I happen to run across another remarkable paper about the changes we do see in some categories, and how cloud computing is driving this change.
The executive summary from CSO insights (c) in a recent whitepaper says it all - and categories like CRM will be the first to adapt this change. What we will see ist the move from Customer to Consumer relationship Management - mostly driven by the key question - how can I make a customer a promoter?
So and how does cloud play in here? Well. not only it has spearheaded this change - it is the best technology foundation to keep innovation and agility on a level that is needed now.
As we learn from CSO insights study:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been around for 20 years and has been broadly adopted by selling organizations. It has put technology in the hands of sales reps, enabling them to access contact information, track activities, manage accounts and opportunities, and increase productivity to some extent.
Yet with the changes that have occurred with the Internet—the shift in the buyer-seller balance of power—many companies are finding that their CRM system is not keeping pace with today’s demands, and not fulfilling the promise of continued sales effectiveness.
Beyond traditional capabilities, next generation CRM includes these added abilities: 1) Mobile; 2) Collaboration; 3) Complete View of the Customer; 4) Analytics; 5) Guided Selling; and 6) Lead-to-Cash Orchestration.
Let us pick some of the key findings:
User Experience
User adoption has improved with usability and capability of CRM systems—but there is still significant room for improvement.
SAP Cloud for Sales provides a broad set of valuable and proven capabilities to drive sales effectiveness, along with a modern, “consumerized” user experience. It is designed for the way sales professionals sell, uses state-of-the-art usability techniques, and is easy-to-adapt to user-specific needs and preferences. The application allows each sales rep to personalize what and how information is displayed and also visualizes information (e.g., customers and their locations within a certain geographic area).
Mobile
Mobility is the watchword for today’s sales reps. Mobile devices are being deployed at unprecedented rates, and everyone agrees “mobile” is big and going to get a whole lot bigger. Handheld devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) are increasingly flexible, powerful, and useful to field-based reps.
SAP Cloud for Sales’ mobile capability is as robust as working on your desktop and has the same modern, intuitive user interface. There’s no additional software to develop or deploy, no additional charge for support—the mobile capability is “just there” the same way it is on your desktop. The difference is that you’re able to leverage the mobile platform during the sales call to provide enhanced productivity and a differentiated customer experience
Collaboration
True collaboration means leveraging all the knowledge and assets within your company and co-creating a positive buying experience with your customers. For every question or challenge your company faces, someone has the answer; SAP Cloud for Sales provides a sales knowledge management system that helps reps easily identify the right individuals, and recommends relevant answers and content so that subject matter experts (SMEs) can scale their knowledge to the entire sales organization and aren’t repeatedly answering the same questions.
With SAP Cloud for Sales’ social capability (SAP Jam) and pre-built connectivity to SAP ERP, all the functionality needed to communicate throughout your entire organization—reviewing purchase history, tapping into SMEs, sharing documents, etc.—is readily available and can be viewed in the SAP Jam social conversation thread. All members of the sales team and invited guests (inside and outside your firm) can co-create a solution leveraging the expertise throughout the enterprise in a client-specific workspace. Further, news feeds automatically search for, gather and share insights on how to most effectively meet the customer's need while differentiating from the competition.
There are more, especially around Complete view of the customer, Analytics, Guided selling and Lead-to-cash orchestration.
The whitepaper (link here) looks in detail at how SAP Cloud for Sales delivers on these new key areas to take sales effectiveness to the next level and equip sales organizations with the tools they need to engage today’s empowered customers. Most of these capabilities do come thanks to the technology underpinning this innovation: Cloud. For more information how customer engagement should look like today check here. And for a test drive, check here.
Many thanks again to @Dietmar_Bohn for this wonderful asset. Let me know your thoughts and
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What is currently in your cloud? Predictive pipeline? Your sales notes from last visit? Maybe some apps for travel management?
Let me know by tweeting #inmycloud
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Reference: SAP Cloud for Sales delivers next generation CRM, (c) CSO Insights
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- Public, Private or Hybrid? What are your cloud choices
- Integration and Interoperability of Cloud Solutions - it's a kind of Magic
- SaaS and PaaS: a symbiotic relationship delivering enterprise value
- A winning cloud sales solution - comparing older SaaS against new SaaS
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