by twieberneit | Nov 6, 2020 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
It was a Tuesday again. This time Ralf Korb and I greeted Raj Balasundaram, Senior Vice President of AI at Emarsys as our guest – and had a second one, but more on this special appearance below. Of course we were interested in both sides, Emarsys, the marketing automation company that was recently acquired by SAP, and in his deep experience with the implementation and use of AI based systems. We had lots of questions like: Where is the marketing automation market headed? What is your view on marketing automation tools at the intersection of CDP’s, personalization, RTIM, Customer Journey Orchestration? Will these market segments merge? Will they jointly create another one? What is the difference between Marketing Automation and Marketing Clouds? Is one used rather for B2B purposes and the other one more on the B2C side? Or is it different concepts? What is the role of AI and M/L? What is AI after all? Is it just a vendor generated hype? Why should AI work now, after the previous hype cycles failed to deliver on the promise? What are promising applications of AI and machine learning in marketing? Lots of ground to cover. And then we also touched pricing, which currently is a very hot topic. Raj has an interesting point of view – that I like a lot. Last but not least, Ray Gerber, Chief Solution Officer at Thunderhead, who started to follow the CRMKonvo as an interested and active community member came in for some more in depth AI discussion. Things couldn’t get any better, and of course we didn’t stick to the hour that we gave ourselves. Too...
by twieberneit | Nov 2, 2020 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
Ralf Korb and I had a special guest in Jesus Hoyos, long time CRM practitioner and analyst who works from Mexico and Florida. Jesus concentrates on the Latin American and North American markets. Apart from being a genuinely great person, he had a lot of interesting topics to cover, starting from how different even the various Latin- and South American markets are to how pricing models should be different, not only to accommodate for a pandemic situation but also for the structures of markets that are dominated by small companies, companies that are far smaller that the enterprises that are usually targeted by the bigger vendors. This also has implications on product development, training schemes and its availability, partner and ecosystem enablement and a lot of of other topics (including kayaking in the Everglades). This is a conversation mostly in English, with some Spanglish and a few German in between. And it is jam-packed with valuable information. Well worthwhile viewing and listening...
by twieberneit | Oct 26, 2020 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
In this episode Ralf Korb, Marshall Lager and I had two very special guests: Bob Stutz, president of SAP’s CX group, who shapes the CRM industry for more than 20 years now and Esteban Kolsky, former analyst, both independently and at Gartner. Esteban has deep roots and a passion for customer service processes and now leads the sales and service products at SAP CX. And then there was a special star, perhaps the youngest guest who we will ever have. Again, and as usual for our CRMKonvos, we did not stick to one hour. Bob and Esteban actually shared their insights for a full 90 minutes, which is something for which we are deeply grateful. We covered a lot of ground starting with how 22 years of experience in the military services can help in the software industry – and not ending with why it took him and his team that long to publish an SAP CX strategy. You are interested in the state of AI and machine learning? Ask Esteban – or listen to his statements in this episode. Same for what we are doing wrong in customer service for five decades now. And he needs to know, having a service centre background and having covered the service arena for 20 years now in various roles. Did the acquisitions that SAP did in the past years make sense? Why did it take SAP that long to figure out some of the gems in their portfolio? How should pricing look like and why would make this pricing vendors build better software? Why Emarsys? Where does it fit into the stack – and why?Ever wondered what the real...
by twieberneit | Oct 8, 2020 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
#CRMKonvos #17 – The dark side of the Cloud – danger, hope, liability, subscription, privacy … are they all gone? Quo vadis on premise and managed services? We are looking at the dark side of the cloud, its effects, chances and possibilities. We are also analysing the acquisition of Emarsys by SAP, do a little breakdown of the Microsoft cloud services that got announced last week (MS Teams anyone?) and general perspectives. Is the coveted 360 degree on the customer an illusion? And there is some harsh reality facing some suboptimal corporate structures. Fair play, as lived by Zoho, is another topic to be covered … Expectations towards SAP and its Customer Data Platform CDP++ are going towards the next level. Is SAP planning to destroy the silos to create more transparency? Is CDP really some BS (hint: not really) or can it be used in a valuable (for the customer) way)? A CX platform or at least a #COTP (Customer oriented Transaction Platform) are possible ways. Lots of ground to be covered. This episode is in...
by twieberneit | Oct 3, 2020 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
During this episode we talked with Mitch Lieberman who has quite some experience in the CRM industry, on the vendor- and analyst side. He was with Epiphany, Sugar, and with G2, to name but a few.He has the insight and the sharp mind that makes this conversation particularly interesting, without me diminishing the other ones, though.Mitch certainly got our grey matter into high gear during our conversation that started with CX, went into a solid discussion of the value (what is it?) of Customer Data Platforms, CDP, on to conversational systems – and back. Btw, what is a CDP? Let Mitch provide his interesting view.We learned a lot.You can, too.This conversation is in English, apart from a few minutes at the beginning and the...
