Technology Revolution: The Future of Now

Retailers: We know it's tougher than ever to turn customers into loyal evangelists for your brand. The experts say: Christine B. Whittemore: "The winners in retail today are retailers who understand that the customer calls the shots. Few retailers can compete strictly on price..." Brian Kilcourse: "Retailers have a big opportunity to re-define the in-store experience by making it a part of the world that today's consumers operate in." Lisa Joy Rosner: "Where business intelligence provides the rearview mirror to what has happened, social intelligence is what's happening right now. C2B (customer to business) is the new world order." Mark Johnson: "Why is it so hard to 'listen' to our customers, when we 'heard' what they said?" Jon Wurfl: "If word of mouth remains the most powerful marketing influence, do shoppers with large social networks, and maybe loudmouth friends, make better purchasing decisions?" Join us for more game-changing insights for you and your customers.

Open government. Transparency, participation, collaboration. Sounds good on paper, but is it a true game-changer yet? Our experts say: Dr. Natalie Helbig: "Opening government is a perfect storm, but we don't know whether it will just be a lot of data or a sustained and meaningful change in the way we govern and are governed. Russ LeFevre: Technologies exist to enable open government. This 'genie' is out of the bottle. What needs to change is policy, culture and the will of government leaders to champion and sustain change." Jeanne Holm: "With the international ontology for space, we are trying to create the framework by which we can share data about any mission, any project that the governments are interested in having us collaborate on....so the whole world is a global space community." David Nero: "The City of Boston has made significant investments during the past 5 years to uplift its technology and business solutions portfolio." Join us for Open Government: Game-changer yet?

Risk. A fact of business life today. What is your company doing about it? Hear what our experts say. Dr. Parveen Gupta: "Today, nothing is more fundamental to business and more vexing to a company's directors than effective risk governance...a failure in risk oversight could be interpreted by the regulators and the courts as a breach of fiduciary duty by the Board." Barry Murphy: "Good information governance allows companies to get value out of information while minimizing the costs associated with information events like litigation or regulatory requests. Fiona Williams: "Every organization will face uncertainty and risk - the effectiveness of how you deal with governance, risk and compliance (GRC) is what separates market leaders." Bruce McCuaig: Risk management practices are too often failing to meet the value test...Practitioners are looking for the wrong risks in all the wrong places." Join us for more insights – and solutions – on Risky Business: Time for Governance.

Have your employees demanded a BYOD (bring your own device) policy yet? If not, the writing is on the wall – or on the tablet. Any day now, they'll be bringing their iPhones and iPads to work. Is this trend a threat or an opportunity for you? Consultant Steven Romero sees the latter, advising companies to "leverage the consumerization of IT to advance enterprise mobility." Forrester's George Lawrie agrees. "74% of the information workers in our survey used two or more devices for work—and 52% used three or more...they'll be increasingly interested in work systems and personal cloud services that enable easy multi-device access." SAP's Oliver Bussmann warns BYOD laggards, "To be a business 'front runner', it's unacceptable to be a year or even six months behind consumer trends." His approach: "If you can't beat them, lead them." Join us for State of the Device: Consumerization of IT 2012. p.s. Thursdays 1 PM Pacific on The Business Channel, tune in for In the Cloud with Game-Changers.

Today's the day! You're hiring a well-vetted, steep-salary C-suite exec and you're staffing a business-critical new department. Surely your HR folks gave you rock-solid validation for these particular human capital investments. Well, did they? Bersin and Associates founder Josh Bersin doubts it. "One of the biggest opportunities for HR to drive value in the coming years is talent analytics, but HR teams are absolutely not ready. And the systems vendors aren't helping much either!" SuccessFactors' Peter Howes agrees. "Most HR practitioners have limited ability to interpret workforce analytics and reporting. Interpreting workforce analytics is not taught in university HR courses." Wharton Professor Peter Cappelli adds, Metrics are killing HR because all we've come up with are cost items, and we manage what we measure." Join us for more of their wisdom on HR Analytics: How's Your Human Capital Investment Paying Off?

Bankers, listen up: It's not about YOU anymore. Customers are demanding a hassle-free experience, convenience, faster transaction processing, fair fees. Gone are the days of luring them with a free toaster. Two recent blogs tell the story: "4 Reasons Why Bankers Should Think Like Retailers" and "Stop Running Banks for Bankers—Run Them for Customers." What do the experts say? Javelin's James Van Dyke: "In today's increasingly always-on and real-time world, people increasingly want more control of their own ability to manage, monitor and move their money." SAP's Tom McAllister, former CIO, Bank of Ireland U.S. Holdings: "The current state of flux makes this an excellent time to give the systems of the 1980s and 1990s a decent burial." SAP's Carl Snyder: "The revenue train may have left the station, but there is still ample opportunity to drive revenue growth and grow the ever-allusive wallet share that bankers crave." Join us for Retail Banks of the Future: For Customers, Not Bankers!

Enterprise mobility is an unstoppable force. By 2015, this game-changer could impact over 37% of the world's workforce - about 1.3 billion people. And by that time, 50% of enterprise mobility applications will be HTML5, predicts Sanjay Poonen, President & Corporate Officer, Technology & Innovation Products, Head of Mobile Division at SAP. He notes, "Mobile technology is creating both an expectation and impatience in people that never existed before. In fact, mobility has such an impact on companies today that conversations are no longer just between vendors and users, but really vendors and the end user." ThinkJar's Esteban Kolsky agrees. "Mobile is not a fad. It has been building for over ten years as the next frontier for business. Now that it's finally here, we see businesses scrambling to catch up. Can they get there on time?" Join us to hear more about Enterprise Mobility: Faster, Please! p.s. Tune in Thursdays at 1 PM Pacific for In the Cloud with Game-Changers.

Information is still king. But you'll need a different mantra to capture the ear – and the wallets – of the vast Latino market. According to JeffreyGroup president Mike Valdés-Fauli, "Culture is king...Only now are we starting to see savvy-marketers at major consumer brands that 'get it'...The nuances surrounding countries of origin make for remarkably different points of view from Mexicans in Los Angeles, to Puerto Ricans in New York, to Cubans in Miami. Corporate America stands to benefit from acknowledging this difference." Noting that Latinos are "heavier and savvier" tech users than non-Hispanic anglos, he observes that "smart marketing experts are looking 15 years ahead to the coming surge in bi-cultural households." Is your company creating a great customer experience that endears your brand to this blossoming market? Tune in for Multi-Cultural Marketing: Ready to Reach 50 Million Latinos? p.s. Thursdays at 1 PM Pacific, you're invited to join us In the Cloud with Game-Changers.

Have your employees demanded a BYOD (bring your own device) policy yet? If not, the writing is on the wall – or on the tablet. Any day now, they'll be bringing their iPhones and iPads to work. Is this trend a threat or an opportunity for you? Consultant Steven Romero sees the latter, advising companies to "leverage the consumerization of IT to advance enterprise mobility." Forrester's George Lawrie agrees. "74% of the information workers in our survey used two or more devices for work—and 52% used three or more...they'll be increasingly interested in work systems and personal cloud services that enable easy multi-device access." SAP's Oliver Bussmann warns BYOD laggards, "To be a business 'front runner', it's unacceptable to be a year or even six months behind consumer trends." His approach: "If you can't beat them, lead them." Join us for State of the Device: Consumerization of IT 2012. p.s. Thursdays 1 PM Pacific on The Business Channel, tune in for In the Cloud with Game-Changers.

Ready to grow your company into a global brand? Good plan, says Emergent Research's Steve King. "Almost 75% of global GDP growth over the next 10 years is expected to come from emerging market countries. How can you not participate in that growth? More good news from Vivaldi Partners' Erich Joachimsthaler. "Today, we run a global business in a hyperlocal fashion. Collaboration between headquarters and subsidiaries is changing profoundly due to...new social technology and collaboration tools. The world is still round, NOT flat." But globalization can be like a real-life blended family. SAP's Mike Morel warns, "Subsidiaries have been the stepchildren of the corporate world, always a second priority." Enterprise Management Associates' Shawn Rogers sums it up: "Wherever you go...there you are and don't you forget it." Pour a cup and join us for Subsidiaries: No, Virginia, the World Is Not Flat! p.s. Join us for In the Cloud with Game-Changers, Thursday 1 PM Pacific on The Business Channel.