Articles about CRM

Legacy CRM suites often involve slow, cumbersome interfaces, are frustrating for users and consequently don't achieve wide adoption. According to a Forrester survey, 47 percent of respondents encounter user adoption struggles when implementing their CRM initiative.

CRM specialist Insightly is launching the latest version of its product with deep Microsoft Outlook integration, as well as a redesigned technical architecture and user interface to help sales teams in mid-sized businesses improve their productivity.

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Salesforce has revealed the launch of its most advanced CRM analytics platform yet.

Called Einstein Analytics, this platform leverages artificial intelligence to the analytics workflow, allowing users to automatically create CRM insights. The AI will also be able to recommend actions which improve customer service and boost sales, as well as helping optimize marketing campaigns.

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Less than a fifth (17 percent) of customer relationship managers believe their CRM is generating revenue. This is according to a new report by marketing technology company Wiraya, based on a poll of 500 CRM managers.

Despite not having a great image, CRM is still perceived as a key business driver in a third of businesses. The problems, according to the report, lie in the fact that many lack a clear direction and customer insight to support their goals. Without these things, it’s hard to create direct business profitability.

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The importance of social media to businesses has long been recognized. According to a recent survey, time spent on social platforms represents 28 percent of all online activity, so if it’s important to customers, it naturally becomes important for companies too.

While some firms are content to carry out intermittent checks on Facebook and Twitter, many businesses are now demanding more nuanced ways of monitoring social media content. Social relationship management, or SRM, is a software solution that promises to strategically analyze social network interactions to give your business a competitive edge. With organizations from a broad spectrum of industries all realizing the importance of social media, gaining greater insights in this field could make the difference between success and failure.

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For the vast majority of organizations, customers should be the number one priority. Without their support, revenue streams dry up and businesses quickly fail. For small businesses that have a face-to-face relationship with their clients keeping them happy is straightforward, but in larger organizations ensuring that the relationship between business and customer is as positive as it can be is not always easy.

Imagine being in charge of a global, multi-national company with thousands of customers in disparate locations. Each of these customers has their own specific needs and businesses can’t afford to treat them all as a single homogeneous entity. At the other end of the scale, even growing businesses can struggle to manage their customer relationships because of limited resources. Fortunately, customer relationship management software is on hand to help businesses of all sizes and across a wide range of industries.

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We’ve already covered fintech, and now it’s time to have a look at another technology portmanteau: martech. Short for marketing technology, it refers to innovative new approaches to campaigns and other marketing tactics, driven by software and hardware developments.

It is an area that is experiencing rapid growth, with worldwide martech spending expected to reach $32 billion by 2018, up from $22.6 billion in 2015. Because many of the tools behind the growth of martech are relatively new, such as customer relationship management software and big data analytics, they are generating both opportunities and challenges for many marketers. The test facing businesses is whether they can remain agile enough to harness these new martech solutions to gain a competitive edge.

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Whilst CRM systems are used by many companies to handle their sales processes, they still rely heavily on the human element when it comes to interpreting the data they hold.

Marketing cloud specialist Optimove is seeking to bring machine learning and artificial intelligence to bear on CRM with the launch of Optibot. This is designed to automate the analysis and interpretation of customer marketing campaigns behind the scenes and recommend actionable insights to help marketers improve their campaign performance.

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It has been a few months since Microsoft announced plans to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, and it seems that losing bidder Saleforce is still nursing a bloody nose. Saleforce CEO Marc Benioff is complaining that there are antitrust concerns and is calling on regulators to block the purchase.

Having lost a bidding war with Microsoft -- despite offering more money -- Salesforce now appears hell-bent on messing things up for the company. Salesforce's chief legal officer, Burke Norton, has also voiced concerns that Microsoft could block access to user data to rivals. Microsoft says that this is nonsense, stressing that the deal has almost reached its conclusion.

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HP is turning away from Salesforce and Oracle software to run its sales processes and now plans to use Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) software exclusively in its sales and support departments.

The two companies have entered into a six-year contract and plan to roll out Dynamics CRM to 6,500 of HP's sales staff and 20,000 of its support personnel. Though the dollar amount of this deal is still unknown, around 50 percent of the company's workforce will now use Microsoft's software and services to manage their relationships with customers.

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Salespeople spend a lot of their time in communication with customers and prospects, so time spent updating CRM systems can often be seen as unproductive.

Business cloud platform Zoho aims to change that with the launch of its latest CRM product which incorporates SalesInbox, an email client designed exclusively for salespeople.

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CRM systems have become essential tools for sales and marketing teams, giving them the ability to organize and automate the processes that build good customer relationships.

But off-the-shelf solutions don't always meet the needs of specialist industries. Insurance technology specialist Vertafore is launching its new Agency SalesTrack solution, built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM to cater specifically for the insurance sector.

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Facebook has done an excellent job of becoming the social network, connecting people all over the world. More recently, it has tapped into business markets by providing companies with a quick, easy, and -- importantly -- free way to create an online presence. Now, with an update to its Page plugin, Facebook is making it easier for businesses to connect and communicate with customers.

The update makes it possible to better integrate Facebook with an existing website. Companies can easily add the ability to send a message via their website, and the communication will appear on Facebook on the Messages tab. The update also makes it easier to share news about upcoming events, keeping all-important customer engagement going.

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It's not unusual for businesses to use a number of different applications as part of the customer relationship management process. This means they can end up creating complexities rather than a smooth operation.

App integration specialist Azuqua is launching a purpose-built solution to allow businesses to integrate data, automate business-critical workflows and take control of the customer experience by eliminating disconnection.

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Small businesses are no different from larger ones when seeking to get the most productivity out of each working day. However, they don't always have access to the kind of productivity software used by larger businesses.

To help smaller companies compete, client engagement specialist vCita is launching a new solution built from the ground up to support on-the-go lifestyles of service-based SMBs.

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When you work in sales, there can be rewarding moments, but there are many negative moments too. Not only can the career be boring at times, but it can also be very stressful. You constantly have to worry about meeting goals and performing well. A bad month or quarter could mean a loss of employment or the inability to pay bills.

Gamification, however, can make reaching goals fun. If you aren't familiar, this is a method of integrating video game type badges and levels into boring work tasks in an effort to make it more fun and less stressful. Today, Microsoft announces the acquisition of Incent Games Inc, and its gamification platform, FantasySalesTeam.

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