For Technology Product Management & Marketing Professionals

2009 Forrester Groundswell Awards Winners Offer B2B Tech Marketers Valuable Social Media Lessons

by Laura Ramos, November 4, 2009

Business-to-business (B2B) marketers approach social strategy with a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism. Most want to know which firms execute social pursuits well and what tangible outcomes occur. The B2B Division winners of the 2009 Forrester Groundswell . . .

For Technology Product Management & Marketing Professionals

Reach Real Global B2B Tech Audiences With Virtual Events

New Tools And Best Practices For B2B Marketing Beyond Borders

by Jennifer Belissent, Ph.D., October 6, 2009

The downturn is turning out to be a double whammy for tech marketers. Budget cuts and a significant drop in the effectiveness of tried-and-true tools, like trade shows, make calls to reach wider audiences through traditional marketing activities problematic. . . .

For Technology Product Management & Marketing Professionals

Turning Your B2B Web Site Into A Community Hub

Social Media Marketing That Is Persistent, Consistent, And Scalable

by G. Oliver Young, Peter Burris, September 30, 2009

Social media is becoming a major focus in business-to-business (B2B) marketing. However, many marketers are allowing their community marketing approaches to emerge out of piecemeal technology purchases and community participation. To embrace a customer . . .

For Technology Product Management & Marketing Professionals

Get B2B Messages Right: Balance Global Consistency And Local Relevancy

by Jennifer Belissent, Ph.D., September 15, 2009

With marketing budgets under close scrutiny, global tech marketers need to ensure that marketing messages are spot on. Yet, "spot on" is not the same for all audiences across markets. While corporate marketing wants to maintain consistent brand messages . . .

For Technology Sales Enablement Professionals

Demand Insights: Healthcare Budgets And Spending Trends

Data Shows Hospital IT Buyers Need Strong Business Cases And Proof Of ROI

by Eric G. Brown, September 2, 2009

Hospitals' historically lackluster IT spending continues through 2009, with the recurring themes of low outsourcing, tight budgets, and focus on operational stability over innovation. But after years of waiting for widespread adoption of electronic health . . .

For Technology Sales Enablement Professionals

Optimize Performance By Driving Enterprise Sales Outcomes

Moving From Deliverables To An End-To-End Sales Support Orientation

by Scott Santucci, July 17, 2009

Driving down the cost of sales, while simultaneously boosting productivity, continues to be a top business priority and an objective that requires a new way to support and evaluate the sales system. Executive management lacks the visibility into the cause-and-effect . . .

For Technology Sales Enablement Professionals

Forrester's Value-Equation Sales Messaging Framework

Enabling Sales Teams To Tailor The Right Messages To A Given Account

by Scott Santucci, June 16, 2009

As technology vendors broaden their product portfolios and ask their account teams to sell across all levels within their client roster, traditional approaches to hard-coded value propositions are becoming antiquated. Sales enablement professionals should . . .

For Technology Sales Enablement Professionals

Help Sales Teams Connect With Buyers By Mining Quantitative Survey Data

How Surveys Like Forrester's Business Data Services Can Inform One-On-One Sales Conversations

by Eric G. Brown, Emily Van Metre, June 11, 2009

Sales teams know plenty about your offering and capabilities — and little about the people they try to sell them to. Valuable sales conversations, the kind that your top salespeople have that bring in the lion's share of your revenue, start with a good . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Road Map: Workforce Resource Management — A New Market For Project Portfolio Management

PPM, BPM, And Web 2.0 Collaboration Are On A Collision Course

by Tim Harmon, May 4, 2009

Users have to employ a plethora of software tools to effect a comprehensive workforce resource management capability, including project portfolio management (PPM), business process management (BPM), and human capital management (HCM) products. PPM vendors, . . .

For Technology Sales Enablement Professionals

Gaining Executive-Level Access

Marketing Strategies To Help Salespeople Secure Higher-Level Meetings

by Scott Santucci, April 16, 2009

As technology industry vendors pursue go-to-market strategies intended for more executive-level ears, helping sales forces gain higher levels of access inside targeted accounts is becoming increasingly important. This task isn't as simple as replacing . . .

For B2B Market Research Professionals

The State Of Emerging Enterprise Hardware Trends: 2008 To 2009

Business Data Services North America And Europe

by Frank E. Gillett, February 27, 2009

This report provides sample highlights of an extensive data set collected across North American and European enterprises via our Enterprise And SMB Hardware Survey, North America And Europe, Q3 2008. Hot topics include server virtualization, green IT, . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

What App Dev Pros Need To Know In Building A Recession-Proof Packaged Apps Strategy

by R "Ray" Wang, February 9, 2009

The economic recession brings increased pressure on application development professionals to rationalize budgets in the context of both packaged apps and applications development. As app dev leaders and their business stakeholders scrutinize existing . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

A Go-To-Market Prescription For Economic Maladies

Looking At The Market Through SMB-Tinted Lenses

by Tim Harmon, January 30, 2009

During an economic downturn, all companies exhibit conservative technology buying patterns, not just small and medium-size businesses (SMBs). Consequently, many go-to-market models built for SMB tech buyers now apply to larger enterprises as well. Vendors . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Shape Your Apps Strategy To Reflect New SaaS Licensing And Pricing Trends

by R "Ray" Wang, January 14, 2009

Recessionary forces drive applications professionals to seek new delivery models such as software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and other XaaS (X-as-a-Service) models. But with these options' upfront benefits in choice, value, and . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

How Big Is SaaS In IT Management Software?

by Peter O'Neill, November 17, 2008

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is disrupting the IT management software market. Incumbent software vendors are setting up new business units and adding SaaS offerings to existing portfolios; managed service providers are repositioning their offerings to . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

BlackBerry: An Emerging Platform For Mobile Collaboration

by Ted Schadler, October 28, 2008

BlackBerry is a great enterprise email device today. But what else can it do for information workers? It turns out that the BlackBerry platform is also an enterprise-grade tool kit to build mobile content and collaboration applications. ISV support from . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

What Telecom Strategists Should Do In The Wake Of Financial Market Chaos

by Mike Cansfield, October 9, 2008

The media is obsessed with the earthquake going on in the financial sector — and with good reason. Assuming the initiatives taken by governments and central banks work, and the banking sector recovers, then they will have solved one problem. But the earthquake . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

A New ERP For The 21st Century

The Knowledge Economy Calls For A New Resource Management Perspective

by Tim Harmon, October 3, 2008

Enterprise applications vendors successfully address users' operations objectives in the pursuit of efficiency improvement. But companies' executive and senior managers are focused on business transformation, which is not supported by today's operations-oriented . . .

For Technology Sales Enablement Professionals

A Guide To Building Role Profiles

How They Support Your Role-Based Marketing Initiative And What Goes Into Them

by Eric G. Brown, July 2, 2008

Technology marketers are finding that crafting messages for specific roles within a prospect organization, rather than to the company overall, does a better job at getting the attention of key buyers and stakeholders and ultimately drives leads and business . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

The Mashup Opportunity

How To Make Money In The Evolving Mashup Ecosystem

by G. Oliver Young, May 6, 2008

Mashups — custom applications that combine multiple, disparate data sources into something new and unique — are coming to the enterprise. Forrester projects that the enterprise mashup market will reach nearly $700 million by 2013; while this means that . . .

For Technology Sales Enablement Professionals

Building Effective Vertical Industry Thought Leadership Programs

How Capgemini Capitalizes On Research-Driven Marketing

by Ellen Carney, April 10, 2008

Industry thought leadership demands deep insight into specific vertical industries. Many technology providers conduct primary research to validate their thought leadership. But primary research can be expensive, so how should companies in the early stages . . .

For Technology Sales Enablement Professionals

Putting The Right Price On Industry Solutions

Make Industry-Specific Pricing Part Of Your Industry Marketing Plan

by Ellen Carney, March 24, 2008

In a weakening economy, a lot of tech marketers succumb to pressures to reduce prices to sustain demand. Yet tech marketers whose firms deliver strong industry experience matched with a portfolio of service-led solutions that solve industry business challenges . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

The CRM 2.0 Imperative

Look To New Solutions To Keep Pace With The Emerging Social Customer

by William Band, March 10, 2008

Customer relationship management (CRM) is evolving from its traditional focus on optimizing customer-facing transactional processes to include the strategies and technologies to develop collaborative connections with customers, suppliers, and even competitors. . . .

For Technology Sales Enablement Professionals

What Industry Marketers Need To Know Before Going Global

Lessons From PwC: Applying Global Thinking To Local Action

by Ellen Carney, January 30, 2008

Global industry marketing strategies promise seamless service regardless of where it's delivered, but local market conditions matter, too, posing a challenge for tech marketers and consulting directors trying to articulate a clear industry strategy. Forrester . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Trends: Business Rules Platforms 2008

by John R. Rymer, December 21, 2007

Three key trends are driving the market for business rules platforms. First, vendors are bearing down on "authoring" tools and processes that allow businesspeople to directly create and maintain business rules. Second, the independent vendors are adding . . .