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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. Sa...
Sales methodologies and sales force automation (SFA) are a combination that should be a natural fit. In practice, however, method support is poor in most current forms of SFA. Sales managers want their representatives to follow the company's defined methodology, but often salespeople veer off cour...
Like millions of other Americans, I sometimes struggle with pop-up ads and spyware. Given an opening, these small programs can bring even the fastest new computer to its knees. Luckily there is a cottage industry growing up around this problem, and there is also a lot of free software available to...
For several years now CRM vendors have been touting their customer satisfaction scores as a way to claim an advantage over their competitors. But for just as long we have watched as a trend emerged showing company after company changing their CRM brand. Changing CRM vendors is not a trivial proces...
Luck plays a role in life. I don't pretend to understand it, and I believe we make our own luck, but occasionally we also inherit 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? The ...
Analyzing the industry analysts has become a popular indoor sport in CRM and beyond. Ever since the scandals involving a few financial analysts kiting stocks for their investment bank employers, there has been an attempt to upgrade the standards by which financial analysts are judged and to apply t...
Forgive me, but amid all the excitement of the baseball post-season, it's hard to believe there are other important things going on in the world. Last week some important earnings numbers came out of the communications departments of archrivals SAP and Siebel, which I only got to after reading the e...
Last week the numbers moved. No, not the election, but something equally important. Let me explain. For the last couple of years, whenever I ran a survey about CRM acceptance, I always included some questions about how the customer prepared for the deployment. I started doing it because I had a hu...
The annual meeting of the North American Siebel user group is a big deal, and last week's convocation in Los Angeles played true to form. It was new CEO Mike Lawrie's first opportunity to address the group and meet with customers, press and analysts on a grand scale. Lawrie took over from founder T...
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 suc...
They're at it again -- Oracle and (reluctantly) PeopleSoft -- like siblings in the back seat on the ride to grandma's house. Now that a federal court has said that Oracle's pursuit of its rival is OK on anti-trust grounds, Oracle is trying to clear the remaining hurdles, such as the European Commis...
This week I'm trying something different. I usually try to go in-depth with one subject for a column. To do that I frequently start out writing about a number of different ideas just to see where they end up. Many of the ideas don't make it into a column because they never reach a sufficient length...
Much heat, and little light, is emanating from this season's political debate about the offshoring of American jobs. Like blind men trying to describe an elephant by touching and describing various parts, researchers and commentators have come up with very different assessments and conclusions, and ...
Lots of us think that the rise of the Internet over the last decade has turned us into a society totally connected with each other and to the world at large. Although we are definitely on the way, there's still a lot of work to be done. And as it turns out, the Internet has provided only the plumbin...
Even in a slow week for CRM news, you might have missed a couple of announcements that may have a significant impact on the future of the enterprise software market, including CRM. Last week, RightNow, a newly public OnDemand call center company, announced that it had joined the WS-I, an independent...
One of the hardest things about observing evolution -- even business evolution -- is that the pace is so slow that the turning points are not apparent except in retrospect. Does anyone remember when Digital Equipment Corporation or Wang Laboratories became irrelevant? They are gone today and have be...
Too many dollars chasing too few products results in inflation. We've all seen that phenomenon. But what happens when too many similar products swamp the market? Usually the oversupply results in falling prices, and that seems to be what's been happening in the analyst business for several years. In...
Forget for a moment your opinions of the presidential candidates, your views on the war, taxes or social issues. Consider, instead, which party's policies are likely to result in better times in the technology sector. The last technology run-up might offer some clues about the upcoming election. The...
I have heard a lot of talk in the industry lately about CRM being "over." The current phase lacks the 40 percent-plus growth rates of the 1990s, and many people have concluded that means the need for customer relationship management solutions is waning. But maybe not. Although CRM's formal history o...
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 firs...
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The Future of Gen AI in Retail: Balancing Human Factors With Revenue Growth
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Beyond the Cart: UX Hits and Misses Can Make or Break a Virtual Storefront
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Spectrio Digital Signage Gives AI Assist to In-Store Marketing
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Omnichannel, Online Consumers Shift to Mindful Shopping Practices
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