Intelligent Enterprise poised an interesting question in this article it ran last week: How can you integrate SaaS solutions with on-premise? Companies such as Cast Iron and Boomi (mentioned in the article) are both great at accomplishing what they set out to do: integrating solutions with other solutions of preexisting partners. Yet in the end, … Continue reading »
Posted in July 2008 …
Gartner: CRM Grew 23 Percent in ‘07
Sharon Mertz, a long-time industry analyst at Gartner, released her firm’s yearly market forecast report for CRM. All-in-all, it spelled good news across the board. As was to be expected, SaaS was the big market driver, with sales increasing 23 percent in 2007. You can get all the details here; but I took particular note … Continue reading »
Creative Market Sizing 101
I believe that market sizing surveys and reports have a value. In a competitive world, it is good to make benchmarks in terms of what your rivals are up to – how well they’re performing, etc. But some market estimates make no sense to me. Merrill Lynch recently put together a market report stating that … Continue reading »
Keeping Your Call Center Current…
I have been reading the blogs by the editorial staff at 1:1 magazine a lot lately. Some good stuff. A nice post this week on what’s new in terms of contact center managers’ priorities. These two items jumped out at me: Managers want to use e-learning modules for training, but are torn about taking agents … Continue reading »
Commercial Open Source: Understand the Basics
Bill Synder of CIO magazine had an article he recently wrote on open source CRM published today. In it, he highlights a point that my colleague spoke about yesterday: the lingering resistance that many C-level executives have towards allowing open source into the enterprise at the application level. There’s still plenty of CIOs unsure of … Continue reading »
CRM Basics for Success.
I just came across a nice “top 10″ list for companies to follow for successfull CRM rollouts at Inside CRM (gotta give credit where it’s due – thanks Chris). A lot of this is no-brainer stuff for those seasoned in CRM, but I think this is a good standard. The points are solid and good … Continue reading »
Hey, Maybe There’s Something to this Subscription Thing After All…
While Salesforce.com and other companies (SugarCRM included) were busy growing at triple digit growth rates via a subscription model, a lot of established vendors kept their distance. And even when companies got into a subscription model, it was closely tied to their SaaS offerings. Some people, sad to say, still feel SaaS and subscription revenue … Continue reading »
Open Source Telephony and the Call Center
Frost and Sullivan has found that open source telephony and other open source-related IP solutions are experiencing a surge in demand throughout Europe, thanks mainly cost savings, which can run as high as 40 percent over their proprietary brethren. Studies such as these speak volumes, especially when I still hear call centers being referred to … Continue reading »
The Importance of “Commercial” Open Source
I still get asked the usual questions when i tell people I work for a commercial open source software provider. “So – how does your company make money?” “Can ANYONE simply check in code to your solution?” “Do businesses really buy open source software?” I take the time to answer these questions fully, since you … Continue reading »
