Ignoring new capabilities, recreating the Siebel interface, and ditching pre-built dashboards: Avoid the top mistakes businesses make when switching from Siebel to cloud-based CRM.

See the best new features of Salesforce.com’s spring 2011 release, including Outlook integration, better Chatter and sharper reporting tools.

Even with cloud CRM, getting salespeople to adopt SFA requires give and take. Start with the give.

Think it’s cheaper to upgrade to a new version of on-premise Siebel than to use cloud CRM? Don’t be so sure. For 90% of projects, cloud CRM now provides more business benefits, much more quickly, at equal if not better cost. But is your in-house Siebel CRM team ready to hear that?

Oracle’s Larry Ellison dismissed cloud computing as mere fashion — random, meaningless, shallow. But this perspective is not just unfair to fashion designers and IT professionals; it also misses the essential role of fashion in technology.

Why bother custom-coding integrations between applications, if you can avoid it? Ease of integration is just one more reason to pursue SaaS CRM, rather than using on-premise CRM.

Does the new Oracle CRM On Demand version 17 deliver?

What’s the best way to create high levels of interaction and engagement between service representatives and customers? Try moving customer service to the cloud.

Many large organizations think they are too big, and their needs too complex, for SaaS-based CRM. But as the cloud evolves, not using SaaS becomes much more difficult to justify.

To avoid SFA project failure, the solution is simple: plan. Know what you want to achieve, and how you’re going to achieve it.