Every week, we recount some of the best buzz around CRM and data integration. We’ll review our favorite articles and share the most pressing findings or key takeaways from each.
A Question of Granularity
Denis Pombriant (@DenisPombriant)
In this article, Denis tackles the much talked about issue of best-of-breed versus single system solutions. However, Denis doesn’t argue about which solution type is most likely to prevail – instead he points out that the two systems won’t stay disparate, with companies like Salesforce offering both a comprehensive Marketing Cloud and opening up its API to a plethora of partners that enhance and plug into the Salesforce offering. What allows software solutions to “win” today is their level of granularity, meaning companies may take on some best-of-breed solutions and then resort to a single system solution for the rest of their needs to avoid overcomplicating things.
Five Steps to Giving Marketers Data Ownership
By: Peter Chase (@peterrchase)
It’s old news by now – Gartner predicts that CMOs will outspend CIOs by 2017. This means marketers must claim data ownership, and to do so organizations must change their view of data integration from connecting two systems to connecting a plethora of systems across channels, along with understanding that integrated marketing is not simply an iframe or limited set of customizations in the CRM system. Next, marketers need to focus on strategic business outcomes, define discreet use cases (who, what, when) and logical data mapping before implementing a CRM system or integration, and finally successful integration experts will take on manageable chunks of integration to avoid overwhelming themselves with a massive undertaking all at once.
Customer Data Scattered in Enterprise, Says Scribe Study
By: Dana Gardner (@dana_gardner)
Covering Scribe’s recently released yearly State of Data Integration report, Dana recounts the primary customer data challenges faced by companies. With almost half of enterprise budget ownership residing outside of IT, the integration landscape has become increasing complex, with only 16 percent of businesses reporting full integration among customer facing systems and hybrid environments more commonplace. Partial integration and hybrid environments remain the norm, and companies struggle to incorporate integration to drive their top priorities, which include revenue growth and increased revenue per customer. To succeed with both priorities, integration is a must.
Data Integrity Matters: Why Microsoft Dynamics CRM Users Count on Accurate Data
By: Linda Rosencrance
As important as data portability is data quality – at the CRMUG Summit Mike Olean explained how data integrity affects CRM adoption, performance, development and competitive advantage. As with data integration, data quality should be treated as a process rather than a “one-and-done” deal, consistently tackling issues such as duplication, outdated data and inconsistent data. Mike explained one of the simplest ways to begin improving data quality is to introduce naming conventions and data entry standards, and of course I’d like to add the importance of integration in maintaining consistent and timely data across systems.
Salesforce.com Plugs its Ad Tools into CRM and Social Listening With Social.com
By: Anthony Ha (@anthonyha)
With social advertising gaining momentum, Salesforce decided to combine their social advertising and CRM capabilities to compete with best-of-breed companies in serving relevant ads through granular targeting. This decision takes advantage of Facebook’s move last fall to allow companies to target using CRM data, as well as pulling the ability to serve Twitter ads based on Radian6 data into one central hub. If social advertising continues to grow, Salesforce customers will be well-equipped to take advantage of the immense pile of user data that gives social ad targeting so much potential value. And of course, this move supports Denis Pombriant’s observation that single system solution companies are also tackling the best-of-breed space and vice versa.
We hope you had a great week! We’ll see you again soon with a roundup of all the movers and shakers in CRM and data integration news.
