External consultants are people who come to your organization with grandiose plans and ideas of how to improve your company. They are highly paid experts with whom you will risk time and money to see if they can help you achieve some semblance of improvements.

CRM failures have been costly, disruptive, and embarrassing. Red ink, shareholder losses, upset customers, lost market share, lawsuits, and career setbacks are all typical outcomes of CRM failures.

According to customer experience expert Lior Arussy, many businesses today fail to provide their employees with the ability to achieve customer service success. In this chapter, Arussy discusses the downside of an overly controlling management style and gives tips for organizations looking to empower employees.

In white papers, there is no shortage of advice about what best practices can lead to success. But equally important is a thorough understanding of what worst practices are to be avoided during an implementation. Problems during implementation are never deliberate. But in this white paper, we will review four practices that should be avoided unless one wants to go out of one’s way to cause their implementation to tank.

While CRM success rates have risen dramatically over the years, many companies still struggle to achieve the return on investment they anticipated. This white paper looks at the top three reasons that CRM initiatives fail to achieve their goals and provides clear, practical recommendations for ensuring that your CRM initiative avoids these pitfalls and delivers desired returns.

Home Shopping Europe GmbH, GSE24, made its business selling products to consumers from the comfort of their home. A key challenge is ensuring quality, speedy service both during the sales process and after the transaction is done. The company turned to SAP to help it integrate its 460 direct employees and 1,580 indirect (call centers and logistics) to create the sound basis for true customer relationship management.

Rick Seeto, vice president of Marketing for Nortel Asia, explains the fundamentals behind Unified Communications technology and how companies can use UC to reach business goals.

In this paper learn how, with the right CRM solution, information workers can increase productivity, improve customer service, and boost collaboration, while the business simplifies complex processes, increases sales, and reduces costs.