CRM News: Strategy

PaaS and the Democratization of Innovation
November 18, 2009

I was re-reading Eric von Hippel's excellent book Democratizing Innovation and found something in it that might help explain the popularity of cloud computing and Platform as a Service. I am on the way to Dreamforce and have little visibility into what Salesforce.com might announce in the next day or two, but no doubt there will be a lot about the cloud, so this might be a good opportunity to make my point.

CRM for Financial Services, Part 2: Keeping the 'R' in CRM
November 13, 2009

The market for CRM programs will expand in financial services, although the pace of spending will likely slow down in the near term. Still, the rate of CRM spending by financial firms is not the only element that could change in the future. Whether a financial firm already has implemented a program or is about to make an initial investment in CRM, the landscape will be changing.

From Mainframes to I-Frames
November 11, 2009

I got a dose of reality last week when I took a briefing from TmaxSoft, a Korean company that specializes in mainframe conversions. I hadn't thought about a mainframe in a long time and assumed they were no longer an issue, but it turns out that they continue to live on. There are still 6,600 mainframes in operation in the U.S., according to TmaxSoft.

Mobile CRM User, Know Thyself
November 10, 2009

With the proliferation of smartphones and similar handheld devices, it only makes sense that data -- especially customer data -- is following these devices into the field. The scenarios in which sales and field service people can use the data collected by CRM are many and, in a lot of cases, obvious. However, there are also many ways for CRM to go into the field.

CRM for Financial Services, Part 1: Unmet Potential
November 06, 2009

The chastening effect of the recession has many financial services firms taking a cautious view of future CRM investments. One reason is that these firms are husbanding their resources. Another is a growing awareness that investments in CRM by the financial sector have not been all that successful.

Black Swans and Blue Birds
November 04, 2009

I just finished reading The Black Swan, a book that has been on my list since it came out in 2007, and I highly recommend it, though it is not easy reading. There is a great deal of set up before you get to the whole point of the book in the last 50 pages. The Black Swan is about uncertainty in the real world, and the subtitle explains it all: "The Impact of the Highly Improbable."

Social CRM: Size Matters
November 03, 2009

There's no longer any debate about whether social media's going to have a huge impact on CRM. Social media's a little different than the usual emerging business technology, mostly because it didn't begin as a business technology. It started with consumers -- and how they use it varies dramatically.

Sales Forecasting and Say's Law
October 21, 2009

I have been studying sales forecasting and forecasting tools a lot recently, and I have come to the conclusion that we need better tools as well as better ways of using them. There is a lot that can be said about forecasting, its current state and how to improve it, and I don't want to leave anything out but I will try to be brief. First off, how we forecast says a lot about our views on economics.

Oracle Fusion in Context
October 20, 2009

With the introduction of Fusion applications, Oracle has joined the cloud community. You might want to argue that the company has been involved in the cloud for many years as one of the key technology underpinnings of many of the biggest SaaS companies. That was one of Larry Ellison's big points at the Churchill Club.

CRM + BPM: Raising the Customer Experience Bar
October 16, 2009

For decades, organizations have been dealing with the challenges of driving more effective customer service. Traditional CRM solutions have focused on presenting consolidated customer information, but they still rely heavily on employees to resolve customer issues. This means that the customer's experience can vary greatly depending on the manual processes and efficiency of the staff at any given organization.

The Salesforce Cloud
October 14, 2009

In the continuing discussion of cloud computing, Salesforce.com occupies a unique place. While most cloud vendors have kept to one component of cloud computing, Salesforce has inserted itself into all areas, and the company is using its flagship CRM applications as its first case example.

Shortage, Abundance and Synthetic Relationships
October 07, 2009

As luck would have it, I knew nothing about Larry Ellison's rant at the Churchill Club on Sept. 21 about cloud computing when I wrote last week's piece on cloud computing. I saw it on YouTube. You have to admit that Larry is a heck of a showman, and the video is fun to watch.

Motherhood, Apple Pie and Demodularization
September 23, 2009

Modularity is next to motherhood, hot dogs and apple pie in the pantheon of unarguably good things. However, for every rule there are exceptions, and in technology, at least, we may have entered the age of demodularization. For the moment, hot dogs and all the rest are safe, at least at my house.

Funny, Beautiful Symmetry
September 09, 2009

There is a lot of unspoken information in last week's announcements by Sage and Salesforce.com about their respective contact managers. Each is creating a disruptive innovation that affects the other, and the symmetry of these dual and dueling announcements is frankly beautiful in a funny way.

Customer Experience vs. Service-Product
September 02, 2009

Last week, I made the suggestion that we have overdone our reliance on customer experience as a customer intimacy tool -- something that I stand by. The idea of customer experience looms large, and there is no denying its power as a theme in CRM. But if our interpretation of customer experience is off the mark, as I think it is, then what is the right approach?

Customer Experience and the Magna Carta
August 26, 2009

Last week I was doing some research for a speech, and I remembered something from a weekend stint at a cooking school that I decided to run down. I was trying to make a point about customer experience when it occurred to me that the idea has ancient roots. Hospitality law is a body of law that deals with the hotel and restaurant industry.