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I was having a discussion the other day with a client about changes in the software industry. We got to talking about different trends when the subject turned to the current tendency of discussing business software in terms of the size of the company that uses it. "Enterprise" software has certainly gotten a lot of play, though the "SMB" and "mid-market" descriptors have also been well aired out, and, in aggregate, those two groups might outspend the enterprise today...

Someone recently asked me who I thought was ahead in the on-demand market. That's a hard one. As far as I am concerned, there are no right answers to a question like that, and though seemingly innocuous, it raises more questions than I can answer ...

I spent part of last week at a user group meeting high in the Rockies, theRightNow Summit. The term "summit" is not only figurative -- it's literal. The company is headquartered in Bozeman, Mont., another high spot on the continent, and it seems to select meeting locations near the tree line to burnish its western image. At that altitude, it's sometimes hard to breathe, which produces a perfect environment for being sedentary and listening to new ideas. In retrospect, it might have been a perfect setting...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the on-demand call center, and about how the new technology model is driving business model change. With so much happening in the call center, you might be led to believe that being a call center agent is the best job in the world. Well, maybe not the best job, I have that, but you get my meaning ...

I had my annual meeting with my friends at Walker Information the other day when they were in Boston talking about their latest report. I have written about Walker before, and it gives me pleasure to do so again -- and to point out that I have no business relationship with them; I just like what they do ...

Friends in the call center software industry are telling me that they've noticed a decided pickup in their business. What's interesting about that tidbit is that these people are also saying that the interest is in on-demand solutions, and that opens a lot of topics for discussion. For example, we could look at the economic causes of this interest as well as the down stream ramifications of it. Let's do both -- first, the drivers...

Google made its presence felt in the front office market in a big way this week when both Salesforce.com and NetSuite announced within hours of each other their embrace of Google AdWords as an integral part of their marketing solutions. To be sure, the AdWords platform by itself will not solve the lead generation challenge faced by most marketers, but this approach does at least recognize the need to close a loop when a customer expresses a need and it offers a helpful solution...

"Skype has been a driving force behind the success of Internet calling in Europe," says Denis Pavillard,Logitech's vice president of product marketing for keyboards and desktops. "Working with Skype, we've integrated the Skype Internet calling experience with a complete desktop solution, so that people can quickly access the Skype features they've come to rely on."

The idea of the customer ecosystem is a strong one, and I believe we'll be hearing about it for the foreseeable future. The customer ecosystem is only one half of the story, in my opinion. The other half is something I call the "sales web," and the two fit together rather neatly if you know how to look. It's sort of like cutting out maps of South America and Africa and fitting them together. The best example in my mind comes by way of metaphor from the world of biology...

Last week I discussed one of the emerging hot spots in front office software, partner relationship management or PRM. This week I thought it would be interesting to take a look at another perennially emerging area -- wireless ...

After a long period in which there seemed to be little to report, PRM or partner relationship management, appears to be enjoying an upswing. PRM was an unfortunate fellow traveler with all the other 'RM' permutations that came about in the dot-com bubble. There was also eCRM, which was a distinction without a difference, and ERM in which the 'e' stood for employees. That idea has suffered much the same fate as PRM -- not totally forgotten but decidedly a backwater compared to CRM...

I was in Chicago for a few days of R&R when Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, spoke at the Microsoft partner meeting in Boston. As a result, I got news of the company's latest projected delivery dates for its on-demand CRM not from Microsoft, but from Paul Greenberg's blog: "On Demand Means Right This Second, Even for Microsoft." Greenberg makes some good points and I completely agree with him that the second quarter of 2007 is a long time to wait given the speed of evolution we have been seeing in the on-demand market...

Two things hit the wires this week relative to CRM that I think are interesting events, and in some ways they go beyond the on-demand space. Salesforce.com announced its partner relationship management (PRM) solution, and NetSuite said it will sell its product in a retail configuration. Let's go back to front ...

Identifying a paradigm shift is most easily done in hindsight because separating a fad from a long term trend is something that requires a bit of historical perspective to get right. About the only professionals who make it a habit of prognosticating about changing trends are economists and, as the saying goes, they have reliably predicted 13 out of the last 5 recessions...

Last week I mentioned a white paper I wrote a couple of years ago that addresses some of the changes we can expect to come from the on demand development and deployment paradigm and I thought it would be interesting to examine some of the main points here ...

Organizations definitely make the selection part of the process harder than need be, usually by conducting a top-down, extensive review of the systems and processes in place, Beagle Research Principal Denis Pombriant told CRM Buyer Instead, what can be very effective is examin...

Some weeks there's just more to write about than other weeks. It's like the weather -- sometimes there just seems to be more of it than other times. Take last week, for example. Just north of Boston some communities received as much as 19 inches of rain -- more than you'd get from a hurricane and resembling the rainy season in the tropics. That was a lot of water and for a while, some of us thought of changing the name of our state to something more appropriate, like Panama...

Remember demand? It was always seen with supply and it was used to make markets until some wise guys told us that the two could go their separate ways. If you keep all things constant except for supply you can run the table, or so they said ...

"Salesnet excels in providing users with the sophisticated tools needed to handle more complex selling environments," Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research Group, said "When customers need to move beyond simple contact management to standardize practices for s...

For decades Sage Software has focused on the mid-market and SMB space, selling a variety of accounting back office and CRM oriented front office applications around the world, but the company has always been something of an odd duck in the business software market ...