It's a beautiful day here in the CRM neighborhood, glad you tuned into the show here at Radio CBM 98.6, the Pride of the Metro Area, all Bill Monroe all the time:
Thanks to the good folks over at Alterian for their recent research study showing that the emergence of new social media channels [1] is forcing organizations to "radically rethink and evolve" their marketing techniques.
Friends, fully 60 percent of organizations think that personal one-to-one engagement with consumers requires "a radically new way of creating content and on-demand services," and that their existing techniques for understanding consumers need radical improvement.
"We need radical, radical improvement around here," said a nervous, chain-smoking Herbert W. Finkelstein, Chief Fad Officer for Acme Anvils. "Hey, you got Abbie Hoffmann's phone number? What? Dead? Aw hell... how about those radicals Obama hangs with, the Weatherguys? Billy and Bernadette Someone? They take calls?"
In terms of ROI, 28 percent of respondents cited e-mail as the channel that delivered the greatest ROI, noting that "we already know how it works."
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In sports Cave City, Arkansas's high school football team was beating Yelleville-Summit 34-16 when Cave City player Thamail Morgan, heading for a sure touchdown on a kickoff return late in the game, stopped at the two-yard line [2] and took a knee instead of scoring.
Fans applauded the classy move. Scouts from the Detroit Lions, current holders of a 19-game losing streak, contacted Cave City coach Jon Bradley, saying Morgan's reluctance to score touchdowns "fits in with our overall game plan here."
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NetSuite is announcing its cloud computing mobile ERP suite [3] to Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, available now for free on the App Store [4].
The app has on-the-go access to NetSuite's business management suite, including real-time dashboards for ERP, CRM and e-commerce operational data.
"If a company has implemented custom fields, custom records, role-based security or custom dashboard elements in their NetSuite account, they will all be reflected in the NetSuite app," company officials said.
And speaking of classy, in related news, NetSuite issued a press release [5] titled "NetSuite Targets End-of-Life SAP R/3 Users With New Crossroads Initiative."
Noting that NetSuite officials remarked that "nearly 70 percent of SAP R/3 users face a painful, forced migration," industry analyst Herbert H. Finkelstein said other possible titles considered for the press release were "The SAP R/3 Death Panel," "SAP R/3 Users Sent On Trail Of Tears" and "SAP R/3 Users To Re-Enact Bataan Death March."
SAP has announced that maintenance for R/3 V4.6 will end as of March 2010, and maintenance for SAP R/3 4.7 will be extended "at a higher cost."
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Marketing automation product Silverpop Engage B2B was named by Forrester Research [6] as one of the industry's "three leading vendors" in the "B2B Lead Management Automation Market Overview" report, authored by Laura Ramos, Forrester vice president and principal analyst.
Forrester officials say they evaluated 18 of "the most promising vendors" and compared capabilities, remarking that "vendor choices narrow quickly."
CustomerThink's Bob Thompson observed [7] that the technology is "evolving quite fast in the Web 2.0 era," noting that Forrester defines Lead Management Automation as including functions to capture, score and nurture leads, and well as aligning marketing activity with sales results.
"If you're in the market for LMA tools, this report is well worth the money," Thompson said, adding that he got his free, of course.
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In politics, President Barack Obama used his first speech to the United Nations [8] to lay out plans to slash America's nuclear arsenal as a goodwill gesture to encourage Russia to do the same.
"The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a U.S.-sponsored resolution Thursday committing all nations to work for a nuclear weapons-free world," according to the Associated Press.
Russian diplomats praised Obama's stance, saying "We love this guy. You go first."
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Caspio, which sells do-it-yourself database platforms for creating Web apps, announced an enterprise customer relationship [9] with the United States Postal Service.
The Post Office has 34,000 retail locations and relies on its revenue of $75 billion a year from the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses. Post Office officials say it was named "the Most Trusted Government Agency five consecutive years" by the Ponemon Institute.
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nGenera Customer Interaction Management, which sells "customer experience" software, has announced that ugly shoe manufacturer Crocs picked nGen Chat [10] to ramp up for the Christmas season.
A component of the nGenera CIM Suite particularly attractive to Crocs was nGen Chat. nGenera officials contend that while phone agents can typically handle an average of 2.7 customer calls per hour, a chat agent can handle an average of 11.5 chats per hour.
"nGenera CIM completely understood our seasonal needs," said Chris Brown, Director of North American eCommerce at Crocs. Evidently they realize how much America craves hideous-looking shoes.
By the way, if you're looking for a way to remember Radio CBM this Christmas, our second pair of Crocs is almost worn out, so...
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That's the show for today, we're off to host our Windows 7 party [11]!