Articles by

Thousands of people may visit your website every day, but only a fraction of them make it into your CRM system (which enables you to manage and automate relationships, interactions and contact data). What about those visitors who don't get captured by CRM? How do you count and relate to the vast universe of prospects you know nothing about, but who obviously have some reason to be interested in your products and services? ...

Last week was another big week for technology as Amazon announced a new line of Kindles and Microsoft released its Mango product into the wild. Many of us are thinking these products target Google's gains and missed opportunities more than they do Apple's. I'll share my thoughts on the potential for these products and why Google, rather than Apple, may be the initial target...

Consumers are increasingly shopping on global sites, and they want to shop in their own language. By demonstrating cultural awareness, businesses will truly be able to expand internationally. Organizations can attract new and returning business from around the world if they listen to the preferences of customers abroad -- as well as multi-ethnic markets in their own country.

Bank of America may have hoped it could quietly slip a US$5 fee past its customers. If so, it was woefully wrong. This week, the bank announced it would charge debit card customers a $5 monthly fee when they use their cards to purchase goods. The bank pointed to new financial regulations as a reason. Customers, for their part, quickly did the math...

In the wake of Amazon's launch of its Kindle Fire tablet on Wednesday, the company's reportedly looking at buying the Palm webOS operating system from ailing HP, according to a report in Venturebeat. Amazon spent quite a bit of time, effort and money tweaking Android for the Kindle Fire, which reportedly presold 95,000 units on its first day. So w...

A recently revealed U.S. Department of Justice document has provided details about what kind of usage information is retained by the nation's largest mobile phone providers, as well as how long they retain it. In some cases, information is stored for many years....

Is the tablet market so saturated that Research In Motion has thrown in the towel? The company has halted production of its PlayBook and will not pursue any other tablet projects, according to a research note from Collins Stewart Hawkpoint analyst John Vinh. RIM, for its part, staunchly denies the claim. "RIM doesn't typically comment on rumors, b...

Many organizations pursuing lower overhead costs and improved customer service are adapting their business models to the cloud. However, some fail to realize that this move only pays off when monetization models change as well. Productization, enrollment, payment capture and customer support are inherently different in a cloud environment, and go-...

StayinFront has been offering users mobile functionality for 10 years. However, its apps were not optimized for the latest generation of mobile devices, Ken Arbadji, vice president of North American sales, is quick to acknowledge -- such as the iPhone, iPad and Google Android devices. ...

eMusic's old, custom-built content management system (CMS) was slowing the team down. We're a digital media company, and our team has to be able to react quickly and share content on hot topics. When reviewing the different content management systems out there, we found that WordPress was an ideal solution to suit all of our CMS needs. We wanted...

The Kindle Fire made its big debut this week as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduced the tablet along with other new members of the Kindle family on Wednesday The Fire's been touted as a challenger to the Apple iPad, but the real threat to Apple's iconic tablet may come from the Silk browser that will run on the Fire....

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, co-chairmen of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, have sent a letter to Joe Leibowitz, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), addressing Facebook's use of cookies to gather information from members who surf the 905,000 sites that display its "like" button A blog post that su...

Media reform group Free Press has filed a lawsuit against the FCC following the official publication and impending implementation of the commission's Net neutrality rules Network neutrality is the principle that there should be no restrictions imposed by governments or Internet service providers on consumers' access to the Internet....

Motorola and Verizon Wireless on Wednesday got around to delivering what's been promised to owners of the Xoom tablet for several months: 4G LTE. When the Motorola Xoom first went on sale early in 2011, buyers were told that they'd eventually be able to send their 3G-wireless-equipped tablets to a workshop where they'd be upgraded with faster 4G w...

Amazon's Kindle Fire debuted Wednesday morning with much fanfare. Many of the tablet's specs were already known, leaked or widely suspected, leaving little to wow the crowds -- except the price point. The device is going to retail at an eyebrow-raising US$199, several hundred dollars less than the cheapest iPad. ...

To many, the term "sales executive" conjures up images of five-star dinners and long afternoons on the golf course. But, as I'm sure any sales executive would tell you, the job entails more than simply schmoozing with clients and courting prospects. In reality, sales executives face enormous pressure to drive revenue and improve the profitability of their company, particularly since their performance has a direct impact on the bottom line. Their ability to provide accurate sales forecasts and deliver results based on those projections is essential to the overall health of the organization. Predictability is of the utmost importance.

You know how frustrating it is to have a wireless call dropped, right? Or to have such a weak connection that you can't make a call at all. Very frustrating, to say the least. Now imagine that problem happening on a regular basis. Sounds like problems we had 10 years ago, right? Well, that is still everyday life in too many cities and towns around the United States. I call them black holes in wireless coverage, and I'll explain why.

CRM is a business tool. Lke any business tool, its objective is tied to money -- either making more of it through increased sales, or saving it through greater efficiency. Perhaps because CRM is rooted in sales force automation and hard sales, the customer's path through CRM has mirrored the customer's path through the sales funnel. The objective ...

Amazon's US$199 tablet announced Wednesday for a November release will be one of the first sub-$300 tablets with a decent specification. ...

Microsoft and Samsung have signed an agreement to cross-license their patent portfolios, providing broad coverage for each company's products. Microsoft will receive royalties for Samsung's Android-powered mobile phones, and the companies have agreed to focus on further development and marketing of Windows-powered smartphones Samsung recently launc...