We Blog CRM

A very interesting development is on the cards. Google Knol is a knowledge sharing platform launched by Google that encourages you to share your knowledge and in the bargain you make money via Google ads. The service is a being seen as a neat ploy by Google to get more exposure for its ads and at the same time establish a presence in the field of Knowledge Sharing.

An interesting aspect of Google Knol is that unlike Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers where all are welcome to add their two bit to a given topic, over here subject authority is a pre-requisite and will be highlighted. The service could also evolve into a very useful knowledge management tool for enterprises who wish to preserve hand-on knowledge acquired by their staff.

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NetSuite, the on-demand ERP vendor, has announced that its IPO has garnered it $185.4 million in sale of 6.2 million shares. Each share cost $26 and is a good $13 more than the $13-$16 that NetSuite officials thought the share would sell for. The IPO was launched on December 10. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and his family owned almost three-fourths of NetSuite prior to the IPO. Their share is expected to fall to sixty six percent after the IPO. NetSuite plans to use the cash to make some acquisitions and repay $8 million balance on a secured line of credit to Tako Ventures, which is controlled by Larry Ellison.

NetSuite’s expected and awaited entry into the public market has an interesting history. NetSuite goes back a long way with SAP. In fact, the company started life as NetLedger – a small business arm of SAP. As NetLedger came into its own, it changed its name to NetSuite and acquired an independent identity. Around this time SaaS was really taking off and Salesforce.com was stealing a march on the rest. Oracle decided to eliminate some competition for NetSuite and purchased Siebel Systems which was one of the main competitors of NetSuite. One of the major factors in NetSuite going public was its rise in revenue that rose 63% to $76.8 million. Although, interestingly the company still reported a loss of $20.6 million.

Maximizer, which bills itself as the leading provider of simple and accessible CRM solutions, launched CRM Express Services. The services suite is a response from the company to what it terms “overwhelming market demand”. The CRM Express Services Suite aims to help SMBs achieve better ROI on their investments and benefit from enhancements in business processes.

The service purports to address the important issue of user adoption that enables SMBs to benefit from knowledge transfer. The service suite can be implemented in a manner that takes into consideration a company’s growth plans and offers the required scope for scalability.

CRM Express Services consist of three categories. These are planning, activation, and optimization.

SugarCRM has added new capabilities to its CRM offering, these include new customization features, on-demand capabilities and an AJAX email client. Sugar 5.0 underwent three rounds of beta testing that involved 30,000 users. SugarCRM is doing its bit along with Microsoft, which has released CRM 4.0, to add spice to the CRM market and get people interested in their New Year offerings.

Sugar 5.0 purports to be much more user friendly and will even enable non-tech users to build custom modules and this could be a handy tool for SMBs. This said there are chances that this new feature may present implementation challenges. A new simplified interface will enable non-techies to edit and rearrange custom dashboards without asking the IT department for help. Automatic upgrades and the freedom for the user to oscillate between on-site and on-demand versions are other features of the new Sugar 5.0.

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Microsoft has released the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, CRM 4.0 and through it the company intends to start shipping from Monday. CRM 4.0, which is the first major upgrade of the CRM software in more than three years. It has evolved a lot from its parent software – Great Plains Software, for which Microsoft had shelled out $1.1 billion around eight years back.

Microsoft aims to utilize CRM to get ahead in the traditional CRM selling space and the SaaS market. New features incorporated into the CRM system include a fully multitenant architecture that will facilitate volume hosting. This is being considered as the single most significant factor that will enable Microsoft to challenge Salesforce and Netsuite. CRM 4.0 also makes use of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 for its enhanced collaboration capabilities. This version will initially be shipped in English only with nine more languages being made available in January.

 An interesting study conducted by the Ponemon Institute has thrown up some interesting facts regarding the (mis)use of customer data. Sixty two percent of the companies that were questioned by Ponemon stated that they used real and sensitive customer data while testing and developing applications.

Given the fact that the data includes employee, vendor and customer records, and credit card and Social Security numbers, it is a little surprising that companies are loath to use duplicate data for testing purposes.

The report states that 52% of companies outsource application testing and 49% of those questioned revealed that they shared sensitive data with the outsiders working on the application testing. Disregard for data security comes across quite strongly in these situations where companies are lazy enough not to use dummy data. This easy access to data can tempt unauthorized people to abuse the data.
Shockingly, well it is shocking you know, 50% of the companies interviewed had no idea if their data had been compromised during the testing and a third were not sure if their data had been lost or stolen during the testing and development phase.

Infusion software has announced that its product Infusion CRM has been named “Best SaaS Small Business CRM Solution” by SellMoreNow.com. The Company also received the “Jim Cecil Award for Excellence in Drip Marketing.” Getting a commendation in the already crowded SaaS CRM market is a no mean feat.

Infusion CRM won the jury over with its capabilities that wed contact management to Web 2.0 internet marketing capabilities. Infusion CRM also offers powerful drip marketing whereby you can initiate relationship building activities with thousands of prospects.
Critical CRM modules included in CRM include e-commerce, lead capture, email marketing, click tracking, billing and collections and other functions of sales, marketing and customer service that are not found in other CRM software programs.

Apparently the jury is still out on the merits of SaaS as a vehicle of distributing software. In an excellent piece Galen Grumen considers actual industry examples where SaaS deployments met with varying degree of success with respect to their integration with core company apps.

One aspect that hinders SaaS integration is that SaaS providers do not offer out-of-the-box support for APIs of other enterprise applications. In other words, cross vendor integration is limited and this often leads to a scaling down of software capabilities upon deployment. It can isolate a significant portion of your other software from your CRM.

An interesting point which the article raises is that although SaaS CRM purports to be what its name suggests, in reality its capabilities are limited to functions like contact management and sales force automation. The heavy duty transaction management activities are in most cases executed by in-house software.

It looks like we are fast headed toward another convergence of technologies. According to a recent report from ABI Research traditional map-production technologies are fast becoming obsolete.

The reason is the tremendous increase in the volume of map and navigation details that can be managed only with the help of digital-mapping services. This is leading to an integration between between mapping and location-based services. An example of the significance of mapping in the navigation and location value chain is the recent acquisition of NAVTEQ by Nokia.

The upshot of all this for CRM is that you can access user generated street level maps, travel direction, and local information for geo-targeting.

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GI Insight, an integrated marketing specialist, has found that an impressive 19% of top UK companies have demonstrated their keenness to implementing CRM by appointing a dedicated Head of CRM. Is that really a measure of commitment to a cause, in government undertakings such a move serves effectively to silence detractors and to show things are moving but this is the private sector that we talk about… so I guess the increase in dedicated CRM directors over the past two years only augurs well for CRM vendors.

Another question that pops into my head is that what has prompted the big companies to commit to CRM. Now am not saying that the GI Insight report is biased in any way but getting information on the state of preparedness, the manner in which these companies went about their preparation, their prime objectives for pushing for CRM and other such points would be of considerable interest and could throw light on what different industries perceive to be their strong points and weak points regarding CRM and their expectations from CRM.

Managing Director, Andy Wood explains why the research can be taken as an accurate measure of companies’ commitment to CRM thus “Since one-off CRM technology costs can be written off and ongoing senior people costs cannot, a company that puts CRM into the title of one of its senior managers is making a real statement of commitment to CRM. In many cases, measurable return on investment has to be proved before a company will appoint a Head of CRM into a senior directorial role (regardless of whether this is an internal promotion or external hire).”

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