“Leading companies will win digitally by continually innovating brand experiences that drive transformative results,” said Dave Mankowski, Chief Growth Officer for CX software company Bounteous, at our recent MarTech conference.

Many of these digital wins don’t come easy though. In Mankowski’s experience, he sees that innovation often comes slower than expected. Signs of a slow transformation can be seen even in the retail industry overall, where only 20% of retail is done digitally through e-commerce.

Both challenges to innovation and opportunities to advance it do exist within the organizational structure, however, and it’s up to marketers to understand the key drivers to get a transformational win.

“You can get transformational results by doing things better — by unlocking the potential that already exists within the enterprise,” said Mankowski.

“It’s not that companies are moving too early at this point, and it’s not because there’s not great potential for results,” he explained.

When a company has decided to invest in new technology, for example, failure or success can hinge on avoiding the following mistakes.

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Microsoft has announced that it has acquired iPaaS and business process solutions company Clear Software. Microsoft customers who build their own business solutions with Microsoft Power Platform are expected to gain from stronger integration with outside systems as a result of the deal.

Clear Software will help Microsoft Power Platform users by providing strong connectivity into SAP and Oracle.

Adding Clear Software’s API access will strengthen and accelerate how customers use data and processes beyond Microsoft’s first-party services.

Why we care. Microsoft’s enterprise business customers, and their marketing organizations, obviously would like the most flexibility they can have with developing their own business applications and solutions. By adding Oracle and SAP integrations into the mix through this acquisition, the Microsoft Power Platform gives itself a shot at remaining relevant and useful to enterprises looking to maximize their data-driven business insights.

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Marketing automation platforms form the backbone of marketing operations, increasingly serving as sophisticated marketing orchestration platforms. MarTech’s “B2B Marketing Automation Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide,” examines the market for B2B marketing automation software platforms. This report includes profiles of 13 leading B2B marketing automation vendors, capabilities comparisons, pricing information, and recommended steps for evaluating and purchasing.

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Twilio, the customer communications service company, has announced the launch of a new component of its Customer Engagement Platform, Twilio Engage. The latest offering adds a marketing engine to Twilio’s existing Twilio Frontline for sales and Twilio Flex for customer service.

Twilio Engage leverages the capabilities of Segment, the customer data infrastructure solution which Twilio picked up for $3.2 billion last October. In addition to aggregating real-time insights into customer behavior, Twilio Engage will allow marketers to build micro-audiences and deliver personalized experiences to a wide range of channels through Twilio’s communications APIs.

Why we care. Two reasons. First, it’s interesting to watch Twilio building out its capabilities as a customer experience suite that is authentically omnichannel-first rather than email/website first with other channels added.

Secondly, the structure here echoes Real Story Group’s distinction between process-oriented and engagement-oriented CDPs with Segment acting as the customer data infrastructure part of the puzzle here, rather than being used for orchestration. 

Read more here.

More and more, the key to solving critical marketing and marketing ops challenges is marketing technology. But with 7,000+ solutions on the market, finding the right one for your needs can be overwhelming. MarTech makes it easy. Discover dozens of time-saving, profit-boosting solutions and the actionable tactics to effectively leverage them… all in one place, all without leaving your desk, and all for free.

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“On social media build trust by: 1) following up; 2) following through.” Gabriela Cardoza, corporate and personal brand consultant