aheadCRM

In this episode Ralf Korb , Marshall Lager and I had two very special guests: Bob Stutz , president of SAP's CX group, who shapes the CRM industry for more than 20 years now and Esteban Kolsky , former analyst, both independently and at Gartner. Esteban has deep roots and a passion for customer service processes and now leads the sales and service products at SAP CX.  And then there was a special star, perhaps the youngest guest who we will ever have. Again, and as usual for our CRMKonvos, we did not stick to one hour. Bob and Esteban actually shared their insights for a full 90 minutes, which is something for which we are deeply grateful. We covered a lot of ground starting with how 22 years of experience in the military services can help in the software industry - and not ending with why it took him and his team that long to publish an SAP CX strategy.  You are interested in the state of AI and machine learning? Ask Esteban - or listen to his statements in this episode. Sa...

  It has been an intense 2 weeks. The CX or CRM or however you want to call it market got a serious makeover. After a long time without a tangible strategy, SAP announced a lot of things, starting with the intended acquisition of Emarsys , followed by an announcement about the release of a customer data platform as part of its SAPCXLIVE event, and then it also conducted its SAPCXLIVE online event in an impressive manner. I wouldn’t proclaim it ‘cineastic’, which is the current mot du jour, but still, it felt very much like a trade show, just virtual. And the week before, SAP president of CX Bob Stutz shook the players during an executive roundtable (very good discussion, intense 2:40 hrs) with representatives of the big 5 held by the CRMPlayaz Brent Leary and Paul Greenberg . He openly questioned the enterprise software vendors pricing policies by asking why the industry does not go for a utility bases billing approach – or should I say utilization based billing approach. Mayb...

CRMKonvos Nr.18 - KI, #beyondCXM perspectives and opportunities with more dynamics are coming up. This time in our focus: The SugarCRM Story and the node.io integration. In this CRMKonvos Ralf Korb and Thomas Wieberneit talked with SugarCRM CEO Craig Charlton and CTO Rich Green about the past, present and future of SugarCRM. Of course, we covered the progress of the integration of node.io , and the reasons for choosing it. But then there are also topics as mundane as why there are still reasons to choose an on premise installation vs. going cloud. What is a platform? Rich Green has a very good definition with a very own Sugar twist to it - and which makes a lot of sense. What is the real reason for appointing James Norwood into the board? Apart from him being an extremely kind, knowledgeable and connected person? What are the top five gaps in Sugar's footprint? We covered a lot of ground. Enjoy this very enlightening English episode of our CRMKonvos

Salespeople really love to feed data into their CRM system after a long day, or even during the week-end. They are truly looking forward to their weekly sales call with numbers that every single one of their colleague massaged themselves. They are obsessed with typing all sorts of entries into a quotation and know their product catalogue by heart, so that they can provide their customer with the best of all possible quotes to solve their business issue. Salespeople really appreciate all the high quality leads that are funnelled to them by the system. And, of course, they are truly altruistic and thrive on helping their customers for good. Sounds like you? No?  Well, then you are probably like most of us. In brief: Salespeople hate their CRM! This didn’t change almost 40 years after the first electronic CRM tools have been introduced. Users of CRM systems still often do not have the feeling that the systems are serving them, but that it is rather the opposite. That is especially tru...

#CRMKonvos Nr.17 - The dark side of the Cloud - Danger, Hope, Liability, Subscription, Privacy – are they all gone? Quo vadis On Premises and managed services? We are looking at the dark side of the moon cloud, its effects, chances, and possibilities. We are also analysing the acquisition of Emarsys by SAP, do a little breakdown of the new Microsoft cloud services that got announced last week (MS Teams, anyone?) and general perspectives. Is the coveted 360 degree view on the customer an illusion? And there is some harsh reality facing suboptimal corporate structures. Fair play with customers, as lived by Zoho, is another topic to be covered ... Expectations towards SAP and its Customer Data Platform CDP++ are going towards the next phase. Is SAP planning to destroy the silos to create more transparency? Is CDP really some BS or can it be used in a valuable (for the customer) way? A CX platform or at least a #COTP (customer oriented transaction platform) are possible ways. Lots of grou...

The News On October 1st, 2020 SAP announced its intent to acquire Emarsys , a leader in the personalization area and omnichannel customer engagement management specialist. The transaction is expected to be completed in Q2/2020 and still subject to regulatory approval. The purchasing price is not disclosed. According to Crunchbase , Emarsys was funded with $55.3M US by Vector Capital in two funding rounds 2015 and 2016. Not being a financial analyst, I would expect a purchasing price of north of $ 500M US. Emarsys positions itself as a customer engagement platform that combines omni-channel automation, personalization, loyalty management and reporting/analytics. The company has more than 1,500 customers, makes about 2/3 of its revenues in the EMEA region and has a pretty strong partner network including technology and agency partners. Key commerce integrations include Adobe (Magento), Salesforce, Shopify and, of course SAP Commerce. On top of this, the platform brings prebuilt industry ...

During this episode we talked with Mitch Lieberman who has quite some experience in the CRM industry, on the vendor- and analyst side. He was with Epiphany, Sugar, and with G2, to name but a few. He has the insight and the sharp mind that makes this conversation particularly interesting, without me diminishing the other ones, though. Mitch certainly got our grey matter into high gear during our conversation that started with CX, went into a solid discussion of the value (what is it?) of Customer Data Platforms, CDP, on to conversational systems - and back. We learned a lot. You can, too. This conversation is in English, apart from a few minutes at the beginning and the end.