Microsoft tries to tempt users of competitors' tools with CRM Online deal
Microsoft is trying to steal away Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM on Demand customers with a new offer that will provide them with six months' access to its own CRM Online application at no charge if they sign a 12-month contract. Read more...

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Benioff plays nice to Oracle at OpenWorld

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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

Survey: Cloud computing confusion reigns in U.S. government

Microsoft ties Dynamics CRM to Twitter

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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.

Too Many Cooks Spoil the CRM System
Unlike most enterprise applications, CRM systems have users who want to be administrators. Danger lies ahead! Here's advice on how and why to just say no to admin rights.

Editors' Picks

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