Biographical Information

Articles for David Myron

Happy Anniversary CRM Magazine, and a Fond Farewell

As the cloud, analytics, omnichannel, the IoT, systems of engagement, and other technologies evolve, a lot of opportunities will continue to emerge for CRM professionals.

Is CRM Getting Too Intrusive?

There's no end to how much business leaders are willing to scrutinize their employees

Vying for Customer Trust Has Reshaped Business Relationships

Trust in business grew from 48 percent in 2015 to 53 percent in 2016

Should You Create a Customer Journey Map?

Customer journey maps can help organizations understand customers' motivations, feelings, questions, and expectations at any given customer touch point.

SAP Thought Leaders Urge Executives to Think Differently About Customer Engagements [Video Interview, Part 1]

Volker Hildebrand and Sameer Patel comment on the changing nature of customer relationships and how businesses should view systems of record and engagement.

CRM’s Next Biggest Trend: Predictive Analytics

It's like having a personal guide who tells sales and marketing professionals 'This profile is one of your best'

What is Digital Transformation and Why is it Important Now?

Clinging to the status quo is not an option. Disruption is happening.

Bullhorn Unearths Hidden Value in Email Interactions [Video Interview]

Vinda Souza explains how breaking down the walls between email and CRM systems can help organizations find valuable insight.

The Best Way to Personalize Customer Interactions

"Timeliness and relevancy are the foundation of delivering personalized customer experiences in real time."

Deliver World-Class Service: Lessons from the Mouse [Q&A with Dennis Snow]

The former Disney leadership team member urges organizations to focus on improving their customer experiences. (Featured on SmartCustomerService.com.)

Avoid Customer Engagement Disasters and Automate with Care

Organizations must figure out a way to leverage automation to cut support costs and improve customer experiences

Why It's Critical to Invest in Customer Success

All businesses must become much more attentive to customer behaviors

TeamSupport Brings Video and Screenshots to Chat [Video Interview]

In this exclusive interview CEO Robert Johnson reveals the company's latest customer support updates and future product plans.

Customer Service Advances with Mobile, Cloud, and Analytics Solutions

Debunking Generational Misconceptions

People change, so always be ready and willing to challenge preconceived notions about them

How to Get CRM Right in 2016

Focus on a thorough gap analysis, an assessment of what lies ahead, and a stellar customer relationship strategy

Social Customer Service Is Here

Firms must be smart about the ways they collect and maintain customer data.

Let Empathy Toward Customers Guide You

An empathetic employee will listen to customers, understand their needs, and be motivated to provide them with the right solution

Are Banks Too Big To Care?

Financial institutions should figure out a way to appropriately compensate disgruntled customers.

4 Ways to Maximize CRM Data

If your organization is not regularly revisiting how it captures, tracks, and manages data, even good data can turn into garbage very quickly

Social CRM Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Follow these 10 steps to deploy a successful social CRM strategy.

Analyzing the 2015 CRM Market Awards

The growth of digital marketing, CRM's new tie-ins with mainstream technologies, and a strong showing by Microsoft headline our 14th annual market awards.

Customer Trust Continues its Slide

To improve customer trust, start with measures to protect it.

Prepare Your Business for the Internet of Things

Adapt or Perish When Digital Disruption Strikes

It's nice to have options—that's how disruption starts.

The 4 Core Components of CRM

It's time to make knowledge one of the essential components of a successful CRM strategy.

Small Customer Service Vendors Can Make Big Contributions

A best-of-breed solution from a small company doesn't have to be such a risky proposition after all.

Correct Problems Caused by Outdated Automation Systems

'Personalization should permeate the customer experience at every touch point.'

Why Effectiveness Trumps Efficiency

'Things that increase the efficiency of sales reps are not valuable today.'

Why You Should Consider Customer Journey Maps

While creating a customer journey map that accounts for experiences across multiple channels might sound difficult, it is possible.

3 Tips for Social CRM Success

Before diving headfirst into social media, it's important to lay the groundwork for success.

Are You Correctly Measuring Customer Satisfaction?

Unfortunately, bad customer service stories are more common than we'd like to think.

Five Ways to Reveal Your Customer Data

New methods of collecting customer data are already providing attractive returns on their investment.

The Real Truth About CRM Success

Without influence, great strategies and technologies can fall flat.

3 Emerging CRM Trends in 2014

Companies must connect communication channels, shrink big data, and create emotionally charged experiences.

The Unified Omnichannel Enterprise Is No Longer a Pipe Dream

A company must connect all of its interaction channels so a customer can traverse them without losing any data.

Don't Discount Discounts

Today's customers not only want coupons, they demand them.

4 CRM Data Trends to Address

To collect valuable insight, organizations must tackle a few emerging data trends.

Why Customer Experience Is a Bad Metric

The importance of customer engagement will surpass customer experience.

Top 3 Customer Service Trends for 2014

This year's hottest customer service trends include social media, cloud technology, and mobile devices.

Should You Offer Social Customer Support?

Despite its limitations, progressive organizations are leveraging social media as part of an omnichannel customer service strategy.

Is Marketing After a Disaster Exploitative?

CRM—What Lies Ahead in 2014?

We'll likely see mobile technology deployments accelerate pretty rapidly during the next few years.

Preparing for the Omnichannel Environment

In a world where so much attention is placed on technology, we shouldn't lose sight of the human element.

Manage Data or Be Managed by It

Organizations should take a serious look at how they are managing their data.

Retailers Can Combat Showrooming

As more people use smartphones, tablets, and e-commerce sites, showrooming will likely intensify.

Don't Fall Into the Tactical Trap

Graduating from tactical thinking to strategic thinking requires changes in your organization's people, processes, and technologies.

(Ap)perception Becomes Reality

Neuromarketing aims to uncover what's going on at the subconscious level.

Join the Conversation and Build Customer Trust

By joining customers' network of peers, organizations have an opportunity to improve customer trust.

CRM Comes to the Rescue

'How can we have growth like a modern dealership if we don't have the things that a modern dealership has?'

Are We Too Connected?

Despite the highly connected world we live in, some well-known companies are bucking the trend and becoming decidedly more disconnected from their customers.

What Motivates Customer Service Decisions?

Fear is not a strategy.

The Secret to Building a Healthy Brand

"You cocreate your brand with your customers and the sooner you realize that, the stronger your brand will be."

Remove Avoidable Customer Obstacles

Companies looking to improve user adoption should remove as many obstacles as possible for customers and prospects.

Open Your Doors to Mobile Devices

I was surprised to discover that one of the first sites I visited after the storm was not optimized for mobile devices.

Analyze the Cost and Effect of Customer Experiences

A Look at Oracle's New Direction

Hurd Makes His Mark

An exclusive interview with Oracle President Mark Hurd.

What Email Marketers Can Learn from Social Media

Where Are CRM Investments Going?

CRM Moves to an Outside-In Approach

Take a Healthy Approach to Social Media

Becoming Preferred: Up-Level the Brand Experience

Learn how to be unique in a crowded marketplace and add distinctive value to customer experiences.

Going Against the Grain with Gamification and NLU

Video Won't Kill the CRM Star

Prepare for a Multichannel Support Environment

What's Age Got to Do With It?

New Tools Require a New Mindset

Voicing the Future

Build Your Brand Through Exceptional Customer Experiences

Any interaction customers have with your company is a reflection of your brand.

CRM in ‘Pursuit of Shared Goals’

Responding in a way that is mutually beneficial to a company and its customers applies across the enterprise

Get Personal or Get Abandoned

To spot customer changes before it's too late, customer interaction strategies must be continually monitored and updated

CRM Recovers with Low-Cost Options

Being agile in today's competitive market enables organizations to better respond to customers' changing needs.

Our New e-Commerce Reality

All's fair in love and war—and retail

Why Should I Trust People Like Me?

NetSuite Partners with Accenture and Yammer, Targets Large Enterprises

Growing acceptance of cloud-based applications creates opportunities.

Enter the Age of Analytics

To make the best use of your time and your company's CRM investments, you must measure what you manage.

Getting Personal: Be Appropriate or Beg for Forgiveness

Personalizing customer communications is important, but it's essential to understand your audiences' preferences and not assume that you know them.

Is a Contact Center Revival ‘Up Around the Bend’?

The Next Killer App

Mobile Sales Are Going North

Act or Be Acted Upon

Being more proactive is not merely a nice thought, it's essential.

Has Our Technology Exceeded Our Humanity?

Your challenge, in a lot of ways, is to infuse what you do with humanity.

Social CRM Gains Social Acceptance

The emerging tools and technologies have already influenced the outcome of this year's CRM Market Awards.

15 Years of Pocket Shots and Miscues

Social CRM Is Growing Up Fast

Customers in the Cockpit

Just because companies cede control of a customer relationship doesn't mean they cede influence.

SAS Now Monitors the Social Web

SAS Global Forum 2010: The business analytics giant aims to help medium and large enterprises understand customer sentiment and respond.

Green Strategies Are a Go

Perseverance Pays Off in Service

CRM Gives Back

A New Decade Brings New Ideas

Great Relationships Start with Good Experiences

There are instances when primarily focusing on the experience makes sense.

The Cloud Pleaser

Marc Benioff has upended the CRM industry with his vision, service, marketing prowess, and tenacity

Salesforce.com: One Leader. One Decade. $1 Billion.

Salesforce.com has proven the importance of making sure its customers are successful.

Can You Create a Viral Hit?

If your goal is to launch a viral campaign simply to increase your brand awareness, you're flirting with danger.

CRM Bucks the Downward Financial Trend

The CRM industry grew 12.5 percent in 2008, to $9.15 billion.

Strategies that Endure

Proven business strategies abound—even new ones.

Innovate Your Way Out of a Recession

In a recession, an innovative organization can learn to focus on fewer projects—but ones that can meet and even exceed expectations.

Social Media Spawns a New Era in Customer Intelligence

Customer attitudinal information is what companies have been clamoring to obtain for years.

The Stressed-Out Customer

Stress levels brought about by the economy are making people more combative in their everyday lives.

Service with a :-)

Customer strategists' service and support options are rapidly multiplying.

Yes Pecan!

In tough economic times, people are forced to dig a little deeper.

Focus on What Matters Most

In a difficult economy, don't sit idly by. Do something -- but be sure it has a payoff.

Hey! You! Get Onto My Cloud!

Google doesn't want its name to be only synonymous with search.

Build Transparency and Trust

Clearly, improving customer trust should be a major focus for organizations in 2009.

Voting with Their Wallets

Voters are also customers, and customers vote with their cash.

These Marketing Messages Go to 11

if the message in a television commercial isn't compelling, simply raising the volume isn't going to make it so.

New Markets and Leaders Emerge

SaaS revenue will likely remain the driving force behind the CRM industry's growth, but emerging niche markets will also play a role.

Ignorance Is the Remedy du Jour

Too many companies are losing agents at an alarming rate, simply because they're often measuring, managing, and treating the wrong problems.

This Is Not Your Father’s CRM Industry

Many companies are already seeing the ownership, or control, of their customer relationships shift toward the customer.

Fix the Problem, Not the Symptom

Unfortunately, too many executives are reactive and only turn to loyalty programs when problems arise.

Recognizing the Wind of Change

The May 2008 issue of the magazine covers three areas that are experiencing -- or are on the verge of experiencing -- extraordinary shifts in their respective markets.

As One Chapter Ends...

New kinds of software solutions are playing an integral role in helping companies provide faster and more accurate support.

Do You, Bagel, Take This Balela?

Preserving cultures in America is a growing phenomenon -- one that marketers would be wise to address.

Grow Up!

Despite all the buzz around CRM 2.0 and Web 2.0, companies, on average, have been stuck in place for two years.

'Your Call Automation Sucks'

We recently overhauled our own IVR. What we learned can provide useful lessons as you adopt Web 2.0, CRM 2.0, and social networking strategies.

Social Networking: The Harbinger of Trust

The one overarching trend that will likely make an indelible mark on customer-centric strategies will involve social networking in a big way.

The Age of Influence

The failure of many word-of-mouth marketing campaigns is largely due to their transparency.

High-Quality Companies Rely on High-Quality Insight

Generating insight into sales and marketing performance is critical for making smarter business decisions.

CRM Continues Its Climb

Salesforce.com and others prove that small oceans can still make big, big waves.

Automation Proves Its Value

Automation is beginning to prove its value--not only in cutting costs, but in driving revenue as well.

Eat Your Vegetables

Focus on providing value to salespeople and to the company.

You Drive Intelligence

I've noticed an unfortunate eagerness to view business intelligence as a business panacea.

Farewell Blues

Even if a salesperson is successful selling to these blues, consider what the company sacrifices.

Speech Is All the Talk

Analysts will likely be less forgiving of WFO vendors that ignore speech technology in the future.

Tenacious CRM

Thankfully, CRM implementations are not as risky as they used to be.

Finding Customer Clarity

If business professionals would pause for a moment to analyze how their short-term actions can negatively affect long-term customer attrition rates, many would likely do things differently.

Marketing, the Internet, and Brilliance

In minutes P&G on its Web site accomplished what takes other companies months or years -- and millions of dollars -- to do.

All About the Data

There will be lots of potential for customer data quality apps; financial and product data also stand to benefit.

The Growing Consumer Disloyalty

There isn't much difference across generations when it comes to consumer loyalty.

Surprises, Setbacks, and a Sleeper Hit

Every person and company mentioned in this issue should be proud to have helped the industry experience its second consecutive year of growth since its post-Y2K malaise.

Downtime Is Dead

When consumers' days are filled with all work and no play, it makes communicating with them even more difficult than usual.

The Response You Don't Want

Many business professionals still need some convincing when it comes to using CRM technology.

Why Nicaragua?

The Nicaraguan government is betting that U.S. companies will opt for educated, bilingual agents for an average wage of $2.35 per hour, which is even lower than India's average agent hourly wage.

Where the Value Lies

The affluent are not the only ones craving premium experiences.

A Singular Slip

A recent bone-chilling story involving delayed cell phone messages has convinced me to stick with reliable landlines.

Full Suite Versus Best of Breed

A close look at CRM's third annual Service Leader awards issue reveals that in some areas, the age-old debate is being resolved.

Microsoft Brings IT Together

At its Convergence conference, the software giant touts real-time integration and a hosted CRM offering.

Marketing Needs Compassionate Marauders

Consumers are growing more frustrated with and resistant to companies.

Experiences Versus Relationships

Good relationships, over time, generate more value for customers and, as a result, more revenue for businesses.

Calling the Cops on Telemarketers

This is an example of a simple market research campaign becoming a botched effort, resulting in a call to the police.

Microsoft 3.0 Is a Go

The company beats the release's expected launch date with aplomb.

Oracle's First Fusion App

Oracle plans to release its first fused application in January 2006.

Straighten Up and Fly Right

A bad customer experience is only the beginning of a much bigger problem for sizeable airlines.

'The Current and Future State of CRM'

A distinguished Gartner analyst offers some tips for success and a CRM maturity model at Gartner's CRM Summit.

Bye-Bye Boomers, Welcome Yers

There's no question that when boomers retire their spending habits will change. However, this doesn't mean economic calamity for Wall Street, as several factors can help sustain the economy.

Back to Double-Digit Growth

There will likely come a time when not one, but all vendors in the large enterprise category offer a hosted solution.

CRM Magazine Announces Its 2005 CRM Leader Awards

Congratulations to this year's award recipients. Their hard work this past year has helped organizations streamline many of their business processes and significantly improve their customer relationship efforts.

Oracle Unveils Its First Fusion App

Product service and support for existing customers highlight Open World day 2, but challenges have emerged for Siebel customers' business.

Online Banking: Consumer Trust Versus Loyalty

Identity theft victims' assurance of security reflects comfort levels with online banking, and not their loyalty to a particular bank.

Microsoft Says 2.No

Version 3.0 focuses on the SMB market with hosting options, Outlook integration, and marketing automation tools.

Embracing Change

New product coverage only helped to inflate the 1990s technology bubble by focusing more on the technologies' gee-whiz factor than on the business problem they aimed to solve.

CRM 2.0

Once transactional systems are in place many ask the obvious next-step question: What do I do with the information?

100 Reasons to Read This Issue

In honor of the 100th issue of CRM magazine we bring you 100 proven CRM ideas--90 great ones and 10 not-so-great ones.

100 Proven CRM Ideas, Part 2

...successful and disastrous: 90 bright ideas for your CRM strategy and 10 dim ones to avoid. Edited by David Myron

100 Proven CRM Ideas, Part 1

...successful and disastrous: 90 bright ideas for your CRM strategy and 10 dim ones to avoid. Edited by David Myron

Right Channel, Right Time

Most industries don't have to clear the same hurdles as the tobacco industry, but more products and legislation will likely thwart your communication attempts.

Analytics for the Masses

SAS upgrades its Enterprise BI Server to include OLAP, and query and reporting tools.

What Consumers So Desperately Need

May the efforts of the 2005 Service Leaders, Service Excellence, and Service Elite award winners continue to build and maintain consumer trust and satisfaction.

The 2005 CRM Service Leaders--Part I

CRM magazine presents the Service Leaders awards to the most impressive providers of customer care architecture, technology, and services who have worked tirelessly over the past year to improve their capabilities so that contact centers can go about their crucial business more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

The 2005 CRM Service Leaders--Part II

CRM magazine presents the Service Leaders awards to the most impressive providers of customer care architecture, technology, and services who have worked tirelessly over the past year to improve their capabilities so that contact centers can go about their crucial business more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

What Is CRM?

It's still about the people and the processes that drive the technology.

Siebel's OnDemand Upgrade Splash

The latest product upgrades enable the CRM software giant to better serve the SMB market.

Accounting Irregularities Are Linked to Poor Performance Management

Cognos unveils its latest upgrades in enterprise corporate planning capabilities, designed to provide a real-time single view of a company's operations.

Companies Still Struggle with One of CRM's Biggest Pitfalls

Most firms' analytical activity is fairly rudimentary, according to a new study.

Channel Management Gets Hosted

Analog Method unveils its first hosted partner extranet.

The Promise of Guided Selling

Active Decisions is offering Consumer Reports product information online and at retail locations to help customers make the best purchasing decisions.

40 Contact Centers, One Platform

EADS readies the largest single-system contact center operation for Sprint.

CRM.GOV

Industry pundits maintain that the biggest growth area in CRM over the next three years will be in the public sector, especially within state and local governments.

Market Watch: Making Sense of Workforce Optimization

At its core, workforce optimization prepares a staff to manage the ebb and flow of daily call volumes into a call center.

Customers Serve Each Other in Online Communities

The company is now able to be more responsive to customer needs, as software upgrades are based on customer feedback from the site.

Making Sense of Marketing Automation Options

Marketers have done a lot of house cleaning and are better positioned and able to effectively garner more budgets internally.

Hosting Hits Call Centers

Application service providers are building on their success with hosted CRM applications and jockeying for position in the budding computer telephony service provider market.

Survey Shows CFOs' Top Cost-Cutting Considerations

An overwhelming 85 percent of respondents stated that cost reduction is their priority.

Maximizing Customer/Agent Interaction

Onyx Software today unveiled its latest call center offerings, including updated intelligent call scripting functionality and a partnership to provide agents with knowledge management capabilities.

Is Your Compensation Plan Undermining Your CRM Initiative?

Reward agents not simply for volume, but also for meeting customer-focused goals.

Vertical Focus: Pharmaceutical Firms Find a Spoonful of CRM Helps the Sales Pitch Go Down

When a rep can squeeze in time with physicians it is paramount to bring the right message to the right doctors at the right time.

Vertical Focus: Telecoms Focus on Services, Not Price, to Reduce Churn

The industry's average customer churn rate at 30 percent annually, but a closer look indicates that the market could contain even more would-be churners.

Innovative Call Center Design

The company moved its customer service center to another of Bell Canada's multitenant buildings, a 60,000-square-foot facility about four miles away from its headquarters.

CRM Tops SMBs' Wish Lists

Overall, SMBs are expected to increase their technology spending this year 6.6 percent over last year.

Genesys Speeds Ahead with G-Force

G-Force '04: Updates to the Genesys voice platform include the ability to decouple hardware from software to enable easier application development on the customer side.

A Clear Sign of Hosted CRM Success

In 2003 NetSuite's overall revenue jumped 300 percent, a growth rate CEO Zach Nelson says is largely attributable to its reseller channel.

PeopleSoft Taps a New CRM Leader

PeopleSoft announced that George Ahn, a former Tibco, Siebel Systems, and IBM veteran, will spearhead its PeopleSoft CRM solutions.

Hosted Service Is Picking Up Steam

Echopass has unveiled its upgraded TeleCenter 2.0, a hosted call center suite, which makes use of a partnership with Salesforce.com and Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories.

Pitney Bowes to Acquire Group 1 Software

Pitney Bowes to Acquire Group 1 Software to help marketers clean up their customer data and lower direct mail costs.

IBM to Buy Indian Outsourcer Daksh

IBM has unveiled its plan to acquire Daksh e-Services, India's third-largest business process outsourcing (BPO) services firm.

Merging Performance Optimization With Workforce Management

Blue Pumpkin's latest suite upgrade adds benchmarking, forecasting, and incentive management capabilities to merge performance optimization with workforce management.

Capital One Terminates Its Indian Call Center Relationship

Capital One Terminates Indian Call Center Relationship after Wipro Spectramind discovered agents' unethical business practices.

BPO Editor's Note: Open Your Eyes to the Possibilities

With the high cost of dirty data becoming increasingly apparent, companies are turning to outsourced data specialists.

BPO News & Insight: Clean and Compliant

Acxiom and ADP's service enhances ADP's DataFresh product by making use of three data integration and data hygiene offerings from Acxiom: AbiliTec, Acxiom BestAddress, and Acxiom ChangePlus.

BPO News & Insight: Email Tuesdays

The report finds that most emails are opened on Wednesday and that unsubscribe rates are declining.

BPO News and Insight: News Roundup

infoUSA and its division BusinessCreditUSA announced that they are offering customers unlimited access to business credit reports, and more.

SAS Moves Beyond Business Intelligence

SAS Institute has unveiled SAS9 Intelligence Platform, its biggest product launch to date, uses grid computing and multithreading technology capabilities to increase speed, reliability, and scalability.

A 360-Degree View of Customers Is Not Enough

A new report by The Yankee Group evaluates contact center efficiency and effectiveness between agents and customers, and highlights CRM's next step in contact centers.

Microsoft Peppers the Market with Integrated Voice Solutions

The speech platform enables advanced speech-recognition solutions to retrieve text information from Web sites and relay it back to customers in a voice solution over the phone.

Siebel Scores Big in Gartner's Slew of Market Reports

The new report works much like Gartner's Magic Quadrant with regard to leader positioning--the main difference is vendors in the MarketScope are scored individually, and not ranked against each other.

What CRM Downturn?

The report, "IT Spending on Customer Knowledge Technologies: Healthy Increases Across Most Regions," states the compounded annual growth rate of customer-knowledge technology investments by financial services firms worldwide will be 6.2 percent from 2003 to 2008.

Tech Marketing Efforts to Increase

The study shows the average increase of companies bolstering their marketing efforts is 10.8 percent.

Best's Road Ahead, After its ACCPAC Acquisition

The deal, announced late December 2003, delivers a hosted-CRM solution to compete with the likes of Salesforce.com, NetSuite, and Siebel Systems.

DoubleClick Acquires SmartPath

The acquisition would further what analysts say is a trend toward melding the marketing automation side with the marketing operations side.

Salesforce.com Integrates with White Pajama

The pairing integrates White Pajama's contact center and telephony functionality with Salesforce.com's on-demand CRM services.

Vertical Focus: Integrators: Necessary Evil or Indispensible Resource?

Gartner estimates that spending on CRM services in North American will increase at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.4 percent from 2001, reaching roughly $22 billion in 2006.

The Top 5 Ways to Keep Agents

There are two kinds of human needs: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic needs are things like money and incentive programs, but what many organizations lack is the ability to satisfy an agent's intrinsic need, such as appreciation.

Gartner: Best Software Tops SMB CRM Market

Gartner estimates that Best Software has amassed 25 percent of the worldwide CRM market in the small business space, besting companies like FrontRange and Salesforce.com, which are vying for the same space.

A New Report Recognizes the Merger of CRM and SCM

Organizations are shifting their investments from internal applications to outward-facing applications.

Voice Self-Service Adopts ASP Model

A new Yankee Group report, "Hosted Speech Applications are Poised for Growth, Increasing Competition and Volatility," focuses on qualitative trends in voice self-service.

Vendors Don't Deserve Customer Loyalty

The results of a recent Strativity Group study paint a grim picture of customer understanding on behalf of executives at large, global companies.

Forrester Ranks the Top 10 BPM Companies

Forrester BPM TechRankings '04: The research firm reevaluates the top pure-play BPM vendors' products, separating process analysis capabilities and human workflow capabilities.

2004: The Year of VoIP

The consulting company released its latest report on how VoIP technology can be leveraged in contact and customer service operations.

Nuance's Speech Splash

Nuance has released its Nuance 8.5 and Nuance Verifier 3.5, respectively.

Outsourcing Hot Spots

Low labor costs are spurring more and more companies to consider outsourcing their contact centers to service providers in offshore and nearshore locations.

FCC Hits Hard With DNC Fine; Just 1 Question

What the costs to corporate America are to defend against DNC legislation is as yet unknown, but some companies have started to try new outbound customer campaigns.

A Leap of Faith

Dollar Rent A Car's top brass wanted more productivity and efficiency enhancements.

Salesforce.com meets Nextel's Walkie-Talkie

The combination of Nextel's wireless service and mobile devices with Salesforce.com's on-demand model will help mobile sales reps access their critical customer and deal information any time, anywhere.

Report Debunks Outsourcing Exodus Concerns

Driving global initiatives are increased efforts in follow-the-sun strategies and the ability to generate a local presence in many geographical areas.

IT Outsourcing Skyrockets Worldwide

Datamonitor's "IT Services Contract Tracker" reveals the number of deals worldwide with a value greater than $100 million increased 49 percent to 244.

Siebel Acquires a Hosted Call Center Company

Acquiring Ineto enables Siebel to get 100 percent of the CRM business from existing clients, and opens up more opportunities for Siebel in the small- and midsize business market.

Is BPO Going Vertical?

The research firm aims to help BPO service providers identify BPO trends for companies within five vertical industries.

ScanSoft Acquires LocusDialog

ScanSoft announced it has acquired Montreal's LocusDialog, a developer of speech-enabled, auto-attendant applications and call routing solutions, to further ScanSoft's efforts to bring more speech applications to the market.

The New Business Objects

Business Objects joins the ranks of Teradata and SAS Institute, first tier BI vendors providing enterprise reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, enterprise performance management, data integration, and analytic applications.

ClientLogic Acquires Service Zone

The deal, which was announced yesterday, brings a total of 4,200 agents under the ClientLogic roof.

The Customer-Centric Enterprise

A customer-centric enterprise uses business strategies throughout the organization to best serve customers.

(Automated) Talk Is Cheap

By automating access to specific information Armstrong Floor Products decreased customer hold times, reduced customer call durations by 50 percent, and improved call completion rates by 123 percent.

CRM and Crisis Management

Technology companies contribute to disaster-relief efforts.

Hosted CRM Cost Analysis

The report focuses on whether a hosted-CRM solution is tenable for companies.

Most Emails Are Sent on Tuesdays

According to a recent "Delivery Trends Report" from EmailLabs, Tuesday is the best day to send an email campaign, with Wednesday being the top day for recipients to open emails.

Email Management: Be Local, Act Global

It positions KANA customers to capitalize on the growing BPO trend, enabling companies to benefit from low-cost labor available in offshore regions like India and the Philippines. Email responses can be conducted offshore and managed in the United States, using KANA IQ to look for customer-specific information.

Become a CRM Master and Commander

The book contains white papers, case studies, and customer profiles highlighting input from academics, analysts, consultants, end users, and solution providers.

NetSuite Breaks Customization Barriers

NetSuite is taking a slightly different approach to customization than Salesforce.com by requiring code changes to be done inside the NetSuite application using JavaScript.

VoiceGenie Integrates with ScanSoft

The new version provides integration with SpeechWorks' Suite of network speech solutions from ScanSoft, including ScanSoft's OpenSpeech Recognizer 2.0 speech recognition software and Speechify 3.0 text-to-speech software.

Outsourcer Got Your Tongue?

The automated voice solutions industry has been surging since the late 1990s, with North America leading the way in sales.

Driven by Service

Aberdeen Group surveyed 380 executives earlier this year, asking them to identify their technology investment priorities for contact centers over the next 18 months. The most surprising takeaway is that 45 percent maintained that the contact center was a "critical" part of their company's product and customer strategy.

Speech Technology Begins to Realize Its Potential

At least that's what Industry experts were saying at the recent SpeechTEK Exposition and Educational Conference.

Service Revs Up Nissan's Turnaround

Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp. needed to gain a better understanding of agent performance levels to provide faster and better quality service.

BPO: News & Insight: Prepping For Cell Switchers

If all goes according to plan, on November 24 the FCC's wireless number--portability (WNP) legislation will go into effect.

BPO: Northern Exposure

Several large companies have already started an exodus from the United States to Canada, including Marriott, UPS, AOL, and IBM.

BPO News Roundup

Companies experimenting with BPO complain of inflexible contracts, difficulty managing vendors, and a lack of performance metrics; ICICI OneSource announced its intention to acquire FirstRing; and automated speech recognition solutions are growing in popularity as their accuracy improves.

Local Governments' E-Procurement Spending To Double

The increase in government e-procurement spending is largely due to the popularity of what is known as reverse funding.

Facing Consumer Privacy Legislation

Reservoir Partners' report, "Do Not Call--An Executive Risk Assessment," shows mounting concern over DNC legislation, and a recent Jupiter Research survey found that permission-based email marketers are not as concerned by Do Not Spam legislation.

Onyx Offers To Acquire Pivotal

If approved, the deal would yield a combined entity with 2,600 customers and combined annual revenue of $110 million, besting other pure-play CRM vendors in size such as E.piphany, Chordiant, and KANA.

Automating the Channel

Automating business processes can be the biggest challenge for Comergent's mostly manufacturer and distribution customers--that's why Comergent is offering new functionality and enhancements across the order transaction lifecycle.

Working In A Web Wonderland

Nearly 40 percent of online users plan to do some or all of their holiday shopping online in 2003.

Phone Tag: A Costly Game

Based on figures from Britain's National Statistics Office, unsuccessful phone connections costs British businesses nearly L83 million ($139.1 million) a day, or L22 billion ($36.87 billion) in a working year.

Tackling Sudden Support Surges

Hundreds of thousands of customers visit the support portal, which has deflected a significant portion of calls from Charter's contact center.

BellSouth Delivers the Package

The number-three local phone company (behind Verizon and SBC Communications) is targeting small and midsize business (SMB) customers with its latest offering.

The Loyalty Factor

According to the study, 90 percent of customers say they are at least satisfied with their retailers, but less than 50 percent can be considered truly loyal.

Akibia Sends IT Overseas

Akibia will still have local consultants working at clients' sites, focusing on project management, organizational alignment, business processes, technical architecture, change management, and training.

The Healing Powers of Technology

SupportSoft yesterday started shipping its real-time service management software platform, which enables organizations to avoid or resolve technology-related problems.

Blue Pumpkin Wins Patent Lawsuit

The victory marks a big win for Blue Pumpkin, as the lawsuit threatened the very core of its skills-based routing business.

Siemens Integrates With Microsoft

Siemens Information and Communication Networks is integrating its HiPath ProCenter Suites' real-time contact center capabilities with Microsoft Business Solutions CRM.

Humor Breeds Success

If there is one silver bullet that can help companies be more successful, it's humor--there are humor strategies companies can use to bring a little levity into the workplace.

Who's Outsourcing IT?

According to a recent online survey by ITtoolbox, 36 percent of survey participants stated the top strategic reason for outsourcing was the lure of cost-savings, whereas 15 percent cited special skills and/or services as the top reason.

SpeechTEK News Roundup

Speech technology vendors showed their wares during the ninth Annual SpeechTEK Exposition and Educational Conference in New York City this week.

How to Overcome the Call Center Conundrum

Time management, customer knowledge, Web self-help, knowledge management, and embracing opt-in automation are the keys to improving efficiency.

Faster Service, Same Staff Size

Pertinent information like name, address, and type of arthritis is used to create a Web form; this, plus the information gathered from the automated telephone system, is saved into one central database for a holistic view of an individual.

Celebrate Customer Service Week

National Customer Service Week '03: The International Customer Service Association (ICSA) started commemorating the event in 1988.

Marketing Automation Under Attack

Some analysts say the success of the Do-Not-Call registry will likely spawn additional Do-Not-Contact legislation.

Speech Recognition Goes Primetime

According to the company, VoiceTone lets customers hold natural conversations with computer-based systems.

RightNow Offers Email Marketing

The product has more than 200 enhancements, and includes the company's first outbound marketing product, RightNow Outbound.

Advancements In VoIP

The sluggish telecommunications industry and poor-clarity issues facing voiceover IP have traditionally plagued the industry, but the fact that a sizeable company with $338 million in revenue is investing in the nascent technology may be just what the VoIP industry needs to kick it into high gear.

NetLedger Changes Its Name To NetSuite

NetLedger today announced it is changing its corporate name to NetSuite Inc.

Aprimo Makes Marketing Modular

Aprimo focuses on four states of marketing expenditure, including budget, forecasted expense, committed expense, and actual expense.

Call Center Spending Soars

European call center spending among financial services organizations grew 130 percent since 1998--a large chunk of that came from U.S. companies moving operations overseas and outsourcing back-office operations.

Siebel Takes Aim At Do Not Call Registry

To make up for lost revenue opportunities associated with DNC compliance, Siebel is encouraging customers to capitalize on inbound service calls by turning them into sales calls.

Symon Buys TargetVision

Symon aims to integrate its real-time communication solutions with TargetVision's visual communication products.

Caveats For BPO

The research firm surveyed 82 senior business and IT executives and found that companies experimenting with BPO complain of inflexible contracts, difficulty managing vendors, and a lack of performance metrics.

Beware of Corporate Disease

Dr. Michael Treacy, chief strategist and cofounder of GEN3 Partners, advised attendees to beware of the "twin diseases of IT," which he identified as the enterprise disease and the process disease.

ICCM Product Spotlight

Small to midsize contact centers were the clear winners at this week's International Call Center Management (ICCM) Conference and Expo.

The 2003 Market Leaders (Part 1)

CRM magazine scrutinized CRM suite vendors and related categories to uncover the top-five leaders in each category: enterprise CRM, mid-market CRM, analytics, contact center outsourcers, and consulting firms. The results are based on a combination of weighted criteria, including revenue and revenue growth (last four completed quarters, ended March 30, 2003), market share, customer wins, and reputation for customer satisfaction.

The 2003 Market Leaders (Part 2)

CRM magazine scrutinized CRM suite vendors and related categories to uncover the top-five leaders in each category: enterprise CRM, mid-market CRM, analytics, contact center outsourcers, and consulting firms. The results are based on a combination of weighted criteria, including revenue and revenue growth (last four completed quarters, ended March 30, 2003), market share, customer wins, and reputation for customer satisfaction.

ICCM News Roundup

Envision introduces a workforce management tool; Verint's ULTRA Express leverages every customer contact to optimize call centers' processes; and Aspect Iphinity Call Center and Aspect Iphinity Workforce Management (WFM) are designed to bring enterprise level functionality to SME contact centers.

Uptick in the Pharma's Market

Two reports released today reveal the growing interest in CRM among pharmaceutical companies.

Do-Not-Email Legislation?

A report by consulting firm Reservoir Partners examines how organizations still need to be proactive with customer communications.

Considering Canadian Call Centers

The report states that outsourced call center agent positions in Canada are expected to rise 52 percent by 2007.

Partnership Happy

The report maintains that this year, participating IT services providers expect to sell 26 percent of their services via other IT services providers.

Text Chat and Beyond

Expanding the capabilities of its FootPrints Web-based service desk software, UniPress Software yesterday made available live eSupport tools from Atinav.

The Paperless Office Nears

edocs launches Focused Solutions, software for financial services firms that consists of three components: e-Statements for Banking, Customer Self-Service for Credit Cards, and e-Billing for Insurance.

6 Barriers to CRM Success And How to Overcome Them

Take the following advice on how to overcome these six barriers, and keep your organization from being among those that have squandered their CRM investments.

Market Watch: Midmarket CRM

Everything from phased deployments to optimizing business processes to implementing self-service to the rise in hosted solutions is being spurred by companies' desire to cut costs.

Talk Is Cheap

When it comes to communication devices, people simply prefer using the phone.

Vertical Market: Education

Fancy Email-Management Footwork

Skechers cut its email queries in half, to 4,500 each month, and can capture more customer information for marketing purposes--all now done with one tenth the old staff size.

ICICI OneSource To Acquire FirstRing

The combined company, which will be branded under ICICI OneSource's name, will have more than 3,500 employees and 2,000 seats in four call centers in Mumbai and Bangalore, India.

NetLedger's Fall Lineup

The ERP functionality will link to NetLedger's Web hosted e-commerce capabilities to provide customer, vendor, and partner views of the business transactions.

Siebel's Channel: Tuned In and Turned On

META analysts' various sources for generating vendor ratings include vendor surveys, customer references, META research data, and the analysts' collective experience in covering the ChRM market.

Helping Employees Help Themselves

According to a recent study, 32 percent of the typical workweek is spent helping others resolve questions.

Sustained Seat Support

Kanisa5 is designed to improve agent productivity and reduce incident volume by incorporating various features like one-click CRM-data access, self-learning guided-search capabilities, and collaboration capabilities that help agents digitally connect to experts via a digital chat forum.

KANA Automates Customer Response

Using natural language capabilities, the Banter Server, which will be preintegrated with KANA Response, can understand the intent of customers' emails and provide a suggested response for agents.

Microsoft CRM Gets POPular

Zeacom's screen pop capabilities can cut as many as 12 seconds from of each call, according to Zeacom CEO Miles Valentine.

CRM Market Poised For Slow Growth

According to Meta Group's new poll, 75 percent of the organizations queried will spend the same or more on CRM in the next 12 months. The remaining 25 percent is expecting to spend less.

Lawson Gives Retailers Insight and Analysis

Lawson Software yesterday introduced its Retail Comp Store Metrics Data Mart and Store Operations to improve store level profitability.

A Call To End Them All

Roughly 85 percent of the registrations occurred online (primarily at www.donotcall.gov).

Service on Steroids

While the performance optimization market is still relatively new, the melding of workflow automation, training, workforce management, and workforce optimization solutions is starting to provide a soup-to-nuts means of identifying and improving agent performance levels.

Using the Contact Center to Support Sales Growth

If enough employees are not happy with their plan, they can complain to their employer, which might prompt the employer to drop the financial services company for another one.

The Great Debate

It's a product that's designed to help its customers shave seconds off calls, but the way DirectQuest works has led to both benefits and controversy.

Intentia Entices J.D. Edwards' Customers

Intentia yesterday announced its migration path for J.D. Edwards to Intentia's Movex Collaboration applications.

Salesforce.com's Brand and Upgrade Splash

The upgrades represent what CEO Marc Benioff says is Salesforce.com's most significant release since launching its hosted CRM product in June 2000.

Charting MarkITing Success

A survey released today by marketing consulting firm Aelera polled 146 marketing and IT professionals online to determine the effects of bringing IT in on marketing projects.

SAP's CRM Gem Upgraded At SAPPHIRE

The mySAP CRM 4.0 upgrade was introduced at SAPPHIRE '03, SAP's annual international customer conference in Orlando, FL.

Oracle Offer Aftermath

PeopleSoft's board of directors unanimously decided that the offer to buy PeopleSoft's outstanding shares of stock for $16 per share would be met with lengthy antitrust scrutiny.

Chordiant 5.5 Arrives

Chordiant 5.5 provides real-time and wireless capabilities, and easier ways to manage business process changes.

Analysts Address Oracle's Move to Buy PeopleSoft

If the deal goes through, some analysts say PeopleSoft's roughly 5,000 customers would benefit from a smoother migration path.

Convergys Establishes a Customer Satisfaction Benchmark

Convergys has been working since the beginning of the year with Benchmark Portal to create the Customer Experience Benchmark (CEB)

Salesforce.com Is Going Beyond CRM

Today Salesforce.com introduced sforce, an online application-development utility to enable companies to build business applications within the hosted software delivery model.

One CRM Success Leads to Another

FSC executives were so pleased with its first CRM project that they happily took on a second. But delivering access across the enterprise proved to be a challenging workflow problem.

CRM in Action: Creating Cost Savings

Market Watch: Marketing Automation

A Slice of the Good Life: Washington, D.C.--AARP

Labor of Love

Salesforce.com Integrates With QuickBooks and Great Plains

Using prebuilt accounting adapters Salesforce.com customers have the option to integrate with Intuit QuickBooks or Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains accounting software.

The End of Agents?

SoundBite 4.0 uses interactive voice messaging in place of customer service reps.

Call Center Cop and Counselor

The solution is designed to reduce call handling times, increase the quality of customer interactions, monitor individual agent performance, analyze call-handling trends, and enable all calls and interactions to be recorded and made instantly searchable.

SPSS Web Analytics Genesis

Predictive Web Analytics merges SPSS's data mining and predictive modeling solution, Clementine 7.0, with the NetGenesis 6.0 Web analytics platform.

EMEA Call Center Outsourcing Is Primed For Growth

Nearly 1.2 million agent positions in the region, 150,000 (12 percent) are currently outsourced to a third party within EMEA. Datamonitor predicts this number will have almost doubled to 290,000 by 2007.

SAS Bolsters CPG and Retail Analysis

The upgrades are designed to increase calculation speeds and automate modeling and distribution analysis.

Envisioning Call Center Utopia

Envision Telephony and Utopy partnered today to use speech recognition and analytics tools to get a better understanding of agent performance and how it relates to customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Siebel Taps ClientLogic

ClientLogic and Siebel have agreed to implement a rolling payment plan for customers, enabling them to absorb the blow of large CRM implementations over time.

Oracle Draws a Mid-Market Blueprint

According to Forrester Research's Paul Hamerman, although Oracle had a late start out of the gate--falling behind Microsoft, Siebel Systems, PeopleSoft, and others with CRM mid-market initiatives--there is still plenty of room for Oracle.

Vertical Focus: Retail

Got Workforce Management?

The Cost of Isolated Data

Faster Feedback

The Nice Feedback can route callers automatically, obviating the need for agent involvement. Additionally, callers can choose to have their voice complaint tape recorded, which can then be automatically linked to the survey results to gain greater insight.

Witness Completes Eyretel Acquisition

Witness Systems today announced the completion of its acquisition of Eyretel, a U.K. provider of high-volume recording solutions.

Analyze This!

Predictive analytics developer SPSS has made available the latest version of its enterprise Web analytics solution, NetGenesis 6.0, which marks SPSS's first platform upgrade since acquiring NetGenesis during the fourth quarter of 2001.

Baan for Sale

After acquiring Baan in August 2000, Invensys is looking to sell the much stronger business unit.

Execs Say Contact Center Is Critical

According to 48 percent of the respondents, the biggest challenges are understanding new technologies and ways to integrate them.

MetaGroup Ranks Top BI Companies

MetaGroup highlights the 19 leading companies in business intelligence in a recent report. The four leaders--Cognos, Business Objects, SAS, and SAP AG--were selected because of their robust product line and financial strength in the market.

Delivering on its Promise

CRM is turning call centers into profit centers.

Show Report: Hot Issues at Two Key Conferences

Market Watch: 2003 Is ''The Year of Analytics''

Nucleus Research Deemed Presumptuous

Without a predefined set of mutually agreed upon metrics for a CRM implementation, or any large-scale implementation for that matter, failure cannot be accurately measured.

Help Desk Staff Gets Help in MS Office

Technicians using OTIS can reply to customer questions via email text or with an embedded video stream that shows the end user how to resolve the problem.

Quenching the Thirst for New Business

While SAP announces customer wins the water utilities sector, Orcom, an outsourcer of customer information systems (CIS) and billing services, has made available its first hosted service for water utilities.

Speech Recognition Gets Smarter

Organizations are using speech recognition technology to bridge the gap between speech and text.

Salesforce.com Is Profitable

The news bodes well for Salesforce.com, which targets sales professionals for its products by providing them with a lower-cost alternative to large software implementations; also fueling sales at the company are some recent, large corporate-customer wins.

Market Watch: Contact Center Update

In addition to the national Do Not Call registry, telemarketers are facing some heavy scrutiny from state public utility commissions (PUCs) and legislators for dead air and abandoned calls when calling consumers on the phone.

CRM in Action: Keeping Up With Growth

One File Fits All

Managing image files is a way to drive down costs and increase profitability at National Semiconductor Corp.

Who's Minding the Mid-Market?

Mid-market CRM vendors are partnering with consultants to get your business. Here are 10 tips to help you select the right consultant for your needs.

SPSS and Extraprise Aid in the Analytics Evolution

The goal is to help organizations graduate from descriptive analytics to prescriptive analytics; the difference is that descriptive analytics captures historical customer data, where as prescriptive analytics creates actionable analysis on the data captured.

Accenture and Inforte Get Top Ranking

Magic Quadrant '03: The report puts leading service providers into four key areas (challengers, leaders, niche players, and visionaries), all measured against each other by their ability to execute.

ICCM Tip: Make It Personal

Rogers' message was for organizations to focus on individual customers based on the information customers provide.

Salesforce.com Upgrades for the Enterprise

Salesforce.com today announced the availability of upgraded versions of its online service, including improved activity management tools, reporting enhancements, and marketing automation updates, among other updates.

SMB Marketing for the Masses

By using digital sound cards to transfer calls, the product can decrease call abandonment rates by reducing call transfer time without clicks or silences.

The Hosts With the Most

Once thought of as a tool for small companies needing sales force automation, hosted CRM solutions have developed into a formidable competitor to packaged CRM applications for mid-market, and even large enterprises.

Support Gets a Face-Lift

Hot Projects

Vertical Focus: Pharmaceuticals

Public Relations Gets a CRM Lift

Without tools that measure effectiveness, an organization with several PR agencies cannot get an accurate view of their performance, ROI, or their ability to generate impressions in the marketplace. Cymfony's technology will be bundled into MediaMap's Web-based solution called Performa, which enables PR and corporate communications professionals to manage branding efforts and their effectiveness in the media.

Siebel Integrates to IBM's WebSphere

Analysts welcome the long-awaited announcement of Siebel's integration into an open standards platform.

Fix the Agents Not the Technology

Call center agents can make or break a contact center.

M&A Mania

Forrester Research's acquisition of Giga is an attempt to expand Forrester's emerging technology coverage and reach. Current Analysis Inc.'s acquisition of ARS Inc. combines the daily intelligence collection methodologies of ARS and the change-driven analytical model of Current Analysis.

News Roundup

A glance at some of the top news around the industry this week.

SAP and Microsoft Partner for Web Services

All SAP solutions to run on enterprise services architecture.

Cracking Down On Abandoned Calls

One of the issues the TSR aims to change is predictive-dialer call-abandonment rates, or the percentage of calls for which no representative is available to answer the call after a connection is made.

Web Self-Help Wins

Contrary to the speed-to-resolution factor associated with call center agents and their ability to quickly answer customer queries, customers are spending more time on the Web because the tools they are using to find their answers are working.

HOT PROJECTS

Outdoor Retailer Cabela's Gets Chatty With Instant Messenger

Salesnet Upgrades Dashboard Offerings

Users can drill down for more granularity, as they can click on any chart or graph to home in on specific data.

Preview 2003--What's in Store for CRM? (PART 2)

CRM magazine interviewed more than 30 industry leaders and surveyed about 100 readers to uncover what they expect to and predict will happen in the industry in the coming year.

Preview 2003--What's in Store for CRM? (PART 1)

CRM magazine interviewed more than 30 industry leaders and surveyed about 100 readers to uncover what they expect to and predict will happen in the industry in the coming year.

How to Improve Customer Loyalty

According to a recent survey conducted by InsightExpress LLC, out of 500 American consumers who responded, 56 percent participate in loyalty or affiliate programs.

CRM Suite Switchers Empower Customers

A customer ownership scuffle between Salesforce.com Inc. and NetLedger Inc. is proving that one of the benefits of the CRM hosting model is true: Dissatisfied customers can sometimes easily switch from one CRM vendor to another.

CRM in Action: Avoiding Cross-Sell Snafus

Osborne Clarke breaks down its information silos.

NetLedger Steals Salesforce.com Customers

Some companies are finding that industry newcomer NetLedger's integration of back- and front-office data will give them a holistic view that Salesforce.com's front-office only system can't match.

Partners Are Customers, Too

To improve relationships with and increase profits from the channel companies must treat those partners as well as they would their customers.

IBM's Door to SMBs

A portal solution bundled with Big Blue's hardware and software gives SMBs information to improve productivity and reduce costs

PeopleSoft Release Enables Integrated Analytics

The new release, which will be available on December 11, 2002, as a stand-alone component of the Enterprise Performance Management suite, can be used with PeopleSoft's Enterprise Portal.

PeopleSoft Release Enables Integrated Analytics

The new release, which will be available on December 11, 2002, as a stand-alone component of the Enterprise Performance Management suite, can be used with PeopleSoft's Enterprise Portal.

USi Becomes A Siebel Premier Partner

Siebel Systems Inc. has appointed USinternetworking as a Premier Platform Partner in the Siebel Partner Alliance.

Data Cleansing and a Ho! Ho! Holistic Customer View

Data cleansing companies like QAS Limited say it is not too late to clean data.

Track Customers in Real Time

SAS Institute Inc. has acquired assets of Verbind Technology for real-time customer behavior tracking capabilities.

Salesforce.com's Airforce Wireless Edition Is Set to Fly

Salesforce.com's first formal wireless solution, dubbed Airforce Wireless Edition, enables sales teams to access and edit real-time, up-to-the-minute customer information in Saleforce.com via their wireless devices.

Earnings and M&A Wrap-up

An overview of this week's earnings and M&A activity in the CRM industry.

Simplifying Enterprise Branding

Interwoven Inc. launched its Interwoven Solution for Media Asset Management (MAM) last week at its third annual Interwoven user conference, GearUp 2002, in San Francisco.

A Day in the Life of a Call Center

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development's contact center is turning heads--including Mayor Bloomberg's.

Sybase Turns Data Into Economic Value

Sybase announced yesterday at a customer luncheon in New York that it aims to improve the flow, speed, and quality of data to employees is through its latest portal solution, called Enterprise Portal (EP) 5.0.

SAS: It's About the People

Despite the economic downturn, SAS is able to navigate its way through difficult waters. How it was able to do so was one of the main takeaways at its SAS Executive Conference, an event for customers and prospects held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas.

Integration: The Great CRM Bottleneck

Scott McNealy, chairman, CEO, and president of Sun Microsystems Inc., says that IBM and Microsoft are part of the integration problem, not the solution.

Taking A Bite Out of Crime in Florida

Federal, state, and local governments have discovered the benefits of CRM and are using it to interact with and serve their constituencies.

Baan CRM, Meet Baan SCM

Steve Carpenter had barely warmed the president seat at the Baan CRM business unit before a new president was appointed the top spot last week. Ed Daihl, a three-year Baan veteran, who is also president of the Baan Supply Chain Management business unit, is taking hold of the CRM reigns effective immediately. Carpenter is bumped up to Baan Enterprises.

Hot Growth Areas In CRM

Certain sectors within CRM are showing signs of steady strength.

Edocs Releases eaCare Self-Service Solution

The customer self-help solution aims to increase customer satisfaction and reduce contact center interactions.

NetLedger Unveils NetSuite

NetLedger unveiled the latest member of its family of hosted solutions for low-end mid-market companies.

Retailers Report Disappointing Numbers

Retailers are wincing at their latest disappointing sales figures for the month of September, requiring many to take a closer look at their CRM initiatives.

Moving Toward Real-Time Marketing

Only six months after the release of Affinium 4 in April, Unica Corp. announced the coming of Affinium 5, slated for general availability in December.

FrontRange HEATs Up Competition

FrontRange Solutions today announced the availability of HEAT Service & Support 7.0.

Pivotal to Acquire MarketFirst; Warns of Losses

Pivotal Corp. announced its intention to acquire MarketFirst Software Inc. today to win more customers looking for a marketing automation solution.

Personable Voice Messaging

Automated voice messaging for sales, marketing, and customer service campaigns do not have to be so impersonal.

PeopleSoft HR Tool Leverages Self-Help Technology

The connection between HR and CRM applications is getting stronger, thanks to the announcement of PeopleSoft HelpDesk for Human Resources.

Oracle Ranks High In Multilingual Capabilities

Oracle's focus on business flows garners the company top spots on Forrester ranking

European Banks Lower Costs With Contact Center Solutions

Financial institutions are leaning more on technology to field customer inquiries

Battle for Dominance

The enterprise CRM suite landscape is changing, led largerly by efforts in integration.

NetLedger Preps Hosted CRM Solution

Company leverages established Oracle Small Business Suite customer-base to compete in the CRM hosting market

Siebel and IBM Combat Integration Woes

Siebel's highly anticipated UAN aims to facilitate CRM with back-office applications

Chordiant: An IBM Elite Partner

Chordiant joins the ranks of Siebel, PeopleSoft, and SAP by becoming an IBM Strategic Alliance partner

FrontRange Runs On .Net

Mid-market companies show their wares at DCI

Pragmatech, Mimeo Team Up

Electronic documents meet physical world; sales proposals at click speed; the RFP machine

iBaan Continues Momentum

Despite an industry-wide sales slump, Baan presses on with 'pretty good' sales for the first half

Public Relations: A New CRM Market?

MediaMap identifies corporate communications as an untapped CRM market

Salesforce.com Goes Offline

New mobile solution enables disconnected users to remain productive

Integration Rules to Live By

Inforte offers advice on how to tackle front and back-office integration woes

CRM To Lead Mobile Adoption

Datamonitor: Global enterprise investment in mobile field service to hit $220M this year

BizGenics Extends CRM To Business Partners

Solution aims to keep better tabs on multi-tier channels to improve revenue and cut costs before and after the sale

Employee Evaluation and E-learning Join Forces

Two applications join to provide a closed-loop solution for evaluating employee skills and providing customized training

Slim Down Call Center Costs

Are your call center costs bursting at the seams? Here's how to trim down expenses while toning up service.

Workforce Optimization

New software keeps employees and customers in lockstep; human interaction verses self-help; watching over workers

E.piphany's Big Buddy

CRM suite vendor joins forces with IBM Global Services

Siebel Wobbles

Top CRM vendor reports losses and slashes 1,100 jobs; CEO sees little help through Q4

Determine Your Own ROI

Evolve delivers ROI calculator software through third-party partner program

Chordiant, SAP Issue Warnings

European CRM vendors will not meet analysts' expectations

PeopleSoft, PwC Push iAnalytics Envelope

CRM analytics is branching out, moving beyond customer and profitability analysis, as evidenced by the recent non-exclusive partnership between PwC Consulting and PeopleSoft Inc.

Onyx Gives Upside Surprise

Onyx Software Corp. customers can breath a slight sigh of relief that the CRM vendor's long-term viability looks a bit better as the company said it expects to post better-than expected financial results for its second quarter.

Partners In Mobile Solutions

Proscape and InfoLogix join forces to provide mobile industries

The Truth About CRM Success & Failure

CRM implementations are not as disappointing as research firms claim.

Avoiding Analysis Paralysis

Single-view. Real-time. Predictive. The variety of analytics applications can be overwhelming. Here are the key trends in analytics to help sort through the clutter.

Worldtrak: Back On Track as Axonom

After shutting down in May, Worldtrak is going again thanks to an acquisition of all its assets by two-month old Axonom Inc.

Salesforce.com Nabs CompuCom

When trying to win new technology customers, some might argue it is more difficult to meet their meticulous technology demands and therefore close the sale, but not Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive of Salesforce.com. The CRM hosting company said it inked a deal with CompuCom Systems Inc., a Dallas-based technology consultant and systems integrator with over 300 application developers.

Baan Builds Product Lifecycle House

PLM suite enables manufacturing companies to track configure-to-order process throughout the enterprise and across its supply chain

mySAP CRM Is 'People Centric'

At its SAPPHIRE 02 conference, held at the Orange County Convention Center, SAP's top brass pushed their focus on CRM and addressed industry challenges including the threat of Microsoft Corp. entering the market.

Hosting On the Rise

ASPs have significantly increased their Web analytics market share in 2001, garnering 22 percent of the sector's revenue, up from 13 percent the previous year, the report states. "A Web Analytics system analyzes Web visitors' online behavior, enabling enterprises to optimize their Web site structure and content to improve customer loyalty, increase sales, and decrease support costs," the research company states.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Consolidation is continuing. Here's how to protect your investments if your CRM vendor gets acquired.

ACCPAC Improves Integration

ACCPAC eCRM 5.0 enables office and mobile users to have improved integration to back-office accounting functions through the eCRM interface. Reporting and analysis tools are 20 times faster than before, says Tom Crafton, vice president of eCRM for ACCPAC.

Salesforce.com Calculates Marketing Value

As return on investment is becoming more of a concern for C-level executives and marketers, CRM vendors are forced to prove their worth. That is why Salesforce.com upgraded its online CRM product to enable marketing departments to automatically calculate ROI for each marketing campaign.

J.D.Edwards Boosts CRM Market

Just one day after J.D.Edwards made available J.D.Edwards 5, the company breathed some more life into the CRM industry by posting better-than-expected quarterly results and forecasted strong software sales in the current quarter.

Bertelsmann Turns to Kana

Adding to its list of nearly 1,300 customers, Kana Software Inc. signed on German direct marketing-service company Bertelsmann Marketing Service to deploy Kana's Response software for email management throughout 13 call centers worldwide helping over 11,000 agents.

Salesforce.com Gears Up for Giant Clients

While the company is selling its Enterprise Edition, it's selling it to the larger end of its SMB client-base - an area the company has enjoyed phenomenal success, garnering nearly 1,200 new customers in the last three months alone to total nearly 4,500 customers today.

Deloitte Expands SAP Partnership

Deloitte Consulting expanded its alliance with SAP AG to jointly deliver mySAP CRM solutions for Fortune 1000 and enterprise companies. Deloitte Consulting adds SAP to its list of other CRM vendors that it services including E.piphany, PeopleSoft, and Siebel.

Analysts Feud Over CRM Failure

In a recent report from New York-based research firm, Datamonitor, called "Great Expectations But Not-So-Great Implementation: CRM in the Pharmaceutical Industry," the firm states "44 percent of pharmaceutical CRM projects either fail to meet implementation timescales or result in total project failure, a trend that is set to continue." The report cites organizational resistance and cost as the greatest barriers to successful CRM implementation.

Siebel Feeds the Wireless Beast

Analyst: Pavement-pounding salespeople remain skeptical about CRM

Onyx Loss Narrows, Sales Sharply Off

Keeping in line with other CRM players, Onyx this week unveiled a steep drop in software sales for its first quarter due to weak corporate demand for software.

Cutting Call Center Costs

Why one call center operator is pitching its customers on another vendor's offering.

Salesforce.com Goes Mobile

Amdocs Meets Expectations For Now

Cabela's Uses CRM Ammo From ATG

Announcing customer wins proves your organization is good at making promises; announcing customer successes proves it's good at keeping promises.

Targeting Terrorism

The U.S. Government turns to data management firms to keep tabs on terrorists.

Customer Service Gets a Tune Up

Joe Auto uses CRM to polish the image of the automotive repair business.

Edify's Automation Nation

Sun, Sybase Save Server Space

PeopleSoft Plunges

The software maker warns it will not meet first-quarter expectations.

PeopleSoft Partners for Single View

Siemens - A CRM Agent of Change

Salesforce.com Goes Vertical

Baan Builds Brand in Rome

PeopleSoft's Aggressive CRM Rollout

Zamba Integrates At Canon Despite Downsizing

Mobile Marketing Medium

Wireless location services enable retailers to add tourists and mobile business professionals to their customer base.

Blue Martini Ships Retail-focused App

CRM Event Focuses on Integrated Enterprise

I2's Jaguar Has A Need for Speed

Salesforce.com Releases New Products With N.Y. Glitz

Experian's Data Washing Machine

J.D. Edwards: Help Yourself

Partnerware Readies New PRM Services

Siebel Lands Countrywide Credit

To Host or Not to Host

Who says the ASP model is dead? With CRM implementations becoming more comprehensive and the economy more dubious, some companies are turning to CRM-specific hosting providers as an alternative to the costly and time-consuming task of managing and maintaining CRM data in-house.

Common Cold Remedy: Business Intelligence

FIS turns to Silvon to keep up with the season's soup demand.

IDC Gives Data Management A Boost

Vality Joins War On Terrorism

Software tools help identify terrorist suspects.

Gartner: Ignore Security 'At Your Own Peril'

IBM Nabs Nextel for CRM and Wireless Services

Baan Is Back with CRM

DCI's Small Crowd Seeks Big Advice

Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP are no-shows to the event.

PeopleSoft's ‘Show Must Go On'

Company executives tout enterprise service automation as the new CRM.