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Feds to Spend Big on Big Data April 03, 2013 The mushrooming growth of data generated by government agencies will drive federal IT investment in the necessary tools for managing colossal amounts of bits and bytes. As a result of the explosion in information, the government will be spending increasing amounts of its funds on Big Data capabilities.

CallCopy Lets Managers See What Customers Are Saying April 01, 2013 CallCopy recently unveiled cc: Discover 5.1, an upgrade to its flagship workforce optimization suite. Many of the changes incorporated in this version were made at the behest of customers who provided feedback at the company's first annual User Conference last fall, said Patrick Hall, CMO of CallCopy. Taken as a whole, the upgraded application "provides a simple solution to solving complicated problems."

Big Data Spawns Big Ideas for Mobile CRM March 29, 2013 If you have been thinking lately that the chief marketing officer has been driving CRM purchases more than the IT department, you're right. "This is the era of the CMO," Larry Bowden, vice president of portals and Web experience at IBM, told CRM Buyer. The reason for that is simple: The amount of information becoming available to the CMO through new technologies and Big Data offers huge potential.

New Media Metrix Service Counts Eyeballs Across Platforms March 28, 2013 Global digital measurement company comScore this week launched its new Media Metrix Multi-Platform reporting service, which will give publishers and advertisers better insight into how their content is viewed on a wider variety of devices. The new data set builds on the widely used Media Metrix, Mobile Metrix and Video Metrix services from comScore's Audience Analytics suite.

Facebook to Slap Targeted Ads on News Feed Billboards March 27, 2013 Facebook announced this week that it will test a new feature that allows select advertisers to run additional targeted ads in user's News Feeds. The test is an expansion of Facebook Exchange, one of the social network's most profitable advertising initiatives. The service allows marketers to check users' online viewing habits via a cookie-based system.

Coremotives Has the Whole World in Its Plans March 25, 2013 CoreMotives is a marketing automation platform that operates completely within Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Acquired by Silverpop about a year ago, CoreMotives remains a separate offering from its parent's flagship Engage platform, which features its own Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration. CoreMotives has been tweaking its feature set and steadily globalizing its product line since the acquisition.

KXEN's Predictive Offers Helps Agents Get Inside Customers' Heads March 18, 2013 KXEN has launched Predictive Offers, a real-time next best action tool for customer service and call center agents, on Salesforce.com's AppExchange. The product's goal is to improve customer retention, boost upsell and cross-sell, and improve the overall customer experience by providing agents with the best recommendations for the customers they're speaking with in real time.

Locking Up Big Data to Unlock Its Value March 18, 2013 The bad news about Big Data: This business trend means enterprises now have more valuable information within their systems that must be protected. The good news about Big Data: The analytics and business intelligence that come along with the trend can also be used to improve risk management within organizations.

5 In-Demand Skills for Landing a Dream IT Job March 16, 2013 There is no denying it -- the technology sector is on the rise and jobs are ripe for the taking. Demand has shifted from the mainframes of 30 years ago to virtualization, opening up ample opportunity in the field. Today, it's all about optimization and collaboration, and IT decision makers are investing heavily in these new infrastructures.

New IBM Lab Explores the Science of Personalization March 15, 2013 IBM pushed deeper into the customer experience space with the launch on Thursday of its Customer Experience Lab. The lab brings together various elements of IBM's expertise, technology and staff to integrate mobile, social, cloud, Big Data and advanced analytics for its users.

The Time of a Mobile Ad's Life, Part 2 March 14, 2013 Does it matter what time of day a mobile ad is displayed? If a generation's worth of lessons learned from email marketing mean anything, the answer is... maybe. Truth is, there are coherent arguments to be made on both sides. However, as marketers intensify their aim at mobile devices, the balance is shifting to the side that believes timing matters.

Pinterest Analytics Lets Marketers Pin Down Who's Sharing What March 13, 2013 The social bookmarking site Pinterest, one of the fastest-growing social networks of the last two years, released a new analytics tool Tuesday so that users -- especially businesses and marketing professionals -- can do a better job of tracking traffic and sharing aspects of the site.

Algorithms for Rent: The Price Is Right March 12, 2013 If you've been in the market for almost anything recently, you've probably noticed price fluctuations. You place a bicycle on your Amazon wish list at one price, only to see it shoot up a hundred dollars more a few days later, then drop to a hundred less a week or so after that. Everything from airplane tickets to apartment rentals seems subject to dramatic price changes from one day to the next.

FirstRain Showers Sales Reps With Real-Time Intelligence March 12, 2013 FirstRain has debuted FirstRain for Touch, an enterprise customer intelligence application built for the Salesforce Touch Platform. "What we did was create a component version of our application that was then easily dropped into the Salesforce.com Touch platform using their SDK," said Penny Herscher, CEO of FirstRain.

Avaya's New CEM Platform Makes Everyone a Customer Agent March 11, 2013 Avaya unveiled the latest iteration of its customer experience management platform last week, introducing new analytics functionality and a multichannel focus on communication. The new platform's big-picture mission is to foster holistic customer service -- an experience that will become a differentiator for that business, said Laura Bassett, director of product marketing for Avaya CEM and emerging applications.

How to Drink from the Big Data Firehose Without Drowning March 11, 2013 The arrival of big data means the end of the status quo for the enterprise. It means more than just sorting the sheer volume and velocity of information now available to companies. To be able to derive the most value from big data, large enterprises now have to consider its impact on issues such as security, risk and governance.

IBM's Big Bet on Cloud Analytics March 08, 2013 A growing number of established and emerging software and technology vendors are seeking to take advantage of the convergence of Big Data and the cloud. None has made a bigger bet than IBM. Since 2005, IBM has spent more than $16 billion on 35 acquisitions to boost its analytics capabilities. The company is hoping that this investment will generate approximately $20 billion in annual sales.

The Time of a Mobile Ad's Life, Part 1 March 05, 2013 There is a long-standing debate in the email marketing community about timing -- that is, whether time of day makes a difference in open and click-through rates. In other words, will an email marketing message sent early Monday morning be more likely to be opened than one sent Wednesday around noon or one delivered late on a Friday afternoon in July?

HootSuite for Twitter Gives Advertisers a Souped-Up Dashboard February 22, 2013 HootSuite has incorporated paid advertising into its dashboard for the first time with the rollout of HootSuite Promoted Products integration for Twitter. It allows users to buy Promoted Tweets and manage their accounts on the HootSuite dashboard. This is a significant step for HootSuite's users, said Greg Gunn, VP of business development.

IBM's New PureSystems Promise to Ease Big Data, Cloud Adoption February 19, 2013 Business IT solution development generally follows specific trends and overlapping eras. The first, calculation, occurred as digital products and services wholly replaced adding machines and other mechanical business devices. The second, computation, mirrored the evolution of digitized solutions for increasingly complex processes and applications.