This interview was originally published in SIIA’s Vision From the Top. The 2013 Vision From the Top will be released at All About the Cloud, May 7-9 in San Francisco.

In 2020, looking back on this decade, what will be the single most impactful technical advancement driving business growth?

It’s clear to me that mobility will be the single most impactful technical advancement driving business growth in the next ten years … and that’s because mobility has been the single most impactful technical advancement in our personal lives over the past ten years.

Mobility is impacting humanity even faster than the web did. Think about it: there are 7 billion people on the planet, and 1.5 billion of them are on the web. But 5 billion of them have mobile phones! The reach of mobile phones is phenomenal – more than three times the reach of the internet even today.

Last Christmas more than half of all adults used their mobile phones to help them make decisions about in-store purchases. People now use mobile apps more minutes per day (94 minutes) than they browse the web (72 minutes). And we can interact with mobile devices in ways we could never interact with the web through features like touch, motion, and voice controls (welcome to my world, Siri!).

As you think about how much mobile has changed your personal life, it’s barely touched how businesses operate. The current trend of “bring your own device to work” underscores how much business has not tapped the power of mobile … workers would rather pay for and use their own devices at work than be hobbled by the current mobile options provided by their employers.

Mobile in the enterprise is unfolding in two stages: the first is improving existing business processes by mobilizing information and providing it to the employee or customer at their moment of need. For example, a salesperson walks into a client meeting carrying a mobile device equipped with all the account information, a complete order history, understanding of available inventory, and most current price list for that customer. Or a doctor has walks into an exam with all the pertinent patient information at his fingertips including x-rays, MRIs and other visual items. This acceleration of information enables faster, better decision making.

The second stage is where apps utilize all of the interactions and contextual elements that that mobile device and cloud can provide … such as hyper-location, the customer’s previous buying behavior, and the condition and location of perishable inventory. Imagine a mobile application that provides a vice president of sales a real-time performance metric of where his sales people are and their performance in the accounts they are visiting, enabling him to shift sales/pricing strategies on the fly, to close a higher percentage of business. Or imagine a packaged goods company sending a 25% off coupon to a customer who is browsing the frozen food aisle of a grocery store, encouraging them to switch from a competitor’s product.

We are in the early days of companies tapping the power of mobile to improve business processes. Mobile will be even more transformative to business than the web was.

What’s the future for hybrid cloud strategies?

Mobile + Cloud = More than the Sum of Their Parts

Two of the most powerful trends in technology are converging into the mobile cloud. Mobile provides massive reach through billions of devices, while the cloud offers the ability to scale quickly. The strengths of both of these elements combine to create a result that is larger than the sum of their parts … mobile devices provide massive volumes of contextual information while the cloud is able to store, manage, and interpret this massive data.

Cloud-based services also enable enterprises to rapidly integrate functionality, such as check-ins, photos, authentication, and storage to their mobile applications, and then scale those functions rapidly. Enterprises only pay for the cloud capacity they utilize, as opposed to building up servers or storage that may lay unused for long periods of time. Given the current rapid adoption of new apps and innovation of new features, it’s nearly impossible for an enterprise to plan for infrastructure to support. The cloud provides maximum and immediate flexibility to scale mobile applications.

By combining both mobile and the cloud, enterprises can transform their relationships with customers and further empower their workforces with flexible, device-optimized applications, quickly and easily.

Rhianna Collier is VP for the Software Division at SIIA. Follow the SIIA software division on Twitter @SIIASoftware

This interview was originally published in SIIA’s Vision From the Top. The 2013 Vision From the Top will be released at All About the Cloud, May 7-9 in San Francisco.

In 2020, looking back on this decade, what will be the single most impactful technical advancement driving business growth?

Looking back on this decade which started deep in a global recession, the importance of understanding the true financial picture of an operation became critical. Companies of all sizes needed the ability to conduct more what-if analysis, get real-time analytics, and operate with greater agility than they had in growth times. With these economic conditions in mind, two important technological advancements, cloud computing and mobile, have gained leadership as the platform for managing a company. Realoperational management expands beyond the finance department to planning and analysis across all aspects of a company.

Structural changes in our global economy and the way we communicate are presenting a perfect storm for cloud and mobile to intersect. These two powerful platforms are disrupting the technology landscape and will prove to be the single most impactful advancement over the next eight years. The trend has already begun. Now all individuals need is an internet connection to access cloud applications anywhere and at any time. Couple cloud applications with mobile devices and this technology intersection will truly transform the way we live and work.

The explosion of tablets will drive increased demand for Corporate Performance Management (CPM) and a host of other applications necessary for business productivity in an increasingly complex, inter-related and uncertain economy. As conditions require daily access to key metrics, managers and executives will increasingly rely on dashboards and reports to access this information from anywhere and on any device, so they can operate effectively and make decisions swiftly. Either one of these trends discussed here, cloud and mobile, is capable of significant transformation, but the confluence of these technological platforms will disrupt the market as pressure to cut costs and make faster decisions continues to loom in this period of economic uncertainty.

What do you do as CEO to keep your organization focused on customers and value?

At Adaptive Planning we have built a customer centric organization by hiring people who are focused on customer success, by measuring success through metrics that matter to the customer, not just the bottom line, and by building an organization that is truly customer centric. As a SaaS provider our business is dependent on our customers renewing and continuing to expand their relationships with us. The value we deliver is critical. As a result, we continually seek product feedback in the form of Customer User Groups, online forums, annual surveys, and customer support cases.

Adaptive Planning’s product development roadmap is not based solely on what strategy our executive team has come up with, but rather is a direct result of the requests and product feedback from our customers. Our primary objective is to build the best product that we can that will meet the complex and varied needs of our customers, so they can benefit in their professional lives and transform how they strategically impact their organizations.

Because we are a SaaS vendor, we are able to monitor customer usage activity, proactively reach out to customers before their renewal period, and provide open access to executive management. This customer driven culture has earned us stripes in the form of #1 in customer satisfaction awards and more importantly renewals. In addition, our satisfied ecosystem of customers is a self-perpetuating community and we benefit from frequent introductions and referrals.

Social media and social business are big themes for 2012. In which areas of business will the social movement have the most impact (or most potential for impact)? Why?

The broad technological shift towards the social enterprise is an important one. Collaboration and the consumerization of the enterprise are critical trends that are impacting how employees communicate and operations function. As the social enterprise explodes going forward, collaboration capabilities in any cloud application will be critical. The recent political movements in the Middle East propelled by the advent of mobile and social platforms signals that this transformation is only just beginning and is reaching further than first world economies.

Corporate performance management processes-including budgeting, forecasting and reporting-are some of the most collaborative processes in business. At Adaptive Planning, we have been a leader in embedding collaborative capabilities into our SaaS CPM solution from day one. By harnessing these collaborative capabilities, finance, management and executive teams are better able to evaluate the feedback, input, and current thinking of numerous people throughout the organization-resulting in better informed decisions that drive real competitive advantage.

Rhianna Collier is VP for the Software Division at SIIA. Follow the SIIA software division on Twitter @SIIASoftware

This interview was originally published in SIIA’s Vision From the Top. The 2013 Vision From the Top will be released at All About the Cloud, May 7-9 in San Francisco.

Are traditional on-premise mega-vendors really committed to Cloud, or is it just a strategy to perpetuate and protect their on-premise legacy?

All major analyst groups confirm high demand for Cloud services. In 2011, Gartner reported that the Cloud is the number one technology affecting IT. Forrester Research reported that over the next 12 months the majority of companies plan to increase cloud spending. In 2012, the Cloud is no longer a novelty – customers and vendors are rapidly adopting the technology.

Mega-vendors typically follow technology trends instead of creating them. Cloud ERP Software follows this behavior. Mega-vendors are committed to Cloud offerings, but lag the market in terms of releasing products. This causes the market to doubt their commitment, but the complexity of building an offering may be more to blame than the commitment of the mega-vendors.

Committing to the Cloud requires a full company effort. Cloud vendors such as Acumatica have been working on our software for many years, but more importantly, we have been developing a business around SaaS and Cloud offerings. In addition to software, the Cloud requires a new business model, new sales techniques, new partnership models, and new support models.

To cope with these challenges, some mega-vendors have developed hosted versions of existing legacy software. These efforts are mostly stop gap measures to enter the market. Hosted legacy software provides some of the benefits of Cloud such as outsourced IT and remote access, but doesn’t deliver the same advantages as a web-based application that is designed specifically for the Cloud. A web-based solution has several advantages over hosted legacy software. First, it eliminates client software to reduce IT and maintenance costs. Second, cloud solutions provide access from anywhere without the complexities of VPNs or remote access software. Third, cloud-based systems are designed to minimize network traffic and deliver data to mobile devices. And finally, systems designed for Cloud have security models to ensure that a compromised client will not impact the integrity of the system.

The challenges associated with developing a Cloud application and changing organizational behavior cause mega-vendors to launch stop-gap products to get to the market quickly. This gives the appearance that they are not fully committed. But, commitment to the Cloud is a long-term undertaking. There are several things that mega-vendors can do to expedite their delivery process …

The mega-vendors are buying up pure-play SaaS companies. Will they succeed in using those acquisitions to help change their companies to the SaaS culture and business model?

There are two challenges associated with moving to the Cloud – software challenges and organizational challenges. Companies can solve the software challenge by purchasing a pure Cloud vendor or by utilizing a software development platform developed specifically for Cloud applications. The organizational challenges need to be solved through training, hiring, and incentive plans.

In the ERP software space, mega-vendors have taken different approaches building their Cloud solutions. SAP elected to build their software in-house, Microsoft is entering the market through legacy hosting, Sage has purchased ERP solutions, Oracle is biding their time, and Visma is building an offering by using a cloud platform.

Time will tell the best way to acquire a Cloud solution, but we can gather some initial insights based on events over the past few years. Building a solution on your own is difficult as the experience of SAP ByDesign illustrates. After years of work and a product re-launch, SAP has little to show for their efforts.

The most interesting approach is the one being taken by Visma. Instead of re-developing core accounting functions on the Cloud, they opted to OEM our platform technology to build a new line of software that will be targeted to small and medium sized businesses. The benefits of this approach include faster development timelines, lower costs, and faster market entry. This approach also ensures that Visma will have a complete understanding of the software that they develop which will help with support and maintenance activities.

Using a Cloud development platform will also help the mega-vendor face the equally important task of transforming their organization. Purchasing a separate SaaS company will create a new and growing revenue stream, but will not transform the existing organization. Using a Cloud platform will involve the entire organization in the development and planning process so people are more interested and knowledgeable of the Cloud solution. This will improve the sales, support, and adoption of the new products.

One of the most difficult issues facing mega-vendors is managing their existing installed base of customers. Many mega-vendor customers want the benefits of cloud such as reduced IT costs, browserbased access, scalability, current and up-to-date software, but these customers have already paid for their software as well as software customizations. A properly designed Cloud solution requires a completely new code base. This means the mega-vendor must convince customers to purchase their new solution, perform a data migration, and pay to rebuild their customizations. For many mega-vendors this seems like a lot of work, but the risk of not doing it is that customers will begin investigating different vendors.

With relatively little advantage associated with moving existing customers, mega-vendors need to sell cloud solutions to new markets. This is a difficult task – especially if the company purchased a pure-SaaS player. Sales teams that understand the intricacies of existing software will not know the new software or the new sales process. Training can help solve these problems, but unless the commission plans are changed and new people are hired, sales people will follow the path of least resistance and sell the legacy (non-Cloud) solution.

A combination of OEM development, intense sales training, new commission plans for recurring revenue, and partnerships with service/hosting providers will help mega-vendors market and sell Cloud solutions.

Rhianna Collier is VP for the Software Division at SIIA. Follow the SIIA software division on Twitter @SIIASoftware