IBM has a number of internal transformation projects under way, all of which have been brought into the CIO’s office. One very significant transformation is the move away from a traditional sales approach of micro-managing the sales representatives, toward “social selling”, which leverages a variety of technologies, social and otherwise. When IBM started developing this next-generation selling method, the team was not focused on “social” but instead on dramatically increasing the productivity of the sales team. As IBM looked at the challenges of a typical sales team member, a variety of issues surfaced that began pointing toward using social, collaboration, analytics, and other technologies and applications, not only to increase the efficiency of sales representatives, but also to enhance internal collaboration as well as external conversations. ...
Recommendations for enterprise and public sector IT
While still a nascent concept and not yet productized, enterprises and public sector organizations looking for a new approach for taking their relationships with customers and constituents to a higher level should engage IBM in conversation. The outcome in the short term would not necessarily be to buy anything, but to use the insights for long-term IT and CRM strategies and planning.
Large enterprise and public sector organizations with a CRM procurement project under way or planned should definitely include SugarCRM on the vendor long list for evaluation along with other vendors they are considering.
Very interesting view by Carter Lusher from Ovum. I am looking forwrd to use the new Social Selling-solution soon.
This video shows some of the integrations between SugarCRM and IBM Connections: