Technology from the Crossroads

Views from the intersection of digital marketing and enterprise technology

Hello,

Welcome to my personal blog about marketing technology. I am Alan Chatfield, Marketing Operations Consultant at CRMT Digital.

On these pages, I discuss how marketers can make the most effective use of their martech stack.

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After the Max: The Evolving AI Pitch

AI adoption is still growing, yet AI labs are getting nervous. Price cuts and political campaigns are a response to changing AI usage habits.

| Digital Transformation

Marketing Technology

Discover how effective use of technology can boost marketing performance

Beyond the Platform: Salesforce meets Claude

Salesforce's Claude connector has received plenty of press coverage and executive attention. Yet, it's not a game-changer nor a new capability.

| Marketing Technology

HubSpot's Data Management Challenge

Go to market teams have increasingly complex data needs. All those AI agents require high quality data to feed them. Can HubSpot keep up?

| Marketing Technology

Rebirth of SaaS

The major SaaS platforms hold the detailed business context needed by AI. For most ops teams, AI is just a different way of using existing apps.

| Marketing Technology

Beyond Dependency: The Martech Risk

Martech is integral to the success of any marketing program. Yet, that synergy of technology and strategy creates governance and security risks.

| Marketing Technology

Marketing Operations

Maximise marketing efficiency and unlock the value of marketing ops

Agency Vision in an AI World

Creative agencies still have a key role to play, even as AI takes on the lion's share of content production

| Digital Marketing

Systems of Record in the AI Age

Data management requires specialised workflows for each dataset. These exist in multiple different tools in the tech stack.

| Marketing Operations

A Single System for Data Management

By breaking down the barriers to automation, AI allows data to be used much more productively.

| Marketing Operations

Beyond Marketing: Know Your Customer

Product teams often resent the involvement of marketing in product strategy. Yet, examples of what can go wrong without marketing input are plentiful.

| Digital Marketing

Digital Transformation

Commentary on enterprise technology and it's impact on business

After the Max: The Evolving AI Pitch

AI adoption is still growing, yet AI labs are getting nervous. Price cuts and political campaigns are a response to changing AI usage habits.

| Digital Transformation

The AI Pricing Question

AI prices are going up. More expensive models at least answer one of the big unknown questions holding back corporate AI investments.

| Digital Transformation

The Context Imperative

AI needs detailed business context to work effectively. That context already exists. It just needs to be collected and organised.

| Digital Transformation

The AI Adoption Slow Lane

As AI becomes embedded within tech stacks, the key challenge is to find a workflow that allows both humans and agents to interact with apps.

| Digital Transformation

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