First Coffee

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is The Charlie Parker Gold Collection, a serviceable intro to the man’s music:

 

Salesforce.com has previewed Salesforce Summer ‘08 at Dreamforce Europe in London.

 

The vendor’s 26th generation release, Salesforce Summer ‘08 has new features for Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas, along with new CRM features in sales, marketing, customer service and partner management.

 

Company officials say the new generation makes more use of consumer Web technologies such as tagging, subscriptions and recommendations.

 

For Salesforce Content there’ll be delivery to all 15 languages that Salesforce.com supports. Users will also be able to collaborate in Salesforce Content with their partners and customers in the Salesforce Partner Portal and Salesforce Customer Portal.

 

A new “Content Analytics” feature offers metrics to “determine the most frequently used content among sales reps, marketers and other users,” company officials say.

 

What Salesforce officials call “the second pillar in Salesforce.com’s collaboration applications” is Salesforce Ideas, an app letting customer, partner or employee communities post, discuss, and vote on ideas. There will be a feature called “Multiple Communities,” which lets companies create multiple communities “in order to better organize and segment the ideas coming from different groups, and provide participants with a forum to engage with the specific communities that most apply to them.”

 

“Customizable Ideas” lets users set up validation rules, workflows and Apex triggers off keywords alerting companies to relevant conversations taking place within their communities. “Ideas for Partner Portal” lets companies capture the perspectives of their partner community by including Salesforce Ideas in the Salesforce Partner Portal.

 

And as far as just CRM goes, well, campers, there are over 50 new features and some improved ones — Salesforce Partners was introduced a couple years ago, and lets companies manage indirect sales channels. Salesforce Summer ‘08 will provide each Salesforce.com customer with two Salesforce to Salesforce connections, at no additional charge.

 

Salesforce SFA is getting a facelift: Company officials say the Salesforce Summer ‘08 version has a Dashboard E-mail Delivery feature which will automate the process of updating and delivering dashboards.

 

Salesforce Marketing is offering “better visibility into their leads with the Converted Lead Page feature,” which lets companies “see all the related records into which a lead was converted.”

 

Salesforce Summer ‘08 is currently scheduled to be available in June of 2008. Salesforce Content is available at $35 per user, per month. Salesforce Ideas is currently available for customer, partner, and employee communities. It is included with all CRM editions for internal use, with the exception of Group Edition, at no additional cost. For additional employees, Ideas Only licenses can be purchased for $5 per user, per month.

 

For customers and partners accessing Salesforce Ideas through the portal, standard portal pricing applies. Salesforce for Google Apps is available today to all Salesforce.com customers at no additional charge.

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Today’s news is datelined “Cleveland and Madrid,” and when’s the last time you saw those two cities mentioned in the same breath?

 

Cleveland’s Toa Technologies, a Customer Appointment Management vendor, and Ono, a Spanish broadband communications provider, deployed Toa’s SaaS product for managing field operations.

 

Toa will allow Ono to give both customers and technicians control in managing the in-home appointment, said Manuel Marti, director of customer operations at Ono.

 

With competition among broadband companies intensifying throughout Europe, service providers are looking for ways to cut costs without damaging customer service. Legacy workforce management tools are generally ill-suited for achieving these goals because they’re designed to support technician work processes rather than customer preferences.

 

Toa’s Customer Appointment Management product combines mobile workforce management technology, predictive intelligence and interactive customer communications, company officials say. This lets service providers accurately identify the technician’s time of arrival (Toa, get it?) at the customer’s home and narrow the customer’s wait window from the usual 4 to 8 hours down to “60 minutes or less,” Toa officials claim.

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Tyler Technologies has announced that it has signed contracts with two Californian municipalities, the City of Orange and the Town of Apple Valley, for Tyler’s Eden financial management product.

 

Tyler officials say the agreements have a combined total of more than $1.3 million, include software licenses, as well as corresponding professional services, maintenance and support.

 

Both Orange and Apple Valley purchased a variety of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications from Tyler’s Eden financial and human resource product suites. The local governments want to use the Tyler GASB 34 Report Writer for reporting capabilities, Tyler officials say.

 

Additionally, Orange has purchased Web extensions for several applications to let citizens and vendors perform business transactions online.

 

Jeff Green, president of Tyler’s Eden Financial Management Solutions, said Tyler’s Eden system has “a significant user base” in California.

 

Based in Dallas, Tyler sells information management products and services for local governments. Company officials claim a client base of over 7,000 local government offices throughout all 50 states, Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom.

 

Tyler has been named one of “America’s 200 Best Small Companies” by Forbes Magazine and one of “America’s 100 Most Trustworthy Companies” by Audit Integrity, an independent research firm.

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The Americas’ SAP Users’ Group, a customer-run community of SAP professionals, has announced the launch of a series of Benchmarking and Best Practices initiatives through its continued collaboration with SAP America.

 

The announcement comes as part of activities surrounding the 2008 ASUG Annual Conference and the Sapphire 2008 Orlando conference this week.

 

The ASUG and SAP Benchmarking and Best Practices program was developed in 2005. The program is introducing three new Benchmarking studies: Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Sales Effectiveness; Enterprise Health Check; and Retail Merchandising/Category Management.

 

One new Best Practices survey, “Running the ERP Marathon,” is being offered in conjunction with Florida State University.

 

The CRM: Sales Effectiveness Benchmarking study examines the effectiveness of a company’s sales force based on company financials, key performance metrics and sales enabling processes. Participants will have the opportunity to learn more about their company’s sales efficiencies, proficiencies and deficiencies, group officials say:

 

“This will provide insights into Key Performance Indicators with comparisons to both industry and aggregate respondents. The Sales Effectiveness Benchmarking initiative covers over 25 KPIs and over 30 Best Practices.”

 

In February SAP AG announced the availability of the third enhancement package for its ERP application, cleverly named SAP ERP. Released incrementally and “at no charge to existing customers,” the product lets customers access new software features via a download to switch on as needed, “without touching mission-critical core systems.”

 

The software vendor also said more than half of the enterprise services bundles created for the third enhancement package were developed “through efforts of the SAP ecosystem of partners and customers.”

 

SAP officials say the incremental delivery is a value benefit for customers in the latest release of SAP ERP (release 6.0). “Customers can consume innovation at their own option,” company officials say, “switching on the innovation they require at a pace of their choosing and business case.”

 

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a grand old good-time rock record, The Best of The Faces: Good Boys… When They’re Asleep:

 

The Salesforce.com community, assembled in London for the Dreamforce Europe conference, today saw Model Metrics’ use of the new Visualforce technology on the Force.com platform to create custom user interfaces for the Apple iPhone.

 

Model Metrics developers used Visualforce to customize the Salesforce interface specifically for the iPhone, making Salesforce “look and function just like native iPhone applications,” Model Metrics officials say, including touchscreen functionality that iPhone users are accustomed to.

 

Salesforce.com and Model Metrics demonstrated it during Marc Benioff’s keynote address at Dreamforce Europe yesterday in London.

 

The iPhone application demonstrated by Model Metrics uses a scenario at an automotive dealership between a potential customer and sales agent. The sales agent is able to customize model, colors and options on the spot in the middle of the showroom floor, look for inventory at his location and other dealerships, and begin the purchasing process immediately via the iPhone. Information captured on the iPhone is reflected in the native Salesforce interface.

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Chicago-based Intelestream, an official SugarCRM partner, has announced the founding of a monthly meet-up group for everything related to SugarCRM.

 

Included on each month’s agenda, Intelestream officials say, are “tips and tricks for making the most out of the software, a question and answer session with SugarCRM experts, and the most current information everyone should know about software patches and new releases.”

 

From absolute beginner to expert administrator, the meet-up is open to all interested in learning more about SugarCRM. Meetings are free of charge and take place the last Thursday of each month between 12:00 and 2:00 in the afternoon.

 

Registration for the SugarCRM Chicago meet-up group can be found by visiting http://opensource.meetup.com/86/

 

Intelestream is the only authorized SugarCRM partner in Chicago. The company “concentrates on SugarCRM and nothing else,” according to company officials.

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Oracle officials say the software vendor has previewed additional planned feature enhancements of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g.

 

Based on feedback and testing, the latest preview of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g includes planned features intended to provide Java developers with a unified design and development experience based on new open standards for Java, SOA, AJAX, Web 2.0 and Security, as well as to “help reduce the time, effort and cost of developing Rich Enterprise, Web and mobile applications,” company officials say:

 

“The preview showcases planned performance and manageability improvements, as well as tighter integration between various Oracle Fusion Middleware components.”

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London-based Sofia Works, a vendor of on-demand software as a service (SaaS) business products, has announced an advanced recruitment management system for the non-profit sector based on Salesforce.com technology.

 

A Salesforce.com Select Consulting Partner, Sofia developed it for the independent charity Teach First. Using Salesforce.com Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology, the system lets the organization manage, record and evaluate the end-to-end graduate recruitment process.

 

Teach First attracts, selects, trains, places and supports graduates to work in challenging schools and for employers after the two-year program. The company needed to replace its existing custom built recruitment management system to accommodate growth.

 

James Darley, Director of Graduate Recruitment at Teach First, said “we now have a product that supports our candidates from initial registration of interest through application to the final hiring decision process.”

 

Graduates can register their interest in a “sister,” non-Salesforce.com system, which shares this data with the live Salesforce.com environment at the moment of application. The recruitment process is then recorded stage by stage by Teach First staff with field-based workers able to remotely manage and update information via the Internet.

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InsideSales.com, a vendor of “Lead Response Management” products, has announced the release of ResponseDealer, a suite of on-demand technology products designed to help automotive dealerships respond to leads and use dialer and call center technology.

 

This announcement comes after a full year of testing on site with Jim Click Automotive Group, recently ranked #40 in the Wards Top 100 Mega-Dealers in the United States.

 

Dave Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com, said automotive has “always been at the forefront of innovation and early adoption of new technologies.”

 

The product gathers Web leads, inbound calls, and online inquiries from dealer and manufacturer sites and routes them to an inside sales representative, whose job is to respond and invite them to visit the dealership, rather than trying to sell them like the usual car salesperson does. The lead is then entered in the lead management database.

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Kintera, a vendor of software as a service to the nonprofit and government sectors, has reported financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2008.

 

Revenue for the first quarter 2008 was $8.9 million, compared to $10.7 million for the same period last year. On a GAAP basis, net loss for the quarter was $4.3 million, or $0.11 per diluted share, which is an improvement of 48 percent or $0.10 per diluted share, compared with a net loss of $8.3 million, or $0.21 per diluted share, for the same period last year.

 

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, stock-based compensation expense and restructuring charges was a loss of $2.5 million, or $0.06 per share, in the first quarter of 2008, compared to a loss of $3.8 million, or $0.09 per share, in the first quarter of 2007.

 

This is an improvement of approximately 33 percent or $0.03 per share year-over-year.

 

“We believe our unified software as a service platform, which includes events, marketing, and donor management, will help fuel our growth, expand our existing relationships, and attract new organizations to Kintera,” said Richard N. LaBarbera, Kintera CEO.

 

The company also announced a restructuring plan which includes a 14 percent reduction in resources targeting an excess of one million per quarter of savings by the third quarter. The expected charge is $450,000.

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CRM vendor eLoyalty Corporation has announced financial results for the first quarter ended March 29, 2008.

 

For the first quarter of 2008, total revenue was $23.9 million and the net loss was $4.2 million. The net loss available to common shareholders was $0.49 per share.

 

ELoyalty realized “Adjusted Earnings” of $0.7 million for the first quarter of 2008. Adjusted Earnings is a non-GAAP measure.

 

Highlights for the first quarter of 2008 include six percent sequential increase in Services Revenue, 11 percent sequential increase in Total Revenue and $719,000 of Adjusted Earnings, with $2.5 million sequential improvement in Adjusted Earnings.

 

During the second quarter, the Company expects lower CRM consulting revenue due to budget pressures at several large consulting accounts and to experience the one-time impact of a contract modification on one of its Behavioral Analytics contracts.

 

Based on these factors, the company currently expects to achieve second quarter Services revenue of $19.0 million and not exceed or fall below the target by more than 5 percent.

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The Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG), the world’s largest customer-run community of SAP professionals, announced today it has launched a series of new Benchmarking and Best Practices initiatives through its continued collaboration with SAP America, Inc. The announcement comes as part of activities surrounding the 2008 ASUG Annual Conference and the SAPPHIRE 2008 Orlando conference taking place this week in Orlando, Florida.

 

 

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is a Rolling Stones mix — we got 132 Stones songs on the iPod, 132 little shots of high energy to complement the Diet Coke and Starbucks coffee towards the goal of keeping yr mst ob’t sv’t cranking after a l--o-n-g weekend pulling both Mommy and Daddy duty:

 

Etihad Holidays has announced that after a comprehensive tender, it has chosen Ocean from ISO to help with offering Etihad customers all-inclusive holiday packages. Ocean will help with the work of combining accommodation and additional ground services with Etihad Airways network.

 

Ocean is directly connected to the airline inventory which is held in Amadeus, allowing the user to package flights with other services. Etihad officials say Ocean will be integrated with other existing systems, such as the Etihad group’s financial accounting.

 

In future stages of the project, company officials say, “other relevant sales channels such as travel trade and Web” will be equipped with the product. Also, additional internal connections will be established, such as to the Frequent Flyer Programme “Etihad Guest,” the Etihad CRM system and to an online credit card system.

 

Etihad Holidays also plans to use the inbound version Canary of the ISO product for the stop over program of Etihad’s customers in Abu Dhabi.

 

Justin Warby, Project Manager from Etihad, said the implementation of ISO Travel Solutions is “a major step forward” for Etihad Holidays: “We can now book our customers a holiday package in a live environment. The product enables complete automation of our ground and air inventory as well as back office functions.”

 

Warby called the initial implementation of Ocean “the first part of a wider strategy, ensuring our customers and trade partners can make holiday bookings with us.”

 

ISO officials say they see the project as another important step to strengthen the company’s position in the Middle East. The company has had customers in the region for years, such as Emirates Holidays and Dnata, and Markus Kretschmer, Sales Director from ISO, says “Etihad together with Emirates are the two airlines in the Middle East.”

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British industry journal CustomerStrategy is reporting on a user group survey from ProtoCall One, finding that contact center heads are stating time pressures for blocking progress on integrating business intelligence into their call center systems.

 

The user group members are senior heads from UK businesses, the journal says, and their organizations account for around 25 percent of all GWFM UK users. According to the study, the members of the group were asked for views concerning their experiences of BI and their plans to pursue BI within their organizations:

 

“Lack of time” was the key blockage to achieving BI for 63 percent of those surveyed. The highest priority for all group members was to use BI to measure call agents based on business-focused objectives instead of standard call metrics.

 

CustomerStrategy reported that according to the study 75 percent of those surveyed are now looking to integrate customer data for their BI use from their customer relationship management (CRM) systems. One wonders just why the other 25 percent imagine they’re collecting customer data at all.

 

75 percent of respondents used only historical rather than real-time data to track agent performance, and 37 percent of respondents stated that BI and agent performance reporting was still treated separately.

 

Manual workarounds still prevail, the study found, but “time spent by agents is minimized, with 50 percent stating that less than five percent of agents’ time was spent on manual workarounds such as completing forms and reports, but 25 percent have agents spending 10–20 percent of their time on non-automated processes.”

 

Do the math: CustomerStrategy says that what with call center agent salaries averaging £15,458 per year, agents spending just five percent on manual work-rounds would equate to a total annual cost of £77,290 for a one hundred seat call center.

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Right On Interactive and ExactTarget have announced a partnership to integrate Right On Interactive’s 5Buckets marketing automation software with ExactTarget’s e-mail messaging service. 5Buckets will connect disparate databases with outbound marketing communication applications, including ExactTarget.

 

According to Troy Burk, President of Right On Interactive, 5Buckets is “database-agnostic,” providing an integrated marketing automation product regardless of the type of database — “CRM, Ecommerce, Analytics, POS, Financial, or Transactional.”

 

“Rather than sending a one-size-fits-all message, 5Buckets helps companies sort audiences into self-defined segments and then automates the communications process,” Burk said, adding that the software “looks for changes, updates, and actions within the database and then triggers out bound communication to the customer or prospect.”

 

5Buckets also has the flexibility to work with multiple best-of-breed marketing technology products, including ExactTarget and Salesforce.com, Burk said.

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Temenos Group, a vendor of integrated core banking systems, has announced that Al Wasatah Al Maliah, a newly established Islamic brokerage and investment house, has become the first non bank-backed financial investment services company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to implement Temenos T24.

 

Al Wasatah Al Maliah signed with Temenos for a go live date scheduled for the summer of 2008. T24 will support all the company’s operations in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Corporation Council states.

 

Al Wasatah Al Maliah has chosen Temenos Islamic Model Bank for Saudi Arabia, which includes pre-configured products and processes based on banking best practices. The system includes Sharia-compliant modules such as the Tadawul Trading Platform, Asset Management, CRM and Islamic Banking modules as well as an Order Management System connected to multiple exchanges.

 

This OMS is segregated from the company’s back office system which supports trading for multiple exchanges, currencies, products and instruments.

 

Based in Riyadh, Al Wasatah Al Maliah plans to expand its branch network throughout the Gulf region. Bassam Bin Gheshian, Chief Operating Officer, Al Wasatah Al Maliah, said the company’s aim is “to become a leader in the Islamic e-broking sector.”

 

Andreas Andreades, CEO of Temenos, says the company has been selling products to the brokerage sector in the Gulf region since the mid-1990s. He said his company can “help define best practice and deliver out-of-the-box Islamic banking functionality.”

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News from Dreamforce Europe: Informatica, a vendor of data integration software, announced the Informatica On Demand Data Loader Service for Salesforce, the newest addition to its Software as a Service offerings.

 

It’s a bi-directional integration offering that allows Salesforce administrators to automate many Salesforce integration processes, like synchronizing account information with other applications, creating back office orders from closed opportunities and loading leads.

 

In addition to eliminating manual coding efforts, the IOD Data Loader is entirely Web-based, and “removes the need for on-premise software or hardware appliances,” according to company officials.

 

The IOD Data Loader extends the capabilities of Salesforce.com’s Dataloader by adding an intuitive Web-based integration wizard, automating the scheduling of integration jobs, providing direct access to relational databases, transforming data through a drag and drop Web interface and importing and exporting Salesforce Dataloader maps.

 

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is the good old-fashioned basic rock’n’roll that never goes out of style — The Rolling Stones’ “Jiving Sister Fanny:”

 

VCustomer, which sells customer care and technical support products, has announced that it has — once again — been named as a Rising Star in the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals 2008 Global Outsourcing 100.

 

VCustomer’s ranking as a Rising Star required a minimum annual growth of 33 percent, company officials say. The rankings are published annually in Fortune.

 

With more than 40,000 members, IAOP is a standard-setting organization and advocate for the outsourcing profession. It ranks companies based on what it perceives as quality after a review process. The final rankings are based on “a weighted average of the judges’ scores on demonstrated competencies, size and growth, management capabilities and customer references,” vCustomer officials explain.

 

VCustomer sells contact center services with self-service options and automation features.

 

Lori Inuzuka, vice president of vCustomer Global Operations, said she believes “this recognition is a reflection of our commitment to our clients to consistently deliver high quality, cost-effective customer care and technical support services.”

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Enterprise Enabler, which bills itself as “out-of-the-box support for SaaS applications,” including specific support for Salesforce.com, is now available.

 

The product allows for “the integration of real-time sales performance into views of the state of the business and key performance indicators,” company officials say.

 

EE also contains capabilities for data and application integration, along with specific support of enterprise portals like Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. It’s being presented to the market as “a platform for real-time Business Intelligence and Sales Pipeline information system at a fraction of the cost of other implementations.”

 

The adoption of hosted Software Applications, or Software as a Service (SaaS) is forecasted to continue to grow at a fast pace, EE officials believe, “especially in areas like CRM. SaaS adoption in the enterprise does not come without its problems, notably the need to integrate SaaS application data with business back-office information.”

 

“The combination of Stone Bond’s Enterprise Enabler and Microsoft SharePoint allows for cost-effective business performance analysis, regardless of where the data of interest resides”, stated Pamela Szabo, Chief Information Officer at Stone Bond Technologies.

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Lyris has announced that Hot Banana Software, a Web content management product that’s part of the Lyris HQ integrated marketing platform, has been certified on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange.

 

Lyris HQ is an on-demand marketing platform putting a marketing technology suite into a single sign-on dashboard interface.

 

Blaine Mathieu, Chief Marketing officer, Lyris, said Salesforce users can use Lyris HQ to manage e-mail marketing, Web analytics, Web content and PPC campaigns.

 

To receive certification, Hot Banana’s external and composite systems were evaluated to confirm they met Salesforce.com’s security standards and requirements. Other tests measured Hot Banana’s compliance with industry-standard security criteria.

 

Salesforce.com customers can deploy Hot Banana via the AppExchange to build multi-level Web forms with CAPTCHA validation on basic Web pages or on advanced landing pages. The product can also be used to set up Web analytics, lead source, and conversion tracking and transfer the captured lead-generation data from the Web form to Salesforce.

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InterSystems Corporation has announced that Saturn Corporation, an InterSystems application partner, has launched what Saturn officials call “an aggressive initiative” to sell its Eprísa customer relationship management (CRM) product worldwide.

 

Built on InterSystems Caché software, Eprísa is being implemented in multiple locations with the Dutch healthcare foundation Hospitallbroeders the first organization to go live with Caché-based Eprísa online.

 

InterSystems sells database and integration software. Its product line includes the InterSystems Caché object database, InterSystems Ensemble rapid integration platform, and InterSystems HealthShare platform for regional and national electronic health records.

 

Saturn sells online database management services and other back-end processes in the fundraising, membership and commercial marketplaces.

 

Saturn President Fielding Yost said his company “wanted to get to a new-generation look and feel, increase our product’s flexibility and integrate with other applications and processes.” Saturn opted to redevelop Eprísa from the ground up, and to “jump-start it by bringing in Caché experts to work with our developers.”

 

Millennial Technologies, a software and design firm based in Canton, Ohio, partnered with Saturn on building the new CRM application. “By using MTI’s experience with Caché, we slashed the time needed to build Eprísa and to begin deploying it,” Yost noted.

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EXpresso Corporation, a vendor of online community products for businesses, has joined the Etelos ecosystem and is now distributing its line of business products through the Etelos Marketplace.

 

The Etelos Marketplace is a place for businesses to find, try and deploy Web applications. Currently featured on the Etelos Marketplace, eXpresso is billed as “able to reach a spectrum of businesses seeking to build a best-of-breed suite of applications that integrate into their workflow,” by company officials.

 

eXpresso Vice President of Business Development, John Howard, believes the eXpresso / Etelos relationships will “give us the kind of visibility we need to reach our target audience of businesses that share files among dispersed staffs and suppliers.”

 

The eXpresso application is built on a SaaS framework. eXpresso business communities (the first application is Microsoft Excel) use an invitation process and are governed by a system of rights and privileges. Changes to a file in eXpresso are documented in real time and generate an audit trail detailing changes down to the cell level.

 

By distributing this Web application through the Etelos Marketplace, eXpresso is able to lower its cost.

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Xactly Corporation, a vendor of sales performance management, has announced that Data Domain, a vendor of deduplication storage systems, has selected the Xactly Incent on-demand sales compensation management application.

 

The company will use Xactly Incent and the Xactly Modeling module to “automate and streamline its incentive compensation management process end-to-end,” according to Xactly officials, “across approximately 275 users.”

 

“In replacing our currently manual, spreadsheet-based compensation management process with Xactly Incent, we gain a more accurate, economical and powerful tool,” said David Schneider, senior vice president, worldwide sales, Data Domain. He added that “tight integration with Salesforce.com’s CRM application” factored into the decision.

 

Xactly Incent is an on-demand SaaS product that lets users design sales compensation management programs. Xactly Incent can be added modularly.

 

Along with Xactly Incent, Data Domain also selected the Xactly Modeling module, which lets Data Domain perform simulations on plans, plan changes and special incentive programs to gauge their effectiveness.

 

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Oliver Nelson’s album The Blues and the Abstract Truth:

 

CRM vendor Satuit Technologies, which concentrates on the professional investment market, has announced the expansion of its operation to Salt Lake City. The new sales office in Salt Lake will manage customer development and service functions for its corporate clients west of the Mississippi Leading the office as Vice President of Sales is new hire Michael Melis.

 

Melis previously worked for nine years at ChartLogic, a Salt Lake City software firm focused on medical documentation and payment process products. Melis founded Copper Mountain Development, a consulting firm to serve private equity and investment bankers seeking healthcare informatics investment and acquisition opportunities.

 

Karen Maguire, CEO of Satuit Technologies, said the new office will “allow us to serve new and existing clients and develop new sales opportunities throughout the region.”

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Protecode, a vendor of software for Bill of Materials (BOM) management and Intellectual Property determination, will demonstrate the Beta release of its preventative IP management product in San Francisco beginning today.

 

A fully functional beta version will be offered free directly from the company’s site.

 

The software is a plug-in development tool that creates a BOM list and manages IP by detecting and logging content entering a software project, and checking its IP attributes against specific policies.

 

With the beta version comes product updates designed to allow automated tracking of source and binary pieces of code, open source or commercial, that enter any project. This lets open source creators create and publish pedigree information and help developers accelerate managed adoption of open source code.

 

There’s support for Eclipse’s C Development Tool, now both Java and C/C++ are supported. Company officials say administration is now “streamlined with an enhanced GUI, complete with online help.” Project primes can now enter the admin site, create a user ID and password, define a policy, and assign it to developers or a particular project in a simple operation.

 

The Global Intellectual Property database has been enlarged as well, company officials say, with “millions of source lines and binary files.”

 

And nested IP is now supported, allowing users to look back many generations in external content.

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Go iTunes: 50 Glenn Miller Orchestra songs for $9.90 is a good deal.

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SAP AG has announced that ATB Financial, a financial institution based in Alberta, Canada, will replace its core banking and back-office systems with SAP for Banking products.

 

ATB Financial officials say they want to meet core strategic business objectives — faster development and introduction of unique products and services, improved customer relations and talent development, and enhanced revenue growth. Noble goals all.

 

ATB Financial’s offerings include retail and corporate banking, wealth management and mortgage services. The bank wanted a single platform to replace numerous legacy systems to improve business processes and create operational efficiencies.

 

Dave Mowat, president and CEO, ATB Financial, said his company expects SAP to result in “a direct return on investment.”

 

With the Enterprise Services Repository of SAP NetWeaver, ATB Financial hopes to be able to access enterprise services that can be reused throughout the enterprise, as well as configure new services for the creation of new and enhanced banking and operational processes such as obtaining deposits, setting up accounts and processing loans.

 

With the SAP Customer Relationship Management application, ATB expects to track the needs and preferences of its customers and use the flexibility of its new IT environment.

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OmniVue Business Solutions officials say the firm has achieved Gold Certification in the Advanced Infrastructure Hosting Solutions Competency from Microsoft. The designation recognizes proficiency in delivering hosted services built on Microsoft technology.

 

OmniVue adds the Hosting competency to their existing Business Solutions competency achieved in 2003.

 

“We’re pleased to have reached this level of achievement. The Advanced Infrastructure Solutions Competency allows us to identify our skill in helping customers access business management products,” says Jeff Pyden, managing director of OmniVue.

 

Founded in 2003, OmniVue does hosted deployments of Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains), SL (formerly Solomon) and Microsoft CRM.

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Vormittag Associates, Inc., a vendor of enterprise products for the distribution, manufacturing, retail and service industries and an IBM Premier Business Partner, has announced IBM’s integration of the System i and System p enterprise platforms into the Power Systems product portfolio.

 

The move gives VAI’s S2K Enterprise Resource Planning Software Suite a significant power boosting benefit, according to VAI officials.

 

The IBM Power Systems unifies the IBM System i, with the UNIX operating system platform, IBM System p. “Customers that previously operated the System i can now transfer data to the new systems, while continuing to run operating systems to which they have become accustomed,” company officials say.

 

VAI officials say the Power Systems launch enhances the processing power of its S2K product line. In particular, the company’s e-commerce and analysis applications will benefit from the increased speed and precision of the unified platforms, they say.

 

VAI’s S2K ERP Software Suite is billed as “maximizing productivity and profitability by centralizing company data” by company officials: “The System i and System p unification is a logical decision by IBM that reflects the growing needs businesses have for accurate information,” said Kevin Beasley, CIO, VAI, who added that this move “fits perfectly with VAI’s corporate vision.”

…

 

Emerging Consumer Markets BP, which provides energy products to emerging consumers in South Africa, has contracted branded business and technology products provider Lorge to supply and implement a SAP Business One software product in its South African business.

 

The SAP product will offer financial, stock, warehousing and distribution in real time, according to Alex Viviers, Corporate Sales Manager of Lorge’s SAP Business One business unit.

 

“The CRM functionality will also integrate fully to allow ECM to track business partners, customers and leads through the system. This is particularly valuable because there is such high demand for their value-added products,” he said.

 

The materials resource planning functionality of the SAP product is intended to ensure that stock requirements are met. Lorge will also provide ECM with training and support services and the product is expected to go live at the beginning of June.

 

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is The Allman Brothers’ — we’re in a bit of an Allmans groove today — classic album Brothers And Sisters. Unsurprisingly, we have Live At The Fillmore East waiting on deck, too:

 

ShoreTel, a vendor of Pure IP Unified Communications products, has announced that plastics supplier A. Schulman has replaced the phone systems in ten North American facilities with a ShoreTel distributed unified communications product.

 

The ShoreTel product allows. Schulman to use its wide area network for voice communications, resulting in reduced long distance costs, enhanced communications and, company officials say, “improved employee productivity and collaboration.”

 

A. Schulman sells plastic compounds, color concentrates, and additives for plastics in a number of specialized applications. The phone system at the company’s headquarters had reached its end of life, company official say, and the systems at nine other North American facilities were also outdated.

 

In its search for a product, the company wanted call routing, call reporting, a common telephony and voice-mail platform for all facilities, and four-digit dialing. John Broerman, director of information technology at A. Schulman, called the ShoreTel implementation “one of the smoothest I have ever been involved with,” and said they were able to come up with “an easy, cookie-cutter approach for each additional facility.”

 

Schulman has deployed 600 ShorePhone IP telephones and 24 ShoreGear voice switches at ten sites, eight in the U.S. and two in Canada. At each office, all that was required was to determine the number of phones and switches and then deploy the system.

 

Broerman also plans to integrate ShoreTel with the company’s CRM application to make customer data available on incoming and outgoing calls.

…

 

Enterprise social networking had a break-out year in 2007 with “much faster than expected growth,” according to IDC’s Rachel Happe, research manager, Digital Business Economy.

 

While the market is still serviced by a wide variety of small players there was significant consolidation through mergers, acquisitions, and new products from existing players, she said.

 

“Enterprise social networking applications established a strong foothold in 2007, emerging as a more comprehensive product than single utility applications like blogs and Wikis,” said Happe. “A number of important societal, digital marketplace-specific, and enterprise trends are driving aggressive growth in this market. They include social filtering of content, media channel fragmentation, adoption of consumer social networking services, and the perception in mature markets like enterprise software that communities are a way to increase differentiation and retain customers.”

 

As an emergent market, the growth rate is high and spread unevenly between a variety of small vendors and a few larger vendors who represent a relatively large percentage of the market today, IDC’s research found. While 2007 saw some consolidation, IDC expects that 2008 will see even more.

 

Social networking market growth will be moderated by cultural and resource limitations, Happe believes. Many companies will deploy social networking applications and see few benefits because of the lack of understanding or comfort with the openness required for social networking to be successful.

 

The higher than expected market adoption in 2007 has pushed long-term projections higher as well. While this forecast projects both slow and aggressive growth scenarios, the projected size of the market in 2012 is expected to be $1.3 billion.

 

The study, U.S. Social Networking Application Forecast 2008-2012: Enterprise Social Networking Takes Hold (IDC #211945), presents a market sizing and forecast in terms of total aggregated market revenue.

…

 

Team One Solutions has announced a partnership with Applied Voice & Speech Technologies to bring their unified communications platform CallXpress, to their clients in Northern California.

 

AVST’s call processing, voice messaging, unified messaging, fax, notification, and speech-enabled personal assistant products will now be provided by Team One Solutions. Team One Solutions now provides the call processing and unified communications products from AVST to Bay Area businesses and institutions.

 

“AVST has a non-interruptive product for migrating these older systems into future proof messaging platforms,” said Paul Svec, Team One Solutions Chief Executive Officer. “The product can be deployed entirely at the pace that best suits each individual client.”

 

“The ability to integrate the CallXpress platform into our customers’ diverse voice and data networks is an advantage for our organization,” said Jeff Bell, Team One Solutions Vice President of Sales.

 

Team One Solutions is owned and operated by a veteran group of telecommunication executives.

…

 

Pentaho, which bills itself as “the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence,” has announced the availability of Mondrian 3.0, the latest release of the company’s OLAP server, a component of the Pentaho Open BI Suite.

 

With enhanced analytics and other features, including cell-level security and aggregate role support, Pentaho is positioning itself as an alternative for commercial open source business intelligence.

 

The analytic functions can be used by organizations in a variety of industries. “The new percentile calculation lets a sales manager looking at high-volume customers immediately see the percentile that the customer falls into based on sales volume,” company officials say, adding that “the same function can be used by financial services firms to better understand branch profitability and by governmental organizations to measure local agency performance or aggregated citizen demographics.”

 

Another function, the Net Present Value calculation, lets users weigh the long-term cost or value of certain investments based on the investment period and expected return.

 

“Companies around the world have experienced business benefits from using commercial open source products in other areas, and Ventana’s research shows that organizations have been moving aggressively to obtain similar benefits for business intelligence,” said David Stodder, VP and research director — Information Management and IT Performance Management at Ventana Research.

 

Stodder said the new release “should increase interest in commercial open source BI over the coming months.”

…

 

Epicor Software has announced that specialty retailer Boot Barn has selected the Epicor Retail Software as a Service product to “streamline its retail operations and support its long-term growth plans.”

 

Boot Barn was one of four Retail SaaS deals Epicor signed during the first quarter of 2008. In business for more than 30 years, Boot Barn is a West Coast specialty western and workwear retailer.

 

Boot Barn wanted end-to-end retail product to replace existing disparate systems and in doing so, to eliminate the manual processes required to integrate and share data among these systems.

 

The Epicor Retail SaaS delivery model is a turnkey retail product that provides retailers with access to Epicor’s suite of products for the specialty retail market place while virtually eliminating the need for an on-site retail IT infrastructure.

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is The Allman Brothers’ — we’re in a bit of an Allmans groove today — classic album Brothers And Sisters. Unsurprisingly, we have Live At The Fillmore East waiting on deck, too:

 

ShoreTel, a vendor of Pure IP Unified Communications products, has announced that plastics supplier A. Schulman has replaced the phone systems in ten North American facilities with a ShoreTel distributed unified communications product.

 

The ShoreTel product allows. Schulman to use its wide area network for voice communications, resulting in reduced long distance costs, enhanced communications and, company officials say, “improved employee productivity and collaboration.”

 

A. Schulman sells plastic compounds, color concentrates, and additives for plastics in a number of specialized applications. The phone system at the company’s headquarters had reached its end of life, company official say, and the systems at nine other North American facilities were also outdated.

 

In its search for a product, the company wanted call routing, call reporting, a common telephony and voice-mail platform for all facilities, and four-digit dialing. John Broerman, director of information technology at A. Schulman, called the ShoreTel implementation “one of the smoothest I have ever been involved with,” and said they were able to come up with “an easy, cookie-cutter approach for each additional facility.”

 

Schulman has deployed 600 ShorePhone IP telephones and 24 ShoreGear voice switches at ten sites, eight in the U.S. and two in Canada. At each office, all that was required was to determine the number of phones and switches and then deploy the system.

 

Broerman also plans to integrate ShoreTel with the company’s CRM application to make customer data available on incoming and outgoing calls.

…

 

Enterprise social networking had a break-out year in 2007 with “much faster than expected growth,” according to IDC’s Rachel Happe, research manager, Digital Business Economy.

 

While the market is still serviced by a wide variety of small players there was significant consolidation through mergers, acquisitions, and new products from existing players, she said.

 

“Enterprise social networking applications established a strong foothold in 2007, emerging as a more comprehensive product than single utility applications like blogs and Wikis,” said Happe. “A number of important societal, digital marketplace-specific, and enterprise trends are driving aggressive growth in this market. They include social filtering of content, media channel fragmentation, adoption of consumer social networking services, and the perception in mature markets like enterprise software that communities are a way to increase differentiation and retain customers.”

 

As an emergent market, the growth rate is high and spread unevenly between a variety of small vendors and a few larger vendors who represent a relatively large percentage of the market today, IDC’s research found. While 2007 saw some consolidation, IDC expects that 2008 will see even more.

 

Social networking market growth will be moderated by cultural and resource limitations, Happe believes. Many companies will deploy social networking applications and see few benefits because of the lack of understanding or comfort with the openness required for social networking to be successful.

 

The higher than expected market adoption in 2007 has pushed long-term projections higher as well. While this forecast projects both slow and aggressive growth scenarios, the projected size of the market in 2012 is expected to be $1.3 billion.

 

The study, U.S. Social Networking Application Forecast 2008-2012: Enterprise Social Networking Takes Hold (IDC #211945), presents a market sizing and forecast in terms of total aggregated market revenue.

…

 

Team One Solutions has announced a partnership with Applied Voice & Speech Technologies to bring their unified communications platform CallXpress, to their clients in Northern California.

 

AVST’s call processing, voice messaging, unified messaging, fax, notification, and speech-enabled personal assistant products will now be provided by Team One Solutions. Team One Solutions now provides the call processing and unified communications products from AVST to Bay Area businesses and institutions.

 

“AVST has a non-interruptive product for migrating these older systems into future proof messaging platforms,” said Paul Svec, Team One Solutions Chief Executive Officer. “The product can be deployed entirely at the pace that best suits each individual client.”

 

“The ability to integrate the CallXpress platform into our customers’ diverse voice and data networks is an advantage for our organization,” said Jeff Bell, Team One Solutions Vice President of Sales.

 

Team One Solutions is owned and operated by a veteran group of telecommunication executives.

…

 

Pentaho, which bills itself as “the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence,” has announced the availability of Mondrian 3.0, the latest release of the company’s OLAP server, a component of the Pentaho Open BI Suite.

 

With enhanced analytics and other features, including cell-level security and aggregate role support, Pentaho is positioning itself as an alternative for commercial open source business intelligence.

 

The analytic functions can be used by organizations in a variety of industries. “The new percentile calculation lets a sales manager looking at high-volume customers immediately see the percentile that the customer falls into based on sales volume,” company officials say, adding that “the same function can be used by financial services firms to better understand branch profitability and by governmental organizations to measure local agency performance or aggregated citizen demographics.”

 

Another function, the Net Present Value calculation, lets users weigh the long-term cost or value of certain investments based on the investment period and expected return.