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Week in Review: What's Hot in CRM
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December 18, 2009

Week in Review: What's Hot in CRM

By Kelly McGuire, TMCnet Editor


Welcome to the week in review for the customer relationship management, or “CRM,” industry. Below are some of the top stories that came across the TMCnet news wires this week.

On Monday, call center software provider, Five9 Inc., announced that the company appointed Dan Burkland, a 20 year call center software and voice applications veteran, as the new Senior Vice President of Enterprise Sales and Business Development. 


Chief Technology Officer of Five9, Jim Dvorkin, said that, with the recent introduction of the industry’s first cloud computing platform for call centers, Burkland’s leadership will drive adoption of this innovative technology by enterprise customers. Burkland’s 20 years of experience includes sales positions at GeoTel and Cisco Systems (News - Alert), as well as Transera and IP Unity. 

“Dan’s proven track record with large enterprise clientele and his sales leadership will allow us to accelerate our momentum in the enterprise call center software market segment,” Dvorkin said. 

On Wednesday, lead management and telemarketing software provider VanillaSoft, announced its involvement with a new sales movement that – given the appropriate evolution of the professional world – could invoke a new generation of selling techniques for a new generation of call center agents. Sales2.0, also described as Buyer2.0, is a sales approach that adapts and excels to improve the efficiency of a company’s sales resources by changing purchasing behaviors. 

In a recent interview with TMCnet, VanillaSoft’s Vice President of Business Development, Bruce Bonini said that buyers’ purchasing techniques now consist of tasks such as searching out possible vendors and analyzing competitive offerings on the Web among others.

“A company needs to be ‘in phase’ with a potential buyer and be on their radar to be part of their buying process,” Bonini said, adding that customer relationship management, or “CRM,” systems are great repositories of data and allow all kinds of nice reports. 

And finally, on Friday, the Japanese arm of customer relationship management, or “CRM,” software provider, Salesforce.com announced plans to debut a business offering information technology firms a way to use its cloud infrastructure and development platform to create their own-brand services. 

Over the next year, Salesforce.com (News - Alert) officials said that they hope to have 100 systems developers signed up for the program. Companies can already use the Force.com platform to develop software that they can sell to third parties, which must form contracts with both the developer and Salesforce.com, company officials said. 

Firms joining the OEM Partner Program will sign an undisclosed private contract with Salesforce.com, agreeing to pay a fee based on the term of the contract and the scale of use. The new business, which Salesforce.com calls the OEM Partner Program, will allow systems and software developers to use the Force.com platform to devise products they can independently price and market under their own brands.

That’s the top CRM News for this week. Check back next week on TMCnet for more breaking news in the CRM industry.
 

Kelly McGuire is a TMCnet Web editor, covering CRM and workforce technologies, and anchor of its daily TMC Newsroom video broadcast. Kelly also writes about eco-friendly "green" technologies and smart grids, compiling TMCnet's weekly e-Newsletters on those topics, as well as the cable industry. To read more of Kelly's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Kelly McGuire


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