CRM

In this era of social media, the Dunbar Number has been the subject of considerable debate. For those of you who don't run in evolutionary anthropology circles, the Dunbar Number is a concept created by Robin Dunbar, the director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford ...

Salesforce.com hit it out of the park with quarterly earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter and full fiscal year, which ended Jan. 31, 2012. Total Q4 revenue was $632 million, an increase of 38 percent on a year-over-year basis, topping the $624 million expected by analysts. For the full fiscal year...

When Microsoft's next service update to Microsoft Dynamics CRM is released in Q2 2012, users who rely on its business intelligence functionality will be in for a pleasant surprise. Microsoft has ratcheted up the BI functionality significantly, providing more options on how to view, present and inter...

I have a lot of fun writing about CRM -- the ideas, the tools and how they're brought together as a coherent strategy. CRM is a foundation on which to build relationships, layer on additional sales and support tools, and create a customer-centric business. But this foundation needs a foundation. Aft...

Avaya has provided a sneak preview of several healthcare IT-based mobile applications it will be rolling out later this year. These include Avaya Mobile Activity Assistant, Avaya Flare Communicator for iPad, and other collaborative service offerings in telehealth and social media. Healthcare is one ...

Nimble has introduced a new Software as a Service social CRM platform designed to enable social engagement. Nimble 2.0 empowers companies to get closer to their customers through listening and engagement, helping them turn their social communities into customers for life, according to the company. F...

Three years ago, the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia was at a crossroads with its constituent relationship management system. The system it was using at the time, based on Unidata, was decades old, said Necie Steward, director of advancement services for USciences. The provider was planni...

My childhood birthdays and Christmases had a few eternally repeated phrases associated with them: "Happy Birthday," "Merry Christmas," and "He'll grow into it." The latter one was always perplexing to me. The volume of oversized clothing I received as a kid from aunts, grandparents and family frien...

If you are a Boston Red Sox fan who splurges on luxury seats, don't be surprised if the organization suddenly seems much more familiar with your tastes and preferences. Last year, toward the end of the season, the team deployed parts of Green Beacon Solutions' Sports CRM app, which is based on Micro...

Last week, after dropping off my Prius at the dealership for routine service -- as I've done regularly since I bought the car in 2007 -- I ambled over to the shuttle stop for a ride home. "Where you headed?" barked the driver, never raising his head from his newspaper. I recognized him -- he'd drive...

Microsoft has taken the wraps off of its forthcoming service update to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which will be released in Q2 2012. The service update will build on Microsoft's rollouts last year in such areas as social CRM and mobile. "We are on the path to deliver a significant new set of capabiliti...

TeleTech has been placed in the "Leaders" quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant: Customer Management Contact Center BPO, Worldwide, 2011, and Yesmail has announced the release of its "Look Book" in celebration of its recent awards for mobile-scalable email design. Meanwhile, West Interactive has rele...

Salesforce.com unveiled a new customer service help desk tool this week. Desk.com works with customer requests delivered over a social network. It is the byproduct of Salesforce.com's acquisition of Assistly last year. However, it is no mere product integration, said Alex Bard, former Assistly CEO a...

CRM applications are generally not the sources of the problem -- it's those pesky humans, who have remarkably unfettered imaginations when it comes to finding ways to misuse or underutilize their CRM applications. Here are three recurring misuses of CRM that are head-slappingly common.

At the National Retail Federation's annual convention,Retail's BIG Show 2012, Epicor debuted its latest mobile offering: the Epicor Retail Clienteling application. It is an add-on for Epicor's existing CRM app, said Dave Burton, product director of CRM services -- meaning a retailer has to be an Epi...