How to make an impact on CX – with your supply chain
Amazon is surely an example for a company that has the reputation for good CX. Where does it come from? After all, the site is ugly. Too much advertisement, too. But then Amazon has outstanding supply chain and logistics. Customers like having alternatives even when they buy habitually. Amazon was good at delivering in 2-days and forgiven for not doing so during the pandemic. So they established their reputation before disruption upset it. Amazon also focuses on consumer experience. Many other firms don’t manage their supply chains that far forward. We are discussing with Steve LeMay, Associate Professor of Marketing and Logistics at the University of West Florida, and Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Logistics at Mississippi State University. Steve has a long history in researching supply chain, supply chain ethics and circular closed-loop supply chains. And he is the person who knows Paul Greenberg longest – apart from Paul’s brother … This makes him the perfect guest to talk about the impact that supply chains have on CX, and how to make sure that they contribute to a good CX. Have there be learnings from the Covid crisis? Or from the 2021 blockage of the Suez Canal? Which ones? Are they being implemented? Are lean supply chains too lean? How to make them lean and resilient? What is the state of research? Steve shares a wealth of experience and examples in this episode, which make it well worth reviewing it. Enjoy the last CRMKonvo of the year 2021. CU again on the other side of New Year’s...
The Clash of Titans – The Great 2021 Players
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...
You are a platform player? How to not be doomed!
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...