CRM

Software as a Service was designed to be a more convenient way for businesses to implement enterprise applications. However, on the vendor side, the new distribution approach complicates matters in the sales department. Traditionally, a salesperson would sell clients on-premise software packages tha...

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. I got to thinking about this after watching the movie "Elf" over the holidays. The character of Miles Finc...

B. Joseph Pine II has been interested in the vendor-customer relationship for a long time. Pine and his partner, James H. Gilmore, have written numerous books and articles that lie at the heart of the CRM approach to business. Together they have written The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre &...

The new year is here and marketers are putting the finishing touches on their budgets and plans for 2008. However, before we move forward, there are some trends from 2007 that are worth continuing in the coming year. One trend that is top of many minds is the increased focus on customer relationship...

The pressure to increase top-line revenue growth is uniting sales and marketing executives to focus resources on aligning their two groups. In October, Aberdeen Group surveyed over 250 companies to identify the strategies, capabilities and enablers that Best in Class companies are using to improve s...

It is difficult to avoid the talk of a potential recession in 2008. Even firms whose product set or market niche are well-suited for tight times don't like the thought of slow sales and bleak economic forecasts. RightNow Technologies, an established Software as a Service CRM vendor, is one of those ...

John Roberts, chairman and CEO of SugarCRM, is no stranger to the proprietary software that delivers most of the CRM functionality in the market today. The Washington, D.C.-native moved to Silicon Valley in his twenties and spent 12 years in the "trenches" as he puts it, developing products for ente...

Now general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Brad Wilson's career trajectory has allowed him to deliver CRM to the market from many different vantage points -- and levels of resources. Wilson began at HP as a database software architect, moving into product management and marketing after a few yea...

NetSuite has sold 6.2 million shares to investors in a Dutch auction this week, raising a healthy $161 million. The haul from its long-awaited initial public offering came in spite of -- or perhaps because -- its moving target price. NetSuite ultimately debuted at $26 per share, after jumping from a...

John Fleming and Jim Asplund are the coauthors of Human Sigma: Managing the Customer Encounter. They believe that when it comes to human systems -- a company's employees and their relationships with customers -- businesses have dropped the ball. Their view is that by moving the customer experience a...

Oracle beat many Wall Street predictions in its second fiscal quarter, reporting $1.3 billion in net income and a year-over-year 36 percent increase in stock earnings. The increase in quarterly profit equated to 25 cents per share. The Redwood Shores, Calif., software giant raked in $5.3 billion in ...

The latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM -- 4.0, formerly code-named "Titan" -- is complete and released to manufacturing. In other words, the long-awaited application has shipped from Microsoft's engineering group and is now available from electronic download for new and existing customers. The...

Incentive compensation is often the first place where management makes adjustments in efforts to improve sales productivity. Many organizations have departed from the straight commission model in favor of plans that prompt the sales force to target high-profit deals. However, when a salesperson is p...

NetSuite is going to the market for its proposed initial public offering with high hopes: The company has upped its estimated price range for the second time this week. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it expects its IPO target price to be between $19 to...

Several years ago when Salesforce.com burst onto the CRM scene, it was difficult to imagine how the upstart firm could make a dent in the space. At the time, the gorilla in the room was Siebel and the thought of an Internet-based application -- an experimental delivery mode then -- besting the deepl...