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Microsoft will join the $9.7B CRM market later this year.
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For as long as computers have been used to analyze customer behavior, marketers have had to rely on Irr people to run reports and help make sense of information organized in socalled data warehouses. Now, rich market analysis is coming to a desktop near you, paving the way for greater cooperation among the sales, marketing and customer service departments.
The soft economy is compelling marketers big and small to justify their marketing budgets by tracking leads through the entire sales cycle. Meanwhile, consolidation among CRM vendors is sparking technology improvements that let non-technical people view and act on real-time customer data.
Oracle Corp., Siebel Systems Inc. and other customer relationship management vendors are emphasizing data accessibility and collaboration in their latest marketing-automation packages.
"Everybody in marketing has been at the end of a pointed finger saying, 'You don't generate enough leads; and everyone on the sales side has been blamed for not taking advantage of leads generated by marketing," said Lisa Arthur, Oracle's VP-RM marketing.
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