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        Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

        Dreamforce has become the largest enterprise software event for businesses in the United States, and it is evident why when looking at it this year. With over 170,000 business and IT professionals attending, Salesforce came to show off upcoming product announcements and innovations. This year's biggest focus was on Einstein Voice (a personalized and intelligent conversational assistant), integration with other platforms, and Salesforce Customer 360. The last of these is the start of an answer...

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        Topics: Salesforce.com, Customer Experience, Machine Learning, Marketing, Voice of the Customer, CRM, Dreamforce, Sales Performance Management (SPM), SPM, Digital Technology, Digital Marketing, Robotic Process Automation, AI, natural language processing, Intelligent CX

        I have been meaning to write about Salesforce since its Dreamforce 2015 conference. Salesforce provides a platform, tools and applications for business and IT who claims to be the ‘no software’ company which as you will read is exactly what happened on May 10th. Heck, Salesforce is making a lot of advances on its platform, its applications and even with Analytics and the Internet of Things. These changes are at the center of what at our analyst firm calls digital business innovation. Much of...

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        Topics: Sales, Salesforce.com, Marketing, NA14, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Customer Service, IOT, CRM, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM)

        At this year's Dreamforce more than 140,000 people gathered in San Francisco to share the excitement about the use of technology for business. Salesforce.com’s annual conference has reached megashow status, which is a mixed blessing: Dreamforce remains social in its design, but it has become impersonal due to its size. In any case Salesforce had plenty to show off. The company has continued to enhance its cloud-based business applications for sales and customer service, and in the last year it...

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        Topics: Sales, Salesforce.com, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM)

        Few sales organizations realize their full potential, partly because they don’t execute well. We urge organizations to move beyond conventional wisdom in how they think about executing sales processes and have placed methods for making improvement to sales execution at the center of our research on sales in 2014. In our recent research on sales forecasting almost half (44%) of sales organizations said they have impediments that are motivating management to consider further investment in sales...

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        Topics: Sales, Salesforce.com, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Qvidian, Sales Coaching, Sales Force Automation, Business Analytics, Cloud Computing, Sales Performance Management (SPM), SFA

        I recently attended the annual Informatica analyst summit to get the latest on that company’s strategy and plans. The data integration provider offers a portfolio of information management software that supports today’s big data and information optimization needs. Informatica is busy making changes in its presentation to the market and its marketing and sales efforts. New executives, including new CMO Marge Breya, are working to communicate what is possible with Informatica’s product portfolio,...

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        Topics: Big Data, Data Quality, Master Data Management, Salesforce.com, MDM, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Data Governance, Data Integration, Data Management, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Informatica, Information Management, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, CEP, Informatica Cloud, Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Strata+Hadoop

        SnapLogic, a provider of data integration in the cloud, this week announced Big Data-as-a-Service to address businesses’ needs to integrate and process data across Hadoop big data environments. As our research agenda for 2013 outlines, dealing with data in the cloud is very important to organizations. At the same time, businesses need to be able to integrate their big data with all their technology assets, as I pointed out recently.

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        Topics: Big Data, R, Salesforce.com, Operational Performance Management (OPM), SnapLogic, Business Analytics, Cloud Computing, Cloudera, Data Integration, Information Management, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), Sales Performance Management (SPM)

        I attended Oracle’s annual OpenWorld conference this week. The company claims it holds the world’s largest technology conference, with 50,000 attendees and a million people viewing sessions online. It was a great opportunity to get close to the Oracle Fusion Applications, which the company presented as proven and ready, with customers using them on-premises and in private and public cloud computing usage methods. In keynotes from executives Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd and Thomas Kurian and...

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        Topics: Sales, Salesforce.com, SAP, Social Media, Mobile Technology, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Social Collaboration, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), CRM, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Information Management (IM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), SFA, Workday, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

        Salesforce is a global software-as-a-service (SaaS) company to be reckoned with. The swarming crowds at its Dreamforce event last week were estimated to exceed 90,000. The company is rapidly growing an ecosystem that includes Sales, Service and Marketing Clouds; Force.com for building applications; and Data.com for storing data in the cloud centrally for use across Salesforce products. It is also focusing on social computing, as I outlined at the beginning of the event. Hundreds of Salesforce...

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        Topics: Big Data, Master Data Management, Salesforce.com, Social Media, Operational Performance Management (OPM), SnapLogic, Zyme Solutions, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, CIO, Cloud Computing, Data Governance, Data Integration, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Informatica, Information Builders, Information Management, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Data, data integrity, database.com, IT Performance Management (ITPM), Kapow, Sales Performance Management (SPM)

        I was at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference this week to hear about the latest advancements from the cloud computing software giant. Salesforce has helped revolutionize cloud computing for business, and its social media and collaborative technologies help advance business processes in sales, customer service and improve the interactions between employees, partners and customers. Salesforce has made great advancements in cloud, social and mobile technology, as I have assessed and my...

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        Topics: Big Data, Predictive Analytics, QlikView, Salesforce.com, Social Media, Gooddata, Operational Performance Management (OPM), SnapLogic, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, InetSoft, KXEN, Operational Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Cloud9 Analytics, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Domo, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Builder iway, Information Management (IM), Roambi, Sales Performance Management (SPM)

        The annual Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference (Twitter: #DF12), just underway, may be the largest software conference ever, with attendance, physically and on the Internet, expected to be 90,000. Certainly, as one of the largest software events of 2012, this conference will be heavily covered via social media, while under the roof of the Moscone Center and surrounding hotels Salesforce will be demonstrating the power of using social media concepts in the enterprise and combining those...

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        Topics: Big Data, Salesforce.com, Social Media, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Research, SFDC, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Operational Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Dreamforce, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)
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