Mark Aspillera

Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), or Fixed Asset Management, is a very archaic name for a very relevant type of software. At its heart fixed asset management is a centralized system for managing the entirety of a company’s maintenance operations. That applies to maintenance of properties, facilities, pieces of equipment and just about any bits and bobs that would count as a fixed asset.

This week’s community question comes from. Bob S. asks, “Researching our next generation ERP / MRP application for use in a medical device manufacturing shop environment. FDA & ISO13485 level of quality system. Currently using Epicor Vista 8. Is there a better solution?” Our experts compare the leading MRP and ERP software solutions.

There were times we thought it might never happen, but task management and collaboration tool Asana finally added a calendar view function called, unsurprisingly, Calendars in Asana. While the default List view that you first see upon logging into Asana certainly gets the job done, the omission of a calendar view was glaring, an omission that was glaring enough to seem like it was deliberate. We took a look at how the new feature measures up.

In this week’s Best Value we’re taking a look at web conferencing tools. In contrast to some of the other segments we’ve covered in past installments like Marketing Software and Nonprofit Management, web conferencing can be applied to just about every single department in any given organization. Any team is going to have to have meetings at some point or another. Additionally, in the contemporary workplace many teams, even at smaller organizations, are working remotely from each other with potentially vast distances between individuals.

Just because network stacks continue to get more complex doesn't necessarily mean that the means to monitor them properly have to get just complicated. LogicMonitor operates on that principle, offering dynamic stack monitoring based on a simple Java-based application that can be installed on any device. In this second part of our feature on LogicMonitor we talked to CEO Kevin McGibben to find out more about the company and what it's setting out to do with the product.

There's more to the sales process than sales calls. Let's answer this week's question by taking a look at how CRM with email marketing works and what a landing page is.

Solutions designed to monitor a stack, the sum total ecosystem of all the IT hardware and software necessary to run daily operations, are nothing new. What is new, however, is the idea of stack monitoring as a lightweight software-based solution. In this article we sit down with LogicMonitor CEO Kevin McGibben to take a look at the Santa Barbara company's Java-based stack monitoring solution.

ERP continues to be one of the most widely sold and implemented types of business software in the world, constituting a market size in the tens of billions. It's also one of the most bloated and confused carrying a three-letter acronym (in case you didn't know, that's saying a lot).

Think about the kind of stuff that goes into a CRM database and real-time intelligence probably wouldn't apply to most of it: first name, last name, email address, phone number, chance to close, lead source, etc. etc.

CRM isn't just for the sales team anymore. As of late CRM has been picked up by marketing, nonprofit donor management and other fields as a tool for keeping track of their outreach campaigns. This week we look at two potential choices when looking for potential solutions in the field of CRM for education.

There's no such thing as perfect data security, be it on premise or in the cloud. There will always be a risk of being compromised by both external and internal attacks. What makes Menlo Park-based cloud security provider Adallom so intriguing is that its flagship product takes a markedly different approach to security on cloud-based enterprise apps, one that makes no discrepancies whether a potential attack is external or internal.

This week’s question from Kevin J. asks, “We are interested in doing our bible study as a webinar both live and on demand and would like some options.” To answer Kevin, we review the top live and on-demand webinar solutions.

2013 has come and gone and we’ve got a whole spiral ring notebook filled up with our observations on and takeaways from the trends—some good and some not so good—that swept over the business software industry. In this post we've put together a roundup of things we'd like enterprise software vendors to consider taking on as their 2014 business software resolutions.

Business software probably isn't the first thing that springs to mind come the holiday season, but you'd be surprised. Christmas software promos and deals abound.

The final vote tallies came in this Wednesday and UserVoice has come out on top in CRM Idol 2013. UserVoice won out over a total pool of 44 companies, and a shortlist of finalists that included some truly great CRM competitors like BlueCamroo and Cirrus Insight.

Non-statisticians are having to deal with statistical analysis on an ever increasing basis. DataCracker, the new analytical and visualization solution from Numbers, aims to service that market. How does it measure up?

It's easy to slip into the assumption that nonprofit organizations exist on some kind of different plain of existence, business-wise. If you're not out there to turn a profit you don't really have a need for a lot of the software tools that for-profits use, right? Even nonprofits need to not just control expenses, but collect, organize and pursue leads to convert into donors or grant givers.

You can give staff members a Facebook-esque system for exchanging messages about a project, but how much do simple message exchanges and task tracking promote greater efficiency? The Plant is trying to bridge the gap between words and outcomes by refining their new top-rated social collaboration tool, Qortex.

Breaking into new segments is something Salesforce has pursued with gusto the past few years. We talk about how the company's behavior with previous acquisitions may transfer to the CRM giant's recent purchase of the Pardot marketing platform.

Dreamforce is one of the biggest marketing and promotional events in the world of enterprise technology, and it's not just for Salesforce itself. Every year at Dreamforce, Dreamforce 2013 included, the Expo floor becomes a sprawling showcase for dozens of companies with some kind of affiliation with Salesforce.