Episodes

Truth time! On a scale of 1 to 10, rate your corporate social responsibility program. If it’s below 5 (you know who you are), our experts may inspire you to raise the bar in 2013. Daniel Elliott: “International corporate volunteer programs are a win-win-win proposition. The host organizations gain access to pro bono world-class consulting services, volunteers gain a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience, and companies enhance their brand and increase exposure to new markets.” Rebecca Wang: “The ...

Your company’s Social Media IQ. Do you know the score?If you haven’t checked recently, or it’s embarrassingly low, do something now – yes, this second day of 2013.

Although 2012 holiday gift-giving is officially over, we’ve got another present for you: Game-Changers 2013 Predictions – Part 2. Yes, more than a dozen thought leaders (guests on previous Coffee Break and In the Cloud programs) will gaze into the SAP Game-Changers Radio crystal ball, joining our 14 experts from last week’s program. Their collective gift is a smorgasbord of insights into the technologies, strategies, people and trends that can help you grow your business and compete better in 20...

What’s on your holiday business wish list this year? If it’s a crystal ball to help you predict what 2013 will bring for your company, we’ve got the next best thing. Today and next week, more than two dozen thought leaders from previous Coffee Break and In the Cloud programs will gather to gaze into the SAP Game-Changers Radio crystal ball. Their gift to you: a grab-bag of insights into the technologies, strategies, people and trends that can help you grow and compete better next year and beyond...

Social entrepreneurship. Yes, good things do come in small packages. The experts speak. Alexandra van der Ploeg: “Donating money is easy, volunteering in the traditional sense is easy, but is it effective? Corporate social responsibility should not be about philanthropy, but about leveraging capital, technology or talent to truly create an impact in the communities we work in.” Anne B. Evans: “Social entrepreneurship is love and respect in action.” Patrick Furlong: “I believe in the importance o...

Banks and big data. Risky business, according to our experts. Simon Paris: “As reported more or less daily, banks continue to face multiple risk and compliance challenges – are they not willing or not able to do proper risk and compliance management?” Ralph Silva: “Banks have to find some humility and realise that retailers, auto companies and grocery chains are far better at managing and mining data than they are. Steal it if you can.” Jane Griffin: “It’s understanding the risks in the market a...

Corporate banking. If your treasury department is in a stranglehold with your bank, you’re not alone. Richard Walker: “For commercial banks, the imperative is on improving customer experience and becoming easier to do business with through ease of integration, data and process transparency...” Olli Kähkönen: “When you walk through a storm, hold your chin up high...At the end of the storm is a golden sky... (Lyrics: You’ll Never Walk Alone) Robert Grimes: “With everything from supermarket chains ...

UI (user interface) is king. Why? If software UI is not beautiful, easy, intuitive– and fun– even the most brilliant engineers and designers will fail to please their intended business or consumer end-user audience. The experts speak.

Charge! If you’re a greenie eying an EV (electric vehicle) as your next car, there’s a lot to consider: battery pack size, driving range of plug-in hybrids like C-Max Energi or Volt vs. all-electric Leaf, power grid impacts, ongoing costs and more. The experts speak: Christine Hertzog: “A consumer-centric EV market maturity model could help accelerate EV adoption. Alaa Owaineh: “The world is increasingly urban, and cities are an important part of any strategy to build smarter, more sustainable e...

Selling. Today’s savvy salesperson must combine many skills: a gatherer-analyst of customer and competitor data; social business guru; collaboration champion; and much more. Our experts speak. Barry Trailer: “There is work to do in every sale. Imagine holding your hands two feet apart. The more work you do ‘selling’ – identifying key buying influences, needs and personal wins, establishing and elevating relationships, etc. – the less ‘negotiating’ you need to do. So, if you do 18” of selling, yo...

What’s in a name? Plenty, for today’s CIO. Why? The role is changing so much, so often that it’s hard to know what the “I” means at any time. The experts speak. Steve Romero: “Calls for the ‘new CIO’ are not new at all. CIO Magazine’s State of the CIO ‘07 survey resulted in the identification of four distinct CIO archetypes: Business Leader, Innovation Agent, Operational Expert, Turnaround Artist. In 2011, its 4 Personas of the Next Generation CIO were Chief Infrastructure Officer…Integration Of...

Education. How do we equip our kids to succeed in a tech-driven world? Kim Jones/ Curriki: Textbooks are becoming as obsolete as the rotary dial phone Kim Saxe/Nueva School: “The Internet and technology (such as Skype) supports the teaching of more open-ended and complex projects than ever before.” Curtis Johnson/“Disrupting Class” author: “The role of teachers will see profound changes – all good… from a qualified source of knowledge dispensing information to largely passive students (in rows o...

Subsidiaries. Straight path to market expansion or potentially tangled ecosystem? The experts speak. Steve King/Emergent Research: “For the first time in modern history, the developing world, not the developed world, is the global engine driving economic growth. This, coupled with the rapidly increasing use of social technologies, is fundamentally changing the relationship between companies and their foreign subsidiaries. Erich Joachimsthaler/Vivaldi Partners: “As internet analyst Mary Meeker sa...

Today’s buzz term: “BI” – business intelligence. Oxymoron? Or game-changer that can make your company smarter, more agile, able to leap over tall competitors in a single bound? Continuing our Apr. 4 and May 9 discussions, we’ll revisit why even the best intelligence needs a strategy, and look at big data, analytics, cloud, single version of the truth and more. The experts say: Brian Sommer / Techventive: “Detectives have hypotheses and working theories they try to prove or disprove. Why shouldn'...

“Are you working hard or hardly working?” goes the old saying. Today, we’re seeing a massive shift in how people work due to the co-impact of big data, mobile, cloud, and social media. Are you feeling it yet? Our experts speak: Alan Lepofsky / Constellation RG: “New technologies such as in-memory database, mobile, and cloud are transforming the way people work.” Richard Edwards / Ovum: “Often using their own mobile devices and free-to-use cloud-based community collaboration solutions, employees ...

M2M. Rise of the machines. The promise of a world of connected devices, where machines of all types and sizes can autonomously communicate with each other. Don’t believe it’s a reality yet? Global M2M revenue is projected to soar from $121 million in 2010 to $948 billion by 2020, the year Ericsson predicts the number of connected devices will reach 50 billion. Our experts have a lot to say. Jason Sumner, EIU: “M2M is going to be big. We have heard this before but there are reasons to believe it’...

Social communities and storytelling. The connection? Ask the experts.Rachel Happe, The Community Roundtable: “Social communities leverage an increasingly expensive asset - people - by allowing them to work out loud, connect with more people, establish trust, and find relevant information and solutions more quickly. Our job as community sponsors is to co-create value and be the storytellers of that value. It is no longer a story about us alone, but about that collaborative journey.” Sean O’Drisco...

Factory of the past vs. the future. Does Charlie Chaplin’s struggling Little Tramp in the 1936 film “Modern Times” represent today’s factory worker and the shop floor scenario? No, according to IDC’s Bob Parker. “Recent research conducted by IDC Manufacturing Insights shows that manufacturing employees care deeply about quality, and management truly appreciates their team's skills and dedication. The age of contentious labor/management relations is over in manufacturing. SAP’s Mike Lackey is opt...

Right Time Experiences. Huge business potential for you, but mobile solutions require business insight, technical chops and strong design to get it right.

You’re a game-changer! You’ve created the new product or service of the millennium, but have no money to take it to market. Your best options: beg your FFF (family, friends, fools) circle, tap an angel for seed money, or convince a venture capitalist to invest millions. Our experts have a lot to say. Chris O’Connor / Taptera : “You've got to have a pretty face (user experience) to get attention; the old ‘desktop’ solution isn't very sexy with VCs.” Sanjay Parthawarathy / Investor: “When the VC’s...

Digital marketing. Your increasingly digitally-smart customers expect more from your website than being able to buy something. They’re demanding a relevant, personalized browsing experience with new product discovery, research, price comparisons and feedback exchange. But if your company is just going through the motions of ecommerce, you’ll lose them fast. Our experts can help you get there. Glenn Conradt: “Companies need to start incorporating contextualized content into the e-commerce experie...

Sales transformation. A catch phrase “for virtually every C-level executive in the race to find answers to questions about sales and earnings growth, positioning and differentiation; even survival,” says Bob Nicols, author of The Journey to Sale Transformation: Twenty-five Axioms for Becoming a Trusted Partner to your Customers. Bob and other experts have a lot to say about why and how your sales organization needs to change...now. Bob Nicols, AXIOM Sales Force Development: “Sales is the most br...

M2M. Rise of the machines. The promise of a world of connected devices, where machines of all types and sizes can autonomously communicate with each other. Don’t believe it’s a reality yet? Global M2M revenue is projected to soar from $121 million in 2010 to $948 billion by 2020, the year Ericsson predicts the number of connected devices will reach 50 billion. Our experts have a lot to say. Jason Sumner, EIU: “M2M is going to be big. We have heard this before but there are reasons to believe it’...

Utilities. How “smart” are they about the smart meter data they can now read and its value to the consumer? Our experts weigh in. Roque Marinho: “With the smart meter being part of operations...utilities have to cope with the fact that there is no turning back on the ‘quantum leap’ on the multitude of reads.” Stuart Ravens: “Smartness begins and ends with analyzing the vast volumes of data created in a smart grid deployment.” Christine Hertzog: “There’s not much research about how much consumers...