Ted Schadler

Vice President, Principal Analyst Serving Application Development & Delivery Professionals

Read Ted's blog posts

Ted 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 digital transformation, digital innovation, digital experience platforms, and digital experience service providers. His current interests and collaborations include digital experience architectures, rebuilding the web for our mobile world, personalization, digital customer experience, and digital insights.

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 won the Forrester Bill Bluestein award, which 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, songwriter, and bass player for Crash Davenport, a Baltimore-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.

Print Bio

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

Most RecentMost Popular

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: Insights-Driven Businesses Set The Pace For Global Growth

The Vision Report Of The Insights-Driven Business Playbook

October 18, 2017 Brian Hopkins, James McCormick, Ted Schadler

A new kind of company — we call them insights-driven businesses — has formed. They are growing at an average of more than 30% annually and are on track to earn $1.8 trillion by 2021. These customer-obsessed firms systematically harness insights across their organization and implement them to create competitive advantage through software. Read this report to find out how insights-driven business are different from most data-aware firms and how CIOs can help redirect their firm's data ambitions toward effective insights and action.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Take Two Technology Roads To Digital Experience Success

Road Map: The Digital Experience Delivery Playbook

October 18, 2017Ted Schadler

Once you have a strategy to prioritize digital interactions and have assessed the business impact of each investment, it's time to plan your technology road map. You must pursue two paths simultaneously: 1) Make urgent investments immediately with 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 updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

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

Business Case: The Digital Experience Delivery Playbook

October 3, 2017Ted 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 road map. 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 Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Your Digital Experience Technology Strategy Starts With A Customer Journey Map

Strategic Plan: The Digital Experience Delivery Playbook

September 29, 2017Ted Schadler

As firms like REWE Group and Schneider Electric have learned, digital experience strategy shapes the technology you need — an investment that can take five years and cost between $20 million and $200 million. To help define the strategy, application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals should follow the lead of customer experience teams: 1) Start with a customer journey map; 2) apply cloud-hosted, mobile-first, and insights-driven thinking; and 3) implement a digital experience platform to serve customers along every step of their journey. 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.
For B2C Marketing Professionals

REPORT: The State Of Consumers And Technology: Benchmark 2008

A Generational Analysis Of The North American Benchmark Survey

July 21, 2008Charles S. Golvin, Ted Schadler

This is a graphical analysis of Forrester's North American Technographics® Benchmark Survey, 2008. It is our annual guide to device adoption and forecasts, demographics, and technology attitudes and behaviors based on a mail survey of 60,847 adults.
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 eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

REPORT: Digitize Your Business Strategy

Executive Overview: The Digital Business Transformation Playbook

January 12, 2017 Martin Gill, Ted Schadler

To compete in the age of the customer, your firm must become a digital business. As a digital business leader, it's your job to shape how. You must enhance your digital customer experience while also driving agility and efficiency through digital operational excellence. This is a tough challenge. Few firms have made the transformation, and many more will stumble along the way. This playbook shows you how to drive digital business transformation in your firm. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

REPORT: Lean: The New Business Technology Imperative

Lean Thinking Is Central To The Shift From IT To BT

September 29, 2009Clay Richardson, Connie Moore, John R. Rymer, Ted Schadler, Dave West

Everyone wants to be lean these days, whether when stepping off a scale in the morning or reviewing the cost of running a successful business. But just how do you define "Lean" — especially in the context of business and technology? Do you think of Lean as a way to drive down costs for technology solutions? Or does Lean conjure visions of streamlined business processes that deliver ever-higher levels of productivity and quality? Or does Lean mean creating a Lean business that delivers more customer value and innovation to compete in today's Lean economy? We assembled some of our top analysts on this subject and put them to the test in a no-holds-barred roundtable discussion. The truth is that you must embrace Lean from all perspectives — people, process, and technology — and focus as much on adding value as on eliminating waste.