Does social marketing meet the expectations that businesses or marketers have set for it? There are many claims according to which social marketing is very effective; perhaps more effective than e-mail marketing for certain generations of consumers or market segments. From a business perspective, recognizing the social as becoming an important space for advertising and finding prospects or reaching the masses is somewhat predictable as a business strategy. Increasingly, companies’ Web sites are becoming extensions of social media pages as are e-commerce Web sites. Read the rest of this entry »

Just after having acquired MarketingPilot, Microsoft Dynamics has announced its acquisition of social listening and analytics vendor Netbreeze. Key features of the Netbreeze technology include the ability to identify influencers, buzz analysis, topic analysis, tonality/sentiment analysis, the ability to compare current to historical postings via data archives, and independent adjustment of search configuration.

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Here’s what TEC analysts have to say about some of the more significant enterprise software developments of 2012.

Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst, on cloud ERP:
For the ERP software space, 2012 was a year of extensive appraisal of the suitability of cloud-based ERP software to the manufacturing industry. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) concept is being clarified, and lessons are being learned by manufacturing companies around the globe. New vendors are offering various cloud-only ERP solutions for manufacturing, while many traditional vendors have developed cloud or SaaS versions of their existing applications, or new cloud systems that parallel the older on-premise ones. Even more significantly, manufacturers are giving cloud deployment serious consideration as part of their IT strategy for the future.

From what I saw during 2012, businesses are starting to realize that perhaps they should not be lemmings in following the crowd to the cloud. Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous post I discussed how the social revolution impacted customer relationship management (CRM) and underlined that while processes designed to derive value in CRM remain valid, they are far from being sufficient in the context of social CRM (SCRM). Yet most organizations need structure to conduct their activities.

As far as CRM is concerned, the social aspect has brought to the surface what already existed but had been dodged by businesses, for a long time—the pervasive opinions and attitudes of their customers. By widely spreading individual opinions, social media has encouraged businesses to transform their exchanges with customers. As a consequence, quite a few businesses today have SCRM strategies in place. In this post, I’ll outline some of the potential benefits of SCRM to businesses and their clients. Read the rest of this entry »

Customer relationship management (CRM) has had a great impact on the social media revolution. Or was it the other way around? Of the many types of software solutions catering to businesses, CRM software has been the most attuned to the rise of social platforms. CRM resides in the attitudes and perception of people and what they acquire, individually or as a group. Social media is the place where people pride themselves with what they can afford. The marriage between social media and CRM seems rather unnatural only in the sense that social media is still relatively young while CRM has been around for many years.

The advent of social media has been viewed as a revolution—the Gavroche of the new millennium. Some say that it tipped the balance in favor of Mr. Obama in the 2008 US presidential election campaign. And that it connected the participants to the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street events, encouraged engagement between individuals with similar interests across the world, etc.

Consider these statements from a popular social media channel: Read the rest of this entry »

Zurmo has released a new version of its Open Source CRM. The  0.7.5 version offers new social CRM elements, the option to add profile pictures, and custom lists while searching. One new feature worth underlining is Mission—a new gamification component that invites “co-workers to challenge one another in exchange for a reward.” In fact, Mission proposes a unified vision of all customer interactions within an organization by displaying each department’s customer conversations to other departments.

I am pleased to announce the launch of TEC’s final software buyer’s guide of the year: Innovations in CRM. Download your copy now.

This buyer’s guide provides in-depth insight from Gabriel Gheorghiu, TEC’s analyst specializing in CRM, about the state of the CRM market, and includes solution overviews, links to CRM resources, customer success stories, and a directory of hundreds of CRM software vendors. The guide aims to educate readers about the CRM space and what vendors are doing to differentiate themselves from the competition through innovations such as cloud computing, social media, and mobile, to name a few. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this series analyzed two white papers entitled “Customer Relationship Management: The Winning Strategy in a Challenging Economy” and “Maximizing CRM Effectiveness During Lean Times” and authored by Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Oracle CRM, respectively. The blog post made the case for forward-looking enterprises to leverage customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to help them both weather the ongoing storm and prepare for the inevitable turnaround.

In addition to several macroeconomic trends that seem to be helping CRM solutions prove their worth, the post also analyzed the recent technological enablers that are making CRM offerings more affordable, flexible, and easy to use. In addition to concluding the technical discussion and trends, Part 2 then introduced five main CRM strategies that companies can employ to survive and thrive during uncertain economic conditions, starting with the focus on existing customers. Part 3 concludes this series by analyzing the remaining four CRM strategies. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series analyzed two white papers entitled “Customer Relationship Management: The Winning Strategy in a Challenging Economy” and “Maximizing CRM Effectiveness During Lean Times,” authored by Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Oracle CRM, respectively. My post made the case for forward-looking enterprises to leverage customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to help them both weather the ongoing storm and prepare for the inevitable turnaround.

In addition to several macroeconomic trends that seem to be helping CRM solutions prove their worth, I also analyzed the recent technological enablers that are making CRM offerings more affordable, flexible, and easy to use. One enabler is the software as a service (SaaS) or on-demand subscription-based deployment mode and the other is the fact that CRM has lately expanded from its traditional “operational” realm into also being “analytic, collaborative, and social.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Some previous TEC blog posts have discussed the benefits (but also the inevitable caveats) of white papers, including the all-too-common vendors’ self-serving marketing fluff and buzzword verbiage, and about their (un)intended audiences. As part of my daily routine of doing research on vendors and their strategies and offerings, I’ve read a ton of white papers in the last decade or so.

And yes, these have ranged from blatant and flamboyant bragging about a vendor’s capabilities (a la the “Every man thinks his own geese are swans” proverb) to some exceptional ones that were quite educational and established someone’s expertise in something. Read the rest of this entry »