InsideCRM

From contract to revenue: how long can you wait?

2008-10-09T15:33:05Z

By Chris Bucholtz Yesterday, we did a webinar with EchoSign about the concept of electronic signatures and their impact on sales (you can hear the archived version of the event by going here ). That may seem like a trivial thing until you think about the times when paper contracts have been misplaced, forgotten or accidentally damaged. If the service you sell is term-based, that could mean days during which you have an agreement but aren’t being paid, as Roque Versace, EchoSign’s vice president of...(read more)

Entellium execs charged; is SaaS next to go on trial?

2008-10-08T18:02:00Z

By Chris Bucholtz The absolutely astounding story of Entellium continues to get stranger and stranger, with no resolution for customers apparent just yet. The latest bit of weirdness came today with the arrests of Paul “P.J.” Johnston, the former CEO, and Parrish Jones, the former CFO on charges of wire fraud. Read about it on John Cook’s blog here . (By the way, hats off to John and other local business reporters; we who cover large verticals get to sit back and aggregate information much of the...(read more)

Zuora closes the billing-payment loop

2008-10-08T14:19:04Z

By Chris Bucholtz It’s a CRM adage that you have to do business the way your customers want to do business. But shouldn’t letting customers pay the way they want to be an integral part of this, too? Payment and billing is an aspect of every transaction. This is straightforward when the customer can buy something, drop cash on a counter and walk away. But how about in more complicated scenarios – like when you’re offering a recurring service, or something subscription-based like SaaS-style software...(read more)

10 Ways IT Managers Can Make CRM Implementation Painless

2008-10-07T10:07:02Z

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Entellium: Either Closed or Conducting an Elaborate Fire Drill

2008-10-03T15:49:04Z

By Chris Bucholtz Word from our analyst team is that the staff at Entellium was walked out of its Seattle headquarters this afternoon with no prior warning. This came after the resignation of CEO Paul Johnston and Senior Vice President Parrish Jones on Wednesday. Phone calls to the usual company contacts have gone unanswered, although we’re getting dribs and drabs of information through the grapevine and hopefully we can put together a more complete picture of this in the early part of next week...(read more)

InsideView: Today Oracle, tomorrow the World

2008-10-03T12:20:03Z

By Chris Bucholtz InsideView continues to build its impressive array of CRM partners and solutions with which it inegrates, adding to its list Oracle CRM On Demand the week of Oracle Open World (naturally). Oracle CRM On Demand joined Salesforce.com, Landslide, Microsoft and SugarCRM on that list, and InsideView isn’t done adding CRM vendors yet, said Rand Schulman. “We want to achieve ubiquitous deployment across all of CRM,” said the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, who outlined plans to conquer...(read more)

Time to BI results: eThority’s ease of use argument

2008-10-01T17:26:03Z

By Chris Bucholtz We’ve covered business intelligence and analytics – especially when they’re aimed at the smaller business end of the spectrum – and how it can impact CRM for quite a while. One of the recurring themes is the idea of making analysis of complex business data something that can be performed rapidly – not by a business analysts whose chief talent lies in knowing how a particular piece of software works, but by a CEO or VP of sales or some other executive whose talent lies in knowing...(read more)

5 Common Sales Problems - And How SFA Solves Them

2008-10-01T10:40:02Z

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Social Networking: Where do you start?

2008-09-29T13:14:01Z

Not long ago, I read a blog post from Chris Ross that reflected a bit of what I’ve heard from more than a few marketers battling to keep up with social media. The proliferation of tools, sites and technologies – not to mention the exponentially-growing complexity of managing them all – has a lot of marketing pros confused. And why wouldn’t they be? And if they’re confused, what do small business owners do to figure this stuff out? My suggestion: it’s like dim sum: Only put on your plate what you...(read more)

Power to the People AND the Government: The Value of New Media in Public Service

2008-09-29T10:44:01Z

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Online Market World 2008 - San Francisco, Calif.

2008-09-25T14:20:01Z

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CRM Made Simple

2008-09-25T12:16:03Z

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Open World: random takes

2008-09-25T09:01:03Z

Random takes from Open World… Oracle sure knows how to spend money. Nothing amused me more than the sight of members of the media lining up for grub in the press room, with the box lunches the rest of the attendees received already in hand. A well-fed press equals good coverage! The closure of Howard Street and the use of one of Moscone Center’s cavernous halls for the keynote addresses (as opposed to revenue-generating booth space) are two other signs that Oracle is both doing well financially and...(read more)

Open World Highlight: CRM for the Reseller Space

2008-09-24T17:42:02Z

By Chris Bucholtz Oracle Open World is in town this week, and while I tend to shy away from the big keynotes (let me guess – Larry Ellison wore a brown mock turtleneck and a tan-ish sportsjacket during today’s keynote. Am I right? What do I win?) there’s an awful lot to learn from the other companies that have symbiotic relationships with Oracle. Some of them are pursuing CRM in unique ways. One of my favorites is TreeHouse Interactive , which works a particularly specific verticals: CRM for companies...(read more)

Optimizing Your Network for Mobile Devices

2008-09-23T18:07:05Z

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Drip Marketing: Slow and Steady Wins the Customer

2008-09-23T11:32:01Z

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B-to-B Demand Generation Summit 2008 - Boston and San Francisco

2008-09-22T13:32:01Z

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Breaking Down SFA Adoption Bottlenecks

2008-09-22T12:29:03Z

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Sage’s big - but subtle - improvements

2008-09-19T12:28:01Z

By Chris Bucholtz The Gartner CRM Summit seems so long ago now – which is an indication of how busy we’ve been around here this week – but it was a great chance to catch up with a lot of people and companies. One of them was Sage Software, which never seems to dominate headlines but still seems to keep its customers loyal and happy. They ought to be increasingly happy with SalesLogic, based on what I saw. Travis Nisbett, a product manager at Sage, sat down with me and walked me through Sage SalesLogix...(read more)

The scary numbers around Web self-service satisfaction

2008-09-18T17:29:03Z

By Chris Bucholtz This week, Tealeaf hosted a small panel discussion about customer experience – especially the on-line customer experience – using a new survey it commissioned from Harris Interactive as a great excuse. This is the fourth year for the survey, and as in years past 9 of 10 consumers reported a problem in an on-line transaction. However, these problems tend to compound themselves: 41 percent or the respondents abandon the transaction or switch to a competitor, and of those remaining...(read more)

What Does Sales 2.0 Actually Mean?

2008-09-17T10:24:03Z

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New look, same mission

2008-09-16T16:08:00Z

By Chris Bucholtz You may have noticed something different about Inside CRM, starting yesterday. We took the virtual sheet off the re-design of the site and some people here are very interested to see what readers think about it. After all, if you’re a site about CRM, you ought to care about what your customers – also known as readers – think about how you present yourself to them. The re-design is intended to help you find what you’re looking for easier and more quickly, and plans are in the works...(read more)

Picking a New Breed Automated-Marketing Vendor

2008-09-15T16:41:01Z

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Fourth Annual Call Center Summit - Orlando, Fla.

2008-09-15T10:12:00Z

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Customer surveys: how do you use them, and how can you trust them?

2008-09-11T16:08:04Z

By Chris Bucholtz I just returned from the Gartner CRM Summit in Washington, D.C. and I was pleased to see that most of the trends we’ve been following are the same trends that people at the show were interested in, too. There’s a developing theme that CRM is the nucleus of the business organism, but other things – analytics, call-center technology and marketing automation, to name a few – are absolutely necessary to drive value out of your CRM investment. One of the speakers at the event was Chip...(read more)

InsideCRM

From contract to revenue: how long can you wait?

Entellium execs charged; is SaaS next to go on trial?

Zuora closes the billing-payment loop

10 Ways IT Managers Can Make CRM Implementation Painless

Entellium: Either Closed or Conducting an Elaborate Fire Drill

InsideView: Today Oracle, tomorrow the World

Time to BI results: eThority’s ease of use argument

5 Common Sales Problems - And How SFA Solves Them

Social Networking: Where do you start?

Power to the People AND the Government: The Value of New Media in Public Service

Online Market World 2008 - San Francisco, Calif.

CRM Made Simple

Open World: random takes

Open World Highlight: CRM for the Reseller Space

Optimizing Your Network for Mobile Devices

Drip Marketing: Slow and Steady Wins the Customer

B-to-B Demand Generation Summit 2008 - Boston and San Francisco

Breaking Down SFA Adoption Bottlenecks

Sage’s big - but subtle - improvements

The scary numbers around Web self-service satisfaction

What Does Sales 2.0 Actually Mean?

New look, same mission

Picking a New Breed Automated-Marketing Vendor

Fourth Annual Call Center Summit - Orlando, Fla.

Customer surveys: how do you use them, and how can you trust them?

5 Common Sales Problems - And How SFA Solves Them