Articles by Kelly Shermach

According to a study by Accenture, 55 percent of companies lack a single view of their customers. CRM may be able to solve that problem, but the study found an even bigger problem that traditional CRM doesn't touch: 68 percent of companies can't measure the return on investment of marketing campaigns Something called marketing resource management m...

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing types of consumer fraud, and banks in particular fear that such crimes will hinder consumer online banking activity A recent study on bank account phishing and hacking from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reveals that single-factor authentication for online banking has flaws that are increasing...

Call center operator InfoCision Management Corp. is adding teleservices representatives. Over the coming months several hundred people will join the company's call centers in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The company also is working on plans for a new call center that will, if built, employ 100 to 200 additional staff by June. The majority of new hires will take call center rep roles, but InfoCision will pull in new managers, too...

Just as many companies that adopted CRM applications years ago often failed to use the data they collected, call centers that tape inbound calls for regulatory compliance and quality assurance often lack the time and the staff to listen to the calls and learn from them Enter speech analytics software. More companies are employing the technology to ...

Canadian outsourcing vendors tend to attract sophisticated work and projects closely tied to American culture and the English language. As such, despite the stronger numbers of outsourcing firms and employees in offshore locations such as India and the Far East, Canada is holding its own against overseas competitors, especially in high-end project areas...

Many retailers already use automation in their supply chain and inventory management. Vendor-managed inventory (VMI), for example, has made its way into many retailers. It optimizes supply-chain performance by keeping the responsibility for restocking with the manufacturer, not the distributor. The manufacturer has access to the distributor's inventory data and is responsible for generating purchase orders...

Oracle's OpenWorld conference last week in San Francisco combined the company's traditional shows Oracle AppsWorld and OracleWorld in the company's largest conference ever. More than 25,000 customers, vendor partners, Oracle employees and analysts took part. Even Microsoft made its first appearance "Technology demand clearly has been recovering and...

Loyalty card programs operated by grocery and drug retailers have been focused on rewarding shoppers for isolated activities. Typically, retailers dole out extra points for buying Brand A today or discount the price of Brand B during a given week and not much more. But now these loyalty programs are growing up, and retailers are trying to change the reputations they have for granting only short-term returns...

Siebel Branch Teller, a new retail bank solution that invigorates cross sales and customer care at branches, finally brings CRM to the channel that originates most financial services relationships with consumers The product, which uses IBM middleware specifically designed for the retail banking vertical, ensures the consistency of customer interact...

Pressed to establish best practices and comply with global quality audits, Indian business-process outsourcers (BPOs) have taken an interest in outsourcing firms in the United States, Ireland and the United Kingdom and employed the help of outsiders to guarantee their future success Approximately 800 or 900 Indian companies take exported business p...

East Coast grocer Stop & Shop has introduced shopping carts that give consumers Internet accessibility at their fingertips The smart carts, from IBM and Cuesol of Quincy, Massachusetts, feature on-board IBM touchscreen computers that double as personal assistants when the laser scanner on the cart reads an individual shopper's loyalty card. The car...

With recent regulatory developments in the industry and routine call center functions moving to offshore teleservices vendors, there is no time like the present for the Call Center Research Laboratory established at the University of Southern Mississippi a few weeks ago The CCRL, led by USM professor David Butler, aims to be the first international...

Long known as a technology and hardware provider, Unisys has pushed to diversify, joining the ranks of large systems integrators just when many companies are drawn to the simple, low-risk offerings of hosted solutions providers. Unisys, however, sees that trend as temporary, and its CRM leaders feel confident that the firm's holistic, even complex business-intelligence overlays will put it at the top of a competitive set...

Mobile phone manufacturer Nokia and semiconductor maker Royal Philips Electronics plan to test a contactless transportation payment system in Germany next year ...

Google reported this morning that it had locked down a security hole in its e-mail software A week ago the Israeli online magazine Nata NetLife reported an exploitation of Google's Gmail e-mail service, currently in beta testing....

To make amends for a disruption in its service earlier this month, PayPal is waiving transaction fees for payment recipients in the United States and some other countries Sellers will be credited for any transaction fee -- normally 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent -- charged on payments made today from 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Pacific time....

Each season, Legoland Denmark welcomes 1.6 million guests, and about 1,600 of them end up getting lost This spring, the theme park adopted an AeroScout RFID location solution, offering parents use of an RFID bracelet for their children at a nominal fee. If their children wander away from them in the park or try to exit unaccompanied, parents can re...

The European Commission, the regulatory body of the European Union, today removed the final anti-trust barrier to Oracle's takeover of PeopleSoft ...

In some ways the buzz about business intelligence analytics, an increasingly common add-on to a smart and established CRM system, resembles the buzz five years or so ago about CRM. Organizations have to exercise caution in choosing BI analytics solutions, a single piece of the amorphous CRM puzzle hawked half a decade ago "With the CRM hype of the ...

Yahoo and Adobe announced a partnership this morning in which each will leverage the other's user groups When Adobe windows pop up on computer monitors and laptop screens, prompting consumers to update their Adobe packages, they now will have the opportunity to download Yahoo's desktop search toolbar, too....