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  • Top 10 stupid CRM data corruption tricks

    Posted December 6, 2011 - 11:56 am

    In the spirit of David Letterman's occasional feature "Stupid People Tricks," it's time once again for a new list of errors that lead to corrupted CRM records. Past quizzes have focused on SysAdmins and consultants, but now it's time to find out how your users and their business policies can contribute to data pollution.

  • Legacy application fixer-uppers

    Posted November 7, 2011 - 11:47 am

    Legacy applications are one of the most difficult issues to face within IT. A rip-and-replace approach is expensive and thus difficult to justify; plus, it tends to interrupt operations. Here's how 3 companies solved their legacy application problems.

  • Pfizer's future depends on IT transformation

    Posted October 31, 2011 - 11:27 am

    With its business model ailing, this pharmaceutical giant tries a new IT formula, including a loyalty discount card, mobile applications aimed at consumers, and a cloud-based tablet CRM system for physicians

  • Fujitsu rolls out Salesforce.com to internal staff

    Posted September 29, 2011 - 6:14 am

    Fujitsu has rolled out Salesforce.com technology internally to 1,200 of its staff as part of a customer relationship management (CRM) system refresh.

  • Salesforce alternatives: 5 CRM services for small businesses

    Posted September 12, 2011 - 9:08 am

    Customer relationship management (CRM) programs have a bad reputation for being overly technical, burdensome to implement, and a chore to use. This can certainly be true of some services, especially for owners of small to medium-size businesses who lack the funds or resources to customize the CRM properly to meet their company's needs. Salesforce, for example, is popular but not necessarily lightweight or easy to get off the ground.

  • RightNow CEO on improving the customer experience

    Posted August 10, 2011 - 6:48 pm

    For Greg Gianforte and his colleagues at Bozeman, MT, based RightNow Technologies, Inc., customer relationship management is so, well, yesterday. The key focus for companies today is dramatically improving the 'customer experience' in all the places consumers touch organizations -- from the Web to the call center.

  • CRM and sales: If it's broke, fix it.

    Posted August 10, 2011 - 3:53 pm

    Fixing your CRM system and the sales and marketing organization will take some real time, and should be done in stages. Further, in both CRM and sales there's a serious talent shortage. Sure, there are people on the street -- but just try to find a truly great salesperson or SFDC wizard in New York or San Francisco. So you should grab the employees and consultants whenever you can find them, and expect to fix the software and organizational issues in parallel.

  • Cloud CRM: The politics of data ownership and control

    Posted July 28, 2011 - 3:27 pm

    As I've written previously, CRM systems are inherently the most political of Enterprise systems. Users' bonuses and even their career paths may be riding on the data values in the CRM system. Small errors in the data can mean big problems if leads are getting lost or sales reps can't see relevant information about their customers and prospects.

  • Microsoft talks cloud CRM, ERP at partner conference

    Posted July 12, 2011 - 11:22 am

    Microsoft is expected on Tuesday to update its strategy for cloud-based ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) software during the annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles.

  • Social CRM for business: Analytics can spur greater success

    Posted July 6, 2011 - 4:21 pm

    Done right, Social CRM can help your company talk to your customers, but even more importantly, it can help you listen to your customers in ways you've never imagined. And that can help your business grow.

  • CRM systems: IT in the cloud or the office?

    Posted June 28, 2011 - 5:04 pm

    Whether organisations opt for an on-premise or cloud solution, analysts from both Gartner and IDC agree the CRM systems market continues to be buoyant.

  • Is offshoring different in the cloud?

    Posted June 28, 2011 - 9:24 am

    Offshoring IT work to India, China, Eastern Europe, and even South America has been a staple of IT cost reduction. And by definition the Cloud means location independence. Generally speaking, they're practically made for each other.

  • How to get smarter about CRM security

    Posted May 13, 2011 - 9:31 am

    If Value Engineering is the identification of different implementation strategies to achieve the business goal, the ultimate in value engineering is to identify requirements that don't need to be done in the first place. Although security and access control would seem to be a poor candidate for this kind of requirements elimination, in many situations the technical solutions are so clumsy and expensive that there's almost no ROI.

  • Develop a social CRM strategy

    Posted May 10, 2011 - 11:54 am

    The announcement early last week (May 2nd) of Salesforce.com's completion of the acquisition of social media analytics company, Radian6, stirred some thoughts I've had on the long term trajectory of socialytics and social CRM.

  • Boden sends online sales higher with new CRM

    Posted April 29, 2011 - 4:13 am

    Online and mail-order clothing retailer Boden is aiming to boost website revenue worldwide with software from Autonomy.

  • CRM on a smartphone

    Posted April 28, 2011 - 4:14 pm

    A smartphone app integrated with its CRM system helps Hard Rock Hotel and Casino track customer spending and promote food and beverage specials

  • Salesforce.com shares take big hit

    Posted February 28, 2011 - 7:05 pm

    Shares of enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) fell nearly 5 percent Monday after a Wall Street Journal article poked holes in the company's recent fourth quarter financial report and basic fundamentals.

  • The inherent unfairness of employee non-compete agreements

    Posted February 24, 2011 - 4:41 pm

    Maybe instead of pressuring prospective employees to sign non-compete agreements in order to keep them from going to a rival, companies should compete to keep their valued workers. Or just let them go.

  • Cloud meets CRM: How to track who's who

    Posted February 16, 2011 - 7:56 pm

    In the early days of CRM, it was simple: people were people and companies were companies. Adding a new person to the CRM database was pretty unambiguous, whether they came in through direct entry or via integration across the clouds.

  • Cloud-based CRM: Beware bad data and silly object models

    Posted February 8, 2011 - 4:57 pm

    Over the course of too many years, I've said that you can't make a user interface that's too easy for users. But cloud-based software vendors have essentially done just that. System setup is now deceptively simple, and too many sales pitches tell stories of how users can set up a cloud-based system themselves.

  • Why some companies are ditching their spreadsheets

    Posted January 20, 2011 - 8:58 am

    Until a few years ago, Thule Group's North American division would have been considered a "classic spreadsheet-driven" company, according to Vice President of Finance Mark Cohen.

  • A Nimble way to manage your social stream

    Posted December 23, 2010 - 4:35 pm

  • Do you need a cloud CRM platform or cloud CRM product?

    Posted December 21, 2010 - 5:43 pm

    The best CRM applications are really toolkits in disguise. When do you need to be focusing on buying "just an app," and when do you need to focus on the toolkit and platform?

  • CRM: Four dirty little secrets of marketing automation

    Posted December 1, 2010 - 4:53 pm

    In the heat of a sales cycle, marketing automation vendors tell you all the great news about how their systems will increase conversion rates, improve sales effectiveness, and save time. When used properly, marketing automation systems do all that. What the sales reps don't tell you is...

  • Social CRM, enterprise 2.0 and the complete business

    Posted November 23, 2010 - 1:47 pm

    There has been a good bit of back and forth going on lately after the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara about the terms e2.0, social CRM and social business. I'm getting tired of the argument frankly, all of the terms have a place in what has been happening and they each describe a piece of what I think has to become a "whole". Social CRM and programs that deal with the "social customer" are the new "black" this year. And why not, every business wants to get closer to its customers, right? There are some great success stories about everything from using consumer based social communications channels like Facebook and Twitter for marketing, support and sales to building community based support through peer-to-peer networks. Social is gaining traction all across customer facing functions in many organizations and companies are starting to realize that the social customer expects companies to interact with them "when, where and how" the customer chooses.
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