Expert Advice

During the past few years, customer service organizations have faced increasing amounts of pressure to deliver better service over a broader range of channels including the Web, email and phone. Customers expect to get service at any time of the day or night and assume that customer service teams wi...

Many small-business owners may not realize that the cloud plays a big role in their business operations, and its importance is growing every day. I'm often asked, "What exactly is the cloud, and why does my company need it?" Simply put, the cloud hosts resources and applications that are accessed th...

Sales has had a rough couple of years. Although customers have been harder to find, the pressure on sales pros to produce has become ever greater. In some U.S. firms, the lowest-performing 40 percent of the sales force is replaced annually. In other businesses, departures or layoffs of sales staff a...

The CRM Idol competition starts this week. If you aren't aware, here's the basic rundown. It's the brainchild of Paul Greenberg, who is no stranger to the speaking circuit and a believer in making CRM entertaining. Idol, as the name implies, is a competition focused on emerging companies, and it...

Does "green data center" refer to having more greenery around your data center site? No, definitely not. It means reducing your carbon footprint by making effective usage of the core center of your organization -- your "information assets." Being green requires an end-to-end, integrated view of the...

Over the past few decades, most IT shops have followed a somewhat similar trajectory: Starting from a centralized model, computing resources, much like the cosmological Big Bang, have exploded outwards to become ever-more-distributed and decentralized. This makes sense given market dynamics. Comput...

In an era when the sting of recession has not yet worn off, many consumers are continuing to look for ways to save a few dollars. One of the effects on the retail industry is the increasing desire of shoppers to avoid unnecessary shipping fees. While many consumers want to be able to purchase an ite...

In terms of online communication, social media is the biggest trend in recent years. There are billions of participants around the globe as well as an array of forms: blogs, forums, wikis, multimedia content, social bookmarking and, of course, popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+....

At CRM Evolution, Brian Vellmure, founder of Initium Technology, gave a talk on the future of customer relationships. He peered well into the future, envisioning an era when the Internet anticipates customer needs and delivers advice automatically. That can only happen when companies develop suffici...

Once considered the red-headed stepchild of the gaming industry, social gaming is finally taking its rightful place at the table. The free-to-play model has surged to the forefront of next-generation gaming, while console game companies and traditional game developers have faltered by the wayside.