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Buyer’s Guide for Customer Success Management: Gainsight I’m in the process of writing profiles of vendors in the customer success management industry. These vendor profiles are a tool for buyers to evaluate their customer success management options before selecting a vendor. In addition to an overview of the vendor, these documents identify key differentiators, product offerings, and provide a number of features that should help a client create short list when determining which vendor to put on out an RFI or RFP. So far, I have also covered ServiceSource® and TotangoThis post is about Gainsight. If you’d like a peek at the table of contents for this report and an excerpt, along with the full report, you can find it here.
Analyst Blog
Buyer’s Guide for Customer Success Management: Totango I’m in the process of writing profiles of vendors in the customer success management industry. These vendor profiles are a tool for buyers to evaluate their customer success management options before selecting a vendor. In addition to an overview of the vendor, these documents identify key differentiators, product offerings, and provide a number of features that should help a client create short list when determining which vendor to put on out an RFI or RFP. This post is about Totango. If you’d like a peek at the table of contents for this report and an excerpt, along with the full report, you can find it here.
Analyst Blog
Case Study
Case Study: Free Flow Wines & Netsuite Free Flow Wines' Distribution Model is Disrupting the Wine IndustryThis case study documents how Free Flow Wines used Netsuite solutions to build a business platform that includes financials, inventory management, work orders, and assemblies. This business platform powers Free Flow Wines' innovative distribution model, a model that is disrupting the wine industry.
Vendor Profile
Vendor Profile: Totango Understanding Which Customer Success Management Approach Fits Best This vendor profile provides an overview of Totango and identifies key differentiators, product offerings, and a short list guide for buyers.
Being able to make better use of your Marketing leads is the difference between closing deals and not. One of the most important aspects of marketing is to be able to have better discernment around the leads. And one way to understand which leads are really important and which would lead to more realistic conversion requires more than traditional lead scoring. And that’s where Mintigo comes in.
Analyst Blog
If you’re like most executives who play some type of role in technology selection as an influencer or as a buyer, what keeps you awake at night, aside from the current free fall of stock prices, is trying to make the right choices in regards to technology that are going to help you build momentum quarter over quarter, but also ensure that your business is well positioned for the long haul.
Analyst Blog
Holger Mueller, Constellation Research VP & Principal Analyst, prepares leaders on how to to take full advantage of the cloud and next generation applications.
Video
When I first starting teaching the MBA course, “Organizational Analysis and Design,” I went in search of a tool to offer the students as they learn to describe organizations and think about organizational redesign. I’ve generally had the students read some version of Jay Galbraith’s work (Galbraith Star Model) and pieces of Nadler and Tushman’s “Mapping organizational Terrain.” One of the first things we do is look at the two models and think about how they fit in the students’ organizations. Quickly it’s clear that these models were written when technology was considered more like plumbing and less like a strategic opportunity for organizational design (or possible ways to augment or fully-substitute for human work).
Adding Technology to Traditional Organizational Design Frameworks
Organization design’s goal is to support the strategy of the organization. Give me a strategy and we can work out a design. Galbraith and Nadler and Tushman are foundations, but we need something that matches modern organizations, while is still basic enough to have top of mind for evaluating or creating thoughtful proposals, making sure you don’t let a particular dimension get dropped from discussion, or getting your thoughts together for an unexpected job interview.
My students and I end up drawing this image almost every class session. For shorter courses, like my sessions in the 21st Century Management program, I give them a stack of templates. At some point I break out one of my Skwish toys to demonstrate interconnections across different organizational design dimensions.
I’m now going to turn this post over to past student, Shandon Fernandes, for the real story:
From a Student’s Perspective
On the first day of class, Terri divided us into groups and sent us to nearby restaurants. The goal was to come back with an assessment of the organization -- without doing any interviews.
Our six member team was assigned to a nearby Starbucks. When we arrived at the store, we started to think about organization from the point of view of the business owners and made customer service and satisfaction a primary focus.
This assumption, that the most important thing for a business entity is the end result of what your customers get, led us to make shallow and casual observations, like how the two baristas rotated between counter and coffee making. We assumed this was to the benefit of the customers. At no point did we stop to think about the corporation’s policies and how other organizational dimensions could be interacting with each other. In retrospect, our observations were missing vital elements and the connected nature of the various dimensions of the star framework Terri would help us develop when we got back to class.
Star Framework Dimensions
People – Psych 101 material. How do people behave (whether or not they are in an organizational setting)? People generally like rewards and don’t like punishments. Different generations may have different preferences.
Process – This dimension allows for an evaluation of organizational policies. Hiring, performance, pay, training, any policy or procedure, big or small.
Technology – Technology forms a crucial and inevitable part of the STAR Model. Technology has not only transformed the nature of and specializations of jobs but offers organizations an effective tool to evaluate and transform their operations when used appropriately. Ranges from the kind of office furniture you have to electronic communication to robots and artificial intelligence.
Structure – Structure lays out the location of decision-making and authority. This is where team-based strategies and org charts are considered.
Context -- Context is the linking point to many other MBA courses. Is this an international business or a local one? Is the market trending up or down?
Soon after that field trip experience we had our first Harvard case analysis. Many found it difficult to put the complexities of the case in perspective. Terri then reminded use to use the star framework as a tool to sort things out. This approach proved useful as we were better able to understand the underlying design of the organization based on the five star dimensions.
Don’t Change Everything All At Once
Terri adds: You also want to avoid trying to change everything all at once, either when playing with a Skwish or implementing all encompassing enterprise software -- I use FoxMeyer’s failure an example.
End of Part One
In Part Two, Shandon applies the star framework to a recent customer experience. Terri and Shandon work out some possible improvements and demonstrate using the template.
Shandon Fernandes is a currently pursuing an MBA at Santa Clara University and is specializing in Leading Innovative Organizations. A Political Science graduate, Shandon has always had an interest in the structure and functioning of government organizations. She has previously served as a Research Officer for a Diplomatic Mission in Mumbai.
Analyst Blog
I am going to occasionally write a column called “My Mistakes” where I will share an experience from my career where I failed in the hope that others can avoid similar mistakes.For today’s mistake, I am going to revisit a situation where there was a sales contest going on among one of our ticket sales teams, and I was running some revenue reports to check on the department’s progress.
Analyst Blog
Don Tapscott, a leading authority on the impact of technology on society is speaking at Connected Enterprise! Tapscott was an early proponent of the digitally-enabled collaborative workplace (1978), and among the first to write about the digital revolution. Tapscott's presentation at TEDGlobal, "Four principles for the open world", identifies four principles that can transform our increasingly 'open' world into a better place.
Analyst Blog
Only 9% of eConsultancy respondents indicated that senior execs and directors have an “excellent” understanding of digital. While I am not proposing that Boards need a deep understanding of digital, there does need to be a rebalancing. In an era when the world’s most valuable and profitable companies are “digital first”, Australia cannot compete while 91% of our Board directors languish in a 20th Century mindset. IBM’s Global Managing Partner for Social Consulting, Andrew Grill explains this as lacking “digital literacy”. In a recent BlueNotes article he suggested: ...
Analyst Blog
In my last post, I focused on the value of transparency for getting work done. Transparency can also have a broader effect. In a recent peer-reviewed study in the journal Organization Science, Emilio J. Castilla looked at merit-based rewards for almost 9,000 employees before and after changes related to transparency were implemented. Before accountability and transparency tactics were put in place, women and underrepresented groups had lower pay unexplained by differences in performance or position. After transparency and accountability practices were implemented, the gap went away. My take, supported by over 30 years of research in my field, is that given information, managers do the right thing. Without information, bias can creep in.
Analyst Blog
Here is a recap of some of the key news of the last two weeks in the Social Business / Employee Collaboration / Future of Work world. Did I miss something big? Please post a link in the comments. Reference Links:
Analyst Blog
On August 20th, 2015, Infosys announced a set of new service offerings to help organizations jump start growth. Organized into three areas and named Ai Ki Dō, the approach addresses design driven initiatives, knowledge based IT, and platforms.
Analyst Blog
This acquisition that will strengthen Oracle’s solution to manage marketing programs across all digital channels and across the customer lifecycle. Tim Brown, Chief Executive Officer, Maxymiser said, “Our mission is to empower enterprises to use data science to systematically test, discover, and predict what customers want and deliver uniquely tailored experiences. We are excited to join Oracle and bring these capabilities to help extend Oracle Marketing Cloud.” Below is more information about how the testing, insights and personalization works.
Analyst Blog
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.
Analyst Blog
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.
Analyst Blog
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®.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.
Analyst Blog
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 […]
Analyst Blog
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.
Analyst Blog
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.
Analyst Blog
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
Analyst Blog
R "Ray" Wang provides a discussion framework before Holger Mueller reveals his key insights on what's in store with next gen app development over the next 5 yrs.
Video