Bruce MacVarish Notes

VRM ListenLog

Keith Hopper outlines his vision for ListenLog as an example (and element?) of future VRM solutions:

A user-driven activity log works well for an application that pulls together audio streams and files from a number of different sources. Of course, online audio providers (vendors in the VRM model) can already track and aggregate listening behavior data, but only for the audio they control. When the user acts as the sole point of integration, pulling together audio from multiple sources, their own consolidated log becomes unique and powerful. Only when the listener is the point of integration does such an approach yield unique value.

Apperian brings iPhone to the Enterprise

“Number one is helping companies leverage their existing technology investments in smartphones more effectively, by mobilizing workforces and bringing applications to handheld devices; and number two, and more compelling and exciting, is helping large companies really extend their brands and provide transformative, next-generation, point-of-service applications to customers."

Chuck Goldman, CEO, Apperian

(source: Xconomy)

"Sensing" Voice

In my vision of future state for enterprise applications, the 6th element is "Sensing".   

I've used this term to capture how future applications will create new value for users by sensing relevance, context and personal preferences through analytics of voice, video, text, location, attention or other ambient and declarative data from the user.  The ability to capture, store, index, search and analyze voice recordings is fundamental to this future state vision.

Nuance, BBN, TellMe/Microsoft, Nexidia, CallMiner, Utopy, SER, IBM and others have invested to improve STT, TTS, ASR and Speech Analytics technologies that are all critical to this "sensing" end-state.

Recently, Microsoft announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona - Microsoft Recite -  a Voice capture and search application for Windows Mobile devices.

To get a sense of the UX and VUI, check out this video clip...

 

With Recite users can record voice messages and then, based on a voice interface, search for specific terms or phrases to find earlier messages... and I suspect with time... earlier conversations. 

It appears as if Recite uses some type of voice pattern matching or phonetic search engine.  There is not translation from speech to text and the accuracy improves with longer search phrases.  Both of these characteristics points to phonetic processing.  

You can download the app here.

Extracting value from free and ubiquitous data

"I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s? The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades, not only at the professional level but even at the educational level for elementary school kids, for high school kids, for college kids. Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data. So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it."

Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google

Products with Communication Channel built right in ...

From Russell Davies:

"The point I'm groping towards is that as objects informationalise communication channels are getting built in. And there are ways of doing this that are mass, cheap and easy. Printing. Paper. Ink. RFID. And cleverer phones will be the perfect things to interact with these clever objects. This is what advertising and marketing and media people really need to get afeared by. All this web stuff is going to look like a picnic compared to the horrors that will be dealt to the agency and media businesses when every product has a communications channel built right in." 

At the intersection of Mobile, Customer Service and Branding/Marketing is a number of new venture opportunities that take data streams from products and users to build value through networks, markets and communities.    When products have their own communication channel built in, conversations across user communities, customer service interactions and social branding will be the sources of new growth.

Most Popular Posts of 2008

While I haven't done this in previous years, I've always looked to see what were the most popular 3-5 posts over the year.

Thanks to you, here are the most popular posts of 2008

1) The Enterprise Edge Matrix

Creating new value for users - and therefore new revenue growth opportunities - at the "edge of the enterprise" will require new viral application strategies and networked business models that create and monetize value from data found in networks, markets and communities of enterprise end users.

2) The Soul of the Enterprise is to be found in Business User Conversations and Relationships

As Enterprise 2.0 innovations emerge, the soul of the enterprise will be found in enabling users to follow and filter the flow of their most important, most relevant conversations and relationships with colleagues, customers and communities.

3) The Sensing Wave of Opportunity

I believe the emerging wave of "Sensing" solutions and innovations will create new, fast growing companies and whole new industry segments just as the "Computing" Wave ( think Mainframe, Midrange, PC, Software) and "Connecting" Wave ( think networking, routing, switching, LAN, WAN, Wireless, Mobile) did over the last 25+ years.

4) Data Innovation and the Enterprise Edge

If the 80's was about Hardware Innovation, and the 90's was about Software Innovation, then the 00's - 10's has been / will be about Data Innovation.  So, one formula for success in the enterprise edge economy could be to:

"Apply algorithms to unstructured data to organize it into usable, open information for end users in a way that adds value through networks, markets or communities."

5) Cisco's M&A Strategy for the Edge Economy

What the WSJ misses is that Cisco has done more than focus M&A on Platforms.  Cisco has focused M&A on "Edge" deals over the same time period. Cisco's recent M&A activities represent a conscious effort on their part to execute a strategy for the Edge Economy.

5a) Mobile "Sensing" for Context-Aware Applications

In addition, capturing personal data for the individual user will provide context-aware applications and reasoning engines that are critical to helping each of us intelligently filter media and conversations to those that are the most relevant to our situation and preferences.

Customer Service 2.0 continues to evolve

How is Customer Service 2.0 emerging and how might it differ from today's Customer Service 1.0 world?

For me there are two fundamental ways that we'll see Customer Service 2.0 emerge.  

1. Social Networked Customer Service: Customer Care Operations become social and collaborative with their Customer community by optimizing their conversations and relationships using Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 tools.

2. Customer-driven Customer Service: Customers, Users, Consumers take more control over their transaction, conversation and relationship activities with vendors.  What was once CRM becomes VRM (vendor relationship management).

Along these lines, Pistachio Consulting does a nice job summarizing the use of twitter as a case study of customer service 2.0.

Stories of one company or another coming to the aid of its customers via Twitter are now legion. 

Consumer-facing firms like Comcast have made it a priority to scan the twitterverse for unhappy customers and to make them happy.

What you will find less often on Twitter are stories of one customer being simultaneously wooed by multiple companies eager for that person’s brand loyalty.

That’s just what happened to Baltimore doctor Gary Kerkvliet, who found himself being courted by Comcast and Verizon — via tweets and direct messages — for his home-Internet business.
Kerkvliet would ultimately become a champion of bothcompanies — despite having initially horrific problems with one and ending up with the other.

Cisco pushes Enterprise 2.0

Cisco has been pursuing an Enterprise Edge strategy as evidenced by their M&A strategy and investment in Enterprise 2.0 principles and technologies.  

Fast Company reinforces the point in their most recent cover story of Cisco:

"Chambers has greater ambitions, even now, in the midst of turmoil. Or, perhaps, especially now. He has been taking Cisco through a massive, radical, often bumpy reorganization. The goal is to spread the company’s leadership and decision making far wider than any big company has attempted before, to working groups that currently involve 500 executives. This move, Chambers says, reflects a new philosophy about how business can best work in a networked world. "In 2001, we were like most high-tech companies, with one or two primary products that were really important to us," he explains. "All decisions came to the top 10 people in the company, and we drove things back down from there." Today, a network of councils and boards empowered to launch new businesses, plus an evolving set of Web 2.0 gizmos — not to mention a new financial incentive system — encourage executives to work together like never before. Pull back the tent flaps and Cisco citizens are blogging, vlogging, and virtualizing, using social-networking tools that they’ve made themselves and that, in many cases, far exceed the capabilities of the commercially available wikis, YouTubes, and Facebooks created by the kids up the road in Palo Alto."

The Future State of Enterprise Applications

While a little dated, I thought this presentation on the future state of enterprise software was a good one to share.  I'll be adding more over time with a focus on the individual Business User and how they are driving change in the enterprise software industry.

Enterprise Apps Future State

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: enterprise 2.0 business user)

Mobile "Sensing" for Context-Aware Application

From Nokia's Conversation blog, we learn about their vision of turning mobile devices into sensors.  

For me, it serves as an example of Nokia's interest in the "Sensing Wave".

"Every phone is a sensor 
When you start thinking of the mobile device as providing context, you start to think of users projecting who they are, what they are doing, and where they are. But, when you begin to think of what could mobile devices do anonymously, you can see cases where sensor-filled devices can, in aggregate, provide information on traffic, weather, or health patterns."

Most people see how the mobile phone could power context-aware applications by aggregating, analyzing and acting on information "sensed" by the device.  

Here, Nokia highlights how anonymous data could provide context-aware applications for the collective.   In addition, capturing personal data for the individual user will provide context-aware applications and reasoning engines that are critical to helping each of us intelligently filter media and conversations to those that are the most relevant to our situation and preferences.

We're at the early stages of the "Sensing Wave".  Watch for more context-aware applications to emerge that "sense" based on data aggregation, analysis and acting.