Mac News: Vendors

CRM for Financial Services, Part 1: Unmet Potential
November 06, 2009

The chastening effect of the recession has many financial services firms taking a cautious view of future CRM investments. One reason is that these firms are husbanding their resources. Another is a growing awareness that investments in CRM by the financial sector have not been all that successful.

Black Swans and Blue Birds
November 04, 2009

I just finished reading The Black Swan, a book that has been on my list since it came out in 2007, and I highly recommend it, though it is not easy reading. There is a great deal of set up before you get to the whole point of the book in the last 50 pages. The Black Swan is about uncertainty in the real world, and the subtitle explains it all: "The Impact of the Highly Improbable."

Social CRM: Size Matters
November 03, 2009

There's no longer any debate about whether social media's going to have a huge impact on CRM. Social media's a little different than the usual emerging business technology, mostly because it didn't begin as a business technology. It started with consumers -- and how they use it varies dramatically.

Meet-Up Month: RightNow, Sage and Microsoft
October 28, 2009

Colorado Springs is an interesting place. Despite the name, there are no "springs" -- it's an arid place in a valley surrounded by the southern Rocky Mountains and Pikes Peak National Park. The springs were an invention of the railroads seeking to establish a destination for vacationers. Good idea; it's a nice place.

Judge: Customers in Ameritrade Class Action Deserve Better Deal
October 27, 2009

A federal judge has refused to approve a class-action settlement over contact information stolen from online brokerage TD Ameritrade. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco says the deal offers little significant benefit to the more than 6 million current and former customers affected.

Oracle Fusion in Context
October 20, 2009

With the introduction of Fusion applications, Oracle has joined the cloud community. You might want to argue that the company has been involved in the cloud for many years as one of the key technology underpinnings of many of the biggest SaaS companies. That was one of Larry Ellison's big points at the Churchill Club.

The Salesforce Cloud
October 14, 2009

In the continuing discussion of cloud computing, Salesforce.com occupies a unique place. While most cloud vendors have kept to one component of cloud computing, Salesforce has inserted itself into all areas, and the company is using its flagship CRM applications as its first case example.

PRM: Ready to Break Out
September 28, 2009

Some think of it as just an offshoot of CRM. Others view PRM, or partner relationship management, as interchangeable with sales force automation. The reality is PRM is coming of age in its own right, as manufacturers and technology companies struggle to manage their highly complex -- and constantly shifting -- channel partnerships.

Oracle Shares Cool Off on Disappointing Q1 Sales
September 17, 2009

Shares of Oracle slipped in premarket activity Thursday after the information technology company reported sales fell below analyst expectations in the latest quarter, showing that businesses are still reluctant to buy new software. The stock slid 68 cents, or 3 percent, to $21.45 ahead of the opening bell, edging back from their 52-week high of $22.95 hit last week.

The Shifting Call Center Paradigm
September 16, 2009

What is it about customer service that drove three major CRM companies to make announcements about their service products within days of each other last week? Oracle and Salesforce.com each announced new or completed development of functionality, and RightNow said it bought HiveLive, a social networking solution provider.

CRM in 2009: Personal, Social, Mobile, Adaptable
September 14, 2009

Making sure that every customer gets the personal touch may be fairly easy for the owner of a neighborhood bakery, but in a mass market of millions, making each customer feel like an individual is a formidable challenge. In the information age, tools like customer relationship management software make it possible for companies to apply a personal touch to the mass market -- and that's golden.

Funny, Beautiful Symmetry
September 09, 2009

There is a lot of unspoken information in last week's announcements by Sage and Salesforce.com about their respective contact managers. Each is creating a disruptive innovation that affects the other, and the symmetry of these dual and dueling announcements is frankly beautiful in a funny way.

Main Street Meets the Cloud
August 12, 2009

Late on a summer morning recently I got a call from my wife saying "On Point," a public radio program, was doing a show on about cloud computing. "Isn't that what you write about?" she said. "You should listen or call in." Well, I tried, and all the lines were jammed, but I was able to make a comment on the Web site. It was a funny show in some respects, though short on laughs.

Oracle Gives JD Edwards a PIP of an Upgrade
August 11, 2009

Oracle is giving users of JD Edwards -- one of the myriad enterprise software suites the company has acquired over the last decade -- a new set of tools to leverage through its value chain planning applications. It's upgrading the JD Edwards offering with a bundle of SCM-related applications and best practices that Oracle developed for its own products over the years.

The State of BPM: Poised for Takeoff
August 10, 2009

Nothing like a recession to spur business growth. In the BPM space, the current downturn has presented a major marketing opportunity for software and IT service firms. Sparked by customers seeking to cut costs and by innovations in e-commerce, the BPM market could easily double over the next several years.

Pain and Paradigm Shift
August 05, 2009

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told analysts last week that ultra-thin PCs will be the answer to the growing popularity of netbooks. I doubt that, but I can certainly understand Ballmer's interest in backing the ultra-thins, and this obviously has implications for larger issues like cloud computing. By now, the sides have been clearly marked out in the debate about on-demand vs. on-premise.