First Coffee for 17 January, 2006

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
| CRM, ERP, Contact Center, Turkish Coffee and Astroichthiology:

First Coffee for 17 January, 2006

By David Sims

[email protected]

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. Sybase is also working with IBM in the development of Linux platforms designed for the government.

According to Total Telecom Comarch, a Central European IT vendor, is launching its Loyalty Management System, described as “a comprehensive suite of business applications for managing both simple and advanced loyalty programs that can be implemented across all the sectors dealing with large customer groups: telecommunications, retail and financial services.”

Good to see the old Soviet-style attitude towards customers wearing off in Central Europe. “Customer retention and new CRM strategies now are gaining strategic importance in business,” the company thinks. “After the failure of expectations towards first generation of CRM systems, we want to bring the ideas of customer management by covering the specific business processes around the customer satisfaction with our loyalty management systems,” says Pawel Przewiezlikowski, Comarch Vice President and a guy who never has to spell his name over the phone.

Designed with modular architecture, it has the basics – its Business Administration Module can be complemented with Business-to-Customer Web Portal, Business-to-Business Application, Logistics, Contact Center or the Smart Analysis Tool.

Yesterday this reporter wrote an article about AeroScout and NLT working together to get a mining safety product out the door, commenting that it seems whenever there’s a disaster like hurricanes or whatever there’s a rash of announcements for products dealing with just such an emergency.

Heard from AeroScout’s pleasant Director of Marketing, Josh Slobin:

“David, Thanks for covering our announcement this morning with NL Technologies.

I’d like to clarify, however, that this joint offering is something that our two companies have been working on for several months, and the timing of this announcement is unrelated to the recent tragedy.

“Unfortunately, mining accidents are much more common than anyone would like, and although it’s something that has hit home in the US only more recently, the issue has held international attention for many years. (Do a Google search on “Chinese mining accident” and you’ll see what I mean.)

“It’s a problem the industry has been trying to solve for some time, and AeroScout and NLT have been working hard for several months on a solution that can help.

“Also, by the way, AeroScout is based in the US – we have significant presence in Israel, but our headquarters are in San Mateo, CA.”

Cadence Design Systems, Ltd. has announced that the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology has selected Cadence as the sole provider of design technologies to help MIET develop the Russian electronics industry and provide local startup companies better access to the global industry.

A broad range of Cadence technology, including the virtual integrated CAD service model and Cadence kits, will be deployed in a new project called "Inspire the Russian Innovation System," or IRIS.

The concept behind IRIS is to support the development of innovative startups in the field of microelectronics.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.



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