The Secret Sauce for Companies Lies in Distinguishing Themselves Where It Matters

by Thomas Wieberneit | Sep 1, 2016 | Blog |

Note: The below is an interview by Natalie Khomyk covering some nuts and bolts of CRM and digital transformation. It was originally published by Data2CRM on their blog. Thanks, Natalie for talking to me. Indeed, Thomas, you have an impressive and outstanding list of achievements, and truly in depth knowledge of CRM, digital innovations, and customer engagement. Could you share with us the 3 most exciting moments in your career? What is your source of inspiration (if it isn’t a secret)? Thank you for the praise Natalie. There surely are no secrets involved. Originally, back in 1995, I actually only stumbled into what became CRM by joining a company that did distributed sales force automation systems and later got acquired by SAP. A lot of what you just called inspiration comes from day-to-day life. I want to help people and organizations. As customers we are surrounded by businesses and organizations on one side and technology on the other. Organizations, especially businesses, communicate with us and try to get and retain our loyalty increasingly using technology. Sometimes with, sometimes with less of a strategy. This often bothers us as customers and ultimately harms the businesses. Who of us does not have countless experiences of bad service, strange and perhaps intrusive advertisements, products and brands that do not live up to promise, … Combining the topics of people, process, strategy and technology to solve problems and to find creative solutions is exciting.   Having over 20 years of leadership experience in the software industry, business development and consulting, you are currently CEO at two companies: Epiconic and aheadCRM. And here question splits into...

Digital Transformation. Heck, YES! But why?

by Thomas Wieberneit | Apr 27, 2016 | Blog |

Digital Transformation, much like customer journey mapping, customer engagement, customer experience management, is all the rage at the moment. Everybody – and their dog – talks about it. Including me … but then I think the term is widely overused. The other ones, too. Many companies strive to ‘digitally transform’ themselves. Because this is what one does. Everybody does it. But why? How? What does digital transformation deliver? Does it deliver? And what is digital transformation at all? Lets start with the last question. A transformation is a wholesales change of an organisation, e.g. a business. A transformation touches all departments of the business, its whole value chain. Digital, in its broadest sense, refers to anything computer. So, in combination ‘digital transformation’ means to change a business in order to take more advantage of computers and software, in all departments, along the whole value chain. It can even mean a change of the whole business model. Quite a tall order. Nothing that one just does just for the sake of it, one would think. This is an endeavour that an established business embarks on only if it faces the risk of failing, and one that usually takes quite some time. What are possible triggers? I see three, two of them relate to the market place, one to technology. Changing customer demands New or changed competition Technological advances OK, now we are talking. These days many businesses realise that all three of these triggers are set. Technology surely leapt forward in the past few years. E.g. the adaptation of mobiles on the consumer side is unprecedented. This got followed by drastically, and ever faster, changing...

Customer Experience, Customer Engagement and CRM – Think Big, Act Small

by Thomas Wieberneit | Jan 15, 2016 | Blog |

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 challenge. And it is! But if you break it down into smaller pieces it becomes manageable. It requires a kind of SCRUM-like project management approach, on corporate level. The objective is to have a strategy and delivery infrastructure that bases on optimally delivering to customer needs covers every touch point with the customer while remembering that not every customer journey is created equal is flexible enough to quickly adjust to changing customer demands embraces the strengths and weaknesses of the existing systems. Not every touch point needs all available information It all starts with the customer, with customer engagement, customer experience and, yeah, management of the relationship with the customer, in a mobile dominated...

CxM AND PoS – A Tale of two Cities

by Thomas Wieberneit | Oct 17, 2015 | Blog |

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, lacking something better. Mind the lower case ‘x’! A retailer cannot do without CxM either. As evidenced by the capital C, CxM disciplines are all about the customer, engaging with the customer on every possible meaningful channel, providing her with a positive and lasting experience, pre- and post sale. Consistently. This experience is what makes the customer transact with a retailer in a competitive world. Without a customer there is no transaction. Still, our protagonists are like cat and dog, like fire and water, like two cities at war. This doesn’t sound right, doesn’t it? So why is it like this? And...

CRM Evolution – Some not so random Thoughts

by Thomas Wieberneit | Aug 21, 2015 | Blog |

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 job in lining up interesting speakers. What now are the topics that currently seem to move the industry in random order? Customer engagement (CEM), customer experience (CEX), customer journey (CJ) and how these topics relate to CRM Big Data, with a view on the Internet of Things IoT, and related to it: Predictive analytics How to do things CRM right Not surprisingly: The Future of CRM (technology as well as industry) Also not surprisingly these are all interrelated. CEM, CEX, CJ and CRM The intersection of these three topics is extremely interesting. These are also controversially discussed topics. Paul Greenberg recently, in another “stake in the ground” article, gave...