CRM News: CRM

Funny, Beautiful Symmetry
September 09, 2009

There is a lot of unspoken information in last week's announcements by Sage and Salesforce.com about their respective contact managers. Each is creating a disruptive innovation that affects the other, and the symmetry of these dual and dueling announcements is frankly beautiful in a funny way.

Building a Leak-Proof Sales Pipeline
August 20, 2009

In November 2008, Aberdeen published a study titled, "Lead Nurturing: The Secret to Successful Lead Generation." The survey captured the challenges and strategies from 213 organizations and found that on average, 16 percent of the total leads that are deemed "sales-ready opportunities" actually close. That's a fairly alarming number.

The Appointment Principle
August 19, 2009

Beagle Research did some market research earlier this year that we are now announcing. The project aimed to understand some of the nuances involving scheduling appointments for services and walking in. What we discovered was in some cases reassuring and in others surprising, and I present some of our findings here.

The BPO Outlook: Mostly Cloudy With Patches of Sun
August 17, 2009

Five years ago, megadeals were all the rage in the business process outsourcing (BPO) world. Global players such as IBM, Accenture, ACS and CSC were racking up billion-dollar multiyear contracts, mainly for accounting, human resource and procurement functions. Now that's changing.

Distilling ERP Data Into Tasty BI Brew
August 13, 2009

Globalization, supply chain complexity, and commodity and currency volatility combine to produce mountains of business data. In the past, just being able to collect and manage the data was task enough, but now companies are looking to mine the data mountain to drive actionable value. Enterprise resource planning systems provide much-needed capabilities.

Main Street Meets the Cloud
August 12, 2009

Late on a summer morning recently I got a call from my wife saying "On Point," a public radio program, was doing a show on about cloud computing. "Isn't that what you write about?" she said. "You should listen or call in." Well, I tried, and all the lines were jammed, but I was able to make a comment on the Web site. It was a funny show in some respects, though short on laughs.

Oracle Gives JD Edwards a PIP of an Upgrade
August 11, 2009

Oracle is giving users of JD Edwards -- one of the myriad enterprise software suites the company has acquired over the last decade -- a new set of tools to leverage through its value chain planning applications. It's upgrading the JD Edwards offering with a bundle of SCM-related applications and best practices that Oracle developed for its own products over the years.

IBM Capitalizes the 'I' in IT
August 04, 2009

Last week, IBM announced the new Smart Analytics System, a fine-tuned solution for analyzing both structured information in databases and unstructured, often incompatible data from sources such as blogs, emails, information archives, podcasts, videos, Web sites and wikis. In a separate announcement, IBM said it had entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire SPSS.

Automation: A Lube Job for a Sluggish Economy
July 14, 2009

Companies are now in the third stage of "economic downturn syndrome." Having passed through Panic and Denial, they're firmly in Acceptance. Panicky knee-jerk responses such as cost-cutting, layoffs, tightening budgets and resources are a thing of the past. Most companies have had a quick breather and segued to the stage of a more carefully considered response.

LexisNexis Makes CRM App More Relationship-Savvy
July 10, 2009

LexisNexis is enhancing its customer relationship management product, InterAction CRM, with its version of social networking functionality. Called "InterAction IQ," the tool delves into the CRM app and the Exchange Server to establish which users have relationships with certain clients or prospective clients, and then rates those relationships as to their strength.

The Carrot, the Stick and Other Sales Effectiveness Strategies
July 09, 2009

Companies seeking to organize and centralize customer, account and opportunity information are leveraging sales force automation and customer relationship management tools to provide sales managers with better visibility into internal operations and improve overall sales productivity.

Usability: The Cornerstone of E-Commerce/CRM Convergence
June 26, 2009

When e-commerce was born some 13 years ago, systems were typically proprietary, requiring a large team of internal developers to constantly upgrade features while diligently working to integrate them into key legacy back-office systems. At times, these were near-impossible tasks that consumed vast amounts of money and time.

Analysis: Veramark's Performance Advisor for Telecom and IT Expenses
June 25, 2009

This article draws on two discrete data sets: BI deployments of over 270 respondents in an Aberdeen Group April 2009 benchmark report; and the telecom lifecycle management solutions of 140 respondents in a March 2009 benchmark report. This data will be used to contextualize the value of integrated business intelligence functionalities and their ability to drive additional cost savings.

Getting a Grip on Business Intelligence TCO
June 18, 2009

IT and business management are increasingly expressing alarm at rising costs associated with business intelligence implementations. The fear of hidden costs has kept many companies from making an investment, and many adopters have found that the costs related to ongoing support and maintenance of an ever-changing set of analytical and reporting requirements inhibits user penetration.

Monetizing the Cloud 101: The Proof Is in the Profit
June 10, 2009

The traditional model of providing software and services to customers through locally managed servers and storage is fast becoming obsolete. It is not only expensive -- the cost of buying and maintaining an ever-growing cadre of servers alone is prohibitive -- but also counterproductive.

IBM Launches All-Seeing, All-Knowing, Real-Time Data Cruncher
May 14, 2009

As the pace of business increases, business intelligence technologies have been forced to speed up so they can crunch more data and do it faster. On Thursday, IBM unveiled InfoSphere Streams, a high-performance computing system designed to, in essence, provide business intelligence capabilities on steroids.