Vendors

ATLANTA -- This might be remembered as the Convergence where Microsoft finally began to converge. More specifically, it is the convergence where accounting and CRM met in the cloud. The big news coming from Convergence is the announcement that Microsoft AX, one of the company's three ERP systems, ...

Fast-growing Jive Software offers businesses an extensible social business solution that integrates social networking, collaboration software, community software and social media monitoring across the entire enterprise. The company recently bolstered its board of directors with a number of executive...

SugarCRM made enhancements in four areas in the Sugar 6 Spring 2011 release: CRM made global, CRM made mobile, CRM made social, and Sugar as a platform. SugarCRM will also work more on integration with IBM's Lotus family of products. Its acquisition of iExtensions could move its Lotus integration ro...

As hard as it may be for CRM veterans to accept, there are still a great many businesses out there who don't have an application to track the customer and to feed data to sales, marketing and service. These businesses -- mostly small -- are not in the position to afford an employee designated as the...

I saw an interesting CRM user interface the other day, and while I don't usually write about something as basic as the UI, I was drawn to this one. Actually, I've been very interested in a new class of UI emerging lately; something we haven't thought about in a long time is re-emerging, possibly as...

Last week, at the HP Summit 2011 in San Francisco, the tech industry waited with bated breath for HP CEO Leo Apotheker's first presentation as CEO. Surely, the theory went, he would make a startling pronouncement describing a twist in the company's strategy -- say, a greater focus on developing its ...

One of the more revealing things I heard from Marc Benioff at Cloudforce 2011 in New York last week was his idea about how his company will continue to build out its product line. Marc's never been super secretive about his general direction, though product specifics have always been closely kept.

With an option for open source development, SugarCRM offers a sales automation system that encompasses pipeline management, social CRM, and the entire lead-to-cash process. "The SugarCRM core sales automation functionality includes lead capture and lead distribution, opportunity and account manageme...

Salesforce.com released its Q4 figures last week, peppered with the usual positives: growth, acquisition, more growth, and so on. Specifically, the company reported that earnings per share were 31 cents on revenue of $456.9 million. Year-over-year revenue increased 29.1 percent. Much of the focus fo...

For companies looking for sales force automation software, NetSuite offers a cloud-based system, NetSuite CRM+, that can be easily integrated with financials and e-commerce. The SFA solution is part of NetSuite's broader product suite. By allowing sales executives to see the sales pipeline, opportun...

Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides customers with rich sales force automation capabilities in addition to marketing automation, customer data management, customer service and analytics, Bill Patterson, director of product management for Microsoft Dynamics, told CRM Buyer. It offers customers the choice...

Sage took a major step in clarifying its position in the market when it hosted an analyst day in Boston last week. The company has been around for a long time and has been one of the higher revenue generators for many years thanks to an assortment of products that span the front and back offices of...

For companies seeking a sales automation solution, Salesforce.com offers a system that is 100 percent cloud-based and can help companies make smarter decisions, said Salesforce Senior Director for Product Marketing Scott Holden. Salesforce wants to bring contact management out of the ivory tower an...

What a week that was. I am still digging out from two snowstorms and dealing with bone-chilling cold, and so are friends across the country, except in the Bay Area, which only makes me envious. Perhaps none were as adversely affected as people on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. I take solace in two f...

Beagle Research is exploring one of the few categories of online videos that thus far has escaped formal scrutiny: the marketing videos of software -- specifically, CRM companies. The research group has announced "The Beagle Short Tale Awards" for 2011. A panel of five industry experts rated about 1...