The most exciting development in the Enterprise today is not, as Salesforce and Jive would have you believe, “social networking for business” but the not-so-stealthy explosion of the iPad as a productivity tool.
We see dramatic deployments every day, especially into the enterprise sales and customer marketing teams which are the teams we work with most often. Eric Lal of ZDNet keeps a site updated with iPad pilots — often documenting large company decisions we have already seen on the ground — thousands at a time!
Even big blue IBM may now have one of the largest Apple and iPad deployments in the world. As an Apple fan it’s terrific to see the corporate world finally seeing the light. Even my own R&D team (for a long time PC-based nerds) are adopting a mix of Apple in with their PCs, iPads (of course for development) and iPhones in with Android phones (which after all you can hack and play with so much more easily than an iPhone).
I also agree with Peter O’Neill at Forrester that many market researchers are falling behind in their methodology and not including broad enough sources of corporate deployment. They have a PC bias and may be missing the rapid growth of BYOD (bring-your-own-device) policies at companies large and small. BYOD is not only popular but in the end it’s cheaper. Cisco pioneered this policy 5 years ago, showing that it was, in the end, cheaper for IT to support. And while IT departments still worry about data security, I was convinced this was solved the day my Symantec customer told me in 2011 that he could now work officially work on the iPad (Symantec is the most paranoid company on security – appropriately so given that it’s their business).
There are two major waves happening for enterprise sales teams right now: social collaboration (yes I don’t think Salesforce and Jive are wrong) and the iPad. And the FirstRain customer intelligence system is right at the intersection of the two – with our sizzling hot iPad app and integration into the top collaboration portals. We have customers deploying in all of them: Jive, Salesforce, Microsoft and Quad (Cisco) and in every case enterprise sales reps also have iPads (either their own or company issue) so they can stay on top of their major customers wherever they are.
And I hope I never have to use a PC again… although this is a false hope since my husband is the lone hold out in our family because he is an electronics designer and needs the high end tools which will probably never be on Apple (sigh).
Image from AllThingsDigital
There is nothing that feels as good as an email from a customer like this one we received today. This is from a company who wishes to remain confidential – but suffice it to say they are a large customer and have 9,000 employees using FirstRain intelligence. Well done Cory, Sagar, Ashutosh, Sweety and the rest of the support team. And thank you Jeff for your support of my team.
Cory and Team:
I just wanted to pause and say “thank you” to each of you for the hard work you do to produce and modify the [internal name they use for FirstRain daily intelligence briefs]. Your good work is evident each and every week and our [internal] clients are very pleased with [internal name]. Please know that your hard work is not going unnoticed and that you are having a positive impact with each [one] you produce and modify on behalf of our [internal] clients.
Job well done!!
Jeff
We have a real problem with jobs in tech. We have more jobs than qualified people.
This is not in the news today because for much of the US population there are not enough jobs. Not enough jobs that people are trained for. And yet in Silicon Valley we have 1 tech position open for every 2 that are filled. Hiring great technical staff is tough and increasingly expensive.
But this is not just a California problem. At the Nashville Technology Council’s annual meeting last week the theme was Diversity – and all the discussion was around education and attracting IT workers to Nashville. They have 1,000 open positions and not having enough IT workers is a real, commercial problem for them.
Commissioner Hagerty, in his warm up speech, talked about the need for technical education in their schools and local colleges. Followed by Mayor Dean who covered many of the same themes and a sense of urgency about education investment. The Nashville Technology Council has a mission to “help Middle Tennessee become known worldwide as a leading technology community, the Nashville Technology Council is devoted to helping the tech community succeed.” – and their main focus this year is Technology Workforce Development.
It was really fun for me to speak to this group and their membership. 500 people, all of whom care about technology jobs in Nashville.
Here’s my talk. I cover the urgency of the need to get more women into technology and the changes we can make to help women stay in technology. Today, even if they start out in the technical field, half of our tech women leave tech in the first 10 years – they either leave in college or they leave early in their careers. It’s just too hard and too isolated.
But it does not have to be this way – and that’s what I talked about. We have to solve this problem as a country. By 2016 we will only be producing 50% of the tech staff we need as a country. Today less than 50% of our workforce (women) hold less than 5% of the leadership of the technology industry.
This is such a waste of talent. It’s a competitive, bottom line issue for any company that needs tech workers – whether they are in health care, energy or computing.
We’ve solved it at FirstRain. We have women in leadership positions in engineering – and we have a very flexible work environment. We can solve it everywhere, and as a country, if we want to.
Long meetings can progressively sap energy and create altered states of being. Yes they can.
We went offsite as a management team for 2 days this weekend to talk through our strategy and 2012 planning. 11 of us in 2 houses at Pajaro Dunes, lots of flip charts, heated discussions, cooking together, walking on the beach and generally spending time together thinking about our business. It was really fun but, even so, it was intense and, combined with long discussions late into the night about the state of the world accompanied by some excellent wines, pretty tiring for some.
Two of our jokesters memorialized their progressive states of mind as they helped clean up after the meeting. They sent me the photos – the editorial is all mine.
Thanks Nima and Ryan – it was fun – and despite the warm sun and sand, amazingly productive!
One of the best ways I’ve found to build community in the office is by working together to give back to the greater community. Last week, the FirstRain team and I continued our annual tradition of volunteering at the Second Harvest Food Bank. SHFB is a fantastic organization that strives to end local hunger around the San Francisco Bay Area. I was pleasantly surprised (and impressed with the massive amount of food to sort) to learn that gathering and collecting enough food was not the organization’s main concern. The great need for volunteers, like those of us from FirstRain, is necessary in order to help sort the food. Kristin Sulpizio, the Director of Volunteer Services told us the “the food is there, it’s finding people to help figure out what to do with all of it, is our problem”.
FirstRain participated in this event not only to give back to the local community but to hopefully encourage others to follow in our footsteps. I know activities like this strengthen our own FirstRain community. Working together outside of the office allows my team to engage in an experience that deepens their sense of shared values, such as social responsibility and caring for others. Every year, I know I can count on our team to clear their busy schedules, to show up and to work very hard. This morale is later translated inside the office, all part of the many reasons why FirstRain’s company culture is so dynamic.
Everyone got his or her hands dirty that day. Working as a team, we were able to quickly and successfully sort through a hefty amount of food in our two-hour time slot. Thanks to the entire FirstRain team’s effort, we helped 236,000 people receive food this month! The day was a huge success and everyone left the bank in great spirits. As always, I was pleased and proud to see my team come together for such a great cause –and one we will continue to support!
It’s always interesting, as we begin to approach the end of another year, to think about how far technology has taken us once again. With the holidays right around the corner, I’m confident that more people than ever will be hoping for an iPad2 in their stockings. Since the new release of the iPad2 in March of 2011, Apple’s iPad sales have rocketed over the sales of any other tablet device. As a result (or perhaps vice-versa), people are shifting their behaviors when it comes to reading and consuming information. Maybe people are feeling compelled to help the environment and go green (saving trees is a great thing!). Perhaps more people are taking advantage of awesome applications like our very ownFirstRain, which helps deliver news in a faster, more efficient way than ever before (in fact have you tried our FirstRain iPad app?). Or maybe people just feel compelled to keep up with the pace of modern technology—the iPad is a perfect, modern example of how amazing technology can be.
In the morning, I ride San Francisco’s Caltrain from the city down the Peninsula to our FirstRain office in San Mateo. I can’t remember the last time I saw a rider reading the actual newspaper—and I take the Caltrain every day. The typical Caltrain passenger behavior (and we’re talking about mostly Silicon Valley employees) is coffee in one hand and iPad in the other. For the few not lucky enough to have a new iPad, you have people like me who scan news on their iPhone (although thankfully I am able to access news using the FirstRain iPhone app!) Either way, I’d say 8 out of 10 Caltrain riders definitely use technology to access the news they may have been receiving years ago from printed versions. I feel badly for the guy who stands at the end of the station trying to sell newspapers! This shift in behavior is not limited to just business professionals. Last week Mashable.com published a video portraying a 1-year old baby using an iPad. When handed a magazine, this adorable baby girl began to press the non-existent buttons, not turn the pages. She resorted to her only knowledge of how to “read,” that is: how to read using technology. Is this a sign of what’s to come for the next generation? Will turning the physical pages in books, and magazines become ancient history? Was there a generation that mourned the physical satisfaction of pressing cuneiform into clay tablets, or decried the loss of reading an elegant scroll?
Last week, here at the FirstRain office, we had our own conversation about the lack of reading print media in today’s society. Ryan Warren, our VP of Marketing, noticed and commented on the fact that I printed out a colleague’s blog to read over, instead of just editing and reading it on my laptop. I tend to focus better on what I’m reading when I print out a physical version (Facebook & Twitter are not floating around in the background this way). Proof that printing out someone’s paper to edit is becoming less common, he asked if this was something I did normally. What if I’ve been the only person out there who still prints out things to read?
So I decided to investigate. I sent out an email survey to a network of friends, all millennials, all in my age bracket, mostly young business professionals and a few graduate students, asking them all if they preferred reading text online rather than printing out and reading a hard copy. I wasn’t surprised by most of the responses. 90% of those who answered preferred to read online. Some preferred to read online only when the length of the reading material was limited to four pages or less. Others preferred to read online if it was reading for pleasure rather than reading for business or school. And sure enough, some opted to read online because it was “greener.” One friend said it was easier to “stay organized while having everything in one place” on their laptop. I was quite impressed with the reasoning behind each of their answers. Am I the only person still printing!? Don’t get me wrong, I read articles online every day and I don’t buy physical paper newspapers. I use our FirstRain apps and use the Web to access the news. Yet, sometimes, I still chose to print things out in order to help me focus… even though I suppose this makes me old fashioned. Maybe when I finally purchase an iPad, I’ll give up my old habits. I’m really curious to see what lies ahead for future generations and how they’ll consume the media of tomorrow. Will the baby with the iPad write this same blog post, wondering how many people still prefer touch interfaces instead of just having it plugged directly into their brain?
I have a pet peeve that got me thinking. My peeve is people who say “I’ll call you” or “I’ll email you some times to connect” and then don’t. It’s the modern equivalent of the Hollywood brush off “Let’s do lunch”. One of my service providers did this to me last week and it’s annoying and unprofessional, and it got me to thinking again about how important expectations are.
Satisfying other people really is all about setting their expectations, and it’s especially true in business.
The ultimate is meeting your quarterly numbers. AAPL was slammed because they missed their financial expectations even though profits had grown dramatically. If you say you are going to report X and you report X-1 you are going to get dinged in today’s short term market. It’s a no win for the public company CEO and the great ones understand it’s a long term game, but the CFOs make their stripes on setting expectations right consistently.
Next is product schedules. There is discipline to this skill. You want to be aggressive to stretch the team and yet hit the dates you set because the rest of your business team is planning on it. Literally. Planning customer roll out, planning PR, so major delays play havoc with customer expectations. I very much admire my business partner YY and her ability to think through every aspect of the product release, set the company’s expectation at 95%, consistently deliver that 95% and sometimes deliver the upside of 100%. Everyone’s needs are met and our products leap forward every month.
Then there is your relationships. Californians seem very friendly at first, and then are hard to get close to. The English are frosty at first and then warm up. In business, be clear about your relationships. Are you work colleagues or friends… can your companion truly be him or herself in all his or her dumbness at times, or do they always need to be wary ? Are you loyal or fickle at heart? Obviously you can’t signal this early in a relationship but there comes a time when you can, and it’s just more efficient.
Arrive when you say you are going to arrive. Being late is the ultimate in bad manners – it says you think your time is more important than my time.
And if you tell me you are going to do something for heaven’s 
sake do it or don’t tell me in the first place! It just makes me grumpy.
At FirstRain many of our technical and support team are located in Gurgaon just outside of New Delhi in India. Because it is very important that the US based team and the India based team work closely together we not only travel to Gurgaon several times a year, we also bring Gurgaon team members out to San Mateo from time to time for product design sessions, for training and to improve our support process.
Earlier this month Sagar and Nitin came out for 2 weeks and since they were here over a weekend we decided to take them for a classic California experience – wine tasting at Ridge Winery. Ridge is in Cupertino up on the Montebello ridge and offers spectacular views of the Bay Area, plus a warm garden to picnic in and wine tasting for those that drink. We put together a picnic and took family members with us, including one who was 15 months old, and one who was 82. A great way to get to know one another better in a relaxed atmosphere.
Cory, our resident sommelier, sampling the cheese selection with his grenache
Our littlest rainmaker, Sebastian, enjoying the picnic with Sagar and Nitin
Towards the end of the picnic our families persuaded us to pose together and toast a lovely day
We announced the FirstRain iPad app yesterday. Our new iPad app marries the elegance of the iPad with the precision of FirstRain’s business Web. It’s visual business monitoring – slick, fast, cool, beautiful, powerful – all the adjectives we can’t use in a press release but want to say. I truly love it and it’s now how I stay on top of my customers, our industry and everything else business wise that I need to know in a few minutes a day.
If you are in sales, marketing or purchasing, or you are a partner in a law firm, or a librarian, or a MI or CI professional, you are going to want a FirstRain subscription and this app. You are missing developments in your market, your customers, your vendors TODAY that you can now see real-time with the gentle swipe of a finger.
I had hoped that my second blog post for FirstRain wouldn’t, once again, be about Google (you’d think that we’d all be sick of hearing about Google 24×7? And we may be, but sick in that ‘I-still-must-tune-in-and-see-what-is-happening-kind of way’ …). Still, I found myself captivated by their announcement this summer that they would phase out a major program called Google Labs by the end of September. And as we’re now approaching that shutdown date, it’s gotten me thinking again about this interesting decision.
For the most part, I’ve always been quite impressed by Google. I am a long term Gmail user (Gmail has its own Labs, as does Google Maps) and I am still a firm advocate that Google+ will eventually be big (especially after seeing all the complaints of Facebook’s new design on my Facebook newsfeed the past two weeks). Google has launched so many winning products over the years that I was shocked to hear that such a successful and interesting part of Google was to be phased out.
For those unfamiliar with Google Labs, it was a playground for users who are interested in trying Google prototypes and providing feedback directly to Google Engineers. It allowed the public to freely experiment with pre-released Android apps, Google Maps experiments, Google Search betas and much more. Although, not all of these prototypes prove to be effective, it is still a nice way to get the public involved in ‘designing’ and evaluating some of Google’s most popular ideas.
So exactly why has Google decided to pull the plug on this program, when it seemed so many people (albeit, adventurous tech people) were benefiting from it? According to Bill Coughran, Google’s Senior VP for Research and Systems Infrastructure, Google is now beginning to prioritize their product efforts more strictly. And although some of their biggest products had started in Google Labs, they’re now focusing much more of their efforts into dominating the products already in progress, such as Google+. Google has decided that ultimately there are too many ‘small’ projects and they want to channel the company’s focus on the larger and, *cough*, more lucrative options. By simplifying and focusing Google’s product line, Coughran said, more “extraordinary opportunities are ahead”.
The Google Labs decision is more than just phasing out a neat program, however. The last few years were spent testing potential golden projects. And they did this successfully. Google beat out competitors like AOL and Yahoo in numerous departments such as search, smartphones and Email (does anyone use AOL for email anymore?). And Google Labs has significantly helped develop some of these platforms. But the need is no longer necessary as the trial period is officially over. What’s interesting is what a signpost this is for where Google is in their lifecycle as a company. Instead of the fun, pioneering tech startup playing in many sandboxes, looking for ideas and doing no evil, they’ve now evolved into a focused and mature company that—for the most part—knows its market, where the money is, and is coalescing around key products like Search, Gmail and Google+.
Now that the deadline is upon us, I was curious to check out the status of Google Labs, especially since I haven’t come across much recent news about the Google Labs termination. If you go to GoogeLabs.com, they inform users directly (no sugarcoating) that the Google Lab’s program is being phased out. Also, it is obvious that many of the experiments have been visibly shut down.
Not all of Google Labs’ programs will completely disappear. Google claims that they will be integrating some of their better prototypes into many of their already existing experiments but the actual “Labs” name will be retired. The real question for Google now, is how they can retain the spirit of Google labs—that open sense of valued community feedback in a beat environment, now that their flagship vehicle for those values has been lost.
