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Salesforce.com officially unveiled its new software for the wealth management industry, confirming rumors that it won a 25,000-seat contract with Merrill Lynch to deploy the application. By itself, the Merrill Lynch deal is a noteworthy event. Increasingly, large firms are incorporating Software as ...

Small businesses have typically shied away from complex software deployments. CRM, for instance, still has a low penetration rate in this end of the market despite the number of offerings from such firms as Microsoft, Salesforce.com, FrontRange, Sage and others. These firms' evangelization efforts h...

SAP has purchased business intelligence vendor Pilot Software for an undisclosed sum. The newly acquired functionality will sit on top of the NetWeaver platform, thus allowing SAP customers to integrate their applications into it, Sanjay Poonen, senior vice president and general manager of analytics...

Genesys has introduced a major upgrade to its contact center product line, the Genesys 7.5 Customer Interaction Management Platform, and also released VoiceGenie 7.1, which offers built-in support for video contact centers. The contact center application builds upon several earlier developments Gene...

The newly released American Customer Satisfaction Index provides fresh data illustrating consumers' growing love affair with e-commerce. The e-commerce industry registered a score of 80 on ACSI's 100-point scale -- less than a percentage point away from its all-time high score of 80.8 in 2003, accor...

When Dave Asiala, Dow Chemical's shared services IT director, is talking about his company's RFID initiatives and wants listeners to have an "Aha" moment, he tells them about Dow AgroSciences' use of RFID tags in its in-ground Sentricon Termite Colony Elimination System. "Essentially these are bait ...

Microsoft is offering new business intelligence features for its Dynamics CRM product. It can be downloaded for free from CodePlex, Microsoft's open source project-hosting Web site, and the Microsoft CRM Sandbox, a GotDotNet project created for Microsoft CRM users. Called "Microsoft Dynamics CRM Ana...

Verint Systems has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Witness Systems for $27.50 per share in an all-cash deal that will total roughly $1 billion. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter, pending approval by regulators and Witness Systems stockholders. The combined pro...

About 51 percent of organizations contacted for a recent study by Nucleus Research and KnowledgeStorm are using at least one on-demand application. This finding was not surprising to Rebecca Wettemann, Nucleus Research's vice president, because even though the technology has been around for only a s...

RightNow Technologies has added new capabilities to its voice application, which it first introduced in June 2005 when it acquired Convergent Voice, a voice automation vendor. In this major upgrade, the firm has enhanced the application's inbound functions and has begun developing outbound features,...

Sage Software has introduced SageCRM Version 6, with upgrades that enhance the usability and productivity of the application, as well as new administrative capabilities. Much of the development that went into this release targeted end-user adoption, said Chris Reich, the group's director of CRM prod...

SugarCRM, a provider of open source CRM, has added multi-channel marketing and business analytics functionality to its Sugar Open Source, Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise product lines. This development is welcome news to the group of companies that are investigating open source as a viable a...

Autonomy has introduced a new contact center application, the Intelligent Contact Center, which provides a range of higher-end capabilities, including the ability to detect anger or emotion in a call, multichannel analysis at the point of interaction and real-time agent support. The rollout, Autonom...

In almost every industry, new entrants are constantly facing an uphill climb to take market share away from established players. Companies entering the Software-as-a-Service space can count on having additional challenges, according to a new report by Tier1 Research. Right now, there are more than 1...

Amdocs has overhauled the functionality in its flagship CRM-billing suite with the release of Amdocs 7 on Tuesday. Providing telcos with support for new convergence technology and services is chief among the new capabilities in the application. The system does not exclude any providers or service of...

2006 was a quiet year for buyers and sellers of enterprise applications. There were no startling leaps of new functionality; no dramatic bids for competing vendors; and no large plunge in revenues thus prompting vendors to give way at the negotiating table. The year wasn't as quiet for small and me...

A year and a half after its first foray into the on-demand space, Kana has introduced the third leg of its Software-as-a-Service CRM suite -- a self-service application. This release is available as a stand-alone product or as part of an integrated suite of previously released SaaS applications that...

Oracle on Tuesday upgraded its self-service offering with the release of Siebel Communications Billing Manager 5.1.1 and Siebel Communications Billing Analytics 5.1.1 -- applications built on Siebel's acquisition of eDocs in 2005. New changes to the systems will give users increased online access to...

In looking back at the last few years for the CRM industry, 2001 was the year Siebel reigned supreme; 2002 was the year the recession took hold and companies held off on new CRM and other IT investments; 2004 was the year of mergers and acquisitions; and 2005 was the year those firms that remained s...

SAP has introduced the next version of its mid marketing application, All-in-One. In this version, mySAP ERP 2005 has been used as the platform allowing for better implementation and integration of the CRM and SOA tools, Doug Merritt, executive vice president and general manager for suite optimizati...