Stories about: ISM

A beta version of News's MySpace community site was launched this week in China, but users must be careful when typing the Chinese site's URL or may end up shopping for patio furniture.

The Australian Gen2 standard for the EPC (Electronic Product Code) global UHF interface protocol for RFID readers has received International Standards Organization approval.

Unravel the words and acronyms from the world of wireless.

It might seem unbelievable, but there was a time when cars didn't come with locks on their doors, much less any of the complicated security systems we've grown accustomed to seeing today. I'm not old enough to have direct memories of those days, but owning and operating a car in that bygone era must have been a carefree experience. There was, after all, no worrying about seatbelt laws and little thought needed to be given to vandalism or theft.

Robert Joyce understands complex relationships. A former salesman and now managing director of corporate relationship management at The Bank of New York, Joyce completed a CRM deployment in March that gives the firm's 1,650 sales employees in 30 countries a single, consolidated view of each customer's interactions with the bank.

Consumer goods manufacturers face unique challenges when rolling out CRM applications, compared with other industries such as insurance or finance. For one thing, they don't typically focus on supporting call centers or remote sales force automation processes, but rather on building better marketing and sales campaigns. And they generally don't have direct contact with the end consumer, but rather deal exclusively with a middleman retailer or product distributor.

A customer at electronics store Best Buy might not recall purchasing Shania Twain's CD Come on Over back in 1997, but the $25 billion retailer certainly does.

Introduced in 2003, Honda's so-ugly-it's-almost-cute Element was intended to attract young, hip consumers. In its first full year of production, the Element found more than 67,400 buyers, exceeding expectations. But alas, the SUV has gone over like a lead surfboard with the coveted Gen Y crowd; R.L. Polk & Co. shows that buyers are more likely to have attended Woodstock than the X Games.

There's a sea change taking place right before our eyes. Real-time (or close to real-time) data access, rather than batched monthly reports derived from a data warehouse, is helping companies tailor business processes to suit customers' evolving needs. And that's only half of the change. The second half is that real-time access across the enterprise is giving companies an enterprise view of aggregated data and what it means.

Wireless is caught in the classic catch-22 and will take the enterprise by storm only when the true value of mobility is appreciated.

Next month, business software vendor SAP AG will begin shipping a new version of its SRM (supply relationship management) software with several enhancements, including live auctions and supplier portals.