Archive

On Dec. 6, Apple announced that it would begin making some Macs in the U.S., reversing a trend building over several years of manufacturing computers in China and setting an interesting precedent. Apple isn't alone in this: HP has also begun shifting some of its PC production back to the U.S. of A. ...

It is a truism that consumers' smartphones, armed with a slew of sophisticated apps, function as mini computers. That being the case, smartphones programmed with sales force marketing and productivity applications have almost become sophisticated enough to be compared to mainframe computing. They're...

When Double Cola wanted to encourage its customers to keep coming back for more of its vintage fizzy drink, it started a rewards program. Using tried-and-true loyalty methods, the company offered customers the opportunity to turn over the cola's caps, earn points, and get discounts and merchandise. ...

Microsoft next month will roll out a service update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that will have a new user interface, integration with Yammer, Skype and Office 2013, and cross-browser support. In general, the theme of tight integration with other Microsoft technologies runs through the release, said S...

They don't call it the Christmas rush for nothing. December weekends see masses of customers crowding stores to buy gifts, and at peak times the salespeople can appear overwhelmed. Their objective is to check out as many customers as quickly as possible -- ring 'em up, bag their stuff and move to th...

Has the emergence of social technology been faster than the rollout of other advanced technologies like CRM and ERP? If it has, why? I have recently been reading a dense technical book from 1990 with the improbable title -- for CRM -- "The Rise and Fall of Infrastructures -- Dynamics of Evolution an...

The mobile experience has clearly changed consumers' expectations of the shopping experience, creating higher expectations. With in-stock notifications, a mobile shopper doesn't have to run around to various stores. Want to ask a question about a product? Many apps offer chat. "This could be in star...

It's become clear that the true political star of the 2012 election was Big Data. There is much that marketers can learn from its meteoric rise. Trumping the old-school, gut-instinct days of electoral politics, today's campaigns employ data crunchers who mine the campaign's database for clues on wha...

Benbria has launched Blazeloop, a customer engagement platform that revolves around one pointed question aimed at the consumer: How did we do? The theory behind the Web-based app is that most customers do not take the trouble to complain about little things -- but it is those very little things that...

As a callow youth, I enlisted in the Navy and found myself at sea aboard the USS Gray as a bosun's mate. That meant standing a lot of watch on the bridge, and being on the bridge meant knowing how to report positions of other things based on a 360-degree arc. The idea was to have a 360-degree view o...

Have you voted yet? Not in the presidential election -- this is more important! I am talking about voting in the CRM Idol competition. It's time! OK, I know what you are thinking: What is CRM Idol? It's the brainchild of Paul Greenberg, and its purpose is to find the hottest emerging company in the ...

Based on recent statistics, one would think Houston is the mobile-commerce capital of the United States. Shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday, the Interactive Advertising Bureau released its list of mobile-savvy cities. Houston was ranked No. 1, followed by Seattle-Tacoma, San Francisco, Los Ange...

Avaya IP Office joined the BYOD revolution with the release of version 8.1 earlier this year. Now the company is gearing up for more changes, including a forthcoming release that will integrate video functionality into its feature set. It will continue to expand its functionality around mobility in ...

Jeff Hasen, Hipcricket's CMO, recently had what he called his "10 millionth" bad customer experience with Comcast. It's galling enough to be treated poorly by a company when you buy just about all of its services, as Hasen does with Comcast. Worse, though, is when you are a mobile CRM expert, as Ha...

Incorporating analytics in a vendor's solution set was once enough to qualify the vendor as very forward looking and a leader in the market. I think that's true in CRM for sure, and this metric could be spreading. Ever since Salesforce introduced its Marketing Cloud at Cloudforce New York, however, ...