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Sales & Marketing

Reviewing 2012 and Preparing for a Successful 2013

Reviewing 2012 and Preparing for a Successful 2013

By Evangelos Simoudis on January 8, 2013

Happy New Year!  After a longer than normal holiday break, I’m taking this opportunity to reflect on 2012 and provide my early thoughts regarding investment activities in 2013. During 2012 50 companies went public, the most of any year since 2007, but only 8 venture-backed companies during 4Q12, the lowest number in any quarter since […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Big Data, Cloud Computing, internet, SaaS, Sales & Marketing, software as a service, Venture Capital

Roundup of CRM Forecasts and Market Estimates, 2012

Roundup of CRM Forecasts and Market Estimates, 2012

By Louis Columbus on December 5, 2012

Showing signs of growth through 2013 and beyond, the latest round of CRM forecasts illustrate how quickly behavioral and predictive analytics, greater usability, integration with social media and mobility are transforming this market.  Even with the most usable, easily learned CRM systems, enterprises at times struggle with adoption rates however. That problem has venture capitalists […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts, Technology / Software | Tagged analytics, byline=Louis Columbus, Cloud Computing, CRM, customer relationship management, enterprise software, Entrepreneurs, Facebook, gartner, Intelligent Tech, Leadership, Louis Columbus' blog, mobile, Public Cloud Computing, SaaS, Sales & Marketing, sales force automation, Sales Leadership, salesforce.com, sap, Social Media, Strategies & Solutions, Tech, ticker=NASDAQ:AAPL, ticker=NASDAQ:FB, ticker=NASDAQ:MSFT, ticker=NASDAQ:ORCL, ticker=NYSE:CRM

SaaS Adoption Accelerates, Goes Global in the Enterprise

SaaS Adoption Accelerates, Goes Global in the Enterprise

By Louis Columbus on November 1, 2012

In working with manufacturers and financial services firms over the last year, one point is becoming very clear: SaaS is gaining trust as a solid alternative for global deployments across the enterprise.  And this trend has been accelerating in the last six months.  One case in point is a 4,000 seat SaaS CRM deployment going […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts, Technology / Software | Tagged australia, byline=Louis Columbus, Cloud Computing, CRM, customer relationship management, enterprise software, gartner, oracle, SaaS, Sales & Marketing, salesforce, Strategies & Solutions, Tech, ticker=NASDAQ:ORCL, ticker=NYSE:CRM, ticker=NYSE:IBM, ticker=NYSE:N, Total cost of ownership | 2 Responses

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Social CRM and the Social Enterprise

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Social CRM and the Social Enterprise

By Louis Columbus on October 9, 2012

The best CRM systems change a company and its relationships for the better.  Implemented well, CRM systems can take a business into entirely new markets while solidifying leadership in existing ones. Add in the easy-to-use nature of social networks, and the potential value of CRM accelerates even faster. The Social as defined by , heavily […]

Posted in Featured Posts, Trends & Concepts | Tagged analytics, Bazaarvoice, byline=Louis Columbus, Cloud Computing, Collective Intellect, CRM, customer relationship management, Dreamforce, Entrepreneurs, Magic Quadrant, Mitch Lieberman, Natural language processing, oracle, Sales & Marketing, salesforce.com, Social Enterprise, Social Media, Strategies & Solutions, Tech, ticker=NASDAQ:ORCL, ticker=NYSE:CRM, ticker=NYSE:IT | 1 Response

Lessons Learned at Stanford’s Digital Marketing Program

Lessons Learned at Stanford’s Digital Marketing Program

By Louis Columbus on September 6, 2012

Given how important digital marketing, social media and big data have emerged in defining and implementing customer-centered strategies, Stanford’s first-ever Digital Marketing Program looked worth attending.  I look at education like an accelerator; it can propel both individuals and entire organizations to their goals faster, with greater insight and clarity. Stanford’s Graduate School of Business […]

Posted in Business | Tagged analytics, Andreas Weigend, Big Data, byline=Louis Columbus, Cloud Computing, CRM, customer relationship management, digital marketing, Digital World, Entrepreneurs, Ian Sigalow, Louis Columbus' blog, mobile, Phil Knight, SaaS, Sales & Marketing, Social Media, software as a service, Stanford University, Tech, ticker=NASDAQ:AMZN, ticker=NASDAQ:CTCT, ticker=NASDAQ:ELOQ, ticker=NASDAQ:FB, ticker=NYSE:CRM

Customer Centricity Requires CMOs to Drive Data and Channel Integration

Customer Centricity Requires CMOs to Drive Data and Channel Integration

By Evangelos Simoudis on July 24, 2012

In a post last March I wrote about how Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are starting to drive the corporate application agenda. I had concluded that as corporations become more customer-centric, they are looking for, or starting to use, a new generation of data-driven applications to help them extract insights about their customer behaviors so that they can improve their interactions with customers and prospects regardless of the communication channel. Technologies such as big data, mobile, social and cloud are at the core of these new applications that are being aggressively embraced by CMOs. Since I wrote that post I continued…

Posted in Featured Posts, Trends & Concepts | Tagged CMO, ibm, internet, Sales & Marketing | 1 Response

CMOs are Starting to Drive the Next-Gen Application Agenda

CMOs are Starting to Drive the Next-Gen Application Agenda

By Evangelos Simoudis on March 19, 2012

A couple of weeks ago my partners and I hosted a meeting of our SaaS advisory board. This is one of our firm’s four advisory boards. I had written about the role of these boards and the value our firm and portfolio companies derive from our advisors’ insights, feedback and help. Our SaaS advisory board includes executives from SaaS application vendors, CIOs and CTOs of companies that are heavy users of SaaS applications, and leading SaaS consultants. One of the most interesting insights that came out of our meeting was that the Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are starting to drive…

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Cloud Computing, internet, Online advertising, SaaS, Sales & Marketing

3Q11 Was a Solid Quarter for our SaaS Portfolio

3Q11 Was a Solid Quarter for our SaaS Portfolio

By Evangelos Simoudis on November 19, 2011

Against a continued volatile world economic environment that was dominated by the European debt crisis, and the persistent 9% unemployment here at home, SaaS companies had a very good quarter.  We were particularly concerned this quarter because around July we started to read about the deteriorating sentiment and buying behavior among consumers and small businesses.  […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Cloud Computing, SaaS, Sales & Marketing | 3 Responses

In Search of the Obvious - cutting through the marketing mess

In Search of the Obvious – cutting through the marketing mess

By David Terrar on February 8, 2010

When I first tweeted that Jack Trout’s new book “In Search of the Obvious” had arrived from Amazon, my mate @euan suggested his (excellent) blog is actually easy to find. He called it “The Obvious” because when he started writing about the application of new technology and social media in organizations, he felt that, actually, […]

Posted in Trends & Concepts | Tagged advertising, al ries, design, General Business, jack trout, laws of marketing, marketing, Marketing & Media, marketing warfare, media, messaging, positioning, sales, Sales & Marketing, strategy

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