I'm not sure if Gartner does 'rock star' analysts but Nick Jones generates more buzz than most. Today at Symposium he contends that: Your Customers and Users are Revolting!
First Nick nails his audience by describing the session as a maverick presentation. In Gartner terms that means containing views not officially endorsed by the company. We all nestle back in our seats.
One of his key points is to warn his audience of CIOs that their user communities, whether customers, employees or partners, are being massively empowered by technology. This empowerment is also fuelling a sea change in expectation that will make them a nightmare (my choice of words) to satisfy and manage.
Nick is spot on. We can see it all around us. The days when the IT Guy was worshipped for dropping that first chunky PC and a copy of Office on your desk are long gone. Each miracle of technology inevitably fades into the fabric of day-to-day life.
So far, so good, but probably not news to this audience. Nick continues to explore this theme. He contends that consumer-led technology change will explode the bastion that was the corporate IT infrastructure.
In simple terms, that new graduate intake you just hired aren't aware of where, or when, they cross the lines between their personal infrastructure (their Hotmail/Gmail, their IM, their Skype, their home network and storage, their own WiFi access or mobile device). The security and compliance issues are enough to make any CIO weep. Luckily, in the next sixty minutes Nick goes on to give them more detailed advice on essential actions and strategies.
For marketeers there is opportunity and challenge in all this change. This is the Me Generation, massively empowered by new consumer-driven technologies, which are offered up to them through new business models (that means free, or very, very cheap).
But the me-centred consumer is also battered into selfishness by work:life pressures and has lost the polite inhibitions of its parent's generation. They expect all of that technology to just be there, to be always on, always accessible and immedialtely responsive. For them, good enough is indeed good enough, but failure to cross that standard quality bar will incur their wrath. And now they have means to damage the corporates who can't measure up.
Outside the organization, consumer action can be direct and instantaneous. Ask that most treasured and loved tech icon, Apple, how long it took for its customers to fall out of love with it, and take the route of direct confrontation after experiencing manufacturing problems with the iPod Nano.
Inside the organization, well these same consumers arrive at work and become your employees. Try explaining to them why corporate IT policy means they can't connect their new fashion statement of a mobile device to the network. They won't listen. They may possibly think about moving jobs. They will probably connect it behind your back anyway.
Managing this snakepit of outrageous expectations and new risk exposures could turn out to be a nightmare.
Fortunately - reverting back to the session - Nick has lots more to say on the key trends and technologies that CIOs need to be tracking, the essential strategies they must take, and who among the vendors might emerge as either winners and losers.
Its a thought provoking session, he has earnt his healthy applause. We stumble out into the bright Barcelona sunshine.