we face the start of a new year more than halfway through a decade of significant change. We've seen companies come and go; we've seen the Web mature; we've seen software-as-a-service grow from a niche to a major business model. Through it all, we've heard over and over that "the customer is king."

That well-worn platitude is developing a life all its own, as part of a growing movetnent away from the traditional concepts of CRM. What has been seen as a means of managing customer data in order to understand them-or to sell more to them-is now viewed as a vital two-way link between customers and vendors centered on the overall customer experience. CRM, in other words, is incorporating customer experience management (CEM), or what many are calling CRM 2.0.