Midsize Insider is a valuable repository of expert content tailored for small-to-midsized business owners and IT decision makers. Expert insights and perspectives in the Midsize Insider are gleaned from actionable business experiences and will assist readers in creating efficiencies, cutting costs and delivering results.
In order to get the most from a business partner on an ERP project, plan ahead, define clear goals and ...
Call me crazy, but I believe customers truly want me (us) to bring innovative ideas to the table. The obstacle we face is that these same customers have been conditioned to believe that I can just pull innovations out of ...
SaaS-based CRM is in demand. A new survey by Gartner shows that one out of every four customer relationship management software tools sold were SaaS based. As midsize firms consider new CRM software or seek to upgrade their current systems, ...
Best-in-class organizations turn to services firms for ERP projects for a variety of reasons. it's not always the IT organization ...
In the current business climate, BYOD is generally a voluntary practice, with employees receiving support and access to applications for their personal devices. This process helps businesses keep costs low, and it keeps employees from being stuck with old technology ...
Two of the most important considerations, when choosing client relationship management (CRM) software, are how it enhances the sales and customer service elements of a business. Managers of midsize firms are especially dependent on continual product sales and customer retention ...
Aberdeen Groups finds that best in class companies use service firms to augment their ERP strategies. Data mining for actionable ...
B2B marketing is typically laden with cliches and bullet points. That stuff doesn't resonate with customers any more. In this ...
Buying has changed. The traditional role of the sales person in “teaching” the customer about solutions and products is much less important. Buyers are self educating on the web. Depending on which research you read, as much as 70% of ...
You can throw marketing dollars and SEO at an e-commerce site, but the best plan of action to target customers is to know the audience, analyze traffic patterns, track user behavior, and target CPC ads for better return on investment. ...
Relationships are critical to business success. Solid interactions between employees, managers, and IT admins are the foundation of company efficacy, but profitability rests on how well corporations can connect with consumers. The rise of customer relationship management tools focused on ...
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is red HOT in the marketplace! Gone are the days when a company could simply give “lip service” to being customer focused. Today, companies of all sizes are embracing a customer centric vision as a core ...
When a business is in the midsize stage, it is at a critical junction of its growth cycle. It has reached a break-even point and is at the threshold of expansion. Its business goals are no longer in flux, and ...
Customer relationship management (CRM) software has become a necessity for midsize businesses, but there is often confusion about what exactly this technology does, how it is implemented, and how IT professionals can make the best use of its resources. While ...
A few years back I started talking about widgetizing CRM and Enterprise applications. Basically, I suggested that interfaces needed to be designed to help get specific jobs done, and to provide them in the proper context (where we work). I ...
Integrated business processes with ERP systems can benefit companies of all sizes. However, they are particularly useful for growing midsize firms with strained resources. ERP software bundles an arsenal of business applications in one, arming savvy users tools that help ...
Enterprise resource planning solutions drive a thriving market of business management software that provides a collection of applications companies can use to effectively manage their organization. This software suite brings together all facets of a company's operation under one roof, ...
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions provide midsize IT with a way to control all aspects of their workflow, from production to sales to development and design. Once the province of large corporations, ERP implementation is now an achievable goal for ...
Midsize businesses rely on strong customer relationships to compete with bigger companies. Customer relationship management (CRM) software can help. CRMs track customer preferences, interactions, and behaviors, allowing organizations to build strong relationships with customers and treat them consistently throughout the ...
As an extension of material requirements planning, enterprise resource planning (ERP) attempts to manage internal and external information, including manufacturing process, sales, service, and customer relationship software, across an entire corporate network finance. Midsize IT pros hoping to leverage the ...
Personnel management is often thought of as a human resources responsibility; traditionally, midsize IT professionals have had little to do with staffing, preferring instead to deal with the technical issues brought forward by staff. The changing tech market, however, has ...
A good customer relationship management (CRM) online tool is the linchpin of proper customer management. CRMs help the business deal with customer orders, complaints, and private information in one system, so all business employees have that information available to service ...
Customer retention is a critical issue. Wisdom (and data–thought it’s not at my fingertips) says that it costs us less to keep a good customer than to acquire a new customer. But it seems companies take two different approaches to ...
True customer loyalty goes beyond delivering discounts, quality products, and excellent customer service to fostering emotional attachment. Two factors promoting this emotional attachment, key to customer loyalty, are personal attention and special advantages. A good CRM application allows you to ...
A customer satisfaction rating can tell you how happy customers are overall with your company or industry. It covers more than just good service - it also ranks overall experience, satisfaction with products, and perceived value. The most common index, ...
Each and every day, in sales departments around the globe, a sales manager is striding into the room and making this proclamation … “I have great news! We have decided to provide you with a CRM so that you can ...
It’s the customer’s moral and business obligation to always challenge you with, “But Your Price Is Too High.” This isn’t a problem or issue. What is the problem, is the mindless response from sales people, immediately offering a lower price. ...
In today's marketplace, customers often gauge a company's reliability and service by both the products offered and their personal interactions with the company, whether online, via phone, or in person. How a company interacts with these customers can determine its ...
ERP systems aim to make life easier for midsize firms. By tying all of their critical IT management tools together in a single solution, they dramatically simplify administration while giving these businesses a degree of agility that enables them to ...
Anyone who attended the recent Microsoft Convergence 2013 conference may have noticed an exhibitor with a 3 letter acronym. The conference is the annual event for Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM. The exhibitor with a 3 letter acronym was none ...
The right CRM tools boost business. They help midsize firms get ahead in the market and help them build successful relationships with clients.The Right SolutionsThe right customer relationship management software helps salespeople at midsize firms convert more consumers into customers. ...
Human resource departments at midsize businesses, much like IT departments, have seen their roles change dramatically over the last decade. Not only do HR managers have more regulations to follow and more reporting requirements to handle, but the role of ...
Surprise, surprise! Who could have anticipated that IBMs presence at Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2013 would solicit shock and awe? Here's the story. At the conclusion of the Dynamics client conference last week, I polled 44 colleagues with this question: “What ...
The customer is an elusive creature, difficult to entice, and all too ready to bolt into a nearby thicket - or competitor's front door. Such trickiness is why attracting and holding customers has always been a primary concern, especially for ...
Successfully managing customer relationships is vital for sales-driven midsize organizations. For this reason, a good CRM tool has become an indispensable commodity in the current business climate. Not only does such a tool position companies to improve relationships with customers, ...
Mid-sized companies need better tools to help understand what customers need and want. Mid-sized companies also need better ways to help the sales team capitalize on potential and actual sales opportunities. In reviewing a white paper this week my eyes ...
Information is critical company currency—without up-to-date data, decision making becomes problematic, an exercise in chance and futility. As a result, innovative business solutions have evolved to meet demands; customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in particular ...
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software helps midsize firms increase their performance and productivity. When well implemented, it can do wonders for a midsize firm by centralizing the databases and functions of every department into one easy-to-use system. There are various ...
Hiding in the dark corners of the marketing world are those who believe that nearly 80% of the available buyers in a market…don’t buy. I’ve always believed that if, all things being equal, I could get to a buyer earlier ...
Sales organizations have many more sources of information available to qualify prospects and understand when and how to approach them. ...
Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions help businesses maintain customer feedback and service issues and can host dozens of other management utilities for a growing business. Customer relationships aren't just about answering phones and taking orders. Good customer relationship management tools ...
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is a game changer for midsize firms today. ERP solutions optimize business processes and help companies adapt to an ever changing market. Most of all, they offer affordable technology that was once only available to ...
We spend a lot of time talking about customer experience design. There is some value to it, but there is also great danger (and arrogance) in it. We cannot possibly design the customer’s experience, we can only design how we ...
CRM software lives up to its name by helping companies improve all things related to managing customer relationships. Through a combination of its own core functionality and integration with existing systems, this technology can enhance marketing strategies, while strengthening customer ...
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term that encompasses both the approach to managing the service side of a business, as well as the software used to effectively do so. CRM is becoming much more important to the overall success ...
Insight is the word of the year. We are all being trained in providing insight–ideas about the customer’s business; how they might grow, opportunities they might be missing, how they might improve, how they might achieve their dreams and goals ...
Businesses of all sizes are starting to see the value of customer loyalty. Maintaining an existing customer base is less expensive than acquiring new customers, and loyal customers have a greater lifetime value, among other benefits. Most customers are looking ...
The ever changing role of the Information Technology (I/T) department in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) deployments makes for an interesting story - and begs the question...what is next? Before we consider the answer, let’s pause briefly to look at some ...
If you are the leader of a small to midsize business, you know good customer service just doesn't cut it anymore.Today's customer has high expectations, and to win and keep their business, you must anticipate their needs, deliver exceptional customer ...
Gartner's Magic Quadrant for CRM Web Customer Service Applications (2013) has been released, and it shows a market trending toward maturity. Several areas, such as mobile apps and improved self-service options, have emerged as key drivers. The result is a ...
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tracks customer contact information and customer interactions with companies. To get full value from their CRM applications and leverage the technology to improve customer service performance, midsize businesses must ask how the software improves the customer ...
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions attempt to integrate both external and internal management data, with the ultimate goal of improving cross-department information flow to better inform business decision-making. Midsize business IT departments are increasingly tasked with the selection, installation, and ...
If your competitors are engaging the public and creating loyal customers, can you afford to stay focused on solely your products? The new business paradigm includes excellence in products and services but also focuses on the customer experience. A lot ...
Asking business people about the most important thing in business could produce an impressively long list. Product quality, innovation, and employee skills all would make a frequent appearance. Sufficient money in the till is also helpful.But perhaps the most important ...
Brand loyalty is crucial for developing midsize businesses. IT professionals can use customer relationship management (CRM) software to build customer loyalty to both the company and its products and services. CRM software that aligns with corporate strategy, has functional features, ...
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a top priority for most midsize businesses, and it often falls to IT to determine and implement the best customer relationship management solutions to meet the company's goals. Ultimately, CRM can be used to engage ...
The benefits of CRM are the basis for midsize companies to get ahead in the market and build great relationships with clients. A customer relationship management tool compiles important sales and marketing data into one easy to use software solution.Good ...
All successful companies realize that HR goes beyond "pushing paper" and that it contributes greatly to how a company can move ahead of the competition. For midsize companies, human resource planning software is part of an overall strategy to positively ...
Traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) focuses on basic information and purchasing behavior of consumers. Midsize businesses can benefit from such a program by personalizing their relationships with their customers. The process forges a connection between the brand, product, and customer, ...
courtesy of M. Griffin / OTUS Analytics The outlook for small-and -medium-sized (SMB) businesses includes a lot of looking toward cloud computing and improved analytics, according to Ed Abrams, IBM’s VP Marketing and Strategy for SMBs. Ed and I spoke ...
Midsize businesses are in a unique position: They don't have the resources of larger companies but are still expected to compete in a global, customer-centric market. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems can help by giving midsize businesses relevant tools to ...
Customer loyalty is key to any business and, as a result, so is customer retention marketing, which is a tactically driven business approach based on customer behavior. It's an important tool for midsize businesses today as they devise their customer ...
Salesforce.com is gearing up for a spring update of its core customer relations management (CRM) solution, along with its Chatter social feature for messaging and collaboration. A "sandbox" preview of the updates will be available on January 11.For the IT ...
Good news for midsize businesses: According to Forbes, customer experience is one of the things midsize businesses do better than smaller and larger companies. They report that half of mid-market executives attribute their success to a strong focus on customers ...
Salesforce, the popular cloud-based CRM (customer relationship manager), and Zendesk, a platform for managing customer support, have deepened their collaboration with an update that promises enhanced integration for users of both Zendesk and Salesforce leading to improved customer service.As reported ...
When midsize businesses want to increase their performance and productivity they turn to ERP solutions. Enterprise resource planning solutions centralize the databases and functions of every department in one system. When implemented well it is a game changer for any ...
Many SMBs are realizing that investments in mobile solutions is money well spent with many seeing a quick return on investment. When it comes to ERP, just how much are companies willing to invest and how quickly will they see ...
Trends for mobile customer relationship management (CRM) in 2013 include more user-friendly, high-quality features that don't require extensive training. According to Taptera CEO Chris O'Conner, three areas for improvement are "making the face-to-face sales meeting more exciting, valuable and productive; ...
Companies using custom-coded enterprise resource planning solutions from SAP can now take advantage of SAP's MaxAttention support service. With a bit of shrewd negotiating they might be able to get a deal on the deal.For the IT community at midsize ...
The use of Internet services on the move, despite the ready availability of laptops, netbooks, and other devices, was previously determined exclusively by the speed of access, and slow speeds eliminated the use of applications with advanced features due to ...
Businesses of all sizes recognize that customer acquisition is a critical ingredient for business success. But never before have there been so many challenges in the quest to attract new customers.Whether individuals or other businesses, today's consumers are becoming more ...
Let Your Dream Client Teach You to Pitch Them is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino ...
Social CRM (customer relationship management) is more than having a presence on Facebook; it has profound implications for how midsize businesses operate. In the last ten years, customers have gained increased influence and power, changing the way companies must think ...
Over the last 20 years, Toyota has been able to show just how well lean manufacturing works. By focusing on the customer the once small company has become the world's largest automaker. Now, one of the world's leading online stores ...
As anyone in business knows, customer satisfaction is key to the long-term success of a business. However, measuring customer satisfaction isn't as simple as it sounds.Benefits of Satisfied CustomersSatisfied customers are important to business growth for several reasons. They are ...
Software as a service (SaaS) is a rapidly growing market, and some estimate that by 2020, annual global earnings will exceed $125 billion, a six-fold increase over current earnings. In a recent article on Gigaom, Russ Mason, founder of Mulesoft, ...
While the heavy lifting of CRM is done by the application running on a server, the data on which relationship management is based has to come from the customer and has to be available on sales calls. It no longer ...
Shares of Salesforce.com are up a solid 8 percent, or almost $12, making it "priced for perfection," according to a number of financial sites. But despite solid financial growth and seemingly unstoppable stock gains, a recent survey says businesses are ...
The 2012 presidential election included a marked uptake of social media; both candidates and voters took to Twitter and Facebook to voice their opinions. But other technology trends emerged as well, for example the use of "gamification" as a way ...
If someone asks "What does CRM mean?" how do you respond? Most senior executives know that CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, but learning a little more about it may reveal new growth and cost-cutting opportunities for midsize businesses.CRM refers ...
If you are a senior executive looking for tools to better manage your business, it won't be long before you come across the term Enterprise Resource Planning, (ERP). Initially introduced for the benefit of large corporations, today's technology makes ERP ...
The recent announcement by the U.S. Air Force of their decision to scrap the billion-dollar ERP program ECSS (Expeditionary Combat Support System) was not a popular one with U.S. taxpayers and is one of several government-funded IT projects that have ...
Customer Relationship Management is more than just data and statistics. Behind those numbers, charts, and graphs are very real people, organizations, and human interactions that, particularly, midsize businesses depend upon for sustenance and growth. Sure, this sounds like nothing more ...
German technology giant SAP this week released its newest customer relationship management (CRM) solution, the 360 Customer offering. Unveiled at a conference in Madrid on November 13, 2012, 360 aims to give companies better access to collected data by marrying ...
More and more midsize businesses are starting to use cloud-based CRM products, and they are learning a lot about their customers. But is it too much? Are consumers' rights being violated? That is one question that the Obama administration may ...
Midmarket organizations that use service providers to support enterprise resource planning software report better ROI, lower operational costs and stronger ...
Online reputation management has increasingly become a necessary but burdensome task for businesses. Large businesses may have more resources to tackle the task simply because they have more staff to do so. Small businesses, such as the cupcake baker featured ...
Growth in customer relationship management (CRM) and other software applications is likely to be more conservative after substantial increases in the last three years, says research from IDC. For 2012, the global market registered first-half growth of 4.7 percent to ...
The worldwide software market is worth a whopping $167 billion, and customer relationship management (CRM) apps are leading the way to further growth. For the first half of 2012, the market enjoyed a 4.7 percent year over year increase, with ...
Many companies have started to use cloud-based services and one of the more popular services is CRM. Cloud-based programs that help businesses understand their customers better can ultimately lead to more business, so it is no surprise that small and ...
The northeastern United States is still recovering from last week's monstrous storm, Hurricane Sandy. While the damage is being cleared out and lives are starting to get back in order, analysts have been busy marveling at the prominent use of ...
A recent study of more 200 industrial and manufacturing executives revealed that many companies are not getting the full benefit of ERP software. Conducted by software company IFS, the study shows that while resource planning deployments are on the rise, ...
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions are "considered the backbone of any organization", says Bryan Milton of SAP. But a recent online survey found that many midsize and enterprise businesses are also installing add-on customer relationship management (CRM) systems to maximize ...
On Not Creating Dependents (A Note to the Sales Leader) is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony ...
The times they are distracting. If it isn’t hurricanes, flooding, or snow, it is elections…… and pretty soon it will ...
Your Clients Already Know You’re a Salesperson is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino Your Clients ...
Whether you are a sales leader, company executive or you have your own sales territory, the common denominator for us ...
In 1995, the term customer relationship management (CRM) finally made its way into the general technology market. Now, these solutions are ubiquitous among enterprise, midsize and even small businesses eager to connect with customers and forge closer relationships - but ...
Being at work is more of a state of mind than a place, according to IBM’s Senior Marketing Manager of ...
What Success Is Not is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino What Success Is Not is ...
In this time of the “Chief Executive Customer” there has been a lot of talk about specific ways and ...
Companies love CRM; employees hate it. That's the general rule when it comes to customer relationship management software. Despite the great game talked up by companies like Salesforce and the efforts of management to get staff trained on new applications, ...
Buyers Make Emotional Decisions and Justify Them Later is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino Buyers ...
IBM announced new cloud-based products and services at the recently concluded IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit held in Orlando, Florida. These services are launched as an expansion to IBM's Smart Commerce initiative, a program designed to help businesses facing intelligent ...
Slimming down is all the rage for midsize IT pros. Sure, providers tell them their server doesn't look FAT32, but budgets are getting ever harder to stretch, and it's all too easy to gorge on the vast array of customer ...
Small and midsize businesses are expanding their basic CRM capabilities and implementing marketing automation solutions more than ever.The global market research and industry analyst organization Techaisle recently conducted a study that revealed marketing automaton to be among the top 10 ...
One of the biggest reminders that sales is changing in midmarket companies is that customers have much, much higher expectations ...
As technology continues to advance upon almost every aspect of business, concepts like social media and the cloud are rapidly changing the face of customer relationship management (CRM). This change is most evident in the growing midmarket, as one CRM ...
Midsize businesses and other enterprises looking to move to using social media as part of their customer relationship management (CRM) efforts should not ignore the lessons from implementing traditional CRM. Instead, they should look to the past to avoid potential ...
CRM deployments are no longer only the province of enterprise-level companies. Both small and midsize businesses can benefit from a robust online customer relationship management solution. But along with commercial deployments, many high-profile CRM firms are developing programs that target ...
Meeting and listening to Guy Kawasaki here at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit for mid-market and enterprise companies is ...
Chief marketing officers are becoming an important constituency for IBM, and Big Blue is responding. In this interview at the ...
Mobile devices are everywhere, and it's no longer in the best interests of business IT to ban personal smartphone or tablet use. Fighting the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend is like fighting the tide; you can do it, but don't expect results. ...
We have a very high respect for the Sales Force Effectiveness Blog over at Sales Benchmark Index. They regularly have ...
Over the past few years, the social space has expanded from its birth in the consumer sector and now has the business world solidly in its grasp. A whole new world of customer relationship management (CRM) options are available, but ...
Big data is a big problem. The simple fact is that there's too much of it, all coming too fast, for most small and midsize IT admins to keep up. It's not for lack of trying, but rather a lack ...
This is the time when those who appreciate the top athleticism in the world are in their element – during ...
Every customer relationship management (CRM) provider wants to be the showboat, the big dog, the one with all the best CRM features that all companies turn to when they need to get things done. Some experts argue that spot is ...
Over the last four years, Salesforce.com has been largely impervious to the value issues plaguing other technology companies, in part because of the rising popularity of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. Valued at just $22 per share in November 2008, ...
Small-to-midsize retail businesses face stiff competition in an industry increasingly dominated by regional, national, and even global chains. But payment processing solutions provider Mercury is trying to give SMB retailers a fighting chance at checkout with a new social POS ...
Facebook users have been telling friends and businesses what they like, but what about what they want? With investors looking for the social media giant to diversify and create more revenue from its users, CNN has suggested that a "want" ...
Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions offer companies myriad ways to connect with clients and generate reams of actionable data to help diagram future efforts. This hype sounds good on paper, looks great online but in many cases CRM success isn't ...
Customer relationship management is not just a competitive concern for small to midsize businesses, but for enterprises of all brands and sizes. Even a global corporation like Microsoft recognizes the truly competitive nature of customer relations in an ever-increasing, cloud-based ...
NCR Corporation has entered the mobile payment technology field with NCR Silver, a sales and back-office service targeting small and midsize businesses. To accept payments, retailers use iPads and iPhones along with a card reader that scans bar codes and ...
It was much clearer when the sales leader initially hired each sales person. They would have a sales role – ...
Salesforce and Twitter have joined forces to produce a scalable CRM with social networking from the Twitter mini-blogging platform. Salesforce is one of the biggest customer relationship management tools IT managers and business owners can use in the cloud. Partnered ...
For IT managers seeking control and added safeguards as more employees follow the growing trend of bring-you-own-device (BYOD) at work, Avaya's IP Office 8.1 may provide just what they are looking for. Midsize businesses will appreciate the benefits of Avaya's ...
There's a lot of talk about customer relationship management (CRM) software, but how many businesses are buying in? According to recent data, quite a few, with year-over-year revenues increasing at a steady pace. Though CRM adoption is on the rise, ...
IBM and SugarCRM are on an aggressive campaign to recruit business partners who want to take advantage of one of ...
It's the dawning of the Age of the Customer, according Forrester Research. Companies can no longer let advertising speak for itself or ignore the complaints of a single customer, hoping that they'll "make it up in volume." Instead, the sound ...
It's been a week full of ups and downs for Microsoft. On the same day a judge dismissed the Novell antitrust lawsuit against the computer giant, the European Union (EU) has threatened billion-dollar fines over the lack of Microsoft browser ...
Some time ago we talked about the 3 parts of the sales pipeline: front, middle, and end from a sellers ...
The Google Penguin and Panda updates have significantly affected the way companies need to look at search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Gone are the days of paying for spammed links and low-quality content, replaced instead by a world where content ...
Customer relationship management solutions are becoming an increasing priority for businesses in North America and Europe, according to the results of recent surveys conducted by technology and market research provider Forrester Research. The reports, Forrester Wave: CRM Suites for Midsized ...
Salesforce.com has acquired GoInstant, a Canadian start-up that provides "interactive co-browsing" technology. The tools, which require no user software downloading, allow two or more people to browse the same web page interactively.This technology solution offers a way to alleviate one ...
The "Mac versus PC" gap may be closing, according to technical analyst, Horace Dediu, who predicts that combined iOS and OS platform sales will equal that of Microsoft Windows within the next two years. Dediu draws his conclusions and voices ...
Holographic virtual assistants are making their appearance in airports like Boston's Logan International and Washington's Dulles, with New York's airports expected to add the hologram assistants this summer. They greet passengers in multiple languages and direct them throughout the airport. ...
Looking through a new infographic on “An Integrated Approach to CRM” and accompanying white paper there are some important statistics ...
At 8:49 a.m. BST, on July 10, 2012, seven Salesforce.com instances went dark. By 10:45 a.m., the company acknowledged there had been "power issues" but could not say when servers would be back up and running. At 11:35 a.m., two ...
You Are First and Foremost a Sales Organization is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino You ...
Customer relationship management (CRM) is the future, say managers of midsize businesses to their IT admins. They claim that Big Data and tracking the customer experience will lead their companies to the promised land of books in the black and ...
Midsize business IT admins aren't just being asked to implement customer relationship management (CRM) solutions any longer, but often told by management such a system needs to be in place--and soon--if a company is to compete in the world of ...
Technology giant Oracle has been hounded over the last few years--lawsuits against both Google and HP have not only tarnished its reputation but helped set precedent whereby even minor issues of intellectual property are settled in courtrooms rather than boardrooms. ...
It snuck in like the fog very early one morning – the end of Q2. Can you believe it? For ...
As more and more of your customers are spending time involved in social media, you too need to build your ...
A new report from Gartner predicts that the market for business applications will continue to expand over the course of this year. This is great news for midsize firms targeting the enterprise market, but the report also shows certain aspects ...
Employees, including sales professionals and sales leaders in midmarket companies will need to have four main traits to be competitive ...
Salesforce.com is acquiring Buddy Media, a social marketing specialist that numbers Ford and Hewlett-Packard among its customers. Their aim is to further reinforce Salesforce's ability to reach its customers through social media. The focus is noteworthy, given that those targeted ...
For a very, very long time--one might even argue millennia--the interaction between customers and sales people is where customer relationship management (CRM) has taken place. Cut to the technological revolution and the advent of social media, and eCommerce soon birthed ...
IBM's Global CEO Study for 2012 is out. And one headliner finding in the midmarket CEO portion of the study is that these CEOs want to meet their customers as individuals. This is probably not new. What is new is ...
With each passing year, customer relations management (CRM) software gets closer and closer to full integration with social media. The end result would be a platform that allows companies to have a complete understanding and almost complete control over its ...
Social CRM, which essentially means aligning social media platforms with customer relationship management programs, is increasingly becoming one of the favored methods for businesses to deliver customer service. Businesses are now able to get closer to their customers by directly ...
You Are Capable of So Much More is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino You Are ...
Imagine a workplace social network that discovers connections, mines data from office documents, and automatically mind-maps its discoveries around employees and their expertise. The Collective Project, a social collaboration tool created by Hewlett-Packard (HP) Labs and still in the research ...
Most sellers have little time for training, and when they do, it seems that product training takes center stage. After ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. You’re busy serving your clients and trying to ...
Customer relationship management (CRM) is something midsize business IT admins need to understand--managers and CEOs are quickly going to come knocking for viable, market-facing solutions. But it's no longer enough for IT pros to know the technical side of their ...
For many years, companies have relied on a variety of lead generation methods that in many cases did not involve ...
Midsize businesses thinking about offering free Wi-Fi to customers might want to take a close look at Panera Bread. Free Wi-Fi initially raised the company's sales by 15%, but now, after eight years, that same feature has become a challenge ...
The lament of the small provider is eternal; enterprise-level firms are always confronted by CEOs and tech managers from such companies looking for a meeting, looking for time, looking for just a chance to show a customer relationship management (CRM) ...
Manufacturer Empowers Users, Cuts IT Costs with CRM Superior Manufacturing Group wanted to streamline its reporting process and enable users to develop their own reports and extract key business data from their data warehouse. In addition to helping cope with ...
Customer relationship management (CRM) software has passed the point where it's "nice to have" for midsize businesses and moved on to being a necessity. But thanks to rapid growth in both cloud and virtualization markets, CRM trends are driving a ...
IT managers have long been aware that Apple's top priority is consumers and not enterprise buyers, but little by little, products like the iPhone have made their presence known in the business world, and not simply as a means for ...
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) products are now big moneymakers, as businesses from enterprise giants to small and midsize players attempt to solidify not only what they spend, but how they spend it. The Sage Group, creators of the Sage 200 ...
Occasionally, things created for the tech market go mega-public; the cloud is perhaps the best example; while most consumers use cloud technology without realizing it, providers have developed an entire hype machine around the industry, giving it almost celebrity status. ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. One of the reasons that it is difficult ...
A corporate salesperson was telling me about his pipeline, and explaining all of the opportunities that were stalled. Nearly every ...
The next stage in technology will result from collaboration, not competition, according to many who support the concepts behind the open source movement. Once the purview of IT outliers, open source has now infiltrated just about every aspect of technology ...
In an inbound marketing world, is there still need to call people? This is the current question on many sellers ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. You don’t need to wait for your dream ...
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way to quickly gather workers together in a way that could make real-time crowdsourcing possible. According to an article in Technology Review, the problem with crowdsourcing is the wait-time ...
Though many an IT professional is apt to grumble at the number of employees using their personal devices at work, the future is swiftly descending upon us, and the consumerization of IT seems unavoidable. Rather than aggressively fighting the change, ...
A survey conducted by University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, showed a downward trend in business blogging. Only 37 percent of companies surveyed in 2011 maintained blogs, down from 50 percent the year before. According to an article in USA Today, the ...
Microsoft has long been known for products that don't exactly play well in the schoolyard of the technology market, and on more than one occasion has been the bully other companies wish would get noticed by the teacher. Their place ...
With the cost of getting into the social networking sphere relatively small, one would expect that small and midsize businesses would jump at the chance for extra exposure and customer interaction, but a new study shows that the opposite is ...
Customer relationship management (CRM) software isn't new to the industry. But in recent years--thanks to advancements in virtual technology and the cloud--it has been hailed as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) savior for many midsized businesses. CRM deployments, say the companies that ...
Zoho recently released two new apps for mobile business. One is a CRM app for Android, and the other is for a project management app for iOS. While it's not clear whether the company will release companion apps respectively, or ...
Faced with a bandwidth crunch, Procter & Gamble took action by banning employees from Netflix and Pandora after an IT audit showed that the company's employees clocked 4,000 hours of music on Pandora during the workday. According to a CNN ...
Are you a sales data naysayer? Think that metrics and measurement are “too confining” (that was a National Safety Council ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. Your online presence is your surrogate salesperson. She ...
The consumerization of IT is once again being hyped as the greatest thing since the Internet. And yes, a lot of consumer apps and devices are nifty. No doubt, there are lessons that IT shops and enterprise application designers can ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I recently attended a conference where a consulting ...
One of the best ways to determine worth is a competition--even for IT products. Companies always have glowing things to say about their own products and services but often use terminology that doesn't translate to other similar options designed by ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. For sometime now I have been noticing a ...
Twitter is everywhere, and businesses that don't get in on the social phenomenon may quickly find themselves behind the times and less relevant as other more agile companies respond directly to customer feedback. Thanks to the social media site's popularity, ...
We recently posted in our newsletter about 3 tips to close more deals. The third tip talked about setting next ...
In order to be most productive with the sales opportunities in your pipeline there are a number of people you ...
Salesforce.com no longer rules the customer relationship management (CRM) roost; while the company's revenues were up in the fourth quarter of 2011, overall profits were down in part because of the need for an increased CRM marketing budget to stave ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. Your sales force automation and customer relationship manager ...
Contacts are data, and people are real. Who these people are needs to be sorted out and organized, hence the need for a CRM, Social CRM, or other contact system. Without recommending one platform or another specifically, we urge ...
Often, the cloud is referred to as if it existed in a bubble, and the benefits of cloud computing are often touted without being connected to how the cloud can solve other issues--like the expanding amount of data midsized companies ...
The sheer volume of information on the Web continues to grow. For Web users, it means a clutter of options to choose from. For firms, it means a clutter they must break through. The "curated web" is a response to ...
Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions that integrate with legacy systems, project management, and analytics options are rapidly becoming the expectation for midsized business management as they look to get more value for their IT dollar and more work out of ...
KLM Airlines is testing out Meet and Seat, a social flying program that allows flyers to share their Facebook and LinkedIn profile information to find a more compatible seatmate on flights. According to an article in The New York Times, ...
What can users and potential users look for in Microsoft's expected Dynamics CRM R9 update? The update is expected later this year. And in a nutshell, says one well-informed blogger, the focus will be on social analytics and enriched data ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. There are opportunities in your pipeline that aren’t ...
On Monday, Oracle announced that it would be waiving its Extended Support fees for E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12.0. While this is certainly good news for customers using these applications, giving up on a steady revenue stream raises questions ...
As a seller you are working hard to create a full pipeline (funnel) and now that you have all of ...
Years ago when I started in B2B sales, there was one way to keep track of customers and prospective customers ...
The recent Carnival Cruise Lines ship disaster is one illustration of the need for businesses to have CRM analysis tools to take control and manage the effects of negative sentiment in the social media world. In the case of Carnival ...
Marketers today are continuously and intensely bombarded with new approaches, methodologies, and technologies that change how they do their jobs and the results they can achieve. The value of techniques such as "inbound marketing" and various automation capabilities, and social ...
By September 2011, virtual pinboard site Pinterest saw the number of unique visitors climb to 7.21 million and overtake even media giant YouTube for site referrals. In January 2012, the site generated 3.6% of all referral traffic--big numbers in a ...
What is the value of a saw if you never sharpen it? Having a dull saw will not allow you ...
Salesforce.com is a leading player in the world of CRM software development and deployment, and rarely makes a misstep when it comes to serving small and midsize businesses (SMBs). Recently however, the company began offering a new feature-filled version of ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. Over time, selling to and working with your ...
You’ve listened online and are following your prospective customer – the one you are about to close a big deal ...
Students at San Jose State University are now getting real-world experience using social media to help transform a business, showing just how fast social media has exploded into the business world. This trend is only likely to grow in the ...
Start-up CRM vendor Intercom has drawn interest--and support--for an automated CRM tool designed to help Web businesses connect more easily to their customers. The implications could extend well beyond Web-only firms.As a broad range of small and midsize businesses (SMBs) ...
Most everyone focuses on the front of the sales pipeline, and there is much written about all of the things ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. One of the primary reasons that I use ...
Small business customer relationship management (CRM) services face a unique challenge, one that larger companies can often ignore: the need to connect with customers in a timely manner. While big players in the industry are now doing this out of ...
In conversations about managing sales opportunities you need to reference either a pipeline or a funnel to really understand that ...
PhoneDog LLC is suing its former employee, Noah Kravitz, over ownership of a Twitter account and 17,000 followers. Kravitz went to work for PhoneDog in 2006 and started a social networking account under the name @PhoneDog_Noah. He changed the account ...
For many years, the “sales explanation industry” has worked with and discussed a Funnel or a Pipeline model to explain ...
A new calendar year always brings the possibility of discussions of business process improvement and in particular, sales process improvement. ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. Last week I wrote about some of ...
Having a sure-fire repository, or “catch-all” place to help support your business growth was the original purpose of a CRM ...
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. In the past I have written about ...