How customer voice
drives business

Scott Brinker – author of the Chief Marketing Technologist blog and program chair of the upcoming MarTech conference (March 21-22 in San Francisco) – produces a marketing technology landscape infographic each year, which plots the logos of most marketing technology vendors by category and function. Brinker’s goal is to illustrate the continuing transformation of Marketing into a technology-based discipline. The supergraphic depicts explosive growth in terms of the number of Martech vendors (and categories): The 2014 version recognized 947 vendors; the 2015 version included 1,876; and Brinker says the 2016 version – not published yet – will include an even larger sample of the roughly 4,000 marketing technology companies that he now estimates exist worldwide. Yet one of Brinker’s most interesting predictions for 2016 is that the number of active vendors will actually finally plateau. The space is crowded, consolidation is happening, and the VC appetite for unproven technology startups is cooling; however, adoption of marketing technology – particularly among leading vendors – will continue to grow as Martech becomes more mainstream. This is certainly evidenced by the growing number of marketers using sites like TrustRadius to evaluate Martech products. It’s also sure to be a topic at the MarTech conference – where TrustRadius is a media partner. Here’s the visual […]

Be sure to check out our new Buyer Blog for the latest B2B blog articles & discussions! We talked to Kevin Marasco, CMO, about how HireVue’s video engagement platform helps recruiters and coaches. Marasco explained that a combination of video interviews and predictive analytics powers performance scoring, based on personality and language attributes. According to Marasco, this allows managers to make data-driven decisions about hiring and coaching.  Introduction to HireVue Give us a brief overview of HireVue. HireVue’s the team acceleration company. We use digital video and predictive analytics to build and coach the world’s best teams. Our purpose is to give people a voice. We believe people represent unique stories, experiences and potential that doesn’t always come through on your typical resume or profile. So we offer individuals the ability to share their stories through digital video, where they can show the attributes that really matter – things like attitude, ambition and potential. This levels the playing field for candidates so that they can find and do more meaningful work. Busy candidates and team leaders can stay focused on their customers and day jobs, and respond at their own convenience, on demand. We are also leveraging predictive analytics. We are analyzing […]

  As we head into 2016, we took a look at trends in the social media management landscape. Here’s the year in review: several vendors gained visibility on TrustRadius over the last year, while others fell in the ranks—and these changes in buyer research activity seem to be a function of continuing social M&A. Check out our stack rank chart, based on changes in website traffic over the last year, below.  Spredfast, Oracle, Sprinklr, and NetBase are Fastest-Growing SMMS Vendors on TrustRadius A Closer Look at Growth, Research Frequency & Company Status Sprinklr, NetBase, Spredfast, and Oracle SRM gained the most traction over the last year, rising up in the rankings for most researched SMMS tools on TrustRadius. Interestingly, over the last few years climbers Sprinklr, Spredfast, and Oracle have all added to their social offerings through M&A, which continues to be a big trend in the social space. Sprinklr, the clear leader in terms of research frequency on TrustRadius, has been particularly active over the last two years. Sprinklr’s recent acquisitions include the Dachis Group, TBG Digital, Branderati, Pluck, Get Satisfaction, Scup, newBrandAnalytics, and Booshaka. Hootsuite, which held steady in second place between 2014-2015, has also been acquisitive—in 2014, Hootsuite […]

SMMS users have spoken! According to user feedback on TrustRadius—ratings and research frequency—here are the top ten social media management suites for 2016: Sprinklr, Hootsuite Enterprise, Sprout Social, NetBase, Spredfast, Adobe Social, AgoraPulse, Oracle SRM, Viralheat, and Shoutlet. (Engagor, which is just shy of Top Rated, and Expion, which is used by agencies, were close runners-up.) But, it can be tricky and time consuming to dig into the nuances that distinguish these products. So, we put together an overview to help you quickly and easily compare leading SMMS tools. Use this chart to narrow down your choices, based on the qualities and features that are most important for your use case. Here’s what you’ll find in this chart: Top-Rated SMMS products for small businesses, mid-sized companies, and enterprises.  Ultimate feature comparison across 38 social media management features, including listening/monitoring, publishing, engagement, marketing, channel coverage/integration, reporting/analytics, and account management. Features marked in green are standouts—they score at or above average among the leading products. Comparison of user ratings for product attributes like usability, support, training, and implementation. Attributes marked in green are exceptional—they score at or above average among SMMS leaders. Alternatives to leading products, based on top buyer comparisons. Top industries using each product (based on reviewer distribution). Compare the Top Ten Social Media Management Suites Best SMMS […]

We talked to Andrew Archer, VP of Marketing at Yesware, about the developing Sales Enablement software space. Yesware combines email tracking, sales intelligence, analytics, and productivity features (such as email templates and click-to-call) into a tool that’s designed to service salespeople as well as managers/ops. A pioneer in the sales email tracking space, Yesware is expanding its core by building out more in-depth analytics and prescriptive recommendations, which Archer said will increase the actionability of Yesware’s data and help improve sales performance. He also gave us a view on upcoming product releases—including how Yesware’s development roadmap fits into larger trends in Sales software and best practices. In addition, Archer responded to reviewer feedback around Yesware pros and cons, explaining Yesware’s approach to common pain points compared to its closest competitors.   Introduction to Yesware Give us an introduction to Yesware—where do you see yourselves in the space, and what is your mission? Our space is evolving rapidly, and it’s been called a couple of different names: Sales Enablement, Sales Acceleration, and Sales Productivity. All of these terms fall under a larger umbrella term—Sales Automation Software. We see Sales Automation as a macro category that contains CPQ software, sales content management tools, sales performance management platforms, […]

The almost moribund category of job scheduling and workload automation has been invigorated by the emergence of a number of open-source, DevOps-oriented tools that have quickly become hot commodities. This is an increasingly visible and quickly developing category. What follows is an overview of the space and an early summary of the key products, based on initial reviews. Summary of Findings Tools like Chef, Puppet Ansible and SaltStack allow IT administrators to automate the configuration of cloud services, in addition to internal data centers. These upstart tools have also completely moved away from any kind of batch processing, to be event-based configuration allowing, for example, new cloud resources to be provisioned and configured automatically during peak demand. These DevOps tools are not all the same. As early reviews make clear, Ansible is much lighter weight, and easier to use than other tools. Chef is more powerful, but also requires developer-level resources. Puppet is the most established product, but has a steep learning curve. Large enterprise vendors like VMware and HP have taken notice, and some have made significant investments. Ansible is in the process of being acquired by Red Hat, but look for further acquisitions in this very hot space. Our review […]

We talked to Replicon co-founder & co-CEO Raj Narayanaswamy about his perspective on time. Narayanaswamy explained how Replicon tracks time as an enterprise asset, which he sees as unique compared to other HCM vendors, who offer time as a module or add-on within a suite.  Replicon integrates with payroll, HRIS, ERP, and project management systems to unify company records and streamline the end-user (employee) experience of tracking time. Narayanaswamy also updated us on compliance-as-a-service, or how Replicon delivers location-specific legal expertise.  He sees this as increasingly important, since states like California are passing new compliance laws that change how time worked earns paid sick leave. Introduction to Replicon To start, give us some background about Replicon. What do you do, and what is your overall vision? At Replicon, we consider time to be an enterprise asset. “I don’t have enough time” is the most common complaint. A company with 1,000 employees has over two million hours a year at its disposal, and we provide companies with an understanding about where those hours are going. Replicon provides a time asset management platform on which companies can track time for their employees. We do that in three different ways: we help companies […]

Infer’s flagship product is a predictive analytics platform for marketing and sales, which builds predictive models based on a company’s historical pipeline and current customer data. The predictive sales analytics space is heating up, and as vendors become more competitive, they’re developing differentiators. We talked with Jamie Grenney, Vice President of Marketing at Infer, about their new “stealth” product, Prospect Management, which can work with or without a predictive model. Infer Prospect Management is a lightweight app that works with Salesforce, marketing automation, and/or data from a predictive model to produce recommendations about which prospects to target and which content to use. Prospect management helps ops teams, product marketers, demand gen teams, and sales reps get a more intelligent view of segments, personas, and profiles. Grenney also discussed the evolution of predictive technology and weighed in on the possibility of “self-driving cars” (AI-powered marketing and sales ops) in predictive’s future.  Introduction to Infer What’s new at Infer? Over the last year, $242 million in venture funding has flowed into B2B predictive marketing. That is great validation that we’re on the edge of a mega-trend that could be every bit as big as cloud, social, or mobile. At Infer we feel fortunate to have gotten out front and had time to build […]

EverString is part of a relatively new space called Predictive Sales Analytics (aka Predictive Marketing, or predictive analytics for sales and marketing). We’ve found that many people are interested, but not yet ready to buy—honestly, some aren’t quite sure what predictive sales analytics actually is. We talked to J.J. Kardwell, President and Co-Founder of EverString, to better understand their positioning and the evolution of the space. EverString is unique in the space in that it’s architected for Account-based Marketing, designed around the account object rather than the lead object. Kardwell gave us an in-depth view on how buyers new to the space should be evaluating solutions, and how users already familiar with predictive lead scoring can be driving more value with other applications of predictive.  Introduction to Predictive Analytics for Marketing & Sales How would you characterize the space for readers who are early in the buying cycle, perhaps just starting out with their research? A year and a half ago (when we started actively selling), category awareness was still very, very low. My sense is that nationally, awareness was virtually zero, and even in Silicon Valley it was less than 50%. Now, category awareness in Silicon Valley has grown to more than 80%, […]

Donna Ronayne, Vice President of Marketing at Halogen Software, explained Halogen’s focus on the talent management functionality most important to the mid-market, and why they’ve avoided enterprise bells and whistles and complex customizations.  Ronayne said Halogen strives to be the “un-ERP,” prioritizing easy configuration and usability. Ronayne also described the new style of conducting employee performance reviews, which will be increasingly important as the workforce becomes younger and the talent pool becomes more competitive. Rather than functioning as a system of assessment, the next generation of performance review is about employee engagement and development—a shift supported by the Halogen platform. According to user reviews on TrustRadius, Halogen is Top Rated talent management software for mid-sized companies in 2015. Introduction to Halogen Give us a brief introduction to Halogen. We are one of the leading talent management vendors. We focus on mid-market companies as opposed to the Fortune 100 companies, and our philosophy is to be the “un-ERP.” Because we work with the mid-market, which we define as 100 to 10,000 employees, we knew it was necessary for us to make a solution that was very easy to configure and easy to use. We have been around since 2001; we started with […]

TriNet is an HR software and service provider focused on the professional employment organization (PEO) model, meaning TriNet takes on the HR risk for employees at customer companies. We talked to Pravin Kumar, VP of Product Management, about the company’s tri-fold growth, in terms of revenue, geography, and verticals. Kumar also explained how policy changes like the Affordable Care Act make the HR landscape more complex, motivating TriNet’s technology + services approach. TriNet offers three packages—TriNet Ambrose, TriNet Passport, and TriNet SOI—to serve of private firms, office workers in white-collar industries, and “mainstream USA.” Introduction to TriNet Give us an introduction to TriNet. TriNet is an HR service provider, and we leverage state-of-the-art software along with deep domain expertise and services to our clients in easy-to-use formats. We are one of the largest providers in the space, and we’re growing at an incredible pace. We are more on the SMB side; we target companies from five to 500 employees, though we are flexible outside of that. We provide all services from payroll to benefits to risk management along with the traditional HR tools like time off and job change capabilities. Who are TriNet’s competitors? Our largest competitor is a mishmash of services […]

We talked to George Brady, VP of Sales and Business Development at Personnel Data Systems (PDS) Software, about his perspective on safe data transmission, the development benefits of having an active user community, and why PDS customers call their bundled solution “the best-kept secret in HR.” Brady explained that PDS Software caters to HR departments at mid-sized companies, and is unique in that it continues to focus on on-premise deployments—although they do also have a licensed-hosting plan and a SaaS offering, which requires a 3-year commitment. Brady also said that PDS handles complex use cases well, by offering features like tips processing, grandfathered benefits plans, and mid-period pay increases, and by allowing companies to personalize the system to their own individual use case. Vista HRMS, the Core HR solution from PDS, was Top Rated by users on TrustRadius in 2015. Introduction to PDS Give us a brief introduction about your company and your product. PDS has been around since 1974, and we are only focused on HR solutions: payroll, benefits, recruiting, and time and attendance. We’re a small, privately owned company in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Our target market is the 500- to 10,000-employee range. This is in part because of our […]

11/12/2015 We talked to Lara Shackelford, CMO at The TAS Group, about the Dealmaker platform and The TAS Group’s new product release: Dealmaker Sales Performance Manager. Dealmaker helps sales reps and sales managers better visualize their pipeline, assess sales velocity, and understand risk and trends. Because The TAS Group focuses on strategic sales pipeline management, account targeted selling best practices are built into the software in the form of guided insights and coaching. Dealmaker is built natively on the Salesforce1 platform, which Shackelford explained maximizes accessibility, usability, and security. This is also a differentiator within the marketplace, since pipeline analytics competitors aren’t native to Salesforce. Introduction to The TAS Group Give us a brief introduction to The TAS Group. The TAS Group is focused on helping sales professionals and sales managers get the best sales performance and guidance every day through our built-in sales expertise. We do that in real-time, built natively on the Salesforce1 platform. We help sales professionals crush their quarter with insights and total visibility into their pipeline and performance—no analytics needed. Companies don’t need to hire a business analyst or a data analyst to try and figure out what’s happening with your sales pipeline. We help them […]

We talked to Malcom Fox, VP of Product Marketing at Epicor, about the benefits of deep integration between HR and ERP technologies. Fox explained that with this approach, Epicor can help the mid-market improve knowledge retention and transfer across the company. Epicor uses a social collaboration network, embedded in their legacy ERP product, to build a knowledge library. Constructing such a repository for skills and processes enables a company to more efficiently train new employees. According to Fox, as younger generations (who are less likely to remain with the same company longterm) become the majority in the workforce, it is important to institutionalize company knowledge on an ongoing basis. This can also help HR get recognized as a core department, with technology and capabilities that impact the entire company and remain relevant even after the onboarding stage. Introduction to Epicor Give us some background on Epicor, including your entrance into the HR space. Our legacy is ERP. We focus on the global midmarket manufacturing, distribution and retail space. We have found that our customers have employees, of course, and more and more of them need a solution to manage that. In 2010, we acquired Spectrum, an HR solution marketed as “an HR solution […]

Matt Singer, VP of Marketing at Jobvite, discusses the company’s focus on best-of-breed recruiting software, including how they handle social and trends toward mobile and predictive analytics. Singer also talks about the “recruiting funnel,” methods for building the talent pipeline, and the increasing importance of recruitment marketing to build interest in a company’s brand. According to user ratings on TrustRadius, Jobvite was a Top Rated recruiting product for mid-sized companies in 2015. Introduction to Jobvite Give us a brief overview of Jobvite, who you are and what you offer. Jobvite is a top-to-bottom recruiting platform; recruiting is all we have ever done and all we ever plan to do. We view recruiting as a funnel with passive candidates at the top and onboarding at the bottom, with reporting and analytics to optimize every step of the recruiting lifecycle over time. We have products for each step of the funnel. Deep Focus on Recruiting Why has Jobvite chosen to be a recruitment-only platform instead of adding functionalities for different aspects of HR? It starts with our CEO, Dan Finnigan, who is a big believer in the idea that there are two parts to HR: the personnel department, which is focused on existing employees and […]

Performance Metrics Feed Visibility and Engagement: Hoopla is a visual communication platform that specializes in intra-company engagement through shareable content broadcast across mobile, web and TV , including company updates and sales competitions. The company is a Silicon Valley startup, founded in 2010. They take a unique, complex approach to visibility and gamification, which Mike Smalls, Founder and CEO, says can help engage the millenial workforce and create a small company feel at large companies. Hoopla recently launched a new release to open up the platform to other data sources, improving customization options and the ability for more employees and departments to contribute content (such as selfies when they’ve achieved a goal). Hoopla is highly rated by users on TrustRadius. Introduction to Hoopla Who are you as a company, and what is the grand vision behind Hoopla? I founded Hoopla in 2010, and we’ve seen some pretty impressive growth since then. At the time, we were trying to solve a key problem: the challenge of motivating, engaging and driving the right behaviors from salespeople. We were focused on the metrics and dynamics that drive performance. Our team built a platform to bring visibility to key metrics and progress, and create […]

  During October’s HR Tech Conference, we spoke to David Hurwitz, CMO, about how the SmartRecruiters Talent Acquisition platform works to maximize efficiency in the recruiting process. SmartRecruiters is built around three core components: recruitment marketing, collaboration, and management.  With an emphasis on deep, bidirectional integrations to major HRIS systems, SmartRecruiters has helped clients triple their recruiting productivity along with building collaboration across a company’s recruiting infrastructure. Introduction to SmartRecruiters Talent Acquisition What is the SmartRecruiters vision around recruitment and hiring? Our vision is set by Jerome Ternynck, our founder and CEO, who is a longtime veteran of the recruiting industry. He founded a very successful recruitment agency in Europe in the ‘90s before becoming a software entrepreneur. Jerome came to realize that talent acquisition is about so much more than just applicant tracking. ATS is more about compliance and internal “check-the-box” than about finding, sourcing, marketing to, and recruiting the best candidates. Additionally, it did not stimulate the collaboration between hiring managers and recruiters. ATS systems needed to be supplanted by a new generation of technology that would support the holistic, full-lifecycle approach to talent acquisition. He founded SmartRecruiters in 2010 as a next-generation talent acquisition platform that includes ATS […]

At Dreamforce, we talked to Rip Gerber, Vlocity CMO, about how Vlocity can help companies become more efficient and increase customer satisfaction by delivering an industry-specific CRM layer that eliminates the phantom costs of developing on Salesforce. Vlocity has four solutions: government, telecommunications, insurance, and healthcare. Each cloud-based app is native to Salesforce, and extends the CRM platform with very specific business process applications for those verticals. These apps replace custom-built solutions, which Gerber explained are increasingly costly to maintain over time. Vlocity was founded in 2014 by experts on industry customized CRM software, who earned their stripes implementing on-premise Siebel systems. The company is backed not by venture capital, but by strategic investments from Salesforce and Accenture. Give us an introduction to Vlocity—who are you as a company, and what do you do? Vlocity is an Industry Cloud company. We deliver cloud and mobile software that embeds industry-specific functionality and processes, built in partnership with Salesforce. We enable companies to deliver an omnichannel experience, achieve greater sales and service agility, and capture faster value from the cloud. Vlocity is industry cloud apps built on the Salesforce platform. Our verticals are communications, public sector, insurance, and health insurance. We’re 100% native […]

Evan James, Head of Americas Marketing, gave us a view on the Socialbakers approach to social media marketing: cross-channel visibility into a brand’s own social profiles paired with comparisons to competitor performance, including in newer areas like social video. According to James, Socialbakers has the largest social pages database, allowing them to create customized benchmarks for specific industries, geographic markets, and sets of competitors. Beyond their core analytics product, Socialbakers also has solutions to help with publishing and content management (Builder) and ads strategy (Promoted Post Detection). James explained that because Socialbakers has an intrinsically analytic perspective on social media marketing, analytics are built deep into all of these other products. Give us an introduction to Socialbakers—who are you, and what is your value proposition? We started in 2008. Over the years we have developed into a social media marketing company with an emphasis on analytics. Our core product, Socialbakers, gives marketers visibility across their social profiles—across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, Sina Weibo, and vKontakte—to understand what’s working and not working. The main piece involves being able to see how they’re performing in context of competitors. Our customers can see how they stack up one-to-one versus their most important competitors, […]

Marc Aubin, CEO and co-founder at AppBuddy, explained that while Salesforce’s complex data structures are well suited for storing data properly, they can be difficult for end-users to navigate effectively, which hinders adoption among salespeople. GridBuddy fills this gap in Salesforce by improving data visibility, context, and actionability. Aubin characterizes its single-screen interface, where related data can be sorted, filtered, and edited, as the marriage between transactional reporting and data management capabilities. Give us overall background on AppBuddy—how long have you been around, and what is your product focus? AppBuddy started about 6 years ago, in 2009. We were first listed our flagship product GridBuddy on the Salesforce AppExchange in 2010. GridBuddy fills a usability and adoption gap in Salesforce. Working with a relational data management system is confusing for end-users. The data structures translate into a lot of complexity, yet this complexity is necessary to store data properly, insuring data integrity so that it can be reported on. It’s a necessary evil. Unfortunately, for a lot of people that user experience is not something they can dive into easily and use effectively. We see problems with sales people not entering their data in a timely fashion. Down the line, these user adoption […]