Salesforce.com unveiled a new customer service help desk tool this week. Desk.com works with customer requests delivered over a social network. It is the byproduct of Salesforce.com's acquisition of Assistly last year. However, it is no mere product integration, said Alex Bard, former Assistly CEO and now vice president and general manager of Desk.com. www.crmbuyer.com | 2/3/12 3:00 PM

Every tool has a purpose. That's never more clear than when you see a neophyte do-it-yourselfer trying to use a tool for a purpose other than what it was designed for. For instance, anyone wielding a hammer while trying to fix a car's engine is probably not going to succeed. www.crmbuyer.com | 2/2/12 3:00 PM

The hard part of selling isn’t the actual sale. Any good salesperson will tell you it’s the monotonus data entry and admin tasks that get in the way of productivity. Now, online selling platform maker SalesCrunch said it has integrated its next-generation meeting application CrunchConnect into Salesforce.com, with the promise to "…radically reduce the tedious data entry associated with customer relationship management." 

Read full story... www.cmswire.com | 2/1/12 7:40 PM

I take briefings from all sorts of vendors every day, from established companies with a new release to emerging companies with what they hope will be The Next Great Idea that the market will seize on. I am always happy to give my opinion and advice, and sometimes it's even taken. But I am usually reticent to write about most of them simply because it's not my job to provide free advertising. www.crmbuyer.com | 2/1/12 3:00 PM

The sharp growth in the use of smartphones and tablets has spurred the U.S. government to keep pace with the private sector in the use of mobile devices. While federal agencies have been incorporating mobile technology for several years, the rate of adoption could be -- and should be -- far greater, contends Steven VanRoekel, the federal government's chief information officer. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/31/12 3:00 PM

JETNET LLC, the world leader in aviation market intelligence, is attending this years HAI Heli-Expo 2012 in Dallas, Texas, February 12th - 14th, booth #9763. JETNET plans to feature a new complement to their comprehensive global database of piston and turbine helicopters: an aviation-tailored customer relationship management system, JETNET CRM.

www.topix.net | 1/31/12 6:53 AM

Oracle has closed on its $1.5 billion acquisition of RightNow, developer of a cloud-based customer self-service application. Oracle announced the deal in October 2011. For Oracle, the deal makes eminent sense: It fills in a missing gap in its cloud-based CRM functionality and gives it a broader base from which to compete against Salesforce.com. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/30/12 3:00 PM

At the National Retail Federation's annual convention,Retail's BIG Show 2012, Epicor debuted its latest mobile offering: the Epicor Retail Clienteling application. It is an add-on for Epicor's existing CRM app, said Dave Burton, product director of CRM services -- meaning a retailer has to be an Epicor customer to use it. However, the app comes with a few additional features designed for the tablet form factor. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/27/12 3:00 PM

 After a short delay, Oracle has completed its deal to acquire RightNow, a cloud-based provider of call center automation, sales force automation and customer relationship management solutions.

Read full story... www.cmswire.com | 1/26/12 9:44 PM

The way the concept of CRM is defined during the sales process can sow the seeds of its ultimate failure. Because the decision makers are often sales managers rather than actual salespeople, the pitch is usually made that CRM makes it easier for the managers to manage their sales staff. Which is true. But what's in it for the sales staff? www.crmbuyer.com | 1/26/12 3:00 PM

CRM and 500 Startups incubated company Intercom has raised a seed round of $1 million from angel investors including twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Huddle founder Andy McLoughlin, Dan Martell, 500 Startups and Digital Garage. Intercom's customer relationship management tool (CRM) is designed specifically for web businesses. The web-based SaaS features Google Analytics-like integration so that its database of customers is always automatically up-to-date, tracking every interaction. With its flexible filtering function, users can be segmented into groups for whom the business has different goals (i.e. converting free users into paying customers). tctechcrunch2011.wordpress.com | 1/26/12 12:00 AM

My Aussie friends have an interesting saying that seems part compliment and part benediction: "Good on you." They pronounce it with an accent on the second word so that the phrase becomes a single word in the mouth, more like "goo-don you." At any rate, good on you. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/25/12 3:00 PM

The Borders near me closed the other month. Wasn't surprising. Ditto for Circuit City. Gone. A few years prior to that it was Hollywood Video that rolled its end credits. The problem is, none of them had to go. They each died of self-inflicted wounds. Sure, a lot of their CEOs came out and blamed Iraq, the economy, e-commerce, etc., for their failures. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/24/12 3:00 PM

It's one thing to have a computer system at a major bank, retailer or government agency invaded by cybercriminals. At best, such hacking incidents cause minor annoyances, and at worst, they result in high-cost privacy invasions. But what if the hackers get into the power systems that make the entire Internet possible? www.crmbuyer.com | 1/24/12 3:00 PM

CSC and Infovisionix announced a new agreement at Retail's BIG Show 2012 in New York City. Under the agreement, Infovisionix's suite of retail reporting and analysis tools will be incorporated in CSC's Retail Enterprise Intelligence offering. The new capabilities will help retailers understand and improve key operational and customer performance metrics. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/23/12 3:00 PM

Having spent more than 20 years in the tech industry, I've seen many trends (and related buzzwords) come and go. One trend that I continue to see each year is the "consumerization of IT." While it hasn't always been referred to by that label, consumer demand has manifest itself across a variety of sectors in the industry, from PCs and email to the cloud. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/20/12 3:00 PM

This was a big week for the Nasdaq-listed Blackbaud: The company announced its plans to acquire Convio, which offers a fund-raising application for nonprofits, for $275 million. The feature sets of the Convio application and Blackbaud's CRM software for the nonprofit space are complementary, to a large degree. The newly acquired technology will help Blackbaud further develop its user base. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/20/12 3:00 PM

I'm ensconced at the Swan and Dolphin Hotels at Walt Disney World in Orlando this week for IBM's concurrent Lotusphere/IBM Connect shows, and all the announcements here paint the picture of a company and a partner ecosystem that is going all-in on collaboration. Big Blue's fuddy-duddy reputation is being completely overhauled, it seems. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/19/12 3:00 PM

Rapidly expanding customer relationship management company SugarCRM announced integrations with IBM, including support for IBM DB2 database software and a move to IBM SmartCloud Enterprise.

Read full story... www.cmswire.com | 1/18/12 10:05 PM

Customer experience is leading off the year as an idea that we need to pay more attention to. In the last week, two important publications have surfaced that highlight this importance. SAP gurus Reza Soudagar, Vinay Iyer and Volker Hildebrand collaborated on a new book, The Customer Experience Edge: Technology and Techniques for Delivering an Enduring, Profitable and Positive Experience to Your Customers . www.crmbuyer.com | 1/18/12 3:00 PM

There is an interesting discussion brewing about the nature of Silicon Valley companies. Are they "tech" companies, as Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo asserts, or are they "... companies in other industries that happen to make heavy use of technology," as CBS Money Watch blogger Erik Sherman says? The gentlemanly disagreement started over the appointment of PayPal President Scott Thompson as the next CEO of Yahoo. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/17/12 7:00 PM

The routine is almost universal. Every day, millions of workers turn on their computers, take a second or two for a sip of coffee as their desktop or laptop "boots up," and then get to work. In those few seconds, the basic input-output system, or BIOS, of the computer loads the protocols that actually run the PC -- in effect, acting the same as the worker's shot of coffee. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/17/12 3:00 PM

Salesforce.com has snagged a marquee name for its executive ranks: the former chief information officer of the United States, Vivek Kundra. Kundra, who left his post with the Obama administration last year, is joining Salesforce.com as executive vice president of emerging markets. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/17/12 3:00 PM

Companies commonly rely on a myriad of software suppliers, from internal teams that share and re-use code to third-party commercial software suppliers and outsourcing development partners. Companies are increasingly being held accountable by their customers for the quality and security of the complete product. Yet third-party code typically isn't tested with the same level of rigor as internally developed code. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/16/12 3:00 PM

Avaya has released its IP Office 8.0 -- the latest iteration of its trademark unified communications platform for small and mid-sized businesses. The new application comes with a number of new features, some of which focus on the company's core competency of communications, collaboration and presence. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/13/12 3:00 PM

Do customers suffer from a split personality? I say this not because of encounters with clearly rattled fellow shoppers during the holiday season. I say it because of the numbers that consistently come out when customers are surveyed -- and the other numbers that seem to be in the forefront of most buyers' minds. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/12/12 3:00 PM

The retail space is changing. Twenty years ago we used to shop and buy in person at retail stores. Ten years ago, the Internet started a change Wave. We could buy online but were not ready yet. So we shopped online, but we still bought in person at stores. Now we have reversed this trend completely. Today we shop in retail stores to see and touch, but we buy online because prices are lower. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/12/12 3:00 PM

Just how much information about the U.S. government is available on the Internet is anybody's guess. But U.S. citizens should be comfortable knowing that if they are persistent enough, they should find much of what they are looking for regarding the federal government online -- whether it's tax information from the Internal Revenue Service, benefits data from the Social Security Administration, or some obscure economic table. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/11/12 4:22 PM

It's been difficult in recent years for many people and small businesses to get the loans they need from banks and other traditional lenders, but there are a variety of alternative models. One is person-to-person lending, offered by companies like Prosper, which essentially lets individual people become lenders. "We look at Prosper as a new way of banking," said Chris Larsen, Prosper's CEO and cofounder. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/11/12 3:00 PM

It's the beginning of the year, time for sales kickoff meetings and presidents' clubs at some location within 10 degrees of the equator. These signal events will reward those diligent and fortunate enough to have made or exceeded quota while focusing the attention of everyone on this year's mission. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/11/12 3:00 PM

Peter C. Whybrow, M.D., is a neuropsychiatrist and director of the Semel Institute for Neuorscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, or at least he was when he published American Mania: When More Is Not Enough in 2005. In the book he quotes numerous economic thinkers and writers from the last 300 years, including Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville, as he analyzes how we behave in modern business. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/10/12 3:00 PM

The CRM landscape is shifting gears -- and it looks as though 2012 will be the year that will see investments in technologies to cash in on a veritable explosion of social media, mobile and integration opportunities. The winners in 2012 will be those that can figure out new ways to distinguish themselves on the customer service front, said Ajay Kapoor, vice president of customer service for Avaya. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/9/12 3:00 PM

The political ranter/conspiracy theorist, the angry life individual, the used car salesman, or the social media hussy. networking.ittoolbox.com | 1/9/12 12:00 PM

It is provides business solutions such as Enterprise Resource Planning , Customer Relationship Management , and Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management .

www.topix.net | 1/8/12 2:50 PM

The company is principally engaged in providing IT and IT enabled services. It also focuses on providing business process outsourcing services ranging from voice services, web enabled services to back office processing; knowledge management to customer relationship management and other value added services.

www.topix.net | 1/7/12 1:33 AM

The company offers a wide range of solutions for eBusiness, customer relationship management, supply chain management, business intelligence, portals, electronic document management and infrastructure solutions and products.

www.topix.net | 1/6/12 8:42 PM

Mobility, intuitive cloud-based tools, iPads, iPhones, and social media have forever transformed the sales ecosystem. Across all industries and sectors, salespeople are no longer chained to a desk or landline, and managers and executives agree that integrated technology makes selling more efficient. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/6/12 3:00 PM

President Barack Obama named Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau via a recess appointment on Wednesday. It was a controversial move for the president, prompting Senate Republicans to accuse him of making a power grab and abusing executive authority. Indeed, Republican resistance to confirming the former Ohio attorney general for the post prompted the recess appointment. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/5/12 9:39 PM

Let's be frank: The main reason Oracle's latest quarterly revenues nosedived was backlash from users fed up with two years of price hikes on products, technical support, maintenance and licensing contracts -- and not because of a correction in the overall server hardware market. Yes, it's true that the latest quarterly financials of other high-technology bellwethers also disappointed. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/5/12 8:40 PM

In our careers as consumers, we've all encountered employees from time to time who display a shocking lack of manners, aggressive ignorance of what their company sells, or a toxic attitude that suggests we're seen as an enemy rather than a customer. "How in the world did this person get this job?" we might ask as we hang up the phone or flee the store. "And how in the world is this person allowed to keep this job?" www.crmbuyer.com | 1/5/12 3:00 PM

Customer relationship management startup Nimble has raised $1 million in funding from notable investors Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis, Don Dodge, Dharmesh Shah and more! Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara views Nimble as a combination Hootsuite, Yammer and Salesforce. Unlike CRM tools like Salesforce, which Ferrara equates to stagnant databases of customers, Nimble takes into account that today's salespeople are social. techcrunch.com | 1/5/12 6:25 AM

Welcome back to the discussion. At the top of my list is the idea of resiliency, which I consider a more practical form of sustainability for business. We are now encountering a wave of sustainability-oriented ideas in the popular culture. Forty miles per gallon is the new 30, someone said, and I have seen or heard the word "sustainable" used tentatively more than once in advertising. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/4/12 3:00 PM

Cybersecurity is such a pressing issue that the U.S. government will be dedicating a good chunk of its annual information technology budget to protecting data systems from breaches, hackers and other threats. Tthe number of cybersecurity incidents reported by federal agencies has increased from 5,503 in 2006 to 41,776 incidents in 2010, according to the GAO. www.crmbuyer.com | 1/3/12 3:00 PM

starting your consulting business, solution selling, and don't waste time with social media networking.ittoolbox.com | 1/2/12 6:59 PM

For many companies, the role of the PMO seems like an enigma. Sure, everyone knows that PMOs exist to streamline project operations so time and money aren't wasted, but what do they actually do? Failure to answer this question has led many companies to question the value of the PMO in the years after its establishment. However, the burden of proof is on the PMO -- not the executives. www.crmbuyer.com | 12/29/11 3:00 PM

After seven years of a neck-and-neck race for first place in customer satisfaction, Amazon has pulled decisively ahead of Netflix, according to ForeSee's annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index. Amazon moved ahead 2 points to reach the top spot with 88 on the index's 100-point scale. Netflix slid 7 points to 79. Amazon's 88 score is an all-time high for the 14-year-old index. www.crmbuyer.com | 12/28/11 10:23 PM

"It takes two to tango." Ronald Reagan said this of the contentious relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union in the final stages of the Cold War. Unfortunately, this also applies to executives and project management offices. At times, it seems they are destined to face off against each other, but this should not be the case. www.crmbuyer.com | 12/28/11 3:00 PM

Are you making New Year's resolutions or resolving to be a doer? networking.ittoolbox.com | 12/26/11 2:10 PM

Late in posting but 4 minutes to a smarter you networking.ittoolbox.com | 12/26/11 10:44 AM

Don't leave money on the table networking.ittoolbox.com | 12/22/11 10:41 AM