By William Band

To make the savvy investment decisions, BP&A professionals need to know which CRM applications have the strongest track record for delivering results. I just surveyed 286 companies to understand their opinion of 19 categories solutions that comprise the Extended CRM Application Ecosystem.

Here’s a sneak peek of my findings:

• Sales, order management, and service are the keys to your revenue engine. The business and IT executives that we surveyed feel that “core” business processes like selling, order taking, and customer service are the most critical to their success. For, example over half report that order management, customer service & support, and contract center infrastructure applications are critical solutions. Forty-eight percent say that salesforce automation is a critical app, and 42% say this is the case for eCommerce solutions.

• Customer data management and intelligence are keystones for success. The Holy Grail for CRM professionals has long been to achieve a “360-degree” view of customers. Consequently, 44% of the companies I surveyed report that customer business intelligence and customer data management are critical solutions for their businesses.

You are not going to believe this. Goofus and Gallant grew up and they both became application development professionals. Inseparable as they are, they both landed jobs at a global medical supply company in Parsippany, NJ where they develop enterprise supply chain web applications. Gallant has a bit less hair than he used to and Goofus is sporting a "Comdex" tattoo. But, these guys are basically the same as they ever were. (Remember Goofus and Gallant from Highlights Magazine For Children)

We Can Still Learn A Lot From Them

Goofus forgets to check-in his code before going a week-long vacation to Martha's Vineyard.

Gallant always checks-in his code and makes thoughtful revision comments on the changes each night before he goes home.