David Sims
January 2006
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First Coffee for 31 January, 2006
January 31, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Frank Sinatra’s weepy No One Cares. Might have to pick up the pace here soon:
C3i, a CRM vendor, today announced that a specialty pharmaceutical company selected C3i to offer end-to-end Siebel Pharma Services.
C3i will upgrade the life sciences customer’s CRM application to Siebel 7.8 for its 750 U.S.-based sales force. Following the upgrade, C3i officials say, they’ll provide global help desk support, and managed services for Tier II and Tier III technical support.
C3i will also offer workstation engineering, tablet deployment and hardware repair services for new tablet computers. The whole deal includes roll-out training and new hire instruction to ensure end-user adoption of the Siebel Pharma system.
Richard Matlus, research vice president at Gartner said pharmaceutical companies rely on CRM more than some other firms do.
First Coffee for 30 January, 2006
January 30, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bill Evans’s highly underrated piano jazz:
According to a new survey by investment bank AdMedia Partners, merger and acquisition activity for Internet marketing firms will be remarkably strong in 2006. AdMedia’s survey also found that mergers and acquisitions of “experiential marketing” companies – which includes buzz, viral, guerilla and event marketing firms – as well as database marketing and customer relationship management firms, will also be strong this year.
The survey – “Merger and Acquisition Prospects for Marketing Services and Internet Marketing Firms” – shows that the valuation multiples that respondents anticipate for marketing services firms increased to 6-7 times EBITDA (pretax profit) from 5-7 times last year.
The most notable increase in valuation parameters was seen for Internet marketing firms, with anticipated multiples of 6-10 times EBITDA, up from 5-7 times last year. By contrast, AdMedia officials say, valuation multiple expectations for traditional advertising agencies have held at last year’s level of 5-6 times EBITDA.
AdMedia Managing Director Abe Jones says of those who identify as prospective buyers, 54 percent expect to complete an acquisition during 2006, up slightly from 51 percent who thought they would do so in 2005. In a more dramatic shift, 42 percent of those who identify as prospective sellers expect to sell all or part of their businesses in 2006, vs.
First Coffee for 28 January, 2006
January 28, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Ol’ Blue Eyes’s “I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good:”
First CoffeeSM loves pouring gasoline on fires as
much as the next excitement-addicted journalist, so would like to report that GlobeTel
Communications is officially stating today that in accordance with
the obligations placed on all Amex-listed companies under Rule 401(c) of the
Rules of the American Stock Exchange yada yada yada, GlobeTel Communications
Corp. “would like to state in the
strongest terms that the statements
and implications made by Mr. Seth Jayson in his Motley Fool article dated
January 23rd, 2006, are entirely without
substance and are misleading.”
Take that, ye Fool. “The company rejects his attempts at guilt by association regarding persons and actions that predate any GlobeTel involvement with Advantage Telecom,” the statement continues:
“GlobeTel believes his misleading statements result in damaging implications that have the potential to seriously damage both shareholder value and the ability of GTE management to effectively conduct the company’s business.”
Well, what’s this catfight?
Things kicked off when GlobeTel stock shot up 75 percent in a single day in late December after the firm, which describes itself as a “diversified, global telecommunications and financial services company” announced a $600 million “WiMAX wireless network” deal for the “30 largest Russian cities,” Jayson recounts.
GlobeTel CEO Tim Huff predicted at the time that “Russia will, quickly and at a relatively modest cost, have a wireless infrastructure that will rival any in the industrialized world,” according to Red Herring.
Jayson wrote a commentary titled “More Hot Air From GlobeTel” on January 6 at Motley Fool.
First Coffee for 27 January, 2006
January 27, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a shuffle of all the songs on iTunes that I’ve played fewer than three times, just to keep things from getting stale. Current song: “The Shadow Of Your Smile,” by Tony Bennett:
Management Technology Consulting LLC, through its MTCCRM.com site, is now offering Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 in what MTC officials say is “a choice of hosted products to fit every customer need and budget size.”
Hosted products allow CRM users to offload all the cost and headache of an enterprise-class business application. It’s proven quite the successful business model for RightNow Technologies, NetSuite and salesforce.com.
MTCCRM.com is MTC’s online resource, e-store, and e-consultant site exclusively about Microsoft Dynamics CRM, devoted to over 1,000 pages of Microsoft CRM resources.
MTC has added two choices for organizations that are considering a hosted option that company officials claim “truly is frictionless in start-up and maintained at a value.” Offering both dedicated servers and virtual servers in an encompassing array of set-up and monthly cost price points, as well as performance, scalability, and the ability to host complementary enterprise applications.
The virtual server technology basically allows inexpensive, low price points for up to 10 users, and even if you have only two or three users it might be affordable to implement CRM and get value out of the deal.
The dedicated server has greater performance, scaling to thousands of users and allowing later line-of-business integration they may need.
MTC’s job is to efficiently manage a frictionless on-line process and provide deep customer service for their server hosting partners.
…
Datamonitor‘s announcing that Avaya Inc. has unveiled yet another major VoIP alliance, “announcing a partnership with router and security vendor Juniper Networks Inc. for the delivery of ‘secure, reliable, intelligent communications to enterprises.’”
Yesterday Avaya announced they would partner with fixed-line carrier AT&T Inc. to try to sign up business customers into their IP telephony.
First Coffee for 26 December, 2006
January 26, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a Glenn Miller swing set:
Funniest line in a news story so far today: “The claim by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was based on reporting by Hamas activists who observed the counting in the polling stations, the group said…”
…
A latest global survey reveals that “the theft or loss of personal or financial information is the number one concern among consumers worldwide,” according to a results reported in Comtex Environment.
The Harris Interactive survey was commissioned by Visa International, and found that “theft or loss of personal or financial information” was the number one concern among 64 percent of consumers worldwide, edging out environmental degradation (62 percent) and terrorism (58 percent).
Other major issues for the consumers are job losses, disease or epidemics, and natural disasters, the survey says. The release of Chris Selland’s all-time favorite movie, Miss Congeniality II on video and the possibility that Sandra Bullock might be possessed by Satan to make Miss Congeniality III scored only slightly below Iran’s nuclear arms program and Asian bird flu.Seventy-seven percent of the Chinese
surveyed are “highly concerned” about having personal or financial
information lost or stolen, 13 points higher than the worldwide average, the
survey shows. Seventy-six percent of Indians were likewise concerned about lost
or stolen information, but only 52 percent of Japanese and 48 percent of
Australians.
“Corresponding to China’s overall concerns, an overwhelming 90 percent of the Chinese reported that they are more concerned as a result of what they have heard or seen in the news over the past few months regarding people’s personal or financial information being lost or stolen,” Comtex says.
In Nigeria, the number one concern was that there are fewer and fewer moneyed morons taking those “Hi, my name is Obutu Obsanjano, and my father’s a dictator who wants to put $27.8 million in your bank account” e-mails seriously, as most fools appear to have gone separate ways from their money by now. At least fools with e-mail addresses and bank accounts.
Twenty-one percent of Chinese consumers consider it “very” or “extremely”
likely that their personal or financial information will be lost or stolen in
the near future.
“More than 6,000 consumers in 12 countries including Australia, China, India, Japan in the Asia Pacific region responded to the survey,” Comtex reports, “which was conducted in November and December 2005 by Harris Interactive.”
…
Network vendor Netcentrex and T-2, which claims to be the
first company to offer VDSL Internet access and triple play services in
Slovenia, have announced that
T-2 will use Netcentrex for its IP-based
communications management and
delivery.
T-2 launched services on Slovenia’s residential and corporate communications markets in October 2005, using Netcentrex’ MyCall Residential Services suite and Business Services suite.
First Coffee for 25 January, 2006
January 25, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Jack Johnson’s lovely Hawaiian-tinged, acoustic guitar-driven In Between Dreams:
Customer Relationship Management vendor Talisma is announcing the immediate availability of Talisma CRM 7.0, what company officials are billing as “the latest version of the industry’s most powerful multi-channel CRM solution.”
The 7.0 release claims more than 100 new and enhanced features and four new
add-on modules. The upgrades are aimed at bolstering the product’s sales force
automation, customer interaction management and customer service functions.
The new version of CRM suite provides “significant enhancements across all areas of the customer lifecycle,” with company officials highlighting additions such as greater access to disparate data sources, improved user experience and administration capabilities and software diagnostics.
…
It’s a done deal, folks, but today Siebel Systems, Inc. has announced details for its Special Meeting of Stockholders to be held on January 31, 2006 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time to vote on the proposed acquisition of the company by Oracle Corporation.
Siebel’s been after Oracle to acquire it for some time now, they caught Larry Ellison in a hungry mood a few months ago.
As previously announced, the meeting will take place at the San Mateo Marriott Hotel, 1770 South Amphlett Boulevard, San Mateo, California, 94402. In addition, the meeting will be accessible via telephone in listen-only mode by dialing 1-888-754-4179 toll-free within North America or (212) 231-6020 outside of North America.
First Coffee for 24 January, 2006
January 24, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the strains of Joni Mitchell’s Court & Spark wafting up from my wife’s CD player downstairs:
Canada appears to have realized that “We hate the United States and everything they do” a) wasn’t much of a national “identity,” and b) was becoming noticed south of the border. Congratulations to Stephen Harper, you’ve got your work cut out for you, mate.
…
Onyx is eager to put CDC’s failed bid for control behind it, announcing Onyx Employee Portal Wireless for Japan. Described by company officials as “part of an integrated suite of mobile enterprise CRM” products, OEP Wireless for Japan is immediately available for Foma 3G and mova 2G Series iMode devices.
Onyx’s introduction of OEP Wireless for Japan opens the market for 45 million iMode users to access Onyx’s CRM platform. OEP Wireless for Japan is designed to deliver capabilities for managing customer and partner account, sales, service and support activities.
OEP Wireless features a thin client mobile interface using Onyx’s XML-based pure Internet platform.
First Coffee for 23 January, 2006
January 23, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Trane’s Blues, a nice John Coltrane collection:
Just like I said at the beginning of the season: Pittsburgh and Seattle in the Super Bowl. Why’d you ever doubt me?
Now here’s how to double your money: Take Pittsburgh and the 3 ½ Vegas line. The Steelers are going to destroy those people.
…
Now’s not a great time to be Vodafone. The British mobile colossus is tottering, buffeted by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, their CEO Arun Sarin’s getting henpecked by shareholders and the news won’t be good Tuesday, when they announce their subscriber numbers.
Oh there’ll be plenty new customers – about seven million, give or take. But some heavyweight investors, the ones whose opinions matter, want to see Vodafone “sell its struggling business in Japan and its minority stake in Verizon Wireless of the US,” Britain’s Sunday Telegraph reports.
Some industry observers put the Verizon stake as the biggest problem. Susie Mesure says “some in the City [London’s financial district] are losing patience and want to see Sarin offload Vodafone’s 45 per cent stake in America’s Verizon Wireless, thought to be worth $44 billion, and return cash to shareholders.” Vodafone’s “struggling Japanese business” isn’t viewed with much enthusiasm by analysts either.
Add the fact that revenues in Germany and Italy are falling, that organic revenue growth is dropping from 6.9 per cent in the second quarter to 6.2 per cent, and that its week-long drop in share price has resulted in a 20 percent loss over the past quarter, slicing over $10 billion from its market cap – 6.5 per cent of the total – and seven million new customers doesn’t seem all that wonderful.
And as the Telegraph says, the stock’s tanking, one of the worst performers on the FTSE “despite a 15 per cent rise in the dividend payment, announced in November, and an increase in the company’s share buyback program.”
Vodafone’s forging ahead with a service streaming songs directly onto customers’ mobile phones, albeit with the somewhat unfortunate name “Radio DJ.”
Slated for release later this year, it’s a cool idea to offer such themed collections such as “British rock” or “Hip-hop”, songs “chosen by DJs or celebrities,” New Zealand industry observer Reuben Schwarz writes, “and a personal channel customized to each listener… [tailored] to their tastes by rating the songs that are streamed to their phone.
First Coffee for 21 January, 2006
January 21, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the greatest album in rock, The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street. No argument, please.
So why did Hong Kong software maker CDC Corp. drop out of the hunt for a majority stake in CRM software developer Onyx yesterday?
According to InfoWorld Daily that eliminates the possibility of long, drawn-out struggle for the troubled CRM vendor, which is to the good, I guess.
CDC’s proposal was to kick in all the assets of CDC Software, and $50 million in folding green, for a majority of Onyx’s common stock, keeping Onyx a publicly-listed company. Onyx’s management announced two weeks ago they were rejecting the deal.
So taking a page from Qwest’s playbook, CDC then said they wanted to deal directly with Onyx’s major shareholders, see what they thought about CDC’s proposal to merge its software holdings with Onyx’s. Evidently that’s off the table now as well.
Earlier this month, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports, “Onyx officials gave a variety of reasons for turning down the offer, including: CDC Software assets are performing poorly; CDC lacks a sustained history of profitable operations and has a poor record of delivering shareholder value; and synergies between the Onyx and CDC product lines are limited.”
Specifically, Dow Jones reports, Onyx said on Jan.
First Coffee for 20 January, 2006
January 20, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Beethoven’s String Quartet in B flat, Op. 130:
Working Solutions, a provider of remote agent call center services to Fortune 1000 companies, has launched three new vertical offerings for the travel, healthcare, and financial services industries.
Called Agents OnDemand, they’re “designed in response to the specific inbound calling and customer requirements of these key industry vertical segments,” and are “the first to extend the proven efficiencies of the supply chain process and use the high quality, industry-specific knowledge of an experienced remote agent to deliver a ‘just in time’ workforce for corporate call centers,” according to Working Solutions CEO Tim Houlne.
Houlne explains that Agents
OnDemand are designed to let contact centers respond to fluctuating call
volumes by using agents as needed.
It’s an oft-repeated idea today that companies can save money and increase customer satisfaction by outsourcing their call centers to providers who use industry professional agents. McKesson Health Solutions L.L.C. of Broomfield, Colorado, is a Fortune 20 subsidiary that earned a Texas Medicaid contract to perform disease management outreach to 30,000 participants. Rather than use internal registered nurses, they contracted non-clinical calls to Working Solutions, who used remote healthcare agents to handle transactions.
Houlne noted that Business Week and The Wall Street Journal have recently cited forecasts by “industry experts” projecting that the number of remote home agents will increase threefold over the next five years.
…
Privacy advocates are asking the Homeland Security Department “not to include the use of Radio Frequency Identification contactless chips in its regulations for implementing the Real ID Act for state driver’s licenses,” according to published reports.
In a Jan. 13 letter to Secretary Michael Chertoff, Newsbytes
reports, “the groups assert that RFID costs a lot, lacks standardized
technology and poses potential dangers to privacy from unauthorized reading of
the chips.”
While the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of implementing the Real ID Act at $100 million, reports say, Citizens Against Government Waste judged that an RFID chip mandate as part of the act would cost up to $17 billion.
…
Amdocs is happy these days.
First Coffee for 19 January, 2006
January 19, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Robert Earl Keen, Jr.’s “For Love,” the song of the year for 2005 as far as I’m concerned:
INation’s NationBuilder CRM platform is now partnered with portfolio accounting and performance reporting from Albridge Solutions.
The partnership allows subscribers to iNation’s NationBuilder CRM tool to access Albridge Solutions’ consolidated customer account information via one Web portal.
Gary Bennett, president of iNation says financial advisors can now “segment their book of business by searching and sorting using a number of variables.” For example, an advisor could look at all clients invested in a particular investment, with a certain account size, who live in the same area and have common interests, and then use that data to automatically send e-mail communications or a mail campaign to a targeted group.
INation’s NationBuilder product was launched in 2005, designed specifically for financial advisors and other sales professionals.
…
Kind of an FYI, “gee-whiz” news piece, but the Japan Economic Newswire is reporting this morning that Konica Minolta Holdings Inc. will withdraw from the camera business at the end of March, selling its digital single-lens reflex camera division to Sony. The company will dump 3,700 employees as well, just over ten percent of the workforce.
I know it’s a business decision and all that, the company says they want to focus – sorry – on such products as copiers and electronic components, but still, for those of us who’ve had Minolta cameras, the news that there won’t be any more of them, it’s kind of, well, maybe my father felt this way when Volkswagen stopped producing the Beetle.
The news reports say that the shift from film cameras to digital cameras knocked Konica Minolta for a loop, being more of a pure optical technology firm they weren’t really in the league anymore.
Oh well, time moves on.
…
Datamonitor’s done another one of their studies, this time finding that business for third-party logistics providers looks “very promising.”
In their recently published “European Logistics House View,” the tech research firm finds that expenditure on outsourced 3PL provision across the Automotive, Consumer, Hi-Tech, Pharmaceutical, and Retail industries is “set to increase significantly over the coming four years.”
In Europe’s automotive industry for example, what Datamonitor calls “continual pressure on costs” will mean 3PLs “account for 60% of overall expenditure on logistics services by 2010,” Datamonitor thinks.
But they do warn that 3PLs must “understand the factors driving the outsourcing trend in respective industries if they are intent on winning new business,” presumably by purchasing a Datamonitor report.Overall logistics spend in the European retail market will increase by $12 billion by 2010, the report says: “Although the grocery retail sector is largely nationalistic due to differing domestic tastes within Europe, the largest European markets are reaching saturation point.”
Companies moving eastwards will present opportunities to 3PLs as well, Datamonitor thinks, finding that within the consumer grocery sector “European companies are shifting their gaze eastwards due to competitive pressures caused by an increase in private labeling and a rise in discounters,” says Chris Morgan, Datamonitor logistics analyst and author of the research. “However, as with the retail sector, success in Eastern Europe will largely depend on the available logistics network, which is where 3PLs with the necessary infrastructure could play a significant role.”
And the research suggests to Datamonitor that in high-tech, outsourced logistics will account for “two-thirds of overall logistics spend in 2010.”
The supply chain in the hi-tech sector has come under pressure due to the success of the “just-in-time” business model, and the continuing globalization of both the production and consumer bases.
First Coffee for 18 January, 2006
January 18, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is… well, let’s bring up iTunes, click on Library, hit “Shuffle” and see what we get… okay, play… ah, it’s Lou Reed’s “Intro/Sweet Jane” masterpiece from Rock’n’Roll Animal. Nice start to the day:
First CoffeeSM’s unofficial position as chronicler of bad customer relationship experiences with online vendor Caiman.com is becoming known around the blogosphere, as “Mark” writes in to say:
I had a similar experience with this dishonest vendor (caiman.com). I bought a CD from them via Amazon.com and it has been 6 months now and I have still not received it! Worse, they are not responding to emails. I get sick thinking about how much $$ they are making by not sending the product that people have ordered.
I am taking this up with Amazon and expect a full refund.
First Coffee for 17 January, 2006
January 17, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Anton Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, the “New World Symphony,” conducted by Leonard Bernstein:
Promo marketing agency Marketsync Inc. is announcing Marketsync for salesforce.com’s AppExchange.
Marketsync bills itself as an on-demand service that lets salesforce.com customers and subscribers “touch contacts and leads with real-world marketing materials and to capture the data needed to track marketing ROI.”
Built on the AppExchange on-demand platform, Marketsync for AppExchange is immediately available for test drive and deployment at www.appexchange.com, in conjunction with the Salesforce Winter ‘06 release.
Adam Gross, director, product marketing, salesforce.com explains that Marketsync for AppExchange lets users “design, execute, and measure their marketing programs right from within their Salesforce deployment.”
Marketsync for AppExchange is one of more than 150 applications created by salesforce.com, its customers and partners that are now available on the salesforce.com AppExchange, what salesforce.com loves calling “the world’s first on-demand application platform.”
…
ViVOtech, a vendor of contactless payment products, is announcing a demonstration today at the National Retail Federation Show at the Javits Center in New York City.
They’re promising a live demonstration of their end-to-end NFC payment product, designed to enable secure transactions with mobile devices. It will include four NFC-enabled mobile phones pre-loaded with ViVOwallet software, as well as various credit cards making contactless transactions at ViVOpay readers attached to point of sale systems located throughout the booth.
Attendees viewing the phones will be able to see what a “soft card” image looks like in the phone’s display window after being delivered through an over-the-air provisioning infrastructure.
The NFC-enabled phones will regularly download various types of content from “smart posters” with RFID tags embedded into them. Attendees will be able to view this content on the phone display screen.
The ViVOnfc offering itself includes ViVOwallet software which allows consumers
secure access to soft cards directly on their NFC mobile phone screen and an
over-the-air provisioning infrastructure which securely downloads credit,
debit, prepaid, loyalty and gift cards.
Contactless readers are designed to provide easy, convenient and safe transactions in limited space counter environments such as movie theatres, ticket booths, quick service restaurants, car rental facilities, retail outlets and hospitality areas.
…
A big happy birthday today to Charles Brockden Brown, born in Philadelphia in 1771, who was “the first man in the United States to try and make a living writing novels,” according to The Writer’s Almanac, and ended up starting the American Gothic horror genre: “His masterpiece was Wieland, published in 1798, whose plot turned on ‘spontaneous combustion, demonic ventriloquism, murder and madness.’” What sells sure hasn’t changed much, has it?
…
Software vendor Sybase is “looking to expand its product offering beyond databases in Mexico and is in search of distribution partners to help it sell solutions in the areas of business intelligence, RFID and Linux,” Infochannel has reported.
Currently databases make up 80% of Sybase’s sales in Mexico,
but according to Sybase’s vice president for Latin America, Tom Conlan, Sybase
is “keen to penetrate the Mexican market with solutions it has inherited over
the last two years through the acquisitions of companies such as AvantGo,
Dejima and Excellent.”
As part of the company’s expansion strategy it will open an office in Monterrey.
First Coffee for 16 January 2006
January 16, 2006By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Jack Johnson’s 2005 album In Between Dreams, a nice find I made in New Zealand over Christmas, hearing it in a café on the South Island near Oamaru:
Yes, we’re back from the most beautiful country in the world, New Zealand, visiting my wife’s family for Christmas and traveling around afterwards. As a general rule I don’t like vacations, and I’ve been dreading the first real live car vacation with three kids (remembering how they went when I was on the other side of the driver’s seat), but it went swimmingly – our kids traveled well, even on the 14-hour Dubai-Melbourne flights, we covered quite a bit of territory and saw quite a lot of New Zealand’s cultural history, along with the gorgeous landscapes and coffee shops offering drinks called “long blacks” or “short whites” with fresh-baked everything wonderful.
Favorite coffee shop story: We’re in Queenstown, my wife and I go into a local bakery/coffee shop around seven in the morning – jet lag – and settle on two long blacks and point to New Zealand-style doughnuts, what we’d call cream éclairs.
“Sorry,” the counter girl says somewhat apologetically, “those are old, we’re not selling them, the new ones’ll be out soon.”
Well, day-old doesn’t bother us, so we say don’t worry, we’ll take ‘em. She serves them and doesn’t charge us for them. “We’ll pay, no problem,” we say. She smiles, says “no worries, mate” and waves us off.
Excellent museums, gorgeous scenery, strikingly nice people, good wines, what’s not to like? How about the fact that the main highway between Auckland and Wellington is still a two-lane road in most places, and goes through the middle of towns along the way, turning what should be a four-hour drive into an all-day excursion? “You’re such an American,” my wife sighs.
Not sure how well I could live there, it is rather far away from pretty much everything else, and New Zealanders do suffer from that Canadian-style insecurity about what everyone else thinks of them (or if they even do), but as a vacation it can’t be beat, especially as a break from its polar opposite, dirty, crowded, teeming, vibrant, endlessly fascinating world crossroads Istanbul, my favorite city in the world, where we live now.
But in peaceful New Zealand the world seems very much… not with us.
