FREE Business Resources!

All of these publications or products are available FREE just by clicking on the title of each listed item.
(The authors will ask you for your contact information but the publications are very useful and a great source of information, ideas, and direction. The publications themselves are 100% free!)

"Keeping hold of your customers, especially in tough economic conditions"

You know as much as anyone about the challenges faced by midsize organizations. There are always competitors with deeper pockets, customers demanding more for less, and suppliers giving preferential terms to larger organizations.

How can you sharpen your competitive edge? Read this white paper to learn how Oracle can help you:

• Retain customers by deepening insight and improving service
• Retain customers cost-effectively with optimized information insight and improved process flexibility
• Use information insight and process flexibility to retain customers
• Keep hold of your customers

"Get Closer to Your Best Customers: A Shift in Customer Strategies in Time of Crisis"

Learn what companies can do in economic downturns to position themselves for later success.

Find out what changes to make to customer strategy; how to align your organization to best support a winning approach; and how to drive excellence in execution to achieve results in today's economy.

For Executive Management, find out how to improve customer relationships.

In this 26-page white paper, co-written by SAP and The Economist, executive management will find out how to improve customer relationships by taking an integrated approach.

"Defining the Great Customer Experience"

This smith+co white paper explores the importance of the customer experience and the role of technology in creating, nurturing and strengthening customer relationships with every single interaction.

Customer experience is the most powerful tool available today for distinguishing your company from competitors – each contact with the customer offers an opportunity for strengthening your relationships by delivering value. That makes the support center an extremely strategic contact point.

"Creating Enduring Customer Relationships"

Learn how investing in a new loyalty solution or improving your existing one will enable you to truly differentiate your business around the customer experience and drive lasting relationships.

In today's environment, customers are spending less yet competition is more intense than ever. Loyalty initiatives must evolve beyond traditional reward programs to become a strategic part of the company's customer vision.

"People + Processes + Technology: Creating a Winning Formula for Customer Support"

You might have the world's best support professionals or the most sophisticated technologies – but if you don't effectively combine the two, your service and support will be run-of-the-mill or even mediocre.

This new SupportIndustry.com white paper explores the critical relationships between people, processes and technology and provides best practices for delivering superior service and support.

"Protecting Against the New Wave of Malware"

Learn about the scope of the malware problem and strategies that can help you defend against evolving malware threats.

Managing and protecting against endpoint security threats continues to get more difficult for most organizations regardless of their size. Malware of all types are becoming more virulent, their authors are becoming better at getting around current defenses, and the profits generated by malware are funding new and more dangerous threats. Traditional approaches just don't work as well as they used to.

This Osterman Research white paper examines why older, traditional antivirus approaches don't work and why a new approach to endpoint security is required to better protect your users, your data and your long-term viability as a company from malicious threats.

"The Work-at-Home Agent Model for Improved Customer Loyalty"

Learn the most effective methods for utilizing an at-home agent model to achieve growth and retain customer loyalty.

The benefits of the home-based model are compelling. From cost efficiency to disaster recovery to reduced attrition, the established trend of the homebased model resonates with many of us. But why are these benefits so worthwhile? Because within these benefits is an even more valuable outcome.

This paper discusses options for deploying and managing a home-based agent model with the ultimate goal being increased customer loyalty. As the key driver in this model, other cumulative benefits result: higher agent productivity, reduced attrition, lower operational costs and stronger business continuity.

Six Mistakes Companies Make Today & How To Avoid Them!  -  

When the economy slows, many businesses react by retrenching and cutting costs in order to weather the downturn.

While such cost reduction is important, companies often overlook equally critical strategic decisions—opportunities to use valuable business information to strengthen product and service offerings and emerge ahead of the competition. The paper highlights six common mistakes companies make in a down economy, and how organizations can use business intelligence to avoid them. The paper also includes a self-assessment questionnaire to determine the level of business intelligence opportunity across an organization.

Best Practices of the Best-Run Sales Organizations -

Learn from today's sales leaders who have benefited from building a sales strategy based on a position of deep customer knowledge.

Maintaining a robust customer database in a CRM tool not only provides your sellers and sales managers with actionable intelligence but it can provide significant value to your company.

"Selling Through A Slump - An Industry-by-Industry Playbook to Help You Prepare for the Recovery"

Selling in a recession is tough. And simply doing more of the same is not the way to survive, much less thrive, in a recession. There are important dos and don'ts in times like these.

This eBook is your industry-specific roadmap out of the economic slump. Selling through a Slump: An Industry-by-Industry Playbook brings together sales strategies and best practices from 11 top sales experts from 11 distinct vertical market sectors, ranging from retail to health care to telecom - because one size doesn't always fit all. The practical tips and experience-based wisdom here aren't just limited to any single industry, though. Regardless of your market sector, you're bound to find value in this arsenal of great sales ideas. Get access to exclusive tips on how to sell in a recessionary market, from renowned sales experts like Jill Konrath, Charles Green, and Dave Stein. You've got questions - this eBook was created to give you answers.

"Solving the 5 Biggest Challenges of Field Service Delivery"

Learn how on-demand technology will help you conquer the headaches of field service delivery!

Finally: an easy way to solve the biggest headaches of field service management – whether you're facing complex processes, high operating costs, demanding customers, or a combination of all of these. Download this exclusive white paper and you'll learn ways to dramatically improve your field service processes from start to finish, plus:

• How to solve the top five pains of field service delivery – including minimizing warranty and entitlement leakage, streamlining service operations – and more!
• Cost reduction and revenue increases you can expect from automating your field service process
• What options you have to automate your field service delivery today

"Keeping hold of your customers, especially in tough economic conditions"

You know as much as anyone about the challenges faced by midsize organizations. There are always competitors with deeper pockets, customers demanding more for less, and suppliers giving preferential terms to larger organizations.

How can you sharpen your competitive edge? Read this white paper to learn how Oracle can help you:

• Retain customers by deepening insight and improving service
• Retain customers cost-effectively with optimized information insight and improved process flexibility
• Use information insight and process flexibility to retain customers
• Keep hold of your customers

"Choosing the Best CRM for Your Organization"

This white paper describes and analyzes the four most popular deployment scenarios, then offers a guide to choosing the best CRM solution to meet your organization's needs based on functionality, application integration features, customization capabilities and your budget, so you can meet your company's needs today and support your business as it grows and evolves.

CRM buyers now have a wealth of deployment options available to them, providing unprecedented flexibility, cost-efficiency and business value. This gives organizations the power to fine-tune CRM deployments to match their needs, strategic objectives and budget requirements. But with choice comes complexity. Not only must executives carefully analyze their business scenarios, they must also understand the different characteristics of the available products.

"Hosted CRM System Comparison Guide"

Discover how this easy-to-use guide helps you compare features and costs of the major hosted CRM solutions.

Hosted CRM solutions make up a sizable portion of the growing CRM market. This guide breaks down 15 major players (including Salesforce.com, RightNow Technologies, NetSuite, Microsoft, Entellium, SugarCRM and Oracle) so you can quickly and easily compare the features and costs of each. Points of comparison include:

• Pricing per User
• Sales Force Automation Features
• Service and Support Features
• Marketing Features

"Customer Relationship Management: Secrets to CRM Success"

Learn how Microsoft Dynamics® Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can help you develop profitable customer relationships.

Find out how you can convert your pains into profit. Microsoft Dynamics CRM uses lead and opportunity management, incident management and a searchable knowledgebase. CRM also makes use of reporting tools for accurate forecasting, measurement of business activity, and employee performance. This webcast is your key to learning the secrets of Microsoft Dynamics CRM success.

"Customer Satisfaction With Email Archiving Systems"

Learn the important advantages Sunbelt Exchange Archiver (SEA) can provide your organization's email infrastructure.

Email archiving is rapidly becoming a critical best practice for organizations of all sizes and across all industries. Osterman Research conducted a primary survey specifically for this white paper, surveying organizations about a variety of email archiving systems to understand overall satisfaction of their current archiving solution. The goal is to report on a variety of metrics related to archiving systems and vendor performance, to help decision makers in their archiving evaluation process.

"CRM Your Salespeople Will Love"

CRM can provide companies of all types and sizes with significant benefits, but only if users adopt it.

Therefore, winning over users and obtaining buy-in at all management levels are crucial to the success of any CRM initiative. Front-line salespeople are often the major source of resistance. The newest solutions from leading software providers such as Oracle incorporate many innovations to change this trend. For example, new features let salespeople work the way they want to, reduce their administrative burden and genuinely support personal success in every aspect of the sales process. This white paper discusses user adoption problems in general, followed by an overview of the newest CRM features designed to drive ease of use and high rates of user adoption.

"On-Premise CRM Comparison Guide"

Learn more from this guide about the major players in the CRM market so you can quickly and easily compare the features and costs of each.

If your business needs the flexibility offered by an in-house CRM system, your first step should be to research offerings from some of the industry's biggest vendors. Find out how different solutions address different features, how much you can expect to pay and what kind of technology infrastructure you need in place. This guide compares solutions from vendors such as Microsoft, SugarCRM, SAP and Infor.

This comparison guide addresses topics such as:

• SFA (Sales Force Automation) features
• Marketing features
• Service and support options

"Preparing for the Upswing"

Learn how other midsize companies are staying poised for economic recovery by maintaining staff and spending in their most crucial areas.

There are always key areas of any business that cannot be cut if the business is to remain ready for an economic upswing. Find out how some companies consider the current climate a window of opportunity to:

• Invest in core activities
• Cultivate the most qualified employees
• Maintain customer relationships

"Sales Performance Management: Maximize Profits with Comprehensive Sales Processes"

Discover why the key to a productive sales force is ensuring that sales people concentrate on acquiring, growing, and retaining profitable relationships with their account bases.

SAP CRM empowers your sales force with a clear and detailed view of prospects, customers, and the market - and the ability to turn that insight into action.

"Protecting and Nurturing Your Brand"

Learn how to protect your brand in difficult economic times.

Get answers to these questions:

How can your company ensure delivery on its brand promises to customers?

How can you meet sustainability concerns and protect brand value?

And how can you develop the type of workforce associated with a world-class brand?

"Best Practices in the Call Center: A Customer Touch-Point Methodology"

Explore how you can improve operational efficiencies and also customer satisfaction by establishing your own customer touch-point methodology.

One of the biggest dangers in establishing best practices for your contact center is to do so in isolation from your self-service stakeholders. Instead, all customer "touch-points" must be viewed as part of a continuum. Customer touch points include Web Self-Service, Interactive Voice Response, Contact Center Agents, and Face-to-Face transactions. By tracking the interplay between these, you can more easily identify meaningful key performance indicators.

"Transforming Customer Service into a Strategic Asset – Free Webcast"

Discover how Microsoft Dynamics CRM can help you transform customer service into a strategic business asset.

What is the role of customer service in your organization? Is it considered simply a cost of doing business or does it play a critical role in your organization's business strategy? For years, research has conclusively demonstrated a substantial link between high customer satisfaction levels and increased profitability and company value. To take advantage of this trend, you need the right software to help you do the job.