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17. A Passion for Research -- Louis Columbus With a tagline of "Focusing on the Intersection of Technology and Trust," Louis Columbus' blog has a broader focus than just CRM, examining all manner of enterprise software and the cloud. But when you talk trust, you're also talki...

There were also two panels, one on M&A activity that we put together last minute with the able assistance of Sameer Patel, Josh Greenbaum and Louis Columbus. As is so often the case with these things, serendipity played a role and caused more than a few people to walk away with the idea that this kind of thing ought to happen again. Thanks guys, the panel was outstanding and a good example of the talent pool that lurks in the Enterprise Irregulars, a group with a low profile (that ought to be greater) and an inversely proportional IQ factor...

Anyone who has reviewed their 401(k) statements lately has received a very personal and immediate measure of just how the last four weeks of financial turmoil have affected them ...

Despite how quickly social networking is becoming integrated in enterprises, it still isn't scaling to meet the most complex problems faced today. The well-known success stories of customer service being made more accountable and responsive are emanating out of how @ComCastCares, @JetBlue, @SouthwestAir and other companies are using Twitter as a means to better solve customer problems...

"I think you have to respect the fact that MySpace did this so above board and so visibly," Louis Columbus, senior manager, enterprise systems at Cincom Systems, told the E-Commerce Times. "They did it with a lot of transparency. They've come out -- and it was all over the blogs last night -- and they've been very forthright about their intentions. It's important to have an opt-out option, which MySpace does."

Marketing is going through a revolution online, thanks to the continual adoption of the Web 2.0 concepts originally defined by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty ...

With so many companies tightening their budgets in the midst of the tough, uncertain economic climate, there's a tendency to look at social networking as the new, free panacea. I've seen a few financial services and insurance companies start social networking strategies, promising to be open and reach out to their customers -- only to turn these strategies into yet another communication channel where they do all the talking and none of the listening...

Get beyond the fascination and addictive tendency of Twitter, Facebook and other social networking apps, and underscoring all of these new approaches to connecting, communicating and collaborating with others is a revolutionary new way of communicating with your channel partners as well. ...

When you're talking with your best and most trusted friends, there is no need to defend yourself with disclaimers, overly defined examples, or defensible arguments. The conversation just happens. When two friends know each other well, they finish each other's sentences. ...

It's not a question of whether social networking will influence your company, customers, employees, suppliers and others, it's a matter of when. If you haven't committed to learn more about this area, it's time ...

By most metrics -- from its product rollout to enterprise strategy to even cultural heros -- IBM is making all the right moves, Louis Columbus, an analyst with Cincom, told CRM Buyer For starters, IBM has five major initiatives underway to accentuate collaboration within and b...

Lead generation, like outsourcing, is a lot like golf ...

Integrating systems pays when it comes to serving customers, yet it took a project one of my students is working on to show how dramatically it saves lives as well ...

The biggest challenge facing SAP in the next few years will be external, Louis Columbus, a consultant with Cincom Systems' enterprise compliance and quality management practice, told CRM Buyer. Taking on Oracle -- which, within the space of a few years, has built itself into a formidable competitor not only in the enterprise space but also in the CRM industry -- will be a huge challenge for Apotheker to manage...

Louis Columbus, a CRM Buyer columnist, is a former senior analyst with AMR Research. He has worked with enterprise clients on defining solutions to their channel management, order management and service lifecycle management strategies. He also teaches graduate-level international business and marketing courses at Webster-Loyola Marymount University and the University of California, Irvine, and is the author of 15 books on technology and two books on analyst relations...

After reading the book Mindset: The Psychology of Success by Dr. Carol S. Dweck, I began to wonder if her concepts of fixed versus growth mindsets were either accentuated or diminished when it came to customer relationship strategies enabled with SaaS-based applications ...

Scanning the RSS feeds from the blogs -- many of which are all about the benefits of Web 2.0 providing greater customer intimacy and building trust with customers -- one begins to wonder if telemarketing is on its way to becoming obsolete ...

Competing for customers has never been more challenging, intensely focused, or costly for manufacturers globally. Instead of relying on plunging prices or continually adding in product line extensions to marginally increase a given product's market size and potential sales, manufacturers must get back to what made many of them successful to begin with, and that is concentrating on knowing the unmet needs of customers and responding to them with innovative products and solutions better than any competitor globally...

"From my experience working in companies who have launched customer-facing strategies to working with clients to launch CRM initiatives as an analyst, the issues of making people change consistently surfaces as the most time-consuming and often the most problematic area of rolling out any new system," wrote Louis Columbus, with Cincom Systems' Enterprise Compliance & Quality Management Practice...

Corresponding with the rise in all forms of social media has been a growing fascination -- to the point of obsession on the part of some marketing VPs -- to find their markets' key influencers ...