General Consultant Discussion

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  • 1.  This is a must watch interview. It shows why Benio

    Posted 12-02-2015 06:51
    This is a must watch interview. It shows why Benioff is a master CEO - he is slick as goose shit. He also says that Salesforce doesn't care about the Cloud because Salesforce customers don't care about the Cloud. They just want the great experience. This is different from what Salesforce has stated over and over previously. It shows the trend is shifting. Cloud is a delivery mechanism - it's not a feature. The funny thing is now all the competition out there is: ""Cloud! Cloud! Cloud!"" and he is already pivoting. Give it a watch. It's long but worth it for anyone in this group. The only down mark is the interviewer is like the Jay Leno of business interviews (sycophantic, butt-kissing, softball questions). http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-12-02/marc-benioff-we-re-focused-on-the-customer?cmpid=yhoo.headline


  • 2.  RE: This is a must watch interview. It shows why Benio

    Posted 12-02-2015 07:53
    Yes. He is very good. I also think he's right about the Cloud: it is merely a method to deliver the functionality to users. The CRM world has now become (sf or ms) vs The Rest. Benioff did a nice sidestep on MS in the interview, as I suspect that MS is the only CRM competitor sf spends any significant time thinking about. He didn't really talk about it, the sf's vision for its Force One platform will enmesh larger firms into sf's subscriptions in a way that will force competitors to essentially play on sf's turf. It appears to be working far better than skeptics thought it would 5 years ago. In the interview, Benioff never mentions ""ERP"", but he is effectively promoting the idea that ""customers come first and your internal ERP issues a distant second.""It is how he encroaches on SAP and Oracle turf, where the $$$ is. Also note that his interview was all about public companies. His model appears to be working quite well in the ROI calculations of those exec's. It is not clear how much of this will appeal to companies <$50mm, although sf is usually the starting point for those companies now considering CRM. In many ways this moves the CRM, and increasingly the ERP, sales turf to 70's computing world of IBM. Anybody who wants to compete must first show they're equal to sf in the needs of an SMB company and then fight the FUD and slick selling tactics from sf before they can show they are better deal for the prospect. It is interesting to compare this interview and sf's current success to Sage's recent announcements. SF touts Cloud as an effective way to deliver functionality to customers, so they don't mention ""Cloud"" much. Sage can't get any of its new cloud products to ""work"" (defined by finding significant paying customers) and yet it talks about its Cloud future constantly. Sage needs to ""show me the money"" pretty soon here ... or at least buy some cattle for its big hat.


  • 3.  RE: This is a must watch interview. It shows why Benio

    Posted 12-02-2015 09:42
    He knows at this point the cloud is no longer the differentiator and not where the customer really derives value. Thanks for posting.


  • 4.  RE: This is a must watch interview. It shows why Benio

    Posted 12-02-2015 14:54
    @PeterWolf This was a very motivating interview. I should thank Sage for introducing me to Salesforce and the development platform, because it opened my eyes to how things could be. Salesforce combined with the Kimble PSA really is something I could use in our practice. Now if we could just find a great accounting system that integrates with those . . .


  • 5.  RE: This is a must watch interview. It shows why Benio

    Posted 12-03-2015 06:09
    @JohnHoyt join the 20 other users on Sage Live...


  • 6.  RE: This is a must watch interview. It shows why Benio

    Posted 12-03-2015 06:41
    I heard Sage Live is smashing down the doors between front and back office for the first time ever - so that does sound pretty damn great!