Richard Boardman
Last quarter’s CRM market news in 60 seconds…
In case you missed them, here’s my 60 second bullet point round-up of the main CRM software stories last quarter: April Salesforce.com take a cue from Amazon’s ‘Mayday’ customer support feature on the Kindle Fire to add a new SOS capability to its Service Cloud…
Getting closer to the coal-face to get more out of CRM technology…
Photograph courtesy of Ron Reiring I’ve been having one of those ‘I’d long known it was important, but I’d forgotten just how important’ moments in recent weeks. One of our clients has recently gone live and, in the absence of a colleague who was away…
Are people really using your CRM system? Six ways to find out…
If you’re not sure how well your CRM system is being used, here are five ways to find out: Look at usage stats If people aren’t using the system, it’s not going to be adding any value, so a good starting point is to understand…
A quick introduction to social listening, its benefits, and integration with CRM
Photograph courtesy of Ky With Microsoft recently announcing that social listening will be a key component of its spring 2014 release, following last year’s acquisition of Netbreeze, and Salesforce.com’s Radian6 already a well-established part of their marketing cloud, social listening capabilities are set to become...
Sixteen things you should be doing to maintain the value of your CRM system...
So you’ve invested in new CRM software and successfully overcome the challenge of user adoption. What now? Photograph courtesy of zzpza Here are sixteen things you want in place if you are to maintain and grow the value of your investment: Administration – someone needs…
The under-appreciated benefits of the humble CRM mail-merge function
One feature of CRM technology that I don’t think users make enough of is the ability to create, store, and manage mail-merge templates within the system. These templates allow commonly used documents and emails to be quickly generated automatically, inserting relevant data held in...
Ten ways to use your CRM system to better support telephone-based sales and marketing
A lot of businesses have some form of telephone-based sales and marketing function, and most will make use of CRM technology to support their activities. In this post I wanted to highlight a number of ways that companies can potentially use their CRM systems,...
Last quarter’s CRM software news in 60 seconds…
In case you missed them, here’s my 60 second bullet point round-up of the main CRM software stories last quarter: December Oracle announces it will buy Responsys for $1.5 billion to fill out Oracle Marketing Cloud January Microsoft acquires Parature for $100 million to extend…
The hidden dangers of replacing vertical CRM software with generic offerings
One of the big shifts we’ve seen in the CRM market in recent years is the progress that generic CRM software such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, or SugarCRM has made in markets that were once dominated by vertical specific CRM solutions. As I touched on...
Choosing CRM software – the dangers of recommendations – an addendum
In my last post I wrote about the dangers of recommendations when selecting CRM software, and I just wanted to add a few points that I didn’t cover last time out. Firstly, the post was very much in the context of the dangers of recommendations...
Choosing CRM software – the dangers of recommendation
While recommendations from people we know is probably the biggest influence on our purchase decisions for goods and services, I’ve never been too convinced as to how well this works when choosing CRM software. As a case in point, I had a conversation this week...
Dull maybe, but essential – the role of the usage manual in CRM implementation
Point 57 in the ’99 ways to get more out your CRM software’ was: 57. Develop a usage manual – does everyone understand how they should be using the system? Often different people will use it in different ways, and that impacts key outputs such as reports....
A worked example as to why process inefficiencies provide rich pickings for CRM technology
Carrying on my elaboration of some of the points in the ‘99 ways to get more from your CRM software’ post, point 69 suggested that you might consider reviewing your processes, rather dryly noting that: ‘analysing your existing business processes can be extremely insightful. You...
CRM’s role in aligning sales activity with opportunity…
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m in the process of fleshing out some of items on the ‘99 ways to get more from you CRM software post’, where brevity was a necessary constraint at the time. Item fifteen was about share of purse,...
Big, quick gains from streamlining your CRM system…
Early last year I wrote a piece entitled ‘99 ways to get more from your CRM software’. Given the nature of the post brevity was a necessary constraint, and over the next few week, or so, I want to expand on some of the...
The many benefits of integrating customer support into CRM
While many organisations run some sort of customer help-desk or advice line, it’s surprising how often this function is supported by standalone technology rather than being part of the main CRM application. Given that most CRM applications have some level of out of the box...
In case you missed them, a catch up on this Autumn’s CRM stories
For those that want a quick recap or may have missed them orginally, here's my take on the main CRM stories this autumn: An uneasy peace Perhaps the main headline in our round up of the summer's news was the sudden and unexpected outbreak of…
In case you missed them, the top ten CRM software stories this summer
In case you disconnected from the world of CRM this summer, here's a round-up of the main stories: Salesforce.com and Oracle – peace breaks out One minute Salesforce.com and Oracle were at each other's throats, the next peace had broken out. Following a disappointing set…
Last month in CRM software – a catch up on May’s CRM news
In summary: Salesforce.com's Q1 results trigger a share price dip, NetSuite makes an acquisition and signals there may be many more, and Rimini Street needles SAP at its Sapphire Now event… Salesforce.com released its quarter one earnings with revenues in line with analyst expectations...
Last month in CRM software – a catch up on April’s CRM news
In summary: Salesforce overtakes SAP to be number one, SugarCRM's SugarCon, and great results from Netsuite and Rimini Street… It's long been on the cards, but April seemed to confirm that Salesforce.com had grabbed the number one CRM vendor slot from SAP. Gartner's 'Market Share...