Expert Advice

Integration Plus Intelligence Equals Multichannel Campaign Success
May 23, 2013

The personality inventory known as the "Myers-Briggs Type Indicator" is premised on the idea that different people process information in different ways. Some people are verbal processors. Others are visual processors. Some people respond more strongly to images -- others to text. The most effective way to learn is to map the different learning styles to each individual's characteristic strengths.

The 5-Step Plan for Picking the Right CRM Consultant
May 21, 2013

Pretty much all CRM deployments need some degree of customization, the exceptions being those rare situations where businesses have very simple needs. Customizations can be as simple as the modification of a field to accommodate a local convention for addresses, or as complex as the addition of workflows that introduce social media data or specific sales and marketing behaviors.

Criticism: A Security Chief's Most Valuable Resource
May 17, 2013

This past week, a lesson about enterprise information security found its way to me via a somewhat unorthodox channel: specifically, an episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. In this particular episode, the upshot was that Ramsay wasn't able to help. Why not? The owners weren't able to take criticism. There's a lesson in this for those of us in the network and security space.

Connecting With Key Influencers in the Industry Analyst Community
May 16, 2013

If presenting to the technology industry analyst community is so important, why do most companies do such a poor job? I have participated in more analyst briefings over the last 25 years than I can remember. Companies all want the same positive result, but they all go about it very differently. Only a very few are well done and get good results. So what is the path to success?

Tap CRM to Give Your Customers a Pleasant Surprise
May 07, 2013

So you have your CRM application in place and humming, collecting information about customers and potential customers and organizing it -- but how are you using it? Most companies pour it back into sales, marketing and support to keep feeding those machines, which is good. It's the way you realize the value from your CRM investment.

Social Savvy Beats Cold Read for Warming Up to Customers
April 30, 2013

If you're a dedicated skeptic like I am, you probably know the way a psychic's cold read works. Start by asking a broad question that fits almost anyone -- like, "Have you lost someone you love?" Allow the mark to fill in the blanks, and then ask further leading questions based on information fed to you until the mark thinks you're actually communicating with a dead relative.

Android: A Second Career in Security?
April 23, 2013

Many of us have a wealth of decommissioned corporate-provisioned mobile devices: We've bought them, handed them out, and seen them used successfully for years. Now they're on their way to the great docking station in the sky. However, because these devices are already off the books adapting them for specific security functions can mean achieving certain goals practically for free.

Improving IT Ops Service Levels and Efficiency
April 22, 2013

New tools are available to help with service level management, but they require a new perspective on how IT infrastructure components should be managed. The key is to embrace a new ideal of managing every infrastructure component from the perspective of how it impacts end-user service levels. To do this, IT operations teams must understand the three laws of service-oriented IT operations management.

The 6 Secrets of Highly Successful M-Commerce
April 15, 2013

If we take a page out of our not-so-distant past, we can see that on the web, both commerce applications and functionality have contributed to the demise or success of mobile apps. The success of business models, return on investment and viability of mobile initiatives all depend on how well m-commerce is managed and handled.

The Say-Anything Salesperson Is a CRM Killer
April 11, 2013

I was talking to a friend of mine whose company had a rough first quarter. As is often the case, both sales and marketing came under scrutiny; several salespeople were let go, and marketing is now under a microscope. In trying to perform a post-mortem on the problems, we struck upon the issue of salespeople. The sales manager held up a former employee as an example of the kind of people he wanted; this guy was a go-getter.

5 Things That Kill CRM ROI Dead
April 05, 2013

Back in the old days -- like around 2003 -- the rate of what was termed "CRM failure" was unacceptably high. You often heard it bandied about that 70 percent of implementations were failures. That was an estimate -- companies were not coming forward to confess their CRM disasters, so building a scientific sample was impossible. Still, the number reflected the general dissatisfaction.

Grabbing the Mobile App Brass Ring
March 30, 2013

By the end of 2012, 60 percent of U.S. broadband households owned at least one app-enabled consumer electronic device. With connected device ownership at mainstream levels, there is a solid foundation for app development and rapid growth in app economies. Of the primary devices used to access apps, smartphones have the highest penetration rates.

A Tale of Two VoIPs
March 23, 2013

Ever since the first Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, calls were made in 1973, packetized voice was supposed to be the nail in the coffin of enterprise PBX systems. Thirty-seven years later, while instant message, presence and conferencing have successfully penetrated the enterprise, VoIP is still lagging behind traditional voice services in the large enterprise setting.

The Revolution Is Over, and M-Commerce Is Here to Stay
March 16, 2013

In case you missed it, 2012 -- the so-called "year of mobile" -- came and went pretty quickly. Now we simply live in a mobile world. E-commerce is moving to mobile devices more and more, and that trend is not likely to stop anytime soon. U.S. retail mobile commerce sales will grow from $13.63 billion in 2011 to $86.86 billion by 2016 -- increasing from 7 percent to 24 percent of all retail e-commerce, eMarketer predicted.

Secrets for Speeding CRM Time to Value
February 21, 2013

We all know about the idea of total cost of ownership and the concept of return on investment. Both have their place in business evaluations of CRM. There's another measurement, however, that should be considered -- one I like to call "time to value." The T2V test is simple.

3 Bad Habits to Unlearn for SCRM Success
February 14, 2013

For the better part of six years, we pundits have been urging businesses to get social. Social CRM even has its own Gartner Magic Quadrant, and while the entries in that document are all over the map in terms of what they do, vendors serving aspects of SCRM are well established. Gartner itself said that sales of software for SCRM topped $1 billion in 2012.

Cross-Domain Semantics and the End of 'Solution Sales'
February 08, 2013

Do your customers think of you as one of them? Do they think you truly understand their business challenges, their opportunities and what keeps them up at night? These are questions you should very seriously consider, because in the extraordinarily demanding B2B sales climate of our post-recession world, it's the vendor who can answer "yes" who will win the business.

5 Business Lessons to Learn From PR Flacks
February 07, 2013

As a journalist covering technology, you get bombarded with material from PR people trying to get you to write about their clients. Although there are some stellar PR people, the majority of pitches I get are not targeted at what I write about, addressed to the wrong person, or make claims that are demonstrably false or inaccurate.

Cloud Atlas: Defining and Categorizing the Personal Cloud
February 02, 2013

The definition and makeup of the "personal cloud" are areas of intense debate. A variety of companies with a stake in cloud-based engagement have very different perspectives on what is and is not included as part of a consumer's personal cloud. "The cloud" broadly refers to the content, services, and features that users can access remotely on the Internet or via some other network.

Is Your Storytelling Smothering Your Customer Relationships?
January 24, 2013

"People buy your story." Hearing that said from the stage at DemandCon 2011 by Forrester's Jeff Ernst made my withered writer's heart grow two sizes (to paraphrase Dr. Seuss). Covering the technology industry has made me an unwilling witness to a range of crimes against language, ranging from tortured grammar to made-up words to an impenetrable lexicon of jargon.