Products

Colosa Builds Better BPM Into SugarCRM
April 04, 2013

SugarCRM and Colosa are getting set to debut a new Sugar module based on a visual tool that lets users design business process workflows inside SugarCRM. They'll be able to control the way tasks get routed; track how long it takes to complete; and control which screens get displayed and their order. The module, ProcessMaker SugarCRM Edition, contains a full BMPN 2.0 designer and engine.

Coremotives Has the Whole World in Its Plans
March 25, 2013

CoreMotives is a marketing automation platform that operates completely within Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Acquired by Silverpop about a year ago, CoreMotives remains a separate offering from its parent's flagship Engage platform, which features its own Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration. CoreMotives has been tweaking its feature set and steadily globalizing its product line since the acquisition.

Salesforce.com's New Mobile Chatter Expands the Conversation
March 22, 2013

Salesforce.com has rolled out the latest iteration of its Chatter app designed specifically for the mobile environment. "With this version, we are taking [it] to a new level, allowing users to really drill down into accounts and take many different types of actions while in the field," said Michael Peachy, senior director of solutions marketing at Salesforce.

Microsoft Dynamics Gets Major Overhaul
March 19, 2013

Microsoft opened Convergence 2013 Tuesday morning with a keynote address from Microsoft Business Solutions President Kirill Tatarinov -- and the debut of an upgraded CRM application. With 11,000 attendees, this is the largest Convergence Microsoft has held to date, said Seth Patton, senior director of marketing for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. "The key theme for the event is uniting business and IT," he said.

KXEN's Predictive Offers Helps Agents Get Inside Customers' Heads
March 18, 2013

KXEN has launched Predictive Offers, a real-time next best action tool for customer service and call center agents, on Salesforce.com's AppExchange. The product's goal is to improve customer retention, boost upsell and cross-sell, and improve the overall customer experience by providing agents with the best recommendations for the customers they're speaking with in real time.

FirstRain Showers Sales Reps With Real-Time Intelligence
March 12, 2013

FirstRain has debuted FirstRain for Touch, an enterprise customer intelligence application built for the Salesforce Touch Platform. "What we did was create a component version of our application that was then easily dropped into the Salesforce.com Touch platform using their SDK," said Penny Herscher, CEO of FirstRain.

Avaya's New CEM Platform Makes Everyone a Customer Agent
March 11, 2013

Avaya unveiled the latest iteration of its customer experience management platform last week, introducing new analytics functionality and a multichannel focus on communication. The new platform's big-picture mission is to foster holistic customer service -- an experience that will become a differentiator for that business, said Laura Bassett, director of product marketing for Avaya CEM and emerging applications.

Let's Hear It for The Ecosystems!
March 06, 2013

Could we have a moment of sustained loud noise for all of the companies that form the various ecosystems around major product lines? I mean it. The ecosystem -- and maybe not even social -- is the story of the last five years. While many of us have been talking up social, the ecosystems have been adding immeasurably to the customer experience.

Demandbase Tech Targeting Trims B2B Marketing Waste
March 04, 2013

Demandbase has incorporated a new filter in its Demandbase Company-Targeted Advertising platform. The filter, called "Technology Targeting," lets users target and personalize display ads based on the technology they use. In other words, users can now include the specific criteria of 'technologies used' as part of their campaign targeting requirements with the Demandbase platform.

Where Customers Go, Salesforce Service Cloud Follows
February 26, 2013

Salesforce.com on Tuesday unveiled Salesforce Service Cloud Mobile, the first of a number of mobile computing initiatives planned for this year. Salesforce.com is stepping up its focus on mobile in 2013, said Michael Peachey, senior director of solutions marketing.

HootSuite for Twitter Gives Advertisers a Souped-Up Dashboard
February 22, 2013

HootSuite has incorporated paid advertising into its dashboard for the first time with the rollout of HootSuite Promoted Products integration for Twitter. It allows users to buy Promoted Tweets and manage their accounts on the HootSuite dashboard. This is a significant step for HootSuite's users, said Greg Gunn, VP of business development.

IntelliBuzz Helps Brands Keep an Eye on Social Media Mentions
February 15, 2013

Intelliverse has rolled out a new cloud-based tool that monitors social media for brand mentions and responds when appropriate. IntelliBuzz is simple enough that a company with minimal IT resources in-house -- that is, a computer and an Internet connection -- can manage this outreach just using the app.

With LiveOps, All Customer Channels Are Created Equal
February 01, 2013

LiveOps this week debuted LiveOps Engage, a browser-based desktop agent app that centralizes myriad channels -- phone, email, live chat, SMS, Twitter and Facebook -- on one screen. The screen also displays the history of past interactions with the customer. "This release is bringing together all of the channels of communication, both inbound and outbound," said CEO Marty Beard.

CRMCulture Productivity Pack Puts Pivotal on Steroids
January 25, 2013

CRMCulture is preparing to release its latest iteration of Productivity Pack for Pivotal CRM. On one hand, it might seem counterintuitive that Pivotal would need a productivity pack. "Pivotal is a great platform," said Steve Roch, CRMCulture's founder and president. "It is pure .Net on the front and back end."

Zoho Update Gooses Sales Productivity
January 11, 2013

Although Zoho routinely updates its CRM application every few months or so, its latest release is far from routine, according to Zoho Evangelist Raju Vegesna, who described it as a step forward in collaborative productivity. "Essentially we added three new features, all of which focused on improving the productivity and collaborative capabilities of the sales person," he said.

Zurmo: Playing Games Is Serious Business
January 04, 2013

Last summer, open source CRM provider Zurmo threw its hat into the CRM ring with a beta version of its particular take on the hot new gamification software category. The theory is simple: CRM, especially sales force automation, has notoriously poor user adoption figures. Why not use some of the fun features people are accustomed to seeing in games and social media to drive adoption?

CRM Product Profiles: The Year in Review
December 28, 2012

CRM applications tend to embody a range of features, depending on the maker and the audience. Some applications are stripped-down products sporting a handful of features -- and only those features -- deemed necessary to the user. Other products have become de facto mini-ERP systems with their integrations into back-end systems and business analytics.

Salesforce.com Pilots Tech for Team-Building
December 21, 2012

Salesforce.com rolled out an integration between Sales Cloud and Work.com this week. The integration is currently available in pilot and will be made generally available to all Salesforce.com customers in the first half of 2013. To understand the value-add the integration offers, one first has to become acquainted with Salesforce.com's social performance management platform, Work.com.

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.

Mobile CRM Apps: Easy In, Easy Out
December 11, 2012

It is a truism that consumers' smartphones, armed with a slew of sophisticated apps, function as mini computers. That being the case, smartphones programmed with sales force marketing and productivity applications have almost become sophisticated enough to be compared to mainframe computing. They're not quite there yet, but mobile sales force software has become quite formidable.