CRM Magazine articles from January 2006

CRM Magazine archives from January 2006

Clarification.(Correction Notice)
January 1, 2006... Clarification: In our December 2005 issue, in the sidebar to the cover story, "The Year in (P)review," we wrote that Pitney-Bowes bought Firstlogic. We learned after press time that the deal fell through.--The Editors

Calling the Cops on Telemarketers
January 1, 2006... AT HOME ONE NIGHT in November, my girlfriend, Galia, received a disturbing phone call from a survey company. She had already signed up for the Do Not Call registry (which helps minimize telemarketing calls, save those from politicos, charities,...

Microsoft 3.0 Is a Go
January 1, 2006... Eager to get an early jump on its Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 release, Microsoft beat its expected launch date with aplomb, making the product generally available on December 6, instead of the first quarter of 2006. The product release represents...

The Bitter Taste of Offshoring: Europe Is Setting an Example of Best Outsourcing Practices That American Business Might Want to Follow
January 1, 2006... Corporate America's appetite for highly educated Indian employees at a fraction of U.S. wages is causing some severe indigestion. After loading up on a diet rich with extra travel, training, telecommunications, infrastructure, and dual...

Aspect's Facelift: The New Company Must Balance Rationalizing Its Overlapping Functionality with Retaining and Attracting New Customers
January 1, 2006... Concerto Software's $1 billion acquisition of Aspect Communications in September (creating Aspect Software) marks the contact center industry's largest consolidation move in 2005. The deal signals that the market is moving toward a smaller...

Manufacturing: CRM's Next Makeover; Analytics Can Reinvigorate the Industry Now That Consumers Are Consuming Again
January 1, 2006... To the outsider, manufacturing seems like an impersonal business. But the industry stands to benefit heavily from advances in CRM technology and techniques, and analytics will be the mark of success. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] CRM adoption is...

DestinationCRM Dashboard
January 1, 2006... * Forrester's Top ERP Vendors. Forrester Research has released its latest evaluation of the top ERP vendors, examining how they address customers' desires for them to provide licenses that incorporate more flexibility and better software life...

Why Customers Do What They Do
January 1, 2006... Marshal Cohen is one of the world's foremost authorities on consumer behavior, and he has some good news for CEOs, marketing directors, and brand managers: Regardless of what they are selling, they have the ability to anticipate the needs,...

What web support service will your organization implement in the next 12 months as part of its online self-service initiative?(The Pulse)
January 1, 2006... WHAT WEB SUPPORT SERVICE WILL YOUR ORGANIZATION IMPLEMENT IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS AS PART OF ITS ONLINE SELF-SERVICE INITIATIVE? Natural-language search 10% Forums 23% FAQs 23% Email ...

Statistically speaking.(CRM TRENDS AND NEWS ANALYSIS)
January 1, 2006... * Worldwide CRM software license revenues will experience a 3 percent CAGR from 2004 to 2009, according to Gartner's "Worldwide Customer Relationship Management Forecast, 2004-2009." The firm also predicts that marketing automation will be...

CRM: The Past and the Future; Born of Contact Management Applications 25 Years Ago, Enterprise Software Systems Have Come a Long Way
January 1, 2006... THE CRM INDUSTRY is now 25 years old--it's time to celebrate. In this issue's column we'll look at the impressive accomplishments of CRM over the past 25 years; next month Reality Check will focus on the future of CRM. When CRM began, in the...

Is Your Product Really That Great? Loyalty Programs Won't Work If a Company's Core Product or Service Is Perceived to Have Little or No Value
January 1, 2006... IF YOU'RE like many customers you carry several loyalty cards from your local supermarket, video store, or coffee shop (get-a-free-coffee punch cards are popular). How many airline mileage programs do you belong to? Ask yourself a simple...

Dangling the Carrot: Drive Your Sales Force to Profitability; Selecting and Implementing the Proper Sales Compensation Tool to Drive and Motivate Your Sales Force Is More Important Than Ever
January 1, 2006... Jennifer Graham knows the importance of tracking her commission. As the legal placement director at Conduit Recruiting, a small recruiting agency in New York City, figuring out what her bonus is every month means the difference between planning...

Safe Secrets: When Is Safe Too Safe? Establish Reasonable Guidelines and Stick to Them
January 1, 2006... Benjamin Franklin famously observed, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." That nugget of wisdom is just as apt today as it was then, and its application has extended...

A New Marketing Medium: Blogging Allows Marketers to Start Conversations with Prospects and Customers through a Powerful New Avenue of Communication
January 1, 2006... A SHIFT is taking place in corporate communications, one that promises to alter marketing strategies well into the future. Marketing has always been about balancing company interest with customer interest, but now it is becoming more about...

Surefire Hires: It's Not Easy Being a Contact Center Agent. Organizations Jeopardize Their Ability to Best Serve Customers If They Don't Have Selection, Retention, and Development Strategies for Contact Center Agents. Here, Industry Insiders Offer 9 Tips to Help Minimize Risk
January 1, 2006... This is reflected in the industry's high agent churn rate. In the article "A Recipe for Reduced Turnover: Find the Right Mix" (CRM magazine, August 2005), Saddletree Research Chief Analyst Paul Stockford put yearly, industry-wide agent turnover...

BPM speeds the purchase request plow.(BEST PRACTICES and PROVEN RESULTS)
January 1, 2006... Advanced Management Technology Inc. (AMT) provides IT support equipment, software, and training to public and private sector clients, including NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. Facilitating some of its...

Signed, Sealed, Delivered: A Travel-Tech Services Broker Taps Digital Contract Management for E-Signatures
January 1, 2006... Digital signatures have been legal in the United States since 1998. We don't see them much, however, in personal or business transactions, unless you count manual signature capture. Whether from ignorance or fear, true e-signatures haven't seen...

Hosting Time Is Money: Migrating to iRadeon's Version of SugarCRM Saves a Search Engine Marketing Company Both
January 1, 2006... Efficient Frontier was facing a problem that many successful SMBs run into--it was outgrowing its CRM system, as more employees needed to access it. Unlike most other companies in this situation, its system was not old. In fact, it was a recent...

Pounding the Pavement with Real-Time Communication: Field-Service Management and Optimization Lead to Enhanced Productivity and Significant Cost Savings
January 1, 2006... Royal KPN's muddled method for scheduling, dispatching, and managing field engineers in its Fixed Network Operations division had the Dutch telecom giant hanging on for assistance. The company relied on a mix of applications, including Microsoft...

Opening Accounts and Relationships: A Credit Union Uses Service as a Competitive Advantage over Price
January 1, 2006... North Shore Credit Union (NSCU) competes with some of the largest banks and credit unions in north Vancouver. The company has roughly 42,000 members, but needed to improve its understanding of the relationships it had with each of those members...

Secret of My Success: Broadband Satellite Network Provider Hughes Turns to Perseus Development to Take Customer Satisfaction Surveys to the Outer Limits
January 1, 2006... Anida Carpenter, Operations Manager for Customer Research & Business Intelligence, Hughes Network Systems | as told to Colin Beasty * Why did you need an enterprise feedback management (EFM) solution? Before Perseus, Hughes was running...

Business Problem: Contact Center Managers Cannot Staff and Manage Their Call Centers Effectively; Tech Solution: Workforce Optimization Tools
January 1, 2006... Staffing a contact center requires properly trained individuals and a robust communications platform. Staffing one well requires technology that can provide support solutions for the best allocation of scarce resources into an environment that...

Put More Feet on the Street: To Extract More Value from Existing Sales Machinery, B2B Companies Must Address Fundamental Sales Productivity Inhibitors, Focusing First on Process, Policy, and Guideline Improvements
January 1, 2006... RELENTLESS PRESSURE to simultaneously improve efficiency and boost revenue growth has led many B2B executives to focus on new ways to extract value from their existing sales operations. The way to do this is to concentrate on productivity...

Promising That This Year Won't Be like Last Year: 13 Goals That Businesses Can Actually Hit
January 1, 2006... I HOPE YOUR HANGOVERS have all cleared up, because if you are reading this it's 2006. That's quite a concept to digest, since 2005 was such an eventful year--I started writing for CRM magazine, which is a pretty monumental occurrence in itself,...