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.
Using Cross-Channel Attribution To Understand Marketing Effectiveness
In an environment where media fragmentation is the status quo, traditional one-to-one, last-touch methods of allocating demand to marketing efforts are outdated and lead to a suboptimal marketing...
Trends 2010: Listening Platforms
Customer service managers must pragmatically balance the needs of their customers with the needs of their business. Listening platforms allow customer service organizations to better understand how...


During our recent customer engagement agency (CEA) Forrester Wave™, we surveyed more than 100 CEA clients to understand their choice of vendors and the quality of the relationships. We found...
Orchestrate Digital For The Best Brand Experience
Digital has been widely embraced by consumers and by many parts of the enterprise. But the adoption of digital channels — Web sites, mobile apps, online sales and customer service, and other...
Drive Smarter Customer Loyalty With Customer Intelligence
Customer loyalty is a hot topic. Companies look to loyalty programs to enhance customer knowledge and drive customer retention, revenue, and engagement. But, while they see the potential of loyalty...
Executive Overview: The Social Intelligence Playbook
Social media's prevalence across the Web gives consumers and brands a new way to connect online. But while most businesses know the importance of social media, most are missing opportunities by not...

In the age of the customer, the old rules and standards of database marketing will be the downfall of traditional retailers. While financial services, travel, and a handful of cutting-edge merchants...
In researching the Forrester Wave™ evaluation of loyalty program service providers, we surveyed 94 loyalty program service provider customers about their vendor partnerships. We found that...
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...
Competitive Strategy In The Age Of The Customer
The empowered customer is driving new models of business success that are rapidly redefining the CIO's investment agenda in successful firms — the inauguration of what Forrester calls the age...
Performance Management: The Social Marketing Playbook
You've no doubt heard the question: "How do we know that social marketing drives sales?" But just as not all TV spots or billboards are intended to drive direct response, not every social marketing...
Performance Management: The Business Process Management Playbook
Advancing technology for business process management (BPM) and analytics is allowing broader and deeper treatment of performance metrics. As a result, defining and using performance metrics is an...

Customer experience — its relationship to loyalty and satisfaction and the likelihood that it will lead to future business — is now a well-established discipline. However, measuring...

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 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...

Findings From The Forrester Wave™ Evaluation On Online Testing
During the Forrester Wave™ evaluation of online testing applications, we surveyed 79 online testing customers about their vendor partnerships and online testing practices. Online testing's...
Adobe And Autonomy Lead A Pack Of Strong Performers
In Forrester's inaugural evaluation of online testing vendors, we researched eight companies across 82 criteria. We found that Adobe and Autonomy lead the pack because of their consistent strength...
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,...
Apply Customer Intelligence Best Practices To Safely Test Social Data
Although more and more businesses are adopting social intelligence strategies, regulated companies — such as those in the insurance, finance, pharmaceutical, and healthcare space — remain...

Assessment: The Customer Loyalty Playbook
Successful intelligence-driven loyalty involves five major components: strategy, data, customer intelligence, offer management, and measurement. This report outlines Forrester's assessment process...

How Seven Vendors Are Addressing The Evolution Of Online Testing
In Forrester's 53-criteria evaluation of online testing platform vendors, we identified the seven most significant providers — Adobe, Autonomy, Maxymiser, Monetate, Optimizely, SiteSpect, and...