Every week, we’ll 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.
How Forrester’s Former CMO Is Using Big Data To Build Next Generation CRM
By: Dave Feinleib, co-founder of Speechpad
Is the next generation of CRM one that can predict sales, a la Amazon predicts purchases?
That’s what Brian Kardon, formerly CMO of Forrester, believes. Kardon believes the next generation CRM will not focus exclusively on internally-known data, but rather incorporate externally-known data into the mix. Kardon recommends bringing together all known data in one place to reduce the burden on sales people who feel challenged to by the amount of data they encounter and the difficulty accessing it quickly.
Cloud in five years’ time
By: Phil Wainewright (@philww)
Phil, CEO of strategic consulting group Procullux Ventures and long-time thought leader on cloud computing, shares his views on where the cloud is heading in the next five years. From his perspective, growth, disruption and regulation are all on the horizon.
As we’ve heard before, one of the cloud’s greatest attributes is the agility and business transformation it encourages. For some businesses, the cloud will allows increased success, though for others – think older, less nimble companies – it may cause turmoil.
Check out Phil’s full post for all his predictions – a great read!
Have you heard email marketing is dead?
While you may have heard that email marketing is dead, you’d be hard-pressed to take that seriously – look no further than the momentum of ExactTarget’s Connections Conference. In fact, B2B Magazine reports that 59% of B2B marketers name email as the most effective channel for generating revenue. 49% of B2B marketers spend more time and resources on email than any other channel. In fact, 61% of marketing companies plan to increase their email marketing efforts in 2013.
But the power of email is even greater through integration – companies who integrate their email service provider with their CRM cite year-over-year revenue gains of 22.7% vs. 13.4% for companies who don’t.
The New Data-Savvy Adaptive Marketing
By: Julie Hunt (@juliebhunt)
Julie examines the state of marketing and predicts that marketers are moving towards ‘adaptive marketing,’ a highly customer-centric form of the discipline. Adaptive marketers must have access to customer intelligence in real-time, demanding that customer data is shared among systems – no longer siloed in various business units.
We wholeheartedly agree with Julie’s predictions, and we know the importance of data integration to make this process a reality. That customer data must be able to move seamlessly through systems to create more personalized customer experiences.
Why The Future Of Software And Apps Is Serverless
By: Ken Fromm (@frommww)
Ken, VP of Business Development at Iron.Io, offers up his views on why the future of software will be serverless. Through the growth of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), we’ve seen improvements in cost, agility, scalability, and, in certain cases, reliability which will continue this trend.
An important distinction of Ken’s thesis: “The phrase ‘serverless’ doesn’t mean servers are no longer involved. It simply means that developers no longer have to think that much about them.” This allows developers to focus on tasks and process flows, versus application usage and servers.
There you have it, folks. What do you think? Do you think the next generation CRM will be predictive? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter.
