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In long-distance navigation -- like in a boat or an airplane -- if you're going to make an error, it's better to make it later than to make it early on. A half-degree mistake can multiply itself into hundreds of miles over the course of a long voyage, but the same error made toward the end of the tr...

SAP is holding Sapphire, its annual user meeting in Orlando, this week. Sapphire is one of the premiere events on the IT tradeshow calendar, along with Microsoft Convergence, Oracle Open World, Sage Insights and Salesforce.com's Dreamforce. These events each draw tens of thousands of people from a...

Sales have traditionally been considered an art, science or a mix of both for most practitioners and businesses. Aside the different views on each end of the spectrum; the truth is that Sales is a data-driven function. Performance of each sales rep and organization can be monitored, measured and ass...

The past year has seen business process management (BPM) achieve tremendous growth in the enterprise, but there continues to be a good deal of misunderstanding about BPM itself. At its core, BPM is about automating and streamlining manual processes. These processes may represent a diverse range of t...

The Kaden Group has launched a new social CRM application, PartnerOption.com. The startup is hoping to carve out a niche by targeting small businesses with a product that combines free CRM functionality -- for now -- with an organized, easily portable business social network focusing on sales leads,...

"What's my motivation?" Sounds like a corny question an overwrought actor might pose to a director on the boards or in front of a camera. But we all have motivations -- and it's smart to understand your own and those of your vendor when it comes to CRM. No one wakes up one morning and decides, "What...

Yesterday Zuora, the billing and payment solution company for subscription businesses, did a smart thing, at least I think so. At NetSuite's user meeting, SuiteWorld, Zuora chief Tien Tzuo announced that his trademark product is now pre-integrated with NetSuite's financials. But that wasn't what's...

Rash assumption of leadership on the part of product managers creates an environment of uncertainty, and can result in the degradation of work ethic and productivity. Therefore, wise project managers will pay special attention to how they portray themselves and the manner in which they execute the ...

To meet the growing demand for social CRM, RightNow positions itself as a provider of "customer experience management" solutions, a term the company prefers to use, said John Kembel, vice president of social solutions. "That's a bit more customer-focused." RightNow CX, the customer experience suite,...

ListenLogic is moving into the social CRM sphere after building expertise with its two related offerings: a reputation management application that helps corporations identify threats before they reach crisis proportions, and a social market research and listening product. "These were the jumping-off...

My wife is a recruiter working in high technology. Recruiters are like every other profession: There are some bad ones, a bunch in the middle who are competent, and some who are truly excellent. I may be biased, but I think she falls into the latter category. Here's why I think she's so good: She t...

Admit it: You never think about data storage any more. We used to, quite a bit. Long before the storage glut that exists today, there was already too much of it, and it was hard to find places to store it. When we built software, it was with an eye toward maximizing our limited storage capacities...

Gartner's Business Intelligence Summit 2011 kicked off on Monday in Los Angeles. It is the sister conference to one held in the beginning of the year in London. While the keynote speakers and participating companies vary, the general themes running through both conferences are the same. One is that ...

The shift from traditional CRM to social media is creating a new paradigm for customer interaction, and Salesforce.com offers cloud-based solutions to help companies meet this new challenge, Scott Holden, senior director of product marketing at Salesforce.com, told CRM Buyer. One of the biggest ch...

CoTweet, a social media management application that ExactTarget developed when it realized that email marketing recipients often continue a conversation about a brand in social marketing venues, now has stronger integration for CRM legacy systems. The company recently unveiled new extensions that al...