Archive

IT vendors -- from RFID tech providers to supply chain management software companies -- have descended upon the National Retail Federation's 95th annual convention and expo in New York City to show off their latest applications and technologies. In the CRM space, vendors such as SAS Institute and Ep...

Siebel Systems has pre-announced sales that vastly surpassed its own and Wall Street's expectations: It said it expects to report fourth quarter revenue of US$469 million -- a 30 percent to 38 percent increase from its last forecast, and a 20 percent rise from the same quarter a year ago. License re...

Many sales forces seem to be stuck in a time warp. Selling with a transaction focus to customers who require a consultative or even enterprise approach is driving the cost of supporting these misaligned sales forces to the point of being unaffordable. Conversely, there are companies out there that ...

NetSuite has introduced more than 30 vertical applications that were developed by partners using the company's latest integration tool, the NetFlex Applications Program. An integration platform, NetFlex was introduced almost a year ago to help customers connect the NetSuite application to third-part...

SAP is redoubling its efforts to grow its piece of the mid-market enterprise suite space by introducing 39 new industry and micro-vertical versions of its mySAP All-in-One application. These new apps have been developed by SAP partners around the globe in such industries as biotechnology, plant cons...

A few weeks ago, I started writing about what I see as the post-CRM world. I think it is becoming clear that front-office automation is moving past the definition of CRM that we have become accustomed to. As I look around the industry, there is a perceptible difference between what software is and...

Microsoft has posted sample code and technical guidance for an internal project it has been working on for more than a year that integrates Outlook with Siebel CRM using Visual Studio tools in Office. More of an approach than a product or even a complete code, Project Elixir has been watched closely...

New research indicates that many brand-name computer companies perform poorly when it comes to online customer service. The study by the Ipswich, Mass.-based Customer Respect Group, an international consulting company, demonstrates that only six companies included in the report received an "excellen...

Asia Pacific is still the dominant locale for contact-center outsourcing, new figures from Frost & Sullivan confirm. The number of contact centers in the region totaled more than 21,360 in 2004 and is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 9.1 percent to reach 39,247 by the end of 2011, a...

According to a McKinsey & Co. survey conducted in June 2005, leading B-to-B companies that conduct collaborative projects with supply chain partners and end customers increase their revenues and profits by more than 20 percent on average. But joint projects are rare in B-to-B because process cha...

After two days of consideration, Onyx Software rejected CDC's unsolicited offer to buy a majority stake in the company. "Onyx is not for sale, and we consider the matter closed now," Robert Craig, director of analyst and public relations, told CRM Buyer. On Wednesday, CDC, a Hong Kong-based company ...

Throughout the last few months of 2005 there was a pronounced ramp-up in activity around Web Services to enable integration of marketing, sales and CRM databases so that more precise selling strategies could be created. The holy grail of CRM -- achieving a single view of the customer -- is within re...

The home-based customer care market -- a small but quickly growing niche of the contact center industry -- could triple by 2010 to 300,000, according to a new report by IDC. "Current estimates put the number of home-based agents at 112,000, so that is a strong growth rate," Stephen Loynd, senior ana...

Hong Kong-based CDC has made a bid for majority control of Onyx Software, after providing institutional shareholders with information on the proposed structure of the merger and the synergies it believes will result. CDC went public with its desire to make the acquisition late last year, after tryin...

First it was manufacturing, then IT. In 2006 -- despite the recent stem-cell controversy in South Korea -- the biotech industry is likely to continue to outsource research and development, as well as other activities, to science parks and contract firms in Asia. In brief, groundbreaking stem-cell an...