[2003-08-27] Setting the Record Straight - Five reasons the future is bright for CRM
As I enter my 19th year in the CRM industry, I can safely say that I've gotten some perspective on what is real and what is fluff. This perspective has confirmed for me that for five key reasons, the CRM industry is indeed headed in a very healthy direction.
[2003-08-25] Light Your Fuse Now
Have you been thinking about launching a company? Or perhaps you're considering an expansion of your existing business. Finally, current economic conditions are conspiring to offer you the best environment for a business start-up. Current conditions are as favorable for start-ups as any time we've seen since late 1982, the year we were just beginning to emerge from a deep and prolonged recession and enter a 20-year expansion that was interrupted only briefly in 1991.
[2003-08-22] Calculating ROI on your Investment in Requirements Management Tools
There's no question that a commercial Requirements Management tool is very useful; but, can it pay for itself at your company? In this article we'll look at a model to help you calculate ROI on Requirements Management tools.
[2003-08-20] Outsourcing Supply Chain Management - 8 Issues
Outsourcing is done for various reasons. The driver can be generating cost reductions and downsizing; this has been a traditional reason for outsourcing. But there are others, such as gaining capabilities that are not available internally, implementing lean programs, streamlining operations, strategically positioning the company, or improving or adding capabilities to gain competitive advantage. Regardless of the reason, outsourcing succeeds when it is well thought out and done properly.
[2003-08-19] Calculating the Cost of Content
In our enthusiasm to measure clickthroughs, pageviews and revenues, we seldom stop to consider the cost of our Web site content.
[2003-08-19] ROI For CRM Systems - Can You Measure It?
This is a hot topic in the industry today. There is a great amount of debate and discussion about Return on Investment for Customer Relationship Management systems. There are extremists at both ends of the spectrum. Some people say financial ROI for a CRM system is simply impossible to measure because the direct benefits are either intangible (like customer goodwill) or are intermingled with all kinds of other factors (did our sales increase because of our CRM system or because of that new product launch, or both?). There are others who say you can absolutely equate CRM ROI to dollars, and that you shouldn't implement until you incorporate that into your plan.
[2003-08-13] ADVERTISING YOUR SITE FOR FREE: Get people to visit your site on a zero-budget
Introduction This article is intended for webmasters who already have a webpage set up on the internet. I have recently set up my own webpage, and this will be a conclusion of what I have learned from my own research on the web, and from taking part of several discussion forums.
[2003-08-12] Ethics Foundations for Business
With all the recent headlines about company misconduct and ethics violations has come a significant, and long overdue, increase in the consideration of ethics among businesses. As a result of the recent bad press about lawsuits against companies' "behaving badly", there has been a rapid, almost frantic scramble among many large corporations to set themselves apart from the "wrong-doers" in the business world. Companies have quickly penned ethics codes, instituted ethics compliance monitoring programs, or have had high-level corporate officers visibly touting their company's "new and improved" ethics focus in the hope of regaining consumer confidence in a devastated economy. And with good reason: consumers are increasingly wary of all business interactions, to the detriment of all, even the most upright of enterprises.
[2003-08-12] Choosing The Wrong Server Will Literally Make Or Break You
Choosing the right web server will be one of the most important decisions you will ever make with your online business. Why? Because the web server you choose will literally make or break your online business.
[2003-08-11] 5 Steps to Poor Listening: The ordinary professional’s guide
The development of non-technical, soft skills represents a significant choice in the career of IT professionals. For those who choose to take the road most traveled, here are a few thoughts on how to ensure poor client and peer relationships, projects that focus on solutions to the wrong problems, and working cross-purposes with your team.
[2003-08-11] The Lifecycle Of Large Websites
If you're part of a large organization, your website will probably have been started by a small group of evangelists. It will have grown in a very ad hoc manner. Gradually, senior management will have become more involved. Finally, the website will have been viewed as just another business tool, and managed as such.
[2003-08-08] Design Patterns -- An Evolutionary Step to Managing Complex Sites
When your organization's web site or intranet has hundreds of contributors, how do you ensure that every page is high quality and extremely usable? Especially, if these contributors have never designed a web page before?
[2003-08-07] Sales Doesn't Work
For decades, our selling practices have been based on selling a product rather than helping buyers decide how to buy. Indeed, the underlying belief has been (and I'm being simplistic here) that products/services get sold when sellers pitch/present the product well. Or they get sold when sellers create great personal rapport with prospects. Or when the script is exceptional.
[2003-08-06] Sales and Distribution Management and Training
Are you interested in distributing products using the web? With the customer-centric distribution chain today, the role that a distributor plays includes enabling direct ordering and tracking of orders over the Internet. Does it mean that you switch your current operations to the Internet? Or does it mean making use of the Internet in such a manner that optimizes your role in the value chain.
[2003-08-06] Quality Web Publishing Is About Saying No
Are the people who have least to say in your organization publishing most on your intranet or public website? Are the people who have most to say publishing least? You're not alone. Organizations are slowly realizing that managing a website is as much about what you don't publish as what you do.
[2003-08-06] Blogging for Business
There's something going on out there called Blogging and if you haven't looked at it as a potential marketing tool for your business, now's the time. Blogging is the practice of writing personalized, heartfelt (to varying degrees) content and publishing it on the Internet for the world to read.
[2003-08-04] Global Factors Impacting the Software Development Industry
One of the great ‘equalizers' in the global economy is the Internet and other forms of modern telecommunications. Today, unlike just a few short years ago, programmers in one part of the world can work seamlessly on projects across the globe. Likewise, work may be distributed to programmers in many locations - unrestricted by time or distance - to be reassembled as working units back home.