How customer voice
drives business

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Workforce Management Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores.  Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right workforce management software based on your needs and current industry trends. Overall Top Rated Kronos Workforce Ready UltiPro Ceridian Dayforce Beeline VMS Top Rated by Enterprises UltiPro Kronos Workforce Ready Ceridian Dayforce PeopleMatter TimeForce Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies Kronos Workforce Ready UltiPro Beeline VMS PeopleMatter What is workforce management software? Workforce management software provides tools to help you maximize your workforce by efficiently planning, managing, and analyzing employee-centric processes such as staffing, time and attendance, PTO, compliance with labor laws, etc. Many solutions are geared towards particular industries and/or employee time configurations (hourly, or salaried, or both) with the corresponding tools required to manage employees effectively. In addition to scheduling shifts and tracking employee attendance, workforce management systems can also be used to forecast labor demands and report on the efficiency of your staff.  Workforce management solutions […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right ERP software based on your needs and current industry trends. Overall Top Rated SAP ERP Microsoft Dynamics NAV SAP Business One Microsoft Dynamics AX Sage Intacct Infor ERP Oracle ERP Cloud Oracle Financials PeopleSoft Financials Deltek Vision Top Rated by Enterprises SAP ERP Oracle ERP Cloud Oracle Financials PeopleSoft Financials SAP Business One Microsoft Dynamics NAV Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies Microsoft Dynamics NAV SAP ERP SAP Business One Microsoft Dynamics AX Oracle ERP Cloud Epicor Prophet 21 PeopleSoft Financials Deltek Vision Top Rated by Small Businesses SAP Business One Sage Intacct Microsoft Dynamics NAV Microsoft Dynamics GP What is ERP software? ERP software handles all the resources required to make ship and account for customer orders. It does this by integrating all the information flowing through the various departments of a large complex organization. This […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Telephony and VoIP Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right VoIP software based on your needs and current industry trends. Overall Top Rated Genesys PureConnect 8×8 NICE inContact CXone Google Voice Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) Nextiva UberConference Top Rated by Enterprises Genesys PureConnect NICE inContact CXone Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) Google Voice Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies RingCentral Genesys PureConnect Jabber 8×8 Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) Google Voice UberConference Top Rated by Small Businesses RingCentral Google Voice UberConference ShoreTel  What is telephony & VoIP software? Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology eliminates the need for conventional landlines and makes it possible to transmit voice, video, and media communications through an internet connection by using your smartphone, tablet, laptop, or VoIP conference phone. VoIP is the underlying technology that powers Unified Communications systems, which provide a fully integrated internal communication structure across […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Ecommerce Platforms. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right ecommerce platform based on your needs and current industry trends. Overall Top Rated BigCommerce Shopify Salesforce Commerce Cloud Episerver Digital Commerce WooCommerce Top Rated by Enterprises Salesforce Commerce Cloud Episerver Digital Commerce Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies Salesforce Commerce Cloud Shopify Episerver Digital Commerce Magento Open Source (formerly Community Edition) Top Rated by Small Businesses BigCommerce Shopify WooCommerce What are ecommerce platforms? Ecommerce platforms provide a software solution for vendors who want to sell products and services online. The core components of ecommerce software include an online storefront, shopping cart capabilities, and a system for processing payments. The online storefront (or ecommerce website) is a site where customers can go to browse through products and compare details and pricing. Shopping cart capabilities allow customers to place items they want to buy in a virtual cart, so that they can […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Customer Success Management Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right customer success software based on your needs and current industry trends. Overall Top Rated Gainsight Pendo.io Intercom Totango ClientSuccess Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies Gainsight Pendo.io Intercom ClientSuccess Top Rated by Small Businesses Pendo.io Woopra What is customer success management software? Customer success management (CSM) software is designed to give you the tools you need to assess customer health, drive retention, and build brand advocacy. Through a deeper understanding of how your customers are using your subscription products or services, CSM solutions can help you identify low engagement customers who may be at risk of canceling, so that you can intervene proactively to keep their business. Likewise, these systems can help you identify customers who are very active, where there may be an opportunity to upsell them on more capabilities or ask them to share their experience […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Contact Center Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right contact center software based on your needs and current industry trends. Overall Top Rated Genesys PureConnect Tenfold Five9 Virtual Contact Center NICE inContact CXone Top Rated by Enterprises Genesys PureConnect NICE inContact CXone Tenfold Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies Genesys PureConnect Five9 Virtual Contact Center Tenfold Genesys PureEngage What is contact center software? Contact center software provides robust customer care tools and features that can be scaled and customized across all your support channels such as phone, email, instant messaging, text, social media, and self-service portals. Contact center solutions support multiple channels of service communication, but each mode is typically managed by a separate system and sometimes even adheres to unique business processes or procedures. Despite the advantages of multi-channel tools, contact centers are usually implemented as a phone-first solution for businesses. These solutions can handle large call […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Survey and Form Building Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right survey tool based on your needs and current industry trends. Overall Top Rated Qualtrics Google Forms Typeform Formstack GetFeedback FormAssembly AskNicely Top Rated by Enterprises Qualtrics Google Forms Inquisium FormAssembly Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies Qualtrics Typeform Formstack QuestionPro AskNicely Top Rated by Small Businesses Qualtrics Wufoo Typeform FormAssembly AskNicely What are survey tools? Survey and form building tools allow you to create and distribute online questionnaires and analyze responses and feedback. Typically, web forms are used to gather information which will be stored in a database for analysis. Using the form building features, you can create and format customized surveys to send via email or embed on your website. More robust survey platforms include tools to distribute surveys, collect responses, and analyze results built in. There are also survey tools that simply allow for data […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Talent Management Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right talent management software based on your needs and current industry trends. Overall Top Rated UltiPro Workday Human Capital Management Oracle HCM Cloud Saba PeopleFluent Mirror Suite for Talent Management Top Rated by Enterprises Workday Human Capital Management UltiPro Oracle HCM Cloud Cornerstone OnDemand Saba PeopleFluent Mirror Suite for Talent Management Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies UltiPro Oracle HCM Cloud Kenexa PeopleMatter PeopleFluent Mirror Suite for Talent Management What is talent management software? Talent management suites are designed to effectively track and coordinate all the HR activities that take place during the lifecycle of an employee, ranging from recruiting and onboarding to training, performance reviews, PTO, compensation adjustments, etc. Talent Management suites contain a combination of tools for performance management, recruiting, corporate learning, incentive/compensation planning, workforce analytics, and/or employee engagement. Main benefits of using talent management software Talent management […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for SEO Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores.   Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right SEO tool based on your needs and current industry trends. Overall Top Rated SEMRush Conductor Searchlight Screaming Frog SEO Spider Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins Ahrefs Site Explorer Majestic SEO Top Rated by Enterprises Conductor Searchlight Google Search Console Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies SEMRush Conductor Searchlight Screaming Frog SEO Spider Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins Ahrefs Site Explorer Majestic SEO Top Rated by Small Businesses SEMRush Screaming Frog SEO Spider Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins Ahrefs Site Explorer BrightEdge Conductor Searchlight Google Search Console What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a method of driving free or organic traffic to your website by optimizing your headers, web copy, and metadata tags to index your site and drive it to the top of the search results on engines such as Google or Bing. SEO tools provide you with features designed […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Email Marketing Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right email marketing software based on your needs and current industry trends. Overall Top Rated MailChimp Bronto Marketing Platform SendGrid Marketing Email ActiveCampaign Emma GetResponse Robly Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies MailChimp Bronto Marketing Platform Sailthru Campaign Monitor Emma Top Rated by Small Businesses MailChimp SendinBlue SendGrid Marketing Email ActiveCampaign Emma GetResponse Robly What is email marketing software?   Email marketing software is a business staple, and is constantly evolving to keep pace with marketing trends. Leveraging email is critical for distributing content, nurturing leads, enabling outbound sales and supporting an account-based approach. Email marketing software enables these strategies by providing a way to individualize marketing efforts, with the efficiency of sending those messages in a bulk, batched, or triggered format. Email marketing solutions integrate with other popular business systems, primarily CRMs, to streamline your marketing efforts and effectively […]

When the tables are turned and they’re the ones buying something, marketers turn to peers before making a decision. As a marketer, you’re savvy to all the strategies that go into transforming leads into customers, and the tools you choose for your business are an essential part of your craft. But your own expertise in attractive branding and slick messaging may give you pause when it comes to shopping for those tools. You know how to sell the benefits of your product or service effectively, which makes you hyper-aware of being sold to by other vendors. So how do you go about researching the best marketing tech for your business? What sources do you trust? Where might your skepticism come in handy? Read on to learn how other marketers like you navigate their technology purchasing decisions. In this recent post, we pointed out the key findings of our 2018 B2B Buying Disconnect Report and highlighted the gap between technology vendors tactics’ and their target customers’ preferences. In a nutshell, across the board people buying technology crave more transparency from vendors to win their business. The full report contains the feedback of 438 buyers and 200 vendors, but we thought you […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Sales Intelligence Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. They are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, site traffic, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Sales intelligence tools allow sales teams to stay on top of prospect and client data. These products aim to make salespeople more productive by updating/augmenting account and contact data and surfacing details that can help reps qualify leads or provide context for a conversation. They (typically) integrate with the user’s CRM, email inbox, social networks, and web browser. It’s important for sales intelligence tools to be convenient to access and easy to use, as well as provide accurate data. Reviews provide buyers with insight into these areas from sales reps, managers, and marketers who use sales intelligence tools to build a pipeline. Feedback from users who have experience with more than one sales intelligence tool is particularly valuable, since they’re able to compare products head to head and explain where products can be used in combination. Here are the winners: Overall Top Rated ZoomInfo […]

With the increased availability of intuitive development tools, online reference materials, and how-to videos, more people than ever are creating their own mobile apps. The result is that an individual or an organization with the right idea can find success on Apple and Google’s app stores. Even with all these advantages, however, the mobile application market is one of the most fiercely competitive marketplaces in modern business. Because of this, there are many factors that a developer should consider before writing even the first line of code. Market factors can change quickly in tech. Once-universal best practices can fall by the wayside in favor of new ones. Users can be can also be fickle. Failure to cater to their wants and needs can result in a product that could be dead on arrival. Therefore, your app’s success depends on much more than a clever name and a stylish pitch deck. As a member of the tech industry, I’ve seen firsthand how app creators conceptualize their ideas. They change and adjust them through iterative development, and pull all the elements of their app together for its launch. And while not every app hits its mark, I’ve noticed the products that succeed […]

Project portfolio management is the organization and management of all projects within an organization from a high-level perspective. Project portfolio management (PPM) can sometimes be confused with project management. However, they are very different. To point out the differences, we’ll briefly go over what project management is first. Then, we will continue with an in-depth explanation of project portfolio management. What is Project Management? The most important thing to note about project management is that a project manager is usually responsible for a specific project’s tasks. The project is meant to result in a specific product, service, feature, etc. A project manager (PM) could have multiple projects that they are responsible for managing. However, each project runs separately. A PM usually works with a project team, and that person is responsible for task management and team collaboration. A project manager may have tasks including: Making project objectives, milestones, and tasks clear Assigning people and deadlines to tasks Planning and keeping track of a project’s roadmap Ensuring that tasks are completed on time and milestones are hit Keeping track of the budget and other resources Understanding and preventing risks Managing the project team to achieve success A project manager may have […]

Content marketing is a pretty widely interpreted and applied marketing term. The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as a “strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” Due to the broad definition of content marketing, it’s not uncommon to see many campaigns fail. I’m here to tell you that understanding content marketing and the results that it can drive can be as simple as a ratio. Specifically, an 80:20 ratio. The Pareto Principle & How It’s Related to Content Marketing Back in 1896, an Italian Economist named Vilfredo Pareto first noted that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of Italy’s population. After several follow-up studies, he then found a similar ratio in other European countries. People have been finding this same ratio in places that Mr. Pareto would’ve never thought. This principle can be applied to computer science (20% of most-reported bugs cause 80% of crashes), sales and business (20% of your customers account for 80% of your profit), and even criminal investigation (20% of crimes are committed by 80% of criminals). Regardless of the action […]

What do vendors actually mean when they say their products are “AI-driven”, or “contain built-in machine learning capabilities?” (if they mean anything at all). Certainly, technology buyers have become pretty cynical about the use of these terms to sell a product. A recent Resulticks survey, reported in Adweek, found that: 47% of marketers consider AI to be overhyped 20% of marketers think vendors don’t know what they are talking about 40% of marketers surveyed say that the expression “artificial intelligence” makes them feel skeptical, and 12% feel exhausted   Let’s take a closer look at these technologies and what they can do. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the broadest and vaguest term in this domain. AI has been around since the 1950s and is really a superset of machine learning and deep learning. The essence of AI is developing computer systems that can perform tasks that are normally thought to require human intelligence. Hal, the artificially intelligent machine from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey is probably the first thing that springs to mind in the popular imagination when somebody brings up AI. While at a practical level we may be a long way from Hal, there have been significant advances […]

With the advent of platforms like Upwork, Elance, and Freelancer.com, the freelance economy has absolutely exploded. According to a 2017 study on Freelancing in America conducted by Edelman Intelligence, there are over 57 million freelancers working in the United States alone. That’s over 35% of the workforce! What’s perhaps even more telling, is that a strong majority of freelancers (63% to be exact) feel more financially secure with diversified income as opposed to just one employer. Freelancers in the study average 4.5 clients per month. Freelancers are also now investing in skill development on a regular basis. The study found 55% of freelancers reskilled within the last 6 months! That’s almost double the 30% of others who reskilled within the same time frame. So what does this revolution mean for small businesses? Expert human resources, that were formerly only available to small businesses as full-time hires, can now be afforded on an as-needed basis. It’s not dissimilar to the flexibility the SaaS model has provided to smaller businesses over the past decade. After all, the SaaS boom opened the door for budget-strapped organizations to leverage tools formerly reserved for enterprises and pay to use them monthly on a subscription basis, […]

Containers exist because they solve an important problem: how to make sure that software runs correctly when it is moved from one computing environment to another. In an agile, DevOps world, this has become more critical than ever. Agile methodologies are based on frequent and incremental changes in the code versions, such that frequent testing and deployment are required. The DevOps engineer has to manage the IT infrastructure as per the requirement of supported software code that is dedicated in a hybrid multi-tenant environment. There is a need to have the required resources for provisioning and getting the appropriate deployment model and also validating and monitoring the performance. DevOps engineers frequently move software from a test environment to a production environment and to ensure that the required resources for provisioning and getting the appropriate deployment model are in place, and also validating and monitoring the performance. For example, a different version of a required software library may be running. Or maybe the target machine uses a different compiler or loader. Incompatibilities of this kind can cause headaches for DevOps engineers. The Initial Solution: Virtualization One well-known solution to this problem is virtualization. Virtualization has been around for decades and is […]

When it comes to picking prospecting tools, sales and marketing teams are in a more powerful position than they’ve ever been. Regardless of the specifics of what a company does, the products it’s selling, or even its budget, there’s never been so much choice when it comes to choosing tools that will help supercharge their sales efforts.   That said, with so many tools to choose from, how can we know which ones will work best for us? Obviously, since every company and its needs are different, there’s no one “right” answer to this question. But what we can do is look at which tools are hot on the radar of others in the industry, and leverage perks such as free trials and demos to establish which tool (or tools) best fit our own unique needs. Here are 5 prospecting tools to consider, broken down by price, features, and ease-of-use. 1. Harness the Power of Video with BombBomb Did you know that 55% of us watch videos online every day? And that experts predict video will account for 80% of all online consumer traffic by 2019? That means one thing: if you’re not using video in your marketing already, you probably […]

This is old news. We’ve got new research for 2021. SEE THE NEW DATA Many B2B technology vendors claim to be buyer-focused and even “customer-obsessed” in their marketing, sales and product strategies. But in reality, most vendors fall short. Buyers don’t trust vendors to tell them the whole truth about their products, and it isn’t always easy for buyers to connect with customers who have relevant experience. Read on for tips and insights from the 2018 B2B Buying Disconnect Report on how your peers are navigating the buying process, including which resources they use to make confident purchase decisions, and why. Buyers Need the Whole Truth to Feel Confident Making a Purchase When you need to find a new tool at work, the stakes are high — both financially and in terms of your professional reputation. It’s a big investment, and you need to get it right. To explore how modern buyers approach this process, and how well vendors’ marketing and sales tactics align with buyers’ preferences, we conducted a survey of 438 buyers and 240 vendors. The most common cost for one technology product, purchased in the past year by buyers who participated in our survey, was $11,000-$50,000 annually. […]