{"id":12374,"date":"2013-12-11T12:27:23","date_gmt":"2013-12-11T11:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=5968"},"modified":"2021-08-16T18:31:15","modified_gmt":"2021-08-16T16:31:15","slug":"leweb-in-the-future-all-companies-will-be-software-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/leweb-in-the-future-all-companies-will-be-software-companies.html","title":{"rendered":"LeWeb: In the Future, All Companies Will Be Software Companies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/george-colony-banner1.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5971\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/george-colony-banner1.jpg?resize=690%2C310&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"george-colony-banner\" width=\"690\" height=\"310\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.forrester.com\/ceo_colony\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">George Colony<\/a>, CEO of Forrester Research, gave a presentation at <a href=\"http:\/\/leweb.co\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">LeWeb Paris<\/a> on the topic of \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/forrester\/the-age-of-the-customer-29093984\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Age of The Customer<\/a>,\u201d which he defined as:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cA 20-year business cycle\u2026 in which the most successful enterprises will reinvent themselves\u2026 to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 5px;\">The overall outline of the presentation will be familiar to anybody in the technology industry: customers have more power than ever, and there\u2019s an opportunity for organizations to engage with customers in new ways, notably through mobile devices.<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 5px;\">Colony fleshed out this basic premise with data from his company\u2019s research, and explained how companies need to change in the future.<\/div>\n<p>Three reasons that customers have more power:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Pricing.<\/strong> Services can be more precisely priced, giving consumers more choice (this is similar to the \u201cunbundling\u201d notion introduced in <a href=\"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/the-10th-leweb-conference-paris-opening-keynotes.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fred Wilson\u2019s LeWeb talk yesterday<\/a>).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Shared critiques.<\/strong> People increasingly turn to others for advice: 17% are influenced by consumer ratings and reviews, 13% by recommendations from friends and family, 5% by online forums or blogs.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The ability to buy anything, anytime, anywhere, from anyone.<\/strong> Old barriers to commerce are falling \u2013 for example, 22% of European online adults have ordered products from a website outside of their home country in the last three months.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Colony emphasized how changing demographics are accelerating what Forrester calls the \u201cmobile mind shift,\u201d defined as:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe expectation that any desired information or service is available, on any appropriate device, in context, at your moment of need\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He outlined Forrester\u2019s research calculating the \u201cmobile mind shift index\u201d for different groups (country, gender, by type of phone usage, etc.). Unsurprisingly, iPhone users have the largest index \u2013 i.e. they have the highest expectation of easy access to goods and services from their phone.<\/p>\n<p>Colony believes that \u201cin the future, companies will put themselves into their customers\u2019 pockets\u201d and that the importance of the web will diminish, becoming \u201cthe AM radio of digital.\u201d In other words, it will never go away, but it will not be the place where most commerce is conducted. Instead, mobile devices, accompanying customers as they walk through time and space, are the future of digital commerce.<\/p>\n<p>The company argues that organizations need to start working today on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sap.com\/pc\/tech\/mobile\/software\/solutions\/commerce-solutions.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">increasing mobile engagement with their customers<\/a>, but that optimizing the customer experience will ultimately require big disruptions to current commerce ecosystems, with different services coming together:<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/image1.png?resize=640%2C294&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"image\" width=\"640\" height=\"294\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Colony concluded that \u201cin the future, all companies will be software companies\u201d \u2013 in other words, fulfilling the high expectations of tomorrow\u2019s consumers will require a seamless, coherent approach, centered on big data, and that this \u201csoftware\u201d will be the ultimate source of competitive advantage.<\/p>\n<p>An interesting real-world example of this trend is the recent creation of a \u201cmobile commerce ecosystem\u201d around the Montreal transit system, where software from SAP is used to continuously <a href=\"http:\/\/business.financialpost.com\/2013\/12\/10\/a-joint-venture-with-sap-theres-an-app-for-that-montreal-transit-users-get-more-than-a-ride\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">optimize mobile offers to the 1.2 million daily users<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cJumping on transit in Montreal just got a whole lot more rewarding thanks to a first-of-its kind loyalty program developed by Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de transport de Montr\u00e9al (STM) and its technology partner SAP.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can find more about Forrester\u2019s research in their report\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forrester.com\/Competitive+Strategy+In+The+Age+Of+The+Customer\/fulltext\/-\/E-RES59159?docid=59159\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Competitive Strategy in the Age of the Customer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forrester believes that \u201cin the future, all companies will be software companies\u201d: the high expectations of tomorrow\u2019s consumers will require a seamless, coherent approach, and that this \u201csoftware\u201d will be the ultimate source of competitive advantage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[83,100,173,498,499,528,911],"class_list":["post-12374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conferences","tag-age-of-the-customer","tag-analytics","tag-big-data","tag-forrester","tag-forrester-research","tag-george-colony","tag-sap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/george-colony-banner-1.jpg?fit=690%2C310&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3dA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20555,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12374\/revisions\/20555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}