Strategy

We all like to say our businesses are "customer-centric." It's the de rigueur thing to say these days, and it's the only smart way to describe yourself to your customer audience. But how many companies really revolve around the customer? Not many, and for realistic reasons. For instance, your busine...

The term "cloud computing" has inspired a lot of thought, energy, ideas and enthusiasm. It's also sparked a lot of head-scratching, brow-furrowing and definition-debating. You might think that after several years of the concept being in the forefront of thought around business computing, this might ...

I don't know how much Oracle spends on research and development each year. I know the biggest piece is being spent on CRM these days, something that warms my heart. The R&D number is in the billions of dollars, and though I cannot confirm it easily, the number seven seems about it. Judging by...

Exhibiting at traditional trade shows is one of the most common marketing tactics used by companies targeting the industrial and manufacturing marketplace. The opportunity for direct engagement with prospects, customers and other vendors who could be potential partners or customers is invaluable. An...

In a Ted Talk from 2004 that I watched a the other day, Malcolm Gladwell spoke about Howard Moskowitz. You might recall the New Yorker writer made a name for himself with the publication of The Tipping Point and several other works that focus on the unpredictable things that people do in the course...

If you're in the CRM industry, you may have a slightly skewed view of the world when it comes to CRM penetration. Many of my peers, when they hear about a company that still uses a home-brew system to manage sales, marketing and service, are aghast. With hundreds of applications out there and thousa...

Back in August I wrote about some research I had gotten into mostly for fun. You might recall it. I searched on a company name and the word "sucks" and reported what I found. The point of the research was not to be salacious or to offend anyone. In political circles, it's known as discovering on...

Consider the left hand of sales methodology and the right hand of digital strategy. It's 2010 and the two hands still do not know what the other is up to. Even with the most advanced of our clients, the digital strategy is focused on lead generation, awareness and a bevy of other activities aimed at...

Social CRM has earned widespread appreciation as a real business tool. It's no longer an idea or a theory or a hunch. However, it's still a new idea, and many are approaching it with trepidation because its impact on the bottom line is not yet well understood. I don't believe there's a single set of...

A funny thing happened to open source CRM over the last few years: It stopped being all about open source and started being about delivering CRM -- at least, for some vendors. That shift makes sense. Customers of CRM products want applications that meet their business needs, not their desire to have...

This year, the CRM Evolution event was true to its name. The organization of the show reflected the way thinking about CRM has changed over the years, with a breakdown into three tracks: CRM, Social CRM and Deployment Strategies. Really, the tracks parallel the state of CRM for its users -- or rathe...

Cloud computing is breaking through to the general public. Unfortunately, it's only the most watered down version that the public is hearing about. Last week I listened to a program on NPR that briefly discussed the cloud and some "expert" who worked for a general circulation magazine was happily t...

CRM is a complex thing. It involves understanding your customers and your own business -- two difficult things to fully grasp under any circumstances -- and then using technology to convert that understanding into a positive impact on your business. Customers, and to a lesser extent your business, a...

The new age of sustainability is like a three-legged stool, and over the last couple of weeks I've discussed my ideas for the first two legs, including customers and energy or transportation. The third leg involves products, and this idea takes some thinking to fully comprehend. Most of us don't th...

Every business needs to understand its audience in order to put together a social strategy that makes sense. A one-size-fits-all template fits no one in the social era. Still, there are some things that you don't do. You don't use social data to creep out your customers, for instance, by revealing t...