InsideCRM

Defining - and not re-defining - socialprise

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:53:01 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz It may be a dangerous thing to coin a word too early, lest others get a hold of it and water down the meaning to the point where it no longer can be defined and thus loses its power. I suspect few are quite as aware of this as Rand Schulman...(read more)

Changes afoot at Inside CRM - you just can’t see them yet

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:16:05 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz If you notice that not much is changing on our home page, don’t worry. We’re getting ready to unveils some major changes here at Inside CRM, and the engineering guys say that adding a bunch of new content now would be sort of like jamming...(read more)

New on Inside CRM: Tools to Help Choose the Right CRM Vendor

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:22:00 GMT

If we have one goal here at Inside CRM, it’s to be useful to CRM buyers as they negotiate the rocky shoals and confusing currents of buying a CRM system. It’s not easy to figure out what solution is best for your company. To help clear away some of the...(read more)

Lawson’s CEO: Head in the SaaS Sand

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:33:00 GMT

Jim Berkowitz’s blog today makes mention of a rather amazing interview with Harry Debes , CEO of Lawson Software, in which Debes predicts that the SaaS “industry will collapse,” starting with Salesforce.com, in two years. I presume that...(read more)

Forecast: 100 percent chance of CRM failure

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:30:03 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz I’ve written at length about CRM failure as an effect of misplaced expectations – the technology does what it was designed to do, but the humans who use it sometimes fail to grasp its true purpose and its limitations. I was apparently...(read more)

RightNow shoots the contact center generation gap

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:49:00 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz It’s not enough for CRM companies to introduce new features to their solutions – they have to introduce new features that people will actually use. RightNow put out its August 08 Release today, and I think it has a couple of items that...(read more)

365 days of free CRM: Concursive’s appeal to SMBs

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:19:00 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz The idea of free CRM has been around for a while ( DataForce CRM , OctopusCity and Free CRM for example). The object is to use CRM as a loss leader and to sell services, add-ons and other things to make the CRM solution more useful....(read more)

Xactly makes “rewards” actually rewarding

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:23:00 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz The fine folks at Xactly rolled out a neat program this week at the DestinationCRM show in New York. As you may know, Xactly planted its initial stake in the ground with its compensation management tools, then started building from there...(read more)

Maximizer hitches its wagon to mobile CRM

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:59:05 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz A while back (I can’t pinpoint the date, but it was a while ago) I said that any CRM provider that did not include a truly effective mobile component would eventually become a casualty of consolidation. (Smarter people than me said it...(read more)

CRM, riding the (tiny) rails

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:08:05 GMT

One of the new trends in building relationships with customers is the idea of giving something away – not like a slice of summer sausage from the Hickory Farms mall store (by the way: yech!), but some nugget of useful information. This can be really effective...(read more)

Call center myths, and how VoIP and at-home agents smash them

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:26:05 GMT

I had an interesting conversation with Greg Sherry, the director of marketing for Witness Actionable Solutions at Verint Systems, Inc. about the rapidly-evolving nature of the call center, especially as it evolves from a fixed environment on a corporate...(read more)

Building freeways between CRM systems…

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:53:03 GMT

Last week, SnapLogic introduced a new solution pack for Salesforce.com, which will allow users to integrate it with their existing applications. That may not be immense news by itself - Salesforce has several other integration companies in its AppExchange...(read more)

How the concept of ‘mindshare’ is anti-CRM

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:44:05 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz I was reading the business news today and I ran across a word that sets me on edge, especially when it’s not used correctly: mindshare. Essentially, the way this word is used in most cases today runs contrary to the very essence of CRM...(read more)

Webinars for the social customer-conscious

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:16:00 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz We do our own fair share of webinars , but it never hurts to hear more of ‘em. Toward that end, I’m happy to recommend a series called “New World CRM – Enterprise 2.0 and the Era of the Social Customer.” This trio of webinars, which...(read more)

Landslide picks a target, and hits it

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:34:05 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz We talk a lot about “CRM failure,” which I’ve written is not usually an IT failure or a problem with technology of any sort, but with expectations – the system is brought in with the expectation that it will do something it can’t do...(read more)

Today’s post brought to you by the letters C, R and M

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:18:02 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz I’m always looking for good examples of CRM people can understand. The concept is encased in a layer of jargon that works against it with neophytes, and since CRM is usually accompanied by a technology component, the very sound of the...(read more)

Why arguing about open source is an academic effort

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:04:04 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz Almost a decade ago, as I recall, the esteemable Vance McCarthy, a past editor of mine at another publication, called me into his office and ordered up a speech-club-style debate over open source software. Because he still had lots of...(read more)

CRM failure, by the numbers

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:10:02 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz I really like numbers – especially when they quantify concepts around CRM that otherwise might seem unsubstantiated. For example, most of us know that the cause of the perception of CRM failure is most often a failure to set realistic...(read more)

The experts have spoken - and continue to speak

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:10:02 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz A lot of you (and I mean A LOT) have already become part of the Inside CRM Expert Group on LinkedIn, and you probably received an email that asked this question: Google has been actively partnering with Salesforce.com recently. Knowing...(read more)

Election 2008: CRM-ocracy

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:04:03 GMT

Brent Leary has done stuff with us in the past – most notably this webinar – and he’ll be doing stuff with us in the future (stay tuned for details, listeners!). But his advocacy and examination of CRM and social media – and how one is becoming indispensable...(read more)

Which would you prefer: an interface, or an experience?

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:56:01 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz Not to sound superficial, but there’s a lot to be said for how something looks. Like airplanes – one of the rules of thumb for designers is, if it looks right, it is right. I think the same holds true for CRM solutions, to a degree....(read more)

Revolutionary concept: sales and marketing working together

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:48:03 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz Two fairly unimportant facts about Marketo’s CEO, Phil Fernandez: one, in phone interviews, he sounds ever-so-vaguely like actor John C. Reilly, and two, he is fairly unafraid of using his sense of humor to get across his ideas, something...(read more)

Can Microsoft make a CRM attitude adjustment?

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:39:03 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM Online has been given generally positive reviews, and you’d think that, with the mighty wind of the Microsoft empire behind it, it would be sailing full speed ahead. That “mighty wind” terminology is not a reference...(read more)

The Marketing Market

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:55:05 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz I had a nice conversation today with Landon Ray, CEO of OfficeAutopilot . This is a company trying to elbow into a leading spot in the increasingly crowded marketing automation space, but they’re targeting small businesses (up to 200...(read more)

Customers vs. Customer Service

InsideCRM - The CRM Industry's Web Resource — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:36:01 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz We have all had experiences with customer service people that were bad. A lot of times, it’s because management has given them poor processes, denied them the power to fix things when they went wrong, or hired people who were incapable...(read more)