Year: 2013

For those that want a quick recap or may have missed them orginally, here’s my take on the main CRM stories this autumn: An uneasy peace Perhaps the main headline in our round up of the summer’s news was the sudden and unexpected outbreak of peace between Oracle and Salesforce.com. Continue Reading

In case you disconnected from the world of CRM this summer, here’s a round-up of the main stories: Salesforce.com and Oracle – peace breaks out One minute Salesforce.com and Oracle were at each other’s throats, the next peace had broken out. Following a disappointing set of fourth quarter results that Continue Reading

In summary:  Salesforce.com’s Q1 results trigger a share price dip, NetSuite makes an acquisition and signals there may be many more, and Rimini Street needles SAP at its Sapphire Now event… Salesforce.com released its quarter one earnings with revenues in line with analyst expectations at $893 million, an increase of Continue Reading

In summary: Salesforce overtakes SAP to be number one, SugarCRM’s SugarCon, and great results from Netsuite and Rimini Street… It’s long been on the cards, but April seemed to confirm that Salesforce.com had grabbed the number one CRM vendor slot from SAP. Gartner’s ‘Market Share Analysis: Customer Relationship Management Software, Continue Reading

In summary: Microsoft makes another CRM acquisition, Salesforce tops up the acquisition war chest, and Oracle’s Q3 sales execution issues…. It doesn’t seem very long ago that I was suggesting that Microsoft was going to get left behind if it didn’t respond to the raft of acquisitions being made by Continue Reading

In summary: ACT and SalesLogix change hands, SugarCRM revenues up 60%, Salesforce.com’s positioning looks to be changing, and Forrester incurs Oracle’s wrath…. Two of the big CRM brands were on the move in February, with Sage selling Act and SalesLogix to email marketing company Swiftpage as part of a rationalisation Continue Reading

One of my formative experiences was visiting Nissan’s assembly operation in Sunderland back in the 90’s. The car plant was the most productive in Europe at the time and the thing that really struck me was how the company had applied the principal of Kaizen – never ending improvement – Continue Reading

How can your B2B CRM system do more for you in 2013? Here’s the fourth (and final!) installment of ideas: 76. Consider the customer journey – analysing how a customer interacts with the range of touch-points in your organization, and looking at how that that experience can be improved, may Continue Reading

In summary: Infusionsoft secures $54 million and makes an acquisition, Microsoft’s bad year continues, more SAP HANA announcements, and Rimini Street sets a record… Infusionsoft caught the eye in January. The Gilbert, Arizona based developer of an all-in-one CRM, email marketing, e-commerce, marketing automation application for small businesses, secured $54 Continue Reading

How can your B2B CRM system do more for you in 2013? Here’s the third installment of ideas (the previous two can be found here and here): 51. Customer portals – the CRM system doesn’t have to be just for your own staff. Providing access through a portal to customers Continue Reading