Andres Botero Joins Steelwedge Software

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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Andres Botero, who worked at Siebel Systems as Group Manager of Worldwide Operations, has joined Steelwedge Software as Chief Marketing Officer. Founded in 2000, Steelwedge improves sales and operations planning by adding automated collaboration and analytics to the process. In his new role Botero will be responsible for will be responsible for strategy, positioning, product marketing and marketing operations.

Steelwedge products build consensus among sales, marketing, finance, and the supply chain about future product demand so that companies can better understand why it fluctuates, balance capacity with sales, connect sales and operations with financial planning, and measure performance. The company claims to have more cloud sales and operations planning deployments than all of its competitors combined. Some Steelwedge customers include Applied Materials, Canon, Hospira, Emerson, NVIDIA, Sara Lee, Sony and Syngenta.

Before joining Steelwedge, Botero was Global Lead for Supply Chain Management Marketing at SAP.

Are Contact Centers Becoming Obsolete?

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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The Omni Channel Contact Center refers to the delivery of a fully connected customer experience across all communication channels, which include the telephone, email, Web, IVR, chat, social media, texting and mobile applications. While this is the goal for customer service, most customer support organizations still struggle to support an integrated multi-channel customer experience that does not fully connect the customer across all communication channels. Customers’ preference for non-voice channels is evident by the recent Dimension Data’s 2013/14 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report @Dimension Data 2009-2013. This report found that the phone was the channel of last resort when all else fails. However, the number of telephone customer support agents continues to grow because brands do not offer satisfactory support over self-service channels, which makes customers place a call by default.

The high growth channels of choice for consumers are smartphone applications, social media, such as Twitter or Facebook or interactive Web dialog. Frequently, brands provide support for these channels in their marketing departments and support is isolated or only partially integrated into the contact center operations. This may result in inconsistent service delivery, as customer applications and content management systems are not shared fully among support groups.  When a customer cannot easily engage with a brand over preferred newer channels, they resort to the most expensive channel, live telephone support.

Moving customers to an integrated omni-channel experience requires updating legacy technology and integrating customer facing applications to support the newer channels. Cloud solutions often enable change to occur more quickly and allow brands to retain existing infrastructure, while adding new support capabilities. Creating intuitive web self-service and social media experience encourages more customers to use these channels exclusively. To transition customer to fully engage with a brand using web self-service CSRs need to encourage customers to go to the web site and walk them through the transaction. While this may be more time consuming initially, it will reduce talk time and shift customer’s behavior. Contact centers that consider the telephone as their primary channel are out of sync with what their customers want from a brand. Innovative brands already know this and the majority of other brands need to quickly catch up.

Resources

"Online Communities Offer Amazing Customer Care" by Elizabeth Herrell

All research by Elizabeth Herrell

Purposeful Collaboration - How To Make "Social" Work

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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The following is the 18min talk I gave at Constellation Connected Enterprise on how to move social from being a stand-alone service for sharing, to integrating social features into the business tools that your company relies on the run your business.

Editor's note: this continues Constellation's continued release of the 2013 Connected Enterprise recordings. We will continue to publish one recording each day. 

Resources:  Enterprise Collaboration Software: From Simple Sharing to Purposeful Collaboration - Research report authored by Alan Lepofksy

News Analysis: Acumatica Raises $10M In Series C Funding, Aims For 1B In Revenue By 2023

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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New Funding Round Fuels Road Map And Geographic Expansion

On November 18th, privately held Acumatica announced Series C funding from Runa Capital and Almaz Capital.  The  Kirkland, WA based Acumatica, has been quietly providing its partners a customizable, cloud-based ERP and CRM development platform for the SMB market.  Acumatica’s previous rounds were funded by Visma (a KKR company) and Almaz Capital (backed by Cisco).  The announcement is significant because Acumatica intends to:

• Expand its partner base into new markets. Acumatica currently has offices in Washington DC, Singapore, and Moscow.  Through affiliates, resellers, and partners,  Acumatica is present in the US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Nordics, The Netherlands, Africa, Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia.  Sales come exclusively from partners.  Thus, the company intends to recruit more partners for high growth markets such as Asia and Latin America.  European expansion will focus on a replacement ERP market of aging systems
  
  Point of View (POV): Early success with Acumatica has come from the ease of use and functional footprint that accelerates a partner’s ability to take a solution to market.  However, future growth will require the leadership team to increase its investment in brand awareness and partner enablement.  Expect key hires in partner sales, support, and R&D.  Given the limited number of qualified partners in the market, Acumatica will have to convince partners from competitors to switch.  Early indications show this market traction.  In fact, since August 2013, Acumatica has added 50 partners, bringing the total to 270.

• Invest into new product offerings. The current offering supports a choice of deployment options including on-premises, hybrid, and cloud. Key functionality includes a financial management, project accounting, distribution management, customer management, and development tools for partners.  The core partner offering is Acumatica Studio, an ISV and OEM development platform.  The platform allows for visual, functional, and database customizations.  Partners can also utilize dashboards, integrated reporting engines, and report designers to create customized dashboards for customers.  An early set of content management tools include a business wiki, file management, and website management capabilities.
  
  (POV): From attending the 2013 partner summit, customers can expect greater investment in the mobile platform including native support for various platforms.  Other areas include expanded Office 365 integration, portal improvements, advanced workflow for ERP and CRM, and early HCM functionality such as payroll and workforce management.  Success will also require Acumatica to orchestrate how verticals and micro-verticals enter the marketplace.

The Bottom Line: SMB Customers Have A New Option To Consider For ERP And CRM

Founded in 2007, Acumatica has grown from the grass roots by delivering a solid product.  Today constant innovation of the core platform and careful curation of specialized partners in industries and geographies for last mile delivery has been one pillar of success.  The future requires strong funding to continue growth into new markets, product innovation, and brand awareness.

Continual funding is one proof point that Acumatica is building a solid foundation for growth and demonstrating not only partner traction, but also market success.  While both Almaz Capital and Runa Capital are specialized in helping entrepreneurs and start ups succeed, the next milestone that matters will come from the number of customers live on Acumatica.  Given the constant need for more specialized solutions in the SMB space, this task may not be too daunting in the quest for 1B in revenue by 2023.

However, the real benefit of this funding is market choice.  Acumatica’s success is good for customers and prospects.  The market now has a viable option in a rapidly consolidating SMB and enterprise software market.

Your POV:

Are you looking at ERP and CRM replacement? Do you need specialized requirements for your industry?  How are you doing this today? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Please let us know if you need help with vendor selection efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Designing a next gen apps strategy
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

Related Research:

• News Analysis: Aptean Six Months After The CDC Software And Consona Merger
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• Event Report: Seven Trends From This Year’s Human Resources Technology Conference 2013 (#HRTechConf)
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• Monday’s Musings: The Controversy Surrounding Gartner’s CRM Market Share Analysis
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• Event Report: Dreamforce X (#DF12) Emerges As The South By Southwest (#SXSW) For The Enterprise
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• Best Practices: From First To Worst – Continental In A Post United World, Lessons In Next Gen Customer Experience
• Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business
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• Monday’s Musings: Using MDM To Build A Complete Customer View In A Social Era
• Monday’s Musings: Mastering When and How High End Brands Should Use Daily Deal Sites Such As Groupon
• Best Practices: Applying Social Business Challenges To Social Business Maturity Models
• Research Summary: Software Insider’s Top 25 Posts For 2010
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
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• Tuesday’s Tip: Applying The Five Stages Of Adoption Towards SCRM Projects
• Monday’s Musings: Avoiding Failure In Social CRM Projects Requires Ecosystem Coordination
• Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management
• Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone
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Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 – 2013 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience!

Salesforce1 - What You Need to Know Now webinar recording

Today we presented the webinar, "Salesforce1 - What You Need to Know Now". Please find the webinar recording below. The deck for this webinar is also available for download here. Additional resources below.

With so much hype swirling around Salesforce1, it's difficult to filter out the noise and get the information you really need to make the best decisions in regards to this development. Constellation Research, the original disruptive technology analysis firm, tamed the buzz and cut through the hype to deliver the critical information you need to know about Salesforce1.

Highlights:

• Implications - customer experience, apps, collaboration, Internet of Things
• Is Salesforce1 a platform? - Analysts debate
• Salesforce Chatter
• The "Inclusion Layer" - new technologies enable effective MDM, a reason to not categorize Salesforce1 as a platform?
• Recommendations - how to take advantage of Salesforce1

Download the deck

Speakers:

• Elizabeth Herrell
• Holger Mueller
• Alan Lepofsky
• J. Bruce Daley
• R "Ray" Wang
• Joseph A. di Paolantonio

Resources:

• “Inclusion Layer Products Enter the Market: New Class of Software Promises to Create Better Apps and Reduce Maintenance”

• Dreamforce 2013 Platform Takeaways – All about the mobile platform – or more?
• Platform ecosystems are hard: Salesforce grows it – FinancialForce shrinks it
• Takeaways from the Salesforce and Workday Strategic Partnership     
• Act II – The cloud changes everything – Oracle and Salesforce.com
• How the cloud can make the unlikeliest bed fellow
• Is Oracle 12c the end of multi-tenancy as we knew it?
• How many Pivots make a Pirouette? Salesforce’s last Pivot
• Salesforce.com introduces Salesforce Identity
• The cloud changes everything

• Salesforce 1 Touch Service Enables Products Not People to Report Problems.
• Cloud Customer Service Delivers High Value
• Compelling Investments for Extraordinary Service:
• Customer Service Strategy for a Disruptive World.

• Tuesday’s Tip: Understand The Five Generation Of Digital Workers
• Monday’s Musings: The Chief Digital Officer In The Age Of Digital Business
• Slide Share: The CMO vs CIO – Pathways To Collaboration
• Event Report: Seven Trends From This Year’s Human Resources Technology Conference 2013 (#HRTechConf)
• Event Report: Metaio’s #InsideAR Conference Hails The Future Of An Always On, Always Augmented Reality
• Event Report: CRM Evolution 2013 – Seven Trends In The Return To Digital Business And Customer Centricity
• Research Summary And Speaker Notes: The Identity Manifesto – Why Identity Is At The Heart of Digital Business
• Monday’s Musings: The Controversy Surrounding Gartner’s CRM Market Share Analysis
• Research Summary: Constellation Cosmos – Cloud Bill of Rights for SaaS Apps, Actian and Netsuite Achieve Epic Status
• Trends: Seven Priorities In The Shift From CMO to Chief Digital Officer
• Monday’s Musings: Understand The Four Organizational Personas Of Disruptive Tech Adoption
• Monday’s Musings: The New Engagement Platform Drives The Shift From Transactions

• What Does IoT All Mean 
• New Hope from Big Data
• Sensors, Sensors Everywhere
• The Internet of Things and Change

Matrix Commerce: Tackling the Evolving Ecommerce Ecosystem

Good news--the Connected Enterprise recordings are out! I'll highlight one new recording from Constellation's Connected Enterprise every day. Don't miss out on all the technology adoption tips, disruptive business models, actionable recommendations, and inspiration.

First up: Matrix Commerce Visionaries.

The Visionaries series features well established practicioners and thought leaders operating within the realm of Constellation's business research themes.

In this video, three executives discuss Matrix Commerce and how their companies are tackling the rapidly changing commerce ecosystem.

Panelists:
Andy Lloyd, General Manager, Commerce, Netsuite
Jason Maynard, Managing Director, Software Analyst, Wells Fargo
Mike Ni, CMO, Avangate

Matrix commerce (TM) is the fusing of demand signals and supply chains in an increasingly complex world of buyers seeking frictionless buying experiences.  Friction in this new world originates from new regulatory requirements such as sustainability, taxation, and privacy.  
As the world revolves around the buyer, channels, demand signals, supply chains, payment options, enablers, and big data will converge to create what Constellation coined in 2011 as Matrix Commerce.  Matrix Commerce spans across disciplines as people, process, and technologies continue to transform today's commerce models. More about Matrix Commerce https://www.constellationr.com/content/matrix-commerce

Join us at Constellation's Connected Enterprise 2013 #CCE2014 October 29, 2014 - October 31, 2014 at the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay. Learn more and submit your request here: https://www.constellationr.com/content/connected-enterprise

Getting Social with Siebel #1: Supporting Real World Scenarios

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

Read more