It’s surprising to me that most enterprise CRM companies are still living in the dark ages à la Web 1.0. Little do they realize that web 2.0 is here and how companies do business has drastically changed. On demand CRM was nothing more than an idea back in 1998 before Siebel Systems was the first [...]

I’m not one to usually plug Oracle (Siebel) products, but in this case there’s a decent white paper available to download for free. All you need to do is fill out a looong form and they’ll email you a link to the report. I’d provide a direct link if I could but you know I [...]

Just like any industry where demand exceeds supply, there is a shortage of resources. Basic economics. So what happens when enough people want to implement a CRM system but there just isn’t enough system integrators or engineers available? You are left with two options as a result — crappy rollouts by average consultants or wait [...]

I came across this article on CRM Today written by Philippe Gaillard, President & CEO, Neocase. He brings up some good points about how important the “C” (Customer) is since most companies implementing CRM are more focused on just acquiring more customers. A fundamental goal of CRM is to improve long-term growth and profitability through [...]

Still paying hundreds of thousands of dollars on hardware, labor and maintenance for in-house customer relationship management systems? Hosted CRM is not a new concept, but more and more companies are deploying the software to pump up their sales operations. Those companies are finding cost savings in reduced maintenance fees and deployment times. They’re also [...]

Vendors can offer all kinds of suggestions on how to plan your deployment. Consultants can help with time lines and schedules. But if you’re looking for some serious advice on how to kick-start your project–and see it through–who better to ask than those who’ve done it before? Baseline turned to five managers who have deployed [...]

Before investing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in a new CRM system it’s probably a good idea to test drive at least a couple solutions. Sure, you can read the product feature comparison charts and all the marketing fluff that makes it sound like it’s a perfect solution for you but you [...]

I came across a pretty cool CRM information site called CompareCRM.com which has some free tools to help you choose the right CRM solutions. CompareCRM features information about the leading CRM vendors and their website makes it easy to build your CRM shortlist. You’ll find information on the company, key product strengths, modules and more. [...]

If we look at why CRM initiatives fail, we can get a sense of why success will require better planning. Perhaps you’ve read the myriad of articles that state the high failure rate of CRM projects. Typically, survey results say that anywhere from 60% to 80% of CRM projects fail. What exactly do these studies [...]

Susan Campbell talks about how Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solutions can do great things for a company, when they are selected and implemented correctly. She then goes on the say “This is easier said than done, however, and many decision makers are left scratching their heads trying to determine exactly what the company’s needs [...]