Archive

Asked to define CRM, most enterprise executives will tell you it's the process of moving a company from a product-centric focus to a customer-centric one. Since customers ultimately write your paycheck, it's not hard to see why enterprises have embraced this concept and the technology to enable it. ...

Assemble Connect may be a small company -- but because it is a distributor of custom-manufactured products, its operations are complex enough to rival the largest of manufacturers. That means just about every aspect of its business must be customized -- down to the software that manages the operatio...

Microsoft traditionally has focused on building industry-generic productivity, communications and collaborative software. Now, though, the company appears to be heading down a path well trodden -- for better or worse -- by such companies as Siebel, SAP and a host of best-of-breed vendors: the softwa...

A group of leading technology vendors is reporting significant progress in the standardization of service-oriented architecture, or SOA, standards. The Open Service Oriented Architecture collaboration represents an informal alliance of 17 companies that have worked together to create and agree upon ...

The high level of mergers and acquisitions in the CRM market will continue through 2008, research firm Gartner predicts, with one in three CRM software vendors involved in such a transaction each year. There has already been a series of very high profile M&As in the space, of course, including O...

In an era of prevalent outsourcing -- some of it hurriedly agreed to without due diligence -- Artifact aims through its Scorecard service to help small and mid-sized businesses determine the right outsourcing vendor for their needs. Its on-demand software product, Lighthouse, is designed to help sma...

After a long period in which there seemed to be little to report, PRM or partner relationship management, appears to be enjoying an upswing. PRM was an unfortunate fellow traveler with all the other 'RM' permutations that came about in the dot-com bubble. There was also eCRM, which was a distincti...

Trying to get your hands around organizational change is a difficult challenge for most companies, but it is even more daunting when you are trying to identify the needs of employees that support multiple product lines and span numerous geographic locations. Today, Web-based surveys continue to tak...

Like most retailers, supermarket conglomerate Ahold has a customer loyalty card program, and like most retailers, it mines that data as much as it can to help it sell more products. The data it has gathered over the years range far beyond what a certain customer buys every week. It can also determin...

With the CRM vendor landscape going through so many changes today, it's an excellent time to check up and see what your vendor's viability is, what their future prospects look like, and especially for the best-of-breed vendors, what their exit strategy is, if they have one. I have compiled some quic...

German software giant SAP said Thursday its net profit rose 43 percent in the second quarter on higher U.S. revenues and better margins. The company reported net income of US$519 million, or $1.69 a share, compared with $366 million or $1.18 in the same quarter last year. SAP had already reported l...

ATG continues to build out its e-commerce platform -- an area into which it has been pouring resources for the last two years -- with the introduction of three separate but related sets of e-functionality. These include new navigation or search capabilities for users that ATG calls "searchandising,...

Amdocs, an erstwhile CRM stalwart that has increasingly transformed itself into an end-to-end provider of communications industry software, has filled in missing functionality with a new acquisition. The company has signed an agreement to acquire Cramer Systems Group, a provider of operations suppo...

I was in Chicago for a few days of R&R when Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, spoke at the Microsoft partner meeting in Boston. As a result, I got news of the company's latest projected delivery dates for its on-demand CRM not from Microsoft, but from Paul Greenberg's blog: "On Demand Means Righ...

In buying a U.S. company, liabilities do not cease once a seller has completed a deal. The allocation of liabilities is usually determined in the acquisition agreement. Acquisition agreements are described in the previous article in this series. The role of indemnifications in mergers and acquisi...