Theme of the week: B2B is huge, soon twice the size of B2C by some projected metrics; bigger, moving faster, more agile and complex than ever. But that is both a blessing and a curse: the way businesses work together and collaborate is shifting so quickly it’s hard to stop to absorb learning before the next critical-seeming insight arrives.
Here’s a summary of our top 5 stories Nov 3-7:
1. B2B ecommerce, powered by Alibaba, ready to explode? One projection says it will hit $6.7 trillion market value in 6 years. Frost and Sullivan projects that number as twice as big as B2C.
2. MSFT loves the cloud: Microsoft deploying ERP in addition to CRM apps via private cloud. Customer acceptance and deployment frequency moving up; Microsoft Business Solutions lead: 15% Dynamics growth last quarter, 80% for CRM; ERP behind, but accelerating.
3. Whither ad tech? Are the innovative energy, attention, and VC dollars (if not actual marketing budgets) shifting definitively to marketing technology? Are we about to see the two combine as at this conference, and converge? One analyst predicts adtech will eat martech. Our coverage of AdTechNY. dotRising’s YouTube channel has some good interviews from adtech London. Interviews with industry executives and commentary on adtech/martech convergence coming up on B2bNN.
4. End of year lists and planning are in full swing. IT leaders’ priorities for the next 3 years: perennial security, MDM, big data. Full report (reg req’d). In the public sector, security, funding top US state government CIO priorities.
5. Demand gen is broken: only 2.8 percent of B2B marketers surveyed by Annuitas were meeting their demand gen targets. Very few are coordinating sales training and demand generation. Sirius Decisions looks at 2015 trends.
Next week’s coverage on B2BNN looks at the death of the press release, how ecommerce is taking a bite out of the Canadian grocery industry, the difference between VC cultures in Canada and the U.S., and how to best use Twitter Lists for your business.
