Archive

Around the time when Software as a Service was pre-empting the on-premise vendors, SugarCRM burst onto the CRM scene with its own disruptive business mode: open source for CRM. The build-it-yourself model wasn't for everybody, of course -- or so many thought at the time. As SugarCRM continues to ref...

One of the selling points for moving software into the cloud is that it is supposedly hassle-free: no hardware, no software and presumably no huge staff of IT employees. The latter is certainly true -- but that is not to say companies can stop investing in their IT human resources just because they ...

Conventional wisdom suggests that the more information a person has concerning a particular issue or event, the more likely they are to accurately predict the outcome. This applies to such diverse areas as baseball, meteorology, and, of course, business. The challenge, however, is deciphering which ...

I am fond of Paul Greenberg because he's smart and knows a heck of a lot about CRM -- most importantly, he's a good judge of whether a company is for real or just playing around. I am also grateful to him for pointing out that I was the fortunate one to identify on-demand technology as a disruptive...

The purpose of a strategic plan is to guide an organization intelligently into the future -- but what happened to the last strategic plan you put together? It likely sits in a binder collecting dust on your office shelf, without ever fulfilling its intended purpose. With so much time, money and reso...

The Business Intelligence space has been on a mission for several years. The goal: to simplify the way these applications work for the end-user. Several years ago, one practically needed a Ph.D. to be able to eke out usable data. Today, most line of business users can get the same results. Noetix is...

For some companies, the decision to move to the cloud is a no-brainer -- especially if they limit their planning to pure number crunching. Without a doubt, the savings for such a leap, both explicit and implicit, can be huge. Still, though, there are technical issues to consider, not the least of wh...

Amazon's announcement of a cloud-based data mining and analysis service, using the eHadoop implementation of MapReduce, potentially opens advanced business intelligence activities to many more businesses and organizations. It's an excellent example of just how much cloud computing can change the w...

I almost couldn't have imagined it. I give myself a little leeway, but after years of writing and talking about "new, new things" it didn't really dawn on me that at some point we'd be talking about a new, new economy -- but we are. I was speaking with Brian Zanghi, CEO of Kadient, the other day, a...

Software as a Service CRM implementations require more than just SaaS to succeed. SaaS customer relationship management must be integrated with other applications and data sources. The goal of SaaS CRM integration is an integrated view of customer data, which unlocks its inherent value and increase...

Right now, about 2 percent of the contact center infrastructure market uses Software as a Service, said inContact CEO Paul Jarman, citing research by Gartner. That statistic seems reasonable, given that the contact center infrastructure space has traditionally been dominated by on-premise players --...

As with any new technology, there are special considerations that must be taken into account when deciding how or whether to implement a cloud-based application. These are early days for cloud computing, which means the planning process must move off auto-pilot. Here are some of the things companies...

The traditional sales pressures of lengthening sales cycles and low quota achievement have only been exacerbated by the recent economic downturn. Many businesses have been forced to cut costs, eliminate waste and often freeze spending. The few organizations that might be looking to spend are increas...

It is inevitable. In economics, commoditization is a routine part of the life cycle, the opposite end of the spectrum from innovation and as natural as life and death. Sometimes commoditization results in the elimination of a product or idea, but at other times it merely means subsuming the innovati...

Companies deploy CRM solutions to improve business performance, maximize customer relationships and enhance customer service, but many deployments fail to meet expectations. There are many reasons technology rollouts fail, from lack of planning to lack of funding, but there's another, less-understoo...