So far, here's what we have.
CRM Watchlist 2012 Pt 1A - The Big Guns
CRM Watchlist 2012 1B - The Big Guns Again
CRM Watchlist 2012 - The Winners List
CRM Watchlist 2012 - Let the Reviews Roll: The Top of the Top
Now we get into the hardscrabble stuff. The winners reviews in their sort of appropriate categories.
Today, we start with the generalists. These are the ones who provide more than just one of the pillars of CRM (sales, marketing, customer service) and, in two of the three cases, CRM itself is just one of their offerings in a larger enterprise suite. Interestingly those two, Infor and NetSuite both apparently are reinvigorated about CRM and are pushing it a bit more forward as a lead element of their enterprise suite - though I'd say this was the case more for Infor than NetSuite.
In any case, all three of them - the two aforementioned and SugarCRM deserve their Watchlist winners status and I'm now going to tell you why - and what they need to do in 2012 to be winners in 2013 too.
A year ago, I included SugarCRM on faith because they actually fell below the threshold I had established to be a winner (for example, if they had done the same this year, they would be down and out without any recourse to me). But I trusted their company, their leadership under Larry Augustin and their product to pull the company through - and damn! Was I ever right. This year, they won easily, guaranteed winner, no judgment necessary and I was tougher by FAR than last year all in all.
What did it? There was a lot to like.
But the biggest change from 2010 to 2011 was the extension of their strategic alliance with IBM.
This was a big one. A real big one. This was critical to SugarCRM because they had made a decision to move from their comfort zone which was the small and mid markets to start attacking the enterprise. They did this in the exact same year (2011) that multiple other companies announced the very same thing - NetSuite and Microsoft (around Dynamics CRM in particular) among them. The alliance with IBM positions them to piggyback into the enterprise with IBM. Something critical to them.
I had the opportunity to speak with CEO Larry Augustin, CTO Clint Oram, and IBM's Sean Poulley who drove the alliance (at the time he ran Lotus a.k.a. IBM Collaboration) all at once for about an hour at Lotusphere last year. I wanted to gauge the seriousness and the depth of the alliance. I wanted to see if this was a partnership of equals or a one-sided kind of thing. The former would work, the latter would fail.
Make no mistake about it. That conversation and subsequent investigation clarifies that we are dealing with a partnership of equals here. From my standpoint, this alliance is needed as much by IBM as it is by SugarCRM -for different reasons. In SugarCRM's case, it is the needed tutelage and investment to help them step up to the enterprise. In the case of IBM, they have been woefully deficient on CRM applications despite their acquisition of Unica, Coremetrix, SSPS etc. So deficient that for this and other reasons, IBM only made my "check with them in 6 months" list this year.
But that also brings up my biggest concern about SugarCRM. The IBM-SugarCRM alliance, as important as it is, is nowhere near sufficient to support their leap into the enterprise. That is another toolset, experience and skills level, approach to messaging, level of product and even public image. It's another kind of partner.
What SugarCRM has to address in 2012 is how do you do all this (and make no mistake about it, they have to do it in 2012) and not lose a significant portion of your existing customer and future prospect base?
I think they are aware of this, at least in part. I know that they are changing their messaging to reflect not open, social, mobile which was fine for 2011 but to SugarCRM solving business problems of their users. This is an important step in line with three things:
But it isn't enough. SugarCRM needs to consider a few things in 2012 to start transforming themselves to an enterprise-focused company; among them (but not exclusively)
I could go on but I won't. This should give you some idea of what they need to address.
SugarCRM is a company that has a lot to be proud of. What they did in one year is remarkable and only bodes well for their impact in 2012. But at the same time, 2012 is the year that SugarCRM needs to transition to the enterprise. They can do it with the help of IBM but not on the backs of IBM. Do I think they are capable? Hey, they won this year didn't they?
This is not a slouch of a company. First, they own what I've always considered one of the Hall of Fame CRM products - the Epiphany Customer Interaction Advisor. When Epiphany (which unaccountably used to spell it E.piphany) was doing its independent thing back in the earliest part of the millennium, they were kicking butt and taking names on a regular basis. Then a strategic misstep and the next thing you know, they are owned by SSA Global, who completely screwed the product up and buried it in their offerings so deeply that no one knew anything about it anymore. Then SSA Global was acquired by the $2.3 billion Infor - the best thing that could have happened to Epiphany.
Fast forward to 2011. George Wright, a very senior CRM veteran, with stints at Epiphany, SugarCRM, VirtuOz, who not only has the smarts, but also retains the enthusiasm for CRM (and is a cool guy to hang out with), comes in to head up Infor CRM as GM and SVP. This is just after Charles Phillips is ripped from Oracle to be the new CEO. There are decisions made to make Epiphany a great product again, not only with investments in R&D but also with a new strategy for the CRM offerings of Infor.
Infor had made the decision it was a product company - this was the overarching framework for their approach to CRM. To add to that, Infor decided to take the approach that somewhat resembled what CSC did on the consulting services side (see CSC review here) - a laser focus on specific verticals. In Infor's case, that was financial services, telecommunications, retail, hospitality and high tech. They focused on complex business problems in those spaces. As a result, for example, Epiphany not only was able to provide the engine, but specific solutions such as churn management for telcos.
But Infor didn't stop with just Epiphany. They offer a deep CRM suite - including Enterprise Sales and Enterprise Customer Service. Their crown jewels are in marketing - with Enterprise Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Marketing Resource Management (via a very good partnership with Orbis Global) and their rather amazing E-mail Advisor, which at least with email marketing, provides real time offers and content optimized for discrete e-mails based on the dynamic activity of individuals.
More recently, they've begun to incorporate some social channels capabilities into their multi-channel marketing tools - which, while not cutting edge, are more than table stakes level, so more than adequate for customers who have the perspective of seeing that social is not exclusive or predominant, but another set of channels to engage your customers in.
It goes further than that. At Dreamforce 2011, they announced a significant partnership with salesforce.com around ERP and what they thought, at least, was the Marketing Cloud. Salesforce even invested some $ into Infor (though Infor is larger than salesforce.com). They're calling the joint integrated product offering "Inforce.com." I can't decide whether I think that's cool or tacky. J
Infor has other partners that show up with some real panache, too. Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, IBM Global Services, Hart-Hankes, Amdocs, Hewlett Packard and a myriad of others - meaning they get the partner "thing."
So what's the problem with this goodness? When the press say "Oracle and SAP better watch out for Infor," they mean Infor 10 ERP, not CRM. They mean Infor ION middleware, not CRM. They mean....you get the idea.
In the CRM world, few have Infor top of mind. They've heard of Epiphany, just not Infor. While Infor has a plan and they've begun execution on the plan, they still haven't made anywhere near the impact that they should and will be making in 2012.
They've done webinars, they attend conferences, they present, they reach out to analysts and influencers, they have a customer advisory board that not only gives them advice, but is an avenue and leverage for visibility as to the good work that they do. They produce white papers. But they still don't have the reach or exposure that they should for a company with 70,000 customers and billions in revenue and one of the best CRM products ever produced.
So what are the things that they need to do in 2012 to have the impact that I am convinced, with their outstanding team, they can have.
Broadly there are two:
Do those things and they are off to a great start. They already have so much powerful product and leadership capital in the bank that they will go stratospheric once they accelerate enough. That's why they are a Watchlist 2012. Because I think they will accelerate. Fast.
They still win because of the strength of that CRM product (they call it CRM+ and it is plus level) and its nearly seamless integration with that suite and because they have a real strong knack for making an impact even in a market that is not their central focus. But more on that and why later. What characterizes their CRM product is its solidity and, as a traditional CRM product that is designed as part of an enterprise suite - its completeness. So for example, not only do you find sales force automation, but customer service applications, marketing automation, partner relationship management, mobile applications, and a modicum of customer-focused analytics. This is the CRM Swiss army knife that is characterized not by continually developing new blades but by an ongoing commitment to better steel.
In other words, while NetSuite builds, buys, or partners reluctantly when it comes to shiny new product components for their ecosystem, what they do spectacularly well is extend and strengthen what they already have which is the core essentials.
But 2011 represented something a bit out of the ordinary for this company. First, they held their first user conference ever and managed to draw 2000 people - which is a spectacular number for a first effort. But the conference wasn't just a quantitative success, two new themes emerged. Social and enterprise. Not to be confused with social enterprise.
Let me explain, please.
Back in 2010, when I declared them yet again, a winner of a CRM Watchlist award, I said the following:
"...... I find nothing that indicates that social anything is a NetSuite priority - which in 2011 will start to hurt them. Again, social is now mainstream. Not marginal. Mainstream. Center. Middle. BIG stuff. They have to deal with this - and they may be but I don't know that. And find no evidence either."
Well, in 2011, they "went social", kinda, with a major integration with Yammer (another Watchlist winner) and a smaller but still significant integration with collaboration community platform provider Qontext. This combination was declared their "SuiteSocial" which, given NetSuite naming conventions, more or less works. Along with their existing sales intelligence focused integration with InsideView, they achieved what I would have to say in looking at it now, is a more than marginal but less than fully adequate table stakes level of social integration.
They also decided to go out of their comfort zone - the upper end of the midmarket - and attack the enterprise. (for more, watch this great interview by enterprise uber thought leader Dennis Howlett with NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson) This is a big step and one that I think they can handle though will place them squarely in competition with SAP. In the past, they manufactured their SAP competition so that they could have a big bad enemy. Now they don't have to manufacture them as competitive - because they will be. I don't question their desire and reasoning to go to the enterprise and scale up from the upper end of the midmarket. But I wonder if they are as ready as they could be? This is a question, not a pejorative statement. I truly don't know. Though I think they need to spend 2012 in part getting their operations, software, skill sets and messaging in order for this, if they truly want to attack the market that SAP, Oracle, etc are already in for a long time.
What they do as well or better than any other company that is of their size or even larger is market impact and influencer relations. This is largely on the strength of two of their actual human beings, even more so than programs. Those humans would be CEO Zach Nelson and SVP of Corporate Communications, Mei Li. Both of them are consistently in touch with analysts, influencers, journalists, and other thought leaders. Zach additionally focuses on customers and prospects and is a highly engaged, visible CEO who doesn't just show up for his own conferences to do something. Mei Li is loved by the traditional and new influencers who she spends the time with to make sure that they get what they need. NetSuite does what it promises. The force of the two personalities has great impact on their public visibility. Keep in mind one thing. To truly reach influencers, its relationships that matter. Mei Li and Zach Nelson in their different ways in their different roles spend the time to know who they are dealing with, not just what they are dealing with. Knowing only the latter is the biggest reason for failure of influencer relations at almost any company.
2012 is a vital year for them - a year where they have to be more than consistently solid and do more than extend. They need to concern themselves with a number o things: