Features

• CRM tips: The trouble with activity management

  By David Taber | 16 February, 2010 08:11

  CRM systems are almost always used for lead, contact and deal management. Sales and marketing put data into the system so that pipeline formation and deal flow can be seen and worked in a systematic way. Many companies also use CRM for customer service, which uses calls and cases as the core workflow. Once your company gets a decent proportion of the customer interactions in the system, you can easily produce reports and dashboards that allow management to see more about the business, spotting bottlenecks or other problems in your operation. Consequently, most companies use data from the CRM system to set standard performance levels for the sales, marketing, and customer service organisations, measuring them against quotas by month or quarter.

• Analytics in the cloud: 5 lessons learned

  By Merv Adrian | 16 June, 2009 01:31

  Every company-from the smallest start-up to the largest firm-needs to be agile in today's market to respond to changing dynamics and new competition. But these days it's often the smaller companies who are better positioned to adapt: as the barriers to entry have decreased, emerging companies now have access to data streams-and techniques for analyzing them-that used to be the exclusive province of the largest companies.