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The Talk of the Web February 08, 2012 
There's been a lot of activity on the Web and in our industry in the last week, and I thought it might be fun to try and tie at least some of it together. Much of it in one way or another involves Facebook -- or "FB," as the proposed ticker symbol suggests. It's widely assumed that its IPO will make the very earliest buyers a nice pile of profit, but what about those looking for a longer-term investment?
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Microsoft Dynamics Update Promises 'CRM Anywhere' February 06, 2012 
Microsoft has taken the wraps off of its forthcoming service update to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which will be released in Q2 2012. The service update will build on Microsoft's rollouts last year in such areas as social CRM and mobile. "We are on the path to deliver a significant new set of capabilities," said Craig Dewar, director of Microsoft Dynamics CRM's product management group.
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CRM Players' Accolades and Upgrades February 06, 2012 
TeleTech has been placed in the "Leaders" quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant: Customer Management Contact Center BPO, Worldwide, 2011, and Yesmail has announced the release of its "Look Book" in celebration of its recent awards for mobile-scalable email design. Meanwhile, West Interactive and VBrick Systems have released major upgrades.
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Desk.com Makes Help Desks More Mobile, Social February 03, 2012 
Salesforce.com unveiled a new customer service help desk tool this week. Desk.com works with customer requests delivered over a social network. It is the byproduct of Salesforce.com's acquisition of Assistly last year. However, it is no mere product integration, said Alex Bard, former Assistly CEO and now vice president and general manager of Desk.com.
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3 Painfully Common Misuses of CRM February 02, 2012 
Every tool has a purpose. That's never more clear than when you see a neophyte do-it-yourselfer trying to use a tool for a purpose other than what it was designed for. For instance, anyone wielding a hammer while trying to fix a car's engine is probably not going to succeed.
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New App Boosts Epicor's Tablet Chops in Retail Setting January 27, 2012 
At the National Retail Federation's annual convention,Retail's BIG Show 2012, Epicor debuted its latest mobile offering: the Epicor Retail Clienteling application. It is an add-on for Epicor's existing CRM app, said Dave Burton, product director of CRM services -- meaning a retailer has to be an Epicor customer to use it. However, the app comes with a few additional features designed for the tablet form factor.
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5 Ways to Sell Salespeople on CRM January 26, 2012 
The way the concept of CRM is defined during the sales process can sow the seeds of its ultimate failure. Because the decision makers are often sales managers rather than actual salespeople, the pitch is usually made that CRM makes it easier for the managers to manage their sales staff. Which is true. But what's in it for the sales staff?
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Good on You January 25, 2012 
My Aussie friends have an interesting saying that seems part compliment and part benediction: "Good on you." They pronounce it with an accent on the second word so that the phrase becomes a single word in the mouth, more like "goo-don you." At any rate, good on you.
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It's Showtime for CRM January 23, 2012 
CSC and Infovisionix announced a new agreement at Retail's BIG Show 2012 in New York City. Under the agreement, Infovisionix's suite of retail reporting and analysis tools will be incorporated in CSC's Retail Enterprise Intelligence offering. The new capabilities will help retailers understand and improve key operational and customer performance metrics.
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Blackbaud Gears Up for Next Enterprise CRM Release January 20, 2012 
This was a big week for the Nasdaq-listed Blackbaud: The company announced its plans to acquire Convio, which offers a fund-raising application for nonprofits, for $275 million. The feature sets of the Convio application and Blackbaud's CRM software for the nonprofit space are complementary, to a large degree. The newly acquired technology will help Blackbaud further develop its user base.
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When B2C and B2B Worlds Collide January 20, 2012 
Having spent more than 20 years in the tech industry, I've seen many trends (and related buzzwords) come and go. One trend that I continue to see each year is the "consumerization of IT." While it hasn't always been referred to by that label, consumer demand has manifest itself across a variety of sectors in the industry, from PCs and email to the cloud.
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What's Good for Social Business Is Good for Social CRM January 19, 2012 
I'm ensconced at the Swan and Dolphin Hotels at Walt Disney World in Orlando this week for IBM's concurrent Lotusphere/IBM Connect shows, and all the announcements here paint the picture of a company and a partner ecosystem that is going all-in on collaboration. Big Blue's fuddy-duddy reputation is being completely overhauled, it seems.
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Ensuring Software Quality Across a Global Supply Chain January 16, 2012 
Companies commonly rely on a myriad of software suppliers, from internal teams that share and re-use code to third-party commercial software suppliers and outsourcing development partners. Companies are increasingly being held accountable by their customers for the quality and security of the complete product. Yet third-party code typically isn't tested with the same level of rigor as internally developed code.
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Avaya Mobilizes Smooth Collaboration in IP Office 8.0 January 13, 2012 
Avaya has released its IP Office 8.0 -- the latest iteration of its trademark unified communications platform for small and mid-sized businesses. The new application comes with a number of new features, some of which focus on the company's core competency of communications, collaboration and presence.
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Salespeople: Let's Get Reactive January 11, 2012 
It's the beginning of the year, time for sales kickoff meetings and presidents' clubs at some location within 10 degrees of the equator. These signal events will reward those diligent and fortunate enough to have made or exceeded quota while focusing the attention of everyone on this year's mission.
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The New Cyber Savannah January 10, 2012 
Peter C. Whybrow, M.D., is a neuropsychiatrist and director of the Semel Institute for Neuorscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, or at least he was when he published American Mania: When More Is Not Enough in 2005. In the book he quotes numerous economic thinkers and writers from the last 300 years, including Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville, as he analyzes how we behave in modern business.
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