Ted Schadler

Vice President, Principal Analyst Serving Application Development & Delivery Professionals

Ted Schadler serves digital business professionals. He has 33 years of experience in the technology industry, analyzing the effects of disruptive technologies on experiences and on business strategy and architecture. His research agenda focuses on digital transformation, experience-led transformation, commerce and digital experience service providers, and the future of services.

Ted is the coauthor of The Mobile Mind Shift: Engineer Your Business to Win in the Mobile Moment (Groundswell Press, June 2014). Companies have a choice: to be present in a customer's hand — or lose the mobile moment to a competitor or other distraction. This book gives companies the guidance and tools to serve customers in their immediate context and moments of need: Continuously identify mobile moments, design mobile engagement, engineer solutions, and analyze to optimize outcomes. Now that it’s clear that most customers won’t download your app, it’s just as true for the mobile web — even more so for most brands.

Ted is also the coauthor of Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business (Harvard Business Review Press, September 2010). In this groundbreaking and still-current work, Ted analyzes how important it is in the age of the customer for companies to empower employees with the tools and confidence to directly engage customers.

Previous Work Experience

Ted’s work at Forrester spans 20 years, starting with the early days of the internet, open source, and web services. In 1999, Ted launched Forrester’s TechRankings™ product, now the Forrester Wave™. In 2003, Ted became a Forrester Bill Bluestein award winner; the award is granted annually to one of Forrester’s most influential analysts. In 2005, Ted analyzed the impact of technology on customers’ online and mobile behavior. He ran Forrester’s data business during this period. In 2009, Ted launched Forrester's Workforce Technology Assessment, the industry's first benchmark survey of workforce technology adoption. Since 2014, Ted has focused on digital business and digital experience delivery.

Prior to joining Forrester in April 1997, Ted was a cofounder of Phios, an MIT spinoff. Before that, Ted worked for eight years as CTO and director of engineering for a software company serving the healthcare industry. Early in his career, after dropping out of MIT’s PhD physics program, Ted was a singer and bass player for Crash Davenport, a Maryland-based rock-and-roll band.

Education

Ted has a master's degree in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also holds an MS in computer science from the University of Maryland and a BA with honors in physics from Swarthmore College.

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Ted Schadler

Vice President, Principal Analyst Serving Application Development & Delivery Professionals

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Ted Schadler's Research

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For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: The Business Impact Of Digital Experience Technology Is Profitable Growth

Business Case: The Digital Experience Delivery Playbook

March 1, 2021Ted Schadler

Armed with the methods in this report, application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals can help their companies link digital experience strategy to the technology roadmap. First, assess how digital interactions benefit customers and deliver value to the firm using metrics of profitable growth like increased basket size, percentage of service delivered digitally, and mobile onboarding. Then, prioritize investments based on the total technology cost and time-to-deliver. Is it an extension or a new platform investment? This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For CMO Professionals

REPORT: Gauge Your Digital Business Maturity

The Assessment Report In The Digital Business Playbook

February 19, 2021Ted Schadler, Pascal Matzke, Martin Gill

Digital business transformation is a journey, not a destination. This report guides digital business leaders through Forrester's digital business maturity assessment so you can gauge where your firm is on its journey and discover which core competencies you need to strengthen or develop. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy. We revised this edition to factor in a revised assessment tool and benchmarking data.
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: Harness Emerging Technologies To Guide Business Strategy

Advanced Level: Technology Practices For IT Transformation

February 12, 2021 Bobby Cameron, Brian Hopkins, Ted Schadler, Patrick Carroll

Tech leaders in advanced firms treat technology as a business asset, making IT transformation a foundation for new customer-obsessed business models. As part of their future fit technology, they let new technology guide their business strategy and put technology at the core of their innovation process to seize advantage the way a startup would. And they build on the tech platforms from earlier phases of maturity. To succeed, advanced technology leaders must focus on systems of engagement; systems of insights; security; and infrastructure, including cloud, integration, and internet of things (IoT). This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Take Two Technology Roads To Digital Experience Success

Roadmap: The Digital Experience Delivery Playbook

January 26, 2021Ted Schadler

Once you have a strategy to prioritize digital interactions and have assessed the business impact of each investment, it's time to produce your technology roadmap. You must pursue two paths simultaneously: 1) Make urgent investments in cloud or software extensions and 2) deliver important agility and long-term benefits with a modern digital experience platform. This report outlines the key milestones necessary for application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals to execute on a digital experience delivery strategy. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and revises it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: Reset Your Technology Foundation For Customer Engagement

Beginner Level: Technology Practices For IT Transformation

January 25, 2021 Bobby Cameron, Brian Hopkins, Ted Schadler

Companies just beginning to establish their technology priorities for the age of the customer are facing an uphill battle against legacy systems and outdated technologies as they develop their future fit technology strategies. This report outlines the technologies that tech leaders in this phase should prioritize to kick-start customer engagement and lay the groundwork for continued growth, including web and mobile interfaces for customer engagement, data and analytics to understand customers, identity management to protect and serve customers, and cloud computing to move to the future of software. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and revises it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

REPORT: The Digital Business Imperative

February 15, 2017Ted Schadler, Nigel Fenwick

Customers' power in the marketplace continues to ramp up, so eBusiness leaders still need to transform digital customer experiences, including marketing, sales, and channels. The ability to align products, operations, and business models to what we call a "customer-obsessed operating model" will determine firms' ultimate success. To digitally transform both experiences and operations, eBusiness professionals will apply technology to these facets of the business, ensuring that they are customer-led and insights-driven. This is an update of a previously published report. Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy; we revised this edition to factor in new data, examples, and ideas.
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: The Top 10 Technology Trends To Watch: 2018 To 2020

Ten Trends Will Help You Maximize The Value Of Business Technology

October 19, 2017 Brian Hopkins, Bobby Cameron, Ted Schadler, Rusty Warner

Maximizing the value of your business technology investments requires an understanding of trends — not just as interesting reading but as vital clues to your firm's future success and, possibly, even survival. CIOs must demand trend analysis that goes deeper than trite statements about artificial intelligence, digital platforms, or meshes. Our 2018 to 2020 trends do exactly that. Read this report to understand the top 10 trends and how they will change the nature of your business.
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: Digital Insights Are The New Currency Of Business

January 12, 2018 Brian Hopkins, Ted Schadler

Businesses are drowning in data but starving for insights. Worse, they have no systematic way to consistently turn data into action. This can't continue. Demanding customers and competitive pressures require firms to treat insights — not just data — as a business asset. Firms need to create "systems of insight," a combination of people, process, and technology, to close the gap between insights and action. Read this report to see how CIOs can lead their firms to find, test, and codify digital insights in software, leading to more intelligent engagement and better decisions. This is an update to a previously published report.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Build A Four-Tier Digital Engagement Platform

March 22, 2018 Michael Facemire, Ted Schadler

Mobile is pushing aging web architectures to the brink. The three-tier architecture built for a browser-led PC world can't flex, scale, or respond to the needs of a good mobile experience or the emerging requirements for connected products. Mobile's volatility and velocity of change require a distributed four-tier architecture that we call an "engagement platform." The engagement platform separates technical capabilities into four parts: client, delivery, aggregation, and services. App developers need to start planning immediately for the migration from three tiers to four. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: Mobile Is The New Face Of Engagement

CIOs Must Plan Now For New Systems Of Engagement

February 13, 2012Ted Schadler, John McCarthy

By 2016, smartphones and tablets will put power in the pockets of a billion global consumers. Mobile is not simply another device for IT to support with a shrunken website or a screen-scraped SAP application. Rather, mobile is the manifestation of a much broader shift to new systems of engagement. These systems of engagement help firms empower their customers, partners, and employees with context-aware apps and smart products. To remain vital in this business technology reformation, CIOs must step up and work with other executives to establish an "office of the chief mobility officer" to implement an enterprisewide mobile strategy. This team will coordinate the business and technology investments under a "design for mobile first" mantra that delivers four immediate benefits: 1) fuel profitable growth with stickier offerings and mobile self-service; 2) move faster along the mobile learning curve; 3) aggregate mobile project budgets to fund needed engagement technology; and 4) grow from an IT group focused on systems of record to a business technology group focused on systems of engagement.