by twieberneit | Jan 19, 2021 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
This time, the CRMKonvos gang had a long and good chat with Jon Reed, co-founder of diginomica, one of the premier media outlets that serve the information needs of enterprise leaders in a digital era. Together, we have attended a good number of virtual events, which led to different experiences. Jon has written about virtual and hybrid events, we have our opinions. So what is better than having a frank discussion on what to do, what not, how to measure, what to measure. Of course, this easily touches the hot topic of personalization, and then AI driven personalization and AI in general. A long and very good conversation with one of the most influential thought leaders. Enjoy, as it is highly...
by twieberneit | Jan 18, 2021 | Blog |
It’s that time of year again. And although I’m not really into trend articles, I think it’s time this year to start thinking about what’s going on in the worlds of customer experience and customer relationship management – and how it’s affecting businesses and customers. Especially since I was also asked … So here’s my list of developments that I think will be relevant in the next few years, in quite random order, and admittedly not entirely without overlap. Digitization – not Digital Transformation If there is one theme that has and continues to permeate through the Covid pandemic, it is that of digitalization. The pandemic has painfully brought to light the failure to make necessary investments in consistent processes and technologies in the past. As a result, many companies continue to have processes that are characterized by media disruptions. The need to improve here is also the overarching theme for some of the other developments and trends currently evident. Companies and their employees, as well as customers, have had to learn to deal with a highly distributed work infrastructure. Companies have responded by building communications infrastructures (zoom fatigue anyone?) and building out or rebuilding their sales and service infrastructures for increased remote capability. This is being done in 3 phases: First, as part of a stop-gap solution, an infrastructure was quickly pulled up that allowed operations to continue somehow. In the second phase, order was brought into the chaos thus produced. Now, in the third phase, more attention is being paid to integration and efficiency. As a result, we will see more end-to-end digitized processes that address the...
by twieberneit | Jan 16, 2021 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
The CRMKonvos team started into the new year talking with Daniel Renggli, Director Field Marketing North at Oracle. As we all know, Oracle has a vast range of solutions across the whole value chain and is one of the few that can (almost) support a whole enterprise with its solution. Oracle was also known as a cloud laggard – a notion that got vastly changed in the last few years. And Oracle governs the complete hardware and software stack to support businesses, which again is rare in the enterprise applications world. The company’s IaaS infrastructure even can extend into the customer data center, which is a very interesting offering. Last, but not least, Oracle has a strong set of CRM- and CX applications, on premise and in the cloud, with the cloud software being established in the market in the past years. Oracle is one of the contenders in the #ClashOfTitans. All the more reason to talk with an Oracle representative about what is great CX and how to get there. Being confronted with the complete CRMKonvos gang, Daniel took his stand. And he did well. We learned a lot. You can, too. Here is the recording of the conversation. It is worthwhile the time. Trust...
by twieberneit | Jan 1, 2021 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
Many CRM systems are still well in the past. They do not do what their users, especially sales people want them to do. They do not see them as helpful. Why not? What can be done to improve the situation? The CRMKonvos team discusses with Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research. Why do salespersons rather clean the bathroom than use their CRM? Do you know why a CRM system cannot be “sexy”? You will not be surprised to learn that technology is only one aspect in this picture. It’s not just the bathroom. A study that was conducted by Beagle Research found a long list of things salespeople would rather do than work with their CRM systems. For instance, waiting in line at the motor vehicles office, having a fight with your significant other, going to the dentist — you get the idea–are all ahead of CRM. The question is why? And Denis simple answer is that all the other things are finite and have an endpoint but CRM seems to be forever or at least more long term. That says a lot. Still, people are reluctant to discuss this and it’s no one’s fault, certainly it’s not the fault of the software, the software vendor or incompetence about the purchase process. What this nets out to is that the majority of CRM in use today was designed for another time, for different business processes that have been superseded by the Covid era but that started even before Covid. Digressing slightly, the same phenomenon could be seen about ten or more years ago. Back then businesses were trying to get...
by twieberneit | Dec 29, 2020 | Blog |
Since about February or March of Anno Domini 2020 we regularly hear about how the Covid crisis is driving “digital transformation”. You now might ask yourself why I put this term into quotes. Bear with me for a minute, it’ll be explained … For sure, this crisis is forcing many a company into enabling its employees to work remotely. It also forced some companies to at least temporarily close physical doors as supply chains and/or delivery of products and services are severely inhibited or even broken. We also see a lot of companies implement interesting hybrid strategies that bring what we thought of being decidedly offline experiences into the online world. A good example for this trend are wineries that lost an important lead generation and sales channel with their temporary inability to host wine tastings in their cellars. Till now the opinion was that nothing can beat the experience of being down there in a wine cellar, surrounded by barrels of ageing wine, musty air, like-minded people and a connoisseur that explains the wines, their provenance and their characteristics. Still, some of them have transformed the experience they deliver during wine tastings into a combination of offline and online experience. Wine gets selected by the customers, an appointment for the tasting is made, and the wine is wrapped into some nice packaging, along with some information, and sent to the customer. The tasting itself then is supported by platforms such as Virtual Wine Tasting, Tasting Room, or Cheerswithme. The experience might not be the same as at the winery, and it shouldn’t. Instead, it offers something that a...
by twieberneit | Dec 23, 2020 | Blog |
Since February or March of Anno Domini 2020, the Corona pandemic is making the headlines and is driving digital transformation, or at least the digitalization of businesses. For sure, this crisis has forced and is continuing to force many a company into enabling its employees to work remotely. This has accelerated an already ongoing fundamental change of the way people work. It has also had an impact on work culture. People can no more just drop by a colleague to ask a question, but need to pick up a phone. Meetings do not happen in the meeting room around the corner anymore but by utilizing technology – virtual meeting rooms – voice and video. Salespeople can no more travel to their customers for face-to-face meetings. Instead they were forced to adopt and master virtual meetings, something they didn’t believe they could possibly do in 2019. It seemed far too alien. Many of us have learned that this change is rather an opportunity than a threat. We needed to, and did adapt, on a business- and a personal level. In doing so, we realized that many things that we thought of “will never work” actually work quite well. This adaption happened and happens in three distinct steps. We first used any available technology, just to keep the lights on. Then we started to put processes around them to become more effective and now we are looking at improving efficiencies. These efficiencies, that we look for, will be achieved by the harmonization and reduction of the number of the used tools and their deep integration into each other and essential business...
