Marketers are spoiled for choice when it comes to the endless array of tools and platforms to choose from to help them better understand prospects and generate leads. First, there was CRM, a must-have for customer records. After its introduction, marketing automation platforms (MAPs) quickly became “the” tool all marketers needed (and arguably, still do)…. read more >
My colleague Jill Finger Gibson has done a great job analyzing the challenges and opportunities presented by the late October acquisition of WCM vendor Hippo by Silicon Valley’s BloomReach, which offers a commerce-centric personalization platform. Not the least of those is the perrenial question when a company is acquired: What does it mean for the… read more >
Around this time last year, media conglomerate Publicis Groupe released a video of CEO Maurice Levy on YouTube. Levy explained that the company was moving to a more client-centric organizational model comprised of four divisions: Publicis Communications, Publicis Media, Publicis.Sapient, and Publicis Health. As Digital Clarity Group noted in an analysis of the announcement, the idea of… read more >
This week, the global systems integrator (SI) HCL briefed industry analysts on the latest developments in the company’s strategy and service offerings. Based in India, HCL is one of the largest SIs in the world – it earned $7 billion in revenues in its FY 2016, and employs over 110,000 people over 31 countries. As was… read more >
In recent discussions with both IT and marketing leaders at over ten firms, they consistently noted one common barrier to improving customer experiences. As one said, “Getting the capital expenditure budget for the project is actually not that hard. But approval for on-going operational expenses is very rare.” This build-launch-and-forget mentality was never a good idea…. read more >
A few months ago my colleague Alan Pelz-Sharpe published a report noting the increase in acquisitions of CMS vendors, such as those of Sitecore, Episerver, and Ektron by private equity firms (with the latter two acquired by the same firm and subsequently merged) and of CrownPeak by Active Standards. The report predicted that this trend… read more >
As the 2016 holiday season approaches, the usual hype and headlines about how massive Amazon is are surely causing the usual heightened anxiety amongst its competitors. In a post a few months ago looking at the latest online retail stats for the U.S., I noted how retailers, especially those with physical stores that have roots in the pre-online… read more >
As advisors to enterprise buyers of technology and services you might think we answer the same questions time and time again. But every so often something new arises in the discussions. Meme-like, this topic suddenly seems to pop up in every customer conversation. A few years ago it was the question of going to the… read more >
What was your company’s global gross revenue last year? Now calculate 4% of that total. The result is the amount you can be fined by European Union data protection authorities for non-compliance with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), based on 2015 revenue. Some random examples of an approximate 4% fine on 2015 global… read more >
Episerver has announced acquisitions of two different software firms over the past few weeks. Both acquisitions will be added to the Episerver Digital Experience Cloud, thus adding digital marketing capabilities to the vendor’s existing content and commerce solutions. The two acquisitions, both in Europe, are Optivo, an email marketing software vendor based in Germany, and Peerius, an omnichannel personalization vendor based… read more >
