Salesforce.com announces 'Chatter' social-networking app
Salesforce.com opened its annual Dreamforce conference by previewing Salesforce Chatter, a social-networking application the vendor dubbed a "Facebook for the Enterprise." Read more...

Cloud won't do for critical applications, SAP says

Microsoft tries to tempt users of competitors' tools with CRM Online deal

Ellison: Fusion Applications in 2010

Benioff plays nice to Oracle at OpenWorld

SAP offers 'free' CRM for ERP buyers

Salesforce.com renewing push into customer service

Salesforce.com sets sights on the smallest businesses

Appirio aims its new SaaS app at large services businesses

SAP customers pledge support, but want more

More CRM Stories

CRM: How Marriott Broke Down Customer Data Siloes
Make every interaction meaningful: It's the Marriott philosophy. This is not an easy task given the multitude of Marriott brands and the plethora of campaign management tools used to contact customers. By partnering with brand leaders and marketing leaders, Marriott's IT department built a unified framework for engaging with customers. The project enabled Marriott to exceed its revenue goals while sending customers fewer, more targeted communications.

CRM Tips: The Fixed Price is Not Right
Many companies buy CRM consulting services the way they buy hardware: Fixed price. What if this just isn't the right model, no matter how good a price you get?

More Jobs Vanish: IT's Gains Are Real People's Losses
Improved IT means many jobs cut in this recession have been cut forever, some job hunters are now learning. While long-sought efficiency improvements have arrived, not everyone is celebrating.

CRM Tips: Don't Let Leads Die Prematurely
Even if you're not a Monty Python fan, "Bring out your dead" from The Holy Grail movie is a sick but funny sequence. That vignette is surprisingly relevant to how you handle leads in your CRM system.

Meet 'The Fixer' for Troubled IT Projects
Consultant Jason Coyne shows up at your IT project for one reason: To cure it or kill it. In this Q&A with CIO.com, Coyne explains why he's one part doctor, one part marriage counselor, and how he helps IT teams at odds with a vendor or integrator recover from near disaster.

Behind Enemy Lines: Salesforce.com, Rimini Street
Both tech vendors are aiming to change the rules of game for enterprise software. And while they're going about it with two different business models, the companies share some things in common.

CRM Myth Busters: The Opportunity Funnel
In most businesses, the sales team will talk about a funnel of opportunities that will mature into closed deals. They may have a waterfall spreadsheet showing the sequence of sales stages and conversion events, and they're almost sure to calculate "pipeline coverage": an indication of how much they have in potential deals to cover their target number for the quarter. Despite the apparent precision of their numbers, sales forecasts all too often don't match reality.

Get More from CRM: Activities vs. Campaigns
It's easy to think that CRM systems are "just a database," since they hold parametric and text data and handle it more or less transactionally. While parametric CRM data is the core of many a report and dashboard, it's actually not the most important data about the evolving customer relationship. Because those parametric data represent only the current state of play, to understand the history means following the sequence of changes in audit trails: quite difficult, and less than enlightening.

Marketing Automation: Unique Kid on the CRM Block
You'd think that "marketing automation," like "sales automation," would be part of a CRM system. In theory, sure. But in practice, you need to know how these systems fit together and how they don't.

Acquire Me! Oracle's and SAP's Next Likely Targets
A new 451 Group report serves up some tasty offerings to feed a possible acquisition binge by the enterprise software supervendors. Oracle's Larry Ellison is preparing to throw a pie at IBM: The only question is who will be the whipped cream.

Editors' Picks

Getting to know Windows 7? Don't stop now: From speeding up taskbar thumbnails to reining in UAC, here are 20 ways to make Windows 7 act the way you want. Is Motorola's new Droid good enough to vanquish iPhone envy? To find out, we took it on a 3-day trip. Sure, you could always use Linux as a desktop OS, but Corel Linux 1.0 was the first distro designed for ordinary users. It's been a long, strange trip since then. New touch-screen laptops from Fujitsu, HP and Lenovo take advantage of Microsoft Windows 7's touch-friendly infrastructure.

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