Archive

By now, most people understand the power and the value of adding a social component to your CRM strategy. Perhaps you're not yet ready to go to full social CRM, but you no doubt recognize that there is a lot of value in engaging with customers in the ways they want to engage. As social media become ...

Someone recently commented on my post about curation. In part, the comment read, "Do you mean that it is the end result of the analytics phase, where relevant information on a specific topic is collected and acted upon?" The answer is yes and no, and I thought it would make a worthy topic to occupy...

On Sunday, July 10, Time Magazine posted a book review of sorts by Rana Foroohar. "Driven Off the Road by M.B.A.s" is really a riff on Bob Lutz's new book, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business. Lutz should know something about his topic since he spent a 47-year c...

Oracle has released version 19 of its Oracle CRM On Demand application, providing upgrades that range from small, incremental changes to significant innovations. These include new cloud extensibility and mobile options; more access for sales reps via a new connected smartphone application that allow...

Whether you're a user or whether you purposely ducked the invitations to join, you've probably discovered that Google+ is all but inescapable as a topic of conversation. Responses run the gamut from rejection to an all-in embrace of Google's new social media platform; users are trying to figure ou...

We tend to think of social media as a property of CRM, and it is, but the story hardly stops there. Social media is changing the world beyond CRM too, and that's what makes it valuable. If being social were strictly about commerce, it might not be worth writing about. This week's Economist has a ...

What would you do if 100 people visited your website tomorrow and each wanted a different variety of your company's solution? Would you take that information and develop 100 new and unique brochures? No, that would be cost- and time-prohibitive. Now imagine that you can track where website visitors ...

Aprimo has added integrated text messaging functionality to its Aprimo Marketing Studio On Demand application via a new mobile module. The new features allow users to launch SMS campaigns using segmentation, dialog and management functions similar to those found in applications designed to manage ma...

Something interesting is happening at Sage, but it looks like the company isn't ready to tell its whole story. That's a challenge if you happen to be hosting a combined partner and user group meeting, which Sage did this week in Washington, D.C. The company's annual get-together had its share of a...

Whenever I talk about CRM to people who aren't CRM experts, I find the discussion devolving into an examination of the real common denominator in all of this: the human aspects of doing business. The "R" of relationships resonates far more strongly with people than the "M" in management, and for goo...

Avaya is delivering multimedia capabilities to the front line with its announcement of two new contact center products designed to bring agent-assisted and automated customer service up to speed with the social networking world: Avaya Aura Contact Center 6.2 and the Avaya Experience Portal. Avaya Au...

Ever wonder what the opposite of CRM would be? I have. In my ruminations it's not as simple as matter and antimatter, up and down, left and right -- though few of us would consider antimatter very simple. If I gave you written directions to my house, you couldn't get home simply by turning the sh...

A year or so after it rolled out v.7.0, Sage CRM has updated its application with social media functionality, more interactivity, and tighter integration with email marketing, including a subscription-based service for managing email marketing campaigns. The latter, in particular, is of high value t...

Although businesses no longer control the conversation with their customers, that conversation has never been more important to pay attention to and to respond to in a coherent and, when possible, personalized way. It's critical to realize that these relationships are a key part of the customer expe...

If you are a regular reader, you know that from time to time I write about things that appear to be tangentially related to CRM -- at best. My favorite alternative to straight ahead research and reporting on CRM is a strange sounding thing called "peak oil." For those of you not familiar with the i...