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When Wal-Mart started talking about using RFID technology to get a better handle on the demand signal in its supply chains, one frightening image embedded itself in consumers' collective imaginations: a manufacturer, retailer or both tracking the use and disposal of an individual's razor blade, toot...

RFID initiatives introduced by the Department of Defense and private sector providers such as Savi Technology or Boeing are driving greater use of the technology in the aerospace and defense industries. Unlike Wal-Mart's RFID initiative in the consumer goods space, though, the Department of Defense'...

SAS has upgraded its marketing automation and marketing optimization applications with new functionality. While not a point release, the upgrades are worth noting because of their inclusion -- for the first time -- of digital marketing. First though, to give the marketing automation and optimizatio...

Microsoft plans to ship a retooled version of its Dynamics CRM 3.0 application when Office 2007 and Windows Vista ship at the end of November. The compatibility upgrade is one strategy the company is using to encourage corporate buyers to adopt the new Vista-Office bundle. Feature-wise, the upgraded...

SalesGene, a startup that worked a niche category of sales force automation called "marketing sales effectiveness," has renamed itself and repositioned its product in order to better serve its potential buyers. The firm is now called "Landslide Technologies," echoing the name of the firm's portal-li...

eGain Communications has released the latest iteration of its self-service application, eGain Service 7.6. New features include guidance on complex customer interactions and tweaks to security, as well as additional process improvement. Such incremental gains in functionality -- across the self-serv...

NetSuite has introduced a new development platform that gives both users and partners deeper customization capabilities for their respective needs. Called "SuiteFlex," the platform gives customers the tools to build their own workflows and user interfaces -- for example, a billing application that r...

Renault is marketing a car called the Logan -- a starter vehicle that retails for about US$6,300. A safety conscious consumer may pause before getting in -- but he shouldn't, or at least not more so than he would with any other car. Renault is not cutting corners in its manufacturing process. Instea...

Oracle and IBM are leveraging the multi-million dollar investments they have made in their Linux product lines by joining forces to collaborate on the sales and marketing of Oracle applications for Linux on System z. This collaborative effort has been driven in large part by customer demand, Frank ...

A survey of online banking illustrates how banks can cement brand loyalty and even increase market share through a thoughtful redesign of their online channel. The survey was one of three extensive research studies released by Keynote Competitive Research, measuring the performance and competitive ...

What should companies do -- and what should they refrain from doing -- when reacting to blog postings about their products or services? Robert Cox, president of the New York-based Media Bloggers Association and a consultant to consumer packaged goods companies, has very specific ideas on the subject...

Oracle is offering to support clients' PeopleSoft and Siebel applications in its own data center -- a managed service option that it has offered with its own Oracle applications for the last few years. Oracle is including these new offerings in its On Demand portfolio, although the name is confusin...

At its first CRM customer summit, held this week in San Diego, Microsoft announced the availability of tools to integrate its Dynamics CRM application with competing ERP back-end systems. Called "Solution Accelerators," the integration packages connect via BizTalk Server. They are available for Orac...

Of all the CRM subsector technologies, sales force automation is the most mature. Expecting dramatic change in this category, therefore, would be akin to expecting the radical realignment of a general accounting ledger package. Yet, over the last year or so, dramatic change is exactly what has oc...

Growth in the enterprise resource planning market may have paused during the 2001-2002 recession, but it is now back to a steady pace, according to a new AMR Research report. The consulting firm found that total ERP market revenue grew to more than US$25 billion in 2005 due to strong customer demand...

Salesforce.com has opened its code to outside developers for the first time with the introduction of Apex, a new multi-tenant programming language and platform. Companies will be able to use Apex to tailor or reprogram their Salesforce.com deployments or build entirely new components within the appl...

Oracle's Fusion -- its middleware designed to help customers use the various enterprise suites and applications it has acquired over the last few years -- has been incorporated into PeopleSoft Financial Management 9, the first new release of the application in eighteen months. "The application has a...

As a rule, manufacturers have been blissfully unconcerned with some of the finer points of CRM functionality and processes -- but not because they have been indifferent to their customers' needs. Rather, the low adoption rates of CRM technology in this sector have been more reflective of manufacture...

Witness Systems is making its first vertical play with the dual acquisitions of Demos Solutions Consulting Group and Exametric, two companies that provide workforce optimization, productivity and enterprise planning applications for the financial services industry. The aggregate purchase price for t...

Microsoft and EMC have developed native integration technology for SharePoint Server 2007, as well as the 2007 Microsoft Office system and SQL Server 2005, through a newly announced enterprise content management alliance. The new functionality expands the EMC options available to SharePoint users, E...