Fall Conference Season Preview – Enterprising Insights – EP35

Hello everyone. I'm Keith Kirkpatrick, research director with the Future Arm Group. I'd like to welcome you to Enterprising Insights.

It's our weekly podcast that explores the latest developments in the enterprise software market and the technologies that underpin these platforms, applications, and tools. So this week I actually wanna talk about some of the upcoming conferences and events that I'm gonna be attending, uh, this fall. Uh, as some of you're aware, uh, as part of my role as an industry analyst, it's to attend, uh, these, uh, big conferences.

Sometimes they're big user conferences, sometimes they are just strictly for the analyst community. But, uh, really, it, it's an important part of my job because really by going out and actually meeting face to face with these companies, uh, I, I can get a lot more insight into the, into the company's actual direction. Uh, oftentimes we'll get previews of new product features on their roadmap.

Uh, in terms of some of the larger conferences, we'll actually get to talk to customers on site to gauge their reaction to the new product launches, get their reaction to just the company's overall direction and strategy. And to be honest, sometimes we actually get some really good, honest feedback about the company and what they're doing. Uh, and to their credit, uh, most of these large organizations don't put any restrictions on who we can talk to or, or anything like that.

So that is very much appreciated because in the end, what I see my role is, you know, being able to take in all of that feedback and bring it back to the company to hopefully help them actually improve their product or service or messaging, what have you. And really, the only way that you're able to really deliver improvement is to take honest feedback. Sometimes it's not always going to be positive.

And, and I've found the best way to do that is actually talk to customers. Uh, of course, the other, you know, real benefit to being on site and talking to people is you get to talk to a lot of different folks within the company. Everything from the c-suite, uh, across to product managers, product strategists, uh, and other executives who can really give their view, uh, in terms of the company's overall strategy, uh, and some of the tactics that they're using to achieve those goals.

And it's often interesting to be able to, you know, uh, pose the same questions, uh, to each of these folks and get their opinion. 'cause everyone's gonna have a little bit of a different take on, you know, what needs to be done, what the company is doing, and what the impact is on their customers. So I'm gonna take some time to today and go through some of the events that I'm going to be attending in the fall.

Then of course, as always, we'll move to my rent or rave segment where I pick one item in the market, and I will either champion it or criticize it. So, without further ado, let's just get right into it. So, uh, the first event I actually have on my calendar is an analyst only event at WorkHuman.

Now, WorkHuman is a social recognition platform. Uh, their event is being held, uh, in early September, up their new headquarters in framing of Mass. And what I'm really interested in hearing about there is really a few things.

One is they're gonna provide sort of an overall update on the company's performance and a roadmap for 2025. Uh, they're also gonna be talking about, uh, a new launch that they have planned for the fall. And, and I think one of the things that I'm really looking to hear from them about is how they're actually incorporating AI into their platform and what that means for the functionality of their platform and their end users.

Uh, we've heard a heck of a lot about artificial intelligence and how it's being applied to sort of basic productivity use cases like summarization of content, uh, content generation, like type, you know, creating emails from, uh, content. But what I'm particularly interested in here is how this company is actually using generative ai, uh, within their platform, which is around social recognition. If we think about employee experience, it is not just enough in this day and age to have someone come to work and do a job, and then you give 'em a paycheck and you say, thank you very much.

Employees today, particularly those, uh, that are in the younger generation, are looking for more in terms of recognition of what they're doing and that they're doing a good job. And it isn't always just about money when it comes to recognition. So it'll be really interesting to hear, uh, how they're, uh, evolving their platform and where the overall market is going.

I think that's gonna be really interesting. Um, you know, one of the things that I, I know that they are talking or will be talking about is working with new AI assistance. Uh, this basically, uh, helps coach and monitor, uh, you know, the effectiveness of a rec an employee recognition program, uh, just basically to figure out what works, what doesn't work, uh, because as, as I'm sure everyone realizes, you know, just asking people for feedback, you're not always going to get complete insights into, you know, what's working, what isn't.

You actually need to look at the data in terms of, you know, how long are people engaging with specific content or specific initiatives. And what this AI system apparently is going to do is help, uh, you know, help make sure that the programs are actually, uh, you know, uh, specifically tailored to the employees and their programs. So, uh, we'll see how well that works in terms of helping to measure the effectiveness of a recognition program.

So, uh, really looking forward to that event. That is, again, uh, in early September up in Framingham, which is obviously right outside of, uh, Boston. Then I actually head to a couple of very, very large events where we will see not only other analysts, but also customers and partners.

Uh, the first event, of course, is Oracle. Uh, they have, they're actually co-locating cloud world, along with Sweet World. Uh, so that will cover obviously their enterprise focused applications, you know, everything from OCI, um, to Fusion apps and so forth.

Uh, they're going to be holding that event alongside of Sweet World, which is obviously focused on, uh, Oracle NetSuite, which is focused more at the mid-market, uh, as opposed to necessarily large enterprises. So this is taking place in early September, or actually mid-September in Las Vegas, uh, which is, anyone who heard me talk is probably not my favorite place in the world, but, uh, it is certainly going to be great to reconnect with the good folks at Oracle and hear more about what they're doing. Now, obviously, again, we can't escape those two little letters, ai, but what I'm particularly interested in hearing is what Oracle is going to be doing in terms of strategy around actually developing, uh, you know, how are these use cases that they've developed using ai?

How are they performing? How are customers actually deploying this? And what kind of actual ROI are they generating A lot of times at these events that we hear a lot of, Hey, we're, we're deploying this particular use case for ai.

What I wanna know now, now that we're, you know, more than a year down, uh, down the road in terms of generative AI being, you know, sort of generally available in some cases, I would like to really hear specific use cases with real metrics in terms of this organization deployed this, uh, particular AI use case Here is the benefit. So I'm certainly looking forward to that. I'm sure the teams will deliver, uh, you know, what they can in terms of numbers, uh, and, and performance metrics there.

Now, of course, this is also, um, interesting because if we think about what's gone on over the past, ooh, four to six months or so, uh, Larry Ellison actually made a, uh, fairly bold statement where he basically said that they're going to be moving, Oracle is going to move their headquarters to Nashville. And one of the reasons he said that is that he said that Oracle is going to be jumping in both feet, uh, to the healthcare industry, really trying to service that market, apparently, uh, the Nashville area, Nashville and the surrounding area, uh, it is home to a number of very, very large healthcare organizations. Uh, so I'll be interested to hear more about that.

How are they developing solutions? We got a little preview of that last, uh, April or May or so in terms of various features that are being built out, uh, to really address a lot of these use cases, uh, you know, with respect to, to healthcare delivery and healthcare administration. So I'm really interested to hear more about that.

Then of course, uh, you know, as I mentioned before, one of the really cool things is that they're co-locating cloud world along with Sweet World. Now, I also cover NetSuite, which is, again, more focused on that mid-market, uh, customer base. It is an ERP system, and, uh, it is one of those, you know, I, I've spoken with, um, uh, their leader, which is, uh, Evan Goldberg, and he, he's always great about being very, very available to analysts.

We can go in, in small groups, talk to 'em, ask questions about where they're headed, uh, and he has always been very upfront about the fact that, you know, because they are part of Oracle, they reap the benefits of all of the investment that Oracle is making into ai, generative ai. And that obviously is going to filter down where appropriate into NetSuite. I, I think I am, uh, particularly interested to see, again, how, how AI is actually being applied by these customers in which use cases, and if that differs for companies that might be smaller, that might be taking more, perhaps more, more of a cautious approach to generative ai, because, you know, it's a different equation there.

In terms of scalability, it's a different equation in terms of comfort around security. Uh, you know, it's obviously different in terms of the amount of data that a particular company may have, uh, which is ultimately what underpins how well a company can actually deploy ai. As, as you know, I've said it, a a number of my colleagues in the analyst community have said, you know, the real key to unlocking the power of AI is data, making sure that it is available, making sure that it is, you know, properly prepared so that when an AI algorithm is applied, that it is actually able to act on all of as much data as possible, you know, and ensuring relevancy, ensuring timeliness, and of course, making sure that it is only acting upon that sort of single source of truth.

So you're not having interactions that, that are going on, that are not being pulled in at once, because that really does throw off, uh, the ability of an algorithm to provide the most insight if there are multiple sources of truth or activity going on within the organization. So, uh, you know, really looking forward to that. And that is at Oracle Cloud World and at Sweet World in Las Vegas.

Then, uh, the week after that, I will be headed over to San Francisco for Dreamforce. Now, Dreamforce, of course, is sort of the flagship conference for Salesforce. Uh, Salesforce has obviously, you know, been doing quite a bit over the last several months in terms of announcements, in terms of, uh, announcing, you know, the, again, sort of the greater integration of artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI in their various cloud products.

Uh, I am, you know, one of the things I'm certainly gonna be looking for again, from Salesforce is not just what sort of, what sort of features that are incorporating in terms of, uh, you know, the Einstein one platform being able to enable generative ai, but also looking at how are the companies that are using Salesforce products, how are they able to leverage the benefits of AI with data that may not be held or may not originate within that Salesforce, uh, ecosystem? I had a very interesting conversation at the last Salesforce event where, uh, a product manager actually, you know, flat out said, you know, a lot of our customers actually work in sort of this hybrid environment where yes, they use Salesforce, but they also have a lot of other, you know, uh, uh, many other applications and sources of data that sit outside of that Salesforce ecosystem. And it's really what Salesforce has really been kind of talking about, is using Data Cloud to sort of harmonize all of that data from wherever it may lead, may live or reside will be generated, and making that available.

Uh, you know, so you can apply AI across the entire organization and across entire workflows. So, um, that will be really interesting to see if they can actually provide some, uh, concrete examples of how that is actually working. Now, uh, of course, the other thing that's gonna be really interesting as we, you know, by the time you, you watch this video, uh, Salesforce has latest quarterly results will be out.

It'd be interesting to see whether or not, uh, they will be able to see sustain the growth that they've had over the past several quarters. Uh, if not, you'll be interesting to hear what the company may be doing to sort of reverse that tide if in fact, we do see sort of a different revenue. Um, you know, we're, we're in an interesting period where, you know, there is a lot of promise about generative ai.

There are certainly some success stories, but really we're still pretty early in the game. And if you think about all of the things that companies are concerned about, they're concerned about return on investment, they're concerned about things like security, data security, they're concerned about things like hallucination. Uh, they're concerned about guardrails, making sure that when this technology is deployed, that it is deployed safely, and that is reliable because in the end, we're not talking about, uh, you know, sort of a science experiment.

We're talking about the use of the technology that has a direct impact on a company's, uh, you know, operations and their financial health. So if we're really interested seeing what's go to see what's going on, uh, with, uh, Salesforce and if they can talk more about some of their customers and their, uh, success stories. Um, so yeah, so that is Dreamforce again being held in San Francisco.

Then, uh, once we hit October, I am going to be, um, going to Zendesk's analyst event. They're having an event here in New York. Uh, Zendesk is an interesting company because again, they are not, uh, you know, they're focused more on the mid-market, um, you know, sort of, um, sort of the higher level SMBs to mid-market.

And then of course, of course, some enterprise customers. Uh, they are really an interesting, uh, uh, company because they seem to, um, you know, they have a ton for a, a company that's focused on sort of the smaller, uh, size company. They have a lot of customer data or interaction data, uh, from which, you know, their AI can use to, to really interact and really, really automate a lot of different experiences.

I'll be very interested to hear about any kind of new, uh, features and functionality with their ai, you know, in terms of being able to automate, being able to deliver more seamless experience within specific, uh, channels instead of having to go outside of them. And then I, I, I'm also really interested in hearing more about Relay, which is a new app they just announced, uh, which, uh, essentially offers proactive messaging services for companies that use both WhatsApp and SMS. Um, this apparently allows companies to proactively reach out to customers at scale, uh, using outbound messages through WhatsApp or through SMS, and actually manage all those conversations from within Zendesk natively.

Um, why am I interested about that? Well, because the, if you think about how outbound used to to happen years ago, it was, you know, voice, you know, companies would call up customers, you know, hi, how are you? How did things go with the product that you purchased four months ago, six months ago?

What have you? That's great, but it's very expensive to do that. It's also not efficient, uh, in the current situation where we have, you know, organizations struggling with being able to have enough labor to handle the critical tasks.

Sometimes this follow up gets kind of pushed to the side. So a solution like this is very helpful because if you think about where people are these days, they're not just sitting by their phones, uh, you know, waiting for a voice call, they're on their phones, and they have all of these different things, whether it's, you know, SMS, which everybody have WhatsApp, which is certainly very popular here, uh, in the states, as in terms of being, um, you know, an application that, that can operate cross platform, uh, allows secure messaging. So it'll be really interesting to hear from Zendesk, uh, you know, what's going on with this?

How are organizations using this? And what is the overall impact on customer experience? Because ultimately, the, the channel is great, and that's, you know, absolutely critical to actually reaching people, but then looking at what else is Zendesk doing, or what else, you know, are their customers doing to really, you know, look at the messaging strategies, you know, is it just, you know, sort of a basic, Hey, how, how are things going with the, uh, particular product of service?

Or are they reaching out and, you know, personalizing that outreach, uh, offering, you know, another, you know, uh, commerce based offer, or are they offering, you know, a different level of support? All of that kind of stuff is really important. I think as we continue down this road of more personalized interactions, I think that applications like this will be the key to differentiation, particularly if they can incorporate all of the customer journey information.

And then, of course, the other thing that's critical of this is, depending on the product or service, if they're able to capture any kind of utilization, uh, information, you know, to, to, you know, provide even more relevancy, that's gonna be really important. So I'm really interested to talk to the company, to talk to them about what they have planned in the future for that type of, uh, service. So, uh, then after I leave that event, uh, in mid-October, I will head down to Miami Beach, Florida for Adobe Max, which is Adobe's sort of creative conference.

Uh, if you think about, um, what's going on with Adobe, well, they are certainly on the cutting edge, uh, when it comes to generative AI as it relates to things like image generation. So again, if you were to use, uh, you know, something like Adobe Firefly, and you can type in a prompt and create an image basically outta nowhere, uh, of course obviously the models are trained, uh, on content held within Adobe stock and only within Adobe stock. So we're talking about licensed images where creators get paid or images that are in the public domain.

So, uh, they're among the leaders, they're, you know, both in terms of functionality, but also in terms of safety. When you think about, uh, the world we live in these days where we have to be very, very careful, particularly from a commercial point of view, you can't just, you know, grab an image and then go use it within a major multimillion dollar campaign. If you don't know, or if you're not assured that the source imagery, you know, is, has been properly paid for, if it is in fact an image that was created by an artist or a creator, uh, or, you know, if it happens to be in the public domain.

So they're among the leaders in, in terms of being very, you know, much about pounding the table saying, no, we wanna be, we wanna take the responsible approach there. Now, what am I, what do I expect to hear from Adobe? Well, what I'd like to hear is, I would like to hear them more clearly articulate their message to creators about, you know, how they actually, you know, how their business operates to protect creators.

Now, you know, there's a big her Fluffle about two or three months ago, about how they changed their terms of service and really, you know, it was wording and it wasn't clear. Uh, but if you go onto the message boards, a lot of the creator message boards, a lot of folks were up in arms because it was confusing. And as happens a lot of times with large companies, all takes is a kernel of, uh, you know, opaqueness or, or a lack of clarity to get a snowball moving in terms of things that may or may not be true.

I would really love it if Adobe would come out at be as transparent and clear as possible. They need to really just, you know, again, just clarify and crystallize their message around here is where, you know, if we're talking about our Firefly models, um, here this is in fact the only source of training data, it's in Adobe stock and it's licensed content, or it's, uh, royalty free public domain images, then they need to also, again, be clear about what data they collect, what data they do not collect, what they have access to, what they do not have access to. And again, you know, as far as I understand it, you know, they are not scanning local drives or anything like that, you know, in terms of content that's being scanned, you know, it on their servers.

It's only to prevent things like, uh, inappropriate content, pornography, uh, you know, excessively violent, uh, content, uh, you know, what have you, stuff basically stuff that we wouldn't want in anything. And, but a again, I'm probably not articulating it very clearly, and that to me, that means that Adobe also needs to take a look at their messaging and really get it out to this creative community because I think there is, um, there are a couple things going on. Number one, I've talked to a bunch of creatives at some of their other events, and they like the technology.

They have said though, that they are worried about these issues, about, you know, content, uh, being, uh, you know, taken from them or, or being scanned or whatnot. They're concerned about that. Their bosses, uh, essentially the corporate folks are worried about data privacy.

They're worried about data leaks, they're worried about security, they're worried about guardrails. All of that kind of stuff that of course you should be concerned about if you're using a large platform to handle all of your content creation and content distribution, uh, you know, activities. So, uh, certainly, you know, I think it's a great opportunity for Adobe to really come out and crystallize all of that messaging.

Now, from a technology standpoint, of course, I'm really gonna be interested to hear or see any new models that could come out with any new functional functionality. I would love to hear more, uh, 'cause I know they teased it a year ago about what they're doing with generative video, generative audio, because I think that is where we're really going to start to see some really creative stuff coming out where you're able to combine the still imagery of Firefly with other tools. Um, they've teased various things over the years in terms of using generative technology to improve audio performance, improve video, but it would be great to see, I'd love to even get some teases about using generative AI to create, say, uh, moving pictures, because I think that's, that could be really interesting.

Now, of course, that does, uh, bring up a lot of other concerns about things like deep fakes and all of that kind of stuff. Um, but, you know, certainly it, it is really amazing if you think about where we were just, you know, 16, 18 months ago where a lot of this stuff was just, you know, it wasn't really on many people's radar. So, uh, again, really interested to see what's going on, uh, with that at Adobe max, which will take place in mid-October in Florida.

So those are the main conferences that I'm going to as of right now. Obviously, my travel schedule is constantly updating, and if, uh, I do wind up going to other events, I'll certainly talk about them either before, during, or after here on this podcast. So certainly stay tuned.

So with that, I'd like to move to my rant or rave segment where I pick something in the market and I either, uh, you know, rant about it and complain about it or rave about it and give the old applause. So I am going to rant today. So I happen to be away about a week or so ago, uh, not on a business trip, but I actually took a trip with my family to, uh, London and Dublin.

So, uh, nice trip, right? To hang out with the family and, and not be thinking about work necessarily. But there was something that kind of annoyed me.

Now, I do a lot of traveling for work, but I don't always do it from a consumer perspective. And, uh, in particular, I think this was in both London and it was in, um, uh, Dublin. We went out to several restaurants and I would walk into the place, we'd sit down and no service would come over, you know, no waiters, waitresses, whatever, come over.

And we'd be sitting around going, Hmm, what's going on? And it turns out a lot of these places had QR codes on the table and you just had to scan it, and then you could order. Now, I don't know whether it's just I've been, uh, out of the loop or whatever, but that wasn't made clear to me.

Me, there was no big sign saying, Hey, you know, uh, use the Q QR code to to order. Um, and that brings up an issue. Now, once we did it, it was fine.

It worked great. You know, some, in some cases you just order through the app. Other cases, uh, a server would come over, what have you.

But that kind of, you know, I guess lack of direction is interesting because if you think about experiences, uh, it really, it, it, it just says one thing. You can't assume anything. You can't assume that a customer absolutely knows what to do unless you tell them, uh, and you think about first impressions, if, you know, if it's, if you introduce friction at the very beginning of that interaction, you know, that's not a great foot, you know, upon which to start out, you know, a, a, a long sort of, uh, uh, engagement.

So I think that to me just raised another issue, which is, you know, within applications, you know, we're typically, if you think about a business application, most people need to be trained on it. And because they don't know where do I start? They don't know what button should I push, how do I get going on this?

And a lot of times if you think about certain applications that offer sort of a free trial, if it isn't intuitive or there's no big thing that says, Hey, you know, start here, in many cases you may go, you know what? This application isn't right for me. And I think that's where generative AI may actually be able to provide real benefits.

Um, you know, just sort of, you know, identifying, okay, I'm sitting here on an application and I'm moving my cursor around and I'm dwelling on something. Well, it should be able to identify that I've had this cursor over this one menu or this area of the screen for 20 seconds. I haven't done anything well that probably indicates that I don't know what to do.

This is where generative AI can kind of remove that friction and say, Hey, it looks like you're looking in this area. What was it you like? What is it that you would like to do?

I see that as a real opportunity for application vendors out there to utilize generative AI in a very, very basic way of just understanding, you know, what is it that that user is doing? You know, so they're not just sitting there staring at the screen. Uh, so, you know, this whole rant is sort of a long-winded way to get ready to, to get around to that topic, but it's that similar sort of first impression issue that I have.

Like when I'm sitting there in that restaurant, I don't know what to do. Um, it doesn't mean the restaurant isn't good, but it means that I didn't know how to get started and it already gave me that sort of negative impression. I feel that is the same way with certain pieces of software.

And, you know, it's certainly an, you know, now that we have the technology where it's being developed now, I think there's a real opportunity to utilize that, to focus in on that initial user experience where they're just sitting there and they don't know what they're doing, having something pop up based on their action or inaction. You know, if I'm clicking around different things, well, it knows I'm doing that. And then it can hopefully, you know, have some sort of assistant pop up and, you know, ask me in plain English, say what, or whatever native language, and I can hopefully type in or somehow interact with them and say, I would like to do this, and then have the application or the assistant walk me through that process.

So, not that it necessarily needs to do it for me, but it actually takes me through the steps, so the next time I know how to do it. So I think this is sort of, uh, it's sort of a, a mini rant, you know, just probably more my fault than anything else, uh, in terms of the restaurant experience. But I think it, it certainly does highlight a big, what I see a, as a large issue for a lot of application vendors, particularly ones that are, you know, that are trying to gain traction in the market, um, or trying to build up utilization.

They need to make it easy, uh, for that person who's just sitting there, not sure what to do. So that is my, uh, ran for the week, and of course next week I'll be back with another one or hopefully a rave. So again, that's all the time I have today.

So I wanna thank everyone for joining me here on Enterprising Insights. I'll be back next week with a new episode focused in on the happenings within the enterprise application market. Thanks for everyone for tuning in, and be sure to subscribe, rate and review this podcast on your preferred platform.

Thanks, and I'll see you next time.