Technology Revolution: The Future of Now

The buzz: Mentoring. Basic mentoring involves a more experienced or knowledgeable person guiding someone less experienced or knowledgeable for personal or professional development. Time for a pop quiz: Is your company allowing mentors for a privileged few, perhaps mostly males, or for a broader employee population? Are your mentoring practices building a diverse leadership or merely cloning stereotypes? A lot to consider. The experts speak. Sherryanne Meyer, Air Products and Chemicals: "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination" (Albert Einstein). Sarah Cooke, Great Place to Work: "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad" (Miles Kington, UK's The Independent daily columnist). Meaghan Sullivan, SAP: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel (Maya Angelou). Join us for Mentoring Done Right: Everybody Wins! – Part 2

Today's buzz: Customer experience. Is technology the magic bullet to help you give customers everything they want and more – and thus ensure their loyalty? Not quite. Technology can indeed give you real-time insights to be relevant, to respond with agility and speed, to connect collaboratively and transact efficiently. But the perfectly seamless, frictionless customer experience can be elusive. The experts speak. Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group: "Statistics show that customer loyalty is not well correlated with customer satisfaction. But customer disloyalty IS highly correlated with customer dissatisfaction." Anthony Leaper, SAP: "Many companies believe technology is the only lubricant needed to enable a frictionless customer experience. The individual characteristics needed to deliver a frictionless experience are never consistent, so is its successful delivery to a customer simply guesswork or luck?" Join us for Frictionless Customer Experience: War Stories from the Trenches.

Today's buzz: Simplification. Complexity is intensifying for businesses, communities and us as individuals. Is this what we really want or need? If the complexity trend perpetuates in established companies, at risk are the agility, adaptability, scalability, and cost-effectiveness that allow leaner, simpler organizations to compete better and win bigger. Before you try to recapture your long-gone simplicity via new organizational design, technology tools and business processes, first figure out how you got this way. If you don't understand what caused the problem, how will you avoid repeating it? The experts speak. Suzanne Passante, Day & Zimmerman: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" (Albert Einstein). Matt Healey, TBR: "Never confuse a clear view with a short distance." David Fowler, SAP Services: "The most important things in life aren't THINGS." Join us for the Future of Business: Changing the Game through Simplification.

The buzz: Thinking. Increasingly, in-demand jobs require proficiency in critical thinking. Without it, how can a company validate the information it uses for decision making? Think about it. The experts speak. Dr. Mark Battersby, Professor: "Learning to think more critically involves developing practices that lead to more carefully thought-out, evidence-based decisions and judgments." Dr. Sharon Bailin, Professor: "Critical thinkers are more committed to the process of being reasonable than to any particular view or position." Shirley Calla, Masters Student: "I think the task of figuring out how to combine the best of conscious deliberation and instinctive judgment is one of the greatest challenges of our time" (Malcolm Gladwell). Emily Mui, SAP: "In this age of information overload and demand for instant response and gratification, it's even more important to have good critical thinking skills so you can make good decisions." Join us for Critical Thinking Part 2: To Tell the Truth.

Today's buzz: Marketing. We're all bombarded by a never-ending deluge of marketing content that rarely works its intended magic. If you're among the thousands of marketing writers spewing the reams of boring, forgettable content that's likely harming your brand, it's time to get help. Listen-up for insider tips that can help boost your messaging to memorable, experience-rich, relevant, actionable communication gems. The experts speak. Jeremy Epstein, Sprinklr: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel" (Maya Angelou). Kare Anderson, Moving From Me to We: "Start with the specific customer story, then end with the specific product benefit that made it possible, not the reverse." Tim Clark, SAP: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" (Leonardo da Vinci). Join us for more of their insights on Social and Content Marketing Part 2: Relishing Relevance.

The buzz: Fraud. As hard as you try to implement effective anti-fraud processes and tools, fraudsters work harder. Take heart! Predictive analytics technology can help you understand emerging fraud patterns and adapt against new types of attack. The tools continue to advance, but is your management team making analytics – and their insights – a high enough priority? The experts speak. Derek Snaidauf, Deloitte: "There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction" (John F. Kennedy). Michael P Cangemi, Cangemi Company: "An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage" (Jack Welch). Jérôme Pugnet, SAP: "The median duration – the amount of time from when the fraud commenced until it was detected – for reported cases is 18 months" (2014 ACFE Report). Join us for Fighting Fraud: Predictive Technology to the Rescue – Part 2.

The buzz: Manufacturing. Manufacturers are pushing automated processes into overdrive to survive in the global marketplace. As this evolution spawns new jobs demanding specialized skills best performed by robots, will the factory workforce need humans? The experts speak. Mike Yost, MESA International: "Governmental initiatives, like Germany's 'Industry 4.0' and US National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, are shining a light on the importance of advanced technologies in manufacturing, but we're still a long way away from putting the pieces together correctly." Kimberly Knickle, IDC: "I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy" (Marie Curie). Jeff Jackson, Deloitte: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" (Albert Einstein). Chuck Pharris, SAP: "The future of automation will be a shift from robots replacing humans in jobs to humans working beside robots." Join us for Manufacturing Trends: Automation in Overdrive – Part 2.

The buzz: Game on! Games are an integral part of all societies. A formalized expression of play, games carry the ideas and behaviors of a culture through time to future generations (Wikipedia.org). But while we thought they it just for fun, the concept of games was maturing into a serious player in the diverse arenas of formal learning, job training, workplace productivity, sustainability, healthcare, advertising and sales. We've even heard that 70% of the top 2000 companies plan to use gamification by 2015. Not a believer yet? The experts speak. Prof. Ashok Ranchhod, Games Design Hub: "If you don't know where you are going, any road'll take you there" (Alice in Wonderland). Gopal RajGuru, Innovate+Grow Group: "Let the (business) games begin!" Philipp Herzig, SAP: "Participants who went through a gamified (elearning) course are upset when they have to take a non-gamified training." Join us for Gamification: Serious Business – Part 2

Today's buzz: SMEs. If you're the entrepreneurial founder or leader of a small-to-midsize company, you likely face challenges that test your commitment every day. Once you get past grappling with financing and building a leadership team, you need to focus on scaling technology, opening sustainable channels of distribution, engaging new customers, mastering social media opportunities and more. Ready to hear how successful businesses are figuring it all out? The experts speak. Brian Moran, Brian Moran & Associates: "If you want something bad enough, you will find a way; if you don't, you will find an excuse." Andrew Sherman, Jones Day: "Innovation without execution is an irresponsible waste of corporate assets and dilutes shareholder value." Ursula Ringham, SAP: "Every great company started with an ambitious idea." Join us for Growing Your Small-to-Midsize Business: Challenges and Strategies

Today's buzz: Data overwhelm. What's the big deal about big data when it comes to marketing your products and services? Successful marketing hinges on gaining insight from the mountains of data you capture and store, so you can build great relationships and experiences with your customers and prospects. Do you have the right people and tools to sift through all that information and find the golden nuggets of opportunity? The experts speak. Andrew Jones, Altimeter Group: "Customer identity today is a shattered mirror, with little pieces of it spread throughout the organization. Customer Service sees a different piece of the profile than sales or marketing or loyalty." Esteban Kolsky, ThinkJar: "Customers don't care about brands. Brands care about customers." Kaan Turnali, SAP: "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well, the product or service fits him and sells itself" (Peter Drucker). Join us for Data Deluge: Customer Insight Challenges and Opportunities.