCM and ERP-SCM vendors out there .. many are SaaS-based, representing low barriers to entry, with trial versions.
ED: As Article Publish dates are frozen in time, it is quite possible reviewed vendors and their capabilities may have advanced beyond those presented herein. Please accept my apologies for my shortcomings. A note to vendors: please reach out to advise your current offering capabilities and I will update.
SCM Audiences
Many industries rely on supply chains and can benefit from a robust SCM implementation:
Retailers with complex supply chains require a lot of coordination and inventory management. SCM can help to streamline processes by providing real-time visibility into inventory levels and product availability. Retailers will see reduced costs and improved efficiency by optimizing their inventory levels and reducing stockouts.
Logistics companies have to manage large volumes of shipments, coordinating with multiple parties, including suppliers, manufacturers, carriers, and customers. SCM helps to automate these processes, providing real-time visibility into shipment status and location. Logistics companies can improve efficiency and reduce costs by optimizing transportation routes and reducing delays.
Manufacturing companies have complex supply chains that require coordination and supply management across multiple vendors for raw materials. SCM helps to streamline material acquisition processes with real-time visibility into production status and material availability. This helps manufacturers manage costs and improve efficiency by optimizing their production processes and reducing downtime.
In short, DSCM can help businesses in a wide range of industries to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and improve sustainability. Within these companies, titles a sales effort should pursue include:
SC and SCM Owners / Operators
SC Operations, SC Logistics Titles
Logistics and Transportation Operators
IT Admins
Finance
Materials and Manufacturing Processes Operators
Conversations will engage a wide variety of departments .. be prepared to orchestrate cross-department discussions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, digital supply chain management has emerged as a critical strategy for businesses to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced and highly interconnected world. By leveraging the power of advanced technologies such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT), organizations can gain real-time visibility and insights into their supply chain operations. This enables them to make more informed decisions, reduce costs, improve efficiency, and enhance customer satisfaction.
Implementing digital supply chain management is not without challenges. It requires significant investments in technology, infrastructure, and talent, as well as a cultural shift toward data-driven decision-making. Organizations must also address concerns around data privacy and security, supply chain disruptions, and the potential impact on human jobs. In the mid- to long-term, the benefits of digital supply chain management far outweigh the cost and effort, and businesses that embrace this approach are well-positioned to succeed in the future.
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