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Amdocs, an erstwhile CRM stalwart that has increasingly transformed itself into an end-to-end provider of communications industry software, has filled in missing functionality with a new acquisition. The company has signed an agreement to acquire Cramer Systems Group, a provider of operations suppo...

Salesforce.com has released Summer '06, the quarterly update of its flagship on demand CRM application. Improved lead tracking is one of the enhancements in this version, which happens to be Salesforce.com's 20th release. Also, new scripting features for sales beef up the application's sales guidanc...

Microsoft has announced plans to write Dynamics CRM Live -- its own Software as a Service CRM offering -- on the same code base used for earlier versions of its on-premise application and for the hosted offerings of its partners. Right now, only the partner hosted offering and the on-premise applica...

SAP Business One will incorporate new e-commerce and CRM capabilities from the company's recently completed acquisition of Praxis Software, a privately held SAP Business One partner whose software allows users to set up online stores. The new functionality will also augment Business One's existing C...

Business intelligence applications have always delighted company executives -- at least as they watched simulated exercises on a sales rep's laptop. Real-world execution, though? Until recently, that has left much to be desired. To be sure, it is not entirely the fault of the vendor. Earlier generat...

Erstwhile open source CRM vendor TechWhale Solutions is getting set to launch its beta 3.0 version of BlueWhaleCRM in August, which the company says will significantly leverage AJAX and ATLAS technologies. In preparation, TechWhale has rolled out an interim release, version 2.0, based on the .NET fr...

Channel partners serving U.S. small and medium-sized businesses can expect their sales to this group to rise by 17 percent to US$154 billion over the next year, according to AMI-Partners. SMBs can expect to see a greater selection of customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, ma...

Earlier this month, Aprimo released Marketing 7.5, a milestone for the company in many respects. It is the first release that incorporates Ensemble, a product acquired from DoubleClick, and it provides business-to-consumer campaign management capability for the first time. Marketing 7.5 is also the ...

Sprint had a problem ubiquitous to all retailers: a percentage of customers unhappy with its products and services. However, for Sprint -- one of the nation's largest wireless telecom providers with a complex supply chain that touches upon numerous and overlapping related customer service processes ...

Oracle is replacing the IBM tech stack that has supported the Siebel OnDemand application with, not surprisingly, its own tech stack, according to statements made by executive vice president Charles Phillips during a recent conference call. Before its acquisition by Oracle, Siebel had a close relati...

Salesforce.com is venturing into the partner relationship management space with the release of Partnerforce, Salesforce Partner Edition. PRM, a software category related to CRM, focuses on connecting and maintaining relationships with direct and indirect partners instead of customers. Processes supp...

There are a few challenges facing the North American customer care outsourcing industry that may dampen growth in the coming years, according to a new Frost & Sullivan report that projects earned revenues to reach US$20.1 billion in 2012 from $19.5 billion in 2005. These predictions are intentio...

QuickBase, a division of Intuit, has upgraded its hosted-model product to make it easier for sales reps and sales executives -- two user groups that often have competing application requirements -- to use the sales module. New functionality in the application, called "Manage Your Sales Team," includ...

CDC Software has made its third offer to acquire mid-market CRM vendor Onyx, offering shareholders a choice of all-cash or cash-and-shares in CDC. The offer -- US$4.85 per share in cash, or $2.50 in cash and $2.50 in CDC stock -- comes a few weeks after Onyx signed a definitive agreement to be acqui...

While enterprise PBX product lines continue to register the highest level of growth in the telephony market, newly emerging trends will eventually realign use and deployment patterns, according to a survey conducted by market researcher Dell'Oro Group. These include a shift to hybrid systems and a n...

SSA has finished retooling its CRM suite -- one of the company's most significant steps since its acquisition of E.piphany last year -- with the release of its sales and services modules, SSA Sales 7.0 and SSA Service 7.0. The company released SSA Marketing 7.0 in April. The latest upgrades incorpor...

Witness Systems has upgraded the workforce management module of its Impact 360 Workforce Optimization application to provide tighter integration into the workforce optimization engine, as well as new functionality. Impact 360, released last September, combines Witness Systems' software with technolo...

Choosing the right system in the first place is key to optimizing your investment in a customer relationship management system -- and that process can be strewn with potential pitfalls. While the selection process can be unnerving, implementation can be a downright nightmare -- and, in some cases, w...

Oracle has acquired Telephony@Work, an on-demand provider of IP-based software infrastructure for hosted contact center services. Telephony@Work provided much of the functionality in Oracle's OnDemand Contact Center application via an OEM deal the company had with Siebel, which Oracle has since acqu...

RightNow Technologies has introduced two new voice applications that provide contact center agents with enough identifying information about the customer to eliminate the need to repeat information when a call is transferred to a new agent. The new functionality addresses a long-standing customer c...