Cubic Compass Software

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Mike Leach

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Here it is July and I feel like a kid on Christmas knowing that the next release of SmarterStats includes advanced charts and graphs using Silverlight. Very cool!

SmarterStats is one of many applications included with every i-Dialogue subscription.

Posted: Thursday, July 24, 2008 9:30:18 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   
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I found it interesting that Entellium, a CRM software company, is abandoning its browser based CRM application in favor of it's rich client CRM application.

This is one of several recent events that signals (to me) that a larger "Software + Services" (S+S) inflection point is now underway.

Looking at Gen Y office workers as a leading indicator, I'm often amazed at how many actually *prefer* to use rich Windows applications. The browser is just an alternative interface, much like a mobile phone.

eMarketing is a never ending battle and compromise between "reach" vs "rich", with maximum "reach" and lowest common denominator channels winning out, so I don't see this trend significantly impacting the custom interaction front lines. A website and simple HTML emails will always be guaranteed to reach a wide audience.

But I think productivity and development tools will most certainly be revived in a S+S context. Even Salesforce.com, known primarily as a web-based application, has converted me to their S+S development model of using Eclipse (a rich Windows application) to communicate with Salesforce via webservices, and I would expect the deployment of an Adobe Air-based Salesforce application to be announced in the near future to keep them relevant with this trend.

"Multi-client" may become the new buzzword that replaces "multi-tenant" in SaaS circles.

Posted: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 8:19:05 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   
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The "Milestones" feature in i-Dialogue CMS can really save your bacon if you ever need to rollback a particular web page to a previous version.

Here's a quick walk-through of this feature (click the "Play" button below to view).

Posted: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 1:57:20 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   
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What is the future of search engine optimization (SEO) now that consumers and customers can interact with Google like this (click play below)?

Posted: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 2:52:08 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   
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I'm happy to announce the start of what I hope will be a long standing tradition at Cubic Compass Software (CCS). CCS "Navigator" awards will be announced at this years Dreamforce conference and awarded to i-Dialogue customers whose solutions exhibit leadership and innovation in the areas of online demand generation, customer experience management, and one-to-one online interactions.
 
Navigator Awards recognize individuals and organizations who have made significant contributions to enabling one-to-one "dialogues" with their customers and/or partners through the use of CRM/CEM technologies and applications.
 
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Posted: Sunday, July 13, 2008 10:01:09 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   
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Just when I thought Google Apps subscription price of $50 per user/per year was the ultimate in web productivity tool value, Microsoft comes along and announces $3 per user/per month for hosted email/collaboration tools and simultaneously rolls over their existing hosting partners.

Posted: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 8:25:07 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   
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Yet another semi-scripted, one-take tutorial on how to use the Dialogue Script PageLayout control to create a simple online survey that is managed in Salesforce.

View the full screen video.

Posted: Monday, July 07, 2008 1:36:59 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   
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It's been over a year since I took a hard look at offering a hosted i-Dialogue solution for Microsoft CRM. At the time, the Microsoft CRM partner subscription model really wasn't in place (to be fair, the Salesforce Royalty Winter gave partners shivers too :-) ).

But a lot has changed in a year:

I continue to be astonished at how many of our Salesforce customers use Microsoft Outlook, and I really see no end in sight for the Exchange beast, so it's worth conceding on this front that any truly effective eMarketing or Sales "dialogue" must integrate well with Outlook... somehow.

More on this later...

Posted: Sunday, July 06, 2008 8:53:19 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   
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