I had the opportunity to spend time with Microsoft last week in the run up to the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, or what might, barring a change in naming convention, have been known as Microsoft CRM Dynamics Version 5.0. My first thoughts were that it’s a surprisingly comprehensive Continue Reading

The following is an excerpt – albeit a fairly lengthy one – from ‘An Industry Insider’s survival guide to everything you should know about buying and implementing CRM software’.  This section covers our thoughts on how to purchase the right CRM software at the right price: As I set out Continue Reading

I’ve been a big fan of Chris Bucholtz’s writing both when he was working on the InsideCRM blog and now Forecasting Clouds. For some while now he’s been doing an annual  top 20 CRM blog list, which we’ve been fortunate to be included in from time to time. This year Continue Reading

Rimini Street is an interesting company. Not just because of the odd name, but because it offers a service that represents many software vendor’s worst nightmare. Rimini Street is a third party support and maintenance provider for enterprise software suites such as Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Oracle E-Business and SAP. Continue Reading

Many years ago I visited the assembly line at the Nissan car plant in Sunderland, one of the most productive car factories in the world at the time. I guess I was expecting to see huge numbers of robots and other automation, but in fact it was a surprisingly manual Continue Reading

Yesterday Salesforce.com announced the acquisition of Dimdim for $31 million in cash.  The press release notes the ‘Acquisition will extend Salesforce.com’s Chatter collaboration platform with critical real-time communication technologies’. Dimdim provides real-time collaboration features in its browser based web conferencing platform including the ability to white board and share documents. Continue Reading

You may have a CRM system, but is adding value? Here are five quick ways to test if all is well: What reports does it produce? – reports are a great acid test of how well your CRM system is supporting the business. If there aren’t any relevant reports, or Continue Reading

In David Skok’s excellent post ‘Startup killer: the cost of customer acquisition’, he notes that the inability to acquire customers at a cost appropriate to their life time value is one of the biggest reasons that start ups fail. He suggests that a successful business model will see the life Continue Reading

This post is about choosing an implementation partner as opposed to a CRM software vendor. The distinction being that while you may choose CRM software from vendors such as Microsoft, Salesforce.com, or Sage, the actual implementation work is likely to be performed by one of a large network of partners. Continue Reading

Following on from my previous post, the next 10 ways to cut the cost of your crm project: Buy to fit your functional needs – your detailed requirements specification should tell you the functionality you do (and don’t) need from your CRM software. Understanding your needs and matching them to Continue Reading