by twieberneit | Mar 20, 2019 | Analysis, Blog |
The News Today Salesforce announced the next release of its Service Cloud. It brings together more Einstein AI as part of the Service Cloud and adds Quip to it. This enables more agent empowerment and efficient work. In order to augment the tools with the necessary knowledge and soft skills, Salesforce also just launched Trailblazers for the Future, a program that is targeted towards increasing the soft skills of service managers and service agents. Einstein now is delivering reply suggestions as well as article suggestions to inquiries that the service representative can easily use to reply to questions. At the same time Einstein suggests so called next best actions that are designed to help increase satisfaction and unearth cross- and upsell opportunities. Additionally, Einstein now optimizes case routing leveraging machine-learning processes on the inquiry to find the ideal queue for processing it. Additionally, Salesforce embedded the collaboration tool Quip into the Service Cloud to increase productivity and to increase service agents’ access to knowledge. The press release is here but for your convenience you can read it below. The Press Release Salesforce Empowers Service Agents with Einstein AI and Quip for Service Service Cloud expands Einstein AI portfolio with new intelligent recommendation and routing capabilities so agents can spend more time where it matters most — building customer relationships and solving complex problems New Quip for Service boosts agent productivity with incident swarming and cross-team collaboration available directly in the agent console SAN FRANCISCO—March 19, 2019—Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the global leader in CRM, today announced new artificial intelligence and productivity solutions that empower customer service agents...
by twieberneit | Jan 28, 2019 | Analysis, Blog |
AI, IoT, and CRM, three acronyms. However, these three belong together and should not be treated or looked at separately. One important reason for this is that companies and organizations can provide significantly better service experiences and, more importantly, results, by combining the capabilities behind these acronyms. Good field service not only gets dispatched smartly but also equipped with the right parts and, ideally, in a proactive manner. This can get delivered by the combination of Field Service, AI, and IoT data. That’s why I found Salesforce’s early December announcement of having added a component “IoT insights” to its Field Service Lightning product quite interesting. As the press release said, this capability enables service agents and representatives to see IoT signals together with other CRM data, so that the triple p of personalized, proactive, even predictive service is possible. After all, Einstein is embedded into Field Service Lightning for quite some time now. Doing so, Salesforce wisely did not implement yet another IoT platform but enabled its system to ingest data from existing IoT platforms, thus sticking to the core competencies of the company. The solution helps in three areas: Enabling of early issue anticipation (rather than detection, which is responsive) and remote diagnosis Providing agents with more relevant information, to speed up issue resolution And automation via rules and workflows. Says Paolo Bergamo, SVP and GM, Salesforce Field Service Lightning: Let me first clarify that we’re not competing with IoT platforms from the likes of AWS IoT or Azure IoT. Our solution extends the value of these platforms – they provide streams of device data that then flow...
by twieberneit | Dec 8, 2018 | Analysis, Blog |
The year 2018 is coming to an end, which means it is high time for some interesting product and roadmap news. Here’s some Nimble news (ok, not THAT fresh anymore, I have been incredibly busy recently). For starters, Nimble released its long awaited Mobile 3.0 for Android, complementing the iOS version that got released earlier this year. Nimble unifies contacts from teams’ mobile, cloud-based, and desktop records into an all-in-one relationship manager. With minimal taps, sales and marketing professionals can prepare for meetings by quickly scanning social insights, sales intelligence, and contact engagement history from their portal device. To keep the momentum going, Office 365 and G Suite users can send personalized responses using template, trackable emails, and monitor opportunities across all deal stages from their portable devices. “People buy from the people they know, like, and trust,” said Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara. “We therefore designed Nimble Mobile to give users the insights they need to build confidence, engage in productive discussions, and follow through promptly anytime, anywhere.” With this milestone, Nimble has now truly achieved a vision of being a simple, smart ‘CRM’ for MS Office and G-Suite users that works for the user. I put the CRM into quotes as this term for me and most other people relates to a stragegy or system that includes marketing, sales and service capabilities and not only Sales Force Automation (SFA). And SFA, particularly contact management, is what is at the core of Nimble. Still, Nimble combines key ingredients of the digital workplace that a mobile, sales person needs, into one single place. It provides the user with vital information about...
by twieberneit | Nov 13, 2018 | Analysis, Blog |
The News On November 11, 2018 SAP announced that it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Qualtrics, the “global pioneer of the experience management (XM) software category”. Here is the full announcement for you to read: WALLDORF, Germany, PROVO, Utah, SEATTLE, Wash. — SAP SE(NYSE: SAP) and Qualtrics International Inc. (Qualtrics) today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which SAP SE intends to acquire Qualtrics, the global pioneer of the experience management (XM) software category that enables organizations to thrive in today’s experience economy. Together, SAP and Qualtrics to accelerate the new XM category by combining experience data and operational data to power the experience economy Creates a highly differentiated offering for businesses to deliver superior customer, employee, product, and brand experiences Ryan Smith to continue to lead Qualtrics; Qualtrics to maintain dual headquarters in Provo, Utah, and Seattle, Wash. Under the terms of the agreement, SAP will acquire all outstanding shares of Qualtrics for US$8 billion in cash. SAP has secured financing in the amount of €7 billion to cover purchase price and acquisition-related costs. The purchase price includes unvested employee incentive compensation and cash on the balance sheet at close. Subject to customary closing conditions and attainment of regulatory clearances, the acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2019. The Boards of Directors of SAP and Qualtrics have approved the transaction. Qualtrics’ shareholders have also approved the transaction. SAP CEO Bill McDermott said: “We continually seek out transformational opportunities – today’s announcement is exactly that. Together, SAP and Qualtrics represent a new paradigm, similar to market-making shifts in personal operating systems, smart...
by twieberneit | Oct 15, 2018 | Analysis, Blog |
In the past three posts of this series I have covered the definition of a platform, followed by a brief analysis of the big four players in the customer experience world, namely Microsoft, and SAP, followed by Salesforce and Oracle. And then there are the IaaS Platform Providers Of which there are mainly four, although Gartner Group lists six of them in their 2018 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide! And this drop from 14 vendors in 2017 to just six in 2018 already shows how much consolidation is going on in this market. But why even mention them here? After all this text originated as an analysis of the big business software vendors. Cloud infrastructure provides are important for two reasons: They do provide the raw computing power, the storage, networking resources, etc. for business workloads in a highly elastic way – including the ability to scale up and down in (near) real time. IaaS platforms also more and more contain and offer the PaaS portion that is necessary to offer value added services. In essence, the big six of the IaaS providers that are covered by the Gartner Group offer a technology platform, an ecosystem, insight, and productivity tools. The only thing that they are not really doing – yet – is offering rich, integrated business applications. But back to why I do see only four main IaaS providers going forward. These famous four are AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Alibaba. Of course with AWS having a tremendous lead for now, with Google and Microsoft struggling for the second spot, and with new kid on the block Alibaba growing...
by twieberneit | Aug 28, 2018 | Analysis, Blog |
A little recap As it has been some time since I published Clash of Titans – Platform Play, the first part of this little series, let me start with a little recap. The business applications market, especially the CRM market, is evolving fast. CRM has morphed from concentrating on transactions to become an enabler of engagements. Engagements in turn result in experiences. And positive experiences are what companies want to achieve. In a digital world this is possible only if companies rely on a foundation, a (technical) platform. Becoming the provider of the dominant technical platform therefore has become the main goal of of the big business software vendors. However, even governing a great technical platform is not enough. Software vendors that want to be successful platform players need to be able to deliver on four areas to succeed: Platform (IaaS/PaaS) Ecosystem Insight Productivity Only if they deliver on all four aspects are ‘platform players’ able to provide their customers with what they need to involve themselves in digital engagements that result in sustainably positive experiences. I will look at how the big four are measuring up in this and the next article of this little series. Microsoft and SAP will be the starters. Then I will look at Oracle and Salesforce. I might conclude with some surprise additions. But let the games begin! Microsoft Microsoft is the (not so, if you look sharply) hidden champion of this game. Actually, I think that Microsoft is the 800 pound gorilla in this game. It is Microsoft’s objective to become the fabric that connects enterprises of all sizes with their stakeholders,...
