R "Ray" Wang
R "Ray" Wang
Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business – Ram Menon, Tibco
Welcome to an on-going series of interviews with the people behind the technologies in Social Business. The interviews provide insightful points of view from a customer, industry, and vendor perspective. A full list of interviewees can be found here.
Ram Menon - Executive Vice President, Tibco
Biography
Ram Menon is Executive Vice President at TIBCO. In this role he is responsible for all global marketing activities including product marketing and strategy, corporate communications, field marketing, customer programs, partner enablement, and branding worldwide.
With Ram at the helm, TIBCO has won numerous marketing awards for its creative yet cost effective campaigns while generating one of the highest marketing ROIs according to leading analyst benchmarks. Moreover, analyst, business and marketing audiences have sought his insights on innovation and technology.
In addition to this role he leads the strategy, product development and sales of two product groups, TIBCO’s Enterprise Social computing platform – tibbr and TIBCO’s Real time Loyalty business.- Loyalty Lab. In the early years of TIBCO’s growth, Ram served as TIBCO's Chief Strategist, defining and executing new product strategy and M&A direction. He has been with TIBCO since 1998.
The Interview
1. Tell me in 2 minutes or less why Social Computing is changing the world for your customers.
Ram Menon (RM): Social computing is allowing our customers to improve the speed of information sharing in the flow of work.
For example: An energy company, a customer of ours explains this well: For those who are focused on drilling on the high seas or in remote regions, sharing information is an acquired taste. While drilling in the North Sea a drill bit can take on a strange shape. By posting a quick picture of the drill bit on their social tool, a drilling engineer can elicit an opinion from another colleague who may have seen the same wear in an operation in Australia and instantly explain the “why”. That’s powerful….really powerful. Social computing is therefore creating value in new and exciting ways.
2. What makes social computing disruptive?
RM: Think about this – the average employee in a global 1000 company makes 19 phone calls, logs into six enterprise systems, and still has to deal with physical files and innumerable meetings all in a days work. Despite the billions of dollars spent on IT systems, the average employee’s work routine consists of a variety of log on and log off tasks- all in a quest to seek information to make better, faster decisions That exquisitely designed status report designed by existing IT systems is usually 30 pages long and out of date the minute its spits out of your printer. Social computing now allows the information you seek to find you- all on your wall.
What if you had these systems post to your wall that the invoice you were waiting for has been processed? It saves you 2 calls to Bob in accounting several reminder emails. What if you knew your customer just had a Stage -1 emergency when the system posted the request on your wall in real-time and you were able to post back in real-time on how to solve it, as opposed to the daily log-in to see problems and then arranging a conference call.
Now that’s disruptive…
3. What is the next big thing in Social Business software?
RM: I think the word you will hear more and more is Context. Some companies have more data stored than the US Library of Congress. We have data, we have people, we have scads of information and delivery to devices is a cinch with 5 billion mobile phones in use in 2010.
If not handled right- the metaphor of the Social Business wall could become a dumping ground for a massive flow of information- events, activity streams, notifications. The trick is the ability to deliver fine grain information streams to your wall that is relevant to you- at a particular point in time. This requires different ways to segment information streams like the subject-based approach TIBCO advocates, designing systems to take into account profile /location/propensity to consume and drive context. Because without context -information is not actionable.
4. What are you doing that's disruptive for Social Computing?
RM: We believe that enterprise social computing is more than following people. In addition to people, we are trying to combine enterprise data, unify Communications as well as your multiple social networks to offer a universal Inbox- your command line for the enterprise in a sharing world. Let me explain on 3 points.
Enterprise data.
What if I could have colleagues, enterprise systems all post to your wall? What if I could make existing documents seamlessly come alive in a post by attaching a file directly from sharepoint or any other repository.
Unified communications.
What if I could fire off an instant videoconference when I see something that requires action or Switch to desktop sharing to look at a colleague’s report? What if I could then make sure this is recorded and reposted for all the people that did not attend- all in one friction less session working off my wall?
Multiple Social networks.
What if I could tab back and forth between my secure internal employee community and my external customer community and also a third community I participate in- reseller community all while preserving security policies for each community that are inherently different at the back end? What if I could post or bring in facebook and twitter updates from behind my firewall into a single tool and at the same have the flexibility to switch it off for certain departments because they do not need this external access?
Connecting all the exposed wires at the back end to unify all this stuff on the front end is hard, its something we can do well that’s the kind of stuff we are working on.
5. Where do you see technology convergence with Social?
RM: I would expect to see:
1. Convergence of transactional systems, business processes and real world conversations, all into one stream relevant to you.
2. Convergence of Communications: Soon voice, video, desktop sharing, and interoperability with existing communications systems will be a given.
6. if you weren't focused on Social Computing what other disruptive technology would you have pursued?
RM: I would be spending more time looking for that 48’ Buick with a Dynaflow that I have not been able to find. Seriously…Customer Loyalty is an area we are pursuing. The world is moving beyond static product recommendations and Likes.
Companies today are challenged with how to hold on to their existing customers. They are trying to figure out -what customers want, how they want it before they want it
Think about walking through the mall, your credit card provider through your buying habits knows you buy your wife jewelry. You are a few steps from a jewelry store and it’s her birthday next week. An instant discount coupon appears on your mobile phone for a diamond ring you wanted to buy. How did they do that- at that “moment in time”?
How do you use all the terabytes of data about customers, social, location, mobile - to crunch out a real time contextual coupon on your mobile phone at the right time to millions of customers every day? This is what we are pursuing- combining TIBCO’s real time event based rules technology and TIBCO Loyalty Lab to create a unique experience for customers.
7. What's your favorite science fiction gadget of all time?
RM: I like the suit in Iron Man. Right brain thinks of all the solenoid motors to make it work. Left brain says that’s cool!
Your POV
What do you think? Got a question for Ram? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.
Additional interviews will be added and updated! To be considered for the series, please reach out to Elaine (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.
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