I almost couldn't have imagined it. I give myself a little leeway, but after years of writing and talking about "new, new things" it didn't really dawn on me that at some point we'd be talking about a new, new economy -- but we are. I was speaking with Brian Zanghi, CEO of Kadient, the other day, a...
Two of the biggest names in CRM had trade shows recently. Oracle and Microsoft each held customer conventions in the same week, but the two could not have been more different. Microsoft attracted thousands of customers, partners, employees and press to New Orleans for Convergence, one of its big ann...
Last Monday at Demo, Zuora CEO and cofounder Tien Tzuo introduced Z-Commerce for Facebook -- a significant announcement that might be looked back on as a turning point in the evolution of on-demand technology. Zuora, if you don't know, provides an on-demand billing and payments suite for companies t...
Last week Salesforce.com marked its 10th year in business. To celebrate, the company held a conference call to discuss its earnings, and CEO Marc Benioff brought presents for his investors. The big announcement was that Salesforce had succeeded at generating just over $1 billion in revenue for its ...
Oracle continued its fast-following ways last week when it introduced additional functionality for Oracle On-Demand Release 16. The statement completed a two-part announcement begun the week before and brings to eight the number of new on-demand CRM applications from the company. The products annou...
The recession is ahead of our thinking about how to sell around it. Our first response is a tried and true strategy that is not right for all occasions. People will disagree with me, but so far we've seen a steady stream of one idea -- staying close to the customer and attending to the customer expe...
Late last week Salesforce laid off three executives, or so the story went. Actually two senior sales execs were let go and venerable president and former CFO, Steve Cakebread, just left. Immediately the knowledge-sphere started rumbling about what dire straits Salesforce must be in. I write a lot ...
The two biggest dogs in the CRM fight are Salesforce and Oracle. You could debate that, but not with me. Salesforce has had a good run lately with announcements about its platform technology, its community of developers and its new foray into social media and social networking. Oracle has been plowi...
Last week Salesforce.com introduced its new support concept dubbed "The Service Cloud." I have to say it makes a lot of sense both as a product direction and as a business decision. The announcement is in line with many of the business initiatives that the company has made over the last decade in t...
I have been writing about communities for many years, and it seems like a particularly good topic for the interesting times we live in, to borrow a Chinese phrase. A couple of weeks ago I wrote that this is a perfect time to engage in community building, but there is a lot of ambiguity built into t...
Happy New Year! Let's be counterintuitive for a moment, shall we? We're in a recession and we all know it. Traditionally (and sadly) in an economic downturn, when companies seek to lower their expenses, they cut their marketing budgets -- and why not? Marketing costs money, and if you believe your ...
What a great time to be thinking about the future. Seriously. This is my last column of the year, and traditionally I try to forecast some movements in the market for the year ahead. This year it takes a special kind of fortitude to even read a piece like this, let alone write it, but if you think ...
I don't know about you, but I will be happy to write "The End" on the chapter we call 2008. Normally, at the end of a year I look back at some of my predictions from a year earlier and look for some indication that I was on track at least some of the time. This year is different. Who cares, really...
Nearly five years ago, I wrote a white paper that resonated around the industry like a three-point shot clanging off the front of the rim as time expired. A "brick," in the vernacular of basketball; nonetheless, I view it as some of my finest work. The paper, "The New Garage," takes as its premise ...
We can all read the news. Credit is frozen, or nearly so, and the federal government is laboring mightily to get credit flowing again. Unfortunately, here in the U.S. as well as in other places, like the UK, banks have become averse to doing business. The news reports I read say that after being too...
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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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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