Blog Archives - Page 109 of 786

Normalcy Bias

One of my favorite authors is Marcus Wynne, who is CEO of a cognitive neuroscience firm. On his blog, he espoused: “There’s this thing from psychology … which is
called, I think, “normalcy bias.” In sum it’s the thinking that goes like this: “It hasn’t happened to me, therefore it cannot happen.” It’s a presupposition which provides an unconscious (as in you don’t even know you know/believe it) foundation for action and planning. The cure for it generally is a
harsh one, when reality sticks it’s sometimes ugly nose in and says, “Hey Sweet Cheeks? Today’s the day you get screwed.”

I think about this in terms of cyber-security and disaster planning. No one wants to spend on it. (They don’t like buying insurance either.) But when (not if anymore) disaster strikes in the form of outages, hacks, breaches, malware/ransomware, severe weather, floods, tornadoes, etc. many businesses are unprepared and fail.

Personally I don’t know how to change someone’s bias. It’s like the worldview that on-premise hardware is better than cloud.

Tags: disaster recovery, security
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Business Continuity is a Conversation – Jul 19, 2016

There Were Some Bright Spots – Dec 26, 2014

Hacking and Identity Theft – Dec 20, 2016

A Look Back at 2016 News – Dec 14, 2016

Channel Outlook in a Mega-Merger World – Nov 07, 2016

As the Telecom World Spins – Nov 04, 2016

The InterWebs are Down! – Oct 21, 2016

Tidbits #2440 – Oct 06, 2016

Are Outages the New Normal? – Oct 05, 2016

Tidbits #2439 – Oct 03, 2016

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January 9, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

Disruption Everywhere

Two articles demonstrate that no field is free from disruption. The first is about the Big Consulting business practice that is changing fast. The legal professional is also being disrupted and used as an example of why the consulting world will soon fall fate as well.

“Management consulting’s fundamental business model has not changed in more than 100 years. At traditional strategy-consulting firms, the share of work that is classic strategy is now about 20%–down from 60% to 70% some 30 years ago.”

Former Big Three employees now work for companies like general counsel. They reduce professional services costs. They reduce scope of work and thus the price tag. Just another example of a high-profit business being annihilated, only Amazon didn’t do it this time.

“Clients rely on brand, reputation, and “social proof”–that is, the professionals’ educational pedigrees, eloquence, and demeanor–as substitutes for measurable results.” That is a problem in consulting. The measurable part. I think that some companies hire ideas/strategy but forget that it is all about execution. I don’t know if you can disrupt execution yet. Knowledge certainly. And I think we have spent a good amount of time just copying strategy from competitors. That isn’t working out well either. Like in law and medicine, the general practice firm is giving way to specialists.

The second article is about voice first technology disrupting the search ad revenue model.

“”…one thing that we are all clear about is the days of three top text ads followed by ten organic results is a thing of the past in the voice first world”– Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior VP of advertising and commerce @ Google, November 29, 2016.”

“Just like this generation now no longer has CDs, DVDs, tapes or records, the next generation will expect voice interaction, not with pages of search results but AI assisted, ontology, and taxonomy perfect answers, most particularly one answer.”

“The writing is on the wall.”

Medium.com just laid off one-third their staff as the traditional ad based business model was NOT working for them.

Retail isn’t working for Sears/KMart, Kohls, Macys, Sports Authority and so much more. Have you been to a mall lately? Anyone holding a shopping bag from a store in that mall?

New drug will regenerate teeth, so where does that leave dentists?

A large hedge fund will replace managers with artificial intelligence!

What does this have to do with YOU? Well, anyone can be displaced or replaced. The number of displaced workers is growing. Either you are growing or you are dying. Either you are learning new skills or someone/something will leapfrog you.

Hugh MacLeod writes, “To innovate, you don’t have to reinvent the whole thing. Innovation is taking what exists and making it better. It’s grown-up copying.”

Tags: analytics, artificial intelligence, big data, disrupt, innovation
Related tags: business model, consulting, business, strategy, either, voice

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A Look Back at 2016 News – Dec 14, 2016

Tidbits #2438 – Jun 07, 2016

Telecom Disruption – Jan 24, 2016

Mobile Phones are Hyperlinks – Apr 21, 2015

Sales Math and Measuring What Matters – Feb 18, 2015

News Tidbits Part 2915 – Feb 09, 2015

Two New VoIP Offerings – Jan 05, 2017

The Beginning of 2017 – Jan 03, 2017

The Channel Marketing Dilemma – Nov 30, 2016

Big Data Comes to Bosses with Prodoscore – Sep 06, 2016

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January 9, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

Two New VoIP Offerings

IDT is an international LD company doing about a billion bucks globally. Last year, it finally entered the Hosted VoIP world through its Net2Phone brand. Net2Phone launched in the channel. Net2Phone also launched an inbound service (like Google Voice or Citrix’s Grasshopper) called PicUp. Those terms are interesting.

TOS: “If you provide Feedback to Net2Phone, then you grant Net2Phone a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, fully paid up right to publicly display, broadcast, transmit and distribute the Feedback (and derivative works thereof), including but not limited to Your name and company name for attribution purposes. During the beta trial period, You will receive 1000 free inbound minutes per month calculated from the date of sign-up; provided that, if You do not use a minimum of 25 minutes per month, then Net2Phone reserves the right to close Your Account. Once Your free minutes have been used during a month, Services will be suspended until the next month begins. Net2Phone may terminate your beta trial service for any reason or no reason without prior notice. Once the beta trial period ends, Your free 1000 minute per month plan will automatically convert into the then-commercially available 100 minute free plan.”

It looks like they are just lab testing. A 100 minute inbound plan seems like it would be for a very small business. That’s less than 2 hours per month. Oh, well.

They did buy some functionality via the acquisition of LiveNinja. “Net2phone will combine LiveNinja’s customer messaging and live chat service with PicuP, which gives small/mid-size businesses a self-service platform to deal with inbound calls, including auto-attendants, customized welcomes and voicemail to e-mail.”

“LiveNinja offers a messaging application that facilitates companies and their customers having seamless conversations across multiple messaging and chat channels including live chat, SMS and Facebook Messenger,” according to SeekingAlpha. Riddle me this: why would Google Voice service with 100 inbound free minutes need multi-platform chat integration? It seems that this should have been integrated into Net2Phone’s Hosted VoIP offering instead of the stripped down PicUp service. It is a crowded space. Not sure they have product-market fit yet.

A similar service to PicUp launched from 3 VoIP veterans. David Walsh and Evin Hunt (from Shango); and Jason Tapolci (from VoIP Innovations) just soft launched their hosted VoIP service that is a mobile app only called Vocaly.

Launching an offering isn’t cheap but it isn’t that expensive either. There needs to be more experimentation in the space. A bunch of failures before we get some new, fresh ideas that work.

I give Verizon credit there because One Talk is an experiment with their Broadsoft platform that is powering other traditional offerings. We need IDT, Verizon and start-ups like Vocaly and Fone.do to experiment and see what happens.

Tags: hosted pbx, innovation, smb, startup, UC, voip
Related tags: phone launched, google voice, trial period, service picup, phone, service

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What the Studies About UC Say – Aug 25, 2015

2000 Players Have Less Than 40% of Market – Jul 21, 2015

Tidbits #2444 (Telecom and Otherwise) – Jan 04, 2017

UCaaS Round-Up (Tidbits 2443) – Nov 16, 2016

Marketing Lesson from the Election – Nov 09, 2016

Is UCaaS Growing? – Oct 31, 2016

What Pain Does UCaaS Solve? – Aug 22, 2016

UC Tidbits #2441 – Jul 05, 2016

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Why Do You Look at an iPhone That Way? – Apr 07, 2016

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January 5, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

MSP EXPO Panel on Differentiation

MSP EXPO is collocated at ITEXPO in February in Fort Lauderdale. I will be moderating one panel: “How to Differentiate Your Telecom, Managed, Hosted, and Cloud Services for Revenue Growth”. The panelists will be Jim DeBald of CoreDial; Eric Hernaez of SkySwitch; and Joshua Feinberg of SP HomeRun. The panel will be 1 pm ET on Wednesday, 02/08/17. Join us.

The premise for the panel is as follows: “The way telecom, managed services, cloud, and hosting purchasing decisions are made is changing. Today, because IT influencers and decision makers are doing so much upfront research, often 70 percent or more of their decisions have already been made before you’re even looped into the conversation. This can put you at a huge disadvantage if you haven’t drawn their attention through market differentiation. Likewise, for those MSPs that have, this change in decision-making theory presents an opportunity to earn a seat at the table as a highly-differentiated trusted advisor. This session will detail how to ensure you get found early enough in the buyer’s journey to matter, stand out from the crowd, command premium pricing, and attract world-class clients and talent.”

As I have often written here, positioning, differentiation and USP are the key to value and standing out. We will discuss this during the session.

The IDEA Showcase Startup Event is Thursday at 4.

Tags: cvx, differentiation, itexpo, msp, startup, usp, value
Related tags: telecom managed, panel, differentiation

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Look for me in Miami Beach Next Week – Jan 26, 2012

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Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

January 4, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

Tidbits #2444 (Telecom and Otherwise)

There are too many VoIP and UCaaS providers. Consolidation is required in this space. I think UCaaS has to shift into Voice/Dial-tone (POTS replacement or SIP Trunking with some features) and some collaboration platform. The way it is now – replacing an on-premise PBX with a hosted one – isn’t selling very well. CAGR from 8×8’s latest numbers show service revenue grew 23% year over year. My estimate is that UC/VoIP growth is 17-23% for the bigger companies, bu many of the 2000+ are not seeing even 15%. And the buyers are shifting on it.

In UC&C (and most software) “CIOs will be buying into the customer experience and not the technology,” writes RingCentral’s Sahil Rekhi.”In 2017, CIOs will be buying communication solutions with a focus on experiences rather than technology; removing distinctions between communication, collaboration and productivity. Workplace communication and collaboration tools in the cloud will be made to create a unified and consistent experience across multiple devices, moving businesses away from a siloed approach to communications.” Most ITSPs are not set up for the complete mobile experience yet, let alone a full UC&C CX (customer experience).

There are providers still trying to add analytics to call logs. Because we are still stuck on replacement instead of impact, outcome or experience. (One reason that Slack took off: UX!)

GOOD READS:

Fred Wilson’s frank look at what will happen in 2017.

Start the new year with better sales meetings HERE.

PR trends in 2017. Content versus Attention versus Influencers = Viewers running away to the “Dark Social”, “the amount of communication which occurs behind closed doors and messaging apps and private groups.”

Sales Hacker’s Top 10 Trends & Predictions Heading Into 2017.

This is a twofer: 5 lessons from the book LinkedIn’s head of recruiting recommends to all new managers is a summary of Ryan Holiday’s book.

Are you hiring? Good read on what to look for. I always say Attitude first, but this CEO says have a meal with the candidate and look for Gratitude and excitement.

MEDIA PAIN

Medium has laid off one-third its staff. Medium is a blogging/media platform founded by the same guy who founded Blogger, Odeo and twitter. He is having an issue with business models as the world of the Internet is based on free. No idea why he didn’t try charging $9.99 per year per reader or some other nominal amount. It isn’t a volume shop like Huffington or Buzzfeed. It has a targeted audience. But that is the problem: everyone uses the model that they see, not one designed specifically for their product.

As Seth Godin pointed out, “Newspapers won Pulitzer prizes for telling us things we didn’t want to hear. We’ve responded by not buying newspapers any more.” That is why we have click-bait, fake news, struggling newspapers and uneducated voters. It is all about the pageview, even in this content marketing world. Go figure!

RETAIL SUFFERS!

Sears is closing 150 more stores. Macys is closing stores. Retail had a bad holiday season – and the stock market is unforgiving. American Apparel is BK (and Amazon is trying to buy it.) Retail has to change. Big time. Also, malls have to re-think what they are to consumers.

Fast food is hiring robots and self-serve kiosks; retail is tanking. What will teenagers do for employment? What will many others do for employment in place of managers, buyers, maintenance, etc.

Ford is staying. Carrier is staying but they got tax breaks and other bonuses to do so. And they are going to automate those jobs out of existence. AI is replacing some fund managers. If you can’t fix or code a robot, what will you do for a job?

Tags: content, hiring, hosted pbx, jobs, marketing, news, retail, robotics, social media, UC, voip
Related tags: customer experience, closing stores, communication collaboration, experience, retail, communication