Archive

A recent national survey found that an overwhelming 83 percent of consumers would purchase more online if retailers provided more interactive and interesting sites. Consumers surveyed expressed interest in a wide variety of features that would improve their shopping experience, but what does creatin...

Avaya on Thursday made two related announcements: the acquisition of enterprise mobility software maker Traverse Networks; and a new product strategy centered around unified communications. Avaya's unified communications solutions give corporate users easy access to all of their communications appli...

Over the last week, two partnerships -- Pegasystems and IBM, and Amdocs and SAS -- have emerged to offer new CRM applications for the banking industry. The timing no doubt was happenstance, but the dual product rollouts illustrate the attraction this sector has for the CRM industry. In fact, banking...

One of the benefits from the explosion of sales effectiveness solutions has been the effect on the marketing process. For too long, selling was regarded as a pseudo science while marketing was regarded as an art that needed to be tightly controlled to prevent waste. So it was no surprise to hear d...

Siebel led a list of top CRM applications ranked according to their size and expertise in eight vertical markets in a recent IDC report. Not surprisingly, Oracle's other CRM solutions -- thanks to multiple acquisitions over the last several years -- also dominate a majority of the categories. Howeve...

Measuring a Web site's performance isn't what it used to be. Site operators are increasingly turning to outside sources for the components of their Web pages. That can muddy the metrics for companies trying to get a handle on how their sites are really performing. Gomez Inc., though, believes it has...

Outsourcing and the establishment of captive customer service operations offshore depend on labor markets to supply qualified talent at affordable rates. Without appropriate personnel, nothing is possible. The globalization of information technology and IT-enabled services is leading to the global...

When Wal-Mart started talking about using RFID technology to get a better handle on the demand signal in its supply chains, one frightening image embedded itself in consumers' collective imaginations: a manufacturer, retailer or both tracking the use and disposal of an individual's razor blade, toot...

RFID initiatives introduced by the Department of Defense and private sector providers such as Savi Technology or Boeing are driving greater use of the technology in the aerospace and defense industries. Unlike Wal-Mart's RFID initiative in the consumer goods space, though, the Department of Defense'...

Consumer loyalty has become such a ubiquitous goal for marketers that its definition is murky, at best. Ten years ago, a loyal customer participated with a chosen brand more frequently than the average shopper. For marketers, the term has evolved to encompass frequency, recency of interaction and mo...

SAS has upgraded its marketing automation and marketing optimization applications with new functionality. While not a point release, the upgrades are worth noting because of their inclusion -- for the first time -- of digital marketing. First though, to give the marketing automation and optimizatio...

I have been very encouraged by the flurry of activity in the sales effectiveness space. Over the last 18 months or so, emerging vendors there have taken a concept that had been around for a while and breathed new life into it. Sales effectiveness is still a catch-all category. If you had to distill ...

Microsoft plans to ship a retooled version of its Dynamics CRM 3.0 application when Office 2007 and Windows Vista ship at the end of November. The compatibility upgrade is one strategy the company is using to encourage corporate buyers to adopt the new Vista-Office bundle. Feature-wise, the upgraded...

SalesGene, a startup that worked a niche category of sales force automation called "marketing sales effectiveness," has renamed itself and repositioned its product in order to better serve its potential buyers. The firm is now called "Landslide Technologies," echoing the name of the firm's portal-li...

In call centers across America, companies measure employee attrition. They often seek to understand why employees are leaving. However, they probably should be measuring why employees are staying. Instead of studying the dissatisfaction, it might be better to look at the problem from a new direct...