Gamification is a hot topic in the CRM space but I’m wondering if it’s really a good idea or a waste of money. The underlying premise seems sound. Make the interaction with the technology fun and recognize employees (particularly sales employees) for efforts such as entering information into the CRM system. The assumption is that…

Net neutrality is an issue that’s generated a lot of interest, and more than its fair share of blog posts. I’m loathe to add to the discussion but I was on the Acela train travelling back from NYC this past week and the topic came up among three of us at a table. The fourth…

There’s lots of talk about Internet connected devices. Some of the ideas are clever, some just interesting, and some of them remind me of Disney’s 1950’s–style Carousel of Progress ride. Let’s put aside the issues of security, privacy, and processing power and look at IoT from a bottom line point of view. Just because you…

There’s been a lot of hype about omnichannel customer engagement over the past few years. That’s because many people are realizing that after fixing the internal issues with shiny new CRM systems, integration, and analytics, there’s still the pointy part of the sale when you actually touch the customer. Most of the omnichannel messaging has…

It looks like OpenText is trying a new strategy to keep its customers happy: giving away its solutions for free. This month the company announced for the second time in two months that it was giving new and existing customers the opportunity to download Tempo Box, its file sync and sharing solution. Now, this could…

Last year we started talking about the Dark Cockpit as an aspirational design model for enterprise software, and how software vendors should be investing in development that simplifies, focuses, and automates business tasks by using the intelligence of software (read the report). We’ve seen a number of vendors beginning to take the Dark Cockpit guidance…

Internal Rate of Return (IRR) does not measure the return of a project. That’s a fact. Don’t let the word “return” fool you. IRR is not the value of a project but rather the interest rate that sets the NPV equal to zero. There are issues with NPV notably that without a residual value at…

I’ve said before that the role of IT and even the title of CIO is changing to a support rather than a critical corporate function. I had a chance to speak with a few human resources folks a few weeks ago and an interesting discussion highlighted one factor for the benefit of cloud and the…

Cloud applications deliver value. We looked at the numbers and found a 1.7 times greater ROI when an application is delivered as a cloud service versus an on-premise solution (here). Old news, and well-worn territory, but among the benefits, and there are many, SaaS-based applications allow the organization to closely track the value curve, and…

A quick thank you to the Lotus Formula 1 folks for hosting Rebecca and me in Enstone UK last week. For those of you who don’t follow Formula 1, it’s considered the pinnacle of motorsports, where the technology is arguably as important, if not in some cases more important, than the drivers. Annual team budgets…

I had a chance to meet with the folks at Episys and came away impressed with their technology. For those not immersed in the retail world, omni-channel has been a buzzword for some time.   In short, retailers have recognized that the buying experience needs to be consistent across physical and virtual worlds. The consumer may…

I had an opportunity to meet with the folks at Via Science recently and came away impressed with their technology. The problem with Big Data is, well, that it’s big. You need processing power to crunch the data and more than a bit of knowledge about the data to create models. For instance, rain and…

We looked at Arachno’s Orbit earlier in the year (o6 – A closer look at Orbit) and highlighted its SharePoint-like capabilities for the broader world beyond just Redmond Washington-sourced products. It came up again recently when discussing Google Apps and its slow adoption in the corporate environment with a few CFOs. These bottom-line folks liked…

Remember when RFID was hot? Remember when every technology analyst and basement-dwelling industry pundit promised all items would have RFID tags and our shopping experience would be seamless and happy? RFID is a great idea that never made the leap to broad acceptance because it didn’t offer additional value. We already have bar codes on…

Last week Rebecca Wettemann, our VP of Research, published a piece looking at NetSuite’s growth over the previous year (o24 – What NetSuite’s growth means for ERP).  In it she makes the point that an increasing number of organizations normally considered conservative are embracing the cloud, and that’s helping NetSuite along with other cloud focused…

Twitter has been in the news recently, missing a Wall Street expectation that sent the stock downward.  I’m not sure the missed number (241 million user count verses Wall Street’s expected 243 to 250 million) means all that much, or the stock valuation (market cap around 30B!) has any basis in reality, but fundamentally Twitter…

If you can prove that value of what you’re selling then you can sell almost anything to a rational thinking buyer. Given that, why do sales push or die due to no decision? It’s likely your marketing message either isn’t building a compelling value case or worse, is focusing on TCO. I was working with…

We just published a research note looking at the value of Jaspersoft and Amazon Web Services. It’s an interesting piece and you can get it here. In short, Jaspersoft’s business intelligence server is available through the AWS marketplace. We found a number of benefits for customers but the most interesting may be the pricing model…

Continuing my last post it’s interesting to compare 2011 ROI case studies with 2013 ROI studies and in particular the results of cloud versus on-premise projects. Cloud case studies averaged 522% ROI in 2011 while for 2013 they averaged 359%. Despite the lower ROI the payback was better, dropping from 12 months in 2011 to…

Could there be dark clouds on the horizon for Facebook? I conducted a very informal survey of teenagers during the holiday week (well, basically I just asked a few of them) and found a growing lack of interest in the social network. I didn’t find anyone closing their Facebook account but not updating seemed to…