Heard and Overheard

"Marketing is an investment, not an expense." --Steve Biegacki, vice president, commercial marketing, Automation Control & Information Group "Consistent, reliable data is the backbone of the enterprise." --Henning Kagermann, CEO, SAP
"Over the long term, all products are commodities. The only
differentiator is service." --Barton Goldenberg, founder and president, ISM
"Offshoring has gotten too closely associated with low labor costs. Clearly that's part of the appeal, but it's an oversimplified and incomplete view of the business and customer benefits that offshore services can offer." --Chris Selland, vice president, sell-side research, Aberdeen Group "This is an ideal time for CRM. The economy is rising." --Rich Berquist, CTO, senior vice president, and PeopleSoft Fellow, PeopleSoft "We [ASPs] earn the business every month. If [customers] don't like us, they turn us off." --Dan Starr, CMO, Salesnet "[CRM users] are saying, 'We finally realize that the reason we are failing is that our customer data is just c**p.'" --Ted Friedman, principal analyst, Gartner Research "CRM is like learning a foreign language. You can't go to a two-week or even a two-month course and expect to be fluent." --Greg Gianforte, CEO and founder, RightNow Technologies "Trust only comes from the success of good advice--and it only takes one piece of bad advice to ruin that relationship." --Joe Parente, managing director, manufacturing & technology practice, BearingPoint "Most companies with large contact centers really need to have a workforce management system--just to make sure you get the right people at the right place at the right time." --George Tubin, senior analyst, delivery channels practice, TowerGroup