Archive

Hoping to appeal to smaller businesses and fend off competition from open-source rivals, Oracle plans to release a free version of its database software. The company has not made it official yet, but the expectation is that by week's end, Oracle will announce that Oracle 10g Express Edition (Oracle ...

The latest gold rush is on. It's the Chinese broadband market, and just like the award-winning film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" the market is a labyrinth made up of many plots and lessons, accented with plenty of action. China is emerging as the world's manufacturing center and a sourcing magn...

Bringing video to the Apple iPod opens up a wealth of ideas for attracting, selling to, serving and generating solid relationships with customers. While not primarily designed for this purpose I've been thinking about how many new opportunities Apple's latest iPod opens up for serving customers and...

The path to SOA must consider several typical approaches. SOA adoption is a gradual process. While some organizations dabble with Web services by wrapping applications as a means of exploring the world of SOA and deciding how to proceed, others engage in enterprise-wide business transformation. Othe...

With the dust still settling from Oracle's US$5.85 billion purchase of Siebel Systems, SAP is taking a run at Siebel customers, hoping to capitalize on what it calls "uncertainties" about the future of Siebel after Oracle takes control. But Siebel is going on an offensive of its own, telling custome...

Contrary to prevailing wisdom, increased availability doesn't necessarily mean increased costs. A number of companies are combining two common technologies to improve their total availability without draining their total IT budget. The secret is to teach your old servers new tricks. At the top of ...

Mass merchandisers are redefining what's needed to launch a product through indirect channels, and the fact that bargain-hunting prospects for many products use the high-priced channels to do research and buy online anyway is making Web product introductions a path to greater profits for manufacture...

Whoever controls the basic customer information controls the front office. In order to have the customer information, you need to have a data schema that can support it. That means a schema that supports things like products, invoices, purchase orders and much more. If you think this is beginning...

When Oracle agreed early in September to buy former rival Siebel Systems for US$5.85 billion, some questioned how long Siebel would continue its CRM OnDemand service. That question came to light because Oracle rival IBM plays a big role in the on-demand service. Yesterday, Siebel responded with the ...

Companies allocate significant resources to customer satisfaction measurement and improvement. Wayne Hoyer, chairman of the marketing department at University of Texas-Austin's McCombs School of Business, says satisfaction with product or service quality has a strong and positive impact on customers...

At the heart of any customer relationship is trust. Knowing how healthy that trust is in your company and its execution starts with knowing the expectations your prospects and customers have.

As goods and services increasingly become commoditized on a global scale, companies are looking for new ways to reduce costs, customer churn, and make the most of their existing customer base. In order to whittle down their overhead, many companies are looking at outsourcing their service delivery g...

We've been having a debate in the graduate-level International Marketing course I am teaching regarding whether or not you can buy your way into entirely new markets through high levels of R & D spending. The knee-jerk reaction is to say the bigger the spending in R & D, the higher the inno...

OK, so here we are a week later and what do we know for sure? Well, lots of things. First, Oracle now has seven assorted CRM packages from its acquisitions and those of its acquired companies -- if you count Siebel. The issue with counting Siebel is that the deal is not done yet. Don't look for ...

In an effort to strengthen its market position in the retail industry, SAP today announced it is acquiring a privately-held Canadian point-of-sale software provider. SAP said it plans to purchase Toronto-based Triversity, whose product portfolio includes traditional and enterprise point-of-sale, sto...