By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Best of 1968-1973 by The Steve Miller Band. I’m a joker…

Datamonitor is predicting that North America's $458 million hosted and managed speech services market “is tipped to exhibit an aggressive 15% year-over-year growth rate through the next four years.”

Their report, “Voice as a Service,” says growth is being spurred by a saturated hosted/managed DTMF market forcing hosted IVR providers in North America to sharpen their focus on speech services to arrest the precipitous slide of their revenues and create new revenue streams.

“In tandem with this,” they say, “smaller providers that specialize in hosted speech services are gaining greater momentum and credibility among enterprises and service providers.”
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NCO Group, Inc., which sells business process outsourcing services, announced today that during the second quarter of 2005, it reported net income of $14.1 million, or $0.42 per diluted share, as compared to net income of $14.4 million, or $0.43 per diluted share, in the second quarter of 2004.

Their revenue declined – in the second quarter of 2005 they got $247.2 million, a decrease of 3.2%, or $8.1 million, from Q2 2004’s revenue of $255.3 million.

NCO’s operations are organized into four market specific divisions that include: Accounts Receivable Management North America, Customer Relationship Management, Portfolio Management and Accounts Receivable Management International. For the second quarter of 2005, these divisions accounted for $192.5 million, $43.8 million, $27.8 million, and $3.3 million of revenue, respectively.

For the second quarter of 2004, the ARM North America, CRM, Portfolio Management and ARM International divisions accounted for $185.0 million, $59.4 million, $24.1 million and $3.5 million of the revenue, respectively.

The decrease in revenue is being pinned on the loss of a telecommunications client within the company’s CRM division. “While the implementation of newly committed client contracts is progressing on schedule, the revenue from such opportunities has not yet had a meaningful impact on the company,” officials say.

Michael J.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Uncle Kracker’s 2002 No Stranger To Shame:

First, a correction from yesterday. First CoffeeSM received the following e-mail concerning an article his mild-mannered reporter alter ego wrote:

I work in NetSuite Public Relations and noticed your article titled “SAP’s Hosted CRM: Ten Things You Need To Know” has a misleading statement that reads “…..Oracle baby NetSuite….”

Oracle and NetSuite have no affiliation. Larry Ellison has personally funded NetSuite and is a majority stockholder and sits on the Board but that is the extent of his relationship.

At one point we had a co-branding agreement with Oracle for our Oracle Small Business Suite but that has long since passed. Would you be able to issue this correction to read something like “…Ellison baby NetSuite…?”

First CoffeeSM agrees, if someone’s personally funded a company they’re the majority stockholder of and on that company’s board, that qualifies as their “baby,” and after such rigorous paternity testing hereby declares the father to be Larry Ellison, not Oracle.
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The Oki Electric Industry Co., Japan’s oldest telecom is announcing the development of “Visual Contact Center,” a demonstration system using the videophone function on 3G mobile phones.

Japan and Korea are years ahead of the rest of the world in their adoption of funky personal technology, and right now 30% of mobile phones in Japan have become 3G.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a bootleg of Bob Dylan’s historic electric set at the Newport Folk Festival, forty years ago today, which ripped both folk and rock music wide open:

First CoffeeSM isn’t a conspiracy theorist – he’s one of two or three people alive who believes the Warren Commission’s report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which found that Lee Harvey Oswald was a disturbed wingnut who acted alone. But he does note this morning that his beloved Mozilla Firefox browser can’t access Web sites which the clunky old Internet Explorer can access with no problem – well, no more than all the usual problems which led First CoffeeSM to ditch it in favor of Firefox in the first place.

Any other Firefox users out there having unexplained trouble? Again, we’re not proposing any nefarious conspiracy, just noting that it’s curious there’s all of a sudden this accessibility problem with one of the most serious threats to Microsoft’s ham-fisted browser hegemony?
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Somewhere Malcolm Gladwell smiles. “Wireless messaging and corporate application access have finally reached the ‘tipping point,’” said Terry Austin, President Worldwide Marketing and Sales, Good Technology.

Gladwell, of course, is the author of 2002’s The Tipping Point, a “facile piece of pop sociology,” according to one reviewer, contending that trends – such as wireless messaging – spread like viruses.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Al Stewart’s A Beach Full of Shells, his new album and first in a few years:

It’s quarterly reporting season, and CRM vendor Amdocs Limited weighs in with a good one.

The St. Louis-based vendor, which is hitting the Chinese market hard, reported that for the third quarter ended June 30, 2005, revenue was $507.4 million, representing sequential growth of 3.9 percent and an increase of 12.7 percent from last year’s third quarter.

Excluding acquisition-related costs net of related tax effects of $1.7 million, net income was $78.8 million, or $0.37 per diluted share, an increase of $15.3 million, or 24.1 percent of Q3 2004.

The company’s net income was $77.1 million, or $0.36 per diluted share, over net income of $59.9 million in Q3 2004.
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SAP didn’t do too badly either in their Q2 2005, slightly exceeding estimates. They’re reporting software revenues of 576 million euros… sigh, break out the calculator… okay, at 1.21 euros to the dollar, that’s… $701 million, up from $605 million last second quarter. That’s a 16 percent increase in any currency.

American license sales were up strongly, but the Walldorf, Germany-based giant is a little concerned over declining German license revenue.

Total revenues for second quarter of 2005 were euro 2.02 billion, or $2.46 billion, over 2004’s $2.19 billion, a 13 percent increase.

Software revenues in the U.S.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Dave Brubeck’s Time Out. Just never gets old, does it?

First CoffeeSM welcomes Bruce Cleveland this morning. Cleveland is Siebel’s new senior vice president of products, but he’s still running, as before, the company’s OnDemand hosted CRM product and the small and medium business division.

Cleveland graciously took the time to answer some questions First CoffeeSM had. Excerpts appear below, the entire Q&A will be in an article by First CoffeeSM’s mild-mannered reporter alter ego on the TMC site later today:

FC: Congratulations on your promotion at Siebel. Do you get a nicer office now, too?

BC: I’m in the same office, but I’m seeing even less of it than before!

FC: Your new position puts you in charge of products, as well as the on-demand business. What do you see as your top challenges in that position?

BC: Marshalling our resources quickly and effectively to gain the biggest wins the fastest is a critical challenge.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Sony’s compilation Pop Music: The Golden Era, 1951-1975 released in 1999. Nice variety of artists from Frank Sinatra to LaBelle, Louis Armstrong to Bob Dylan:

First CoffeeSM’s post on what terrible customer service online retailer Caiman.com provides gets another assent from yet another screwed-over Caiman.com customer.

Frankly First CoffeeSM’s wondering whether terrible customer service provided by such companies is a concern of Amazon.com or not. It’s time to find out.

Because it’s one thing to report on Customer Relationship Management news and issues, and offer insights and pointers on good customer service, that’s great and First CoffeeSM likes doing that, but there are times when something needs to be done in the real world, and it’s time for Amazon.com to do something about Caiman.com.

It started when Caiman.com promised a fictitious ship-by date on a CD First CoffeeSM mild-mannered reporter alter ego ordered from Amazon.com. Their customer “service” afterwards was insulting, canned and rude, so it made a great article, Three Ways To Lose Customers.

Reader Greg Veeser wrote in to say yup, same thing happened to me.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits’ Meisterwerk, 1985’s Rain Dogs:

Global IP Sound is announcing an OEM license agreement with Microsoft for voice processing products which “improve PC-to-PC voice quality” to be used with MSN and Microsoft Office Real-Time Collaboration, according to Global officials.

The MSN Service, which has more than 165 million active users each month, supports not only text instant messaging but also PC-to-PC voice and video services. MSN will use GIPS VoiceEngine, while RTC will use GIPS Acoustic Echo Cancellation and GIPS Auto Gain Control high quality VoIP functionality.

Gary P. Hermansen, President and CEO of GIPS said there are over 200 million downloads of their software currently in market today.

GIPS VoiceEngine is a packaged VoIP product created specifically for PC or PDA applications to improve sound quality in Internet telephony, simplify the integration of speech codecs, communication with sound cards, real-time performance, RTP protocol handling and other voice-related tasks. GIPS AEC is used to eliminate echo caused by acoustic feedback in real-time communications in a PC environment.
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First CoffeeSM is glad things are going so well for the University of Arizona that they need to use CRM to handle all their applications.

The U is using edGenuiti’s Multi-Channel & Multi-Campus CRM for Higher Education to automate much of the University of Arizona’s inquiry and application process, allowing their study abroad staff to manage a record number of applications last year.

Prior to edGenuiti, the study abroad office used separate databases to track different stages of the enrollment process – inquiry, applicant, accepted, rejected, etc.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Best of Tony Bennett:

A tip of the coffee pot to Dan Taylor, just appointed to Scribe Software Corporation’s board of directors. Dan’s the founder and former CEO of ManagedOps.com and The Taylor Group, and the author of Integration Manager, the original standard for integration with Microsoft Great Plains that is now part of the Microsoft Great Plains offering.
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It’s nice to get a different-sounding news advisory once in a while, and Business Signatures Corporation is announcing that today they’ve “emerged from a four-year stealth phase” to “unveil an innovative software solution called Business Signatures Customer Intent Suite.”

A four-year stealth phase! That’s a lot more bracing than the usual “Acme Anvils is announcing the release of the revolutionary innovative earthshattering epochal XP-49 Roadrunner Crusher dashboard add-on solution…” drone.

Based on what BSC claims is “new data management technology,” it’s “designed to help companies discern the intent of their online customers in real time – and act upon it immediately.”

Business Signatures was founded in 2001 by three ex-Oracle guys who set out to solve what they identified as “the three biggest challenges facing online businesses today” – managing IT infrastructure for the best possible customer experience, preventing online fraud and maximizing customer profitability through personalized customer service.

To do this, company officials explain, they “focused on the one problem not currently addressed by existing solutions: understanding customers’ online interactions as they happen, at scale and at the individual customer and transaction level.”

The product BSC is hawking here is designed to give companies an “instantaneous” view of customer intent: what online customers are trying to do in the moment. They think this will allow companies to “act immediately to service, protect and, ultimately, retain their customers.”

Peter Relan, founder and CEO of Business Signatures says discerning actionable customer intent in the online channel is a lot harder than it is in a store, where you can watch the customer pick up a paintbrush, a roller, drop cloths, price blue paint and scrapers, discern he’s going to paint his back porch and go over and offer painting tips and suggestions and sell him some extra sanders and a stepladder and keep him coming back as a Satisfied Customer.

Can’t do that online. So BSC has developed the Business Signatures Intent Processor, based on a new data management technology called “streaming query.” Instead of the traditional “store first, query later” approach, it takes a “query first, store later” approach that can “rapidly convert the massive volumes of HTTP data streams generated by a transactional Web site into chunks of immediately intelligible information,” according to company officials.
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A while ago First CoffeeSM wrote about The Customer Care Institute’s invitation to North American contact center managers to participate in “a survey designed to capture information for the ‘internationally renowned’ Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report by visiting www.customercare.com before July 31, 2005.”

CCI Managing Direct Roger H.

UBy David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Everybody’s Bach, a Deutsche Grammophon collection of Bach pieces released this year:

The Oki Electric Industry Co. is announcing that it’s delivered an IP telephony system to Kobe Steel, Ltd. based on Oki’s IP telephony server, IP Convergence Server SS9100.

Kobe Steel installed 2,000 units of Oki’s IP phones in its Tokyo headquarters, according to Oki officials, and expects to expand to 15 locations to reach 10,000 IP telephony units throughout the country by the fiscal year ending March 2009. If that happens it’ll be one of the largest IP telephony systems in Japan.

NTT Communications Corp. took charge of the system integration, and Kobelco Systems Corp. took charge of the total coordination.

First CoffeeSM realizes that Kobe Steel’s headquarters are in Tokyo, not Kobe, but still, perhaps mindful of the terrible Kobe earthquake in January of 1995, which cost thousands of lives and billions of yen in damages, disaster considerations are built into the system: “In addition, even in a time of a disaster when PSTNs restrictions apply to communications, outgoing calls can be made via Kobe Center, which makes it a disaster-resistant system,” Oki officials say.

Or maybe that’s a nationwide thing now, like New Zealand, Japan’s earthquake-proof construction requirements are tight and strict.
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First CoffeeSM’s tiring of the Siebel – salesforce.com game of announcing new customer wins in the style of “Acme Anvils chose salesforce.com, NOT SIEBEL! HA HA! for their new…” so it’s nice once in a while to see someone get the better of both of them.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is – can’t believe we haven’t had this one on yet – 2004’s There Will Be A Light, by Ben Harper with the Five Bind Boys of Alabama:

It was an ambiguous headline on the press release – “Salesboom Announces Release of New Web-Based Automotive CRM Software Edition.” You’re an American, you assume that’s CRM you can do in your car, right? You have car phones, car faxes, why not car CRM? Something you put your BlackBerry in to synchronize…

Actually it’s a CRM package specifically for the automotive industry. No cup holders included. The press release calls it “a tailor-made CRM version for all aspects of the automotive industry.” Tools include Car Dealer Software, Used Car Dealership Software (plaid sport coat and toupee available as upgrades) and Automotive Factory Software among others.

It’s available for trial upon a request to Salesboom, and since it’s on demand can be deployed online. Companies are invited to try Salesboom free of charge for 30 days or 5,000 miles, whichever comes first.

So what was the pressing need for this product? Salesboom thinks the “key advantages” it has over other traditional CRM software providers includes a “fully integrated Inventory Management systems to keep control of your inventory levels, from the factory level down to each individual dealership.” Yup, inventory management, that’s a new concept.

Also, “Salesboom is deployed real-time, so all links in the business process chain have access to the most up-to-date information whenever they log into the Salesboom system, eliminating any lapses in information transfer down the chain.” That’s certainly something First CoffeeSM’s never heard of any other CRM package offering.

But there’s also a “fully functional Customer Billing & Invoicing system for individual consumers and corporate sales.” How’s that for out-of-the-box thinking?

First CoffeeSM’s not saying this isn’t a good product, it could be the best one on the market for all we know. It would be nice, however, to have some insight into how the demands of CRM differ for the automotive industry reflected in the product announcement or description itself.

Yosri Al-Kishawi, Salesboom’s CTO said “working closely with partners in the automotive industry, we’ve spent a huge amount of time and resources carefully crafting the perfect automotive software solution.” They’ve clearly done their homework, First CoffeeSM knows them to be smart, hard-working guys who put out a good product, so why not let us know why we should buy it?
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Maybe you saw this last Thursday, First CoffeeSM missed it, but Kana Software has completed a private placement of 1,631,541 shares of common stock with institutional investors at a price of $1.471 per share, for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $2.4 million. “The company has entered into an equity-financing round with its investors, raising $2.4 million that will be added to the CRM provider’s working capital,” according to Kana officials.