Crm News & Articles

As usual this year, hidden in the deluge of press releases and publicity material produced by Microsoft over the course of Convergence, there were a few gems that it took a while to uncover. One such gem was the keynote from Kirill Tatarinov, president, Microsoft Business Solutions, who had a lot to say about Dynamics, and the cloud.

Since SAP and OpenText signed reseller agreements to sell OpenText document management and enterprise CMS under the SAP brand name, they’ve been steadily building the product portfolio and adding new functionality. Now they have released v10 with support for SAP CRM and Supplier Relationship Management (SRM).

If you thought IBM analytics was big already, it has just announced today that it’s getting bigger. Bigger in a whole pile of ways: think Big Data, think larger number of offerings, think bigger market share. The announcement by Big Blue of its new predictive analytics services and software today contains an element of all three of these elements.

If you’re not entirely sure that your company has developed the correct Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy or technologies, you would not be alone. According to recent research from Forrester, despite widespread adoption and deployment, many IT and business people says they are struggling.

In the age of social and mobile customers, all paths lead back to your website.

In the age of social and mobile customers, all paths lead back to your website.

Nimble, the CRM app that brings together collaboration, contacts, communication and social networking into one interface, has released version 2.0. The update introduces a cleaner interface, and a host of features that make it easier to manage contacts and engage with one's network.

 We all know about the importance of the customer experience, but because there's no magic formula for what works and what doesn’t, it’s often challenging to know how your company’s efforts stack up against the competition. Until now. Forrester recently announced the results of their 2012 Customer Experience Index.

CRM is nothing really unless it can adapt to business users’ changing marketplace. Microsoft, since the release of Dynamics CRM online last year, committed itself to providing agile CRM and preparing companies for the release by flagging changes 90 days in advance. It has now flagged that it is making Dynamics CRM mobile.

Sage N. America's top ERP partner, Laguna Hills, CA based Blytheco LLC, announced this week it has has partnered with SugarCRM, "...delivering to its clients the ability to effectively boost sales and retain customers, while saving money," the company said.

Customer Experience Management (CXM) is important to all businesses, there is no argument there. But what seems to be a common misconception is that CXM comes from a software product you install and that with the click of a button and a short download you can provide the ultimate customer experience.

 After a short delay, Oracle has completed its deal to acquire RightNow, a cloud-based provider of call center automation, sales force automation and customer relationship management solutions.

You can’t swing a cat these days without hitting something with the prefix “social” stuck to it – especially if you’re at work when you’re swinging it. Which, I believe, would be an HR violation in most companies.

But I digress.

For the last few months, we’ve been talking about big data. From social media to customer experience to cloud storage, the enterprise is struggling to manage and leverage copious amounts of data. The real issue for big data isn’t just where to put it all, but rather how to gain access to it when you need it.

The future enterprise is one where the systems we use will provide the features we need when we need them rather than a complex, convoluted dashboard that stuffs every option into one viewable area. In this future enterprise, end users will focus less on how to use the technology and more on getting actual work done.