This interview was originally published in SIIA’s Vision From the Top. The 2013 Vision From the Top will be released at All About the Cloud, May 7-9 in San Francisco.

Does Mobile fall into one of your top 5 priorities for 2012? If so, how will you be attacking it? If not, why not?

Mobile remains a top priority for FPX in 2012. FPX’s core business centers on enabling sales teams to be more successful by responding quickly, if not instantly, to the needs and requests of their prospects and customers. Since every sales situation today is highly competitive, buyers have the power. FPX is committed to equipping our customers to serve their prospects whenever and wherever those customers expect; enabling them to take action immediately. Only a solid mobile component of a greater sales process system can do that.

When sales people have the solutions they need at their fingertips, they have the information they need to give their prospects the confidence needed to buy.

Our commitment to providing superior mobile solutions, beginning with the Budgetary Quotes Mobile App that we released in late 2011, means platform agnostic apps. Our strategy is to continue to develop mobile apps for people, not for a specific device. Our core competency is to exceed the expectations of our customers, allowing them the ability to access their sales systems and solutions from any mobile device.

In 2020, looking back on this decade, what will be the single most impactful technical advancement driving business growth?

Cloud computing, and the Software-as-a-Service model, will prove the single most impactful technical advancement driving business growth today and for the foreseeable future. The transformative power of the cloud is driving innovation virtually everywhere, but its most significant impact will come from bringing to bear the power of solutions previously only available through on-premise systems without the inherent expenses.

This is already creating a movement away from on-premise software installs to SaaS solutions, especially under certain conditions. In the CRM and Configure-Price-Quote® marketplace, SaaS provides undeniable benefits including lower initial cost and total costs of ownership, higher ROI, and reduced strain on IT resources to name a few.

FPX is committed to this model. As one of a very limited number of providers of SaaS-based, multi-tenant sales process solutions, we are increasingly attracting enterprise customers who, in the past, would have had to select a big-box on-premise software provider.

This demand is already pervasive. Adoption to the Cloud empowers companies to transform their business models and gain a competitive advantage. The Cloud allows companies to be agile and enable the development of effective virtual business processes, which will facilitate their employees, customers, partners and suppliers to connect and conduct business seamlessly.

According to a recent study by Bain & Company, the cloud computing share of the tech wallet will quadruple by 2020, growing nearly six-times faster through the end of the decade than spend on legacy hardware and software.

Social media and social business are big themes for 2012. In which areas of business will the social movement have the most impact (or most potential for impact)? Why?

Social media and social business will impact sales and marketing more than any other area of business. In B2C selling situations, consumers have always had access to the thoughts and opinions of those they trusted. This provided consumers a limited degree of power in making personal purchase decisions. For the most part, however, retailers have held most of the power.

Online social media has radically shifted the power in the B2C space from retailers to consumers. Consumers in the early stages of the purchase process now have ready access to others who are farther along in that same process. They can search out reviews, polls, comments, and can even engage in conversations about retailers, products and brands with those they choose and trust. This arms them with knowledge long before they enter a store or engage with an online retailer. Further, the input of others can either undermines or substantiate the claims made by expensive advertising and marketing campaigns.

In the same way, those responsible for making purchase decisions in B2B environments now have access to the opinions and experiences of those with similar responsibilities. Using social media including LinkedIn, salesforce.com’s Chatter, Twitter and a myriad of other specialized networks, decision makers have access to credible sources of information prior to and during the vendor selection process.

The use of social media among business professionals levels the communication playing field. A buyer in a B2B situation can quickly investigate any claim made by a sales person or contained in a company’s marketing collateral. Companies who exaggerate their claims do so with a high degree of peril. However, companies that are committed to customer success will be rewarded for their efforts. As the use of social media increases among business professionals, companies selling to other companies must remember that they are ultimately selling to people. Social media has the potential to push the phrase B2B into obsolescence, making P2P the new reality.

Rhianna Collier is VP for the Software Division at SIIA. Follow the SIIA software division on Twitter @SIIASoftware

This interview was originally published in SIIA’s Vision From the Top. The 2013 Vision From the Top will be released at All About the Cloud, May 7-9 in San Francisco.

As you look around the globe, which markets will provide the best opportunities for tech companies in the next five years?

Most of recent growth trajectory and net job addition seems to be coming from mobility/ social space. With more and more people accessing their social, email and other day to day functions/ applications via their mobile, app development in mobile is a given. India as a target & growth market cannot be ignored. Tele-density has been increasing at a random pace and the telecom sector itself has been growing at more than 25%. Some interesting dynamics include land line adoption of only ~ 35 million whereas cell phone adoption at ~ 882 million. Recent Mckinsey study revealed that India’s internet users will increase fivefold by 2015 and more than 3 quarters of them will choose mobile access. Gartner sees the penetration reaching 82% in 2014.

Yet with all this growth, infrastructure is a challenge and it isn’t going to be easy. Of the country’s 100 million Internet users, just 12.5 million have broadband, compared with 450 million households in China. Internet speeds are sluggish compared to international average of 5.6 mbps. Policymakers are trying to solve this by utilizing cable TV lines. However there are couple challenges to this approach-most of the subscribers only have analog connection and upgrading infrastructure isn’t going to be cheap. Secondly it isn’t going to be easy to up convert an analog box to digital box. Given the demographics, companies might have to push the box at real low price.

Now, where there is a challenge there is an opportunity. Mobile content and applications could be the answer.

There are over 850 million registered mobile numbers (these numbers are skewed as there are multiple accounts registered to the same user). Average revenue per registered number has fallen over the years and service providers are constantly looking for ways to up that. Mobile apps if delivered at affordable prices and with the right content will deliver attractive returns to content and application development companies. As long as the applications are compelling and tuned to local demographics (more so with all the different languages spoken and read) and the pricing right (in order to attract the low end of the demographics), all players can make some money. With mobile advertising picking steam, local ads could be another money spinner.

If email takes a backseat to Facebook, Twitter, and SMS for business communication in 5 years, how will that change your business strategy? What are you doing today to prepare for that possibility?

It is true that new channels have come up but I think there is a synergy between new channels and email. You still need an email to login to Twitter and Facebook. You still get notifications via email for updated info and new followers. It is true that web based email is starting to take a back seat but that is web based. Mobile email usage is skyrocketing. In fact comscore’s own numbers show that about 30% of American mobile users regularly access email via smartphones / mobile devices.

Numerous studies have shown that email is still one of the most effective ways to drive online and offline sales, and is the preferred method by which consumers are notified of offers. Sure, there are better ways to communicate a single line or a short message but the way twitter and Facebook is set up, it is difficult to imagine that someone would send a contract via social sites.

While in about 5 years Facebook and the probably likes may take over intranet communications, for all external communications email still might make sense. I wouldn’t change the business strategy yet…

Rhianna Collier is VP for the Software Division at SIIA. Follow the SIIA software division on Twitter @SIIASoftware