Bantam Live

Ed Thompson is a distiguished CRM analyst at Gartner. On May 5, 2009, SiliconRepublic in an article entitled "The Future of CRM is Social, says Gartner Analyst" published this quote from him:

"Collaborative CRM, or social CRM as it is becoming known, is effectively traditional CRM attuned to a world where customers and businesses live pretty much face to face. ...In the past 10 years, less than 10% of CRM budgets were invested in the social aspect, but the rise of services such as Twitter and Facebook are hard to ignore. Traditional CRM budgets are shifting towards social CRM applications..."

As we noted in the last paragraph of a previous post, we're hesitant on labeling Bantam with "CRM" because it goes well beyond that functionality with its communication, collaboration, other apps for business teams. However, the "social CRM" aspect of Bantam does indeed reflect a significant part of what we're bringing to market, and we think some CRM players with their legacy rooted mindsets systems built for closed enterprises will be challenged to join the social future.