Sales and Marketing Need to Sleep in
the Same Bed
Bad marriages between the two are epidemic

Differences in the way that sales teams and marketing departments are focused, managed and paid often leads them in conflicting directions. But there are strategies for harmonizing their missions that benefit everyone.  Christine Crandell, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for data center technology provider Egenera, has seen it in some of the nation’s leading technology companies and helped repair their sales-marketing rifts.

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Case Study: How Ariba Became a Market Leader by Getting Sales and Marketing to Cooperate

Coordination between a company’s sales force and its marketing department sometimes requres direct and active intervention.  Christine Crandell, who is currently executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Egenera, was previously a marketing VP for Ariba, where she learned first-hand about bringing the two functions together.

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Looking Around the Corner at the Future
Turning market intelligence into a strategic weapon

Chessboarding and Forward Viewing are powerful tools which, in the right hands, can enable a company to anticipate where its markets and competitors are headed and to prepare itself accordingly.  In her capacity as executive vice president and chief marketing officer for data center technology provider Egenera, Inc., Christine Crandell applies those disciplines to her company’s business development, alliances and global market strategy. Here she explains how and why to use them.

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Earning Your Stripes Every Day
How high-speed SaaS markets force providers to excel

SaaS is more than traditional software delivered online.  It’s a whole different type of business with its own distinctive set of challenges.  Greg Coticchia, who has worked in both types of business, explains the difference. 

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Next Gen SaaS Strategy
How to enhance online software services for competitive advantage

Chris Gormley, PSN Member and executive with peer-to-peer information technology provider Tiversa, explains three ways to increase stickiness with subscribers to Software-as-a-Service applications. With growing competition among SaaS providers, finding ways to seamlessly deliver human expertise and knowledge assets through a SaaS application can also lead to new sales opportunities and new sources of revenue.

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Five Steps from Recessionary Turtle to
Rebound Hare
Plan your recovery now, before it’s too late.

Implementing a deliberate strategy for identifying early signs of recovery and changes in the market along with your company’s responses to them, can turn a sour economic time into a period of healthy transformation. Christine Crandell, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Egenera, explains how to do it.

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Searching for Your Inner Google
Focus on authentic strengths

Particularly during tough times, a company’s ability to survive requires knowing what its core values are and then focusing relentlessly on building the business around them.  At search giant Google, whose profusion of new products has been the awe of American industry, economic contraction has prompted the company to sharpen its focus on projects that match its core strengths.  Google New Business Development Manager Robert Meese explains.

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Harvesting Good Ideas      
At Bayer, they’re going out into the field

Doing it all yourself is so last century.  And it’s probably going to lead to the wrong answers anyway.  So at Bayer, the quest for innovative ideas has become much more outwardly focused with the wisdom of crowds unseating the solitary inventor in identifying relevant product concepts.  Ten-year Bayer veteran Brian Long, who is charged with managing innovation at the company’s New Business Creative Center, explains.

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Revving the Product Management Function  
Better company performance requires a better-performing product management team

Transitioning a technically-oriented product management function into a market-focused one requires re-engineering people's expectations as much as reorganizing their workflow.  Veteran product strategist Jason Baim has led that effort at TeleTracking Technologies and talks about the evolution. 

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Morphing Maps
The number, substance and detail of a company’s product roadmaps evolve along with it.

Product roadmaps, along with their extended family of product line and company strategy roadmaps, have different applications at different stages in a company’s life. Andrew Hally, Vice President of software maker Unica, tells how.


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