This blog post is part of Forrester’s Holiday 2018 retail series. Despite news of brands such as Nike, Adidas, Allbirds, and SeatGeek successfully selling on social networks, social media is still not a place that consumers buy products and services. Our Forrester Social Technographics® data uncovers that consumers use social media least in the buy stage of […]
There is ample evidence that improving employee experience leads to better business results. Briefly, firms that improve employee experience find that they get better work performance and more discretionary effort from employees.[i] Discretionary effort makes companies more effective and efficient, according to this study published in Harvard Business Review.[ii] Better employee experience also leads to lower employee turnover […]
Your organization faces two powerful trends: The growing pressure of regulatory requirements on data protection that are emerging worldwide. The increasing awareness of privacy rights, which causes customers to take action in their relationship with businesses. You can choose to focus on compliance at the minimum possible cost, playing catch-up with regulators while delivering mediocre […]
The Counterintuitive CEO
Sending malicious payloads and packets is no longer the standard in threat operations. In today’s world of massive social media presence and influence, malicious actors can bring an organization to its knees — 280 characters at a time. This isn’t an attack on your infrastructure but an attack of computation propaganda aimed to shape a divisive […]
Data governance is good for you, they said. Data governance de-risks your business, they said. Data should be owned by the business, they said. How’s that working for you? It’s my guess that data governance is not — quite — working for you. Sure, in pockets you’ve managed to satisfy regulatory imperatives like GDPR and may even […]
When your CEO asks you for your digital strategy, you could go away and huddle up with your team for a month and produce some voluminous document full of TLAs, only to have it sit on the shelf for the next two years. Instead, simply give your CEO a copy of your business strategy. After […]
This blog post is part of Forrester’s Holiday 2018 retail series. Online holiday shopping in the US is set to grow to $151 billion this year, up 14% from $133 billion in 2017. Total holiday sales will grow at a more conservative 1.7%. All told, we see approximately one-fifth of all US holiday shopping this […]
This blog post is part of Forrester’s Holiday 2018 retail series. Despite news of brands such as Nike, Adidas, Allbirds, and SeatGeek successfully selling on social networks, social media is still not a place that consumers buy products and services. Our Forrester Social Technographics® data uncovers that consumers use social media least in the buy stage of […]
It may not seem like it yet, but climate change is altering the world so drastically that all enterprises will need to undergo a transformation to avoid going extinct. Earlier this week, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported (with high confidence) that at the rate we’re going, global warming of 1.5°C is likely […]
You’re an executive, an employer, or maybe an up-and-comer in your organization, but either way, you have surveyed the moment and you know that big things are poised to happen. Unlike the big things of the past — the internet or mobile — the change won’t be the result of consumers embracing a shiny new object or buying into a […]
Picture the following: You wake up from a fitful night of sleep feeling under the weather. From your sickbed, a voice assistant gathers your symptoms, accesses your patient history, and orders a prescription for you. But you want to talk to a human as well, so you initiate a video chat with your physician using […]
Facebook Loses More User Data (This Time Unintentionally) Facebook announced that it experienced a breach this week that lost 50 million users’ data. Ironically, the breach happened in part due to exploited bugs in three features developed to give users more control over their privacy. Some quick key lessons to take away from this breach: […]
Unless you were on the Appalachian Trail for a few weeks, you know what I’m talking about. I’ll start with this paragraph from our newly published analysis of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, called “Nike Makes No Sacrifices“: Judging Nike’s decision is difficult because there’s so much conflicting evidence. In concept, values-based appeals […]
I am still catching my breath. Adobe has agreed to acquire Marketo for $4.75 billion. The deal is the biggest in Adobe’s history and a massive encore to the acquisition of Magento for a mere $1.7 billion in May. On the one hand, I find myself proud to be a B2B marketer — to think that […]
So where are all the GDPR enforcement actions? The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entered into force at the end of May 2018, giving unprecedented powers to regulators. From ongoing regulatory audits to hefty fines and a range of new privacy requirements, the GDPR is the most dramatic change in data protection and governance in the last 20 years. Some […]
Autonomous payments is the future state of payments — and banks, merchants, and payment vendors need to prepare now. Venture funding in this arena already exceeds $28 billion. Coupled with intensifying economic and political forces, consumers globally will see this new but nonlinear evolution of payments emerge, where payments will melt into the wider commerce experience […]
If you regularly follow the financial markets, it’s hard to ignore the growth generated by the FAANG stocks (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google). When you look more closely at the “ANG” part of this quintet, it’s not hard to see how continuous delivery and rapid creation of customer value and corporate growth go hand in […]
Over $1 trillion (no typo) — that’s how big 2017 holiday topline sales were in the US and Europe combined. As for online sales specifically last year, Forrester projected $129 billion in the US and €54 billion in Europe. As a retailer with substantial revenue at stake, you’ve made your merchandise buys, allocated your marketing dollars, and feverishly analyzed […]
It’s been 30 years since the internet made customer self-service and automation the watchwords of business. But most of you are still in the starting gates of digital transformation. Only 15% of companies have kicked it into digital high gear. And even these advanced incumbents fall way behind digital pure plays in harnessing the full power […]
Wealth management is not a sleepy market, but the core business model and operations have remained relatively stable while other industries have been immediately — and in some cases — viciously affected by empowered customers and the dizzying pace of digital. It is already clear that younger customers are captivated by fintech and insurtech providers. They are willing to experiment and, in […]
Quickly: Stop reading the news during your workday — you will be happier and more productive. I was traveling in Europe in June, and in a reflective moment, I asked myself a simple question: “What one habit could I change that would improve my life?” As I surveyed my typical day, I spotted an opportunity: my […]
Stay tuned for updates from the Forrester blogs.
I am thrilled to introduce my most recent report, ‘Instill a Security Culture by Elevating Communication’. This is an update of my 2011 report “How To Market Security To Gain Influence And Secure Budget’. A different time called for a completely revamped report (read on to see what’s changed). To me, this always has been […]
It’s a great time to be an experience design professional — what we call an XD pro. I remember my early years as a user experience practitioner: 25% of my time was spent practicing my craft (the exciting part!) and 75% evangelizing my discipline and explaining why a human-centered design approach benefits both customers and […]
Research announcement: My first Forrester Wave™ will be evaluating managed security service providers in Asia Pacific for Q1 2019. Gather round! The managed security service provider (MSSP) market has seen a massive shift fueled by a shortage in security skills and increased complexity on all fronts (business, technology, threats, regulations, etc.). This has invited many […]
Adobe’s new Premiere Rush CC brings pro-level video editing capabilities to video creators who aren’t pros. It’s part of Adobe’s continued push downmarket to expand its footprint among creatives. Its simple interface works across computers and mobile devices, which means you can start a project on one device and finish it on another — or send […]
Context And Timing Is Critical For Robots And Humans To Work Well Together
GDPR seemed to promise chaos at the dawn of May 25, but we haven’t seen much yet. Senior Analyst Enza Iannopollo explains the lack of major headlines — and why you can’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Featuring: Enza Iannopollo, Senior Analyst Show Notes: We’re nearly five months in, and yet the […]
Huawei held its flagship Connect 2018 conference in Shanghai from October 10 to 12. The event, which featured more than 200 sessions, attracted over 25,000 visitors and more than 1,500 partners from around the world. By the end of 2017, Huawei’s annual revenue had exceeded US$92 billion — half of which comes from global markets […]
Fall means that software conference season is in full swing and that I’m on the road more than I’m off it. This week was an interesting one, as I found myself pinballing from one end of my coverage to the other. On Monday I spent some time at IBM’s Agile Engineering Summit in D.C. Attendees […]
Volkswagen’s recent announcement of its decision to build its automotive cloud platform on Microsoft Azure is yet another example of the types of tech-driven innovation efforts that transportation leaders are taking to position themselves as customer experience leaders. The objective of Volkswagen Automotive Cloud is to transform the company to a digital-services-driven business. While the […]
2018 has been a year of mass deregulation in healthcare. The Patients Over Paperwork program launched with the goal of stripping burdensome regulations from healthcare. Lawmakers started by scaling back EHR and quality reporting requirements. These changes will go into effect beginning in January 2019. Healthcare leaders should take this reprieve as an opportunity to […]
The annual SpringOne event, held in D.C. a few weeks back, was full of exciting, detailed, and compelling stories of enterprise transformation. This wasn’t a show about open source disrupting a proprietary technology stack — it was a celebration of how open source and new ways of building software are helping large, global enterprises transform into […]
In late 2016, IBM announced the availability of its full-scale cyber range at the Cambridge, MA headquarters of its security division. With two shifts per day and currently booked out six to eight months, it’s been a huge success for the division. The range isn’t just about training security incident response analysts; it’s a full […]
It’s frustrating when a customer exhibits purchase intent but doesn’t buy because of friction in the customer journey. It’s worse when a store manager or contact center agent is unaware of a digital promotion. Nearly 40% of CMOs say that a lack of consistent customer experience (CX) prevents greater online sales revenue. Empowered customers now […]
I’m getting ready to kick off a Forrester Wave™ on cybersecurity incident response services that should be viewed as a refresh of “The Forrester Wave™: Digital Forensics And Incident Response Service Providers, Q3 2017” published in September of 2017. This iteration of the Wave will be focused on measuring how service providers are able to prepare clients […]
This blog post is part of Forrester’s Holiday 2018 retail series. Black Friday holiday sales events are a fixture of the European holiday shopping season (even without a European equivalent of the Thanksgiving holiday!). Initially finding its way to the UK, the sales day has extended across Europe to become a significant sales event from […]
As of 2018, the market for contact center technology has fully shifted to cloud. The remaining outliers of demand are large, highly customized implementations that preserve legacy on-premises software or organizations that wish to maintain the technology inside their firewall. Agility, flexibility, and the ability to rapidly shift capacity are all key elements that AD&D […]
Points and discounts are the hallmark of most loyalty programs, and our data shows that they are usually pretty successful in incentivizing purchase behavior: Nearly half of US online 18–35-year-olds admit that programs influence what they buy and how much they spend. But loyalty isn’t just about the purchase — or at least it shouldn’t be. […]
(with Pascal Matzke and Michael Glenn) Customer expectations are rising too quickly for traditional models of incremental improvement; companies need to find a strategy to harness disruptive technologies that balances iterative solutions with fearless, flexible innovation. Many company leaders have been swept up in the sex appeal surrounding the term “innovation,” claiming proficiency without any […]
About half of the 51 XD providers we surveyed recently — agencies and consultancies such as Astro Studios and Work & Co that provide experience design (XD) services — are also: Developing their own products. Founding startups and maintaining equity stakes in them. Investing in startups with either money or their talent in the form of […]
News flash for marketers using Google for advertising: Measurement just got more difficult. GDPR forced Google to rethink how it gathers, stores, and uses customer and prospect data or face hefty fines that could add up to millions. As a result, Google has restricted advertisers’ ability to access data to measure marketing effectiveness. This means that […]
