Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Nadella Banks On LinkedIn Data To Challenge Salesforce (reuters.com)
Microsoft is rolling out upgrades to its sales software that integrates data from LinkedIn, an initiative that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Reuters was central to the company's long-term strategy for building specialized business software. From the report: The improvements to Dynamics 365, as Microsoft's sales software is called, are a challenge to market leader Salesforce.com and represent the first major product initiative to spring from Microsoft's $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, the business-focused social network. The new features will comb through a salesperson's email, calendar and LinkedIn relationships to help gauge how warm their relationship is with a potential customer. The system will recommend ways to save an at-risk deal, like calling in a co-worker who is connected to the potential customer on LinkedIn. [...] The artificial intelligence, or AI, capabilities of the software would be central, Nadella said. "I want to be able to democratize AI so that any customer using these products is able to, in fact, take their own data and load it into AI for themselves," he said. On Monday, LinkedIn said it has surpassed 500 million members globally, one of the first big milestones for the business social network since its acquisition.
"democratize"
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I'm somewhat doubtful as to who this is ultimately designed to help, you or Microsoft?
Also, are people's networks really that reliable? I get requests to connect all the time from people I don't know...I refuse but plenty of people don't and just "contact farm" like on FB
I'm sure some infinitesimal fraction of LinkedIn's data is accurate and not just puffery. Didn't we have people complaining here on slashdot that linkedin or other users were certifying them as experts at skills they themselves did not claim to have?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I don't give a shit what the privacy statement says. New owner, new statement,agreement,rules, whatever - fuck you if you don't like it. Good luck stopping them.
Are complaining like crazy about the loss of some tools and the UI. I use LinkedIn for opportunitiesâ, that's it.
So this is 'not' a social network, but a professional network that is structured 'socially'. OK
And now we're to consider the network's AI behavior of connecting people together, based on data-scraping, as an intelligent desirable thing?
Look, they just want to groom us for eventually becoming hooked on their cloud services or software, etc.
LkdIn: Hi there Big Guy, I see your customer A says he hates your guts, would you like me to contact him for you and explain you are a nice guy? ...well, he will be some day, my AI programming was very firm on this.
Big Guy: No, I can handle this.
LkdIn: Errrmm...how about if I send him some flowers?
Big Guy: I'll take care of it.
LkdIn: Flowers are very nice gesture, might I suggest a nice floral arrangement?
Big Guy: He's my customer, I can deal with him.
LkdIn: Have you considered candy?
Big Guy: Will you leave me the fuck alone, I'll handle it.
LkdIn: Not worry, I sent him a sympathy card over his death.
Big Guy: What? He's not dead!!
LkdIn:
Big Guy: (pulls out gun, shoots self in head)
LkdIn: Look bucko, I'm not sending you a sympathy card after that gratuitous gesture.
Now I get to look forward to co-workers being further tricked into influencing me. As an engineer, I've come to realize that the only mission of a salesman is to manipulate your otherwise objective decision making in their favor. ("Objective" to the extent possible for a human). Where possible, I no longer accept sales calls or meetings with sales. Sometimes, it's hard to let go of the feeling I'm being rude. Companies who don't have a hard-boiled, experienced purchasing person doing most of the talking during major buying efforts are fools. Unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule.
People are on LinkedIn for their own reasons. They do not want to 'abuse' their LinkedIn relations for the company they happen to work for at the moment. When you start abusing your contacts like this there won't be much benefit left very quickly. Assuming there was nay to begin with of course.
People will react in one way or another. I wonder whether Microsoft gets this, because this will eventually destroy LinkedIn, or at least turn it into something completely different and very much less valuable.
9 ouf out of ten "notifications" from their iPhone app, the little number in red, are paid(I suppose) notifications. So I ended up uninstalling it some time ago.
Sort of like before I deleted my Twitter and Facebook accounts, they liked to "ping" me if I hadn't used their app in a day or two. "Someone posted something" or "someone tweeted something". Was it a message directed at me, or did it "tag"/include me? Had I participated in the discussion? Nope, they just wanted to make sure that I used their app and got trained properly so that I would end up checking the damn thing every minute.
of Microsoft so this just strikes me as a desperation move. They lost confidence in him in less than a year.
.. and we are still trying to justify our $26 Billion check.
I'd be more rosy about Microsoft's ambitions if Salesforce wasn't doing such a good job making their customers so happy.
And I mean really happy at all levels. Not golf-and-vacations-and-hookers-for-the-CxO's-sign-the-contract happy.
The rank-and-file salescritters love it. It's a good tool that lets them do their job and works on everything.
The managers love it. It gives them good data and there are a lot of products to fit their needs.
The IT staff love it (Which is the real shocker) Well documented APIs. Good support. Fast and accurate information about outages. They make it easy to integrate. They /flood/ your inbox about impending important changes like 6 months in advance.
It won't be this way forever. Salesforce will get a bit too popular, then someone new in charge will tighten the nipple clamps and start squeezing money out of the customers while providing less value for the dollar.
That's when a new player will step in.. Not now.
Reason being is Salesforce is kind of scaring me as too powerful and a threat to I.T. jobs.
If it is cross platform which MS is heading too we can put down the hate on MS like its 1999 still. From what I gather is it is not ads, but rather MS won the desktop wars by integrating and doing proprietary tricks to link stuff together ALA Visual Basic COM objects. You had everything tie together.
Today in 2017 Windows is not longer the guerala. But MS is hardly dead in the workplace. So instead of integrating components and doing proprietary standards they are doing open standards with TypeScript, .NET, Android in Visual Studio, SQL Server for Linux, Powershell for Mac/Linux, and MS Code editor for Linux, and embracing Linux Vms, and even making MS Code available for Linux and Mac. Their browsers are all fully W3C compliant now and Office 365 is the reason why.
So MS is doing the data and service integration instead. If the company owner, your employees, and yourself all use LinkedIn, Yammer, and other tools which run on multiplatforms it gets rid of a reason to use Salesforce.com.
MS maybe getting too powerful in this area but Office 365 is rapidly getting more apps and mobile programs like Dwell, PowerBI, etc. LinkedIN is the glue that ties this together to keep business to business relationships on the ecosystem ... rather than crappy COM win32 standards.
http://saveie6.com/
Seriously.
My company deals with CRM platforms. And just about anybody who's ever had experience with Dynamics has pretty much run away from the platform, screaming.
And I can understand why.
When even MICROSOFT cannot recover a proper SQL backup out of their own data with regards to MULTIPLE versions of Dyanmics and SQL Server. you KNOW something's wrong. Hell, even a simple contact export seems beyond them.
And let's not even get into (lack of) usability or (dearth of) performance...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
My head hurts after reading this, please appologize.
vdfvxdv