Trends

Whenever I talk about CRM to people who aren't CRM experts, I find the discussion devolving into an examination of the real common denominator in all of this: the human aspects of doing business. The "R" of relationships resonates far more strongly with people than the "M" in management, and for goo...

Ever wonder what the opposite of CRM would be? I have. In my ruminations it's not as simple as matter and antimatter, up and down, left and right -- though few of us would consider antimatter very simple. If I gave you written directions to my house, you couldn't get home simply by turning the sh...

Although businesses no longer control the conversation with their customers, that conversation has never been more important to pay attention to and to respond to in a coherent and, when possible, personalized way. It's critical to realize that these relationships are a key part of the customer expe...

If you are a regular reader, you know that from time to time I write about things that appear to be tangentially related to CRM -- at best. My favorite alternative to straight ahead research and reporting on CRM is a strange sounding thing called "peak oil." For those of you not familiar with the i...

We get so wound up talking about the value of online communities for social CRM purposes -- for instance, in building loyalty, identifying potential leads, and improving the quality of service our businesses deliver -- that sometimes we forget that they're really scaled-up versions of actual communi...

There's a huge difference between the enterprise world and the social media community. While there are many signs of life on the social side, the rank-and-file Global 1,000 seem for the most part to be clueless. That's not an indictment, just a statement of fact, and maybe opportunity. At the Enterp...

Last week Marc Benioff was in Boston with another regional Cloudforce tour event, and Stephen Denning has written a good book. There is a connection between them. The day after the Boston Bruins clinched the Stanley Cup, Benioff was in Boston, and thank goodness the company decided on a noon start ...

If you knew you could apply a number of best-in-class lead generation processes proven to close five times more deals than average processes, would you do it? Seems like a no brainer, doesn't it? But in reality, many companies continue to implement lead generation processes that can be considered av...

Customer experience can make or break a company. The pressure to manage costs has never been greater, but it's a fatal mistake to view customer service channels as a cost center. The solution? An at-home workforce that delivers excellent results: 10 percent higher customer satisfaction; 30 percent m...

It's often said that CRM is always a work in progress. Never mind the fact that I'm the one who's often saying it -- it's true, if you're doing it right. You should always be looking for areas where you can coach your people, adjust your processes, and fine-tune your technology. However, thinking ab...

For more than a decade, B2B firms have used the Internet to publicize their product catalogs. As a result of the rise in consumer sales on the Web and the rapid maturation and adoption of Internet technologies like RIAs and Web 2.0, B2B firms are now rethinking their e-business strategies. At the sa...

I have a friend who's a musician, author and former radio personality, and he likes Facebook. A lot. My newsfeed is clogged with his posts -- news from his life, comments about music and movies, photos of his travels, videos of songs, links to other people's articles. I don't think there's any possi...

A couple of weeks ago, Marketo announced its research-based belief that its form of revenue performance management could help grow global GDP by $2.5 trillion by 2015. I love it when emerging companies talk about big plans this way. It reminds me of the young plumber who upon seeing Niagara Falls ...

Do you know how much money you will lose if your e-commerce site fails for just one hour? What if your site slows down? The more tags and pixels you have on your site, the more likely you are to find out. Tags, or pixels, are pieces of code that are put on your website every time you implement a new...

A legal dispute between Oracle and erstwhile client Montclair State University illustrates that despite the steady evolution of ERP technology and implementation methodologies, these projects can still turn ugly. The two have filed suits against each other over a failed project, called the "Bell Tow...