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.
Landscape: The Customer Loyalty Playbook
Consumers join programs of brands they like, but they limit their participation to only a few programs and are motivated by the desire to seek out discounts. Since 2008, consumer attitudes toward...
As the demand for customer intelligence (CI) from business stakeholders grows and more organizations increase their CI maturity, organizations' marketing agency needs have also changed. A few...

Integrating Customer Data Is Vital, But It's Not The End Goal
We recently surveyed 137 Customer Intelligence (CI) professionals about their use of analytical applications and priorities. Users are investing in solutions that transform insight into action, but a...

Processes: The Customer Loyalty Playbook
Loyalty programs promise to increase retention and satisfaction, but they often fall short of delivering results because they lack an innovative strategy to set them apart from the competition. This...

This report provides a case study supporting Forrester's best practices for customer intelligence professionals working to drive customer loyalty. Forrester identifies four crucial best practices for...
In our recent study of database marketing service providers (MSPs), we found that MSPs exist in a diverse vendor ecosystem but enjoy significant customer loyalty. While most firms prioritize deep...
US health insurance companies are in the midst of a systemwide transition to meet the requirements of congressionally mandated healthcare reform awaiting them in 2014. While insurers have made great...
With the increase in high-profile data breaches and the recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settlements that hold Facebook, Google, and Twitter accountable to strict privacy audit guidelines,...

Cross-channel campaign management (CCCM) tools are the heart of the enterprise marketing platform, yet campaigns are too rigid and too rooted in batch-based techniques to allow firms to achieve...
Continuous Improvement: The Customer Loyalty Playbook
Successful loyalty programs offer a boost to customer retention, customer satisfaction, and the bottom line. But today, many programs fail to reach success because they haven't mastered even basic...
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...

CI Professionals Are Fighting Wars On Multiple Fronts In Order To Evolve
As Customer Intelligence (CI) matures, CI professionals must adapt how they capture, integrate and manage, analyze, and apply knowledge about their customers. As we look ahead to 2011, we expect CI...
Vision: The Cross-Channel Attribution Playbook
Today's customers interact with brands via a wide variety of touchpoints and at different stages of the brand life cycle. But companies measure campaign success using last-touch methods that fail to...
Findings From Forrester's Q4 2010 Survey Of Customer Intelligence Professionals
Forrester recently surveyed 137 Customer Intelligence professionals to understand their marketing technology priorities, plans, and budgets. Old issues continue to fester — a lack of a...

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...
The online marketing suite supports many of the priorities that customer insights (CI) professionals hold dear: customer centricity, cost efficiency, measurement, and marketing relevance. But...

Continuous Improvement: The Social Intelligence Playbook
If you represent a large consumer brand, consider a social intelligence command center — a dedicated resource for listening to the groundswell. A command center like this can improve your...
Customer Intelligence (CI) professionals should constantly evaluate their need for next-generation marketing measurement processes, including cross-channel attribution. Successfully implementing...
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...
Epsilon, KBM Group, And Targetbase Lead A Strong Chasing Pack
In Forrester's 90-criteria evaluation of US database marketing service providers (MSPs), we found that Epsilon, KBM Group, and Targetbase led the pack because of their analytical and strategic...
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...