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You might ask what the difference is between personalization and authenticity in CRM, and the answer is subtle. For a long time I have felt -- and said -- that we overemphasize personalization when what customers really want is authenticity. However, examples are hard to find, especially with our current culture's strong emphasis on personalization and the tendency to give authenticity quizzical looks. Perhaps you are feeling quizzical right now...

The social CRM sector "is very competitive and has been so for several years," Beagle Research Principal Denis Pombriant told CRM Buyer The biggest challenge resulting from deals like this is "always making sure you don't slow down as you grow," Favaron observed. "We've seen t...

I recently talked with Bonnie Crater about changing her company's name, and something really struck home. Crater is CEO of Full Circle Insights, and I've known her since her days as an executive at Salesforce. I have followed her startup's progress almost since day one. ...

Microsoft earlier this week announced that it has bought FantasySalesTeam, a sales gamification platform. The intent of the product is to boost sales productivity. The gaming part is designed after some aspects of fantasy sports leagues in which participants build a team from known professional athletes and try to beat other teams. The team aspect makes everyone more competitive, and the goal is to improve everyone's performance...

Spreadsheets suffered a body blow on Tuesday, when Salesforce announced new platform functionality. Soon all spreadsheets will be good for is financial analysis. This sounds funny, because the spreadsheet for several decades has been the unofficial IT prototyping tool. ...

I've been looking at process as the next big thing in CRM for a while. It only makes sense, for several reasons. First, as we move to conducting increasing amounts of business online, we lose the intimacy of personal contact between vendor personnel and customers. In its place we need accurate and authentic processes that treat customers in ways they appreciate...

Under the new terms, Microsoft will bundle Dynamics CRM Online Professional, Office 365 Plan E3, and PowerBI for US$65 per user, per month. Existing Office 365 Plan E3 and E4 customers can add CRM Online Professional and PowerBI for $45 per user, per month, according to Denis Ford, who oversees pricing and licensing strategy for the Microsoft suite of products...

Having meaningful work is one of the biggest challenges for many people at the bottom of the employment ladder. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell documented the multigenerational effect of meaningful work. ...

I've written many times about how conventional, premises-based ERP seems to be evaporating. CPQ -- configuration, pricing and quoting -- are business processes that illustrate the point. ...

It occurred to me at Salesforce's Marketing Cloud event held last week in New York that CRM has come full circle in a fundamental way. I was never a fan of labels like "CRM 2.0" or "Social CRM" or whatever else came along, principally because those monikers didn't signify anything that was new in doing business. ...

"My personal interest is in journey mapping with Journey Builder because I believe all marketing should start with vendors understanding their customers' journeys," said Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research "Many think they know, but it's amazing what you discover whe...

If you read a lot, like me, you might notice almost daily there's a new study that contradicts some earlier research. Something causes cancer -- then it's good for you. You know the drill. What's going on here? Do we simply not know what our research is saying? Can nobody correctly interpret the data? ...

"The reason for pharma CRM is counterintuitive," noted Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research Pharma is highly regulated, and vendors are legally restrained from making claims about products that don't match what the products were approved for, "so not only do sales pe...

Every innovation spawns its own set of issues. What happens when you have a lot of a good thing, like cloud computing? You might get a "Franken-cloud," as some vendors are calling it. ...

Zuora two weeks ago announced its first acquisition and a new product, Z-Insights. The acquired company, Frontleaf, will form the basis of Z-Insights. This marks an important moment for both Zuora and what it has called the "subscription economy." ...

"This is a very important announcement, because it begins to bring structure to analytics and concretely demonstrates how many niches there are in the space," remarked Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research Group. "It de-monolith-izes analytics," he told CRM Buyer....

There is no better company to look at to get a sense of the future of technology in business and society than Zuora. This might surprise many people, because companies like Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce might come to mind more readily. To one degree or another, those companies feature their products and services, which are very important, but Zuora talks about business models -- and today, that's even more important.

It is subtle, but in the spring conferences I see a pattern emerging around the importance of process. Admittedly, my analysis in this case is less than scientific, and I have no statistics to support my idea, but I my instinct says a trend toward process is beginning. Two conferences that support my contention include Xactly and Zuora, both of which are taking place this week in San Francisco...

"We've been trying to find better ways to work with customers forever," said Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research Group. Using video in CRM "is just the next thing," he told CRM Buyer, because it's "a good way to use your most expensive asset -- your people -- effec...

Sage and Salesforce put on a lovefest on Tuesday to announce their partnership, in which Sage has developed Sage Life, a product to enable small companies to connect their customer, accounting, payroll and finance data into one system, accessible from any device, anywhere, according to the companies ...