Small businesses don't need expensive customer relationship software to manage customer records and important business data. Here are four inexpensive CRM options that offer the functionality you need and also integrate with the social sites your customers and prospects use.

With most enterprise applications, the security model can be simply user/group/world. It can't be all that complicated with CRM, right? Think again.

Everybody uses the cloud. How can there be any secrets? Many companies had to learn these three little lessons the hard way, but there's no reason your business can't learn from those mistakes.

Siri has a cousin: Sophia is a voice-recognition app that helps on-the-go sales representatives handle recordkeeping chores.

A banking CIO works with the CMO and discovers that complex financial transactions can be quite emotional for the customer. Good technology can help build trust and improve the customer experience.

Everybody knows data warehousing is big data. But when you want to understand what's really going on with your customers' social interactions, terabytes may seem small. It's a laborious process, but the insight it provides can reap big rewards.

Agile is the best approach for CRM projects, but what if management just won't let you go there? What does it really mean to have a fixed-price, fixed-deliverable project? You will have to put in more effort, but you can succeed in the long run.

A user interface can be too easy. Just ask any cloud administrator who learned the hard way that there's no undo feature. Here's our wish list for 10 things that would make a cloud admin's life much easier. Most are a few years in the making, though.

Best-practices articles are as dull to read as they are to write, columnist David Taber says. So here are 10 customer support system worst practices that are certain to derail customer satisfaction.

Customer relationship management experts and seasoned users discuss how to avoid the most common mistakes, so you can get the most out of your CRM software or service with the least amount of hassle.