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.
When will we see mobile and home telephone numbers (E.164 numbers) replaced by addresses, such as a SIP address? The UK Payments Council is proposing to use a mobile number as a unique identifier in...
Introducing The Forrester Marketing Flywheel For Assessing Budget Allocations
The tech industry is returning to expansion mode, and tech marketers must gear up to drive profitable revenue growth for their companies. However, unlike previous generations of tech industry growth,...

Benchmarking Web Sites Using Forrester's Online Video Product Scorecard
Over the past year, our video strategy series has presented the business case goals and best practices for adding video to your Web site. In this report, we demonstrate how our online video product...

Forrester conducted an online survey fielded in March 2012 of 4,518 US individuals ages 18 to 88. For results based on a randomly chosen sample of this size (N = 4,518), there is 95% confidence that...
Benchmarks: The Email Marketing Playbook
This report helps interactive marketers benchmark their email marketing campaigns against 70 of their peers that Forrester reviewed, from the consumer goods, retail, travel, financial services,...

Faced with fragmented customer bases and unclear regulatory requirements, business-to-business (B2B) financial services marketers have traditionally shied away from launching social marketing...
How To Navigate The Regulatory Minefield And Build Effective Social Media Programs
Financial services firms are beginning to adopt social technologies: In fact, we found that 79% of companies in the industry have some social media presence. But, held back by regulatory concerns and...
ForecastView Spreadsheet
Interactive marketing spending segmented by industries. Each industry's IM spending is further broken into the various components of IM: display, paid search, SEO, email, and mobile advertising.

Caution continues to dominate business-to-business (B2B) financial services interactive marketing strategies as budget squeezes, regulatory concerns, and a lack of digital experience impede...
Sensor Devices Disrupt Marketing Practices
Your customers are becoming even more connected. Sensor-laden devices on our bodies, in our homes, in our cars, and virtually everywhere else are creating new opportunities and demands for marketers....

What opportunity does Google Wallet present to product strategists at banks?
Many financial services firms have been moving transactions out of the branch and into more cost-effective channels in the past few years. The introduction of Internet banking services has gotten...
How B2B Interactive Marketers Can Drive Engagement, Not Just Leads
B2B interactive marketers today are tasked with more than just building lead pipelines — they must also work alongside sales teams to build deeper customer relationships. Increasingly, B2B...

A Global Consumer Technographics® Report
Based on sheer geographical size, Russia is the largest country in the world. It spans nine time zones, represents a diverse ethnic population, and is on track to be one of the five largest economies...
The pace of innovation in mobile payments is accelerating. 2011 is finally the year when Near Field Communication (NFC) will reach the hands of millions of consumers, while initiatives in the digital...

Benchmarks: The Search Marketing Playbook
Forrester applied an adjusted version of its search marketing review methodology to 300 paid search ads from the retail, travel, consumer packaged goods (CPG), media and entertainment, financial...
Google's statement that mobile payments are just getting started is correct. Its announcement on May 26, 2011, was another early salvo in what will be a long and hard-fought battle to change...
Tackle The Low-Hanging Fruit To Maximize 2012 Budgets
Business-to-business (B2B) financial services interactive marketers will likely feel the squeeze in 2012 as they look to deliver improved performance with limited budget growth. While this economic...
After so many years of unmet expectations, gambling is finally going mobile. Although it's not yet the promised El Dorado, and despite the fact that competition is likely to be fiercer in a complex...
Talk of "the year of mobile" is not only passé but also irrelevant. The disruptive forces of mobile arrived more than two years ago and will fundamentally change businesses in the decades to...

Forrester believes that chief marketing officers (CMOs) must abandon the century-old marketing/sales funnel and embrace the customer life cycle in order to better manage their customers' interaction...
