CRM Idol 2011: The SMB Vendors Jump To the Fore #1A
From now on through the next few weeks, I’m going to bombard you with the reviews that an esteemed panel of judges (well, esteemed except me) are writing for the companies that are participating in the CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season competition. This thing has burgeoned into something rather large – at least within [...]
Imperfect substitutes
HP’s PDAs and phones never received management attention. How do I know? Because they relied on off-the-shelf components for everything including software. It indicated that the value to be offered was in “leveraging” (there’s that word again) their brand and distribution. The value of HP was not to build something great–something that required blood, sweat [...]
The Venture Investment Cycle Returns to Procurement — In Part, But Not Entirely
I’ve had conversations in the past two months with half a dozen different investment firms — more of them better categorized as private equity and later stage venture firms rather than angel/early-stage investors — who wanted to…
The (ERP) Shootout That Isn’t.
<rant> We’ve often discussed SaaS Suites, ERP, specific vendors like SAP and Netsuite, so seeing this tweet by SAP a good month ago of course piqued my curiosity: @SAPByDesign RT @VendorShootout: Business #ByDesign: The Most Complete,Adaptable OnDemand Business Solution http://spr.ly/6019RH4S #erp <-reg 2 download Wow. It looks like SAP’s SaaS offering, Business ByDesign won some [...]
Radical Surgery to Fix Software Patents
I’m from the camp that says we’re way past the point of patents fostering innovation, if they ever did. It didn’t take me long reading Scoble’s post this morning about the value of WebOS’s patents to HP possibly making the unit a profitable venture to be reminded once again that while patents may be a [...]
The Path to Co-Creating a Social Business: The Early Adoption Phase
The figures vary but in the last several years a major change has begun in organizations around the world. Sometimes the efforts are small and unsanctioned, sometimes they are big and bold, but increasingly businesses are employing social media strategically to engage deeply with both their workers and customers. We see this all the time [...]
Beware the “Confusing, headache inducing” software I Just Sold You
This is what we need to banish from enterprise software forever. I’m not naive enough to think that some level of on boarding and systems training is needed. But if out of the box technology can lead to “confusion, headaches and sluggish performance”, thats just not acceptable in 2011. And this certainly isn’t just true [...]
