Enterprise Apps

Empowering sales forces with tools to work remotely has evolved dramatically since the first wave of smartphones hit the streets. Sales reps have grown adept at basic applications such as e-mail and Web browsing, but often still wait for an end-of-day laptop session to access their CRM system. Still...

The dam has burst in regard to the demand for supply chain management services in the small business segment, according to recent Aberdeen research. The results of a December 2007 outsourcing survey of more than 300 organizations reveal that small businesses -- with annual revenues of $50 million or...

RightNow has enhanced its retail industry-specific app with chat and feedback functionality -- changes that give users more outreach options to customers using self-service channels. "With this app, retailers can incorporate feedback into chat," said Susan Meriwether, VP of product marketing, "to ma...

An increasing global customer base is driving companies to provide "follow-the-sun" customer support services. In order to enable this level of support, agents are now being located in any part of the world. The challenge is to merge technologies and provide seamless, accurate and real-time customer...

Amdocs has introduced a new lineup of service offerings designed to help its customers make the transition to marketing their own products and strategies in the digital medium. Amdocs began realigning its product portfolio in this direction last year, when it introduced the Customer Experience Syste...

Database vendors, as well as human resources, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning and specialist recruitment management systems developers are all working with organizations to improve their recruiting and personnel management capabilities -- and they're taking advantage o...

Most of us have been approached -- gingerly, aggressively, desultorily -- by a sales clerk in a retail store at one time or another as we made our way empty-handed out of the door. What one application -- UpSellit, a virtual chat e-marketing and e-commerce application -- has done is mimicked that la...

The proliferation of marketing channels represents a key challenge for every CMO seeking to optimize return on marketing investments. Today, the marketing department is tasked with maximizing return across dozens of marketing channels. The use of multiple technologies results in silos of valuable in...

ATG is building out its personalization feature set with the $10 million acquisition of best-of-breed vendor CleverSet. It is the first acquisition the company has made since its $48.3 million eStara deal in 2006. CleverSet is an automated personalization engine delivered in Software as a Service mo...

It's long been a management axiom that the knowledge and abilities of employees are among the -- if not the -- most valuable of an organization's resources. While this is generally held to be true -- even in capital-intensive industries -- it is particularly valid for knowledge-intensive businesses....

I was speaking with a CRM vendor the other day about positioning and messaging for sales force automation. The vendor was telling me that the company wanted a back-to-basics message that would focus on the importance of SFA in helping salespeople recover some of the time they invest in unproductive ...

Alltel has joined the ranks of service providers offering mobile CRM functionality to their business customers. The wireless company has introduced SalesNOW, a contact, activity and deal management Web app designed for the BlackBerry mobile device. Most of the application's features relate to contac...

On the heels of Oracle's successful bid to acquire BEA Systems, SAP has unveiled the first wave of products developed through its own $6.78 billion acquisition of Business Objects last year. It has also revealed more details about its plans to integrate its product suite with the French business int...

Salesforce.com has introduced a set of new tools with a pricing model designed to encourage adoption of its Force.com Platform as a Service product introduced last year. One of the new entries is Force.com Cloud Computing architecture, which can be purchased on a per-login basis. "The concept of clo...

On Feb. 16, BizAutomation.com is planning a launch of an on-demand business suite that will include e-commerce, CRM, accounting and other back- and front-office features. There are other similar products on the market -- namely NetSuite -- but none, insists CEO Carl Zaldivar, that are geared specif...