These are the best-of-breed shortlist vendors who provide their application and services without bundling into another platform

These early- to mid-stage companies have raised rounds from investors such as First Round Capital, Starbucks, Salesforce Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures

Investors have poured over $6B into these startups offering sales tech solutions across CRM, sales enablement, communication, analytics, and more

Over the past decade, a new set of user-oriented enterprise applications has arrived to support a variety of business use cases across both horizontal use cases such as analytics and collaboration as well as departmental use cases such as finance and sales

Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Sounds like a self-help group for frustrated call center employees. Not quite. Rather, it’s a catch-all term for how companies manage customer interactions and data. It covers strategies involving everything from customer service to sales. Each incoming phone call or email may contain an overwhelming amount of data that a mere human in today’s hyper-competitive, tech-intensive environment can’t handle alone. Time to bring in some help with artificial intelligence

When you think of artificial intelligence (AI), do you imagine Will Smith battling humanoid robots? Well, think again…did you know that AI is already being applied in the Internet, helping you go about your daily life without drawing attention to itself

Slack, the $3.8 billion cloud-based team collaboration tool, has launched Slack Enterprise Grid, aimed at helping companies administer and connect multiple chat instances. Slack made the big announcement this week in San Francisco

Tact, the AI-driven sales tool that uses software smarts to simplify sales tasks, today announced integration with the newly announced Slack enterprise product, Slack Enterprise Grid

The combination of bots and voice-enabled natural language interfaces is about to transform the way end users interact with a broad spectrum of applications in 2017

On December 12, 2016, Tact announced a $15 million Series B funding round to support its AI-based sales assistant platform. In this report, Blue Hill explains how Tact’s embedded AI and user experience provide

Artificial intelligence (AI) had a coming out party of sorts in 2016. Even though it has been in development for decades, this year, with the perfect combination of cheap computing power and access to increasing amounts of data, it seems AI’s time has come

Every company loves CRM. Every sales rep hates it. Former Salesforce executive and current Tact CEO Chuck Ganapathi thinks the solution is a virtual personal assistant, driven by modern artificial intelligence

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software was born with the best of intentions — to create a record of customer interactions. The problem, salespeople will tell you, is that it becomes a chore. Tact has been designed to add an intelligent layer to CRM — and today it got $15 million to make CRM easier to use

Salespeople today work from their mobile devices more than ever before, but most customer relationship management applications were built during the web era

Companies spend an enormous sum of money on sales automation and relationship management software, a category that could reach $51.5 billion in revenue by 2020, according to a forecast by Cowen and Co

Chatbots are automating cybersecurity operations and speeding up recruiting, and now companies are starting to employ them as part of their sales efforts

Today, Tact, a Redwood City, CA based company, announced the successful close of a $15 million series B round led by Upfront Ventures. The round also had participation from Microsoft Ventures, and existing investors Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners and Satish Dharmaraj of Redpoint Ventures

I love that AppExchange is constantly growing with new apps. Although new apps may be flying under your radar, some are starting to generate significant momentum and buzz (not to mention terrific reviews) from our community. Spanning a wide range of categories, these 25 apps possess common attributes: they’re value packed and have a high customer rating

Our team attended last month’s Salesforce Dreamforce event in San Francisco. We visited each stand at the exhibition and collated the top tools, add-ons and Apps for Salesforce users

Since 2002, The Stevie Awards have recognized excellence both on an individual and organizational level. In the always competitive Sales & Customer Service group, past Stevies for Best Relationship Management Solution have gone to respected names like LexisNexis

At a time when most startups in India are switching to a mobile-first model, a clutch of firms in Silicon Valley and India have moved on to the next stage — an offline-first strategy.

Salesforce, Microsoft, and a slew of other business software vendors announce cloud, customer relationship management, management, marketing, and sales solutions for enterprises

Tactile, provider of a mobile-first command center designed specifically for field salespeople, today unveiled three new products that empower salespeople while on the road

Think back to how and where you worked five years ago. Smart phones were already everywhere, yet business applications were still heavily relegated to the desktop. Today, mobile technology has not only become omnipresent in our personal lives, but it is also transforming the way we work, and developers are scrambling to meet this growing demand

There is an expectation for constant connectivity today. We’ve all experienced the frustration of not being able to access email on the subway or needing an urgent file on the road but being in a dead spot

Persistent rumors of an acquisition have been floating around Salesforce for weeks now. The market has twice halted trading of Salesforce's stock in the last two weeks — once on April 29 and again on Tuesday. This was necessary because the price spiked up dangerously fast on news that the cloud company was hearing buyout offers

Rumors around a Salesforce takeover are heating up. After a swirl of chatter last week about Oracle being a likely suitor for the company, the talk has now turned to Microsoft Relevant Products/Services as a possible buyer for the customer relationship management giant

You’re ready. You have a great idea, and you have reached a place in your career or life where starting your own company is the next step. Great! But before you start pitching your idea to potential investors, partners or employees there is vital step you can’t skip: How do you get your spouse and family to accept the risk, uncertainty and lifestyle that lies ahead as an entrepreneur?

"This is a very popular meme today in the Valley: If you talk to aspiring entrepreneurs in accelerators or earlier, it’s 'We want to be the Uber for something or the AirBnB for blank,' " says Chuck Ganapathi, the founder of Tactile, which makes software that helps salespeople do their jobs better

Last week, Salesforce.com reported some pretty stellar fourth quarter and fiscal year results along with a strong outlook for the coming year. The company continues to expand into new areas, bringing the “power of the cloud” to what will become new business units that will drive growth for the company

Every discussion on mobile-first development misses out on one of its most important and least understood characteristics: Mobile apps need to work offline

When you think of today's work environments, images of cubicles, copy rooms and water coolers may come to mind. Or, if you're in parts of the Silicon Valley, maybe they're more like ping-pong tables, well-stocked kitchens and fitness centers