CRM News:

Siebel Ships First Two New Vertical Apps
May 20, 2004

Just a month after announcing it would introduce 23 vertical industry solutions, Siebel Systems shipped the first two this week. The software, geared toward the telecommunications and automotive industries, is designed to improve functionality, business processes, integration and analytics while reducing corporate customers' total cost of ownership (TCO).

Hosted vs. In-House: An Enterprise Checklist
February 19, 2004

With a variety of CRM options available, many CIOs and IT managers find themselves facing an embarrassment of riches. Numerous CRM companies are eager to woo corporate customers, and this fierce competition tends to help IT departments negotiate better deals. Before choosing a vendor, however, a CIO must answer an increasingly critical question: hosted or in-house?

Hosted CRM Success Stories
February 09, 2004

While many companies seem all too willing to share on-premise CRM and ERP horror stories, condemnations of hosted CRM are few and far between. Instead, success stories seem to be cropping up with increasing frequency. Could it be that this technology really works as advertised?

PeopleSoft Slashes Hosted Service Costs
January 26, 2004

Although PeopleSoft reduced prices on its application hosting service last November, the company has said it plans to cut the cost of the service again, this time by 20 to 30 percent. "In the hosted market, it's not really about the features right now," Yankee Group analyst Sheryl Kingstone told CRM Buyer.

May the sforce Be with You
January 09, 2004

In a recent white paper, Denis Pombriant, vice president and research director of CRM at Aberdeen Group, wrote that salesforce.com's sforce 2.0 application platform could be the true disruptive innovation in the CRM space, rather than hosted CRM. "What we are seeing is the changing of the guard," he told CRM Buyer.

The Evolution of IBM's WebSphere
September 10, 2003

When it comes to e-commerce software, IBM's WebSphere still reigns supreme -- but competitive pressure has prompted major changes to the product line. For example, Big Blue has begun to target the mid-market by selling a scaled-down version of WebSphere with a lower price tag. What is IBM's big-picture plan for this much-vaunted software?

Is Self-Service Really Reaping ROI?
August 28, 2003

More and more businesses are jumping on the self-service bandwagon. However, as they consider investing thousands or even millions of dollars, companies must answer a key question: Can self-service systems produce quantifiable, positive ROI, or are they simply one more expensive toy to enhance the customer experience?

Best Budget Strategies for CRM Buyers
May 23, 2003

Creating a realistic budget for CRM software can be tricky for even the most seasoned IT manager. The need to strike a balance between customer satisfaction and ROI is a juggling act that many companies try to manage by using multiple vendors, creating software in-house or throwing more money into the mix. But it is possible to do more with less.

The Beauty of Budgeting for Outsourced CRM
November 19, 2002

Outsourcing IT services -- or, for that matter, any business function, such as billing, procurement, human resources or research and development -- has become the cost-control method of choice for many companies as they grapple with tight budgets and flatlining revenues.

How To Tell If Your New Vendor Will Stick Around
August 29, 2002

Partnerware's exit from the partner relationship management space is the latest reminder for IT buyers that the software industry is not at its most stable point right now. While it seems reasonably certain that Siebel, Oracle and SAP will remain long-term viable companies, the same cannot be said for smaller, newer companies.

CRM Price Negotiations: Don't Try This at Home
August 20, 2002

Show me a company that thinks it got a good deal when it negotiated a big discount off the list price for an enterprise software package, and I will show you a company that likely just got rolled.