CRM

Microsoft and SAP announced today they are working to build a program -- code named "Mendocino" -- to link together Microsoft's Word office suite with SAP's enterprise software, a move that analysts say could have a profound effect on the entire market. "The possibility of a close relationship betw...

There are many CRM solutions that track click-throughs, e-mail responses or track ads, but Manticore Technology today released a solution that does all three and takes that a step further to the generation of sales leads. The leads are discovered by organizing information from online marketing campa...

For the last four years I've been teaching an international business course occasionally for a local MBA Program. My students are all working professionals who come to class for discussion and debate, not sermons. Case studies are the perfect teaching tool for this audience; there is plenty of roo...

In the economic clouds of recent years, marketers discovered a silver lining in multichannel marketing. Numerous reports and case studies showed that online marketing of big-ticket items such as automobiles improved offline purchases. In recent research, MSN and research partners the Advertising Res...

Customer data integration (CDI) is becoming important for enterprises who want to target, acquire, develop and retain customers. In order to benefit from it, however, an enterprise needs to create a unified and comprehensive customer view from all disparate data sources -- including CRM, financial,...

Oracle has made its third purchase in less than a year, announcing today that it has acquired Oblix, a small identity management software company. Terms of the sale were not announced. Oblix's security software allows for Web access control of single sign-on, identity administration and user provisi...

Oracle and its CEO, Larry Ellison, have won the battle to acquire retail software maker Retek, signing a definitive merger agreement announced today. SAP, Oracle's rival in the quest to buy Retek, bowed out of the bidding. The database giant will buy Retek's outstanding stock for $11.25 a share, or ...

Oracle bumped up its bid to acquire Retek late yesterday, in the second round of its battle with SAP for the retail applications developer. The move was expected, but the new offer, US$11.25 per share to SAP's $11, was lower than the $12 Gartner analyst Andrew White predicted yesterday. At the new h...

Home-grown ERP systems are the Oscar Madisons of the IT world. Grizzled by years of service yet reluctant to change, these massive home-grown systems resist the efforts of CIOs to transform them. More often than not, the home-grown ERP system ends up changing the CIO. The complexity and lack of c...

SAP took another shot in its battle with Oracle, raising to $11 a share its bid for Retek. SAP had been set to buy the retail applications provider for $8.50 a share, then Oracle countered at $9. The war, however, is far from over, analysts say. "I would be surprised if Oracle didn't go through anot...

Oracle, never a company to shy from head-on competition, announced today that it would outbid rival SAP in its attempt to buy software maker Retek, offering $9 per share. SAP had agreed last week to pay $8.50 a share. Oracle's offer bumps the bid for the retail applications provider from $496 millio...

The demand for enterprise portals -- software that connects the applications at work inside a company -- will be strong for the next five years, according to "Two Technologies, One Direction: How CRM and Enterprise Portals Can Coexist," a recent report by IDC. The report details the rapid adoption ...

Interactive marketing has come a long way. In 2005 it will appear more often not only on the big screen -- the computer screen, that is -- but on the little screen of the mobile phone as well. With a cell phone the constant companion to more than 170 million Americans, there's a lot of potential. A ...

These are exciting times to be a data analyst. I say this because two of the biggest barriers that have traditionally prevented analysts from effectively leveraging and acting upon data have been greatly reduced. The time required to compile and process data to make it useful for analysis plus our ...

Prior to Oracle's announcement of its PeopleSoft integration road map, there were rumors that it would shed J.D. Edwards & Co., a business purchased by PeopleSoft in 2003. The unit, considered a poor fit for Oracle because its software products focus on IBM technology, became a hot topic of conv...