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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 ...

Will the move give SAP a quick boost in market share? It's hard to tell, analysts say. SAP's quick response to the PeopleSoft buyout may help, but that's not enough to change the marketplace dramatically by itself, says Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research "I think it's shrewd ...

I got an interesting press release the other day. Headlined "SalesForce Loses CRM Lead," the release said that a new hosted CRM company, FreeCRM.com, claims 13,500 customers to Salesforce.com's 12,500. Hence the leadership change. As you might expect from the name, this company has amassed its considerable hosted CRM community by giving away its product...

At its best the selling life can be great fun, full of action and accomplishment. At its worst it can make pushing on a string look like the essence of productivity ...

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. Here goes: ...

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 MITVenture Capital Conference. The conference was run by students and ispart of something called MIT Innovation Week ...

The end of the year is always a good time for top ten lists andforecasts of things to come. It's a way for analysts and pundits to showhow smart we are and that we "knew it all along" -- or at least toexhibit our 20/20 hindsight ...

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 course, wasting time and resources. Most importantly, when salespeople go off on a tangent, their data trails leave little hint of what they have accomplished, making it harder to coach them later...

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 help cleanse our computers from the worst effects of this class of software. But although this is a growth industry, it is not one that advances the productivity of the average worker or enhances the gross domestic product...

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 process. It involves a good deal of work, not to mention a write-off of the previous CRM investment, although a great deal of the learning from the first experience goes into helping make the second implementation a success...

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? ...

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 those standards to industry analysts as well ...

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 the numbers moved. No, not the election, but something equally important. Let me explain ...

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. In addition to the usual swarm of product announcements, education sessions, and the partner pavilion, it was new CEO Mike Lawrie's first opportunity to address the group and meet with customers, press and analysts on a grand scale...

In a sign of the times, last week Salesforce.com introduced a new call and contact center service called Supportforce.com. It appears to be 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 Technologies and Siebel Systems in offering on-demand call and contact center applications...

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 Commission's potential objections, while PeopleSoft's executives are spending valuable cycles inventing poison pills...

This week I'm trying something different ...

Much heat, and little light, is emanating from this season's political debate about the offshoring of American jobs ...

"Pressing on by Oracle will be the business equivalent of invading Iraq," Denis Pombriant, managing principal of Beagle Research, told the E-Commerce Times Benefits of the Acquisition?...