Digital business has made a once linear marketplace, fast-paced and in constant change, making it difficult for stagnant leadership mindsets to remain competitive. Successful business tactics that worked in the past, will leave you in the dust today. To optimize a business strategy, one must be able to adapt quickly to change, and be aware of risks, opportunities, market changes and trends. Enterprises must demonstrate agility to strive in the current marketplace by balancing essential leadership roles throughout the C-Suite.
Letting go of past behaviors is difficult, but with digital business dictating the customer market, enterprise leaders have to “let it go.” Gartner’s recent research report “Take Digital to the Core — Remaster Your Leadership Using Six Personas to Win in Digital Business” forms the argument that C-Suite level executives must learn to adapt to new digital business, as new technologies are constantly disrupting industries and more and more companies become marginalized. The article warns leaders that using “mature” business practices will cause enterprises to miss out breakthrough opportunities.
Adapting to change is not easy, and rather than changing your leadership team, teams should instead self-assess, find strong traits, acknowledge weaknesses and promote to fill in the voids to create a rock-star, digitally-ready, executive team. As Gartner points out in this research, management behaviors should be complementary of one another, and these six personas will help fill in the gaps:
In this research, Gartner makes a strong argument that by re-mastering leadership styles, with these six personas, your enterprise will be fit for the modern day challenges of digital business. Business competition and practices, specifically within the C-suite, have changed in the past five years forcing leaders, executives and VPs to readjust. People need to adapt to digital business no matter how successful previous tactics were. Fill in leadership gaps with a digital-business-ready executive team!
To read the full Gartner report you can register for free here: “Take Digital to the Core — Remaster Your Leadership Using Six Personas to Win in Digital Business”
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It’s a new year and everyone is looking for digital trends that will optimize business strategy this year. We trust that things are already in full swing your business initiatives and we want to recap on our favorites brought to you from our friends at Altimeter.
CEO, Charlene Li, thinks, “Agile customization of experiences becomes a priority” in 2016, and we could not agree more.
Industry Analyst, Ed Terpening, acknowledges a rising complexity in the digital ecosystem.
Today’s business world is not static and your digital strategies must address not only volume of data but recency based on the specific role and need of the ‘consumer’ of that data. That is why our FirstRain Business Web Graph continually scans the structure of the living Web and the topics, triggers and business lines continually change over time, evolving and expanding based on system input and customer feedback.
FirstRain is an enterprise leader in providing a competitive analysis of target market analysis that will help optimize your business strategy this year.
Feel free to contact us for a free demo, and show you how actionable insights can empower your digital strategy this year.
This is part of the FirstRain Persona Series.
The role of a CIO has evolved. Now, the responsibilities demand a CIO wear many hats; to be a chameleon and a visionary.
Today’s CIO must be able to lead, adapt quickly, be a pioneer with an innovative and competitive perspective. And let’s not forget, a CIO bears the challenge of finding business technology that embodies all of these traits.
A core challenge for the modern CIO is finding fundamental technology that can be productive, predictive and proactive across the many divisions of a company and accessible through many platforms. She/he is responsible for creating fluidity for internal and external business information.
Chief Strategy Officer of Adjuvi , Dion Hinchlcliffe confirms, “While yesterday’s IT could be somewhat siloed, today’s modern enterprise must have an open architectures, from data to APIs, to search and discovery, that makes it possible for the knowledge that flows within the organization to find its way to wherever it needs to be, and to do it all securely as well.”
CIOs face the challenge of finding enterprise solutions that transmit a cohesive streamline of information throughout a business network. In the past, the role was focused on precision in the implementation of effective IT departments. Now, the role demands much more.
CIOs must pioneer a digital business strategy that will address the needs of transitioning legacy software into Cloud, SaaS platforms. According to CIO.com, many companies are still struggling with software updates with significant IT costs and CIOs are challenged with mitigating the risk of moving too fast or moving too slow.
CIOs are aware of the transition that is taking place. They know that they must implement a digital strategy that meets the demands of day-to-day processes and future enterprise goals.
A CIO must service the key responsibility of providing teams with internal and external access to intelligence technology, both equally important and crucial for business development.
Within the company, internal information management technology must be productive and sensitive to existing legacy software. Business technology companies are addressing these enterprise needs and have built platforms and services that are scalable with easy plug-and-play implementations offering an array of accessible platforms. For example, companies like Salesforce, Oracle and Microsoft, offer their customers enterprise cloud based platforms that meet the needs of today’s CIO.
Today’s CIO must understand the sensitivity in moving legacy software to a digital world, and must also act like a CMO, a sales hustler and must understand the importance of staying competitive as a global business.
Access to external information should not only be predictive it must be actionable to stay competitive. For example, a CIO in the manufacturing sector requires industry analysis that draws meaningful connections between current business relationships, and the global economy. New technology is doing just this.
Business intelligence software companies are fulfilling the need of identifying the intricacies of products, vendors, markets and the global economy. They offer market insights and competitive intelligence tools that address risk and opportunity.
For example, FirstRain, an enterprise leader of data analytics, provides access to a dynamic platform, that delivers target market analysis of emerging events, market trends, management changes and strategy developments so a CIO can help his/her teams stay competitive and engaged.
As global business technology becomes hyperactive and continues to evolve, so does the role of a CIO. Today, the CIO must be a CMO, a sales leader, a CFO and successfully sail the enterprise to meet the goals of the CEO and board of advisors. Connecting teams to the right technology can drive results, and this is why the role of a CIO continues to be pivotal.
If you want to learn more about how transformational CIO’s are using the FirstRain platform please visit our website or contact us!
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You saw Lightning. You heard Thunder. Did you discover FirstRain?
For our fifth year running, the FirstRain team was a force to be reckoned with at Dreamforce, with the mission of sharing FirstRain’s brand new product release, a powerful analytics platform called Orion.
Marching through the crowd, our astronaut met and took pictures with many conference attendees and was even featured on KPIX Channel 5 news.
As a part of our Discover FirstRain initiatives, we held Exploration Sessions where executives toured our platform and learned how to use FirstRain to tap into their customer’s world through real-time analytics of their markets, competitors, critical events and developments in key sectors and product lines.
The attendees had a chance to preview our newest families of analytics that create even richer business insights, a newly designed user interface that allows to both get a bird-eye view of the industries and markets that the sales rep sells into, and do a deep-dives into topics and markets that help them make smarter decisions.
In good Dreamforce spirit, of course we had to raffle off something. Sorry, it wasn’t a Tesla Model X—maybe next year. But Jessie, who attended one of our Exploration Sessions, won a GoPro, courtesy of the FirstRain marketing team. Congratulations Jessie! We are looking forward to collaborating with you in the future. Send us some videos of your adventures with it!
FirstRain is proud to be on the forefront of today’s business analytics technology platform and enrich the Salesforce experience right inside CRM workflows. While Salesforce helps you manage leads, pipeline and forecasts, FirstRain provides personalized high precision insights on your accounts, end markets and competitors. The custom analytics are flexible, manageable, extensible and easy to understand and act upon. Our technology brings together dynamic categorization of the global enterprise data sources including web and social that are highly relevant to each user and augmented with real-time scoring and ranking across all sales rep’s accounts.
Interested?
Visit us on the Salesforce AppExchange or Contact Us for a demo.
Today, we have Big Data and dynamic, sophisticated visualizations to help our businesses bloom with insight into predictive analytics that identify risks, specific market trends, and relationships. How did the business world unfold and understand information before the use of big data? The remarkable tools used before big data evolved may not be receiving enough credit. These tools incorporated logic, intuition and most of all great minds. Of course, where we are today propels far beyond the expectations of the scientist before our time.
Before the evolution of big data, scientists relied on data visualization in order to present data and information. Data visualizations ranged from wood blocks, to images, to tables and charts. Some of the world’s greatest thinkers gained tremendous insight and changed the world simply by organizing and deciphering basic data sets in new ways.
Edward Tufte, a statistician and artist, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science at Yale University, wrote, designed, and self-published 4 classic books on data visualization. The New York Times described ET as the “Leonardo da Vinci of data,” and Business Week as the “Galileo of graphics.” ET teaches a one-day course on Fundamental design strategies for all information displays: sentences, tables, diagrams, maps, charts, images, video, data visualizations, and randomized displays for making graphical statistical inferences. Gaining knowledge of the past critically influences the future.
Read More here.
FirstRain is proud to be named a finalist for “New Product of the Year – Business Intelligence Solution” as part of the Annual American Business Awards for our recently released Personal Business Analytics for CRM solution!
Our submission highlighted the “unique way that FirstRain ranks top accounts by the quality of triggers that are dynamically discovered based on a user’s role, and the products and services they sell. And how using an adaptive business graph that delivers unmatched categorization and precision, and in-the-moment, context-aware personalization, FirstRain can coach sales teams by alerting them of “Deal Breakers” and ”Accelerators” – which include real-time triggered events on potential risks in active Salesforce.com sales opportunities, or real-world events that will help accelerate sales discussions.”
As a result of our nomination, we are included in voting for the People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products.
Voting is open, and the winners will be honored at The American Business Awards’ new product & tech awards banquet in San Francisco in September 2015.
TO VOTE, PLEASE GO TO:
Short Code: W496Y
FirstRain COO, YY Lee, is giving a speech at Thomson Reuter’s Data Science Meetup “Rubber Meets the Road: What’s hard about deriving real meaning from data” tonight in San Francisco.
In her presentation, YY will share her expertise on deriving business developments, implicit relationships, and “meaningful insight” from vast swaths of online and social content across the global web. She will share FirstRain’s experience in addressing the following data science problems to deliver deeply personalized information experience to business professionals:
The event is being held at Galvanize in San Francisco tonight from 6:00 – 9:00pm. We are looking forward to meeting you!
DM Radio provides a casual talk radio format for detailed discussions about the people, products, services and trends that comprise the IT industry. On this week’s episode “Rise (and Assimilation?) of the Analytics Databases” host Eric Kavanagh will lead a discussion around a whole new crop of analytics databases that have emerged. This week’s guests include FirstRain’s COO YY Lee, Zahid Akhtar of Deloitte, Mark Madsen of Third Nature, and Brian Gentile of TIBCO.
Join the broadcast to learn how can you use these tools to benefit your organization today!
Tune in Thursday February 12th 2015 at 03:00PM ET/12:00PST. Register here
Author:
Ritu Parihar (with inputs from Neha Dahiya)
This year I had the opportunity to attend one of the tech world’s most prestigious conference celebrating women in computing, the Grace Hopper Conference (GHC), organized by Anita Borg Institute (ABI). FirstRain has a deep connection with ABI and I am glad I got an opportunity to attend GHC this year in Bangalore, India.
Our FirstRain CEO, Penny Herscher recently stepped down from the ABI board but continues to be actively engaged- in the spring she was the Master of Ceremonies at the annual Women of Vision awards and also moderated a panel on Male Allies at the 2014 GHC conference in Phoenix, US. Our Managing Director of our India operations, Aparna Gupta is also very involved in ABI as part of the India Council and has been a part of the Advisory committee and panels over the years. With our leadership team, committed to diversity and ABI’s primary aim to recruit, retain, and advance women in technology, participating in the conference is a great opportunity to further this important cause.
During my two days at conference, I had the opportunity to meet many women professionals and exchange views on various topics like technical acumen, team work, work life balance etc. The beauty of the conference is the fact that it creates a platform for collaborative proposals, wherein women connect and share knowledge and expertise for the benefit of others, which is truly inspiring.
I would like to segregate my overall experience of conference in two parts:
i) Technical Learning
ii) Motivational Boost
Technical Learning
The most impressive talk that I attended was:
1) Analytic Footprint’s- The session was around Big Data analytics and the key take away are:
a) How to manage data
b) selecting right kind of data
c) know when your sample size is sufficient
d) good data science
e) good technology
f) social media data can also be used for critical analysis
2) Another great session was on “Machines that learn to make difference”
Some live projects like Electronic Toll collection that aims to eliminate the delay on toll roads by collecting tolls electronically, Parking fee collection based on number plate recognition, parking space management were discussed.
3) A Poster session where engineers represented their creative innovation in their company:
• Generic server failure analysis Tool that gives frequent reason of server failure by filtering, gathering and analysis of logs
• Framework that provides visual help for installing/configuring new software
• Sentiment analysis –to analyze problem like downfall in Credit card users
Motivational Boost
1) We attended some sessions around career development topics like Discover and Build your strengths, The Career Guidance and Think Different – See Abilities where Deepa Narasimhan (President EMC) and Sushmeetha B.Bubna (Director of ASCENT Networks Pvt Ltd) shared their real life stories about how they conquered obstacles and battled social stigma due to their physical disabilities but they explored technology, tweaked them as per their requirements and made themselves to be at par with their non-disabled counterpart.
2) “Idea to Execution”- This was my favorite session. The key points I learnt are: Believe in your ideas, feedback from critics, how to influence-be simple and memorable, use right engineering approach, do not over-engineer, do personal branding, networking, collect enough data for your work etc.
Attending the conference allowed me to connect with prominent leaders in the technology field and get a better understanding of their research while sharing ideas with them. The conference really instilled a sense of togetherness among attendees, as we were able to connect with one another and share similar struggles that we go through on a regular basis.
I feel that the Grace Hopper Conference is THE platform for women in tech as it aims to empower everyone with equal opportunities and unending inspiration, by bringing together a community that is life-changing. I hope to volunteer and be a more active part of planning this conference next year!
Brief Bios:
Ritu: is a Software Engineers in Tools Engineering. In a very short span, she has proved to be a key member of the Tools Development team and was awarded the “Rising star” award recently. An enthusiast engineer, she works to develop Highly Available applications. She is an expert in developing the middleware systems used in the global enterprises…
Neha: is a Software Engineer in Content Engineering and works with the Data Science group. She works on cutting edge problems and new Analytics ideas and is responsible for building a framework to rapidly prototype them. She also works on providing quick solutions to content operation to increase their work efficiency.
This post was written by YY Lee, FirstRain COO.
I am proud of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (@ghc) community this week for raising important issues and grappling with uncomfortable, difficult-to-solve questions.
I appreciate FirstRain’s own Penny Herscher(@pennyherscher) for putting herself out there to moderate the Male Allies Panel, despite the concerns going-in about how to constructively include that perspective. The fiery reaction to that session raised the level of engagement around deep-seated systemic equity issues in our industry in a way that would not have been achieved otherwise. And in Penny’s usual way — she engaged those issues head-on, in direct personal and online exchanges with the men & women, leadership & grassroots members of the community.
Satya Nadella’s wrong-headed comment the next morning (as he has acknowledged), underscored the complacency and problems around gender-equity issues, even among the thoughtful and well-intentioned. This forced the realization that this is not an simply an issue of perception, interpretation or over-reaction. But will require a real introspection and major change — even from colleagues and leaders who are confident they are already totally on-board and acting as allies for equity.
This was the near-perfect opportunity, timing and forum to examine the truth. It is remarkable that even given the charged emotions around this, the discussion started relatively politely, and besides excessive piling on, it remained safe — this in stark contrast to the ugly violent targeting has been simultaneously unfolding around GamerGate. Which only further highlights the reality of the technology industry’s toxic differences in how men and women are treated.
It is too bad that before Nadella’s KarmaGate comment, he stated one of my favorite quotes of the whole conference —summing up why I’ve loved doing this work, nearly every day for over two decades:
“[We work with] the most malleable of our resources, software… That’s the rich canvas that we get to shape… paint…” -Satya Nadella
He nailed it. He put his finger on that the one thing that probably links all the men and women in that event. This is a deep-thinker who understands the heart of matters, which is what made his later comment so doubly surprising and disheartening.
I am encouraged to see the after-effects like Alan Eustace trying to do things differently. And honest conversations with ABI executives about their awareness and struggle with the impossible balance of growing their reach and impact while containing the inevitable, unintended side effect of corporate co-opting.
To all of you “good guys who do care” — Satya, Alan, Mike Schroepfer, Blake Irving, Tayloe Stansbury — less patronizing talk is nice, listening is refreshing, but which of you and your companies is going to commit to results?
==> Here my question to all the “good guys” out there as well as my fellow female leaders: Who is going to set and deliver specific targets for ratios of women and minorities that reflect the real population — in technical leadership by a specific date… 2016? 2017? Who is going to hack their orgs & companies to solve this problem, rather than running feel-good, look-good “programs”?
The Grace Hopper Celebration is an inspiring, important and high-quality gathering in an industry that is littered with mediocre PR-flogging events.
“The Asian community owes a lot to the black community. They opened a lot of doors for us [in the fight for equality].” -Barb Gee
I’m not going to end this post with some rah-rah “just go get ’em girls!” trope. Because the women technologists are already out there — delivering effort, innovation and results at 120% while receiving 70%… 80%… (to be wildly optimistic) of the recognition and reward.
I will share just one final favorite conference quote, which is how this gathering makes me feel every time I attend:
“… at #GHC14… Just not enough space to desc. Wow. Much women. So much brain” -@michelesliger
It is our industry and companies that need to be fixed, not the women in it. I have to believe it is becoming increasingly obvious to our leaders, managers and co-workers that under-valuing this incredibly intellectual resource is idiotic, bad business, and just plain wrong.
- YY Lee (@thisisyy), COO of FirstRain
