You can check out my latest audio musings here. In this installment, I wax poetic about how mobile CRM has evolved, and a bit on where it is going… Enjoy!
Posted in February 2009 …
What Harley Davidson has Learned from Open Source (I Think)
Progress is inevitable. Change is constant. Yadda yadda yadda… I keep telling myself these trite proverbial cliches to keep my spirits up after selling off one of my babies – my 40 year old British wonder – a beautiful 1969 Triumph motorcycle. She just wasn’t being given the attention she needed, given my other bikes, … Continue reading »
California’s Failed SAP Implementation: A Lesson In Old-School IT
California’s decision over the weekend to shed a multi-million dollar SAP implementation caught my attention for a number of reasons, mostly because it represented antiquated implementations from years past. Similar to the Shane Co. example that I blogged about a month ago, this is more a reflection on inept decision making and failed business processes … Continue reading »
The Social CRM Learning Curve
I saw an E-Commerce Times article online yesterday talking about the state of social CRM. On the whole, it was pretty spot on, save for one major area with which I took particular issue. The author of the piece stated that: In most cases, applications like CRM systems were designed to work with structured data, … Continue reading »
Gartner: An Honest Take on SaaS
It’s refreshing to see a major analytics firm like Gartner issuing a report about the hype that’s surrounded SaaS for years now. Whether SaaS truly is more affordable than on-premise installations has been a debate that’s raged within the industry for years. As a former editor at CRM magazine, I remember covering the story from … Continue reading »
A Few Additional Thoughts On Open Source and Cloud Computing
The other day I wrote about the benefits, and more specifically, about the growing number of companies adopting hybrid proprietary/open source application environments within their IT department, all to the tune of more choice and flexibility within their respective businesses. Today, along the same lines of giving customers choice, Matt Asay blogged about the comments … Continue reading »
Some Still See Vendor Lock-In as a Good Thing…
Everyone is talking “open” these days. Well, either open or “the cloud” seems to be coming out of every technology marketers mouths… So I was surprised to see that an obvious critique of Salesforce.com’s Force platform as a lock-in strategy treated as a good thing by Fortune magazine. In a recent article online, I read … Continue reading »
Geeks on the Way, SugarCRM, and Building a Business on Open Source
Many congrats to Geeks on the Way, the Canadian home and small office tech support service that was recently named the winner of the Stevie award for Sales and Customer Service. The company is using SugarCRM along with many other open source components to better serve its customers, and also run a tighter ship internally. … Continue reading »
Sound off on Open Source: OSBC Open Source Survey now Open
Want your thoughts heard about the future of open source? Then add your opinions to the Future of Open Source Survey – brought to you by the OSBC and North Bridge Venture Partners. The survey results will be announced during an OSBC panel discussion on March 24th at the OSBC event at the Palace Hotel. … Continue reading »
Customer References 2.0
I just had a great talk with Jim Mooney of References Online (thanks go to Denis Pombriant for the introduction). References Online is essentially a service that crates online (of course) video and audio customer references for companies. The idea is simple, but a very good one. During the sales cycle in many industries, prospects … Continue reading »
