E-Commerce News: ECT News Exclusives

ERP Should Pay for Itself in a Year: Q&A With xTuple CEO Ned Lilly

Monday - June 29, 2009

The universe of enterprise resource planning providers is huge; ditto for open source. The space where twain meet? Not so much. xTuple is an open source ERP provider, and CEO Ned Lilly says there are few fellow travelers on his company's path. In this tanking economy, the company has been leveraging both its open source bona fides and the fundamental functionality that is inherent in an ERP system to gain market share. Its most recent endeavor was the launch of an onine app store called "xChange." [More...]

Collaborating in the Cloud: Q&A With PBworks CEO Jim Groff

Monday - June 22, 2009

Cloud computing is remaking just about every software category -- and project management is no exception. In the on-premise software era, collaboration was limited by the technology of a particular firm, as well as the security requirements of a particular industry. That was then, of course. [More...]

Turning 'Interesting Moments' Into Sales: Q&A With Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez

Monday - June 15, 2009

If there is any one characteristic of the current economy that stands out, it is that people are just not buying. From billionaires to budget shoppers, frugal is in. Enter Marketo, a startup whose raison d'etre is to get people to buy. Surprisingly -- or not, given its product lineup -- Marketo is doing very well these days. [More...]

Keeping Credit Card Numbers Well-Cloaked: Q&A With Fingerhut's Mark Lieberg

Thursday - June 11, 2009

It's a fact that might not bring a lot of comfort to consumers and businesses, but it's true: The methods for protecting e-commerce transactions haven't changed a great deal since online shopping became a viable option in the early '90s. SSL and TSL encryption are the protocols that slap on that little padlock you see at the bottom of a Web site once you've begun the purchase process. [More...]

Outsource or Keep It Home? Have It Your Way: Q&A With Alpine Access CEO Chris Carrington

Monday - June 8, 2009

Not that long ago, the outsourcing of customer service to home-based agents was a small niche category, viewed as not quite on par with a bricks-and-mortar call center operation. For a number of reasons, that perception is changing -- starting with the lower costs involved and ending with the growing number of quality providers that have highly qualified staffs on hand. [More...]

Riding Out the Storm: Q&A With Information Builders CEO Gerry Cohen

Monday - June 1, 2009

Business Intelligence has evolved considerably in the last several years. At one time the domain of PhDs or other highly trained employees, it has become accessible to the masses. Indeed, one of the competitive differentiators among the vendors in the market -- from the huge stack players to the small best-of-breed providers -- is not whether, but how, they make this complex technology available to business line users. [More...]

Building a 21st Century Platform: Q&A With Consona CEO Jeff Tognoni

Monday - May 18, 2009

Consona offers a line of ERP and CRM software that is made up of parts that are more recognizable than the whole. Remember Onyx? It belongs to Consona. Same with Knova and, more recently, SupportSoft. Over the last few years, Consona has been steadily acquiring companies, building out a very respectable portfolio of products. It's about to take the next logical step. [More...]

Investments Bleed When You Cut Costs: Q&A With Tigerpaw CEO Dave Foxall

Monday - May 11, 2009

Tigerpaw Software is a family-owned software company that, 24 years after it was founded, is about to enter a new phase of growth. The company's enterprise CRM, inventory and project management platform has always had a loyal following, in no small part because of the care and attention Tigerpaw lavishes on its customers, said CEO Dave Foxall. [More...]

The End of Message Fragments: Q&A With Relenta CEO Dmitri Eroshenko

Monday - May 4, 2009

Before the arrival of sales force automation and marketing campaign software, there were productivity applications. CRM, as we all know, rose from that fundamental platform of email, calendaring, mailing list management and task management. A lot of CRM vendors include productivity in their CRM apps, but few focus on it as relentlessly as Relenta does. [More...]

Long Live PRM: Q&A With TreeHouse CEO Erich Flynn

Monday - April 27, 2009

PRM has an intriguing business case: It applies the concepts and tools of customer relationship management to the business relationships that also affect a company's customer base. The problem with PRM is that it hasn't caught on -- for myriad reasons, starting with its expense and difficulty in implementation. Enter the next generation of PRM companies. [More...]

Poised to Pounce on IPO: Q&A With SugarCRM CEO John Roberts

Monday - April 20, 2009

Around the time when Software as a Service was pre-empting the on-premise vendors, SugarCRM burst onto the CRM scene with its own disruptive business mode: open source for CRM. The build-it-yourself model wasn't for everybody, of course -- or so many thought at the time. As SugarCRM continues to refine its code and product lineup, it is attracting customers that once would have opted for a packaged or SaaS product. [More...]

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