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CRM's Odd Couple March 18, 2005 
Home-grown ERP systems are the Oscar Madisons of the IT world. Grizzled by years of service yet reluctant to change, these massive home-grown systems resist the efforts of CIOs to transform them. More often than not, the home-grown ERP system ends up changing the CIO.
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Channel Selling March 09, 2005 
The indirect sales channel has emerged as a sales environment distinctly different from conventional business-to-business or business-to-consumer selling. This shifting focus is long overdue, especially in industries such as technology, where a high percentage of products are sold through distributor and reseller networks that require different approaches to selling and management.
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CRM Entrepreneurs Ease Interoffice Networking February 01, 2005 
Social networking software and Web-based tools have proliferated in the past few years. These networks operate by creating a tree of contacts beginning with the user, followed by the friends and associates she or he extends an invitation to, the friends they extend an invitation to, and so on.
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New Research Shows CRM's Promise January 20, 2005 
Over the last few weeks, I have been busy putting the finishing touches on a new report scheduled for delivery to market later this month. My premise was that there might be a lot of enterprising companies in CRM or closely associated markets that are either new or that have new ideas that we should pay attention to.
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CRM Trends for 2005 January 11, 2005 
Twelve months ago, CRM faced some resentment in many organizations, but as the year progressed it began proving its value. "2004 was mainly a year of validating that CRM works, rather than [focusing] on major new functionality. A lot of companies focused on governance and integration, making what they had more valuable and more useful," said Erin Kinikin of Forrester Research.
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2005 Forecast: Stick Around, This Could Be Fun December 22, 2004 
Time to go out on a limb, put everything on the table, and make some prognostications about what the big stories will be in and around CRM in 2005. This is all based on the best available research and written with the confidence of knowing that no one will remember any of it by next December.
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Visit to the Echo Chamber: A Day at MIT December 15, 2004 
Earlier this fall an MBA student from MIT's Sloan School gave me a call. He wanted to invite me to be a panelist at the Seventh Annual MIT Venture Capital Conference. The conference was run by students and is part of something called MIT Innovation Week.
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Important Happenings in CRM in 2004 December 08, 2004 
The end of the year is always a good time for top ten lists and forecasts of things to come. It's a way for analysts and pundits to show how smart we are and that we "knew it all along" -- or at least to exhibit our 20/20 hindsight. Here are my observations of what was important to CRM this year.
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Social Security Administration: The Next Salesforce.com? December 03, 2004 
In the last U.S. presidential election the candidates clashed on the issue of privatizing the Social Security system. I'll leave the political debate to the professional politicians, but I would like to address this matter from the standpoint of millions of U.S. workers.
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IBM To Add Hosted Service for Web Conferencing November 10, 2004 
In a move to compete in one of the Internet's fast-growth markets, IBM yesterday announced plans to start offering hosted service for its Web conferencing. Big Blue will target small- to mid-sized businesses (SMB) with an offering planned for December. Web conferencing software integrates teleconferencing and the Web to allow users to gather in an online forum.
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Salesforce.com Ups the Ante in IT November 10, 2004 
Luck plays a role in life. I don't pretend to understand it, and I believe we make our own luck as well as occasionally inheriting some from the cosmos. How else do you explain the timing of Salesforce.com's announcements last week at DreamForce, its annual user group meeting in San Francisco?
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Salesforce.com Pushes On-Demand Model with Winter '05 November 03, 2004 
Salesforce.com today announced the expansion of its on-demand service with Winter '05. The product line includes Salesforce.com Winter '05, Supportforce.com Winter '05, sforce 5.0 and the new on-demand customization toolkit, Customforce.com.
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HP, SAP Bring Enterprise Management Tool to SMBs October 27, 2004 
SAP and Hewlett-Packard announced today they will jointly offer a business management tool that they say brings enterprise-level best practices to small and medium-size businesses. The hosted software will be priced on a per-user basis, starting at $325 per month.
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The Hosted Contact Center October 06, 2004 
Last week Salesforce.com introduced a new call and contact center service called Supportforce.com. It's a slick package that includes the hardware and software any company needs to initiate or enhance call center activities right down to voice over IP. Salesforce now joins the ranks of companies such as RightNow and Siebel Systems in offering on-demand call and contact center applications.
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Race for Ultimate Hosted CRM Model Underway July 28, 2004 
Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com, rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange last Wednesday, an act that some day may be viewed as the end of the beginning of the hosted enterprise-software revolution. The ritual market closing was part of a bigger event: the company's first presentation to the press and financial analysts since going public in June.
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Siebel's Keith Raffel on Serving OnDemand CRM June 29, 2004 
In 1997, Keith Raffel founded UpShot Corporation, the first company to offer Web-based, hosted sales-force automation and CRM. In this exclusive interview with Raffel, now vice president of Siebel CRM OnDemand, he told CRM Buyer about how OnDemand evolved, how the company is positioning the solution for the marketplace and how OnDemand has become a critical part of the company's direction.
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The Battle To Rule the Hosted-CRM Roost June 24, 2004 
Wednesday's salesforce.com IPO offered a rare opportunity for smaller CRM companies to elbow their way into the media spotlight. Although a salesforce.com spokesperson said that the company couldn't provide a comment to CRM Buyer, Yankee Group analyst Sheryl Kingstone told CRM Buyer: "The followers are always going to attack the leader -- and they are always going to have to compare themselves to the leader."
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Salesforce IPO Underscores Investor Appetite for Tech June 24, 2004 
Salesforce.com soared on its first day of public trading Wednesday as the second-most hotly anticipated technology IPO of the year -- behind only Google's still-to-come initial public offering -- gained 56 percent and valued the company at US$1.7 billion. Salesforce.com's strong first-day gains came despite two last-minute increases in the offering price.
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