CRM - June 2008 - (Page 14)

CRM TRENDS AND NEWS ANALYSIS Making Mashup Masterpieces Business just got a little more hands on—and a lot more interesting I t’s rare that a day goes by without a the imagination of their creators, are consumer turning to technology to empowering businesses to tackle busimake her life a bit easier. Business ness problems with the power of techleaders also depend on technology nology—without having to wait for the to do their jobs; the problem is actually technology department’s helping hand. Google Maps may be a typical starting getting that technology to do what they want. Mashups are one way to tame the point for a mashup, but the endless postech beast: They’re Web-based appli- sibilities can drive insight into your busications, sometimes called widgets, that ness by combining data in new ways. Last unite disparate sources of content to cre- fall, for example, the Faceforce application appeared on the social ate an integrated tool that networking site Facebook, serves a new—and, perhaps, “Mashups are really more powerful—functional- important in the way drawing on information in the user’s Salesforce.com sysity. In the beginning, there tem. This “social enterprise may have been only one [that] search became mashup” allows a sales mancommon flavor of mashup— really important.” ager to interact and manage location, location, location. In fact, IBM’s Director of Lotus Mashups her contacts from two data sources as a Mikael Orn jokes that the only way peo- single service. On an even larger scale, ple used to discuss mashups was to have Google and Salesforce.com announced a map. Today’s complex business needs, an alliance in mid-April that brings however, extend beyond simple elec- together CRM and Google Apps, officetronic pushpins cluttering up a map, and productivity software—email, spreadtoday’s enterprises—large and small— sheets, and word processing—residing face issues, many of them customer- “in the cloud,” and positioned as a Webfacing, that require immediate resolution. based competitor of Microsoft’s DynamMashups, in many cases limited only by ics CRM and Office applications. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JUNE 2008 “Mashups are really important in the way [that] search became really important,” says Anne MacFarland, director of data strategies and information solutions at technology consulting firm The Clipper Group. Like search, mashups allow people to aggregate information in ways that never could have been accomplished before—or at least, not efficiently. A confluence of activity in the market has helped mashups emerge as a relevant tool. Enabling technology has set the stage: Web 2.0 in the enterprise is gaining traction, Web browsers have better Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) support, and open-source code has grown more popular. Taken together, these trends are enabling developers to utilize applications and make changes with much less overhead. Naturally, better technology gives way to better opportunities. “People are trying to do things, but quicker,” Orn says. This bodes well for the new generation of employees, who were practically raised on the Internet, and as Orn describes, have a habit of taking matters into their own hands. www.destinationCRM.com 14 http://Salesforce.com http://Salesforce.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - June 2008

CRM - June 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Making Mashup Masterpieces Trouble in the Air CRM on Twitter Is SaaS Ready for Its Contact Center Close-up? CRM: In the Public Interest Required Reading Lollipop Loyalty Best Practices Series: CRM & eCommerce eGain NetSuite Infor Longwood Software Vovici The Second Coming of 2.0 Believe the Hype About Hosted Contact Centers All Talk So Hot It’s Cool Linksys Gets Shaken, a Community Is Stirred The Risky Risk Business Awana Hears a SaaS Sermon Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - June 2008

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