Tag Archives: Cloud MDM
Hybrid IT and the Latest Informatica Cloud Release
In a recent Information Management blog post, Alex Bakker from Saugatuck Technology noted:
“There is an underlying problem facing many, if not most enterprise IT leaders and organizations: these technologies [Cloud, Mobile, Social, Analytics and Integration] have developed much faster than enterprise IT groups and practices have been able to adopt and manage them.”
Sound familiar? Gartner (and others) have referred to the new reality of enterprise IT as Hybrid IT. At Informatica World next month, we have an entire track on this topic.
The good news is a topic that was once considered the “Achilles heel of cloud computing” is increasingly being recognized as the key enabler of cloud success: integration and data management. With that in mind, Informatica rolled out our Summer 2013 release this week. Here are some highlights and useful resources. (more…)
2013 Cloud Data Management Predictions
Ok, I know it’s a little late to post 2013 technology predictions, but with so many good ones published already, I figured I’d sandbag a little and not only post a few of my own but also share a few of my favorites so far. For me, it starts with Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends presentation. 2013 is going to be a year of “re-imagining” enterprise software, from social, to mobile, to cloud, to Big Data and Analytics.
I summarized my 2012 predictions in an earlier post and Informatica already posted some great predictions from the world of data. Here are my 2013 cloud data management predictions. (more…)
Informatica Advances Cloud Integration and Data Quality
Informatica Cloud Winter 2013 has arrived. This is the fourteenth release of the company’s award-winning family of cloud integration applications and integration platform as a service (iPaaS), which has now expanded to include Informatica Cloud Master Data Management (MDM). In this post I’ll provide an overview of the new cloud integration and cloud data quality capabilities. Be sure to register for a 30 day trial and/or attend the release webinar on Thursday to see Informatica Cloud in action.
Dreamforce Takeaways: Struggling with Salesforce Adoption? You’re Not Alone
I just returned from my first Dreamforce experience, which surpassed my expectations. In this brief video I talk about how inspired I was by salesforce.com’s customer-obsessed culture. However, many Dreamforce attendees I spoke with admit that they struggle with Salesforce adoption.
This is consistent with the results of a LinkedIn poll: 52% of sales managers said sales reps don’t use CRM like they want them to, highlighted in this BlueWolf blog, who is one of our partners: 4 Ways to Make Your Salesforce Adoption Dreams Come True at Dreamforce 2012. (more…)
#1View for Salesforce Customers – Introducing Cloud MDM from Informatica
Yesterday I attended Informatica’s first annual Cloud Connect conference in San Francisco, which was followed by a Dreamforce 2012 kick-off party sponsored by our partners Astada, Covisint, MicroStrategy and Zyme. It was a busy day, with a keynote from Juan Carlos Soto focused on the three pillars of our cloud computing product strategy, a deep-dive technical update and Ask the Experts stations for one-on-one interaction with product management. We also announced the winners of our 2012 Cloudy Awards! Congratulations to all of the winners! I’ll post some pictures next week. (more…)
Will Salesforce be the Catalyst to Propel MDM into the Cloud?
Salesforce.com – a company that has become synonymous with the cloud – acquired over 100,000 customers and one million users within a span of just 10 years. Compare that to a traditional company like General Electric, the only company to be on the Dow Jones Index for over 100 years – it took them over five-times that many years to acquire the same number of customers. This goes to say that customers have been enamored by the cloud and its benefits – no software maintenance, rapid time-to-value, and subscription pricing – to name a few. No wonder, there are thousands of cloud applications and millions of users out there now. I’ve seen projections that the cloud computing market will grow to $241 billion by 2020. This might be a conservative estimate.
Mind the Gap: How Sales Operations Can Overcome Five Customer Information Gaps in Salesforce
Lockton is the world’s largest private insurance broker. Their goal is to achieve 95% client retention. The company, which operates in 60 countries, successfully adopted Salesforce to empower 4,450 associates to continually improve cross-sell and up-sell to existing clients.
To succeed, the director of operations at Lockton knew that the associates need to know who their customers and prospects are and which products and services they already have. When he investigated, he found several customer information gaps in Salesforce.
Below are five customer information gaps in Salesforce CRM that can impact sales:
Mind the Gap: How Sales Operations Can Overcome 5 Customer Information Gaps in Salesforcecompanies.
Gap #1: Which customer record can I trust?
Before reaching out to a customer (let’s use fictitious client Mark Niles), the sales rep needs to access Mark’s contact information in Salesforce. Chances are Mark Niles’ customer information is spread across multiple duplicate lead, account and opportunity records with inaccuracies, inconsistencies and incomplete information. For example, potentially four records exist in Salesforce for one customer 1) Mark Niles 2) Marc Niles 3) M. Niles 4) Mark. The customer information gap becomes worse when a company has multiple Salesforce orgs. Sales dilemma: Which Salesforce customer record can I trust and update?
Gap#2: Which products and services does my customer already have?
Before a sales rep can identify which product or service to offer Mark Niles, she needs to know which ones Mark already has and if he has any outstanding issues. Chances are Mark Niles’ product information is stored in enterprise systems such as SAP, Oracle or JD Edwards ERP, customer support systems and maybe cloud applications such as NetSuite and Eloqua that are not integrated with Salesforce. Sales dilemma: Why can’t I access all relevant customer information from my Salesforce customer record?
Gap #3: What is impacting my customer right now?
Sales reps want to be up-to-date before reaching out to customers. They may need to go outside of Salesforce to get information such as credit scores and news announcements that may impact the timing of customer contact and the conversation. Sales dilemma: Why can’t relevant third-party data be included in my Salesforce customer record? (more…)
Informatica Positioned in the Recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for MDM
Gartner recently published its annual Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management of Customer Data Solutions, which “positions MDM of customer data solution vendors (and their products) on the basis of their Completeness of Vision relative to the market and their Ability to Execute on that vision.” The growth of MDM market has been phenomenal – $1.6 billion in 2011, a growth of 21% from 2010, and projected to grow by the same rate to $1.9 billion in 2012. (more…)
Getting Ready For Dreamforce 2010
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s hard not to know that the annual salesforce.com Dreamforce conference is just around the corner. There are ads on NPR. There was even a full page ad congratulating the Giants that offered free keynote and expo passes – nice touch! The conference is being billed as “The Cloud Computing Event of the Year” and with over twenty thousand people expected to be at the Moscone Center from December 6-9th (along with Bill Clinton, Stevie Wonder and a few surprise guests), I think it will live up to the expectations. (more…)