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Every year, Beagle Research Group scours the tech landscape in search of a few good companies that are developing technologies not only novel to the customer relationship management industry, but also likely to reinvent business processes in their particular niches. Denis Pombriant, principal at the...

Having your customers comment on your policies, products or employment practices is one thing. Having them suggest ideas for improving said policies and products -- in a public forum where participants can vote on these ideas, no less -- is an entirely different matter. How well a company can handl...

Avaya has introduced Intelligence Presence, a new software application that gives users -- both in corporate environments and call centers -- the ability to view so-called presence information across multiple sources. For example, it would allow a contact center rep engaged with a caller to see if a...

Microsoft's annual lollapalooza of a conference, Convergence, has come and gone, but the blogs it triggered live on. The team behind Microsoft CRM Live -- the on-demand application scheduled to be released later this summer -- has been particularly prolific, with "how-to" posts on the company's late...

Microsoft is on schedule to release Dynamics CRM Live this summer, CEO Steve Ballmer assured the crowd at the Convergence 2008 keynote address. The application's features and functions are, for the most part, familiar to users and partners. They are largely the same as the Dynamics CRM 4.0 applicati...

With the launch of On Demand, version 15, Oracle is introducing robust new Web 2.0 functionality -- and it's sending a strong signal that more of this type of application development is on the horizon. Oracle's message is that Web 2.0 is now part of the CRM family, Beagle Research founder Denis Pomb...

Bloggers -- especially those whose traffic volumes can rival a minor newspaper's -- are getting used to the royal treatment. Consumer electronic vendors, hotels, auto manufacturers -- heck, even politicians -- are reaching out to the people who have made it their avocation to blog about them. Every...

RFID has gained ascendancy in the corporate world more by fiat than through efforts to persuade suppliers that the technology could deliver internal returns -- at least, in the beginning. With the requirement to deploy it or lose contracts handed down by such entities as Wal-Mart and the Department ...

PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and a host of others succumbed to the pull of its tractor beam. Could Salesforce.com be next on Oracle's list? Though this rumor has been around for several years as idle speculation, in the last several months it's taken on new life. The tenor of the gossip has change...

NetSuite has introduced its own version of a development platform -- direct competition for the raft of initiatives and platforms Salesforce.com has designed to entice developers to its product line. The difference between them, according to NetSuite, is that it based its new platform on open standa...

RightNow has updated its flagship SaaS CRM product with new agent desktop functionality, customer-tracking abilities, enhanced analytics and chat features. The new version, which it calls "February '08," also includes a contextual workspace -- that is, a user interface for contact center service rep...

The customer is always right -- except for, of course, when he or she isn't. When it's inconvenient for the company, or when the customer asks for something that could negatively affect the company's revenue streams or business model, the customer is never right -- even when he or she is. That's why...

Through a joint venture with the renowned Cleveland Clinic, Google is entering yet another software category: electronic personal health records. The two firms last week announced plans to develop a PHR pilot program that will test the secure exchange of patient medical record data -- such as prescr...

Oracle has introduced a new single-tenant option for its Siebel CRM customers. In contrast to the typical multitenant architecture, Siebel's Single Tenant, Enterprise Edition gives customers a path to connectivity via a fully dedicated database, middleware and application instance of Siebel CRM On D...

RightNow has enhanced its retail industry-specific app with chat and feedback functionality -- changes that give users more outreach options to customers using self-service channels. "With this app, retailers can incorporate feedback into chat," said Susan Meriwether, VP of product marketing, "to ma...

A frustrated Best Buy customer has filed a $54 million lawsuit against the electronics retailer in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Her complaint? Best Buy lost the laptop she had brought in for repair; the tech staff was evasive about its whereabouts; and the store refused to compens...

"Opportunity computing" is a term that Danny Kolke, founder and CTO of Etelos, has coined -- or at least introduced into general use in the CRM community, thanks to his recent blog post, "Utility v. Opportunity." A partner recently asked Kolke about Etelos' move into the utility computing business.

Salesforce.com has released its Spring '08 update, building on the Content and Ideas modules that debuted in its Winter '07 edition and boosting standard customer relationship management functionality. The primary purpose of the Content and Ideas applications is to give users more tools to manage un...

SugarCRM will be building out its global footprint and investing in its engineering bench now that it has completed its latest round of funding. The open source customer relationship management provider just secured a $20 million package, led by New Enterprise Associates, bringing its total funding ...

Amdocs has introduced a new lineup of service offerings designed to help its customers make the transition to marketing their own products and strategies in the digital medium. Amdocs began realigning its product portfolio in this direction last year, when it introduced the Customer Experience Syste...