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Reframing service as a profit center is the key to driving new growth – So says James L. Watson, regional manager, Neocase Software. In an exclusive viewpoint published at DestinationCRM, James states that all you need to do to drive growth from CRM is to look at it differently, consider it a profit center. Apparently, a shift in perspective will enable you to get your CRM activities to become a major revenue driver.

A read through his article tells that this is all that you need to do to make money from CRM, get a quick ROI. I say this because, although he suggests a difference in perspective, the accompanying activities are simply those that one would normally associate with a successfully operating CRM deployment.

James goes on mention activities such as offering good service, up-selling, cross-selling, etc as those that you need to do if you are going to look at CRM as a profit center on par with sales and marketing.

To be honest, I didn’t really understand the point of the article. I mean the ultimate objective of deploying a CRM solution has always been to make money – make money by keeping the customers happy. So, how does adding some new nomenclature to it make a difference when you are not introducing any new activities to go with your new concept? Is this vinegar in a wine bottle?

P.S The last paragraph of his article reminds me of typical boardroom pep talk that my boss used to give me. Does nothing to make it easy for the guys who are actually facing the heat out there.

Verticals onDemand, which provides SaaS CRM solutions for the pharmaceutical sector, has brought forth the VBioPharma Primary Care Edition CRM application targeted at the Life Sciences organizations. This new CRM is the first of its kind in that it has been pre-validated for PDMA and the Food and Drug Administration s CFR Part 11 compliance. The call reporting and sampling system offered by Verticals onDemad comes with IQ and OQ documentation. This validation helps reduce costs and protects the company from potentially damaging consent decrees that can cost a company millions of dollars.

Learn more about VBioPharma.

Loyalty Lab’s integrated marketing platform features a stand-alone email product that enables integrated targeting, segmentation, and CRM capabilities. Businesses can send personalized and precise messages thanks to a range of data integration options. The platform is easy to deploy, in fact it is as the company puts it ‘Ready-Aim-Engage’. Marketers can use emails to create marketing messages that can be utilized in different environments such as social networks. Multi-channel integration allows marketers to follow campaign performance and tweak their efforts accordingly.

Navigor has launched Oracle’s Siebel-on-demand solution for SMBs in South Africa. Navigor hopes to push the new Siebel-on-demand offering as a solution for the CRM requirements of SMBs. The CRM is available as a rental option thereby putting it within reach of businesses of all sizes. Low entry costs, good broadband connectivity, no maintenance costs are some of the advantages that small businesses can hope to avail with the new Oracle offering.

Navigor will help businesses modify and categorize the CRM solution as per customer requirements. A little strangely, Navigor feels that convincing SMBs about the benefits of a hosted solution will be a challenge. It would be interesting to learn of other places apart from South Africa where SMBs need to be educated about the benefits of a hosted solution.

Boomi, which is in the very interesting business of on-demand integration products, has announced that MDS Pharma Services has implemented its product to integrate Salesforce CRM application with its legacy on-premise Oracle applications. The Boomers are confident that their integration app is the right shot in the arm for MDS which will now be able to improve operational efficiencies by means of more accurate data and reporting.

The integration of SaaS and on-premise applications will enable MDS Pharma Services to maintain a smoother information flow without any additional hardware installations. Boomi apps work via point-and-click, drag-and-drop.

Learn more here.

Am not sure if Maximizer is stepping into virgin territory, for me at least this is the first time that I am hearing of CRM for the sole proprietor. Of course there are contact managers out there that can be used by entrepreneurs and work from home moms but what Maximizer has done is to be there for the entrepreneur and hopefully grow with him as he moves towards becoming a mid-market player.

The Maximizer Contact Manager allows entrepreneurs to get an idea of how to incorporate CRM into their business. Maximizer hopes that once businesspersons learn the CRM ropes with the help of the stripped down version they will move to the vendor editions that offer more bells and whistles. This transition to a full-featured CRM will accompany a maturity in business and will happen in a seamless manner so that entrepreneurs can add functionalities such as customer service, case management, and marketing when they feel that the time is right.
Maximizer is offering its entrepreneur package at a low cost; features offered include analytics, mobility, reporting and time management and more.

Oracle has stated that the growth prospects for its CRM and on-demand CRM solutions are looking good in the Asia Pacific region. The company’s partner base in the Asia Pacific, consisting of Siebel CRM On Demand resellers and implementation experts, has increased to more than 48 in the short span of 12 months.

A little unsurprisingly the company sees itself as the CRM market leader, though SAP, Salesforce.com and even Microsoft may have their own definitions of a CRM leader. Here’s Will Bosma evangelizing on how Oracle is the CRM Holy Grail for companies in the Asia Pacific. I wish, though, he had said something a little more original than exceeding customer expectations. 17% of the CRM market in the AP region is under Oracle’s control.

A nation-wide survey conducted in England conducted on behalf of HTK as revealed that a huge 66% of SMEs are not happy with the procedures that they have in place for dealing with customers. The survey covered more than 200 SMBs. According to Cambridge-based research specialist, Analysys that carried out the survey a lot of SMBs were pretty open to the idea of hosted technology. Almost all SMEs considered were technologically aware and over two-thirds had a broadband connection.

A significant proportion, more than half in fact stated that it intended to deploy hosted software within the next twelve months. The survey covered businesses across a spectrum of technologies and industries. Capital cost, understandably was the main concern and stumbling block in implementing CRM. Traditional CRM is an expensive proposition and inspite of problems with marketing and customer management, many SMEs simply do not entertain thoughts of CRM. SaaS has offered a ray of hope as it’s a much cheaper software alternative.

On February 12th, RightNow announced its on-demand CRM solution designed for retailers. Existing features of RightNow CRM include self-service, call center and email management applications and knowledge foundation. These come preconfigured with the offering for retailers which also offers features like RightNow Chat to enable retailers to converse one-to-one with customer, Voice of the customer which allows retailers to capture and measure customer feedback, Shopping cart and post purchase surveys, and other features.

Visit the RightNow site to learn more about their retail CRM offering.

Here’s the lowdown on yet another study on CRM, this time by Gartner. Sometimes I feel that CRM single-handedly keeps a lot of these research companies afloat. Anyway, a Gartner October 2007 study states that the European CRM software market is expected to grow at the rate of 12% in 2008. The growth rates in 2006 and 2007 were 8.2% and 14% respectively.

The forecast for CRM growth in 2008 is positive inspite of uncertainties in the financial market. The reason for this is that 66% of companies questioned as a part of the survey stated that CRM initiatives were one of their top three priorities for the year. A very interesting fact is that 2008 is the year when most companies will be shifting to new-generation CRM systems. So, it’s the end of one cycle that began somewhere in 2008. Spending in one sense is thus unavoidable. CRM modules or sub-sectors that will be the drivers for CRM deployment are SFA and marketing and analytics software.

Here’s more on the same topic.