tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-339811732024-03-14T18:10:10.650+11:00Sqware Peg - Premiere Asia-Pacific Consulting Partner of salesforce.comSqware Peg is a leading provider of On-Demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services and solutions, which drive measurable revenue generation, performance visibility and customer retention through improved Sales, Marketing and Customer Service & Support.
<br><br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger178125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-28172692897335103852008-07-10T09:45:00.001+10:002008-07-10T11:49:52.870+10:00CRM is a Social Animal<p><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">On The Scene: Web 2.0 -- As enterprise social computing takes off -- and employees clamor for more -- CRM providers scramble to connect, as well.</span></strong></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">By </span><a id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_rptAuthors_ctl01_Author" href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=49805"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Lauren McKay</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Social networking is really connecting, it seems: Revenue in the sector has grown 191 percent in the past year, according to IDC. Forrester Research predicts that Enterprise 2.0 spending will be a $4.6 billion industry by the year 2013. With increased momentum, rising adoption on the enterprise level, and noticeable marketing and branding opportunities for businesses -- all readily apparent at May’s Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco -- social networking has clearly spread into the mainstream. Google’s effort to create its OpenSocial standard for application programming interfaces (APIs) among social-networking companies is another sign of a maturing marketplace.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Rachel Happe, Digital Business Economy researcher with IDC, is among those who think the next step with social networking will involve applying Enterprise 2.0 functionalities to business processes, such as CRM -- all in hope of finding the return on investment (ROI) for money spent getting wired into social networks.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">"People are taking a functional business need that you can attach an ROI to, and using social media to experiment and see if they can expand ROIs," Happe says. She adds that employees are now engaging Enterprise 2.0 tools beyond those of blogs and wikis, and focusing more on social media with increased conversation on sites and platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. Employees, in their personal lives, are increasingly using social networks on the consumer level; that puts more pressure on enterprises to adopt social media applications, but it also breeds more familiarity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">According to the IDC report, "2007 Social Networking Takes Hold," authored by Happe, enterprise social media solutions have started to emerge and are passing up their small-to-midsize-business counterparts. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">And not every enterprise social network has to rely on (or hook into) Facebook: According to a Time column by an executive of the search intelligence firm Hitwise, </span><a href="http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1808077,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar" target=""><span style="font-family:verdana;">the aggregate market share of MySpace and Facebook among U.S. Internet users only accounts for roughly half of all visits to the Hitwise Social Network category</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">. Hitwise lists more than 4,700 other sites in that category -- meaning there’s a lot of niche and specialized networking experience out there. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Take Trampoline Systems’ recent release of Sonar Dashboard, an entire social-computing platform created for enterprises. Sonar Dashboard is similar to Facebook only in that it allows users to connect with other users. However, Dashboard is designed specifically for the enterprise, allowing employees not only to create individual profiles, but to share information regarding work projects, contacts, and interests. User information is dynamically generated, providing the most up-to-date data for sharing. The Dashboard product also maps out relationships among employees in the enterprise, adding visualization to complicated, complex, and growing companies. (Oracle introduced similar enterprise social computing capabilities with the release of its CRM On Demand 15.) "You’ve got a generation of people in the workforce who are used to having these tools to search, reach out, and connect with anybody," says Charles Armstrong, the founder of Trampoline. "When they go into work, they’ve still got these information systems which are rigid. It’s the employees who are pushing the drive."</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Analysts and vendors alike agree that the growth of business-side social networking can be attributed to consumer demands. And while real-time application of "social CRM" remains foggy, integration of enterprise and CRM software with social-networking platforms seems to have a sunny future. This is evident in solutions such as Faceforce, which puts Salesforce.com data side-by-side with Facebook profiles of customers, and that of Sales Social, a collaborative mashup from Kapow Technologies and Wavemaker that presents LinkedIn, Facebook, Salesforce.com, and Technorati customer data in one place. (See </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Columns-Departments/Insight/Making-Mashup-Masterpieces-49158.aspx" target=""><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Making Mashup Masterpieces," June 2008</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">, for more about mashups.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Other CRM products, such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, are toying with social media in certain sectors before wide deployment. Microsoft Dynamics Connect Beta for Facebook, for instance, began with a community site for the finance unit of Dynamics. "The idea was that we were building up a unique set of communities tightly integrated to the product we use," says Craig Dewar, director of community marketing for Microsoft. "The assumption is that end users gain insight about [the] product by talking to other end users similar to themselves. They can talk about marketing campaigns, ask about CRM, and gain self-help," Dewar adds. (See </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Editorial/Magazine-Features/Is-Microsoft-Winning-the-CRM-Race-49819.aspx" target=""><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Is Microsoft Winning the CRM Race?"</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> for our extensive look at Microsoft and its Dynamics CRM offerings.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Happe says that linking CRM data with consumer-networking profiles will be the next step for CRM providers. Doing so can provide a lot of a value, particularly in gathering insight into the consumer mind. "CRM applications are clearly taking things more seriously," Happe points out. "In sales and marketing, it’s all about building trust and getting in to talk to people. What we’re learning is that you can use [networks] to build trust before you ever make an explicit request to speak with [prospective customers]."</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-73932666513438427352008-06-24T13:25:00.000+10:002008-06-24T13:29:45.509+10:009 Deadly Sins in Marketing<span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>DMDays '08: A database is more than just a list of names—it's where marketers go wrong and how to get back on course.</strong> </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">By </span><a id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_rptAuthors_ctl01_Author" href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=49491"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Jessica Tsai</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">NEW YORK—Arthur Middleton Hughes is old, rich, and famous—the latter two of which he attributes to his success in database marketing. Another contributing factor may be the many books he’s written on the topic, the latest of which is entitled, Strategic Database Marketing. In his presentation at the 2008 DM Days Conference and Expo here this morning, Hughes—vice president and solutions architect at Texas-based KnowledgeBase Marketing—explained how, even though we’ve had to sacrifice the intimacy of 1950s-era mom-and-pop grocery stores, technology can help marketers bridge this gap, improve customer loyalty, and, ultimately, increase sales.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">There are two types of database people, Hughes says:</span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>The constructor:</strong> knows the ins and outs of how to build the list and getting it onto the Web; and </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>The creator:</strong> knows how to use the names and build loyalty and repeat sales. </span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Companies will inevitably hit a dead end if they lack either of these, Hughes told the crowd. You need both types of database marketers to make it work. Hughes outlined the nine biggest mistakes marketers fall into when attempting to squeeze some benefit from their customer database: </span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Lack of strategy.</strong> "What are you doing with the database?" Hughes asked. Building it is easy, but making a profit means marketers must figure out, "If I were a customer, why would I want to be in this database? What’s in it for me?" A successful database collects data on customer purchases, permits ad-hoc analysis, fuels information to create a customer lifetime value (LTV) table, and helps marketers figure out what motivates their customers. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Focus on price.</strong> Databases build loyalty—coupons don’t. Study after study has shown that customers generally care about more than just low prices—though the current </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Columns-Departments/Insight/Market-Focus-%3Cbr%3ERetail-Consumer-Packaged-Goods----Price-Check,-Aisle-5-48694.aspx" target=""><span style="font-family:verdana;">economic conditions may have pushed price higher on a consumer’s list of priorities</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">. A positive shopping experience, according to Hughes, is typically associated with feelings of recognition, good service, quality information, convenience, and helpfulness. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Lack of testing and controls.</strong> Most marketers fail to implement a control group when testing out the effects of their campaigns, opting instead to go big and launch the program on the whole database. Key measuring points include: response rates, return on investment (ROI), profits, and lifetime value. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Poor segment strategy.</strong> Use your database to figure out who your best, most-loyal customers are—and then do everything you can to keep them, Hughes said. Those prime customers make up the bulk of your revenue. Don’t waste your resources on the less-valuable ones. Having customers complete profiles can also help you determine how they prefer to communicate with you and what their individual needs are. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Failure to use the Web.</strong> The Web is an excellent place to collect customer data and shopping behavior. Moreover, after a consumer makes an online purchase, Hughes advises marketers to send a follow-up confirmation email within 30 seconds. The benefit is so tremendous, he says, that "if your software engineers can’t get this done, get rid of them." </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Building in-house.</strong> It costs too much and takes too long to build a database in-house. Many vendors—some present at DM Days—allow companies to outsource their database and save the headache of trying to build their own. Vendors in this field include: Experian, Merkle, and Harte-Hanks. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Treating all customers alike.</strong> Returning the concept of segmentation, Hughes reiterated the importance of treating customers differently depending on their stage in buying cycle and their profitability. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Lack of a retention program.</strong> It costs far more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, and yet, Hughes said, marketers still fail to implement a retention strategy. One of the best ways to hang onto a customer, Hughes added, is to sell them another product. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Lack of leadership.</strong> Marketing leaders need to take initiative to tie together the internal and external units. Channels include the Web, management information systems, customer service, technology support, telemarketing, service bureau, and direct agency.</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">A database has the power to give marketers insight into the preferences and needs of their customers. With the proliferation of choice, the customer has less incentive to be loyal. A database gives marketers an opportunity to make that personal connection. "You have to touch people’s lives," Hughes said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-44853420244069433272008-06-24T13:14:00.002+10:002008-06-24T13:23:26.470+10:00Maximizing the Value of Salesforce.com By Leveraging Software-as-a-Service Business Intelligence and Analytics<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_w6_i5BjSnvM/SGBojSGcWfI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/gg88brUYR2A/s1600-h/whitepaper2.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215283323858606578" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_w6_i5BjSnvM/SGBojSGcWfI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/gg88brUYR2A/s400/whitepaper2.gif" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">Sponsored By LucidEra</span><br /><div><div align="justify"></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>At a time when businesses of all sizes are facing unprecedented competition due to globalization and eCommerce, and the threat of recession in the US is placing severe budgetary pressures on their operations, a growing number of companies are seeking new ways to optimize their operations and maximize their new business opportunities.</strong> </span></div><div align="justify"><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In order to survive and succeed in this increasingly challenging business climate, companies of all sizes must gain greater insight into their business operations. For many of these companies, this means an increased focus on getting more value out of their customer relationship management (CRM) and salesforce automation (SFA) systems as well as a greater demand for business intelligence (BI) and analytic applications.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">These trends have also fueled the growth of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Salesforce.com has become the leader of this new generation of web-based, on-demand solutions that are dramatically changing the way businesses harness the power of enterprise applications and capitalize on their previously untapped reservoir of corporate data.</span></div><div align="justify"><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This whitepaper will discuss the market trends which are driving companies of all sizes to adopt these more flexible and effective SaaS BI solutions to achieve their corporate objectives, like LucidEra's on-demand analytic applications.</span></div><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Download this whitepaper </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/Readers/Subscriber.aspx?Redirect=http://www.destinationcrm.com/PDF/dCRMWhitepaper.aspx?IssueID=1070"><span style="font-family:verdana;">here</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-65776312699129456582008-05-08T10:17:00.000+10:002008-05-08T10:19:35.769+10:00Open Source Is an Open Book for SaaS Providers<span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>A new study from Gartner predicts that, by 2010, 90 percent of software-as-a-service providers will incorporate some component of open-source technologies into their infrastructures.</strong> </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7886&TopicID=9"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Christopher Musico</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">During the CRM market's well-documented move from on-premise-only offerings to the on-demand world of software-as-a-service (SaaS), not as much attention has been given to the role that open-source technology can have in this shift. One aspect in particular that may have been overlooked, according to a recently published report from Gartner, is the extent to which open-source technologies are used in the infrastuctures of SaaS offerings. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The report -- "Open Source in SaaS, 2008" -- was written by Robert DeSisto, a Gartner vice president and a distinguished analyst specializing in applications strategies and government. "[The study is] more of an awakening of what is going on behind the scenes," DeSisto says. "The point is, no one ever asks what's going on behind the scenes with SaaS. The problem is, when people do it, they don't tend to worry about details -- so we're exposing [in this study] what's going on." </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">DeSisto explains that several CRM vendors -- in particular Salesforce.com, RightNow Technologies, and SugarCRM -- all use open source in one form or another. Salesforce.com, he says, uses an open-source database on its laptop disconnected version, while RightNow and Sugar use an open-source infrastructure stack on the server side. While particular vendors may use open source differently, DeSisto says that infrastructure isn't becoming a competitive differentiator -- and that is a good sign. "[Vendors] are not looking to differentiate on infrastructure," he says. "[They] are looking to differentiate on other elements on what they're providing." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">DeSisto stresses that open source is not a negative -- leveraging open-source technology has its value propositions, which may explain why the Gartner report predicts that 90 percent of SaaS providers will utilize some form of open-source technology by 2010. DeSisto explains that leveraging an open-source framework can help vendors lower software development costs, which in turn could lower acquisition costs to end users -- but that's not a guarantee. The report acknowledges the posibility that "vendors may choose to improve profitability or increase R&D efforts with their savings." DeSisto also stresses that just because a SaaS vendor might opt for open source does not automatically improve its overall offerings. "If open source can enable [vendors] to not spend a lot of money they would have to pass on to users, themselves, whatever the case may be, then it is valuable," he posits. "But you can go open source and still have terrible practices or operating software so any advantage would be lost anyway. [Open-source technology] is not a magical secret sauce -- it's just one piece." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">So what benefits can end users gain by buying from vendors that use open-source technology? Lower costs might be one, but DeSisto points to another long-term benefit: user communities. These self-forming groups can sprout up around application and platform providers, especially those utilizing open-source practices, often to share best practices or even entire applications. According to DeSisto's research, by 2010 open-source applications will make up at least 30 percent of a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider's ecosystem of available applications built on its native platform. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This statistic, however, is dependent upon the mass adoption of PaaS--and there is a chicken-or-egg kind of challenge that may impede this adoption. DeSisto explains that while some companies have the platform (such as Salesforce.com's Force.com) for this type of community, other companies (such as Microsoft and IBM) have the developers necessary to build out the application ecosystem. Having the combination of platform and developers is essential, he says. "The engine fuel is the [adoption of the] platform," he notes. "If the application platform has difficulty getting adopted, then I think we won't see as much open source in SaaS as we predicted."</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-78312603476555543302008-03-25T13:01:00.000+11:002008-03-25T13:04:00.335+11:00Marketing: It's Nothing Personal<span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>A report from the CMO Council reveals that personalization is a marketing force that isn't being fully utilized -- yet.</strong> </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7751&TopicID=9"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Marshall Lager</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The good news in the world of marketing is that more than more than half of all respondents in a recent Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council study plan to allocate 10 percent or more of their marketing budgets toward personalized communications, with a quarter of respondents allocating at least 20 percent. The bad news is that only a handful of respondents felt their previous personalization efforts had been successful, and 38 percent said they didn't even know whether personalized communications had outperformed traditional mass-marketing tactics. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"The Power of Personalization," a study of 700 senior marketers worldwide, reveals flaws in past attempts to get closer to the customer, while simultaneously preserving hope for a better tomorrow. "Clearly, CMOs are gaining more confidence in the process of personalization and are increasingly willing to direct more of their marketing budgets to personalized communication tactics," said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council, in a statement. "Nevertheless, many marketers' programs have been deemed unsuccessful because of a lack of actionable customer data used in campaign planning -- as well as because of inadequate analytics used in assessing post-campaign effectiveness."<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In a follow-up interview with destinationCRM, Neale-May adds that a disconnect exists between available capabilities and the willingness to use them. "The deficiency we're seeing in marketing organizations is a lack of intelligence, intimacy, and understanding regarding the customer," he says. "It's frustrating to see, because this isn't a new issue." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Neale-May attributes much of the personalization gap to inertia. "Tools -- and, increasingly, services -- exist to access individual-level customer data," he says. "They can predict which toothpaste brands might [fail], and which customers are likely to defect, but who's extracting and using the data for more targeted campaigns? Procter & Gamble is still doing mass marketing because its agency is pushing for it." In the study, 44 percent of respondents claimed low usage of personalized communications in their programs for customer acquisition and customer relationship management. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Still, marketers understand the value of personalization even if they aren't using it yet. "Personalization strategies and programs will be very important to maintaining customer relationships," Neale-May says. "A lot of marketers recognize the value of cross-channel communication." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">More than advertising and special deals, personalization provides marketing communications with the means to deliver real value to customers. "Look at texting -- it's a very powerful channel for notifying customers," Neale-May says. "Chemical companies can notify farmers when the ideal time is to spray crops based on weather and other factors; drug companies can text people to remind them they need prescription refills." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The CMO Council study proposes a long list of winning strategies in personalized marketing communications, including: </span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Individualized emails and letters;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Opt-in, permission-based marketing programs;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Targeted database marketing leveraging personal profiles;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Personalized email promotions based on timing of sign-up and regular intervals thereafter;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Print-on-demand collateral incorporating personalized content; and</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Variable Data Printing (VDP).</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Neale-May says he's hopeful that better marketing practices will become mainstream in the near future. "Close to 50 percent of the CMOs we represent are hired to fix broken marketing organizations," he says. "If we can grow customer-analysis competencies in marketing organizations, this can make marketing spend more effective."</span> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-86051567691820827052008-02-15T11:47:00.000+11:002008-02-15T11:49:15.287+11:00The End of Mass Marketing<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">Is on-demand marketing the way of the future?</span></strong> <br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7639"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Georgia Hanias, founder, Cyrano Media</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In today's telecommunications-savvy world, it takes a lot more to keep a customer happy than ever before. With so many telecom providers to choose from, customers have become immune to traditional and impersonal methods of marketing. Direct campaigns that have been used in the past -- such as telemarketing and direct mail -- are now becoming too costly to run and are largely ineffective. And lately it seems that everyone is offering a great bargain on phone services. So what's a business to do to stay on top? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Customer Lifecycle Management Like many other telecommunications-industry experts, Rob Bamforth, an analyst at Quo Circa, believes that a more one-to-one dialogue will be the key to keeping customers loyal, and stresses the role that this approach plays in today's mobile world. This individual-centric approach is being referred to as Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM).<br />"Since CLM is a relatively new concept, it's difficult to explain or define," Bamforth says. "The way I would describe it is context-oriented mobile marketing."<br />Another way of describing CLM is "Marketing on Demand." Through the use of real-time behavioral marketing, CLM enables operators to manage, evaluate, and automate customer interactions to support one-to-one dialogues, based on user profiles, behaviors, and previous exchanges. It creates a bond between the operator and the customer throughout the customer's lifecycle so that the operator knows exactly what the customer wants and is able to communicate the right service to her in real time. This approach can help lower churn and increase revenue generated from each customer. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"CLM providers have a major challenge ahead of them, and that is to convince mobile operators that behavior-based marketing is an important opportunity that is worth investing in," Bamforth adds. "I believe it has a future in mobile telephony -- especially in advanced sectors where there is a blurring of fixed and mobile services. This convergence is eating away at revenue generated by traditional services such as voice calls. To find new ways of earning income and keeping customers happy, operators have to differentiate themselves from their competitors -- and to do so in a way that makes a subscriber feel valued and not just a number. CLM can help achieve this by enabling an operator to target an individual person."<br />One of the companies offering CLM technology in the mobile sector is Agillic, a United Kingdom-based enterprise set up eight years ago to provide an answer to falling revenues and customer disloyalty. Agillic offers operators a unique way to communicate with customers by deploying marketing-on-demand solutions that are quick and easy to deploy requiring little or no integration with underlying systems. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Case Study: Telenor SONOFON Among Agillic's big success stories is its collaboration with Danish GSM leader Telenor SONOFON, which deployed the company's Pre-Paid and Post-Paid CLM solutions. "Before CLM, customers were migrating to other mobile operators with the belief that they could get better products and services at more competitive prices, without realizing that [we] could offer them the same if not better," explains Martin Kildgaard Nielson, Telenor SONOFON's CRM manager. "This lack of customer loyalty was the result of our inability to communicate more effectively with each of our subscribers and to do so with cross-channel synergy. We needed to address this serious challenge before we could improve our performance in the market." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Agillic provided the foundation for a communications strategy that could manage both inbound and outbound communications with each customer. "Agillic's CLM solution gave us the potential to build a relationship with each customer over time by learning from every dialogue," Kildgaard Nielson says. "It could also support real-time interaction, allowing us to react swiftly to customer behaviors. So if a user clicked on a Web link we could automatically send out a message that was pertinent for that moment in time. All of these capabilities helped the company create a targeted marketing campaign that fit the user profile of each individual high-value customer." Thanks to CLM, during the first year Telenor SONOFON reduced churn among its high-value post-paid customers by 50 percent and increased its average revenue per user by between 5 percent and 10 percent. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Bamforth says he expects that more telecommunications providers will follow Telenor SONOFON's path toward delivering a more individualized service to customers. "There is definitely a future for CLM, but the big challenge is getting broader recognition for this marketing approach and carving out a niche in the telecoms sector."</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-62247395641943827232008-01-21T09:05:00.000+11:002008-01-21T09:09:00.165+11:00CRM Market Set to Double<em><span style="font-family:verdana;">Recent studies predict the global CRM market will double within six years, and suggest explosive growth in CRM adoption across every segment -- especially on-demand CRM.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7462&TopicID=9"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Joshua Weinberger, with reporting by Demir Barlas and Jean Thilmany</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Good news for CRM vendors: CRM software investment, adoption, and product revenues are all set to rise, according to </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7351"><span style="font-family:verdana;">a recent report from market analysis firm Datamonitor</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Though Datamonitor estimates the 2006 global CRM software market was worth just under $3.6 billion in license revenue alone, the research firm's analysis finds the market hasn't yet matured. In fact, less than half of U.S. companies -- 42 percent -- are using CRM, according to </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7340"><span style="font-family:verdana;">new research from the consulting firm KensingtonHouse</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">. Datamonitor predicts a compound annual growth rate of approximately 10.5 percent through 2012, nearly doubling in size to $6.6 billion.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Datamonitor attributes that predicted growth to increasing deployment of CRM in new vertical sectors, such as healthcare and life sciences, as well as to a high degree of flexibility in deployment that will bring smaller-size end users on board. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Even more notable, in terms of current and future growth, is the fact that CRM's "market fertility" -- the percentage of companies deploying, upgrading, or actively considering a CRM purchase -- stands at 38 percent, according to the KensingtonHouse report. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The market-fertility figure is the metric KensingtonHouse chose to highlight, as it reveals a record number of companies deploying or planning to deploy CRM. "This is significantly above what I've seen historically, which has been 18 to 25 percent fertility," says Thomas Moriarty, the consultancy's president. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">According to KensingtonHouse, the main reason for the current wave of CRM popularity is the maturity of the on-demand delivery model and functionality set. Fifty-five percent of respondents expressed a preference for on-demand, with a mere 14 percent nominating on-premise and 31 percent undecided. Though 87 percent of survey respondents were either small or midsize businesses (SMBs), Moriarty says that the preference for on-demand extends to the enterprise segment as well. (The research canvassed 437 respondents representing a population of 20,000 companies with a degree of accuracy of plus or minus 5 percent.) </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">On-demand's benefits include its low cost and its simplicity, Moriarty says: The model can lower the cost of a CRM deployment by as much as 60 percent while also offering an increasingly user-friendly experience. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">While on-demand can be easier to implement than on-premise, adopters of either variety should still be aware of the risks of project failure. Gartner recently predicted that, by the end of 2008, "25 percent of CRM projects will be postponed or canceled because of the CRM skill shortage in consultants and systems integrators." Moriarty suggests that figure be taken in context. "Three years ago, that number would have been 75 percent," he claims. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">A recent report from the consultancy Bain & Co. revealed that companies that put more effort into CRM up front (including long-term planning, unwavering executive sponsorship, and diligent change management) get more out of the technology. Those companies that put a "major effort" into CRM reported a 4.17 satisfaction score on a five-point scale, while those putting in a "limited effort" were only able to achieve a 3.53 score. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">More companies now consider CRM critical to their enterprise application portfolio, according to Datamonitor: "As the increasing number of organizations understand the importance of positive customer experiences and strong customer relationships, the market for [CRM] applications continues to expand." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The report found the CRM sector increasingly segmented by enterprise size. Whereas CRM was once primarily for large companies, Datamonitor estimates that companies with fewer than 1,000 employees made up one-third of all CRM licenses sold last year; by 2012, that sector will hold 42 percent of the market. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">But Datamonitor's analysis found that many end users are cautious when considering CRM for fear of facing adoption issues. These companies reported several "adoption inhibitors," including software complexity; high total cost of ownership; and lack of strategic support for CRM installations. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">On-demand software has become a credible alternative, but report author Vuk Trifkovic, a technology analyst at Datamonitor, doesn't expect it will significantly alter the CRM market in coming years. (The report estimates the present-day global on-demand CRM market to be approximately $1 billion.) Trifkovic expects to see a substantially more competitive on-demand market, with established on-demand vendors facing pressure from smaller ones -- and both competing against traditional on-premise vendors that now offer on-demand editions. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The on-demand application model -- in which the vendor hosts the CRM software on distant servers -- removes the end user's headache of daily maintenance and technical operations. Such applications will drive CRM adoption, particularly at small and midsize enterprises that have held back due to concerns about implementation issues, the report says. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Although [the on-demand] method does address certain adoption inhibitors, CRM on-demand, alone, cannot transform the market," Trifkovic writes. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-73175053629783802962008-01-08T11:47:00.000+11:002008-01-08T11:51:26.765+11:00Top 25 CRM News Stories of 2007<span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>As 2008 arrives, a look back at the most popular online stories of last year.</em> </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7451&TopicID=9"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Editors of CRM magazine</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Heading into 2008, awash in predictions and guesses about what the year ahead is likely to bring, we thought it was a fine time to step back and take a moment to reflect on the 25 stories viewed most often by visitors here at destinationCRM.com.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">It's important to note, of course, that stories posted recently haven't had the benefit of extra time to trickle through the series of tubes we call the Internet, so it's no surprise that any list such as this would skew heavily toward the first quarter of the year -- it's impossible to guess what this list will look like a few months or even a year from now. (If you've got an algorithm for accurately weighting popularity as a factor of time, we'd love to hear about it.) If history is any guide, articles eventually develop lives of their own, spiking in popularity weeks or even months after they're first written -- as companies change, products are introduced or updated, and related trends emerge.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Consider some of the major headlines from the year that aren't yet on this list:</span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">the business-intelligence fire sale that included </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6734"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Oracle acquiring Hyperion Solutions</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">, </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7274"><span style="font-family:verdana;">SAP making a bid for Business Objects</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">, and </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7364"><span style="font-family:verdana;">IBM snapping up Cognos</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">; </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">the late-year launches of </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7220"><span style="font-family:verdana;">SAP Business ByDesign</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">, </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7420"><span style="font-family:verdana;">SAP CRM 2007</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">, and </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7441"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Microsoft's Dynamics CRM 4.0</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">; </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">the initial public offerings for </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7445"><span style="font-family:verdana;">NetSuite</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> and (after </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7302"><span style="font-family:verdana;">a short delay</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">) </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7369"><span style="font-family:verdana;">SoundBite Communications</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">; </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">the ongoing legal battle </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6788"><span style="font-family:verdana;">between SAP and Oracle</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> over </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7029"><span style="font-family:verdana;">alleged corporate espionage by an SAP subsidiary</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">; </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">a </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6906"><span style="font-family:verdana;">major restructuring</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> and </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7279"><span style="font-family:verdana;">some wholesale corporate tumult at Sage Software</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">; </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">departures of key CRM executives from </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6914"><span style="font-family:verdana;">SAP (Shai Agassi)</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> and </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7292"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Oracle (John Wookey)</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">; </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Oracle's offer to </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7281"><span style="font-family:verdana;">buy middleware competitor BEA Systems</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> -- which was quickly rejected; </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">CEO departures from </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7267"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (for Nuance Communciations) and from </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7380"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Callidus Software</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (for Microsoft); </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">the </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7144"><span style="font-family:verdana;">launch of Apple's iPhone</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> and </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7042"><span style="font-family:verdana;">the mainstreaming of enterprise mobility</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7154"><span style="font-family:verdana;">in CRM overall</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Salesforce.com hitting a milestone (</span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7423"><span style="font-family:verdana;">its millionth subscriber</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">) and </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7048"><span style="font-family:verdana;">launching its Platform-as-a-Service</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">; and </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">upgrades -- and new naming conventions -- for the core CRM suites of </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7013"><span style="font-family:verdana;">NetSuite</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">, </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7431"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Concursive Corp. (formerly Centric CRM)</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> and </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7412"><span style="font-family:verdana;">RightNow Technologies</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">.</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">All these stories were major events in 2007, stories likely to have repercussions in the year ahead -- and none of them has yet cracked the Top 25. </span></p><span style="font-family:verdana;">That said, the articles that do currently comprise the Top 25 have been popular for a reason, and they reflect a wide range of subject matter -- from research reports to trend analysis, from vendor announcements to product launches. What's really amazing is the sheer breadth of the CRM industry reflected in this list -- 18 of the 25 headlines mention a CRM vendor by name, with only two vendors appearing more than once. We take that as a sign of how democratic the marketplace truly has become (and perhaps a sign that we're doing a fairly decent job being representative of that marketplace). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">But enough dragging out the suspense -- here are the Top 25, as of Dec. 31, 2007: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">#1 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6664"><span style="font-family:verdana;">SAS Tops Gartner's BI Magic Quadrant</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (2/1/2007)<br />#2 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6701"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Verint: Can I Get a Witness?</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (2/12/2007)<br />#3 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6713"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Gartner Combines Two Magic Quadrants</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (2/14/2007)<br />#4 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6726"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Midmarket CRM Grows</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (2/23/2007)<br />#5 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6745"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Beagle Honors the Wizzes in the Biz</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (3/6/2007)<br />#6 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6592"><span style="font-family:verdana;">High-Tech Wages Are On the Upswing</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (1/3/2007)<br />#7 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6648"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Infor Is the Top Performer in Performance Management</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (1/22/2007)<br />#8 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6631"><span style="font-family:verdana;">SPSS Refreshes Its Data Mining Software</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (1/16/2007)<br />#9 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6712"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Microsoft Brings Analytics to the Desktop</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (2/14/2007)<br />#10 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6646"><span style="font-family:verdana;">A Dot KANA Solution</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (1/22/2007)<br />#11 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7206"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Omniture and Salesforce.com Take a Meeting</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (9/11/2007)<br />#12 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6599"><span style="font-family:verdana;">What's in a Lead?</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (1/9/2007)<br />#13 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6760"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Centric CRM Updates Its Offerings</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (3/9/2007)<br />#14 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6887"><span style="font-family:verdana;">An SFA Wave Hits a Crowded Beach</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (5/3/2007)<br />#15 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6715"><span style="font-family:verdana;">NetSuite Moves Up the E-Commerce Ladder</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (2/15/2007)<br />#16 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6658"><span style="font-family:verdana;">SugarCRM Adds Spice</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (1/29/2007)<br />#17 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6609"><span style="font-family:verdana;">A New Flavor of Microsoft Dynamics CRM</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (1/10/2007)<br />#18 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6674"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Business Objects Makes Baby's First BI</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (2/5/2007)<br />#19 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6746"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Siebel Continues to Fly Solo as a Leader</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (3/7/2007)<br />#20 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6675"><span style="font-family:verdana;">RightNow Delivers on Voice Commitment</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (2/5/2007)<br />#21 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6597"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Offline-Level Service Is a Must-Have in the Virtual World</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (1/8/2007)<br />#22 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6615"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Avaya Begins an Ascent</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (1/15/2007)<br />#23 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7118"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Yahoo! Is the New E-Biz Satisfaction Leader</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (8/14/2007)<br />#24 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6732"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Salesforce.com Makes a Vertical Splash</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (2/28/2007)<br />#25 - </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6662"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Oracle's World of Unlimited Possibilities</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (1/31/2007)</span><br /><a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/click;h=v8/3641/0/0/%2a/z;44306;0-0;0;7565885;31-1/1;0/0/0;;~sscs=%3f" target="_blank"></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-37510924294343664192007-12-07T15:40:00.000+11:002007-12-07T15:42:29.739+11:00Omniture Set to Acquire Visual Sciences<p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>The pool of Web analytics providers continues to shrink.</strong> </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7334&TopicID=9"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Jean Thilmany</span></a></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The Web marketing technology space continued its trend toward consolidation last week, with Omniture announcing plans to acquire Visual Sciences for $394 million.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The move solidifies Orem, Utah-based Omniture's spot atop the shrinking list Web analytics players, and means other marketing-software vendors will look to integrate their products with Omniture before turning to other integrations, says Bill Gassman, research director at industry research firm Gartner.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Boasting a client list that includes eBay, General Motors, Microsoft, and Sony, Omniture's SiteCatalyst product helps electronically measure Web-site traffic, visitor activity, advertising effectiveness, and e-commerce transactions. Other products give customers access to business data in real time. San Diego-based Visual Sciences offers Internet-based businesses a tracking service that measures and analyzes Web-site activity. The data it collects can help improve marketing, e-commerce, and customer support, according to company statements. (Until May of this year, Visual Sciences was known as WebSideStory, which acquired the Visual Sciences name and technology in February 2006.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Companies that operate on the Web -- and that includes just about every company in business today -- rely on analytics tools, Gassman says. Tools such as Omniture's look for Web trends that are vital to planning targeted marketing campaigns. "The more your business depends on online channels, the more you need analytics because that's the way you understand your business," Gassman says.<br />But smaller companies need not pay costly software-as-a-service (SaaS) fees to access those tools, he says. Instead, companies with fewer than than 5 million page views per month can use Google Analytics for free. Since its introduction a few years ago, the Google product has fractured the Web analytics market: Large companies and those with an entirely online presence -- think eBay -- now use products such as Omniture's, while smaller players turn to Google Analytics.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">As the number of Web analytics providers (all following the SaaS model) that cater to big businesses continues to shrink, companies looking to analyze and track visitor activity on their Web sites have fewer software options to choose from. But the remaining analytics providers increasingly boast a broader solution set that covers more tracking, analysis, and Web marketing bases than in the past, Gassman adds.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">"And here we have number one buying number two," he says. "What that means is [that] vendors of other online marketing programs will make the effort to integrate their products with Omniture first. They'll pick up other Web analytics platforms later." Examples of online marketing applications that can be integrated with Web analytics software include targeted email programs and marketing planning software. Those applications use Web analytics information to populate their own applications. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Josh James, Omniture's chief executive officer, says his company's fit with Visual Sciences is a natural one. The companies' combined analytics and tracking technologies will offer a stepped-up set of solutions that can meet customers' expanding needs, he says. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">"We're facing a very significant opportunity defined by the rapid growth of online advertising and online business in general," James says. "This acquisition enables Omniture to accelerate our investments in advanced solutions that drive customer success as well as create further opportunities to cross-sell our growing portfolio of products to a combined customer base of more than 4,000 customers."</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">At least one other marketing-technology executive agrees that consolidation is a good thing for the industry. Luis Rivera, chief executive officer of marketing software provider J.L. Halsey, says Omniture's move is indicative of what he calls the "vitality" of the marketing sector, including his own company's recent spate of acquisitions (Lyris Technologies, EmailLabs, ClickTracks, and Hot Banana). "Technology today makes it easier than ever for marketers to acquire customers and drive increased ROI through more relevant, behavior-based marketing programs," Rivera says, in a written statement. "But every technology tool at a marketer's disposal -- Web analytics, content management, and email marketing, to name a few -- is made more valuable when it works in concert with all the others. That's what this wave of consolidation is all about."</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-81018164472943837612007-12-07T15:38:00.000+11:002007-12-07T15:40:12.222+11:00CRM Is Up Down Under<span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>New research shows Australia leading the adoption of CRM software in the rapidly expanding Asia-Pacific market.</strong> </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7338&TopicID=9"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Colin Beasty</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"> CRM software revenue in the Asia-Pacific region will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.8 percent from 2006 to 2011, according to a new study recently released by Gartner. The firm's research, which highlights the region's expanding importance for CRM vendors, found Australia leading the way in CRM, claiming 42.8 percent of Asia-Pac's CRM market in 2006.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The Asia-Pacific region's strong uptake of CRM is being fueled by growth across all subsegments, Gartner's findings show -- with marketing, in particular, laying claim to 23.5 percent of CRM software revenue. And unlike the United States or Europe / Middle East / Africa (EMEA) -- regions that are experiencing explosive growth in software-as-a-service (SaaS) -- the Asia-Pacific market has, to date, been relatively old-school, driven by traditional deployments of installed software, says Denise Ganly, an analyst and research director of enterprise applications with Gartner. "The [Asia-Pacific] market is relatively immature compared to North America and EMEA," she says. "SaaS and on-demand hasn't taken off in the same way, and in many Asian countries this will not likely change due to the cultural barriers associated with such a deployment model."</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Despite the so-called immaturity, Gartner expects market consolidation and burgeoning on-demand use to stimulate CRM expansion overall in the region. Australia in particular will experience continued growth -- especially organic growth -- thanks in part to what Gartner sees as the country's strong IT infrastructure and partner channels for CRM vendors, as well as the availability of integration and support services. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"The Australian market will continue to grow as end users extend their applications beyond ERP, but the market will also experience growth because of the continued adoption of on-demand solutions, as well as CRM solutions for self-service customer support of campaign management," Ganly writes in the report. "Even in Australia the CRM market is relatively immature, with a lot of potential for organic growth. Companies across the Asia-Pacific region are focusing on analyzing customer data and trying to gain the whole view of the customer, rather than embarking on [automation] for their sales force."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Recent research by Gartner also highlighted the growth of business intelligence (BI) software in the Asia-Pacific region. The BI market grew 16 percent in 2005 to reach $491.8 million in 2006, with Japan accounting for more than half of that overall growth. India was listed as the fastest-growing BI market, with software revenues for BI platforms reaching $16.4 million in 2006, up from $12.1 million the previous year. In many ways, CRM and BI software are growing hand-in-hand, Bhavish Sood, a principal analyst with Gartner, writes in the report. This sort of software is "nice to have" as businesses in the Asia-Pacific region continue to develop beyond basics such as ERP and accounting software, he says.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-12107150355927462912007-12-07T15:36:00.000+11:002007-12-07T15:38:43.222+11:00CRM Remains a Fertile Market<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">New research points to explosive growth in CRM adoption across every segment -- especially on-demand CRM.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7340&TopicID=9"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Demir Barlas</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"> Forty-two percent of U.S. companies are using CRM, according to new market research from the consulting firm KensingtonHouse, and the percentage just keeps on growing. Even more notable, in terms of current and future growth, is the fact that CRM's "market fertility" -- the percentage of companies deploying, upgrading, or actively considering a CRM purchase -- stands at 38 percent, according to the report.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The market-fertility figure is the metric KensingtonHouse chose to highlight, as it reveals a record number of companies deploying or planning to deploy CRM. "This is significantly above what I've seen historically, which has been 18 to 25 percent fertility," says Thomas Moriarty, the consultancy's president.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">According to the survey, the main reason for the current wave of CRM popularity is the maturity of the on-demand delivery model and functionality set. Fifty-five percent of respondents expressed a preference for on-demand, with a mere 14 percent nominating on-premise and 31 percent undecided. Eighty-seven percent of survey respondents were either small or midsize businesses (SMBs), but Moriarty says that the preference for on demand extended to the enterprise segment as well. The research, sponsored by Microsoft CRM partner T.H.G. Sales Automation, canvassed 437 respondents representing a population of 20,000 companies with a degree of accuracy of plus or minus 5 percent.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">On demand is succeeding because of both its low cost and its simplicity, Moriarty says, adding that KensingtonHouse estimates the model can lower the cost of a CRM deployment by as much as 60 percent while also offering an increasingly user-friendly experience. "Customization is so easy now that you don't have to be a bits-and-bytes guy to go in and create all kinds of different fields, reports, and dashboards," he says.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">While on-demand initiatives may be easier to implement than on-premise ones, adopters of either variety should still be aware of the significant risks of project failure. Gartner recently predicted that, by the end of 2008, "25 percent of CRM projects will be postponed or canceled because of the CRM skill shortage in consultants and systems integrators." While this sounds like an inordinately high number to industry outsiders, Moriarty emphasizes that it has to be taken in context. "Three years ago, that number would have been 75 percent," he claims.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The good news is not only that the ecosystem of CRM consultants and systems integrators has matured through continued CRM implementation success, but also that CRM adopters can control their own fates by making CRM an institutional priority. The recent Management Tools and Trends 2007 report from management consultancy Bain & Co. revealed that companies that put more effort into CRM up front (including long-term planning, unwavering executive sponsorship, and diligent change management) get more out of the technology. In the Bain survey, those companies who put a "major effort" into CRM reported a 4.17 satisfaction score on a five-point scale, while those putting in a "limited effort" were only able to achieve a 3.53 score.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">That data point alone should convince any CRM adopter aiming to maximize return on investment to enter into the implementation prepared and willing to put in some heavy lifting. "You have to maintain the quality of data and make sure to load a good set of business rules that specify how the system is going to be used," Moriarty counsels. "You have to do the work."</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-29260516632763589802007-12-07T15:33:00.000+11:002007-12-07T15:36:20.477+11:00Market Focus: Technology -- The Simple Truth about Complex Manufacturing<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">Tech firms need CRM as much as any other company--and sometimes even more.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7300"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Marshall Lager</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">There's a long-standing (and wrong-headed) belief that CRM technology can be a cure-all for a company's operational woes. There's an equally long-standing (and equally wrong-headed) perception that high-tech manufacturers and vendors don't need CRM. Not only is the 360-degree view of customers, partners, and processes important in the technology vertical; it's made tricky by the complexity of the business models and by the roots of those misperceptions.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In the first place, every business needs CRM, even if only to manage customers' account histories and communications -- CRM grew from contact management, after all. Why, then, the idea that tech businesses don't need it? "It's not as much a process vertical [as] financial services," says Tim Hickernell, senior research analyst, applications, Info-Tech Research Group. The focus is on the products themselves -- and since tech salespeople are often former engineers, they're less likely to be relationship-driven.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is a dangerous reduction of the situation. Even in the tech world, says Diane Albano, vice president of Americas operations at Progress Software, "People are still selling to people, trying to solve a problem." Progress promotes sales effectiveness of businesses across many verticals, and Albano says the key is communicating. "If you can get that message across to your team, you'll have happier customers and more motivated workers."</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Using and contributing to the CRM system, remembering that business is about the customer and not the product, are basic elements that haven't become as ingrained among tech firms as they have elsewhere. Fortunately, fixing issues around adoption and technique among techies requires largely the same effort as it does in other verticals. "You must make it mandatory -- it's not up for debate. But do it in a gentle, prodding way, not with yelling," Albano says. "Show how you're enabling salespeople in order to make them understand why it's necessary."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Beyond adoption, Hickernell notes where tech companies are different from others in terms of CRM. "Selecting the right CRM components is more important," he says. "Channel management and knowledge management are important considerations. There's a very complex value chain -- relationships are at least B2B2C," he says, and often reflexive, where two manufacturers sell each other their products. "Work is spread across the value chain, involving original equipment manufacturers, original design manufacturers, and even different divisions of a single company selling to itself as an internal customer." This means careful tracking of channels, and a firm grasp on information at all stages with knowledge management.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This becomes apparent in engineering-to-order processes. "We maintain virtually no finished goods in stock. Almost all orders we take require engineers to be involved before production begins," says Phil Shields, senior analyst at K&L Microwave, a manufacturer that uses CRM software from IFS. "They may be involved in the quoting process, determining if we can even build a product to the customer's specs, providing technical data or preliminary drawings. After we receive an order, engineers will design the new product; even for repeat orders, engineers many times need to check the documentation provided by the customer to make sure there are no changes since the last time."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Prior to implementing sales-and-marketing functionality, K&L was generating quotes with the IFS ERP system. "This required us to create a customer, sales part, and inventory part just to create a quote," Shields says. "Integration with our ERP system was one of the big reasons we selected IFS's CRM system." Requiring zero programming or customization, all customers, sales parts, customer orders, and invoices are now available within the CRM system. "The IFS CRM system has given us one place to put information, both customer-furnished and K&L documents, so that everyone in the company can access it," Shields says.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Knowledge management and dissemination also comes into its own in high technology. "The expectation for self-service, especially Web self-service, is much higher in this vertical," Hickernell says. "The customer is much more savvy, and more is expected of the vendor. If an error message is programmed into a piece of technology, the customer expects there to be a knowledgebase article for dealing with it."</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-63878710766152915702007-12-07T15:32:00.000+11:002007-12-07T15:33:01.220+11:00Advertising is low on marketing budget list, survey shows<a title="http://www.dmi-news.com/" href="http://www.dmi-news.com/"><span style="font-family:verdana;">www.dmi-news.com</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Advertising accounts for just under 15 per cent of marketing spend on average and marketers plan to spend less in the future - so says a marketing trends survey from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), based in the UK.<br />The other marketing activities attracting significant budget include lead generation (12 per cent), CRM (12 per cent) direct mail (11 per cent), field marketing (11 per cent) and internal marketing (seven per cent). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The survey found that marketers plan to increase their spend on online marketing in the current sales year by an average of 3.6 per cent, CRM by two per cent and public relations by 1.5 per cent. However, they plan to reduce their spend on advertising by 0.2 per cent. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Although marketers who were surveyed plan to spend more on online marketing, digital communication was used by only one in 12 companies at least 'a fair amount'. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Geoff Hurst, marketing director at the CIM, said: "It's interesting to note that a significant majority of marketers are still not making use of the full spectrum of technologies available to help them communicate with customers. In fact, the numbers answering 'not at all' when asked how regularly they used podcasts, corporate blogs, mobile marketing and viral marketing, have actually increased since the survey was last conducted in autumn 2006. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"While traditional marketing techniques will remain important tools for marketers in the future, it will be interesting to see how these figures change when we carry out our next survey."</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-32629844935004564082007-12-07T15:13:00.000+11:002007-12-07T15:32:13.571+11:00Toolkit Tutorial: Getting Value From SFA Applications<span style="font-family:verdana;">The develop, education, assess and learn (DEAL) approach will help sales organizations achieve the elusive business value they seek in their sales force automation (SFA) deployments. There is no guarantee of a return on investment (ROI) for IT projects, but the DEAL approach will better prepare your sales organization to define expectations, adopt realistic measures and achieve tangible benefits.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Key Findings </span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Developing and continually measuring meaningful sales metrics tied to business goals are key to showing value in SFA deployments. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Setting realistic expectations and gaining consensus on the needs of sales management and salespeople are critical to securing, buying and pursuing attainable business goals.</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Recommendations </span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Develop meaningful sales metrics tied to business goals (rather than to sales activity); this is key to showing value in SFA. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Continually measure, interpret and take action based on sales metrics; this makes these metrics "meaningful." </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Create reporting processes to assess achievement against metric goals that are nonintrusive and don't burden salespeople. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Establish a feedback loop technically, via a community site, or organizationally, through sales support, and use the data collected to tweak the metrics, processes and SFA system.</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">ANALYSIS</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Context</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The DEAL approach is a process that will improve the ability of a sales organization to capture and continually improve the value (for example, through increased sales, lead conversion rates and shorter sales cycles) attained from SFA deployment.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The top question Gartner receives about SFA is: How do you measure ROI for SFA? Even in cases where user adoption approaches 100%, sales organizations struggle with understanding the value delivered by their SFA to the sales organization. Sales executives often say they have improved visibility, or more accurate sales forecasts, but they cannot translate these "soft" benefits into real revenue or margin improvement. The primary difficulty in determining value is that there are many parameters besides the technology that will determine performance. Devising the right sales process, developing optimal sales territories, creating the correct incentive compensation plans, or just having good products or services to sell have significant, if not decisive, impact on sales performance and outcomes. However, the variability in nontechnical factors should not excuse organizations from measuring the success of an SFA deployment. The Gartner DEAL approach, when followed, will improve the ability of sales organizations to benefit from an SFA deployment.</span></p><p><em><span style="font-family:verdana;">Assumption: The Gartner DEAL approach focuses on the deployment of SFA. The assumption is that a sales organization already has implemented a sales methodology and has developed territories and compensation plans to pursue business goals. The DEAL approach is designed to provide insight into the effectiveness of sales strategies to enable you to make refinements.</span></em></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Develop </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The "develop" phase of the DEAL approach is the most critical and should not be circumvented. In this phase, your sales organization will determine the sales metrics to be tracked and measured during the life cycle of the deployment. The metrics are not for management only but also for salespeople. The intent of the metrics is to provide insight for all system users, to determine whether they are receiving value that is meaningful to them (such as increased close rates for salespeople). Each industry has specific metrics they consider most important; however, some basic metrics tend to be common. For sales management, metrics may include lead conversion rate, confidence levels in forecast pipelines/pipeline health, opportunity funnel velocity (the time it takes for a sales opportunity to move from qualification to close), opportunity close rates and new salesperson ramp-up time (the time it takes a salesperson to be as a effective as comparable performers).</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">These metrics are not meant to replace analytical reporting on sales performance, where managers gain forecast insight into such issues through win/loss reports, or specific territory performance. The sales management metrics for the SFA project are intended to focus more on the effective use of technology. For salespeople, metrics may include sales content effectiveness (which sales content has been proved most effective in winning new deals), lead quality/source conversion (which lead sources have proved most valuable for sales opportunities), sales methodology effectiveness and activity-based forecast collaboration (helps salespeople measure how well their committed forecast maps to committed sales activities). This is not an exhaustive list of metrics but provides a general guideline to determine the type of metrics your sales organization should consider.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">In general, sales objectives and associated metrics tend to be focused on:</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Acquiring new customers more effectively </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Cross-selling </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Improving margins per sale </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Reducing costs of sales </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Retaining or reducing the churn of established customers </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Selling more frequently </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Upselling </span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Top-line financial metrics must be supported by operational sales metrics, which are more difficult to select and monitor effectively. (See Note 1 for examples of sample metrics that enterprises have used to gauge performance in their sales initiatives.) A key issue in SFA projects for field sales is user adoption. These performance metrics can be augmented by measuring activity and operational metrics, such as the number of people accessing the total functionality of the system and system adoption rates. Sales organizations should develop and distribute activity metrics, in addition to performance metrics, to salespeople to enable them to thoroughly understand their sales results, as well as why these results are occurring.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Education</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Education is critical to the success to any SFA project. Most SFA training is focused on how to use the application, such as explaining the mouse clicks to create an opportunity, or the menu item needed to associate a contact with an opportunity. These are important elements in the successful use of the SFA application, but if this is all you do, then you will be destined to poor adoption, or to obtaining subpar value from the technology.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Ideally, the SFA application would be rolled out at an annual sales meeting, with a launch theme that reflects the value statement and metrics. However, if the timing does not work, e-learning and smaller, regional training groups will work as well. The goal is to create shared ownership of the application, not a top-down management mandate of forced adoption. Before you show the application during sales training, explain the value each person should receive and how he or she will be able to measure that value while using the SFA tool. Once you have buy-in for the value, you can proceed to teaching the mechanics of using the application.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Other key value-added tasks during the "educate" phase:</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">As you hire new salespeople, first reinforce the value proposition of the SFA application before teaching them how to use the system. The one-on-one or peer-to-peer training approach is optimal for bringing a new salesperson up to speed on the SFA system and goals. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Build case studies into the learning modules to simulate the steps, stages and effective use vs. required use. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">For e-learning, include just-in-time learning nuggets that require five minutes or less and will address an immediate problem.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Have a hot line to sales support for help prominently showing (for example, at the top) at all times in the application. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Offer e-learning capabilities within easy reach (not buried within the help function) so that training can be accessible to those who wish to help themselves. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Validate system usability with a select group of achievers. </span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Assess </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Once the metrics are determined, you must put in reporting dashboards to collect the data, to report and review on it a weekly, monthly or no-less frequently than quarterly. The frequency of the reports will depend on the velocity of the business. Specific metrics may have different update cycles. The ultimate test of the metrics you have defined is whether you can assess the progress of the metrics against sales goals, such as revenue, market share or earnings. To demonstrate the value of SFA application, metric reports must show the association between organizational and personal objectives.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The quandary surrounding the "assess" phase is capturing experiences, which can be an art in itself, because you do not want to overburden salespeople with tasks such as entering large amounts of data into opportunity management systems, recording forecasts, or fulfilling administrative tasks. Thus, the key is limiting the demands placed on salespeople, while still capturing the relevant sales experiences and insights that lead to good sales activities and processes. This requires setting up an architecture that may rely on a single database or a set of federated databases, typically capable of handling alphanumeric and text data types, to incorporate data points, feeds and perspectives from different systems.</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">The system should have analysis tools to capture insights on lead quality, pipeline health, documentation quality, presentation resonance, proposal resonance and best practices on the most propitious timing and context for applying sales resources to an audience in a sales cycle. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">The system should be set up to support taking the insights captured in the analyses stage and translating key findings into effective guidance that is communicated via key systems (such as proposal generators, presentation Web sites, opportunity management systems and sales team Web sites), or is introduced in initial training and continuing education programs, and if serious or significant enough, then delivered orally in team meetings. </span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The "assess" phase is not just a management activity; it is imperative that salespeople have a view into their personal metrics to determine the value of the sales force application and how they compare to other salespeople using the system. The view into the metrics should be provided as part of the SFA system user interface. For example, if only 5% of sales content produced is effective in closing sales, then this will be readily apparent to all concerned. This will enable the organization to take the information and move to the next phase – "learn" to take action.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Learn </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">After assessing progress against the defined metrics, its important for the sales organization to be oriented toward becoming a learning organization that can effectively discover key trends and facts from information and can take corrective actions to improve practices and outcomes. For example, if the lead conversion rate is 40% below goal, and the two or three lead sources are the main cause of the problem, then the sales organization can make the appropriate adjustments to their lead source investment and can begin improving conversion rate. Ultimately, this will improve the quality of leads, which will, in turn, improve salesperson "stickiness" of the application and will increase value. The bottom line is that SFA is a continual deployment process that must be adjusted and tweaked as values for key metrics are reported.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">A key element of continuous learning is interviewing and surveying sales teams. This could include having technical or marketing or sales support personnel listening to or attending sales calls to witness approaches to selling. In addition, consider one-on-one interviews with overachievers who are willing to share the secrets of their success by sales support (preferably sales operations personnel or business analysts) or marketing resources. Finally, have team managers, or first- or second-line management, polling selling personnel on what does and doesn't work. IT should have resources dedicated to detecting problems with technology and capturing requirements from a technical perspective. For example, "This interface is confusing, and all I want to do is get to my last five favorite presentations."</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Key Facts </span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Most sales force applications fail to show measurable ROI. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">A major cause of poor ROI is limited or no investment in evaluating metrics for success. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Metrics and reporting that result in no actions probably need redesign. </span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Note 1 - Same Sales Metrics</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Amount of recurring revenue </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Close rate </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Days sales outstanding </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Margin </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Number of cross-sells </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Number of new customers </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Number of open opportunities </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Number of proposals given </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Number of prospects </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Number of retained customers </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Number of sales calls </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Number of sales calls made </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Number of sales call per opportunity </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Number of upsells </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Profit by customer </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Renewal rate </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Revenue by channel </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Sales cycle duration </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Sales stage duration </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Time to close by channel </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Competitive knockouts </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Deal margin </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Wallet share</span> </li></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-70868184329181304352007-12-07T15:11:00.000+11:002007-12-07T15:13:04.396+11:00B2B marketers ignoring customer databases<p><span style="font-family:verdana;">By </span><a id="ctl00_leftColumnContentPlaceHolder_AuthorRepeater_ctl01_authorNameHyperLink" href="http://www.itnews.com.au/Feedback/Feedback.aspx?PID=93923&Story=65621"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Robert Jaques</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span></p><p><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">Business-to-business marketers have "plenty of room for improvement" when it comes to using customer and prospect databases for direct marketing purposes, new research claims..</span></strong></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">An online survey conducted by marketing communications agency </span><a title="Godfrey" href="http://www.godfrey.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Godfrey</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> found that B2B marketers could make their direct marketing campaigns more effective by combining web 2.0 technologies with customer and prospect databases.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Lynne DeMers, strategic direct marketing team leader at Godfrey, said: " Direct marketing is not about sending 20,000 mailers to a rented list and hoping for a two per cent return."It is about creating a programme and a system of messages, offers, information capture, measurement and refinement."</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">It is a direct communications 'roadmap' of continuous cultivation that provides more targeted information and leads prospects to the point where the sales channel can take over."</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The poll found that 80 percent of B2B marketers maintain a sales lead or inquiry database, but only 55 percent use it regularly for direct marketing. In addition, only 40 percent of B2B marketers regularly engage their inquiry database via email or an e-newsletter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Only 60 percent use their customer database for targeted direct marketing, and only 40 percent regularly update customers with new offers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">While mass direct marketing techniques typically yield response rates ranging from 0.5 to two percent, targeted direct marketing technologies are considerably more effective, according to Godfrey.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">B2B marketers can realise 40 percent open rates, 10 to 20 percent click rates and opt-out rates of less than one per cent with segmented email marketing and e-newsletter campaigns.</span></p><p><br /><a href="http://www.vnunet.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Copyright © 2007 vnunet.com</span></a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-3476629385576992552007-12-07T14:55:00.000+11:002007-12-07T15:08:06.605+11:00SaaS CRM Market in Asia Estimated to Grow 68% in 2007<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">Market expected to grow to US$460 million by 2010</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Singapore – December 7, 2007 – Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry, today announced results from its latest research covering the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) market in Asia (excluding Japan). Springboard estimates that the SaaS CRM market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 61% between 2006 and 2010. Springboard pegged the SaaS CRM market in Asia at US$69 million in 2006, and expects it to reach US$460 million by 2010.<br /><br />Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, India, and China are the key SaaS CRM markets in Asia Pacific. Of these, Australia remains the top market, accounting for 35% of all SaaS CRM sales generated in the region.<br /><br />“SaaS CRM has gained acceptance in Asia’s business mainstream and the coming year will see higher adoption rates as larger enterprises opt for SaaS CRM,” said Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, Senior Manager for Emerging Software for Springboard Research. “At the same time, the market is set to witness unprecedented growth in the SME sector as a spate of new initiatives by vendors such as SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle promote their CRM offerings,” added Ms. Aggarwal.<br /><br />Increased adoption among larger enterprises will be the turning point in the uptake of SaaS CRM and will bring the model a legitimacy that it did not have when it was mainly used by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Already, leading vendors like Salesforce.com, who had traditionally targeted the SME market, are now eyeing larger enterprises. As traditional software players step up their activities by offering proprietary SaaS CRM applications, large enterprises will be lured to the market, creating an entirely new base of customers who had previously been fence sitters. Springboard Research also forecasts that the SaaS CRM market is set for consolidation as the number of players increase and bigger players make serious forays into the marketplace.<br /><br />Springboard currently estimates that SaaS CRM represents the largest segment of SaaS application expenditures in Asia at 45%, followed by collaboration, ERP/PLM/SCM applications, and human resource applications. Within the SaaS CRM segment in Asia, Salesforce.com has captured a very dominant position in the market. Other prominent vendors in the region include RightNow, Oracle, and Netsuite.<br /><br />“Springboard Research believes that a substantial portion of the growth in Asia Pacific’s SaaS CRM market will come from the SME segment. We expect SMEs in Asia Pacific to go for simpler CRM solutions that are not too complex,” said Ms. Aggarwal. “This will drive CRM vendors, especially the traditional licensed software companies, to sell stripped-down versions of on-premise offerings or to develop SME-specific applications for distribution via the SaaS model.”<br /><br />About This Study<br /><br /></span><a name="OLE_LINK2"></a><a name="OLE_LINK1"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a disruptive innovation that has the potential to transform the software industry. Many new players are entering the SaaS market, while established software companies are scrambling to compete against these new entrants by developing SaaS products themselves.</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />While SaaS has received a lot of press and hype, detailed information on the size, scale and characteristics of the market is still relatively limited. Springboard Research is helping to change this with its Asia Pacific SaaS Market Canvas, an ongoing research service through which users can access detailed and continuing research focused on SaaS in Asia.<br /><br />About Springboard Research<br /><br />Springboard Research’s core values are integrity and insight. Led by a team of dynamic industry experts, Springboard Research provides its customers with high value IT market research that helps them identify new market opportunities, growth engines and innovative ways to go to market. As a result, Springboard’s clients lead rather than follow market trends. Not bound by legacy, Springboard’s cutting-edge research model leverages its offshore research centers, the Internet, and an increased use of technology as engines of innovation to deliver unique research value. Provided as an alternative to traditional IT market research, Springboard’s reports deliver data and knowledge in a more usable and interactive format for our clients. Springboard Research works with the largest IT companies in the world in the software, services, hardware, and telecommunications sectors.<br /><br />Founded in 2004, Springboard Research serves the needs of its clients globally through offices in the United States, Australia, Singapore and Japan as well as global research centers in India, Pakistan, and Morocco. Springboard has been acknowledged as an emerging leader in the global IT market research industry and was recently named a “Rising Star” by Outsell, the leading research and advisory firm for the information industry.<br /><br />For more information regarding Springboard Research, please visit </span><a title="http://www.springboardresearch.com/" href="http://www.springboardresearch.com/"><span style="font-family:verdana;">www.springboardresearch.com</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Media Contacts<br /><br />Chris Perrine, COO & EVP of Sales & Marketing<br />Springboard Research<br />65-6325-9716<br /></span><a title="mailto:cperrine@springboardresearch.com" href="mailto:cperrine@springboardresearch.com"><span style="font-family:verdana;">cperrine@springboardresearch.com</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><br />Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, Senior Manager- Emerging Software<br />Springboard Research<br />91-11-40518249<br /></span><a title="mailto:baggarwal@springboardresearch.com" href="mailto:baggarwal@springboardresearch.com"><span style="font-family:verdana;">baggarwal@springboardresearch.com</span></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-28468224821343117632007-11-22T11:53:00.000+11:002007-11-22T11:59:12.835+11:00Google takes hosted site search worldwide - Nov 22 2007 - iTnews<a href="http://www.itnews.com.au/News/65533,google-takes-hosted-site-search-worldwide.aspx"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Google has announced the international availability of its Custom Search platform allowing companies to add Google's search technology to their websites.</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Aimed primarily at small businesses, Google reckons that it takes only three steps and few minutes to sign up and deploy the service.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><a title="Google Custom Search" href="http://www.google.com/cse" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The platform</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> allows users to integrate search into personal and community sites and blogs, and developers can use the Google Custom Search APIs to allow searching from within their applications.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"For many organisations, a website is their window to the world and significant investment goes into attracting customers to the site," said Robert Whiteside, UK and Ireland enterprise manager at Google Enterprise.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Keeping visitors on a site once they arrive, however, is a challenge and the absence of a search facility can be a major cause of a lack of website 'stickiness'.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"By improving the ease, speed and accuracy with which users can find what they need, businesses can ensure that their website justifies the investment." </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Google has released two versions of the platform. Custom Search is a free ad-supported engine, and Business Edition is a paid-for service which offers more customisation and support.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Both versions provide site search hosted by Google, eliminating the need for a business to install and maintain its own technology, and reporting features provide insights into visitor behaviour.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The Business Edition also caters for full customisation of search results, email and phone support and a choice about whether to include ads or not.Google Custom Search Business Edition starts at around £50 per year for searching up to 5,000 pages, and extends to approximately £1,125 per year for up to 300,000 pages.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Larger volumes of pages are supported through Google's enterprise sales group.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-33996831523013288202007-11-21T11:09:00.000+11:002007-11-21T11:11:39.956+11:00Market Focus: Technology -- The Simple Truth about Complex Manufacturing<span class="subHead1" style="font-family:verdana;"><i>Tech firms need CRM as much as any other company--and sometimes even more.<br /><br /></i></span><span class="bodySmall" style="font-family:verdana;">by <a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7300">Marshall Lager</a><br /><br /></span><span class="body"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> There's a long-standing (and wrong-headed) belief that CRM technology can be a cure-all for a company's operational woes. There's an equally long-standing (and equally wrong-headed) perception that high-tech manufacturers and vendors don't need CRM. Not only is the 360-degree view of customers, partners, and processes important in the technology vertical; it's made tricky by the complexity of the business models and by the roots of those misperceptions.</span><p style="font-family: verdana;">In the first place, every business needs CRM, even if only to manage customers' account histories and communications -- CRM grew from contact management, after all. Why, then, the idea that tech businesses don't need it? "It's not as much a process vertical [as] financial services," says Tim Hickernell, senior research analyst, applications, Info-Tech Research Group. The focus is on the products themselves -- and since tech salespeople are often former engineers, they're less likely to be relationship-driven.</p><p><span class="bodySmall"><span class="body"><p style="font-family: verdana;">This is a dangerous reduction of the situation. Even in the tech world, says Diane Albano, vice president of Americas operations at Progress Software, "People are still selling to people, trying to solve a problem." Progress promotes sales effectiveness of businesses across many verticals, and Albano says the key is communicating. "If you can get that message across to your team, you'll have happier customers and more motivated workers."</p><p style="font-family: verdana;">Using and contributing to the CRM system, remembering that business is about the customer and not the product, are basic elements that haven't become as ingrained among tech firms as they have elsewhere. Fortunately, fixing issues around adoption and technique among techies requires largely the same effort as it does in other verticals. "You must make it mandatory -- it's not up for debate. But do it in a gentle, prodding way, not with yelling," Albano says. "Show how you're enabling salespeople in order to make them understand why it's necessary."</p><p style="font-family: verdana;">Beyond adoption, Hickernell notes where tech companies are different from others in terms of CRM. "Selecting the right CRM components is more important," he says. "Channel management and knowledge management are important considerations. There's a very complex value chain -- relationships are at least B2B2C," he says, and often reflexive, where two manufacturers sell each other their products. "Work is spread across the value chain, involving original equipment manufacturers, original design manufacturers, and even different divisions of a single company selling to itself as an internal customer." This means careful tracking of channels, and a firm grasp on information at all stages with knowledge management.</p><p style="font-family: verdana;">This becomes apparent in engineering-to-order processes. "We maintain virtually no finished goods in stock. Almost all orders we take require engineers to be involved before production begins," says Phil Shields, senior analyst at K&L Microwave, a manufacturer that uses CRM software from IFS. "They may be involved in the quoting process, determining if we can even build a product to the customer's specs, providing technical data or preliminary drawings. After we receive an order, engineers will design the new product; even for repeat orders, engineers many times need to check the documentation provided by the customer to make sure there are no changes since the last time."</p><p style="font-family: verdana;">Prior to implementing sales-and-marketing functionality, K&L was generating quotes with the IFS ERP system. "This required us to create a customer, sales part, and inventory part just to create a quote," Shields says. "Integration with our ERP system was one of the big reasons we selected IFS's CRM system." Requiring zero programming or customization, all customers, sales parts, customer orders, and invoices are now available within the CRM system. "The IFS CRM system has given us one place to put information, both customer-furnished and K&L documents, so that everyone in the company can access it," Shields says.</p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Knowledge management and dissemination also comes into its own in high technology. "The expectation for self-service, especially Web self-service, is much higher in this vertical," Hickernell says. "The customer is much more savvy, and more is expected of the vendor. If an error message is programmed into a piece of technology, the customer expects there to be a knowledgebase article for dealing with it."</span> </p></span></span></p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-1318337608574889152007-11-21T11:07:00.000+11:002007-11-21T11:09:27.015+11:00CRM Remains a Fertile Market<span class="subHead1" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;">New research points to explosive growth in CRM adoption across every segment -- especially on-demand CRM.<br /><br /></span></span><span class="bodySmall" style="font-family:verdana;">by <a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7340&TopicID=9">Demir Barlas</a><br /><br /></span><span class="body" style="font-family:verdana;"> Forty-two percent of U.S. companies are using CRM, according to new market research from the consulting firm KensingtonHouse, and the percentage just keeps on growing. Even more notable, in terms of current and future growth, is the fact that CRM's "market fertility" -- the percentage of companies deploying, upgrading, or actively considering a CRM purchase -- stands at 38 percent, according to the report.<p>The market-fertility figure is the metric KensingtonHouse chose to highlight, as it reveals a record number of companies deploying or planning to deploy CRM. "This is significantly above what I've seen historically, which has been 18 to 25 percent fertility," says Thomas Moriarty, the consultancy's president.</p></span><span class="bodySmall" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="body"><p>According to the survey, the main reason for the current wave of CRM popularity is the maturity of the on-demand delivery model and functionality set. Fifty-five percent of respondents expressed a preference for on-demand, with a mere 14 percent nominating on-premise and 31 percent undecided. Eighty-seven percent of survey respondents were either small or midsize businesses (SMBs), but Moriarty says that the preference for on demand extended to the enterprise segment as well. The research, sponsored by Microsoft CRM partner T.H.G. Sales Automation, canvassed 437 respondents representing a population of 20,000 companies with a degree of accuracy of plus or minus 5 percent.</p><p>On demand is succeeding because of both its low cost and its simplicity, Moriarty says, adding that KensingtonHouse estimates the model can lower the cost of a CRM deployment by as much as 60 percent while also offering an increasingly user-friendly experience. "Customization is so easy now that you don't have to be a bits-and-bytes guy to go in and create all kinds of different fields, reports, and dashboards," he says. </p><p>While on-demand initiatives may be easier to implement than on-premise ones, adopters of either variety should still be aware of the significant risks of project failure. Gartner recently predicted that, by the end of 2008, "25 percent of CRM projects will be postponed or canceled because of the CRM skill shortage in consultants and systems integrators." While this sounds like an inordinately high number to industry outsiders, Moriarty emphasizes that it has to be taken in context. "Three years ago, that number would have been 75 percent," he claims.</p></span></span><span class="body" style="font-family:verdana;"><p>The good news is not only that the ecosystem of CRM consultants and systems integrators has matured through continued CRM implementation success, but also that CRM adopters can control their own fates by making CRM an institutional priority. The recent <i>Management Tools and Trends 2007</i> report from management consultancy Bain & Co. revealed that companies that put more effort into CRM up front (including long-term planning, unwavering executive sponsorship, and diligent change management) get more out of the technology. In the Bain survey, those companies who put a "major effort" into CRM reported a 4.17 satisfaction score on a five-point scale, while those putting in a "limited effort" were only able to achieve a 3.53 score.</p><p>That data point alone should convince any CRM adopter aiming to maximize return on investment to enter into the implementation prepared and willing to put in some heavy lifting. "You have to maintain the quality of data and make sure to load a good set of business rules that specify how the system is going to be used," Moriarty counsels. "You have to do the work."<br /></p><p><br /></p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-46414399937513042682007-11-12T14:54:00.000+11:002007-11-12T15:11:04.881+11:00Best Practices in Campaign Management: Tips & Tricks<span style="font-family:verdana;">by <a href="http://blogs.salesforce.com/marketing/">Salesforce.com Marketing Blog</a></span><br /><div></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">Now that we’ve covered the basics of how campaign management works in Salesforce how do you get the most bang for your buck? Here are some suggestions to get you started:</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Naming Conventions.</strong> </span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">A must-have for any organization running a lot of campaigns. The campaign name is what appears in search so you want it to be unique and easy to identify. Campaign names should be structured in a consistent manner so they are easy to decipher by people outside of marketing. For example: Program - Tactic - Audience - Quarter</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Add custom fields to campaigns that align to key metrics.</strong> </span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">You may want to know how your programs perform by offer or by tactic (email, web promo, etc). Add these as custom fields to your campaign so you can report on them later. If these metrics are key to decision making in your organization be sure to make them required fields. </span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Use the active flag on campaigns with purpose.</strong> </span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">There are 2 reasons why campaigns need to be active. The first reason, is so you can run the super secret “Campaign Call Down” report. The second reason is so your sales team can find the campaign name from the lookup on leads and contacts and manually add the campaign to the campaign history. If you have thousands of active campaigns, this look-up view for your sales reps gets pretty muddy and decreases the likely hood they will use it, so try and keep your active flags up to date. (Tip: In the Winter ‘08 release you will be able to run the campaign call down report on both active and inactive campaigns removing the necessity to have campaigns active for reporting purposes only) </span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Create a section on your campaigns for follow up.</strong> </span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is a great way to communicate to your sales reps or inside sales teams what the appropriate follow up is for each particular campaign. This section could contain key messages, any email templates that should be used for follow up, etc. This way an inside sales person can simply click in to the campaign, and easily identify what their next steps should be.</span></div><div><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_w6_i5BjSnvM/RzfQ1GaEvMI/AAAAAAAAADo/gQn7eCmFfqA/s1600-h/image1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131799911083588802" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_w6_i5BjSnvM/RzfQ1GaEvMI/AAAAAAAAADo/gQn7eCmFfqA/s400/image1.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">Standardize your member status values.</span></strong><br /></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">Reporting across campaign membership can be difficult without consistency. Maintaining standard values will allow you to compare the performance of your programs against each other. Some example status values are:</span></div><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">For web promotions set the default value to “Responded”</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">For events and webinars set the default value to “Registered” with additional values for “Registered – attended” and “Cancelled”.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">For email marketing set the default value to “Responded”</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>If you don’t have it already, install the “Campaign Membership” web link from AppExchange. </strong></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">This web-integration link on the campaign detail page pulls up the “Campaign Call Down report I referred to earlier and allows you to see all of the campaign members (both leads and contacts) in one report. If you don’t have this already, install the link off the AppExchange here: </span></p><p><a id="a0330000000j5OdAAI" title="https://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?NavCode__c=" href="https://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?NavCode__c=&id=a0330000000j5OdAAI"><span style="font-family:verdana;">https://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?NavCode__c=&id=a0330000000j5OdAAI</span></a></p><div><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_w6_i5BjSnvM/RzfRq2aEvOI/AAAAAAAAAD4/0j9DowN-Qhs/s1600-h/image2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131800834501557474" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_w6_i5BjSnvM/RzfRq2aEvOI/AAAAAAAAAD4/0j9DowN-Qhs/s400/image2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_w6_i5BjSnvM/RzfRcmaEvNI/AAAAAAAAADw/vNXDy5GIi20/s1600-h/image2.jpg"></a><br /><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div><p></p><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-81145034138881339652007-10-26T10:52:00.000+10:002007-10-26T10:59:22.349+10:0013 Reasons People Will Open Your Direct Mail<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7287&TopicID=9"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Jessica Tsai</span></a></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">DMA07: At the Direct Marketing Association's annual conference, the secrets to reaching consumers in the real world.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">CHICAGO -- No matter how quickly technology is pushing us toward a digital world, marketers continue to actively rely on direct mail. In fact, advertising spend on direct mail is second only to the money spent on television, according to a presentation by Robert Coen of Insider's Report here this week at DMA07, the Direct Marketing Association's annual conference. Customers, too, continue to enjoy receiving mail, according to experts at the conference. One of those experts, Nancy Harhut, managing director of relationship marketing at Hill, Holiday, a Boston-based communications agency, shared with attendees 13 tips for improving your direct mail campaign.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Studies of human psychology have uncovered various ways people act in automatic ways, Harhut told the audience. For instance, she said, if faced with an entryway on the left and right side, most people have a tendency to go right. Similarly, people have learned how to automatically recognize and respond to what they think is junk mail. Therefore by leveraging the reflexive impulses of human behavior, marketers can optimize their direct mail campaigns.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Here are Harhut's 13 tips about those reflexive impulses, how they can affect campaigns, and what you can do about them: </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>1. People respect authority:</strong> Make your mailings look professional, serious, and official -- whether through key phrases such as "important information enclosed," delivery by respected carriers like Western Union or FedEx, or even the use of high-quality envelopes.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>2. People respect authority figures:</strong> Unsure of what to do, people tend to trust those who seem to know. Have quotes from famous figures endorsing your product, or simply have a famous client's name on the outside of the envelope -- both result in increased response rates.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>3. People are naturally curious:</strong> Present your campaign in a unique way and customers will be attracted by its original presentation -- and, thus, interested in what's within. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>4. People make very deliberate assumptions:</strong> The people that Harhut calls "gatekeepers" are those who filter each mailing before it reaches the intended recipient. They, like most people, can immediately recognize what seems to be junk mail. Marketers have to get past that barrier to entry by appearing important and relevant.</span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Make the mailing personalized.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">If the mailing is a fulfillment request, be sure to note that clearly on the envelope.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Have an official-sounding sender or title, such as "Doctor John Smith," or even "From the</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Office of the Director of Marketing."</span></li></ul><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">5. People are inclined to touch things.</span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>6. People are drawn to attractive keywords:</strong> The most enticing word to consumers is "free." Other words that make consumers feel like they're being introduced to something new include "introducing," "announcing," "finally," "now," etc.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>7. When people say "no," it can really mean "tell me more":</strong> People often reject an offer because it doesn't solve their problems, but if after they say "no" you come back with a different approach, they may become interested. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>8. People respond to compliance triggers:</strong> People have been trained to view certain things as signifying an automatic "yes," Harhut says. Coupons are often understood to provide savings whether or not the amount saved is specified. People like to understand why they are being asked to do something, but they don't always bother to listen to what comes after the word "because." Studies have shown that by simply hearing "because" after a request is often enough to stimulate a "yes," she says.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>9. People are most interested in themselves:</strong> Present your campaign in terms of how the customer will benefit, not in terms of how you are helping them:<br /></span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Tell them how to succeed.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Present them with an offer. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Flatter them.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Deliver good news.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Make them feel superior.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Tell them something that seems as if it were exclusively meant for them.</span></li></ul><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>10. People make decisions based on both rational and emotional reasons:</strong> Appeal to the emotional and they may justify it with the rationality of your offer. They are also more likely to respond when trying to avoid pain, and the nuance is critical; as an example, "Are you losing customers?" is more effective than "Are you getting enough customers?"</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>11. People feel obligated:</strong> Give people a complimentary gift along with the message and many will feel obliged to give something in return. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>12. People want what they can't have:</strong> People are often charged into action when they think something is "for a limited-time only," "expires soon," or is for just "the first 1,000 customers." In fact, when a limit is imposed on an offer, customers who were already inclined to buy are often compelled to buy more.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>13. People do what people who are like them do:</strong> People are more likely to think they're missing out than revel in the fact that they are the maverick. Along with a campaign, present an extensive list of customers who have aligned with your company. Regardless of whether those clients are influential individually, the sheer volume can be enough to be convincing. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-18745396816949375002007-10-26T10:44:00.000+10:002007-10-26T10:46:29.351+10:00Honda chooses services model for database<span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,22630956-5013040,00.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Ben Woodhead</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">HONDA Australia's motorcycle and outboard motor business will introduce its first fully fledged customer relationship management system under a contract with Salesforce.com.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The hosted system will replace Honda Australia Motorcycles and Power Equipment's existing Lotus Notes customer database and will be integrated with other technology such as its voice over internet protocol phone system. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The unit's IT manager, Craig Bassett, said the $350 million a year concern would install Salesforce for 40 users in December and eventually increase the number using the platform to 50. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"The major reason for looking at Salesforce was to be able to understand our customers better," Mr Bassett said. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"We had disparate, decentralised databases of customer information all over the company and Salesforce is an opportunity to centralise that. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"We'll be better able to serve our customers and market to them. There's no point trying to market an off-road mini-bike to a 60-year-old. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"We want to understand what a customer may be interested in depending on age, where they live, what their interests are, and we haven't be able to do that." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Mr Bassett said the unit looked at a number of customer relationship management alternatives over the past two years and it had not started out with a clear preference for either a hosted or on-premises system. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">However, he said, many big-name vendors quickly priced themselves out of the equation and that a hosted system offered the best value for money. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"When we did a matrix of the costs involved in in-house versus outsourced system, Salesforce came out on top," he said. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Not in all areas, but in most." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The unit awarded Salesforce. com the contract in July and has been working through requirements testing and proofs of concept for the past two months ahead of the December production rollout. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Integrator Sqware Peg is handling installation of the system.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-49274345673890922722007-10-26T10:41:00.000+10:002007-10-26T10:43:57.121+10:00''Everything Will Be Digital,'' Says Microsoft CEO<p><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7286&TopicID=9"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Jessica Tsai</span></a></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>The Association of National Advertisers' "Masters of Marketing" Conference reveals insights about how to handle the industry's future: brand focus and maverick creativity will light the way.</strong> </span></p><span style="font-family:verdana;">PHOENIX -- The overall theme of this year's Association of National Advertisers (ANA) conference, bringing together 1,200 marketers and advertisers, centered on transformation. In the Web 2.0 era, technological advancements have forced the role of the marketer to change -- fast. One presenter after another regaled the audience with examples of how, with each new development, consumers have been ready for the next innovation and what they've come to expect from marketing -- and marketers.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In the conference's first session, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer envisioned a future in which, while watching the PGA championship game, he could communicate to his colleague, Microsoft founder Bill Gates simply by saying to the TV, "Hey, Bill, did you see that shot?" Voice recognition technology would pick that message up, GPS would locate Gates, and the Internet telephony wired into the system would connect a call and convey Ballmer's message. Bill would then respond, "Yeah, and did you notice it was a Nike ball?" Gates's reponse would trigger an interactive shopping interface to pop up on both their screens, allowing either of them, in real time, to purchase a set of similar golf balls through the TV.<br /><br />Soon, according to Ballmer, "everything will be digital," and, in that world, there is no limit to innovation. Technology will provide boundless possibilities and the only thing marketers need to focus on is human talent. Customer insight will be bursting at the seams -- and the more marketers understand about manipulating that information, the more targeted, relevant, and effective their messages will be.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">When technology becomes ubiquitous, the differentiator will be creativity. According to many of the ANA presenters, a strong, innovative, and creative strategy is, and will be, key to the future of brand success. Therefore, companies have to move past the handicap of being "overanalytical," said Bob Lachky, senior vice president of Anheuser-Busch, the St. Louis-based maker of Budweiser and other beers. "At some point you just have to go, 'Make room for creativity.... Nurture your mavericks.' "</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">And yet, amid all the changes in delivery media, companies must stay true to their brand, Lachky says. Focus on the meaning of the brand everyday, he told the audience, because if companies can't grasp that core message, marketers certainly can't expect consumers to. "Create your own characters," he added, and don't lose sight of them. For example, when you employ a celebrity to deliver your message, that star "must be subservient to your brand," he said. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Even for corporations with a strong identity, such as McDonald's, it is essential never to forget the premise of the brand. McDonald's has been experiencing a revival of late, with healthier food choices and increased focus on nutritional content, according to Mary Dillon, the company's chief marketing officer. The Oak Brook, Ill.-based fast-food chain currently serves an estimated 52 million customers daily worldwide and recently announced that it expects to surpass analyst predictions for third-quarter earnings (to be released on October 19), according to USAToday.com. But the company has suffered its share of bad times. "We took our eyes off the fries, so to speak," Dillon said, adding that the company had failed to execute on the basics, such as customer service, that were essential to the McDonald's brand. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Companies that have stayed true to their brand include Milwaukee-based motorcycle retailer Harley-Davidson, said Chuck Brymer, chief executive officer of DDB, a New York City-based advertising agency. The Harley-Davidson brand embodies the concept of personal freedom -- and by staying true to that central concept, the company has developed a following that "lives and breathes Harley," Brymer told the ANA audience.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-72434881020350339162007-10-16T14:42:00.000+10:002007-10-16T14:50:12.400+10:00Ten strategic technologies to watch in 2008<p><span style="font-family:verdana;">By </span><a href="http://www.searchcio.com.au/topics/article.asp?DocID=1276289&SiteID=19"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Linda Tucci</span></a></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Protecting the environment has become part of IT's job. Managing your organisation's metadata should be high on the IT agenda. But the Web -- and the new computing models it's spawned -- looms large on Gartner's list of 10 strategic technologies for 2008.</strong> </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Strategic technologies, as defined by Gartner, are technologies that could disrupt IT or business in the next 18 to 36 months. They may require a large dollar investment and could cripple your organisation if adopted too late. In other words, these technologies carry a high potential to shake up your job, big time. Here's what should be on your radar now, with comments from Gartner analyst Carl Claunch:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Green IT.</strong> Here to stay. Regulations are multiplying and could constrain plans to build new data centres. Learn about potential compliance regulations and form an alternate strategy for adding data centres. Don't get on the wrong side of the boss, shareholders or marketing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">M</span><span style="font-family:verdana;">any companies, from Dell to Sole Technology, a small maker of skateboard footwear, are touting </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_IT" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Green IT</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> as a component of the company mission. Make no mistake, the software that schedules which applications should run where will and must factor in server energy efficiency. In the meantime: "When you are at a peak period and using everything, you have no choice. During the times when you are not totally maxed out, turn off the ones that are the worst energy hogs," Claunch said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Unified communications.</strong> Twenty percent of companies that used to rely on </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=private+branch+exchange+%28PBX%29+&go=Go" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">private branch exchange (PBX)</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> have migrated to IP telephony. But the times, they are a'changin'.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">More than 80% of companies are doing trials of IP telephony. In three years, a majority of companies will be using it, Gartner predicts. And no wonder, when even things like video security cameras have become digital, Claunch said. This is the first major change in voice communications since the digital PBX and cellular phone changes in the 1970s and 1980s.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Business process modelling.</strong> The imperative for 2008 for this perennial list maker is to bring enterprise architects, senior developers, process architects and process analysts together to jointly define top-level process services. The modelling goal is faster and highly flexible processes. Think Legos. If the business decides it wants to change how it charges for products for two months, IT should be able to get into the process, change it and change it back when required, Claunch said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Metadata management.</strong> A jargon-rich discipline (or lack of discipline, unfortunately) that nonetheless is a critical technology going forward. "If your aim is to have the ability to re-hook the IT systems to rapidly support any change your business might make, then you're talking about connections you don't know in advance," Claunch said. You need clean and consistent data to do that. "</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Data" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Metadata management</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> is part of the magic sauce to that." </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Virtualisation 2.0.</strong> "This is a change in people's recognition of the scope of what </span><a href="http://datacenterdecisions.techtarget.com/html/seminar-virt101.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">virtualisation</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> can do," Claunch said. Virtualisation is not just about shedding servers -- disaster recovery is a good example. Suddenly, putting in 10 backup machines for 10 production machines is a crude and expensive strategy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Also just emerging, courtesy of virtualisation: A new distribution model for applications. "Instead of selling and shipping just the application to you, the software supplier might send you a virtual machine file that has everything, the OS and the application, pre-integrated," Claunch said. So less work for you, and the vendor doesn't have to test all the combinations. Cautions? Licensing issues have to be sorted out before pre-integrated applications become widespread. And you'll have to run herd on vendors to make sure patches are updated. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Mashup and composite applications.</strong> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashups" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Web mashups</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> will be the dominant model (80%) for creating composite enterprise applications by 2010. Why? They allow you to rapidly tailor the functionality you want in one place, without having to re-create the original, Claunch said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Mashups will replace internal portals for employees, who now have to flip between applications to get what they need. Businesses will use mashups to talk to customers about their orders. "You get the tracking information from FedEx, the map from Google, stick in on the same page with your data and now what the customer sees is a picture of a little plane with her order," Claunch said. And the licensing issues here? "Once you make a service that is available and open and doesn't require registration, I think it will be difficult to talk about terms and conditions that are hidden in a contract five screens down." </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Web platform and Web-oriented architecture (WOA).</strong> Forget the acronym, Claunch said. The idea is this: Software as a Service (SaaS) is forcing companies to evaluate where service-based delivery will add value from 2008 to 2010. Meanwhile, emerging Web platforms are offering service-based access to infrastructure, information, applications and business processes through Web-based "cloud computing" environments. Now is the time to look beyond SaaS and examine how Web platforms will change their business in three to five years. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Computing fabric.</strong> Five years ago, you bought a server. Inside there was one motherboard with a particular number of processors, some amount of memory and I/O connections. You got the mix the vendor built. You needed tons of memory and not much processor? Too bad. Blade servers helped. The next step in this progression, Gartner says, treats memory, processors and I/O cards as components in a pool, combining and recombining them into particular arrangements to suits the owner's needs. "You use the fabric to hook them anyway you want," Claunch said. "That's really a revolution."</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">For example, a large server can be created by combining 32 processors and a number of memory modules from the pool, operating together over the fabric to appear to an operating system as a single fixed server. The enabling technology is the switch that got fast enough to make it feasible. "It's things like </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">InfiniBand</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">" that make it possible, Claunch said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Real World Web.</strong> The Real World Web delivers augmented reality as opposed to virtual reality, in real time, not before or after the fact. It gives tripping a whole new meaning. So, the GPS navigation unit, for example, gives real-time directions that react to events and movements. Now is the time to look for how to cash in on augmenting the world at the right time, place or situation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong>Social software.</strong> The Web version of mob mentality, the collective conscious, "the wisdom of crowds" -- whatever you want to call it -- is coming to a workplace near you. Web 2.0 products such as wikis, RSS feeds and tagging will be used to communicate and foster collaboration in your company. Expect a shakeout as vendors big, small and just-born strive to deliver robust Web 2.0 offerings to business.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33981173.post-67210177721015649182007-10-02T11:11:00.000+10:002007-10-02T11:17:14.759+10:00CRM's Future Will Look Nothing Like Its Past<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">At the Gartner CRM Summit, a distinguished industry analyst outlines (yet again) how companies have learned about -- but continue to struggle with -- the requirements of CRM.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7214&TopicID=9"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Colin Beasty</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">HOLLYWOOD, FLA. -- The CRM marketplace continues to benefit from a stronger economy and renewed attention to driving profitability -- and now, more than ever, chief executive officers are taking note, according to a leading industry analyst. As part of Gartner's annual CRM Summit here yesterday, that was the crux of the message from Scott Nelson, a vice president and distinguished analyst at the firm. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Citing recent Gartner research, Nelson said during his keynote presentation, "Why the Future of CRM Will Look Very Different from the Past," that 72 percent of CEOs stated that building better relationships with customers was the best way to increase revenue. "CRM is the result of the environment a company is operating in," he told the audience. "And thanks to the lessons learned from the past, most businesses' CRM practices are better because of it."</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">According to Nelson, whose speech had the familiar bent of past Summits, most businesses today have learned to focus their CRM initiatives in order to:</span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">increase revenue;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">cut costs;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">drive brand awareness; and </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">improve customer loyalty.</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Most businesses have learned--but not all, apparently. "I remember one financial services company that had spent close to $1 billion on their CRM project over the course of nearly a decade," Nelson said. "And they still hadn't determined which of these four areas they wanted to address first and foremost." (The arena most companies focus their CRM projects on, Nelson said, is in improving customer loyalty.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Even as companies gain a better understanding of CRM and expand their expertise, many still have long way to go with their CRM initiatives, Nelson said. Some are still plagued by the problems that have bedeviled the market for years -- including an overabundance of options. "The [vendor] market is still a highly fragmented one," Nelson said, "and organizations are still struggling with many of the strategies and concepts."</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">But any company still disillusioned by failed CRM efforts had better get past them, Nelson said. Customers are driving the need for improved CRM strategies because the bar has been raised, thanks largely to well-known, innovative CRM practices. Nelson cited Amazon.com as an example: Consumers value its customization capabilities and now expect that level of personalization with other vendors they deal with. "Our customers use Amazon.com and compare us," Nelson said. "They know someone else can do it, so why can't we?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">However, as many who have tried CRM and failed realize, there are some caveats. "Many businesses are still product-driven organizations, and are struggling with making the transition to becoming a customer-driven organization. You can't just automate the front office without thinking about how it may bog down the back office," Nelson warned. If too much information comes in from different segments throughout an organization, he added, "you can bring the back office to a grinding halt."</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">To help organizations avoid this and other pitfalls, Nelson offered four principles for a successful customer-centric strategy:</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Extend the breadth and depth of relationships.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Reduce delivery channel costs. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Reinforce the brand.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Focus on customer value and satisfaction. </span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Nelson also reiterated Gartner's half-decade-old </span><a href="http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=3250"><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Eight Building Blocks of Customer Centricity,"</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> each of which, he said, is essential for organizations to have:</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Customer Vision</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Customer-Centric Strategies</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Valued Customer Experience</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Organizational Collaboration (among staff, partners, and suppliers)</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Managing Customer Lifecycle Processes</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Collecting and Distributing the Right Customer Information </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Technology</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">Defining Internal and External Metrics for Success and Failure </span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The adoption of these eight building blocks helps determine where a company sits in the CRM maturity model, of which Nelson said there are five stages. The first stage of what Gartner calls its "Customer-Centric Generational Framework" includes companies that have no vision or customer-centric strategies, don't know the customer experience, collect only basic and fragmented information, and have very fragmented technology with weak functionality. These Stage One companies also are hindered by departmental silos and have little to no organizational collaboration or processes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Most companies, according to Nelson, are right where they were a year ago -- and two years ago: between Stage Two and Stage Three. Companies mired there have initial productivity and visibility into their customer bases; isolated customer-centric strategies initiated from the bottom up; and minimal progress on developing customer-experience strategies. Also, these midlevel firms are noticing the first signs of organizational collaboration, starting to optimize processes for efficiency, launching team-based (and, unfortunately, fragmented) customer-information campaigns, and implementing technology (albeit with limited functionality).</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The fifth and most advanced stage in Gartner's guide to customer centricity includes companies that have the following:</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">a value network enabled;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">a value-based collaboration strategy for mutual benefit;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">an understanding of a wider scope of the customer experience;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">shared customer centricity with goal alignment;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">end-to-end process optimization;</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">shared information and insight beyond the company; and </span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;">strong technology functionality implemented beyond the company to partners.</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">To reach that upper echelon of Gartner's customer-centric framework, Nelson told the crowd, it's critical that companies understand the most important aspect of CRM success: "It's about defining the business processes and strategies," he said. "Companies still struggle with their CRM initiatives because they struggle to identify and automate the customer processes, or [they] automate broken ones."</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">And, in the end, companies also need to understand technology's a proper place in the big picture, Nelson said. "You can do CRM without technology; you just need technology to scale it."<br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0