CRM

NetSuite has married two of its applications to provide additional features for clients that use its product to collaborate with partners. PRM+ integrates the company's partner relationship management, order management and commission management apps, incorporating enhanced functionality. It allows c...

As a rule, manufacturers have been blissfully unconcerned with some of the finer points of CRM functionality and process. This is not to say they are indifferent to their customers' needs. Rather, the low adoption rates of CRM technology in this sector have been more reflective of manufacturers' bus...

SAP has upgraded its Software as a Service CRM application to include service capabilities, rounding out its earlier sales and marketing offerings. The new modules also have enhanced integration capabilities and new sales automation functionality, specifically the ability to provide product quotes...

Earlier this month, Sage Software announced it had acquired one of its longtime partners, Corum, a Canada-based provider of CRM technology. It was a significant deal for the company, said Dave Batt, senior vice president and general manager of Global CRM, as the acquired technology matches one of th...

It's the catch-all department in many companies where top sales funnel activities like lead and demand generation are found, or lower sales funnel strategies including pre-sales support, pricing exceptions and team selling are found. It's team selling on enterprise-class ERP applications. It's als...

As the online space expands and becomes ever more complex, Web marketers are finding that they have to cherry-pick among the many possible technology marketing channels available to be exploited. Online marketing has evolved from links to banners to search engines. While search engines are by far th...

Both large and small companies plan to expand their average budgets for enterprise portal initiatives by 35 percent to 40 percent in the coming year, according to a new report from Aberdeen Research. Drivers behind this demand include initiatives to extend business applications across the enterpris...

Unica has introduced the latest version of its enterprise marketing management suite, Affinium 7. Over the past few months, the company has been rolling out modules of version 7, including applications for marketing resource management, campaign management, optimization, predictive analytics and We...

Next week at its CRM Summit, Gartner will release statistics suggesting that in certain implementations, the Software as a Service model is not as cost-effective -- or even effective -- as earlier projections and experiences have led some companies to believe. In fact, through 2010, 75 percent of c...

I had my annual meeting with my friends at Walker Information the other day when they were in Boston talking about their latest report. I have written about Walker before, and it gives me pleasure to do so again -- and to point out that I have no business relationship with them; I just like what th...

The best performing companies when it comes to customer-facing strategies actively attack the seven deadly sins of CRM with a vengeance. These observations come from their quantified success, and for certain publicly held companies, a rise in their Price/Earnings Ratio, stock price and valuation. ...

With tight budgets and plenty of alternative ways to invest their money, small and medium-sized businesses must always balance value with overall affordability as they pursue software solutions. Some solutions may seem like must-haves -- but if it is not affordable, then the "must-have" quickly beco...

Google made its presence felt in the front office market in a big way this week when both Salesforce.com and NetSuite announced within hours of each other their embrace of Google AdWords as an integral part of their marketing solutions. To be sure, the AdWords platform by itself will not solve the...

First it was support for e-mail marketing, then it was a user interface that displayed real time system data -- also known as the "Dashboard." Now the latest must-have feature in on-demand CRM, at least as evidenced by two separate offerings, is paid search. Both NetSuite and Salesforce.com have in...

More companies are viewing the Software as a Service model as a viable delivery option for functions beyond CRM -- the area in which it has probably developed the greatest traction -- according to a new study by Aberdeen. SaaS implementation times and ROI cycles are growing shorter in such areas as...