Archive

SugarCRM has announced the latest version of its app for iOS and Android, Sugar Mobile 5.0. It includes a redesigned user experience based on customer feedback; support for Apple's Touch ID; a new Sugar MACS service that lets users customize login, splash and loading screens to support their organiz...

Most people think they know what the term "artificial intelligence" means, based on the results of a survey Pegasystems released Tuesday. However, their responses suggested that they probably don't fully understand how it's being used today, including in the customer service realm. Researchers polle...

Salesforce this week announced Financial Services Cloud Einstein, an artificial intelligence-based CRM tool for financial advisors. It gives users a holistic view of each client's household and wealth ecosystem and lets them leverage Salesforce's AI technology to seek out new business opportunities....

Back in 1993, every company had to have a website because it was the thing you did! A website was new, fresh and shiny, and it allowed the marketing team to reach more people than ever before. It was on the Internet, which automatically made your company seem cool. Within about 18 moths, though, ev...

INSIGHTS

It’s Mud Season Again

It's mud season here in New England -- that time of year when everything merges into an amorphous mess. The gray sky merges with a gray landscape made into slop by continual rains and dirty gray melting snow. It's hard to tell where one thing ends and another begins. Eventually the sun comes out and...

AWS has announced Amazon Connect, a self-service contact center solution based on the same cloud technology used by Amazon customer service associates worldwide. It offers phone numbers throughout the U.S. and 18 countries in Europe. "The opportunity for cloud contact centers is significant," said R...

When the U.S. Department of Labor issued its fiduciary rule last year, it set financial advisers, insurers and agents into a mad scramble to meet an April 10, 2017, implementation deadline. The rule elevates all financial professionals who work with retirement plans or provide retirement planning ad...

LinkedIn Enterprise Edition lets users send 50 emails on LinkedIn a month, adds Single Sign-On and other management features, and introduces TeamLink Extend, a tool that pools the networks of all the Sales Navigator users in an enterprise.

INSIGHTS

Blockchain: CRM’s Next Frontier

We've seen a parade of technologies coming into the front office since 2000, including browser-based cloud computing, social media, mobile technology, workflow, journey mapping, and big data and analytics. It's typical that at first there's only a tenuous relationship between the technology and CRM'...

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Outreach CEO Manny Medina: Selling Success

Making sales account-based is "the ability to take an account and use a holistic approach when dealing with it," said Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach. "You use a combination of marketing and sales to get to that account," he continued. "It's giving a name to something people already do, and it creates...

ProsperWorks, which provides CRM for Google's G Suite business tools, last week announced the addition of in-app cloud communications functionality. The new features are available through a custom integration with RingCentral, which provides enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solution...

McDonald's has begun testing new mobile ordering and payment functionality at 29 of its restaurants in Monterey and Salinas, California. It will expand the pilot to another 51 restaurants in Spokane, Washington, on March 20. The company will run multiple pilots to gather customer feedback, work out ...

INSIGHTS

Analytics and Workflow

There's a big difference between B2C and B2B analytics that no vendors seem to be addressing, and it involves the consumption model. I recently spoke with K.V. Rao, founder and chief strategy officer of Aviso, an analytics company focused on sales, and his unabashed opinion is that "if you're trying...

OpenMethods on Tuesday announced integration with Next Caller's Advanced Caller ID database. The integration will let contact centers on the Oracle Service Cloud use real-time contextual data for more than 500 million landline, mobile and VoIP numbers to personalize and simplify their agent and cust...

IDG has introduced Pipeline Activator, a global subscription-based service pinpointing verified projects and active sales prospects for those selling to enterprise IT. Pipeline Activator, the latest addition to IDG's ABM360 suite of account-based marketing services, provides sales and marketing team...


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