Growing interest by customers in SaaS delivery and competition from pure-play vendors has led traditional CRM vendors to respond with their own SaaS offerings, such as the Oracle On Demand and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online solutions. Also, Sage Software now offers SageCRM as both an on-premise and SaaS solution.
Customer-relationship management vendor Maximizer (TSX: MAX) says most of its mobile CRM users favour the BlackBerry platform, and the ever-changing dynamics of mobility require more frequent platform refreshes, leading to the recently released Maximizer 10.5 Freedom for BlackBerry.
Developed by Vancouver-based Maximizer Software, Maximizer is a portfolio of CRM and contact management solutions for business users. Maximizer Freedom is designed specifically for mobile users to extend the capabilities of their CRM platform to their smartphones said Angie Hirata, worldwide director of marketing and business development for Maximizer.
Voices.com, an online marketplace for voice talent, uses "CRM on demand" from Salesforce.com to manage various aspects of its rapidly growing business. Salesforce.com helps the online firm identify long-term opportunities — and missed ones — becoming the central hub for all decision-making.
Gartner says that CRM software growth will remain strong for another 10 years. There may be more good news than they think. If there is consolidation in the market place as many are predicting then fewer players will help providers hold up their pricing models. Those industry specific vertical CRM solutions that remain independent will also benefit because their functionality and integration to their specific industry will insulate the price point. And finally, if Software as a Service does take off like wild fire the price point per user is already much more expensive than most on premise CRM applications. Assuming some degradation in pricing on those offerings they still won’t supplant a lower price point for purchased CRM offerings. CRM is still growing in adoption and the product is maturing and that provides fertile ground for margin and profitability.
AMC Technology, a leading provider of multi-channel integration solutions for contact centers, announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC)’s, www.tmcnet.com, Customer Interaction Solutions magazine (www.cismag.com) has named AMC Application Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a recipient of a 2009 CRM Excellence Award. Customer Interaction Solutions has been the premier publication in the CRM, contact center and teleservices industries since 1982.
This selection represents the third time that AMC Technology has been chosen to receive the CRM Excellence Award.
Pam Baker, insideCRM
CRM vendors pitch their software with great enthusiasm, rightfully claiming that CRM is a must-have in a troubled economy. But beyond all the hype, are CRM providers themselves using CRM to tend to their customers’ needs?
Inside CRM looked at five CRM vendors to see if they practice what they preach.
In a nod social networking’s increasingly prominent place in business settings, San Francisco’s Salesforce.com – a Web-based customer relationship management and Software-as-a-Service provider – reportedly is poised to offer a CRM application for Twitter.
According to Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com (News - Alert), the company has, since January, seen "tremendous momentum and validation" from customers, prospects, and partners that the Service Cloud represents the future of customer service.
“Today’s announcement builds on this momentum by enabling companies to join the conversations happening between the more than eight million users on Twitter," Benioff said.
Paul Greenberg, CRM 2.0: The Conversation
Over the last few days, social analyst Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang and PR 2.0 pundit Brian Solis have been calling Twitters’s Future: Social CRM. Jeremiah did it in his wildly popular Web Strategist blog here and Brian did it in his very good PR 2.0 Blog here. While Jeremiah’s argument is somewhat different than Brian’s the basic premise that both of them have is that Twitter can be (not is going to be) a Social CRM something. Product? System? A little unclear actually.
The reality is that they’re both wrong. Twitter is an increasingly important channel that provides businesses with a means to engage customers on Twitter and to gather data in real time from Twitter, potentially. If Twitter was to be social CRM system or product, it would need the level of overhaul that would make it Twitter no longer. Twocial TweeRM?
Jeremiah claims that Twitter has two of the three elements of CRM - customers and relationships. Just not management.
Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today celebrates the ten year anniversary of its founding, and with it, ten years of customer success. A decade ago, salesforce.com was founded with a bold vision for The End of Software. Today, the company’s cloud computing model has enabled new levels of success for more than 1.5 million net paying subscribers at 55,400 companies around the world, and spurred a new industry of SaaS providers.
"I’d like to thank our customers, who have created an unprecedented record of success and inspired our best innovations," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at salesforce.com. "There’s only one way to describe this past decade: The End of Software. As we look forward to the next decade, we see not only applications, but also platforms running in the cloud. The age of enterprise cloud computing is here."
Paul Greenberg, CRM 2.0: The Conversation
The buzz around social CRM and CRM 2.0 is picking up. The strategists are getting out there and throwing fastballs down the heart of the plate (ahhh, spring training. Go Yankees!) and pushing recognition that CRM has always been a strategy, as Gartner CRM Eurodemigod Ed Thompson points out at ZDNET UK in his great 10 year CRM retrospective. CRM 2.0 follows in that fine tradition - strategy first, vendor second. What’s interesting is the steam emerging - its hot and high volume, wide area. Several long time CRM influencers and analysts (I’ve run across about a dozen key folks) who have stayed away from the CRM 2.0/social CRM debate for a long while are now coming back into it full bore and some of the social gurus are stepping into the discussion on social CRM too. Welcome back and welcome to everyone who wants to take off the gloves and extend the discussion. I’m going to throw my generic two cents in here since I’ve read everything that the CRMers and social-ers have to say on the subject to date.
