Ted Schadler

Vice President, Principal Analyst Serving Application Development & Delivery Professionals

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Ted Schadler serves digital business professionals. He has 29 years of experience in the technology industry, analyzing the effects of disruptive technologies on people and on businesses. His research agenda focuses on platform business models, digital transformation, digital experience platforms, and digital experience agencies. His current interests and collaborations include digital transformation, digital maturity, platform businesses, mobile web, and maps: the power hidden in plain sight.

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 customers’ 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 Ph.D. 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 M.S. in computer science from the University of Maryland and a B.A. with honors in physics from Swarthmore College.

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Ted Schadler

Vice President, Principal Analyst Serving Application Development & Delivery Professionals

Read Ted's blog posts

Previous Work Experience

Education

Research Coverage

Ted Schadler's Research

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For CMO Professionals

REPORT: Gauge Your Digital Business Maturity

The Assessment Report In The Digital Business Playbook

June 3, 2019Ted Schadler, Pascal Matzke, Martin Gill

Digital business transformation is a journey, not a destination. And every journey has a starting point. 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 Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Now Tech: Digital Experience Agencies, Q2 2019

Forrester's Overview Of 42 Digital Experience Agencies

May 14, 2019Ted Schadler

Digital experience agencies are essential partners for building differentiated customer, marketing, commerce, and product experiences. But to find the best partner for your project or program, you first have to select from a diverse set of service providers that vary by size, capability, country, and vertical market presence. Digital business leaders should use this report to understand the value they can expect from a digital experience agency and to select one based on market presence, cultural fit, and software and service capabilities.
For CMO Professionals

REPORT: Desperate For Differentiation: Creativity Galvanizes The Total Brand Experience

Infuse Your Brand's Essence Into Every Interaction

May 1, 2019 Jay Pattisall, Ted Schadler

"When everyone is super, no one will be." Little did The Incredibles villain Syndrome know that he was predicting the challenge of experience creation. Sure, your coffee app and online retail store work great. But aren't they all the same? In the digital realm, where place is universal and fulfillment of customers' every need is within reach, what will differentiate your brand? We've spoken to dozens of CMOs and corporate and agency executives to find out. Our answer is to move creativity to the fore and put emotion into the code.
For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

REPORT: Vital Partnership Or Unholy Alliance? Decoding The Software/Service Provider Relationship

Partner Alliances Can Make Or Break Your Digital Experience — Here's How To Avoid Disasters And Work Partnerships To Best Advantage

April 5, 2019Ted Schadler

Software vendors and service providers need each other to survive. And digital leaders need them to work well together to build great digital experiences. But how these complex relationships work is a mystery. We drew on hundreds of client inquiries and interviews with 17 software vendors and service providers to find out what's really going on. We found an alliance landscape that's often hidden from view and rapidly shifting as software-as-a-service (SaaS) becomes the norm. This report sheds light on how partner programs work and how to work them to your advantage.
For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

REPORT: Forrester Infographic: Learn From The Best In Your Digital Transformation Journey

The Benchmark Report In The Digital Business Playbook

April 3, 2019Ted Schadler, Mike Chirokas

Digitally advanced firms are markedly different: By innovating at the intersection of experiences and operations, embracing emerging technology, partnering omnivorously, and building digital products and services, they grow faster than digital beginners or intermediates. But few firms have reached this digitally advanced state. This Forrester infographic uses survey data from North American and EU services decision makers at enterprises to give digital business leaders at every firm a benchmark to hit based on the Forrester digital maturity model.

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: 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.
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: Digital Insights Are The New Currency Of Business

Beginner Level: Technology Practices For Insights-Driven Businesses

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.