CRM Watchlist 2013 Lifetime Achievement: IBM Institute for Business Value

Summary: The 2013 CRM Watchlist Liftetime Achievement Award, the second annual one, kicks off the reviews. This is probably the kindest of the reviews that you'll be seeing in this entire 40+ series of them. Because the IBM IBV is SO damned worthy. How can I be edgy?

In a lot of ways this gives me an enormous amount of pleasure. It’s my second annual CRM Watchlist Lifetime Achievement Award and it goes to an organization that has had long term and continuous (meaning year over year) impact on the business world especially that focusing around customer facing industries and practitioners.  Last year, the inaugural award rightfully went to the Peppers and Rogers Group, who were pioneers in one to one thinking and personalization and continue to be leaders in how customers and companies interact and need to.

This year, however, it goes to a very different kind of organization.  One that I’ve had the honor of knowing and trusting for a long time and one that if you are part of this industry in any way, knows is perhaps the most quoted and trusted research organization in the world of business.  One that has had perhaps more impact on driving vendor and practitioner strategies around market trends and best practices than any other organization that I can think of. One that has had its studies and data quoted almost ubiquitously and is omniscient in the discussions around how to proceed with the present and future business of business.  One that never has had its veracity questioned despite its ties to one of the most significant businesses on the earth.  One that seemingly has no agenda despite those ties – it is an institution that lives to produce the quality of work that it does.   A true impact player.

It is my honor to announce that the Second Annual CRM Watchlist Lifetime Achievement Award goes to…

The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV)

(Clap! Clap! Audience goes wild).  I suspect if you know anything about these guys that when you saw the award went to them, you went “of course; it’s so obvious.”  And it is obvious.  From their every-two-years (biennial?) CEO report to their work on big data analytics to their research on social business and social CRM, they have become what is probably, at least in the technology world, the most quoted business research group ever.  Anecdotally, I’ve seen a slide on the perception gap between business and consumers when it comes to social channel use (source: From Social Media to Social CRM, Part 1, 2011) used in more presentations than any other single chart in my life.

But this goes way beyond anecdotal evidence. Their results have driven decision-making at companies across the spectrum – ranging from technology companies and consulting firms to manufacturing and CPG businesses.  Despite their connections to IBM, no one I know in any industry presumes they have any agenda other than producing extraordinary research to provide some fundamental insights for those reading it.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet with Eric Lesser, who is the Executive Director – the guy in charge – of the IBV.  He is the kind of guy who engenders the personal trust of those who deal with him – and he is as big a Yankees fan as I am. J.  I told Eric about this award and asked him for a statement that speaks to who the IBV is. So, before I go on any further, ladies and gentlemen, Eric Lesser:

The Institute for Business Value, the research and thought leadership development arm of IBM Global Business Services, develops practical, fact-based points of view on a variety of industry, cross-industry and role-based topics.  I have been proud to have been part of this group, which is comprised of leading subject matter experts from around globe, since its inception in 2002.  In the IBV, we develop perspectives as well as share the results with executive audiences. We work in collaboration with internal and external industry experts, leading edge clients and IBM’s own consultants to provide practical recommendations built on a foundation of fundamental research.

Since 2002, we have produced over 250 studies over the last ten years, which are disseminated through a number of delivery channels, including our website and tablet app. This base of knowledge provides IBM with the insights needed to develop deeper relationships with its customers and demonstrates its commitment to leading business thinking.

From the beginning of the group, we have developed a range of marketing and consumer-based insights.  Starting with research on customer relationship management, we have continued to expand our coverage to understand global consumer opinions in the retail, telecommunications, banking, automobile and insurance industries, as well the impact of emerging topics such as Social CRM and Collective Intelligence.  One of our flagship studies, the  2011 Chief Marketing Officer Study which is based on face-to-face interviews with over 1,700 marketing leaders, has shed new light into the challenges faced by senior executives on the use of social media, customer data and the future skills needed for marketing success.

I am honored to be part of such a great group of individuals, who have really helped shape business thinking over the last several years, and made a significant contribution to IBM and its clients.  

I expect that the IBV’s impact will not only continue but grow over the next several years because the C-level studies are iconic reference points for those people who care about not just data and trends, but about possible practices that work in the rather confusing world of 21st century. The IBM Institute for Business Value has been and is one of the beacons that help us light the way.  For that reason, they win the CRM Watchlist 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award AND what will be my kindest review of any of the winners of this award. J

CONGRATS to the IBM INSTITUTE FOR BUSINESS VALUE, the 2013 CRM Watchlist Lifetime Achievement Award! 

There are currently no prices available for this product.

In addition to being the author of the best-selling "CRM at the Speed of Light: Social CRM Strategies, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers," Paul Greenberg is President of The 56 Group, LLC.

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CRM Watchlist 2013: Marketing Puts Itself Out There

On Wednesday February 20, 2013 at 7:00am ET, the CRM Watchlist 2014 registration process begins. Yep, right in the middle of the 2013 reviews. Progress (and time) wait for no man (or woman). What that means is that if you are a technology company or consulting/systems integrator business that does "customer facing" things which means software or services products/solutions, you become a candidate for the CRM Watchlist 2014. That means that:

You can request a 2014 registration form from me at paul-greenberg3@the56group.com.When you receive it, fill it out exactly according to instructions and in return you will get the questionnaire for 2014 - either the vendor questionnaire or the consulting/SI questionnaire which are slightly differentYou have until November 30, 2013 to fill out the questionnaire.If you send in the registration form to me, I will presume that you are going to fill out the questionnaire by the due date and will start tracking you as soon send the registration back to me.  Please don't waste my time and request the questionnaire and then not fill it out. I'm tracking you for the better part of a year if you do send it.

Now back to our scheduled show:

Previously on the CRM Watchlist:

CRM Watchlist 2013 Lifetime Achievement: IBM Institute for Business ValueThe Sweetest Suites: Part 1 of 3 – salesforce.com; MicrosoftThe Sweetest Suites: Part 2 of 3 – SAP, OracleThe Sweetest Suites: Part 3 of 3 – Infor, NetSuite, SugarCRM

Marketing departments are at the forefront of strategic technology investment – at least you would think that if you agree with Gartner’s now famous (apparently defensible) declaration that CMOs will have more budgetary authority then CIOs when it comes to technology buys in the near future (see Watchlist winner Aprimo’s CMO Lisa Arthur’s Forbes post on this here). The corollary is that marketing is also the hottest area when it comes to customer facing (e.g. social CRM and social media) technology purchasing and strategies. Thus, software and services clearly labeled social marketing are incorporated at least in concept with the more traditional tools like campaign management, email marketing, and for the larger ventures, marketing resource management among many other options.

This trend has led to something of a new phenomenon too, with what were essentially public relations and advertising agencies transforming their business models to add practices that specialize in social CRM and social media strategies and the technology components that enable those strategies – something brand new. Take a good look – Industry giant Edelman has a social business practice that involves thinkers like David Armano and Michael Brito; LBi hired Anthony Lye, who ran the CRM and customer facing cloud applications practices for Oracle to be President of their global digital technology division; three years ago, G2 split from Grey Global to be a digital strategy agency rather than a traditional public relations firm. Vendors such as Company to Watch winner Next Principles has redefined itself as a “digital agency” – and, for them, it makes sense, given the services they provide with their applications enabling those.  In other words, the evidence of this change is everywhere.

This is a great partnership opportunity for the smart vendors – and all the vendors here are smart.  In one case, as you will see, I think that they are exceptionally positioned to develop those relationships. (Don’t cheat and look ahead!  Bad! Bad kitty!)

Every vendor here with the exception of perhaps Infusionsoft has substantially advanced social marketing tools incorporated into their portfolios.  They’ve adjusted to the market realities of the Fortune 3500 so to speak and to the new demands of customers in how they “relate” to companies – mean care to be involved with the companies that they want to buy things from.

So, let’s see why these 6 companies in the hottest of the customer facing technologies market will impact that market in 2013 – and what they have to do about all that.

Aprimo, which is owned by Teradata,  has been “different” than the standard marketing automation vendor for many years. They specialize In what’s called Integrated Marketing Management (IMM) which not only has the normal marketing automation capabilities such as the demand generation components (lead generation, lead scoring, lead nurturing etc.) and campaign management, but the operational aspects of marketing such as marketing resource management and a deep business rules/workflow engine. They have been the standout in this world. 

But the world is changing. Marketing Pilot a small competitor of theirs who somewhat mirrors what they do is now part of Microsoft and thus has the resources that Microsoft can bring to bear; Infor is with their acquisition of Orbis has now added substantial Marketing Resource Management capabilities to an already very good marketing suite. Competition is showing up now and they are big competitors.

That said, there is still no one doing IMM at the level of Aprimo and the sophistication of their enterprise ready product shows in the product suite they provide. It is extensive to the point of being nearly overwhelming for all but the most sophisticated enterprises when it comes to marketing

Start thinking about the agencies –There is a market opportunity for Aprimo as the agencies become increasingly involved in the enablement technologies for digital strategies. Like it or not, the agency model is here to stay and more and more major players are getting involved. Aprimo needs to try to become the marketing suite of record for these agencies – who represent nearly perfect partners for them.  The management aspects that Aprimo provides are precisely what the agencies don’t have and won’t build themselves.Explode their Analyst Relations/Influencer Relations – As I mentioned they have a terrific CMO in Lisa Arthur who certainly knows how to handle the job. But one place they fall short is a big ticket program around AR/IR. Their historic tendency has been the classic one. Deal with the Gartner and Forrester institutional analysts and don’t do much else beyond that.  While there’s no problem with that, for a company that lags in top of mindRevamp their vision – They are seen as a classic operationally-focused marketing automation provider. Which they are. But to do what I’m outlining above, they have to be more visionary in their approach, which in turn, makes them a more interesting and exciting company to deal with. Good example of what they need to think about – the blandness of their vision – “Teradata Aprimo promises customers a commitment to continue to provide a high level of service and to invest in solid product advances. Teradata Aprimo will continue to find new ways to use technology to advance the function of marketing within your organization.”  While that is certainly a good thing to do – that isn’t a vision. Just adding the word “continue” doesn’t make it visionary. They need to see a future that companies are excited to buy into. What they are promising here is something that companies simply need to expect.  A vision statement is not where you make a promise about the quality of your work – it’s about the future you see and how you can support that future. Not support the “function of marketing.”Flip from operations to outcomes – Aprimo is very much a company that focuses on technology. But they need to go beyond that to technology enablement of outcomes that businesses are looking for. Just bifurcating the solutions into B2C and B2B doesn’t quite cut it. They need to show how they support the outcomes that the individuals who will be using them are looking for.  What is the business problem being solved or the outcome needed that they can enable?

Aprimo is not only a player that was very good before they acquired and now even better.  Now, it’s time for them to not only be good but to show it to the world – which they are doing more and more. It seems to me that 2013 is their year – and I’m sure I’m right.

Eloqua’s review is going to be short.  In a way, they don’t even belong here having been acquired by Oracle for a bargain $871 million in the last month of 2012.  But, they are a standout company; the acquisition, while announced, is still pending officially and it’s really hard to not include them in a list of companies having an impact when they’ve had a strong impact on the marketing technology world in particular and on CRM and customer-facing technologies in general for years. But their acquisition limits what they have to do in the next several months – and we’ll get to that in a minute.

There was no doubt about the impact Eloqua had in 2012 – with their successful August 2012 IPO – the first company of their genre to go public and their December 2012 acquisition by Oracle. But this isn’t all that makes Eloqua an impact player.

Even though they arguably battle for mindshare with Marketo in the Revenue Marketing space (they call it Revenue Performance Management (RPM) as does Marketo. The Pedowitz Group (TPG), another CRM Watchlist winner calls it Revenue Marketing. I prefer the TPG designation by a long shot. RPM makes it sound like accounting), they have a serious piece of it with their thought leadership in the space. Arguably the first to build their applications with the alignment of sales and marketing objectives in mind, Eloqua has bolstered their case for mindshare with their Grande Guides (disclosure: I did one for them on Social CRM in 2012) which cover such topics as: Lead Scoring; Social CMOs; B2B Content Marketing; and, of course, Social CRM among many others. They also were among the early adopters to incorporate communities into their engagement strategies. They have their Topliners community, which they call “an open forum peer-to-peer community for marketers and Eloqua customers” which serves as a location to get questions answered, interact with experts and other customers and get marketing expertise. They have over 6000 members – which while not say, SAP’s numbers, is still impressive for a company focused on marketing.

The acquisition changed things a great deal and not completely for the better. In 2011 and 2012, Eloqua invested a lot of time into their salesforce relationship, partially in response to Marketo’s sashay with salesforce and partially because their deep integration with the basic salesforce applications had been so successful.  But the acquisition kills that and all other integrations that they had invested in, no matter what you might hear.

But that is a smaller problem far exceeded by the likely benefit of the acquisition should the cultural integration work as well as I hope it does.  There is some speculation that Eloqua was acquired to replace an aging Siebel Marketing application with something more attuned to contemporary marketing – i.e. Eloqua. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that Oracle bought Eloqua and it was a smart acquisition for whatever reason.

So, Eloqua, here’s what you need to do….limited by the acquisition of course….

Just finish the deal – Once the deal with Oracle is done, then comes the tough part – integrating the cultures which are VERY different.   Oracle’s culture is not easy to assimilate to – both due to its size and its formality.  Plus there are a significant number of acquisitions that are still being assimilated for the past 18 months or more. So this is clearly going to be the big concentration point for Eloqua.  Their culture is self-described as “very customer centric.” Oracle is more sales centric but has a strong bias to their customers (e.g. their continuous assessment of their relationship to customers by the Chief Customer Officer’s group) but that’s still different than the much smaller Eloqua’s culture.Figure out what to do with the deep ties to salesforce.com and other integrations– This is no small effort. If you look at Eloqua, when it comes to integration, they almost bet the farm on salesforce.com with a very deep integration with salesforce.com; a beta of Chatter inside of Eloqua; a prioritized sales optimization (in the context of marketing) and product called Discover for salesforce.com in addition to some salesforce marquee integrations (e.g. the Center for American Progress).  They also have integrations with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, NetSuite and Saleslogix among others. They have the requisite integrations with Oracle CRM on Demand and Siebel, but these other ones are no small matter and there are customers to be dealt with as well as the partnerships with these companies – which are pretty much endangered barring unusual circumstances.

Hubspot is one of the last several years’ success stories. They evolved from an inbound marketing knowledge “site” to a mature technology platform without losing a beat over the last 3 years or so. Now they have a complete set of tools to support inbound marketing efforts that, while originally focused on the small business market, are now squarely in the mid-market.  

They are a company that has attuned themselves to the 21st century with a model based on attracting customers rather than pushing messages to customers (thus, “inbound” marketing) Their focus is around quality content and their systems reflect that with applications that provide (among other things):

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)A blogging platform and editorSocial media tracking and publishingA content management system (CMS)Analytics that are accessible to the ordinary humanLanding page publicationContent targetingStandard marketing tools – e.g. lead management; email marketing; campaign management

And I could go on. The key is that they have a strong toolset that is geared to their midmarket customer base and at the same time allows their small customer to cherry pick what they need to do what they do at the lesser levels that they operate on.

I’ve seen their platform and their methodologies in action and they work. Stop me if I’ve told you this story, but about 3-4 years ago, Brent Leary did a social CRM webinar for them. They had 6500 registrants and 2600 attendees!! Far exceeding anything I’ve ever heard of from anywhere else. But, what makes this really amazing, is that this was only the 4th largest webinar they did that year!!

But as far as impact goes, great success stories when it comes to webinars etc. are awesome as part of a mythos, but not enough when it comes to market presence.  So in late 2011, Hubspot hired a product marketing person and at the same time began thinking about their brand in a significantly self-aware way. That means that Hubspot began to attack the market to increase visibility leading to over 70 articles in 2012 that mentioned them. They proactively built out their existing strong thought leadership in a market that they say they coined “inbound marketing” with a book by co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah on Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blog and other books by other Hubspot staffers.  Even their blog has over 100,000 subscribers.

Meaning they know how to be in the market. 

Their success led to a Mezzanine round of funding in November 2012 of $35 million from institutional investors.

Jeez, they seem so successful, but they are also in a place – marketing where the competition is hot and heavy and the challenges huge – so they need to step up in some areas.  While there are tweaks beyond the two mentioned here, these are the imperatives.

Step up their analyst/influencer relations by magnitudes – While they made some progress in 2012, they are still light years away from where they should be given the size and scope of their company. Thus, while they are regarded well, they are not in the top-of-mind conversations they should be when it comes to customer recommendations.  They fall into the “oh yeah, you can also look at…..” category – which isn’t a horrible place to be but not good enough. This means that 2013 requires a formalized AR/IR program with all the requisite things that need to be done – which are investments of time and money and personnel.  They have to get past the old school view of it which is the talk to the institutional analysts and no one else. There is a far more complex world out there when it comes to how influence works now. They are a brilliant company who should be able to master it.Step up their strategic partnerships – right now their most significant integration has been with salesforce.com. Its been good on multiple levels for them – resulting in salesforce as one of their investors – and giving Hubspot a leading position on the AppExchange. Hubspot also integrates with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, NetSuite, Sage, Zoho and SugarCRM. While these exist, none of the relationships they have with these companies are at the level of salesforce. They should step it up with at least Microsoft Dynamics CRM seeing that Microsoft, even with the acquisition of Marketing Pilot, doesn't supply the capabilities that Hubspot does.  Additionally, they should reach out to other smaller CRM vendors who can use the Hubspot API for integration and placement into the Hubspot Marketplace, similar to what they have with Nimble, High Rise and Pipedrive among others.

This is a company that doesn’t do much but win. Except when it comes to their love of Boston sports teams.  But despite that, Hubspot will be an impact player in 2013. They just need to figure out how much they want to be and then do what they have to do to get to that level. They are entirely capable of that. Mark my words.

Infusionsoft is adamant about one thing – they are going to be laser focused on small businesses under 25 employees – a market that has been historically underserved and yet is HUGE – 27 million small businesses according to the most recent figures from the Small Business Administration. That laser focus has been absolutely unmovable no matter what the temptations of going up market into the larger side of small business or the medium sized business – where companies like Sage with Saleslogix and others lurk.  

Thing is that this focus has given them the best possible results too – a company that has fanboys as customers – witness the 1500 attendees at their 2012 InfusionCon and $39 million in revenue in 2012 –a 50% increase from 2011. They have 40,000 customers too. To add a very big cherry on top of the cake, in January they announced a Goldman Sachs led funding round of $54 million – indicating the confidence their customer base and their investors have in their future.

And why shouldn’t they? They actually have a product that is very, very good and is absolutely tailored to the market they serve. Its focus is around marketing but they’ve added sales (which they rather weirdly call CRM) and paid attention to the trends that we see that are sweeping the marketing world – which is how sales revenue and marketing objectives need to be aligned – and it shows in their application.  Their applications don’t skimp when it comes to the standards of sales force automation – opportunity management, contact management, pipeline management et al. but they really shine in marketing where they cover everything aspect from demand generation (e.g. lead generation and scoring) to campaign management.  What they don’t do much of is the integrated marketing management functions like marketing resource management – because they don’t really need to do that for small businesses under 25 people now do they?

But they go considerably further than that with their involvement with their customer base. They have a strong services offering that provides “success coaches” which has a slightly narrower definition than the “success managers” that are becoming such a popular job category in the technology industry. A success coach’s job is to make sure their customers optimize their use of Infusionsoft. They have an Elite Forum program for selected customers limited to 20 who get a deep workshop in how to grow your business to the next level. They have an Ultimate Marketers Program which is an award for the most significant users of Infusionsoft each year with a decent basket of prizes including $5000 cash for the winning 3 companies. 

They also have remarkably close relationships with customers who are very vocal about their requirements as customers, so they have a vibrant informal co-creation process that is ongoing with their customers. They are not abstract or formal about it. The customers have deep input. They listen to it and make changes accordingly.

That doesn’t mean that they don’t make mistakes, though, thankfully not a lot of them in recent years. Perhaps their most egregious mistake was their “CRM is Dead” campaign of a few years ago which they smartly and thankfully dropped when they realized that CRM not only wasn’t dead, but was one of the things that made them money. One thing I like about this company is their willingness to correct mistakes and call them that – rather than defend the indefensible. Makes for a much more transparent i.e. honest relationship with the market and their customers.

Their partner program is focused around resellers more than anything who account for a significant portion of the revenues of the company – much like the Saleslogix model of the early part of the millennium.  Their strategic alliances are a bit different than I expected. They really seem to be something that are based on customer editions of Infusionsoft for a vertical. Which is really not the standard definition of “strategic” but if it works, who am I to question? (J)

With all that and their remarkable success, the competition is getting more intense for the market they dominate, which means the bar is being raised as of right away. That means in 2013, Infusionsoft, to continue to have the impact they have or increase it, are going to have to effect some evolutionary changes, four of which I’ll mention here.

A significant increase in their outreach and analyst relations program – while Laura Collins has done a magnificent job in her outreach to influencers, there comes a time in a company’s life where they need to establish an actual analyst program – which means an investment in time, money, and personnel. They are big enough to take that on.  There is only so much one person can do by themselves. Luckily, I know that they are taking this seriously and doing just this, so this is checked off.Extend their services offerings into an ecosystem - which means engaging business partners to provide the support services that Infusionsoft can’t internally or natively provide. That means a partner network that extends beyond resellers and into both technology integration partners (for example web self-service for those on the upper end of their small business spectrum who need some simplified customer service capabilities) or loyalty programs or whatever.  They have a small marketplace now that at least is a start to that.This also means on the opposite side, resellers with some public cache - I’m not saying Accenture necessarily because I’m not sure how Accenture makes money reselling to small businesses or providing small business services but a reseller with a marquee name never hurts, though this is a lower priority than the building out the ecosystem.Add social capabilities to their products – they are pretty weak in this regard and yet, we are all seeing an increasing interest in using social channels by small businesses. Vocus, last September came out with a survey that said “77% of SMBs say that social media accounts for 25% or more of their total marketing effort.”  While this represents the extreme I think (most similar are in the realm of 25%-40%), all in all we are seeing a significant uptick in social channel and social media usage so it would be wise for Infusionsoft to get on top of this.

They are an impact player in the small business world – period.  But they can even be more and if they proceed apace, 2013 might be a bigger year than even they anticipate. But watch out for competition on the horizon.

Marketo just seems to keep moving.  It’s kind of a funny thing with them. They are truly market leaders when it comes to marketing automation or what they (as does Eloqua) calls Revenue Performance Management. They are the ones that are mentioned more frequently top of mind than any other company in their in genre.  They have the technological chops and the vision to stay a leader in the industry if they choose to.

Their management is not only a highly experienced one but to their credit a highly visible one – unlike most companies in the tech world. For example, Phil Fernandez, Marketo’s CEO is an author, was an active mentor in CRM Idol (one of the contestant’s favorites) and was highlighted in the Wall Street Journal.

The company itself piles up the accolades as an industry leader – too many to count. If you want to see what they have won, check here.  

They don’t rest on their laurels however. They understand that the market is demanding two things – high quality products and content that is meaningful. They’ve decided to provide them both.

Marketo provides what are arguably the highest quality integrations with other CRM software – salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM in particular. But, the highlight of 2012 was their acquisition of Crowd Factory, which at the time, was the leading social marketing suite, now fully integrated into Marketo.  In the course of that acquisition, they also acquired their new CMO Sanjay Dholakia, a gifted professional who is as valuable to them as the acquisition of the Crowd Factory applications.  Crowd Factory had been the second place finisher in 2011 CRM Idol competition. 

But their applications refresh is only part of it. They provide extensive, quality content to the world that wants it – focused around their Definitive Guides series which provides detailed expert knowledge on things marketing – often up to 100 pages.

Of course their success has led to a series of rumors about the company ranging from acquisition of Marketo by salesforce.com to an IPO down the pike. Rumors are what they are – rumors. But they reflect a “feeling” that Marketo is a valuable and important property.

That said, they are far from perfect and in fact they have to move faster than ever before.  Which means they have some things to take care of – more picking them up than creating them though. You’ll see what I mean.

Make Marketo Spark important – Marketo released their small business product Spark in 2011 and while it’s a good product, it hasn’t been as visible or as prominent as you would expect in a market that starving for good technology to help their businesses.  Infusionsoft is the dominant force in that market right now. Perhaps Marketo Spark is doing better than my investigations show, but this fundamentally sound product doesn’t have the mindshare it should at this point in a market that is underserved. Marketo needs to spend some time building the presence of Spark in 2013 before they just become a small competitor in that space.Stronger AR/IR outreach – They have good analyst and influencer relationships but they are a company that needs to take the next step in AR/IR. That means for example, making sure that they have a program that is defined solely for the AR/IR crowd.  In their case, they are at the point that an Analyst Summit might not be a bad idea at all.  Also, either as an alternative or in addition, they need to make sure that more analysts, influencers, journalists attend their User Conference – and that there is an organized program for them at the event.

This is one strong company. They have done so much right in the last few years that their primary sin might be that they coast on what they’ve done sometimes rather than drive forward.  But they are without a doubt an impact player and will continue to be until one of those rumors comes true. Big stuff is possible in 2013 if they just do what they are doing already. Even greater things if they take up my suggestions. Either way, they are winners of the Watchlist for a really good reason.

Neolane is a first time winner of the CRM Watchlist this year.  I’ve been aware of them for several years however and followed their travels (and occasional travails for quite a long time).  Not that they are that old. I’m WAY older than they are. They were founded in France in 2001 and I was founded in Long Island NY in 1949. They’ve had a strong European footprint since their founding.  I’ve had two footprints since mine – at least since I learned to walk. 

They have a strong European presence. They are well funded, announcing a $27 million C series round of funding led by Tier One VC Battery Ventures in January 2012. Their 2012 revenue numbers hit a decent $44 million. They have a really solid well thought out product (more in a minute). Not only that, they were one of the few companies that (refreshingly) directly answered most of my questions.

Thing is, Neolane is a genuinely smart company.  For example, their view of "social" is that it is a practical requirement for the businesses that need marketing support. They launched Social Marketing in 2011 - slightly ahead of the general game -  but its not based just on Twitter responsiveness which so many social marketing apps are. The underpinnings are the monetization of social media audiences.  That means of course, deep social profiles tied to the customer records and the records of the interactions of specific and named customers (easier said than done); it also means that personalization is at the core of the interactions. It's, in effect, marketing to one.  That means at all levels. Learn what you can about the individual and then deliver what you can based on what you know about that individual.  Simple in concept; tough - very tough - to execute at scale.

Their marketing suite has all the broad capabilitie that a solid marketing suite needs including:

Campaign managementInteraction management (recommendation engine)Social marketing (see above)Message Center (high volume personalized messages)Leads (kind of obvious)Marketing Resource Management (planning, spending, resource allocation)

Now, I don't know that they do any one of these better than anyone else on this list, but its breadth is important for customers getting into the marketing automation world.   The one thing that I am a bit wary of is their commitment to their umbrella term for this, "conversational marketing." Its a term that they seem deeply attached to, but I'm a lot more diffident about. I'm not sure what purpose it serves beyond seeming somewhat "hip." See what I say below for my thinking on this because it is important to how they position themselves as they expand.

Neolane also is a company with a sense of humor.  For example they did a song parody they released at Dreamforce 2012 using the Red Hot Chili Peppers "Otherside" (RHCP was the concert at DF12) called "Touch the Social Enterprise." It was something only a geek could love but the guy who sang it was pretty damned good. At least they (and Hubspot too) try to inject humor, something missing from the enterprise software world. 

So what does this rookie Watchlist winner have to do?

Boost U.S presence big time - They are a presence in Europe. They have a presence in the U.S. but they are nowhere near a top of mind choice. That said, they are used by some marquee firms in the U.S. including Barnes and Noble and Disneyland Resorts. But it isn't enough. The U.S. market - or more broadly the U.S and Canada, are starving for great marketing technology - even to the point that marketing departments are creating positions for marketing technologists.Their product isn't at issue, it has universal appeal. But they have to step up their efforts at "getting known" in the U.S. This is a prime revenue opportunity for a quality company with an excellent set of products who's suite compares with anyones in all aspects. I think they can make what are okay numbers a lot better if the effort is there. Be more visible in the U.S. than you are, Neolane. Trust me, you have a lot to show.Don't overrely on institutional analysts - Just to be clear. I'm not saying don't deal with Gartner, Forrester, et. al. I'm just saying spend some time on understanding the overall analyst and influencers matrix that exists now. There have been dramatic changes that require different kinds of thinking than in the past. I imagine they are starting to think this way, come to think of it, or why would they have entered the Watchlist? But I really have no indication that they talk to more than the institutional analysts in here or even to some extent in Europe. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think so and even if they do, they don't make much of an impression or someone would remember talking to them. Time to understand the 21st century version of AR.Make conversational marketing a real category - or not - They "own" this category because they are the only ones that really call what they or anyone else in the space does, this.  While they proudly claim to coin the phrase and perhaps as a marketing and positioning "thing" it translates better in EMEA, I think they don't have any body of work to really support the category that they claim. At least not by that name. Their resources on their site are fairly sparse on this subject (not on the technology). This is pretty much the marketing side of customer engagement, or customer interaction, or even to a limited degree, customer experience (if you are willing to stretch it) - meaning what I've called marketing over the years - ironically - "the first line of conversation" with the customer. But my typing it that way and Neolane speaking to it as theirs doesn't make it so.  They need to either make it so or reposition it, not them, by renaming it. That means, in a long winded way, support it with a body of knowledge, don't just explain it and claim it.

If Neolane focuses on the U.S. the impact I already think they are going to have will be miniscule by comparison to what I think they can achieve.  But, that's an opinion. I just like what I see and I think they can realize all kinds of unrealized potential. This is why they won this year.  Because they should have.

 _______________________________________________________________

Next up: Customer Service companies – KANA, Moxie, Parature

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CRM Watchlist 2013 winners: Social is as social does the mainstream, part 2

Summary: Last week, I reviewed Attensity, Gigya, and Jive. This week we complete the circle with the final three social mavens: Get Satisfaction, Lithium, and Nimble. Let's see what's in store for these companies and what makes them as good as they are.

Keep one thing in the forefront as you read what are my fairly tough love reviews of my 2013 social platform winners. These are maturing companies, not mature for the most part. They are newer to the enterprise world than, say, Oracle, or even Salesforce.com, which is a relative newcomer. They have, for the most part, been successful in the enterprise, even as they need to scale up to sustain their success and expand their opportunities in that always competitive space. It's never a technology question — all of the ones that are focused on the enterprise can scale. When they aren't aimed at that market, like Nimble, it's still broadly about the same question — how sustainable they are in the markets that they target. The CRM Watchlist is an impact award that is based on their ability to sustain that impact over years, and that means to sustain the success of their company over years. Or, at least, my belief in their ability to that based on the evidence I have.

Since I said a lot of what I wanted about the social platforms last Thursday, I won't repeat it here; but there are a couple more things to chat about.

That's why I'm kind of tough on them. I think they are great companies, but they are teens about to graduate college or even in the case of the most mature of these six (I'm not telling you who that I think that is), they are newly graduated from college. This of course is relative to the industry giants — veteran companies with mature models that have their own issues, but sustainability isn't one of them.

So, forgive me in advance if I sound too tough. I bop because I love.

Let's do the housekeeping first.

On Wednesday, February 20, 2013 at 7.00am ET, the CRM Watchlist 2014 registration process began. Yep, right in the middle of the 2013 reviews. Progress (and time) wait for no man (or woman). What this means is that if you are a technology company or consulting/systems integrator business that does "customer-facing" things, which means software or services products/solutions, you become a candidate for the CRM Watchlist 2014. That means:

You can request a 2014 registration form from me at paul-greenberg3@the56group.com.

When you receive it, fill it out exactly according to instructions and in return you will get the questionnaire for 2014 — either the vendor questionnaire or the consulting/SI questionnaire, which are slightly different.

You have until November 30, 2013, to fill out the questionnaire.

If you send in the registration form to me, I will presume that you are going to fill out the questionnaire by the due date and will start tracking you as soon send the registration back to me. Please don't waste my time and request the questionnaire and then not fill it out. I'm tracking you for the better part of a year if you do send it.

When you run across Get Satisfaction, several things immediately stand out. It has a mature management team led by Wendy Lea and Jeff Nolan — both long-time industry veterans with enormously successful track records. It has a strong platform and a big customer base that has been built on the platform, but also helped build the platform. That customer base is strong — over 3,000 paying customers who pay on a subscription model that is a scalable one that customers actually appreciate. It has a vision of being the online customer engagement platform — not just a service community platform — a very ambitious vision. But at least it has a vision.

Then again, talk is cheap. But unlike others, it isn't just talking. Get Satisfaction is actually doing most of what it has to do to build the foundation for the realization of that vision.

I met these guys back in 2008, I think, when they were pretty much a landing strip for business' customer service communities. In fact, the apparent competition was sites like Planet Feedback. My attention was attracted by what I thought when I first heard it, a strange business model built around the idea that (take a deep breath and exhale slowly as you read this run-on explanation) if companies didn't want to answer customer queries officially on the Get Satisfaction community site, then employees of that company could "represent" those non-participant companies with an unofficial customer service site run by those employees of the company who chose to be involved. Do you get that?

Whew.

But in 2010, given that despite its spectacular growth, there really wasn't much of a revenue model, it wisely began to shift the model to something that was more sustainable — a cloud-based customer community platform that could OEM or at least architect private firewalled communities, and still managed to hold in tow the literally 63,000 communities that it already had. You heard me. There are 63,000 communities by Get Satisfaction's reckoning.

In a way, this is an architectural marvel, because, on the one hand, it has an agnostic platform that is highly configurable and allows its customers to build and run communities on the Get Satisfaction platform. On the other hand, it, in effect, migrated 63,000 communities of both the official and unofficial sort to the new platform (though it was on it already technically) without losing any of its 63,000 pre-existing assets. Luckily, it has a 27-year veteran CTO, David Rowley, to handle this, and you have to like the chances of the platform succeeding as a result.

The company is characterized by careful thinking about the steps it takes — which for the most part works — when focus is prolonged and there are no distractions, though, at times there are (I'll leave it at that because it's not entirely germane to the discussion). For example, it has very carefully considered and well crafted thought leadership documents that focus around concepts that have measurable return. Here's one that typifies the care taken: It's called To Drive Revenue from Your Social Strategy, Invite Customers to be More than Friends, While the name is terrible, the content is exceptional — with definable ROI a part of the document, not just wildly speculative thinking. Often times, there is a confusion between what thought leadership is and speculative fiction is. Not here.

As carefully crafted as its thought leadership is, its partnerships and integrations are opportunistic. I'm sure you hear this said all the time. It merely means that when something comes along that makes sense, and you look to the success in its future and are satisfied, you act on the opportunity. It's done this with its technology integrations. It is integrated with Salesforce, Magneto, Zendesk, HootSuite, JIRA, Good Data, Badgeville, desk.com, and several others. Each of these is designed to be complementary, and, one would have to presume, to drive market presence and revenue. What might be interesting for it is to start pursuing a company like NetSuite who could sorely use its capabilities and in a market — the upper end of the midmarket — that Get Satisfaction could shine.

The platform itself is characterized not by its depth, though it is deep, but by the power that the consistency of the user experience regardless of channel — desktop, mobile etc — brings. It is highly navigable, and remarkably easy to configure. The key to that is a widget architecture that it calls the Engage Widget. The concept is stunning in its simplicity. It goes like this:

You have a community.

You want your customers to be able to involve themselves with the community no matter where they are and what device they are using

You want them to have a consistent and easy user experience where they decide to engage.

You create this widget, which you embed in whatever environment you want to — Facebook, search engines, websites, mobile devices, you name it.

This widget is secure, configured to limit or expand whatever form of conversation you want and whatever conversations you want to expose.

It is a branded widget so that your corporate presence is always clearly there.

It works for both public and private communities.

Sound easy? It kind of is, though of course, there has to be serious though given to #5 and how you want to set that up. But it is a unique and valuable differentiator for Get Satisfaction that also shows there is power in simplicity — sometimes.

So, clearly, Get Satisfaction plays on a big stage, or, as I'd like to say so I can sound erudite, plays at the Globe Theatre. But 2013 is also a key nodal point for it. Like a few of the winners, there are things that involve it getting off the stick and moving ahead right away, or 2013 can be less than expected. However, this company, which won CRM Idol 2011 — the very first American winner — and the Watchlist this year on its own merits — is one that's in my sights because I see it doing exactly what I expect. And that means, win.

Thought leadership needs to get beyond personalities: Right now, there is no doubt about the presence of Get Satisfaction's two charismatic leading personalities, CEO Wendy Lea and VP of Product Marketing, Jeff Nolan, who is an independent thought leader in addition to the work that he does for Get Satisfaction. They have strong analyst relationships due to their longstanding status in the customer-facing technology industry. But that's not enough. What they don't have is a strong body of work that's out there for all to see when it comes to mindshare. They are competing with Lithium and Jive, with Lithium arguably making the strongest case for mindshare (see below). Get Satisfaction's leaders need to step up their game and provide a consistent and solid body of knowledge to the business world so that they are seen as leaders when it comes to community platforms.

It needs to stop standing still: This is a little more nebulous, but, in the last year or so, if you look at things at a surface level — it seems to be standing still or moving more slowly in the past. That wasn't and isn't necessarily bad; it has been filling out its platform and "maturing" the company. But the problem is that it hasn't shown the level of innovation that it did back in the days before it was a platform and while it was a service community with a provocative business model. It needs to become provocative again. In this case, in the broadest sense, it needs to start creating alliances with some of the big boys and make its value proposition so blatantly obvious that the Accentures, Deloittes, etc, all say, "of course". It needs to be perceived as "provocative, interesting and business sensible" too. It has the perspective to do that. The provocative behavior for it comes from scaling up to the enterprise but in conjunction (and in a go-to market alliance) with some of the marquee big boys. It doesn't have to be intellectually provocative. It has to show to those who need to see that it has a provocative value proposition. Right now, its corporate body language reads good value proposition. Not provocative.

Make the story clear: It is clear that it is transitioning out of pure customer service — always a difficult and highly risky move. But, assuming it does that, then it comes obvious: It has to participate in the forums and discussions around the areas that it is moving to. That would be marketing at this juncture. If it doesn't establish a beachhead quickly in marketing, given that this is the hottest area of all in customer-facing universes — this one and all alternative ones, too — it will flounder. If its story is on the congruence of marketing and customer service, tell the story. If it is doing a pure play in marketing as well as its more historic service-based community platform — tell that story. Whatever it strategically decides, it needs to knit together and make it work — both in execution, but also the public face has to be clean shaven, not scratchy. This is another area for it to be provocative about its value proposition — by telling a new story.

Get Satisfaction made what promised to be its most difficult transition about three years ago from customer service all-purpose community to community platform provider. It was a big deal. But the bread on the table is only there so long before it gets stale. Get Satisfaction is ready to make moves that can make it a serious impact player in 2013 and beyond. I know it has to. I know it wants to. I'm thinking it can.

Lithium has been a force in the social software and services world for several years now — meeting the Watchlist "sustain impact over time" criterion easily. It has bobbed and weaved a bit with its focus, moving from service communities to a broader attempt at being both external social and, to a much lesser degree, internal collaboration communities, and then finally cemented with the excellent acquisition of Social Dynamx, refocused on service communities again — its core offering — but with a twist.

From its founding in 2001 by Lyle and Dennis Fong, two major league entrepreneurs and gamers, Lithium has been a company in the headlines. It had enterprise customers for its strong community platform from the beginning; it had a gamers' interface due to the background of the founders — and it stood apart from any other platform of its type. It has had dynamic chief marketing officers from Sanjay Dholakia, now the CMO of Marketo to its current CMO, Katy Keim. It has spent a great deal of time putting itself out in the market — highly visible — but making sure that its campaigns and positioning are carefully crafted before it exposes them to the larger market. It understood and understands the idea of what I call "company ambiance", which is the subtle image that a company presents with the intent to evoke a specific feeling about the company in the marketplace. If you study its imagery, it's high quality and vivid. Very colorful (look at its landing page). It does kind of a modified Windows 8 thing — though to Lithium's credit, this predated the release of Windows 8). The presentation of this subtle ambiance is an important differentiator for companies because the ambiance colors the look and feel of the company. Vivid means vibrant. Live tiles mean motion, action. You think about it for second. You see vivid, vibrant, live, action, motion, and what do you think? What's the picture that gets painted in the mind's eye? Lithium has made an art of this.

But it hasn't ignored substance, either. It's not all imagery. It has arguably some of the best thought leadership material in the entire industry — material that directly impacts customers and the industry as a whole. That's largely due to the work of its chief scientist Michael Wu, who is a leading authority on areas such as big data, influence, social networks, and gamification, among other things. Wisely, Lithium leaves Michael, for the most part, to his own research and writing and doesn't give him trouble about the information and concepts he presents being agnostic. This leads to an impressive body of thought leadership from Michael. However, there is a caveat. As it grows, the internal thought leadership needs to expand beyond just Michael, even with his brilliance. There is a real value in leaving him independent, but also there needs to be others who are emerging in this domain.

Lithium has a solid analyst relations program that, with a few glitches here and there, has been smart and effective. Given that it is not a Big 4 company, it doesn't have unlimited funds to spend, so it is fairly highly targeted to the analysts — institutional, boutique, and independent — that it engages with. But it does engage. Plus, it has an understanding that the world of AR has changed in the last several years, and that smaller entities and individuals carry as much influence as the long-established institutions — albeit in different forms.

The area that it has made the most progress in over the last two years is in its partnerships, thanks to channel veteran Ed Van Siclen, who is doing a great job at Lithium. It has the integration partners that fit its social customer service thrust quite well with companies like Salesforce and a surprising, strong, and valuable strategic partnership with SAP and another one with Microsoft along with smaller but important players like IPSOS and Aspect. But equally as important are the partners who will help it expand its market reach and bring it directly into deals — some big names like Deloitte and PwC.

Even more on the partner side, it is cognizant of the most recent trends that can drive business for it. There is a growing involvement by the agencies — meaning advertising and PR agencies — in what we now are calling CRM, formerly known as SCRM. The agencies are not only looking to implement marketing and customer strategies for their clients, but are getting very involved in the technology selections needed to support the strategies. The most representative and powerful example of this is that Anthony Lye, the former head of Oracle's CRM practice and an industry thought leader, left Oracle at the end of last year and went to major digital agency LBi (a Lithium partner) as the president of Digital Platforms and Channel — a huge catch by LBi and an indicator of the trends. Lithium partners with LBI and SapientNitro among others — an agency strategy that will serve it well.

Finally, it has spent the last three years growing up in a manner of speaking, adding a very senior management team with lots of enterprise experience — something that it sorely lacked in the early days. It had enterprise clients and an enterprise-ready platform, but was not an enterprise-ready company. It lacked veteran presence in several areas that it has now made up, and, with a few minor moves, will be well positioned to win more enterprise deals for a long time to come.

But, but, but. It has a fair amount to do to make sure that it stays competitive and a market leader. It is doing most things right. Some things need to be, uh, tweaked.

Analytics powuh!: It needs to kick up its analytics offerings several notches. It acquired Scout Labs back in the day for monitoring and analytics, but honestly, that acquisition, which had some value, is still more "meh" than "wow". Its potential enterprise customers are looking to differentiate themselves by being able to anticipate customer behaviors, not only by demographic, but down to the individual level. In fact, in a just-released study by Accenture, it found that in the last three years, the use of analytics as a predictive tool tripled from 12 percent in 2009 to 33 percent in 2012. But the ability to anticipate individual customer behavior takes insight. Insight takes knowledge. Knowledge takes information. Information takes data. Analytics is needed to organize that data so that it ultimately leads to insight. There is a lot of data residing in the communities that Lithium creates. It doesn't currently have the predictive capabilities to support the requirements of larger enterprises. It needs to get it.

Continue building out partnerships/integrations: This one doesn't need much, because it is on the right track. It needs to work to expand the go-to market partnerships to expand the size and amount of deals that are in its pipeline. Partners of PwC, Deloitte, and larger agencies hold the key to this. Grab the agencies in particular, because it's fertile ground that hasn't been raked much yet.

Build up a body of work around customer experience: Its current positioning is around the social customer experience economy, which, without a body of work to support that, sounds like a series of somewhat shop-worn phrases — social customer, customer experience, experience economy — cobbled together without much more than the phrases for substance. In effect, it needs to build up the thought leadership assets to prove the social customer experience economy. But I think it can do this. Hell, this was the company that convinced the industry that it was a Social CRM platform without a single traditional CRM component and won a leadership position in the 2011 and 2012 Gartner Social CRM Magic Quadrant. So building up an "evidentiary" and conceptual set of assets shouldn't be that daunting for this agile company. However, this might be its most important effort in 2013. Either prove it or lose it. Chris Carfi originated social customers about 10 years ago; customer experience is about 60 years old; the experience economy was the name of the seminal work by Joe Pine and James Gilmore in 1999. So "social customer experience economy" is other people's stuff and old terminology. Make it Lithium's via thought leadership around it. The idea is good, but it needs explanation, not a long phrase by itself.

Ratchet down conversation around "social": As I (and many others) have been saying for a year now, social is no longer the conversation. It's a mainstream business requirement. Even the most ardent social companies, like Salesforce, are dropping it as a differentiator per se. It's time for Lithium to do the same. Social is just table stakes. You need it; you need to let people know you have it; but you shouldn't emphasize it.

Lithium is a company that has had continuous impact for the last four to five years. It is a marketing machine with knowledge of the subtleties, and it has a rapidly maturing company that is readying itself to be a permanent player in the business firmament. 2013 is its "year of the debutante's ball". It is coming out to stand and stay on the big stage, where it has been tentatively for the last several years. If it solidifies in the areas that I think it needs to. I've said my piece. Lithium now needs to do it.

A two-anecdote start to this one:

Jon Ferrara, the CEO and founder of Nimble, long-time CRM industry pioneer, took the stage at Social Business Atlanta in February 2013 and made an offer to the 250 attendees: "I'd like to offer you Nimble Premium free for one year." The audience went home happy.

This press release hit the wires on March 4, 2013: "Nimble offer[s] free year of social relationship software to over 50 leading startup accelerators." The story went on to say that Nimble was willing to provide a complimentary two-user premium version with 100GB of additional storage for a year to young startups — with an initial list of over 50 who had already said yes.

In a certain way, these two stories typify Nimble — both through its generous nature and industry involvement of its management, especially Jon Ferrara, and a strategy to build up the customer base with a bit of a dependence on conversions — which has its strengths and weaknesses.

To its credit, Nimble almost built a category — social contact management, which it calls social relationship management. It has become a seriously visible recognized presence in small business CRM. Note that I didn't say social CRM, even though it is all about "social". I didn't say it because social CRM is CRM now, and there is no longer a distinction. Social infrastructure, components, and features are built into all CRM systems either from scratch, with retro wiring of the applications or through integrations. It is de rigueur, and SCRM is just plain CRM from now on.

Make no mistake about it: Nimble to a certain extent is still a product in development — a work in progress — as all good products are. But in the last two years, it has added significant functionality — with a strong nod to contemporary business reality — a lot of business information resides on social networks, and small businesses need to be able to surface that information and use it in their daily business lives to think better, sell better, market better, and serve better. To that end, Nimble provides a solid useful product for the small business market in particular — one that is fairly priced at $15 per user per month.

I could go into the features, but what makes Nimble a Watchlist winner in 2013 is its well-executed strategy — one that has been in place for several years. It is a strategy that extends from the partner/channel program to the involvement in social and traditional networks, events, and activities to the analyst relations to the strategy to a well-crafted agenda to building out the customer data it needs to both seed its monetization and to gather intelligence for product development. Let's briefly look at each piece. And I do mean briefly.

Partner strategy: This is a combination of resellers (VARs) and integration partners. Jon, modeling the VAR channel after his success with a similar strategy for Goldmine, which he sold for zillions of dollars years ago, has about 250 VARs that resell Nimble, half of which are outside the US. They focus on the 10-25 user markets. His technology partners are all precisely aimed at providing functionality for that same 10-25 user market, with significant scalability possible if Nimble chooses to do so. So he's integrated with HootSuite, FreshDesk, MailChimp, HubSpot, and several others of the "two words run together" type. What makes this fascinating is that its contact API provides significant extensibility and widens the possibility for a much larger number of technology partners.

Social and traditional outreach: Between Jon Ferrara's constant involvement on social channels, personal one-to-one meetings, on the phone, in the press, at events on the web, and live and anywhere else that Nimble can be evangelized, and PR maven Brenda Christensen's alternative involvement in the same channels, it has done a pretty superb job of insinuating Nimble into the pores of discussion in the industry. It has many relationships at the personal and business levels, with dozens of influencers that have on the balance been beneficial in getting the Nimble message out and respect for what it's trying to do. All in all, the constancy of the campaign, the usually well-crafted messages, the usually non-abrasive cadence, and the level of discussion has worked to give it some genuinely impressive top of mind when it comes to the SMB world technology companies being discussed. The number of write-ups about Nimble in both the traditional and digital press is mind blowing.

Freemium model for leads and data: Nimble has 45,000 registered users and a growing four-figure paid customer base. It has been building the free subscriber model up for a long time, and has used it to generate a good but non-disclosed conversion rate, and has been able to use the data that it has from the free users to improve the product.

All in all, its tightly designed and well-executed strategy is what gets it the impact it has. But it is also at a crossroads in 2013. This is the make-it-or-break-it year, as far as I see it. It has a shot at being wildly successful, but it has one of the tougher roads to travel to be that.

Revenue, revenue, and, oh yeah, revenue: There is nothing more important in 2013 than revenue for it. It has to date done OK, but it has to step it up by multiples to both give itself the opportunity to exponentially grow and to continue the momentum it has built over the past few years. It has a pretty strong reliance on the conversions, which are great, but I think that there are a number of things to do that will get it to the revenue level that it has to achieve — aside from the conversions. First, its VARS need to step it up. As far as I can tell, and this is just supposition, but I think a reasonable one, its 250 VAR channel isn't pulling its weight, and that means some pressure and reassessment if need be. Revenue is the key. I'll say it 100 times. In my head. 2013 is the year for revenue growth big time for Nimble.

More thought leadership assets: Oddly, given the brilliance of the outreach, Nimble hasn't done much in the way of producing original assets either from internal sources or external subject matter experts. I suspect this is due to not much of a budget for it. Time to bite a little bullet and invest a bit in building up the thought leadership assets — webinars, videos, whitepapers, web apps, and podcasts that define the market it wants to lead. It doesn't have to be a huge investment, but it's a prudent one in 2013 for it.

More integrations, please: This goes hand in hand with the revenue plea. Integrations like HubSpot are perfect because they are integrating with mature companies in a complimentary way that expand its footprint in areas that both flesh out its offering to a more complete CRM offering and at the same time open up Nimble to whole other markets that it otherwise wouldn't be involved with. For example, it makes sense to consider a possible alliance and integration with Infusionsoft. That integration would be with a company that focuses on the same market size roughly, has a huge channel of its own, has complementary functionality (though some overlaps), and has a revenue stream in the tens of millions. It has advocates all over the place. Just see my review here. This opens up opportunity. There are others. It also needs to grow its Apps Marketplace. It has integrations there with NetSuite and others, but one or two partners are building them. More developers on the marketplace should be a priority, though I'd personally try to focus more on added functionality and less on integrations that might be strategic (like the NetSuite one).

Back when I first had it on the Watchlist (2011) it was a matter of faith, and I said that. It's no longer that. It got here because of performance. Its strategy to have an impact has been successful so far. It has reached a crossroads in 2013. If it crosses that road, not only will it continue to impact the market, it can possibly also be known as the market maker, in the same way Radian6 did it several years ago. We'll have to see, but I hope that I can see it with even my 20/20 eyes (without glasses on). That's the potential it has.

That's it for the social, guys and gals. Next up are the Eclectics — top scorer Blackbaud, Coveo, and Thunderhead.

Related stories

CRM Watchlist 2013 Lifetime Achievement: IBM Institute for Business Value

The Sweetest Suites: Part 1 of 3 — salesforce.com; Microsoft

The Sweetest Suites: Part 2 of 3 — SAP, Oracle

The Sweetest Suites: Part 3 of 3 — Infor, NetSuite, SugarCRM

Marketing Puts Itself Out There - Aprimo, Eloqua, Hubspot, Infusionsoft, Marketo, Neolane

Customer Service Served Hot — KANA, Moxie, Parature

Three Kings: Sales, Process, Analytics - Xactly, Lattice Engines, BPMonline, Pegasystems, Clarabridge.

Social is as Social Does the Mainstream Part 1 — Attensity, Gigya, Jive

Topics: Tech Industry, Emerging Tech

In addition to being the author of the best-selling "CRM at the Speed of Light: Social CRM Strategies, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers," Paul Greenberg is President of The 56 Group, LLC.

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Microsoft Convergence 2013: Crossing the 'T's; dotting the 'I's

First, once again, an apology to Microsoft and to those of you who like reading this stuff, for the lateness of this post on Convergence, which was well over a month ago. I'm on the road so much and had to finish the Watchlist and cry, cry, whine, whine, so I'm sorry.

But I can move on if you can.

As those of you who read my stuff know, I place a good deal of stock on the annual user conferences that software vendors put on. I think that they both reflect the state of the vendor and, at the same time, are indicators of the future of the vendor. You can see what progress they made, what promises they kept, and what problems they have by comparing where they were a year ago with where they currently stand.

The vendors feel the same as me. They spend millions of dollars putting these things on, making them their show of shows each year. They court customers and analysts and intermingle with their guests in what is often a highly orchestrated "experience" that is designed down to the positioning of the lights to provide an ambiance that is feel-good in nature, even when the news might not be as good.

Each vendor chooses the canvas and the colors of the paint they want to apply to that canvas. It varies from year to year — it can range from splashy and spectacularly vivid to more brown toned and muted, soothing rather than exciting. Whatever the choice, it is both deliberate and something that can make or break the company's efforts for the year.

This year, Microsoft was ubiquitous Windows 8 blue — a somewhat muted blue — and, folks, that was a good thing.

Where last year at Convergence, it was user experience and user interface and Windows 8 and all color and light and enthusiasm (and rightfully so), this year is more customer experience and the presence of Windows 8 in a ubiquitous fashion. It was/is just there.

What this means for Dynamics CRM, I'll get into in a minute in this shorter-than-normal and late blog post. First, a look at the conference itself, not the messaging.

First, as I do every year, because I am in awe every year, I want to thank what I think is the best AR team in the industry: The folks from Waggoner Edstrom who work with the Dynamics CRM team. Umran Hasan, Lisa Perazzoli, Lourdes Rios Salazar, Anne Goldman, Leslie Boelter, and Meg Hollis deserve the designation. They take care of business, and they are professionals to the nth degree, but not to the exclusion of being warm and personable individuals. They are the textbook for AR and IR.

That's saying a lot, because being excellent at influencer relations (IR) isn't an easy thing — it's a relatively new approach to the more traditional analyst relations, and involves understanding the newer dynamics in the market when it comes to interacting with influencers, be they institutional analysts, independent advisors, or journalists. Plus, influencers can occasionally be snippy and sometimes feel entitled. So dealing with us ain't easy, and yet they make it that way. Thank you so much for doing that — not just once, but year after year.

Microsoft understands the importance of conferences, and, as I said in last year's Convergence post, it deliberately keeps things to an "intimate" size — this year, the number was 12,000. Needless to say, that's a relative number. But the key to its approach is to create a highly personalizable and personable experience for each attendee, despite the still rather large size. It isn't a high-energy experience. It is wise enough to know that this isn't its forte. It had a local band doing heavy and light rock, and it was a solid cover band with good vocalists and good musicians. But that was the feel of the conference. Solid.

To its credit, it knows that on the level of energy, no one is going to successfully compete with Salesforce and Dreamforce. Interestingly, except for one slightly snippy comment about a vendor's new messaging, the conference (thank God) was devoid of competitive misanthropy.

Dynamics in general and Dynamics CRM in particular is clearly playing an increasingly important role in the Microsoft product pantheon. Just to be clear, Convergence is a business apps conference, so business apps clearly are going to be front and center — and mentioned a lot more than, say, Office 365. But it's what's said and done between the lines that is meaningful at conferences like Convergence, and the message this year is clear: Customers first. Windows 8 is already a landscape fixture, so it no longer has to be emphasized — it just "is". And Microsoft is moving aggressively onto the competitive stage with Dynamics, so look out, Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, and others in the marketplace.

Why would I say that?

Because I want to.

OK, OK, not enough. So here's what I'm thinking. About a year ago, Microsoft coaxed Bob Stutz to take over CRM at the company. A great move. For those of you who don't know who that is, he is something of a technology legend in the CRM world, being the strategic architect (not the technical one) of Siebel and of the first true SAP CRM release: SAP CRM 2007.

He has been tasked at Microsoft in bringing Microsoft Dynamics CRM into the 21st century. It has been a serviceable, even good product focused on SFA and customer service. But it lacked quite a bit. It was missing marketing automation, it was missing a true social layer, and it lacked any kind of native customer analytics.

In its original incarnations, since the target markets in the earliest days of Dynamics CRM were small and midsized businesses, it could get by with what it had because it had a ubiquitous name and enough functionality in the two areas that customers in those markets cared about initially.

But, about two years ago, it decided to go upmarket and thus those missing pieces in combination with the navigability and the scalability of what it had became an issue that it had to solve in order to reach out to the enterprise.

Last year, to compound and resolve some of that, it introduced Windows 8 to great fanfare with a focus, even with the business applications, on usability, user experience, user interface, and customer experience. This was an advantage in that it normalized Microsoft Dynamics CRM with an interface that was contemporary, interesting, and highly navigable. It compounded the difficulties, too, because of the adoption difficulties Microsoft had with Windows 8 in its incipient stages. It added a layer of learning to the CRM suite that added work to the learning curve.

Let me point one thing out here before I move on and address some of you who might be Windows 8 naysayers or, more importantly, who are dissing Microsoft because the sales of Windows 8 aren't as high as (you) expected.

Microsoft is in this for the long run. This is a long-term play on its part because it understands that changing the paradigm to one appropriate to the 21st-century approach to person-machine interaction.

While none of this was any different from last year to this year, the messaging around the business applications at Convergence was no longer focused on Windows 8 and usability — but around the customer and the work that Dynamics CRM (and other Dynamics apps) enabled for those customers. It's playing it smart and, given the emphasis on customer experience, a corollary emphasis on customers, while generically always right, is specifically called for in this period — and in this (Microsoft) instance.

The level of progress for CRM in the last year for Microsoft can be game changing for the company. Dynamics CRM, if Microsoft is willing to give it the chance it should, can and should become the leading element of its business suite, given the progress made. But that's a non-trivial IF that I'll get to in a few. I'm not going to speak to the changes that it has made in the technology foundation, nor in the interface until what it is calling the Orion release drops in Q3 2013. This promises the mobile and Windows 8 versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a work in progress (with an emphasis on the word "progress" and it is impressive in many ways. Why? Patience, grasshoppers), but I do want to speak to its two acquisitions, which are both very important to Microsoft's future in the CRM world.

The progress that Microsoft has made is not only in the utter reformation of the Dynamics CRM product, but also in the intelligence of its acquisitions to fill holes that have long existed in the portfolio. The acquisition of the integrated marketing management suite — Marketing Pilot (now Microsoft Dynamics Marketing) — was a truly intelligent move. The application, which has about two thirds of the functionality of Aprimo, is as close to its doppelganger as it is going to find. It is a great acquisition, but it needs a lot of TLC to make it a great part of the suite.

If you take a look at the functionality, it is dizzying. Ranging from the more traditional marketing automation functionality like campaign management and email marketing to the more complex management functions like collaborative project management and even not-obvious back-end functions like expense management and budgeting, you begin to see how rich the application suite really is, and, if used fully, would be able to handle all but the largest enterprises — and I'm not sure that is even a fair statement. It might be able to handle the largest ones.

Aye, but there's the rub. Most marketers don't need all that functionality, and even with the revamped Windows 8ish interface — a vast improvement over the original pre-acquisition one — it can be a confusing mischigas ("mess" for those of you not fluent in Yiddish) and actually achieves a level of "too much choice". But there is no reason to dumb it down, either, because as you go up the enterprise-scale food chain, the increased functionality becomes necessary.

As of now, which to be fair is version one, the way that you access Marketing Pilot is via a connector to the Dynamics CRM suite (which is fine, for now) but doesn't solve the "too, too much" conundrum.

But, surprise, surprise, my big-mouthed, highly opinionated self has a solution.

Integrate it fully into the Dynamics CRM Suite. Don't leave it as an independently connected product. That way, it's not on-premises only; it's in the cloud, and Dynamics CRM is a full-blown suite.

Provide a basic marketing edition with Dynamics CRM that has all the fundamental functionality available — marketing automation, email marketing, etc.

Make the rest premium business services that you can subscribe to. This means that as a business grows and it starts needing to, say, manage resources, you can turn on the functionality by paying an extra whatever bucks per month per user for the additional capabilities. It sounds easy; it isn't. But it is the way that I think that Marketing Pilot gets to be part of the Microsoft suite that both makes it one of the better in the marketplace and monetizes it.

Do these things, and Marketing Pilot's acquisition becomes a steal at any price.

The Microsoft acquisition of Netbreeze works. It works because of how it intends to use it. Netbreeze, for those of you who don't know it, which would be most of you, is a Swiss company of seriously intelligent scientists who built a highly functional, modestly deep, user-friendly customer/social analytics product that actually can provide you with useful information — the kind that is usable for insights. Its greatest strength is its ability to do sentiment analysis in 28 languages, including several different writing systems (Arabic, Cyrillic etc). But even though the product is certainly a good entry in the marketplace, the value for Microsoft comes, not in the product per se, but in the intended use — its game plan.

If it had intended to buy the product so that it could make it part of a product portfolio, an offering, it would have been stupid acquisition at any price. It's not really built for that, and up against some of the deeper products in the space (eg, Clarabridge, NextPrinciples, the customer-facing analytics products of SAS, Oracle, SAP), it would not do well. But, instead, Bob Stutz and team acquired them for a different reason — one that not only makes sense, but it is actually the ideal approach to both the market, and to support the strengths of Netbreeze's offering. It is going to integrate it as a layer across the entirety of Dynamics CRM and give it away free of charge as the "social analytics" layer of the Dynamics CRM platform.

To Microsoft's credit, this wasn't a dramatic conference. The message that came through loud and clear this year is that it is proceeding with its initiative launched in 2012 to change the way people compute and to provide businesses with what they need to accommodate that change — and, of course, deal with the way that customers have been changing for the last decade.

Are there things that it can do? Of course there are. If you want to see what they are, read its Watchlist review of about a month ago. Beyond that, how it handles Marketing Pilot is going to be an important piece of its ability to provide a "right-sized" offering for multiple different target groups. All in all, it is on the right track to not only continue to be a major player, but also to reassert its position in the CRM market as one of a small handful of vendors that could be a good choice for any company, regardless of size.

We'll check back later this year to see how it's doing.

Seriously.

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CRM Watchlist 2013 Lifetime Achievement: IBM Institute for Business Value

Summary: The 2013 CRM Watchlist Liftetime Achievement Award, the second annual one, kicks off the reviews. This is probably the kindest of the reviews that you'll be seeing in this entire 40+ series of them. Because the IBM IBV is SO damned worthy. How can I be edgy?

In a lot of ways this gives me an enormous amount of pleasure. It’s my second annual CRM Watchlist Lifetime Achievement Award and it goes to an organization that has had long term and continuous (meaning year over year) impact on the business world especially that focusing around customer facing industries and practitioners.  Last year, the inaugural award rightfully went to the Peppers and Rogers Group, who were pioneers in one to one thinking and personalization and continue to be leaders in how customers and companies interact and need to.

This year, however, it goes to a very different kind of organization.  One that I’ve had the honor of knowing and trusting for a long time and one that if you are part of this industry in any way, knows is perhaps the most quoted and trusted research organization in the world of business.  One that has had perhaps more impact on driving vendor and practitioner strategies around market trends and best practices than any other organization that I can think of. One that has had its studies and data quoted almost ubiquitously and is omniscient in the discussions around how to proceed with the present and future business of business.  One that never has had its veracity questioned despite its ties to one of the most significant businesses on the earth.  One that seemingly has no agenda despite those ties – it is an institution that lives to produce the quality of work that it does.   A true impact player.

It is my honor to announce that the Second Annual CRM Watchlist Lifetime Achievement Award goes to…

The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV)

(Clap! Clap! Audience goes wild).  I suspect if you know anything about these guys that when you saw the award went to them, you went “of course; it’s so obvious.”  And it is obvious.  From their every-two-years (biennial?) CEO report to their work on big data analytics to their research on social business and social CRM, they have become what is probably, at least in the technology world, the most quoted business research group ever.  Anecdotally, I’ve seen a slide on the perception gap between business and consumers when it comes to social channel use (source: From Social Media to Social CRM, Part 1, 2011) used in more presentations than any other single chart in my life.

But this goes way beyond anecdotal evidence. Their results have driven decision-making at companies across the spectrum – ranging from technology companies and consulting firms to manufacturing and CPG businesses.  Despite their connections to IBM, no one I know in any industry presumes they have any agenda other than producing extraordinary research to provide some fundamental insights for those reading it.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet with Eric Lesser, who is the Executive Director – the guy in charge – of the IBV.  He is the kind of guy who engenders the personal trust of those who deal with him – and he is as big a Yankees fan as I am. J.  I told Eric about this award and asked him for a statement that speaks to who the IBV is. So, before I go on any further, ladies and gentlemen, Eric Lesser:

The Institute for Business Value, the research and thought leadership development arm of IBM Global Business Services, develops practical, fact-based points of view on a variety of industry, cross-industry and role-based topics.  I have been proud to have been part of this group, which is comprised of leading subject matter experts from around globe, since its inception in 2002.  In the IBV, we develop perspectives as well as share the results with executive audiences. We work in collaboration with internal and external industry experts, leading edge clients and IBM’s own consultants to provide practical recommendations built on a foundation of fundamental research.

Since 2002, we have produced over 250 studies over the last ten years, which are disseminated through a number of delivery channels, including our website and tablet app. This base of knowledge provides IBM with the insights needed to develop deeper relationships with its customers and demonstrates its commitment to leading business thinking.

From the beginning of the group, we have developed a range of marketing and consumer-based insights.  Starting with research on customer relationship management, we have continued to expand our coverage to understand global consumer opinions in the retail, telecommunications, banking, automobile and insurance industries, as well the impact of emerging topics such as Social CRM and Collective Intelligence.  One of our flagship studies, the  2011 Chief Marketing Officer Study which is based on face-to-face interviews with over 1,700 marketing leaders, has shed new light into the challenges faced by senior executives on the use of social media, customer data and the future skills needed for marketing success.

I am honored to be part of such a great group of individuals, who have really helped shape business thinking over the last several years, and made a significant contribution to IBM and its clients.  

I expect that the IBV’s impact will not only continue but grow over the next several years because the C-level studies are iconic reference points for those people who care about not just data and trends, but about possible practices that work in the rather confusing world of 21st century. The IBM Institute for Business Value has been and is one of the beacons that help us light the way.  For that reason, they win the CRM Watchlist 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award AND what will be my kindest review of any of the winners of this award. J

CONGRATS to the IBM INSTITUTE FOR BUSINESS VALUE, the 2013 CRM Watchlist Lifetime Achievement Award! 

There are currently no prices available for this product.

In addition to being the author of the best-selling "CRM at the Speed of Light: Social CRM Strategies, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers," Paul Greenberg is President of The 56 Group, LLC.

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CRM Watchlist 2013: And now, the winners!

This is it. We're are now running the last couple of laps. Today we are announcing the 2013 winners of the CRM Watchlist. There is a lot done differently in this announcement than in the past--and for the first time, I will do the complete list of winners, including:

The vendorsThe consulting/systems integratorsThe Ones to WatchThe Ready to LeapThe Lifetime Achievement

All of them are here--a departure from last year, when I did the list after I had started the reviews. So here's what will happen from here:

I publish the list of winners here

Then the review of the Lifetime Achievement winner in the next post

Following that, I will reviews the vendors categorically (the categories depend on how I group them so that they are fluid). This will take several posts

After the vendors are done, I'll do the consulting/SI reviews

I'll then produce a yearbook in PDF form for free distribution, which will have the 2014 criteria--a sneak peak, so to speak

In late February, registration for 2014's questionnaire will open--and the whole thing starts all over again.

I hope this helps those of you out there who asked about why they didn't know about the 2013 Watchlist--which was decent-sized in number. I wasn't shy about publishing details. If you want to know about 2014's CRM Watchlist, either read this blog or follow the #crmwatchlist hashtag on Twitter. I can't do much more than that.

Finally, if you want to see the criteria for 2013, and the format, please read this blog post.

Okay, enough of the preliminary chatter. Without further ado...

There will be much more on the IBM Institute for Business Value in the initial review post next week. It is an amazing outfit, and it, like the charter lifetime achievement award winner last year, Peppers and Rogers, has a body of work from over many years that is truly extraordinary. They have managed to have an impact over a length of time that goes above and beyond. Just know they won. We'll hear from them next week, alonf with my review.

This was an incredibly difficult set of choices, but ultimately, the revised numbers ruled and the below are the winners. There were mitigating circumstances that affected some of the choices. For example, finalist VirtuOz was acquired by Nuance. That, and because of multiple factors--including some uncertainty on how long it will take to merge cultures; the integration into the Nuance customer base, etc.; and just the plain amount of time it takes to effect a transformation like this--took them out of the running. On the other hand, Eloqua has been a market leader for a long time in the marketing automation/revenue performance management/revenue marketing world (take your pick of names), and will stand strong even as they make the transformation, so they became a winner. Eloqua's offering will likely remain a strong viable part of Oracle's portfolio over 2013, and in their case, the time it will take to integrate works to their advantage. For 2014, however, they will be just part of Oracle, and I will treat them as such.

But, as I said, the numbers were revised and some of the choices for finalists didn't quite have the winner's mantle in their cards yet. However, that doesn't mean that they aren't great companies, just that they need something else to make them the impact champs they are likely to be. A few barely missed--thus the other two categories of awards (more on them later).

This year, Blackbaud barely (and I do mean barely) retained its number one status. Its impact in the non-profit market is even stronger than it was last year (for reasons that will be revealed in its review). To tease you all a bit more, the companies you see in italics are in the top 10 percent of the winners, after Blackbaud (in bold and italics)--and one of them came very close to unseating Blackbaud this year.

Here are the vendor winners in alphabetical order, except for Blackbaud (though I guess that's obvious, isn't it?)

BlackbaudAttensityArtesian SolutionsBPM OnlineClarabridgeCoveoCrowdtapEloquaGet SatisfactionGigyaHubspotInforInfusionsoftJiveKANALattice EnginesLithiumMarketoMicrosoftMoxieNeolaneNetSuiteNexJNimbleOracleParaturePegasystemssalesforce.comSAPSugarCRMTeradata AprimoThunderheadXactly.

These are the companies that are about a year from becoming real players on the scene. They each were finalists, but they haven't quite yet made the winners circle. However, in 2014 —, watch out.

AllegianceDemandbase UPDATE!Tracx.

These are the companies that have a 2015 (most likely) arrival date as a true impact player. Let me be clear. Their products and services are purchase-worthy right now. They are exceptional companies. But they are being compared with much longer-standing companies in many cases, and what they are missing is several of the other components they need to actually impact the market and customers in the way that the winners of the Watchlist do. For the most part, it's because they are young. With some seasoning, increased revenues spent on various aspects of their strategy, and of course, a good game plan, these are poised to make a mark in 2015, even as you buy their products or services today. That's why you should be watching them now, and getting in while you still can.

Next PrinciplesNearstream.

The standards for the consulting/SI winners are different than for the vendors--similar categories, marginally different questions, different weights and values assigned, and different "secret things" that I'm looking for. These winners should be damned proud of themselves because it was easy to be eliminated in this category. The reviews will speak for themselves when they come out. Here, too, we had an acquisition that affected the result--Innoveer was acquired by Cloud Sherpa--which raises all the uncertainties that acquisitions have. However, the acquisition makes Cloud Sherpa a possible contender for 2014--if they register.

AccentureCSCErnst and Young AdvisorySolvis ConsultingThe Pedowitz Group.

Now comes the good stuff. All the reviews begin with the next post, starting with the lifetime achievement winner: the IBM IBV. The fun is just starting.

Congratulations to all the winners of CRM Watchlist 2013!

Your badges will be on the way soon. And the reviews, as soon as I write them. You all did really well.

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