Think of the CxO's & leaders you know (who are 40+), how many of those people were the 'consulting kids on the bus'? Many, right? The next generation of young professionals is going to have an interesting experience, will they ever really know 'the job' or will the most prompt savvy lead the way?
Super interesting - I am not sure on the demise of systems of record though. I still think that companies will want and need a way to unify their systems of action which historically have disparate schemas and data models. If anything I see them becoming even MORE important (but fortunately easier to build and maintain) because without that layer, companies end up with a fragmented mess which limits their ability to run robust ML models and enable cross-functional AI and automations. I also think that having this layer lets you be more agile and swap in and out systems of action much more easily as the landscape changes. Even in a future state that the action systems schema are completely personalized to a single business, I don’t see one system of action covering all the ground that the business needs to become the system of record. For example, an advertising platform would not have data structures/schema for email or sales cadences; But if you’re running an ABX motion, then you need to associate those ad impressions/clicks/etc to an account as one type of activity in your scoring model along with those email opens or whatever.
The system of record to me is the hub that unifies all the spokes - it ingests data from other systems, normalizes, joins, and most importantly syndicates back out. That is its “action” moreso than just data storage.
What am I missing though? Your POV is insanely interesting and I’d love to hear your feedback on this point.
Recent piece on Accenture's challenges reinforces the app software playbook point that SIs need to rapidly evolve their value delivery model to avoid extinction: https://medium.com/utopian/accenture-is-doomed-e70e9535908c
Think of the CxO's & leaders you know (who are 40+), how many of those people were the 'consulting kids on the bus'? Many, right? The next generation of young professionals is going to have an interesting experience, will they ever really know 'the job' or will the most prompt savvy lead the way?
Super interesting - I am not sure on the demise of systems of record though. I still think that companies will want and need a way to unify their systems of action which historically have disparate schemas and data models. If anything I see them becoming even MORE important (but fortunately easier to build and maintain) because without that layer, companies end up with a fragmented mess which limits their ability to run robust ML models and enable cross-functional AI and automations. I also think that having this layer lets you be more agile and swap in and out systems of action much more easily as the landscape changes. Even in a future state that the action systems schema are completely personalized to a single business, I don’t see one system of action covering all the ground that the business needs to become the system of record. For example, an advertising platform would not have data structures/schema for email or sales cadences; But if you’re running an ABX motion, then you need to associate those ad impressions/clicks/etc to an account as one type of activity in your scoring model along with those email opens or whatever.
The system of record to me is the hub that unifies all the spokes - it ingests data from other systems, normalizes, joins, and most importantly syndicates back out. That is its “action” moreso than just data storage.
What am I missing though? Your POV is insanely interesting and I’d love to hear your feedback on this point.
Great perspective, Brett. Gonna be fun (and scary) watching this play out. How long is the fuse?!!!
David, I think it is shorter than most anticipate.