We have heard from many analysts that this is HR’s moment to shine. For HRTECH vendors too, this is an opportunity to prove that their stuff really works. eLearning consumption is way up, for instance, as is use of survey tools. Processes like Kurzarbeit in Germany and furloughing in the UK mean that flexible and well configured payroll and time management systems show their value. Organizations that have their administrative processes well organized are far more agile and flexible when it really matters.
I worry though, when the desire to ‘innovate’ exceeds the quality of the data that the organization has about their employees and workers. Let’s start with some basic ones.
You would like to provide specific guidance to all line managers that manage contractors in their departments.
You have decided that independent contractors that have worked at least 20 hours a month for more than six months before the plant shut down will receive a hardship payment.
You would like your contractors to watch a new health and safety video before they return to work, and formally confirm that they have watched it.
You wish to model out alternative transport options for employees and contractors to get them to work when your main plant re-opens next week.
You would like to send several non-medical masks to all your workforce at home, so that when they return to the office it is easier for them follow safe guidelines.
You would like to send a gift to your retired employees.
Before you start, check if you actually have an up to date home address that you can actually post something to for all your workers. The sad fact is that many organizations don’t. No amount of fancy technology will help if your core master data is shoddy. Do you even know who your independent contractors are?
Some of those same organizations that can’t track home addresses think that they can predict workforce churn through some AI magic, or worse, track and predict covid exposure in the workforce.
If the postal code is on-premise and wrong, it is wrong. If the postal code is in the cloud, and wrong, it is still wrong.
Before you post stuff to the wrong John Smith, insist on an accuracy audit of your core HR data, pull a 100 or so random records and have them checked (bearing in mind GDPR etc). But start closer to home, and look at your own record. If your own key 30-40 data items aren’t spot on, it is very unlikely anyone else’s would be. If you haven’t watched the health and safety video yourself, it would be tough to expect your workforce to be held to a higher standard.
I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the “New normal” they can expect as the economy wakes up.
This time it is Aneel Bhusri, CEO of Workday.
He talks about leadership during this crisis and likely changes in executive suites as healthcare becomes a major market opportunity and bigger HR challenge for every entity. He talks about conversations with fellow leaders on how best to re-open work places as the economy wakes up. He describes acrobatics in his customer base like running a million-person payroll and financial closes with nobody in the office. He also describes how cloud applications have scaled very well during the crisis and easily supported work-from-home efforts of customers.
Aneel is one of the nicest guys in the industry and while he credits his mentor and co-founder, Dave Duffield for that trait, his calmness comes across throughout the recording. Workday has done backflips for its employees and customers during the crisis – he describes some of each.
There is a definite feel-good, “be kind to each other”, “have fun” vibe during the conversation. It is a small detail in the conversation, but I particularly appreciated his generosity with the Zoom background of Giorgio’s Pizzeria, one of his favorite comfort-food places and his hope they survive the crisis.
I could almost hear ‘Peaceful, easy feeling” by the Eagles playing as I was talking to him. Enjoy.
As a data-driven investor, we constantly track data. Fundraising data. Market data. Economic data. Over the last month, one question persists —how will COVID-19 affect venture capital fundraising particularly in the Future of Work?
We decided to look at our data to understand VC fundraising over the last month and compare last month’s data with the same period last year. We also wanted to analyze a full year of data to compare year-over-year trends. The early indications suggest the fundraising environment has NOT changed as a result of the pandemic. In fact, as you see the data below, if you compare fundraising in Future of Work companies in April 2019 vs. April 2020, it was actually up 40% year over year.
Please keep in mind a few considerations. First, the data is based on actual fundraising announcements so there may be a lagging affect from when the actual investments were made. Nonetheless, we believe a few things are happening…
In the “follow the herd” mentality of Silicon Valley, remote work has become a broad-based theme across all stages of investors.
Highly competitive deals will still get funded quickly with little-to-no impact on timing or valuations.
The large household names — those that have raised outsized funds over the last 2 years — are taking advantage of the uncertainty and being very opportunistic to land deals previously not in market.
That said, we also believe…
Deals are still getting done but a “reset” is just starting to happen that will have a lagging effect on venture fundraising later this year.
Valuations are increasingly being scrutinized and deals will inevitable take more time to close with increased dilution for entrepreneurs.
Investor will be going to the edges, either early seed and later stage. We foresee many companies at risk in the mid-stages as a result of the “frothy” fundraising environment of the last few years. Many companies are “at risk” as a result of high burn rates, high valuations, increased concerns on churn, and stalled net new bookings.
I had a chance to share notes ideas with some fantastic investors focused on the future of work including Roy Bahat (Bloomberg Beta), Kara Nortman (Upfront Ventures), Naomi Ionita (Menlo Ventures), and Lan Xuezhao (Basis Set Ventures). I encourage you to watch a replay of the discussion (coming shortly). Even though I broke Roy’s “no predictions” format, it was a great discussion with wide-ranging topics on remote work, the impact of government, and the future of “shareholder capitalism”.
Contactless, Direct To Consumer, Buy Online Pickup Anywhere, Automation, and Subscription Ready Drive Post Pandemic Response
Matrix Commerce analyzes the disruptive pressures influencing the commerce paradigm. Commerce faces rapidly changing business models and new payment options that are often misunderstood and poorly integrated.
Matrix commerce (TM) means the fusing of demand signals and supply chains in an increasingly complex world where buyers seek frictionless buying experiences. Friction in this new world originates from new regulatory requirements such as sustainability, taxation, and privacy.
As commerce continues to evolve around buyer preferences, channels, demand signals, supply chains, payment options, enablers, and big data will converge to create Matrix Commerce. Matrix Commerce spans across disciplines as people, process, and technologies continue to transform today’s commerce models.
Constellation has seen significant push for direct to customer, contactless commerce, buy online pick up curbside, digitization of channels, subscription and services ready, and automation and AI enablement. Conversations with matrix commerce business and technology leaders have led to 12 key trends in the post pandemic world:
Diversify supply chains. The norm was a global supply chain with outsourced operations and heavy concentration in regions such as China. International relations and security concerns have shifted priorities to diversifying production and distribution. Business continuity risk management has many organizations moving to a near shore model and also ensuring domestic availability.
Double down on demand planning. Sales and operations planning (S&OP) have never been hotter. Demand planning is a business process that forecasts demand for a product or service. The result is a more efficient production and delivery to stake holders.
Focus on top 20% of SKU’s. Leaders have identified their highest volume SKU’s as well as their most profitable SKU’s to determine which products to double down on. Prioritization and focus have enabled organizations to ensure supply meets demand while some operations are furloughed or shut down.
Digitize channels. The shift to mobile , voice assistant enabled, and online ordering has never been more important. Digitization enables contactless commerce and frees up FTE’s to focus on core operations.
Build subscription business models. Organizations with subscription business models have fared the best with minimal cancellations. Identify where a product, service, experience, or outcome can be brought down to bite size chunks in a subscription model.
Move to direct to consumer. From B2B organizations to organizations that have never sold direct, the shift to D2C is very real. Shifting from selling bulk to smaller packaging sizes will be the toughest challenge for B2B organizations used to high volume, large quantity orders.
Optimize pricing. Now’s the time to invest in pricing optimization solutions. Understand the factors to pricing elasticity and understand how to optimize pricing models by channel, region, industry, economic trend, and supply.
Drive up automation. Decentralized work environments have sped up the need for automation. With scarce labor on hand and the need to make more rapid decisions, investments in both AI and automation have increased.
Build dynamic feedback loops for personalization. Learn how to use attribution, context, dynamic choices, A/B testing to identify long term patterns to create digital feedback loops. Determine how to apply AI to improve personalization.
Move to event driven architectures/ micro services. Upgrade your architecture to support the latest approach. EDAs promote the creation, production, detection, consumption of, and reaction to events. These events can be mined for improved AI and orchestration of personalized journeys
Accelerate payments. Improve your payments infrastructure to support contactless commerce. Upgrade your security systems with better payment gateways and advanced billing capabilities. Invest in billing platforms that enable subscription capabilities and accurate revenue recognition.
Deliver contactless commerce. From buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) to buy online pickup at curb (BOPAC), to other means for prepayment and delivery, the rush to contactless commerce has never been so great. Buyers expect zero tampering and contamination of their products during delivery. Organizations must support contactless commerce variants as conditions change.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud Four Quick Start Solutions Address Immediate Requirements For PostPandemic Commerce
Salesforce announced the availability of four solutions that meet today’s post pandemic requirements for commerce. The four Quick Start Commerce solutions include a bundle of key solutions and implementation partners or managed services. Key launch partners include Accenture, Astound Commerce, Avionos, Capgemini, Deloitte, Docmation, and OSF Digital. Here are the four Salesforce Quick Start Commerce Cloud solutions:
Direct to consumer and essential goods (Pricing: starts at $195k/year). With supply chain resiliency a significant challenge and retail channels impacted, manufacturers, brands, and enterprises must reach customers. Leading organizations have accelerated their digitization of channels. This solution delivers key commerce capabilities, order management and managed services to help consumer good and essential businesses to be digital channel ready and profitable.Products include B2C commerce, Salesforce Order Management, and Storefront Reference Architecture app for consumer and essential goods. Pricing includes implementation partners who will assist with site setup (branding and configuration); merchant setup; data integration, price, inventory; storefront management, product catalog, and search;payment integration; and tax integration.
B2B consumer, essential goods, and MFG (Pricing: starts at $99k/year). Customers expect immersive experiences across all channels. This quick start enables digital ordering and more self-service opti0ns. B2B sellers seek to quickly launch transactional websites.Customers receive a quick implementation of commerce cloud. The solution includes online catalogs, reorders, and product recommendations. Managed services (with 3 month commitment) include site setup and administration, product, pricing, and order load. In addition, the offering adds store front management, product catalog, and search. Most ISV integrations are included.
Grocery and food services (Pricing: starts at $390k per year). Buy online pickup anywhere has emerged as a post pandemic standard. In as little as 10 weeks gain sell online for curbside capabilities grocery and food service customers expect to have their deliveries safe, fresh, and ready.The offering includes Commerce Cloud, Salesforce Order Management, Picking App, and Managed Services. Key offerings include the B2C Commerce, Salesforce Order Management, Storefront Reference Architecture app for grocery and food service. Implementation partners will provide site setup (including branding and configuration); merchant setup; data integration, price, inventory; pricing application; storefront management, product catalog, and search; payment integration; and tax integration
Curbside and store pickup (Pricing: starts at $125k per year). Customers have prioritized safety and convenience and see curbside pickup. This program is different from the grocery and food services offering and designed for retail store operations.The curbside and store pickup solution can be implemented in 3 weeks. Curbside and Store Pickup bring together Salesforce Order Management and Commerce Portals (prebuilt associate app). Managed services include setup of stores and inventory lists on the B2C site; adding store selector on PDP, cart, and checkout; setup of flow and store pickup locations; payment integration, and configure store associates for last mile app.
Source: salesforce.com
The Bottom Line: Plan For Your Post Pandemic Response Now
Over the course of the next few weeks, the research team will provide specific details for each business theme. The need to create a response and playbook have never been greater. Learn from the current best practices and share your thoughts. Enclosed is the high level overview for guidance in creating your post pandemic playbook.
Salesforce.com Commerce Cloud has rolled out four key requirements that customers have asked for as they move forward in the post pandemic world. As the shift to digital channels, contactless, subscription models, automation, and AI take shape, Constellation expects that the winners in the post pandemic era will double down on investments and the losers will cease to exist.
I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the “New normal” they can expect as the economy wakes up.
This time it is Tamas Hevizi, Global Head of Private Equity at Automation Anywhere. He covers three very timely topics.
How bots, ML and other automation are helping with the massive volumes we are seeing during the COVID-19 crisis at banks processing emergency loans, the healthcare system handling tests, state unemployment offices handling applications and many more scenarios.
Using his long experience at SAP at Value Realization, he provides commentary on how to justify value from technology in a recessionary market.
Finally, he talks about the Private Equity market he has been part of for much of his career – how it has evolved in the last decade and how it is likely to change during this period.
I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the “New normal” they can expect as the economy wakes up.
This time it is Ray Lane who has had a remarkable career as exec at Oracle, Booz Allen and EDS, in board roles at HP and Carnegie-Mellon U, as investor at the iconic VC firm, Kleiner Perkins and now with his fund, GreatPoint Ventures. And I am just scratching the surface of other stuff he has done over his career. In the video below, we talk about leadership and acrobatics during this crisis, global trends and re-opening the US economy.
Listen to what he says because he is so generous.
He is generous to entrepreneurs. He says he likes to invest in the “jockey, not the horse”. When I asked him about acrobatics he has seen during this crisis he pointed to the CEO of one of his portfolio companies, Farmer’s Fridge. They sell fresh salads and snacks via kiosks in corporate cafeterias and airports. That market evaporated as travel dropped to near zero and everyone started working at home. The CEO could have furloughed most of his employees. Instead he started delivering food to hospitals and schools, which have struggled to find wholesome food as their cafeterias and meal services have shut down. The revenues are back to near prior peak. He also talked about Beyond Meat which is picking up on shortages in the meat supply chain.
He is generous to his partners – calls them operators. They certainly have that serial startup experience. He modestly calls himself a slouch in comparison. Actually, he is a Polymath – he mentions in passing the dinners with his family during the quarantine. He does not mention he is an accomplished fisherman and hunter, and could fend for his family anywhere, anytime.
He has been very generous to me over the years. The start of our relationship was rocky. I was a Gartner analyst, he was an Oracle executive. That pair, even in today’s world, is not cuddly to each other. But he saw beyond that and has made time for me often, for my books, or just to have a glass of wine every once in a while.
Listen to him because he is positive
While many of us have been miserable during the quarantine, and he is empathetic to those who have to manage young kids while trying to work from home, he talks about how much more productive he is on his Zoom board calls, in his recruiting and his meetings. He talks about having much more time for family and dogs. As he says, “what we are experiencing today, I hope that we can make 50% of it permanent”
He talks plenty about leadership traits he has used effectively over his career and what he looks for in his entrepreneurs. He talks about the big markets in IT and in wellness that he continues to be excited about and invests in. GreatPoint’s slogan on its website is “Make no little plans”
Listen to him because he is a patriot
When I asked him about global trends and politics around the pandemic, he invoked the US dependence on foreign oil in the early 2000s, and how domestic horizontal drilling changed that. I had written about his cleantech portfolio at Kleiner Perkins in The New Polymath. His investments would have done far better if oil and gas prices had stayed high. But fracking delivered energy independence to the US over the last decade. And he believes we can do the same with our other global supply chains now with similar innovations. He says funds which raise money this year and next will likely be the best performing this decade. You should hear his reasoning.
Ray ends the session with a timely message:
“..look if we are going up the open up our economy again the responsibility now transfers from the government to us…Get out …get back to work… bring all of these great technologies that we have seen during the COVID crisis ..bring them forward. I think you can operate in the month of May being socially responsible but let’s get the economy going again.”
I have known Ray for a while and he is no fan of big government, but both in the video and the conversations prior, I could hear his respect for leadership of many state Governors and the President during this stressful time. In our political divisiveness, we likely won’t thank them much. But in the private sector, as he says, we do need to grab the baton and get us out of the mess we find ourselves in. With his investments in healthcare, he has access to some of the best medical resources in the world. When he supports the economy opening up, he is fully aware of the health risks and wants us to be smart. As he says, leadership is about tough decisions around risk and reward.
And by the way, most C level executives I have been interviewing around the country are all talking about similar prudent opening of their facilities. They will continue with work from home wherever possible. Where physical locations need to be open ensure distancing, temperature checks, enhanced hygiene routines.
My wife saw the video and said wow, he is energetic for someone in his 70s, and you in comparison look a little subdued. Truth be told, I am nursing a chipped front implant that cannot be looked at till Monday morning. I was afraid I would cause it more damage if I was more animated:) Seriously, though, even if I had been 100%, I would have been quiet out of respect for the man.
One of the hardest things about running startups is you’re never sure who to listen to.
Your board members own big stakes in the company, but that doesn’t automatically align them with you. Your late-stage investors want low multiples on big numbers. Your early-stage investors want big multiples on small numbers. And they have their own specific needs driven by their funds and their partnerships. Your rank-and-file employees own relatively small stakes which, ceteris paribus, should make them want you to swing for the fences — but, in these days of decade-to-liquidity, you may have employees so jaded on equity compensation that they’d just like to keep their well-paying jobs.
Your executive team wants to hit their targets, earn their bonuses, and maybe some of them are deeply motivated by winning in the market, but maybe not. With a 0.5% to 1% share, a $500M exit can mean a $2.5M to $5.0M pop. Maybe some would prefer to take the early exit, upgrade the house in Menlo Park, and go do it again somewhere else, as opposed to riding it out for the long term.
In all such cases, you’ll be taking advice from business people who have gone before you, have had anywhere from some to considerable success, and interested in sharing their learnings with others. You know, people like me [1].
Look, I’m not going to argue that getting advice from successful people is a bad idea — it certainly seems preferable to the alternative — but I am going to point out a few caveats, most of which aren’t obvious in my estimation:
Successful people don’t actually know what made them successful. They know what they did. They know it worked. They have hunches and beliefs. Causality, not so much. Some of them can be quick to forget that, so you shouldn’t be [2]. There was no control group. If Marc Benioff carried a rabbit’s foot, would you?
Too many successful people are rinse/repeat [3]. I’m frankly surprised by how many successful people are chomping at the bit to do exactly what worked for them at their last company with total disregard for whether it applies to yours. Beware these folks. Interview question: so could you tell me about a situation where you wouldn’t do that? It’s not foolproof because most will catch the hint, so this is really something you need to listen for before asking. Do they diagnose-then-prescribe or prescribe without diagnosing?
Their situation was likely different from yours. In fact, in the land of disruption, as Kelly Wright points out in this podcast, it almost certainly was. Are you creating a new category without competition? Are you in an over-funded next-big-thing category? Are you competing against a big company transitioning product lines? Are you trying to get people to buy something they don’t believe they need or pick among alternatives when they know they do? Are you disrupting technology, business model, or both? Are you filling a need that is in the midst of being created the rise of another category?
Should you listen to these people? I think yes [4]. But try to find ones who have seen both success and failure, seen success in many situations not just one, and who are thoughtful about the specific situation a company is in, and approach both advising and their own prior success with humility.
# # #
[1] I am advising and/or have advised over 20 startups.
[2] One of my favorite quotes of this ilk is from now-deceased Harvard marketing professor, Theodore Levitt: Nothing in business is so remarkable as the conflicting variety of success formulas offered by its numerous practitioners and professors. And if, in the case of practitioners they’re not exactly “formulas,” they are explanations of “how we did it” implying with firm control over any fleeting tendencies toward modesty that “that’s how you ought to do it.” Practitioners filled with pride and money turn themselves into prescriptive philosophers, filled mostly with hot air.
[3] By the way, “I made $1B doing it this way” is one of the more difficult arguments you’re probably wise not to take on.
What better to blame – when all goes wrong – than the evil robotic thing you just inserted into your system. Many of you saw the recent article in ABA Banking Journal where they blamed RPA for the “burden on their processing system and diminishing of its capabilities”. We will discuss this debacle in a more detailed POV (stay tuned) but the crux of the issue here is a poorly run government IT function tinkering with software to try and process a mad scramble for many thousands of small business handouts from the recent Covid-19 stimulus package – and most likely in some weird virtual lockdown vacuum. And it appears woefully understaffed.
In short, APIs + humans + bots need to work within system parameters, or we’re always going to have failures of scale like this one.
RPA is a highly useful tool to support this environment, but please let’s start deploying it as part of the overall tool-box
As we’ve said of late, the digital workforce that wasn’t finally has its burning platform chance to shine. Since global lockdown commenced, we’ve been tracking, talking, and learning about the ways in which enterprises and their service and technology partners are using automation to help them function. One of the most prevalent use cases in recent weeks is in the banking and financial services sector where lenders are using automation, largely, RPA, to support loan processing for government-backed loans. RPA is helping lenders grapple with massive loan volumes and get them submitted quickly so loans can be approved and dispersed.
Insert monkey wrench.
The U.S. government’s Small Business Administration (SBA) application and approval portal was overwhelmed with demand as a second tranche of government funds were made available on April 27. The funds are intended to support loans for small and medium-sized businesses (administered via banks) as part of the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) during the Covid-19 pandemic. The SBA E-Tran system receives the loan applications and then the SBA processes and approves them. The system struggled to handle the new surge of applications coming through and repeatedly crashed. As of Tuesday, April 28, the SBA prohibited the use of RPA bots in the application process.
RPA fail, right? Not exactly. It is actually the overwhelming success of a blunt instrument.
The HFS team dug in and spoke with a variety of ecosystem players – banks, software companies, and service providers to get the straight scoop. We also reached out to the SBA, but they have not responded. We view this as a case of RPA being used as a blunt instrument allowing any bank that invested in RPA to automate loan application submissions. RPA very legitimately helped banks and lenders process scads of PPP loans. This presented two immediate issues:
The SBA E-Tran system crashed – it was way overburdened with hundreds of thousands of loan applications.
Banks with automation were potentially able to submit more loan applications than those without thus more effectively accessing a limited pool of stimulus funds.
The SBA responded in a super butt-covering mode with its “NO RPA!!” edict. It will still allow loans to be automatically processed through APIs. So now banks are scrambling to convert their RPA processes to API-led. And the SBA assigned one person. Yep, one person to field all requests for API access. We hope this poor beleaguered contact has some help, but banks have reported the API access option is “very slow”. To address the potential of access bias for those firms with automation – deemed to be the larger banks – the SBA designated an eight-hour window on April 29 for lenders with less than $1 billion in assets to submit loans.
Bottom line: This SBA debacle is why you need nuance and a toolbox approach to automation to get desired results.
It’s too easy to say RPA failed. It’s more complicated than that. Really RPA was a blunt instrument here – for its speed to solution and ability to swiftly process loan applications and it worked remarkably well. Too well. It swiftly overwhelmed SBA’s E-Tran system – which was doomed to be overwhelmed anyway by these unprecedented volumes in a short period of time. But RPA exacerbated it and potentially gave access advantage to automation-savvy firms. While access through SBA’s XML API may allow for more efficient loan submission rather than the RPA model of going through the user interface and clogging the narrow pipes, this did not have to be an ‘either or’ situation. APIs versus RPA is not the point. Automation always lives in an ecosystem with upstream and downstream impacts and these were not adequately addressed. A better approach would have been a toolbox approach that leveraged RPA for loan preparation and access into legacy systems in the lenders’ shops, APIs for submission and humans for oversight with some substantial volume throttling to give the SBA’s system half a chance at doing its job. Automation cannot live in a vacuum.
Gender Diversity & Future of Work Companies — We Can Do Better!
Since launching the Future of Work Global Index earlier this year, we have been pouring through the publicly available data on the companies within the index. Who are the outliers and why? What makes the strong performers unique? What are some unique metrics about the segment itself?
When we launched Acadian Ventures last year, we created our core investment thesis. “Diverse Companies Win” emerged as an important theme for our fund. As I was looking at the financial performance of the index companies, I was also curious to better understand diversity — in particular gender diversity — across the companies. Do companies that focus on workforce productivity, performance, and progression “walk the walk” when it comes to diversity?
The short answer is “NO”!
Source: The Acadian Company
Sadly, most companies on the Future of Work Global Index lack gender diversity at both the board and executive level. In aggregate, of the 31 companies listed on the index, only 23.5% of executive teams are female. The average executive team included 10.8 individuals but only 2.7 of those individuals are female.
Gender diversity at the board level was even worse. Less than 1/4th (21.9%) of board members were female. On average, the board composition was 6.4 male versus 1.9 female. The most depressing statistic is only one company had a female CEO — Hayden Brown of Upwork — and she was appointed in just the last 6 months.
Source: The Acadian Company
If you look at the data on a company basis, gender diverse executive teams varied widely. It should be no surprise that Upwork’s executive team is 55% female. Other gender diverse executive teams include Fiverr (40%), Smartsheet (38%), and 51job (38%). A few companies stood out for their lack of executive gender diversity including Atlassian (0%) and Paycom (0%). Interestingly, 5 companies, all based outside of the United States, lacked any female board members.
Lastly, we wanted to see if there was any correlation between financial performance and gender diversity. Unfortunately, we aren’t yet witnessing any correlation between financial performance, as measured by revenue multiple, and the percentage of female executives. I would expect a higher correlation of diversity and performance over time.
It should be noted that many of the companies lacking executive and board diversity have recently launched comprehensive diversity and inclusion programs. Of note, we credit companies like Atlassian that have active, company-wide diversity initiatives and publicly share their diversity statistics.
Suffice to say we need our leading companies to put great focus, emphasis, and priority on diversity at all levels. We encourage all companies — public and private — to share the diversity programs and results because the rising tide will lift all boats.
Note: The gender diversity data is based on publicly available information from the respective companies website and listing of their executives as of March 31, 2020. The financial performance data is based on market data as of April 21, 2020.
Understand The Key Priorities In A Post Pandemic Response
Over the past seven weeks, Constellation Research, Inc. has fielded hundreds of calls from CXO’s about what to consider in the business and technology response to the coronavirus and Covid-19 fall out.
The conversations with clients and the analysis from the research team have resulted in a Post Pandemic Playbook that considers the context of public health and economic health with (see Figure 1):
People and process
Technology
Business models and economy
Politics and legislation
Figure 1. The Post Pandemic Playbook
Source: Constellation Research, Inc.
Building off of Constellation’s PESTEL frameworks, the result is an actionable playbook of what’s required for success for executives seeking guidance in Constellation’s business themes (see Figure 2)
Figure 2. Constellation’s Business Themes
Source: Constellation Research, Inc.
AI, Digital, and Cloud Drive Matrix Commerce Pandemic Playbook
Matrix Commerce analyzes the disruptive pressures influencing the commerce paradigm. Commerce faces rapidly changing business models and new payment options that are often misunderstood and poorly integrated.
Matrix commerce (TM) means the fusing of demand signals and supply chains in an increasingly complex world where buyers seek frictionless buying experiences. Friction in this new world originates from new regulatory requirements such as sustainability, taxation, and privacy.
As commerce continues to evolve around buyer preferences, channels, demand signals, supply chains, payment options, enablers, and big data will converge to create Matrix Commerce. Matrix Commerce spans across disciplines as people, process, and technologies continue to transform today’s commerce models.
Conversations with matrix commerce business and technology leaders have led to 12 key trends in the post pandemic world:
Diversify supply chains. The norm was a global supply chain with outsourced operations and heavy concentration in regions such as China. International relations and security concerns have shifted priorities to diversifying production and distribution. Business continuity risk management has many organizations moving to a near shore model and also ensuring domestic availability.
Double down on demand planning. Sales and operations planning (S&OP) have never been hotter. Demand planning is a business process that forecasts demand for a product or service. The result is a more efficient production and delivery to stake holders.
Focus on top 20% of SKU’s. Leaders have identified their highest volume SKU’s as well as their most profitable SKU’s to determine which products to double down on. Prioritization and focus have enabled organizations to ensure supply meets demand while some operations are furloughed or shut down.
Digitize channels. The shift to mobile , voice assistant enabled, and online ordering has never been more important. Digitization enables contactless commerce and frees up FTE’s to focus on core operations.
Build subscription business models. Organizations with subscription business models have fared the best with minimal cancellations. Identify where a product, service, experience, or outcome can be brought down to bite size chunks in a subscription model.
Move to direct to consumer. From B2B organizations to organizations that have never sold direct, the shift to D2C is very real. Shifting from selling bulk to smaller packaging sizes will be the toughest challenge for B2B organizations used to high volume, large quantity orders.
Optimize pricing. Now’s the time to invest in pricing optimization solutions. Understand the factors to pricing elasticity and understand how to optimize pricing models by channel, region, industry, economic trend, and supply.
Drive up automation. Decentralized work environments have sped up the need for automation. With scarce labor on hand and the need to make more rapid decisions, investments in both AI and automation have increased.
Build dynamic feedback loops for personalization. Learn how to use attribution, context, dynamic choices, A/B testing to identify long term patterns to create digital feedback loops. Determine how to apply AI to improve personalization.
Move to event driven architectures/ micro services. Upgrade your architecture to support the latest approach. EDAs promote the creation, production, detection, consumption of, and reaction to events. These events can be mined for improved AI and orchestration of personalized journeys
Accelerate payments. Improve your payments infrastructure to support contactless commerce. Upgrade your security systems with better payment gateways and advanced billing capabilities. Invest in billing platforms that enable subscription capabilities and accurate revenue recognition.
Deliver contactless commerce. From buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) to buy online pickup at curb (BOPAC), to other means for prepayment and delivery, the rush to contactless commerce has never been so great. Buyers expect zero tampering and contamination of their products during delivery. Organizations must support contactless commerce variants as conditions change.
The Bottom Line: Plan For Your Post Pandemic Response Now
Over the course of the next few weeks, the research team will provide specific details for each business theme. The need to create a response and playbook have never been greater. Learn from the current best practices and share your thoughts. Enclosed is the high level overview for guidance in creating your post pandemic playbook.
We have heard from many analysts that this is HR’s moment to shine. For HRTECH vendors too, this is an opportunity to prove that their stuff really works. eLearning consumption is way up, for instance, as is use of survey tools. Processes like Kurzarbeit in Germany and furloughing in the UK mean that flexible and well configured payroll and time management systems show their value. Organizations that have their administrative processes well organized are far more agile and flexible when it really matters.
What better to blame – when all goes wrong – than the evil robotic thing you just inserted into your system. Many of you saw the 
