Biographical Information

Articles for Ginger Conlon

Keeping Pace With the Evolution of CRM

Amdocs ClarifyCRM lays out its road map, highlighting its focus on integration.

Branding: It's All About the Experience

Deliver a positive experience on a consistent basis.

CRM Delivers for FedEx

Meeting customer expectations has helped the company improve operations and employee satisfaction.

November 29, 2004

Concerto announces substantial growth; Zions Bank selects Harte-Hanks; UniPress launches a Footprints upgrade; and more.

Taking Charge

Let us introduce you to the dynamic new top executives in the CRM industry.

The Changing Face of CRM

Customer commitment has always been and will continue to be the ultimate goal of CRM.

How to Succeed With Customers

Thirty years of TQM, customer service initiatives, and CRM, and customer satisfaction levels are still mediocre.

Customers' Changing CRM Expectations

SAP Americas CEO lays out what customers should expect from CRM vendors.

Pivotal Focuses on Service and Growth

Pivotal is working to make integration as seamless as possible.

CRM's Dysfunctional Relationship

Companies looking to boost loyalty are starting at the front lines.

Siebel Caps User Week With Stronger Earnings and Refined Service Offerings

Siebel Systems' unexpectedly strong business represents performance above financial analyst expectations, but not above Siebel's own track record.

New Alliances and New Products at Siebel's User Week

Siebel has provided analytic capabilities to customers for some time, but the new Siebel Business Analytic Applications collection is designed to run both in Siebel user environments and other business scenarios.

Get Your Facts Straight

The economy has forced marketing and salespeople to be less artists and more scientists as far as being very metrics-driven.

Anytime Is the Right Time for CRM

I thought CRM was right for a company that considers it "customers" to be the facilities it maintains, because they are the recipients of this firm's services.

In Celebration of Service

Our 2004 CRM Leader Awards celebrate the people and companies that in the past year have stood above the rest; the CRM Elite details how customer centricity pays dividends; and the Influential Leaders spotlights executives whose determination and concentration on results have driven success for themselves, their customers, and in some cases, the industry as a whole.

The 2004 Influential Leaders

In alphabetical order, the winners are...

CRM Magazine Reveals the Winners of Its 2004 CRM Leader Awards

The Awards recognize superior performance in ROI excellence in customer companies, individual achievement, and vendor leadership.

Are Companies Satisfied With CRM Results?

CRM magazine explores the CRM customer experience.

Partnering for CRM Success

Most every company that implements CRM does so with the help of a consultant, an integrator, or both.

CRM: Alive and Kicking

As long as companies have customers they'll need strategies to manage those relationships; whatever name you prefer, in the end it's CRM.

Integration Is the Linchpin for CRM Success

Florida wanted to ensure that is call center agents had the data they needed to most effectively serve taxpayers.

Keeping the Right Customers

Can companies use CRM as effectively to retain profitable customers as they can to escort unprofitable customers to the competition?

Don't Get Comfortable

Don't overlook new strategies your competitors are using to grow market share at your expense.

Uncovering Profitable CRM Practices

Should companies expect their CRM vendors to help them use CRM to determine who their most profitable customers are?

SAP's Customer Commitment

CEO Kagermann says SAP will continue to find further ways to lower TCO, for example, through improved enterprise services offerings like inventory prioritization and planning, and will continue to offer the flexibility that should allow customers to better use SAP to help spur their growth.

Finding Diamonds in the Rough

CRM executives answer the question, Do companies that use CRM have a distinct advantage over companies that don't use CRM in uncovering who their most valuable customers are and then retaining them?

People Are the Most Important Part of the CRM Equation

Executives from NetSuite, Onyx, PeopleSoft, and Salesnet all say the same thing: Their recent product upgrades were direct results of having worked closely with customers to uncover their needs and priorities.

All Customers Are Not Created Equally

CRM magazine Editor-in-Chief Ginger Conlon, moderator of the SuperPowers of CRM panel at the recent Frost & Sullivan Sales & Marketing Executive Summit, asked the panelists, Should companies offer stellar service to every customer, no matter what their true value to the organization?

Creating an Unforgettable Customer Experience

Yahoo!'s Tim Sanders reveals the three building blocks needed to create valuable customer relationships: customer experience, knowledge, and compassion.

Midmarket Mavericks

The benefits are the result of a heated battle among CRM vendors, all eager to win their share of the huge, underserved midmarket.

How Profitable Are Your Customers?

Industry executives answer the question, Is it necessary to estimate a customer's lifetime value to determine their true profitability?

CRM Vendors Spring Into Action

PeopleSoft, Onyx, and SAP are starting Q2 with updates to several existing applications, and are adding some new products.

The Week in Review: March 19, 2004

Click Commerce has announced its intention to acquire privately held competitor Webridge in an all-stock deal; Russian telecom provider Vimpel-Communications has deployed Amdocs ClarifyCRM; Current Analysis today announced that telecom industry veteran Raymond Keneipp; and more.

CRM Is at a Crossroads

Moving CRM through its maturity phases within your organization will solidify CRM's place in your company and your company's place ahead of the competition.

CIOs Link Spending to Business Recovery

The survey found that although respondents are expecting to increase IT spending by about 1.4 percent in 2004, they don't intend to do so until they see a business recovery.

Winning CRM Companies Reflect the Industry's Growth

For the first time since the awards were created in 1992, ISM's Top 15 CRM Software Awards are divided into two categories: enterprise CRM and CRM for SMBs.

Service Takes the Lead

The 2004 Service Awards are our choices of industry leaders whose expertise you can leverage for your decision-making and benchmarking regarding customer services processes and technologies.

CRM Strategy Is Taking Center Stage

At the recent Frost & Sullivan Sales & Marketing Executive Summit CRM magazine Editor-in-Chief Ginger Conlon, moderator of the SuperPowers of CRM panel, asked the panelists, "What will be the most significant change to the CRM industry over the next twelve months?"

The Great Outsourcing Debate

Outsourcing customer service: For companies considering outsourcing, both are tough decisions.

Great Service Is Your Call

There is no CRM success without communication.

PRM Puts RIM's Sales in Motion

RIM's goals for its partner relationship management initiative are to support its selling partners and their customers; to simplify how partners work with RIM; to provide an enterprise view of its customers across its 37 business units; and to gauge its sales and marketing effectiveness.

CRM Success Is Your Responsibility

You have to take responsibility for the success of your initiative before it begins.

A Winning Formula

Executives from five leading vendors speak out on collaboration between sales and marketing.

How Do You Measure Success?

CRM magazine, in partnership with strategic CRM measurement and improvement firm CRMetrix, invited readers to evaluate their organizations' CRM measurement systems against CRM measurement best practices. More than 260 executives responded to the survey. Fifty-four percent say their implementation is live, 15 percent of them are in the process of deploying CRM, and 31 percent of them are still in the planning stage.

Giving Customers What You Want Them to Want

Often customer expectations are misaligned with company offerings.

Take My Advice--Please

The SuperPowers of CRM panelists at a recent Frost & Sullivan Sales & Marketing Strategies Executive Summit answer CRM magazine Editor-in-Chief Ginger Conlon's 30-second CRM-advice question.

Required Reading

The Great Service Debate

Used properly, self-service applications can enhance the buyer-seller relationship.

How Satisfied are You With CRM?

More than 330 executives spanning myriad industries and company sizes voiced their opinions on how satisfied their are with their initial implementation and with CRM overall.

The 2003 Influential Leaders

Here, we spotlight customer-company and vendor executives who have made a significant impact in their company or on the industry in the past year. Additionally, we introduce our inaugural CRM Hall of Fame, and induct three industry luminaries.

CRM Goes Hollywood

The awards recognize superior performance in three areas: ROI excellence in customer companies (The CRM Elite); individual achievement (Influential Leaders); and vendor leadership (CRM Market Leaders).

CRM Magazine Announces Its 2003 CRM Leader Awards

Many of the industry's top customer-company and vendor executives took part in the ceremony, which was followed by an interactive panel discussion.

Required Reading

Author Russ Lombardo offers practical advice on gathering information to design and plan the right CRM strategy, getting buy in, and planning for ROI in "CRM for the Common Man."

PeopleSoft Aims to Simplify the Customer Experience

The product enhancements focus on three primary areas: packaged business-process integration, new and enhanced productivity-related features, and advanced synchronization with Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes.

Focusing on the Customer Experience

Eighteen months ago HP set a goal to simplify the digital experience for customers: For example, what began as a 57-step process to take and print a digital photo has been reduced to three steps.

What's Hot in CRM

There is a need for more marketing accountability and precision; companies should look at ROI across the enterprise, for example, CRM and supply chain together; and total customer value should include each customer's current value, their future value, and associated value.

A Powerful Mix

The Front Line Is Your Brand

Required Reading

Driving Sales

Saab Cars USA rolled out its enterprisewide CRM solution and strategy, dubbed TouchPoint, beginning in January 2002. Saab is using TouchPoint to improve customer service efforts, as well as to support customers and dealers. The initiative focuses on the customer interaction center, marketing, lead management, and data quality.

Who Owns the Mid-Market?

During the DCI CRM Conference & Expo in Boston, executives from Oracle, PeopleSoft, NetLedger, and Salesnet discussed and debated where the mid-market is headed and which vendors will take us there.

Maximize Customer Relationships

Keynote addresses updated rapt audiences on trends in the real-time enterprise, in mobile CRM, and in marketing.

Three Key CRM Trends

"Beyond the Hype: The Impact of Web Services on CRM," "CRM Consolidation--Enterprise Software RIP?" and "Next-Generation Self-Service," reveal Reservoir Partners' findings on the impact of Web services, vendor consolidation, and self-service technologies.

A Slice of the Good Life: New York--Oracle Corp.

The Multitask Master

A Day in the Life of CRM

Required Reading

Love Is in the Air

Making CRM Pay Off

Required Reading

E.piphany Gets Vertical

Interaction Advisor features self-learning analytics, rules, and analytics that work together in real time to create offers, multichannel offer execution capabilities, and closed-loop monitoring and analysis of campaigns.

The Next Frontier

CRM vendor Onxy Software plan to be a leader in embedded CRM, and is embedding its application in the offerings of such partners as Reuters, IBM, and Metavante.

A Room With a (Point of) View

Executives on the SuperPowers of CRM panel offer their opinions on where the market is headed and how to get there ahead of the pack.

Stand by Me

Hot Seat: Take My Advice, Please

Creating a CRM Culture

They Love Me, They Love Me Not

Can't Get No Dissatisfaction

In an exclusive survey conducted in conjunction with consultancy CAP Ventures Inc., CRM magazine finds that a surprising number of executives are pleased with their CRM system--and with their results.

Does Your Culture Support CRM?

Mark Sauter, president and CEO, GTP Associates Inc., said changing behavior is always a long-term process--companies need to begin cultural changes early in the CRM implementation.

Preview 2003--What's in Store for CRM? (PART 2)

CRM magazine interviewed more than 30 industry leaders and surveyed about 100 readers to uncover what they expect to and predict will happen in the industry in the coming year.

Preview 2003--What's in Store for CRM? (PART 1)

CRM magazine interviewed more than 30 industry leaders and surveyed about 100 readers to uncover what they expect to and predict will happen in the industry in the coming year.

Everything Old Is New Again

CRM Brings Holiday Cheer

Sold on CRM

PDA to the People

PeopleSoft Inc.'s support of Microsoft's Pocket PC Phone Edition platform and the newly launched Microsoft Windows Powered Smartphone software will allow field sales and service professionals access to up-to-the-minute sales information at the point of customer contact and more.

IT Decision-Makers Speak Out

Walker Information, a research firm specializing in customer loyalty issues, has released a benchmark study that reveals the loyalties of IT customers.

IBM's SMB Strategy Is Clear

A new alliance with Clear Technologies positions IBM strongly for a mid-market push

Right On!

Stellar CRM is possible. Here are the stories of five outstanding implementations to prove it.

Apples to Apples

A new online tool lets CRM buyers compare leading vendors' offerings

Pivotal on Call

CRM vendor takes a leap of faith into call center market

Genesys Bolsters Management

Names Laurent Philonenko COO; also industry hires at Accenture, Motorola, Kanisa, Astea, Whisperwire, Astute, ePeople, among others

Customers Really Matter

To Samsung's Peter Weedfald, CRM is a lifestyle, not a technology. Follow his 7 secrets of CRM, and he will lead you to the promised land of customer infatuation.

Onyx Appoints New Marketing Chief

CRM vendor is one of many trying to strengthen its management teams

CRM Executives on the Move

Companies make new hires to drive business

Marketers Doing It for Themselves

Trillium's launch of its Trillium Software System 6 aims to help marketers get control of their data before they drown in a flood of information. The application "is designed to be understood and implemented by businesspeople," Dubois says. This eliminates the need for marketers to go to IT every time they need to generate reports or conduct research.

Samsung Uses CRM to Support ''Four Season of Hope''

At a gala overlooking the water yesterday at New York City's Chelsea Piers, Samsung Electronics America Inc. launched Four Seasons of Hope, a cause marketing program designed to "support the communities in which we sell," says Peter Weedfald, Samsung's vice president, North America strategic marketing and new media.

ePeople Aims to Resolve Customer's Complex Issues

Teamwork 4.0 is designed to help companies bolster customer satisfaction by delivering faster, more accurate answers to complex issues

Marketers Get Serious

Looking for ways to measure ROI, executives turn to contextual marketing.

CTIA: The Wireless Revolution

ClarifyCRM Gives 360 Degree Customer View

Shopping for Service