Oracle Announces Agreement To Acquire Marketing Cloud A/B Testing Firm @Maxymiser

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…...

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Oracle Marketing Cloud Customers Will Gain Channel Agnostic Customer Experience A/B Testing Solution

Oracle announced the August 20th, 2015, agreement to acquire Maxymiser, a multivariate and A/B testing solution used to improve customer experience.  Here’s the quick video analysis of the deal (see Figure 1). (A blog post may follow given time constraints). 

Figure 1. Video Analysis Of Oracle’s Maxymiser Acquisition

News Analysis: @Oracle acquires Marketing Cloud A/B Testing Firm @Maxymiser from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

The Bottom Line: Oracle Ups The Game In Customer Experience

The move from gut driven decisions to data driven decisions in customer experience requires multivariate and A/B testing.  Unlike many channel specific solutions, Maxymiser gives Oracle the opportunity to deliver the same testing platform across a journey sprinkled with a variety of settings and channels.   Settings gain importance in a post IOT world where your car, your office, the conference room, or your living room bring a different set of experiences.

Recommendations: Get What You Need Now Before The Merger Closes

Should the merger close, Maxymiser customers and prospects with deals about to close should ask for the following:

1. Long term price commitments.  If you have a 1 year deal, plan for a 3 year pricing plan that is fixed or below CPI.
2. Feature commitments.  If there is a road map prioritized item, get a written guarantee on what release the feature you need will be delivered.
3. Change of control clause.  Include language that allows you to keep existing agreements in the event of change of control.  Also provide an out clause if needed on change of control for situations such as mergers, acquisitions, or divestitures.

Your POV.

What do you think of the acquisition? Are you Infor, GTNexus customer or both?  Will you stick with Infor? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Resources

• Event Report: Oracle Open World 2014 – Day 1 #OOW14
• Event Report: Day 1 At Oracle Open World 2013: The Quest For Innovation #oow13
• 20130629 News Analysis: Oracle’s Cloud Disruption Webinar Recording
• 20130625 News Analysis: Oracle’s Cloud Strategy – Revisionist History or Cloud Genius?
• 20121231 Market Maker 1:1: Steve Miranda, Oracle Fusion Applications Update – The Inside Story
• 20121001 Event Report: The Day 0 And Day 1 Tweet Stream From OOW12

• News Analysis: Infosys One-Year After Vishal Sikka August 4, 2015
• Event Report: Sage Summit 2015 Shows A Refocus On The Future Of The SMB Customer July 29, 2015
• News Analysis: Inside The Rationale Behind @LinkedIn Turning Off Its CSV Connections Download Tool July 25, 2015
• News Analysis: How @LinkedIn Is Creating A Personal Data Hostage Crisis For Its Users July 25, 2015
• Tuesday’s Tip: Apply For A SuperNova Award – Recognize Leaders In Digital Business July 21, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 10 From Disrupting Digital Business – Segment By Digital Proficiency Not Age July 12, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 9 From Disrupting Digital Business – Deliver Intention Driven, Mass Personalization At Scale July 2, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 8 From Disrupting Digital Business – Democratize Distribution With P2P Networks June 22, 2015
• Webinar Invite: Delivering on Continuity – The Future of Marketing June 15, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 7 From Disrupting Digital Business – Humanize Digital With Digital Artisans June 14, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 6 From Disrupting Digital Business – Win With Network Economies June 10, 2015
• Product Review: Two Apple Watch Enterprise Apps Launched With IMS Health Life Sciences Wearable Platform June 7, 2015
• Event Report: Zuora’s #Subscribed15 Shows How Organizations Can Power Their Digital Transformation Initiatives May 31, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 5 From Disrupting Digital Business – Build For Insight Streams May 31, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 4 From Disrupting Digital Business – Know That Data Is The Foundation May 25, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 3 From Disrupting Digital Business – Sell The Smallest Unit You Can May 17, 2015
• Webinar Invite: Disrupting Digital Business – The Customer Experience Imperative May 16, 2015
• Quips: Networked Economy Models Emerge Should Verizon Gain Approval To Acquire AOL May 12, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 2 From Disrupting Digital Business – Keep Brand Promises In An Attention Economy May 10, 2015
• Research Summary: The Correct Way to Use Customer Data May 6, 2015
• Event Report: Insights Into The New NetSuite At SuiteWorld 2015 May 9, 2015
• Book Summary: Lesson 1 From Disrupting Digital Business May 3, 2015
• Personal Log: Read Chapter One of Disrupting Digital Business April 22, 2015
• Press Release: Registration Opens for Inaugural Constellation Digital Disruption Tour April 16, 2015

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 -2015 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.

The post News Analysis: @Oracle Announces Agreement To Acquire Marketing Cloud A/B Testing Firm @Maxymiser appeared first on A Software Insider's Point of View.

Mobile Customer Relationship Management: Mobile is the New CRM

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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Will The Mobile Device Ever Live Up to It’s Potential? Everyone in mobile commerce has been waiting to see mobile commerce take off. While individuals report it’s the one device they always have with them, the change in mobile commerce and CRM has not grown as fast at most experts expected – at least until now. There is a mobile customer relationship management company that is scaling fast. Intact, it has increased its revenues by 500% since their series A funding of $10M last  year. In addition they have added a new Chief Revenue Officer. The company is call Helpshift. They are the first CRM solution built specifically for mobile applications.

HelpShift Is Adding New Team Members To Help It’s Growth: In addition, Helpshift also announced the appointment of Kevin Grant, seasoned enterprise and mobile executive from AT&T and Boku, as chief revenue officer, to advance Helpshift’s efforts in enterprise sales. Abinash Tripathy, founder and CEO of Helpshift was quoted saying, “I am extremely proud of Helpshift’s success thus far, and am excited about our future. The sky’s the limit and we have big plans for the rest of the year. Our focus is to keep growing the product and our position in the market. We’re thrilled to welcome Kevin to the executive team; his extensive client list and wealth of experience in the mobile space will only increase our current rate of success.”

With the addition of Kevin Grant to the Helpshift roster, the company is poised to continue its rapid growth. Grant’s experience working with Enterprise and Mobile industries will help solidify Helpshift’s customer base and triumphs in the market. Kevin Grant was quoted saying “Helpshift’s approach to mobile CRM is truly revolutionizing the customer service industry. It’s a great opportunity for me to work with such a smart group of leaders and engineers who are changing how merchants think about mobile customer care. I’m enthusiastic about the future of Helpshift, and look forward to helping our clients prioritize an amazing customer experience for their consumers. I love win-wins!”

What is Helpshift? Helpshift is an in-app customer engagement platform that enables businesses with mobile apps to improve customer experience, drive higher ratings, and increase retention. Helpshift’s SDK allows companies of any size to have a direct in-app conversation with their customers. To date, Helpshift is installed on more than one billion devices and serves 300+ million mobile customers monthly, resulting in 70 percent faster resolution times. Just two years ago, Helpshift began as a small group of engineers in India and a small sales team in San Francisco. Helpshift now has a team of more than 50 engineers in India, and well-established account management, finance, customer success, sales, and marketing teams in San Francisco.

Why Is Helpshift so Important?  The companies that are making a fortune in the new mobile economy have sewed an exceptional customer experience into the very fabric of their company. Support doesn’t just add value — an exceptional customer experience is the value. But the current support solutions were never intended to support the mobile experience – you can’t pour motor oil into a jet engine and expect it to fly, and CRMs and helpdesks just don’t meet the needs of mobile users. Which is an issue, since there are more apps competing for a brand’s customer’s homescreen every day. The world is moving to mobile and shoving a web view into a native app isn’t good enough. Helpshift wants to offer businesses the ability to provide that unparalleled experience wherever their customers are. Helpshift makes it easy to create that exceptional experience in native mobile apps, transforming customers into the most passionate sales team you could hope for, and loyal for life.
Who Are Some of HelpfShift’s Customers? Helpshift has built applications for Target, DoubleDutch, Clash of Clans, Outlook, Family Guy and Mercari.

What Does Pricing Look Like? Helpshift has everything from the freemium model, with 10,000 users and 1 team members to 300,000 users and 3 team members to custom pricing.

With the mobile device being the one we all carry with us, it makes sense that increasing that customer experience would be key. Looks like Helpshift is out to make that a reality!

@DrNatalie VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Don’t forget to enter the Super Nova Awards!

Verint® Acquires Telligent® to Extend Online Community Customer Experience

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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As you might recall, Telligent®, acquired Zimbra, whose purpose was to help organizations enhance support, drive digital transformation and to ensure brand consistency. Today, Verint acquired Telligent®.

The reason for the acquisition? Verint wants to extended its customer engagement optimization portfolio with the addition of a market-leading, enterprise-class community solution. As a result, organizations can uniquely provide actionable intelligence across customers’ omnichannel experiences to include voice, chat, email, web self-service, and now customer and employee communities.

Was This Acquisition a Good Move For Verint? MY POV: This seems like a very good move for Verint, as having a community offering is key to customer care. Communities are a critical part of customer service as well as customer engagement. With the combination of Verint and Telligent, customers will be uniquely positioned to use the actionable intelligence that flows through their communities to help achieve important strategic objectives, including the ability to gain a holistic view of customer service effectiveness, integrate social experiences on the web and support digital transformation initiatives.

How Is Having An Option for Online Communities Useful To Brands? By integrating communities into their customer support and marketing strategies, organizations can lower their service costs, redirecting routine customer queries to their communities for quick answers to frequently asked questions. Through powerful analytics, they also can gain critical insights into buying trends and patterns; evaluate marketing content and campaign effectiveness; enhance social selling; take action on voice of the customer feedback about products, services and overall experiences; and heighten loyalty.

How Do Communities Play a Role In OmniChannel Customer Engagement? As consumers continue to self-serve and seek insights and perspectives from peers, the importance of social communities has grown. With increasing demand for more real-time engagement and personalized service, communities are becoming sought-after and valued sources for customer support. Likewise, marketers are turning to social communities to infuse new digital content, advance social experiences in their online properties, and take action by tracking and analyzing buyer behavior and site activity. There’s not one department that can’t benefit from an online community. And, while that is true, not all departments know the business case. There are huge business reasons for every single department  – customer facing or employee facing – that can benefit from an online community.

Does Your Brand Have a Community?  If not why? What are you waiting for? Want the ROI of online communities beyond customer service? I’m your ROI gal!

@drNatalie VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Don’t forget to submit your case study to the Super Nova Awards!!!! NOW!! 

Transparency and the Future of Work

Terri Griffith

Professor/Author/Speaker
Simon Fraser University

Terri Griffith holds the Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. She spent two decades in the Silicon Valley and, in 2012 was honored as a Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Terri helps her students and their organizations accelerate performance and prepare for the futures of work. Through her speaking, writing, teaching, and research, she brings evidence-based leadership and innovation to high-tech, education, and global agribusiness organizations. She inspires and coaches groups on negotiating change and uniquely mixing existing and new capabilities. Her most recent work uses a “bottom-up” approach to automation, including artificial intelligence. Her award-winning book, The…...

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Transparency is at the heart of modern work and organizations. Tom Malone, in his book, The Future of Work, talks of a shift to more decentralized organizations where there is “participation of people in making the decisions that matter to them” [emphasis in the original]. People can’t make decisions if they don’t have information.

Warren Bennis, in Transparency: How Leaders Create A Culture of Candor, highlights the monetary value of transparency, "[a]gain and again, studies show that companies that rate high in transparency tend to outperform more opaque ones." He cites a 2005 study finding that a group of 27 U.S. companies noted as "most transparent" beat the S&P 500 by 11.3 percent.

Lead By Letting Go: Transparency

I’ve had the chance to talk with a variety of executives about the value of transparency. These conversations, combined with results from peer-reviewed research, prompt me to place transparency at the heart of how you lead by letting go. It’s not that transparency is an absolute positive, but rather that managing transparency is a key skill in our future of work. (Below, I’ve provided links to three articles if you want to follow the recent research on these issues.)

Avinoam Nowogrodski, CEO and founder of Clarizen, the online collaboration and project management company, provides thoughtful advice as well as a tool to support transparency. Over a coffee on the San Francisco waterfront, he and I talked about the challenges of modern work. We are often physically separated from our teammates and the pace of our work seems to be increasing. I’ll add that, though not really a change, it surprises many that the U.S. median tenure with a company is just 4.6 years. We don’t have a lot of face-to-face opportunity to learn from our colleagues.

Technology Can Help

These dynamics are enabled in part by by technology tools. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, in their book, The Second Machine Age, describe the good and the bad of our changing work environment. They suggest that we learn to “race with machines,” rather than against them.

One way the machines can help us is by providing greater transparency around our work. Rather than proactively reporting on our work, the machines can automatically share as we get on with the tasks at hand. Teams do better to the extent that their members know who knows what, who needs what information, and how to coordinate. If we have tools and the will to apply the knowledge gained via the tools, team performance can be supported by technology. In the past, when it was more typical to work in the same room with our teammates, transparency was supported by the technology of the furniture layout. Today, our electronic tools can provide some similar access to knowing who knows, and needs to know, what.

It’s a classic example where the outcome is the result of the human, technical, and organizational dimensions of the work. Transparency has value, if we pay attention to what we see and don’t make the process of providing transparency onerous.

Guiding Principles

Nowogrodski suggests four principles which span the human, technical, and organizational dimensions of work, as well as crossing individual, team, and organizational levels of action:

• Democratic information sharing
• Evolution into a transparent enterprise
• Aligned input and impact
• Organic innovation

It’s not transparency for transparency's sake, but rather for impact and innovation. In an article for Entrepreneur.com, he offers:

[L]eaders within enterprises that exercise transparency do not feel the need to “force feed” transparency to employees. This is because transparency is embedded within the fabric of their culture.They own it. As such, they unleash transparency from within to qualitatively and quantitatively improve employee engagement, workflow management, communication and collaboration, customer support and development, program and project governance, and more.

Take Action -- At the System Level -- Then Let Go

Performance is a combination of motivation, opportunity, and ability. Transparency can help motivation by letting people understand the connection between their actions and their outcomes. Transparency can help opportunity by signaling about the work that needs to be done (I’m looking forward to posting about a recent interview with RallyTeam founder, Dan Ellis, on a related topic). Transparency can help ability as people get feedback closer to their own actions. Build organizational systems that enable transparency, then let people get on with their work. Lead by letting go.

Deep Dives into the Academic Work on Transparency Process and Outcomes

• The Transparency Paradox: A Role for Privacy in Organizational Learning and Operational Control (Bernstein, 2012)
• Organizational Transparency: A New Perspective on Managing Trust in Organization-Stakeholder Relationships (Schnackenberg & Tomlinson, 2014)
• E-leadership: Re-examining transformations in leadership source and transmission (Avolioa, Sosik, Kahai, & Baker, 2014)

A Great Place for Customer Service? Twitter: Oracle’s Social Roll-Out of A Twitter Enhanced Customer Solution

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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There was a time when customers wrote a letter to customer service- ok that was a really long time ago. But not long ago, the phone was what a majority of people used to contact customer service. And then along comes social media. As the author’s of the Cluetrain Manifesto said, “Markets are conversations” and many of the new marketplace conversations are happening in social networks.

Markets are Conversations

One of the reasons that more and more marketplace conversations are happening in social and digital networks is that it’s the first time customers have been able to talk to each other directly in ways that surpass the bulletin boards of yester year. Another reason is that when customers tried to get service by dialing the customer service 1-800 number, they were often met with long wait times, agents that didn’t have all their information in front of them (the company didn’t have the type of computer telephony were all you info was pulled up from the phone number and delivered to the agent) or when the customer finally got a customer service agent on the phone, the service experience was rushed (over 4 minute mark many contact center agents would get dinged for a long average handle time) and some of the agents just weren’t prepared to help, had an attitude, didn’t fix the issue so the customer had to call back in and retell their story all over again… The bottom line: customers have been tired of poor service.

Customer Service is the New Marketing

It’s never made sense to me to provide bad service. Customer Service is the new Marketing. How someone is treated in a customer service situation stays with them. That customer might be loyal for a while, at least until there’s a better deal from another company. It’s part of why there is so much customer churn. One of the biggest issues is NOT that Customer Service Professionals are not aware of the issues in their contact centers. They know what they would like to do. They just suffer from the Rodney Dangerfield Affect: They just don’t get enough respect. What I mean by that is they are often not allocated enough budget to make the customer service experience what it should and could be. Customer Service should be a CEO level decision. In companies where it is, the service is great. In companies where it is not respected as a mission critical part of the business, the service is just “so so” to really bad.

A Change in Corporate Culture Needs to Happen NOW

What is important about social and digital media is not necessarily the channel. It’s really about a philosophical corporate culture issue. Because customers couldn’t get the service they wanted in a phone call or email, they realized that social networks were the perfect place to get a company’s attention. Why does it work so well? In comparison to a call or an email or chat, social networks are a public medium. It’s a medium where everyone can see what’s happening. And one of the biggest issues – whether its Twitter, Facebook, an online community – is that the conversations between customers and between customers and companies are public. And not only are they public, they are often permanent digital footprints that last a long time (think cave painting that last millions of years.)

If You Think Social Media Isn’t Affecting Your Company, Stop Doing the Ostrich

Some people would argue that there’s not that many people on social networks. In fact, there are There are 7.2 billion people on earth and more than 2 billion of them are active on social media. And take into consideration the 1-9-90 rule, most customers are lurking or reading what other customers are writing about companies. (The 1% refers to customers who post, 9% refer to those who respond to those who post and 90% refers to those that read what the 10% posted. Of course that ratio changes depending on the industry, but it’s roughly 80-90% of the customers who just read what other customers think. So should companies be worried about what is said about them in social and digital media. I think so. I think there will be some companies, because of the bad word of mouth and their lack of attention to it or changing the issues with their products and services will just go out of business and never know what hit them.

Operationalizing Social Customer Care on Twitter

One way to operationalize a brand’s ability to track and interact with Customer Service and Twitter is to consider Twitter’s new data and functionality to create improved and transformative customer service solutions for brands. Oracle Social Cloud was part of the announcement and is extending this enriched Twitter data to our customers.  Oracle Social Cloud will be rolling out this new social service solution in a managed release to select customers. The product will be available to additional customers in the fall.

Exceptional Social Responsiveness is A Necessity of Great Customer Service

According to Nielsen, more than 1 in 3 consumers prefer social customer service to phone. A recent McKinsey study stated that companies that improve their customer service can see a 30-50% improvement in key measurements including “likelihood to recommend” and “make repeat purchases.” Social service is more than just resolving issues.

Meg Bear, Group Vice President, Oracle Social Cloud, said, “In today’s digital landscape, modern customer care is social and mobile, and increasingly the platform of choice for consumers is Twitter.  Working with Twitter data allows customers to better integrate enriched social data more deeply within their customer service process to capture, learn, and act on insights to match consumer expectations.”

An Example of a Company That is Taking Social Customer Care to Heart

Rebecca Harris, Global Head of Social Center of Expertise at General Motors, commented that, “General Motors continues to strive for excellence with our customer care capabilities, providing new ways to understand and engage with our customers like never before—and it’s a winning strategy for both our customers and our business. The importance of social service is echoed by our customers, too. We interact daily with our customers on Twitter, allowing for a quicker, more personal engagement, enabling General Motors to put its customers at the center of everything we do.” I grew up in Detroit and worked for GM many, many years ago. It’s an interesting industry that is critical to the stability of the American economy and great to see they understand the fundamental importance of not only customer service, but also social customer care.

Wondering How The Oracle Twitter Solution Can Help Your Company?  

The new social customer care solution is an upgradeable option for Oracle customers that want to provide the most advanced and innovative solutions to meet the rising expectations of mobile and social consumers. The solution captures Twitter impressions and aggregated engagement metrics, coupled with their advanced listening algorithm, and delivers a next-generation solution that allows customers to better identify influencers, understand social impact, and prioritize service issues.

How It Will Work – Real-World Superior Social Service:

Let’s say you are an airline organization or a hotel chain monitoring millions of Tweets across the globe. You could leverage Oracle Social’s advanced listening, filtering and categorizing capabilities to quickly identify “customer service” topics from other conversations. Your agents could respond and resolve customer service and customer care issues with speed. That’s good – but it can be done better.  How do agents easily identify who to respond to given the potential volume of service complaints?  How does one Tweet stand out from the next in a blurry sea of Tweets?  Those are all good questions and need answers.

For starters, with the new Twitter-enriched data, the airline or hotel chain now has more insights and rich context into each message through an algorithm that weighs impressions and engagement metrics and then color-codes each based on highest impact and priority. This proactive solution allows agents to visually identify messages as they trend based on views, clicks and aggregate engagement metrics. Counting favorites and retweets as the only indicators misses the mark on critical service scenarios that are quickly going viral.

Of course, every customer issue is important, but now airline or hotel agents can prioritize and resolve the frustrated customer whose Tweet about lost luggage or lack of air conditioning in the room was actually seen by 5.5 million people (…and counting re the 1-9-90 rule).

The new customer care solution will be surfaced in Oracle SRM’s new column-based Engage UI.  The new column-based Engage UI will be available to all customers whether or not they upgrade to the advanced Twitter customer care solution.

What’s your take on Social Customer Care? Here’s some quick tips to consider:

1. Do you have the ability to operationalize listening and responding in social and digital networks?
2. Do you have the staff that understands not only the strategy but also how to operationalize social customer care real-time?
3. Do you have executive management buy-in, a business case and a strategic and tactical plan that shows how your approach to social customer care is going to reduce costs, but also increase revenue?

@DrNatalie

VP and Principal Analyst, Covering Customer-facing Applications to Create Amazing Customer Experiences

Don’t forget to submit a SuperNova Award if you are doing something amazing at your company: Deadline is extend to August 21^st.

SuccessConnect15 - Progress, innovative ideas, and challenging the status quo

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend SAP’s SuccessFactors SuccessConnect user conference held in Las Vegas this week. The conference was well attended with a record of 2800 attendees. As we have seen often a lot of good things happen with an increased conference size, it’s an indicator a vendor is on the right track and the positive underlying vibes cross pollinate between attendees, prospects, partners and the vendor. In contrast to previous Success Connects there where a much higher number of live and implementing customers in the audience – a good sign to the more ‘in evaluation mode’ crowd of the previous years. It has certainly helped to have the same key speakers and leadership on stage for consecutive years, as buyers and users look for consistency.

 

 

As always with a multiple day event – the challenge is to come up with the Top 3 takeaways, but here you go:

 

Ettling opens SuccessConnect 2015

Intelligent Services for HCM – This was clearly the most important announcement on the product side of this SuccessConnect. For too much time HR functions have been atomically automated, one transaction at a time. The glue between them was in human brains, on post-it notes etc. Taking a step back now, technology is advanced enough to bundle and bring these activities together for a richer, more powerful level of automation. It is good to see the innovative thinking by SAP here, it is not unique as more vendors are working on similar offerings (more later this year) –but SAP is first out of the gate with 16 intelligent services shipping in the August release of SuccessFactors. 

 

 

Krakovsky introduces Intelligent Services

Behind the scenes SuccessFactors enables Intelligent Services with three technology components. The vendor already had an established event bus that is collecting all events and connecting the various SuccessFactors products. Using the OData standard SuccessFactors can enrich the leaner event information an (existing) rules engine helps to define how events should be handled. A plausible architecture to enable Intelligent Services, we plan to drill down a few levels deeper going forward. 

 

The 3 components behind Intelligent Services

As always with analytics – the key question is ‘does it work?’ – And we will have to wait for the experiences of the first customers in a few months. The interesting angle is that SAP has the transaction of its users from when they got live. So suggesting a powerful set of intelligent services to a business users is in the realm of the possible. As well is populating most common rules to empower the intelligent services, from data of one enterprise, or as an unveiled industry best practice. Would have been good for SAP to unearth that – but it is early days and I am sure SAP will do that soon. Checkout my News Analysis on the unveiling of Intelligent Services here. 

 

New 1:1 Management Capability - will it fix Performance Management?

Re-Thinking Performance Management – We have maintained for a long time that Performance Management is broken, and with that most of Talent Management not really working. Software vendors are not the only culprit, human nature plays a big role here, too. Humans generally do not like to get rated, do not like to rate employees and don’t look forward to have a tough conversation on people performance. That said, most of today’s Performance Management is largely automating the forms based process in place before – and not taking advantage of the new capabilities offered by technology. For instance enterprises had no financially viable opportunity around 5 years ago to store all performance relevant information for the purpose of powering performance management… today BigData technologies offer that at a fraction of the cost. (True) Analytics can run on that for the cost of an average burger meal. This means that best practices can change and technology can power new (and better) ways to do Performance Management. Kudos to SuccessFactors to challenge the status quo here – something established software vendors rarely do. Especially when it comes to question early products, keep in mind SuccessFactors started out on the Performance Management side. The first step as shard by Krakovsky is to power 1:1 management in a more efficient way – certainly a good place to start in the Anglo-Saxon management culture. 

 

New UI - New Home Page

Good Housekeeping – We also learnt more about good housekeeping on the SuccessFactors side. For the longest time there was going back and forward on the full adoption date of SAP’s in memory database HANA, and it is now set with 2017. That is only a little more than 5 full quarters away – so certainly an ambitious schedule. Moving on HANA is important for SAP not only to reduce royalty payments to key competitor Oracle, but also to get better economies of scale from the HANA investment and most importantly eliminate integration issues. When running on a named value pair, columnar database – all information is in the same table by its very definition. With integration being a key headache for HR professionals, SuccessFactors has a technology at hand to put the challenge to rest – at least for the very own SAP products. And medium term being compatible with the S4/HANA platform is important, too.

Likewise SAP is working on phasing out Dell Boomi as the integration tool, replacing it with HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) Integration Services, targeting a similar date like the HANA migration.

More immediately SAP showed a new User Interface that will roll out in Q4 of this year. No surprise SAP is starting with the home screen and EmployeeCentral, using the Fiori UI paradigm and the SAP UI 5 HTMTL capabilities. An important step as the SuccessFactors UI started to feel more pedestrian (we blogged earlier about this) and there is not yet consistency in the UI across the different products. Certainly something customers are living with, but even slightly different user interfaces come with an organizational cost, so it will be good for SuccessFactors to address the topic. On the positive side – moving to Fiori and UI5, there will be consistency on the user experience side beyond SuccessFactors, as users use more than the HCM products).

Analyst Tidbits

Benefits - To a certain point a surprise, SAP is now offering ‘simple’ Benefits functionality for the US. Certainly an acknowledgement of the importance of Benefits automation in the US. The partnership with BenefitFocus remains in place, for the more complex needs, but SAP now needs to explain the positioning. 

 

US Benefits coming to EmployeeCentral

 

Learning – SuccessFactors keeps building out its new Learning capabilities, last year it was about predicting attractive learning content (which has been delivered) and the roadmap now focusses on the classroom / instructor side. A valid focus, given the large amount of classroom held training, but not the long term focus on Learning. Looks like customers have pulled SuccessFactors back here, a valid motive for any software vendor.
 

Krakovsky walks through Learning Roadmap

Deeper Partnership with Workforce Software - Similarly to Benefits, Time and Attendance is more of an ‘edge’ system for mainstream HR vendors, so SAP partnered with Kronos and WorkForce Software, but now has a deeper relationship with the latter, with a Workforce Software bundle making it to the SAP price list (read more here).

 

SuccessFactors and LinkedIn partner

Partnership with LinkedIn – We have to do some more due diligence here, but for now it looks SuccessFactors is the first HCM vendor to get LinkedIn to share the LinkedIn profile into the Employee profile in Employee Central. That is the foundation of new best practices (data concerns thrown to the wind) changing e.g. internal recruiting, blurring the inside / outside enterprise ‘firewall’ etc. – kudos to a first mover advantage.

Mobile – Android emancipates – The Android client had always been lacking behind the iOS client, now SuccessFactors has brought the mobile Android client up to par to the iOS client – and more importantly the vendor has committed to keep them at par.
 

Document Management Partners

Documents managed in HR – HR always needs to take care of a lot of sensitive documents, so it is good to see SuccessFactors starting to warm up to the area, starting with partnerships with Opentext, Box and more. The question will be going forward how such a wide partner array can satisfy the more complex compliance issues – compared to e.g. native solutions offered by e.g. competitors ADP and Ceridian.


Analytics – SAP is making progress in this important area and to a certain point the new Intelligent Services will be a prominent use of ‘real’ analytics (those that take an action or make at least a recommendation). Beyond that SuccessFactors is partnering with key clients and piloting new capabilities, but there has been no product release in this area yet. Certainly an area where SAP has to push down the gas pedal.
 

New Data Centers - Shanghai, Toronto & Moscow

New DataCenters – It is good to see the opening of more data center locations, most prominently in Russia, where recent data sovereignty legislation is forcing data to reside in country. And data center locations do not only matter for compliance, but also for performance as Krakovsky pointed out correctly in its keynote. We will have to learn more about how SuccessFactors plans to ‘slice and dice’ code and data across various data center locations to achieve compliance and increase performance.
 

New Admin Center

The Centers are coming – It is good to see that SuccessFactors is looking at empowering users more and better – and the approach are ‘center’. There is a new Admin Center –always a good move to empower admins, we have seen how well that works in the SaaS economy at Salesforce. And then there is an Integration Center and an Extension Center, doing what one can expect what they do, the new Extension Center being a user friendly front end power by the MDF framework.

 

MyPOV

A good event for SuccessFactors that is showing all the benefits of a growing vendor. It is good to see new innovative thinking like the Intelligent Services as well as gutsy move like the challenge to the status quo on Performance Management. The vendor is also doing some good housekeeping, short term on the UI side, longer term with technology stack harmonization on the larger SAP architecture, something that will matter more and more over time.

On the concern side a lot of work remains, as SuccessFactors is a combined entity of old SuccessFactors organically grown functionality (e.g. Performance Management), SuccessFactors acquired products (e.g. Recruiting, Learning) and new SAP / SuccessFactors built products (e.g. EmployeeCentral)), combined with SAP code (e.g. for Payroll). To a certain point it is fair to say that SuccessFactors had to wait for the overall SAP to ‘sort things out’ – e.g. on how to run HANA across its datacenters in the ‘cloud’ etc. but these hurdles have been or are being removed as we blog, so it will be key for SuccessFactors to address them.

Overall good progress by SuccessFactors, which is uniquely well positioned to address the challenges of global organizations (not much of messaging at the conference on that), given the reach and expertise of SAP both from a local expertise and payroll capability. With Globalization one of the key trends enterprises are facing, a good position for SAP’s existing and future customers to be in. And employees need to be paid, the paycheck still being the most regular occurring artefact between HR functions and the employee and SAP is equally well positioned here. But the HR game is more than HR Core and Payroll and SAP needs to make sure its Talent Management remains (at least) ‘good enough’ to remain competitive. Fresh thinking on Performance Management is a good start. And overall SuccessFactors had more to show on the product side than 12 months ago – a good sign for the SuccessFactors ecosystem. We will be watching and analyzing, stay tuned.

 

 

More on overall SAP strategy and products:

 

• News Analysis - WorkForce Software Announces Global Reseller Agreement with SAP - read here
• First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Day #1 Keynote Top 3 Takeaways - read here
• News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors introduces Next Generation of HCM software - read here
• News Analysis - SAP delivers next release of SAP HANA - SPS 10 - Ready for BigData and IoT - read here
• Event Report - SAP Sapphire - Top 3 Positives and Concerns - read here
• First Take - Bernd Leukert and Steve Singh Day #2 Keynote - read here
• News Analysis - SAP and IBM join forces ... read here
• First Take - SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
• In Depth - S/4HANA qualities as presented by Plattner - play for play - read here
• First Take - SAP Cloud for Planning - the next spreadsheet killer is off to a good start - read here
• Progress Report - SAP HCM makes progress and consolidates - a lot of moving parts - read here
• First Take - SAP launches S/4HANA - The good, the challenge and the concern - read here

 

• First Take - SAP's IoT strategy becomes clearer - read here
• SAP appoints a CTO - some musings - read here
• Event Report - SAP's SAPtd - (Finally) more talk on PaaS, good progress and aligning with IBM and Oracle - read here
• News Analysis - SAP and IBM partner for cloud success - good news - read here
• Market Move - SAP strikes again - this time it is Concur and the spend into spend management - read here
• Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors picks up speed - but there remains work to be done - read here
• First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Top 3 Takeaways Day 1 Keynote - read here.
• Event Report - Sapphire - SAP finds its (unique) path to cloud - read here
• What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire - read here
• News Analysis - SAP becomes more about applications - again - read here
• Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass - off to the contingent workforce - early move or reaction? Read here.
• SAP's startup program keep rolling – read here.
• Why SAP acquired KXEN? Getting serious about Analytics – read here.
• SAP steamlines organization further – the Danes are leaving – read here.
• Reading between the lines… SAP Q2 Earnings – cloudy with potential structural changes – read here.
• SAP wants to be a technology company, really – read here
• Why SAP acquired hybris software – read here.
• SAP gets serious about the cloud – organizationally – read here.
• Taking stock – what SAP answered and it didn’t answer this Sapphire [2013] – read here.
• Act III & Final Day – A tale of two conference – Sapphire & SuiteWorld13 – read here.
• The middle day – 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
• A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
• What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire – read here.
• Why 3rd party maintenance is key to SAP’s and Oracle’s success – read here.
• Why SAP acquired Camillion – read here.
• Why SAP acquired SmartOps – read here.
• Next in your mall – SAP and Oracle? Read here.

 

And more about SAP technology:

• HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS - read here
• News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenSource - key steps - but what is the direction? - Read here.
• News Analysis - SAP moves Ariba Spend Visibility to HANA - Interesting first step in a long journey - read here
• Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough - read here
• Event Report - BI 2014 and HANA 2014 takeaways - it is all about HANA and Lumira - but is that enough? Read here.
• News Analysis – SAP slices and dices into more Cloud, and of course more HANA – read here.
• SAP gets serious about open source and courts developers – about time – read here.
• My top 3 takeaways from the SAP TechEd keynote – read here.
• SAP discovers elasticity for HANA – kind of – read here.
• Can HANA Cloud be elastic? Tough – read here.
• SAP’s Cloud plans get more cloudy – read here.
• HANA Enterprise Cloud helps SAP discover the cloud (benefits) – read here.

 

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard.

2012, 2013, 2014 & 2015 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

How Facebook Rips Off Businesses

Partner, Sensei Marketing
Partner, Sensei Marketing

Sales & marketing veteran with almost 30 years’ experience and now 1800 digital projects to his credit for clients including Morgan Stanley, AOL, Hyatt Gaming Management, Snyder's of Hanover, Hitachi, the Home Depot, Kraft Foods, Drees Homes, American Idol, and hundreds more, including leading agencies around the North America.     ...

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Looking through some of my most recent articles on Sensei’s blog, one would think I’m on some mission to malign social networks. Over the last two weeks I’ve questioned Instagram’s new advertising platform in one post and the questionable use of “influencers” by brands on that same network in another.  And this is certainly not the first time I’ve questioned the value of Facebook for business. It wasn’t that long ago that I told readers that businesses don’t necessarily require a Business Page on Facebook.

I’m not trying to focus my content on calling out social networks, but as the guiding principle behind my content strategy is to share the real-time experiences and debates we at Sensei Marketing have internally or among clients, today’s article will, once again, focus on another manner in which Facebook is ripping off businesses.

In truth, I utilize (and benefit from, in varying degrees) all these networks for various client projects I manage. It’s that experience, and the resulting lessons learned, that form today’s commentary.

Who Really Owns Your Community?

Over the past twelve months or so, Facebook has made a series of changes to its algorithms to “improve the user experience for individuals.” These well-documented (and criticized) changes to business pages include deleting “likes” (essentially followers) from business pages that have not visited or engaged in some time. Facebook claims that this last change is intended to improve the business’s insights and reach.

This wouldn’t be that big a deal if Facebook had provided a rationale to businesses for the changes, explained how it would benefit them, and then offered an opt-in function for businesses to have the Likes that Facebook deems unnecessary deleted. But that would require Facebook to acknowledge that our businesses own our followers and as we all know (or should know), we don’t; Facebook owns the audience of every business on its platform.

Double-Dipping – How Facebook Rips Off Businesses

The reality that Facebook owns a business’s community may not be that big of a deal if you factor in the fact that it provides businesses the opportunity to create and manage brand profiles for free.

Or is it free?

One of Facebook’s more notorious algorithm changes saw it throttling the number of followers who see its post. Reports indicated that somewhere around 4% of a business’s total audience will have its post included in followers’ newsfeeds.

So for a business to reach those people who have indicated they WANT to see posts from the business by “Liking” the business’s Page, they must pay for their posts to be seen by “People who like your Page.”

I understand the rationale for paying to reach people who have not Liked a business page; that’s basic advertising. However, for Facebook to provide a platform where businesses are encouraged to create interesting content that drives people to its network – from which it captures reams of personal data and generates a healthy profit through targeted advertising – to then request a payment to reach those people, well, it just feels like ransom to me.

Playing devil’s advocate, I’ll argue once again that the social network is offered at no charge to businesses so we should not be complaining.  But that’s the thing…it’s no longer free.

Every day Facebook encourages me to “Get more followers” for my businesses and those I manage by “Promoting Your Page.” Then, once I have an audience that I’ve paid for, I’m required to pay more money if I want to reach those people whom I’ve just paid to acquire (through promoted posts or content marketing efforts).

Huh? This business model is essentially an advertising “circle jerk.”   You pay to build an audience then you’re forced to pay more to reach that same audience.

Imagine a magazine’s marketing team charging a business for an ad in its publication but then black out that ad unless the business pays more money for subscribers to actually see the ad.

What would your reaction be to such an advertising policy?  Any sane businessperson would be outraged and walk away.  Yet Facebook is getting away with it.

Or is it? Many businesses are simply fed up and walking away from the game. Eat24, the popular food delivery and take out business – that you’d think would benefit tremendously from Facebook marketing – is one of many businesses to essentially quit the network, and they did it in style. Here’s an excerpt from Eat24’s hilarious breakup letter to Facebook.

We’d love to say “It’s not you, it’s us” but it’s totally you. Not to be rude, but you aren’t the smart, funny social network we fell in love with several years back. You’ve changed. A lot.

When we first met, you made us feel special. We’d tell you a super funny joke about Sriracha and you’d tell all our friends and then everyone would laugh together. But now? Now you want us to give you money if we want to talk to our friends. Now when we show you a photo of a taco wrapped with bacon, you’re all like “PROMOTE THIS POST! GET MORE FRIENDS!” instead of just liking us for who we are. That’s hella messed up.

 Who owns them? Well, the question should be “Who should own your business’s Facebook followers” because we know the answer. Facebook owns your followers, you do not.

Non-Profit and Charities

I’ve always stated that I don’t begrudge any business making money, even those I particularly dislike (such as Klout). It’s the goal of a business to make money and I’m all for that. As businesses and individuals, we have the option to advertise or to not advertise. It’s a business’s prerogative to rape and pillage its customers but it’s also the customer’s prerogative to simply walk away, as Eat24 did.  I may not like Facebook’s double-dipping practice but I can simply not participate and seek to build and engage my audience elsewhere.

What’s particularly bothersome to me is that Facebook, with all its growth and revenue, maintains the same practice with non-profit support groups, schools and other organizations that continuously struggle for funding but play an integral role in our society.

I’m part of a team that founded and manages The Friendship Bench, a non-profit support group dedicated to helping students suffering with anxiety and depression access available on-campus support. Facebook offers us the option to create a Page to help connect with students, parents, and faculty, yet holds that audience ransom until we pay to communicate with them.

Again, Facebook is a business and has the right (nay, the obligation) to try and make money; however, any profitable business with such aggressive practices would be better served by taming those practices.  Adopting social good policies, like exempting charitable organizations from their predatory advertising schemes, would mitigate some of the criticisms and possibly justify some of the higher fees other businesses pay.

Should Your Business Quit Facebook?

According to Facebook, “the goal of News Feed is to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time so they don’t miss the stories that are important to them. Ideally, we want News Feed to show all the posts people want to see in the order they want to read them.”

The changes made to Facebook’s display algorithms, which supports its near-criminal advertising practices, does not mean businesses can never benefit from the social network.  If you’re a small business and can’t afford the fees, maybe it’s not for you. Or, you can invest more in your content marketing strategy and personnel to create posts that:

– Keep your followers loyal and actively seeking out your page on a frequent basis
– Encourages those followers to like, share, and comment more frequently

Doing so will take advantage of Facebook’s current algorithm and increase the likelihood that your business’s posts will remain prominent among fans. However, don’t fool yourself…accessing the full community you’ve earned or purchased will cost you; if not through double-dipping advertising fees, through heavy investment in content marketing personnel and cross-network/website promotion and integration.

Corporatization of the Social Platform

This may all be a moot point as a Princeton study last year suggested that the social network is declining in popularity and may actually lose 80% of its users by 2017.  The study colorfully suggests that Facebook has spread like an infectious disease but we are slowly becoming immune to its attractions.

Facebook predicted to lose 80% of its users by 2017

Other studies have reported Facebook’s impending doom by referencing the millions of young people – or future users of the platform – that have been turned off by the corporatization of the social platform.

Facebook – along with businesses seeking to invest in social media marketing – should take a long hard look at the advertising model being created here and ask: “Is this a sustainable model for my business?” Competitive options are always just around the corner.

 Sensei Debates

Are Facebook Pages for business still a worthwhile investment? Will your business continue to support them?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The post How Facebook Rips Off Businesses appeared first on Sensei Marketing.

Salesforce Evolves Communities From Forums To E-Commerce

pending

Guy Courtin was formerly Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Matrix Commerce and how the Internet of Things drives the evolution of commerce.  Guy has over 15 years experience in the technology space and specifically in the supply chain space. Most recently he was the Vice President of Research at SCM World. Where he focused on the service providers that empowered supply chains. Prior to SCM World, Guy held numerous senior positions. He was responsible for product marketing at RSi, a retail supply chain solution provider. There managed RSi’s go to market strategy around their leading cloud based supply chain solutions. He also spear headed Progress Software’s supply chain group. Where he was responsible for driving revenue and market share as well…...

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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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Today Salesforce launched the ability to embed a Buy Button into sites built upon their Community Cloud platform. This new feature will bring the power of commerce to the world of social: enabling brands to leverage the activity that takes place in social channels and convert it into financial transactions. The following is Constellation Research’s reaction to the news, co-authored by Principal Analysts Alan Lepofsky and Guy Courtin.

Below you can see an example, in this case labeled Cart, which allows community members to add an item for purchase.

Shopping Meets Social

From the press release: "The new e-commerce capabilities enable communities of customers to discover, research, discuss and buy products in a single location while introducing a new sales channel for companies."

Alan's POV: This is significant because it enables companies to blend together 1) their community forums; where current and future customers can ask questions, post reviews and share feedback with 2) their e-commerce platform for purchasing. Today many companies separate these two functions, relying heavily on popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for customer engagement, then shifting those customers to another location for purchasing transactions.  The integration of community (social) and commerce (shopping) will allow for a much more seamless, hence more desirable customer experience.

Guy’s POV: Retail and CPG have long been aware of the growing power and influence social channels have on their brands and products. One only had to look as far as Twitter to see how brands such as @BestBuy or @USAir are acutely aware of any possible issue voiced by their customers. This announcement is looking to take advantage of the positive that comes of out social media – converting sales. Retail and CPG are also both acutely aware that their best sales people are existing customers. Enabling transactions to take place in these forums builds on the aspect of community influence. 

Commerce Without Coding

From the press release: "With new e-commerce Lightning Components from Salesforce partners like CloudCraze, Demandware and Bigcommerce, companies will be able to seamlessly incorporate e-commerce into their communities. Lightning Components are reusable building blocks that enable companies to quickly add rich new capabilities into their communities without programming."

Alan's POV: While the idea of making it easy for "citizen developers" (line of business workers who are not trained coders) to simply drag and drop components into applications sounds appealing, organizations need to be weary, as there is more to application development than just writing lines of code. Successful applications rely on compelling user interfaces (the look) and user experiences (the interactions). Commerce is a complicated process, involving complex workflows between inventory, purchasing and shipping.  These things require professionals with training and experience. That said, there is nothing wrong with Salesforce making it easier for professional developers to add these new e-commerce functions to their applications. The addition of the Buy Button and other components from their business partner eco-system, help make the Salesforce1 a compelling platform.

Complexity Of Supply Chain Meets Ease Of One Click Commerce

From the press release: “Community Cloud customers are already deploying custom e-commerce solutions, demonstrating the power of combining transactions with communities.”

Guy’s POV: The addition of a transaction function to the communities is not as simple as adding some code to a web site. The supply chain aspects of order management, fulfillment and payment are all aspects of the supply chain that have to be in sync for the promise of a “buy” button to come to fruition. This is no simple task; many e-Commerce players have failed at this step. It will be an interesting play for the software giant if it can integrate some of the efforts it is making with Salesforce retail as well as the partnerships it announced to truly take this to then next level. As the examples given for this new offering revolve around digital assets, the challenge of moving physical goods is much more complex.

Summary: From Forums To E-Commerce

The announcement hold much promise when it comes to the integration of retail and communities. The addition of e-commerce provides Salesforce an edge over many rival social community platforms. However there remains much to be seen as to how Salesforce can fulfill some of the promises, especially when it comes to moving physical goods. What will they build themselves, what will customers need to build and what gaps will be filled by business partners and 3rd party vendors? Constellation supports this first step in integrating shopping and social and recommends customers speak with Salesforce to see if it will work with their specific e-commerce systems and suppliers. This is a space to watch, hopefully with more details and examples being presented at Dreamforce.