Customer Relationship Management; CRM

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I WANT TO both thank you and congratulate you on your very insightful (and clever) Pint of View "The Devilish Drift" (January 2007). I recall my business law class back in the early 1980s: The professor (a former Iowa Supreme Court judge) befuddled the class with how the law really works. It was a bit of a shock to learn that it was legal for salespeople to puff up or exaggerate the benefits and abilities of their product or service.

Dirty Little Data Secret

The flip side to the installation of EII, ETL, and data warehouses is that a company generally has a foundation for CDI, says Ray Wang, Forrester Research's principal analyst of enterprise applications. "The beauty of [the CDI hub approach] is that most organizations already have most of the pieces in place," he says. "They just need to find a way to pull it together." CDI does this by consolidating functions into a unified hub that sits between-and works in conjunction with-a company's... De...

Custom Fits

Ten years ago buyers who signed off on a new SFA system knew they faced heavy lifting ahead, according to Jim Dickie, partner at CSO Insights (and a contributor to CRM magazine). With that in mind, buyers wouldbring in programmers or consultants in tandem with the new system. Survey 1,000 companies and you will not find two that use their sales force automation (SFA) system the same way. No SFA vendor an cover all those disparate bases. None even tries. Customizing and configuration is easier...

Wise Guide

Secure Computing lets customers create content by providing forums for select products. These forums are searched periodically by the business to see what the hot topics are, and then customers are directed to the company's knowledge base for company-sanctioned answers, according to [Kris Solberg]. Financial success for an enterprise can boil down to what employees -- the most valuable internal business resource -- know. How to effectively, efficiently push relevant information to customer-fa...

Re:Tooling

Companies have valuable data languishing unused in multiple areas; moving that information from one place to another-either from application to application or into a data warehouse-is the job of extract, transform, and load (ETL) tools. ETL solutions extract (read) data from a source, transform (convert) it to a desired format, and load (move) that information into a targeted database. Companies have valuable data languishing unused in multiple areas; moving that information from one place to...

Insight

Sap Loses Visionary Agassi Over Ceo Rift

Leo Apotheker, president of SAP's global customer solutions and operations, was named deputy CEO, alongside [Henning Kagermann]. Shai Agassi's resignation from SAP in late March triggered a major realignment of the SAP executive board and has left industry pundits and customers alike wondering how the exit of the whiz kid will influence SAP's product strategy and road map. Agassi was denied a job as co-CEO after Chairman Hasso Plattner asked CEO Henning Kagermann to retain his position until ...

A Green Light for Marketing

Marketing, with its constant direct mailings and piles of swag, has come under criticism for wasting of raw materials, and many companies have looked at ways to make their marketing efforts less ecowasteful. Ecofriendly marketing has gained popularity among companies in the past year, largely propelled by growing concerns surrounding noticeable climate changes and the depleting ozone layer. Organizations have found great success with ecofriendly campaigns, but many have discovered that once y...

Buying Into the Customer Experience

It's become progressively harder for retailers to compete based on price over the past few years. Retail subsegments in crowded marketplaces have seen low-cost online pure plays and big-box stores with substantial supply chain efficiencies continue to pick up steam with consumers. A growing number of retailers, however, are waking up to the importance of creating a seamless multichannel experience as a vital part of their tool kit for competitive differentiation. A growing number of retailers...

Statistically Speaking

* The market for speech analytics will increase by 100 percent in 2007 and 2008, making it the fastest growing sector in the contact center technology market, according to DMG Consulting's "2007 Speech Analytics Market Report." The number of implementations has experienced a compound annual growth rate of 391 percent, growing from 25 in December 2004 to 603 in December 2006.

Destinationcrm Dashboard

Software AG Is Set to Acquire webMethods Integration software provider webMethods is getting scooped up by Germany-headquartered Software AG, a systems software and service-oriented architecture (SOA) provider, for an allcash offer of about $546 million. The transaction is intended to boost Software AG's footprint in the SOA/business process management (BPM) space and nudge it closer to its goal of becoming a billion-euro company by 2011.

Moving Beyond the Buzz

[Lois Kelly]: They'll learn how to listen and participate in a two-way conversation with customers. When you listen you garner the feedback that can help drive your marketing and communication strategy. They'll also learn how to leverage their company's point of view. Every company has its own beliefs and ideas about itself, its products and services. Those ideas are what provoke conversations. In an interview, Lois Kelly, author of Beyond Buzz, talked about the book. Consumers have come to r...

Reality Check

We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

Outside North America the situation is differentmost consumers in Europe and parts of Asia already own video-enabled phones. In those markets, where the carrier networks deliver superior bandwidth, it isn't just the mobile phone market that is marching toward video. Telecoms like NTT, Orange, and France Telecom are promoting videophones evocative of Blade Runner's for home usage. Although CRM delivered through contact centers usually means voice interactions, eventually there will be a place ...

The Tipping Point

Making the Pivot

Naming the right coach in today's environment is an emerging dilemma requiring attention. In some cases this responsibility can be filled by a traditional line of business player; in other instances a chief customer officer may be the answer. Whatever decision companies make regarding who leads the change, the fact is that making the pivot to this new CRM mindset is critical and urgent. Businesses today need to be agile when managing customer relationships, and must be able to turn on a dime ...

Front Office

You Drive Intelligence

WE'VE WARNED our readers countless times that they shouldn't expect CRM software to be a business panacea. For the most part, the warning has worked-organizations are more knowledgeable about what to expect from their CRM technologies and, as a result, CRM success stories abound. However, I'm concerned that some may have taken this advice to mean that if CRM isn't a business panacea, then perhaps a subsequent technology will be. Readers were warned countless times that they should not expect ...

Customer Centricity

Truly Mobile Strategies

Wireless CRM solutions have been just out of reach for a long time-each time we thought there was a breakthrough we found the solution was simply an attempt to emulate bigger systems and the wireless solution lost in the comparison. That seems to be changing. Vendors realize that a mobile sales rep doesn't need to carry around a lifetime's worth of data; instead, they concentrate on providing access to the information most likely to be needed in a given day, week, or month. There has been a g...

Real Roi

Cleaned-Up Visibility

It worked as an ACD system without any problem," says Varghese Jacob, the SWD's deputy director of administration and finance. But as a result of the city's conversion to the Windows platform, the SWD could n't get any reports on vital call center metrics like incoming call volume and call answer rate. The City of Tampa Solid Waste Department (SWD) used a 15-year-old DOS-based ACD system to help operate its call center. But as a result, the SWD could not get any reports on vital call center m...

Know All, See All

Once we started getting everybody to enter the information into Salesforce we thought it would be great to have that information flow right down to the technician's phone," [Mitch Cook] says. If you think boosting the productivity levels of onsite employees is a daunting task, try improving the efficiency of your field service technicians while being in the dark about their on-the-road whereabouts. That was the challenge facing TEMSCO Solutions, a provider of energy and security management se...

Content Management Is for Lovers (and Clydesdales)

Because Virginia.gov was already running with CrownPeak, the implementation period the site had previously undergone was cut in half for the 2006 renovation. It is not easy to fit an entire state on one Web site. However, that lofty goal is Virginia.gov's mission. Virginia residents can -- from the site's homepage -- check the weather, file their taxes, pay for a traffic ticket, or find out what is on offer at the annual Virginia Arts Festival. Managing the content level that Virginia.gov pro...

Gunning the Sales Accelerator

The relationship between Bombardier and Sales Progress began in mid-2004, but its bonds have continued, with new salespeople brought up to speed while Sales Progress veterans refresh their skills and train for new initiatives. "We have just completed our latest sales program and our employees have completed die first phase of dieir self-learning matrix. Many adults hate going to school, especially for something they feel they already know. This is a particular problem with salespeople, who ar...

Cpm's Golden Opportunity

One of the biggest challenges has been Internet connectivity. Hyperion System 9 Data Quality Management is a Webbased application. While it's great because it doesn't require local installation, it's dependent on Internet bandwidth. For our offices in Africa, and certain parts of Asia, that's an issue because they don't have reliable Internet connectivity. Things have improved dramatically in Asia and Latin America, but Africa is still a couple of years behind. In an interview, Tim Head, serv...

Sponsored Content

Crm Magazine Best Practices Series: Sales Force Automation

The success of SFA implementations still relies on the adoption and compliance of individual salespeople, and encourages as much by offering solutions that are easy to use, presenting a unified view of customer issues and history, and featuring useful personal productivity tools. Most SFA offerings available today have been able to find the balance between making the process as painless as possible for salespeople while giving management accurate reporting and forecasts.

Tomorrow Now: Extending the Life of Siebel or Peoplesoft Crm Applications with Third-Party Maintenance and Support

TomorrowNow is supporting PepsiAmericas' full suite of PeopleSoft enterprise applications, including CRM. The company receives expert-level support from its TomorrowNow engineer who has years of experience working with PeopleSoft. Using TomorrowNow's support services was an insurance policy for PepsiAmericas to keep the business running while the company transitioned to a new enterprise software strategy. The savings were relatively easy to calculate.

Crm: Helping Salespeople Sell

What is really needed is a set of powerful, flexible SFA tools that do all the hard work behind the scenes while users point and click to accomplish what they want. These tools are now becoming available in the latest generation of CRM software. They are giving salespeople the ability to take control over what information they store and how they're able to retrieve it.

True 360° Visibility: The Silver Bullet for Sfa

NetSuite CRM+ is the only on-demand CRM solution that provides a true 360° view of all customer data and interactions, including complete visibility into all financial transactions without any integration required. With NetSuite CRM+, a single view of customer information is available to everyone in the company who needs it.

Sales Compensation Management: Are You Driven to Succeed?

Psion Teklogix discovered that Compel is more than just a commission calculation tool; it's a strategic platform for modeling, managing, and optimizing sales compensation. Compel enables companies to leverage compensation as a true sales performance tool. Psion also learned that Compel integrates with CRM systems such as salesforce.com.

Maximizing Revenue Generation Using Sales Software

ScoreSight causes a fundamental change in the interaction between sales management and salespeople. Information from salespeople is consolidated and presented to management in views conducive to quick, accurate understanding. Gone are tiresome recitals of past activities and endless hours putting forecasts together. ScoreSight gives sales managers a constant situational understanding of field activities and more time to do the job they love-mentoring salespeople and closing business.

Point Of View

Lord of the Undead Vendors

[Siebel] is hungry. Whenever Oracle is mentioned, Siebel is sure to be the next topic. But when Count Siebula leads the discussion, where is poor Oracle? The name will come up, but like Renfield it is a shadow of its master. And don't doubt that Siebel is the master; which company is all of Oracle's CRM and SOA functionality built around? Siebel hides behind Oracle, draining its press all the while and denying it the spotlight. A blood-fiend walks among us: It is Siebel Systems, Lord of the U...