Enterprise hits and misses – vanity metrics get exposed, DeFi deflates, and the connected consumer puts brands on notice

Lead story – Quantifying the connected consumer – where do brands go from here?

MyPOV: The connected consumer hit the diginomica spotlight, via a fresh report from Salesforce. Stuart kicked things off with Trust and honesty – what the Connected Customer wants from brands in the Vaccine Economy. So what have we learned?

It’s already been noted by various parties that what might be termed ‘pandemic goodwill’ – when consumers were ready to excuse poorer customer service due to the nature of the macro-emergency – is now wearing thin and ‘because COVID…’ is no longer an excuse many people are ready to accept.

Indeed – though supply chain snafus can go well beyond brand annoyance, as the baby formula shortage/crisis in the US proves. In a case like that, where only a few brands hold sway on scarcity, I’m not sure how the so-called “connected consumer” exercises much power. But that doesn’t mean the omni-consumer doesn’t apply brand pressure. Stuart notes two more takeaways from the report:

• 71% of consumers have changed brands in the last 12 months (the good brand news)
• Consumers are increasingly brand disloyal (the flip side – and not so good news for brands)

Stuart bears down on the health/fitness industry, where brands have been on a pandemic rollercoaster. What’s next for Peloton in the Vaccine Economy? Not the best news, writes Stuart:

Would cash-constrained people choose to spend their money on a Peloton subscription or would they prefer to pay out to the real-world gym? This week we got a partial answer to that question when Peloton’s share price crashed 20% as quarterly revenues dropped from $1.26 billion.(Connected Fitness – the wheels are coming off the Peloton bike as underlying tech issues come to the fore)

How can Peloton make up ground? By getting its omni-act together. Stuart quotes the CEO on Peloton’s app:

The unaided brand awareness is like 4%. So it’s the greatest app nobody has ever heard of. And we absolutely need to fix that…we can’t get there without making the digital app a big success. I mean, that’s pretty clear. And we can’t get there without having a broad-scale international business.

Two things jump out: riding high in one market (pandemic times) can lead to a cold shower in the next. Especially when your tech infrastructure/delivery gets exposed. A revealing quote from Peloton’s CEO finds the gap between many IT shops and best-in-class:

I mean, really, we have to wait until the end of June to be able to test on the website? That’s something that would take 1.5 days at Netflix, even early on.

Meaty lessons here – and perhaps a CIO feeling a bit of heat as well, I’d guess. Stuart takes these themes further in Connected Fitness – WeightWatchers set to shed digital calories as omni-channel realities emerge in the Vaccine Economy.

Diginomica picks – my top stories on diginomica this week

• Robot ethics need to get specific, says Durham University – Robot ethics are a work in progress at best – despite the widespread deployment of robotics. When it comes to a new Durham University report, Chris sees plenty of problems, starting with “robot” as a term: “It is far from clear whether they are talking about software or intelligent, autonomous hardware – of the kind that, frankly, doesn’t exist yet, at least not to a sophisticated degree.”
• 29 tips on what to do on the first day as a new CIO – Mark Chillingworth rounds up 29 CIO pointers. I’ll pick: “Be acutely aware of cultural differences between geographies and understand the drivers for different areas. Not everywhere is like the UK/US.”
• Bereavement and its impact – a growing challenge for technology leaders – Another keeper from Mark, on an overlooked topic that deserves airtime. Empathy and policy are both needed here; fusing empathy into policy is the hard part.

Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here’s my three top choices from our vendor coverage:

SAP Sapphire 2022 Orlando – diginomica event coverage: I was on the ground in Orlando, chasing down stories and doing the pester-the-execs “Jon from diginomica has another question” thing, with more to follow. Scroll down for podcast links.

Our Kinexions22 supply chain coverage rolls on:

A few more vendor picks, without the quotables – the event madness (and roundups) roll on:

Jon’s grab bag – The first time the trendy buzz of DeFi wound up in hits and misses, it was an upbeat thing. Now, not so much: DeFi meltdown as Luna, UST, and other tokens plunge (by Chris). Also by Chris, how about this for a CIO gig? UK Space Agency CIO preps launch pad.  Finally, Brian has some grilled rump roast tough love for marketers in The problem with tech marketing – and how to cure it!

Best of the enterprise web

My top seven

Vanity Metrics: The Problem with Skin-Deep Data – Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel nabs post-of-the-week honors by a wide margin:

There are (2) major tells when looking at metrics.  #1 – who’s measured it and how was the measurement done? and #2 – why does this metric matter?  Or, more importantly, what end goal is the metric measuring towards.

But if we concede that vanity metrics are a problem – and they are – we still need better ones. The final section of Tinder’s article is a terrific list of superior enterprise KPIs, including:

Metrics that matter most:
1.  Business Value Delivered (1. revenue improvement, 2. cost reduction, or 3. working capital improvement)
2.  Stakeholder Adoption.  Are my users actually using the system for the purpose intended?
3.  Customer Experience (measured by CSAT and churn or stakeholder satisfaction if an internal initiative—e.g. employee experience)

More best-of-web picks:

• Enterprise architects take charge of the digital revolution – Joe McKendrick documents the changing role of the enterprise architect: “They are responsible for a digital enterprise architecture. It’s a completely different ecosystem that they have to maintain.”
• DEA Investigating Breach of Law Enforcement Data Portal – Krebs doing what he does: “The hackers could use EPIC to look up a variety of records, including those for motor vehicles, boats, firearms, aircraft, and even drones.”
• The Great Security Debate: Is Patching Useless? – You don’t hear an argument against patching very often, but it’s an instructive debate.
• How remote collaboration impacts innovation – This study on the drawbacks of remote work for deeply innovative projects is an interesting one, but with plenty of nuances (example: modern collaboration tools seem to lessen the drawbacks).
• Cable’s Last Laugh – Ben Thompson delves into the surprising resilience of cable, in the face of the cord-cutting that was supposed to demolish it.
• SAP Sapphire podcasts and video reviews – If you want more post-game fodder, I got lured into a couple of these. I brought Josh Greenbaum onto mine:  The underground SAP Sapphire Orlando ’22 Review  (plus a quick chat on the show floor with Geoff Scott, CEO ASUG). Then Holger Mueller and I debated Sapphire Orlando takeaways on his video show, spiced up by live rebuttal comments from SAP’s Meg Bear.

Whiffs

I’m not calling this a whiff, but, when the wind is gaining ground, you won’t find me up here:

This is definitely not a whiff by Gartner’s Hank Barnes,  but I’m not sure where else to feature enterprise song lyrics, inspired by New Order:

This one’s more sad than whiffy, but when one of my fave content strategies starts flogging NFTs, I have to call BS (see my listener comment here: Joe Pulizzi Breaks Down Web3 And The Creator Economy – This Week’s Six Pixels of Separation Podcast). As I said in the comment, if this is Web 3.0, count me out.

Finally, I took another gratuitous Twitter shot, and it felt good:

See you next time…If you find an #ensw piece that qualifies for hits and misses – in a good or bad way – let me know in the comments as Clive (almost) always does. Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed.