Articles about CRM

Customer relationship management is on target to be a $36 billion market by 2017, overtaking enterprise resource planning as the most significant enterprise tool.

Business software selection specialist Capterra has surveyed over 500 users of CRM in the US to determine the ways they find, buy and use their software.

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[BetaNews Recommended Reading] Companies today have access to more information about their customers than ever before. This gives them the opportunity to effectively personalize their marketing messages, but are they failing to take advantage of the opportunities this offers? And with large volumes of often unstructured data available how difficult is it to find and use the right information?

We spoke to Sara Vera, data scientist at CRM specialist Insightly to find out more about the challenges enterprises face in adapting to a personalized world.

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No matter how effective a business is at selling products or services it's the quality of customer service that often determines how consumers feel about it.

A new report from research company Gartner looks at the importance of mobile customer service and how it will need to adapt in the future.

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By allowing companies to track and manage customer interactions, CRM (customer relationship management) systems are key to the success of sales and marketing teams. There are a lot of alternative systems to choose from though which can present a problem when it comes to picking the best option for the needs of a particular enterprise.

In order to help with this business software user review site G2 Crowd has produced its regular Grid report ranking 27 different CRM systems.

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CRM has been around for a long time, but don't be tempted to think that it's on the way out. Companies are seeing CRM technology as a major part of their digital initiatives in order to improve customer experience.

This is the finding of the latest Gartner market trends report which says that demand for improved customer relationships is driving the expanded integration and use of CRM technology.

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Bitrix24, the enterprise social network aimed at small and medium sized businesses, has released a new version of its cloud-based service.

Only three months on from the last release the latest version aims to improve telephony, CRM and collaboration features for its users.

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Cloud, cloud, cloud. This is a word that is prevalent when describing modern services, and one that we hear all too often nowadays. The premise is simple: move stuff somewhere you cannot control and leave it to someone (or some company) to do the backend work for you. For CRM software this approach appears to be ideal, as both the developing companies and their clients seem to embrace it.

CRM software used to be associated with on-premise solutions, but this approach has failed to integrate well into the new computing landscape where mobile devices are used increasingly around the office and on the go. A mobile-friendly philosophy is key. I chatted with Pipedrive, a company that makes cloud-based CRM software, about how it leverages the cloud and what the benefits are for its 30,000 users.

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The holy grail for businesses is to understand what their customers are going to do. Marketing departments spend a lot of time and effort trying to predict consumer behavior. Enacomm's 4Cast customer relationship management product looks to help in the quest by using past and present data in order to predict future customer behavior.

By creating what it calls a 'Dynamic Decisioning Solution' Enacomm aims to help companies know who their customers are, what they want and what they're going to do. The result is better customer service, enhanced brand loyalty, increased efficiency and improved profitability thanks to the ability to cross sell.

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Bitrix24 offers social intranet for enterprises and small to medium businesses, but with a twist -- the firm’s cloud-based service is entirely free for organizations with 12 or fewer users and includes 5GB of online storage space and essential tools, such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), project management, and instant messaging.

We’ve covered the firm’s service previously, but Bitrix24 has just rolled out a new version of its CRM platform that comes with project management fully integrated. Tasks, calendars and other similar tools are now available from within the CRM module and documents can be stored inside the CRM, attached to entries, and shared with employees (with different rights levels controlling access).

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Next week, private social networking startup Unison is launching on both the iOS and Android platforms, so enterprise users can have mobile access to all the features of the browser-based version of Unison, plus persistent presence and voice note chatting from your mobile device.

The overall impact of social media on the enterprise sector is difficult to measure. It has changed interpersonal communications, it has changed the information cycle, and it has changed the way companies observe and interact with their customers. Though the impact is still difficult to measure, it's relatively easy to create a picture of the overall enterprise social media landscape with qualitative assessments.

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Maybe it wasn't drool-worthy enough for heaps of fanboys to liveblog, but Leading Cloud CRM provider Salesforce has already rolled out a host of big news at its week-long Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Some of the news has been in the form of new product unveilings and new partnerships that focus primarily upon expanding Salesforce's social CRM functionality, and growing its business into newer, less-trodden territory.

Some of the news has taken the form of progress updates on Salesforce as a company, and on the state of enterprise cloud business as a whole. Those who are acutely aware of bubble-like investment opportunities where growth is fast but returns on investment are uncertain will want to take note.

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In a highly logical collision of functionality, enterprise social media management platform HootSuite on Tuesday announced support for Microsoft's enterprise social network Yammer had been added via a new App in the HootSuite App Directory.

With the Yammer app installed, HootSuite users can view and participate in conversations, interact with groups, Like or reply to updates, and view or add attachments directly from the HootSuite dashboard.

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Cloud-based customer service startup Freshdesk on Tuesday announced the availability of the HTML5-based mobile app version of its helpdesk solution called FreshMobile. Like Salesforce's recently launched Desk.com mobile support solution, FreshMobile hooks up with the Freshdesk CRM system and lets agents resolve customer queries from any mobile device.

The idea behind FreshMobile is that it makes mobile support possible while working within the constraints of a mobile device. Freshdesk agents can create, save and reuse canned response templates for replying to tickets from their mobile device. The application also introduces a feature called "Solution Suggest," which uses previous activity to learn the most likely course of action on a given support ticket.

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New York City buzzed earlier this week when Salesforce announced it will acquire Buddy Media for $689 million. For those that have watched Mike Lazerow build the company from "a social media agency", as people jabbed in the early days, to a true social management platform, this outcome doesn’t come as a surprise. Buddy quickly grew as brands’ presence on social media shifted from experimental marketing budgets to a critical part of any chief marketing officer’s strategy. While Buddy originally (and wisely) hitched its wagon to Facebook as the network took off, they have since diversified outside the walls of Mark Zuckerberg’s castle and into other networks and platforms like Twitter, Google+ and more.

While this purchase may or may not come as a surprise to people, I have seen many folks scratching their heads and asking: "Why Salesforce?" Why not go, instead, with WPP (who’s an investor), Facebook, or another big agency holding company. The answer to this question lies in the difference of business fundamentals between agencies, Facebook, and Salesforce.

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Catering to the special marketing needs of nonprofit organizations, Blackbaud Inc. on Thursday released a new version of its Blackbaud CRM software which expands the software's functionality with a new browser-based dashboard, new fundraising and membership management functionality, and improved overall data management.

The major addition to Blackbaud CRM 2.93 is its Web dashboard. Previously, the software was only available as a Windows application, but now it can be accessed through Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Safari for iOS, and Android. The dashboard features a new, streamlined user interface and new batch commit functionality.

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