Business

With Great SOMO Tools Come Great Responsibilities
December 17, 2012

Enterprise CRM of the future is all about social and mobile. In fact, Blackbaud, which specializes in providing CRM products and services to the nonprofit sector, even has an acronym for it: SOMO. "We're looking at how we can extend our technology into social and mobile spheres," said Tiffany Crumpton, senior marketing manager for CRM with Blackbaud.

Coremotives Connects the Marketing Dots
December 14, 2012

CoreMotives, a Silverpop company, has launched a new integration that ties revenue-tracking capabilities embedded in its CRM system to the Ticketmaster sales application. The upshot is that teams that use Ticketmaster to market tickets can also easily track which campaigns actually led to a sale.

Bringing Production Home
December 12, 2012

On Dec. 6, Apple announced that it would begin making some Macs in the U.S., reversing a trend building over several years of manufacturing computers in China and setting an interesting precedent. Apple isn't alone in this: HP has also begun shifting some of its PC production back to the U.S. of A. Before we start popping French champagne corks, we should think about what this means and why it is important.

Microsoft Dynamics Aims to Pull All the Pieces Together
December 07, 2012

Microsoft next month will roll out a service update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that will have a new user interface, integration with Yammer, Skype and Office 2013, and cross-browser support. In general, the theme of tight integration with other Microsoft technologies runs through the release, said Seth Patton, senior director of Microsoft Dynamics CRM product marketing.

Rolling Out an Idea
December 05, 2012

Has the emergence of social technology been faster than the rollout of other advanced technologies like CRM and ERP? If it has, why? I have recently been reading a dense technical book from 1990 with the improbable title -- for CRM -- "The Rise and Fall of Infrastructures -- Dynamics of Evolution and Technological Change in Transport," by Arnulf Grubler.

Avaya Puts More Eggs in BYOD Basket
November 26, 2012

Avaya IP Office joined the BYOD revolution with the release of version 8.1 earlier this year. Now the company is gearing up for more changes, including a forthcoming release that will integrate video functionality into its feature set. It will continue to expand its functionality around mobility in 2013, said SVP Tom Mitchell, president of Avaya Go to Market.

Courting the Prized Omnichannel Shopper
November 16, 2012

Holiday shopping this year will take place on multiple channels, with many shoppers doing research and buying online or on mobile devices. That's according to Deloitte's 2012 Annual Holiday Survey, which found that shoppers who use multiple channels plan to spend more money than retail shoppers.

Genesys One Gives Mid-Market a Second Shot
November 16, 2012

Genesys is making a play for the middle market with the release of Genesys One. The last time the company targeted the middle market was more than 10 years ago, when it was owned by Alcatel. Since then, the middle market has changed significantly. Both customer needs and buying behavior have changed considerably, observed Brian Bischoff, vice president of global offer management for Genesys.

Demandbase Finely Hones B2B Targeted Marketing
November 12, 2012

Demandbase is extending beyond its Web analytics and sales roots with a new platform that allows B2B advertisers to target and personalize display ads for specific companies. Demandbase Company-Targeted Advertising, which has been incorporated by Eloqua within its own marketing automation application, represents a shift for Demandbase.

Following the Mobile CRM Money Trail
November 09, 2012

Mobile CRM and its related technologies have intrigued developers and users alike for years. However, it wasn't until Facebook announced it would acquire Instagram for an eye-popping $1 billion that the money began to pour into this space. "That was the transaction that crystallized for us and a lot of folks that mobile is a hot growth area deserving of investment," said CB Insights' Anand Sanwal.

Companies Quake Under Social Sword of Damocles
October 29, 2012

Forty-seven percent of all social media users have used their networks to get customer service from a company, with usage as high as 59 percent among 18-24 year olds, according to a new study from NM Incite. Almost one in three social media users said they preferred to contact a company that way, and companies have learned to respond in kind.

StrongMail Lifts Weight Off Burdensome Marketing Operations
October 26, 2012

StrongMail has upgraded the latest version of its flagship email marketing product, Message Studio, now available in version 7.1. Chief among the changes is a new type of data integration with an ERP system, as well as new testing, optimization, automation and reporting capabilities. "This is our third release of the year," said Dave Cormier, VP of product marketing at StrongMail.

Mobile CRM Strikes Geolocation Gold
October 23, 2012

Increasingly, CRM vendors are incorporating geofunctionality into their offerings. It is a must-have marketing technique for brick-and-mortar retailers competing with e-commerce providers. While that use is indeed still a big driver, vendors are also beginning to view it as a technology that has multiple CRM-related uses, such as a complementary technology for contact management.

Nimble CRM 2.0 Adds to the Social Whirl
October 22, 2012

The name of the product is "Nimble CRM," but the "CRM" part is almost a misnomer -- if you accept the traditional sales-marketing-service definition of CRM, that is. A startup that launched early last year, Nimble CRM chooses to embrace a morphing view of CRM. This is a view of CRM driven by social media, by mobile computing -- and most of all, by savvy contact management and networking.

Waiting for B2B Mobile CRM
October 16, 2012

It is not hard at all to find an example of a mobile B2C CRM app -- all one has to do is fire up the nearest smartphone. But B2B mobile CRM? That is a qualified yes -- assuming one is willing to limit one's thinking to salesforce automation as a B2B discipline. To be sure, there is a case to be made for that argument. When, though, will B2B mobile CRM expand beyond this traditional deployment?

ExactTarget Hones Cross-Channel Communications
October 15, 2012

With two new acquisitions, ExactTarget is pushing beyond its original email marketing mission to become a one-stop online marketing and social media shop. The company has acquired Pardot for $95.5 million and iGoDigital for $21 million; it announced both deals last week.

Mobile CRM Gives Retailers Ammo Against Showrooming
October 09, 2012

Showrooming enabled by the proliferation of smartphones has become the bane of brick-and-mortar retailers. Basically, consumers waltz into a local Best Buy or similar big box store, find the product they are thinking of buying and check it out. So far, so good, from the retailer's perspective -- only then they go online to buy it from an etailer like Amazon.

Mobile CRM Gets Gamified
October 02, 2012

CRM is a mature software category with a decades-plus history of development and evolution. Still, one important problem remains unsolved: A lot of employees, especially sales staff, just can't be bothered with it. Corporate "solutions" have ranged from bribing to arm-twisting to appeals to corporate loyalty. None, though, have worked so well as building gamification features into the system.

Dreamforce: The Aftermath
September 26, 2012

t's over, Dreamforce that is, and I have gotten some needed sleep on the flight back to Boston. As I contemplate Dreamforce 2012 and its meaning, I have three observations. First, it was what I expected it to be. If you refer back to my post just before the show opened my expectations were more than met. You might wonder about the timing of that post but I was under NDA and unable to say much until then.

Dreamforce 2012: Revolution Is Out
September 20, 2012

The CRM industry is used to getting a jolt every year from Dreamforce, Salesforce.com's annual mega-event. Each year, the number of attendees swells -- this year, it's more than 70,000 -- and that makes CEO Marc Benioff's bacchanal the epicenter of the CRM industry for a week. That give Salesforce a chance to make a serious splash.