Five lessons from a CIO innovation workshop
“Complexity” defines the reality of life for most CIOs. Under pressure to increase both efficiency and innovation in an environment where reducing costs is mandatory, CIOs face a unique set of challenges. These conflicting goals symbolize enterprise confusion around IT and the appropriate role of technology in business. Many organizations view IT is an expensive necessity [...]
If outsourcing were an employee, it would be fired… Part 1
For those of you attending our dreamSource summit this Spring, Lee and I will co-host a session entitled “If outsourcing were an employee, it would be fired”. Lee, who today has built and now leads shared services for heathcare provider, Ascension Health, caught up with us last week to talk about the session and why we called it just that…
4Q12 Performance for Trident Capital’s SaaS Portfolio; Nice Way to End the Year
The year ended well for our SaaS portfolio companies, and particularly well for our online marketing and advertising platform companies. While Europe remained soft, NA more than made up for it. All of online advertising platform companies exceeded their budgets, in some cases by as much as 40%. We also saw margin expansion as several [...]
CRM Watchlist 2013: Marketing Puts Itself Out There
Marketers are trying to figure out what to do with their customers now that marketing is the “first line of conversation.” And technology enablers are starting to feel the heat and respond to it.
Infor: a grown-up stealth start-up
I have known Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor for going on 2 decades now. He was a polymath way before I wrote a book celebrating them. He has computer science and law degrees in addition to an MBA. He is on the board of a media company, a museum, a jazz organization and a charity. [...]
Event Report: #InforSummit Reveals More Than A Redesigned Infor
Changes at Infor More Than Cosmetic Analysts and tech watchers gathered on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 2013, for Infor Summit, a progress check on Infor, the third largest independent applications vendor in the market. While many customers may not have heard of Infor, most have heard of the brands it has acquired over the last [...]
A P2P Implementation Guide: Avoid the “Dumb Ways to Die”
Given YouTube’s rising influence – or at least the time we’re all wasting watching silly clips – we decided to honor the namesake viral video with a Spend Matters research paper titled: A P2P Implementation Guide: Avoid the “Dumb Ways to Die.” Our thesis is that far too many companies get themselves into trouble with [...]
AppExchange Seven Years On
The AppExchange is undoubtedly a significant portion of what makes salesforce.com unique. Pre-integrated solutions dramatically reduce the cost to the customer to extend the capabilities of Salesforce and the fact that it has already gone through growing pains means it will take other providers years to mimic its capability and impact. ~Narinder Singh, co-founder and CSO, Appirio [...]
Why There Is a 50/50 Chance You’ll Tilt Upmarket in SaaS
When you’re starting off in SaaS, it’s very tempting to target small businesses. After all, when you launch, your product will be pretty feature poor. You won’t have the resources to service the Fortune 500. And in fact, unless you’ve worked and lived inside the Fortune 500, you won’t understand them at all. How they [...]
