CRM

If it's true that the best CRM systems are built, not bought, then which features should you be building? And how should you build them? As with riding a bike, implementing a CRM system gets much harder once you take off the training wheels--or, in this case, the out-of-the-box features.

Business owners think they have a great understanding of their customers, but a new survey shows they're completely clueless.

Global CRM (customer relationship management) revenue grew 12.5 percent last year to US$18 billion, a rate three times that of all enterprise software segments on average, as companies look to acquire more business and serve existing customers better, according to a new Gartner report.

Business intelligence software provider Tableau Software has updated its namesake software with additional tools for connecting to the sources of data in the cloud.

Microsoft is hoping to shove aside rivals such as Salesforce.com and Oracle in the CRM (customer relationship management) software market by linking its own Dynamics CRM application with new capabilities for marketing automation and social media analysis.

Oracle first announced its Social Relationship Management product family several months ago at OpenWorld, but has now taken steps to actually integrate the components of the product set, which it gained through a number of acquisitions over the past year.

Many companies had to learn these three little lessons the hard way, but there's no reason your business can't learn from those mistakes.

Agile is the best approach for CRM projects, but what if management just won't let you go there? What does it really mean to have a fixed-price, fixed-deliverable project? You will have to put in more effort, but you can succeed in the long run.

Salesforce.com is being sued by a customer who claims the CRM (customer relationship management) software vendor's misrepresentations made their relationship go sour.

Salesforce.com's next product update will feature scores of new capabilities for its core CRM (customer relationship management) application as well as the Chatter messaging and collaboration service.

As Salesforce.com's SaaS offerings become more sophisticated, configuration and deployment gets more complex. In response, enterprises are increasingly turning to partners for implementation help.

The global software market grew 4.7 percent in the first half of this year to US$167 billion, with CRM (customer relationship management), virtualization and collaboration coming in as the fastest-growing segments, according to figures released Wednesday by analyst firm IDC.