|
Farber: How do you differentiate yourself from the likes of Talisma, Onyx, and Epicor in the mid-market space CRM space?
Robinson: Talisma and Epicor are not competitive or present in ANZ. Onyx is struggling from a technology standpoint and regarding their ability to invest in R&D, and their financial stability is in question right now.
But to give you a couple of specific points of differentiation, our ongoing customers are happy with Pivotal's ability to scale from small office to enterprise. We have many local reference sites, extensive CRM implementation experience across Australasia, and a choice of implementation partners.
Robinson: Since the inception of CRM the market has moved on dramatically, to the point that the term CRM is confusing if not meaningless. Do you agree? How would you re-name the discipline if you could?
Farber: Customer relationship management or CRM is one of the most abused and maligned acronyms in the industry. Saying that, I'd probably stick with it because it's so well understood, but I'd probably change it to stand for Customers Really Matter to encourage vendors and users to maintain focus.
Ultimately our goal is to become the globally recognised trusted standard in managing and sharing corporate information on demand. So it's a vision of the future with CRM at its core, but one that extends far beyond CRM.
Farber: How do you act local but think global?
Robinson: We have a proven local organisation (since 1997) that truly understands the customer management needs of all businesses in Australia and New Zealand. We have extensive customer references in most markets (financial services, NFP, government, FMCG, services, technology, and manufacturing), but continue to leverage R&D, international successes, and collaborative customer management on a global scale. And on top of that we have a great internal CRM solution we use!
Robinson: With the new privacy laws in place, how does a hosted solution such as salesforce.com comply? Should a salesforce.com Australian customer be concerned that its personal data is being stored on a US-based data system given the US government's access to data under the US Patriot Act?
Farber: We've spent more on getting our security and privacy house in order than most organisations do on security generally (approximately US$150 million to date). As a hosted model, it's part and parcel of the proposition and we got this right before launching. We have a chief security officer so security is priority number one for every salesforce employee. There is no greater asset to us than the trust of our customers. Our model demands that. So the imperative to preserve and enhance that trust informs every decision we make.
Salesforce.com is committed to keeping sales data private and secure. To this end, salesforce.com has expressly stated how we will handle your private data. For a greater understanding of the legal obligations we adhere to regarding data privacy, please refer to the salesforce.com privacy policy on our Web site.
Farber:
What prevents Pivotal from making a sale?
Robinson:
Mostly in-house, old school IT "experts" who continue to believe in their own existence and that they can develop systems themselves rather than implementing an out-of-the-box solution with the ability to configure as and when required. This type of expensive in-house IT team will identify a need and put a "sticking plaster" over the top to fix the problem rather than take a holistic approach. This not only makes running an IT department complex and costly long term, with many different internal systems and platforms, but it also creates inter-departmental silos resulting in lack of communication and holding the business back. This is a "qualify out" type of sale.
And of course there is always the all-too-often-quoted perception from the late '90s that many CRM "solutions" tried to mould their clients' business needs around their technical capabilities (or lack thereof!).
One big "competitor" is companies who don't realise that understanding how technology can truly enable their business, and who don't realise the importance of consistent relationships with their customers.
I find it haerd to seethese two as CRM leader , They have little abity tooscale as aproduct such Netsuite does from It PC awrd wing netcrm product
( also tyye bother to spend the mony to Auastalianise the product