Best of ECT News

Not too long ago, advice to keep a CRM implementation simple would have focused around due diligence for the application. It would have focused on negotiating the best deal with a systems integrator. Most of all, it would have focused on a clear needs assessment driving the application. That was the...

It's about that time of year when we see all the predictions and forecasts of how much online sales will increase, by product, for this holiday season. From cautiously to wildly optimistic, these forecasts are things that e-commerce managers' dreams are made of. There's something missing in this yea...

In an effort to gain a competitive edge in the market, companies are implementing customer self-service solutions to address two distinctly separate business challenges -- improving the customer experience and cost reduction. While the cost-related benefits of self-service are widely understood, and...

In the not-so-distant future, the mundane will become borderline miraculous. The home washing machine will order its own repairs and the sprinkler system will call you on your cell phone to say the lawn service has broken one of its water spouts and it is now wasting water. The car will tell you to ...

Over the last three weeks I have received an intensive course in what it means to be The Customer, and I really liked it. During that time -- not to mention the preceding six months -- my wife and I have been trying to get our kitchen remodeled. In our journey we have dealt with a broad range of co...

Paul Greenberg has one of the most prolific and wide-ranging minds in the CRM business. He wrote the CRM bible, CRM at the Speed of Light, which is now in its third edition. Greenberg is also an incredible gadget-head. He has all of the toys you can imagine -- phones, game consoles, entertainment ...

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...

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...

The Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act -- more commonly known by its acronym "HIPAA" -- targets specific electronic data and communication processes in medical organizations. Adopted in 1996, HIPAA sets standards for the use and disclosure of patient information. At first blush, HIPAA seem...

Earlier this month, Sage Software announced it had acquired one of its longtime partners, Corum, a Canada-based provider of CRM technology. It was a significant deal for the company, said Dave Batt, senior vice president and general manager of Global CRM, as the acquired technology matches one of th...

Have you noticed the "dial 'O' for a human" movement gathering steam? One related manifestation is the clever set of ads put out by Citibank for its credit cards. You may have seen the ads showing a man calling for service and navigating through the tragedy that is the automated call response syst...

Two years ago or so, a handful of upstart companies entered the CRM market offering open source technologies designed specifically for this space. At the time, open source CRM was neither mature nor relevant enough to corporate deployment needs to make much of a dent in the CRM space. Fast forward t...

Enterprise is far from the days when it was enough simply to have a Web presence. More and more sophisticated consumers are shopping for services based not only on what a company offers, but what it offers online and how easy it is to negotiate. A recent study by Keynote Systems, which offers e-bus...

Enterprise is far from the days when it was enough simply to have a Web presence. More and more sophisticated consumers are shopping for services based not only on what a company offers, but what it offers online and how easy it is to negotiate. A recent study by Keynote Systems, which offers e-bus...

As Microsoft once again renews its efforts to target small to mid-sized companies, many in the software industry express skepticism, while others welcome the competition. Just how committed is Microsoft to the small to mid-market software segment? As many critics will point out, this is not the firs...