CRM News: Strategy

Real Estate Discovers CRM, Part 2: Trying Out the Tools

Monday - July 14, 2008

As more buyers and sellers look to the Web and as other parties in the real estate value chain move to Web-enabled business software platforms, the real estate industry has begun to embrace CRM as a sales tool. While enterprise-level leaders such as Oracle and SAP don't have specific CRM offerings for real estate agents, they do offer real estate management tools for their clientele. Meanwhile, development and growing use of Software as a Service CRM solutions is beginning to change the competitive landscape, and the way real estate agencies manage their sales and work forces. [More...]

Real Estate Discovers CRM, Part 1: Embracing the Idea

Friday - July 11, 2008

In few other industries is the need for a good CRM system as great as in real estate -- a business that employs large sales forces with a need to build lasting client relationships and processes lots of documents. Add to that the need to track property listings, sales leads and referrals, and it becomes clear that CRM is the name of the game in real estate. [More...]

Flying Colors

Tuesday - July 1, 2008

Microsoft CRM 4.0 Applications certification is partly a way for Microsoft to quantify its relationships with its business partners and partly a credential to attract clients. The latter is particularly important, as 4.0 is proving to be Microsoft's most popular customer relationship management app yet. [More...]

The New Contact Center Profit Model

Thursday - June 26, 2008

Contact center managers for years have been using tried-and-true efficiency-oriented key performance indicators to measure contact center success, such as average call handling time and cost-per-call. Aberdeen completed a benchmark survey in May that examines the trend of Fortune 100 Best-in-Class companies that are transforming their contact centers from cost centers to profit centers. [More...]

Beyond CRM 2.0

Wednesday - June 25, 2008

Last week, and for many other weeks, I discussed CRM 2.0, but today I am thinking more about the world beyond 2.0. Maybe it will be CRM 3.0, or maybe some wise guy like Paul Greenberg will change the numbering and call it "CRM 20xx," who knows? My reading and research tells me that there will be a need for something else. [More...]

CRM for the Video Game Industry: Tough Crowd

Thursday - June 19, 2008

Attracting and retaining fans are the keys to success in the crowded and competitive online games industry. The Net's growing multimedia communications capabilities are providing not only games developers but businesses of every size and stripe a vastly richer yet less structured environment for CRM; something game developers and distributors are very much aware of and keen to plug into. [More...]

CRM and the Enterprise 2.0 Challenge

Friday - June 13, 2008

What is the potential opportunity for Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise space? A whopping $4.6 billion a by 2013, according to a tally Forrester Research arrives at in a report released earlier this year. Spending on Web-based enterprise technologies, including social networking, RSS, blogs, wikis, mashups, podcasting and widgets will grow by 43 percent each year for the next five years. [More...]

Customer Bloggers Pumping Up the Volume

Tuesday - June 10, 2008

As we've said here before, blogs have been an excellent leveler of the playing field for consumers. Had a poor customer service experience or are just feeling aggrieved with a service provider? Complain to management, yes, but then blog about it. While such posts are generally considered to be the realm of consumers, occasionally a practitioner in the industry takes a stand as well. [More...]

Study: Asia-Pacific IT Market Growing More Sophisticated

Wednesday - May 28, 2008

Enterprise application integration services will emerge as the biggest opportunity in the Asia-Pacific IT marketplace, excluding Japan, between now and 2011, according to a forecast by Springboard Research. Springboard forecasts the EAI market in A-P will grow at a compound annual rate of 11.5 percent between 2007 and 2011, from $5 billion to $7.8 billion. [More...]

Where Have All the Good Leads Gone?

Sunday - May 18, 2008

Lead generation, like outsourcing, is a lot like golf. No one wants to admit they had a mulligan or two out on the course playing a round of golf, or for that matter spending on lead generation or outsourcing and not getting their money's worth. But it's happening with increasing frequency for companies in manufacturing, services and software, and it's not the recession, it's relevancy. [More...]

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