As the Eagles kick off their training camp and get ready for the new season with new coach, Chip Kelly, a question all fans are asking is, “What can be expected of the 2013 Philadelphia Eagles’ season?”

For starters, they can expect a packed house at the Lincoln Financial Field summer training practices when the full team reports beginning July 28th. An estimated 200,000 tickets are already claimed for this year’s training camp in their hometown, and according to team reports, fans will not be disappointed.

With Kelly taking the reins and planning to rebuild the struggling team, Kelly and the new management have invested in brand new equipment and technology upgrades for the team and facilities. Their laundry list of improvements strive to make the team better through individual player performance and help improve the fan experience.

Investments in equipment include new weight training machines, more cameras and better video technology, and another lift for practice filming was added. There are also smart TVs throughout the complex that provide player data and display the player’s daily schedules and workouts. These TVs will help fans connect with behind-the-scenes player information beyond what they see on the field (or on personal social network pages).

In addition to the equipment upgrades, the Eagles are also anticipating better workouts and practices and holding players accountable for improvements through new technology. One hole in player development data has been with understanding exactly how a players body is responding to training, but now, that may be possible as the Eagles enter an agreement with an Australian sports company offering a world renowned biometric device.

The Australian sports company, Catapult Sports, has been a leader in the industry and engineered matchbook-sized GPS devices that are packed with sensors and worn on a player’s uniform to measure and collect biometric data (that is, information about an individual’s body performance). Aspects of play that are measured through the device include agility, force, and acceleration. Catapult describes their innovative company as, “the global leader in athlete analytics producing wearable athlete tracking technology that provides objective data on athlete performance.”

This GPS device known as the OptimEye system, works when it is placed near the T1 vertebra and tracks 3-D motion the athlete’s space. The tracking results are detected automatically and recorded, and these wearables produce individual data analytics for each player. This data is stored in cloud-based software and can be analyzed to determine strengths and weaknesses of a player. The data can also be compared to a player’s biomedical data to give more of a 360 degree profile of the player, their body, and performance.

The technology used in the device – accelerometers, magnetometers and gyroscopes -are no different than a gravitational load (GPS) on an iPhone. But unlike the technology on a phone, Catapult isolates the data by using filters to pinpoint an individuals actual direction for each acceleration.

The Philadelphia Eagles and other teams who have invested in this technology are hopeful that it will lead to improved performance and will help the coaching staff to be more informed when making decisions, and lead to improved strategies and overall enhanced performance. In turn, implementing these analytic-driven decisions may increase their chances for more game wins.

In total, the equipment and technology upgrades cost the Eagles more than one million dollars. The results of the 2013 season and Chip Kelly’s decisions will determine if there will be a positive ROI.

On a recent morning, as I was going through my usual routine, my coffeemaker broke. I cannot live without coffee in the morning, so I immediately looked up my coffeemaker on Amazon and had it shipped Prime in one day. My problem was solved within minutes. My Amazon app, and my loyalty account with that company, was there for me when I needed it most.

It was in this moment that I realized the importance of digital presence for retailers. There is a chance that the store 10 minutes from my house carries this very same coffeemaker; I could have had it in one hour, instead of one day. But the need for immediate access to information pushed me to the online store. My local retailer was not able to be there for me digitally like Amazon.

Retail is still about reading the minds of your customers in order to know what they need and create a flawless experience. But the days of the unconnected shopper in a monochannel world are over. I am not alone in my digital-first mindset; according to a recent MasterCard report, 80% of consumers use technology during the shopping process. I, and consumers like me, use mobile devices as a guide to the physical world.

We don’t need to have an academic discussion about multichannel, omnichannel, and omnicommerce and their meanings, because what it really comes down to for your consumers, or fans, is shopping. And shopping has everything to do with moments in your customers’ lives: celebration moments, in-a-hurry moments, I-want-to-be-entertained moments, and more. Most companies only look for and measure very few moments along the shopping journey, like the moment of coupon download or the moment of sales.

Anticipating these moments was easier when mom and pop stores knew their customers by name. They knew how to be there for their shoppers when, where, and how they wanted it. And shoppers didn’t have any other options. Now it is crucial for companies to understand all of these moments and even anticipate or trigger the right moments for their customers.

In today’s digital economy the way to achieve customer connection is with simple, enjoyable, and personalized front ends that are supported by sophisticated, digital back ends. Then you can use that system to support your customer outreach.

Companies around the world are using creative and innovative methods to find their customers in various moments. Being there for customers comes in many different shapes and forms. Consider these examples:

Chilli Beans

A Brazilian maker of fashion sunglasses, glasses, and watches, Chilli Beans has a loyal following online and at over 700 locations around the world. Chilli Beans keeps its customers engaged by releasing 10 limited-edition styles each week. If customers like what they see, they have to buy fast or risk missing out.

Bonobos

Online men’s fashion retailer Bonobos reaches its customers with its Guide Shops. While they look like traditional retail outlets, the shops don’t actually sell any clothes. Customers come in for one-on-one appointments with the staff, and if they like anything that they try on, the staff member orders it for them online and it is shipped to their house. The 20 Guide Shops currently open have proven very successful for the company.

Peak Performance

Peak Performance, a European maker of outdoor clothing, has added a little magic to its customer experience. It has created virtual pop-up shops that customers can track on their smartphones through CatchMagicHour.com, and they are only available at sunrise and sunset at exact GPS locations. Customers who go to the location, be it at a lighthouse or on top of a mountain, are rewarded with the ability to select free clothing from the virtual shop that they have unlocked on their phones.

Shoes of Prey

The customer experience is completely custom at Shoes of Prey, a website where women can design custom shoes. From fabric to color, the customer picks every element, and then her custom creation is sent directly to her house. Shoes of Prey has even shifted its business model based on customer feedback. Its customers wanted to get inspiration and advice in a physical store. So Shoes of Prey made the move from online-only to omnicommerce and has started to open stores around the world.

While the customer experience for each of these connections is relatively simple – a website, a smartphone, an online design studio – the back end that powers them has to be powerful and nimble at the same time. These sophisticated back ends – powering simple, enjoyable, and personalized front ends – will completely change the game in retail. They will allow companies to engage their customers in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.

Technology will help you be there in the shopping moment. The best technology won’t annoy your customers with irrelevant promotions or pop-up messages. Instead, like a good friend, it will know how to engage with customers and when to leave them alone – how to truly connect with customers instead of manage them. Consequently, customer relationship management as we know it is an outdated technology in the economy of today – and tomorrow. Technologies that go beyond CRM will help retailers to differentiate. Aligning your organization and those technologies will be the Holy Grail to creating true and sustainable customer loyalty.

Learn more ways that business will never be the same again. Learn 99 Mind-Blowing Ways The Digital Economy Is Changing The Future Of Business.

Find out how SAP can help you go beyond CRM and support your retail business.

Ralf Kern is Global Vice President Retail for SAP and a retail ambassador for SAP. Interested in your feedback. You can also get in touch on Twitter or LinkedIn

This blog also appeared on SAP Customer Network.

Today the Internet of Things is revamping technology.

Smart devices speak to each other and work together to provide the end user with a better product experience.

Coinciding with this change in technology is a change in people. We’ve transitioned from a world of people who love processed foods and french fries to people who eat kale chips and Greek yogurt…and actually like it.

People are taking ownership of their well-being, and preventative care is at the forefront of focus for both physicians and patients. Fitness trackers alert wearers of the exact number of calories burned from walking a certain number of steps. Mobile apps calculate our perfect nutritional balance. And even while we sleep, people are realizing that it’s important to monitor vitals.

According to research conducted at Harvard University, proper sleep patterns bolster healthy side effects such as improved immune function, a faster metabolism, preserved memory, and reduced stress and depression.

Conversely, the Harvard study determined that lack of sleep can negatively affect judgement, mood, and the ability retain information, as well as increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even premature death.

Through the Internet of Things, researchers can now explore sleep patterns without the usual sleep labs and movement-restricting electrode wires. And with connected devices, individuals can now easily monitor and positively influence their own health.

EarlySense, a startup credited with the creation of continuous patient monitoring solutions focused on early detection of patient deterioration, mid-sleep falls, and pressure ulcers, began with a mission to prevent premature and preventable deaths.

Without constant monitoring, patients with unexpected clinical deterioration may be accidentally neglected, and their conditions can easily escalate into emergency situations.

Motivated by many instances of patients who died from preventable post-elective surgery complications, EarlySense founders created a product that constantly monitors patients when hospital nurses can’t, alerting the main nurse station when a patient leaves his or her bed and could potentially fall, or when a patient’s vital signs drop or rise unexpectedly.

Now EarlySense technology has expanded outside of the hospital realm. The EarlySense wellness sensor, a device connected via the Internet of Things, mobile solutions, and supported by SAP HANA Cloud Platform, monitors all vital signs while a person sleeps. The device is completely wireless and lies subtly underneath one’s mattress. The sensor collects all mechanical vibrations that the patient’s body emits while sleeping, continuously monitoring heart and respiratory rates.

Watch this short video to learn more about how the EarlySense wellness sensor works:

The result is faster diagnoses with better treatments and outcomes. Sleep issues can be identified and addressed; individuals can use the data collected to make adjustments in diet or exercise habits; and those on heavy pain medications can monitor the way their bodies react to the medication. In addition, physicians can use the data collected from the sensor to identify patient health problems before they escalate into an emergency situation.

Connected care is opening the door for a new way to practice health. Through connected care apps that link people with their doctors, fitness trackers that measure daily activity, and sensors like the EarlySense wellness sensor, today’s technology enables people and physicians to work together to prevent sickness and accidents before they occur. Technology is forever changing the way we live, and in turn we are living longer, healthier lives.

To learn how SAP HANA Cloud Platform can affect your business, visit It&Me.

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Companies that begin life digitally operate differently from the incumbents they threaten and unseat. Employees at digital companies don’t waste time gathering and analyzing information; they use live data to make decisions. They don’t need to wade through organizational hierarchies to get permission to act; their leaders explain business goals and then empower them to use their best judgment.

To compete, incumbent companies have to transform not only decision-making processes and hierarchies that have hardened over decades but also the nature of leadership itself. The leadership strategies and behaviors that drove success in the knowledge economy aren’t sufficient to navigate a successful transition to the digital economy.

Two-thirds of Global 2000 CEOs will center their business strategies on digital transformation by the end of 2017, according to IDC. But few business executives today have the leadership mindset or skills necessary for these strategies to succeed, according to the Leaders 2020 study conducted recently by SAP, Oxford Economics, and McChrystal Group. The study found that only 16% of executives are ready to lead their companies through this transformation.

Leaders must lead differently if their companies are to transition to the digital economy and reap its rewards. In 10 years, for example, 75% of the companies that were listed on the S&P 500 Index in 2012 will have been replaced, according to a study by Innosight. Meanwhile, global competition is heating up. Rising disposable income in emerging economies has sparked the advent of new rivals—and in a survey by consulting firm Accenture, 70% of marketers in those economies expressed confidence in their ability to execute a digital business transformation. In mature economies, the figure was just 38%.

But it’s not too late to learn the essentials of digital leadership.

Communicate the Digital Mission

Fostering an organization whose employees have the skills, tools, authority, and information they need to make decisions in the moment begins with leaders who can formulate and communicate the digital mission. Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T, understands the forces driving digital transformation. Under his guidance, AT&T’s lines of business have expanded—both organically and through acquisitions—to include extensive digital operations, like DirecTV and potentially, as of press time, Time Warner, according to The New York Times. So even as AT&T continues to compete for market share against established and startup telecommunications providers, the company is going head-to-head against digitally based companies like Amazon and Google.

Every business must become digital and work in the cloud, but the change doesn’t merely mean making acquisitions, buying new technology, and rewriting org charts. A new digital workforce is needed as well to meet the transformation challenge. And like the companies they serve, the members of this new workforce will have to develop new abilities and prepare to take on new roles.

That reality is the impetus for Stephenson’s ambitious initiative to transform his company by transforming his team. Through a program launched nearly three years ago, AT&T is underwriting education and professional development opportunities for employees who are willing to pursue the studies on their own time. Those who take advantage of the offer can learn new computing skills that align with the company’s blueprint for digital transformation.

AT&T’s education plan shows the extent to which data is driving a profound change in employees’ daily tasks, functions, and core value to the company. Until recently, businesses sought knowledge workers who were capable of reviewing, assessing, analyzing, and disseminating data in support of decision making. But in the digital economy, companies must be able to respond in the moment to customer, market, and competitive changes. Reviewing masses of data and following traditional hierarchical decision-making processes defeats that goal. To succeed and, in truth, to survive, companies must have that data available when they need it and make a decision in the right moment.

Invest in Understanding How Work Gets Done

With that in mind, digital leaders must invest in understanding how work gets done and then commit to adjusting processes, deploying the right technology to support those processes, and measuring what adds value for customers and, therefore, to the bottom line. Yet only half of the executives surveyed by Oxford Economics rated their companies’ senior leaders as highly proficient in using the technology necessary for transformation.

What’s more, becoming digitally savvy isn’t enough. Leaders’ aptitude for cultivating teams and work environments that can make good use of technology is also essential. Indeed, nearly 80% of the companies considered farthest along in digital maturity make data-driven decisions, according to the Oxford Economics study (see Digital Leadership in Hard Numbers). Meanwhile, 53% of respondents were found to be clinging to old-school decision-making styles and failing to map decisions to strategy. As a result, only 46% qualified as equipped to make decisions in real time.

Lead by Simplifying

Digital leaders make it a priority to continually simplify processes and decision-making procedures to reduce institutionalized complexity and bureaucracy. These impediments take a real toll. A study by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that organizational complexity costs businesses up to 10% of profits. Flattening organizational hierarchies and encouraging transparency and organization-wide inclusivity in the decision-making process can help erase such losses, according to the Oxford Economics study.

Achieving these goals doesn’t require a committee. Empowering people at lower levels to make business-critical decisions based on available data has a natural flattening effect on the hierarchy. And as individuals and the enterprise as a whole become accustomed to having access to real-time data that speeds responsiveness, decision making becomes distributed across the organization.

That doesn’t automatically mean that the organizational pyramid is dead. Rather, it empowers employees, the organization, and leadership by placing responsibility for individual responses and actions in the hands of the people best equipped to carry them out, take ownership of the results, and ensure their success. This key characteristic distinguishes digital workers from knowledge workers: they have access to the data necessary to drive the right decisions at the right time, regardless of where they appear on the organizational chart. This not only empowers people at lower levels but also eases the bureaucratic burden on upper management, which is then freer to focus its time and energy on leading the organization forward instead of directing its day-to-day and even minute-by-minute activities.

Lead by Getting Ahead of the Customer

Creating an organization that’s capable of capturing data and making decisions in the moment can transform customer relationships. Besides responding to immediate customer needs, digitally transformed organizations can also predict emerging requirements, even before the customer is fully conscious of them.

To achieve this, digital leaders must be able to view digital in terms of its ability to support innovation: to make it possible for the business to deliver an array of services and advantages that it wasn’t possible to deliver before.

“The challenge is to not ask the question, ‘How does this affect my business?’ That’s inherently a defensive, firm-centric question,” says David Rogers, author of The Digital Transformation Playbook and a member of the faculty at Columbia Business School. “Instead, firms need to look at every new technology and digital capability and ask, ‘How might this allow us to offer new forms of value to our customers that we could not have done in the past?’ And be continuously looking.”

Being plugged into digital’s power to transform customer relationships thus allows an executive to evolve into a digital leader with the vision and the tools necessary to conceive and implement continuous innovation.

Concentrate on Team Dynamics and Employee Engagement

Millennial leadership is well suited to understand the human side of digital transformation. Digital leaders of older generations must recognize the importance of inviting and acting on input from Millennials, which is essential to inspiring them to perform at their best—and to achieving the overall goals of digital transformation.

Digital leaders must also understand that encouraging diversity in their workforce isn’t simply a matter of fairness; it’s also a source of competitive advantage. Leaders who build diverse organizations have more engaged, productive employees, as well as higher levels of innovation, according to the Oxford Economics study. This in turn leads to better bottom-line results. Companies that reported higher revenue and profitability growth were more likely to cite the positive impact of diversity on their numbers.

Despite this, the study found that only 60% of companies have adequate programs to ensure that they are developing a digital workforce. The shortfall is hurting companies’ ability to hire and retain talent: only 53% say they are successful in attracting qualified applicants.

This problem will only get worse as Baby Boomers exit the workforce. Digital leaders will be increasingly pressured to maintain stability and continuity in their workforces. The challenge will be especially difficult for companies that lag in meeting the expectations of professionals who have entered the workforce in the era of the gig economy. They expect to make numerous career moves and don’t necessarily see length of tenure as a priority.

Thus, companies need processes for bringing new staff members up to speed as quickly as possible while optimizing their productivity, encouraging them to make constructive contributions to the business, and motivating them to deliver their best performance. They must also develop programs for continuous learning and job rotations to engage and retain workers who may not otherwise remain with the company as long as they would have in past generations.

Address the Generation Gap

Millennials and Generation Z have different expectations of what it means to be an employee and how to use technology than other generations do. They expect collaboration across the hierarchy, which is important to keeping them engaged with the organization and with their personal passions. Fostering a sense of meaning within the workplace, then, is another element of digital leadership; leaders must make the company a place where employees feel as engaged and rewarded as they can be and can do their best work.

In this respect and many others, most businesses are contending with a generation gap. The Oxford Economics study found that in comparison to older executives, Millennial executives have a much more pessimistic view of their organization’s ability to perform well in such key areas as using technology to achieve competitive advantage, collaborating internally, inspiring employees, and fostering an organizational culture that promotes feedback and reduces bureaucracy. In addition, the Millennials are more conscious of—and place a premium on—diversity and its benefits. Addressing that generational disconnect is key to digital leadership.

When today’s mid- and late-career executives entered the workforce, it was understood that younger workers invested the early years of their professional lives paying their dues. But that model no longer works in a market in which a company’s future depends on an approach to digital transformation that comes most naturally to younger executives. And those executives will not invest themselves and their expertise in companies that fail to recognize and respect Millennial workplace priorities.

Help Employees Address Future Challenges

Digital transformation isn’t just altering employees’ expectations of their careers. It’s also remaking jobs and what work itself entails. In response to a survey by consulting firm Cap Gemini, 77% of companies reported that they saw digital skill gaps as the chief obstacle to their digital transformation.

Their concerns are well founded. Oxford University examined 702 job descriptions across all job types and found that 47% were likely to be replaced by technology within a decade. Another 19% were moderately likely to be replaced. With that in mind, part of the leadership challenge in digital transformation is anticipating how people will work in this world and how artificial intelligence, robots, and people will be integrated into a new and more efficient workforce. How will people interact with these digital forces in the workplace? What will it mean in human terms?

Digital leaders can’t expect employees to keep up with these changes on their own: things are simply moving too quickly. AT&T’s Stephenson recognizes this. The New York Times reported that the company’s digital transformation is projected to make 30% of current jobs obsolete by 2020. That’s why, to get ahead of that challenge, Stephenson ordered the creation of AT&T’s training program, which includes an extensive curriculum of online and classroom courses.

This approach illustrates a key characteristic of digital leaders: the ability to think conscientiously about where their companies are headed, what skills their people will need, and how they can help them develop the skills they’ll need as their roles evolve. Digital leaders are also able to articulately communicate to employees where the world is headed so that they are motivated to get there and be productive now and in the future.

Unleash a New Generation of Executives

Companies can no longer afford to delay recognizing the digital sea change that is transforming decision making and the capacity to respond in real time to challenges and opportunities. Led by Millennial executives, the new digital workforce is ready to spark unprecedented performance improvements in organizations that do not constrain their ability to communicate, collaborate, and contribute. Digital leaders are devising strategies for harnessing their energy, enthusiasm, and innate understanding of digital capacities to achieve higher levels of productivity and profitability. The remaining leaders face a choice: embrace this change or get left behind. D!

Read more thought provoking articles in the latest issue of the Digitalist Magazine, Executive Quarterly.

I am a child of the on-premise world. I grew up learning BASIC on an Apple II+ clone with 48K of RAM. When my dad gave me a 16K RAM expansion card for my birthday, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

I didn’t get my first modem for another 7 years (a  2400-baud Hayes!). I learned assembly language, made my own games, and typed in pages of code from computer magazines. I didn’t need to get connected to anything; I found an entire universe inside that little box in my bedroom.

How on-premise was I? I could place my hand on the disk drive, and from the sound and vibrations emanating therein, I could tell you whether or not the disk had an error about 10 seconds before any error messages popped up.

I stayed with IT through the rise of the Internet, and in tech support roles early in my career spent my fair share of time hanging around server rooms, swapping tapes, typing cryptic Unix commands, and waiting out long-running scripts as I performed weekend production upgrades for various customers. I was proud of that time in my life, as I felt I was in the forefront of an IT revolution that was changing the world.

If you’re an IT professional in your 30s or 40s, you’ve probably also done some or all of the above. Perhaps you and other readers are wondering why there is skepticism about the cloud. The decision-makers grew up in an on-premise world. Happiness is a warm server.

Let me try to convince you, fellow children of the 70s and 80s, of the benefits of a cloud solution. If I could cross the divide to the cloud realm, you can too.

1. You have better things to do

Most likely, your organisation is not an IT infrastructure company. Running data centers is probably not your core business. Many companies, however, are forced to have their own data centers and server rooms because of the lack of reliable services out there. This is a bit like having to dig your own well because there is no water service at your house. Things have changed, however—now, instead of dedicating personnel to non-core functions, you can let somebody else do the menial work and let your employees focus on things that are more relevant to your bottom line.

2. It costs less

Aside from the obvious shift from capital expenditure to operating expenditure when you move to the cloud, you must also take into account many other factors that go into running your own infrastructure. Perhaps the following graphic, which popped up on my LinkedIn feed the other day, describes it best:

I love this illustration because it illustrates many aspects of how your cost structure will change by moving to the cloud.

First, your most visible cost (the tip of the iceberg) will change from an up-front license fee to a subscription fee. If you simply look at this visible cost, it’s pretty clear that after a few years, the subscription cost will be higher than the one-time license cost. However, it’s important to remember that beneath the surface are the hidden ongoing costs that go into maintaining your own infrastructure.

In the cloud, that becomes somebody else’s problem (just as you wouldn’t need to worry about well maintenance once water is hooked up to your house). This is one of the true savings of moving to the cloud, so it is important not to overlook what lies under the surface when considering your TCO savings.

3. You’ll remove risk

Let’s go back to the well analogy again: If you use a well, you are responsible for making sure that the water is clean, that no feral possums get into it, and the pump is rust-free. When you are a water subscriber, you have only one risk: if the water supply stops.

That risk is mitigated by the fact that the water company has thousands of other water customers to whom it is also responsible. Same with the cloud, so you can stop worrying about whether your server room will catch fire or a mouse will nibble through your cables and just use the software you need.

And much like the water company likely does a better job of managing the water supply than you can, moving to the cloud with the right company enables you to take advantage of best practices such as automated backups, built-in redundancies, and automated software updates.

4. You’ll be more agile

Most on-premise software projects start with the selection and procurement of hardware, followed by installation of that hardware and software. Only then can you finally begin implementing and configuring your business solution. With cloud solutions, you can cut straight to the chase without worrying about potential infrastructure problems.

Furthermore, five or seven years down the road, you will not need to worry about what to do with that old server that can no longer run the latest release of your software.

All of the above factors are valid arguments for organisations of any size, but they are especially relevant for the small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which do not have the luxury of large IT departments and generally have more limited budgets.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, it’s time to start drinking the water without worrying about the well—consider how moving to the cloud can shrink your iceberg.

For more on why your business should consider moving to the cloud, visit our new cloud content hub.