Bob Thompson
Downturn Spells Opportunity, Say Consona Executives
After buying 10 ERP/CRM brands in the past few years (including CRM and KM vendors Onyx and KNOVA), Consona CEO Jeff Tognoni put that strategy on hold for the past year or so. But they're poised to continue growing through acquisition as buying opportunities...
Why Rent a CRM Application? Build Your Own With Caspio (and a Whole Lot...
Over the years I've noticed that when a tech trend heats up, I discover successful vendors that have been toiling away out of the limelight for years. In cloud computing, Caspio is one such pioneer. I spoke recently with Caspio founder/CEO Frank Zamani and...
RightNow Aims to Balance Customer Experience With Cost Savings
Just back from the RightNow's global Summit (October 6-8) in Colorado Springs, I'd like to share a few highlights. But first, kudos to RightNow for picking The Broadmoor resort as the venue. A spectacular setting in Colorado Springs coupled with superb service made for...
Jumping Into Cloud Computing Platform War: LongJump
LongJump is an impressive PaaS vendor that could give Salesforce.com a run for its money in the enterprise. Cloud computing is emerging as a hot trend to go beyond packaged SaaS applications to write custom applications completely in the cloud. Or, to rent computing...
Blind Spots in Your Online Customer Experience
Imagine running a retail store blindfolded. If shoppers have a problem browsing or buying, they just go quietly to the store next door and leave partially filled shopping carts behind. Online Issues Evoke Emotional Responses Every so often you run a "shopper analytics" report to...
Alterian Vies for Industry Leadership in Multichannel Marketing
There are numerous marketing solutions in the market, from full-suite CRM vendors and specialized vendors like Aprimo, Epiphany (from Infor), Omniture, Silverpop or Unica. Now Alterian is jockeying for a leadership position in a crowded but still fragmented market. Alterian is a database marketing and...
Fasten Your Seat Belts. Cloud Computing Will Change the Way You Do Business
Credit card? Check. Browser? Check. Congratulations! You're now cleared for take-off into the future of cloud computing. Now you can rent virtually any IT resource as a service, and build custom applications, too. This so-called "cloud computing," built on the success of the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)...
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Comes Alive, Targets Large Enterprises With Version 4
After five years of mostly steady improvement of its CRM solution, Microsoft appears ready to break into the Big Time with Dynamics CRM 4.0 and its on-demand version coming "alive" in Q2. Here's an update based on what I learned at Convergence 2008, the annual...
Infusiastic About Small Business e-CRM
You gotta love the enthusiasm—or should I say "infusiasm"—of the folks at Infusion Software. I wrote about Infusion last year when CRM legend Pat Sullivan joined the company's board of directors. I just attended Infusion's annual user conference (March 5-7 in Scottsdale, Arizona),...
Social Computing Enables Private Relationship Networks, Too
My son, Matthew, is a freshman in high school this year. Some things haven't changed much since I went to high school some 35 years ago. Teenagers are still, you know, teenagers. And it's still a challenging time for kids to grow up and...
Top 10 Dumb Excuses for CEOs Not to Be Leaders in the Social Web
By now, everyone within reach of a newspaper or web site has heard about the rise of the social web. You might have heard other terms used, like "Web 2.0," "social networking" or "consumer-generated media." Millions of people are now using the social web to...
Five Secrets To Lose 50 Pounds, and Shape Up Your CRM Efforts
When I started my own business 10 years ago, I thought I'd have control over my schedule. No boss to tell me what to do. No commute, since I work out of a home office. Freedom! Ah yes, freedom. But, what I learned is that...
Top 10 CRM Stories of 2007
It's been one of the most interesting years in a long time, whether you look at Customer Management from an enterprise, customer or technology perspective. Here are my personal picks for the top stories of 2007, counting down from 10. 10. Sprint Fires 1,000 Customers…
RightNow Gives a “Big Sky” Experience to Consumer-Focused Enterprises
RightNow Technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) wants to help consumer-focused enterprises deliver an "exceptional customer experiences at lower costs." In a way, this is a return to its eService roots. Greg Gianforte founded RightNow in 1997, offering a simple web-based FAQ system. Setting up shop in...
Consona’s Growth Strategy: Franchising, Not Fusing
Consona CEO Jeff Tognoni says the ERP/CRM software maker's mission is to be "your partner in ongoing business process improvement." What that statement lacks in sizzle the company aims to make up with solid execution, according to executives at Consona's user conference (Oct. 11-12...
Find the “Ultimate” Loyalty Metric to Grow Your Business
Managing a business is like flying an airplane. You need a good pilot and equipment to take off and keep it flying to the right destination. During flight, the pilot has a dashboard of instruments to indicate speed, height, direction, rate of ascent/descent, fuel,...
Has the LUV Gone Out of Southwest Airlines?
Are left-brained MBA types running amok at Southwest? A change to their preboarding practice is a good example of analysis that forgot to take emotion into consideration. Southwest has been under some pressure over the past few years to update its "cattle car" boarding...
Use Text Analytics To Listen to Customers on Their Terms
It's never been more important to really hear the voice of your customers. Surveys can help, but when was the last time you filled out a long survey asking you to rate your experiences with a product or service? Right, me neither. Loyalty guru...
Do Sales Engineers Need Their Own Opportunity Management System?
Phil Janus, founder of salesengineering.com, thinks so. After chatting with him and seeing a brief demo, I think it's great to see some attention to this important role. But more focus is needed on skills development, not just tracking performance. Janus certainly has the credentials...
Satisfaction Is Up, Customers Party Like It’s … 1994?
The conventional wisdom is that customers are more demanding and harder to satisfy than ever. I've said so in my keynote speeches, so it must be true, right? Maybe not. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has been collecting data since 1994 across a wide…