CRM

Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn for more than $26 billion has created quite a stir -- at least in my world. Ellen Levy reported that the deal can boast a number of superlatives if you look at it right: the largest sale of a consumer Internet company in history; the largest sale of an enterprise ...

Salesforce held TrailheaDX last week -- its first event just for software developers. The company previously relied on special sessions at events such as Dreamforce to educate developers, but its declared intention to train up to 100 million of them in its Lightning development environment dictated ...

I start a lot of client engagements with a simple question: Who's the customer? It's amazing the answers that I get. Some people are really quite good. They know the customer's demographic and business or personal needs, and they focus on those things. Others don't even grasp the difference between ...

In an era when technology is changing the ways people conduct every aspect of their lives, it's not a surprise that business leaders have come to depend on it as the lever that will elevate their sales and marketing performance to the next level. Productivity has increased in all aspects of busine...

Software vendors and their business customers have tried many things to increase customer loyalty, but they have been disappointed more often than not. Rewards, delight, and daily deals were good ideas to help spur customer loyalty. Unfortunately, they weren't enough to move the loyalty needle in to...

Microsoft on Monday made its Dynamics CRM Spring 2016 Wave generally available to customers. The application focuses heavily on machine learning and the Internet of Things. It offers field service and project service automation capabilities, as well as four preconfigured Web portal solutions for cus...

Salesforce held its Connections 2016 user event in Atlanta earlier this month. About 7,000 people attended, but in the Georgia World Congress Center and airplane hangar, attendance seemed smallish. It might have been held down by Gov. Nathan Deal's slow response to vetoing a religious freedom law la...

SugarCRM on Tuesday unveiled Sugar 7.7, the latest version of its CRM package, with several enhancements. A custom tag feature lets any record in the application be tagged for better classification and sharing. A new search UI automatically expands upon selection. The Sugar 7.7 Knowledge Base has be...

Apple's earnings disappointment thudded into view last week in the middle of an afternoon of briefings at Oracle's Modern Marketing Experience conference in Las Vegas. In that context, it gave me a lot to think about -- especially the difference between a one-time earnings disappointment and somethi...

Sometimes, it takes something drastic to change a business' behavior. Standard procedures can remain in place long after they've become detrimental to the business, but sometimes it takes a tipping point to drive home the fact that failing to change is the surest way to fail. For example, the Ford P...

Salesforce on Thursday launched Government Cloud Lightning for government agencies, contractors and federally funded R&D centers. It provides a modern, component-based platform and an intuitive user experience, as well as access to Salesforce's partner ecosystem, the company said. Government Clo...

Last year, I researched the impact of the proliferation of cloud computing on business. I know it sounds like a dry topic, but if you are a CIO or an application development manager, the results can have serious meaning. Cloud computing has deeply penetrated the enterprise and SMB ranks, and 46.3 pe...

Fusion this week launched Contact360, an enterprise cloud contact center solution developed in collaboration with Technology for Business, the long-time partner it acquired earlier this month. "Fusion will be offering a clear migration path to the cloud for TFB's Fortune 500 enterprise and governmen...