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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For B2C Marketing Professionals

REPORT: The Case Study Bonanza Of Adobe Implementations

July 29, 2020 Xiaofeng Wang, Ted Schadler

Adobe is one of the most important digital experience platforms, but it doesn’t work out of the box. Any marketing, commerce, or experience pro will want to find the best implementation partner; it can be the difference between success and disappointment. In “The Forrester Wave™: Adobe Implementation Services, Q2 2020,” we evaluated 12 global Adobe service providers; each brings different capabilities to the table. This workbook details how service providers help solve business challenges by implementing Adobe platforms in specific cases across different sectors
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: The Pandemic Recession Demands A Digital Response

To Adapt And Grow, Businesses Must Get Lean, Go All In On Ecosystems, And Embrace Agile At Scale

June 25, 2020Ted Schadler

Digital transformation was never optional. But most firms treated it that way, applying digital technology in dribs and drabs — until COVID-19 shuttered economies and forever altered the patterns of life and work and commerce. Until uncertainty and volatility became the new normal. Every company must respond by focusing on its core and smartly outsourcing and orchestrating the resources and innovation of cloud and service partners. With this transformation approach, CIOs can help their company scale its ability to adapt and grow into the post-pandemic era.
For B2C Marketing Professionals

REPORT: The Forrester Wave™: Adobe Implementation Services, Q2 2020

The 12 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

June 25, 2020 Xiaofeng Wang, Ted Schadler

In our 24-criterion evaluation of Adobe implementation service providers, we identified the 12 most significant ones — Accenture, Adobe, Cognizant, Deloitte, Dentsu, HCL Technologies, IBM, ICF Next, Infosys, Publicis Sapient, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and WPP — and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps B2C marketing professionals select the right one for their needs.
For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

REPORT: Join The Progressive Web App Movement

The Spike In Online Commerce Has Raised The Urgency For An App-Like Mobile Web Experience, Tailor-Made For Progressive Web Apps

May 6, 2020Ted Schadler

Now that Apple supports the progressive web app (PWA) standards that Google pioneered, it's time to join organizations like eBay, the Financial Times, Flipkart.com, Starbucks, and West Elm in the movement to build PWAs that combine the discoverability and reach of the web with the experience and engagement of an app. It's the responsibility of eBusiness and channel strategy professionals to bring app-like experiences to mobile web. The recession only makes this more urgent, as the web is an even more vital link to customers. This report shows you how.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Forrester Infographic: Digital Experts Show How To Get The Most From Service Providers

April 16, 2020Ted Schadler, Caleb Ewald

When it comes to transformation, working with service providers is the No. 1 activity. But digitally advanced firms function differently. They invest more money and devote more leadership time to services. They structure contracts for outcomes. And they harness their providers' ecosystems. To keep pace, application development and delivery pros can master these techniques. This infographic highlights insights from the Forrester Analytics Global Business Technographics® Business And Technology Services Survey, 2019.

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.