Enterprise Apps

I was in Chicago for a few days of R&R when Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, spoke at the Microsoft partner meeting in Boston. As a result, I got news of the company's latest projected delivery dates for its on-demand CRM not from Microsoft, but from Paul Greenberg's blog: "On Demand Means Righ...

In buying a U.S. company, liabilities do not cease once a seller has completed a deal. The allocation of liabilities is usually determined in the acquisition agreement. Acquisition agreements are described in the previous article in this series. The role of indemnifications in mergers and acquisi...

Salesforce.com has released Summer '06, the quarterly update of its flagship on demand CRM application. Improved lead tracking is one of the enhancements in this version, which happens to be Salesforce.com's 20th release. Also, new scripting features for sales beef up the application's sales guidanc...

Microsoft has announced plans to write Dynamics CRM Live -- its own Software as a Service CRM offering -- on the same code base used for earlier versions of its on-premise application and for the hosted offerings of its partners. Right now, only the partner hosted offering and the on-premise applica...

SAP Business One will incorporate new e-commerce and CRM capabilities from the company's recently completed acquisition of Praxis Software, a privately held SAP Business One partner whose software allows users to set up online stores. The new functionality will also augment Business One's existing C...

Business intelligence applications have always delighted company executives -- at least as they watched simulated exercises on a sales rep's laptop. Real-world execution, though? Until recently, that has left much to be desired. To be sure, it is not entirely the fault of the vendor. Earlier generat...

Erstwhile open source CRM vendor TechWhale Solutions is getting set to launch its beta 3.0 version of BlueWhaleCRM in August, which the company says will significantly leverage AJAX and ATLAS technologies. In preparation, TechWhale has rolled out an interim release, version 2.0, based on the .NET fr...

Earlier this month, Aprimo released Marketing 7.5, a milestone for the company in many respects. It is the first release that incorporates Ensemble, a product acquired from DoubleClick, and it provides business-to-consumer campaign management capability for the first time. Marketing 7.5 is also the ...

Sprint had a problem ubiquitous to all retailers: a percentage of customers unhappy with its products and services. However, for Sprint -- one of the nation's largest wireless telecom providers with a complex supply chain that touches upon numerous and overlapping related customer service processes ...

Oracle is replacing the IBM tech stack that has supported the Siebel OnDemand application with, not surprisingly, its own tech stack, according to statements made by executive vice president Charles Phillips during a recent conference call. Before its acquisition by Oracle, Siebel had a close relati...

Salesforce.com is venturing into the partner relationship management space with the release of Partnerforce, Salesforce Partner Edition. PRM, a software category related to CRM, focuses on connecting and maintaining relationships with direct and indirect partners instead of customers. Processes supp...

Implementing a Web Analytics Solution for your site can be fraught with all kinds of peril, but knowing what you're in for goes a long way toward avoiding the biggest headaches, as Part 1 of this two-part series points out. Part 2 continues the discussion of effective ways to deal with potential pro...

QuickBase, a division of Intuit, has upgraded its hosted-model product to make it easier for sales reps and sales executives -- two user groups that often have competing application requirements -- to use the sales module. New functionality in the application, called "Manage Your Sales Team," includ...

A 2005 study by AMR Research found 91 percent of companies increased or maintained their customer relationship management budgets for 2006. With so many companies shopping for new CRM solutions or reviewing upgrade opportunities, businesses need help finding the right solution to meet their current...

Implementing a tag-based Web analytics solution is rarely the slam-dunk that vendors imply. Depending on how your site is structured and how dynamic your content is, tagging can range from fairly straightforward to fiendishly complex. How can you tell which experience you're likely to be in for? Thi...