Geniuses Aren’t Always First – They Just Know When to Shift

When we think of geniuses in business – it’s interesting that the leaders we think of weren’t always first to a concept. Microsoft had subscriptions for music before Spotify or Apple. HP had a visual OS before Mr. Jobs or Mr. Gates. Before there was an Amazon fresh or talk of drone deliveries – there was the famous flop called Webvan

In the world of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Marc Benioff has had the word ‘genius’ mentioned when describing him more than a few times. Salesforce is all over the news today as its expected to announce a shift from previous positions and purchase Slack.

Apps In Context

I’ll get right back to the big news. Recently – I got a notification on Siri that was relevant to this story and made me smile. It was to open a Microsoft Power App our firm CongruentX built called Credibly.AI. Much more about that another time – just know that it’s an app that aggregates info from CRM and a few other places, sprinkles in some AI and give you insights in your sales process.

Context = Engagement

Aside from obvious reasons of bringing it up – the bigger reason for bringing up our little app is that the notification was not to go open our enterprise Customer Relationship Management system. Algorithms aside – The notification means I use the app. I use it a lot – on my phone and on Microsoft Teams.

Shifting but Not Gone

Mr. Benioff has been the king of cloud CRM for many years. Like the genius he’s described to be – he sees a shift underway. CRM as we all know it is undergoing a shift. The shift is certainly not that its going away – its just moving.

After years of results that analysts say tend to be hit or miss – literally an average of 50% satisfaction – CRM has been gradually moving from a “system of engagement” to a “system of record”. It’s being surrounded by contextual apps that are huge in their own way like Outreach.io type applications to low code, edge innovation like our little app built in Microsoft Power Apps.

Context and Collaboration

Working from home has accelerated another disrupter – remote collaboration in applications like Slack and more recently in Microsoft Teams. I listen to a great podcast from Nathan Latka. After an insightful discussion albeit with sometimes Simon Cowell like directness – he asks several questions of his guests – CEOs of SAAS companies. One of the questions is, besides your own, what is your favorite tech tool? In the hundreds of episodes, I have listened to, Slack is the top solution. The SAAS CEOs say it helps their businesses collaborate.

I imagine if Nathan interviewed enterprise customers – they might say Teams more often. Either way – There is a massive shift to get “insights about our stuff” into the place we collaborate. It just makes sense that there is a mad rush to build apps and solutions for Slack and Teams. Did I mention that Credibly.AI is also available in Teams?

Defense is Smart Too

Salesforce is crushing it with nearly 20% market share but what if the market he dominates is shifting? What if the market is shifting from millions of people engaging with Salesforce every day to people engaging with collaboration software like Slack and Teams every day and the information sent behind the scenes to a CRM system.

Microsoft seemingly saw this trend a while back. They even stopped formally using the term CRM. As long as their millions of users are using “Microsoft” – through Teams is just fine.

If Mr. Benioff buys Slack – he doesn’t do it for their revenue – they are a long way from adding to anybody’s bottom line. The genius of Benioff is he buys Slack so millions of people still log into “Salesforce” every day.

PS…Did I mention that Credibly.AI works with Salesforce too?

PSS… If you want to learn about how you can get more your of your CRM today, Collaborate better today, and use Low code Apps to drive revenue today – and all of that with technology you likely already own, without waiting for years for acquisitions to work out – visit us at cxwebdev.mystagingwebsite.com. We can show you how to deliver insights in context to your users through Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office, and the Power Platform all completely integrated back to your CRM today.