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Everyone wants a piece of the iPad CRM pie and Alauras Software is no exception. Alauras has just unveiled the latest version of its iPad CRM software: Yellow Page CRM+. This move is meant to boost sales force automation capabilities and Alauras will be adding full online compatibility with the iPad. Althought Yellow Page CRM+ was initially focused on specific solutions for Yellow Page publishers, it now supports a variety of other print and online media.

On their seventh attempt (aka Version 7.0), the iPad Yellow Page CRM+ offers improved reporting and eContract automation, new customer service functionality and support for the iPad. Regular Version 7.0 will not see any price increase but its iPad CRM counterpart will be offered at a slight premium.

Why did they decide to move onto iPad pastures? Imagine the silent groan of prospects when they view yet another presentation on a clunky laptop. The iPad not only gives a wow factor but also allows the user to make use of the touch screen device to complete presentations, monitor customer service requests and execute contracts. Video presentations for clients can be managed and signatures can be done on the touch screen by using your fingertip or a Mac-based stylus with this convenient iPad CRM solution.

At the moment, there are two publishers participating in a closed test of the iPad CRM software. One company was quoted as saying “The Alauras iPad CRM offers the efficiency we need, and is proving it creates a speedy and extremely compelling sales experience.”

Alauras is striving for innovation for the yellow page industry with its leap into iPad CRM. With a flexible cross-platform publishing systems, we’re sure the industry will thank them.

Yesterday, Jacada Ltd., a provider of CRM and other customer service solutions, began its inaugural series “Customer Service 2.0: Access the Experts,” an online customer service blogging and training seminar program on Jacada.com.

Evidently, slapping “2.0” onto the end of everything is trendy nowadays.

The CRM education program provides, free of charge, a forum of current IT issues and developments in customer service. “Access the Experts” features online resources such as expert blogs, webinars, and articles led by experienced professionals from call center operations, CRM solutions, social media, and other customer service fields.

Richard Stern, senior vice president of marketing and products at Jacada, hopes that through this project, businesses will be able to understand the cutting edge of CRM.

“’Access The Experts’ is an opportunity to move beyond the hype and bring some of the most respected experts in the industry together for a thoughtful discussion,” he says. “By leveraging our website, blog, Twitter feed and a series of online webinars, we’re opening up a dialogue that will be educational and thought-provoking for our customers and the industry-at-large.”

As listed on their website, expert analysts for the educational series will include:

Penny Reynolds is the Founding Partner of The Call Center School, a Nashville, Tennessee-based consulting and education firm, where she develops and teaches courses on a wide variety of call center topics and speaks at many industry conferences and association meetings. She has spent over 20 years in the call center and telecommunications industry and is the author of several call center management books.

Bruce Temkin is the Managing Partner of the Temkin Group, a customer experience research and consulting firm helping large organizations improve business results by changing how they deal with customers. During his 12 years with Forrester Research, Bruce led the company’s B2B, financial services, and customer experience practices. As a Vice President & Principal Analyst, he was the most-read analyst for 13 consecutive quarters and was one of the most highly demanded consultants and speakers in the industry. He is the author of the popular Customer Experience Matters blog, a noted speaker and a frequent advisor to Fortune 500 firms.

Esteban Kolsky is the Principal and Founder of ThinkJar, an advisory and research think-tank focused on customer experience, CRM and feedback management. He has over 22 years of experience in customer service and CRM consulting, research, and advisory services. At Gartner, he focused on Customer Service and CRM research. While there he coined the terms for EFM (enterprise feedback management) and CIH (customer interaction hub). In addition, he wrote on the social networking topics that led to today’s revolution and assisted Fortune 500 and Global 2,000 organizations in all aspects of their CRM deployments.

Brent Leary is a CRM industry analyst, advisor, author, speaker and award winning blogger. He is co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, an Atlanta based CRM advisory firm covering tools and strategies for improving business relationships. Recognized by InsideCRM as one of the 25 most influential industry leaders, Leary also is a past recipient of CRM Magazine’s Most Influential Leader Award. He serves on the national board of the CRM Association, and on the advisory board of the University of Toronto’s newly created CRM Center of Excellence. He’s been quoted in several national business publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and Entrepreneur magazine. He writes the Social CRM column for Inc.com’s technology site, and serves as Blogger-in-Residence for TheSocialCustomer.com.

Additionally, Jacada executives and consultants will toss in their two cents with company research and case studies.

The CRM discussions will continue on until the end of October. More information can be found at their website at www.jacada.com.

Who knew, it saves money to arm delivery guys with iPads.

Arhaus Furniture, an Ohio-based furniture maker with stores across the Midwest and eastern United States, is equipping each of its delivery drivers with an iPad. The company aims not only to cut down on paper usage, but to actually improve sales.

During this fall when the technology will be deployed, drivers will bring the iPad on deliveries and use it as part of a mobile CRM system; iPads will be used to obtain customer signatures, during which customers will also have a chance to view the furniture catalog and a thank-you video message from the company president.

“We look at our drivers as a secondary sales force. Customers might order a sofa but no tables with it. This really becomes more a point-of-sale tool for our drivers, says Roddy.

For a while, the company has been looking for such a mobile, handheld device to allow its drivers to access CRM capabilities, says John Roddy, senior vice president of logistics for Arhaus. However, the fact that these devices are built to handheld size is a problem.

“We have delivery guys who are big, burly guys, and they have problems double keying,” says Roddy. “But then, the new IT directory and I sat down and he threw out the idea of the iPad and I said, ‘Come on – it’s just an oversized phone.” However, Roddy was won over by the iPad when he took it on a summer vacation.

With iPad adoption, Arhaus will be able to compile business apps and CRM solutions it will employ on the one device. The company has been a longtime customer of TOA Technologies (an IT solutions provider), who will produce the signature capture application for Arhaus. TOA already provides an internal workforce management system for the company to schedule deliveries, which can now be accessed through the iPad. Arhaus will also use GPS-based applications on the iPad to track where trucks are.

As amusing as it’s going to be for customers to receive iPads from surly delivery guys, this isn’t a frivolous company purchase. Roddy calculates that by eliminating the paper delivery tickets the company would have printed over the year, Arhaus will pay for the iPads with $10,000 to spare. Roddy also hopes this will cut down on fuel usage, customer service staffing, and truck mileage. This isn’t to mention any possible improvements in customer service, CRM management, sales, etc.

Arhaus will order 40 iPads for the roughly 25 trucks it has on the road each day, and hopes to have the new mobile CRM system in place by this November.

Some recent studies point to a rising trend of social media usage in the workplace.

Research commissioned by Open Text Corporation, a Canadian enterprise content management solution provider, finds that more than half of businesses surveyed in the United Kingdom use social media in the workplace. Further, a whopping 95% believe that social media offers businesses an opportunity to improve both internal and external communication.

The research was done at Open Text’s customer Content Day Event, and surveyed more than 300 IT executives and business leaders.

43% view the direct and personal online interaction with customers and partners as the key benefit of social media. However, security issues were cited by 41% of respondents as a roadblock to long-term social media adoption in the workplace; 20% said that lack of control over content was a concern.

More than a quarter of large organizations expect social media to improve customer service. 93% believe that corporate blogging can help corporate communications.

On social media site usage, more than a quarter of companies surveyed regularly use Twitter for business functions, while LinkedIn, the most popular website, is used by 35%. Also, 40% said they prefer Facebook and LinkedIn above other social media sites for their ease of use.

In slightly related social media business news, SuperLumin Networks recently introduced a Social Media Cache, which is intended to help small businesses handle the bandwidth use of social media applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.

Social media websites use a redirection model to distribute content, which means that the same Web objects are stored multiple times, often from different servers with different URLs. The SuperLumin Social Media Cache determines whether an object has already been retrieved from another server, and then provides that content from the existing cache inventory.

In its own press release, SuperLumin cited another study by Network Box, which provides security services. For social media usage, “Youtube topped the list, consuming 7.8% of corporate bandwidth, followed closely by Facebook at 4.4%.” The study further found that 5.8% of all enterprise network Web traffic goes to Facebook.

Social media can be a useful tool to connect to customers and clients. But granted, much of social media traffic will probably come from idle, distracted employees scrabbling for sources of entertainment at their desk.

Salesforce.com has moved beyond providing customer relationship management software as a service and wants to be simply the provider of enterprise software as a service. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, recently posted an image of two mockups for Salesforce.com ads and asked for feedback. For the first time, it is a refreshing change to see a billion-dollar software company reach out to the community like this – but beyond social media this shows how Salesforce.com is moving from being a customer relationship management focused player, to being a true multi-disciplined technology company. The question asked by Benioff offers a real insight into where Salesforce.com is.

Clearly it is seen as the quintessential SaaS company — but out of necessity for continued growth, it has moved beyond this — Chatter, the AppExchange, Force.com, VMforce are all examples of Salesforce.com wanting to be much more than a simple (or even complex) sales tool. Initially Force.com created a programming platform to allow Salesforce.com customers to significantly broaden the functionality of their applications while the AppExchange created a marketplace for developers to sell those applications. More recently Chatter has sought to broaden the impact of Salesforce.com by creating a social feature set while VMforce moves decidedly down the stack in an effort to offer a platform as a service.

Which is why the simple question posted on Facebook is pretty telling — the cutlines under the ads tell of two fundamentally different propositions –- one limited and focused on sales, the other offering a broader enterprise toolset. I expect the messaging from inside Salesforce.com to becomes less sales-centric going forward as the product and the target market becomes broader.

This is more than just Salesforce.com grappling with its market perception however. Others in enterprise software consider it a threat as well. For example, Microsoft’s patent infringement lawsuit and IBM’s product related reactions to Salesforce’s move to the cloud give an indication of just how seriously the rest of the industry regards the company. While it was a CRM company only, the threat vector was only directed in one specific area, but its moves of late to become a player at every level of the stack has made the industry sit up and take notice.

At its CRM Evolution 2010 conference, CRM magazine announced the winners of its 2010 CRM Market Awards. In its ninth annual ceremony, CRM magazine “honors the vendors, consults, and end-user companies that focus on customer relationships and the customer experience through the sophisticated integration of people, processes, and technologies.”

There were ten categories for which CRM listed one Market Winner, four Market Leaders, and a rising “One to Watch.” Judging was determined through a three-month rating and analysis process of financial and corporate information.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce

As it so happens, Salesforce dominates the awards. The company has had an active year that’s included the recent release of its corporate social collaboration application Chatter.

The awards are:

Enterprise Suite CRM — Winner: Salesforce.com
Leaders: Microsoft, Oracle, RightNow Technologies, SAP
One to Watch: NetSuite

Midmarket Suite CRM — Winner: Salesforce.com
Leaders: Microsoft, NetSuite, Oracle, RightNow Technologies
One to Watch: Sage

Small-Business Suite CRM — Winner: Salesforce.com
Leaders: Maximizer Software, NetSuite, Oracle, SugarCRM
One to Watch: Consona

Sales Force Automation — Winner: Salesforce.com
Leaders: Microsoft, NetSuite, Oracle, RightNow Technologies
One to Watch: Sage

Incentive Management — Winner: Xactly

Leaders: Callidus Software, Merced Systems, Synygy, Varicent Software
One to Watch: Softscape

Marketing Solutions — Winner: Unica
Leaders: Alterian, Aprimo, Eloqua, SAS Institute
One to Watch: Oracle

Business Intelligence — Winner: IBM
Leaders: Oracle, SAP BusinessObjects, SAS Institute, Tibco
One to Watch: Microsoft

Data Quality — Winner: Informatica
Leaders: DataFlux (SAS Institute), IBM, SAP, Trillium Software (Harte-Hanks)
One to Watch: Talend

Open-Source CRM — Winner: SugarCRM
Leaders: Compiere (Consona), Concursive, SplendidCRM, vTiger
One to Watch: xTuple

Consultancies — Winner: Deloitte
Leaders: Accenture, Capgemini, IBM Global Business Services, Infosys
Ones to Watch: Innoveer

Additionally, eight CRM principals were named as the 2010 Influential Leaders:

Marc Benioff, cofounder, chairman, and chief executive officer at Salesforce.com

Bill McDermott, co–chief executive officer at SAP

Doc Searls, fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, head of the individual-empowerment initiative ProjectVRM, and one of the co-authors of Cluetrain Manifesto

Brian Solis, principal at FutureWorks, cofounder of the Social Media Club, and author of Engage!

Ray Wang, partner at Altimeter Group, a new analyst firm;

Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Michael Wu, principal scientist of analytics at social CRM innovator Lithium Technologies

Mark Zuckerberg, cofounder and chief executive officer of Facebook

These, among other awards, will be presented at the Marriott Marquis in New York for the CRM Evolution 2010 conference, which continues today and tomorrow.

Microsoft Canada and the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management have announced the creation of the Rotman Executive Programs Centre for CRM Excellence, a joint initiative housed within Rotman Executive Programs with a focus on research, building intellectual capital, and developing interactive customer relationship management (CRM) educational programs.

The CRM Centre will be unique in that it will be the first CRM research institute that utilizes the strengths of both an academic center and a large corporation. Supporters hope that it will become a global capital of CRM research and effort.

The first program running at the CRM Centre will be a three-day conference designed for executives responsible for CRM implementations, with a particular focus on social CRM. The program will help participants build IT infrastructure that satisfies their customers’ needs.

“The practice of CRM is evolving as businesses increasingly tap into the power of social networks and real-time feedback,” says Frank Falcone, CRM Lead at Microsoft Canada. “The days of simply providing better service are gone – today CRM is social, driven by personal interactions and by customers who expect control over their engagement with companies. Programs like this will help companies learn to be more responsive, transparent, and personal in their dealings with customers.”

Paul Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light and President of the 56 Group LLC., also notes how crucial such an institute is. “The creation of the University of Toronto CRM Centre of Excellence isn’t just important, it’s seminal. As recognition for this business strategy and methodology grows, a neutral body that supports the evolution of Social CRM is important. Thanks to the University of Toronto, the new ideas, approaches, practices and refinements of this mission-critical business science have an indisputable home.”

The CRM Centre is scheduled to open November 2010.

Research firm Zinnov has released an estimate that the cloud computing market within India is expected to reach $1.08 billion by 2015. This would be a ten-fold increase from today’s $110 million market. Software as a Service (SaaS) is expected to make up $650 million of that revenue, and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) will make up the rest.

“This is indeed a perfect storm. The only difference is that, this storm is destructive only to companies which are not willing to change, while it is a huge opportunity for others,” says Pari Natarajan, CEO of Zinnov.

The global cloud computing market, as a whole, is expected to increase from $58.6 billion in 2009 to $148.8 billion by 2014, as estimated by another firm, Gartner Inc. Much of the market’s growth is expected to come from outside of the US, from countries like the UK and Japan. American shares are expected to decrease from 60% in 2009 to 50% in 2014.

Cloud computing refers to using services without owning them, but by paying a subscription fee. Hardware and software infrastructure is often not necessary as the services come through an online network.

Cloud computing often entails enterprise applications such as ERP and CRM. The popular trend has been to use cloud computing because it can eliminate investment costs for software or deployment. Zinnov expects cloud computing to grow in major sectors such as banking and finances, telecommunications, manufacturing, and government. In particular, the Indian government has been more receptive to cloud computing than, say, the U.S. government.

So far, Indian software businesses have not been large players in the cloud market. However, cloud computing solutions have been readily accepted there for CRM or ERP applications, and many U.S. cloud companies, such as Zoho, hold certain operations in India. Also, Indian outsourcers have taken advantage of cloud computing to become even more competitive. Clearly, the texture of this market may change in the not-so-distant future.

Currently, Forrester rankings show that SAP and Oracle-Siebel are the leaders in CRM software. However, competition is close at their heels. Because the CRM software market has developed immensely in recent years, this has made it difficult to make distinctions between products. The Forrester report stated that the reason Siebel and SAP do so well is because they are both adequate absolute CRM software products that have a tremendously high usability.

Even with the high level of success that SAP and Siebel have achieved with their products, other companies are close behind. CDC, Microsoft, Oracle’s CRM On Demand application, RightNow, and Salesforce.com are all treading close to SAP and Siebel’s waters.
In particular, CDC’s rise in the rankings is due to a new commitment in its marketing strategies. Also Oracle’s other CRM products, (not including Siebel and On Demand) ranked fairly high as well.

As far as the CRM software market itself; it is still considered relatively healthy. A survey conducted by Forrester showed that out of 455 large organizations, 56% had already put into operation a CRM tool and an additional 17% plan to implement CRM software in the next 12 to 24 months. Another survey illustrated that of 286 businesses, 62% of business and IT professionals have put into use or are growing their customer business intelligence solutions.

On May 20th, RightNow Technologies announced the release of RightNow Mobile, a new on-the-go way for companies to engage with consumers via any mobile device. RightNow Mobile allows customers to receive interactive support through smartphones, tablets, GPS systems, and game consoles using three different techniques: web self-service, web chat, and guided assistance.

Web self-service allows consumers to search for answers for any inquiry, review related answers, and send emails from their mobile device while web chat provides live assistance, in which the consumer engages with an agent over a simple, easy to navigate chat interface. Guided assistance differs in that the consumer is provided a series of question branches which helps solve problems in a more question and answer format.

There is a pressing need for companies to go mobile which is addressed in this new product offering for the mobile experience. Current users of the new RightNow Mobile include Aircell, Ovum, CBS Interactive, Match.com, and MySpace. Michele Watson, VP of Global Customer Care at Match.com, noted that, as Match.com reaches its 15th anniversary, customers are seeking additional methods to interact with singles.

RightNow provides a solution that helps highly engaged mobile customers get support directly from their device to enhance their experience. This is critical since mobile devices are one of the fastest growing channels and Match.com has developed mobile applications for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Palm Pre/Pixi smartphones. With more than 20,000 singles registering on Match.com every day, delivering an exceptional customer experience no matter how a customer chooses to contact us is very important.

Daniel Hong, Lead Analyst for Customer Interactions at Ovum, predicts smartphones to be the next frontier in customer service interaction. Hong attests that unlike other communications, RightNow Mobile is “up front and center” and envisions the smartphone as critical in customer service, whether in the medium of email, chat, text, or video. Inbound call volume for call centers is only increasing, and RightNow estimates that the majority of incoming calls will be from smartphones; RightNow predicts three in five cell phones will be smartphones by 2014.

Hong asserts that customers are much more connected than they used to be, which ultimately means there is a lot more transactions with customers. Although RightNow Mobile seeks to broaden customer communication, Hong maintains that the same level of customer service must be maintained in all communication routes for RightNow Mobile to be effective.

A demographic for RightNow Mobile has yet to be determined as Hong says mobile strategies will differ per company. But the objective will be to bring awareness to the mobile customer experience.