Customer Relationship Management > Sales Force Automation

How do you pick the right projects? Find out what stocks and projects have in common--and how you can use that to help choose the right portfolio combination for your company.

Online sales force automation is attracting a huge number of fans. Read why.

Making sales force automation part of your CRM efforts isn't as crazy at it might sound. In fact, it's a great step toward complete customer and client care.

Global professional resourcing and project-based solutions leader turns to Compuware’s Changpoint to manage growth and complexity with streamlined resource planning, project management, and time and materials tracking.

You will have to fight against the gravitational pull of negative organizational climate to achieve the engagement of project workers and others. Use these tactics to help you win the battle.

Not only are we more accessible, but the devices we use are now becoming increasingly more robust to the point that we can be effective CRM agents anytime, anywhere--handheld and connected.

One way to push CRM forward is with sales force automation. It's a big risk--mainly because the statistics are so grim. Here's how to put yourself on the winning side of the SFA challenge.

Technical debt describes the cumulative consequences of cutting corners in software development, but it escapes the attention of many project managers as they focus on scope and schedule. That’s a mistake because it impacts both. Here are questions to help you ascertain the real state of technical affairs.

There are two ways to go about package implementation, slow and steady or with one big bang. It might be tempting to go the spectacular route, but remember: The higher they fly, the harder they fall. Weigh your risks and other factors to decide which approach is best for you.

Why involve project management before there’s a project? Customer expectations are often out of whack before the services part of the organization ever gets its hands on the project. Here we look at the root of the problem--and provide some solutions.

This will be the first in a series of articles that will look to provide the background of issues involved with managing an agile software development project under a traditionally linear and sequential project procurement process. Software development has been deliberately chosen for the example industry since that’s the domain for which agile is most typically used, but for those using agile in other industry domains, the general issues and proposed solution should work equally well within your industry.

A major reason for Sales Force Automation system implementation problems is that the two involved communities--IT and sales--view it from vastly differently perspectives. These differences have resulted in SFA systems that are rich in features and capable of doing many functions--but that are also complex and intuitive, which makes them difficult to learn and incorporate in the daily routine.

Software program management office, founded in 2004, proves instrumental in helping the Milwaukee-based company achieve increased predictability, productivity and visibility.

First, you must understand want you want to be as a company, and why your customers come to you. Then link your organization’s goals and priorities with those customer goals. Steven Rodin, chief executive officer of Storagepipe, explains what strategic focus means to him, and how he balances it with innovation.

When choosing the ideal CRM system, it's best to inject a healthy dose of realistic expectations into the selection process.

The sixth annual award recognizes visionary and proven project management offices. Past winners include EDS, Rockwell Automation and IBM Corp.

Many companies struggle with justifying the need to maintain a project management office after it is established. But the onus is on the PMO itself. Here are five key performance indicators that PMOs should use to measure effectiveness and ensure alignment with the needs of the organization.

There is a push for a more flexible, dynamic approach to supporting knowledge work through technology. Software architect and author Keith Swenson is a leading advocate of adaptive case management, which recognizes the creative, unpredictable nature of knowledge work. He shares his thoughts on the concept.

Does your PPM solution help you understand the cost of IT operations or just your projects and portfolios? Technology Business Management is an emerging category of software solutions designed to help CIOs and IT executives manage and communicate the cost, quality and value of IT Services.

Even in the face of need, awareness and involvement, project results fail to get used. Implementations are resisted. People refuse to adapt their approach or shift their habits. This may seem ludicrous, irrational and unreasonable. That’s not the point--it happens, it is real and it is consistent. Even in the face of compelling reasons why change makes sense, it doesn’t necessarily occur. Why?

The times are tough, and companies in many industries have delayed their CRM investments. However, there is one sector that is forging ahead and in fact growing: Pharmaceutical & Life Sciences.

If you really want to see how well your CRM is working, draw a picture. Process mapping is one of the best ways to visualize and understand the importance of process in your CRM efforts.

Regardless of your communication style and the means through which you decide to communicate to customers, the important component of any message you send requires that you build a component of trust into every exchange.

Anyone who has been a project manager for a while will have run into an organizational change management project--and has likely experienced some of the unique challenges that they present. We all know that there is no such thing as an easy project, but making fundamental changes to the company or department in which we work presents a whole new set of potential pitfalls. Successful organizational change management needs careful planning and execution--and here we help you prepare for this tricky time.

Recent alliances, acquisitions and implementations in the world of project and portfolio management.

The economic downturn forced one company to revisit its entire portfolio. Here we take a look at the drivers behind a portfolio reengineering.

Some project teams are devoted to their timeboxes. Some teams are devoted to their Kanban boards. But you don’t have to exclusively choose one or the other--both of these approaches are good for people who want to transition to a more agile way of working.

ROI analysis can be an enormously valuable tool for directing project investments, but it requires an open mind, reasonable assumptions and accurate numbers. Even then, the numbers that tell the whole story usually don’t appear on silver platters and rarely lend themselves to cookie-cutter templates. Here are five pragmatic rules for constructing useful, believable ROI analyses.

If and when the NBA owners and locked-out players come to agreement and begin the 2011 season, a rescue project of sorts will begin. And players, managers and support personnel will face the same challenges most project leaders face when getting a late start or falling behind.

A new guide addresses unique aspects of project management within the pharmaceutical industry, including regulatory context, integrated validation and risk management.

Some things in life are inevitable--unfortuntely, customers are not. You have to build a strategy to get and keep customers, based on who your customers are. Different types of customers require different CRM approaches, but one thing is certain: You can't afford to ignore CRM.

Who says you can't have your cake and eat it, too? With software services, you can have what you want quickly without breaking the bank. Here's six steps to doing it the right way...

Agile projects benefit from the rapid pace of feedback achieved through frequent releases, but what happens when you’re working on a complex project with a long timeline and resistance to releasing early? As a compensating strategy, story maps based on project goals can leverage some benefits of a release even if you aren’t “going live” any time soon.

If it’s the standardization and automation that attracts many in the construction field to project portfolio management software, how that ties into risk and reward keeps them coming back for more.

Project management in practice struggles to evolve, and we consistently fail to take the actions we know we should. Human inertia is too strong an influence to ignore if we want the future of PM to be that much different than it is today. If it were to be different, however, where might it go? There are two overall directions that appear to be emerging, and each has advocates and detractors. Whether (or indeed if) one attains dominance will depend upon the intersection of many forces.

Leading companies are renewing their organizations to position themselves for the upturn in the market--and those that use OPM3 have an advantage.

Everyone wants to be successful. Here are eight things to keep in mind when your starting a software implemenation--or any project.

Once we realize there may be a requirements misunderstanding or underestimation, one of the following two opposite ends-of-the-spectrum scenarios will unfold. Are you prepared for them?

Project managers pursuing an entrepreneurial, Agile approach to get things done will find that setting the stage to properly support a team is the most challenging and rewarding activity they can undertake. In the process, their value goes far beyond tactical execution.

The relationship forged with strategic providers can make the difference between success and failure within the organization. Here, the value proposition they represent is often based more on their service and support levels than price. In essence, SPs become de facto stakeholders with the organization--and thus require special consideration in terms of how the relationship is cultivated and managed.

Many software development organizations are discovering that they must be agile--but they seldom know much about Scrum. This article explains and describes some of the most commonly observed patterns that arise in organizations that implement “big” Scrum.