The digital intelligence solutions vendor Webtrends has introduced the Action Center platform supported by Webtrends Streams, a streaming architecture pushing real-time visitor and event-level data into marketing systems. In other words, the platform facilitates the integration of in-session and historical customer-level data into systems that marketers use including e-mail, display ad networks, SMS messaging, customer relationship management (CRM), etc. Read the rest of this entry »

At SugarCon 2013, in New York, SugarCRM demonstrated the new capabilities of its customer engagement platform, Sugar. It features the following developments: Read the rest of this entry »

2012 was a whirlwind year of influences on the business landscape—some of them good and some of them not so good. The fiscal cliff, the U.S. presidential election, an anemic economic recovery, the debt ceiling and proposed sequestration cuts, along with Hurricane Sandy’s effects on business are a few things that come to mind. But despite the ever-changing business landscape, one central tenet always rings true: keep your customers happy.

Sage’s professed focus has for some time been the customer experience, and the company has done a number of things in the last year to further its goals in this regard. We talked to Joe Langner, executive vice president of mid-market solutions at Sage North America, about what Sage has learned in this arena, and what the company is planning for 2013 to continue following this mantra. While Sage is a large company with over 6 million customers worldwide, many of the lessons it has learned can easily be applied to any business—small or large, in services or manufacturing, bricks-and-mortar or ecommerce.

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The IBM Connect 2013 Opening General Session peeked into what the future will bring for IBM’s clients and partners. The company will launch a new suite for human resources (HR), and new versions of the IBM Connections social business platform and the Customer Experience Suite.

A series of applications meant to create collaborative work environments (i.e., community builder, video conferencing, activity streams, document sharing, whiteboard collaboration, etc.), will be central to the HR software solution. Read the rest of this entry »

SAP announced its latest business solution, powered by HANA, called SAP 360 Customer, during the SAPPHIRE NOW – SAP TechEd event being held in Madrid. The solution aims to move beyond traditional customer relationship management (CRM) and provide organizations with the neccesary capabilities for improving one-on-one customer interactions in real time. Read the rest of this entry »

Vendors of customer relationship management solutions, and the companies that use those solutions, praise the advantages of having a 360-degree view of the customer. The approach is meant to provide a company with a full picture of its customers in order to enhance the customer experience, provide better customer service and support, and improve the company’s sales and marketing initiatives to better target those customers.

One problem that many companies face in using their 360-degree view stems from having focused on only one or two of these objectives. But as its name implies, a 360-degree view demands a holistic approach. Read the rest of this entry »