Robert Desisto

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Entries Categorized as 'CRM'


Dreamforce 2011: Salesforce.com Doubles Down on Social and Mobile Technologies

by Robert Desisto  |  October 7, 2011  |  Comments Off

Salesforce.com reinforced its strategy for social and mobile technologies with a number of announcements at Dreamforce 2011. The social enterprise is its latest marketing theme, introduced at Dreamforce 2011 to elevate awareness of the salesforce.com’s current cloud offerings, such as Chatter. This research note http://www.gartner.com/resId=1815914 analyzes the mobile, social and platform elements of salesforce.com’s announcements [...]

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Category: CRM SaaS Software as a Service salesforce automation     Tags: ,

CRM SaaS Pie Growing?

by Robert Desisto  |  September 16, 2011  |  Comments Off

It was assumed that the CRM SaaS market would be a zero sum game. Success of Microsoft would come at the expense of market share leader salesforce.com. However, there is evidence to the contrary. Two specific market events directly go against the prevailing wisdom that Microsoft’s gain would be Salesforce.com’s loss, or vice versa. Salesforce.com [...]

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Category: CRM Cloud SaaS Software as a Service salesforce automation     Tags: , , ,

SaaS Enterprise License Agreements Are Not New, Buyer Beware

by Robert Desisto  |  September 8, 2011  |  Comments Off

Spurned on by recent press hype, I have been inundated with calls from clients about a supposedly new concept called SaaS Enterprise License Agreements. Despite claims made by some vendors this is not a new concept, even for vendors who are making claims that it is new have been offering it for years. Sometimes vendors [...]

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Category: CRM Cloud SaaS Software as a Service Vendor Contracts     Tags: , , , , , , ,

Evaluating a Vendor’s SaaS Delivery

by Robert Desisto  |  August 18, 2011  |  Comments Off

I just published research on how to measure a vendor’s SaaS delivery capability. It covers topics ranging from a vendor’s operational management capabilities to measuring the the strength of a vendor’s service level agreement. No matter what SaaS application your considering (e.g., email, CRM, ERP, etc) this research note How to Evaluate A Vendor’s SaaS [...]

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Category: CRM Cloud ERP SaaS Software as a Service salesforce automation     Tags: , ,

Apply Gartner’s Pace Layer Model to Sales Applications

by Robert Desisto  |  July 22, 2011  |  2 Comments

Gartner’s Pace Layer Model can help sales organizations develop an effective, flexible and innovative sales application strategy. I just recently published a research paper on using the Pace Layer model to deconstruct a sales application portfolio. I provide specific examples for both sales organizations with direct and indirect sales channel models. The goal of the [...]

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Category: CRM salesforce automation     Tags: , ,

2011 Sales Force Automation Magic Quadrant Released

by Robert Desisto  |  July 18, 2011  |  Comments Off

Check out the 2011 Sales Force Automation Magic Quadrant (released on July 15th, 2011). Mobility continues to grow in importance for users; therefore, it has also become a more critical component of our evaluation criteria for the sales force automation (SFA) Magic Quadrant. Smartphones and iPads (see “iPads: Customer-Facing Selling Will Drive iPad Use for [...]

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Category: Applications CRM Cloud Software as a Service     Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Evaluating Sales Force Automation Functionality

by Robert Desisto  |  March 24, 2011  |  Comments Off

Just published an update to the Gartner Decision Framework for Evaluating Salesforce Automation functionality. The framework provides a complete view and suitability analysis of functionality for sales force automation ranging for opportunity management to social CRM.

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Category: CRM     Tags: ,

Wanted: Salesperson who loves their Sales Force Automation System

by Robert Desisto  |  March 21, 2011  |  Comments Off

Lately, I keep hearing from sales force automation technology providers that salespeople who use their system “Love it”. Love?, Really?. The only reaction I ever get from a real sales person is that they enter as little data as possible into a sales force automation system to avoid being spied on. I am hoping this [...]

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Category: CRM     Tags: ,

SAP Offers Further Details on New CRM SaaS Offering

by Robert Desisto  |  March 7, 2011  |  4 Comments

On 1 March 2011, SAP previewed its updated Sales OnDemand solution at CeBIT 2011 in Hanover, Germany. Neither pricing nor an official release date has been determined, but the product will be available for early customer involvement in April 2011. The new offering reflects a trend toward social technology in CRM applications with a people-centric [...]

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Category: Applications CRM Cloud ERP SaaS Software as a Service     Tags: , , ,

What is all the chatter about Salesforce.com’s Chatter?

by Robert Desisto  |  March 4, 2011  |  1 Comment

Salesforce.com is taking a different approach to social technology by embedding capabilities directly into the context of the application. Other vendors incorporate collaboration items like instant messaging or content sharing, but not to the extent of salesforce.com. Salesforce.com attempts to use principles similar to those of Facebook for CRM applications, and sees Facebook as having [...]

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Category: CRM Cloud Customer Service SaaS Software as a Service     Tags: , , , ,