Continuing its effort to reduce the cost and complexity of linking its hosted CRM software to other applications, Salesforce.com Inc. recently announced a series of additional integration capabilities. The San Francisco-based vendor said it plans to offer a set of packaged connectors for tying its customer relationship management tools to Oracle Corp.’s E-Business Suite 11i [...]

Implementing a CRM system and putting some business intelligence into the processes may help in boosting sales or in creating an end-to-end strategy for those who have been around during the implementation, but what happens when a new hire sits in front of the complex, customized application? Getting new service reps used to a CRM [...]

Achieving the long-term value of customer relationship management (CRM) requires a strategy involving the whole business and should be approached at an enterprise level. Only a small, but growing, number of enterprises are tackling CRM at this level, with most CRM initiatives consisting of departmental projects or attempts to integrate the work of multiple projects. [...]

Yes, you read the title correctly. Marketing campaigns that produce an abundance of leads can actually do your organization more harm than good. Why, you wonder? For starters, high-volume lead generation is a lot like creating a haystack in which the sales rep is responsible for finding the proverbial needle. Bona fide candidates do exist, [...]

Lucent Technologies, the telecommunications equipment giant, outsources upward of 85 percent of its manufacturing to its contract manufacturers’ 20-plus locations worldwide, along with its own integration centers. Needless to say, it’s not easy to coordinate across different time zones and different vendors. So Lucent has contracted with Kinaxis, a software provider offering specialized coordination services [...]

Salesforce.com has further opened up its programming platform, allowing users to enhance and change the way its online customer relationship management application functions. The Apex programming language is already used for Saleforce’s hosted CRM, but was not available to outside developers. The language is scheduled for release in mid-2007. Apex will allow users to change [...]

Granted, it’s only been one day since Salesforce.com announced Apex, its new programming language and platform. Not enough time for anyone to really digest what’s going on, right? Wrong. The response to Apex from customers (and, not surprisingly, partners) has really been overwhelmingly positive. I spent a good amount of time Oct. 9 and Oct. [...]

Let’s step back to the basics and revisit what exactly is CRM. SMBedge.com recently launched a new section called CRM Advisor and this is their first story with the following introductory tutorial. Firstly CRM is not technology nor is it something you can touch or feel. It was during the dotcom days that led many [...]

B2B marketers who are recognizing the limitations of today’s email-marketing and Web-analytics applications for generating qualified sales leads are switching to a lead- or demand-generation solution to ensure a continuous stream of qualified leads. In addition to providing the reporting that legacy email and Web analytics products provide, demand-generation solutions automate the progression of leads [...]

In 1999, the idea of renting software over the Internet was dismissed by many in techdom as little more than a marketing ploy cooked up by Salesforce.com about Salesforce.com Chief Executive Marc Benioff. At the time, the outspoken exec was operating in the shadow of software giants Oracle about Oracle and Microsoft about Microsoft and [...]