About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Vikram leads the forecast team, which is responsible for producing all forecasts within M&S research. He is focused on the consumer commerce areas including retail, travel, and financial services. He is keenly involved in understanding the evolution of consumers' online behavior and technology adoption.
Vikram came to Forrester Research through its acquisition of Jupiter Research, where he started in July 2000. Prior to Jupiter, Vikram worked at IRI, a leading market research company, where he worked closely with some of the leading CPG companies.
Vikram often appears on TV, radio, and comments in the press on the US online retail and travel industry. He has been quoted in The L.A. Times, Business Week, The New York Times, CNN Money, and American Banker. He has also appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and Radio, NPR, Fox Business News, and ABC.
Vikram earned an M.B.A. from Virginia Tech and a B.Com from N.M College in Mumbai, India.
How Customer Intelligence Can Unify Audience Intelligence Across Channels To Enable Advanced Advertising
Marketers constantly seek ways to design addressable marketing programs that reduce media waste and create targeting efficiencies: Direct marketers turn to marketing databases to inform audience...

Vision: The Customer Analytics Playbook
With the growing importance of customer intelligence (CI) in organizations, the role of analytics to extract insight and embed it back into organizational processes is at the forefront of business...


A Decision-Making Framework For Lifetime Value Analysis
Customer lifetime value (CLV), a forward-looking indicator of customer profitability, became common parlance as relationship marketing gained momentum. However, calculating CLV remains a significant...

Benchmarks: The Customer Analytics Playbook
The customer data explosion shows no signs of abating. Companies need strong customer analytics capabilities to get a handle on customer data and make meaningful decisions based on analytical...

The real-time buzzword is back. Marketers, vendors, and service providers use this term in a variety of scenarios to describe technologies, analytics, customer service, and processes. The hype around...
Three Approaches For CI Professionals To Deliver Value
Few customer segmentation models deliver on their promise. Some drive organizational strategy and profitability, while others live as glossy reports on the CMO's shelf. Segmentation that merely...
Forrester posits a customer intelligence (CI) quotient with three levels of maturity: functional intelligence, marketing intelligence, and strategic intelligence. At the highest maturity level, the...
Landscape: The Customer Analytics Playbook
The analytics conversation is now front and center for marketers, thanks to the real estate that big data enjoys in mainstream media. As a result of this buzz, customer analytics practitioners who...
Organization: The Customer Analytics Playbook
A mature customer intelligence (CI) function needs optimized data processes, cutting-edge technologies, and the right analytics talent. Analysts add value to CI with their data-mining and...

Customer segmentation has featured in the marketing tool kit for a long time as a means to understand customers and develop targeted communications. Customer Intelligence (CI) professionals use...

How Six Vendors Stack Up In A Mature Yet Changing Market
In Forrester's 70-criteria evaluation of customer analytics vendors, we identified the six most significant software providers — Angoss Software, FICO, IBM, KXEN, Pitney Bowes, and SAS —...

Analytically Driven Personalization Increases Retention And Return
Companies personalize products, offers, content, and communications for a variety of reasons — to treat customers uniquely, to make them feel special, and to encourage them to spend more. Firms...
Why Customer Intelligence Pros Must Collaborate With Interactive Marketers
The emergence of data management platforms (DMPs) as a technology that serves the audience segmentation and targeting needs of interactive marketers has wide implications for Customer Intelligence...
In the future, consumers will manage their data through a concept that Forrester calls personal identity management (PIDM). Customers' control over their data affects the analytics performed on that...
Processes: The Customer Analytics Playbook
Marketers continue to emphasize acquisition and are willing to take the risk of acquiring customers with low long-term profitability. While retention efforts typically enjoy the spotlight in an...
Tools And Technology: The Customer Analytics Playbook
With the increased focus on data-driven marketing, few firms have the budgets, technology capabilities, or analytical skills to advance their analytics agendas internally, and they frequently turn to...