We Blog CRM

Today Jive Software, a producer of what it terms “Social Business Software,” launched an integration with Microsoft SharePoint—the first in a series, called Jive Connects, that it hopes will liberate content in server suites.

After integration, Jive and SharePoint users will have a unified stream of content within both systems, and can also create content in one system and have access to it in the other. Jive users will also be able to search and link to SharePoint repositories and content from wherever it is they are working in Jive, from discussion threads to blogs.

Jive isn’t the first social enterprise provider to integrate with SharePoint, and it is certainly a smart move to join with the Microsoft product to enrich the Jive experience. Still, Jive’s SharePoint Connector is part of a bigger scheme, Jive Connects: a series of modules that’ll enable organizations to surface content activities from almost any CMS inside Jive, and is intended to bridge several gaps.

First, Jive wants to allow for a CMS solution that provides forums for content within the platform—normally conversation regarding content slips to “off-the-grid” emails, and having the feedback easily accessible will preclude the need for switching between applications. Adding a social aspect to enterprise is a wise move in general, but Jive wants to incorporate social networking features for searches, pointing out that social media is quickly changing the way people look for and expect to find information. Jive also recently launched a social media tracker to its platform, so it will be interesting to see what they’ll be doing in the coming year.

Really Simple Solutions, the UK’s largest hosted CRM provider, released an email marketing tool last week: DribbleMail. The product is available through integration with Really Simple’s on-demand CRM service, and allows direct mail marketers to efficiently plan and execute email marketing campaigns. Like many of the enterprise software add-ons released recently, DribbleMail is an SaaS tool and gives subscribers instant access to campaign information.

The tool arranges for bulk emails to be sent at integrals, which allows users to better manage their leads and customers. Tony Selmes, Business Development Manager at B2M Solutions (a mobile device management developer), noted the integration with the CRM platform saved the company time from having to move data and results between emailing and CRM systems. Sending out email batches at integrals also cuts down on the number of messages caught in spam filters. The service offers full tracking and monitoring abilities, which, compounded with the trickle method, will give users more accurate campaign reporting.

DribbleMail may not be a groundbreaking device, but it is a smart one, and it will be interesting to see how efficient productivity tools become with SaaS capabilities.

The Entellium situation continues to play out as more news comes out regarding the former CRM Software giant. With the declaration of bankruptcy of former CRM Software giant, Entellium Software, it appears as if the Entellium situation is finally behind us. Intuit is also looking into a possible purchase of Entellium’s assets to help partially pay off much of the losses accrued by the venture capitalists who invested money into Entellium.

With the Intuit purchase comes an influx of money for Entellium software to help pay off its unfulfilled obligations. However, the priority of where this money is to be directed seems to be misguided. Rather than paying off wrongly pressured employees, the money is going to go to stupid investors who had full control over where they chose to invest their money.

More news is coming out regarding how former Entellium employees’ layoffs were handled. These situations were described as pressurized, unpleasant positions for employees who were surprised with the sudden dismantling of the company. With no prior notice, Entellium shut its doors, only giving employees time to pack their bags and sign severance papers. Former employees had little time to review these papers as they were pressured into signing these documents or threatened with the loss of their health insurance benefits. Many former employees succumbed to the pressure and signed the documents after barely glancing at them. This forced many to sign over rights such as severance pay and vacation payouts that they had rightfully earned.

The sale of Intuit will provide Entellium with money to partially pay off its debtors. However, the priority of who should be paid needs to be revised. Rather than paying off venture capitalists who were lazy and foolish, the money should be paid to employees. Employees had no control over what was going on and should get what they rightfully earned for the many years they served working for Entellium.

The proliferation of mobile communication devices that are now much more than just telephones has interested application providers. Mobile CRM can help traveling executives take timely decisions and furnish advice to demanding customers without having to rely on a data being relayed from an office.

Deploying a mobile CRM environment is a new experience for most businesses. The dynamics of the process are slightly different from those of a standard CRM deployment.  A good piece here at MyCustomer explaining in detail about the best ways to succeed with mobile CRM.

According to a recent study conducted by Aberdeen – “Tailor-Made CRM: Best Practices in Customization, Configuration, and Integration”, companies are making use of customizable applications and data collection technologies to customize and configure their applications so that these are tuned to company processes.An important finding was that “best-in-class” companies are much more likely to implement data integration for CRM than those that lag behind. CRM customization is driven by a desire to acquire and retain customers.

Best-in-Class companies said that they currently use data integration products (47 percent), contact management products (50 percent) and sales knowledge management products (38 percent) to “increase the effectiveness and functionality of the core CRM product.”

Given that the enterprise market is pretty saturated and renewing licenses is pretty much only way to make money off the big companies; it is not surprising that software vendors are looking to target the mid-market segment.The growth of SaaS has been a major factor in driving the attention of companies like SAP and Oracle towards SMBs.

SAP started offering MySAP CRM as a hosted service around two years ago. The company fell behind Salesforce.com and many other pure SaaS players, partly because of the delay in bringing out Business ByDesign. Yet, SAP has kept up its efforts in the SaaS CRM arena and in the recently concluded SAPPHIRE user conference, it announced new CRM functionality in its Business All-in-One solution for medium-sized companies.

CRM is supposedly on a comeback trail with a vengeance, hot on the heels of the last post I made regarding CRM’s comeback, here’s another one. This time it is from the UK and it says that faced with recession, companies are caught between trying to conserve finances and trying to get the best out of their CRM solutions in an effort to at least latch on to their existing customers if not get more customers for their customers base.

In the face of the economic slump, driving ROI is harder then ever. Paul Winters, managing director of CACI’s new customer management group, Marketing Solutions Division, says: “The world is changing in terms of acquisition, the days of mailing the Electoral Register three times is getting expensive and not working. There is now much more of an emphasis on driving value from your existing customer base.

“Retention is critical, you should do more with the customers that you already have as it’s from them that you are going to get the most from your revenue in hard economic times. It’s also tough to recruit new customers in the current climate.”

This is an aspect of CRM that is indeed worth a thought by industry worthies – how to align CRM and manufacturing. CRM focuses on the customers and aims to make the entire process customer-centric whereas most manufacturers belong to the school of thought that extols lean manufacturing where emphasis is placed on productivity and performance. CRM projects succeed only when the CRM philosophy is embraced across the organization and measurable customer-centric process are in place across the value chain.

The difficulty is in balancing lean manufacturing where the emphasis is on cutting costs with a customer-centric approach. CRM companies are finding it difficult to sell the concept of CRM to manufacturing companies. One of the issues that CRM vendors find discouraging is the trend of treating CRM as a desktop application with no strategic backing or accompanying changes in the thought processes of the company. Commence which provides on-premise as well as hosted CRM, has come up with a detailed list of forty best practices for industrial marketers that will help them to sell more effectively and obtain ROI more quickly.