Top 3 CRM Innovations and Themes for 2020: Time, Microservices and Good Intentions

Last Updated: December 16, 2021

The winding road that makes up this year’s conference season is coming close to its end, but September – October reinforced a few themes while introducing some new ones into the mix. Here’s a few things that got my interest this time around.

1. It’s Time for CRM to Add Time into the Mix

There’ve been a number of themes repeated over and over again throughout many of the conferences I’ve attended this year. AI was everywhere. So were chatbots and voice assistants.  Everyone is putting together platforms – either of the CX, CDP, or No Code/Low Code varieties. But it took SugarCRM’s Connection event in late September to introduce a concept (and product called Sugar Discover) that both makes a bunch of sense and makes you wonder why I hadn’t heard any other companies talking about it and incorporating it into their platform. Sugar not only is repositioning themselves as a CX platform, but adding a time coefficient layer to that platform to allow their customers to “rewind history, play history forward, and analyze that to find anomalies and patterns using machine learning techniques”, according to Sugar CTO/CPO Rich Green.  And “time” has been the missing piece of every CRM system Sugar’s CEO Craig Charlton says he’s ever used. 

This clip gives you some more details into why the Sugar execs are betting big on time coefficients and anomaly detection as a foundational piece to their reimagined platform:

After thinking a bit about this I’m even more curious as to why this wasn’t something that’s been repeated over and over at other events – and not just this year. Because everyone using CRM and making CRM applications has been talking about the 360-customer view forever. But that 360-customer view we talked about has been based on a snapshot in time and not a 360-customer view over time, especially since we’re talking about customer journeys taking place over periods of time. So it will be interesting to see what impact Discover has on Sugar’s ability to gain traction as a CX platform as well as add to the industry conversation and roadmap. I think the potential is there for this to have a significant impact as using machine learning and time coefficients to detect anomalies and patterns could be a game-changer for surfacing more successful next-best-actions and recommendations.

2. Microservices and Platforms – From A(dobe) to Z(oho)

The last couple of weeks, two companies I’ve been watching for years had interesting announcements that got me thinking about how they are taking different approaches to themes each says is critical to their future. 

During Adobe’s MagentoLive Europe event in October (one of the few events I didn’t attend) several announcements were made that piggybacked off of announcements made earlier this year at both Magento Imagine and Adobe Summit events (both of which I did attend). The acquisition of Magento by Adobe gave them the promise, as Constellation Research founder Ray Wang phrased it during a conversation at the Summit, of ‘going from creative to commerce’. Ray goes into a bit here in the clip below during a CRM Playaz episode with Paul Greenberg and me at the end of this year’s Adobe Summit:

As both Paul and Ray alluded to, Adobe’s been constructing their experience cloud for roughly a decade starting with the Omniture acquisition, and in my opinion have done a great job acquiring key technologies and integrating them with organic pieces to build one of the top two enterprise marketing/experience platforms available.  And with Magento becoming their Commerce Cloud they are now able to not only complete the customer journey, but now with Sensei they are beginning to show how adding commerce data to their AI layer can produce the following capabilities announced at MagentoLive:

  • Instantaneous gathering and analyzing of shopper behavior
  • Highly personalized product recommendations
  • Increased sales by adding product recommendations to relevant store pages like the product details page
     

 These are the kinds of ideas that would come from the synergies emanating from the acquisition – and what Magento could bring to the Experience Cloud, shared Jason Woosley, Adobe’s VP of Commerce Product and Platform, with me during a conversation at Imagine.. One of the main reasons he felt there was great chemistry was that the two companies agreed – in his words – that the future of application/platform development is microservices.  So the fruits of the shared vision has made it possible to integrate this strategically important piece –commerce – into the overall Experience Cloud in a way for it not only to close the loop from creative to digital transactions, but also to provide recommendations and next-best-actions to continually improve and extend customer journeys.
To hear Jason explain this in his own words, check out the clip below and hear him describe how Magento’s development experience and methods brings to Adobe, what Adobe’s platform experience offers Magento, and what having access to Sensei will bring to Commerce Cloud customers:

While Adobe has built (and continues to build) it’s platform on acquisitions and integration expertise, on the other end of that spectrum is Zoho, who also made a significant announcement in October of their Catalyst platform.  Catalyst provides a single environment for no-code/low code/ pro code development to occur, while providing professional developers access to a full technology stack Zoho has been using internally for years.  This gives developers access to a growing number of Zoho application features and functions exposed via microservices, in addition to providing an abstraction layer to easily allow these applications to run safely, securely and with scale, without them having to write custom code into their apps to handles these important areas.  And, as is usually the case with Zoho, all of this has been done organically, as part of the corporate ethos is to build rather than to acquire. 

While the means may be different, the approach of building applications on a microservices framework is just as critical to Zoho as it is to Adobe. In a conversation with Zoho cofounder and CEO Sridhar Vembu, he talks about how the combination of Zoho One (45+ integrated business apps), Zia (AI layer and conversational interface) and Catalyst make up a significant piece of the foundation of the company’s future:

3. Leading with the Right Intentions Is Also Good for Lead Generation and Customer Connection

Finally, I wanted to close with this trend. In most of the big events I’ve been to this year, corporate initiatives around social impact – or as like to say ‘Doin’ Good’ – were front and center in ways I haven’t seen before at industry events. I hope this is a trend that continues as it’s good to see good being done in the industry.  In fact, it’s great to see companies empowering their employees to do good and making it easier for them to do so with tools and platforms to go along with cultural support.  And one of the best explanations of this comes from Nasi Jazayeri, CTO/CPO of Salesforce.org, who says volunteering is the best way to get engaged with customers and prospects:

And one last clip on this comes from a CRM Playaz conversation we had at ServiceNow’s Knowledge ‘19 event. We were lucky enough to spend some time with Farrell Hough, SVP of Customer Workflow Products for the company. During her keynote, Farrell had a very touching moment with one of their customers – Optum’s VP of Customer Experience Innovation Erin Doney.  She explains how Optum’s use of the ServiceNow platform really hit home for her in this clip.

Also Read: Opens a new window

Top 5 Customer Experience (CX) Conferences In 2020Opens a new window

As you see, there continues to be a lot going on, right up until the end of the year.  And while the end of conference season for 2019 is in sight, things end with the biggest event of the year – Dreamforce. And if you happen to be going this year come and check out the session I’m moderating on trends in innovation and transformation for 2020Opens a new window . And be on the lookout for the CRM Playaz, as we’ll be roaming San Francisco having conversations with Salesforce executives, customers, partners and other analysts.

Brent Leary
Brent Leary

Partner, CRM Essentials LLC

Brent Leary is a CRM industry analyst, advisor, author, speaker and award-winning blogger. He is co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, an Atlanta-based CRM advisory firm covering tools and strategies for improving business relationships. He is the co-chair of CRM Evolution 2018, CRM Magazine's annual industry event. He writes regularly for CRM magazine and The Atlanta Tribune, where he also serves on the editorial advisory board. He co-hosts two video podcasts - The CRM Playaz and Watching Amazon.
Take me to Community
Do you still have questions? Head over to the Spiceworks Community to find answers.