RPA – hot or not? Here are the ultimate answers
One of today’s big business topics is robotic process automation. What is it? A boon or a thing? Where is the real value in applying RPA and how to do it right? So many questions that the #CRMKonvos team needed to ask Sebastian Eggert of SOGEDES. It is no secret that RPA has its roots in UI based test automation to conduct load and stress tests and screen scraping. It is also no secret that it is always better to use APIs than that. That would put RPA firmly into the category of dying animals or, in more technical terms, make it a bridge technology. But then, how about real life? Can one always do connect applications with APIs? How about empowering business units to get solutions faster than working with a continuously overburdened IT department? And: How about the risk of entrenching existing processes instead of entering the road to digital transformation, which is a business transformation? Is it reasonable to expect investments being made into RPA being turned over fast? After all, temporary solutions have the tendency to become quite permanent. And if it is a bridge technology: What is the future? Hint: Look into process mining and machine learning… Most important of all is the right approach for implementing RPA. Where to start, how to decide about good candidates for automation? Does it need a strategy? He answered them all! Watch the episode that will remain known as the “hot shit” show. Because RPA is quite...
Medallia and Thunderhead for great CX
The News On January 20, 2022 Medallia announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Thunderhead, the leader in customer journey orchestration, or like the press release states it, leader in every-channel journey orchestration. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of this fiscal year. The stated benefit for customers is that “with the combination of customer experience insights and journey orchestration, organizations can have a single view of the customer journey and use real-time interactions to improve experiences and loyalty.” Thunderhead is expected to “strengthen Medallia’s ability to power individualized journeys and conversations at scale, across all online and offline channels, helping Medallias’s thousands of customers continue to increase their brand loyalty, sales and growth.” Thunderhead founder and CEO Glen Manchester says that “the acquisition heralds the next era of customer experience. We pioneered the idea of the customer operating system, with our closed-loop customer engagement platform powered by continuous listening, feedback and learning, all actioned through our unique fusion of journey orchestration and real-time interaction management (RTIM). With Thunderhead, Medallia can ensure that every single aspect of the customer lifecycle – marketing, commerce, sales and service – will be a seamless, relevant, and frictionless experience.” Tl;dr Watch my snap analysis – or read on. The bigger Picture The name of the game is CX (platform). As with any platform game, it is crucial to have enough scale. On top of this, the markets for CDP, segmentation, personalization, real-time interaction management and customer journey orchestration are converging. A CDP provides the persistent and transactional data foundation that allows the delivery of the additional value that insight...
Is Microsoft bringing the joy and community of gaming to everyone?
The News On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the intention to acquire Activision Blizzard with the vision of bringing the joy and community of gaming to everyone, for $95 per share, which equals a transaction value of $68.7 bn. This is a bit more than eight times of the revenue that Activision Blizzards expect to have in the fiscal year 2022. With this acquisition, Microsoft can add 400 million monthly active users to the already existing 25 million Game Pass holders. Until the acquisition closes, the companies will run independently. After completion of the transaction, Activision Blizzard wil report to Phil Spencer, the newly appointed CEO of Microsoft Gaming. This acquisition makes Microsoft the third largest gaming company by revenue, after Tencent and Sony. The stock markets reacted with a sharp increase of Activision Blizzard shares to about $87, while Microsoft stock largely followed its pre-existing slight downward trajectory. Here my analysis in a brief video. The bigger Picture We have currently around 3 billion people and growing, who are actively gaming. Millennials and younger do not even know a world without social media and smart phones. They often play using mobile devices. Microsoft, on the other hand, is available on basically every device and offers quite some hardware, too, either directly or via partners. Additionally, Microsoft already before was a known entity in the gaming market, e.g. owning gaming platforms like Minecraft and Doom. Still, according to Shacknews, Microsoft seems to have missed the own growth targets, even though an increase of Game Pass holders from 18 million to 25 million in the year 2021 is quite significant. Apart from the...