Five best practices for avoiding “CRM Gone Wild”

When it comes to creating a successful CRM project -- whether it's automating the quote-to-order process, creating greater visibility into the sales pipeline, refining your partner relationship management practices, or meeting any other business requirement -- less is more. In other words, identify your top CRM-related business goal, define the related functionality, and then deliver it. Save the "nice to have" wish list for later.
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Worldwide SaaS Revenue to Grow 18 Percent in 2009

Worldwide software as a service (SaaS) revenue is forecast to reach $7.5 billion in 2009, a 17.7 percent increase from 2008 revenue of $6.4 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. The market will show consistent growth through 2013 when worldwide SaaS revenue will total over $14 billion for the enterprise application markets.

The content, communications and collaboration (CCC) market and the customer relationship management (CRM) market continue to have the largest amount of SaaS revenue across market segments, with the CCC market generating $2.6 billion in 2009, up from $2.14 billion in 2008 and the CRM segment generating $2.3 billion in 2009, up from $1.9 billion in 2008.

SaaS has continued to represent a key driver of growth in the CRM market for the past four years, climbing from less than $500 million in 2005 and over 8 percent of the CRM market to over 20 percent of the market in 2008, with nearly $1.9 billion in revenue. Gartner expects growth to continue, with SaaS representing almost 24 percent of the CRM market’s total software revenue in 2009.

More information on SaaS can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Google tries its own take on customer service

If you rely on a compelling service that happens to be free, what level of customer support are you entitled to receive? Google is trying to figure that out. Known for using brilliant engineers, complex algorithms and speedy servers to organize online information in a simple and accessible fashion, Google is learning how to add the human touch to its repertoire as customers look for answers that can't be found on an FAQ.

For many users of Google's free services, support is limited to a series of Web pages, FAQs, and user forums. That's not that surprising, since Google can't realistically offer phone support to every Gmail user who can't figure out the conversation-based design.

But as Google continues to push forward with free advertising-supported services that people and small businesses increasingly rely on in their personal and professional lives, the company appears to be banking on its ability to train those users to expect a healthy dose of relatively low-cost support.

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Web Remains Retail Industry's "Growth Engine" This Holiday

With overall retail sales expected to show no gain this holiday shopping season, online retail sales in the US will reach $44.7 billion this holiday season, an eight percent increase over last year, according to a new forecast by Forrester Research, Inc.. The growth rate represents an increase from 2008, when, on the heels of the worst of the global financial crisis, online holiday retail sales in the US grew just five percent. Forrester defines the holiday shopping season as the months of November and December.

The National Retail Federation has forecast a one percent decline in overall US holiday retail sales for this year. A recent Forrester survey of more than 4,000 US online consumers showed that 94 percent of those who made a purchase online within the past three months plan to continue to buy online this holiday season. And 72 percent of retailers surveyed in "The State Of Retailing Online," a Shop.org study conducted by Forrester in Q3 of this year, say they expect online holiday sales to increase over last year.

As outlined in the new Forrester report "US Online Holiday Retail Forecast, 2009," online retailers will strive to balance consumer demand this holiday with profitability. Improving margins is in; chasing sales is so last year. The change in strategy will manifest itself in a number of different ways, including more limited-time and limited-quantity sales as retailers seek to reduce across-the-board discounting. Retailers will also cut down on automatic free shipping and institute price thresholds to qualify for free shipping. Customer engagement is also a priority this holiday: Expect to see online retailers deploy more cross-channel customer service options, advanced merchandizing software that will provide more product information, and enhanced social networking tools that will enable consumers to share purchase decisions with friends.

More information on CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Survey Finds 78% of Consumers Want More from Their Social Network Experience

European research results announced by Critical Path, a provider of messaging applications, reveals a startling gap between what consumers want from their interaction with social networks and the services available today.

The average consumer has four separate address books across a number of services, including mobile phones and social networks such as Facebook®. The majority of people (68%) fail to update their address books with contact changes and 91% are frustrated with their out-of-date contact information.

Of the 3,000 consumers surveyed:

-- 75% found the task of updating their contacts across their social networks frustrating
-- 82% wanted a solution to synchronize their separate address books
-- 78% are looking for a simple, easy-to-use solution

Clear preferences for services were identified – a large majority wanted automatic updates from their friends using social networks and also wanted control over the type of updates they receive.

This research demonstrates the growing relevance of social networks and the importance consumers place on their online interactions. Operators have a clear opportunity to provide solutions to address these consumer frustrations and heighten their role and value in mobile social networking.

More information on Customer Relationship Management can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Survey Highlights Importance of Online Customer Experience

Tealeaf, a provider of online Customer Experience Management software (CEM), announced the results of the 5th annual survey of online consumer behavior, commissioned by Tealeaf and conducted by Harris Interactive. The survey found that 48% of U.S. online adults say that they are now conducting more online transactions than they did in the past given the current economic climate. However, 80% of adults who have conducted an online transaction in the past year experience problems when doing so in 2009.

This improvement over prior years may be attributed to a growing business focus on delivering better online customer experiences. While this reported decline in online transaction issues is good news, online customer experience is still very much a work in progress. The percentage of consumers affected by issues such as error messages (38%), endless loops (19%) and login problems (28%) is still extremely high. Further, the resulting business impact is significant, as 32% of those who experience issues when conducting transactions online would simply take their business elsewhere (to either an online or offline competitor) or abandon the transaction entirely.

The survey results also show that online adults are increasingly turning to social media to share their online experiences with others, while simultaneously becoming less likely to alert a company directly – a shift in consumer behavior which extends the business impact of customer experience issues beyond any single transaction.

The number of consumers who contact a company directly in response to online transaction issues declined:

- 26% of online adults who experience problems conducting online transactions then posted complaints on a company's Website in 2009, versus 32% in 2008.

- 38% of all online adults contacted a company's call center after encountering problems using the Website in 2009, versus 47% in 2008.

Meanwhile, 12% of online adults who encountered issues said they shared those experiences via blogs or social networks, twice as many as in 2008.3

Further, the survey reveals that these shared experiences are highly influential and should therefore be a real business concern. More than half (54%) of all online adults said social media content has influenced their online transactions, with 82% of those reporting that social media has influenced their choice of vendor.

Interestingly, the survey also found that online adults whose transactions have been influenced by social media content actually respond to positive reviews (26%) more so than negative ones (21%), so good online transaction experiences are amplified online just as much, if not more, than bad.

More information on CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Cloud Computing is Democratizing Computing Power and Traditional IT Barriers of Cost, Time, Quality, Scale, and Geographic Location

A new study, recently published by Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company, revealed top performing companies that have adopted cloud computing have reduced IT costs 18% and data center power consumption by 16%. The survey revealed the top business pressures driving the adoption of cloud computing include:

-- Overall cost of IT infrastructure

-- Need to enhance competitive advantage

-- Lack of flexibility in the current IT environment

-- Need to support additional services or users

Survey results show top performing organizations shared several common characteristics, including:

-- 77% monitor cloud applications for efficiency and use

-- 75% have a cloud team or task force

-- 69% use a formal cloud evaluation process

-- 62% have a formal education plan for training cloud team

Cloud computing is changing the role of IT from predominantly one of maintenance to one of innovation enabler through the new service delivery model of cloud services. Consequently, top companies are realizing the critical need to establish a governance model around SOA architectures and cloud-based service delivery.

More information on cloud computing can be found at www.crmindustry.com