CRM

Salesforce.com's Service Cloud 2, a Web-based platform designed to help companies handle their customer service needs, includes integration with Salesforce Chatter, the service provider's new real-time collaboration tool. "Service Cloud is the fasting-growing product offering," said Fergus Griffin, ...

Salesforce.com is planning to release a free version of its real-time social collaboration application and platform, Chatter, according to comments CEO Marc Benioff made during the company's recent earnings call. Specifically, the company is working on "a kind of virally based" product, he said. The...

Salesforce.com stock shares soared 17 percent Friday morning to an all-time high in response to its fiscal third-quarter earnings report released Thursday afternoon. In the report, Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said he believes the company will reach $2 billion in revenue in fiscal 2012, making it t...

I spent part of last week in the Seattle area at a small meeting Microsoft organized for analysts. The purpose was to brief us on product positioning and plans, and much of the meeting was covered by non-disclosure. Consequently, I am at a loss for how much I can divulge in this setting, at least ...

Avaya has introduced its latest iteration of Avaya IP Office -- its flagship communications suite for small and medium-sized businesses. The high points of the upgrade are easier-to-use features, greater transparency into coworkers' presence, and a more intuitive interface. For starters, Avaya IP Of...

Apparently years of complaints by consumers about long wait periods for service providers have gone unheeded: The standard three-to-five hour appointment period for in-home visits by cable companies, utilities and repairpersons is still very much in force, a new survey found. The 2010 In-Home Servic...

Developing good relationships with your customers pays off when all is going well -- but it can also pay big dividends when things go very wrong. In fact, as a recent case illustrates, those relationships nurtured through CRM can set the tone for your corrections and preserve your business. The busi...

One of the more interesting developments of the last week has been the announced acquisition of ATG by Oracle. ATG is one of the leading suppliers of e-commerce solutions, and Oracle liked their stuff well enough to plunk down a cool billion bucks for the logo. I thought it was a good idea at the t...

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison took the witness stand Monday to testify that the illegal downloading of Oracle software by a unit of SAP cost his company $4 billion in missed license fees. When asked to back up his claim of $4 billion in damages, however, Ellison said he could not point to any documentati...

SugarCRM has released an upgrade to Sugar 6, expanding its CRM suite with new features that will build up its social bona fides. For the first time, it is giving users a mobile app -- Sugar Mobile for iPhone -- developed directly by the vendor. Other new features bolster Sugar 6's global functional...

Reports surfaced recently that SAP shelled out US$120 million to Oracle for agreeing not to seek punitive damages in the latter's lawsuit against the company. However, SAP spokesperson Saswato Das ducked questions on this topic. "I cannot comment on this because this has been sealed by the court," h...

Shoutlet, which last year launched an app designed to help companies manage their social media operations, has expanded its feature set to include CRM functionality. It is a natural extension of Shoutlet's original feature set, explained President and COO Aaron Everson. "Shoutlet lets a company set ...

A lot of information is coming together this quarter that begins to put a new spin on social CRM. While we've all been busy getting networked in our personal lives and professionally, a huge mountain of data has been accumulating that will make our work in social technology more valuable. Last week...

Oracle announced Tuesday that it will acquire ATG -- a provider of e-commerce applications and platforms -- for $6.00 per share, or approximately $1 billion in cash. Oracle and ATG both pointed to the complementary nature of their applications. ATG provides an e-commerce platform that includes a cro...

Swix has enhanced its original application, Swix Analytics -- a dashboard that tracks ad campaigns and subsequent user engagement across 20 social media communities -- with Swix Social Marketer, a new product that tracks the returns those campaigns are delivering. "Businesses realize there is power ...