If you thought that the move from the Industrial Era to the Digital Era was the last major economic transition that your business would have to deal with, think again. We are in the middle of yet another transformation of comparable magnitude. The slow but steady shift of power away from companies and to customers as we moved into the Digital Era will reach its zenith in the years ahead. Today’s customers, clients, and consumers are instrumented, interconnected, intelligent, engaged, informed and empowered. They want companies they buy from to know them, interact with them on their terms, and personalize marketing offers and customer support. They even want personalized products and services. IBM (my employer) calls this the Connected Consumer Era and it will lead into a digitization of the front office comparable to the back office digitization of the past two decades….