Customer relationship management

A community portal about Customer relationship management with blogs, videos, and photos. According to Wikipedia.org: Customer relationship management covers methods and technologies used by companies to manage their relationships with clients. Information stored on existing customers is analyzed and used to this end. Automated CRM processes are often used to generate automatic personalized marketing based on the customer information stored in the system.

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Top CRM News for Year 2007

Written by redHammer on

So what happened to CRM solutions during the past year? Now be prepared for a list of Big 2007 CRM News ..

On top of the list is the remarkable claim made by Salesforce.com. The software provider arranged a press release (in early December) announcing that it is about to reach a major milestone within the month. This milestone constitutes a breakthrough of more than a million paying subscribers!

Another remarkable event, though not exactly an accomplishment, is the firing spree Sprint undertook. Yes, you got that one right--a firing spree. That's not the worst of it. They did not fire employees. They fired customers--1,000 unprofitable customers. Yes, these customers do not exactly bring in revenues. But firing them is calling for them to bring in trouble. Just wait 'til they start talking about the bad experiences they had with the company. That's bad publicity free of charge!

Now let us go back to real achievements.. Still one among the top three brands in CRM solutions (the 'big 3' made up of Microsoft, SAP and Oracle), Microsoft made real progress this year. Just this December 17, Microsoft announced its release of 'Titan', the fourth version of Microsoft's Dynamics CRM solution. Now that means a single code base for whatever CRM need you may have--on-demand, on-premise or a combination of both.

This is good CRM news to SaaS, a fast-growing market base which is expected to grow by 25% in software revenue over the next couple of years (and that's good CRM news for Microsoft too!). And of course, there's the remaining 75% that a giant like Microsoft will have no problem dominating. If anything, the company remains to be ahead than Salesforce.com in terms of customer familiarity (think Interface).

Speaking of Salesforce.com, the company is set at meeting yet another milestone (a big one!). Salesforce.com is optimistic about meeting the $1B milestone in terms of annual revenue. And they are planning to reach the goal within this year.

Salesforce.com is not alone in this feat, there are also the likes of Consona, Unica and RightNow taking on a positive outlook (although in their own different ways).

Consona is taking on an acquisition of "franchises". RightNow, on the other hand, remains to cater to its market made up mostly of consumer-focused enterprises operating on a large scale (mainly through on-demand services). As for Unica, it continues to profit on a niche the company itself invented, something called an Enterprise Marketing Management. It also expanded its scope, including web analytics in its efforts.

And that's not the end for CRM news 2007.. Companies gave a louder voice to customers during the past year. This was made possible by Voice of Customer programs that allow enterprises to better listen to customers and to even measure their loyalty. Among these companies are Confirmit, CustomerSat and Allegiance; all of which makes use of Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) systems.

And there's the so-called Web 2.0 or Consumer Generated Media. Social networking and online collaboration is the thing these days (or is this an understatement?). I you are still not using this type of media at a time when the Web is empowering people more than ever, then you are not managing your customer relationships after all.

The CRM news mentioned above are only few of the numerous remarkable things happening in this fast-growing industry. There is still more to learn about the benefits of CRM sofware (and CRM pitfalls too!). So keep exploring and find out more about how CRM software works !

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