The Opportunities object (OK, table) is where CRM and SFA systems hold the data about prospective deals. And nearly every system uses some sort of stage pick-list that's an indicator of the deal's current status in the sales cycle. Each stage typically has a percentage assigned to it, and a forecast category (such as "pipeline" or "upside") that is used to drive the opportunity pipeline report and bookings forecast. Simple. Rational. Wrong.
Aegon Religare wants to grow its insurance sales in tandem with the salaries of a burgeoning middle class in India. The fastest way to do it, company executives determined last year, would be to sell policies on the Internet-a novel way to market insurance in that country.
SugarCRM has repackaged its open-source, browser-based customer relationship management platform to make it easier for other vendors to put their own brand on products and services built with SugarCRM, the company announced Thursday. But it is also working on a native iPhone app that will put the brand under the noses of many more users.
Earlier this month, I wrote about using a few Dummy records in tables to make CRM systems smarter. This time, we're looking at a different situation: Dummy fields that may be needed in all of a table's records.
The first release of Oracle's long-awaited, next-generation Fusion Applications will be generally available in the first quarter of 2011, CEO Larry Ellison said during a keynote address at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Sunday.
VCC, a nationwide retail construction company, was forced to diversify when the recession struck. The company found that giving project managers smartphone access to customer data was a big boost in attracting new business.
Salesforce.com rolled out a new service on Wednesday that integrates business-contact information with its own CRM (customer relationship management) application and Chatter collaboration software.
CRM systems are where the richest data about customer relationships is supposed to live, and most CRM systems provide a report-writing system as well as dozens of canned reports.
CRM systems are where the data about customer relationships are supposed to live, and they typically provide a report-writing system as well as dozens of canned reports. But reports are incredibly vulnerable to GIGO, and they immediately expose data quality problems. Let's look at issues that limit the validity and credibility of any reports in your CRM system.
Those who loathe talking on the phone to automated speech recognition systems may take solace in the fact that scientists are working to make such systems more lifelike and less annoying to use.
Although not traditionally known for its contributions to the open-source community, the German-based SAP is adopting more open-source software, as well as contributing more of its own code back into the community, company officials said in an interview.
CRM (customer relationship management) software has established a significant foothold on Google's Apps Marketplace since its launch in March, according to an official blog post this week.
Priorities are so clearly part of rational project management. But they also fall victim to emotional and political pressures, so priorities jump around all too often. This is particularly true with CRM projects, thanks to the right-brained types in sales and marketing, and the frequent reorgs and marketplace shifts that really do change what's important. While the rapid, incremental deliveries from Agile's scrum teams certainly help accommodate rapid change, it's a good idea to have some tools to make the priority list more stable in the first place. Given that the No. 1 cause of scope creep is a weak or erratic prioritization mechanism, getting this process right will pay dividends throughout all phases of your CRM implementation.
Zendesk has upgraded its Web-based help desk software to simplify and automate how its users capture, analyze and respond to public Twitter messages that merit a customer-service response.
Microsoft plans to take a cue from rival CRM (customer relationship management) vendor Salesforce.com with the upcoming release of CRM 2011, by adding a marketplace site where partners can sell complementary applications.