Several interesting pieces of research were published this week. They included three reports commissioned from IDC by Alteryx, Aptean and UiPath. Other survey findings were published from Xactly, Workday, MYOB, and Calabrio. 6Sense also published an interesting book which is a who’s who of female CMOs.
6Sense
6sense aims to address the male/female imbalance with a new book, The Empowered CMO Board Book. It lists 60 women CMOs who are qualified and ready to serve on boards. The book is aimed at venture capital, private equity, and corporate board executives.
At the 2021 Empowered CMO Retreat, Latané Conant, Chief Market Officer at 6sense, announced a commitment to drive the advancement of distinguished women CMOs by opening doors and creating opportunities. Recognizing the importance of sponsorship, 6sense invested in more than 100 women CMOs to join the Athena Alliance to accelerate their board readiness and develop their board candidate resume for inclusion in the Board Book.
Conant commented: “I really love that 6sense recognizes an issue and is taking action to address it. We saw a need for women CMOs in the boardroom and an opportunity with our Empowered CMO community, and we knew we had the right relationships to influence the next generation of board candidates.
“We’re addressing both the lack of gender diversity and market expertise in boardrooms that are proven to hold companies back from the growth they deserve. It’s only our first step, but it’s a big one.”
Accenture
Accenture and the Project Management Institute have released a new report. It highlights that more companies are creating the role of chief transformation officer. The report is titled: Chief Transformation Officer: Why Transformation Leaders Matter, What They (Should) Do, and What They Need to Succeed.
The report examines how companies are driving enterprise transformations that are characterized by competing demands. These include far-reaching in vision and pragmatic in execution; deliberate and adaptive; competitive and collaborative; continuous and schedule-driven; value-focused and explorative.
The two key findings from the survey of 350 transformation leaders identified:
- 95% agree that the chief transformation officer role is critical for achieving transformation goals
- More than 90% of respondents believe a permanent transformation office improves the alignment between strategy and execution and the orchestration of multiple initiatives.
However, it surveyed transformation leaders and not CEOs. Greg Douglass, Accenture’s global Technology Strategy & Advisory lead, commented: “The rise of the transformation office and a chief transformation officer role in the C-suite signals that companies are embracing bold, concurrent transformation initiatives designed to support innovation and sustain growth.
“The success of these programs depends on leaders having strategic vision for making the transformation a reality across the organization and building credibility and trust in the process.”
Alteryx
Alteryx commissioned research from IDC entitled “4 Ways to Unlock Transformative Business Outcomes from Analytic Investments.” While 73% of organizations expect analytics spending will outpace other software investments in the next 12-18 months, less than half make decisions based on analytics. The reason may be that 93% of organizations are not fully using the analytics skills of their employees. The report highlights four ways for organisations to improve.
- Deploying easy-to-use cloud-based or hybrid AI-infused analytics technology to support cross-functional use cases
- Breaking down data and analytics silos by emphasizing enterprise-wide analytics
- Developing a data culture that aligns technology spending with upskilling on data literacy
- Ensuring alignment on analytics initiatives between IT and line of business to eliminate shadow IT
Dan Vesset, group vice president, Analytics and Information Management IDC, commented: “It’s no surprise that so few organizations are ahead of the curve when it comes to analytic maturity considering they leave out a key component: people. What we’re seeing is that organizations that provide analytics tools that are easy to use and easy to access, while upskilling their talent, achieve more ROI from their respective analytics investment than organizations who do not.”
Aptean
Aptean has sponsored an IDC White Paper: Global Food and Beverage Industry Trends and Strategic Insights, 2022. It highlights the benefits of industry-specific cloud-based solutions. The report found that companies using industry-specific ERP reported greater increases in both revenue and profit (5.3% in revenue and 4.9% in profit) compared to industry peers using generic ERP solutions (2.9% in revenue and 3.7% in profit).
Simon Ellis, Program Vice President for IDC Manufacturing Insights, stated: “With the unique challenges faced by food and beverage organizations, having functionality designed specifically for their requirements results in a more effective software system overall. This, combined with cloud deployment, accelerates the benefits of digital transformation. As food organizations plan digital transformation and explore cloud-based systems, it’s essential that they look for technology partners that understand their needs.”
TVN Reddy, CEO of Aptean, commented: “Aptean’s mission is to provide unrivaled, purpose-built software and superior customer service. This new research confirms that an industry-specific approach drives better business results for food and beverage companies and that cloud-based solutions will ultimately provide the greatest value.
“The food and beverage industry operates in a challenging and rapidly changing environment. Cloud-based, industry-specific solutions lead to increased revenue and profit, a competitive advantage that is critical to success.”
Calabrio
Calabrio has identified a direct correlation between contact centres, brand loyalty and brand revenue. The global research report, State of the Contact Center 2022: Empowering the Contact Center as a Brand Guardian, uncovered a surprising gap between the role contact centre agents play in consumer brand perception and how much employers support and empower those same agents to be brand guardians.
Both consumers (97%) and contact centre managers (98%) agree that customer service interactions impact whether consumers stay loyal to a brand. And a vast majority (88%) of contact centre managers also agree that brand perception directly impacts overall company revenue. When positive customer experience (CX) interactions boost loyalty, revenue follows.
Tom Goodmanson, president and CEO of Calabrio, commented: “We know that contact center interactions can make or break a customer relationship, leading to increases or decreases in revenue. How smoothly those interactions go is a direct result of how agents are trained and how they are supported with the right tools and technology.
“It’s critical for brand loyalty that agents feel confident to make the right decisions at any given moment. And the most efficient way to improve the customer experience is to empower contact center agents as brand guardians.”
MYOB
MYOB has revealed the size of the gender wage gap among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) employees. It is sitting at 7.5% in favour of men when comparing median hourly wages. Women faced disproportionate challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The MYOB Success Report: SME Wages presents an analysis of over a million anonymised data points.
Helen Lea, Chief Employee Experience Officer at MYOB, stated: “The gender pay gap is a widely established concern across all sectors, with the WGEA calculating the gap, in terms of average earnings, to be 14.1% in favour of men.
“On top of established and systemic challenges, the pandemic exacerbated many social and economic drivers that contribute to unequal outcomes for women. These were particularly apparent in the industries most impacted by COVID restrictions, such as hospitality and retail.”
Despite the gender pay gap, there is some cause for optimism. The survey results show flexible working practices, accelerated by the pandemic, benefited 11% of women compared to 5% of men. 11% of respondents also reported the pandemic led to more increased wages for women, compared to 6% for men, and increased opportunities for 11% of women, compared to 6% for men.
UiPath
UiPath published an IDC report, the APJ Automation Survey 2022. Key findings from respondents across nine countries in APJ included:
- 62% of the organizations in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) will scale up their robotic process automation (RPA) initiatives or achieve an enterprise-wide RPA deployment
- 91% of the organizations do not have enterprise-wide RPA deployment in place today despite recognizing the importance and benefits.
- 86% of the organizations in APJ agree that automation will be a critical requirement for business excellence, customer experience, and competitive success within the next 3 years
- Over 90% of the organizations in Australia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and China underscore their shifting focus toward Intelligent Process Automation
Michael Araneta, Associate Vice President of IDC Financial Insights, commented: “APJ business leaders are increasingly acknowledging the pivotal role of automation in resolving their pain points and accelerating growth across the region, against the backdrop of an intensifying competitive climate and turbulent macroeconomic environment.
“While improving operational efficiencies and enriching customer experience have been top of mind for leveraging automation, many organizations also believe that automation is a pathway towards meeting ESG and sustainability goals, which will be a game-changer for corporate trustworthiness.
“However, despite securing these unprecedented benefits, most organizations have been slow in taking the leap into implementing an enterprise-wide automation program due to myriad yet addressable challenges, including finding automation skills and talent, identifying the right automation software, and ensuring robust security and governance.”
Workday
At Workday Rising, Workday published a new report – Addressing Burnout Risk in 2022. It leveraged data from the employee engagement solution Workday Peakon Employee Voice. It found that burnout risk declined for Manufacturing between 2021 and 2021 (61% to 50%) but increased for Government (44% to 60%) and Transportation (44% to 54%). There were fewer changes for other industries, and technology remained the lowest at a stable 13%.
The report also noticed increasing risk in countries such as the UK, Norway, Canada and Denmark. Whilst burnout risk fell significantly in Australia and Germany. The report has other interesting findings for multinational and national organisations.
Xactly
Xactly published findings from a survey of more than 400 sales leaders to uncover how workforce and economic volatility have impacted sales teams. It revealed that 85% of sales leaders would likely change jobs if the economic situation in the U.S. did not change, illustrating how retaining top performers is critical to a company’s business strategy. This is up from 58% in 2021.
Chris Cabrera, founder and CEO of Xactly, commented: “The impact of the sales talent crisis will not only impact a company’s talent base, but also revenue goals and profit margins. Attracting and maintaining top talent requires more than a competitive compensation package – workers today seek purpose as well as work-life balance.
“Many salespeople who left their companies to chase higher compensation have become ‘Great Regretters.’ It is clear that there are more changes and challenges ahead and the fastest to evolve will be the winners.”
The report identified trends and some useful statistics to help organisations retain key sales staff in the future. The intent is to reduce the risk of another Great Resignation.
