Today’s rapid changes in technology have left many companies behind in the digital transformation that is shaping the future of marketing, sales, commerce and client engagement. At Ventana Research we have seen this change coming, having been close observers and analysts of technological shifts for almost 15 years, providing continuous research and guidance to the technology industry. Now the leading edge is the digital point of engagement with customers through websites and social media. Earlier this year I wrote about mastering marketing mayhem in a meaningful, meticulous manner explaining how organizations can adapt to the new digital reality. Well, we are taking our own advice. Ventana Research spent the first half of 2016 reflecting on lessons learned and best practices from our research and advisory efforts. The result is our new community and website, www.ventanaresearch.com that we have announced and is available for everyone on the Internet. With it we strive to set an example of simplicity in engaging an audience in need of insights and education on technology applied to business.
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Topics:
Mobile,
Customer Experience,
Marketing,
Marketing Performance Management,
Mobile Technology,
Cloud Computing,
digital technology
It’s widely agreed that customer experience is now the most important dynamic for business. Any organization that wants to retain loyal and even vocal customers should do everything possible to ensure and maintain customer satisfaction. Software companies, especially those that promise to provide CRM and effective interactions across any channel at any time, should be good examples of embracing the methods they prescribe for using their products. But do they?
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Topics:
Social Media,
Customer Experience,
HCM,
Human Capital,
Human Capital Management,
Marketing,
NA14,
NetSuite,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Zach Nelson,
Cloud Computing,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Customer Performance Management (CPM),
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
HR,
HRMS,
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
TribeHR,
Workforce Performance Management (WPM)
I attended NICE Systems’ annual Interactions (Twitter #Interaction2012) conference in Nashville to get the latest from this growing global software business that focuses on customer-centric applications. If you have not heard of NICE you might not be primarily involved in managing and interacting with customers, the area in which NICE has been growing organically and by acquiring technology providers that complement its existing portfolio. As we discussed in recent analyses, and NICE acquired Merced Systems for its sales- and service-centric performance management applications and Fizzback for customer feedback management software. Both have helped it become a more strategically focused software business. NICE Systems targets enterprise contact centers as well as financial risk, compliance and security. NICE makes its applications available not just on-premises but also in software as a service and hosted environments.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
NICE Systems,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer Service,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Operational Intelligence,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Customer Performance Management (CPM),
Desktop Analytics,
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
Interactive Intelligence,
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
Workforce Performance Management (WPM)
NICE Systems last week announced an agreement to acquire Merced Systems, a provider of business applications for customer service and sales organizations. This acquisition slipped by with little fanfare, but it marks a significant milestone for NICE, a major provider of applications and technology for call centers and a player in their evolution into multichannel contact centers. Building on a good 2010, as my colleague Richard Snow noted, NICE expects to reach almost $800 million of revenue in 2011, which would make it one of the largest companies in its segment. NICE has made multiple acquisitions to build its software portfolio, including purchases of Actimize, CyberTech, eGlue and others mentioned below. It recently won our 2011 Ventana Research Leadership Award in the contact center category with its customer deployment at Alliance Data. NICE Systems plans to have Merced Systems as a foundation of its enterprise systems and a complement to its contact center workforce optimization offering. This purchase builds on its other acquisitions, including FizzBack recently and IEX and Performix in 2006, which helped NICE establish its customer service and back office agent performance management software. That area has not grown as quickly as NICE would like, mostly due to marketing that was not aggressive enough in attracting customers. NICE recently rebranded its NICE SmartCenter for helping agents, as Richard noted, and is leveraging its assets into the back office, which he also assessed. Our benchmark research on contact center technology found that companies’ priorities for future investments match up well with NICE Systems’ focuses on expanding customer service agent applications and analytics applications.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Sales,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Marketing,
Merced Systems,
NICE Systems,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Revenue Performance,
Sales Compensation,
Sales Force Automation,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer Service,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
Call Center,
CFO,
CMO,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Customer Performance Management (CPM),
Desktop Analytics,
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
Sales Performance Management,
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
SFA,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
Workforce Performance Management (WPM)
At the SAP Global Influencer Summit (Twitter #SAPSummit) that I just assessed the company addressed, among many other things, its SAP CRM vision and recent advances. SAP has shifted its focus from standard customer relationship management (CRM) to the customer lines of business where professionals increasingly see that the enterprise customer experience should span channels and processes in marketing, sales and customer service. SAP now is focusing on specializing its applications for a customer-focused set of business processes, which can be differentiated in its vertical industry solutions more than its horizontal CRM applications. This industry approach makes sense for SAP, which has not been able to tap into the new energy and applications in marketing, sales and service but is aware of multichannel customer requirements. Let’s start by looking about what SAP is focusing on in the customer lines of business.
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Topics:
SAP,
Customer Experience,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Analytics,
CIO,
Enterprise Software,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
CRM
