Archive

It's about that time of year when we see all the predictions and forecasts of how much online sales will increase, by product, for this holiday season. From cautiously to wildly optimistic, these forecasts are things that e-commerce managers' dreams are made of. There's something missing in this yea...

In an effort to gain a competitive edge in the market, companies are implementing customer self-service solutions to address two distinctly separate business challenges -- improving the customer experience and cost reduction. While the cost-related benefits of self-service are widely understood, and...

They pulled out all the stops at Oracle Open World last week to unveil a whole lot of advanced and interesting business technology. It was the 30th anniversary show, but the emphasis was clearly about the future -- not the past. There was lots that was not CRM related -- though from my provincial pe...

SAP may be putting on the block its third-party support and maintenance subsidiary, TomorrowNow, the company reported. SAP acquired the company, which services Oracle subsidiaries PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, a few years ago as part of a larger drive to build out an independent stream of support and ...

RightNow is leveraging two of its competitive strengths -- self-service and knowledge management -- to deliver a syndication widget in its November 07 release. The feature allows companies to syndicate and then distribute content, such as pricing or warranty information, across several Web sites tha...

Today, there are 165 agents in Capgemini's new 610-seat Customer Care & Intelligence center in Junction City, Kan., using Google Apps as part of their customer care activities. Corporations' use of Google Apps have come a long way, considering that when Google Apps was first introduced it was la...

With holiday season promotions escalating into top gear, the term "free shipping" is popping up on many e-commerce sites. While the promotions do attract the attention of consumers, the meaning of the term and the impact of such promotions on retailers' sales are decidedly mixed at this stage. Ship...

When you're making a large investment in software, you want to be sure that you're buying from a reputable company that will be there to support you long-term. Getting a short list of happy customers that your vendor has helped -- some references -- is a common part of most companies' buying process...

OpenSpan, a Microsoft partner, rolled out an application integration platform that allows users of Microsoft's Customer Care Framework 2008 -- which was also introduced Wednesday -- to link together older applications and custom-built systems with the front-end agent desktop. Built on the Microsoft ...

I was looking forward to writing more on Sales 2.0 this week. Selling is something that I am keenly interested in, but it will have to wait for another time. A call from a client set me off in another direction. My client called to talk about phishing and what they are doing to combat it and help th...

Another best-of-breed business intelligence vendor has been snapped up: This time, it is Cognos, which IBM has agreed to acquire for $5 billion in cash, or roughly $58 per share. The move was widely anticipated, given the recent acquisitions made by IBM's rivals in this space. Earlier this year, SAP...

The holiday season may bring joy to consumers and retailers alike, but hand in hand with that joy comes the inevitable pain of post-holiday returns. Gift returns can be a hassle for consumers, but for retailers they pose a daunting logistical challenge, requiring speedy adjustments throughout the pi...

Companies' integrated voice recognition applications are being stretched thin. Even when the best interface designs are in place, customers are abandoning calls before completion. Forty-three percent of companies surveyed in the "Contact Center Analytics" benchmark were either seeing poorer performa...

OK, I get it. I went to the Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week and there was a lot to like about it. In my career, I have seen some major back and forth changes in selling, and I have to say that these changes relate more to what is being offered than who we are selling to. Every salesp...

Sage Software has upgraded ACT by Sage for Real Estate 2008 (10.0) and ACT by Sage Premium for Real Estate 2008 (10.0) contact and customer management applications. These were introduced last year as ACT's first vertical offerings. The company rolled out the two new versions during its Sage Summit c...