aheadCRM

Earning my keep to an extent with consulting in the SAP orbit it of course is of interest to me how the no. 1 enterprise software vendor is doing in my nape of the world. And I am deliberately not talking about other regions - just mine. And yeah, I also may be wrong, but here's my take. Starting from a look at my specialty - CRM - it appears that not a lot is going on in the SAP arena. While it is true that many companies still consider CRM as not so crucial to their business a deeper look reveals that there is no real drought. There are implementations, but apparently, in the words of my former boss Bob Stutz, then at Microsoft and now at SFDC: "We do not see SAP, the final decision is between SFDC and us". And MS Dynamics grew considerably in the past years. This indicates that there is a market. So why doesn't SAP get the implementations? Is it because of problems with the imlementation projects? They surely exist, believe me! But then other vendors suffer fr...

This is the second post in my mini series about continuously improving the customer experience and customer engagement in the triangle of Customer Experience Management (CEX), Customer Engagement Management (CEM), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Well, actually the third, if you include my guest post  There’s no customer experience without customer engagement  on friend Paul Greenberg’s ZDNet blog. A while ago, in my post  CxM and PoS – A Tale of two Cities  I have asked you to stay tuned in case you were interested in learning about a way of implementing the strategy of thinking big while acting small in order to be able to keep the big goal – adding value for your customers offering the best possible experiences –  at the center of actions. All this while acknowledging that priorities are shifting, budgets are scarce, and different customers prefer to engage via different sequences of touch points. Sounds like a nasty and complicated ch...

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 thin...

CxM and PoS, these are two protagonists of an ever continuing story. It comes in many different flavours but it essentially is about change vs. stability. On one hand we have the PoS, the contender, a long time best hated friend of the retailer, an infrastructure that they cannot do without. They can’t! Simple as. The PoS is the infrastructure that all in-store sales are executed on, the infrastructure that is crucial to gain and keep an overview about in-store (and overall) inventory, an infrastructure that also tries hard to gain additional knowledge about the customer. But then the core entities that the PoS works with is not the customer, but are the product and the sales, the transaction. Without the transaction the retailer is dead. On the other hand we have the new kids on the block: CxM, Customer Experience Management, CXM, and Customer Engagement Management, CEM. New, although they, too, are around for quite some while already. Going on I will mainly stick to CxM...

CRM Evolution 2015 was a very vibrant conference with lots of discussion that included a number of high profile industry influencers. For me as a first time attendee it was amazing how approachable many of these people are. But then this might come with the territory. To understand these takeaways it is important to know that my reason for attending was getting into closer touch with what is going on in the CRM world outside SAP - and New Zealand. So, these are purely notes and thoughts that result from sessions, discussions with influencers, speakers and other conference attendees, and not learnings from vendor briefings. Also, this event was split into three separate conferences: CRM Evolution Customer Service Experience Speechtek I nearly exclusively concentrated on CRMEvolution and one session from the Customer Service Experience. First things first: Was it worthwhile coming all the way from NZ? This is very clearly a yes. Paul Greenberg and the team did an amazing j...

A few days ago I was asked for my top 5 tips for retailers on how to connect with their customers, limited to 100 words. For a topic that one could write a novel on … Well, here is my answer: Help customers solving their problem. This distinguishes and makes you found by the customer Marketing/loyalty programs offer your customers value and are not mere vehicles to gather more data points Simplify your customers’ life, e.g. with a card wallet instead of own app that directly integrates with your CRM and POS Relevant communications at the right time, place with the right content – without appearing intrusive. For this you need to know your customer Consistent communications across channels and interactions, optimized for used touch point They probably need some more elaboration, especially the last one. First and foremost, the reason for any business to exist is making profit for its owners. This is not equal to producing and selling things (or providing a ...

A few days ago I came across a blog entry by  @MikeBoysen  titled  Customers Don”t Want Relationships…PERIOD! A really intriguing title and read – perhaps written to stir up a discussion. Works for me, as it stirs me up from of my absence from this blog of mine… Mike, after this very strong claim the starts with another one: CRM is dead. Well, CRM seems to be pretty alive for a dead one; as a strategy and also as a technology. And here is exactly the point where Mike and other influencers – I had discussions about this topic e.g. with  @bob_thompson  from CustomerThink as well – are dead wrong (I couldn’t resist this pun). Their argumentation is solely based upon CRM being a technology. And then they compare CRM with another acronym that they claim is a strategy, concluding that the other one is far better. Apples vs. pears. Technology vs strategy. CRM is not a technology. It is also not a process area. CRM is a strategy. CEM is anoth...