• Lattice Engines Automates All Steps in Prospect Discovery
    [May 20, 2013] There’s nothing new about using public information to identify business opportunities: it’s why lawyers chase ambulances and bankers phone lottery winners. But the Internet has exponentially grown the amount of data available and made it easily accessible. What’s needed to fully exploit this resource is technology that automates the end-to-end process of assembling the information, [...]
  • SugarCRM Adds Business Process Management Module
    [April 29, 2013] SugarCRM announced a few weeks ago, integration with Colosa, Inc.’s open-source business process management (BPM) and Workflow suite, ProcessMaker. The new product, ProcessMaker SugarCRM Edition, is a new module that allows enterprise customers full access to standard BPM tools designed to optimize workflows within the SugarCRM environment. The announcement was made just before the kickoff [...]
  • Reps Make Better Sales Calls Decisions with Mobile App for “CRM Call Planner”
    [April 8, 2013] InfoGrow announces a mobile app for its popular “CRM Call Planner” module.  The CRM Call Planner takes CRM information and, through the power of Bing Maps, creates a visual representation of accounts and contacts on an online real-world map. This helps sales reps to better plan sales calls.  A big plus for users is that [...]
  • Marketo Plans IPO, Eloqua Eyes B2C
    [February 28, 2013] There were two bits of news from Marketing Automation Land: Marketo announced it has filed a draft registration statement for an initial public offering, and Eloqua CEO Joe Payne was quoted as saying his company plans to expand into business-to-consumer marketing.
  • Moxie Integrates with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    [February 4, 2013] I have covered Moxie Software™, enterprise social software provider, before (see Moxie Provides Free Desktop Sync Capability with Moxie Spaces and Moxie Announces Spaces to Enhance Customer Engagement).  They now have announced a partnership with Microsoft Corp. to pursue a joint, go-to-market strategy offering Spaces by Moxie™ within Microsoft Dynamics CRM. 
  • RedPoint Offers Broad, Deep B2C Marketing Automation
    [January 7, 2013] On days when I have nothing else to be cranky about, I sometimes fuss at how business-to-business software vendors hijacked the term “marketing automation” despite its long and relatively honorable history describing systems for consumer marketing. Oracle’s recent agreement to purchase Eloqua reinflamed that wound, since much of the commentary ignored Oracle’s extensive existing suite [...]
  • SiteCore Migrates From Web Content Management To Cross-Channel Customer Engagement
    [December 18, 2012] It’s more than three years since my original post about SiteCore’s plans to transform itself from a Web content management system to a platform for cross-channel customer experience management. It seems to be working out – since that time, revenue has grown 40% per year and the number of clients has nearly doubled from 1,600 [...]
  • 6 Small But Sweet Updates to Jugnoo and Other Stuff
    [November 12, 2012] Over the last few months, lots of folks have asked why they’d want to use Jugnoo versus their current platform of choice (say, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Trackur, etc).
  • Microsoft Buys Marketing Automation Vendor MarketingPilot: Start of Something Big?
    [October 22, 2012] Microsoft announced the acquisition of marketing management system vendor MarketingPilot, which will become part of its Dynamics CRM group. Financial terms were not disclosed.
  • New Social And Cloud Offerings From Salesforce
    [October 1, 2012] Salesforce kicked off its annual Dreamforce event with a bunch of announcements. "Today's leading companies recognize that business is social," said CEO Marc Benioff. "With new innovations across our six product lines, companies can transform the way they sell, service, market, collaborate, work and innovate in order to connect more deeply with customers."
  • HubSpot’s Latest Marketing Software Sends the Right Message
    [September 6, 2012] HubSpot yesterday launched a “completely re-envisioned and rebuilt” version of its marketing system at its Inbound 2012 user conference. The main thrust of the new release was dynamic customization of emails, landing pages, and forms based on each contact’s profile and behaviors. This is a major expansion beyond HubSpot’s original focus on “inbound marketing” to attract leads.
  • Top Brands Joining Instagram
    [August 9, 2012] In the past few years, it's become impossible for the world's biggest brands to ignore social media. First, having a robust Facebook presence was imperative. Then, it was Twitter. Later, brands had to spread their resources across newer networks like Google+ and Pinterest.
  • 65 Key Resources for Running and Growing Your Business
    [July 18, 2012] For the last several hundred Saturdays I’ve run a blog post post called Weekend Favs. The post consists of three finds I’ve made during the week that I like to share. I always get lots of positive feedback on this feature and consequently get lots of questions from people looking for resources and tools for running and growing their businesses.
  • Moving From Back Pats to Business, Social CRM Is For Real
    [June 11, 2012] As marketers try to determine appropriate resourcing, one of the big measurement and accountability challenges faced by social media is the anonymity inherent in most social data. Indeed, smart companies track social media's impact on desirable behaviors such as lead generation, repeat website visits, and even corollation-derived ROI. But in almost every case, the evidence that social media "works" is based on aggregate, anonymous data. But by blending together social media listening and engagement software with customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, the promise and premise of social CRM is finally becoming a reality, 2-3 years after we started to trumpet it (more optimistically than realistically at first).
  • S&P Capital IQ Provides Clients With CRM Data Suite
    [May 21, 2012] S& Capital IQ has announced a new CRM data suite which they hope will provide their clients with a strong option in improving their data infrastructure. The system will be maintained by a select group, which will eliminate duplicate records, in turn allowing clients to utilize supplementary CRM systems along with their own.
  • The Incredibly Logical Way to Manage Customer Relationships
    [April 30, 2012] In a perfect world, every customer relationship would be steeped in a complete understanding of the customer's current wants, needs and desires. The trick of course is that getting anything that looks like that at all requires three things - incredible planning, thoughtful technology and consistent execution.
  • Momentum for CRM Provides Legacy Systems With Enhanced Messaging
    [April 12, 2012] For Oracle's Siebel CRM app, the capabilities of email, and SMS/MMS capabilities are going to be boosted to try and engage with their mobile customers even further. According to Message Systems, the company behind the product, they're making it easier to boost delivery rates and help clients using Siebel to communicate with customers easier.
  • Web Based CRM and Social Media CRM
    [March 26, 2012] Choosing a CRM solution is a hugely important decision for any business. Depending on the size and complexity of an organization it can be a big task. Usually the worst thing you can do when looking at any IT system is to start with technologies and solutions. Typically it makes much more sense to spec. out user requirements, find out exactly what you would want from a system and at that stage go out to the market and see what will meet your needs and your budget.
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gets New Service Update
    [March 9, 2012] Microsoft announced a new service update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, coming in Q2, which will bring mobile access to the product, surely a long overdue feature for users.
  • Utilizing Social CRM in B2B Connections
    [February 6, 2012] Consumers are continuously expanding their usage of social media. As a matter of fact, businesses understand the need of integrating online social media to their customer relationship management (CRM) strategy for business to consumer (B2C) entities. However, the question with regards to the ease of using social CRM in business to business (B2B) connections recognizes a key concept.
  • Nimble Adds Social Data to CRM
    [January 26, 2012] I had an intriguing demonstration yesterday from social CRM vendor Nimble. Since "social CRM" could mean just about anything, it's important to explain what Nimble actually does: it combines traditional contact management with automated access to social media information about those contacts.
  • Salesforce Acquires Important New Startup
    [December 19, 2011] Salesforce has recently acquired Rypple, a cloud computing startup company that provides customers with cloud based HR solutions.
  • Oracle Making Another Big Purchase
    [November 14, 2011] Technology giant Oracle has recently purchased RightNow for a staggering 1.5 billion dollars.
  • Successful CRM Requires Commitment by All Management Levels
    [October 11, 2011] CRM is not just another piece of software to be loaded onto your computer network or floating in the cloud. It should be the backbone of your customer knowledge, customer service and sales. If senior management, especially sales, isn't committed to your CRM, then failure of the system is a given.
  • The Social Customer Engagement Index Shows New Trends in Customer Relations
    [September 19, 2011] The Social Customer, a site dedicated to publishing content for customer relations, has surveyed 118 professionals regarding engagement of customers through social networks. The Social Customer Engagement Index (PDF) produced from the results reveal new trends in customer relations.