Matt Asay recently posted some commentary on the benefits of Software-as-a-Service and Open Source technology in a business downturn.  As usual Matt draws useful conclusions on how IT groups might react over the coming months (and years!).

Read the rest of this entry »

salesforce.com is about to undergo the third release of the year (or the first release of next year if you go by the branding) - Winter ‘09.  One of the key points of difference for salesforce.com in our experience is the value it adds "for free" with it’s regular release schedule.  This is a much easier upgrade process than your traditional software where business users have to fight for, queue and pay for the IT department to apply upgrades.

Read the rest of this entry »

The business challenge

We’re undertaking a vendor selection for a client seeking a Marketing Automation and Email Marketing solution.  They want to introduce efficiencies into an already very busy Marketing department while improving the service that they provide to the wider Sales and Servicing communities.

Potential vendors

Based upon an initial criteria of integration with salesforce.com CRM, the shortlist comprises the following:

All of these vendors have some integration with salesforce.com and Investment Management experience.  However, this is a very immature software category in the Investment Management industry.  The salesforce.com integration is a key factor so there are no other vendors in play at present.  However as the industry and software matures, maybe there are some emerging solutions that need to be considered in future.

A wider net

So has anyone experience with other Marketing Automation vendors?  Are there some that don’t currently integrate with salesforce.com but are a strong enough proposition to be considered in isolation? We welcome all suggestions and comments.  In return, we’ll happily share our experience of Marketing Automation within the Investment Management industry with you.

Transforming Investment Management Sales, Marketing and Client Services   Based on a detailed vision and previous experience of transformation projects, we provide specialist services to support any Investment Manager seeking to:   improve their Client Communications, Reporting, CRM, Contact Management, Fund and Marketing communciations processes and offerings transform their Distribution firm through technology, process and organisation-enabled change programmes establish a shared, centralised Sales, Marketing and Client Services platform that enables global, multi-product, multi-channel support

For many years, Investment Management has underinvested in it’s Distribution capabilities. The challenges of selling, marketing and servicing in an increasingly complex market have been accentuated by an environment of manual processes, tactical systems and unstructured organisations. . We are now seeing increasing activity to alleviate this situation. Our services assist Investment Managers to enable this change through:

.

• a technology vision that develops a Distribution Platform for Investment Managers and Financial Service companies

• process design, re-engineering and change management

• structural organisation change to take advantage of specialist and centralisation

Specialised support packages

Tomtom Consultants has assisted a number of companies with their initial CRM projects, enabling both the technology and  processes that result in success for the business.  Once up-and-running our clients are able to support the majority of ongoing needs internally.  However, a regular programme of external support, education and development often helps keep CRM in the shape that the business needs it.  At present, we provide support packages focused around the following business areas:

• CRM for Financial Services SalesForce Automation; more details are in the brochure here

• Client Communications for Institutional Investment Management

• New Business Management for Financial Services

• Client Service and Support for Institutional and Corporate channels