CMOs See Business Strategy & Digital Marketing As Top Priorities

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) want to have greater influence in setting business strategy, and they feel an increasing need to raise their technology IQ, according to a new global CMO survey by Heidrick & Struggles and Forrester Research, Inc.  

Almost 80 percent of senior marketers said they wanted their influence to grow as business strategy and development leaders. They see improving their relationship with the senior executive team as a critical way to get there, with 38 percent saying C-level relationship building is the skill they most want to improve. But in a world powered by a technology-empowered customer, the number-one skill to improve on is digital: 40 percent of CMOs say increasing their technology savvy is their top self-improvement goal, a dramatic increase from the previous survey in 2008.  

While relationship building with the senior executive team is seen as a top area of improvement, not all relationships are created equal. Despite the rise in importance of technology and digital media, CMOs are still prioritizing relationships with the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and head of sales ahead of the chief information or technology officer. Only 30 percent of senior marketers see this relationship as important to develop, indicating a wide gap between the two departments. The survey also indicates that CMOs are increasingly recognizing the need to act as company leaders, not just marketing leaders, through trends such as embracing and championing the "voice of the customer" and ensuring that marketing becomes the growth engine for the organization. In fact, 42 percent of CMOs claim that representing the voice of the customer is one of the most critical factors in ensuring personal success as a marketer.

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

Accenture Technology Vision 2012: Emerging Technology Trends for IT Leaders

Accenture publishes its technology vision annually. It is a distillation of extensive research over the course of the previous 12 months, the experiences of their research teams and the input of clients. In it, they outline the emerging technology trends that forward-thinking CIOs will use to position their organizations to drive growth and high performance, rather than just focusing on cost-cutting and efficiency improvements.

Accenture has identified six technology trends that will influence business over the next three to five years:

-- Context-based services. Where you are and what you are doing will drive the next wave of digital services.

-- Converging data architectures. Successfully rebalancing the data architecture portfolio and blending the structured with the unstructured are key to turning data into new streams of value.

-- Industrialized data services. The ability to share data will make it more valuable—but only if it is managed differently.

-- Social-driven IT. Realize that social is not just a bolt-on marketing channel. It will have true business-wide impact.

-- PaaS-enabled agility. The maturing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market will shift the emphasis from cost-cutting to business innovation, supporting rapid evolution for business processes that need continuous change.

-- Orchestrated analytical security. Organizations will have to accept that their gates will be breached and begin preparing their second line of defense—data platforms—to mitigate the damage caused by attacks that get through.

More information on IT Trends can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Research Shows 86% of U.S. Adults Will Pay More For A Better Customer Experience

The Annual Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report, conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of RightNow  among 2,291 U.S. adults, once again shows that delivering exceptional customer experiences is essential for any organization that wants to grow and sustain competitive differentiation in today’s market.

The 2011 CEI Report explores the relationship between consumers and brands. The data reveals that consumers call the shots and want personal and engaging experiences that develop into meaningful relationships with brands. Highlights from the report include:

-- 86 percent of U.S. adults will pay more for a better customer experience. 

-- 89 percent of U.S. adults who’ve ever stopped doing business with an organization due to a poor customer experience began doing business with a competitor. 

-- When asked specifically how companies can better engage with consumers to spend more, 54 percent said to improve the overall customer experience.

The CEI Report also tracked the impact social media has had on consumers, finding that:

-- After a poor customer experience, more than 25 percent (26%) of U.S. adults expressed frustration by posting a negative comment on a social networking site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter message boards, forums). 

-- 79 percent of those who shared complaints about poor customer experience online had their complaints ignored (i.e., received no response to their post(s) from the company/organization). 

--  57 percent of those surveyed who received a response had positive reactions to the same company: 46 percent of those surveyed were pleased and 22 percent of those surveyed posted a positive comment about the organization.

More information on how to improve the customer experience, visit www.CRMindustry.com

88% less likely to buy from companies who ignore complaints in social media

A new study by Conversocial looks at consumers’ sentiments and expectations concerning interactions with companies on social media platforms. The future of communication between companies and their customers lies in social media. A majority (50.7%) of consumers currently use social media to communicate with corporations. Moreover, 78% of respondents believe that social media platforms would either soon entirely replace other means of customer service altogether or become the dominant way for consumers to communicate with corporations.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the study’s key findings:

-- High Rate Of No Response: Of those respondents who have communicated with companies on social media sites, nearly a third (32.5%) were either neglected or altogether ignored. 

-- Price of Neglecting Customers: If ignored by companies on social media sites, 45% said they’d feel anger, and 27.1% said they’d stop doing business with the offending company altogether. 

 -- 88% Less Likely To Buy: If confronted with unanswered customer complaints on a company’s social media site, 88.3% of respondents said they’d be either somewhat less likely or far less likely to buy from that brand.

-- Low Level of Current Consumer Satisfaction with Companies’ Social Media: Nearly a third of respondents, or 32.4%, characterized their overall satisfaction with the way companies use social media sites to communicate with customers as either poor or very poor, while 59.6% expressed guarded optimism for future positive developments in the field and only 8% were thoroughly satisfied. 

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

Mobile Worker Population to Reach 1.3 Billion by 2015

By 2015, the world's mobile worker population will reach 1.3 billion, representing 37.2% of the total workforce. According to an updated forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC), the most significant gains will again be in the emerging economies of Asia/Pacific thanks to continued, strong economic growth. The Americas will experience a slower growth rate due to a protracted economic recovery and high rates of unemployment.

Among the key findings from this forecast are the following:

-- The Americas region, which includes the United States, Canada, and Latin America, will see the number of mobile workers grow from 182.5 million in 2010 to 212.1 million in 2015. North America has the largest number of mobile workers in this region, with 75% of the workforce mobile in 2010.

-- Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) will see the largest increase in total number of mobile workers with 601.7 million mobile workers in 2010 and 838.7 million in 2015. Much of this is due to the sheer size of the population in China and India, combined with strong economic expansion in both countries.

-- In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), the mobile workforce will see a healthy compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.6% as it expands from 186.2 million in 2010 to 244.6 million mobile workers in 2015.

-- Japan will see a declining CAGR of 0.2% because of its declining population base. However, the share of mobile workers will reach a penetration rate of 64.8% of its workforce by 2015, for a total of 38.6 million mobile workers.

More information on mobile workers can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Worldwide CRM Applications Market Forecast to Reach $18.2 Billion in 2011, Up 11% from 2010

International Data Corporation (IDC) released its latest results from the Worldwide Semiannual Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Applications Tracker. The Tracker monitors nearly 190 CRM vendors (global and local) across a total of 49 countries globally. Information provided include biannual market size, vendor share, and forecast data for the four functional markets – Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, and Contact Center – that comprise the CRM applications market.

The global CRM applications market recorded a very strong performance in the first half of this year, with revenues totaling $9.2 billion. The semiannual year-on-year growth of 13.3% was a third stronger than what it was a year ago.

Out of the four functional markets, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service are each expected to achieve double-digit growth in 2011. While the Contact Center functional is not forecast to follow suit, it nevertheless should recover very strongly from a prior year decline of 3.6%. In terms of geography, Americas and Europe will be registering at least double the growth of 2010.

A total of 18 vendors (two more than during the first half of 2010) achieved revenues of more than $100 million revenue during the first half of 2011 (1H11). Combined, these vendors captured a total market share of 63% with the remainder shared among 170 vendors and others. The two new vendors that surpassed the $100 million revenue mark in 1H11 were Nuance Communications and Reynolds & Reynolds.

Oracle remained the number 1 CRM vendor worldwide, growing above the market average and the only vendor that earned double-digit market share (13.2%) during the first half of 2011. Salesforce.com continued to impress with the best year-over-year growth (22.6%) among the top 10 vendors during the same period and moving into the number 2 position worldwide for the first time since IDC started tracking the market semiannually in 2008. Within the top 10, SAP and NICE Systems were the other vendors that had stronger than overall market growth.

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