CRM with Xactly for Oracle Siebel, iMagicLabs, Pharma CRM, Access Data, iCongo, salesforce.com, REACH3

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
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CRM with Xactly for Oracle Siebel, iMagicLabs, Pharma CRM, Access Data, iCongo, salesforce.com, REACH3

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Ornette Coleman's Change Of the Century:

A new study released by Cutting Edge Information found that many pharmaceutical CRM initiatives suffer from the lack of a firm definition. The report "focuses on the inner-workings and best practices of CRM initiatives at top pharmaceutical companies," according to company officials.

"CRM tends to mean different things to various companies. CRM initiatives would greatly benefit if companies better defined CRM and educated internal parties on its applications and objectives," said Amanda Zuniga, senior research analyst and lead author of the report. "Internal buy-in and cross- functional support is absolutely crucial to CRM success. Education is the first step companies should take to secure this critical internal backing."

The study found that for some companies, CRM means a database which tracks campaign efforts, whereas at others CRM has flourished into a culture of sorts, which encompasses all the marketing efforts for a brand. Wherever a CRM initiative falls on the industry spectrum, it is essential that a company clarifies what CRM means from its perspective.

Once a company has developed a solid understanding of what CRM means to its organization, company officials say, the next step is "to share this knowledge. To win internal buy-in, the company's CRM champion must make a concerted effort to educate all parties on the CRM initiative's parameters, objectives, tactics and goals."

Hard to see how any of this is different from how CRM should be operating anywhere, of course. Just goes to show the best principles are the basic ones.

This "internal education" must transcend the boundaries of marketing because several other internal functions play an integral role in the development, support and maintenance of CRM, Cutting Edge officials warn, since "the fate of a CRM program relies on the success of cross-functional input and cooperation.

First Coffee supposes the main industry benefit of the report, "Pharmaceutical Customer Relationship Management," will be in the case studies "exploring," company officials promise, "how top companies build solid business cases to attain sufficient resource backing for CRM programs as well as to win senior management buy-in."

The report contains budget and staffing metrics for 13 different customer relationship management programs. Case studies, best practices and tactics for addressing key CRM program challenges are offered.

Download a free summary of "Pharmaceutical Customer Relationship Management: Developing and Improving CRM" or purchase the report at http://www.pharmaindustrycrm.com/.


Salesforce.com has announced that Bear Stearns Asset Management has deployed Salesforce SFA, Salesforce Service & Support and applications downloaded from the salesforce.com AppExchange directory.

BSAM is using Salesforce to "consolidate global customer data and integrate multiple critical business systems for portfolio performance management, billing, subscriptions and reporting," salesforce.com officials say.

BSAM used applications from the AppExchange directory to customize its Salesforce applications for its particular needs, including Profundcom.net, which specializes in financial services and hedge funds, and The Workflow Tool, which "helped build and manage both internal and client-related business processes for BSAM," salesforce.com officials say.

A newly formed partnership between The Beryl Companies and CRM vendor REACH3 "further enhances both companies’ ability to support strategic marketing efforts for healthcare providers who embrace customer relationship management strategies," officials from both firms say. Beryl sells "customer interaction services."

Tom Panion, Beryl’s chief customer officer, said working with REACH3 will "enable hospitals to more clearly identify, interact with and target appropriate messages to their patients and targeted consumers."

Beryl officials say the partnership will let healthcare clients of both Beryl and REACH3 "enhance their ability to collect and manage consumer data," since Beryl call advisors will have access to REACH3’s data base of demographic information about callers, so they can "offer specific and appropriate products and services to these consumers."

CRM vendor iCongo has announced that the Parenteral Drug Association has selected iCongo's Online Event Platform to host the PDA's Virtual Career Fairs.

The Parenteral Drug Association headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, provides science technology and regulatory information and education for the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical firms. The PDA Virtual Career Fairs will enable participating employers to post job descriptions online, search for and make contact with qualified potential employees to fill highly desired pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical positions.

Attendees to the Virtual Career Fairs will be able to submit their resumes direct to company representatives, download corporate brochures and documents, as well as ask questions and schedule meetings online. In addition, the Career Fairs will include scheduled online seminars on topics of interest to attendees.

CRM vendor Access Data Corp., which specializes in selling enterprise reporting and data management services for the financial services industry, has announced that Mellon Institutional Funds have selected Access Data SalesVision to monitor detailed shareholder trading activity in order to detect trading irregularities.

Mellon Institutional Funds will use SalesVision's online, on-demand 22c-2 offering, which includes use of multiple 22c-2 shareholder compliance rule sets; technical and operational data stewardship for account and transaction shareholder data; and Access Data Exchange to provide Mellon with connectivity to financial intermediary platforms and the DTCC SDR interface.

IMagicLab, which sells on-demand CRM for the automotive industry, has announced that its DealerCRM Internet Lead Management service has been selected by Towbin Dodge, seen on the A&E reality show The King of Cars, for online customer communications.

"The King of Cars creates an enormous amount of leads," noted Richard Keith Latman, Chief Software Architect of iMagicLab, "and our tools help them discern sale prospects from television personality fans."

Xactly Corporation, which sells on-demand sales compensation management, has announced that it is a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork and will integrate Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand and Xactly's Xactly Incent sales compensation management.

Under terms of the CRM On Demand Go-to-Market initiative under OPN, Xactly will develop an integration between Xactly Incent and Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand. Specific integration efforts are focused on delivery of single sign-on between the two applications, data transfer between both applications and integration via Xactly Incent's patent-pending Incentive Estimator.

Once integrated, Siebel CRM On Demand users will be able to calculate in real-time "what-if" scenarios based on Siebel CRM On Demand opportunities and estimate commission and bonus payments before, during and after a sale. Users "can expect to access the Siebel CRM On Demand opportunities of interest by using filters on information such as date and probability of closure to see what their commissions could be if they closed forecasted deals," Xactly officials say.

If  read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.



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