Technology Revolution: The Future of Now

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: Potential Is your company still operating by Industrial Era standardization, predictability, top-down authority? Enough! Progressive organizations are using a connected, collaborative, creative model to unleash and amplify the imagination, initiative, passion of inspired individual employees, customers, suppliers. How? The experts speak. Polly LaBarre, MIX: "Every great advance has issued from a new audacity of imagination" (John Dewey). Andrew Jones, Conjunctured Coworking: "In today's rapidly evolving 'sharing economy,' traditionally managed large firms built purely on scale will struggle to receive respect and commitment from tomorrow's most talented knowledge workers." Mario Kaphan, Vagas: "Individuals are empowered to do whatever they want, BUT everybody has everything to do with that." Kerry Brown, SAP: "Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions" (Oliver Wendell Holmes). Join us for Unleashing Unlimited Human Potential.

Today's buzz: You - again! Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849). Early-days "Make for Me" industrialization was humming along until Henry Ford car-jacked it to launch the "Any color you want, as long as it's black" mass-production manufacturing economy. Today, consumers are once again calling the shots, loudly clamoring for "Make for Me" products and services. All at higher quality at lower prices, of course. Can new technologies help your company give 'em what they want and still be profitable? The experts speak. Whitney Johnson, Disruptive Innovation Facilitator: "The more we give, the more we have. The more we let go, the more control. Elizabeth Hedstrom Henlin, TBR: "So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism" (E. M. Forster). Reuven Gorsht, SAP: "To understand your customers, start by knowing why you exist." Join us for Future of Make for Me: The Luxury of Customer Centricity – Part 2.

The buzz: 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Age of the Smart Factory, where a new generation of systems delivers real-time awareness and dynamic interactions among machines, systems, assets, people and things – aka The Internet of Things. Consumers are connected through sensors and smart tags. Printing is now 3D. Is your business ready to seize innovative opportunities or are you stuck in the dark ages? The experts speak. Dave Westrom, ThingWorx: "It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive, but those who can best manage change" (Charles Darwin). Quentin Fisher, HCL Axon: "The Future is already here. It is just not evenly distributed (William Gibson). Chris Hallenbeck, SAP: "When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. (Buckminster Fuller) Join us for Industrial Internet: Real-Time to Grow Your Business – Part 2.

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.