Search Results

Software vendors and their business customers have tried many things to increase customer loyalty, but they have been disappointed more often than not. Rewards, delight, and daily deals were good ideas to help spur customer loyalty. Unfortunately, they weren't enough to move the loyalty needle in today's highly competitive markets. ...

My friend and a partner atWildcat Venture Partners, Bruce Cleveland, along with his associates, has come up with an idea that helps explain why some early-stage companies thrive and thus raise more capital, while others die on the vine ...

Salesforce held its Connections 2016 user event in Atlanta earlier this month. About 7,000 people attended, but in the Georgia World Congress Center and airplane hangar, attendance seemed smallish ...

Although SugarCRM "does not stack up well against its cloud and on-premises brethren in some ways," that could be because "they play to a different market with different rules," suggested Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research Group. SugarCRM targets IT and customers t...

It has been 40 years since Bill Gates wrote his open letter to the software industry complaining that computer hobbyists were stealing his BASIC program. That was so long ago that Wikipedia has a picture of the source code for "Micro-Soft" BASIC on paper tape. A lot of things have changed since then ...

Apple's earnings disappointment thudded into view last week in the middle of an afternoon of briefings at Oracle's Modern Marketing Experience conference in Las Vegas. In that context, it gave me a lot to think about -- especially the difference between a one-time earnings disappointment andsomething more serious ...

Last year, I researched the impact of the proliferation of cloud computing on business. I know it sounds like a dry topic, but if you are a CIO or an application development manager, the results can have serious meaning ...

"The cloud contains Web, social and other channels that weren't a factor before," Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research Group, pointed out. "This changes the service paradigm from one that's phone-centric to one that's more customer-focused," he told CRM Buyer, noting...

Zuora, the company that made its bones in subscription billing and payments, held its annual Subscribed user meeting in San Francisco last week and staked out some new turf ...

"Chatbots look like the new spaghetti being thrown at a wall to see if it sticks," observed Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research Their sweet spot "will be in providing the ability to proactively personalize brand encounters by providing contextual innovation," he told...

There's an interesting connection between customer relationships in subscription businesses and loyalty, according to a recentarticle by Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo. It had particular resonance for me, since I just wrote a (soon-to-be-available) book about customer loyalty myself ...

On the other hand, the purchase "has the earmark of an acquisition done to bring promising ideas in-house without necessarily having a clear path to market," suggested Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research "As one of the larger companies on the planet, Salesforce is mo...

Remember when your mother used to yell up the stairs to get you to turn your music down? Sometimes, in the age before sensitivity awareness, your dad would do the yelling and he'd substitute noise for music. Ah, the good old days. Too bad they aren't here right now yelling at vendors ...

"Seems to me IBM bought the expertise they don't have in-house," observed Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research Group. "Bluewolf has a wealth of knowledge about how to build apps on Salesforce for multiple different platforms." IBM "is looking for ways to pump up its p...

Virtually every CPQ -- configuration, price and quote -- software vendor on the planet has a credible solution for the processes from which the category gets its name. That's the good news ...

"Analyzing operational metrics only gives insight once it's too late to do something," argued Denis Pombriant, principal atBeagle Research Group. "Other measures worth considering include revenue and leads per program against costs, time for programs to yield measurable results, and number of marketing-qualified and sales-accepted leads generated per time unit per unit of expenditure."

There isn't much value left in Yahoo to fix with a board reshuffling, noted Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research Group "The cold reality is that there's very little reason for Yahoo to exist on its own. They no longer have the dominant position and haven't ha...

For more than 50 years, the IT industry has followed a well-known script associated with emerging and evolving paradigms: First a product or category is introduced, then it gains wide market acceptance (or dies on the vine), followed by a long period when vendors and customers seek out ever more efficient ways to produce the thing ...

It may not be a cakewalk for IBM, though, because "this isn't the old days when [it] could show up and dominate," noted Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research. Public sector CRM "is a crowded market." How IBM Can Make It Work...

Periodically, a blatantly silly idea gains currency, spreading throughout society, and it has one of two effects: Either it scares the heck out of people, or they become enraptured with its seeming plausibility ...