Archive

While they worked closely together in the past to provide cutting-edge wireless, bar code and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, U.S. companies Symbol and Intermec are now locked in a widening patent battle that some fear could hamper the progress of RFID. Holtsville, New York-based S...

Customer data integration (CDI) is becoming important for enterprises who want to target, acquire, develop and retain customers. In order to benefit from it, however, an enterprise needs to create a unified and comprehensive customer view from disparate data sources -- including CRM, financial, pro...

Last week a small piece of our world changed. Did you catch it? It happened Thursday, when NetSuite, with its NetFlex announcement, became the second company to offer development and customization capabilities. The week before, in New York, Salesforce.com announced Multiforce, an ambitious additio...

Oracle and its CEO, Larry Ellison, have won the battle to acquire retail software maker Retek, signing a definitive merger agreement announced today. SAP, Oracle's rival in the quest to buy Retek, bowed out of the bidding. The database giant will buy Retek's outstanding stock for $11.25 a share, or ...

Phishing as a way of pilfering private consumer information has become a major security concern. What started as fraudulent e-mail requesting personal information has morphed into sophisticated phony eBay transactions and fake online bill-pay opportunities. Consumer fears, combined with the someti...

Oracle bumped up its bid to acquire Retek late yesterday, in the second round of its battle with SAP for the retail applications developer. The move was expected, but the new offer, US$11.25 per share to SAP's $11, was lower than the $12 Gartner analyst Andrew White predicted yesterday. At the new h...

Home-grown ERP systems are the Oscar Madisons of the IT world. Grizzled by years of service yet reluctant to change, these massive home-grown systems resist the efforts of CIOs to transform them. More often than not, the home-grown ERP system ends up changing the CIO. The complexity and lack of c...

SAP took another shot in its battle with Oracle, raising to $11 a share its bid for Retek. SAP had been set to buy the retail applications provider for $8.50 a share, then Oracle countered at $9. The war, however, is far from over, analysts say. "I would be surprised if Oracle didn't go through anot...

The theory goes that each side of the brain controls a distinct mode of thinking: holistic and synthesizing on the right and logical and sequential on the left. Many people believe that they lean to one side or the other in their approach to learning and doing. Now help is on the way for right-brain...

Sales systems are a regular feature of the CRM suite, and if you didn't know better you might think that garden-variety sales force automation (SFA) is about the only thing you need. That might have been true a few years ago, but we're seeing that changes in markets and economies can have a great e...

Blogging is quickly becoming part of the online lexicon of marketing, sales and support organizations as companies look for better ways to connect with customers. The Pew Internet and American Life Project published a report in January based on two blog surveys. The report is free and can be downl...

Software developer SAP and chip designer Intel said today at the CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany, that they would collaborate on technology to allow companies to integrate data collected from RFID chips. "The announcement provides additional evidence that RFID is real and is moving from being ...

ChoicePoint Inc., a seller of information about most households and their inhabitants, became an overnight household name last month. The Alpharetta, Ga., company disclosed that criminals posing as legitimate business operators had acquired 145,000 consumer records in October 2004. This announcement...

Oracle, never a company to shy from head-on competition, announced today that it would outbid rival SAP in its attempt to buy software maker Retek, offering $9 per share. SAP had agreed last week to pay $8.50 a share. Oracle's offer bumps the bid for the retail applications provider from $496 millio...

The indirect sales channel has emerged as a sales environment distinctly different from conventional business-to-business or business-to-consumer selling. This shifting focus is long overdue, especially in industries such as technology, where a high percentage of products are sold through distributo...