Editor's blog: Rambling questions, tricky answers

I'm writing this during a break in the proceedings at the Gartner CRM summit. It's been an interesting day so far.

The first thing I noticed upon arriving is the sheer number of people here. CRM is hotter than a tin roof in the Sahara right now as companies look to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction as key factors in growth.

Of course there is much more to CRM than buying some technology, flicking a switch and waiting for the customers to beat your door down with fistfuls of cash and that (really-should-be-obvious) fact has been a central message of the day so far.

Amid all the common sense, it was also refreshing to hear organisations being told to break down the silos within their structure if CRM technology is to stand any chance of improving matters for customers.

This certainly rang true. Just this week I was on the phone to the London Borough of Sutton, trying to pay my council tax. The payment department couldn't tell me what the outstanding balance was, while the benefits and tax department, which knew the balance, couldn't take payment. It will take more than technology to iron out those wrinkles. You can read more about how companies can better share information across departments in our new special report, Joined-up Enterprise.

And despite it being revealed their products are far from a customer satisfaction panacea, the major vendors (or at least those who have sponsored the event) are here to tout their wares.

The first panel of the day - starring old adversaries Microsoft and Oracle - which could have been good, sadly fell very flat. This was largely due to some rambling and ponderous questioning from the stage - at one point, an opening question ran to about five minutes.

My sympathies went out to the panellist from Oracle - a slightly harassed looking Mark Woollen - who launched into one answer: "What companies need to do... what I think they should... what they will have to... " before stopping himself and asking: "What was the question again?"

I knew how he felt.

However long the questions, one answer that seems inescapable is if CRM is hot right now then its burning centre is software as a service (SaaS).

According to Gartner's Scott Nelson, on-demand is going to be "white hot" in 2007. But as I type this a thought occurs to me. If software as a service is "white hot" how come Gartner still uses a venue where it's so difficult to get online?

Connectivity at Royal Lancaster Hotel, the venue for the CRM Summit, is hindered by a poor mobile phone signal throughout. And as for wi-fi, forget about it. The hotel's wireless network is a closed shop to conference guests and other neighbouring signals limp and whimper before dropping off the radar. It's not a picture of ubiquitous wi-fi reliable enough to build business models on.

Salesforce.com was today heralded by Gartner as the "poster child" of software as a service and a major driving force for CRM. It's just a shame then its customers can't connect to the internet at Gartner's venue of choice - an annoyance I know was shared by many other attendees.

But for all the talk of SaaS, the CRM old guard hasn't been without a morsel of news. Oracle is keen to talk to journalists about a recent customer win. However, the customer in question - HR company SThree - isn't keen to talk about cost or time-to-deliver - the two darkest clouds hanging over the use of Oracle (formerly Siebel) software.

If they can't - or won't - answer the important questions, we fail to see how this is news.