Michael Maoz

It is hard to know where to begin describing the turmoil that destroyed the CRM applications market over the past seven years. We saw it coming. We predicted it. And now end user organizations struggle to recover confidence that any best of breed vendor will not undergo the same rapid process of launch, quick growth, and absorption into a more powerful and/or better funded enterprise. Knowledge solutions, customer service software, email response, salesforce automation, customer insight, and workforce management vendors all have been mashed together by investment firms and software collectors who viewed startups as outsourced R&D.

So, we won’t be fooled again, right? Wrong. Innovation is a key to growth, and innovation at the edges of applications rarely comes from large enterprise application vendors or market consolidators or collectors. It emerges from small startups that find valuable niche applications that can differentiate a business. Entering 2009 these areas include online marketing, channel analysis, community management, real-time decisioning, customer analytics, device monitoring, and collaborative content, or however one defines social software.

In a world of software as a service and SOA, we can protect ourselves somewhat from the downside of big commitments to application suites, both by consuming what we need, and snapping in functionality as it is needed. But the fear is there, and it will take better planning of the business case, and better alignment with a corporate objective, if you are going to have your budget approved. Our most successful customers are moving forward, but they are moving forward with their facts before them. They find the specific data from a sea of content, and use it to win approval. Herbert Simon wrote that, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Don’t boil the ocean: make a concise, compelling argument, and your CRM initiative will roll forward, despite the wreckage from the past.

1 Comment »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

Share