Although it may look and sound complicated, calculating the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for on demand CRM is as simple as elementary subtraction. Or to go one step further, more money will be going into your business rather than the system that struggles to support it. The on demand model affords customers greater flexibility [...]

I recently spoke at a global sales summit in Verona, which gave me a unique opportunity to interact with sales executives from all corners of the world. I heard their perspectives on sales effectiveness challenges, sales process, and channel management, among other topics. During my keynote I shared the results of CSO Insights’ 2006 Sales [...]

Integration across operating locations of all sizes has become increasingly important in the age of globalization and increased competition. The reasons are clear: reducing costs, optimizing processes, and gaining a single, unified view across all company-wide information. While end-to-end business software solutions are helping to integrate data, systems, and business processes within large enterprises, many [...]

Review a stack of business journals and three letters will likely pop up time and time again – CRM. The universal acronym for customer (or client) relationship management, CRM is seemingly the Holy Grail of today’s business manager. For the professional services person, some iterations of CRM may be confusing – many are slanted toward [...]

Companies that learn to recognize and avoid them can realize the long-promised benefits of increased productivity, greater customer satisfaction, and better employee satisfaction. It’s 1999–CRM is the must-have business application, because untapped customer relationships will open the floodgates to new revenues. You plan how you’ll spend the bonus you know is coming your way. Thousands [...]

Communication is critical to rollout success and CRM user adoption. Make sure to include customers in your communications for the parts of the project that will impact or be visible to them. Rolling out, or deploying, new procedures and the systems that support them always should be carefully planned. But when those procedures and systems [...]