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Call center operator InfoCision Management Corp. is adding teleservices representatives. Over the coming months several hundred people will join the company's call centers in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. This growth seems to fly in the face of expectations following the implementation of th...

I got an interesting press release the other day. Headlined "SalesForce Loses CRM Lead," the release said that a new hosted CRM company, FreeCRM.com, claims 13,500 customers to Salesforce.com's 12,500. Hence the leadership change. As you might expect from the name, this company has amassed its con...

Oracle today officially released the mobile version of its grid computing database, 10g. A version of Database Lite 10g has been in use since 1996 as a means of accessing the main 10g database through PDAs, laptops and handheld computers. The company says its new release is a giant step ahead of the...

Twelve months ago, CRM faced some resentment in many organizations, but as the year progressed it began proving its value. "2004 was mainly a year of validating that CRM works, rather than [focusing] on major new functionality. A lot of companies focused on governance and integration, making what th...

While January 1 is a great mile-marker in any business timeline, the urgency for change needs to be dictated by honest assessments rather than by the flip of calendar pages. We all have enough to do already, and no one wants another action item list. That's why resolutions can turn out to be counte...

Just as many companies that adopted CRM applications years ago often failed to use the data they collected, call centers that tape inbound calls for regulatory compliance and quality assurance often lack the time and the staff to listen to the calls and learn from them. Enter speech analytics softwa...

At its best the selling life can be great fun, full of action and accomplishment. At its worst it can make pushing on a string look like the essence of productivity. As a practitioner, the thing you either love or hate about selling is change. As a market emerges and matures, the techniques that on...

Traditionally, e-mail program measurement focuses on overt consumer responses: We know that a customer has opened, clicked, perhaps even transacted -- but unless a coupon redemption is involved, our knowledge of why a response has occurred is often limited. With the focus in measuring e-mail progra...

Canadian outsourcing vendors tend to attract sophisticated work and projects closely tied to American culture and the English language. As such, despite the stronger numbers of outsourcing firms and employees in offshore locations such as India and the Far East, Canada is holding its own against ove...

Think of this scenario: You're shopping for a new home and instead of guiding you into a single-digit fixed-rate mortgage, lenders try to persuade you that an adjustable mortgage indexed to your income makes more sense. Structuring mortgages like that makes no sense, and it's making less and less se...

American businesses are struggling with retaining experienced customer service agents as demands and contacts increase along with higher expectations in the customer-driven economy. At the same time, the marching orders to the contact centers are to keep costs down, reduce call time, increase satisf...

Many companies question if the dollars spent with research and advisory firms are delivering unbiased, accurate guidance. This is particularly true in the CRM industry, where analysts influence short lists, sales cycles, and media coverage extensively. Analysts, in short, can make or break a start-u...

Time to go out on a limb, put everything on the table, and make some prognostications about what the big stories will be in and around CRM in 2005. This is all based on the best available research and written with the confidence of knowing that no one will remember any of it by next December. Here...

Many retailers already use automation in their supply chain and inventory management. Vendor-managed inventory (VMI), for example, has made its way into many retailers. It optimizes supply-chain performance by keeping the responsibility for restocking with the manufacturer, not the distributor. The ...

Hoping to expand its customer base while also enhancing the so-called front office services it already provides, Siebel Systems said it will buy e-billing service provider eDocs in a deal worth US$115 million. Siebel will take control of Natick, Massachusetts-based eDoc's 180 employees and gain acce...