Expert Advice

In case you missed it, 2012 -- the so-called "year of mobile" -- came and went pretty quickly. Now we simply live in a mobile world. E-commerce is moving to mobile devices more and more, and that trend is not likely to stop anytime soon. U.S. retail mobile commerce sales will grow from $13.63 billio...

We all know about the idea of total cost of ownership and the concept of return on investment. Both have their place in business evaluations of CRM. There's another measurement, however, that should be considered -- one I like to call "time to value." The T2V test is simple: From the time you begin ...

For the better part of six years, we pundits have been urging businesses to get social. Social CRM even has its own Gartner Magic Quadrant, and while the entries in that document are all over the map in terms of what they do, vendors serving aspects of SCRM are well established. Gartner itself said ...

Do your customers think of you as one of them? Do they think you truly understand their business challenges, their opportunities and what keeps them up at night? These are questions you should seriously consider, because in the extraordinarily demanding B2B sales climate of our post-recession world...

As a journalist covering technology, you get bombarded with material from PR people trying to get you to write about their clients. Although there are some stellar PR people, the majority of pitches I get are not targeted at what I write about, addressed to the wrong person, or make claims that are ...

The definition and makeup of the "personal cloud" are areas of intense debate. A variety of companies with a stake in cloud-based engagement have very different perspectives on what is and is not included as part of a consumer's personal cloud. "The cloud" broadly refers to the content, services, ...

"People buy your story." Hearing that said from the stage at DemandCon 2011 by Forrester's Jeff Ernst made my withered writer's heart grow two sizes (to paraphrase Dr. Seuss). Covering the technology industry has made me an unwilling witness to a range of crimes against language, ranging from tortur...

With less than a month to go before pitchers and catchers report to baseball spring training, I'm increasingly thinking of the national pastime -- and specifically, about Moneyball, the Michael Lewis book adapted into film two years ago. For those unfamiliar with the story, it's the tale of how Oa...

One of two things will happen with the upcoming launch of the brand new RIM BlackBerry 10. Either it will be a success and help RIM get back on a growth curve, or it will end up being like the Palm Pre, loved by the media and analysts yet wanting for sales. Can RIM recover with BlackBerry 10? It's p...

More than just a marketing gimmick, gamification has the potential to inject new life into a variety of industries and broaden the appeal of many new and existing offerings. The term "gamification" describes the use of game mechanics, such as challenges, achievements and rewards, to drive certain co...