You are a platform player? How to not be doomed!

by Thomas Wieberneit | 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...

Zoho One – The Operating System for Business

by Thomas Wieberneit | Oct 19, 2021 | Analysis, Blog, Sponsored |

Zoho is a privately-owned technology company that was founded in 1996 as Adventnet, Inc. and has quietly evolved into an ambitious global player that serves the SMB and enterprise markets with cloud applications. The company offers a suite of more than 50 business, collaboration and productivity applications. These include applications for CRM, project management, finance, human resource management, analytics and support.  The company is headquartered in Chennai, India. It has eleven offices in India, five in the United States and has offices in Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, Singapore, China, Egypt, South Africa, United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands. Offices in France and Germany are in preparation. Zoho has more than 10,000employees as of mid-2021. It is present in 180 countries with more than 70 million users. Zoho is led by its co-founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu. Being a privately held company, Zoho is not obliged to, and does not publish revenue or profit numbers. However, the company indicates a track record of profitable growth that is well in the double digits. The company manages its growth organically, i.e. without acquisitions. All applications are built by Zoho, using one single hard- and software stack. They are deployed and delivered via Zoho owned data centers in the United States, Europe, India, China and Australia. Following this unique approach, the company has built a solid platform with a unified data model that allows it to grow and deliver software at high speed. Core values of Zoho include corporate self-determination, privacy as a principle and a commitment to delivering high value. Zoho One Zoho aspires to deliver the operating system of a business with the goal of driving customers’ margins by unifying business operations on one single technology platform. The most important part...

Zohonomics: How to make a difference by creating resources

by Thomas Wieberneit | Aug 3, 2021 | Blog, CRMKonvos |

What does it take to make a company sustainably successful? Why is it so important to combine the global and the local view? And what is Zohonomics about? The CRMKonvos team had the chance to discuss with Vijay Sundaram, Chief Strategy Officer at Zoho about these topics – and some more. As one of very few global companies, Zoho has made it its strategy to not build locations in tier one centres, but to go to smaller towns. According to Vijay, this is highly beneficial. The company is also doing some other things different. As one example, Zoho does not look at resources as something that is constrained, but as something that can and needs to be created! Another interesting view is the one on core competencies? What are they? And why? Will they stay static? What to do if one does not have a competency? Why does all this matter? Vijay explains this in the CRMKonvo.  tl&dr? The CRMKonvo is totally worthwhile following. In case you want a shorter version of some key aspects: Vijay Sudaram explains Zohonomics and how the avoidance of fads in favour of sustainable principles is beneficial....

Why privacy is not an option

by Thomas Wieberneit | Jul 6, 2021 | Blog, CRMKonvos |

Data breaches, ransomware, stolen identities, collecting of data for no benefit of the customer, are only some of the things that we do see every day. There does not seem to be any privacy anymore. This makes privacy and data protection hot topics not only for customers, but also for software vendors – or at least should make it hot topics. Apple put in some privacy controls and got chided for it by Facebook and the rest of the adtech industry. Google, with FLOC, tried to establish a technology that aimed at being able to track users in a post cookie world. To adapt a quote of the Asterix books: The whole world tracks users and customers. The whole world? No, there is one brave company that doesn’t. All this is reason enough to have a #CRMKonvo with one of the most accomplished and outspoken protagonists of privacy in the enterprise software arena and we were very excited about the opportunity to have an intense and interactive discussion with Raju Vegesna of...

Outlaw Spirit – Lessons from The Zoho Analyst Day 2021

by Thomas Wieberneit | Mar 3, 2021 | Analysis, Blog |

The 2021 Zoho analyst day certainly was different. Different not only because it was not an offline but an online event but in the way it was prepared and conducted. Apparently, the team around Sandra Lo has taken up quite some lessons that other events had to learn, too. This is kind of the advantage one has not being the first one in a season. But this was only one part of it. The second part is that the whole event was run using Zoho software, in particular Zoho Backstage and Zoho Meeting. Overall, there have been some 150 attendees with what I assume, very different levels of knowledge about Zoho. The event In contrast to most other analyst events, this one required actual preparation, as product and roadmap topics have been sent out beforehand for self-study – and were kind of “required reading”. Going through all videos at least once was an exercise that lasted more than five hours. The event itself was split into two days of two and a half hours each, covering topics from corporate responsibility via status up to roadmap topics. Day one started with a corporate presentation, the past 25 years and a view into the next 25 years, based upon CEO Sridhar Vembu’s vision and the partly interrelated themes that he sees (and builds his company around): De-Layering the tech stack, which means that within the tech stack from chip level to business solutions that a company operates, less vendors will be neededExtreme financial bubbles that we have seen and will continue to seeThe emergence of self-reliant regional economies and the regionalization...