CRM

I have been investigating the possibility that social networking is something that can be used inside an organization -- "intra-organizationally," as my bureaucratic friends might say. That should really be no surprise -- the entire employee base is a natural community. There's at least one place,...

SAP and Research In Motion announced last week that they were partnering to develop a native BlackBerry client to link to SAP CRM, and then, eventually, to the firm's other business applications. The move is a no brainer for SAP, writes Vinnie Mirchandani, an ex-Gartner analyst and founder of the ad...

Who would have thought the meltdown in financial services could fuel the overhaul of the industry's customer service departments? Actually, it's just one of several factors driving companies to put customer service initiatives on the fast track in pursuit of compelling business advantage. The subpri...

SAP and Research In Motion are partnering to develop a mobile CRM application. The first output of this venture will be a native BlackBerry smartphone client that links SAP CRM with BlackBerry applications such as Email, Address Book and Calendar. To be precise, they are developing a native RIM clie...

SugarCRM has released version 5.1 of its open source CRM platform, building on functionality it debuted in last year's milestone 5.0 release, which included new development tools, a new Ajax e-mail client, and a new multi-instance on-demand architecture. Among the new features in version 5.1 are enh...

Pharmaceutical companies manage large quantities of content about their product lines. However, unlike other industries, the challenge of managing this information is exacerbated by regulatory and compliance demands and the need to manage information from multiple "touch points" across a diverse cus...

This is one of my favorite times of year because it's announcement season, the time when all sorts of vendors book briefings to tell me about what's new in their worlds. It has been a busy couple of weeks, and I expect the briefing deluge to continue for the rest of the quarter. I love this because ...

Combining in-memory data management, visual analytics, social networking and rich Internet applications, Software as a Service and open source software development, companies such as Advizor Solutions, Fractal Edge, Greenplum, LucidEra and others are filling what was an open niche in the BI marketpl...

Look closely at any effective customer relationship management strategy. Look beyond the technology, beyond the hype, and what will you see? What you'll see is a company that knows how to effectively communicate with its customers. Ask yourself, "What do CRM solutions actually do?" To put it very si...

Law firms stand to gain as much as anyone from the advances being made when it comes to CRM systems, and CRM software providers are keen to fill this potentially lucrative market niche. LexisNexis, Microsoft and Salesforce.com are among the firms out there offering CRM systems specifically geared fo...

It's official. With the general availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft is now formally a player -- a big one -- in the online CRM space. The general availability release seems almost anticlimactic, given that so many of its features and functions are the same as those in Dynamics C...

Salesforce's announcement that it would partner with Google to integrate and deliver Google Applications said more about the software industry today than it said about either company or even about the propensity of software makers to deliver Software as a Service. The software industry, like many ot...

The big CRM news of the week was Salesforce.com's tie-up with Google to embed its CRM application in the search engine provider's productivity suite. Plenty in the industry were wowed by the development -- not all, though. Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu can be counted among the latter. Zoho is an on-demand ...

Etelos has released a limited beta that provides access to offline data -- a chief requirement for any on-demand vendor. The feature, called "Apps on a Plane," allows any browser-based application from the Etelos Marketplace to exchange data with any other AOP-enabled app. Last year, the firm announ...

They may be still waiting for the first signs of the much advertised recession in the Bay Area. Everything I see here, especially this week, points to growth and all that goes with it. Multiple people have come up to me, phoned or e-mailed seeking introductions or support as they confess to having i...