aheadCRM

Earlier this year, a few days after attending SAP Sapphire reimagined , I asked Quo Vadis, SAP . At that time industry legend Bob Stutz led the CX group already for 8 months, with Esteban Kolsky being his chief of strategy. At this event there was hardly any mention of SAP CX. This is in spite of the CRM market being the fastest growing enterprise software market and in contrast to then CEO Bill McDermott’s bold statements that SAP will take Salesforce heads on.  Esteban meanwhile changed his role and has become Head of Product, Customer Service and Sales for the SAP CX unit, which indicates that there is an emphasis on execution. And then, there was the announcement that Qualtrics, the company that basically defined the experience management market and that SAP acquired barely two years ago, will be brought public . So, something is happening. But still, there is no word about a strategy or a vision besides a few hints that Bob and Esteban gave during various webcasts or a blog ...

#BeyondCXM. To turn customers and employees into fans as a possibiility to achieve sustainable business is what Ralf Korb and Thomas Wieberneit as hosts discussed with Dr. Winfried Felser and Marc Schmid , CEO of Novadoo . Sometimes the magic of customer experience if found beyond normal processes and classic expectations and therefore individual, consumable, experiences. This happens especially if one offers a genuine and heartfelt 'Thank you' and with that creates an emotional bondo or relationship with the customer, instead of just a transactional one. Leading up to this: What are companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, or Zoho currently doing and how can these developments help with a Corona restart with ten times the current possibilities? Big topics, discussed in this CRMKonvos episode. This episode is in German language.

In this episode we had the pleasure to talk with fellow long time analyst, influencer and CRM industry observer Marshall Lager about what value TikTok could bring to Oracle - if any - and continued from there to experiences and experience management upto raising the question about what lies beyond CXM. Will it be purely technically driven or even philosophical? Find out in this episode fo the #CRMKonvos. And do not forget to tune into the next one, which will continue on the theme of going beyond CXM. This episode is in English.  

Will ByteDance be able to sell some of its non-Chinese TikTok business or not? TikTok, the app that is all the rage with millenials who post thirty second movie clips and seem to have tremendous fun with it. And which got valued at more than $ 50 bn US before it was threatened with a ban in the US. It is less than a week to the deadline for an enforced shut down of the infrastructure. Time to jot down a number of seemingly, but not so random thoughts. Microsoft, in combination with Walmart, and Oracle, along with some unnamed additional investors, appear to be the frontrunners for making a deal. There are rumours about at least Twitter and Netflix showing some interest, too. If they are allowed to make a deal, and then willing to make it given the boundaries that are set by both, the US and the Chinese governments. There is tremendous pressure exerted by the US government citing a threat to national security because it could provide data about US users to China. This would make it nece...

  The News On September 10, 2020 Zoho announced Zoho Workplace , a new cloud based product bundle that is targeted at making a workforce more effective and efficient by bundling collaboration, productivity, and communication tools into one integrated set. As a part of this release Zoho enriched the applications that are part of Zoho Workplace with additional capabilities, following the vision of driving better business outcomes easier. Zoho Workplace consists of nine tightly integrated applications that are built on a common data model and that share a common dashboard and AI based enterprise search. The bundle is “ centered around a full-featured business mail and office suite ”. The nine applications Zoho Workplace consists of, are: ·       Mail for business e-mail ·       Cliq, as a messaging system ·       Meeting for online conferencing ·       Connect, a social intranet solutio...

Episode 13 of the CRMKonvos with Ralf Korb and Thomas Wieberneit revolved around the topic of how to get to a great CRM that truly helps employees and customers alike by making sure that satisfied employees have the means to create and keep happy customers. Our guest Patrick Ganzmann , MD of valantic Customer Engagement and Commerce, is the right person to talk to about this topic.  We were keen to hear his insights and examples from the numerous projects that he and his team completed; how they did it, and what they learned on the way. In brief: Patrick didn't disappoint with the wealth of insight and learnings that he shared with us. Leading into the topic, we briefly discussed the way into offering a search engine that Apple seems to go. Doesn't make sense for you? Follow our brief analysis about this topic. And why Apple to start with?  Because they are all about experience, which is what a good CRM helps offering. Enjoy! This webcast is in German language.

During episode 12 of the #CRMKonvos my colleage Ralf Korb and I are talking with Andrea Grosse, Managing Director of Just4People . Andrea is a highly reputed Marketing expert who earned several awards. She focuses on demand generation. Hear her speaking about how to meet customers expectations and to generate great experiences using data. And, as a goodie, get an assessment of the recent Salesforce announcement .  

In this episode Ralf Korb and I talked with our special guest Michael Jopen about the impact of the acquisition of Node.io by SugarCRM , which I wrote about before, the Gartner MQ on CRM Lead Management, and notably, Microsoft's MetaOS that got also commented on by Mary Jo Foley on ZDNet . Michael voiced some interesting hypothesis on where Microsoft will go with it. Does Microsoft venture to copy Google? Watch and hear what Michael has to say. This episode is in German.

  The News On September 1, 2020 Salesforce announced its next round of updates to its Field Service Management solution. Eric Jacobson , Salesforce VP Product Management, Field Service  and Gary Brandeleer , Senior Director Product Management, Field Service gave me an interesting briefing and demo beforehand. The new releases are all about efficient processing of the engagement throughout the whole process. In detail they are about Dynamic job scheduling Using Einstein Recommendation Builder to ensure that service technicians have the right spare parts available Asset management capabilities that allow companies a detailed view into the installed base at their customers. This is developed in cooperation with ServiceMax Improvements to the appointment assistant to provide as accurate as possible information to the customer about the arrival time of the service technician. The various features shall be made generally available through the next 6 months; as this is a forward loo...