News Analysis: Clarabridge Raises $80M in Funding For Expansion

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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General Catalyst, Summit, and Yuchun Lee To Take Clarabridge To Next Phase Of Growth

Rapidly growing Reston, VA based Clarabridge, announced on September 10, 2013 a $80 million round of capital.  Founded in 2006, Clarabridge is a leading provider of customer experience solutions.  The funding announcement is significant as Clarabridge:

• Invests into global expansion and product innovation. General Catalyst Partners, Summit Partners, and Yuchun Lee invests in the latest round .  Clarabridge intends to apply the investment towards global expansion, accelerate product innovation, and execute strategic transactions.  Key customers include B/E Aerospace, Best Buy, Charming Shoppes, Inc., Choice Hotels, Dell, Expedia, E.ON, Fidelity, Gaylord Hotels, Government of British Columbia, Intuit, J.D. Power, L’Oréal USA, Marriott International, PetSmart, QVC Inc., Sage North America, United Airlines, Walmart, Walgreens, and Wendy’s International.
  
  Point of View (POV): With over 150% of revenue growth over the past 3 years, Clarabridge plans to expand beyond it’s latest entry into San Francisco and London.  The CEM vendor  has the opportunity to build out new geographical markets while expanding industry reach in auto, cpg, finance, healthcare, hospitality, insurance, manufacturing, pharma, restaurants, retail, technology, telecommunications and travel.   Moreover, as the CEM space continues to evolve, Clarabridge now has a war chest to acquire new technologies or engineering talent as the market continues to expand and large legacy vendors acquire to consolidate.

• Brings on experienced investors and board level expertise. Previous board members included David Blundin of Link Ventures, Don Raine of Grotech ventures, John Glushik of Intersouth Partners, Jonathan Perl of Boulder Ventures, and Sanju Bansal COO of MicroStrategy.   Larry Bohn of General Catalyst Partners and Tom Jennings of Summit Partners will join as part of the board.  Meanwhile, Yuchun Lee will serve as Chairman of the Board.
  
  Point of View (POV): While the previous board and investors provided the initial catalyst to Clarabridge’s success, in order to take it to the next level, the company needed new energy and direction.  David Blundin and Sanju remain on the board from the previous set of investors.  With Yuchun as chairman, expect innovative approaches to partnerships, OEM relationships, and positioning of Clarabridge in a broader customer experience context.

The Bottom Line: Clarabridge Poised For Growth

At the 2013 C3 Customer event, Constellation spent time speaking with over 50 of the 400 clients in attendance.  The range of customers covered key brands across a variety of industries.  Customers chose Clarabridge for a few reasons:

• Intuitive user experience
• Ability to handle multiple sources of engagement
• Global language support
• Self learning systems

Customer centricity is now a strategic imperative and requires first rate orchestration, company wide commitment, and leadership.  This new round of funding and more importantly board level expertise will help take Clarabridge build, acquire, and partner with the capabilities that customers will need to succeed.

Your POV.

What’s your plan to achieve customer centricity? Are you embarking on a digital business transformation?  Let us know how it’s going!  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 your Matrix Commerce and Digital Business transformation efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing matrix commerce readiness
• Developing your digital business strategy
• 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 Resources

• Event Report: CRM Evolution 2013 – Seven Trends In The Return To Digital Business And Customer Centricity
• Monday’s Musings: Four Elements for A #SharingEconomy Biz Model In #MatrixCommerce
• Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real-Time, Achieve Right-Time
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
• Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business
• Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Technology Budget Part 1
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business

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!

Don Rainey

Board Member

Don Rainey joined Grotech Ventures in September, 2007 as a General Partner and focuses his investment activities on software and e-commerce technologies. Until recently, Don was a General Partner in Intersouth Partners, a venture capital firm based in Durham, North Carolina.

Formerly, Don was an entrepreneur with a track record of a number of successful businesses. He was President of Attitude Network, one of the first entertainment networks online, which was sold to TheGlobe.com. He also served as a founding member of the Board of Directors for Accipiter through its acquisition by CMGI and was COO of DaVinci Systems, which was sold to ON Technology, enabling a combined entity IPO four months later. Don has also held senior executive positions with Novell and the IBM Corporation. Currently, Don is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland, where he teaches graduate courses on new venture creation and finance. Don is also among a select group of venture capitalists chosen to serve as a consultant to the Chief Information Officer of the US Department of Defense, through the DeVenCI program, advising on emerging technologies.

Don is a member of the boards of ARPU, Zenoss, Mid-Atlantic Venture Association (MAVA), March of Dimes – Capital Area, Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties Foundation and Mindshare, an organization that helps CEOs from the most promising start-ups in the Greater Washington Metropolitan region build long-term sustainable companies. Previously, Don has served on the boards of Covega, Defywire, Maxcyte, Artifact Software, Flatburger, Enterprise Investment Advisory Committee for the State of Maryland and Investment Advisory Board of the State of Virginia’s Growth Acceleration Program.

Don is a James Madison University Graduate, BBA and holds a MS in Bioscience Management from George Mason University.

John Glushik

Board Member

John Glushik is a general partner with Intersouth Partners, one of the most active and experienced early-stage funds in the Southeast with more than 80 investments in private companies over the last 20 years. Intersouth manages more than $750 million in seven venture capital limited partnerships, the most recent of which was established in May 2006 and totals $275 million. This fund is the largest venture capital fund in North Carolina and one of the largest early stage funds in the Southeast. John has been actively involved with most of the companies in the Intersouth information technology portfolio, serving as a board member and a board observer. His work covers all aspects of venture investment and portfolio management. He has led multiple venture financings and he has managed a number of successful liquidity events. John is an active member of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), serving on CED’s board of directors and executive committee. He serves on the board of the Florida Venture Forum and he has served as co-chair of the AeA Venture Forum. He also serves on the advisory boards of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of the Southeast and Southeast TechInventures. He teaches as an Adjunct Professor at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. He speaks frequently at North Carolina State University and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University where he is an Entrepreneur Affiliate. John serves on the Engineering Alumni Council and Devil Fund Board at the School of Engineering at Duke. Prior to Intersouth, John worked as an engineer and consultant in the information technology and aerospace industries. His previous experience includes software development, telecommunications engineering, data communications research and strategic market consulting. He holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering and materials science from Duke, an M.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Jonathan Perl

Board Member

Mr. Perl is a General Partner at Boulder Ventures and has more than 12 years of investing experience, focused primarily on early-stage information technology companies. He led Boulder Ventures’ successful investments in iLumin Software (acquired by Computer Associates) and Era (acquired by SRA International), and is on the Boards of Millennium Pharmacy Systems, Zenoss, and Metron Aviation. Mr. Perl is also a Board Member of The Mid-Atlantic Venture Association (MAVA) and a National Child Research Center (NCRC) Trustee and Chair of its Finance Committee. He is Co-Chair of MAVA’s Capital Connection for both 2009 and 2010.

Mr. Perl holds an MBA from the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a BA (magna cum laude) in classical history from Tufts University.

Sanju Bansal

Board Member

Sanju K. Bansal has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer since 1993 and was previously Vice President, Consulting since joining MicroStrategy in 1990. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of MicroStrategy since September 1997 and has served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors since November 2000. Prior to joining MicroStrategy, Mr. Bansal was a consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton, a worldwide technical and management consulting firm, from 1987 to 1990. Mr. Bansal received an S.B. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Computer Science from The Johns Hopkins University.

SNA Finalists Data-to-Decisions

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Test

Joseph is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  Covering all things related to Data Management and Analytics, he focuses on making better decisions through using new sources of data, innovative ways of interweaving the volumetric flow of data of increasing compexity, and disruptive techniques for drawing inferences and making predictions from that data. Sensor networks Mobile devices Machine-to-machine interchanges Machine-to-human interactiions Sensor Analytics Internet of Things Sustainability Self-quantification Since 1978, Joseph has been involved with renewable energy research, developing advanced statistical methods for complex system analysis, and creating analytical techniques and management methodologies for solving business,…...

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Data-to-Decisions [D2D] is one of the broadest business research themes that Constellation Research covers. As such, the SuperNova Award entries cover a wide range of data collection, management and analysis for every aspect of organizational and personal decision making. The judges had quite a decision of their own to make, selecting the most innovative and disruptive uses of data to impact decision making from among 28 applicants representing just as varied use cases. D2D and the submissions received apply the most interesting data sets to the most advanced decision challenges facing enterprises, governments, communities and individuals, today. I want to congratulate the 11 finalists in D2D and introduce you to them. For it's you, the reader of this blog, those who are interested in disruptive, innovative decision making, the public who find this page, who will decide the winner from these finalists. Voting opens to the public, from 2013 September 9 through October 9 on the Constellation site. So, here are the innovators and organizations found to be the most innovative of the SuperNova Award D2D applicants.

Vote for the SuperNova Awards

Ashish Braganza, Senior Manager of Global Business Intelligence, Lenovo

Lenovo, the world’s largest PC vendor, is a $US34 billion personal technology company serving customers in more than 160 countries. The challenge facing Lenovo to maintain that top spot. To do so, Lenovo created the Global Business Intelligence [GBI] team and tasked them to improve website conversion rate, and provide an eight-fold return on the investment in the GBI team. Through predictives, optimization and data, using Adobe Systems' Adobe Marketing Cloud [Analytics, Social, Media Optimizer, Target and Experience Manager Solutions] the GBI team was able to directly impact the corporate financial stream, creating a five-fold increase in click-through, boosting revenue per customer by 26 percent.

Brad Donovan, Manager, Agile Analytics and Innovation, GlaxoSmithKline

GSK employees serve US communities by discovering, developing, and delivering new medicines, vaccines, and other healthcare products to help people do more, feel better, and live longer. Unfortunately, a long established commitment to advanced statistics and what is now called data science, had led to a situation wherein the IT & Analytic communities could not respond when Marketing and Sales needed new insight. Teradata, IBM & SAS came on as an advisory council to verify or refute IT's objections to the new Agile Analytics & Innovation group using data directly from the EDW by way of Teradata Data Labs. This is a move from where the old Analytics team was seen as a bunch of PhD stats using SAS and pushing out one-time models. Using Teradata EDW, Data Labs and analytics partners, the Agile Analytics & Innovation group took data aggregation from 30 hours to 3 minutes, model execution from 40 hours to 1 hour, QC from 40 hours to 5 hours, but most importantly they took the predictives and models of the Analytics team from a "bright shiny object" to an actionable solution in production, accessible by thousands of business analysts throughout the company. In many ways, this is a reverse of the current trend towards creating data science teams, and shows how companies that are just moving forward with data science, can leverage and productionalize the improved inferences and predictions stemming from computational statistics, data mining and machine learning.

Bruce Yen, Director of Business Intelligence, Guess?

Established in 1981, Guess?, Inc. began as a denim company and has since successfully grown into a global lifestyle brand that directly operates 511 retail stores in the United States and Canada and 328 retail stores in Europe, Asia and Latin America. To be immediately responsive to customer and business needs, Guess sought to harness the power of big data in near real-time and thus compress the business decision cycle. Guess? Inc. extended the power of the HP Vertica Analytics Platform to power all of its BI & Analytics, but the real disruption came with a cutting-edge analytics iPad application, “G-Mobile,” designed for non-traditional Business Intelligence (BI) users. Via G-Mobile, Guess? extends analytics to the business front line — including designers, buyers, planners, sales executives, and allocators — so they can better manage the business with the right data at the right time. This reduced the load window by 50 - 62.5 percent, from 3-4 hours on the legacy platform to 90 minutes at most, accelerated speed-to-insight: on the legacy system, it might have taken 15 to 20 minutes to generate a merchandise report; it takes just five to 20 seconds on the iPad accessing data remotely, and improved merchandise allocation and distribution of inventory across retail locations due to complex queries, such as sales for all best-sellers, performed 60 to 80 times faster.

Dirk Zeller, Head of IT Consulting at Mercedes-AMG GmbH, Mercedes-AMG GmbH

The image of AMG as the successful performance brand of Mercedes-Benz is reflected in its impressive successes in the world of motorsport and its unique vehicles. Today it is a one hundred percent subsidiary of Daimler AG and is the group's technological spearhead in the high-performance car segment. The AMG brand promise of "Driving Performance" stands for state-of-the-art technology and pure driving excitement. The engine is the key component of every Mercedes-AMG vehicle, allowing us to deliver on the promise of ‘Driving Performance’. AMG have realized that a key function like engineering could benefit tremendously from real-time analytics to innovate and accelerate all engine testing processes which are usually time-consuming (e.g. up to 50mn of engine dyno time are wasted in case of a non-successful engine test-run) while the resources, especially dynometers are limited. Comparing current engine testing data with previous test-bench data to evaluate the performance of the engine was for example extremely complex and in some cases not even possible. Using SAP HANA, mobile, and predictive products, Mercedes-AMG – in collaboration with SAP AG Partner MHP - have built a highly innovative real-time quality assurance platform for the optimization of end-to-end testing processes in development and manufacturing. The solution delivers real-time analytics to engineers on any device to allow them get a 360° view of the performance of the engine during all testing phases – also leveraging high-volumes of polytechnical data coming from sensors connected directly to the enginesThis has reduced run-time for non-successful test-drives (before: 50mn ; after: immediate halt if parameters are out of range), saved between one to several days in engine testing capacity, which can now allow us to test more engines during the same period of time and/or allocate this time for other added value tasks, and decreased capital expenditures. The result is a highly scalable platform for the future. The same approach can be applied to other use-cases: test vehicle on test-track, test-vehicle on long-test runs, crash tests, interior testing, and even getting real-time information from the vehicle while being used by the customer, allowing for a future of predictive maintenance.

Karen Simmons, Senior Director, Enterprise Data Warehouse, Kelley Blue Book Co., Inc.

Founded in 1926, Kelley Blue Book delivers the most market-reflective values in the industry on its top-rated website www.KBB.com, including the famous Blue Book® Trade-In and Suggested Retail Values, and Fair Purchase Price. Kelley Blue Book undertook a significant initiative to create a single 360-degree view of online activity and behavior across disparate data sources throughout and from outside the enterprise, Web360. Kelley Blue Book leveraged technology from Informatica, IBM Netezza, MicroStrategy and SAS to launch Web360, thereby replacing a fragmented assortment of data integration tools, as well as proprietary data integration frameworks, with a unified platform approach to integration. The Web360 initiative enables the company to profile, cleanse, integrate and analyze large data sets with complex relationships. This resulted in improved analytics and intelligence, providing an enhanced and more compelling consumer experience, creating increased performance for advertisers who benefit from new and faster data-driven intelligence.

Oswaldo Mestre, Director, Division of Citizen Services, Office of the Mayor, City of Buffalo 311 Call and Resolution Center

The City of Buffalo 311 Call and Resolution Center, in conjunction with the ancillary programs within the Division of Citizen Services, not just a call center; 311 increases the City's effectiveness in responding to public inquiries, providing insight into the needs and concerns of residents, and promoting accountability by ensuring that services are being delivered in a consistent and timely manner citywide. Using data mostly from 311, the Division of Citizen Services’ Operation Clean Sweep identifies various areas of the city to send the Clean Sweep team of a city, state, county and federal government police and health and human service providers to offer educational outreach, along with beautification crews to address physical issues in the area. Using KANA LAGAN CRM system, 311 allows the City to track issues, get locations, categorize and store each department’s issues in one system, thereby enabling each department to prioritize and respond to issues accordingly.

Lance Henderson, CEO, Zamzee

Zamzee uses sensor technology and a community web site to influence families to healthier lifestyles. Using Bunchball’s Nitro gamification platform and avatar engine, Zamzee participated in research studies by Hopelabs showing that activity levels and associated health measures were all positively influenced through the gamification process.

Roman Coba, Chief Information Officer, McCain Foods Limited

McCain Foods Limited is an international corporation in the frozen food industry, known for frozen potato specialties, and also producing frozen pizza, appetizers, oven meals, juice and desserts. Using Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse with MicroStrategy and IBM Infosphere, McCain Foods use Optimal Equipment Efficiency (OEE) in real-time and projecting it to all production employees in an easy-to-understand format, creating a cultural shift with the ability to access and analyze not just data, but data that is transformed into information that is intelligent and actionable. One unintended result has been the creation of an extremely competitive workforce as production employees can now see in real-time how they compare to other plants, which makes them compete to outdo other plants.

Ronald Baden, VP of Services, Host Analytics

Host Analytics provides cloud-based financial applications for planning, close management, reporting and analytics. Using FinancialForce PSA, Host Analytics went from using Microsoft Word documents and manual processes to using the FinancialForce PSA application’s detailed reports and dashboards allowed the company to better allocate resources based on project needs. This led to Host Analytics customers giving the company the highest combined overall ratings for reported measures in each of the Vendor, Product and Implementation experience categories, as well as receiving other customer service awards.

Russ Turner, Site Reliability Engineering - Manager, Domino’s Pizza

Domino's pizza restaurant chain launched a web ordering service in 2007. This created a big data problem of unwieldy amounts of machine log data. Domino's deployed Splunk Enterprise to deal with this data. The learning experience from the initial uses of Splunk led to this machine analytics solution being deployed across the enterprise and to use in areas other than the original IT and networking areas to to improving business decisions through visualizing sales trends such as orders per minute, numbers of transactions per store, types of pizza customers are ordering and the coupons they’re using to do so. Machine-to-machine data (M2M) data analytics allows Domino's to determine the types of devices–iPhones, Androids or Xbox’s–that are being used to place orders, or assess promotions in real time. All of this made Domino's IT team a legitimate source of business insight across all areas of the organization.

Tony Candeloro, Vice President Product Development, ARI

ARI provides global vehicle fleet management that drives the best results for each of its clients’ unique and complex needs. In the US, more than 450,000 fleet vehicles are covered by ARI’s maintenance management programs. ARI facilitates maintenance and repairs for these vehicles via a nationwide open vendor network. Currently, the network consists of more than 66,000 vendors with a controlled spend for parts and labor of almost one billion dollars. ARI’s commitment to its customers is to match them with a vendor that is best suited for their vehicle and repair type, to negotiate the best price on the parts and labor costs that get passed through to the customer, and to keep vehicle downtime to a minimum. By leveraging SAP HANA in-memory technology, SAP Xcelsius Dashboards and Infosol’s Info Burst Data Caching, ARI created a a neural data network that relates all vendors with given a radius throughout the US. This data drives dashboards that can analyze regional vehicle operating parameters, regional vehicle spend, and regional vendor operations to identify opportunities to leverage and target our clients’ total spend. Correlating this information with geospatial dashboards provides ARI with a clear picture to better negotiate discounts on behalf of our clients and to communicate with our vendors about the opportunities that ARI provides to their immediate markets.

Bottom Line

The Constellation Research Super Nova Award finalists are market leaders and fast followers, using technology from entrepreneurial firms such as Splunk and Concurrent, from established vendors such as HP, Informatica, SAP and Teradata, and innovative solutions from all manner of vendors in-between. If you wish to get ideas on how to solve similar problems, get the entire story, from the link for each finalist in the above summaries<>. Every organization, every individual, can use internal and external data to create inferences and predictions to gain better insight and increase performance. Learn from your peers, by reading these SNA applications. You can also learn the theory behind data-to-decsions.

SuperNova Award Polls Now Open (#SNA2013)

The polls are now open for the 2013 SuperNova Awards!

Cast your vote for your favorite innovators in disruptive technology here.

Polls close on October 9, 2013 at midnight, PT. The 2013 SuperNova Award winners will be announced on October 30, 2013 at the SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner which is held on the first night of Constellation's Connected Enterprise.

J. Bruce Daley Joins Constellation Research as VP and Principal Analyst Covering Mobility and Sales Force Automation

Industry veteran joins Constellation Research to extend coverage of enterprise software by publishing first report and holding first webinar.

Download the report snapshot

DENVER, Colorado– Constellation Research, Inc., the award-winning research and advisory firm focused on disruptive technologies today announced the addition of J. Bruce Daley to the research team as Vice President and Principal Analyst covering mobility, sales force automation, and front office professional services. Daley’s research will add depth to Constellation’s business research themes: Technology Optimization & Innovation, Consumerization of Technology & The New C-Suite, Next Generation Customer Experience.

Daley’s research will focus on those trends driving the adoption, implementation, and modernization of enterprise class technology. Daley will also cover sales force automation (SFA) for Constellation with an emphasis on mobile technology. The addition of Daley bolsters Constellation’s ability to provide its clients with the most comprehensive analysis of disruptive technologies.

“I am honored to join Constellation Research and to contribute to the success of our clients with my research and writing” noted J. Bruce Daley.  “Throughout my career I have been a lifelong student of the software business, although I am not sure that speaks well for me as a human being, it gives me a unique perspective on how the industry really works. Constellation Research is the ideal platform and provides a pulpit for me to help clients see trends more clearly and make strategic decisions more quickly.” 

Daley was for many years the publisher of the Siebel Observer, the largest publication covering the CRM pioneer.  Later he co-founded a boutique advisory services firm that brokered the sale of system integrator Blue Hammock Inc. to GCI International (now called Collabera) and conducted over 250 consultations with mutual funds, hedge funds, and private equity funds. Widely quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Daley also founded the Enterprise Software Summit.

 “Our clients are asking for how to modernize legacy front office systems, and how to take sales force automation into the 21^st century. ” noted R “Ray” Wang,  Principal Analyst and Chairman of Constellation Research, “Bruce brings the historical focus of CRM and the network of professionals who are seeking to modernize through the cloud, mobile, and social.  I’m extremely excited to have Bruce on board.”

Daley's first research paper for Constellation: “Seeing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Legacy Applications: How to Attack or Defend an Installed Base by Understanding How to Qualify the Success of a Legacy Applications" will be published on September 10. This original research will help sales representatives and sales management determine how likely a legacy implementation is to be converted so they can qualify opportunities and threats more quickly. The report will be available for purchase at http://constellationr.com/research/seeing-good-bad-and-ugly-legacy-applications

His first Webinar Where Do You Stand with Siebel will be held on Wednesday September 18 at 9:30 pacific (12:30 eastern).  With Oracle sending mixed messages about the product’s future, this webinar helps Siebel customers and partners determine where they stand and what different directions they can take in their implementation and their careers. Registration for the Webinar is at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/578393734

COORDINATES
Twitter: @brucedaley
Website: constellationr.com/users/bdaley
Linkedin:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/brucedaley
Geo: Denver, Colorado

Bruce Daley 2013 Research Agenda

• Seeing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Legacy Applications
• State of Siebel in the Market 2013
• 2013 State of Siebel Installed Base Survey
• Mobile SFA
• Results from the 2013 State of Siebel Survey
• Innovating Around the Edges of Legacy CRM with Mobile SFA
• Trends from this Year’s Super Nova
• Super Nova Case Study

Press Contacts:
Contact the Media and Influencers relations team at [email protected] for interviews with analysts.

Sales Contacts:
Contact our sales team at [email protected].

What I would like Workday to address this Workday Rising ...

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&nbsp;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.&nbsp; Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization &amp; Innovation&nbsp; 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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The yearly Workday Rising conference is coming upon us - a key event for Workday, customers and the overall HCM market... All eyes in the HCM world will be on Moscone Center from September 9th to 12th, and with that Workday has earned the attention of a whole industry and market.

Time to get some topics out there that we would love to have answers for after this week.

[This post is trying to follow the structure of my May blog post about What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire... that, if interested - you can find here.]

The Future

Workday has done a superb job to achieve its market position and overall recognition. And it has for the first time laid out major innovation pieces coming in the future with Recruitment and BigData Anaytics. It the near time it will be key to understand how these projects are going, what they will deliver and what the road map on top of these deliverables look like. And more longer term - if Workday will share what similar large investment areas there maybe going forward. More horizontal functional extension in HCM, more vertical functionality, more Financials functionality - maybe a surprise? 

My hope is that the company will continue to chart a course similar to the e.g. BigData Analyticcs timelines for similar large and strategic initiatives - something all enterprise software vendors are inherently uncomfortable with - but something that bides a market  leader well. Anyone remember how Siebel kept the ecosystem in its breadth by the march through the six generations of CRM?

More sweet Suite?

Recently Workday has ramped up its messaging on the benefits of running a modern, cloud based integrated HCM and Finance system - and the benefits are on hand (see e.g. Mark Nittler's excellent post here) - but the argument may also play into the hands of even larger automation owners like e.g. SAP, Oracle and Infor. 

Nonetheless this is a move in the right direction in my view and it will interesting to see what innovative and differentiating argument - maybe from a unique HCM perspective, the higher ground for Workday - we will hear this week.

What Clouds will it be?

In Memory

Next Generation Recruitment

Workday has certainly raised the ante on their upoming recruitment product. We hope to learn more about the upcoming functionality and hope that Workday will use this opportunity to build recruitment from bottom up newly in 2013 to truly differentiate themselves from the existing bread and butter functionality. 

Designed for mobile first is the claim, and we expect that to be delivered - but we equally expect a thought leading way how to deal with social media beyond Chatter. And not just for the travolging aspect social for recruitment - but for the overall product suite.

Payroll

From what we can see Workday gets dragged into providing payroll functionality more and more as a product deliverable, as seen with the recent announcement and confirmation of the UK (2015) and France (2016) payrolls. And while the company has done a very good job with interfaces and partner programs - at the end of the day larger international customers - Workday's sweet spot - would like to have this critical piece of information delivered from their vendor - with no potential finger pointing on integration, compliance and payment issues. It will be interesting to see if this ultimately will lead to a rethinking of the Workday in product supported payroll scope.

BigData / Analytics

One of the other larger product development deliverable of Workday that's on the horizon, is their Big Data Analytics initiative. For the data part the traditional transactional vendors usually chose a co-existence model - keep their transactional data in one silo, and the no-sql data in another and let the magic work in between. For the analytics aspect I am really game to hear more on the implementation - I am hoping for not the faux analytics - where it is used as a new marketing buzzword for reporting - but the real analytics - the one that recommend or even take an action (Read more here).

With Workday's object model though - there are other options to build this - and they could become true value drivers for its customers and products - let's hope we will learn  more in this area at Rising.

Momentum

Workday comes off a stellar quarter - and it will be interesting to see how customers, partners, the whole ecosystem feel about the performance and about the next quarters to come. As known, Workday not only needs very good execution to the product side (that we focused a lot on in this post) - but needs it equally on the go to market, partner development and enablement as well as customer success side. And that across many more geographies. We look forward to see and learn how the company handles the good problem of growing very fast - one of the more strategic overall topics we plan to keep a keen eye on. 

Vision & Thought Leadership

MyPOV

With SaaS, the Software is Not the Only Service Needed

President, Computer Economics and Strativa, Inc.
Computer Economics and Strativa, Inc.

Frank Scavo is skilled at formulating and communicating IT strategy, developing the business case for new systems, and facilitating the selection of enterprise systems, such as ERP, CRM, and supply chain management. He is also an expert in benchmarking IT spending and staffing levels for end-user IT organizations. Frank was one of the first tech bloggers, beginning in 2002 with his launch of the Enterprise System Spectator providing independent analysis of issues and trends in enterprise applications software and the strengths, weaknesses, advantages, and disadvantages of the vendors that provide them. Frank has been quoted as an IT expert in numerous business and industry publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, CIO Magazine, ZDnet, eWeek, Datamation,…...

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Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) simplifies much of the complexity involved in implementing and using enterprise software. However, in consulting on several SaaS selection deals over the past two years, I've grown concerned that some SaaS providers may be neglecting some of the key elements of success for buyers.

(Please note, that in this post, I am not addressing the distinction between multi-tenant and single-tenant hosted systems. Although there are important differences, my concern about services transcends this distinction and applies to both.)

As the name implies, software-as-a-service (SaaS) turns software into a service. No longer does the buyer need to install software in its on-premises data centers. Nor does the buyer need to provide its own day-to-day internal support for maintaining and operating the application infrastructure. The entire system is delivered to users "as a service" by means of a network connection. 

But is the software the only service that SaaS buyers require? It doesn't matter whether it's SaaS or on-premise. These systems do not implement themselves. What about implementation services, such as project team training, help with prototyping, data migration, end-user training, acceptance testing and go-live support?

Moreover, once the company goes live on the new system, what about on-going support? Is there a help desk to deal with problems, such as system unavailability or response time? What if a bug is uncovered or a patch needs to be applied? Who does the buyer turn to when there are questions about how the system operates? Is there good up-to-date system documentation and training materials?

SaaS-Only Providers May Attempt Arms-Length Implementation Services

Over the years, I've noticed a distinct difference in the selling approach of what I call the SaaS-only providers versus traditional enterprise software vendors. The SaaS-only players, being 100% committed to the online model, attempt to move as much of the selling process online as possible. For low-end applications such as survey software or email marketing, they offer free trials with online conversion to the paid service. For mid-level or higher-end applications (think, accounting systems or ERP), they offer self-directed online demonstrations and perhaps some sort of limited trial use of the system. If at all possible, to minimize cost of sales, they attempt to close the deal on the web or over the phone with as little on-site selling as possible. All of these sales methods are good, and I'd like to see the traditional vendors move also in this direction.

The problem in my mind, however, is when vendors attempt to move their implementation services to this low-touch model. They try to use online computer-based training, web-based instructor-led training, and phone support, with as little on-site or personalized service as possible. This may work for lower-end applications, but when you move into those mid-level or higher-end applications, the customer can often be short-changed. It puts more responsibility on the buyer to organize its own resources for deployment.

This may work for some small companies, but not all. Some simply need more hand-holding.

Now, where I think the SaaS-only providers generally do a good job is in post-implementation services. Because these vendors are entirely web-based, they generally have good capabilities for ongoing support, such as self-help systems, user support communities, and web-based training. They also have much experience in migrating customers to new versions, which is far less painful than the upgrade cycles of traditional on-premises vendors.

Traditional Vendors and Channel Partners May Not Be Good at Post-Go-Live Support

The traditional vendors--and their channel partners--face the opposite problem. Their sales model has always been a high-touch model. They conduct face-to-face sales meetings and demonstrations. They bring services people into the process to help close the deal. They derive substantial revenue from implementation services, so they invest in those resources.

What happens when these vendors offer a "cloud" or "hosted" version of their systems? This is where the traditional vendors and their channel partners risk falling down. They can sell their systems as they always have, but now, what about post-implementation ongoing support? The software developer often doesn't want to get involved in the day-to-day management of their customers' systems, so they push that responsibility to their VARs. The VARs, in turn, often cannot afford to invest in their own data centers, so they turn to data center hosting partners to operate the system. This arrangement can work, but the result can be a complex relationship:

• The software vendor develops and issues new releases new versions of the software
• The hosting provider operates the customer's system. 
• The VAR helps the customer implement the software and provides day-to-day ongoing support for the customer, such as help desk services and resolving any issues with the hosting provider. They also provide services when customers need periodic version upgrades.

The risk in this arrangement with largely with the VAR.  Their legacy is as implementation partners. Their experience is in projects. They come in, do a job, then leave. They do not have a culture of providing day-to-day support to their customers. Furthermore, these partners almost always have a mix of on-premises customers and hosted customers, with hosted customers forming a smaller or much-smaller percentage of business. They might have some help desk personnel to take calls, but they cannot dedicate technical resources just to the hosting customers. Rather they must use their implementation consultants when a customer has a routine problem. If the consultant who knows that customer's business is deep in the middle of another customer's go-live, the first customer's problem may go unresolved.

Most of the SaaS-only providers do not have this problem. They develop the system, they host the system, and they provide day-to-day ongoing support for the system, including version upgrades. If there is a partner involved, it is usually only for initial implementation or help rolling out new functionality.

What Should SaaS Buyers Do? 

Seeing that there can be problems with both the SaaS-only providers and the traditional providers offering hosted versions, how can buyers minimize their risks? I would suggest that more due diligence is needed beyond what software buyers perform for on-premises enterprise systems.

When considering SaaS-only providers:

• In the sales presentation: observe whether the SaaS provider pushing an approach of mostly virtual services, claiming the system is so easy to implement that you don't require much help? If you are prepared to implement without much direct support, fine. Otherwise, you may be starved for resources when you most need them. 
• In your reference checking, ask about the implementation experience. Who provided implementation services, the SaaS provider directly, or an implementation consulting firm? What type of support did they provide? Were their on-site services adequate? What do you wish you had done differently?

When considering traditional vendors with hosted offerings:

• In the sales presentation: observe whether the vendor mostly talking about the software and implementation services, or are they giving sufficient time to talk about on-going support after the go-live? This may indicate they are still thinking of themselves primarily as sales and implementation services providers, not as ongoing support providers.
• In your reference checking: ask about the day-to-day experience with ongoing support. Does the provider schedule a lot of downtime for maintenance? Is there much unscheduled downtime? Do you ever have problems getting the right person on the phone to resolve issues?

Of course, all these questions can be asked of all vendors. But you might consider a different emphasis depending on whether the vendor is a SaaS-only provider, or a traditional vendor with both on-premises and hosted offerings.

Finally, if it's not in the contract, it doesn't exist. Be sure all of your needs are reflected in the actual contract and associated statements of work. If you're not experienced with negotiating these, seek help. 

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IT Services in a SaaS World

The Way to Wealth by Chicago Professor

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of &nbsp;award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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I love this advice written on the back of an index card by University of Chicago Professor, Harold Pollack. In clear, simple terms, he explains the dos and don’ts of building wealth over time. Of course, like all advice, it’s easy to hear and hard to put into action. My favourite point is “The person on the other side of the table knows more than you do about their stuff”. Applies to everything in life. Remember it.

Want financial advice? 2) @haroldpollack gives it free…in index card form. pic.twitter.com/FxZURVw5z6

— Sendhil Mullainathan (@m_sendhil) September 5, 2013

Sorry you are down, wait we are down, too! (Or: The sad state of HA)

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&nbsp;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.&nbsp; Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization &amp; Innovation&nbsp; 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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This week I learned about an outage that happened at a provider of Microsoft Office applications. Which reminded me about the sad state of high availability across the industry.


 

More on the provider

The provider is a medium sized infrastructure vendor that is successful in providing hosted Microsoft Officer applications, basically running the servers for Outlook for their clients. They are  not small with 5 corporate locations on both sides of the Atlantic, and 10 datacenters in the US and Europe. The provider is professional and has e.g. achieved SOC2 and SOC3 compliance.

The vendor offers a a 99.999% up-time guarantee - but that was definitively broken by being down for most of a workday from 7 AM till 3:30 PM.
 

What happened

Clients noticed in the morning, that they were not able to get their emails, send emails and work with their calendars. When calling the provider, calls went dead, the provider's website and support applications were not available. The first provider to client communication happened then over... Twitter. And Twitter remained the lifeline between provider and customers till - you may have guessed it - the Twitter account went into Twitter jail for hitting the daily limit of 1000 tweets. And while that seems generous - it's not much if Twitter is your only ways of communication with multiple hundreds customers.
 

What went right

The provider got the system back, tried all they can do to get customer informed (so they were obviously in the dark), offered the usual letter form the CEO in the next 24 hours and had that followed up by the COO. The vendor communicated pro-actively that they had broken the service levels, and that that they would waive the requirement to ask for re-imbursement, and re-imburse customers diretly based on their SLAs.
 

What went wrong

In the CEO letter the provider already offered an issue with their routers as the root cause of the outage. And while it's fine to not have the ultimate reasons 24 hours post an outage event - you need to do better than the following from the letter of the COO- 48 hours later:
 

The sorry state of HA

MyPOV

Constellation Research Publishes Cloud Customer Service Market Overview

Helping brands determine if a cloud solution makes good business sense for their organization

Best practices and a checklist for vendor selection

San Francisco, CA – September 5, 2013 Constellation Research, Inc. the research and advisory firm focused how disruptive technologies transform business models announced today the publication of a new research report: “Cloud Customer Support Delivers High Value” by Constellation Vice President and Principal Analyst, Elizabeth Herrell. Cloud customer support addresses the new demands for cross channel services, social and mobile support.  This market overview discusses the major benefits of cloud services for customer support in addition to factors required for making informed decisions regarding utilization of cloud services for next generation customer support.

This report reveals:

• Major shifts in customer expectations that drive a new support model
• How cloud services support innovation to improve customers’ experiences
• Importantly, this report helps brands determine if a cloud solution makes good business sense for their organization. It also highlights key vendors in this space and the type of services they provide

While cloud solutions have been available for several years, many brands have major concerns regarding using the cloud to support their complex customer support ecosystem. Deciding on a cloud solution for customer support is not just about cost savings but about driving innovation and flexibility into current operations to support emerging support requirements for traditional, social and mobile customers.  This report looks closely at the operational, technical and customer support benefits of a cloud customer support solution and provides guidance in developing a business case for the cloud.

The rapid change in how customers expect to interact with customer support requires that traditional customer support organizations move rapidly to keep up with the many emerging applications that are now considered essential for customer support.  This report provides best practices and a checklist for vendor selection.

This report fits into Constellation’s business-focused research themes: Next Generation Customer Experience and Technology Optimization & Innovation

ABOUT Elizabeth Herrell
Elizabeth Herrell is Vice President and Principal Analyst covering customer experience, customer service and unified communications. Elizabeth’s current research focuses on identifying key trends and innovative technologies for customer support.

COORDINATES

Profile: http://constellationr.com/users/eherrell
Twitter: @eherrell
Linkedin: linkedin.com/elizabethherrell250
Geo: Sedona, AZ

THE REPORT
More information about “Cloud Customer Support Delivers High Value” can be found here: http://constellationr.com/research/cloud-customer-service-delivers-high-value

Press Contacts
Contact the Media and Influencers relations team at [email protected] for interviews with analysts.

Sales Contacts:
Contact our sales team at [email protected].

News Analysis: Zuora Raises $50M Series E Round, Rides #MatrixCommerce Wave

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,&nbsp;Everybody Wants to Rule The World&nbsp;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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Zuora Rides The Wave In The Subscription Economy

On September 5th, 2013, Foster City, CA based Zuora, announced $50 million in Series E capital.  The announcement has significant ramifications not only for Zuora’s self proclaimed subscription economy category, but also the broader business theme of matrix commerce because Zuora:

• Expanded the investor pool. Zuora successfully added Next World Capital, Northgate Capital and Vulcan Capital to existing investors.  Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Tenaya Capital, Workday founder and co-CEO Dave Duffield and Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com all contributed to the existing round.
  
  Point of View (POV): The quality of the investment round and the amount indicate significant affirmation that the subscription economy thesis carries a gravitas among the A-list of Silicon valley investors and angels.   With $132.5M in funds raised to date, Zuora is sitting on tremendous amounts of cash from fundraising.  While Zuora could wait well into 2014 for an additional round, the move to raise additional capital will provide Zuora with an advantage over any new entrants or potential direct competitors.  Buyers can expect Zuora to be around for quite some time.

• Added new board members with deep experiences. CEO and founder Tien Zuo adds Abhishek Agrawal of Vulcan Capital and Craig Hanson of Next World Capital to the board.
  
  Point of View (POV): Craig Hanson  brings significant experience in mergers and acquisitions of late stage and public companies.  Successful acquisitions include MXLogic, LeftHand Networks, NexGen Storage, Nimsoft, PSS Systems, and SenSage.  Abhishek Agrawal brings deep consumer experience from his General Atlantic heritage including Alibaba Gropu, Bazaarvoice, Dice, Facebook, Gilt Groupe, and Network solutions.  Buyers can expect more expertise in supporting vertical markets.  Buyers can expect new partnerships and entry into new geographies.

• Demonstrated continued growth in a new market category. Since 2007, Zuora’s core solution provides subscription commerce, billing, and finance solutions for pay-as-you-go pricing models.   The model of recurring subscriptions has led to customer wins at customers such as Appneta, Borderfree, BoxHop, Dell, Docusign, Dyn, Gigya, Google Wildfire, HasOffers, Joyent, MLSListings, Okta, Rightscale, Symbility Solutions, SMTP.com, Timetrade, UniversityNow, Versature, and Zendesk.
  
  Point of View (POV): Zuora enables the business model shift to subscriptions and time sliced access for customers disrupting existing business models built on ownership and one time upfront payments.  Zuora’s contract values have risen from the low five digits to over 20 million-dollar plus deals in the past 3 years.  Buyers can expect more expansion in supporting vertical markets.

The Bottom Line: The Subscription Economy Will Power Elements of Matrix Commerce

Zuora’s growth highlights the significant opportunity not only for cloud businesses, but also for digital goods, media, education, travel, high tech, telecommunications, and consumer packaged goods to make the business model shifts.  Two parallel trends, the sharing economy and the shift from analog to digital business create macro factors to the subscription economy thesis.  In the sharing economy, where consumers prioritize access over ownership, Zuora plays an important role as legacy businesses reinvent their business models to support access to goods, services, and experiences among certain demographics.  In the shift from analog to digital business, brands and companies will require players such as Zuora to provide the commerce, billing, and finance infrastructure.   Today’s funding announcement highlights the growing investments and bets in the matrix commerce category.  The result – innovative startups and entrepreneurs can rely on new solutions that will enable business model disruption.

Your POV.

What’s your plan to achieve customer centricity? Are you embarking on a digital business transformation?  Let us know how it’s going!  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 your Matrix Commerce and Digital Business transformation efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing matrix commerce readiness
• Developing your digital business strategy
• 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 Resources

• Event Report: CRM Evolution 2013 – Seven Trends In The Return To Digital Business And Customer Centricity
• Monday’s Musings: Four Elements for A #SharingEconomy Biz Model In #MatrixCommerce
• Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real-Time, Achieve Right-Time
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
• Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business
• Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Technology Budget Part 1
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business

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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.

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