Financial Software News and Views

06/23/2009

Free Online Sales and Customer Relationship Management Software

Free CRM is a web-based software solution for sales force automation and customer relationship management. Made by San Francisco-based CRM ASP, Inc., the software is a great tool for small business contact and lead tracking, sales and contact management, sales forecasting, customer service and business management. With over 103,000 customers, CRM ASP is one of the leading on-demand CRM providers. The free version is self-service, allows unlimited users and provides up to 10 MB of storage. If your customer base is not particularly large, it can be a quick and easy way to automate your sales, do a better job of tracking leads and even manage e-mail and call campaigns. You can also pay for the ?Professional Edition,? which offers live support, unlimited storage and enhanced features. --Brian Luskey, Associate Editor

04/14/2009

Salesforce.com for Free on Your Phone

Salesforce.com, the powerhouse in customer relationship management (CRM) software, is offering its customers a free, slimmed down version of the program for BlackBerry smartphones running Windows, as well as the iPhone, PCWorld reports. Users will be able to view customer data and respond to their queries, but not have access to more customized features. Salesforce.com charges $50 a month for a more robust version of the mobile software. Analysts see the offer as a beachhead for Salesforce.com in the world of mobile apps, with a view toward monetization later. A version for Google's Android mobile phone operating system is in the works. --Jeff B. Copeland, Content Product Manager

03/16/2009

Sales Tax Savers

Sales tax -- what an accounting headache for small businesses that operate across multiple states. Internet retailers in particular could have to file hundreds of forms to different jurisdictions and track a multitude of changing tax rates. Tax season is a great time to look into the Software as a Service vendors that handle your sales tax and use tax reporting, like SpeedTax, ADP Sales Tax Service, Avalara, and Exactor. They take on the burden of automatically updating sales tax rates from all over, and typically integrate with the major retailer financial systems like QuickBooks. For a quick look at your company's risk from sales tax regulations, take the questionnaire from SpeedTax. -- Jeff B. Copeland, Content Product Manager

03/16/2009

Microsoft Unbundles

So you prefer browsing the web with Firefox over Microsoft Internet Explorer but every time you click on a link in a Microsoft Word document you're back to using IE. It's that kind of bundling that helped make a Microsoft a software giant. But now Microsoft is loosening the reins. Its next generation computer operating system, Windows 7, will let you remove IE and other previously unremovable Microsoft applications from the operating system if you don't use them, freeing up system resources. A lead Windows developer says it's all about consumer choice -- then again, the European Union has been threatening to force Microsoft to permit the program removals. -- Jeff B. Copeland, Content Product Manager

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