Beagle Research Group Founder Denis Pombriant has spoken again and again about how much he respects the work being done by Brainshark, the online presentation software service provider. And when Pombriant speaks, people listen. I had the privilege of covering his address at CRM Evolution this year and he was mind-blowing. (Check out my coverage of the address as well as CRM’s coverage of the conference here.)

A few weeks ago I spoke with Pombriant about Brainshark and their new Mobile application and he gushed about how it would change the way sales teams were able to communicate and make changes to presentations on-the-go. He also claimed that it would help with sustainability issues, which are Pombriant’s wheelhouse, because business travel wouldn’t be necessary if we could present and sell via mobile devices. He told me that the people at the company were intelligent and he was right.

Here’s a passage from the Brainshark Mobile press release: “As smartphones continue to rise in usage – with Gartner reporting 54.3 million unit sales in the first quarter of 2010 alone, an increase of almost 50% over the same period last year – they’ve become even more critical for keeping today’s highly dispersed workforce and on-the-go users connected, in-the-loop and productive. By making Brainshark presentations – already viewed every 3.5 seconds in locations all over the world – available for mobile consumption, users can ensure that their content is always accessible to the people they need to reach and can let their audience choose the most convenient way to experience it.”

I had the pleasure of speaking with Greg Flynn, senior vice president of products at Brainshark, and here are a few of the interesting things he had to say about his company and the new mobile product:

“People are using Brainshark to create presentations to train their sales force. They’re using it in sales and marketing to educate their customers or prospects. They’re using for anything you might put into a presentation and it’s all done on a SaaS application.”

“With Brainshark Mobile, lets say you change a slide or change your audio track on a presentation: We immediately update the flash-based version of that, which has the audio in that new slide change. Within a few minutes it will be available on your mobile device.”

“Brainshark has valuable tracking capabilities. You know who viewed your presentation, how long they watched it for, which slides they watched, in which order they watched them, did they watch it on a mobile device or a PC. The extensive backend reporting allows you to pull analytics about your presentations and viewer retention rates. Knowing retention rates drop off after slide five tells me that I have to do something about the presentation. Maybe it is too long or maybe I have to change the message.”

I also spoke with Ira Weinstein, senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research, and he had some awesome things to say about Brainshark Mobile as well.

“Content is only as valuable as my access to it. If I have information out there that I need, unless it is brought to me where I am in a timely, convenient, cost-effective manner, then it’s not really valuable to me. What Brainshark has done is recognize the fact that people are not sitting behind a desk anymore. In order to maximize the value or content you’ve gotta bring it to them. The way to do that is to activate their mobiles. Here’s an example of taking an existing content base and making it available to people through their mobile device. It is a wise thing to do.”

Good luck to the people at Brainshark! Let me know if any of you are familiar with their work.

As the CEO of LiveOps, I talk a lot about the opportunity of flexibility for both companies and workers. Flexibility has become a modern day value that everyone wants.

But flexibility comes with a cost. The cost is accountability, which is necessary to gain the opportunity to work where you want, when you want, and how you want. Just as it is in pro sports, (click here for Part One–Meritocracy and the World Cup) being managed by outcomes, maintaining an outstanding record, and doing something to get voted onto the team every day is mandatory to make our system work. What gets me most excited though is what accountability yields: a work environment ruled by meritocracy. The result is a new culture that is better for workers, better for the company, and better for customers.

I came out of retirement to work at LiveOps because of the opportunity to support and promote such a culture. Meritocracy is at the heart of LiveOps’ business. Our technology platform tracks real-time information about our independent agents’ results. All of the freelancers who use our platform for work have access to this data. The technology also provides access to information about how each freelancer compares to other independent agents, creating a healthy sense of competition and providing incentive for improvement. Read the rest of this entry »

World Cup fever is here again and I’m more excited than ever — especially because this year I can catch the live games on my smartphone and laptop. The games are expected to get more online coverage than any major sporting event, and while fans across the planet are going ballistic monitoring matches, results, and statistics, I can’t help but think: Why can’t work be more like this?

I’m not talking about the obvious good stuff — the energy, the teamwork, the camaraderie — I’m talking about the way the World Cup works. The event, like all athletic activities, represents a meritocracy at its finest.

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, and the one most widely participated in. Making it into a top league is harder than in any other sport; making it into a country’s World Cup squad of 23 is harder still! Millions of aspiring players from around the world are out kicking the ball from the time they are 3, practicing their skills, honing their talent, and bettering their game enough to stay in it and avoid sitting out on the sidelines. Unfortunately, for all their effort, most players will still wind up watching from the bleachers. Those who do succeed get a chance to play in one of 700 professional spots scattered across 32 international teams. Of these, only the most skilled and hard working get to take home the Cup.

This acceptance of meritocracy, which is so assumed and so essential in athletics, doesn’t always carry over to the world of work.

Read the rest of this entry »

FrontRange Solutions, a California-based CRM solutions and service provider, recently announced the launch of GoldMine Premium Edition 9 (click here for the press release). The GoldMine product will now include real-time dashboard capabilities and full integration with Microsoft Outlook.

FrontRange boasts that its dashboards are real-time and allow businesses to react quickly to customer need. The dashboards are configured to integrate with third party systems. The Microsoft Outlook configuration means users won’t have to change venues to retrieve information from Office products. Users will also be able to share calendars and emails across the enterprise.

I spoke with Greg Anderson, general manager of the GoldMine business at FrontRange, about the release. Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

“GoldMine has been around for about twenty years and we’re an industry leader for small to mid-market-sized companies.  Over that time things have really changed. People are putting all their information into a CRM package. How do you make it easy to get that information out to take some kind of action? One of the things that we’ve done is provide Universal Search, which is kind of a Google search for your desktop and your GoldMine data.”

“Another important thing about this release is dashboard capabilities. You’re probably thinking: everybody does dashboards. Well, here’s what we’ve done differently: unlike most of the products out there are static. If you look at Salesforce.com or some of the low end products you get a good view from a manager perspective but what if you need to drill down into that to really start understanding what that information means?”

“Every product has Outlook integration today. But how are you able to use that to your advantage as people are trying to adapt to new technology and a customercentric approach? Outlook is email-focused, but how do you take that and turn it into a more customercentric approach and be able to access all the information you need out of GoldMine?”

“What’s nice about our product is that with a number of products in the marketplace, you have to get a third-party tool to create your dashboards. Our designer’s included in the tool and it’s click-to-configure. We’ve built in templates so that you can go after data in social media and bring that into you’re dashboard.”

“The product is available on Blackberry. We’re expanding now for iPod and we’re testing out iPad at the moment.”

I have to say, I’m pretty dissapointed that the new product isn’t available on iPod or iPad yet – especially considering that in 2008 CRM praised FrontRange for being a leader in mobile solutions. There’s still time to play catch-up though, and I look forward to covering the iPad release.

Google search the name Hypatia and you’ll quickly find information about the fifth-century scholar who many claim to have been one of the first notable female mathematicians. Or you may find information about the upcoming film, Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenabar and starring Rachel Weisz. (For the New York Times review click here.) What you won’t easily find is the research company Hypatia.

For those of you who haven’t yet worked with Hypatia Research, LLC, it is a company that delivers customer intelligence research, industry benchmarking, best practices, technology vendor selection, ROI assessment, and consulting services that reduce cycle-time and influence customer management, product strategy and channel development goals, according to the Web site.

Leslie Ament, Vice President of Hypatia, is excited about the film release, and optimistic about what it might mean for her company’s Web traffic.

“We chose the name Hypatia because we calculate results as industry analysts,” Ament says. “We’re all very giddy and the whole team is going to go see the movie this Friday.”

I doubt I’ll see the film but I’m a fan of anything that may bring attention to our industry. So, tell your friends about the film and the company. Let me know what you think of both.

Doug Meyer has a new role at Sage. The formerly titled “president of Sage’s Small Business Division” is now wearing the badge of “Chief Customer Officer.” The role of chief customer officer (CCO?) has been cropping up in organizations– perhaps due to renewed goals of retaining customers during tough economic times. For Meyer, who has spent 19 years at Sage, the new gig means infusing the customer experience into culture at Sage. Inversely, Meyer says, a strong corporate culture can drive great customer experiences.

Doug Meyer, Sage Chief Customer Officer

(Need more proof? Stay tuned for an excerpt from the much-anticipated book Delivering Happiness by Zappos CEO Tony Tsieh in the June social media-themed issue of CRM.)

Sue Swenson, the president and chief executive officer of Sage North America, kicked off the “customer experience talk” during her Monday morning keynote address. “We are raising the bar on the customer experience,” Swenson said.

I know what you’re thinking: This sounds an awful lot like a RightNow conference.

Meyer clears it up, saying that Sage has no intention to attach the CX moniker to its branding and press releases. Sage, he says, is trying to figure out what it means to be a customer centric-organization. Meyer’s role at the company may be a start. A brand new partner workshop dedicated to the customer experience may be another step in that direction. Partners, after all, are crucial in delivering excellent experiences to customers. Read the rest of this entry »

By Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal, Beagle Research Group

At Sage Insights, Sage North America’s annual partner conference being held this week in Denver, the company announced its first cloud-based CRM product. This is a significant event for the company for a couple of reasons.

First, until this point Sage did not have any cloud offerings.

Second, Sage sells through a partner channel which sometimes lags over adoption issues.

In this case, more than 50 partners are participating in a pilot program for Sage SalesLogix — an indication, perhaps, of the level of interest within the partner community.

[More on the offering after the jump...]

Read the rest of this entry »

I twittered yesterday, prior to Colin Powell’s keynote, that I would not have been excited about his speech had he not endorsed Barack Obama.

I was serious about that.

There I was — about to listen to a retired four-star General, a former Secretary of State, a fellow New Yorker — and all I could think about was how frustrating it would be if the speech became Republicanish. Luckily for me, Powell endorsed Obama and my own prejudices were removed from the equation. Had he endorsed McCain my cynicism might have stopped me from enjoying what was ultimately a powerful speech from a charismatic figure.

Powell spoke about leadership and his journey from Harlem to the White House. Although the theme was serious, Powell spent much of the time joking about his age, his poor academic record, and (of course) his struggle with new technology. He was simultaneously personable and authoritarian. Jokes like, “At this stage in my life it’s a pleasure to be…anywhere!” make comments like, “The greatest strength America has to fight terrorism is its openness,” seem more honest and realistic than when candidates deliver similar comments in stump speeches.

He praised America enough to have made my patriotic father happy, and he was critical enough to satisfy the aspiring activist within me. He referenced the drop-out rate (one-third of white students, half of minorities) as a national problem, after explaining to a room of successful businessmen and women what it would take for them to motivate their employees.

Put your employees in the best possible position, and give them the best tools, to get the job done. If you inspire your employees you give them motivation. You have to convey passion, morals, and courage. Recognize good people. Promote. Give raises. Send thank-you cards.

He mentioned the typical leadership qualities one can hear in almost any speech like this one. But he also added:

“Good leaders face the reality of a problem and don’t pretend it isn’t there.”

That sentence embodies who Powell is to me: He’s a republican who endorses Obama. He’s a Reagan-admirer who isn’t afraid to admit that America may have shut out some of the brightest international minds with over-reaching national security initiatives.

He’s capable of being complex in a way that most public figures are afraid to be.

And he is complex in a way that I struggle to be (I’m upset that I might have written him off had he not voted the same way as me).

We all should admire that type of courage.

Lets hope some of the executives here at SAPPHIRE, who for the past two days have been preached to about global warming and sustainability, will have the courage to make controversial (and possibly costly) changes within their organizations in order to help end the climate problem.

By Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal, Beagle Research Group

Sage Software North America convened its annual partner meeting, Insights, in Denver today. The meeting is Sage’s chance to speak directly with all of its partners and resellers about the business and its myriad product lines, to educate and to listen to their issues and concerns. It will also be the partners’ chance to receive recognition for sales performance in each of their markets.

Sage has always had a distinct business model, preferring to sell through a partner channel rather than direct — and the approach has worked well. For a company with so many enterprise resource planning (ERP) and CRM products aimed at the small-business and small-enterprise markets, it may be the only sensible approach.

This year, the third under the leadership of Susan Swenson, I expect to see many new approaches and changes to the business models that govern the relationships with partners.

[Editors' Note: For coverage by CRM magazine and destinationCRM.com of Swenson's keynotes at the previous two Insights events, see here (2008) and here (2009). Associate Editor Lauren McKay will have on-location coverage of this year's event as the week unfolds.]

I don’t expect fundamental changes — the company is not about to scrap the partner model at a time when competitors are discovering it. But I expect Sage will make good on strategies enumerated in its product roadmaps by more fully embracing cloud computing and other new ideas.

[For a sneak peek at what those ideas might be, see after the jump...]

Read the rest of this entry »

This morning Sir Richard Branson and Al Gore spoke at the SAPPHIRE NOW Conference in Orlando. They were both insightful and entertaining in their own ways, and I’ll get into what they said in a bit. But believe me when I say that neither global icon was as memorable as my first morning at a giant IT convention.

I had no idea this thing would be this massive. We’re talking Yankee Stadium full. Giant-screen schedules. Large floating corporate signs. A life-size Blackberry. Booth after booth after booth. I’m writing this blog as a way to catch my breath. 

My morning began at 7:45 AM when I caught a shuttle bus from the Hilton Orlando to the Orange County Convention Center. It was dark and rainy and everyone on the bus was sleepy and quiet. Or perhaps they were saving their energy. We entered the center through small doors and stepped into Grand Central Terminal. Bodies in three-piece-suits moving in every single direction. I had my badge in my left hand in case anyone tried to stop me. No one cared – everyone was too busy trying not to be stampeded. We were, after all, on our way to breakfast. I grabbed three hard-boiled eggs from the overcrowded giant gray hall and I ran to the morning press conference with SAP executives (look out for my news piece on the subject).

After the press conference I took my seat in the main broadcast center. I plugged my laptop in, logged into my twitter account (@crmjuan), and cracked my knuckles in preparation for some rapid typing. Then the lights went out and a loud booming voice announced that the keynotes were about to begin. For anyone who’s been to the Museum of Natural History in New York: it reminded me of when I was a child listening to shows at the Hayden Planetarium.

Sir Richard Branson’s keynote was delivered in a Q&A format. He spoke about how businesses needed to look beyond the bottom line. Don’t simply be “money-making machines.” He said he spends 60-70 percent of his time looking for intractable problems in the world. He doesn’t just look either. He tries to solve. He said it was everyone in IT’s responsibility to remove “gigatons of carbon…in every single industry.” He also mentioned that Virgin was searching for safe fuels that could fly airplanes. The Q&A format was entertaining but I would have rather spent the entire time just listening to the man speak. 

Al Gore re-enacted An Inconvenient Truth. But he added a big-business spin (consumers are demainding that companies be green-minded) and praised SAP for its leadership. I didn’t see a huge connection between what he was saying and the SAP mission or any recent SAP news. But when Al Gore speaks, you listen. “As individuals and as a civilization the most important decision we make is choosing between the hard right and the easy wrong.” That’s why we elected him…nevermind.

I’m going to head to the Colin Powell keynote now. Check out my Twitter page for more information from the conference. I’ll be updating regularly. I’ll have a new blog from Orlando tomorrow.