Ahhhhhhhhh. I feel better now that I'm not going to focus on DreckTV blogging unless there is increased drama. I feel good. So nice.
Wanted to throw out a little bit about two companies that I've run across that I think have something going. One of them is not surprising given its pedigree; the other was a big surprise, because I didn't know them. Both are solutions worthy of a look.
First, the non-surprise:
Verticals On Demand - as the old saw goes, this is an idea whose time has come. The idea is straightforward. Build industry-specific services on salesforce.com's platform. There is a STRONG rumor circulating that Marc Benioff has a stake in this but that's a rumor and I don't have any proof - but its a cool rumor. What IS true is that the leadership of this company has the street cred and the skills to pull it off, if they don't stay too narrow, or get too wide.
The President of the company is Peter Gassner, the uber-tech guy who created PeopleTools (along with Stan Swete) at PeopleSoft, which was arguably the best toolset ever offered to the ERP-lusting private sector back in the 90s and later the SVP of Technology at salesforce.com. Equally as germane is their VP of Sales and Marketing, Matt Wallach, who was the GM at Siebel who made Siebel Pharma the kick-butt product it was. To me, it was the best product that Siebel ever offered, bar none. So heavyweights of the industry conglomerate at VOD. Yes, they do. Not enough. The other management dude is Mitch Wallace, who spent his last 7 years at salesforce.com as VP of IT Integration.
Interestingly, and not terribly shocking, the VOD crew is concentrating their first vertical effort on....ta da!....pharma! (inside joke: Only one exclamation point per, Chris) (everyone else: You can ask but I may not tell).
Wow.
I never could have seen that coming.
But then again I didn't see that Mariano Rivera was going to give up a walkoff homer to Marco Scutaro last night either. That was AWFUL for me and the Yankees.
But this move is great for VOD because the pharmaceutical world and the life sciences world more generally are starting to show a void when it comes to applications that provide them with useful functionality. Dendrite, Sales Technology, and Siebel are about it in that world and now VOD Pharma for salesforce.com (I made that name up. Its not theirs).
This comes at a time when a significant move for "traditional" CRM and the early on demand platforms has to be toward what is universally specialization. Meaning on the one hand, personalizing the experiences of customers to increase customer engagement - that means the offering of the social media and tools to allow the customers to manage and create their own experiences. On the other hand, ah, on the other hand, the requirement is verticalization of CRM - not just having some set of best practices (which are often either not useful to Company X or just bogus) but industry specific versions that meet the highly specialized needs of a particular industry - like life sciences or higher education or financial services. They have wisely alllied themselves with C3i who will give them some mobile presence too.
All in all, this is a promising start to a smart idea - but we have to see where they go when they finish pharma. Pharma is going to be a slam dunk. I'll be checking these folks out big time.
CRM Guaranteed - This one came out of the blue and I'm glad I like that color. Their product is CMPro and it shocked me. See, it started because they had contacted the Technology Evaluation Center (TEC), where, in our roles as the principals in BPT Partners, Bruce Culbert and I play the roles of chief CRM analysts. I had the folks at CRMG, led by CEO Mir Ali (a good guy) give me a demo that I thought would go, maybe an hour and I'd see what I usually see.
But I was surprised.
Not only is this a functionally rich sales force automation tool with hyper powered workflow and the tools to customize that workflow to do anything you want, its got some features that I rarely see in any application big or small - especially the ability to link inbound email to accounts through an automatic (when highlighted) search through the account databases to find the right contact and attach the email to the right contact and right accounts. If not there, you are prompted to create what you have to provide that automated linkage in the future. The functionality is as strong as any major on demand player's on the market.
This is an application with legs - legs I hadn't stared at until now. Nice gams, CRMG.
Dear Paul,
I am glad you are back to writing about CRM. It looks like some of the CRM companies are driving their products to a more ERP type of offering. I think this is the wave of the future, getting data to do more for us.
Cheers,
Tom West
Posted by: Tom West | April 16, 2007 at 07:12 PM