Clash of Titans – Platform Play
A lot has evolved since my Clash of the Titans post that looked into how the big 4.5 (Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, and Adobe) and others are positioning themselves and their platform in the greater CRM arena. First, the commoditization of the business application has accelerated and the vendors’ focus on the underlying platform has increased. CRM, and enterprise software in general, has always been a platform play although this has not always been recognized and sometimes even negated. The obvious reason for it being a platform play is that the creation of positive customer and user experiences need a consistent technical platform. Or else we are ending up in engagements that are fragmented across interactions. This results in inconsistent and poor experiences. So far, so well known. A bit less obvious is the fact that there will be only few dominant platforms. Vendors, who want to become and stay successful on a grand scale need to be one of these few platform providers and attract partners and customers. This is the reason why I consult my customers that one of the very first IT strategy decisions that they need to take is the platform decision. As the article got a little longer this time and as I do not tend to write articles that are as long as dear friend Paull Greenberg’s (maybe I should consider to?) this revisit of the Clash of the Titans will become a two or three piece series, first covering the framework I want to use, the very definition of what I talk of when saying that CRM is a ‘platform play’. The...
CRMEvolution 2018 – A Good-Bye, a Hello, and some not so random Thoughts
Just back home from CRMEvolution it is time to do a little recap on this year’s instance of the conference. This year the conference was co-chaired by Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary, two of the most accomplished independent analysts and influencers around. And also two great persons! It is with a sad I that we see Paul saying good-bye to chairing the conference after 2018 but then Brent is likely to be a very good successor. It will be interesting to see where he will add his style, connections, and background to the conference. This year, we have seen an Amazon keynote for the first time, which I reckon is one of the first marks Brent set as a chair. CRM Evolution: The Main Themes This year there have been some main themes; none of them really surprising, if one follows the industry: It is all about people, not about technology. And in order to successfully get things done in the coming years people need to ‘unlearn’ a thing or two, in order to become open for solving challenges in the novel ways that are required. This point was already hammered down in Brian Solis’ opening keynote. Iteration (doing the same in a better way) doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. Thriving in future will require more innovation (doing new things) and increasingly disruption (doing new things that make the old ones obsolete). At the same time it is crucial to keep one’s audience in mind. AI, machine learning, and with it chat bots are taking centre stage. Customer as well as user engagement needs to be in real time...
Freshworks acquires Zarget – A Snap Analysis from Down Under
The News Freshworks on 29/08/2017 announced that it acquired Zarget, a conversion rate optimization software startup. With this being the ninth acquisition in about two years Freshworks is continuing to augment its development by adding missing functionality from outside while adding talent to the teams. Zarget’s software is helping marketers measuring and understanding how users interact with their websites, which is important information when it comes to assessing reasons for users not becoming customers. For Freshworks this acquisition also marks a first step to close the functional gap that marketing still is for them. With Freshworks founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham having been an angel investor into Zarget this is also a natural choice. An interesting piece of information comes as a quote by Girish: “ At Freshworks, our ambition is to emerge as the de facto cloud-based business software platform for businesses of all sizes”. The Bigger Picture There are a couple of interesting facets to this acquisition. Freshworks, by virtue of its rebranding from Freshdesk, has made a bold statement that they are not striving to cover customer service only. This, of course, was clear earlier when looking at their range of products and solutions but this naming implies an ambition. I have commented on this this earlier. While they are still concentrating on the wider CRM area with bot acquisitions, a recent release of Freshteam, a CRM for recruiters, there is a tendency to divert into different areas. This time it is about starting to close a fundamental gap in Freshworks’ CRM offerings: So far there has virtually been no marketing functionality. Looking specifically at marketing...