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Monday’s Musings: The Controversy Surrounding Gartner’s CRM Market Share Analysis

Published on May 6, 2013 by R "Ray" Wang

The Gartner Market Share Analysis:CRM Software Report Raises Questions On Accuracy of Market Sizing Reports

The recent Gartner report “Market Share Analysis: Customer Relationship Management Software, Worldwide, 2012” has generated some controversy among the enterprise software set. The report and other reports such as these, are often used for bragging rights by vendors and for buyers to gauge vendor viability.

This specific report attempts to rank CRM software spending by vendor using total software revenue worldwide. The good news – the numbers are directionally correct with Salesforce.com claiming the top mantle from SAP this year with $2.525 billion in CRM revenue (see Figure 1). The bad news – many question the accuracy of the actual revenues numbers as listed in the press release, especially for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM business.

As Scott Bekker at Redmond Magazine reported, “Gartner put Microsoft’s CRM revenue at $1.1 billion, up from $900 million in calendar-year 2011. That’s a sizable bump. As of May 2012, Microsoft was only claiming that all of Dynamics, which includes Microsoft’s established ERP products as well as CRM, amounted to $1 billion in annual revenues.”

Mssr. Bekker makes a polite but astute point. The 26% bump in CRM revenue is significant. However, the total revenues are questionable. In any modest observation, that kind of overall growth in the Microsoft Dynamics unit would have Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, shouting from the tops of Mount Ranier and probably have Kirill Tatarinov next in line to be Microsoft’s CEO.

Figure 1. Gartner’s Recent CRM Software Spending by Vendor, Total Software Revenue Worldwide, 2012 (Millions of Dollars)

Not to violate any copyright laws, despite fair use laws, here’s a link to the full table found in their press release. A recreated table below shows the rankings.

Bottom line it shows Microsoft in 4th place for CRM with over 1.1B in revenue.

Organization 2012 revenues 2012 marketshare (%) 2011 revenues 2011-2012% growth

salesforce.com 2,525.6 14.0 2,004.6 26.0

SAP 2,327.1 12.9 2,325.1 0.1

Oracle 2,015.2 11.1 1,870.0 7.8

Microsoft 1,135.3 6.3 900.9 26.0

The Market Sizing Game For Vendors And Legacy Analyst Firms Flawed With Faulty Methodology

In reality, the market sizing game for enterprise software is both an art with some science. Having played this role as a vendor in an Analyst Relations capacity in a past life, one knows that executives can not disclose such financial information directly to a research or market sizing firm. The research analysts must play a guessing game with the software executive and ask 100 questions to zero in on a number. Unlike hardware, where individual counts are more obvious, software revenue sizing requires analysts to dig deep into financial statements and any conversation where growth rates have been discussed. Revenues are hidden in bundling, suite sales, discounting schemes, channel revenue deals, OEM arrangements, and inter-company transfers. To complicate matters, SaaS revenue calculations can differ from how on-premises revenues are calculated. Analysts must also determine the truthfulness of vendors who are trying to indirectly guide analysts to the “right” numbers. In short, this is hard work.

As assumptions are built on previous numbers, one false guess in a previous year, cascades and geometrically inflates or deflates a set of future numbers. In the case of these CRM numbers, one may speculate that past executives may have provided a higher number than actually generated, resulting in the current alleged inaccuracies. Another speculation may come from previous and current analysts who may only focus on one area of the business and not have the total picture on the Microsoft Dynamics overall business. There are many points of inaccuracy that can occur with software revenue market sizing and every legacy analyst and market sizing firm works hard to avoid these situations. For market analysts, dissecting revenue from vendors such as SAP and Oracle is often difficult as these numbers and break outs are masked with multiple acquisitions and product lines.

To be clear, the SAP and Oracle numbers also seem inflated. These numbers have been inflated over decades. Given that these vendors also have many other lines of revenue aside from CRM, it’s hard to gauge the accuracy of their numbers without some digging. Now one would assume a market sizing firm should be doing this right?

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Revenues Do Not Meet The General Sniff Test

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Market Maker 1:1: Steve Miranda, Oracle Fusion Applications Update – The Inside Story

Published on December 31, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

The Inside Story On Oracle Fusion Apps At The End of 2012

Constellation sat down with Steve Miranda, Oracle’s Executive Vice President of Oracle Applications Product Development to discuss the state of Oracle Fusion Apps in a no-holds barred honest conversation about what’s working, what’s not, and what to look forward to in 2013.

R “Ray” Wang (RW): Steve Miranda is Executive Vice President of Oracle Applications Product Development. He is responsible for leading all aspects of product strategy, product development, and product delivery for Oracle’s applications and related cloud services. This includes Oracle Fusion Applications and Oracle’s newest products for customer service and support, commerce, and talent management.

Mr. Miranda joined Oracle in 1992 and has held a variety of leadership positions within the development organization. In 2007 he was asked to lead the engineering of Oracle’s next-generation suite of software applications, Oracle Fusion Applications. Under Mr. Miranda’s leadership, Oracle has continually delivered on its promise to help its applications customers innovate and remain competitive while leveraging their existing IT investments and increasing the value of those investments with new Oracle products and services.

Prior to Oracle, Mr. Miranda worked at GE Aerospace. He holds degrees in mathematics and computational sciences from Stanford University.

CATCHING UP ON ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS TRACTION

(RW): As 2012 is coming to an end it is a good time to reflect on how Oracle Fusion Applications has been doing this year. It would seem that Oracle’s been quite quiet about Oracle Fusion Applications throughout the year. Is the product selling? What’s the state of the Oracle Fusion Applications product lines?

Steve Miranda(SM): Oracle Fusion Applications is doing very well. We’re actively selling the product. In fact, we already have over 400 customers on Oracle Fusion Applications. We’re doing better than Salesforce.com when they started. Keep in mind, we have a rich customer base looking for innovation.

RW: When you say “Oracle Fusion Applications is selling well”, is that the whole suite or components of Oracle Fusion Applications?

SM: We are actively selling the product. More than 400 customers are on Oracle Fusion Applications, that’s any part of Oracle Fusion Applications, not including RightNow, Taleo, Oracle Business Analytics, or Oracle Fusion Middleware. Two thirds of the customers have chosen to deploy in a SaaS model. Then the second largest deployment model but far below are on-premise and the rest are hosted in our managed services.

RW: Does “managed services” means they own their own license, right?

SM: That’s correct. What’s powerful about these deployments patterns is that customers are accessing innovation faster than before. We are at over 100 live customers and are averaging one go-live a day right now.

RW: I understand that Oracle deployed Oracle Fusion Applications internally? How was that experience in “drinking your own champagne”?

SM: Ray, that’s correct. We did drink our own champagne and we are now using Oracle Fusion CRM internally instead of Siebel.. We have a global single instance for the business. When we deployed, we started out with 2 instances to show case a co-existence approach and an end-to-end Oracle Fusion Applications approach. As of June 1, 2012, Oracle Fusion CRM was up around the world. All the territories, forecasting, quotas, sales force automation, and contacts are in Oracle Fusion CRM globally.

RW: Is it one instance now?

SM: Yes. We also went live w/ Oracle Fusion Financials Accounting Hub on the back end. We replaced Hyperion and Oracle E-Business Suite GL and also went live June 1, 2012. We’ve already done several month-end closes and we also have Oracle Fusion Talent Performance Management up live. Employees and managers are now doing goal setting and appraisals.

RW: To be honest with you Steve, we aren’t seeing Oracle much in head to head competitive new deals. We don’t see big press releases about new wins. Where are the customers? Who’s buying what and why?

SM: Well, first of all, many of our existing customers are coming to us about Oracle Fusion Applications. Second of all, and you may not believe this, we’re not focused on publicity, but rather we want to ensure customer success.. Each go-live is very important to us. In our first set of go-lives, we have 10,000 customers who want to talk to the first 10 go lives. We also don’t want to overwhelm our initial customers.

Let me give you some details and examples so you understand the breadth and depth of what the Fusion Apps base looks like and so there’s no confusion. Here’s a selected slice:

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Event Report: The Tweet Stream From #DF12

Published on September 23, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Enjoy the tweet stream from #DF12. It’s all in here.

The Storify Tweet Stream

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Event Report: Dreamforce X (#DF12) Emerges As The South By Southwest (#SXSW) For The Enterprise

Published on by R "Ray" Wang

Dreamforce Represents The Mecca For The “Art Of The Possible” In The Enterprise

Whether Salesforce.com’s flagship conference at Moscone Center was the most attended conference (~48,000) or the most registered for event (~90,000), matters not. When examined in context of the magnitude of what was accomplished, the impact of this 10th annual event transcends attendance numbers. Business folks and the converted IT brethren converged on the week of September 18th, 2012, to see what the future could be inside the enterprise. They left with inspiration and the gospel of what was possible, as told by those before them. The event represented the intersection of where aspiration meets innovation for the enterprise.

Key takeaways from interviews with over 100 attendees reflect the following trends:

Attendee sentiment signals the return of the front office. Prior to the coining of the CRM term, front office was the term which defined marketing, service, eCommerce, and sales force automation. The move back to integrated customer experiences reflects a renewed interest in all the front office touch points and all the support in the back office required to support the customer experience. Attendees walked in with questions about how to integrate their legacy ERP and expose their transactional systems into the front office.
Customers seek knowledge and case studies on business transformation. Delegations arrived to see how they could change their business. Most came with both business and IT to learn from the best practices of others. Almost every customer case study session was packed and common questions revolved around, “How did you do that?”
Product announcements and pre-announcements bring the enterprise closer to the consumer experience. Pre-announcement of Salesforce Identity for Winter 2013 will provide users with Facebook-like single sign on and identity management services. The availability of the Touch Platform services will provide a write once, deploy anywhere touch based mobile UI Experience. The pre-announcement of the Force.com Canvas provides a UI layer to run any other application within the Salesforce.com environment. The App Exchange Checkout delivers out of the box billing for developers and improves the users app store experience. Geolocation capabilities in the pilot of database.com in the Winter 2013 release will improve mobile experiences. Chatter communities pilot in Fall of 2012 and pre-announcement addresses the issue of multiple group management.
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Event Report: CRM Evolution 2012 #CRME12

Published on August 14, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

CRM Continues To Evolve In A World Of Engagement

The CRM industry’s major non-vendor customer focused event kicked off at the Marriott Marquis in New York from August 13th to 15th. Conversations with prospects and practitioners at the event highlighted a few emerging trends:

Shift from transaction to engagement. CRM traditionally focused mostly on the management, a bit on the customer, and very little on the relationship. Major shifts in engagement strategy reflect a move towards two way conversations, unstructured information, and influence models.
B2B and B2C are dead. The notion of forced fit silos to represent a customer no longer applies. The world is rapidly move to people to people models and new systems must reflect this.
The rise of customer experiences. Prior to the coining of the CRM term, front office was the term which defined marketing, service, eCommerce, and sales force automation. The move back to integrated customer experiences reflects a renewed interest in all the front office touch points and all the support in the back office required to support the customer experience.
SaaS/Cloud Best of Breed hell is a real issue. Rapid and random deployment of best of breed solutions versus mature suites results in some basic architectural deficiencies. These deficiencies result in inefficiencies that impact the delivery of customer experience as process, data, and meta data integration increase in complexity and cost.

The Bottom Line: Customers must focus on delivering a single source of truth in the fundamentals

Customers making the shift to next generation customer experiences realize that the basic laws of physics must not be violated. Regardless of where key components reside, a single source of truth must be delivered to support next generation customer experiences. This requires a strong blue print and engagement platform that delivers:

Listening and intent
Interaction history
Master data management (customer master)
Business process management
Complex event processing
Security and identity management
Integration

Your POV.

Are you ready for the new shift to front office? What are you doing to deliver an integrated customer experience? Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

Please let us know if you need help with your business strategy efforts. Here’s how we can assist:

Assessing social business/digital marketing readiness
Developing your social business/digital marketing strategy
Designing a data to decisions strategy
Create a new vision of the future of work
Deliver a new customer experience and engagement strategy
Crafting a new matrix commerce strategy

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News Analysis: IFS Acquires Metrix To Boost Mobility And Service Management

Published on June 13, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Mobility and Scheduling Play A Key Role In IFS Service Management Strategy

On May 23rd, IFS acquired Metrix, a service management and mobility vendor headquartered in Waukesha, Wisconsin. IFS adds 90 customers with Metrix. Key highlights of the acquisition include:

Expansion into new markets. Metrix Service Management provides a field service management and depot repair solution for high volume service industry segments. Metrix succeeds in key industries such as Asset & Capital Equipment, Telco, High-Tech & Medical, and Defense. Key brands among the 90 new customers include Ericsson, Motorola, Xerox, DHL and ITT to IFS’ portfolio. Other key offerings include service contact center, service scheduling, contract management, warranty management, and service project management.

Point of View (POV): Metrix’s products allows customers to automate mobile field service, streamline repair processes, improve customer service, and increase service profitability. While, IFS pioneered service management for many areas including asset intensive industries, the Metrix acquisition opens up the profitable North American market. Deployment modes in SaaS will allow IFS to quickly cross-sell to existing customers and bring in new prospects. Along with a robust field service management solution, Metrix delivers a solid reverse logistics solution that encompasses service repair, returns management, warranty management, and service parts logistics. IFS could benefit from this in-house capability to expand current offerings.

Advancing into mobile apps. The Metrix solution provides a broad solution across the enterprise (see Figure 1). Agents gain mobile reporting tools, assess customer satisfaction with in the field customer surveys, and optimize receiving and shipping management tasks. Other mobile use cases include the ability to verify customer history and product warranties, track serialized part inventories and repair stock, and enjoy one-click customer calling and emailing. The solution currently supports Windows and Android. Metrix Mobile contains a development framework and a set of off-line applications for field service and maintenance that support Android, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Point of View (POV): Metrix improves IFS’ capability in delivering both on-line and importantly off-line solutions. Should IFS complete integration of Metrix to IFS applications, customers will gain the benefits of an integrated mobile application. Lack of native iPhone support should not immediately impact the market, due to the lack of ruggedized devices on Apple. Long term, the lack of offline, store and forward capabilities for iOS support creates a huge hole in the portfolio as iOS penetration increases across the enterprise at a geometric growth rate. IFS does provide full online support of the iPad in the full suite of IFS applications.

Delivery of integrated scheduling with field service. Integration with 360 Scheduling delivers advanced resource optimization. Metrix already had a partnership with 360 Scheduling.

Point of View (POV): Integration with 360 Scheduling allows IFS and Metrix to take advantage of their proven algorithms that go beyond the legacy batch scheduling, business rule, optimization approaches. Integration with Metrix enables customers to address planned and unplanned demand forecasting, skills gaps, location optimization, resource optimization, and profitability.

Figure 1. The Broad Range Of Mobile Scenarios Supported By IFS Applications More…

Friday’s Features: Using Attensity Analyze 6.0 To Compare Customer Sentiment For @united @southwestair @virginamerica

Published on May 18, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

A Travelers’ Tale of Two Airlines (@united vs @southwestair)

A hurried shower, followed by a hastily packed bag. Then, the race to the taxi stand (Figure 1). Should be easy to get a cab at 5:45 am in Las Vegas, right? Only the late night crew roll into a casino this late or early in the morning on a Tuesday. Who’d be flying out so early? So much for that theory. A line forms 50 deep outside. Eveyone is half asleep, and headed to McCarran – Las Vegas airport from Caesar’s Palace at 5:30 am. I figure Southwest 2286 takes off at 6:25 am, should be plenty of time. I keep consoling myself. At 5:50, I get into my cab. I instruct the driver not to take the freeway and to go local.

Figure 1. Just Another Day At The Las Vegas Taxi Stand

I get to the self-service kiosk to check in. I get the dreaded <DING!>. I’m told my bag will be checked late and it could risk being sent on a later flight. At 6:00, I’ve missed all normal cut-off windows. Most airlines cut you off at 30 minutes prior and I am really late. I’m ready to accept my fate. I’m ready to be told to get on the next flight. Strangely enough, the gate agent notices that I’m late and does everything to hurry me on-board. She tells me that there is a chance my bag won’t make it but they’ll do their best. She kindly reminds me check-in is 30 minutes prior and suggests I take another security entrance to improve my odds of passing through TSA in time. She also lets me know that she’s told the gate agent I may be late. I finally get through TSA and get to the gate with 2 minutes to spare. The aircraft door isn’t closed. In fact, it’s open and waiting for me to board. I hop on, pass out, and arrive in San Jose. In some modern day miracle, the bag also has arrived with me. I thank the travel gods.

Flash back one week earlier, the same morning sequence occurs in Las Vegas. This time with rental car in tow, I head to the rental car return center at 4:00am for a 5:30 am flight. A staffing issue occurs with the “consolidated rental center transportation” and no buses arrive until 4:30 am. I think to myself, I still have time. I rush to catch United Airlines 479 to San Francisco. The bus arrives at 4:45 am. I rush to the kiosk and arrive for check-in at 4:47 am. The kiosk tells me to see an agent. I wait another 3 minutes in the uber premium line (a.k.a. Global Services). The agent looks at my ticket and tells me in a stern and disapproving voice, I have to wait for the next flight which is at 11:49 am.

I flash my Global Services card in a last ditch attempt for empathy. The agent tells me that policy is policy. United can’t check me in as I miss the cut-off. She tells me that I should know better and come to the airport earlier. The Las Vegas airport is so big, the bag would never get to the plane on time. They won’t let me take off without my bag. There’s no point in arguing at this point. I have a speech at 11:00 am to get to. I rush over to the Southwest counter to find the next flight. The agent asks me what’s wrong. I tell her I need to get on the 6:30 am. She says, no problem. I give her all the details and she issues me a ticket in 5 minutes. I make it to the keynote but I’m very bitter about United and how they have treated me. I was a happy Continental flyer before the merger, you can read all about it here.

Social Data Quantifies Qualitative Experiences – United Ranks Last Among The Three Carriers

By now, most folks have seen what happened when “United Breaks Guitars“, the tale of an awful customer experience for Dave Carroll who had his guitar broken. When the airline failed to take responsibility, he took to the web. With over 11.9M views as of this blog post, this social media epic fail epitomizes what happens when companies ignore their customers and shirk responsibility for resolving legitimate complaints. But what happens when an airline completely chooses to ignore social media as a channel? Do customers go away? Do they just jump to another channel? Are these social analytics tools reflective of the general customer base?

Using Attensity Analyze 6.0, a comparison was made among the three airlines. We selected two best in class low cost carriers (i.e. Southwest Airlines and Virgin America) and United Airlines to answer this question (Figure 1). Analyze 6.0 took 12,863 public comments from Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums (user forums, discussion forums, LinkedIn Answers, etc) YouTube videos, mainstream news and more to gather this data (see Figure 2).

Figure 1. Twitter Accounts For The Three Airlines

Figure 2. Attensity’s Analyze 6.0 In Action With Feedback Analysis On Three Select Airlines More…

Event Report: Lithium Network Conference 2012 #LiNC

Published on May 9, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Lithium Technologies Shows Continued Customer Momentum And Success In Social Marketing And Support

To the tune of over 500 customers and prospects, Lithium kicked off LiNC on May 2nd, 2012, at the always stunning Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco. Compared to previous years, the audience was not only bigger, but also more experienced and energized. Rob Tarkoff (CEO) and Lyle Fong (Founder & Chief Strategist) kicked off the event with company updates, product road map highlights, and customer progress made over the past year.

Adding to the energy, four compelling case studies graced the morning and highlighted Lithium’s strengths in two distinct and advanced externally focused social CRM (SCRM) use cases: social customer support and marketing. The wide range of proud customers and brands included Chris Blandy, SVP of Digital Media, Fox; Mark Nichols, Director of Customer Support, Skype; Andrew Leary, EVP & GM, Ipsos; and Steve Young, Sr. Director of Technical Services, Cisco. During the event, several key announcements were made including:

Launch of a new product, Lithium Response™. In a top secret OEM partnership, the team unveiled Lithium Response™ a product that enables brands to increase customer satisfaction while reducing costs and improving efficiency in the call center. Key features include easier processes to turn community conversations from unstructured information to entries into the Lithium Tribal Knowledge Base (TKB), peer-to-peer support and gamification incentives to drive self-service customer resolution, cost effective social-web support, blended contact center capabilities, and mobile enablement. The product is generally available (GA) in Q3.

Point of View (POV): The OEM’d product comes from a little-known but powerful solution from a privately held, purpose-built social customer care platform. The product maximizes agent efficiency via categorization, prioritization and queuing, and routing. The system is smart enough to guide customers to self service by replying with relevant links to community content. This platform has been battled test with complicated communication service provider (CSP) environments. Adapted for the Lithium platform, customer can expect a rigorous enterprise class solution that lives up to Lithium’s standards. Lithium Response™ also takes advantage of Lithium’s access to the Twitter fire hose. The movement to address multi-channel customer support puts Lithium in unique league with vendors such as Genesys Labs, Kana, and Moxie Software, who can blend contact center and social support.

Delivers new release of social marketing. Building on customer feedback, the new Lithium Social Marketing Solution™ focuses on improving engagement. New features include support for rich media interactions, ad hoc groups, streaming conversations, and a new ratings and reviews module. A partnership with Shoutlet provides Facebook and Twitter campaign management. Social engagement is updated to include photo sharing, inline-conversations, groups spaces, and adoption of commons social logins. The new ratings and reviews module allows community driven content to be included via widgets. New development tools on iOS improve customer experience in the mobile interface of choice. The product is now generally available (GA).

Point of View (POV): Customers showed significant interest in the new social marketing solution features. The ability to improve ratings and reviews is much needed as this has become table steaks in communities and product catalogs. What’s impressive is the new line of partnerships that align with Lithium’s core strategy. Instead of building their own content publishing platform for campaigns, Lithium takes advantage of Shoutlet ability to place various types of content easily into the conversation. Partnerships with VMWare’s Socialcast unit allows Lithium’s Social Marketing Solution™ to integrate with internally focused collaboration tools to expedite the concept to product introduction process.

Begins concerted global expansion. Lithium announced new APAC headquarters in Singapore which add to its Sydney APAC presence. Lithium also has a strong presence in EMEA with operations in Paris, Zurich, and London.

Point of View (POV): As the market consolidates through attrition and acquisition, Lithium’s push to get more feet on the ground around the globe is much welcomed by customers. Lithium needs to expand fast and put its $53M in funding to work to acquire long-term customers in expansion markets.

Ups the ante in partnerships and alliances. New partnerships with Ipsos and Geoffrey Moore provide access to market research. Agency relationships include Sapient Nitro and Acquity group. Lithium adds software partners such as Shoutlet and VM Ware. Lithium’s approach is to find a small number but committed set of alliances and partnerships.

Point of View (POV): Lithium’s partnership and alliance program traditionally was the weakest among the major SCRM players. The addition of Ed Van Siclen, SVP of Global Alliances and BD, brings enterprise class partnerships to the Lithium’s arsenal. As SCRM matures, key partnerships with major system integrators must be prioritized as well as carefully crafted agency relationships. Software partnerships back to transactional systems such as ERP, CRM, and master data management will be key to long term success and enterprise adoption. More importantly, continued alliances with other engagement applications will keep the innovation engine alive for existing customers as they focus on improving engagement.

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News Analysis: KANA Enters MidMarket With Trinicom Acquisition

Published on April 25, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Acquisition Brings A Proven Multi-Channel Cloud Based Service Offering To The Growing Mid-market

Sunnyvale, CA based KANA announced on April 24, 2012 it’s acquisition of Netherlands based Trinicom, a multichannel, customer contact software provider serving over 200 companies in the BeNeLux market. Trinicom’s flagship T5 all-in solutions addresses multichannel customer service through email response management, web self-service, call management, live chat, “letter, fax, and desk contact”, chat bot, and knowledge base. The acquisition marks KANA’s entry and commitment to:

Addressing the under served mid-market. Trinicom brings enterprise class customer service and engagement tools to mid-sized businesses. KANA states in its press release that “mid-sized organizations in both public and private sectors are increasingly seeking enabling technology to support emerging customer experience needs and to build, enhance, and extend relationships with customers.” Why? Mid-market companies seek enterprise class solutions that don’t require the enterprise levels of staffing, support, and infrastructure. Trinicom brings the expertise in sales, marketing, and support for the mid-market to the traditionally enterprise focused KANA management team.

Point of View (POV): Trinicom suite of products for key service industries succeeds given its mid-market focus. In general, these organizations have 20 to 200 customer service professionals. Referenceable and successful customers come from banking, education, internet, insurers, non-profit, publishing and media, retail & eCommerce, telecom, travel & transport, and utilities (see Figure 1). In fact, Trinicom delivers an end to end offering across social, web, and agent desktops. Past clients expressed general satisfaction with go live times less than three months and on average within six to eight weeks. Most clients praise the rich configuration tools which allow clients easy adaptation without expensive customization.

Gaining a SaaS based deployment option. KANA today offers on-premises and hosted deployment models for its enterprise customers. Trinicom brings its SaaS based technology and Cloud business model to KANA’s existing deployment options. Trinicom’s SaaS operations in Northern Europe complement Kana’s global data center reach.

Point of View (POV): KANA’s lack of a SaaS offering has led to some loss in deals as the market shifts to SaaS as the defacto standard. The good news – the Trinicom acquisition gives KANA customers and prospects more choice in immediate deployment options. Subsequently, KANA gains a SaaS foundation for future offerings in both the mid-market and enterprise.

Expanding customer and revenue base. KANA currently serves 600 commercial and 250 public sector organizations. Trinicom adds key global capabilities and European market expertise. For instance, Trinicom will expand KANA’s presence in the local public sector market in EMEA.

Point of View (POV): The acquisition expands KANA’s customer and revenue base into the growing and profitable mid-market. KANA gains an immediate opportunity to service the mid-market and effectively compete with eGain, Eptica, Moxie, and Parature. More importantly, Trinicom opens up a lucrative mid-market public sector opportunity.

Figure 1. Trinicom Spans A Range Of Service Verticals In The Mid-Market

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Event Report: Clarabridge Customer Connections 2012 #cbc312

Published on April 9, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Clarabridge “Turns Up The Heat” On Delivering Context For Customer Experience

CEO, Sid Banderjee, opened up Clarabridge‘s 4th annual user conference to 350 customers at the Doral Golf & Spa in Miami, FL on March 5th, 2012. Clarabridge, a sentiment and text analytics software provider helps companies discern insight from their text based customer feedback and the growing plethora of social and mobile data points. The goal – aggregation of insights from qualitative analytics that transform key organizational processes in customer experience, new product development, and employee satisfaction.

Clarabridge has shown success with a Global 1000 customer list that spans key verticals in technology/telco, retail/CPG, manufacturing, travel/hospitality, financial services/insurance. Major clients include Bank of America, Best Buy, Cisco, Dell, Disney, Fidelity, General Mills, Hilton, IHG Hotels, Kaiser Permanente, Marriott, Siemens Sony, T-Mobile, United Airlines, Verizon, Visa, Walgreen’s, Walmart, and Zynga.

Some highlights from the event include:

Keynote from customer experience transformist Bruce Temkin. Bruce’s keynote discussed how organizations apply Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs to augment customer experience. Temkin highlighted his VoC Maturity assessment methodology that drills in on six key areas – detection, dissemination, diagnosis, discussion, designing, and deploying. The key quote from Bruce was “Customer feedback is cheap, actionable insight may be valuable, but taking action on insight is precious. VoC programs are useless unless you act on what you find”
Best practices discussions from Global 1000 companies.Leading brands such as Acer, Best Buy, B/E Aerospace, Charming Shoppes, Choice Hotels International, Inc., Dell Inc, Expedia, Estée Lauder, Fidelity Investments, GE Appliances, United Airlines, Sage, Verizon, Vodaphone, Wendy’s, Walmart, and Zynga shared best practices. Experiences from Wynn Parrish, VP Product Support of B/E Aerospace showd how customer management and warranty liability could be minimized. Michael Silverman at Silverman research highlighted how Unilver uses VOC for internal employee programs. One of the highlights was Jared Anderson (Best Buy) and Jonathan Sunberg’s (Confirmit) panel on voice of the customer at the leading edge/
Official details on the Clarabridge 5.0 launch. The launch of Clarabridge 5.0 provides the foundation for a customer insight data analytics hub (See Figure 1). As part of the launch, Clarabridge Collaborate adds integrated notifications and alerts. A new satisfaction scoring and sentiment transparency capability brings customer satisfaction scores into the equation to determine customer loyalty and retention programs. Many attendees expressed interest in the new theme and event detection capabilities which provide custom categorization models to quickly surface new trends. Last but not least, the natural language processing engine now supports Italian, Dutch, and Japanese.

Figure 1. Transforming Feedback Into Insight