Shorter time-to-market, higher product development efficiency, better product quality, and lower product costs are often associated with the benefits of adopting product lifecycle management (PLM) systems. When there is an economic downturn, these benefits seem to be more desirable. However, a recent poll (CIMdata Online Polls, presented near the end of CIMdata PLM Industry Summary, 28 May 2010) shows that ten percent of poll participants thought that PLM couldn’t really help tackle economic downturns. I totally agree with CIMdata that this result indicated an awareness issue—current and potential PLM users are not always on the same page with PLM vendors and advocators. Besides this, I felt that some of the ten percent who responded might speak about the real experiences they had with PLM. With the economic downturn in mind, below are a few points I can think of: Read the rest of this entry »

As communications coordinator for TEC’s selection services group, dealing with IT decision makers has helped me understand the complex decision-making behind a radical software change. You need to devote yourself to careful research and evaluation before making that no-going-back software selection.

Getting the evidence you need to back up that selection can be a real challenge when you’re basing it on marketing brochures, sales hype, paid search engine results, and technical jargon. Read the rest of this entry »

Maximizer probably needs no introduction, but I will do it anyway for people who are not very familiar with the customer relationship management (CRM) space. It was founded in 1987 and is one of the CRM pioneers that created personal information management systems (PIM) and opportunity management systems. The first version of the product (3.0, launched in 1996, one year after the acquisition of the Maximizer product line from Modatech Systems) was promoted as “a full-featured contact management system with activity scheduling.”

Many things have changed since 1996, including: Read the rest of this entry »

Positioning Part 2: Choosing what you want to say

In Part 1, I introduced positioning and talked about how easy it is to miss your mark. This time, we focus on how successful campaign positioning depends on saying and doing just the right thing—at the right time—for the right audience.

Advertising is great fun in that you can choose what you want to say about a product or service—but it’s also where trouble begins. Just as there are great salespeople who can captivate their prospects by saying just the right thing—they seem to be far outnumbered by those who boor, badger and don’t seem to understand the needs or concerns of their prospects. Wouldn’t you agree? Read the rest of this entry »

Let me start this blog series with one disclaimer: I am not an early adopter and I do not easily fall for any vendor’s slick marketing. At a recent large user conference, a vendor’s staffer asked me why I wasn’t already using an iPad tablet computer.

That question cracked me up, since I still use an Apple’s discontinued iBook notebook (besides the fact that I might only start using the latest tablet bestseller when it begins to feature computer multi-tasking, an USB flash drive port, and a CD/DVD drive). My laptop computer seems quite ancient now, but it still works and seems indestructible like a Volkswagen Beetle, in spite of all the abuses it has endured at airports, airplanes, and cafes for years.

With all this personal background laid out, I now have to admit that for all these years I have also cast a skeptical eye on Salesforce.com. Sure, the company has been growing admirably for all that time while even achieving modest profits, but I have also been aware of it constantly announcing (i.e., creating buzz about) new concepts and products well before they were generally available (GA). Salesforce.com would then have to actually deliver on these products’ hyped promises, which would be another opportunity for buzz creation (in a “we told you so” manner).

Read the rest of this entry »