| Avalara and NetSuite Form Alliance to Offer Automated Sales Tax ...
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Wash. --(Business Wire)-- Avalara (www.avalara.com), a leading small and medium business (SMB)-oriented provider of on-demand, web-based sales tax compliance services and NetSuite Inc. (www.netsuite.com), a leading provider of on-demand enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) application software, today announced an alliance extending Avalara's innovative SaaS based sales tax automation solution, AvaTax (TM) to NetSuite customers as an add-on.
.
Will Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Productively Turn Into New ...
Whom are you blaming for your selling teams lack of results with Customer Relationship Management productivity? CRM is a tool that requires skilled users for maximum results. NORFOLK, VA (PRWEB) July 26, 2006 -- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions promised so much but gave so little, but was it the fault of the software? The most recent issue of Inside Strategic Relations, a newsletter for sales and marketing management, explains the tools are fine, it's just what your NOT doing that keeps you from moving revenues to the next level. How many of these common mistakes that keep CRM from being profitable does your company make? Not knowing what the next level is -- If you don't know where it target is, how do you expect to reach it.
Westpac invests $30m in training
WESTPAC has spent more than $30 million teaching staff to use its new customer relationship system, according to sales and service head Fernando Ricardo. Speaking at a customer event held by Teradata in Las Vegas yesterday, Mr Ricardo said banking industry purse-strings rarely loosened for training budgets as easily as they did for technology. In Westpac's case, the investment had been worthwhile. "I don't know why it's much easier for executives to buy $10 million worth of hardware than to invest $10 million in people," he said. "I've spent hundreds of millions of a couple of companies' money and the hardest money to get is for training. "Sometimes we're surprised that customer relationship management programs don't work after we spend $200 million or $300 million, and a key part of that has to do with the investment we make in our people." Using a mix of technology, including Oracle, Seibel, IBM Websphere and Teradata's data warehousing software, Westpac has spent about $300 million building its customer relationship management system over the past five years.
UPDATE - Salesforce.com falls for phishing, warns customers
Salesforce.com is warning customers that they may be the targets of malicious software or phishing scams, after one of its employees was tricked into divulging a corporate password. In a note to customers, Salesforce said that online criminals have been sending customers fake invoices and, starting just a few days ago, viruses and key logging software. The e-mails were sent using information that was illegally obtained from Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com bills its Web-based CRM (customer relationship management) products as easier to use and maintain than traditional CRM software, but this latest development underlines the security risks that come with this more open model. The problems began a few months ago, when a Salesforce.com employee fell for a phishing scam and divulged a company password that gave attackers access to a customer contact list.
Google, Salesforce to buddy up over CRM
Google and Salesforce.com are expected to today launch a combined website that is designed to allow the online customer relationship management software maker to act as a reseller for Google's AdWords. For Salesforce.com, the alliance expands its efforts to tie its hosted CRM software with Google AdWords, following its acquisition of privately held Kieden last year. Salesforce.com will expand beyond allowing its customers to launch Google AdWords from a Salesforce.com application to one in which it will act as a reseller of the Google AdWords platform. The two companies jointly developed Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords and plan to jointly market the offering, said Kendall Collins, senior vice president of marketing for Salesforce.com. Salesforce Group Edition is designed to allow companies to connect to Google AdWords and have their advertisement displayed on Google.com when related search terms are entered on the site, as well as distribute their ads on Google AdSense.
SAP making a play for on-demand e-tail CRM?
Business software giant SAP has acquired Praxis Software Solutions as it attempts to weave on-demand applications into its offerings. Technology from Praxis will be incorporated into SAP Business One, a business management product aimed at small and medium-sized companies, to help them set up online stores and deploy customer relationship management software via the internet. The two key elements that SAP is gaining from its long-time partner are Praxis' NetPoint Commerce and NetPoint Focus applications. The first is an ecommerce package that offers customisable shopping-cart and customer support functions, designed to handle data access for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer needs on a single website. It integrates pricing and inventory data originated from the SAP Business One System.
|
