Eat, drink and be merry
Never underestimate the CRM value of a good Christmas lunch
Christmas is one of the best times of year for business, despite the liver damage usually incurred by staff. The only problem is that your job often gets in the way of the boozy lunches.
Christmas is the time for making and keeping in touch with contacts, after all; wining and dining that client you haven't seen since last January might mean a deal by April.
Never underestimate the CRM value of a good Christmas lunch or drink, whether for thanking existing customers or looking to gain new ones.
While we are busy pondering who will win the record, programme, writer and goldfish of 2004 award, it's worth taking stock of what happened over the past year in the technology sector.
Was it overflowing with unfulfilled promises of recovery, accounting realignments and consolidation, or were the green shoots finally starting to show, with consolidation simply a Darwinian clear-out of the channel?
Whichever way you saw 2004, it is hard to imagine what next year will hold. Vendor strategies flipped from direct to indirect throughout 2004, leaving many in the channel wondering which company will be their safety net next year.
Dell VARs finally admitted that it uses the channel, but Hewlett-Packard's resellers said their vendor has adopted a more direct strategy.
Meanwhile IBM has outsourced/sold its entire PC operation (and recent news regarding its server business suggests it won't be too long before the remainder of Big Blue's hardware portfolio follows suit).
Of course, certain technologies are (almost) certain to feature next year. Storage and security are bound to be high on the agenda, driven by compliance laws coming into effect.
Information management and data analysis will also grab corporates' attention, and more niche technologies such as videoconferencing and the convergence arena, along with any technologies based around IP, will prosper.
Whatever proves to be the shining star next year, CRN would like to wish all its readers a happy Christmas and a very prosperous new year.