There are dozens of webinars, seminars, research reports, whitepapers, and blog postings on the topic of sales and marketing alignment. Despite the endless flow of resources and suggestions, sales and marketing alignment continues to elude many organizations. Misalignment is often a byproduct of a lack of process and a natural result of traditional marketing and sales roles. Think about it -- sales is perhaps one of the most measured functions in an organization. In sales, performance is measured by tangible results.[More...]
xTuple is an open source ERP provider, and CEO Ned Lilly says there are few fellow travelers on his company's path. In this tanking economy, the company has been leveraging both its open source bona fides and the fundamental functionality that is inherent in an ERP system to gain market share.[More...]
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.[More...]
"You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!" -- "You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" What the initially skeptical characters in Reese's famous candy commercials learned through a somewhat painful cross-sell process -- usually by bumping into each other -- was that these complementary ingredients together made each one better.[More...]
Cloud computing is remaking just about every software category -- and project management is no exception. In the on-premise software era, collaboration was limited by the technology of a particular firm, as well as the security requirements of a particular industry. That was then, of course.[More...]
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.[More...]
The past decade of e-commerce has been a story of small companies using online and Internet-delivered services to "act like the big boys." To date, the leveling of the playing field made possible by the Internet has not carried over to physical infrastructure investments like warehousing or shipping. However, all that is changing with Internet-delivered warehousing and order fulfillment.[More...]
If there is any one characteristic of the current economy that stands out, it is that people are just not buying. From billionaires to budget shoppers, frugal is in. Enter Marketo, a startup whose raison d'etre is to get people to buy. Surprisingly -- or not, given its product lineup -- Marketo is doing very well these days.[More...]
The most valuable asset of a company is its good name. Yet the rapid growth of the Internet and the explosion of social media, in particular, have made it infinitely more challenging for a company to protect its good name. Recent examples abound of how, owing to the viral effect of social media, ordinary people now wield the power to do untold harm to a brand.[More...]
With consumers' inboxes perpetually filled with clutter, marketers are challenged to find new ways to break through with valuable, targeted messages that their customers actually want to open. The secret could lie in a largely untapped vehicle: transactional emails. The historical open rates of transactional emails hover around 70 percent because they are, by nature, highly relevant.[More...]