I have been critical in the past of Salesforce.com. And a big fan of Larry Ellison. I commented late last year that Salesforce.com was vulnerable to attack – but for a short period of time. I also predicted that Larry Ellison and crew would digest Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards quickly, and then set their sights on disrupting and dismantling Salesforce.com. Looks like that window of opportunity may have closed for Oracle, SAP and smaller competitors looking to dislodge Salesforce.
The analysis we offer in this blog is from the vantage point of a practioner, a marketing campaigner, a consumer of the technology. We don’t use analytical quants, magic quadrants or rocket scientists to evaluate alternatives. We use our experience gained over 100’s of campaigns to guide our judgement. Not to long ago I commented in this blog about the nexus of campaigning and technology:
Running one of our campaigns is difficult for left brain folks used
to doing everything by the numbers. The kind of marketing campaigning
we practice is full of nuances, subtleties, rapid changes and demands a
form of agility not found in most sales and marketing organizations.
Which is why we developed our attack engine and why command and control
becomes paramount so that the collective will is realized during highly
chaotic periods.One of the most important components of our attack engine is the calibration
– typically a weekly eye-balls to eye-balls event where campaign team
members spend a few hours evaluating campaign progress. During this
meeting, many artful, subjective decisions are made. Decisions that
only a human can make. Decisions that cannot be anticipated let alone
automated.Don’t assume these are the words of a technology luddite. They’re
not. Where I’m heading here is the notion of how much technology is
enough technology. Many of the marketing automation tools created over
the past several years are too generic and lack basic features. Many of
the enterprise wide end-to-end technology initiatives (wiring the front
office to the back office) are too specific and difficult to change.Technology is a powerful weapon in the battle for market share. It
also creates significant vulnerabilities. Knowing how to utilize the
right amount of technology is an art. And despite the best efforts of
enterprise folks like SAP and Oracle and CRM vendors like
Salesforce.com few are close to understand the righteous mix between
technology and methodology. Salesforce.com with it’s recent
introduction of AppExchange is probably the closest.We use a very basic set of technology tools to command and control a
campaign including Excel spreadsheets for data analysis, PowerPoint for
presentations, MS word for word processing, contact managers for target
lists, intranet web sites for data sharing, laptop computers and cell
phones for team communication. We keep hard-wired technology to a
minimum and utilize only those tools we can pick up quickly, adapt exactly, and discard when we’re done.
Also, we make generous use of "old-school" analog tools like butcher
paper, black markers, white boards, wall maps, and large "war-rooms"
where the team can meet and interact. We have yet to see a
collaborative technology solution that comes close to delivering this
functionality.Far too many enterprises try to automate calibrations. They
spend millions of dollars on expensive technology trying to automate
data gathering and decision making processes, and with this automation,
end up with dysfunctional systems that hobble enterprise
competitiveness. My point is that a weekly calibration properly staged
and conducted can save an enterprise $2 million of useless technology
and greatly enhance their competitiveness.
I have a mantra, used above, when it comes to the utilization of technology in marketing campaigns. It is pick up, adapt, discard. The bottom line for me as a campaigner, is my need to have immediate access to effective tools and weapons that I can trust and deploy with known effectiveness. And then when I’m done using them, put them back on the shelf (kinda like the way a soldier visits the armory to get his weapons and ammo, then returns it when he’s done). Do not confuse campaigning with day-to-day customer relationship management. Campaigns typically are episodic and in response to threats or opportunities. The tools and processes I use will vary greatly from campaign to campaign.
I think Marc Benioff, with the combination of his adaptable on-demand infrastructure and the recent launch of AppExchange may have finally found the CRM/SFA holy grail. See the problem up to this point has been the fact that most CRM/SFA applications were hard-wired, looked pretty much the same and functioned pretty much the same. All dealt with contacts, leads, opportunities, tasks, events etc., pretty much in the same way. Customization was impossible without great pain or cost. The on-demand model of Salesforce offered a simple, painless way to access the technology and a different set of economics when it came to purchase and deployment.
I say this because we here at vSente are in the process of building our own marketing automation suite of tools, content and methodology. We’ve been developing this for more than a year, and have looked casually at several alternatives, from coding the suite from the ground up, to using Sugar’s open source platform to partnering with a CRM vendor. We’ve looked at the Salesforce.com AppExchange platform several times and the more we look at, the more we use it, the more we like it. No this is not an endorsement for Salesforce.com. Yet.
See what Benioff and crew have done, is to build a very interesting and compelling business model. As a user I can pickup, adapt and discard. As a developer, I have a thriving ecosystem of enablers, support, applications and qualified prospects. When you go to Oracle’s site and try to compare you’re presented first with this page – a baffling laundry list of CRM apps offered by Oracle, Peoplesoft and JD Edwards. Siebel isn’t even mentioned on this page. To find Siebel you have to go to a separate site, where after a little bit of digging you find their on-demand offerings.
Now, I AM NOT SUGGESTING that Oracle or Siebel’s offering is in anyway inferior to Salesforce.com. Yet. We’ve just begun poking around the Siebel solution. But, the secret weapon, that may just be the difference maker for Salesforce.com, is AppExchange AND the user momentum Benioff is generating. He’s approaching my mantra of pick-up, adapt, discard – and as a potential customer and a potential developer, I don’t see anything else that approaches Benioff’s vision or track record. Yet.
Which begs the question… where’s Ellison and crew? I’d have expected a lot more out of Oracle by now. Is SAP giving them a run for the money? Maybe Jeff Nolan’s attack group is inflicting damage. Trouble inside of Oracle? Integration issues? Safra distracted? Or maybe I just have unrealistic expectations… Whatever it might be, at this stage in the game, it looks to me as if Marc Benioff and crew are winning. Decisively.
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