Salesreps still hate their CRM – Here’s what to do about it!
Salesreps really love to feed data into their CRM system after a long day, or even during the week-end. They are truly looking forward to their weekly sales call with numbers that every single one of their colleague massaged themselves. They are obsessed with typing all sorts of entries into a quotation and know their product catalogue by heart, so that they can provide their customer with the best of all possible quotes to solve their business issue. Salespeople really appreciate all the high quality leads that are funnelled to them by the system. And, of course, they are truly altruistic and thrive on helping their customers for good. Sounds like you? No? Well, then you are probably like most of us. In brief: Salespeople hate their CRM! This didn’t change almost 40 years after the first electronic CRM tools have been introduced. Users of CRM systems still often do not have the feeling that the systems are serving them, but that it is rather the opposite. That is especially true for salespeople. But I repeat myself. Salespeople face a two-pronged challenge. On one side, in an environment that is more and more data driven, they face an increasing reporting demand, which in turns requires an increasing amount of quality data being fed into the system. They feel that all these administrative tasks keep them away what they are doing best and what they want to do most: Be with their customers, understand them, and offer – sell – them the right solutions for their challenges. Thereby making them happy. On the other hand, salespeople feel that they become...
Salesforce Q1 FY21 Numbers – Quite Good, eh?
The news It is reporting season – and I am actually already somewhat late to have a look at Salesforce’s Q1 figures of fiscal year 20/21 and to think about some implications. The earnings presentation makes for an interesting overview, more details are in the quarterly filing, the earnings release, and the transcript of the earnings webcast. So, let’s get into it and look at some figures, concentrating on the company overview, result highlights, revenue and margin developments, revenues by cloud and region. Right on the first content page Salesforce states that it Is #1 CRM software provider worldwide Consistently delivers durable revenue growth Is the fastest growing top five enterprise software company Is uniquely positioned to help customer drive broad-based digital transformation Revenue is up 31 per cent (at constant currency) to nearly $4.9 billion for this quarter, which is slightly below the Q4/FY20 guidance. Operating cash flow shrank slightly to $1.86 billion year over year. The company adjusted the revenue guidance from $21 – $21.1 billion as per the Q4/FY20 down to $20 billion. GAAP earnings per share are adjusted to ($0.06) to ($0.04) from $0.12 to $0.14. Growth of FY21 operating cash flow is adjusted to 10 – 11 per cent from 20 per cent. GAAP operating margin went down by 8.5 per cent points to a negative 2.9 per cent with the non GAAP operating margin going down by 5.1 per cent points to 13.1 per cent. On the revenue distribution frontier it shows that Salesforce’s growth happens in the ‘Sales Platform & Other’ category, which vastly outpaces the other clouds already since Q4 last...
Quo Vadis SAP?
For quite some time the SAP CX community asks itself where SAP is going, or more precisely, which direction its Customer Experience portfolio is taking. This is a worrisome question, particularly as the larger CRM market is estimated to be the biggest segment of the enterprise software market since 2018; and since SAP is positioned with a number of strong solutions, partly home-grown and partly acquired. Hybris, Gigya, CallidusCloud, Qualtrics are only the shiniest catches of the acquisition spree that SAP took under Bill McDermott’s leadership. In September 2015 SAP announced that it set out to build an integrated suite of front office solutions, which the company declared delivered during SAPPHIRE 2018, which also marked the birth of the ‘intelligent enterprise’. These two announcements can basically be summed up as take the CRM market from its strength on the ERP and supply chain side. In between, SAP imported important parts of its CRM 7 solution into its new S/4HANA solution At that time, SAP has essentially turned into a serious player on the CRM market. Which is an impression that got fortified by Bob Stutz joining SAP to lead the Customer Experience team in October 2019. I mean, there is no software exec who is more successful in shaping and driving CRM – with the possible exception of Mark Benioff. Bob, in turn, with Esteban Kolsky, convinced one of the smartest CRM analysts around to become his head of strategy. What could go wrong? Fast forward to June 2020 Bob Stutz holds his position for about 8 months. Jennifer Morgan, so far Co-CEO with Christian Klein, left SAP. The...