by James Livesley
Google Australia has just launched its “gadget ads” – interactive ads that can be embedded into web pages, as revealed in B&T Digital Media in July this year.
Google Australia has today launched its “gadget ads” – interactive ads that can be embedded into web pages, as revealed in B&T Digital Media in July this year.
The ads give advertisers the option to add flash, video, and real time feeds to what in the past have been typically static display ads. From today the interactive ads can be used throughout the Google content network.
They can be placed by the existing bidding system, which allows advertisers to bid for a publisher’s site or content theme.
The benefit of the system is that it allows users to interact with advertiser’s content without the users having to actively search or click through to a landing page.
The new ads will be integrated into AdSense, the contextual advertising system for web publishers.
Local companies who already have examples of the gadgets available on users’ iGoogle homepages include Webjet, Selective Car Rentals, STA Australia, Autoweb.com.au, Brisbane on the Web and GlobeNet Travel.To view examples of the ads visit:
www.google.com/adwords/gadgetads
20.9.07
The 2007 Market Awards: Marketing Automation
by Jessica Sebor
This has been the year of the end user in marketing automation.
The Market
This has been the year of the end user in marketing automation. Interfaces are more user-friendly, vendors are following customers to the Web, and solutions are more pain-point focused. Vendors are embracing the importance of keeping customers happy as the market becomes more consolidated--Unica's acquisition of Sane Solutions, for example. Bruce Biegel, senior marketing director at Winterberry Group, says, "Continued consolidation is making end users cautious in selection--creating confusion and slowing adoption." To speed sales, vendors have been focusing on online integration and marketing resource management (MRM) adoption. Sheryl Kingstone, director of enterprise research at Yankee Group, summarizes today's bottom line for the vendors in this space: "They have to differentiate themselves through customer experience."
One to Watch
After two straight years on the leaderboard, SAP fell off the grid a bit. Despite moves last year to grow out marketing applications, the company spent more resources focusing on its strengths in CRM and ERP, and fell short of blossoming into a fully fledged marketing automation vendor. "They are missing some loyalty," says Kingstone, who calls the firm "very much an ERP vendor." However, with a broad customer base, a strong direction, and growing software revenues, SAP may reassert itself in the coming year. Forrester's Vittal says that, as far as marketing automation goes, "this is still relatively new for them."
The Leaders
Aprimo, which Kingstone calls the "leader in MRM," proved itself worthy of this praise in 2007. Comfortably ensconced on the leader board, Aprimo continues to expand its breadth and functionality while staying true to its pure-play marketing roots. The company added an offer management application with the release of Aprimo Marketing 7.6, as well as releasing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) version with Aprimo Marketing Professional Edition. "[By] integrating functions of planning, financials, brand-asset management, analytics, and project management on a powerful EMM platform," says Aimee Roberts, research analyst at Frost & Sullivan, "Aprimo has taken marketing automation to the next level."
Another year deeper into its Fusion development process with its Siebel Systems acquisition, Oracle has shown strong focus on marketing solutions. What was a jumble of two vendors last year is now becoming streamlined into a cohesive vision. In 2007, Oracle has paid special attention to the retail sector, releasing Oracle Retail with help from its Retek and ProfitLogic acquisitions. Although some cite the company's direction as still being hazy, all agree on the high level of the vendor's potential. "It has a strong promise," says Suresh Vittal, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "It's still one of the best marketing applications available that's embedded into a suite."
SAS Institute's strategy of delivering solutions to answer specific problems served the company well this year, positioning the vendor as a clear leader in the category. Coming off its 30th straight year of revenue growth in 2006, SAS revved up its targeted offerings in a number of verticals, such as academics, finance, technology, and manufacturing. Still, Forrester's Vittal acknowledges that SAS has a few kinks to work out. "It's really hard to use," he says. "But it's a great company and they're doing a lot of great work."
After flying from the nest of parent company NCR this year, Teradata has shown that, in terms of marketing automation, it's a baby bird that can really soar. "I think the spin-off is good for them," Kingstone says. Although Teradata will continue to stick to its traditional data-warehousing roots after the separation, high levels of customer satisfaction in marketing automation will likely drive heightened focus on marketing solutions as well. Teradata in the past has been criticized by analysts for being slow-moving to market, and many agree the company will need to be quicker and more aggressive in the future. "They have a lot of customer success," Vittal says, "but they still need to work on their real-time applications."
The Winner
Unica, once again, nabbed the top spot with little contest, achieving the highest scores in all categories. Unica's flagship solution, Affinium, continues to prove a favorite in the marketplace. Frost & Sullivan's Roberts says the suite "integrates Web and customer analytics, campaign management, lead management, and core MRM to meet the growing demands of global marketers." Unica continues to upgrade and build out its suite, this year enhancing Affinium Campaign Collaborate as well as Affinium Plan. Although some analysts note that the vendor is still a bit behind in Web analytics, Unica recently took strides to combat this functionality gap with the release of Affinium NetInsight 7.2 for e-marketers in June. With a near-perfect score of 4.4 in company direction--a score taken even before the summer acquisition of boutique MRM specialist MarketingCentral--it's doubtful that this powerhouse will shrink anytime soon.
This has been the year of the end user in marketing automation.
The Market
This has been the year of the end user in marketing automation. Interfaces are more user-friendly, vendors are following customers to the Web, and solutions are more pain-point focused. Vendors are embracing the importance of keeping customers happy as the market becomes more consolidated--Unica's acquisition of Sane Solutions, for example. Bruce Biegel, senior marketing director at Winterberry Group, says, "Continued consolidation is making end users cautious in selection--creating confusion and slowing adoption." To speed sales, vendors have been focusing on online integration and marketing resource management (MRM) adoption. Sheryl Kingstone, director of enterprise research at Yankee Group, summarizes today's bottom line for the vendors in this space: "They have to differentiate themselves through customer experience."
One to Watch
After two straight years on the leaderboard, SAP fell off the grid a bit. Despite moves last year to grow out marketing applications, the company spent more resources focusing on its strengths in CRM and ERP, and fell short of blossoming into a fully fledged marketing automation vendor. "They are missing some loyalty," says Kingstone, who calls the firm "very much an ERP vendor." However, with a broad customer base, a strong direction, and growing software revenues, SAP may reassert itself in the coming year. Forrester's Vittal says that, as far as marketing automation goes, "this is still relatively new for them."
The Leaders
Aprimo, which Kingstone calls the "leader in MRM," proved itself worthy of this praise in 2007. Comfortably ensconced on the leader board, Aprimo continues to expand its breadth and functionality while staying true to its pure-play marketing roots. The company added an offer management application with the release of Aprimo Marketing 7.6, as well as releasing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) version with Aprimo Marketing Professional Edition. "[By] integrating functions of planning, financials, brand-asset management, analytics, and project management on a powerful EMM platform," says Aimee Roberts, research analyst at Frost & Sullivan, "Aprimo has taken marketing automation to the next level."
Another year deeper into its Fusion development process with its Siebel Systems acquisition, Oracle has shown strong focus on marketing solutions. What was a jumble of two vendors last year is now becoming streamlined into a cohesive vision. In 2007, Oracle has paid special attention to the retail sector, releasing Oracle Retail with help from its Retek and ProfitLogic acquisitions. Although some cite the company's direction as still being hazy, all agree on the high level of the vendor's potential. "It has a strong promise," says Suresh Vittal, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "It's still one of the best marketing applications available that's embedded into a suite."
SAS Institute's strategy of delivering solutions to answer specific problems served the company well this year, positioning the vendor as a clear leader in the category. Coming off its 30th straight year of revenue growth in 2006, SAS revved up its targeted offerings in a number of verticals, such as academics, finance, technology, and manufacturing. Still, Forrester's Vittal acknowledges that SAS has a few kinks to work out. "It's really hard to use," he says. "But it's a great company and they're doing a lot of great work."
After flying from the nest of parent company NCR this year, Teradata has shown that, in terms of marketing automation, it's a baby bird that can really soar. "I think the spin-off is good for them," Kingstone says. Although Teradata will continue to stick to its traditional data-warehousing roots after the separation, high levels of customer satisfaction in marketing automation will likely drive heightened focus on marketing solutions as well. Teradata in the past has been criticized by analysts for being slow-moving to market, and many agree the company will need to be quicker and more aggressive in the future. "They have a lot of customer success," Vittal says, "but they still need to work on their real-time applications."
The Winner
Unica, once again, nabbed the top spot with little contest, achieving the highest scores in all categories. Unica's flagship solution, Affinium, continues to prove a favorite in the marketplace. Frost & Sullivan's Roberts says the suite "integrates Web and customer analytics, campaign management, lead management, and core MRM to meet the growing demands of global marketers." Unica continues to upgrade and build out its suite, this year enhancing Affinium Campaign Collaborate as well as Affinium Plan. Although some analysts note that the vendor is still a bit behind in Web analytics, Unica recently took strides to combat this functionality gap with the release of Affinium NetInsight 7.2 for e-marketers in June. With a near-perfect score of 4.4 in company direction--a score taken even before the summer acquisition of boutique MRM specialist MarketingCentral--it's doubtful that this powerhouse will shrink anytime soon.
Forcing the dream
by Ben Woodhead
SALESFORCE.COM has re-badged the development platform that it hopes will one day rival Microsoft's .Net and Sun's Java as it battles to convince customers that it is more than a CRM software maker.
Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff admitted that many of the company's customers still aren't aware that the one-time sales force automation specialist is branching out into new areas that include its so-called platform-as-a-service offering, which has been renamed Force.com.
Speaking to analysts and media at Salesforce.com's annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco, Mr Benioff said that he believed that the new Force.com brand would finally cut through to customers. ″We need to communicate (with customers) at a high level still that we have an applications strategy,” Mr Benioff said.
″A lot of our customers still only think we have one application.”
Instead, Salesforce.com is attempting to pitch itself as the underlying platform for software as a service (SaaS) using Force.com, the Apex custom language the company recently launched and its long-running third party developer program AppExchange.
A number of big name companies, including computer games developer Electronic Arts, have signed on to use Force.com, which is hosted by Salesforce.com from its two US datacentres.
But Mr Benioff acknowledged there was more work to do. In support of that work, and in response to growing demands from its user base, Salesforce.com today launched Visualforce, a tool that will for the first time allow customers to customise user interfaces. It also unveiled details of the latest release of its core technology, including the addition of two new applications: a content management system know as Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas, an application that works as a virtual suggestion box.
PC maker Dell has already deployed Salesforce Ideas and based its decision to relaunch a line of products with Linux installed on feedback collected from customers through its IdeaStorm website. The release bearing the two new applications, Salesforce Winter '08, will be available later this year.
SALESFORCE.COM has re-badged the development platform that it hopes will one day rival Microsoft's .Net and Sun's Java as it battles to convince customers that it is more than a CRM software maker.
Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff admitted that many of the company's customers still aren't aware that the one-time sales force automation specialist is branching out into new areas that include its so-called platform-as-a-service offering, which has been renamed Force.com.
Speaking to analysts and media at Salesforce.com's annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco, Mr Benioff said that he believed that the new Force.com brand would finally cut through to customers. ″We need to communicate (with customers) at a high level still that we have an applications strategy,” Mr Benioff said.
″A lot of our customers still only think we have one application.”
Instead, Salesforce.com is attempting to pitch itself as the underlying platform for software as a service (SaaS) using Force.com, the Apex custom language the company recently launched and its long-running third party developer program AppExchange.
A number of big name companies, including computer games developer Electronic Arts, have signed on to use Force.com, which is hosted by Salesforce.com from its two US datacentres.
But Mr Benioff acknowledged there was more work to do. In support of that work, and in response to growing demands from its user base, Salesforce.com today launched Visualforce, a tool that will for the first time allow customers to customise user interfaces. It also unveiled details of the latest release of its core technology, including the addition of two new applications: a content management system know as Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas, an application that works as a virtual suggestion box.
PC maker Dell has already deployed Salesforce Ideas and based its decision to relaunch a line of products with Linux installed on feedback collected from customers through its IdeaStorm website. The release bearing the two new applications, Salesforce Winter '08, will be available later this year.
19.9.07
Campaigns to Cash - Campaign Management Workshop - Sept 28 2007 - Register Now!
There are LIMITED spots remaining to attend our exclusive campaign management workshop. Don't miss out!
The workshop will be presented by our team of marketing success managers and will cover all aspects of campaign management within salesforce.com including:
- Set-Up and Modifications of Campaigns
- Data Import, Data Segmentation and Target List Creation
- Campaign ROI Reports and Dashboards
- Importing and Editing HTML Communication Templates
Date: 28th September 2007
Time: 8:30AM - 4:45PM
Venue: Level 10, 10 Barrack St, Sydney NSW 2000
Included: Training, morning tea, afternoon tea, a lunch voucher from Wellbeing (adjacent to the training centre) and a "Campaigns to Cash" Workshop Manual for all attendees.
The cost for this workshop is $495.00 plus GST.
This workshop will SELLOUT and is available to the first 20 registrants only! We look forward to seeing you there!
Will Scully-Power
General Manager
agency On-Demand®
17.9.07
Google Apps attack: FUD and loathing in Redmond?
by Liam Tung
Software-as-a-service pundits and analysts have hit back hard at Microsoft's criticisms of Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) as backwards-looking and fear-mongering.
"Like [US hockey legend] Wayne Gretzky says: 'Go to where the puck's gonna be, not where it is'," said Doug Farber, Salesforce.com's vice president of operations for Asia Pacific, responding to Microsoft's arguments against the use of GAPE.
"Of course Google will have less rich document processing features, of course it doesn't have tables and footnotes. But that's not hard to do and they will be able to do it in a short time. It's a classic case of going to where the puck was and not where it's going," he told ZDNet Australia.
Google and Salesforce.com have partnered to cheerlead the on-demand message of lower capital expenditure, automatic software upgrades and no contract renewals.
"Google's in the early stages of [the hosted desktop application] initiative but just like we evolved rapidly, Google -- with its horsepower and innovation -- will be capable of making quantum leaps and will get to where Microsoft is faster than Microsoft did," said Farber.
As for Microsoft's criticism that Google launches perpetually "in beta" releases of software, he said: "Everyone knows that it takes at least three releases for Microsoft to get it right. Think of the Xbox, Micosoft's CRM system and Windows."
However, as an enterprise solution, doubt still exists as to whether commercial organisations are willing to adopt an on-demand hosted model.
Jason Polites, technical director at Synetek Systems, an Australian-based hosted provider of e-mail-archiving and contract administration applications, said: "It was odd for Google to partner with Capgemini and move into the enterprise space with that offer. There's resistance at all levels [to software-as-a-service] but we see resistance to SaaS as a platform increasing with the size of the company."
Resistance takes two forms, he said. Users will resist retraining if they are familiar with an existing system like Office, while for organisations there is the issue of losing control over corporate data.
"Really, Google can only overcome this [data control] issue with a commercial agreement. That is, 'Warrant me with use of solution and offer indemnity against any data loss'. But this gets complicated with cross-jurisdictional contracts … At a large business or government level, they need to know the commercial agreement they have can be pursued in litigation and that it has substance," he said.
IBRS analyst Joe Sweeney told ZDNet Australia that Microsoft's 10 reasons for not trusting GAPE miss the point most IT managers should be asking themselves.
"What businesses should be asking is: how much of that old formal stuff is still required? Did we go too far with restricting staff in the past? What are the risks for opening up processes and collaboration and empowering staff to 'do their own thing?'" said Sweeney.
"As an enterprise tool, GAPE lacks important features – especially document management, compliance, and process workflow," Sweeney told ZDNet Australia. While Microsoft criticised GAPE's weaknesses as an enterprise document management solution, Sweeney said Microsoft's assertion that Office is, is "questionable".
"The main problem with Microsoft's response is that it assumes that all of these more formal methodologies are required for all applications, on all clients, all of the time," he said.
"What should alarm IT managers is that few of us have asked the above questions ourselves, nor do we have a framework to engage executive management in the discussion. While a lock-it-down mentality does help to avoid disasters, there is a growing argument that some aspects of work should be less controlled."
Software-as-a-service pundits and analysts have hit back hard at Microsoft's criticisms of Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) as backwards-looking and fear-mongering.
"Like [US hockey legend] Wayne Gretzky says: 'Go to where the puck's gonna be, not where it is'," said Doug Farber, Salesforce.com's vice president of operations for Asia Pacific, responding to Microsoft's arguments against the use of GAPE.
"Of course Google will have less rich document processing features, of course it doesn't have tables and footnotes. But that's not hard to do and they will be able to do it in a short time. It's a classic case of going to where the puck was and not where it's going," he told ZDNet Australia.
Google and Salesforce.com have partnered to cheerlead the on-demand message of lower capital expenditure, automatic software upgrades and no contract renewals.
"Google's in the early stages of [the hosted desktop application] initiative but just like we evolved rapidly, Google -- with its horsepower and innovation -- will be capable of making quantum leaps and will get to where Microsoft is faster than Microsoft did," said Farber.
As for Microsoft's criticism that Google launches perpetually "in beta" releases of software, he said: "Everyone knows that it takes at least three releases for Microsoft to get it right. Think of the Xbox, Micosoft's CRM system and Windows."
However, as an enterprise solution, doubt still exists as to whether commercial organisations are willing to adopt an on-demand hosted model.
Jason Polites, technical director at Synetek Systems, an Australian-based hosted provider of e-mail-archiving and contract administration applications, said: "It was odd for Google to partner with Capgemini and move into the enterprise space with that offer. There's resistance at all levels [to software-as-a-service] but we see resistance to SaaS as a platform increasing with the size of the company."
Resistance takes two forms, he said. Users will resist retraining if they are familiar with an existing system like Office, while for organisations there is the issue of losing control over corporate data.
"Really, Google can only overcome this [data control] issue with a commercial agreement. That is, 'Warrant me with use of solution and offer indemnity against any data loss'. But this gets complicated with cross-jurisdictional contracts … At a large business or government level, they need to know the commercial agreement they have can be pursued in litigation and that it has substance," he said.
IBRS analyst Joe Sweeney told ZDNet Australia that Microsoft's 10 reasons for not trusting GAPE miss the point most IT managers should be asking themselves.
"What businesses should be asking is: how much of that old formal stuff is still required? Did we go too far with restricting staff in the past? What are the risks for opening up processes and collaboration and empowering staff to 'do their own thing?'" said Sweeney.
"As an enterprise tool, GAPE lacks important features – especially document management, compliance, and process workflow," Sweeney told ZDNet Australia. While Microsoft criticised GAPE's weaknesses as an enterprise document management solution, Sweeney said Microsoft's assertion that Office is, is "questionable".
"The main problem with Microsoft's response is that it assumes that all of these more formal methodologies are required for all applications, on all clients, all of the time," he said.
"What should alarm IT managers is that few of us have asked the above questions ourselves, nor do we have a framework to engage executive management in the discussion. While a lock-it-down mentality does help to avoid disasters, there is a growing argument that some aspects of work should be less controlled."
14.9.07
Salesforce.com + Facebook = Faceforce
by Dennis Howlett
Clara Shih, an AppExchange product manager at Salesforce.com has created a mashup between Salesforce and Facebook called FaceForce. Jeff Grosse has a detailed explanation of what it does at CRM-FYI:
Now in Salesforce, if you look at a Contact that you’re friends with on Facebook, you can see their Facebook profile right inline with their Salesforce contact record. It even allows you to perform regular Facebook actions such as Send a Message, Send a Gift, Write on Wall, Message, view their Full Profile, and even the curious Poke.
At the Lead level, the S-control will search Facebook for the lead and show possible matches. If that is the person, you can link them to into the lead so you have access to all their Facebook data inline with your lead data.
At the Account level, the S-control will display all the Facebook connections you have with that company and allow you to take numerous Facebook actions, right from the Account record.
Whenever making a cold sales call, you want as much information as possible about the contact. Given that Facebook members freely give up large amounts of personal information, this could prove extremely useful. As Jeff correctly surmises:
Yet, as a user of both platforms, you can now connect the dots, having more information at your fingertips, inline with the applications you use everyday to build deeper relationships with your customers and prospects.
For the curious, Clara has created an impressive Flash demo. A first look suggests this is one of the most powerful (by which I mean seriously useful) Facebook applications to date. The question now is whether this will become a major talking point at the upcoming Dreamforce show.
Clara Shih, an AppExchange product manager at Salesforce.com has created a mashup between Salesforce and Facebook called FaceForce. Jeff Grosse has a detailed explanation of what it does at CRM-FYI:
Now in Salesforce, if you look at a Contact that you’re friends with on Facebook, you can see their Facebook profile right inline with their Salesforce contact record. It even allows you to perform regular Facebook actions such as Send a Message, Send a Gift, Write on Wall, Message, view their Full Profile, and even the curious Poke.
At the Lead level, the S-control will search Facebook for the lead and show possible matches. If that is the person, you can link them to into the lead so you have access to all their Facebook data inline with your lead data.
At the Account level, the S-control will display all the Facebook connections you have with that company and allow you to take numerous Facebook actions, right from the Account record.
Whenever making a cold sales call, you want as much information as possible about the contact. Given that Facebook members freely give up large amounts of personal information, this could prove extremely useful. As Jeff correctly surmises:
Yet, as a user of both platforms, you can now connect the dots, having more information at your fingertips, inline with the applications you use everyday to build deeper relationships with your customers and prospects.
For the curious, Clara has created an impressive Flash demo. A first look suggests this is one of the most powerful (by which I mean seriously useful) Facebook applications to date. The question now is whether this will become a major talking point at the upcoming Dreamforce show.
6.9.07
Traditional Marketing Practices Won't Work in an On-Demand World
The growing demand for all things "on-demand"--from our entertainment to our business information--is rapidly changing how B2B customers and prospects want to learn about your products and services.
by Joe Gustafson
On demand. Real time. Right time. Today's catchphrases are more than market hyperbole; they articulate a monumental shift in how consumers want to receive information and a wake up call for businesses to adapt or perish. For marketers in particular, this evolution means traditional information dissemination and message delivery strategies just won't work.
To succeed in today's increasingly flat marketplace, marketers need to understand how the advent of an "on-demand" mentality, has led to numerous changes in the way business professionals deliver and consume critical information. People want customized, personalized communications and they expect to receive information at their convenience. The time and place are no longer relevant to the successful delivery and consumption of marketing information. In fact, as more and more business is done away from the office, on the road and via mobile devices; paper-based, in-person, time-specific marketing information is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. To ensure your marketing activities are meeting these new demands, let's discuss the three primary drivers behind the on-demand trend and how your organization can take advantage of the industry evolution.
Attention spans are shorter in today's on demand society
Customers are exposed to an increasing amount of data and information each day - from radio to TV, blogs to web sites, instant messages to text messages. Given all this content available at their fingertips, people have less and less time to spend digesting individual sources; and less patience if it does not quickly grab their attention. In order for people to consume your messages effectively, marketers need to make it as easy and enjoyable for potential buyers to learn more.
Consider the stages of the buying process. In the early stages of the buying cycle, prospects are less "invested" in examining your offerings. It's even tougher if you are trying to uncover latent needs -- reaching those who are still as yet unaware of the benefits they could attain from your offerings and not actively out looking for solutions like yours. At this stage, prospects are rarely willing to take time out of their busy day and give it to a vendor. Reading thru reams of information, or even requesting their participation in a live one-hour webinar is asking quite a lot given busy schedules -- after all, time is money. Marketers need to make it easy for prospects to consume messages -- available when they want it and in the format which they need -- whether online or offline, during the day or after work hours.
Marketing has a greater responsibility to educate the prospect
Today, it's far too costly and risky to rely upon sales teams alone to educate the prospect. Marketing is tasked with a greater responsibility for educating buyers, and aims to deliver a consistent, compelling message to guide buyers to the next logical step -- or so they hope.
The challenge is that buyers are overwhelmed with information, and most of it looks the same -- will your brochure or your landing page really make a difference? That is, if anyone reads it?
Today's on demand communication technologies help you successfully educate prospects by delivering more compelling and measurable communications. You can get your best experts in front of your prospects at a time that is convenient for everyone -- their OWN time. It can make all the difference to secure a sale -- but it has to be scalable. Tools for experts to record their topic presentations can be as easy to use as the telephone, and this is critical to socializing this form of communications across your organization. To create the customized, timely messages that are relevant to your prospects, you can no longer take weeks of time and skilled developers to create this form of content -- it has to be easy and accessible to business people -- for marketers, product managers, CEOs and other thought leaders to play a part in delivering valuable, timely content for buyers to get to know you, your company, and the value you provide.
Marketers face growing pressure to demonstrate ROI
The recent business emphasis on transparency and compliance has finally reached the marketing department. Complacency with costly and traditional long-term marketing campaigns is no longer; today marketers are under intense pressure to justify activities and demonstrate tangible ROI. Additionally, marketers are being measured not only on lead generation programs, but also how they supported the success of those leads.
For instance, on-demand lead generation tools can now identify who has viewed your message, for how long, and their corresponding level of interest. Similar sales measurement tools are also available to help identify which are being used and at what point in sales process, who is consuming messages and how they are resonating with prospects. This presents an unprecedented advantage to marketers, providing immediate feedback on marketing outreach and support. Instead of waiting weeks or months to run a campaign, gather results and analyze the data, organizations can get real-time information on how well messages are resonating, know which messages are most valued by the prospect, launch followup while interest is at its highest, and accelerate revenues.
Clearly the requirements for marketing have changed drastically. However, by understanding these market drivers and embracing the evolution of how consumers want information, you can harness the power of on-demand communications to develop more effective and more profitable marketing programs. Users want customized, personalized communications and they want it delivered on their terms -- whenever the real time or right time may be.
As a marketer, seek to provide a rich, easy to use, on-demand format that prospects will be willing and eager to experience. Deploy simple, robust tools that can quickly and easily communicate individualized messages, while providing the opportunity scale to help maximize resources and revenues. But, balance customization with high value interactions, ensuring each communication brings valid information and insight into the sales process. Finally, recognize the on-demand mentality is not just for prospects, but for your organization as well. Make measurement your mantra to address ROI metrics head on with tracking and reporting capabilities for lead generation and ongoing sales efforts. By leveraging on-demand technologies and services you can ensure your messages are delivered according to the communication mediums audiences require, maximizing your marketing results and propelling your organization to success.
by Joe Gustafson
On demand. Real time. Right time. Today's catchphrases are more than market hyperbole; they articulate a monumental shift in how consumers want to receive information and a wake up call for businesses to adapt or perish. For marketers in particular, this evolution means traditional information dissemination and message delivery strategies just won't work.
To succeed in today's increasingly flat marketplace, marketers need to understand how the advent of an "on-demand" mentality, has led to numerous changes in the way business professionals deliver and consume critical information. People want customized, personalized communications and they expect to receive information at their convenience. The time and place are no longer relevant to the successful delivery and consumption of marketing information. In fact, as more and more business is done away from the office, on the road and via mobile devices; paper-based, in-person, time-specific marketing information is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. To ensure your marketing activities are meeting these new demands, let's discuss the three primary drivers behind the on-demand trend and how your organization can take advantage of the industry evolution.
Attention spans are shorter in today's on demand society
Customers are exposed to an increasing amount of data and information each day - from radio to TV, blogs to web sites, instant messages to text messages. Given all this content available at their fingertips, people have less and less time to spend digesting individual sources; and less patience if it does not quickly grab their attention. In order for people to consume your messages effectively, marketers need to make it as easy and enjoyable for potential buyers to learn more.
Consider the stages of the buying process. In the early stages of the buying cycle, prospects are less "invested" in examining your offerings. It's even tougher if you are trying to uncover latent needs -- reaching those who are still as yet unaware of the benefits they could attain from your offerings and not actively out looking for solutions like yours. At this stage, prospects are rarely willing to take time out of their busy day and give it to a vendor. Reading thru reams of information, or even requesting their participation in a live one-hour webinar is asking quite a lot given busy schedules -- after all, time is money. Marketers need to make it easy for prospects to consume messages -- available when they want it and in the format which they need -- whether online or offline, during the day or after work hours.
Marketing has a greater responsibility to educate the prospect
Today, it's far too costly and risky to rely upon sales teams alone to educate the prospect. Marketing is tasked with a greater responsibility for educating buyers, and aims to deliver a consistent, compelling message to guide buyers to the next logical step -- or so they hope.
The challenge is that buyers are overwhelmed with information, and most of it looks the same -- will your brochure or your landing page really make a difference? That is, if anyone reads it?
Today's on demand communication technologies help you successfully educate prospects by delivering more compelling and measurable communications. You can get your best experts in front of your prospects at a time that is convenient for everyone -- their OWN time. It can make all the difference to secure a sale -- but it has to be scalable. Tools for experts to record their topic presentations can be as easy to use as the telephone, and this is critical to socializing this form of communications across your organization. To create the customized, timely messages that are relevant to your prospects, you can no longer take weeks of time and skilled developers to create this form of content -- it has to be easy and accessible to business people -- for marketers, product managers, CEOs and other thought leaders to play a part in delivering valuable, timely content for buyers to get to know you, your company, and the value you provide.
Marketers face growing pressure to demonstrate ROI
The recent business emphasis on transparency and compliance has finally reached the marketing department. Complacency with costly and traditional long-term marketing campaigns is no longer; today marketers are under intense pressure to justify activities and demonstrate tangible ROI. Additionally, marketers are being measured not only on lead generation programs, but also how they supported the success of those leads.
For instance, on-demand lead generation tools can now identify who has viewed your message, for how long, and their corresponding level of interest. Similar sales measurement tools are also available to help identify which are being used and at what point in sales process, who is consuming messages and how they are resonating with prospects. This presents an unprecedented advantage to marketers, providing immediate feedback on marketing outreach and support. Instead of waiting weeks or months to run a campaign, gather results and analyze the data, organizations can get real-time information on how well messages are resonating, know which messages are most valued by the prospect, launch followup while interest is at its highest, and accelerate revenues.
Clearly the requirements for marketing have changed drastically. However, by understanding these market drivers and embracing the evolution of how consumers want information, you can harness the power of on-demand communications to develop more effective and more profitable marketing programs. Users want customized, personalized communications and they want it delivered on their terms -- whenever the real time or right time may be.
As a marketer, seek to provide a rich, easy to use, on-demand format that prospects will be willing and eager to experience. Deploy simple, robust tools that can quickly and easily communicate individualized messages, while providing the opportunity scale to help maximize resources and revenues. But, balance customization with high value interactions, ensuring each communication brings valid information and insight into the sales process. Finally, recognize the on-demand mentality is not just for prospects, but for your organization as well. Make measurement your mantra to address ROI metrics head on with tracking and reporting capabilities for lead generation and ongoing sales efforts. By leveraging on-demand technologies and services you can ensure your messages are delivered according to the communication mediums audiences require, maximizing your marketing results and propelling your organization to success.
29.8.07
New eBook: Top 10 Tips for Effective Landing Pages
Probably everyone has heard about some stats that are in MarketingSherpa's “Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007-08.” Namely, that:
1. 80% of your new customers think they found you
2. And 83% of those used Google to do it.
But are you using the most effective means of converting those buyers into customers? A B2B marketer should be using this opportunity to educate the buyer. You should frame the discussion and establish your company's brand as a trusted adviser who understands the buyer's problems and knows how to solve them.
You should speak the buyer's language, using words they use as keywords in your search engine marketing and optimization campaigns. Ads that use those or similar words are more like to be clicked, and landing pages that continue the "conversation" by also using those words are more likely to result in conversions.
So, to that end, we have created an eBook as a primer to landing pages, 'Building Effective Landing Pages,' where we explain why landing pages are an important part of your online marketing campaigns and list the top ten ways to build landing pages that will increase your conversion rates.
Download Now: Building Effective Landing Pages eBook
1. 80% of your new customers think they found you
2. And 83% of those used Google to do it.
But are you using the most effective means of converting those buyers into customers? A B2B marketer should be using this opportunity to educate the buyer. You should frame the discussion and establish your company's brand as a trusted adviser who understands the buyer's problems and knows how to solve them.
You should speak the buyer's language, using words they use as keywords in your search engine marketing and optimization campaigns. Ads that use those or similar words are more like to be clicked, and landing pages that continue the "conversation" by also using those words are more likely to result in conversions.
So, to that end, we have created an eBook as a primer to landing pages, 'Building Effective Landing Pages,' where we explain why landing pages are an important part of your online marketing campaigns and list the top ten ways to build landing pages that will increase your conversion rates.
Download Now: Building Effective Landing Pages eBook
Salesforce Marketing at Dreamforce!
It’s been awhile since we’ve posted here but we’ve been busy this summer building tons of great new features and content to share with you at Dreamforce! We’re excited to announce that Salesforce Marketing will have 2 tracks at Dreamforce this year which will be held Sept 16-18 in San Francisco.
The first track, Marketing I: Building the Funnel is geared towards users who are either new to Salesforce or new to certain aspects of the marketing product. We will be covering the entire range of marketing topics including lead management, search engine marketing, campaign management, email marketing, analytics and more.
The second track, Marketing II: Advanced Strategies will be focused on just that – advanced strategies! If you’ve been using Salesforce Marketing for awhile now you might be looking to take it up a notch and that’s exactly what this track is designed for. We’ll be discussing best practices in lead scoring, integrated website tracking, search engine marketing techniques and extending beyond Salesforce reporting just to name a few. This is a track even you seasoned veterans won’t want to miss!
For more details on Dreamforce check out the conference website at www.dreamforce.com.
Hope to see you there!
The first track, Marketing I: Building the Funnel is geared towards users who are either new to Salesforce or new to certain aspects of the marketing product. We will be covering the entire range of marketing topics including lead management, search engine marketing, campaign management, email marketing, analytics and more.
The second track, Marketing II: Advanced Strategies will be focused on just that – advanced strategies! If you’ve been using Salesforce Marketing for awhile now you might be looking to take it up a notch and that’s exactly what this track is designed for. We’ll be discussing best practices in lead scoring, integrated website tracking, search engine marketing techniques and extending beyond Salesforce reporting just to name a few. This is a track even you seasoned veterans won’t want to miss!
For more details on Dreamforce check out the conference website at www.dreamforce.com.
Hope to see you there!
Podcast: Landing Pages Double your Conversion Rates
Jon talks with Heather Lutze of Lutze Consulting about Marketo Pay Per Click and Landing
Pages. Heather asks Jon why use landing pages, and he gave some great statistics:
- 6.3% average conversion rate for home pages
- 9.3% average conversion rate for loosely relevant landing pages
- 12% average conversion rate for highly relevant, targeted landing page
Jon talks about the Marketo Landing Pages on-demand application, which includes the ability to easily create landing page templates and pages, as well as conduct A/B testing. Marketo Landing Pages is available as a Test Drive and 30 Day Free Trial, both available at www.marketo.com.
Pages. Heather asks Jon why use landing pages, and he gave some great statistics:
- 6.3% average conversion rate for home pages
- 9.3% average conversion rate for loosely relevant landing pages
- 12% average conversion rate for highly relevant, targeted landing page
Jon talks about the Marketo Landing Pages on-demand application, which includes the ability to easily create landing page templates and pages, as well as conduct A/B testing. Marketo Landing Pages is available as a Test Drive and 30 Day Free Trial, both available at www.marketo.com.
15.8.07
Salesforce.com Dominates Australia's Software as a Service Market
Accelerates past 1,000 customers in Australia & New Zealand winning customers like Amcor, CGU, Challenger Financial Services, Fairfax Publishing, Flight Centre, Lend Lease and Smorgon Steel Frost & Sullivan confirms that salesforce.com holds approximately 50 percent share of Australia's on-demand application market in 2006MELBOURNE - salesforce.com Summer '07 Launch Event - July 16, 2007 - Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that more than 1,000 companies in Australia are now using its on-demand CRM application suite and platform.
Growing demand for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) - especially among the nation's enterprises - is providing salesforce.com's Australian operations with tremendous customer and subscriber growth. In addition to continued adoption among small-to-medium sized businesses, salesforce.com signed its first 1,000 subscriber customer in the region and has secured major local enterprises including Amcor Limited, BlueScope Buildings, Challenger Financial Services, CGU, Fairfax Publishing, Flight Centre, IDP, Lend Lease, SKILLED Group Limited, and Smorgon Steel in the last twelve months. "Momentum and adoption of salesforce.com's on-demand model is reaching new heights in Australia as our customers realize the success that is possible through our vision of 'No Software'," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. Salesforce.com was founded in San Francisco in 1999 and established its Australian operations in June 2003.
The company has pioneered the SaaS phenomenon which allows organizations to abandon traditional software delivery models and embrace enterprise class software as a service via a web browser and subscription payment model - with no software to license, install and upgrade. Demand for SaaS solutions by Australian companies of all sizes is forecasted to increase significantly. Frost & Sullivan predicts that the Australian SaaS market will experience a 40 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2009. The company has only been in Australia for three years but according to Andrew Milroy, consulting director at Frost & Sullivan, "controlled approximately 50 percent of the market in 2006." According to ACA research, a leading market research firm and authors of The Australian SaaS Market Index[1], up to 85 percent of Australian companies are likely to consider SaaS over on-premise solutions.
"One of the most compelling findings is that as users switch to an on-demand or SaaS model, they experience measurable business benefits. Fifty eight percent of respondents using SaaS recorded significant gains in operational efficiency. Forty percent have experienced increases in revenue," said Dr. Catriona Wallace, Director, ACA Research. In contrast, respondents reported they are struggling with on-premise software maintenance. More than 40 percent of respondents spent over a quarter of their IT budget on in-house software maintenance [excluding staff costs]. Respondents also indicated they were struggling with software upgrades and staff shortages. According to Bruce Kaider, general manager, Business Development and Strategy for Western Bulldogs, "Salesforce.com requires low up-front costs and minimal new infrastructure. It can quickly and easily scale as our business grows and integrates seamlessly with our existing applications."
Grant Waldeck, Marketing Manager of Flight Centre Australia's corporate arm FCm Travel Solutions adds that the SaaS model eliminates the upgrade issues that plague traditional client-server software.
“Our business relies on e-mail connectivity, so it is also a huge benefit to us moving forward that we can communicate to our customers via salesforce.com for any late breaking news in our industry that may be effecting their travelers". We know it’s in safe hands and that we’r e getting the very latest tools,” he said.
Growing demand for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) - especially among the nation's enterprises - is providing salesforce.com's Australian operations with tremendous customer and subscriber growth. In addition to continued adoption among small-to-medium sized businesses, salesforce.com signed its first 1,000 subscriber customer in the region and has secured major local enterprises including Amcor Limited, BlueScope Buildings, Challenger Financial Services, CGU, Fairfax Publishing, Flight Centre, IDP, Lend Lease, SKILLED Group Limited, and Smorgon Steel in the last twelve months. "Momentum and adoption of salesforce.com's on-demand model is reaching new heights in Australia as our customers realize the success that is possible through our vision of 'No Software'," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. Salesforce.com was founded in San Francisco in 1999 and established its Australian operations in June 2003.
The company has pioneered the SaaS phenomenon which allows organizations to abandon traditional software delivery models and embrace enterprise class software as a service via a web browser and subscription payment model - with no software to license, install and upgrade. Demand for SaaS solutions by Australian companies of all sizes is forecasted to increase significantly. Frost & Sullivan predicts that the Australian SaaS market will experience a 40 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2009. The company has only been in Australia for three years but according to Andrew Milroy, consulting director at Frost & Sullivan, "controlled approximately 50 percent of the market in 2006." According to ACA research, a leading market research firm and authors of The Australian SaaS Market Index[1], up to 85 percent of Australian companies are likely to consider SaaS over on-premise solutions.
"One of the most compelling findings is that as users switch to an on-demand or SaaS model, they experience measurable business benefits. Fifty eight percent of respondents using SaaS recorded significant gains in operational efficiency. Forty percent have experienced increases in revenue," said Dr. Catriona Wallace, Director, ACA Research. In contrast, respondents reported they are struggling with on-premise software maintenance. More than 40 percent of respondents spent over a quarter of their IT budget on in-house software maintenance [excluding staff costs]. Respondents also indicated they were struggling with software upgrades and staff shortages. According to Bruce Kaider, general manager, Business Development and Strategy for Western Bulldogs, "Salesforce.com requires low up-front costs and minimal new infrastructure. It can quickly and easily scale as our business grows and integrates seamlessly with our existing applications."
Grant Waldeck, Marketing Manager of Flight Centre Australia's corporate arm FCm Travel Solutions adds that the SaaS model eliminates the upgrade issues that plague traditional client-server software.
“Our business relies on e-mail connectivity, so it is also a huge benefit to us moving forward that we can communicate to our customers via salesforce.com for any late breaking news in our industry that may be effecting their travelers". We know it’s in safe hands and that we’r e getting the very latest tools,” he said.
24.7.07
Software as a Service Continues its High Growth Trajectory in Asia - Springboard Research - July 23 2007
Market Expected to Grow 83% in 2007 as Awareness and Adoption Rates Increase Significantly
Singapore – July 23, 2007 – Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry, today announced the results of its latest research on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market in Asia (excluding Japan). Springboard’s data shows significant growth in awareness and adoption of SaaS across the region with the market increasing 92.5% in 2006 to reach a market size of US$154 million. Springboard forecasts that the SaaS market in Asia will reach US$1.16 billion by 2010, with a compound annual growth rate of 66%, to comprise 15% of the enterprise software application market.
Springboard recorded a substantial increase in SaaS awareness in the last year, with awareness among those surveyed (385 organizations) increasing from 41% in 2006, to 75% in 2007. This increase in awareness also led to a rise in adoption, with 46% of those enterprises surveyed replying that they were using some form of SaaS in their organizations (compared to 29% in 2006). Springboard also observed that the primary reason for adoption shifted from price to other factors that included ease of use, ease of implementation, and lower maintenance.
“We saw significant increases across the board for SaaS through our research, which proves that SaaS has market momentum for the long run,” said Dane Anderson, CEO & Executive Vice President for Research at Springboard Research. “It is a very dynamic time for SaaS in Asia with pure-play vendors like Salesforce.com, Netsuite, and WebEx gaining increased traction in Asia, together with smaller SaaS firms making moves into the region. Round that out with the large players in the industry like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft becoming more aggressive with SaaS, and the market for the rest of 2007 and 2008 is going to be very interesting,” Anderson added.
Springboard found that although customer relationship management (CRM) remains the largest SaaS application segment by revenue in Asia, representing 45% of total SaaS revenue in 2006, data shows that organizations are aware of and use many different types of SaaS applications. Springboard also found satisfaction levels with SaaS applications ran very high, with all application segments scoring between a 7 to 8 on a 10-point scale.
“SaaS is definitely going beyond CRM, which is the area it has been associated with in the past,” said Ravi Shekhar Pandey, Research Manager for Springboard Research. “With all segments of SaaS growing, we are seeing applications across the board being adopted by enterprises in the region and more importantly, we are seeing enterprises being very happy with the SaaS applications they are using. This bodes well for the market, not only the small to medium businesses that have been the mainstay for SaaS vendors, but also those large enterprises looking at SaaS for non-critical applications;” added Pandey.
Singapore – July 23, 2007 – Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry, today announced the results of its latest research on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market in Asia (excluding Japan). Springboard’s data shows significant growth in awareness and adoption of SaaS across the region with the market increasing 92.5% in 2006 to reach a market size of US$154 million. Springboard forecasts that the SaaS market in Asia will reach US$1.16 billion by 2010, with a compound annual growth rate of 66%, to comprise 15% of the enterprise software application market.
Springboard recorded a substantial increase in SaaS awareness in the last year, with awareness among those surveyed (385 organizations) increasing from 41% in 2006, to 75% in 2007. This increase in awareness also led to a rise in adoption, with 46% of those enterprises surveyed replying that they were using some form of SaaS in their organizations (compared to 29% in 2006). Springboard also observed that the primary reason for adoption shifted from price to other factors that included ease of use, ease of implementation, and lower maintenance.
“We saw significant increases across the board for SaaS through our research, which proves that SaaS has market momentum for the long run,” said Dane Anderson, CEO & Executive Vice President for Research at Springboard Research. “It is a very dynamic time for SaaS in Asia with pure-play vendors like Salesforce.com, Netsuite, and WebEx gaining increased traction in Asia, together with smaller SaaS firms making moves into the region. Round that out with the large players in the industry like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft becoming more aggressive with SaaS, and the market for the rest of 2007 and 2008 is going to be very interesting,” Anderson added.
Springboard found that although customer relationship management (CRM) remains the largest SaaS application segment by revenue in Asia, representing 45% of total SaaS revenue in 2006, data shows that organizations are aware of and use many different types of SaaS applications. Springboard also found satisfaction levels with SaaS applications ran very high, with all application segments scoring between a 7 to 8 on a 10-point scale.
“SaaS is definitely going beyond CRM, which is the area it has been associated with in the past,” said Ravi Shekhar Pandey, Research Manager for Springboard Research. “With all segments of SaaS growing, we are seeing applications across the board being adopted by enterprises in the region and more importantly, we are seeing enterprises being very happy with the SaaS applications they are using. This bodes well for the market, not only the small to medium businesses that have been the mainstay for SaaS vendors, but also those large enterprises looking at SaaS for non-critical applications;” added Pandey.
Springboard also saw the competitive landscape in Asia Pacific is beginning to change. Even though the regional SaaS market is still dominated by the top 5 vendors – Salesforce.com, WebEx, RightNow Technologies, Oracle and NetSuite – several other vendors, especially local players, are beginning to make their presence felt in the region. Vendors like Australia-based Saasu (accounting applications), Aussiepay (payroll application), Singapore-based JustLogin (collaboration), China-based 800CRM (CRM on-demand) and India-based Adrenalin eSystems (payroll/employee management) are gaining popularity in the local markets.
18.7.07
Salesforce.com Heats up Enterprise CRM with Salesforce Summer '07, Based on World's First Platform-as-a-Service - July 16 2007 - SF Investor Website
With Apex Code live to customers, the era of platform-as-a-service begins New standard for the "IT-ready" on-demand platform combines multi-tenant programming language, multi-instance development environment, and intelligent workflow Salesforce.com positioned in Leaders Quadrant in SFA Magic Quadrant 2007 (1); establishes new milestones as the industry's most customized, integrated, and adopted enterprise CRM
MELBOURNE, Australia, July 16, 2007 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- salesforce.com Summer '07 Launch Event -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced the release of Salesforce Summer '07, for the first time delivering Apex Code to salesforce.com customers and unleashing the power of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to the industry.
Salesforce Summer '07 is the 23rd generation of the world's most popular on-demand CRM application and delivers a completely customizable CRM application and Platform and a number of industry "firsts" to the enterprise on-demand market.
Salesforce.com customers continue to establish major milestones for the on-demand industry with the power of PaaS. Salesforce.com customers have created more than 125,000 custom applications and objects, completed 30,000 AppExchange installs and produced almost 100 million daily transactions -- proving that salesforce.com is the most customized, integrated and adopted on-demand application and platform on the market today.
"Salesforce.com and Software-as-a-Service revolutionized CRM. Now Platform-as-a-Service and Apex Code stand to revolutionize how customers build and deploy apps," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "Customers can write code that runs on our servers -- it's programming without software. Better yet, it's The End of Software."
"Salesforce.com's architecture allows us to easily accommodate the different needs and personalities of our many businesses and markets while still operating with our standard, One DuPont SAP transaction engine. This is a powerful combination," said Robert R. Ridout, vice president, DuPont Information Technology (IT) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of DuPont.
Salesforce Summer '07 comes at a watershed moment for the on-demand industry -- on-demand has now moved to the mainstream. Summer '07 is salesforce.com's third release this year, maintaining a pace of innovation unmatched by any competitor. Recently, Gartner placed salesforce.com in the Leaders Quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for sales force automation.
Salesforce.com believes this accomplishment marks a maturity of the SaaS industry and an acknowledgement of its role in revolutionizing the software landscape.
"With Summer '07, salesforce.com has not only demonstrated the power of SaaS for the enterprise, but more importantly, the power of PaaS," said Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research. "Apex Code and industry defining features like intelligent work flow and multi-instance development environment provide clarity to enterprise CIOs by enabling them to focus on innovation, not infrastructure."
Summer '07 -- Delivering Platform-as-a-Service and Apex Code to Customers
With the release of Salesforce Summer '07, salesforce.com customers will be able to experience the power of programming free from the burdens of software with Apex Code and PaaS. For the first time, customers will be able to use Apex Code to write any application and leverage the scalability, reliability, and availability of running it directly on salesforce.com's industry-leading PaaS.
All applications written with Apex Code are 100 percent multi-tenant, ensuring that they are automatically upgraded at the same time as the Salesforce service.
"We are very excited to get our hands on Apex Code and develop entirely new on-demand applications so that our entire company can go on-demand. We are confident that the new applications we build with Apex Code will further enhance the success we've achieved with salesforce.com to date," said Mike Epner, Vice President, Worldwide Services and Support, Borland.
Summer '07 comes at a time when customers and partners are integrating salesforce.com's on-demand applications more deeply into their business infrastructure than ever before. In fact, customers have performed more than 125,000 customizations to their Salesforce instances, showcasing the ease and power of adapting Salesforce to each customer's unique business processes.
During salesforce.com's first quarter, more than 50 percent of the 5.4 billion transactions (page views or API calls through Salesforce or AppExchange applications) on the company's industry-leading Salesforce service were handled through the Salesforce Web Services API, demonstrating its extensive use and integration with external Web services, enterprise mash-ups and sophisticated business process and workflow applications.
Apex Code is a Java-like development language that is secure, easy and fast, and will be immediately familiar to any Java programmer. Anything built using Apex Code can be made available as a Web service and is accessible via SOAP and XML standards. More than 1,200 members of the Salesforce Developer Network have had access to Apex Code since January in a developer preview to build prototype applications and provide feedback on the code.
Leading the Industry by Delivering "IT Ready" Firsts
Apex Code provides enterprise developers and IT departments the ability to program completely custom applications for their on-demand platform. In addition, the multi-instance development environment and intelligent workflow features available in Summer '07 give enterprise business users the ability to completely customize their application.
Salesforce.com is the only company that is delivering the flexible complexity that enterprises need with its unique PaaS model. Salesforce.com continues to be the clear standard for on-demand in the enterprise by delivering a number of on-demand "firsts" including:
-- First "IT Ready" On-Demand Multi-Instance Development Environment -- Salesforce Sandbox, introduced with the Winter '06 release, allows companies to create a duplicate copy of their Salesforce development environment with one click. This popular feature ensures that testing, training and development scenarios can be run without interrupting the production use of the application.
In response to requests from the salesforce.com community, salesforce.com is delivering the capability for customers to deploy multiple Salesforce Sandboxes with Summer '07. Enterprise customers can now have separate environments for testing, development and training to achieve a true enterprise development environment.
-- First "IT Ready" On-Demand Intelligent Workflow -- While most on-demand competitors are just starting to incorporate rudimentary workflow into their solutions, salesforce.com is releasing Enterprise Intelligent Workflow. With the availability of Intelligent Workflow, customers can now create complex rules and approvals by adding formulas in workflow. Now anything from complex case assignment rules to sophisticated price discount approvals can be completely customized to fit each individual customer's business needs.
Industry Leading User Experience: Collaboration, Efficiency and Empowerment
Salesforce.com has always delivered an industry-leading user experience that has driven strong adoption of its CRM applications. Summer '07 continues to provide innovative ease of use and powerful customization tools to let developers, users and customers take their user interfaces and experiences to the next level.
-- Salesforce Mobile User Interface -- With the Summer '07 release, Salesforce Mobile is debuting an entirely new search-based user interface, enabling users to find the information they need quickly and easily. The new user interface is completely streamlined with a search box on the main screen. From here users can search for contacts, accounts, opportunities and much more. The results are delivered in an easy to navigate list, grouped by category, from which a user can select the correct solution. In addition, users can now access reports for the first time through Salesforce Mobile.
-- Rich-Content Solutions -- Now, companies using the solution knowledge base in Salesforce Service & Support can illustrate complex solutions easily with diagrams, pictures and other rich-content by creating solutions using HTML to make solutions and services easier to find and understand than ever before.
-- Custom Report Wizard -- Previously, users were able to create custom reports using a standard report wizard which enabled them to achieve true insight into their business programs. Now, users can create completely customized report wizards to make creating reports an easy and streamlined process.
-- On-Demand Collaborative Customer Portal -- The Salesforce Customer Portal delivers the latest Web 2.0 collaboration technologies to enable companies to offer their customers a branded 24x7 self-service portal. The Salesforce Customer Portal enables companies to personalize the portal for different users, roles and companies and easily customize the portal with their brand. For customer service departments, the new self-service portal will use the knowledgebase to suggest solutions to customers and leverages the power of collaborative communities to also deliver customer driven solutions.
"It took us less than a week to customize, brand, and fully deploy the Salesforce Customer Portal," said Mark Silber of QUALCOMM Incorporated. "Salesforce Service & Support gives our IT department the ability to react quickly to changes driven by the business and to revise the app in minutes-not days or weeks-using easy point-and-click capabilities. This allows us to deliver a whole new standard of customer service."
Availability
Salesforce Summer '07 is currently scheduled to be available in August to customers through salesforce.com's multi-tenant, on-demand model. The Salesforce Customer Portal will be available for an additional fee starting at $5 per user, per month, per portal. Multiple Sandboxes are available at an additional fee for Unlimited and Enterprise Edition customers. Apex Code is available for Unlimited Edition customers at no additional charge.
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2007 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
MELBOURNE, Australia, July 16, 2007 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- salesforce.com Summer '07 Launch Event -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced the release of Salesforce Summer '07, for the first time delivering Apex Code to salesforce.com customers and unleashing the power of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to the industry.
Salesforce Summer '07 is the 23rd generation of the world's most popular on-demand CRM application and delivers a completely customizable CRM application and Platform and a number of industry "firsts" to the enterprise on-demand market.
Salesforce.com customers continue to establish major milestones for the on-demand industry with the power of PaaS. Salesforce.com customers have created more than 125,000 custom applications and objects, completed 30,000 AppExchange installs and produced almost 100 million daily transactions -- proving that salesforce.com is the most customized, integrated and adopted on-demand application and platform on the market today.
"Salesforce.com and Software-as-a-Service revolutionized CRM. Now Platform-as-a-Service and Apex Code stand to revolutionize how customers build and deploy apps," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "Customers can write code that runs on our servers -- it's programming without software. Better yet, it's The End of Software."
"Salesforce.com's architecture allows us to easily accommodate the different needs and personalities of our many businesses and markets while still operating with our standard, One DuPont SAP transaction engine. This is a powerful combination," said Robert R. Ridout, vice president, DuPont Information Technology (IT) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of DuPont.
Salesforce Summer '07 comes at a watershed moment for the on-demand industry -- on-demand has now moved to the mainstream. Summer '07 is salesforce.com's third release this year, maintaining a pace of innovation unmatched by any competitor. Recently, Gartner placed salesforce.com in the Leaders Quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for sales force automation.
Salesforce.com believes this accomplishment marks a maturity of the SaaS industry and an acknowledgement of its role in revolutionizing the software landscape.
"With Summer '07, salesforce.com has not only demonstrated the power of SaaS for the enterprise, but more importantly, the power of PaaS," said Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research. "Apex Code and industry defining features like intelligent work flow and multi-instance development environment provide clarity to enterprise CIOs by enabling them to focus on innovation, not infrastructure."
Summer '07 -- Delivering Platform-as-a-Service and Apex Code to Customers
With the release of Salesforce Summer '07, salesforce.com customers will be able to experience the power of programming free from the burdens of software with Apex Code and PaaS. For the first time, customers will be able to use Apex Code to write any application and leverage the scalability, reliability, and availability of running it directly on salesforce.com's industry-leading PaaS.
All applications written with Apex Code are 100 percent multi-tenant, ensuring that they are automatically upgraded at the same time as the Salesforce service.
"We are very excited to get our hands on Apex Code and develop entirely new on-demand applications so that our entire company can go on-demand. We are confident that the new applications we build with Apex Code will further enhance the success we've achieved with salesforce.com to date," said Mike Epner, Vice President, Worldwide Services and Support, Borland.
Summer '07 comes at a time when customers and partners are integrating salesforce.com's on-demand applications more deeply into their business infrastructure than ever before. In fact, customers have performed more than 125,000 customizations to their Salesforce instances, showcasing the ease and power of adapting Salesforce to each customer's unique business processes.
During salesforce.com's first quarter, more than 50 percent of the 5.4 billion transactions (page views or API calls through Salesforce or AppExchange applications) on the company's industry-leading Salesforce service were handled through the Salesforce Web Services API, demonstrating its extensive use and integration with external Web services, enterprise mash-ups and sophisticated business process and workflow applications.
Apex Code is a Java-like development language that is secure, easy and fast, and will be immediately familiar to any Java programmer. Anything built using Apex Code can be made available as a Web service and is accessible via SOAP and XML standards. More than 1,200 members of the Salesforce Developer Network have had access to Apex Code since January in a developer preview to build prototype applications and provide feedback on the code.
Leading the Industry by Delivering "IT Ready" Firsts
Apex Code provides enterprise developers and IT departments the ability to program completely custom applications for their on-demand platform. In addition, the multi-instance development environment and intelligent workflow features available in Summer '07 give enterprise business users the ability to completely customize their application.
Salesforce.com is the only company that is delivering the flexible complexity that enterprises need with its unique PaaS model. Salesforce.com continues to be the clear standard for on-demand in the enterprise by delivering a number of on-demand "firsts" including:
-- First "IT Ready" On-Demand Multi-Instance Development Environment -- Salesforce Sandbox, introduced with the Winter '06 release, allows companies to create a duplicate copy of their Salesforce development environment with one click. This popular feature ensures that testing, training and development scenarios can be run without interrupting the production use of the application.
In response to requests from the salesforce.com community, salesforce.com is delivering the capability for customers to deploy multiple Salesforce Sandboxes with Summer '07. Enterprise customers can now have separate environments for testing, development and training to achieve a true enterprise development environment.
-- First "IT Ready" On-Demand Intelligent Workflow -- While most on-demand competitors are just starting to incorporate rudimentary workflow into their solutions, salesforce.com is releasing Enterprise Intelligent Workflow. With the availability of Intelligent Workflow, customers can now create complex rules and approvals by adding formulas in workflow. Now anything from complex case assignment rules to sophisticated price discount approvals can be completely customized to fit each individual customer's business needs.
Industry Leading User Experience: Collaboration, Efficiency and Empowerment
Salesforce.com has always delivered an industry-leading user experience that has driven strong adoption of its CRM applications. Summer '07 continues to provide innovative ease of use and powerful customization tools to let developers, users and customers take their user interfaces and experiences to the next level.
-- Salesforce Mobile User Interface -- With the Summer '07 release, Salesforce Mobile is debuting an entirely new search-based user interface, enabling users to find the information they need quickly and easily. The new user interface is completely streamlined with a search box on the main screen. From here users can search for contacts, accounts, opportunities and much more. The results are delivered in an easy to navigate list, grouped by category, from which a user can select the correct solution. In addition, users can now access reports for the first time through Salesforce Mobile.
-- Rich-Content Solutions -- Now, companies using the solution knowledge base in Salesforce Service & Support can illustrate complex solutions easily with diagrams, pictures and other rich-content by creating solutions using HTML to make solutions and services easier to find and understand than ever before.
-- Custom Report Wizard -- Previously, users were able to create custom reports using a standard report wizard which enabled them to achieve true insight into their business programs. Now, users can create completely customized report wizards to make creating reports an easy and streamlined process.
-- On-Demand Collaborative Customer Portal -- The Salesforce Customer Portal delivers the latest Web 2.0 collaboration technologies to enable companies to offer their customers a branded 24x7 self-service portal. The Salesforce Customer Portal enables companies to personalize the portal for different users, roles and companies and easily customize the portal with their brand. For customer service departments, the new self-service portal will use the knowledgebase to suggest solutions to customers and leverages the power of collaborative communities to also deliver customer driven solutions.
"It took us less than a week to customize, brand, and fully deploy the Salesforce Customer Portal," said Mark Silber of QUALCOMM Incorporated. "Salesforce Service & Support gives our IT department the ability to react quickly to changes driven by the business and to revise the app in minutes-not days or weeks-using easy point-and-click capabilities. This allows us to deliver a whole new standard of customer service."
Availability
Salesforce Summer '07 is currently scheduled to be available in August to customers through salesforce.com's multi-tenant, on-demand model. The Salesforce Customer Portal will be available for an additional fee starting at $5 per user, per month, per portal. Multiple Sandboxes are available at an additional fee for Unlimited and Enterprise Edition customers. Apex Code is available for Unlimited Edition customers at no additional charge.
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2007 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
9.7.07
Salesforce.com - Success On- Demand World Tour 2007 - Register Now
Looking to drive your business success to a whole new level? Join salesforce.com and a select group of industry experts in the areas of sales, marketing and IT to understand how businesses of all sizes have overcome familiar challenges to achieve sustained success. Ways to kick your business into the next gear...
:: Increase sales productivity and close more deals
:: Improve sales pipeline visibility and forecast accuracy
:: Integrate sales and marketing for effective lead management
:: Achieve a real-time 360 degree view of your business to gain actionable intelligence
:: Transforming a CIO into a Chief Innovation Officer
As the global leader in on-demand customer relationship management, salesforce.com is all about success. Find out what that means by speaking 1:1 with experts, trying the latest interactive demos, test driving new applications, and tapping into the success of some of our 32,300 customers.
It's a day filled with innovation, information, and interaction - plus plenty of ways to get all your questions answered!
AGENDA
2:00pm - 2:30pm Registration & Networking
2:30pm - 2:40pm Experiencing Success On-Demand
2:40pm - 3:30pm John Buchanan - Australia World Cup Cricket Coach
3:30pm - 3:45pm Coffee Break
3:45pm - 5:15pm Breakout Sessions:
SALES - MARKETING - ITCustomer speakers include:
:: Lend Lease
:: Sqware Peg
:: Langdon Ingredients
:: Fleet Partners
:: JB Global
:: Applied BioSystems
:: Okere
:: Western Bulldogs
:: Intel/HP
5:15pm - 7:00pm Cocktail Party
GUEST KEYNOTE SPEAKER
John Buchanan - Coach of Australia's winning World Cup Cricket TeamJohn was the coach of the most successful Australian cricket team in history, culminating in this year's World Cup win. Since 1999, he employed a coaching style that was recognised as being vastly different to those used by coaches for generations. John will discuss how differentiated leadership and performance management can be combined to create successful teams
Melbourne - July 17 2007 Event Details:
2-7pm Crowne Promenade Hotel, 8 Whiteman Street, Southbank
To Register for the Melbourne Event, July 17 2007, Click Here
Sydney - July 19 2007 Event Details:
2-7pm Sydney Hilton Hotel, 488 George Street, Sydney
To Register for the Sydney Event, July 19 2007, Click Here
6.7.07
Opening the floodgates - July 3 - Australian IT
Mahesh Sharma July 03, 2007
THE trickle of users to hosted software - or Software as a Service (SaaS) - could be set to become a flood. The sector is poised to break its banks in the small business arena and move into the enterprise space.
An analyst predicts 40 per cent compound annual growth for the market
The large software vendors are preparing to offer their own enterprise SasS offerings after largely leaving the market to upstarts such as Salesforce.com.
The concept has come a long way since the early days and the, as yet, unfulfilled promises of applications service providers.
Today's fast broadband and the emergence of Web 2.0 technology finally allows companies to access a product with full functionality, while completely managed and hosted remotely by a SaaS provider.
The majority of SaaS activity is taking place in the customer relationship management market.
Indeed, SaaS applications are expected to generate $25 million, or 25 per cent of the local CRM market this year. This is almost double last year's figures of $15 million and 15 per cent of the market, according to analyst Frost and Sullivan.
Further, the analyst predicts 40 per cent compound annual growth for the market, which if sustained will involve growth to $51.2 million in 2009, or 35 per cent of the overall Australian CRM market.
With most of this business is being driven by small and medium businesses, companies at the top end of town are only now beginning to ask how SaaS can help their business.
To date, it has been hard to look into the local SaaS market without touching on the work of Salesforce.com.
The company has only been in Australia for three years, but Frost and Sullivan says that last year it controlled 50 per cent of the local hosted CRM market.
Salesforce.com Asia-Pacific and Japan sales vice-president sales Jeremy Cooper says 40 per cent of its local customer base is relatively new, having signed on in the past year. The new users are spread evenly across the small and medium business and enterprise markets, he says.
"Initially, our focus was on small to medium companies and being able to deliver an enterprise-class CRM solution that they previously couldn't afford, or didn't have the capacity to manage.
"In the past year we've started to see that section of the market becoming a strong validation point for the enterprise end of the market."
According to Frost and Sullivan estimates, the number-two SaaS product locally is NetSuite, distributed in Australia and New Zealand by NetReturn.
It had about 20 per cent of the SaaS CRM market last year.
NetReturn managing director Andrew Birch says it's different from similar CRM offerings because it provides a hosted solution for the whole business, not just CRM.
"ERP, CRM and e-commerce are fundamentally integrated on one database, so it's all the same data from start to finish.
"You can follow a customer from when you send out an email for a marketing campaign, all the way through to when you invoice and collect the catch."
NetReturn says its success has come from the mid-market, a segment that Gartner predicts will drive the take-up of other SaaS systems, such as e-commerce.
Frost and Sullivan consulting director Andrew Milroy says the ability to service demands other than CRM will become a key factor not only for small and medium businesses, but for the entire SaaS market.
It is this move outside the restricted CRM space, he says, that will leave traditional heavyweight such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft positioned to capitalise when SaaS takes off in larger enterprises.
"The difference between Oracle and SAP, and Salesforce.com, is that they can offer the full suite of tools compared with Salesfore. com's CRM system."
Oracle Asia-Pacific CRM vice-president Simon Banks says more than 50 per cent of Oracle's installed customer base is in the mid-market, and it is aiming to take advantage of this network to move customers to its on-demand system.
"We're talking to all of Oracle's partners about on-demand to reduce the cost of implementation and drive up business value. It is very specifically where SMBs thrive."
A similar strategy is being employed by Microsoft as it looks to deliver its Software Plus Service product.
Microsoft Australia online services strategy head Harvey Sanchez says it involves providing new ways for businesses to control and access information. "Businesses like being able to control the ways they run and configure their software, and they want more of that."
Sanchez gives the example of Microsoft's CRM product, which would involve customer management records being hosted by Microsoft, while customers were still able to access this off-premises via mobile devices, or on-premises by way of a full-featured client.
SAP, meanwhile, announced its arrival in the SaaS mid-market earlier this year when it unveiled its A1S hosted business suite.
This offering comes with all the enterprise applications but doesn't offer the features and configuration options of the high-end All-in-One product.
The suite is set to be officially launched only in the first quarter of next year, and then only offshore. An Australian release is expected at the end of next year.
One problem with these mid-market systems is that they are largely providing only simple business features and functions with low or no levels of customisation.
Such a model won't easily translate to the top end of the market, where businesses have more complex and specific demands. At this level the real value for SaaS providers is expected to be in servicing these more complex systems.
Gartner, for example, predicts that until 2010, less than 15 per cent of complex business processes will be delivered using SaaS as the core application system.
Oracle says it remains equally committed to the small and medium business and enterprise markets, but its focus on using SaaS to service specific user communities is best suited to the top end of town.
"SaaS has its history in small and medium businesses, but the larger companies are interested in the simplicity of the systems," Banks says. "Specific user communities can't be deployed from on-premises systems, but there's a huge demand in the big organisations for this type of capability.
"The high-end companies are finding the hybrid systems very popular," he says.
One issue that providers and users are grappling with is working across on-premise and hosted systems, and the problems of transferring information between the two.
In the early days of SaaS, this required separate databases for each segment, but SAP says it holds an advantage because its on-demand solution is built from the same code base as its on-premises product.
SAP says this allows a client to seamlessly transfer information from an in-house systems when it wants to take up the on-demand option. "With our solution you literally take your on-demand system and we can basically port that to an on-premises solution for you."
Transferring information is also a key issue in the security aspects of SaaS.
Gartner says company concern over the handling of its information offsite will hold back SaaS uptake by as much as 20 per cent through to 2011.
Legal experts have said the enterprise companies, especially in the financial services sector, could be liable to incur penalties if their information was exposed because of overseas privacy laws.
In response to concerns from local clients, Oracle, for example, says it plans to expand its data centres outside the US to avoid complications with laws such as the PATRIOT Act.
Aside from these issues, businesses are increasingly looking to the SaaS model as a cheap and flexible way to augment their existing on-premises systems, and even replace them.
THE trickle of users to hosted software - or Software as a Service (SaaS) - could be set to become a flood. The sector is poised to break its banks in the small business arena and move into the enterprise space.
An analyst predicts 40 per cent compound annual growth for the market
The large software vendors are preparing to offer their own enterprise SasS offerings after largely leaving the market to upstarts such as Salesforce.com.
The concept has come a long way since the early days and the, as yet, unfulfilled promises of applications service providers.
Today's fast broadband and the emergence of Web 2.0 technology finally allows companies to access a product with full functionality, while completely managed and hosted remotely by a SaaS provider.
The majority of SaaS activity is taking place in the customer relationship management market.
Indeed, SaaS applications are expected to generate $25 million, or 25 per cent of the local CRM market this year. This is almost double last year's figures of $15 million and 15 per cent of the market, according to analyst Frost and Sullivan.
Further, the analyst predicts 40 per cent compound annual growth for the market, which if sustained will involve growth to $51.2 million in 2009, or 35 per cent of the overall Australian CRM market.
With most of this business is being driven by small and medium businesses, companies at the top end of town are only now beginning to ask how SaaS can help their business.
To date, it has been hard to look into the local SaaS market without touching on the work of Salesforce.com.
The company has only been in Australia for three years, but Frost and Sullivan says that last year it controlled 50 per cent of the local hosted CRM market.
Salesforce.com Asia-Pacific and Japan sales vice-president sales Jeremy Cooper says 40 per cent of its local customer base is relatively new, having signed on in the past year. The new users are spread evenly across the small and medium business and enterprise markets, he says.
"Initially, our focus was on small to medium companies and being able to deliver an enterprise-class CRM solution that they previously couldn't afford, or didn't have the capacity to manage.
"In the past year we've started to see that section of the market becoming a strong validation point for the enterprise end of the market."
According to Frost and Sullivan estimates, the number-two SaaS product locally is NetSuite, distributed in Australia and New Zealand by NetReturn.
It had about 20 per cent of the SaaS CRM market last year.
NetReturn managing director Andrew Birch says it's different from similar CRM offerings because it provides a hosted solution for the whole business, not just CRM.
"ERP, CRM and e-commerce are fundamentally integrated on one database, so it's all the same data from start to finish.
"You can follow a customer from when you send out an email for a marketing campaign, all the way through to when you invoice and collect the catch."
NetReturn says its success has come from the mid-market, a segment that Gartner predicts will drive the take-up of other SaaS systems, such as e-commerce.
Frost and Sullivan consulting director Andrew Milroy says the ability to service demands other than CRM will become a key factor not only for small and medium businesses, but for the entire SaaS market.
It is this move outside the restricted CRM space, he says, that will leave traditional heavyweight such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft positioned to capitalise when SaaS takes off in larger enterprises.
"The difference between Oracle and SAP, and Salesforce.com, is that they can offer the full suite of tools compared with Salesfore. com's CRM system."
Oracle Asia-Pacific CRM vice-president Simon Banks says more than 50 per cent of Oracle's installed customer base is in the mid-market, and it is aiming to take advantage of this network to move customers to its on-demand system.
"We're talking to all of Oracle's partners about on-demand to reduce the cost of implementation and drive up business value. It is very specifically where SMBs thrive."
A similar strategy is being employed by Microsoft as it looks to deliver its Software Plus Service product.
Microsoft Australia online services strategy head Harvey Sanchez says it involves providing new ways for businesses to control and access information. "Businesses like being able to control the ways they run and configure their software, and they want more of that."
Sanchez gives the example of Microsoft's CRM product, which would involve customer management records being hosted by Microsoft, while customers were still able to access this off-premises via mobile devices, or on-premises by way of a full-featured client.
SAP, meanwhile, announced its arrival in the SaaS mid-market earlier this year when it unveiled its A1S hosted business suite.
This offering comes with all the enterprise applications but doesn't offer the features and configuration options of the high-end All-in-One product.
The suite is set to be officially launched only in the first quarter of next year, and then only offshore. An Australian release is expected at the end of next year.
One problem with these mid-market systems is that they are largely providing only simple business features and functions with low or no levels of customisation.
Such a model won't easily translate to the top end of the market, where businesses have more complex and specific demands. At this level the real value for SaaS providers is expected to be in servicing these more complex systems.
Gartner, for example, predicts that until 2010, less than 15 per cent of complex business processes will be delivered using SaaS as the core application system.
Oracle says it remains equally committed to the small and medium business and enterprise markets, but its focus on using SaaS to service specific user communities is best suited to the top end of town.
"SaaS has its history in small and medium businesses, but the larger companies are interested in the simplicity of the systems," Banks says. "Specific user communities can't be deployed from on-premises systems, but there's a huge demand in the big organisations for this type of capability.
"The high-end companies are finding the hybrid systems very popular," he says.
One issue that providers and users are grappling with is working across on-premise and hosted systems, and the problems of transferring information between the two.
In the early days of SaaS, this required separate databases for each segment, but SAP says it holds an advantage because its on-demand solution is built from the same code base as its on-premises product.
SAP says this allows a client to seamlessly transfer information from an in-house systems when it wants to take up the on-demand option. "With our solution you literally take your on-demand system and we can basically port that to an on-premises solution for you."
Transferring information is also a key issue in the security aspects of SaaS.
Gartner says company concern over the handling of its information offsite will hold back SaaS uptake by as much as 20 per cent through to 2011.
Legal experts have said the enterprise companies, especially in the financial services sector, could be liable to incur penalties if their information was exposed because of overseas privacy laws.
In response to concerns from local clients, Oracle, for example, says it plans to expand its data centres outside the US to avoid complications with laws such as the PATRIOT Act.
Aside from these issues, businesses are increasingly looking to the SaaS model as a cheap and flexible way to augment their existing on-premises systems, and even replace them.
Google's Webmaster Guidelines - 4 July 2007 - NetRegistry
NetRegistry News 4 July 2007
This month we wanted to publish a list of best practises to ensure your website is optimised for the search engines. However there is no better advice for building a fully search engine optimised website than that which is offered by Google themselves, so it seems appropriate to republish that advice in full. Even if your website has been online for a while, or you are a web designer building many sites, these guidelines are still a valuable reminder of how to build an optimised website.
Webmaster Guidelines
Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise penalized. If a site has been penalized, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.
This month we wanted to publish a list of best practises to ensure your website is optimised for the search engines. However there is no better advice for building a fully search engine optimised website than that which is offered by Google themselves, so it seems appropriate to republish that advice in full. Even if your website has been online for a while, or you are a web designer building many sites, these guidelines are still a valuable reminder of how to build an optimised website.
Webmaster Guidelines
Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise penalized. If a site has been penalized, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.
- Design, content, and technical guidelines
- Quality guidelines
When your site is ready:
- Have other relevant sites link to yours.
- Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
- Submit a Sitemap as part of our Google webmaster tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
- Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
- Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.
Design and content guidelines
- Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
- Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
- Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
- Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
- Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
- Make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
- Check for broken links and correct HTML.
- If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
- Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
Technical guidelines
- Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
- Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
- Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
- Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you're using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google webmaster tools.
- If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.
- Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.
Quality guidelines
These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.
If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please report that site at
Quality guidelines - basic principles
- Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
- Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
- Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
- Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
Quality guidelines - specific guidelines
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don't send automated queries to Google.
- Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
- Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
- Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
- If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.
- If you determine that your site doesn't meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and then submit your site for reconsideration.
Choosing The Right Keywords With Google AdWords - 4 July 2007 - NetRegistry
By Gareth Parkin
Choosing The Right Keywords With Google AdWords
Any advertiser knows that before you can sell anything, you must first define and then reach your target audience. When it comes to Google AdWords, reaching your target audience is all about choosing the right keywords to display in the advertisements you create. Increasing traffic to your web site is pointless if the people that visit your site are not the type of people who will buy your product or use your services. With that in mind, here are some tips for choosing effective keywords.
Know your Target Audience
The first and most important step of any advertising campaign is knowing who you're trying to reach. What is your target audience searching for, and what search terms are they using?
Match Keywords to your Audience
Once you've defined your target audience, the next step is brainstorming a list of keywords that relate to the service or product you're selling. The key is being specific with your keyword choices-remember that your aim is to optimise traffic, not maximize it. Choosing general keywords is pointless, because you'll end up paying for clicks from people who are not actually interested in buying your products. Optimising traffic means targeting people who will not only click on your ad, but will also buy what you're selling.
Let's say, for example, you operate an online business that sells fancy-dress costumes. Choosing the keyword “clothes” might generate a lot of traffic to your site-from people looking for clothing for everyday wear. They won't be buying your costumes, but you're paying every time they click on your advertisement. Create a highly-specific advertisement that includes keywords such as “costumes” and include more specific words depending on the time of year-such as “Halloween” for example, and you'll be more likely to generate clicks from people who want your products.
Keep it Short and Simple
Google AdWords allows you to choose an unlimited number of keywords to match your advertisements to, but less is always more. Choosing too many keywords can be just as injurious to your advertising campaign as choosing keywords which are too general. Keep your initial campaign to between ten and twenty keywords for maximum benefit.
Along the same lines, you should be thinking simplicity when it comes to writing your ad copy. You only have a couple of lines of text to work with, so every word counts. Your advertisement text should be designed to pique the interest of your target audience-you can't tell them everything about your products in one or two short lines, so you must make them want to find out more by visiting your site.
Experiment with Keywords
Google provides you with a number of tools to determine how effective your chosen keywords are. You should be monitoring your keywords regularly to determine which ones are working best at generating the web site traffic you want, so you can eliminate the ones that aren't generating clicks.
Among the tools you can use is the Google Keyword tool. This is particularly useful if you're not sure which keywords will generate the traffic you want. The keyword tool allows you to enter words you choose then find more words that are related to the ones you entered. You can then go ahead and choose the keywords that are good matches to your advertisement, and add them to your keyword list with a single click.
Choosing The Right Keywords With Google AdWords
Any advertiser knows that before you can sell anything, you must first define and then reach your target audience. When it comes to Google AdWords, reaching your target audience is all about choosing the right keywords to display in the advertisements you create. Increasing traffic to your web site is pointless if the people that visit your site are not the type of people who will buy your product or use your services. With that in mind, here are some tips for choosing effective keywords.
Know your Target Audience
The first and most important step of any advertising campaign is knowing who you're trying to reach. What is your target audience searching for, and what search terms are they using?
Match Keywords to your Audience
Once you've defined your target audience, the next step is brainstorming a list of keywords that relate to the service or product you're selling. The key is being specific with your keyword choices-remember that your aim is to optimise traffic, not maximize it. Choosing general keywords is pointless, because you'll end up paying for clicks from people who are not actually interested in buying your products. Optimising traffic means targeting people who will not only click on your ad, but will also buy what you're selling.
Let's say, for example, you operate an online business that sells fancy-dress costumes. Choosing the keyword “clothes” might generate a lot of traffic to your site-from people looking for clothing for everyday wear. They won't be buying your costumes, but you're paying every time they click on your advertisement. Create a highly-specific advertisement that includes keywords such as “costumes” and include more specific words depending on the time of year-such as “Halloween” for example, and you'll be more likely to generate clicks from people who want your products.
Keep it Short and Simple
Google AdWords allows you to choose an unlimited number of keywords to match your advertisements to, but less is always more. Choosing too many keywords can be just as injurious to your advertising campaign as choosing keywords which are too general. Keep your initial campaign to between ten and twenty keywords for maximum benefit.
Along the same lines, you should be thinking simplicity when it comes to writing your ad copy. You only have a couple of lines of text to work with, so every word counts. Your advertisement text should be designed to pique the interest of your target audience-you can't tell them everything about your products in one or two short lines, so you must make them want to find out more by visiting your site.
Experiment with Keywords
Google provides you with a number of tools to determine how effective your chosen keywords are. You should be monitoring your keywords regularly to determine which ones are working best at generating the web site traffic you want, so you can eliminate the ones that aren't generating clicks.
Among the tools you can use is the Google Keyword tool. This is particularly useful if you're not sure which keywords will generate the traffic you want. The keyword tool allows you to enter words you choose then find more words that are related to the ones you entered. You can then go ahead and choose the keywords that are good matches to your advertisement, and add them to your keyword list with a single click.
29.6.07
Marketing in the Google Era Event Melbourne - 5th July 2007
7 Proven Techniques for Marketing in the 21st Century
agency on-demand® the world's first on-demand marketing agency in conjunction with Salesforce.com would like to invite you to an exclusive marketing briefing.
You will learn to:
agency on-demand® the world's first on-demand marketing agency in conjunction with Salesforce.com would like to invite you to an exclusive marketing briefing.
You will learn to:
- Invest in your web properties
- Invest in search marketing
- Make your message relevant
- Create landing pages for each program
- Measure everything in real time
- Use the web for PR
- Engage your community
RSVP Essential!
To register got to:
http://campaign.agencyondemand.com/forms/marketinginthegoogleera
AGENDA
4:00pm – 4:30pm: Networking
4:30pm – 4:40pm: Welcome and Introduction (Nick Miller – Technology Editor, The Age)
4:40pm – 5:10pm: Marketing in the Google Era (Will Scully-Power - General Manager, agency on-demand®)
5:10pm – 5:15pm: Thank You (Chris Petersen – Director of Alliances, Salesforce.com)
5:15pm – 6:00pm: Networking
6:00pm: Finish
DETAILS
Date: 5 July 2007
Time: 4pm-6pm
Location: Grand Hyatt – Grosvenor Room
Level 8, 123 Collins Street, Melbourne
Beer, wine, champagne, softdrink and canapes will be served!
27.6.07
Salesforce.com Named a 'Hot' Company By START-IT Magazine for the Fourth Consecutive Year - 26 June 2007
SOURCE: Salesforce.com 26/06/07
Recognized for providing innovative technology to the manufacturing industry
SAN FRANCISCO, June 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced it has been named a "hot" company for the fourth year in a row by START-IT magazine as part of its annual Hottest Companies Awards. The award states that with "its on-demand CRM offering now eight years old, salesforce.com continues to be the talk of the town as revenues ballooned to $497.1 million in its 2007 fiscal year from $309.9 million in its 2006 fiscal year."
"Software delivered as a service is changing the face of the manufacturing industry," said Tien Tzuo, chief strategy officer at salesforce.com. "Manufacturers have discovered how on demand solutions can decrease operational costs, increase productivity and improve customer service, which has led to some of the largest manufacturers in the world standardizing on Salesforce."
Award applicants are judged on such criteria as revenue growth, client wins in the previous year, technological developments, and significant events and accomplishments during the past year that helped set the company apart from the competition.
"Each of these winning companies has stepped up and made an impression upon the marketplace in the past year," said Peggy Smedley, editorial director of START-IT. "To be designated as a 'Hot' company shows customers, both current and future, that this company has a dedication to providing innovative and efficient technology to manufacturers, making them more competitive and successful."
Recognized for providing innovative technology to the manufacturing industry
SAN FRANCISCO, June 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced it has been named a "hot" company for the fourth year in a row by START-IT magazine as part of its annual Hottest Companies Awards. The award states that with "its on-demand CRM offering now eight years old, salesforce.com continues to be the talk of the town as revenues ballooned to $497.1 million in its 2007 fiscal year from $309.9 million in its 2006 fiscal year."
"Software delivered as a service is changing the face of the manufacturing industry," said Tien Tzuo, chief strategy officer at salesforce.com. "Manufacturers have discovered how on demand solutions can decrease operational costs, increase productivity and improve customer service, which has led to some of the largest manufacturers in the world standardizing on Salesforce."
Award applicants are judged on such criteria as revenue growth, client wins in the previous year, technological developments, and significant events and accomplishments during the past year that helped set the company apart from the competition.
"Each of these winning companies has stepped up and made an impression upon the marketplace in the past year," said Peggy Smedley, editorial director of START-IT. "To be designated as a 'Hot' company shows customers, both current and future, that this company has a dedication to providing innovative and efficient technology to manufacturers, making them more competitive and successful."
14.6.07
Google and Salesforce.com: The Word
The two companies' pairing results in Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords, an integrated product for small businesses.
by Coreen Bailor
Speculative chatter surrounding Google and Salesforce.com crystallized today with the companies' announcement of a major partnership. They have teamed up to form a strategic global alliance resulting in a new product available now--Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords--aimed at helping SMBs attract and retain customers. The release will replace Salesforce's Team Edition product, an offering catering to smaller shops.
As part of the pairing, Salesforce will become the first on-demand company to resell the Google AdWords platform, the companies said. There are five key synergies that form the foundation of the partnership, according to Bruce Francis, Salesforce.com's vice president of corporate strategy: technology, marketing, distribution, partnership, and philanthropy--the companies will make their joint product available for free to their more than 2,500 nonprofit grantees, according to the companies.
Google AdWords allows companies to get additional online exposure and potentially gain new customers. With the new product, companies can advertise online by connecting to Google AdWords and creating an ad displayed with the relevant search results on Google or across the Google AdSense content network of partner Web sites. Users that click on the ad are redirected to the company's Web site. Once there the company can try to persuade users to complete a name-capture form, according to Salesforce; that information is then flowed into Salesforce as a new lead and distributed to the sales team. Opportunities can be tracked throughout the sales cycle.
"We think this will be a great solution for small businesses solving their chief problems," Francis says, "and that is 'how do I get new customers?' A lot of them are risk averse about advertising because they don't have a way to easily launch those campaigns and track the efficiency of them. So we're allowing the small businesses to find new customers, run more efficiently, and thrive."
Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords is also equipped with dashboards providing companies with insight into lead generation, sales metrics, and company growth. Salesforce.com adds that by leveraging AppExchange customers can mash up business apps available on the directory including technologies for mapping and productivity.
The product is available in a five-user edition for a 30-day promotional price of $600 per year including a $50 AdWords credit available to new AdWord advertisers in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, according to Salesforce.com. However, the list price is $1,200 per year.
One of the things that the partnership and product helps small businesses do is get on an equal footing with larger companies in sales and marketing, according to Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research. "Protection is very, very important," he says. "If you look like a big company you inspire more confidence in people you're selling to and lends greater credence to what you're selling. This [partnership] gives small companies the same kind of tools that larger companies have. It closes a gap."
"Some may see [the announcement] as an anti-climax, but clearly this is just a first step and there will be further steps, said David Bradshaw, principal analyst at Ovum, a telecom and software consultancy, in a written statement. "Google and Salesforce aren't saying what's next on their roadmap, though with a six-month development cycle, there clearly must be more coming. Instead, Salesforce is asking its customers to tell it what they would like to see via its Ideas Exchange. Meanwhile, for those who are keen to get on with developing their own stuff, Salesforce has given access to the Google AdWords APIs via its Apex programming environment." As a first step in a long program, he adds, the product "makes perfect sense."
by Coreen Bailor
Speculative chatter surrounding Google and Salesforce.com crystallized today with the companies' announcement of a major partnership. They have teamed up to form a strategic global alliance resulting in a new product available now--Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords--aimed at helping SMBs attract and retain customers. The release will replace Salesforce's Team Edition product, an offering catering to smaller shops.
As part of the pairing, Salesforce will become the first on-demand company to resell the Google AdWords platform, the companies said. There are five key synergies that form the foundation of the partnership, according to Bruce Francis, Salesforce.com's vice president of corporate strategy: technology, marketing, distribution, partnership, and philanthropy--the companies will make their joint product available for free to their more than 2,500 nonprofit grantees, according to the companies.
Google AdWords allows companies to get additional online exposure and potentially gain new customers. With the new product, companies can advertise online by connecting to Google AdWords and creating an ad displayed with the relevant search results on Google or across the Google AdSense content network of partner Web sites. Users that click on the ad are redirected to the company's Web site. Once there the company can try to persuade users to complete a name-capture form, according to Salesforce; that information is then flowed into Salesforce as a new lead and distributed to the sales team. Opportunities can be tracked throughout the sales cycle.
"We think this will be a great solution for small businesses solving their chief problems," Francis says, "and that is 'how do I get new customers?' A lot of them are risk averse about advertising because they don't have a way to easily launch those campaigns and track the efficiency of them. So we're allowing the small businesses to find new customers, run more efficiently, and thrive."
Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords is also equipped with dashboards providing companies with insight into lead generation, sales metrics, and company growth. Salesforce.com adds that by leveraging AppExchange customers can mash up business apps available on the directory including technologies for mapping and productivity.
The product is available in a five-user edition for a 30-day promotional price of $600 per year including a $50 AdWords credit available to new AdWord advertisers in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, according to Salesforce.com. However, the list price is $1,200 per year.
One of the things that the partnership and product helps small businesses do is get on an equal footing with larger companies in sales and marketing, according to Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research. "Protection is very, very important," he says. "If you look like a big company you inspire more confidence in people you're selling to and lends greater credence to what you're selling. This [partnership] gives small companies the same kind of tools that larger companies have. It closes a gap."
"Some may see [the announcement] as an anti-climax, but clearly this is just a first step and there will be further steps, said David Bradshaw, principal analyst at Ovum, a telecom and software consultancy, in a written statement. "Google and Salesforce aren't saying what's next on their roadmap, though with a six-month development cycle, there clearly must be more coming. Instead, Salesforce is asking its customers to tell it what they would like to see via its Ideas Exchange. Meanwhile, for those who are keen to get on with developing their own stuff, Salesforce has given access to the Google AdWords APIs via its Apex programming environment." As a first step in a long program, he adds, the product "makes perfect sense."
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