thomas.wieberneit@aheadcrm.co.nz
eCommerce is Dead! Long live iCommerce!

eCommerce is Dead! Long live iCommerce!

My new column article on how to take advantage of AI and MachineLearning in eCommerce is live on CustomerThink. It gives you background and actionable information, answering pressing questions like ‘Where does AI come into the picture’? Not wanting to spoil, here a little hint: There is far more than merely product recommendations. But read for...
Forrester Wave CRM Suites for Mid-Sized Businesses – What it Means

Forrester Wave CRM Suites for Mid-Sized Businesses – What it Means

Finally, the much-anticipated Forrester Wave on CRM Suites for Mid-Sized Businesses Q4/2016 has been published by Kate Leggett and her team at Forrester Research. Besides the usual suspects Oracle, Microsoft, Salesforce, and SAP it covers 7 more vendors that fulfil Forrester’s definition of a CRM suite for mid-sized businesses. This definition roughly is To be considered a suite the software covers at least three of the CRM disciplines Marketing Sales Force Automation Customer Service Field Service E-Commerce Customer Analytics There needs to be prebuilt integration between the products, if they are not within the same system; integration shall be via open standards to allow for integrating other applications. The software needs to be targeted at organizations between 250 and 999 employees. Multiple industries need to be targeted. Of course, the solutions need to be in active use and there need to be customer references. The Forrester Wave has some interesting results, some confirming what other people see, too, others somewhat surprising. Let me start with the confirmations, continue with bits that surprised me, and close with an SAP specific view. The Confirmations Of course, we are talking cloud – cloud and nothing else. As can be expected all vendors strive to deliver a toolset that helps their customers to deliver consistent customer experiences. Now I, and others, would argue that the experience is largely in the realm of the end customer and the users and that there is nothing like a ‘system of experience’. Delivering consistent experiences encompasses far more than a CRM suite. But then it is far easier (and sexier) to talk about delivering experiences than about...