Successful CRM in a Recession

Featured Speakers:

Paul Greenberg is Author of the best-selling CRM at the Speed of Light: Essential Customer Strategies for the 21st Century and President of The 56 Group, LLC, an enterprise applications consulting services firm, focused on CRM strategic services including go-to-market strategies for vendors and integrators, CRM strategic planning and vendor selection. The 56 Group also provides writing, speaking and educational services. His book, first published in January 2001 by McGraw-Hill is now in its third edition (August 2004). CRM at the Speed of Light is now in 8 languages and been a runaway best seller. It is used as a text in more than 60 universities across multiple continents. It was called “the number 1 CRM book” by SearchCRM.com in July 2002. The Asian edition of CIO Magazine named it one of the 12 most important books an Asian CEO will ever read. It has been called “the bible of the industry.” Paul writes regularly for publications like CRM Magazine and SearchCRM.com and CRMGuru. He is a contributor to multiple other national business publications. He has spoken as a keynote speaker and otherwise at conferences and seminars in the United States, across Europe, Asia and Australia. He is considered one of CRM’s leading authorities on strategy and on the state of the market, and has been quoted in multiple national magazines and newspapers as a subject matter expert including the New York Times. Paul is also a managing partner of BPT Partners, LLC, a training company that has the cream of the CRM industry developing the subject matter and teaching it.

Paul is the co-chairman of the newly created CRM Research Center at Rutgers University and has been named the Executive Vice President for the CRM Association. Paul is a also member of the Board of Advisors of Baylor University’s MBA CRM major, a unique national program. He also has been selected as a member of the Destination CRM Board of Experts, SearchCRM Expert Advisory Panel and the CRMGuru Expert Guru Panel among many others. Prior to his current position as President of the 56 Group, LLC, Paul was the Executive Vice President of Live Wire, Inc. a Massachusetts-based enterprise applications staff augmentation company. Before that, Paul was vice president of marketing for Atlantic Duncans International (now Optimos) where he was responsible for developing and securing strategic relationships with critical vendors and partners. In addition, Paul was the director of strategic relations for Nexgen Solutions, Inc., where he was directly responsible for generating business development working with Fortune 500 clientele. Paul has years of experience with both CRM and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). He has built SAP and People Soft practices and, has extremely deep ties into the CRM and enterprise applications communities. Paul received a Bachelor of Science in Journalism with majors in editorial journalism, sociology, and a minor in English Literature from Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism. He currently lives in Northern Virginia with his beloved wife Yvonne and their two cats.

Lori Harner has over 10 years of experience with the Microsoft Business Division. During that time she has held various roles including Technical Support Manager, Sr. Product Manager and Sr. Product Planner where she spent much of her time conducting product research and defining the feature enhancements for the Dynamics products . In July 2007, Lori joined the Microsoft Across America team where she focuses on evangelizing the Dynamics Products to the Microsoft Partner community. Prior to joining Microsoft Lori spent 8 years in the financial industry as a Personal Banker and Auditor.

Chris Bucholtz is Director, CRM Content at Focus. He has almost 20 years of experience as a technology journalist, covering beats ranging from CRM to semiconductor capital equipment. He was a writer for technology news service Edittech, Software and Intelligence Editor for Telephony, Senior Editor at both HP World and VARBusiness, and Editor at Semiconductor Manufacturing. His first book, on the totally unrelated subject of the Tuskegee Airmen, came out in 2007 and his second on the Fourth Fighter Group will be published this fall.