CRM

Oracle is giving users of JD Edwards -- one of the myriad enterprise software suites the company has acquired over the last decade -- a new set of tools to leverage through its value chain planning applications. It's upgrading the JD Edwards offering with a bundle of SCM-related applications and bes...

There are always niche vendors developing new applications around functionality that doesn't quite fit into a defined software category. When the analyst community takes note -- and then decides to give the category a name -- a bona fide trend is established. That is happening to SpringCM -- a Softw...

I am hearing from vendors that their on-premise CRM sales in the early part of this year are pretty good. No one has briefed me ahead of their earnings calls, but the results from late last year and Q1 seem to be pretty good. I should probably wait until the numbers for the last quarter come out fr...

Not surprisingly, the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries -- and, to a lesser extent, biotech -- are waiting with great interest to see how the health insurance and care plan making its way through Congress will look in its final form. What many probably have not realized is that the companies ...

What a summer for remembrances. Forty years ago, a couple of people landed on the moon, and a half-million of them landed on Max Yasgur's farm in upstate New York for the Woodstock festival. That might sound like ancient history, but of course without the space program, who knows where the technolo...

This is the marketing resource management world, according to Manticore CEO Jeff Erramouspe: There are the enterprise-oriented types of platforms that can handle robust applications. Their downside is that they require consultants to manage their difficult implementations and dedicated personnel for...

My ride from San Francisco Airport to Redwood Shores, Calif., tells the story of my entire trip to the West Coast last week. Southbound on Route 101, traffic was lighter than I was accustomed to in my more than 10 years of visiting the area. Northbound, there was a five-mile backup, which caused m...

Companies are now in the third stage of "economic downturn syndrome." Having passed through Panic and Denial, they're firmly in Acceptance. Panicky knee-jerk responses such as cost-cutting, layoffs, tightening budgets and resources are a thing of the past. Most companies have had a quick breather an...

M.A. Ketabchi, president, CEO and founder of business process management provider Savvion, might have done just as well focusing on product marketing in his career. From the beginning, he has distinguished Savvion from the competition by concentrating on the one thing potential customers care abou...

LexisNexis is enhancing its customer relationship management product, InterAction CRM, with its version of social networking functionality. Called "InterAction IQ," the tool delves into the CRM app and the Exchange Server to establish which users have relationships with certain clients or prospectiv...

Companies seeking to organize and centralize customer, account and opportunity information are leveraging sales force automation and customer relationship management tools to provide sales managers with better visibility into internal operations and improve overall sales productivity. Despite the pr...

It is has been a roller-coaster year for E2open CEO Mark Woodward, mainly because that is how long he has been at the helm of the Software as a Service provider of supply-and-demand chain, procurement, and B2B integration applications. Over the past twelve months at E2open, the erstwhile senior advi...

Kudos to all those who participated in, organized or even attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference in drizzly Boston last week. There is a lot to write about. The big ideas that I took away include disruption and evolution, ROI and a need to sharpen our focus. Here are a few thoughts on a very good sh...

The universe of enterprise resource planning providers is huge; ditto for open source. The space where twain meet? Not so much. xTuple is an open source ERP provider, and CEO Ned Lilly says there are few fellow travelers on his company's path. In this tanking economy, the company has been leveraging...

When e-commerce was born some 13 years ago, systems were typically proprietary, requiring a large team of internal developers to constantly upgrade features while diligently working to integrate them into key legacy back-office systems. At times, these were near-impossible tasks that consumed vast a...