August 2009

Magazine Features

Healing the Sick

Facing regulatory requirements, spiraling costs, and an aging (and ailing) customer base, the healthcare industry looks to CRM to balance a pair of age-old doctrines: First, do no harm—and physician, heal thyself.

Patients Are Customers, Not Case Numbers

"Healthcare" and "customer service" don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Intelligence in the Cloud

Business intelligence software defined a certain stage of maturity with CRM data by making that data actionable. Now on-demand BI promises to do the same for on-demand CRM — by making it affordable.

LucidEra: The End of an Era?

Industry experts—including some LucidEra investors and competitors—speculate on the reasons behind the fall of an on-demand business intelligence pioneer, and LucidEra customers talk about how they'll cope with the loss.

Serving Up Service Strategies

Delivering quality customer service means making quality shots.

Front Office

Strategies that Endure

Proven business strategies abound—even new ones.

Reality Check

The Next Steps Matter, Too

The Journey of Implementation — Part 2: It's a bit like the Wild West out there — so be extra careful to conduct due diligence when choosing a vendor partner.

Customer Centricity

Doing More of What You Already Do

Performance management is a contact center requirement.

The Tipping Point

Servicing Software-as-a-Service

Trade-Offs, Part 2 — The Technology Side: "The end of software" doesn't mean the end of software headaches.

Connect

Managing Social Customers for Profit

A new paradigm calls for a reassessment of an industry metric.

Pint of View

Channeling My Frustration

Words, words, words. Why don't they mean what they used to?

Insight

Microsites to Serve Microsegments

Brands from Dell to Office Depot are slicing customers into ever-tinier segments—and learning the dos and don'ts along the way.

Do You Know Your URLs?

Not every marketing effort includes a campaign-specific Web address -- but some of the ones that do aren't doing a very good job of connecting to the main brand.

X Marks the Spot

Consumers are looking for you on search engines—but are you there to be found?

On the Scene: Clarity Is SAP’s New Enterprise

SAPPHIRE '09: SAP executives stressed the emerging need for transparency among all enterprises. Did the message ring true?

Required Reading: Rave All About It

Author David Meerman Scott reveals the secret to having your idea spread everywhere.

CRM on Twitter: August 2009

The end of on-demand business intelligence provider LucidEra, captured on the public tweetstream.

Feedback: August 2009

Readers tell us what they think of "social" technologies.

REAL ROI

The Power of Information

OSIsoft uses Socialtext to revamp an outdated knowledge base.

Patience for Patients

Improved surveying techniques improve a hospital's patient centricity.

Less Is More

Email-collaboration provider Zimbra sheds complexity, opts for simplicity—and achieves better results.

Secret of My Success

More Books, Fewer Worries

Self-publishing company Author Solutions turns to Salesforce.com's platform-as-a-service to host its operations and expand its library of ideas.

Re:Tooling

Re:Tooling -- Predictive Analytics: Keeping a Step Ahead

To cope with the recession, more organizations are looking to predictive analytics for answers.