by Damian Bazadona The fallout of the Internet economy is beginning to take its toll. For many, it’s now or never in terms of creating a profitable business model. Ouch, to the consumer. You can soon kiss those “market share…
Electronic messaging services firm Centerpost Corp. said it has closed a third round of financing to the tune of $12.5 million from previous investors Motorola Inc. The Chicago-based Centerpost said Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Portage Venture Partners and Tribune Ventures also…
E-tailers that have customer-retention in mind need to offer a well-balanced online interface. Most experts would agree that arranging a site so that information is presented in a pleasing and well-balanced manner is mission critical when it comes to catching…
Brick-and-click companies are starting to face a new breed of client – the cross-channel consumer. With more offline brands moving web-wards, Forrester Research analysts muse that a new type of consumer is evolving – one that “demands better products at…
Speakers from Business Objects, a Business Intelligence (BI) solutions provider, discussed the importance of Customer Intelligence (CI) in CRM at a function held Wednesday morning. According to Paul Clark of Business Objects, CI is BI sourced from and centered around…
By Eric Griffith and Bonny Georgia The city of Chicago is a sports fan’s heaven, especially for those who enjoy seeing major league basketball, baseball, and hockey played live. But while visitors to the United Center and Comiskey Park scarf…
A new study examines ways in which e-tailers and online content providers can keep customers satisfied without incurring unnecessary expenses. Entitled “Back to Basics: Enhancing User Experience at Low Cost,” a report by Jupiter Media Metrix unifies two seemingly irreconcilable…
By Barbara Tallent, president and CEO of Boldfish Many savvy brand strategists attempt to extend their presence beyond commercial relationships with distributors or professional affiliates to include direct contact with consumers. For many firms, e-mail represents an ideal medium in…
by Daniel Muggeo To the consumer, technology represents another opportunity for aggressive marketers to invade their privacy. Those dinnertime phone calls from rude insurance people immediately come to mind. But to the company marketing products and services, technology is providing…
Two research firms recently suggested ways in which to avoid CRM disasters. “Around 70 percent of CRM projects are not successful,” noted Andy Kellett, senior research analyst for the Butler Group. “It’s not all down to the vendors, however —…
Altiris, Inc. released 3 new product suites this week that natively extend and enhance Microsoft’s Systems Management Server (SMS) functionality. The new Altiris SMS product suites include Mobile Client for SMS; Unix Client for SMS; and Helpdesk for SMS, the…
by Dolores Pepper Are you making your customers click though unnecessary pages to get to your order form? I visited a Web site the other day, found the product I liked and wanted information on ordering. Since there was no…
PeopleSoft Monday says it has completed its acquisition of intellectual property and certain assets of Hayward, Calif.-based Cohera. The cash deal originally announced back on July 23, 2001 effectively supplies the Pleasanton, Calif.-based company’s CRM platform with Cohera’s catalog management…
By Clyde Foster, president and CEO of eConvergent Today’s customers communicate with e-businesses through multiple media channels, often using voice, e-mail, fax and Internet chat for a single transaction. Customers and potential customers not only want to interact with vendors…
PeopleSoft Thursday says it has signed a a $10 million customer-relationship-management software contract with the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS says it is licensing the Pleasanton, Calif.-based company’s CRM platform, PeopleSoft 8, to help upgrade its 35-year-old computer system. As…
One of the big three major national credit bureaus Monday launched its own site devoted to customers interested in educating themselves about and managing their credit. The site: CreditExpert.com will be run by U.K.-based Experian, which has offices in Orange,…
By Mike Espindle With over 30 retail locations in the greater Boston area and one of the largest dedicated floral inventory and shipping facilities in the country, KaBloom of Woburn, Mass., was well positioned to take its fresh-cut flower and…
By Susan Solomon At the health system where I work, one of the first things we do with new residents is put them to bed. That’s right. We put these full-fledged-docs-to-be into patient beds and have them go through precisely…
By Mike Espindle A part of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Sam’s Club, with 480 store locations and over 42 million cardholders, is the world’s largest membership warehouse club. Its online store site, samsclub.com, was initially launched last summer. Over the past…
By asia.internet.com staff CRM consultant and solutions provider SurfGold has appointed reseller XVizion, a Hong Kong-based distribution and consultancy firm with presence in China and Taiwan, to mark its entry into the Mainland market. SurfGold will provide technology, software, CRM…
There’s nothing wrong with trying to make a little money – which means you’ve got to ask people for the stuff, i.e. market to them. But, as is most of our personal experience, improper marketing can infuriate, particularly in the…
By Chuck Sykes Is there anything you won’t do for your customers? Certainly there is. The low cost air carrier, Southwest Airlines, for example, won’t feed you or offer reserved seating, but at the same time they have the airline…
DIRECTV Broadband Monday answered its DSL customer service needs with the announcement that it is working with San Diego-based eAssist. The new customer service solution from eAssist includes a multimedia intelligent queuing engine that intelligently routes email, chat and telephony…
Jackpot.com, which manages three consumer destination websites (Jackpot.com, JackpotSports.com, and BigPrizes.com) is going through an identity crisis. The Pasadena, Calif.-based company Thursday says it is changing its corporate name to The Vendare Group (pronounced Ven DAR ee) to better reflect…
Developing software can be one huge mountain to climb, but putting your software on the desktops of your customers and your employees doesn’t have to be as difficult. At least that’s what Yube’, a software maker for Web-based customer services,…
By Dr. Robert Passikoff, President of Brand Keys We’ve often said that brand marketing and popular culture have a lot in common. Both have — or should have — their roots in, and be designed to connect with, people’s lives…
by Kim MacPherson In an ideal world, effective customer relationship management (CRM) would be based largely on your ability to enhance your customer communications to the point where any and all dialogues are seamlessly integrated with your database’s historical and…
By Chuck Sykes, Senior Vice President and General Manager, the Americas, SYKES Enterprises Some of the largest consumer-facing companies in the world are looking to solve what we call the “triple whammy” — how to get the best customer support…
By eCRMGuide.com Staff Quaero SpringBoardSM, an outsourcing customer relationship management (CRM) service from Quaero, ensures flexibility for marketing and technology executives when implementing their CRM strategies. The outsourcing service was exclusively designed to implement strategic customer communication services while avoiding…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff According to a March 2001 survey conducted by Core Group®, Inc., 76 percent of community banks and credit unions are not utilizing the full capabilities of their customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing customer information file (MCIF)…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff Interactive entertainment company Nintendo of America, Inc. has selected the customer relationship management (CRM) solution from Infinium to drive its Retail Marketing Program. Web-based Infinium CRM builds a fully integrated, enterprise-wide data source linking disparate customer information…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff BroadVision, Inc. will provide the personalization power for Opodo — a new London-based online travel service created as a joint venture between Aer Lingus, Air France, Alitalia, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, KLM and Lufthansa. BroadVision®…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff Chicago-based customer retention company TruePoints, Inc. has introduced turnkey marketing tools designed for customization and integration with a brand’s existing online and offline efforts. Michael Kahn, chief operating officer for TruePoints, encapsulates his company’s objectives: “The lessons…
By Karl Boone, PA Consulting Group At the beginning of this new century, businesses are using a combination of traditional and new methods to reach customers. Now seen as an essential tool rather than a gimmick, e-business is beginning to…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff CustomerLink Systems, provider of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to the automotive service and repair industry, continues a campaign to infiltrate the Southern California market. The automotive service market in Southern California represents a significant market penetration…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff Daleen Technologies Inc., specialists in revenue chain management software, announced plans to integrate its comprehensive billing functionalities with the customer relationship management (CRM) applications of the Oracle E-Business Suite. The alliance will add Daleen to the Oracle…
By boston.internet.com Staff Prodded by poor second quarter results, NetGenesis (NASDAQ:NTGX) will lay off 43 employees, or 19 percent of its staff as the economic downturn continues to take its toll. For the three month period, the Cambridge, Mass., customer…
By boston.internet.com Staff Xchange (NASDAQ:EXAP), a Boston maker of customer relationship management software, has named Chris Wagner president and CEO. The 20-year software vet also joins the board of directors. He succeeds Andrew Frawley, who will continue as chairman of…
By dc.internet.com Staff Manugistics Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MANU) has finalized its $8.3 million acquisition of the intellectual property and other assets of privately-held, Rockville, Md.-based SpaceWorks, Inc. Manugistics, also based in Rockville, will combine SpaceWorks’ Web-based order management technology, including the…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff Sprint Corp. announced a four-year commitment with ICT GROUP, INC. for contracted customer relationship management (CRM) services. Scheduled to go live in September 2001, ICT GROUP will perform a variety of customer service and upselling functions for…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff Delta Air Lines has introduced its Santiago, Chile-based Latin America Contact Center (LACC) that will allow for reservations calls from nine different Latin American countries. This contact center is an addition to the Latin America centers maintained…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff Blue Martini ExpressSM is the latest offering from customer relationship management (CRM) applications provider Blue Martini Software, Inc. The all-in-one product combines software, consulting services, training and support and is designed to help organizations implement Blue Martini…
By Application Planet Staff New York-based brokerage firm Wall Street Access today announced that it has implemented the LivePerson real-time assistance Chat product into its online customer systems. The agreement with LivePerson will enable Wall Street Access to more efficiently…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff With e-business longevity few and far between, one million customers can be quite an achievement. Customer relationship management (CRM) applications provider, FrontRange Solutions Inc., recently celebrated this distinction with one million combined licenses of its HEAT® and…
By eCRMGuide.com Staff According to a customer relationship management (CRM) survey released by YOUcentric, Inc.,, integration and return on investment (ROI) are important when evaluating a CRM solution and low adoption by users and inability to leverage legacy data were…
By Matt Cutler Imagine being a custom tailor and trying to fit a customer’s clothes without taking measurements. Sure, you could make a best-guess, but you’d never really provide that customer with a proper fit. And as a result, you…
by eCRMGuide.com Staff Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. has selected CHARTER continuumTM, a customer relationship management (CRM) product from Swallow Information Systems. Hawaiian Airlines will utilize Swallow’s CHARTER continuumTM application to track all inbound customer contacts, including telephone calls letters and faxes.…
The immediate future for mobile CRM (mCRM) applications lies not in connecting business with consumers, but in connecting employees and their employers, in particular in developing and enhancing business-to-employee (B2E) sales applications, according to research by Datamonitor. The pervasiveness of…
By Christopher Lucas and Krishna Chettayar, Dun & Bradstreet Corp. CRM requires an established company to integrate data spread throughout various departments and divisions in multiple operational systems. The data in these legacy systems are usually substandard and frequently wrought…
By Jeffrey Graham Atticus Finch, the wise father in Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird,” tells his children, “You never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked around in them.” Make that the No. 1…