CRM and VRM meet

I spent an interesting day at Harvard Law School last week at the invitation of Doc Searls for a conference on the intersection of CRM and VRM or vendor relationship management.  Doc’s involved with the Berkman Center at Harvard, which sponsors research into issues of Law and the Internet among other things.  He’s also one [...]

Apple and Microsoft

Yesterday’s news that Apple’s market value slightly eclipsed Microsoft’s was significant and in my haste to get out a post on it, I may not have been able to apply all of my analytical effort so I want to try again. First, to cover basics, the market value of a company is simply the value [...]

Last week and the triumph of CRM

Last week was busy in a good way and also in ways that we have not seen in a while and at least some if that busy-ness showed promise for the economy and our industry.  In no particular order, Cloud9 Analytics announced it closed its C round financing, SAP held its user meeting in Orlando, [...]

The new, new force

The new, new force If you attended the salesforce.com soiree in New York on Thursday you could be forgiven if you thought the company was done with announcements for a while but if you thought that you’d also be wrong.  Kendal Collins, Salesforce CMO, told me that there will be another announcement on April 27 [...]

Can You do Social without Technology?

There’s a huge discussion raging on the Internet started by a provocative question from Bob Thompson.  Can you do Social CRM without social media/networks? The question came to me via Paul Greenberg’s blog and I find it curious that I am not in agreement with much of the discussion or, more to the point, I [...]

Customer experience as IP

Thanks to all of you who took the time to comment on yesterday’s post.  The response was very positive both in emails and in comments.  The experience showed me that there are at least two schools of thought on the subject.  One side is the vendor and analyst camp, which is supportive of the customer [...]

Sell specific benefits

I was in a conversation with the CEO of a CRM company the other day discussing the latest moves in the industry over ideas like SaaS, single tenant and multitenant deployments.  It has occurred to me and I said this to the CEO, that we spend far too much time and brain matter on the [...]

Nothing (much) ventured

In our industry we live on innovation and innovation takes capital — something that has been in short supply over the last couple of years.  Venture funding took a massive hit in 2009 but there are signs that the trend might be bottoming out.  If it is, we might all learn to exhale again. According [...]

Sustainability and unified communications

I almost never attend a webinar unless I am speaking.  When I need to know something I usually get a one on one with a CEO or other leader of a company.  They’re very gracious with their time and the tutelage helps me as an analyst though often I don’t run out and write something [...]

Hope

Two issues in the news lately have shown me that CRM is more than technology and that companies are trying to walk the walk.  The Toyota recall and the way at least some airlines have handled the snow nightmare in the mid-Atlantic states say a lot about how CRM ideas have penetrated business. Now, with [...]