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Too often channel strategies ranging from the most tactical and short-term to the most strategic and multiyear fail. Success or failure of a channel management strategy has nothing to do with the time horizon and everything to do with perspective, timing and getting away from a "one-and-done" mentality ...

While all eyes were focused on Oracle closing the PeopleSoft deal this week, a series of announcements from SAP and Microsoft may prove to be even more significant to the IT industry overall and to CRM specifically in the long term ...

While January 1 is a great mile-marker in any business timeline, the urgency for change needs to be dictated by honest assessments rather than by the flip of calendar pages. We all have enough to do already, and no one wants another action item list. That's why resolutions can turn out to be counterproductive ...

When it comes to pricing, simpler is better. Vendors who are reading the market right are moving more and more to per-CPU pricing, and, in short, trying to minimize the burden of accounting on their OEMs and their customers. The more simplistic a vendors' pricing approach, the greater the competitive advantage. The bottom line is that all the pain of value-based pricing is no longer necessary, there are plenty of good alternatives with other applications that have comparable or better usability, performance and features. Louis Columbus, a CRM Buyer columnist, is a former senior analyst with AMR Research. He currently works in the software industry and recently published the e-book Best Practices in Industry Analyst Relations, which is available on Amazon.com. This story was originally published on August 20, 2004, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. ...

Many companies question if the dollars spent with research and advisory firms are delivering unbiased, accurate guidance. This is particularly true in the CRM industry, where analysts influence short lists, sales cycles, and media coverage extensively. Analysts, in short, can make or break a start-up company relatively quickly ...

It's time for a reality check: When it comes to managing e-commerce strategies in your company, how do results line up with expectations? ...

The CRM systems of many companies fail because they don't properly manage the expectations of prospects and customers. What's been missing is the ability to capture the moment of truth with every prospect or customer and then bring these insights into a broader mosaic of what the many segments of a customer base like, don't like and expect from you...

In the last U.S. presidential election the candidates clashed on the issue of privatizing the Social Security system ...

It's that time again; the earnings calls for CRM, ERP, hardware and services vendors are being scheduled, rehearsed and delivered to shareholders, industry and financial analysts. What's common across the more than two dozen calls I've listened to that span CRM, ERP and SCM software, hardware and services companies is that every CEO is offering up a spin on how global outsourcing is making their business even more cost-competitive, responsive to global markets and stronger for the strategic long run...

The irony is too strong to ignore. Gartner, Forrester, IDC and other analyst firms are all forecasting that outsourcing will continue growing rapidly. Yet not one is forecasting when industry analysis itself will move offshore ...

I'll never forget playing on a losing football team growing up and having my friends --my friends! -- yell from the sideline, "You guys stink!" Thankfully, I discovered a passion for baseball, played for years, and even won a city championship ...

Making inroads into the next major market for software isn't going to happen from enterprise vendors trying to wedge expensive, large application footprints into a product strategy that appeals to medium-sized companies. Despite Oracle, Siebel and others proclaiming they can make this strategy work, the bottom line is that the financial pain of doing this is just too much for companies with their cost structures to bear...

There's a major disconnect between the expectations and results companies are getting when they realign processes aimed at serving their customers, as I've discovered in conversations with several manufacturers ...

Research firms benchmark other companies, but they don't benchmark themselves. This is one of the biggest ironies of the research industry, and CRM analysts are right in the middle of it ...

Two major CRM events took place this week, with Gartner and Siebel coaxing CRM users out of their cubicles to warm West Coast locations ...

There are many common threads that tie together shopping for an analyst firm and kicking the tires of a sports utility vehicle. The power promised by the marketing behind both is impressive ...

They will create for cash. For smaller companies, the deal pipeline could be made or destroyed with just a few simple but bad decisions. Successful smaller companies take longer to make product decisions but once done attack the project with intensity. Bottom line Claiming that all of enterprise software will consolidate into just the ERP vendors is a lazy view of the world. Best-of-breed companies constantly work customer bases for references, generate new product ideas and operate at a higher level of intensity. For these reasons, they will continue to survive and thrive. Louis Columbus, a CRM Buyer columnist, is a former senior analyst with AMR Research and is founder of LWC Research, a firm specializing in CRM, sell-side e-commerce, sales and product configuration and guided selling. ...

It is often said what separates one company's ability to develop, execute and sustain a CRM strategy is the active involvement of the CEO ...

Many people consider order management the heart of any enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. It's heresy in many manufacturing companies even to talk of changing from a home-grown order-management system to an outside ERP system ...

Too many companies take a very automated, ATM-like approach to the ROI they get from industry analyst organizations they work with. For all the cash these companies deposit, they expect only a quote from time to time from their industry analysts, hopefully generated with the same efficiency of a 24/7 ATM transaction ...