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			Business Research: Contact Center, Customer Performance, Sales Technology Research: Information Management, Operational Intelligence Imperative Research: Business Innovation, Performance Improvement, Process Improvement Vendor Research: Actuate, AIM Technology, Business Objects, Cerebit, Cognos, DataFlux, Enkata, Kalido,Hyperion, IBM, Information Builders, Intelligent Results, MediaTrac, MicroStrategy, Omniture, Oracle, Portrait Software, QuePlix , Salesforce.com, SAP, Saratoga Systems, Siperian, Stratature, Teradata, Trillium Software, unica, Tealeaf
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At the Technology for Marketing and CRM trade show currently running in London, four types of application are prominent: Web analytics, e-marketing, customer relationship management (CRM) and data management. Presentations at the show and conversations with Ventana Research confirm that vendors now view the Web as a major channel for marketing and sales. Several – notably SAS, which launched its SAS for Customer Experience Analytics product at the show – are demonstrating tools to monitor Web usage and combine this with other sources of customer data to provide detailed analytics about customer behavior. Despite new regulations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean limiting marketing via e-mail, several vendors are demonstrating products to manage end-to-end e-mail marketing campaigns. The established CRM vendors also are out in force: several of Microsoft’s CRM partners, Pivotal, RightNow, Sage and Saratoga Systems, are demonstrating their latest products.

One of the fastest-emerging technologies is information management. This is still a fluid market; vendors from this niche – which include Acuate Software, Datanomic and Data Discoveries – are focusing variously on data quality, data governance, data enrichment, data analytics and combinations of them. Overall, Ventana Research sees a common theme emerging from all this activity: The customer once more is becoming king. Albeit in many different guises, proactively managing the customer experience across multiple lines of business and multiple communication channels is being taken seriously by a number of mature companies, and a growing list of vendors now has products to support their initiatives.