stephenlibbyy

[stephenlibbyy]

Arista's Evolution to Data-Driven Networking

Arista’s EOS (Extensible Operating System) has been nurtured over the past decade, taking the best principles of extensible, open and scalable networks. While SDN evangelists insisted that the right way to build networks started with the decoupling of hardware and software in the network, manipulated by a centralized, shared controller, many companies failed to provide the core customer requisite in a clean software architecture and implementation coupled with key technical differentiation. This has been the essence of Arista EOS.

Arista's Evolution to Data-Driven Networking published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

The Great (Procurement) Resignation Didn’t Have to Be This Great

If 2020 was the year of pandemic doom and gloom, then 2021 is turning out to be the year of The Great Resignation. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an historic number of workers have been leaving their jobs, while an equally historic number of jobs have remained open. There are plenty of articles out there that state what is happening from a data perspective, but they fail to dig a level deeper into why this is happening. This phenomenon has been a long time coming. In fact, we should have expected it. If you’re struggling with retention in your procurement organization, it’s important to keep in mind that your employees aren’t disappearing, they’re just leaving … for something better. Right Idea, Wrong Execution When we recently polled CPOs about 2022 priorities for the function, the No. 1 priority was talent. This was also the No. 1 priority last year. And this is likely to be No. 1 priority every year. But leaders are often seeking to solve the wrong challenges. Organizations usually only talk about talent in one of two ways: The War for Talent (hiring) or The Skill Gap (hiring and upskilling). These scenarios focus on either finding new employees or expecting more and more from current employees without increasing their wages, benefits and overall value propositions. This is a problem. The Skill Gap or The Skill Arms Race? We’ve all heard the jokes about entry-level jobs requiring five years of experience, an advanced degree and a wish list of skills that no individual (much less a new graduate) could possess. This provides the foundation for what is usually called The Skill Gap — the idea that there’s a disconnect between the skills an employee or candidate possesses, and what’s required for a job. And the issue isn’t that employees lack the necessary skill make-up. It’s that job requirements have become so burdensome that no employee could reasonably fill them. Procurement’s own version of this has been driven by the transition from a transactional function (RFPs out, contracts for goods and services in) to a strategic one (broad value proposition around diversity, sustainability, greater risk management, etc.). While the core value proposition of the function has moved beyond just transactional sourcing and cost savings, there has been an overall decline in headcount but no proportional investments in technology or capabilities to augment human productivity. They’re just expecting more from their current employees or new hires and, when they aren’t getting it, calling it a skill gap. It’s actually a skill arms race — procurement leaders keep expanding their remit and, in turn, expect it be fulfilled through greater displays of skill and capability from employees. We’re expecting more and more from less and less. How to de-escalate the Skill Arms Race? Our most recent procurement research focused on this perceived skill “gap” and how to address it without burning out employees. Our overall advice for procurement leaders could be summarized as: The amount of time you spend discussing hiring strategies should be equal to the amount of time you spend discussing retention strategies. When interviewing clients for this research, we asked a lot about hiring and retention strategies in this new, largely hybrid, environment. When it came to hiring, clients had a lot to say about how they’re re-thinking recruitment. When we asked about retention strategies, however, the conversation tended to dry up. A retention strategy shouldn’t be something that kicks in when an employee turns in a two-week notice; it should be something that starts the first day on the job. What’s next? In this environment, procurement leaders need to be thinking less about the skills and value they’re extracting from employees (and how they can expect more), and more about why an employee should stay with them. Some key questions to ask include: Are we incentivizing our employees to deliver on all that we expect from them — transactionally and strategically? Did we consider employee interests and preferences when we designed our roles and responsibilities? Are our managers viewing their employees as people, or as component parts in a machine to churn out transactional sourcing (while layering on additional strategic work)? If your organization is like most in this environment, the honest answers to these questions may result in some uncomfortable truths. But, as your employees have learned over the last two years, disruption is never easy. Our recent research on The Skill Gap Myth can make it less difficult. Sam Berndt Director, Research Gartner Supply Chain Sam.Berndt@gartner.com The Great (Procurement) Resignation Didn’t Have to Be This Great published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

The Number One Thing to Assess About Your Customers

As readers of my musings (or rantings) know, I'm a big believer in working to gain a deep, deep understanding of your customers and prospects.   Enterprise Technology Adoption profiles are a rich psychographic model, but sometimes I get pushback from clients, saying it is hard to know that much about a customer.   While a sometimes wish I could turn off my video, shake my head in sadness, and then come back; there is some validity to their concerns, particularly for new prospects. In the past, I've talked about assessing how strategically organizations view technology as the most important thing to discover (and one part of the developing the ETA profile.  But recently I started to dig a bit deeper in a different direction. I was prompted by some findings from a recent study (results will start being published for clients in the near future) where the focus was on studying the dynamics of a purchase and deployment of emerging technologies.  In that study, we ask about ways to mitigate the risk of the emerging tech and those that were happiest with their purchase where the most likely to say that have a robust change management program. With that in mind, I went back and took a look at our high quality deal study from 2019 (note:  We have a new study in the field now, I'm excited about what it might reveal).   I then looked at a couple of the ETA assessment questions that dealt with technology change.   And I realized, that willingness to change is more important than the strategic view of technology. [caption id="attachment_2930" align="aligncenter" width="900"] Photo by samer daboul from Pexels[/caption] There are two questions that get to this.  The first asks about broad technology investment strategy.  One of the options is "We rarely implement 'new new' technology projects"  the other is about new technology with an option of "We avoid the cost and disruption of replacing existing technology"  (for anyone who is trying to migrate customers to a new release, this would be a great thing to know). The data is incredible.   There were only 46 respondents (out of 1500) that chose both those options.  For those 46, only 2 (4%) met our criteria for a hiqh quality deal.  There were 233 that chose either of those options.  Only 7% met the HQD criteria.  As a note, the HQD percentage for those viewing technology tactically was 15% and the overall % for all respondents was 27%. Taking this data, with research from colleagues on the importance and value of change enablement, and I have a new number 1. The one thing you want to know about your prospects is the organizational attitude toward change.   You can then also assess strategic value of technology.  And then discover other attributes. But change is the key.    Perhaps it is time for the vendor community to take more ownership of change management for your customers.    That may be the missing element of a whole product strategy. Attitudes toward change.   They key to success.  They cause of challenges and delays.  Understand it, then deal with it, for a less frustrating customer relationship. The Number One Thing to Assess About Your Customers published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Why Metaversial Business Is a Very Long Way Off

[Reminder - these blogs are analyst personal opinion, not Gartner published research] “Open up your firewalls to let your people access us!”  said Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life, as I recall. He was being interviewed on stage by my colleague Steve Prentice (now retired), who asked what the hundreds of CIOs and IT leaders in the audience could do to advance corporate use of immersive virtual worlds for business. It was April 2007, Gartner IT Symposium, and Second Life was the red hot next-big-thing. It was fast becoming a mainstream belief that VR was an imminent next step beyond the web. So much so, it was on the front cover of BusinessWeek. A Fortune magazine article told how then CEO of IBM Sam Palimsano was keen on it, and how he and his his avatar were already hanging out in virtual world meetings. It was the second time in my life I got excited about virtual worlds and the second false dawn. [caption id="attachment_2660" align="alignleft" width="350"] Back to the perennial future. These amazingly fresh looking images are in the 1991 book "Artificial Reality II" by Myron Krueger (Addison Wesley).[/caption]   I have always been a tech optimist. My first period of belief in business VR came in the early 1990s. I learned to use Superscape VR software and I tried out a very early HMD. In Myron Kreuger’s excellent book Artificial Reality II, I read how legendary commercial software pioneer and IBM Fellow Frederick Brookes was researching VR. He hypothesised that VR might deliver massive and complex information to the pattern recognition engine of the human brain via the visual cortex, to amplify human intelligence (IA), and that would be at least as important as AI.  But business VR didn’t happen then. It didn’t happen in 2007 and I really don’t think it will happen in 2027 either. I have come to the conclusion that business VR is IT’s version of nuclear fusion energy. The idea is incredibly seductive, it feels like it should work, and it seems like we are always less than a decade away from achieving it. Huge amounts of R&D effort are poured into it and countless billions of investments over decades and still… and STILL…. it is just around the corner out of reach. I’m not talking about the niche use of VR for exploring stereo isomeric molecules in pharmaceutical research labs, or occasional fancy fly throughs to wow the clients of global architecture firms. I’m talking about the everyday metaverse that becomes a common work and play space for most people and businesses. That scenario is still so far off, that I am not sure it will happen in my remaining twenty-five or so years of actuarially predicted lifespan. Here are five reasons the tech optimism has been thrashed out of me on the idea of mass business VR, and I argue it just isn’t going to happen anytime soon. The gaming world hasn’t bought into it. Serious gamers don’t use HMDs. One source says only 2% have an HMD. The tech may be getting better- but the people most likely to dive into the immersive metaverse first, aren’t. What chance businesspeople will start meeting here if gamers don’t? Wall Street isn’t interested (internally). The big banks are doing huge amounts in applying AI. They are doing a lot with blockchain. But the VR immersed banker or trader just isn’t a big idea of interest. Money will always steal any edge it can get. If VR data visualization and meeting doesn’t work for the industry with the most money to invest – why would other industries take it up? CEOs are not using it. Here’s an interesting historic fact  – six months after the iPad came out, over 40% of CEOs were using one in their job (Gartner CEO survey 2012, paywall). At launch the iPad split opinion and many commentators thought it would be a flop – who needed a massive iPhone? But it if a new tech works for CEOs they will flip to it almost overnight. Today’s Gen X and millennial business leaders will take-up any seriously valuable technology that will give them an edge in their work – from Zoom to private jets.  Many years after their launch, how many CEOs use a Vive or Oculus? (I wonder how many would even know those brand names). The CEO of Metaverse Platforms Inc. probably doesn’t commonly use it in his business day job. OK – I don’t know that. But do you think he is wearing one of those face huggers for several hours per working day? People hate wearing facemasks to protect themselves from a killer virus in a global pandemic and many of them just won’t do it. That’s a lightweight piece of soft cloth across the mouth and nose to prevent serious illness. What chance they will regularly wear a heavy lump of hard electronics across the eyes to make online business meetings slightly less dull? I remain a tech optimist. I do believe that one day business will commonly be conducted in a fully immersive 3D visual metaverse. Let’s call that phase of economic advancement "metaversial business". But it will not happen in the 2020s. It probably won’t happen in the 2030s. Filling the human field of view with a realistic immersive image space, in a way that our physiology, psychology, anthropology, and sociology can all be comfortable with, is an incredibly hard problem to solve. Yes, it is probably harder than rocket science,  and creating a commercial space industry. Perhaps Elon Musk has already come to that conclusion and we’ll have to wait for Neuralink, before dunking our full senses in the metaverse becomes a common, regular way for business people to interact.     Why Metaversial Business Is a Very Long Way Off published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Don't Miss The Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference 2021

See what our Global Conference Chair, David Cappuccio has to say about our IOCS events this year (Figure 1). The emergence of a new normal has changed how businesses across the globe are delivering on customer value. More than ever infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders must embrace agility, and enable scalable, secure, resilient platforms and workplaces anywhere at any time if they are to empower business to meet its customers wherever they are. Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference 2021 is the place to find your answers with objective topic coverage and focus on top trends. Gain the clarity to create an effective pathway to the future. At this year’s conference, learn how to: Reimagine digital to empower the anywhere mindset Deliver customer value for your most critical initiatives Embrace agility to maximize efficiencies with cost optimization Create, secure and scale platforms to deliver workloads anywhere to enable business outcomes Join me virtually at one of the upcoming Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Solution Conferences on November 22 – 23 in EMEA and December 6 – 8 in NA. This year’s conference is focused on how to embrace change and serve evolving enterprise needs through optimizing workloads, maximizing efficiency, and building resilient systems and teams. Stay ahead of disruptive forces and future trends, and impact where the business goes next. Find out more information here.  Don't Miss The Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference 2021 published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Complexity is a Reality, But You Can Tame It

Even as a practitioner, supply chain complexity facts periodically shock me. This week, that complexity “Wow!” moment came upon learning that Amazon’s physical footprint roughly equals the size of where I live — Uppsala, Sweden. Uppsala has been here since the third century; Amazon grew its fulfillment and logistics square footage 50% in 2020. Supply chains have always been complex — with thousands of suppliers, partners and products spanning a footprint with hundreds of sites and markets. Long, often fruitless, debates with commercial partners about reducing the SKU portfolio miss a bigger opportunity. Much of the complexity in a supply chain comes from decisions about its operating model — who does what as well as where and how they do it. Supply Chains Create Their Own ‘Long Tail’ of Operating Model Complexities External pressures for adding operating model complexity such as new business models, shifts to selling solutions, diversifying customer expectations and increasing rate of disruption show no signs of slowing. While we cannot change much of the crazy times we are operating in, we can control how we address them. Right now, we just add more. Over the next five years: More than 50% expect a higher quantity for most aspects of the operating model. (e.g., equipment, projects changing design, business models and partners). More than 80% expect more software tools and projects changing supply chain design. This growth in operating model complexity goes largely unchecked. How many projects were on your strategy last year? How many of them were about removing or stopping something? Over half of supply chains lack effectiveness in ending use of a process or technology, and one-third do not have a formal process to do so. We are adding more complexity, but we are not subtracting. Complexity is a Double-edged Sword Complexity matters. Complexity enables value, but challenges execution. For every benefit of complexity, there is a downside. Operating model complexity creates coordination challenges, reducing agility and resilience, yet increases options to address disruptions. With more places for things to go wrong, complexity increases risk. Allowing all innovation ideas to flourish increases complexity and maximizes the potential value of the innovation to the business and customers. Yet, the weight of complexity makes implementing and scaling innovations difficult. The more complexity a supply chain manages, the harder it is to maintain reliability and service level, reducing customer satisfaction while increasing costs. Taming complexity requires a structured approach to separate the valuable complexity from the complexity that weighs down on results. Tame Complexity With an Operating Model Life Cycle In product lifecycle management, there are concrete stages with roles and responsibilities from “cradle to grave” — or in circular models, “cradle to cradle.” I have hundreds of conversations about supply chain strategy every year. We talk much more about the “cradle” than the “grave.” There is ample executive discussion of what initiatives to prioritize. Most struggle to stop an initiative once they have started it. Adoption is often slow, or stalls before completion. Few, if any, make space in the discussion to talk about what existing activities must stop to make room for all the new priorities. Taking stock of if you should or can effectively keep doing everything is — at best done — done inconsistently, infrequently and in silos. Applying a life-cycle management approach to the supply chain operating model is an antidote to complexity. Expanding life-cycle concepts to each supply chain resource — capabilities, technology, sites, processes, policies, partners — consciously shapes operating model complexity to stop unchecked growth. Taming complexity releases trapped resources to focus on innovation implementation and adoption. Off to the ‘RACES’ So where do you start? Because our goal is limiting unchecked complexity growth and we are the worst at stopping activities, our supply chain architecture lifecycle (SCALe) starts with what we decommission or retire — making room for what comes next. Address issues across the five phases of SCALe to get more value sooner and with less resources: Retire — Start eliminating. Build an effective process to retire aspects of the operating model based on regular assessments to free up resources to focus on innovation. Align — The best check on complexity is to avoid adding it. When required, prioritize complexity that improves competitive position. Building strategic planning capabilities to include customer needs analysis, segmentation, formal competitive assessments and risk discussions enables effective complexity prioritization. Create — Some complexity is unavoidable. Building modular operating models enabling rapid reconfiguration and composability helps structure complexity, making changes to meet needs easier, faster and cheaper. Execute — Increasing complexity provides an opportunity to embrace a new way to execute. Leverage ecosystem partners and technology in new ways with modular operating models to better add value amid uncertainty and volatility. Sustain — Employees circumvented about 50% of the last process they completed. Problems with adherence increase pressure to add complexity and limit the value generated from complexity. Life-cycle owners use voice-of-the-user insights to regularly assess existing complexity and identify areas to reduce user effort and increase process flexibility. Schneider Electric has experienced how a focus on operating model complexity translated to space and speed for innovation. An equal focus on what should stop, as much on what should scale, allows the organization to get value sooner. Taking a technology life-cycle approach has allowed strong adoption across more than 100 sites in six to 12 months. In contrast, traditional approaches take three or more years to achieve significant adoption across only a few sites. Within talent competencies, as a domain becomes less strategic, it may be removed or replaced to free up resources for emerging needs, such as the Internet of Things (IoT). As Jin Piao, vice president, global supply chain chief of staff at Schneider Electric, put it: “As a large, high-performing supply chain, we cannot just let complexity go. Every transformation must focus on reducing complexity to focus precious employee time on the most critical sources of value.” We explore operating model complexities in the October executive report (available to Gartner clients) and in the accompanying podcast, which is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Jennifer Loveland Senior Director Analyst Gartner Supply Chain Jennifer.Loveland@gartner.com Complexity is a Reality, But You Can Tame It published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Arista Partnering with Google Cloud to Deliver Hybrid Cloud and Multi-Cloud Connectivity

Arista has a long history of joint development with hyper-scale cloud providers delivering innovative solutions for a broad range of customers.  Our integration with Google Cloud and Network Connectivity Center is a testament to that ongoing innovation and abstracting complex networking challenges making them simple and agile for IT clients worldwide.

Arista Partnering with Google Cloud to Deliver Hybrid Cloud and Multi-Cloud Connectivity published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Wireless LANS in the 21st Century

The power and potential of the next generation cognitive campus are transformative as the industry undergoes a massive transition to hybrid work in the post-pandemic era. A key underpinning to successful campus networking deployments has been our very first acquisition of Mojo Networks for cognitive Wi-Fi. Arista’s entry into wireless is only in its third year, yet the advances in this space will be profound over the next decade.

Wireless LANS in the 21st Century published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Hyperscale Cloud Providers vs. Cloud IT Services Providers: Who Must Bend the Knee?

Hyperscale cloud providers attract the most media attention and are at the epicenter of innovation in infrastructure and platform services. Growing adoption and increased spending are driving the momentum of this trend even more. According to Gartner’s 2020 Cloud End-User Buying Behavior Survey, 68% of respondents globally indicate that their organizations plan to increase spending on cloud computing in the next 12 months. The majority (76%) of respondents using public cloud indicate that their organization is using multiple public cloud providers. Public cloud providers are generally the main focus of digitization initiatives, perhaps due to the market dominance of a small number of hyperscale providers. The messaging of these digital giants is powerful and compelling, and it would seem that the benefits of public cloud are easy to obtain. However, almost a third (32%) of respondents to Gartner’s 2020 Cloud End-User Buying Behavior Survey reported that their organization unsuccessfully or ineffectively implemented cloud-based solutions in the past three years. Gartner interactions show that the complexity of moving to the public cloud and the scarcity of talent and skills to build and operate public cloud infrastructure are connected to cloud project failures. In addition, survey participants say that the most frustrating aspects of working with public cloud infrastructure providers, such as hyperscale cloud providers, are: Cloud performance (28%) Cost control (28%) Cloud interoperability (27%) Migration of mission-critical applications to cloud (27%) Regulatory compliance (26%) Despite attention being predominantly on hyperscale cloud providers, 65% of survey respondents report their organization is working with cloud IT services providers to overcome the frustrations noted above. That makes cloud IT services providers crucial partners for the hyperscale cloud providers’ ongoing success and ability to achieve their growth ambitions and expectations. Tech CEOs of cloud IT services providers can build a thriving business around the leading hyperscale cloud providers’ portfolios with a successful partnership strategy and technical expertise. In our research note “Tech CEO Cloud MSPs Are Crucial Partners for Hyperscale Cloud Providers’ Growth Strategy and Success”, we help tech CEOs of cloud IT services providers to understand the importance of their role in the cloud ecosystem to better articulate their value proposition in their partnership strategies. - - - If you want to engage with me, feel free to schedule an inquiry call (inquiry@gartner.com), book a vendor briefing (vendor.briefings@gartner.com), follow me on Twitter (@ReneBuest) or connect with me on LinkedIn. I am looking forward to talking to you! Hyperscale Cloud Providers vs. Cloud IT Services Providers: Who Must Bend the Knee? published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Just Say “No” to Low-Value Comms Activities

Since the spring of 2020, Communications leaders have experienced an increased need to prioritize their teams' work. Communications teams feel overwhelmed, overworked, and completely burned out from the volume of requests that they have been fielding. When business partners insist that EVERYTHING is important, communicators can be left scratching their heads on where to truly spend their time. Communications leaders with these challenges ultimately face two main issues:  1. Not having a solid enough grasp of organizational priorities to start saying “no” to requests that do not align.  When communicators say yes to every business partner request without evaluating whether the request is aligned to business priorities, they often become overwhelmed by request volume. Moreover, this might validate a perception that the Comms function isn't strategic and doesn't add value to the business.  Additionally, by automatically saying yes to requests, communicators assume that business partners know what they need. They may have a solution to the challenge, but without evaluating the request, it’s harder to know whether they have the solution to the challenge.  To evaluate requests thoroughly enough to say no to low-value requests, communicators must be intimately familiar with what the business priorities are in the first place. This is harder if communicators reactively wait for requests to come to them, rather than proactively seeking out key priorities from business partners.  The latter is a more consultative approach to planning, and may require a shift in the way the Comms team works with the rest of the business. This will prove to be much harder without governance documents in place.  2. Not having governance documents to codify how to work with the Communications team. Without clear guidance for how to work with the Comms team, it’s no wonder business partners inundate communicators with low-value requests. Governance documents, like service offers and service-level agreements, can help set clear expectations for business partners and enable Communications to offer various support levels. Additionally, many Communications teams have seen their status with business leaders elevate since last year, as organizations have faced unprecedented challenges that require a strong Communications function. Unless Comms leaders clearly define the Comms value proposition, along with their capabilities, policies and procedures, their teams run the risk of losing ground with the organization once they come out of crisis mode.  Here are four steps to address these issues and prioritize your team's work:  1. Identify your organization’s most critical priorities, business objectives, and goals.   Rather than waiting for them to come to you, schedule conversations with your business partners to surface their business priorities. This can occur annually, quarterly, and/or monthly.  Key questions to ask include, but are not limited to:  What are your current priorities and initiatives? How do these priorities align with organizational strategy?  What will help you achieve your performance goals?  What are the target business outcomes and metrics you will use to measure success? Why are you focusing on these areas right now? Who needs to do what to achieve these goals? What metrics will you use to measure stakeholder behavior? 2. Assess the value of your Communications activities.  Next, with an understanding of what your business partners are trying to achieve, assess how aligned your activities are to those priorities. Are they routine activities or strategic? Will they help the organization achieve its goals or is it a business partner's pet project? After estimating your activities' business value, you should then assess the opportunity for the Communications function to uniquely add value. Are there key stakeholder behaviors that need to occur to help the organization achieve its goals? Comms is often more strongly positioned to influence behaviors. Therefore, Comms should own activities that require behavior change, rather than encouraging the business to do those activities themselves.   In your assessment, you can also consider the risk associated with the activity. What is the risk to the organization if you recommend the business partners do the activities themselves? What is the risk if no one does it?  Take a look at Gartner’s tool to help with this assessment, Communications Activity Value Assessment (Gartner subscription required). Use this tool to visualize the allocation of your resources to high-/medium-/low-value activities. Then decide which activities to eliminate, standardize or invest in further to achieve your strategic goals. 3. Establish implementation support guidance for business partner requests.  You can then use the results of your assessment to create service level tiers. These tiers clearly define the implementation support your team will provide to the business based on the type of activity. For instance, the Comms team should own and implement high-value activities, like M&A communications and strategy rollouts. You can enable self-service for business partners to do lower-value activities, like simple org change announcements or site-based communications, by providing them with tools, templates, and guidelines.  Take a look at this case study, Principled Communications Service With Tiered Service Levels (Gartner subscription required), to learn how ING’s Communications team partnered with internal clients to implement a tiered service-level framework. This framework enabled them to shift their activity portfolio aggressively to prioritize high-value work.  4. Educate business partners on Comms capabilities and governance. Finally, incorporate the service level tiers (along with your team’s capabilities, value proposition, and expectations of business partners) into a service statement. Codifying the best way to work with the Comms function will help educate your business partners. You will also have something to stand on when the best decision is to say no to low-value work.   You can see examples of how other communicators are structuring their collaboration with business partners — while simultaneously reducing their resource expenditure on low-value work — in our Service Statement Library (Gartner subscription required). This change won’t happen overnight. However, through consistent work with your business partners and Communications team, you can better prioritize your activities. If you’d like some additional guidance or feedback on your own service statements, Gartner is always available to help! Just Say “No” to Low-Value Comms Activities published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Which Industries Lead in Email Marketing?

At this very moment, you probably have hundreds, if not thousands, of unopened marketing emails in your inbox. Email marketing is one of the most important channels for digital marketers and it has only become more important since lockdown began as emails replace in-person engagement with consumers.  Most brands’ email strategies can be summarized as quantity over quality, but marketers can learn from standout brands not only in their own industry but from others as well. Gartner’s Digital IQ Index: Email Benchmarks 2021 shows how six different industries have adapted to the pandemic and offers applicable recommendations for digital marketers in these industries. Below are the rankings of the six industries and the top brand in each: 1. Retail Retail is the top-performing industry in the benchmark as multiline and mono brand retailers dominate. Brands like Best Buy, Target, and Nike took advantage of the ample amounts of data to send hyper-targeted, relevant email updates. After all, you are more likely to open an email discounting a pair of shoes you looked at last week than another limited-time discount email on a nonspecific item. Retail leveraged both implicit and explicit data to inspire engagement, and had the highest year-over-year growth in site traffic from email, driving increased conversion.  2. Financial Services Financial services as a whole performed nearly as well as retail and made up 5 of the top 10 spots in our brand rankings. Brands also saw increased traffic from email and benefited from having the highest open rates across all industries. Financial services marketers can push timely, targeted email content through their extensive customer account data.  For example, Bank of America — the number one ranked brand in this study — uses its app to collect granular customer data. Bank of America collects data about savings plan preferences via an AI tool within its app and directly references those answers in email subject lines. A millennial planning to save for a home will receive an email with a Life Plan to help work towards that goal. 3. Travel and Hospitality One of the hardest hit in the pandemic, travel and hospitality brands that adapted quickly were able to find relative success in email marketing. The industry has the second highest number of total open emails but was not able to drive traffic to site as well as other industries. Top brands found ways to offer value to customers virtually or safely, usually in the form of free delivery or curbside pickup. Once people started dining in person more, Chili’s – the number one travel and hospitality brand – sent follow-up emails to customers after each visit rewarding them with a free appetizer, or dessert at their next visit. 4. Manufacturing and Natural Resources Manufacturing and natural resources brands often struggle to collect the necessary customer data, but industry leaders have adopted some tactics from their B2C peers. Top brands leveraged the data they had to target specific customers and achieved email open rates comparable to its travel and hospitality peers. Milwaukee Tools, the top brand in the industry, uses a data collection form on its brand site to target specific trades in their emails, driving traffic back to their site.  [caption id="attachment_15" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Milwaukee captures data with a form on its brand site, including a question about the user's trade. Its emails then focus on specific trades and professions in their subject lines, which are sent to small number of recipients. Milwaukee also includes recommended products in every email.[/caption] 5. Consumer Goods Consumer goods also faces an uphill battle due to the relative lack of first-party customer data and owned commerce channels. Marketers in this industry had the lowest email open rate of all industries and suffered a decline in traffic year-over-year. However, top brands also emulate B2C brands by offering customer accounts to collect data like purchase history. Hint, for example, offers exclusive subscriber access to new water flavors and alerts users to restocks for specific flavors they had previously purchased. 6. Healthcare Healthcare ranked the lowest overall. Brands in this industry had the lowest mobile optimization rate, despite being table stakes among the other industries. Healthcare marketers were largely unsuccessful in driving traffic to site from email, but top brands were able to push educational and targeted content that resonated with subscribers during the pandemic. Which Industries Lead in Email Marketing? published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Surprise! Many Enterprise Buying Teams Don't Know Their Own Buying Process

As we prepare our next buying study to go to the field, we are looking back at some earlier results to decide how to tune the survey to get useful information.    In our earlier study (from 2019) that focused in on the biggest purchase a respondent was involved in, we worked to uncover the frequency of occurrence of what we call high quality, low regret deals.   If you follow this blog, you know that the percentage of these deals was quite low--only 27% out of 1464 purchases studied met the criteria. With that in hand, we worked to understand why.   What we discovered were issues on both sides of the tables.   Many buyers are not confident in their own decision processes and vendors are not doing enough to help them.  Add to that some inherent skepticism and it creates a challenging environment. But there are other issues, as tech buying gets more and more distributed across the organization, I expect the challenges to increase.  On the surface, the idea of putting decision making close to the groups that will be getting the most value seems like a good idea  But it also means that you will have a lot of people involved in big buying decisions that they don't make on a regular basis. We already saw some evidence of this.   One of the things we asked in 2019, was whether or not the buying effort was delayed by "surprise steps" that the buying team was unaware of.   Remember, this was the biggest purchase that the respondent was involved in.   Also, these were buying teams with 10+ people actively or occasionally participating.  You would think that awareness of the steps required to buy would be very high. Unfortunately, it was not. [caption id="attachment_2877" align="aligncenter" width="899"] Source: Gartner, Inc. 2019[/caption] Basically, when looking at things based on deal size, 50% of our respondents said their buying efforts were delayed by these surprise steps for purchases under $5M.   That number went down slightly (48%) for deals over $5M, but those also had a higher percentage of significant delays. When looking at this by high quality deals, the numbers due shift.  For high quality deals, only 35% experienced delays due to surprise steps (still a big number!), whereas 56% experienced delays for deals that did not meet our criteria. Does this surprise you?  It really shouldn't, but often we go into situations assuming our customers know what they want to do and know how to do it.   That is often not the case.  To accelerate good business, vendors need to help their customers buy (see all of our work on buyer enablement and sensemaking).  They need to help customers build confidence--not just in the vendor, but in themselves.  They need to guide the customer through common efforts that other successful customers follow--reducing surprises and delays. The old question used to be, "How much time should we spend educating our prospects?" The new question should be, "Can we afford not to educate and guide our prospects on how to buy effectively?" Those that commit to this area will reduce the frustrations that could come as decision making continues to be distributed across the organization. Surprise! Many Enterprise Buying Teams Don't Know Their Own Buying Process published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Turn 2022 Supply Chain Strategic Planning Into a Competitive Advantage

With 2021 soon to be in the rearview mirror, now is a great time to take stock of where we’ve been and how we might approach strategic planning differently in the future. As we all know, the recent spate of global disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical upheavals and extreme climate events has far-reaching impact on various industries and supply chain organizations. That said, less than 50% of supply chain leaders believe that their organizations performed better than their competitors during the past year. It’s no surprise then that supply chain organizations are striving to become future fit in the wake of severe disruptions and to prepare for the severe disruptions to come. Future-fit organizations actively prepare to respond to disruptions and anticipate change; they maintain competitive advantage during highly uncertain business contexts. Strategic planning, if done well, is a critical lever to build future-fit supply chain organizations. Unlike other years, 2022 strategic planning must be different — we can no longer rely on our traditional strategic planning approaches that last for months and result in creating a strategy that is fixed until the next annual review. The business context is likely to continue to change, and the supply chain strategy and strategic plans will need to adapt to this reality. Our conversations with hundreds of senior executives and CXOs in supply chain organizations reveal four key imperatives to enable strategic planning that drives sustained strategic advantage: Elevate Disruption Shaping as a Strategic Planning Goal To reduce the impact of frequent, unfamiliar disruptions on the supply chain, supply chain leaders have to embed disruption shaping in strategic planning. Gartner identifies three major phases in developing an enterprise strategy: strategy formulation, strategy planning and strategy execution (see Figure 1). Most supply chains today plan for unfamiliar risks as they execute the supply chain strategy. Instead, CSCOs must elevate disruption shaping to the strategy planning phase. Leading organizations reduce the rate of disruption by making their supply chains smaller targets in this volatile risk environment. This goal of disruption shaping must cascade down from strategic planning to action plans and appropriate tracking measures. Supply chain organizations that actively embed disruption-shaping strategies are likely to experience less than one-third of the disruptions experienced by their response-focused peers. Support for Gartner clients: Supply Chain Executive Report: Shaping Supply Chain Disruption in a Volatile Risk Environment Case Study: Risk Exposure Diversification Strategy (Stanley Black & Decker) Case Study: Advantage-Driven Risk Strategy (First Solar)  Move to an Adaptive Strategic Planning Process Most supply chain organizations conduct strategic planning on an annual cadence — however, this approach can leave organizations less responsive to market threats and opportunities that occur outside of planning cycles. Adaptive strategic planning can help supply chain leaders respond to unprecedented change and uncertainty. It starts with building a strategic planning cadence that gathers supply chain leaders and other relevant stakeholders to review the strategic plan multiple times during the year, ensuring that it remains relevant to market conditions. Continual scanning of emerging risks and trends, minimum viable strategy and strategic plans, and experiment-based strategies are all building blocks of adaptive strategic planning. Tractor Supply Company (TSC) is an exemplar in using adaptive strategic planning to drive competitive advantage. To better respond to the disruptive changes in the highly competitive retail market, TSC continuously monitors and identifies market trends that likely impact supply chain strategy significantly, assesses capabilities to take advantage of these trends and conducts more frequent strategic plan reviews to prioritize supply chain action. The quick shift in supply chain strategic plans enabled TSC to prioritize and roll out same-day delivery to its stores early in the pandemic — the company saw 7.5% year-over-year increase in first quarter net sales and a 4.3% increase in comparable store sales in 2020 from 2019. Support for Gartner clients: Case Study: Adaptive Supply Chain Strategic Planning (Tractor Supply Co.) Supply Chain Emerging Risk Prioritization Tool Creating Supply Chain Strategy at the Speed of Business Change Amid Uncertainty Surface Strategic Assumptions to Determine When to Change Course Clear assumptions are the foundation for keeping supply chain strategic plans relevant while also maintaining strategic focus. Spending time up front on explicit and implicit assumptions helps supply chain leaders vet the strategic plan periodically and makes it easier to spot the need for a refresh. However, unlike in previous years, we cannot cascade the strategic assumptions underpinning our previous plans, as most of these assumptions are likely irrelevant in light of the massive upheavals in business and economic operating contexts. Instead, supply chain leaders must begin by taking a clean-sheet mentality to business assumptions in 2022. Leading supply chain organizations take the following critical steps: Surface and document all critical assumptions underpinning the new business strategy, and prioritize them based on how critical they are to the success of the strategic decisions. Create tangible near- and mid-term indicators for the assumptions to objectively track their validity over time. These could be internal indicators (e.g., our company is able to acquire technology licenses from firm X) or external indicators (e.g., worldwide ocean traffic to grow by Y%). Leverage scenario planning exercises to test the validity of their strategic assumptions and uncover hidden assumptions. Support for Gartner clients: Flexible Supply Chain Strategic Planning Starts With Strategic Assumptions Ignition Guide to Conducting a Supply Chain Scenario Planning Exercise 5 Steps for Dynamic Scenario Planning Following COVID-19 Embed Flexibility in Supply Chain Budget and Resource Allocation Seventy-two percent of corporate strategists say slow budget reallocation is the biggest barrier to a more adaptive plan. The deeply interconnected nature of a fixed annual budget makes it hard for the supply chain organization to pivot quickly. When unexpected events happen that require changes to the strategic plan, highly interconnected annual budgets often lack rapid resource-reallocation mechanisms, preventing next steps. Without the power to reallocate funds quickly, supply chain leaders can only make limited changes to their plans in the short term. Leading organizations take the following steps to drive more flexibility into their budgeting approach while balancing cost optimization and innovation priorities: Start with a rigorous view of supply chain spend and investment allocation in the last year to get a baseline estimate of critical spend across each functional area. Build budget scenarios and reallocation triggers to account for changing business needs. Adopt multiple and flexible funding models that support changing priorities and sustain innovation focus in varied business environments. Support for Gartner clients: Supply Chain Budget and Efficiency Benchmarks Sustaining Supply Chain Innovation Through Adaptive Funding Models So there you have it. By considering and acting on these four imperatives, supply chain leaders can pave the way for strategic planning that drives sustained strategic advantage. Best of luck as you plan for 2022! Veena Variyam VP Supply Chain Research Gartner Supply Chain Veena.Variyam@gartner.com Turn 2022 Supply Chain Strategic Planning Into a Competitive Advantage published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Listen, IT Leader: Tool to Assess the Effectiveness of Your Team's Culture for Your Company's Digital Ambition

Most organizations are striving to adapt their culture to accelerate their digital journey. CIOs and IT Leaders can use this tool to identify the necessary culture changes to ensure their team’s behaviors are well-aligned to their enterprise’s digital ambition. Culture is an extraordinary enabler of digital ambitions, but it can also jeopardize them. Our research shows that, without the appropriate culture, the chances to succeed in your transformations diminish significantly (transformations in your digital ambitions, in your operating model, in your IT or enterprise strategies, etc). Behaviors are the manifestation of a culture. Changing the behaviors in your IT organization will be a key element for success. In Gartner, we have developed a tool that provides you with a set of criteria to evaluate the current culture gap of your IT organization. These criteria are organized around the 4 components of Business Models: External Clients/Citizens, Finance, Capabilities, Value Proposition. The tool provides you with: The fundamental behaviors (aka cultural attributes) CIOs should start developing from today. Example: The overall culture alignment degree your IT organization has, and a high-level diagnostics that summarizes your situation — There are five degrees: unaligned, awakening, settling, aligned and forward-looking. Example: Intention/Action your organization has: Intention: The current focus, for each of the business model components, on the Intention to do what you have to do (“I know what I have to do”) Action: The current focus, for each of the business model components, on the Action to make things happen (“I act upon it”) Example: The Present/Future focus of your organization: Present: The current focus, for each of the business model components, on the Present Future: The current focus, for each of the business model components, on the Future Example: The diagnostic based on the scores in Intention/Action and Present/Future. Example: Specific recommendations about how to evolve the culture alignment of each component of the business model to its next degree. Example: With all this information, CIOs and IT Leaders will have a clear picture of where they should focus their attention to overcome the cultural barriers that jeopardize the IT organization’s ability to support their enterprise’s digital ambition. To access the tool, go to "Tool: Assessment of Culture Alignment to Your Enterprise's Digital Ambition" (Gartner suscription required).   May wisdom and courage be with you. Daniel Sanchez-Reina   My latest posts: Gain Influence in the C-Suite by Fulfilling 2 Essential Unaddressed Needs of the CEOGain Influence  Predicts 2021: CIOs Must Adjust Talent and Leadership Direction for Digital Acceleration Create a Culture of IT Smart Spending Measure the ‘Predictors of Productivity’ in a Hybrid Workplace (Remote + On-Site)   — I will be looking forward to talking to you. Feel free to schedule an inquiry call (inquiry@gartner.com), follow me on Twitter (@DanielSnchezRna) or connect with me on LinkedIn. Listen, IT Leader: Tool to Assess the Effectiveness of Your Team's Culture for Your Company's Digital Ambition published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Revenue Data Leads the Way to Sales and Marketing Alignment

[caption id="attachment_174" align="alignnone" width="600"] Photo by ev on Unsplash[/caption]   There are many strategic and tactical elements of the revenue process that bring sales and marketing together to collaborate and improve overall results, but where does third-party data fit into the mix? We are in the process of researching vendors in the Revenue Data Solutions market, which includes a variety of third-party data types and capabilities. Each one of the data types provides an opportunity for collaboration between sales and marketing leaders. Revenue Data Solutions start with contact and company data because these are the basics needed for marketing and advertising campaigns and outbound prospecting. While the sources and the quality of this data has changed, the basic idea of it has not changed much from the pre-digital era when companies would buy mailing lists, phone numbers or even those "I'm interested" lists from the checklist cards in trade magazines. In many cases the capabilities of these vendors are merely digital versions — or even automated versions — of functions that have always occurred in revenue teams, but some of the data types are things that have never existed in a non-digital world. It is critical for sales and marketing leaders to understand each data type so they can develop a strategic approach for usage in their organization. This is especially true as these data types can provide a direct path to sales and marketing alignment.  Revenue Data Types Contact (Demographic) Data: The profile information about suspects, leads, prospects, customers, buyers, unknown and known visitors that can be used to clean, enhance and append individuals listed in the system of record. Alignment Recommendation: Sales and marketing leaders should review lead qualification definition to identify the most likely prospects to pursue and the characteristics or data fields that are most helpful in prospecting. Company (Firmographic) Data: The information about companies and their attributes that help revenue teams create ideal customer profiles and target account lists.  Alignment Recommendation: Sales and marketing leaders compare their insights into an organization's best customers to guide targeting and building pipeline. Hierarchy and Buying Group Data: The interconnected structure of companies and their subsidiaries, organizational structure and buying groups that can be used to identify pockets of interest and authority, as well as determining buying group patterns that can lead to group consensus. Alignment Recommendation: Sales and marketing leaders need to both understand the company structure and buying group structure so marketing's aircover campaigns and content align with sales' prospecting. Purchase Intent Data: The specific topics or keywords that are of current interest to companies based on information consumption behavior and other factors. Alignment Recommendation: Sales and marketing leaders should review the information options available to prospects and customers both on their own properties and across the broader web to identify patterns of information and to create additional content. Technographic Data: The company information about technology that is installed, what the current technology budgets is and how many computers are in server rooms and on employees’ desks that can be used by technology companies to understand a competitor's footprint. Progressive organizations can use technographics to understand prospect maturity and growth patterns. Alignment Recommendation: Sales and marketing leaders can confirm competitors from won-lost analysis to support future prospecting and messaging. Relationship Intelligence: The data to provide insight on internal and external network connections to a target contacts and accounts, in order to enhance engagement outreach efforts. Alignment Recommendation: Sales and marketing leaders should look within and beyond their own organization to locate connections to enhance prospecting opportunities. Market Intelligence: The relevant news feeds, blog posts, company/contact and market insights that are available within the CRM or sales engagement platform. These environmental indicators show when to reach out to a prospect or customer. Alignment Recommendation: Sales and marketing leaders need to collaborate on developing sources for specific campaigns that support prioritizing prospecting. Whether sales and marketing leaders are specifically reviewing vendor requirements for Revenue Data Solutions or just identifying means of collaboration, the benefits of the two functional leaders working together will have measurable results. Revenue Data Leads the Way to Sales and Marketing Alignment published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Who Owns the Customer Experience Anyway?

Despite many years of increased organizational focus on the customer experience (CX), many supply chain leaders remain willing to leave the role of managing the CX to commercial and/or marketing teams. However, real opportunity exists for an active supply chain voice to drive CX-related business strategy and outcomes in areas such as: Design — Know and align strategy, operating model, measures, product and service options to address customer needs and preferences Operations — Reliably and seamlessly deliver products, services and experiences to meet customer expectations A growing number of leading supply chains from the Gartner Supply Chain Top 25 and beyond recognize that CX investments aren’t just altruistic — they can drive measurable business outcomes. What are the most common outcomes expected from CX investments, according to more than 400 supply chain participants surveyed by Gartner? Optimized costs (57%), improved service metrics (55%) and revenue growth (46%). The challenge is in proving the relationship between the supply-chain-driven CX investment and business outcomes. Materials science giant Dow, an engineering-cultured company, is one such organization that has been able to leverage this relationship. Dow has demonstrated mathematical correlations between its supply chain performance, the CX, and both margins and growth with Riccardo Porta, Dow supply chain director, recently saying to us: “Every supply chain professional has experienced the frustration of unsuccessfully trying to counter a cash flow inventory reduction value proposition with an on-time, in-full (OTIF) argument. But, what if you can turn the OTIF percentage into CX impact, and CX impact back into margin and growth? That’s the power of CX for supply chain!” We explore how leading supply chains are driving customer value through culture and insights in the August executive report (available to Gartner clients) and in the accompanying podcast, which is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. But, Who Owns CX? Overall ownership of CX in our organizations can be hard to pin down, particularly where there is no formal CX executive leader or group. Without some type of central coordination, leaders of functions and business units are often unaware of completed CX projects, and the value that they create for the business more broadly and their function more specifically. Chaos ensues when each group acts independently, even with the best intentions — the organization inevitably stumbles. Leading organizations start the shift toward customer centricity by creating cross-functional leadership councils or steering teams focused on the CX. Supply chain is not typically the lead — more often it is marketing, sales or a designated CX leader for the enterprise. But the supply chain needs to be a core member of the CX steering team. In lower maturity organizations, where this leadership cannot be easily identified, this may mean that supply chain must work to convene a cross-functional group focused, initially, on driving the CX for top accounts. Although the framework for governance varies across companies, effectiveness relies on consistent and efficient CX principles that business partners adopt into their decision making. Without consistent execution and operational standards, end-to-end management of CX across the enterprise is almost impossible. At minimum, a supply chain should have its own working group focused on the CX, if one does not exist at the enterprise level. This top-level leadership and alignment must be reinforced by bottom-up initiatives that clearly connect what people do in their jobs to how it impacts the customer. Employees must see a direct connection to their “role in the goal” while being provided with sufficient information and insight that will enable them to execute. For example, companies such as Lenovo are “democratizing” their customer insights. This is about giving broad access to employees across an extensive set of data points. This includes individual customer, consumer and channel partner insight communities, customer surveys and analysis of indirect and inferred customer sentiment from social media. The objective of these sensing activities is to identify an opportunity or root cause of a problem, then enable employees to take action. For the supply chain, this more empowering, collaborative approach to delivering the CX has led to material improvements in service levels such as a 6% year-over-year improvement in products delivered on, or before, the delivery promise date. Lenovo even recognizes the importance of incentives and ensures that employees have skin in the game when it comes to CX performance. Between 10% and 20% of employee bonuses are explicitly tied to CX metrics. Of course, it’s not a linear path to get to the point where you can democratize customer insights across your supply chain organization as Lenovo has done. Or link CX investments to business outcomes as Dow has been able to do. However, you may aspire to these types of capabilities where the supply chain is recognized as something more than a cost center — as a department that drives value to customers and organizational growth. If so, then it’s time to either make the case for supply chain to have a voice at the CX leadership table or reinforce the critical role that you play in that leadership group so that you can open up new opportunities. Thomas O’Connor Senior Director, Analyst Gartner Supply Chain Thomas.Oconnor@gartner.com Who Owns the Customer Experience Anyway? published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/

[stephenlibbyy]

Look to China for Solutions to Social Commerce Challenges

With the emergence of Instagram Shopping, Facebook Marketplace and the TikTok-Shopify partnership, social commerce has arrived. But it's not without challenges. Marketers face two broad categories of consumer pushback on their social commerce initiatives. First, consumers lack trust that their personal data privacy will be secured over this new channel. Second, consumers miss the level of detail they are accustomed to on e-commerce product pages, including reviews, user-generated content, ample product images and detailed descriptions (see Design Social Commerce Features That Convince Consumers to Buy). China, with its more advanced social commerce ecosystem, offers perspectives for overcoming these challenges. Leading global brands in diverse categories build extensive commerce presences on China’s largest social platform, WeChat. These efforts provide consumers direct access to a curated assortment of products with ample product page information and compelling content. In China, brands alleviate privacy concerns by creating an easy direct-to-consumer purchase experience. By developing and operating “mini program” stores within the WeChat ecosystem, brands offer a customized shopping experience without making consumers exit the app or disrupting their social media experience. Mini program stores typically mimic web-based direct-to-consumer commerce, in that they include an image- and video-rich storefront, search, category pages and product detail pages (PDP) with extensive information. In addition to providing ample and useful product information, Chinese product pages also incorporate content from celebrities, influencers and users to make product pages livelier. This includes asking users for permission and reusing their social media product photos on official product pages, as well as mimicking the style of user photos. These tactics can help reduce consumers’ skepticism in social commerce. Western marketers should strive for a visual style on their social media and social commerce presence that is both authentic to the brand’s image and native to the social media community’s unique taste. Marketers outside of China should leverage insights from the country’s social commerce playbook. Experiment with Chinese social commerce tactics, and start a dialogue with teams operating in the Chinese market to learn the social commerce practices that make the most sense for your brand. Look to China for Solutions to Social Commerce Challenges published first on https://wdmsh.tumblr.com/