Hendriz Inogacia Santos, the UAE’s number one barista.
By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is The Kinks’ 1975 album Schoolboys In
Disgrace:
Interesting news about SAP’s decision to offer hosted CRM after
saying no, we have no plans to do so.
At the US Sapphire user conference in Boston a couple months
ago SAP talked a lot about its CRM version 5.0, which you’ll see in the third
quarter of this year, but quashed talk of a hosted product offering.
First CoffeeSM doesn’t see it as a coincidence
that the announcement came after SAP announced their second quarter results,
which showed that the CRM division was the only one where revenues stayed flat.
But as he had to, SAP
CEO Henning Kagermann “denied a
link between the CRM application’s below-par performance and the tactical
volte-face,” according to Pete
Swabey at Infoconomy. The service is scheduled to launch later this year.
“We are in preparation [for hosted CRM],” Kagermann said,
according to Swabey. “You’ll see something soon. We’re making our business
models right at this time.”
It took Siebel
longer than most companies to catch on to hosted CRM, it took SAP a little
longer. Maybe it was seeing the likes of RightNow,
salesforce.com and others – seeing archrival Larry Ellison bankrolling the
successful NetSuite must grate back
in Walldorf – doing brisk business that finally convinced SAP that’s where the
future is.
Kagermann defended SAP’s CRM strategy in talks with
analysts, saying that sure, CRM had dipped for this quarter, but maintaining
that one slower quarter does not indicate a trend, according to ComputerWire, which
speculated that the low second quarter sales could be the result of everyone
waiting for a rumored hosted application.
ComputerWire
thinks the move is a “complete change of strategy.” Evidently back in May at
the European Sapphire conference “Peter Kirschbauer, head of business
solutions, said the company had no plans to release a hosted version of its CRM
product because although SAPs platform-and-service approach would make it
technically feasible, it would not fit with the company’s CRM strategy.”
Today on-demand is very “siloed,” Kirschbauer told ComputerWire back in May. “If it was
only used that way it would not be difficult but customers are looking for ways
to integrate data across the enterprise. You need a safe and secure way to
communicate with systems that are out of your control.” That’s… changed,
evidently.
Other hosted CRM vendors are beings sporting about it. Salesforce.com,
with whom SAP will butt heads sooner rather than later, is taking the official
line that it’s “fantastic” because it “endorses on-demand as what customers
want.”
We’ll see if such pleasant toasts last much longer. First
CoffeeSM isn’t betting on it.
…
57% of SMB owners are
“apprehensive” about the reliability of Voice over Internet Protocol service
providers available today, according to a recent survey by PBX vendor Switchvox,
who sells PBX phone systems to SMBs.
The online survey found that 33% of SMBs are “concerned about the quality of
calls” when using VoIP services. 76% of respondents were open to testing out
VoIP, “as long as a service level guarantee was in place.”
The need for VoIP providers offering reliable, quality
services was a recurring emphasis in the study results, given that SMBs don’t have
a lot of time or money to spend fixing such problems themselves.
Joshua Stephens, CEO of Switchvox said his company has come up with “some key
items to look for and be aware of before switching to a VoIP system:”
First, find a reliable VoIP provider. Look for carriers that are responsive
when contacted and will offer a service level agreement guarantee.
Secondly, know your bandwidth capabilities. One rule to use is that each call
will use 100 kilobits of bandwidth.
Thirdly, get a static IP from your ISP. This is necessary
for such tasks as peering two offices together for free phone calls, or having
remote extensions for offsite employees.
Fourthly, investigate quality of service. QoS is the ability for a router to
prioritize certain types of traffic (like phone calls) over other traffic (like
big downloads).
And get the right equipment. Make sure that any new VOIP-enabled PBX purchased can
work with existing phone services – Stephens says a system that allows you to
migrate to VoIP slowly, rather than jumping in all at once is preferable.
…
First CoffeeSM notes that yesterday mobile
marketing vendor CellStory announced the beta release of CellStory for Realty, a mobile CRM product realtors can use with a camera
phone to “build professionally designed web pages on-the-fly from any
property location and deliver them via their mobile phone directly to buyers
and online property listings.”
Basically it lets real estate agents take digital pictures, add
video and audio and, following a series of prompts on the cell phone, use plain
English to build a snazzy listing while still on the property and send the
listing in standard web-based format to potential buyers and partners. They can
simultaneously send the property listing to multiple listing sites, including
their own.
It costs thirty bucks a month now, and it’ll go up to fifty
soon. A 30-day free trial is also available at http://www.cellstory.com. The beta version
is compatible with all Series 60 Nokia camera phones. Announcements for support
for PalmOS, Java, BREW and Windows Mobile phones will be made in Q3 2005.
Just sounded like a cool idea.
…
First CoffeeSM’s glad to see RightNow Technologies has posted good results for the second quarter
ended June 30, 2005. They’re reporting consolidated revenue of $21.1
million for the second quarter of 2005, an increase of 43 percent from the
second quarter of 2004 and the 30th consecutive quarter of revenue growth for
RightNow.
Net income in the second quarter of 2005 was $1.6 million,
or $0.05 per diluted share, compared to net income of $634,000, or $0.02 per
diluted share, in the second quarter of 2004.
For the six months ended June 30, 2005, RightNow reported
revenue of $39.4 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.07, as compared
to year-ago revenue of $27.6 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.03.
Businesswise they’re a smart company selling a good product,
and their rock-solid corporate integrity
is a welcome presence in the business world today. You’re not going to see CEO Greg Gianforte haled before any SEC
hearings or pleading in court, there isn’t going to be any whistle-blowing on
corporate malfeasance out there in Bozeman, Gianforte and the top management he’s
surrounded himself with simply have too much personal integrity for such
garbage to happen and it’s refreshing to see that in today’s business world.
…
A tip of the coffee pot to Mr. Hendriz
Inogacia Santos, pictured above, Lead Barista at Dubai World Trade Center who was declared the UAE’s number one barista
in the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf’s 2005 Champion Barista competition.
Santos will enter the next round of
competitions to be held in August in Malaysia for the CBTL Asia Pacific regional
competition, the winner of which competes at the international Olympics of
coffee blending in Los Angeles.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content.
