Spotlight Features

Cyber Monday may be the most visible symbol of the increasing use of e-commerce technology in the retail sector. On just one day, Nov. 30, consumers operating from home or office computers in the U.S. spent $887 million on Internet purchases. The spending level amounted to a gain of 5 percent versus...

Retail pharmacies in the U.S. filled 3.65 billion prescriptions in 2008, and another 238 million prescriptions were filled by direct mail. Each Rx was issued by a physician -- which explains why the pharmaceutical industry in the U.S. spends heavily on marketing efforts aimed at doctors, including c...

What U.S. business wouldn't want a customer base of 37.5 million prospects? In 2008, hospitals in the U.S. registered that many admissions -- a number that equals 12 percent of the U.S. population. Yet the hospitals in the U.S. have largely underutilized the customer relationship management tools t...

CRM has lagged in the health insurance industry, but a major transformation is imminent. "There's been a reluctance to make comprehensive investments in technology compared with other sectors," said Gartner analyst Joanne Galimi. "Generally, the firms in the sector have been very tactical, only inve...

The health insurance industry, especially in the U.S., has a long way to go before it achieves a high level of performance in the use of customer relationship management tools. However, pressure is coming from market forces -- including new government healthcare reform policies -- that will compel ...

The market for CRM programs will expand in financial services, although the pace of spending will likely slow down in the near term. Still, the rate of CRM spending by financial firms is not the only element that could change in the future. Whether a financial firm already has implemented a program ...

Contact center operations are constantly under scrutiny. They're complex, they're expensive to run, and employee retention and training can be problematic, to say the least. Contact center managers have a never-ending desire to streamline operations to keep spending in check. If they're not focusing...

The chastening effect of the recession has many financial services firms taking a cautious view of future CRM investments. One reason is that these firms are husbanding their resources. Another is a growing awareness that investments in CRM by the financial sector have not been all that successful.