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Rash assumption of leadership on the part of product managers creates an environment of uncertainty, and can result in the degradation of work ethic and productivity. Therefore, wise project managers will pay special attention to how they portray themselves and the manner in which they execute the ...

ListenLogic is moving into the social CRM sphere after building expertise with its two related offerings: a reputation management application that helps corporations identify threats before they reach crisis proportions, and a social market research and listening product. "These were the jumping-off...

My wife is a recruiter working in high technology. Recruiters are like every other profession: There are some bad ones, a bunch in the middle who are competent, and some who are truly excellent. I may be biased, but I think she falls into the latter category. Here's why I think she's so good: She t...

Admit it: You never think about data storage any more. We used to, quite a bit. Long before the storage glut that exists today, there was already too much of it, and it was hard to find places to store it. When we built software, it was with an eye toward maximizing our limited storage capacities...

Gartner's Business Intelligence Summit 2011 kicked off on Monday in Los Angeles. It is the sister conference to one held in the beginning of the year in London. While the keynote speakers and participating companies vary, the general themes running through both conferences are the same. One is that ...

CoTweet, a social media management application that ExactTarget developed when it realized that email marketing recipients often continue a conversation about a brand in social marketing venues, now has stronger integration for CRM legacy systems. The company recently unveiled new extensions that al...

For the past few years, many companies have taken advantage of Google AdWords and other pay-per-click platforms to generate sales leads. The barriers to entry are low for these services, making PPC advertising a relatively easy and cost-effective lead-generation strategy for smaller businesses. Popu...

I hate to sound like Dr. Doom and Gloom, but have you paid attention to the cost of gasoline lately? Of course you have. It's sickening to watch as prices resume their inexorable climb. The last time we saw prices spike was the last time the economy was in decent shape -- right before the wheels ...

You invest in a state of the art CRM platform. You spend months tailoring it to the needs of your organization. Weeks of data mapping and migration tests ensue. You plan, build and deliver rigorous user education. Sales leaders are excited. Salespeople ... don't use it. Or at least, they use it to t...

With its social software platform Mzinga OmniSocial, Mzinga's goal is to deliver a role-based application with CRM capability that a company can then repurpose to collect information from its customers. Rather than concentrating on traditional CRM, Mzinga focuses on the enterprise network side to he...

eGain recently introduced a multidimensional search function to its knowledge agent and its self-service product lines. In essence, it is two sides of the same coin in that it provides the same functionality to both the agent desktop and the computer screen that a customer uses when searching for a...

I'll admit it -- I have a secret life. In addition to being a CRM reporter, I'm also a small businessman. A tiny businessman, in fact; my goofy, niche company grosses about $5,000 a year. We make detail parts for scale model airplanes -- and while you can't get much more niche than that, you also ca...

Marketing has become the new hot spot in CRM. During the recession and even before, there was a great flurry of interest in customer service and related things. Consequently, we have seen a lot of attention being paid to customer experience, and much of the social-media-oriented growth in that per...

Computer software requires an enormous amount of support. That fact has enriched companies such as Oracle and SAP, which levy annual support fees of about 20 percent of the sale prices of their applications. That's one of the things that just sticks in the craw of Clint Oram, chief technology office...

The Lithium Social Customer Suite is designed to help companies identify and manage a group of dedicated customers using social media channels. Referring to these types of social customers as "superfans," Lithium helps companies turn them into advocates for their products and services. With the adve...