CRM

In the ultimate game of bait-and-switch, several Web sites try to pass off a bot as a bod. That is to say that Live Chat is offered to users, but there's no flesh-and-blood person on the line, there's only a chat bot making a robotic guess at what the user might want to know. Few are fooled by the s...

A CRM consultancy will be launching what it describes as the first CRM Web 2.0 portal for executive recruitment and career development in this industry. Located at myCRMcareer.com, the Web site will be managed by Bruce Culbert, Ted Hartley and Paul Greenberg, principals at BPT Partners. Besides empl...

Although some people are still trying to enjoy the last of the summer weather, the retail holiday shopping season has begun. With that, inevitably, comes the peak e-mail marketing season. The holiday e-mail season started last year on Sept. 6 with a Christmas reference in a Sam's Club e-mail, accord...

My last few columns have been focused on new technologies that are making their way into the broader CRM suite. Expanding the CRM suite has never been easier, as platform vendors like Salesforce.com provide all the capabilities necessary for innovative developers to add something to the ensemble. He...

Salesforce.com has signed a contract to supply 40,000 Web-delivered software subscriptions to Japan Post, bringing the total number of deployments to the company to 45,000. The contract is now the largest seat deployment for the iconic on-demand vendor to date. Japan Post, which is set to be privati...

Dave Duffield, most famously the founder of PeopleSoft and now Workday, was giving a keynote presentation at the RightNow user conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., when it hit me. Duffield is about to become a kingmaker in the on-demand market. Please forgive the apparent hyperbole and continue.

As people head off to enjoy the last holiday weekend of the summer, few are thinking about the next stretch of holidays ahead: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah and New Year's. Rest assured, though -- retailers are giving the matter plenty of consideration. Labor Day weekend signals the start of the ...

When two companies merge, there is a seemingly endless list of factors to consider. However, while companies are committed to dedicating ample time and resources to align the operational combination of the two entities, it's all too easy to become overly engrossed in the nitty-gritty and lose sight ...

To many, sales is an art form, one that takes years or even decades to master. If you head to your local bookstore or search Google for "sales," for example, you'll find a myriad of books, training classes and podcasts teaching sales techniques "guaranteed" to help you make your quota. Some stress t...

Sage Software released a new version of its long-standing ACT! application -- a release timed to coincide with the application's 20th anniversary. The biggest change in this application is the introduction of a Dashboard -- a popular type of user interface -- as well as new productivity enhancements...

What does marketing resource management mean to you? Does it mean the same thing to your coworker? Your competitor? The vendors who sell these solutions? The acronyms used to define the marketing automation space -- MRM, MOM, EMM, DAM, etc. -- have undeniably become so ambiguous that it's not unc...

Software as a Service pioneer Salesforce.com exceeded analyst expectations for its second quarter, registering net income of $3.74 million -- a 3 cent per share increase -- and revenue of $176.6 million. The Street had been expecting it to bring in just $174 million in sales. Total revenue for the q...

From all indications, the Software as a Service model of developing and distributing applications is gaining traction and is poised for a phase of rapid growth, whether it be in small and medium-sized businesses or large-scale enterprises. Estimated worldwide revenue for on-demand CRM applications i...

I'd like to continue on the idea of modernizing our sales processes. Part of this modernization has been the focus on de-spreadsheeting selling. As we all know it started with sales force automation, or SFA, but the trend is alive and well and, if anything, gaining momentum. It's hard to believe th...

Companies are increasingly faced with the challenge of how to leverage the large amounts of data available in the contact center. The data is accumulated through customer management systems -- CRM, SFA, ERP and order fulfillment -- and interactions with the customer. Even though providing consistent...