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We've now completed our study of the call center. We did it because we wanted to learn about the trend that has executives looking to generate revenue from this part of the business that has traditionally been focused on servicing customers. I believe several long-term trends are currently at work in call centers and they are adding up to significant shifts in what this part of the business does and how it is viewed by others in the enterprise...

I really wanted to write about something other than Siebel this week. No such luck. There's so much news swirling around the CRM leader that you can do pretty well as a columnist just analyzing the analysis that has come forward so far ...

Last week Siebel Systems kicked off its annual EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) user group meeting in Barcelona with the introduction of George Shaheen, the company's new CEO. After a tumultuous prior week in which the abrupt change of leadership was announced, the company and its customers got back to business as it rolled out a typical --for Siebel -- cornucopia of new and improved technology offerings and gave some important hints about the future...

It seems like all the interesting news breaks when I am out of the country. I was in Paris, attending a venture capital conference for emerging IT companies, when I got the news that Siebel Systems had missed its revised revenue forecast and sacked its CEO. The trip had been planned around my attendance at Siebel's User Week conference to be held in Barcelona beginning today (April 18). Talk about timing!...

Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, once said that the technology life-cycle goes through three phases -- do it, do it right, and do it fast. Maybe that was true of mini-computers, but today I would amend it to something like, do it, lower the cost, and make it small. If you look at the software market that's certainly where a lot of vendors and solutions are going. Take CRM, for example...

When is a sales representative not a sales representative? ...

Last week a small piece of our world changed. Did you catch it? It happened Thursday, when NetSuite, with its NetFlex announcement, became the second company to offer development and customization capabilities ...

Sales systems are a regular feature of the CRM suite, and if you didn't know better you might think that garden-variety sales force automation (SFA) is about the only thing you need. That might have been true a few years ago, but we're seeing that changes in markets and economies can have a great effect on what we sell and how we sell it. Consequently, the software we use to sell must evolve as well...

The indirect sales channel has emerged as a sales environment distinctly different from conventional business-to-business or business-to-consumer selling. This shifting focus is long overdue, especially in industries such as technology, where a high percentage of products are sold through distributor and reseller networks that require different approaches to selling and management...

Back when I sold software for a living -- this would be during the last ice age -- a witty software developer in my company stuck a floppy disk to his filing cabinet with a refrigerator magnet. Scrawled on the disk's label were our flagship product's name and the words "source code." ...

It's not often that I get much of a response to a column, but my recent piece about spyware prompted several letters -- and not just the "let-me-tell-you-about-my-experience" kind ...

Daniel H. Pink has written an interesting book that has important implications for the future of CRM. A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, to be published next month, is excerpted in the February issue of Wired magazine ...

A while ago I wrote about the problems caused by various forms of malicious software that download to your computer while you are surfing the Internet ...

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York, presiding in Manhattan, ruled that a provision of the agreement was illegal because it would have limited the ability of non-settling parties to reduce the amount they would have to pay if a jury found them liable. Cote said the arrangement violated a portion of the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act...

Professional courtesy, that's what I call it ...

"What happens in a large law firm is you're always looking to sell yourservices," Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research and a CRM Buyer columnist, said "Large law firms get a lot of work from big corporations. Big corporationsbuy services from people they know...

Quite a few companies are offering solutions that provide automated customer service in one way or another. There is a lot to be said about this trend, and much of it is good ...

Over the last few weeks, I have been busy putting the finishing touches on a new report scheduled for delivery to market later this month. My premise was that there might be a lot of enterprising companies in CRM or closely associated markets that are either new or that have new ideas that we should pay attention to ...

Will the move give SAP a quick boost in market share? It's hard to tell, analysts say. SAP's quick response to the PeopleSoft buyout may help, but that's not enough to change the marketplace dramatically by itself, says Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research "I think it's shrewd ...

I got an interesting press release the other day. Headlined "SalesForce Loses CRM Lead," the release said that a new hosted CRM company, FreeCRM.com, claims 13,500 customers to Salesforce.com's 12,500. Hence the leadership change. As you might expect from the name, this company has amassed its considerable hosted CRM community by giving away its product...