Ad: Manage updates with the Download App

medallia

CRM rivals invest in social and cloud

The big guns of customer relationship management--Oracle and Salesforce.com--continue to vie for dominance through acquisitions.

Back in March, Salesforce.com enhanced its social strategy and Service Cloud 3 offer with a $326 million purchase of Radian6, the popular social-media monitoring platform. Last week, Oracle made competitive moves to boost its cloud business announcing a $1.5 billion purchase of RightNow, the customer service monitoring company. For that price, Oracle will get a nice set of social cloud applications and some 2,000 reported customers.

Oracle's stockpile of cash and savvy acquisitions has heated up its rivalry with Salesforce … Read more

Bringing customer intelligence to the iPhone (Q&A)

In a recent conversation about predictive analytics, I learned how Wal-Mart Stores uses statistical modeling to better understand the habits and tendencies of its customers--and how businesses can use this data to drive competitive pricing to dominate a market.

Imagine that same type of customer intelligence, delivered almost instantaneously, into the hands of store managers on-site or corporate executives on their iPhone or iPad.

That's what Medallia, a provider of customer feedback and performance data software, aims to provide with a new offering this week on the heels of the new iPhone 4 announcement. Medallia gets its information from … Read more