Silverpop Gives SMBs More Social Media Pull
Silverpop has been on the vanguard of old-school digital marketing providers -- that is, email marketing firms -- embracing social media. The company has released a slew of products designed to integrate the two disciplines. Given that history, it is difficult to imagine a subsector or market constituency that it missed in its earlier product rollouts, but apparently Silverpop has found one, and it has set out to rectify the omission. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 21, 8:00am
Global E-Commerce: Unique Capabilities Required
Over the next few years, the growth in online retail sales in markets such as Western Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America is expected to outpace U.S. growth. Given this increase in cross-border e-commerce, many retailers are rushing to reach new markets. However, the unique circumstances of international shipping call for unique systems and process capabilities. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 19, 8:00am
NetSuite, Transportation and the Internet of Things
This spring has seen a raft of software company events and announcements, and they've been good meetings full of real news and important new developments. It is as if these companies bided their time during the worst of the recession, building new product, thinking about the future and how customers will use their technologies. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 18, 8:00am
People, Processes and Standout Service Experiences
Customer service is a crucial part of the customer experience. That seems immediately obvious. And customer experience is the big buzzword right now, so companies are going bonkers revamping their customer service operations. Right? Would that it were so. Almost paradoxically, many businesses are still stuck in the mode of tweaking with utterly defective customer service processes. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 17, 8:00am
Federal Cloud Adoption, Part 2: Raining Contracts
The U.S. government's pursuit of cloud-based technology has been characterized by a blizzard of policies, directives, technical studies, proposed contract vehicles and conferences. The federal "cloud first" initiative, requiring agencies to give priority consideration to cloud solutions for IT operations, began in December 2012. Now, an idea of how much business is at stake for IT vendors has surfaced -- and it's impressive. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 16, 8:00am
The Rise of Open Source
SugarCon, the SugarCRM user meeting held in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, did some important things for Sugar. It was a coming out party of sorts for a company with a distinct business model and strategy, namely open source. It was also validation of that strategy and, for many, a new realization of what open source means. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 16, 8:00am
Federal Cloud Adoption, Part 1: Lots of Baby Steps
The U.S. government is learning quickly that achieving the next big thing in information technology depends upon implementing a huge number of little things. For federal IT managers, that big thing is the cloud. Federal agencies have busily pursued cloud solutions since December 2010, when the government adopted its "Cloud First" policy, requiring agencies to give priority consideration to cloud technologies. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 15, 8:00am
Sapphire Now: It's a Mobile, Social, Cloudy, Collaborative World
The Sapphire Now conference kicked off Monday in Orlando, Fla., with 60,000 customers, partners and employees of SAP participating, either at the conference facility or watching it online. The first day of the event offered the usual lineup of celebrity speakers -- corporate and otherwise -- with Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong featured in the morning and SAP Co-CEO Bill McDermott in the afternoon. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 15, 8:00am
CRM Conference to Showcase the Retail Experience
CRM Conference is being held May 29 to 31 at the Chicago Hyatt Regency. This annual event offers a unique agenda for retailers, said Devon Wylie, CEO of CRMC. "It's specifically focused on case studies from topnotch multinational retailers. With this approach, attendees can get actionable learnings they can take home with them." Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 14, 8:00am
Zoho Boosts Its Social Enterprise Creds
Zoho has enhanced its menu of offerings by incorporating social media into its customer support features. It has also added a Facebook social media integration point to its flagship application. The changes went live on Thursday, added automatically to the applications. These two developments are modest compared to the company's massive overhaul to its suite at the end of last year. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 11, 8:00am
When Your Business Goofs, CRM Can Be Your Best Friend
There are three things certain in life. We all know the two cited by Benjamin Franklin, but there's a third certainty that we all face regularly and have to cope with constantly. That's the certainty that we'll make mistakes. Everyone makes them; if it hasn't happened to your business, you haven't been in business long. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 10, 8:00am
Sustainable CRM
There was an interesting article about airlines in The New York Times last week, "When Flying 720 Miles Takes 12 Hours," but the subtext was all about CRM, or at least where CRM has to go. If you know me at all, you know I closely attend to macroeconomics and energy issues, and they are all over this article. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 9, 8:00am
BPM and CMOs: A Match Made in Heaven
There's been a lot of talk recently about how BPM is gaining traction across a wide variety of industry verticals. BPM's surge is part of the larger trend of agile development; organizations are weary of growing top-heavy and employing a number of individuals to perform tedious, manual processes. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 8, 8:00am
Getting What You Want From ERP in the Cloud
Through the Ariba Network, Cox Enterprises manages multiple ERP systems for an improved e-procurement strategy. The $15 billion communications, media, and automotive services company has moved toward more efficient indirect spend efforts to improve ongoing operations and drive future growth across more than 50,000 employees. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 7, 8:00am
Making Customers the Object of Devotion
The proliferation of customer service channels can be both a blessing and a curse. It can be a blessing in that companies now have more ways than ever to address customer needs and resolve customer issues, potentially leading to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. At the same time, the proliferation of customer service channels can be a curse. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 7, 8:00am
Insidesales.com Aims to Keep Leads on the Front Burner
Imagine walking into a department store on a Wednesday morning and spotting a pair of shoes you feel that you must acquire, or life will have no meaning. You excitedly ask the sales rep if you can try on a pair in your size and she says, "Sure, why don't you come back on Friday?" That deflating experience occurs all the time on the Web, said Ken Krogue, president of InsideSales.com. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 4, 8:00am
Reading Into IBM's Tealeaf Buy
IBM is building out its digital marketing functionality in its Smarter Commerce portfolio with the acquisition of Tealeaf Technology, a provider of customer experience analytics. Tealeaf software records and analyzes customer interactions on a company's website and any mobile channels it offers. It allows the company to catch any mistakes or glitches in the system that may be hindering the customer experience. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 3, 11:45am
3 CRM Traits Shared by Good People and Great Companies
I just wrote a note to a friend of mine thanking him for his participation at a conference I recently helped organize. It was a thank you note, and he's a CRM industry influencer; I won't divulge names, because it's not important to my point, nor do I want to seen like too much of a suck-up. In any event, I was grateful for his participation in the show -- not just for his session, but for his behavior at this and every other CRM event he goes to. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 3, 8:00am
Federal IT Managers Get New Tools for Hammering Out Innovations
E-Commerce buzz words sound great in theory, but innovation often founders on the shoals of "getting there from here" as IT managers slog through the details of converting to new systems and programs. Federal agencies have been turning to shared services, data consolidation, commodity IT and, especially, the cloud. Directives to reform IT have been flying out of the OMB at regular intervals for the past 18 months. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 2, 8:00am
Spring Renewal
I read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in college, and now every April brings me back to the opening verses about springtime and renewal. This April was especially memorable in our industry, and as the month has just passed I wanted to take a moment to discuss some of the things I witnessed. Mostly, for me, there was an unmistakable sense of renewal in CRM and in the tech sector more generally. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 2, 8:00am
Kicking Off CRM Idol - Season 2
Small CRM players have a chance to get their names out in the market if they win top spot at the second annual CRM Idol competition, which kicked off Monday. Hopefuls have until 6 p.m. Pacific time on May 25 to file their submissions. Contestants will be assigned a mentor to help them prepare the briefing or demo. Read more...
CRM Buyer, May 1, 8:00am
Social Dynamx Turns CSRs Into Rock Stars
Social Dynamx has just launched a new enterprise-class social customer care platform that will allow customer support and community management teams to identify, prioritize and handle millions of one-on-one customer social media conversations daily. As a subscription-based platform, it is designed to quickly identify relevant conversations and intelligently route them to the appropriate customer service agents. Read more...
CRM Buyer, Apr 30, 8:00am