Earlier this month, CRM Buyer re-released an interesting story as part of a “Best of ECT News” series, and it touched upon an important aspect of business management that many SMBs are reluctant to implement: time reporting.

Small- and medium-sized businesses tend to have their CRM spread across multiple applications, so it’s not surprising that some invaluable applications can be neglected. But time tracking is not to be ignored, because it provides important information about where companies are making money (i.e. which customers are the most profitable), to control costs and revenue growth, and helps to really understand costs and focus on key areas. Having an automated system to streamline tasks is beneficial for cutting administrative costs.

Time tracking applications are recommended for companies with 30 or more employees, but they can also be helpful for even smaller business and freelance workers. Simply put, it helps users to not only keep track of their time, but also to make the best-informed decisions when it comes to projects and clients.

Still, CRM Buyer points out that many SMBs are hesitant to adopt these programs, and for a variety of reasons. Some companies are just averse to change; some might find their employees take offense at being asked to record their time at work; and many people just don’t like timesheets. But timesheets can help enforce union contracts and consistency, and the advice given to managers here is to fully explain the business needs for these time-reporting tools.

Naturally, a lot has changed with the economic decline, and time-tracking apps are reportedly on the rise. That time reporters are priceless in running a business isn’t surprising, but what is amazing is the number of companies—no matter what the size—that are shying from using them. Still, most everyone has been affected by the economy, so the demand for these types of productivity tools is only increasing, and will likely cement their status as a business management staple.

And of course, because no CRM application is considered complete if you can’t access it from your iPhone, most time-reporting companies are offering mobile applications.

For a while now, IBM has been shifting their focus from hardware to software, and recently, CFO Mark Loughridge told us that they were investing lost in business analytics. Today, the company announced a very large fruit of that endeavor: the IBM Smart Analytics Cloud. This product is the for IBM clients, and is accompanying the release of Blue Insight, which is an internal product that will be the world’s largest private cloud-computing analytics environment for business analytics.

Predating this release are the recent acquisitions of data analytics company SPSS for $1.2 billion, business analytics firm RedPill, and Canadian business intelligence developer Cognos. In addition, IBM recently performed a Global CIO study and found 83% of respondents were looking to business intelligence and analytics to boost competitiveness.

Blue Insight, the internal offering, will give IBM’s sales and development department (some 200,000 employees) the ability to gather data and information—from customer relationships to demand trends to shipping times—for more efficient decision making to gain further insight at point of sale. One of the most impressive aspects of Blue Insight is its scope: information will come from about 100 different info warehouses that make up more than a petabyte of information—100 times the content of the Library of Congress.

IBM Smart Analytics Cloud will provide customers with the same scalable architecture of Blue Insight, and like its internal sister, will tout many of the Cognos 8 BI tools. Customers will be able to create reports, dashboards, and scorecards for monitoring business performance, and also import data for strategic analysis. And the addition of this vast information source also gives IBM the opportunity to offer an impressive bundle: hardware, software, middleware, and consulting and maintenance services. And the folks at Forbes posit that if IBM adds data mining and real-time analytics, they will strike gold.

IBM’s foray into the software market has been extremely fruitful, and this new product will certainly spark copies from other software companies. It will be interesting to see who else joins the business analytics-cloud race.

Smartphones are proliferating at light speed, and applications for them—especially for the iPhone—are growing apace. The iPhone has long been the rival of the business-friendly BlackBerry, but since the advent of the iPhone, other smartphones are rolling out different features in an attempt to match it.

Most recently, the iPhone and the Android phones have taken center stage, and despite lackluster sales, many consider the latest Droid model as the mobile phone that will outdo the iPhone. The Droid has been positioned as a business phone in many ways—honing in on the BlackBerry crowd—but the phone’s projected coup remains to be seen. Regardless, both the Android phones and the iPhone could succeed the BlackBerry as the enterprise phone of choice—many companies are weary of paying for BlackBerry’s secure messaging server, and both the aforementioned phones will likely adopt similar secure messaging services soon.

So considering that the battle of the smartphones becomes more and more heated, and we see people of all professions carrying them, you’d think a deluge of mobile CRM applications (and news about them) would follow. But like the Droid takeover, the rise of the iPhone CRM application has yet to be seen, and it is very likely it may never be realized.

Devices like the BlackBerry and iPhone offer accessibility to more information, which can be very helpful to sales and field teams in need of CRM data. To remain competitive, it is becoming more important for these service people to have CRM information readily available, and thankfully most CRM vendors have applications for the major mobile devices at this point. When searching for a mobile solution—be it iPhone CRM or other—it’s important that the mobile employees’ needs match the IT and security priorities of the company. But what is most likely going to affect your mobile CRM selection—and the reason mobile CRM will probably never surpass the presence of the desktop application—is that it usually depends entirely on your choice of desktop solution. In most cases, it’s easiest to just rely on the mobile version of the native platform.

Those using on-demand platforms can readily access CRM data from their iPhone, since vendors like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM build their products in the cloud. Companies dealing mostly in legacy systems, like Oracle, usually develop separate applications, and some non-CRM companies are creating applications to extend CRM functionality to the smartphone.

There are a plethora of solutions, but the options for personalization, and how closely they resemble the native app are another story. Dealing with tons of data on a mobile device is not ideal, so an iPhone CRM application is very much “CRM lite.” In addition, security issues may have IT departments worrying about certain data being stored on mobile devices—many mobile CRM apps have offline components, and if the phone is stolen or lost this could be problematic. Fortunately, many vendors are incorporating data encryptions for mobile solutions to prevent the theft of valuable or confidential CRM data.

When it comes to choosing a mobile CRM solution, CRM Buyer has a few recommendations: find a mobile CRM component that correlates to the native application, and more importantly, be sure the mobile solution meets the sales staff’s needs. Should they find the app lacking, they will most likely enact their own solution, which leads to counterproductive fragmentation of information.

It has long been noted that the people benefitting the most from an Android or iPhone CRM application are sales people; aside from maybe help desk centers, they are also the ones thought to benefit the most from social CRM as well. Recently, the CEO of appssavvy, a consulting company that launches mobile applications, told the press his company would soon be expanding from social gaming apps to social CRM applications. Whether these social CRM apps will differ greatly from traditional iPhone CRM apps has yet to be seen, but it sounds like a space where mobile CRM could really grow, especially since social media platforms are already simple, and translate well onto mobile devices. In addition, social networking applications are popular on smartphones, so social CRM as an extension could be highly successful.

Small businesses tend to manage customer relationships through a number of different applications—documents, contact managers, spreadsheets, etc.—and it is those companies that have the most to gain from implementing a unified CRM system. To help quell some of the apprehensions and concerns small businesses may have with CRM, CRM Buyer recently outlined some tips to help SMBs get the most out of the service.

When introducing a CRM system to employees unaccustomed to using one, the most important step is get them to buy into the system. Without employee support and faith in the product, the product will have little worth and SMBs won’t see the ROI they hoped for. Also, every employee must be encouraged to use the platform, because some will likely eschew the system in favor of familiar methods they know have previously yielded success. It is therefore important to stress the benefits of CRM implementation will give the company, rather than the system’s features.

Training is also important for proselytizing employees. Ideally, training will be included with the purchase or subscription chosen, and online documentation, videos, and tutorials are also helpful. For teaching non-technical people, sometimes it is most effective to familiarize them with certain features that are most relevant to their role. Ongoing training for the office is necessary for keeping up with the system’s innovations.  CRM Buyer also recommends training users in groups—training at intervals will allow those first familiar with the system to help others.

Lastly, it is important to choose the right CRM platform. For small businesses, this often means a simple system. Managers should outline the company’s needs and then select a system based on those requisites, and not by the bells and whistles certain vendors may offer.

Not long ago, CDC Software announced plans to acquire on-demand companies in order to create one SaaS software solutions provider to complement its on-premise products for various verticals. Last week, CDC announced they have signed a binding term sheet for the future acquisition of a SaaS provider for not-for-profit (NFP) organizations; the name of the company was not disclosed.

Given the rise of SaaS—a recent global study by Avanade consultancy shows that within 2009 alone, the number of companies using only on-premise solutions decreased from 61% to 41%—this is a smart move for CDC to offer customers multiple deployment options. It is even smarter to offer a combination, as the hybrid SaaS model is proliferating at light speed. CDC plans to take these SaaS and on-premise offerings worldwide, via 22 offices and 1200 resellers and partners. In terms of the NFP vertical solution, business should be good—market research shows there are 1.5 million registered NFPs in North America alone, and SaaS solutions are extremely cost-effective. The soon-to-be-acquired company is venture-capital financed, and provides solutions for ERP, CRM, financial management, e-commerce and others, in one platform.

This pending acquisition will also be fruitful for other CDC solutions: it will provide cross-selling opportunities for CDC MarketFirst and CDC Respond by expanding product functionality into marketing automation, lead management, and complaint and feedback management. Full procurement of the unnamed company is expected by the end of 2009.

Update 11/23: Read about how the SaaS hybrid model is even making headway in the eCommerce software market.

Recently, global IT consultancy Avanade commissioned Kelton Research for a global study about cloud computing and the adoption of SaaS, and the findings were pretty remarkable. The prominent thread in the study was that SaaS is catching on, and at an unprecedented rate, but it is carving a niche more as a hybrid platform—usage with a legacy system—than as a freestanding one.

Not only are more companies adopting SaaS, more are considering adoption than they were even earlier this year. A similar study was conducted in January, and at the time 54% of participants said they would not consider cloud computing solutions; the more recent survey shows a decrease to 37%. The previous poll also showed 61% of companies were using only internal IT systems, and today that number is down to 41%. Avanade’s study found that 68% of respondents were using SaaS at some level, but still about 30% of those said service outages were an issue.

Whatever security and reliability problems respondents had, 62% said they plan to expand their SaaS usage. However, the study had no real conclusion about whether this uptick in hybrid SaaS usage would lead those companies to move entirely to the cloud. The study did conclude that cloud computing will continue making inroads, but that some applications should remain on-premise. Avanade surmised that the gap between companies planning to adopt SaaS and those that aren’t will close in either 2011 or 2012. It will be interesting to see what ratio of cloud to on-premise usage this hybrid moves to in the future, and how controllable security and dependability can become.

The outpouring of Oracle OpenWorld news continues: Samsung SDS and Oracle have co-developed a native mobile CRM application. Last week, demonstrations of the new application were held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, but the week prior the product had a “soft debut” in San Diego that was met with positive reviews.

The application is for Samsung smartphones and is based on Oracle Siebel CRM, and will run on the Samsung Mobile Cloud Center (SMCC). The first release is for pharmaceutical companies, but Samsung SDS plans to develop similar CRM applications for other verticals. Oracle already offers mobile version of its CRM system, but it is a basic rendering in comparison to the new Samsung collaboration, which has more features. Some of the advancements include a hub-and-spoke graphic to show users their customers’ connections—as opposed to Oracle’s original spreadsheet for displaying such associations—communication records built into customer profiles, and complex graphs.

At OpenWorld, Oracle’s Anthony Lye spoke to the importance to moving toward mobile in the future, so it is no surprise that this CRM offering is only the first of Samsung’s projected efforts to target the enterprise market. In this regard, Samsung will concentrate on its Windows Mobile phones in 2010, and plans to continue to focus on applications as well as devices by maintaining partnership with Oracle.

Two weeks ago, the annual CRM Expo was held in Nuremberg, Germany, and SugarCRM client 3Dconnexion was awarded the 2009 CRM Best Practice Award. The award is most certainly a testament to the value and capabilities SugarCRM delivers to its customers, and 3Dconnexion is the third SugarCRM customer to win the award, and it is also the third such win for Insignio, SugarCRM’s German partner who managed the implementation.

3Dconnexion is a subsidiary of Logitech, and the award was given in the “CRM Launch” category for their use of SugarCRM as a global customer management platform. 3Dconnexion develops control devices for a wide variety of users, from gamers to product designers, and is headquartered in Fremont, CA, with European headquarters near Munich. The previous CRM system was spread across multiple databases, and they turned to SugarCRM for a consolidation solution for online marketing, sales, services and reporting.

The SugarCRM deployment includes key integrations to tie the CRM system into Google Maps, the company’s e-commerce platform and partner portal. It also serves employees in seven languages in Europe and the United States, and 3Dconnexion’s next step will be implementation in Japan. Thus far, it’s been a good fall for SugarCRM, as they were also recently awarded “Best Open Source Technology” by CRM Magazine.

The expansion of cloud computing is unstoppable, and its growth within enterprise software is manifest destiny. Of course, when dealing with cloud storage there are always questions about security. After a recent Unisys survey revealed that more than half of its enterprise participants considered security and privacy their biggest concern with the cloud, eWeek did a little investigation and outlined six tips for security. Details are below, but the main points are to ask questions and don’t assume your storage provider is giving you all the pertinent details, and to be completely familiar—back-of-your-hand familiar—with your company’s security requirements.

• Learn as much as possible about a potential provider’s data management. Whether it’s where data is physically stored or what hiring practices led to the staff responsible for securing your data, make a point to know about it.
• Make sure your provider can show you documentation of encryption used to secure and segregate data between multiple customers.
• Should law enforcement perform an audit, be sure your provider can construct an accurate audit trail. Be particularly wary of providers who can’t give you precise geo-location and compartmentalization of sensitive data.
• Another key to smooth audits: know your company’s compliance requirements inside and out so that these become prerequisites when soliciting a provider. This knowledge could eliminate legal hassles down the road.
• If a provider doesn’t have a trustworthy software security assurance program, find one that does. This means security and privacy will be certain in terms of application development in the cloud.
• Lastly, consider Murphy’s Law. Ask prospective providers how they are prepared to handle a security breach, from damage control to correction.

Microsoft’s recent announcement of its “Social Networking Accelerator” could be a sign of things to come. With the explosion of many social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, it was only a matter of time before CRM Software providers started to create applications and tools which integrate these popular social networking sites into their CRM applications.

Microsoft’s new Social Networking Accelerator will initially only serve as a means to gather more information by monitoring customer tweets to generate more data. This will provide Microsoft Dynamics users a firsthand look at what customers say or think about their products. This should provide companies with immediate benefits in knowing customer opinions and assist in making decisions regarding any future product enhancements.

With real-time updates from customer feedback, customer service levels could improve dramatically. Companies can quickly take customer opinions into consideration and quickly address any customer concerns to provide improved response times and more personalized support.

The use of social networking websites as a means to manage customer relations could be revolutionary for the CRM Software industry. CRM providers are already taking notice of the potential of social networking as a means of managing customer relationships. Salesforce.com has already released features designed to integrate social networking sites, and many other CRM providers are soon expected to follow suit. The future of CRM could be in the midst of a dramatic overhaul.