CRM Top Priority for IT Spending in 2013-2014 for Enterprise Applications

According to newly released data from analyst firm Gartner, CRM (customer relationship management) software will be the top priority for additional spending on enterprise applications in the global world*. Second place is ERP (enterprise resource planning), and Office Suites coming in third. According to the Gartner report, organizations are most interested in increasing spending on … Read more

Salesforce Milan Innovation Tour Recap #SFMIT

Last week, I attended the Salesforce Milan Innovation Tour at the Marriott in Milano. Before I get into details, I have to walk you through memory lane. Salesforce hosted their first Dreamforce 10 years ago, to about 500 people.   At the time, CRM was the big selling ticket as on-premise software was still the leader, … Read more

Top 5 Announcements for Dreamforce 2012 (What you need to know)

As expected last week, Dreamforce took over the city of San Francisco bigger and possibly better than last year. When you consider their registration increasing at a rate of almost 100% per year, you have to wonder how big can this event get?  Safety?  Of course, Oracle Open World is next week, so someone was … Read more

Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Front Office vs. Back Office

Dreamforce officially starts today with the main Keynotes starting tomorrow and once again, it’s literally a showcase as Salesforce continues to build out its product line on their ecosystem (as well as one giant party!). Last week, the media had a field day with the Work.com, ChatterBox & Salesforce Identity “announcements” which were potential threats … Read more

Where is Real-Time Decisions in your Sales and Marketing Strategy?

It’s 2012 and companies care about social media.  They use it to increasing their demand generation strategies using Facebook Fan Pages, Corporate Twitter accounts, beautiful Pinterest photographs,  and even YouTube channels, just to name a few. In the “Call Center”, they can monitor what’s being said about your company or your product.  You can use … Read more

Oracle to Launch Platform as a Service (Paas) for Fusion Apps, Others

During the entire Oracle-Salesforce duck and dive show with the cancelled keynote, it was obvious to me that this was not a spontaneous act.  It must have been orchestrated weeks before, because both parties would gain so much free marketing. And they did. For Salesforce, the Twittersphere and Facebook world were swarming with feeds and … Read more

Defining your Service Cloud or Call Center

In the last Dreamforce 2011 conference, a lot of emphasis was placed on the social profile within their Service cloud.  That is, having that user’s relevant Facebook and Twitter stream on the agent’s window.  Along with Data.com and Dun and Bradstreet, you can have accurate data from that user. As well, Salesforce also recommends the … Read more

Radian6 & Competitors- People are Waking Up

I am starting to see a trend for companies using Radian6 and other social enterprise monitoring products. Companies are responding to people’s complaints or queries directly through social media. Wake up everyone, it’s not the just the 1-800 Call Center anymore. With social enterprise monitoring products, companies look for keywords such as their own company, … Read more