by twieberneit | Nov 25, 2022 | Blog |
One of the terms du jour is „industry cloud“. We hear it even more often than even platform or CX at this time. Why is that? Why do we speak about them only now and not for a longer time? After all, we have seen industry solutions forever, albeit on premise. Yes, the concept of vertical solutions is that old. What is the value of an industry cloud? How does “industry cloud” differ from “industry solution”? And does this term really describe what industries need? These are only some of the questions that we wanted to discuss with Vinnie Mirchandani as part of aCRMKonvo. Hurricane Ian intervened and Vinnie had more important things to do than a CRMKonvo. Luckily, everything turned out well for him. Good for the CRMKonvos team, that friend and Enterprise Irregular Jon Reed could jump in to what turned out to be an even more interesting topic than we hoped for. We will continue this discussion with Vinnie on a later occasion. He has quite something to say about industry clouds, and comes from another angle than Jon. The problem with industry clouds Most business applications have started their life as horizontal applications. This makes a lot of sense, as a good deal of the functionality that a business needs, and the application offers, is not exactly industry specific. Instead, it is applicable across a range of industries. Therefore, business software vendors at first concentrated on developing horizontal functionality, as this functionality is reusable across and customized for numerous industries. Often with only little effort. This applies to SaaS software as well as it did apply to on premise...
by twieberneit | Nov 18, 2022 | Analysis, Blog |
On November 10, 2022, SugarCRM held its annual analyst day in the beautiful Chaminade resort in Santa Cruz. In attendance was an elusive crowd of 14 analysts and six customer representatives, along with the SugarCRM executives. We gathered to inform ourselves about what is going on, what will be going on, and of course, to listen and talk to customers about how they solve their business challenges with SugarCRM. All of this in plenum- and individual formats along with good space for informal talks. The event Apart from the very important social activities that enabled SugarCRM executives, customers, partner representatives and analysts to mingle and talk, the event consisted of several informative briefings that ranged from strategy and roadmap sessions across the platform to all-important customer interviews. The last session was an open question and answer with the executive team. The customers in attendance have been very diverse, including (for profit) social business, a jet charter and service business, educational, medical businesses, and a governmental organization. Some of them are fairly new Sugar customers, some of them are with SugarCRM for a long time. What all of them have in common is that they have non-run-off-the-mill businesses and processes and that they use at least two of SugarCRM’s solutions. Some key insights that they shared were that they are often able to adapt their systems to changing needs by themselves and that, whenever they needed the support, it was readily available. Two of the stories brought very notable points. One business explained its ability to merge twenty plus acquisitions in less than two years into their system, so that...
by twieberneit | Dec 10, 2021 | Blog |
The year 2021 comes to an end. More than three years have gone by since the last look at the Clash of Titans, an analysis of how the then big 4.5: Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, and Adobe – along with some other players, are shaping the greater CRM and CX arena. A lot has changed since Thomas Wieberneit published his 2018 series that consisted of 4 articles: Platform PlayMicrosoft and SAP weigh inThe War Cry: Oracle and SalesforceThe IaaS Platform Providers It is obvious that the commoditization of the business application continues, and the vendors’ focus on the underlying platform has even increased since 2018. CRM, and enterprise software in general, has always been a platform play although this has not always been recognized and sometimes even negated. Two obvious reasons for it being a platform play is that the creation of positive customer and user experiences needs a consistent technical platform, or we end up with engagements that are fragmented across interactions. This results in inconsistent and poor experiences. The second reason is that it needs a technological platform to enable and grow a thriving ecosystem. Vinnie Mirchandani in January 2020 stated that Enterprise Software Platforms have so far underperformed. Mirchandani looked at Microsoft, SAP and Salesforce. He basically argues, without providing too many details, that the major enterprise software vendors’ platforms are all lacking ambitious goals and do not aim high enough. One of his major points is that none of these vendors has put enough emphasis in empowering, nurturing and growing their respective partner ecosystems to take advantage of the software platforms by augmenting the applications delivered by the platform vendor...
by twieberneit | Dec 8, 2021 | Blog |
These days every significant software vendor and some others, too, is positioning itself as a CX- and/or a platform player. By now, it is well known, what it means to be a platform player, and this is also not the main topic of this post. Just as much: In order to be a significant CX player, one quite simply needs to be a platform player. Also, regardless of whether one has a platform or not, if everyone is a CX and a platform player, then obviously this is nothing that differentiates one vendor from the other anymore. Customers meanwhile nearly expect a set of solutions by one vendor being built upon one platform – or at least to appear like they are built on one platform. This basically means that “platform” as a thing to emphasize on has reached its zenith. And then, there is an additional problem associated with the platform game. A platform market is a kind of a winner takes it all market. Following the analysis and argumentation of Ray Wang in his new book Everybody Wants to Rule the World, in a platform market there will be only two major players. All other players are becoming insignificant or will vanish. While this sounds somewhat dystopian the point that I want to make is that there will not be a great many successful and strong players in a platform market. To use a metaphor, at one point in time a few vendors will have created enough gravity to become the entity that customers are attracted to. It is also visible that the first vendors have understood this and are acting...
by twieberneit | Nov 24, 2021 | Analysis, Blog |
The News On November 11, 2021 Freshworks held its annual Freshworks Refresh event. This year, the event had a hybrid format with around 250 customers, partners and analysts participating on site while around 17k people have registered for online participation. There was a social pre-event and an after-event for entertainment and networking purposes. The event itself was themed around “delight made easy”. Naturally, it had different agendas for customers and partners on one side and analysts on the other side. The morning was dedicated to a 4-hour sequence of keynote sessions for everyone. The event was kicked off with a keynote by Neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author David Eagleman, who spoke about the “Science of Delight”. The closing keynote was delivered by Amy Purdy, who shared her inspiring story of how she used creativity, a positive outlook and a never-give-up attitude to turn her life from nearly dying, finding herself with a double lower leg amputation and failing organs into becoming a 3 times Paralympic medalist. Between these two speakers, who set the scene, Freshworks offered product and customer information. Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham gave a product update that linked into Eagleman’s message and a distributed customer panel spoke about their experiences with Freshworks, how they implemented Freshworks solutions and how these help the respective businesses. Rounding this off, Freshworks awarded several prizes to customers who offer exceptional EX or CX and showcased the winners of an internal hackathon. The latter is relevant because these winning solutions made it into or will make it into Freshworks products. The afternoon was filled with customer related information in the customer and partner track and product and strategy sessions for the analysts. The...
