Vox populi is Latin for “voice of the people”– in broadcasting and television, they use the “vox pop interview” to get spontaneous opinions on a subject, from different, randomly selected people. My idea is to apply the concept to our blog—whenever you see a blog post starting with “Vox Populi,” it means we’re seeking your opinion.

In broadcasting, only a few people are interviewed, and the answers are edited. On our blog, everyone can leave a comment—we will not change or edit what you say (although our moderators will remove comments that are abusive). That being said, here’s your first assignment: Read the rest of this entry »

The recent economic slowdown has illustrated how interwoven our global economies really are. The demands to increase enterprise performance has accelerated. Whether it’s to find new opportunities to increase or maintain market share, or to generate new revenue opportunities, each of these areas represent additional challenges in fulfilling customer expectations and demands. Read the rest of this entry »

I can partly understand analysts’ temptation to beat up on Microsoft’s forays into the enterprise applications space. To be fair, ”the empire” has had its share of strategic and tactical miscues, as if it had wanted to give these naysayers some ammunition. For one, many analysts and market observers first criticized the giant for not having a unified enterprise resource planning (ERP) product line, but rather several diverse ones, coming from acquisitions of former Great Plains Software and Navision Software a/s.

Today, we are talking about the following four Microsoft Dynamics ERP product lines:

1. Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains) [evaluate this product];
2. Microsoft Dynamics NAV (formerly Navision) [evaluate this product];
3. Microsoft Dynamics SL (formerly Solomon) [evaluate this product] ; and
4. Microsoft Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta) [evaluate this product] .

Read the rest of this entry »

We submitted this question to our analyst team to get their collective opinion. Read on to find out what they had to say.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another installment in our back-to-basics series. So far, we’ve covered ERP 101 and SCM 101.

What Is CRM?
CRM is more than a software application. It is a set of strategies, processes, and associated software systems designed to improve the interactions and engagement of customers. Read the rest of this entry »

Going through our article archives, I stumbled across Glen Petersen’s excellent article A Lexicon for CRM Success.

Petersen takes aim at key buzzwords in the CRM industry, and I thought it’d be worth summarizing his list of the worst offenders–and his thinking about why they belong in the trash can.

Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Picks: Vendors submit. We review.

… white papers from whitepapers.technologyevaluation.com.

White paper: Why One Number Is Not Enough

Editor A (the nominally genial one)
This one caught my eye as it crossed our desks a while ago.

“What number?” I asked. “A hundred? One? Pi? Do tell me more.”

Read the rest of this entry »