Punching Soup - Tag: crm

A LOADED Comment – The Impact of Culture and Technology on Each Other in the Realm of Social Business

Paul Greenberg — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:39:39 -0700

Mitch Lieberman, a VP at SugarCRM is a living proof of concept - vendors can contribute serious thinking to the ongoing discussion around how to create and apply business strategies to customers.... The award winning, edgiest CRM blog on the planet. T...

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RightNow: Analyzing the ‘Cloud Services Agreement’

Michael Krigsman — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:44:32 -0700

Cloud-based CRM vendor, RightNow, recently released new service that are not revolutionary but do challenge other vendors to simplify pricing / licensing terms and conditions.

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Google Launches Apps Marketplace

Zoli Erdos — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:00:00 -0700

I’m at the Google Campfire One event where they’ve just announced the Google Apps Marketplace. The site is live now, feel free to browse. The speculation is now over, this is Google’s answer on whether they will enter the Business Applications market – they just did, with an entire ecosystem of Partners. The new Marketplace fills [...]

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Redux: Will Google Enter the Business Applications Market?

Zoli Erdos — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:27:26 -0700

If you think I am here to spill the beans, you’re wrong. On a purely speculative level, if there is some news to come, and if there is an embargo related to it, then I respect that. And it’s all a big IF. So no, I am simply dusting off an old post I wrote [...]

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SugarCRM Announces New Open+ Partner Program

Peter A. Prestipino — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:12:00 -0700

Open source customer relationship management (CRM) software SugarCRM announced its Open+ Partner Program today.

According to the official release statement, “The Open+ Partner Program will expand SugarCRM’s market reach by empowering its channel partners with a wider variety of incentives and resources to deliver SugarCRM solutions to customers around the world.”

The “incentives and resources” for SugarCRM VAR and reseller partners include a market development program, access and support for SugarCRM’s Open Cloud platform, a new referral program that rewards partners for each qualified lead referred to SugarCRM, improved partner engagement services, and a new customer reference program to spotlight partner success stories and aid the sales engagement process.

“Our partnership with SugarCRM has been the foundation of our revenue growth, and we are excited to take that growth to the next level with the benefits provided with Open+,” said Doug Guilbeau, managing director with Levementum, a SugarCRM Gold Partner. “SugarCRM is one of the clear leaders in CRM. Its comprehensive offerings have allowed us to offer a broad array of services to a rapidly growing market.”

“Open+ creates even more distance between SugarCRM’s award-winning channel program and those of other CRM providers,” said Jeff Campbell, vice president of worldwide sales, SugarCRM. “SugarCRM offers unmatched value for VARs looking to build sustainable revenue streams in the Cloud.”

Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management

R "Ray" Wang — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:00:12 -0700

Analyzing The Demand For Use Cases In Social CRM Since joining Altimeter Group, I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with my colleague Jeremiah Owyang on Social CRM. On a daily basis, the requests for Social CRM strategies escalated from all parts of the organization. In fact, requests reflected all facets of CRM including the usual sales, marketing, [...]

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RightNow promises an end to SaaS shelfware

Phil Wainewright — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:54:12 -0700

I’m at the top of London’s totemic Gherkin landmark tower listening to SaaS CRM vendor RightNow’s announcement of what it calls the ‘Cloud Services Agreement’. CEO Greg Gianforte is challenging SaaS and software vendors to emulate a proposition that, to me, always should have been on the table from every reputable SaaS vendor. Essentially, RightNow is promising [...]

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Social networking: Influence, followers, and ‘nexus leaders’

Michael Krigsman — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:40:52 -0700

Many social networking services use follower counts to motivate higher usage among participants. Enterprises must develop a deeper understanding of influence.

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Tech in 2010 – Growth with a Quality Bias

Chris Selland — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:07:37 -0700

Tech is poised for growth in 2010 but it's increasingly looking like a much better year for the well-established and well-respected tech companies, and a challenging environment for the second-tire companies.

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Social CRM and enterprise business

Michael Krigsman — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:15:04 -0700

Social business has important implications for the enterprise. This post contains an important video that explains why.

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Social CRM: The inner meaning

Michael Krigsman — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:55:56 -0700

Enterprise software is rapidly evolving to reflect the growing importance of social software. Nowhere is this change more obvious than in customer relationship management (CRM).

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CRM Watchlist 2010 – The SMBs – IVA – Brent Leary Rocks

Paul Greenberg — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:28:42 -0700

(Brent Leary, who is both a Social CRM guru and a great friend has graciously done a post on the companies to watch for 2010 when it comes to the small and medium business space. He was clearly trying to outdo me because his post is so big that it has to be split into [...]

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Monday’s Musing: The Hidden Value In SaaS Deployments

R "Ray" Wang — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:34:16 -0700

Gains In SaaS Adoption Driven By Speed And Cost Savings Preliminary data from Q4 earnings data show continued traction among SaaS solutions. Expect SaaS deployments to gain steam in 2010 as organizations finalize their SaaS apps strategies to take advantage of 7 key benefits: Richer user experience - SaaS apps bring Web 2.0 usability to the enterprise [...]

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Salesforce going shopping?

Chris Selland — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:56:57 -0700

Looks like there’s a good chance my predictions that Salesforce.com ($CRM) will get more aggressive on the M&A front in 2010 are coming true. Fellow Enterprise Irregular Larry Dignan has more details on the $500 million convertible bond issue. Of course, $500M likely does not a ‘game changer’ acquisition buy, but it can certainly help fund [...]

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CRM Watchlist 2010 – Part IIIA

Paul Greenberg — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:00:46 -0700

Okay, to recap. We’ve so far done the following watchlist parts: Part I – The Big 4 – Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, salesforce.com Part IIA – CRM Companies – NetSuite, Sage, RightNow Part IIB – CRM Companies – Cognizant, Eloqua, Sword-Ciboodle, SAS, SugarCRM, Helpstream, Aplicor Now we move on to Part IIIA and Part IIIB – The Social Companies and [...]

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Salesforce shows the future of enterprise collaboration – but have they got the branding right?

David Terrar — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:03:07 -0700

A month ago on Monday 7 December I was sitting in the London version of the CloudForce2 Partner Summit, and then stricken by a virus overnight, I watched Marc Benioff livestreamed for the 2 hours and 15 minutes of his keynote in the general customer session on the following day. It sounds like he did [...]

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CRM Watchlist 2010 – Part IIB

Paul Greenberg — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:00:04 -0700

This thing is so big that I have to split the posts. You saw my choices on Monday in Part IIA, now here’s the rest of them – Cognizant, Eloqua, Sword-Ciboodle, SAS, SugarCRM, Helpstream and Aplicor. Any others you would suggest? Why? Cognizant This is one of my most out-of-place and yet most appropriate picks for 2010. [...]

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Peopleclick Authoria – A Perfect Merger or Act of Desperation?

Jason Corsello — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:06:35 -0700

Today, Authoria announce the merger with Peopleclick to create Peopleclick Authoria. Bedford Funding, the private equity firm that owns Authoria is spending $100 million to acquire and merge the companies. I’d love to say I had my crystal ball out when we recorded the Bill Kutik Radio Show a few weeks ago and predicted [...]

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CRM 2010 Watchlist – Part IIA

Paul Greenberg — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:00:12 -0700

Cover of Bad Boys (Special Edition) Okay, you saw what I think about the Four Bad Boys of CRM the other day. Now onto the next not-really-a-tier tier. You’ll note that this year, I’m changing the way I do my ZDNet blog posting to the “more-if-you-click-here” so they just don’t look so damned long. This one [...]

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Ten Tech Tells for ‘10

Chris Selland — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:34:01 -0700

This is by no means a comprehensive list – it’s admittedly biased toward the tech sectors I follow most closely (software and wireless) – but here are a few companies I’ll be keeping an eye on as we move into the new year – some as short-term opportunities, others with a longer time horizon. If, [...]

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Five failure predictions for 2010

Michael Krigsman — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:56:04 -0700

It's time for predictions about failure for 2010.

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Okay Here Goes CRM Forecast 2010 PART II

Paul Greenberg — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:17:00 -0700

I’d go over to Part I of this forecast (released at the exact same time as this one) if you want to read the intro, the Latin American 2010 Forecast from Jesus Hoyos and the first five predictions for 2010. If you don’t, stay here, root around, comment, tell me what a jerk I am [...]

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Okay Here Goes – CRM Forecast 2010 – Part I

Paul Greenberg — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:00:05 -0700

Just so you know, this year, I’ll do even better than last year (notice by adding the word “even” it makes it seem like I did really well last year but will improve over that sterling performance. Looking Back at CRM 2009 Forecast and decide whether “even” is justified or just a [...]

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Is SCRM ‘09 the same as eCRM ‘99? [Buzzword Bingo]

Chris Selland — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:48:09 -0700

I made a bit of a wisecrack (I do that often…) yesterday on Twitter in response to Ray Wang of Altimeter Group’s tweet that traditional CRM vendors are making "Not much progress on Social other than adding "another" channel." My response to Ray’s tweet was that SCRM ‘09 sounds a lot like eCRM ‘99, which [...]

Is SCRM ‘09 the same as eCRM ‘99? [Buzzword Bingo] is a post from: The SiliconANGLE

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Some Pre-Forecast Odds Ends re: Social CRM

Paul Greenberg — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:27:59 -0700

Before I push out my Forecast for 2010 (next week some time), I have a few short observations that are honestly somewhat random: Facebook Does It Again – Not So Privately All Facebook members... The award winning, edgiest CRM blog on the planet. The...

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Foursquare Square complementary strengths venn diagram

Hutch Carpenter — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:39:06 -0700

Parker Smith wrote a piece that got me thinking. In Foursquare: Democratizing the Loyalty Program, he posits that Foursquare could be the loyalty program provider to small businesses. I think he’s right. Then I noticed these identical product benefits touted by the companies themselves, Foursquare and Jack Dorsey’s Square: For example, foursquare can tell you how many [...]

Pre-Forecast Post: Here’s a “Buncha Stuff”

Paul Greenberg — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:42:39 -0700

I’m getting set to do my three part series “Forecast 2010″ which will launch on ZDNet and here in about two weeks or maybe less. There might be a couple of ZDNet posts since I’m attending the SAP Business Influencer Conference in Boston next week and might be moved to post about it but this [...]

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The ’social enterprise’ comes of age

Michael Krigsman — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:34:00 -0700

Social computing has catapulted to the forefront of discussion among enterprise thought leaders. Here's some of the exciting reasons why.

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Chatter from (and About) Salesforce.com

Chris Selland — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:12:13 -0700

I spent a lot of time this week (unintentionally) tuned into Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff’s extremely enthusiastic – and extremely long – DreamForce keynote address and (intentionally) thinking about the implications of the company’s ‘biggest breakthrough ever’ which is destined to ‘revolutionize the workplace’. The announcement of Salesforce Chatter – the company’s newly announced [...]

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Guerilla Marketing @ Dreamforce

Brian Sommer — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:03:27 -0700

Leave the trade show booth behind and get creative. The guerilla marketing at technology shows can be entertaining, memorable and maybe even profitable. Done right, it makes a bigger impact than any brochure, newsletter or keychain giveaway. Look at what SugarCRM did at the Salesforce show!

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Salesforce Chatter: Something to talk about

Michael Krigsman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:56:53 -0700

My take on Salesforce.com's new enterprise-level social networking platform, called Chatter, which was inspired by Twitter and Facebook.

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Dreamforce: Quick first impressions

Michael Krigsman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:48:54 -0700

Sitting here in the audience at the annual Dreamforce conference of Salesforce.com, a couple of quick impressions come to mind.

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What’s next for Salesforce.com ($CRM)?

Chris Selland — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:27:27 -0700

Still growing, if a bit less briskly $CRM was pounded in after-hours trading post yesterday’s earnings announcement, despite beating revenue estimates and raising guidance, largely due to the company lowering revenue growth expectations for 2011. The poster child for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), by all accounts, continues to execute very well in a tough business environment. $CRM is richly-valued [...]

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Legacy Enterprise Software is not Strategic

Sig Rinde — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:01:56 -0700

Despite being involved with some radically different Enterprise Software I have been fortunate enough to be frequently invited to study the wares and future plans of many legacy systems vendors. So again last week, with some of my EI friends, enjoying the latest and shiniest offer from a major SaaS vendor. And of course I’ll be the [...]

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Nenshad - social software fills in process white spaces

Hutch Carpenter — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:41:35 -0700

In the beginning, there were forums, blogs and wikis. And it was good. In talking with people about the Enterprise 2.0 industry, I like to insert yet another versioning number scheme: Social Software 1.0 Social Software 2.0 Social Software 1.0 was the era of actually creating these open, collaborative applications. The approach of these tools was groundbreaking. Apps for [...]

The CRM Playaz FutureShock & See Y’all After Amsterdam

Paul Greenberg — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:46:32 -0700

Hey all. I’m heading off to Amsterdam in a few hours to speak at the CRM Association Benelux nations “national” conference (regional national, I guess). I’m also getting a chance to meet up with Wim Rampen and Mark Tamis, two of the social CRM stalwarts who I admire for their thinking on the subject – [...]

The CRM Playaz FutureShock & See Y’all After Amsterdam is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

Enterprise unplugged: Riffing on failure and performance

Michael Krigsman — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:39:12 -0700

I chatted about enterprise issues and IT failure with Naomi Bloom and Nenshad Bardoliwalla, top enterprise experts willing to openly share what they know.

Enterprise unplugged: Riffing on failure and performance is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

Enterprise 2.0 business activities - Sameer Patel

Hutch Carpenter — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:43:26 -0700

Or human resources with a blog? How about project management with forums? Funny questions to ask, no doubt. Of course it’s not possible to effectively address many of the critical business functions using basic Enterprise 2.0 tools. Yet when it comes to social software, it often seems that the only game in town is to be [...]

Net-Results Integrates with Salesforce.com

Mike Phillips — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:19:00 -0700

Net-Results, a leader in the marketing automation solutions industry has announced they have integrated their platform with Salesforce.com - the widely-used CRM.

"Net-Results’ intuitive and comprehensive lead behavior tracking and management system provides a huge benefit to existing Salesforce.com customers who are running lean in this economy and can’t afford to lose a good lead or waste time on weak prospect," said Net-Results CEO, Michael Ward. "Having accurate and detailed prospect activity data available in real-time accelerates the sales cycle that impacts your company’s bottom line."

Part of what's now capable for Salesforce.com clients includes detailed, real-time summary data such as visitor information (recent visits, pages viewed visit duration, referral source and more), contacts and leads.

Net-Results provides sales and marketing tools that help define prospects visiting your website on an individual level. Behavior is tracked so that website owners can customize their approach to users based on your own parameters. Together, these solutions look to provide a streamlined marketing and sales strategy.

The Salesforce.com integration is available at AppExchange.

Applying 2.0

Paula Thornton — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:33:13 -0700

Of recent, we as a blogging team, agreed to focus more on actual E2.0 implementations and related adoption issues. I’m now insisting on diverging from that. We repeatedly mention that 2.0 is not about the technology. If that’s truly the case, then the advice should not be about the adoption of the same technologies for which [...]

The Social C.R.M Iceberg

Ross Mayfield — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:14:19 -0700

Post originally written for CRM Magazine. The design of the R.M.S. Titanic's hull included watertight compartments that ultimately served against their purpose and sank the ship. The iceberg flooded five compartments when the design supported four, which weighted the bow...

Zoho CRM Integrates with Zoho Email

Peter A. Prestipino — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:43:00 -0700

Zoho's Online CRM and its Mail service are now forever integrated.

Users of the Zoho CRM in the past were not able to email the prospects in their CRM database directly from the platform. Zoho has now brought these two services together, making the platform that much more of a competitor to SugarCRM's Enterprise edition and even SalesForce.

In addition to now being able to manage email (composing and reading too) within the Zoho CRM, another interesting aspect of the integration is that the same permission structure that applies to Accounts/Contacts will apply to e-mails to/from those contacts. The Zoho blog explains it well: "When Steve Salesman, maintains an e-mail communication with Charles Customer, Steve's manager will be able to refer to those e-mail communications." Makes sense, right?

Perhaps the most powerful feature of this integration however is the ability to add a CRM contact directly from the Zoho Mail interface. Users simply select "Add to CRM" from the 'More Options' drop-down in Zoho Mail. After creating the contact, Zoho CRM users can also add a task (send a follow up email for example).

Zoho is definitely ramping up to steal some market share from its competitors. In its open invitation to "Zwitch to Zoho" http://www.zoho.com/crm/zwitch.html the company is offering a free, no obligation assessment with a Zoho CRM specialist, free data migration services and free trial periods (free service for up to 6 months depending on the time left on a Salesforce contract).

Get Satisfaction – Integrated CRM

Peter A. Prestipino — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:30:00 -0700

If it’s better customer relationships, increased loyalty, retention or collaboration with consumers you’re after – read this: Customer service review and rating service GetSatisfaction today launched a very significant advancement to their platform. GetSatisfaction now hopes to "connect the dots from Social to CRM". Should they be successful at that endeavor, you're going to want to pay much closer attention to that enterprise.

What is noteworthy about this version of the platform is that it acts as a "unified hub" by enabling organizations to incorporate the community into their support strategy. Community members can link to distributed conversations on Twitter and Facebook, official channels like email and phone, or even Get Satisfaction partners like help-desk software provider Zendesk. Get Satisfaction is essentially tying every channel together for people seeking support.

Get Satisfaction's platform launched in 2007 and has grown at a rapid clip. More than 20,000 company communities have been created on Get Satisfaction, and upwards of 13,000 organizations are actively engaging with the 1.57 million community members.

"Our Get Satisfaction 2.0 release helps customers solve their problems quickly by moving seamlessly from the crowd-sourced support community to internal company systems such as Zendesk's help-desk system or Salesforce.com. And, they can just as easily flow back again to the public community and monitor the progress of their request or issue."

Virgin Shows the Way - United could learn from

Rob Paterson — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:11:53 -0700

Here is a large snip on Virgin from an excellent post by Brian Solis on Techcrunch. Look at the staffing - tiny and the results - huge. “Porter revealed that the Virgin America team is small and applies roughly the equivalent of 1.5 people to monitoring and engaging on Twitter and other social networks. To her and [...]

Sugar Express - SugarCRM's Online Hosted CRM

Peter A. Prestipino — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:00:00 -0700

CRM (customer relationship management) software is imperative to every Web enterprise. If you're not using at least something, you're probably failing at successfully engaging your users and prospects.

While there are many CRM solutions on the marketing including market leaders SalesForce, my personal open source favorite has been SugarCRM. I'm not alone either - currently, over 60,000 businesses and 550,000 users around the world use on SugarCRM to manage customers. It's always been a genuine contender in the CRM space for a long time and by the looks of an announcement yesterday from the company, it keeps getting better.

SugarCRM has announced the availability of Sugar Express - an online hosted version of the popular CRM software aimed at individuals and businesses who need a low (or lower) cost solution. The solution runs on SugarCRM's on-demand computing platform - the Sugar Open Cloud - feauting functionality including Module Builder to create custom modules and Cloud Connectors to integrate third-party data services from companies such as Hoover’s and Jigsaw. Sugar Express is offered as an annual subscription at $499 for up to five users or $799 for up to ten users per year

“For all of its promise, the cloud computing movement is in danger of becoming yet another mousetrap to lock-in customers to proprietary vendors,” said John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM. “Sugar Express and the Sugar Open Cloud marry the seamless maintenance and deployment of on-demand computing with the values of open source: openness, portability and flexibility.”

Does Your CRM Do This? BatchBook, FreshBooks and Shoeboxed

Peter A. Prestipino — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:05:00 -0700

One of the challenges of selecting a software (of any variety) is forecasting how you'll need to use it in the coming weeks, months and (in some cases) years.

Web professionals are increasingly demanding more from the solutions they choose - as they rightly should. For users of CRM software for example, one of those demands might be an interest in adding a completely alternative layer of data or information to help inform their business decisions.

Social CRM solution Batchbook announced today that their solution can be integrated with online invoice and time tracking service Freshbook as well as Shoeboxed, a reciept and business card scanning service. The integration of these applications are part of, according to the announcement, "the launch of the Small Business Web partnership, a movement that brings together like-minded, customer-obsessed software companies to assimilate their products and make life easier for small businesses."

"The Small Business Web has been a very natural merging of businesses that think alike and act alike. We know our partners, we are customers of our partners and we feel very comfortable recommending them to our own customers," said BatchBlue President Pamela O'Hara. "Providing a single place to access information from these trusted systems makes a lot of sense from our perspective."

CoTweet

Jesse Stay — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:19:09 -0700

CoTweet is the ultimate Social CRM for any business looking to get a handle on their Twitter presence. With the ability to assign Tweets, schedule Tweets, add notes, support multiple accounts, and more, CoTweet will solve many of the problems I’ve seen in Corporate environments trying to manage a Social presence. I just [...]

Managing Your Social Business

Peter A. Prestipino — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:10:00 -0700

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of succeeding online today is managing the increasingly important social side of business. That may be less of an issue thanks to an application released yesterday by Mercury Grove. The product, Dex, is an online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool wherein contacts manage their own profiles, colleagues share networks, and automatic alerts are generated to you let users know when they should get in touch with someone. Sounds like something we all could use.

The real value is that Dex provides constant feedback to users on the health of their professional relationships through a contact rating system, and by monitoring how a person uses the system, their business transactions, and by importing their email and phone activity. Dex provides weekly status updates on important contacts, and reminds users when too much time has passed between interaction. While you might be hesitant to give Dex your data, the value proposition of building stronger relationships is most certainly attractive.

"Dex removes the need for 'data babysitting', giving professionals time to focus on building relationships, not building databases," explained Scott Annan, Mercury Grove's CEO. "If the information about your contacts is on the web you can find it in dex."

Following the beta period, the company plans to charge businesses $20 per user per month. Personal accounts for now however are free.