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Salesforce.com has a developed a new tool for companies to help them develop and publish Web pages and landing pages specifically for marketing campaigns. The tool, called "Siteforce," is built on the Force.com platform. It focuses specifically on new technologies that legacy content management syst...

Fast, easy and accurate -- ask any consumer to describe good customer service and that is the likely response you'll receive. Traditionally, people have reached out to call centers, confident that a well-trained customer service representative would have the knowledge to fill in the blanks. But movi...

At Dreamforce, Zuora, like many other emerging companies allied with Salesforce.com, decided to hold a user group meeting. As long as the customers jointly held by Salesforce and Zuora were in town, the logic went, why not have them in for a day of education, listening and a pep talk from the boss?...

Microsoft is rolling out a service update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for both the partner-hosted and on-premises deployments. The update includes its promised "Activity Feeds," as well as administrative enhancements and stepped-up disaster recovery practices. Microsoft has put Dynamics CRM on...

The ire exhibited by consumers in the wake of Bank of America's recent announcement that it would impose a $5 monthly fee for using debit cards for retail purchases does not seem to have been a momentary flash -- at least, not based on findings in a survey by The Research Intelligence Group. Thirty ...

Oracle has scooped up RightNow Technologies for a reported $1.5 billion. The acquisition price is a hefty 20 percent premium over RightNow's closing price last week. The acquisition fills a missing gap in Oracle's cloud-based CRM functionality. The deal also provides an excellent exit strategy for ...

Predixion Software has introduced Predixion Insight 2.0, the latest version of its collaborative predictive analytics solution. The new release includes enterprise collaboration features, interactive visualizations and automated workflow capabilities, as well as an on-premises version of its predict...

Marketo is taking aim at the smaller end of the business community with Spark, a stripped-down version of its revenue performance management application. The new offering is an entirely separate product; however, there is a tight migration path between it and other products in the Marketo family, sa...

As a CRM journalist, I always enjoy talking to integrators (or resellers, or VARS, or partners, or whatever term they choose to describe themselves). It's always an interesting contrast to speaking with vendors. The discussion you have with a vendor is like taking an anatomy course; the discussion y...

A woman in Florida was floored recently by a T-Mobile cellphone bill that reportedly totaled nearly a quarter of a million dollars. After intervention on the part of a local TV station's news department, though, the carrier slashed Celina Aarons' bill from $200,000 down to $2,500. The charges were i...

I am developing an appreciation of the Occupy Wall Street movement that surprises me. You know the news about it and how over the weekend the movement went global. You probably also know that the authorities are not dealing with it effectively. They've been content to watch and wait, hoping that ...

As customers become more digital, social and mobile, SMBs have significant opportunity to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through a differentiated customer experience, just like their enterprise competitors. However, those who are unwilling to invest in solutions that embrace the needs of ...

Facebook, check. Twitter, check. RSS feeds, absolutely. Mobile, heck yes. In short, email marketing and marketing automation vendor Silverpop has been steadily adding the social and mobile channels to its range of offerings. Now it is pulling the "check-in" channel into the mix with its acquisition ...

What's the ultimate goal of CRM? As much as I and others of my ilk might talk about the positive interactions, good feelings and peer-to-peer relationships that result when CRM is done well, they're just happy means to an end. The end is, and always will be, inflating the bottom line. While a lot of...