"What's my motivation?" Sounds like a corny question an overwrought actor might pose to a director on the boards or in front of a camera. But we all have motivations -- and it's smart to understand your own and those of your vendor when it comes to CRM. No one wakes up one morning and decides, "What my business really needs is a CRM solution." It's not an impulse buy; nor is it the sort of thing that an employer provides as a nice "surprise" to employees out of the blue. You don't buy CRM simply because you hear about a competitor using it. Or at least you shouldn't.[More...]
avsdYesterday Zuora, the billing and payment solution company for subscription businesses, did a smart thing, at least I think so. At NetSuite's user meeting, SuiteWorld, Zuora chief Tien Tzuo announced that his trademark product is now pre-integrated with NetSuite's financials. But that wasn't what's smart, only the thing that enabled the thing that is smart.[More...]
Rash assumption of leadership on the part of product managers creates an environment of uncertainty, and can result in the degradation of work ethic and productivity. Therefore, wise project managers will pay special attention to how they portray themselves and the manner in which they execute the tasks for which they are personally responsible. The primary thing to consider here is the fact that authority, like respect, cannot effectively be taken.[More...]
To meet the growing demand for social CRM, RightNow positions itself as a provider of "customer experience management" solutions, a term the company prefers to use, said John Kembel, vice president of social solutions. "That's a bit more customer-focused." RightNow CX, the customer experience suite, helps businesses use social media to maintain that customer focus.[More...]
ListenLogic is moving into the social CRM sphere after building expertise with its two related offerings: a reputation management application that helps corporations identify threats before they reach crisis proportions, and a social market research and listening product. "These were the jumping-off point for our latest product," said founder and CEO Mark Langsfeld, "our Enterprise Social CRM product."[More...]
My wife is a recruiter working in high technology. Recruiters are like every other profession: There are some bad ones, a bunch in the middle who are competent, and some who are truly excellent. I may be biased, but I think she falls into the latter category. Here's why I think she's so good: She thinks of the managers she's hiring for as her customers, and she spends a lot of time getting to know them and their needs.[More...]
Admit it: You never think about data storage any more. We used to, quite a bit. Long before the storage glut that exists today, there was already too much of it, and it was hard to find places to store it. When we built software, it was with an eye toward maximizing our limited storage capacities, we looked after computer memory the way thirsty people in a desert manage their canteens.[More...]
Gartner's Business Intelligence Summit 2011 kicked off on Monday in Los Angeles. It is the sister conference to one held in the beginning of the year in London. While the keynote speakers and participating companies vary, the general themes running through both conferences are the same. One is that with every passing year, business intelligence technology and applications get ever more consumerized for the business-end user.[More...]
The shift from traditional CRM to social media is creating a new paradigm for customer interaction, and Salesforce.com offers cloud-based solutions to help companies meet this new challenge, Scott Holden, senior director of product marketing at Salesforce.com, told CRM Buyer.
One of the biggest changes companies are wrangling with is the concept of transparency. "It's more transparent," Holden said. "We're creating a transparent world."[More...]
CoTweet, a social media management application that ExactTarget developed when it realized that email marketing recipients often continue a conversation about a brand in social marketing venues, now has stronger integration for CRM legacy systems. The company recently unveiled new extensions that allow users to integrate conversations that originate in social media with such CRM platforms as Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Salesforce.com.[More...]
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