June 7, 2013
Perhaps it is the innate spin-control voodoo persuasion skills of anyone involved with the marketing function, but it seems pretty clear that Salesforce.com's whopper $2.5 billion acquisition of marketing software company ExactTarget will signal a turning point for the entire cloud marketing automation software space.
It's hard to remember a time when we didn't equate CRM applications with the sales team.
But if you stop to think about the actual name of the category (customer relationship management), it's clear that a zillion other processes that contribute to that cause have been left out of the equation: everything from marketing campaigns to billing and invoicing to financial management or even just sales insights. Hence the thriving Salesforce.com eco-system, as well as strategic relationships that many Salesforce consulting partners are forging to help integrate other capabilities for their customers. Bluewolf's strategic alliance with FinancialForce, announced earlier this week, is just one example.
Actually, it probably won't surprise you at all to hear that Bluewolf is just one of several cloud integrators who reached out to me with all sorts of enthusiastic comments about the forthcoming union disclosed by Salesforce.com earlier this week. Offered Eric Berridge, co-founder and CEO of Bluewolf:
