I'm always looking for emerging trends at Dreamforce, the kinds of things that are hiding in plain sight. They might never amount to much, but it's more likely that many of them will bloom. A case in point is the emergence of vertical market CRM. Its time is now because application development tools...
What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, the booths on the Dreamforce show floor were little more than outposts for widget-makers. Fast-forward to Dreamforce 2015, and one is struck by the number, variety, and size of the partner community.That's only part of the story, though. Often out of ...
For a long time I have been uneasy about the selling discussion's direction as it relates to CRM and SFA. Something didn't relate. We talk a lot about accelerating the sales process and freeing up sales people's time so that they can spend more time selling, but it all made me wonder. Several things...
We watched as Salesforce emerged from the crowd in the dot-com era to become a massive company with a $7 billion run rate. We also changed perspectives several times on what to expect from Dreamforce. Not so long ago, we were interested mostly in cool new technologies and business models, but as Sal...
You might ask what the difference is between personalization and authenticity in CRM, and the answer is subtle. For a long time I have felt -- and said -- that we overemphasize personalization when what customers really want is authenticity. However, examples are hard to find, especially with our cu...
I recently talked with Bonnie Crater about changing her company's name, and something really struck home. Crater is CEO of Full Circle Insights, and I've known her since her days as an executive at Salesforce. I have followed her startup's progress almost since day one. As I was listening to Crater,...
Microsoft earlier this week announced that it has bought FantasySalesTeam, a sales gamification platform. The intent of the product is to boost sales productivity. The gaming part is designed after some aspects of fantasy sports leagues in which participants build a team from known professional athl...
Spreadsheets suffered a body blow on Tuesday, when Salesforce announced new platform functionality. Soon all spreadsheets will be good for is financial analysis. This sounds funny, because the spreadsheet for several decades has been the unofficial IT prototyping tool. Actually, it was the end-users...
I've been looking at process as the next big thing in CRM for a while. As we move to conducting increasing amounts of business online, we lose the intimacy of personal contact between vendor personnel and customers. In its place we need accurate and authentic processes that treat customers in ways t...
Having meaningful work is one of the biggest challenges for many people at the bottom of the employment ladder. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell documented the multigenerational effect. The children of people who had meaningful work turned out to be more successful and advanced fu...
I've written many times about how conventional, premises-based ERP seems to be evaporating. CPQ -- configuration, pricing and quoting -- are business processes that illustrate the point. First, let's all agree that enterprise resource planning isn't going extinct as it evaporates -- it's too valuabl...
It occurred to me at Salesforce's Marketing Cloud event held last week in New York that CRM has come full circle in a fundamental way. I was never a fan of labels like "CRM 2.0" or "Social CRM" or whatever else came along, principally because those monikers didn't signify anything new in doing busin...
If you read a lot, like me, you might notice almost daily there's a new study that contradicts some earlier research. Something causes cancer -- then it's good for you. You know the drill. What's going on here? Do we simply not know what our research is saying? Can nobody correctly interpret the dat...
Every innovation spawns its own set of issues. What happens when you have a lot of a good thing, like cloud computing? You might get a "Franken-cloud," as some vendors are calling it. Basically, a Franken-cloud is what happens when you have multiple cloud-based systems that need to share data and ru...
Zuora two weeks ago announced its first acquisition, Frontleaf, and a new product, Z-Insights. This marks an important moment for both Zuora and what it has called the "subscription economy." The subscription economy has spawned a culture in which people have been conditioned to expect subscription-...
Yes, communities and infrastructure can't keep up
Some projects are moving too fast
No, expansion is needed to meet demand
The pace seems about right
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Enterprises Are Trading ‘Press One’ for CRM-Native AI Agents
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Silent Churn Is the Biggest Customer Support Risk
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Overcoming GenAI Roadblocks: TaskUs Helps Retailers Compete
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The End of ‘Spray and Pray’ Email Marketing
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Adobe Positions Itself as the AI Control Layer for CX
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AI Is Forcing Companies to Rethink Employee Experience
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How AI Is Changing Sales Teams Without Replacing Reps
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Workbooks Takes On CRM Giants With Plain-English AI
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