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Whether it is CDs or refrigerators, mega-retailer Best Buy believes it has the best deals -- and it wants customers to keep buying by putting them at the center of what it does. The nearly US$25 billion company announced that it just finished almost a yearlong test of its customer-centricity program...

Rapid growth of information technology among small and medium businesses (SMBs) with between 100 and 1,000 employees has not been lost on some major integration players, including Microsoft and IBM. With this week's launch of IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express, Big Blue is attempting ...

Onyx, a mid-market provider of CRM software, has unveiled upgrades to its Contact Center product that are designed to help it branch deeper into the contact-center and vertical markets. The improvements include call-center scripting and enhanced Web self-service capabilities. As a result of Onyx' mo...

Tom Siebel announced this week that he is giving up the daily grind of running the company he started and instead plans to concentrate on his role as chairman of the board. Taking over as CEO is Mike Lawrie, a 26-year IBM veteran. There's no doubt that Siebel will continue to have a great influence ...

Aspect Communications, a provider of enterprise customer-service solutions, has announced it is postponing its proposed public offering of 12 million shares of common stock. The sale was to include the sale of 9.3 million shares by specific shareholders. According to the company, the sale was not in...

The former chief of sales at IBM has taken the reins at CRM software maker Siebel Systems as the company's founder, Tom Siebel, stepped aside amid pressure from anxious shareholders. Mike Lawrie, who previously served as head of sales and distribution at Big Blue, where he worked for more than 25 ye...

In creating a supply chain that serves a company's specific needs, it may seem as if hundreds of details must be examined to formulate an effective strategy. But in looking at nuances like transportation costs or the price of warehousing software, companies may be missing the big picture. There is n...

Getting CRM wrong is more common than getting it right, according to a new study released by IBM and titled "Doing CRM right: What it takes to be successful with CRM." In fact, just 15 percent of companies seem to achieve that goal. The study, conducted in late 2003 and early 2004 by the IBM Institu...

Microsoft extended its move into the business intelligence market this week through its acquisition of ActiveViews, a privately held developer of ad hoc reporting software based in Provo, Utah. The purchase follows a general trend of consolidation in the business intelligence arena. The software gia...

Global securities and investment services firm Morgan Stanley is dialing up a VoIP solution from Avaya that will let its Institutional Securities Group place internal and external telephone calls over the Internet. The move is likely to help simplify Morgan Stanley's IT infrastructure by reducing th...

How do you standardize trouble-ticket handling over e-mail and phone for 370,000 full- and part-time students? If you're Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MSCU), you opt for hosted CRM software from RightNow Technologies. MSCU formerly used Unicenter Service Desk from Computer Associates. "...

As part of cost-cutting measures, more companies are offshoring their tech-support divisions. Customers of companies like Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, AOL and Dell regularly route their calls to overseas help desks, often located in India. Although training is available for these offshore personnel, ...

BroadVision, a developer of self-service Web applications, has released QuickSilver 2.0. The new version represents a significant upgrade to the application, which lets content managers and Web designers create and publish lengthy and complex documents in multiple formats, such as HTML, PDF and Post...

No matter how impressively a CRM or ERP application performs within a company, if it flunks with customers, it can become a staggeringly expensive piece of shelfware. To avoid this outcome, companies increasingly are purchasing software or services that monitor end-user interactions with application...

As more companies explore the cost effectiveness and power of open-source platforms like Linux, questions are arising about the interoperability of major enterprise applications like CRM. But the integration process does not have to be a struggle to fit a square peg into a round hole. "It's certainl...