Articles by Denis

Well, that was interesting. 2010, that is. When I started doing a year-in-review column, there was an emphasis on quantifying accomplishments -- tangible things that somehow added up to the year in review. But with the economy still lurching and not many major accomplishments, I thought I'd try something different this year. Rather than attempt...

This story was originally published on Aug. 25, 2010, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. I feel like social CRM has become a burger joint. "You want fries with that?" is the traditional up-sell question made famous in skits and jokes, but now I feel like we need to ask something akin in social CRM. The revised qu...

This story was originally published on Aug. 11, 2010, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series Last week in New York, I began some field research in social CRM that will result in a longer paper later this fall. One of the things that interested me was the level of frustration and, well, anger that some customers have for...

Dreamforce, Salesforce.com's annual user meeting and thought leadership confab, is two weeks away, and the anticipation for this event is palpable. In a tough economy, people are looking for the company to do some magic and lift our spirits The company did a smart thing by turning on its new collaboration product, Chatter, for any attendee wanting...

I spent part of last week in the Seattle area at a small meeting Microsoft organized for analysts. The purpose was to brief us on product positioning and plans, and much of the meeting was covered by non-disclosure. Consequently, I am at a loss for how much I can divulge in this setting, at least until things are announced. I am fine with NDA i...

One of the more interesting developments of the last week has been the announced acquisition of ATG (Art Technology Group) by Oracle. ATG is one of the leading suppliers of e-commerce solutions, and Oracle liked their stuff well enough to plunk down a cool billion bucks for the logo I thought it was a good idea at the time, but I am also intereste...

A lot of information is coming together this quarter that begins to put a new spin on social CRM. While we've all been busy getting networked in our personal lives and professionally, a huge mountain of data has been accumulating that will make our work in social technology more valuable Last week, Harvard Business Review released a report sponsor...

It's often hard to maintain high visibility in the marketplace if you happen to be a private company, and for good reason. Private companies tend to be small, and they often do not attract the attention of the financial press precisely because the financial press thrives on the transparency and numbers that small companies prefer to keep to themselves.

I get a lot of email. It's not all because of my job or because I publish my work frequently. Some of it is like that, but it seems like my email address is on a lot of lists, and I am one of the people who get spammed whenever there's a webinar to fill. Perhaps you know this feeling. Last week I was invited to a webinar for a sales product, and it made me think about why we aren't more successful and what might be done about it. ...

RightNow Technologies certainly has come a long way in the last 10 years, and the company used its industry influencers day in Colorado Springs this week to remind us. I saw the day as a marker of a turning point in the company's development, a time when it said to the world, "The first phase of life is over, now let us tell you what's in store n...

Sometimes I feel like we're stuck in the weeds with social CRM. Hopefully I will get a lot of mail for this, LOL! No, really. Sometimes I feel like we're missing the bigger point of social CRM because we're spending so many brain cells focusing on the technology and not so much on what it does beyond the basics....

My favorite scene in "The Social Network" is when Mark Zuckerberg's character has an epiphany that Facebook's screen should have a field to designate a user's status, as in relationship status or availability. Wait, I didn't give something away, did I? You've seen the movie, right? No? Go see it. I'll wait....

This story was originally published on Jan. 20, 2010, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. "Sustainability" has been the key issue capturing my attention this year, so it makes sense to tease apart just what that term means for CRM. To me, sustainability is about business processes that are repeatable and, more to t...

A lot went down at Oracle OpenWorld. Some very good reporting and analysis has come out of it all, and you can easily find it online if you wish. I was impressed with several things that Oracle did, including making strides in sales and marketing software and in introducing two new lines of compute servers. First off, the company said it was be...

I don't know how much Oracle spends on research and development each year. I know the biggest piece is being spent on CRM these days, something that warms my heart. The R&D number is in the billions of dollars, and though I cannot confirm it easily, the number seven seems about it. Judging by the turnout and the number and quality of sessions available at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco this week, the billions buy a lot, and they are well-spent...

In a Ted Talk from 2004 that I watched a the other day, Malcolm Gladwell spoke about Howard Moskowitz. You might recall the New Yorker writer made a name for himself with the publication of The Tipping Point and several other works that focus on the unpredictable things that people do in the course of normal lives. Gladwell's Ted Talk gave me an insight about CRM...

This story was originally published on June 9, 2010, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. It had to happen sooner or later; the only question in my mind is why it has taken so long. It appears that the backlash against social media is beginning. All I can say is, yippee!...

I spent an interesting day at Harvard Law School last week at the invitation of Doc Searls for a conference on the intersection of CRM and VRM, or vendor relationship management. Doc's involved with the Berkman Center at Harvard, which sponsors research into issues of law and the Internet, among other things. He's also one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, which should be required reading in our line of work. Lots of other CRM folk were there too, including analyst Mitch Lieberman and Ed Sullivan from Radian6. We tweeted up a storm, and you can search on the tag #VRMCRM2010...

I feel like social CRM has become a burger joint. "You want fries with that?" is the traditional up-sell question made famous in skits and jokes, but now I feel like we need to ask something akin in social CRM. The revised question: "You got any data to go with that?" To date, the lion's share of information about the wonders of social CRM has be...

Part 1 of this two-part series explored the tendency of some disgruntled customers to air their gripes online Last week I looked at an interesting downside of social media. Social media makes it possible for anyone with very little effort to start a blog or social group that thrashes a vendor. Generally speaking, the people behind these sites hav...