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It’s an interesting thought and I am not aware of very many verticals untouched, except perhaps the semiconductor industry. The trend for sometime has been toward offering industry specific solutions as the thinking over the past 5-6 years has been that the horizontal market has played itself out.

The big ones Oracle and SAP have around 25 verticals covered. These include Automotive, manufacturing, government, insurance, travel, retail banking, energy, healthcare, travel, financial services, high-tech, etc. Within the sectors covered, there will surely be a few industries that are as yet untapped, for example is there a CRM for the retail of books. Its not big business and it has its own unique processes so maybe its too much of a pain to go through pre-customizing a CRM solution for this business.

Surely, an enterprising SaaS player could dig up a few vertical niches that are not huge but capturing a few of them can give a vendor a good foothold to branch off later. Comments invited on CRM verticals as yet untapped.

Technorati Tags: crm, Oracle, SAP, verticals

Here’s something that I have always thought about and it seems am on the same wavelength as Shane over at ITWorldCanada. The issue here is regarding the importance that we need to accord to CRM products and in my opinion also how new a thing is CRM. Sure, the term is not more than a couple of decades old but as a stratagem CRM has existed as long as business and trade has been there.

So, the question to ask is what is it that makes a CRM endeavor a success? How much of it is the software and whether do you really need CRM software at all? To the latter question, lets say we do need the software but how do we then account for the astonishing rate of failure with CRM deployments.

The vendors are never going to agree that its the product. If it is the methodology then perhaps it means that companies are investing too much faith in the software and not bothering to get right the human aspect that involves intuition, lateral thinking, brilliant sales, good follow-ups, obtaining information from data and using it and other such skills.

It is strange that such a crucial aspect of CRM, the human angle, fails one CRM project after another. Its ironical that companies have many aspects of CRM well covered before they go in for a CRM deployment only to see things spiral downward later.

Technorati Tags: crm, customer relationship management, open source, sales

Looks like a likely partnership between two companies with catchy names. SugarCRM, which is one of the premier open source CRM developers out there has helped Geeks on the Way offer improved call center services. Geeks on the way, by the way, is a technology support firm based in Western Canada.

The self-proclaimed geeks provide technical support to residences and small offices and have had around 45,000 calls handled till date. When we consider that its 45,000 calls with 20,000 unique customers serviced then we know that these geeks are running a well-co-ordinated unit.

SugarCRM has helped the geeks to manage increasing call volumes more effectively by providing an integrated voice and CRM system. The open source technologies has made it easier for the geeks to integrate the call center environment with other technologies such as mapping technologies and the result is superior service and timely attendance to calls. Call handling time has been reduced drastically from 2-3 minutes to around 20 seconds. The open source SugarCRM
architecture also fits in nicely with the Geeks expansion and growth plans.

Clearly, Sugar has won over the geeks at Geeks on the Way and the company now plans to extend SugarCRM to other departments; it has already integrated Sugar with its accounting and e-commerce systems.

November 07 is the new version of RightNow Technologies’ enterprise class, on-demand customer relationship management solution. November 07 has several interesting features to help online retailers sell more and sell again. These include product catalogs and product information for customers, utilizing RSS feeds to tackle customer queries and propagating content simultaneously across multiple websites.

The most common customer questions are monitored and these are displayed as links to a knowledge base. The User Interface has been revamped. Features such as analytics, feedback, voice and workspace have been enhanced. The version is available in 33 languages. The CRM is also integrated with the Demandware e-commerce suite that offers product content management, promotion features such as click-to-chat, order tracking, and related functions.

Advances in communication have opened up endless possibilities and the increasing number of mobile devices offering browsing experience has caught the fancy of CRM vendors who are now exploring the many benefits that mobile CRM can offer. The most obvious benefit being that company employees can access CRM data on the move. So no more excuses for sales leads not being converted into sales. The mobile workforce is now in a position to access up-to-date data in real time and take decisions accordingly.

Compass Intelligence LLC carried out research to find out how mobile applications will fare in the coming years; its research suggests that in the U.S alone, spending on mobile applications will touch $9 billion by 2011, at present it’s around $ 4 billion. A fair amount of that money will likely be pumped into mobile CRM.

Go here to learn more about Chuck Dietrich’s thoughts on mobile CRM.

Amidst all the noise that SaaS is the only way to go a new report from Datamonitor, catchily titled ‘Decision Matrix: Selecting a CRM Vendor’ states that the worldwide spending on CRM licenses is set to touch $ 6.6 billion by the year end 2012. Datamonitor has developed a decision matrix to help businesses evaluate vendors on the basis of technology offered, reputation, and their impact of their products on the market.

Datamonitor’s top rankers are Oracle and SAP. The market research firm feels that these two giants provide the best solutions in terms of functionality, integration of CRM with upcoming communication technologies, flexible deployments, and a good mix of on-premise and on-demand solutions.

The chief competitors to the big two are Salesforce.com, Chordiant, and Infor. Waiting below this rung are vendors like RightNow Technologies and Consona. The space will get further crowded if Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 finds takers. So, basically these are interesting times for the CRM space.

Technorati Tags: crm, datamonitor, Oracle

CRM vendors are now offering would-be clients help in preparing a business case for deploying CRM (basically getting the CEO to loosen the purse strings). It is a savvy business move by these vendors who do all they can to portray the business benefits of their products and services, of course clothed in the lingo of tech jargon and powerpoint presentations that are bound to impress all but the most hardened money conscious CEO.

Aspective is a niche consultancy provider and a winner of the Microsoft’s global CRM partner of the year award believes in the power of communication. It talks to departments in a company that stand to benefit from the CRM deployment and offers them perspective on what to realistically expect from the deployment. Read more

Rescompany Systems has just been awarded the contract to provide Seattle-based Majestic America Line with all its CRM needs. Majestic America Line represents Rescompany’s first move into the North American market.

Majestic America Line, formed through the combination of American West Steamboat Company and the vessels of the Delta Queen Steamboat Company, is said to be the premier river and coastal cruising company in the United States.

Rescompany Systems provides reservation and CRM software solutions to the travel and leisure industry. The RESCO software suite is designed to support cruises, day cruises, wholesalers, tour operators, charters, individual excursions, holiday villages and package groups. Rescompany has local offices in Sydney, Salzburg and Vancouver.

Xtime, Inc., a provider of CRM solutions for service operations, today announced that Ferman Automotive Group of Tampa, Fla., has committed to a group-wide rollout of Xtime’s flagship software product, ServiceCRM.

Xtime’s ServiceCRM combines consumer web scheduling, service BDC automation, advanced shop control and sophisticated service marketing.

Xtime now provides CRM solutions to automotive service operations in over 700 dealerships; company figures show that over 1,000,000 appointments have been booked via Xtime. Privately held and based in San Mateo, Calif., Xtime investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, RPM Ventures and France Telecom’s Innovacom.

Ferman Motor Car Company and its affiliated dealerships sell and service thirteen automotive brands from eighteen locations in the Tampa Bay area. The company sells more than 12,000 new and over 6,500 used include Acura, BMW, Buick, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, GMC, Jeep, Mazda, MINI, Nissan, Pontiac and Volvo cars each year. Ferman is reportedly one of the nation’s oldest family-owned and operated automotive groups in America with a foundation date of 1895.

Tigerpaw Software, Inc., a provider of customer relationship management and professional service automation software for small- and mid-sized businesses, announced this week its first real-time seamless accounting software integration between Tigerpaw CRM+ and QuickBooks, known by name as QBTrak. (Is that “QB” as in “quarterback”?)

QBTrak was developed and sold by TigerTrak, a division of Action Networks, LLC. QBTrak creates a link between CRM+ and QuickBooks that seeks to allow seamless and instant transfer of data between the two applications. Touted features in the solution include real-time accounts receivable integration, real-time customer list integration, and automated customer credit hold.

QBTrak is a component of TigerTrak’s Sentry companion-product suite built for Tigerpaw CRM+. Sentry, which retails for $999, includes tools for contract expiration notification, quote expiration notification, service order escalation, closed service order reporting, and custom purchase order generation. Sentry requires Tigerpaw CRM+ version 10.5.

Features planned for future release include a wizard to configure CRM+ price book data for use with QuickBooks; quote-to-estimate integration; collection utilities; timesheet integration; and customer price level analysis to monitor and adjust rates based on payment history.