Malcolm Gladwell, who coined the phrase “tipping point,” will talk about how he sees ideas, behaviors, and patterns moving through a population in much the same way as an epidemic. He posits that ideas can become contagious and reach a tipping point, just as a virus reaches critical mass. Learn what it takes to start a social epidemic and create change and how to push CRM and customer-related technologies, and your businesses, toward the tipping point.

CRM provides sales, customer service, marketing, business analytics, and e-customer tools and techniques to support an organization’s business strategy. The growth and transformation of the CRM industry since its inception in the early 1980s has been staggering. Following years of booming growth, the industry took a hit in the early 2000s. Lots of good lessons were learned, and the industry is back with a roar. The people/process/technology mix is increasingly understood, new implementation options abound, and mobile applications, communications, and devices have added an entirely new twist to the next generation of CRM. Hear how these developments are shaping best practices for implementation excellence and how to harness these enhancements to ensure your organization’s future success.

Come hear two of the CRM industry’s leading authorities — Barton Goldenberg and Tim Bajarin — square off regarding which is more important for the long-term success of CRM: the business or the technology focus. Or is it a marriage of equals? Can technology drive CRM business process? Can CRM business process happen without CRM technology? Goldenberg and Bajarin will also review the conference’s Business and Technology themes and how the sessions within each track fit together so you can plan

In its recent study of more than 1,300 companies worldwide, CSO Insights surveyed senior sales and marketing executives to identify the specific problems that were impacting sales and marketing performance, and, as importantly, to determine what those companies were doing to successfully address those challenges. During this session, Jim Dickie will profile the key findings of this year’s study. Then, using specific case study examples, he will provide an overview of how companies are leveraging CRM technology to turbo-charge their sales and marketing efforts, generating performance improvements such as increasing revenues per sales rep by 51% or greater; decreasing time to ramp new sales people to full productivity by up to 32%; increasing qualified leads resulting from marketing programs by 126% or better; and improving win rates of forecasted deals by 26%.

It’s always a challenge to drive high CRM user adoption rates but never more so than in Raymond James’ complex environment, where there exists both employees as well as independent contractor financial advisors. Come learn how Mike Shelly navigated this complex environment and drove user adoption by listening carefully to the needs of the CRM system users, by configuring the CRM application to address those needs, and by taking the time to properly train and communicate with users each step of the way. A great success story you won’t want to miss!

With the advent of high-speed voice and data communications now offered by telecom companies that use broadband fiber optics, the competition is fierce and the price has essentially been commoditized. The existence of this excess capacity in the communication “pipes” is spawning a whole new industry of “off-premise” technology solutions using Internet protocol. These off-premise-enabling technologies range from the complexity of an automatic call distributor (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), and/or call routing to the more mundane technologies of call recording, workforce management, and post-call feedback surveys. How does managing technology solutions on-premise differ as compared to off-premise? Jon Anton’s research, available in a white paper to attendees of the session, found major differences worth noting. This presentation focuses on the breakout centers in Anton’s database. He will share proven best practices that can take your contact center to a whole new level.

Learn how one of America’s most-trusted brands is applying CRM tools and techniques to enhance constituent relationships. United Way of America is the national organization providing leadership and support to 1,350 United Way members and their key donor segments, volunteers, and nonprofit agencies. As the established leader in philanthropic giving, United Way uses CRM to provide greater community impact and to help them better serve their constituents. United Way’s goal is to shift from a transactions- to a more relationship-oriented approach. This has not been an easy transition and Jim Yu will share with participants the trials and tribulations along the way as he fought hard to get the people, process, and technology mix right. This is a great story that no one will want to miss.

PC Magazine columnist and well-known gadget guru Tim Bajarin will bring conference attendees up-to-date on all of the latest in mobile and wireless technology impacting the enterprise. The presentation includes information about all the hottest smart phones, cell phones, and wireless networks that have become critical tools for any successful CRM program. Bajarin will also share research on how Gen X and Gen Y and their extreme usage of cell phones will likely impact the companies that hire them in the future.

Palm computing has blazed an important trail in the world of smart phones, starting with its first Treo 6 years ago and its new Treo 750 five band World Phone, which is a hit with multinational corporations. In this session, you will learn more about how smart phones are changing the way companies work with employees as well as customers. Three case studies will be shared about how these important mobile devices are being used in SFA, FFA and medical applications.

Customer relationship management takes on a whole new meaning when online video and the tools associated with it are utilized. User-generated video, user-initiated video syndication, video search optimization, video RSS, vodcasting, vlogs, video mashups, broadband mobile video, broadband-to-set-top video — these emerging technologies mean different things to different people and not just more ways to sell ads. From product training and online PR to highly personal customer relationships, online video is carving out some very new terrain. This presentation will take a look at how some of the biggest brands in the world, such as Wal-Mart, GM, Intel, and even the U.S. State Department, are building relationships within their ecosystems using the power of online video.

Europe is several years ahead of the U.S. in exploiting mobile technologies to effectively capture the minds and wallets of consumers. In the U.S., cell phones have undergone a successful transition from technology product to “lifestyle” brand. As a result, there is an increased need for mobile “touchpointing,” a method of providing consumers with the right information about products and services when they are most likely to purchase them. Marketers in every industry must revise their CRM strategies and integrate mobile technologies. Although many applications exist for doing so, companies have yet to fully leverage them. In this session, you will learn how to leverage existing technologies to engage the new social and mobile consumer to “opt-in” to your CRM and loyalty programs.

In this track opener, author and Internet radio host Russ Lombardo shares his secrets for enhancing your career by using CRM technology along with proven selling techniques. Learn how to improve your performance by beefing up your cold-calling, closing, and customer retention skills, leveraging sales processes, and utilizing CRM systems for maximum advantage in the field.

Imagine a world where field-based employees are given a wireless device instead of a laptop computer. That day may be closer than you think. Employees working with hand-held wireless devices will still need the same easy access to their CRM system as they enjoyed when they were working from their laptops. How will field-based staff adjust to this new way of accessing customer information? The rate at which those in the field will adopt new CRM software technologies will depend on their experience with using their new portable devices. In other words, the mobile device itself will impact the adoption rate for a CRM solution deployed to that platform. In this session, Peter Callaghan will explore the business impact that advancements in mobile technologies have had on how end users adopt CRM solutions. In addition, he will tell attendees how the employee adoption rate of a CRM solution can increase revenue, sales effectiveness, and market share, ultimately creating a better customer experience overall.

CRM solutions don’t have to be inflexible, heavy, expensive and hard to use. SugarCRM CEO John Roberts discusses how a commercial open source CRM business model can be used to pioneer new capabilities in enterprise CRM by focusing resources on R&D, cutting sales and marketing budgets, and reflecting customer needs directly in product releases and updates. Roberts will discuss how rapidly evolving commercial open source CRM platforms leverage modern scripting languages, the latest Web 2.0 technologies, and richly AJAX-enabled user interfaces to increase user adoption and to provide competitive business advantages for the largest enterprises down to the smallest small and medium businesses (SMBs). Lastly, Roberts will cover effective strategies for getting involved in open source community forums, choosing between software as a service (SaaS) and on-premise deployments and taking control of your CRM.

Customer support communities engage customers, partners, and employees in open dialogue and organic conversation helping to solve realworld problems with an immediacy and knowledge that oftentimes surpasses the performance of traditional support channels. Drawing on case studies from Fortune 500 enterprises, Joe Cothrel will identify the 10 success criteria for any customer support community. You’ll learn how to identify appropriate online community applications, determine what key functionality options help to guarantee results, find out how to implement solutions, and discover how to extend the value of the community by integrating it into your CRM and call center solutions. Whether you are familiar with online communities or not, you will walk away from this talk with new insights that will improve your service and support strategy and lead to improved customer satisfaction ratings and reduced support costs.

Technology evolves constantly, resulting in new frameworks, standards, and specifications, which over time, diminish the value of current applications. Manually upgrading applications to newer technologies is time-consuming, error-prone, expensive, and disruptive to business. Model-driven architecture provides a solution by separating application development from implementation technology. This development process promotes defining application logic through a technology-agnostic model that uses neutral languages such as XML or UML. Runtime artifacts that implement the application using the current state-of-the-art technology and best practices can then be generated from the model. Anil Annadata advocates an approach that provides an easier solution to upgrade existing applications to use newer technologies. In this method, the application model remains constant while only the artifact generation process is modified to translate the model to newer runtime technology. Learn how this approach allows application developers to focus on the application requirements without getting bogged down in implementation details.

In today’s ultra-competitive marketplace, customers are under pressure to realize the benefits of their CRM investments more rapidly. Licensing costs, maintenance fees, and professional services are just a few of the items that can impact the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a CRM system. Join Greg Anderson to better understand how these items and other pieces of the equation can greatly impact the ROI or time to benefit of a CRM implementation. If you’re being pressured to show a return on your enterprise’s CRM investments—and who isn’t?—this talk will help you get a handle on the various costs involved and teach you how to do the basic ROI calculations that will convince even your boss.