Bob Stutz joins SFDC - A snap analysis from Down Under

My first reaction? Wow, that will stir up the industry, well, at least Microsoft …

Second one? Who will follow? Jujhar Singh! Jujhar will step into a pair of pretty big shoes (no pun intended), but then he was coached by Bob for more than a decade and held a number of increasingly important positions at Siebel, SAP, MS. It is probably about time to step out of Bobs shadow and take centre stage. Congratulations to him!

But what lies beyond is really interesting. Bob is a CRM guy – or rather one of THE CRM guys. He contributed significantly to shaping what CRM is now and has a reputation for getting organisations that have a problem on track – or to lay those tracks. There is no meaningful CRM, no CEM (Customer Engagement Management), neither CXM (Customer Experience Management) without data, lots of data, coming from various different sources covering every customer interaction, customer experience at every touch point. Think mobile, internet of things, sensor network, etc., etc. Data and intelligent algorithms to analyse it and to make it actionable to engage, improve the customer experience, and improve the customer relationship. Combining these two facts SFDC seem to have realised that they have a critical weakness in their offering: The ability to perform in-depth predictive and intent analytics that enables customers to maximise the value of their investments into SFDCs platform. Some of their partners will rightly see this as a threat, some others as an opportunity, up to getting acquired by SFDC. It will, regardless, be interesting to follow SFDC announcement in this area in the next three to six months.

Microsoft definitely suffers a loss in spite of what I said above. They have done tremendous progress in the CRM market and, down here in NZ, together with SFDC, made SAP virtually vanish as a CRM player. It seems like, if a bid for a new project gets competitive, it is between SFDC and MS.

I can only assume that MS had similar success elsewhere under Bob’s guidance. However, down here success came at a price: There are a number of implementation projects that are in dire straits. While this is often a problem of the project itself this has a tendency to fall back on the product/solution and makes its reputation suffer. So, not all is good at MS and there is lots of work to be done for Jujhar, too.

Shameless plug here ;-) – of course I am happy to help both of them …

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