First Coffee for 27 January, 2006

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

First Coffee for 27 January, 2006

By David Sims

[email protected]

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. The partnership with Juniper is to focus on the security and optimization and acceleration sides of the WAN networking vendor’s business, Datamonitor says:

“The two companies already have a history of working together, not least because they can jointly offer much of what archrival Cisco can offer on its own, except Ethernet switches.”

The offerings will include distributed IPT, i.e. IPT across highly distributed companies, secure IPT on any network, letting customers add IDS/IP and optimization onto existing multi-vendor IP networks and a virtual contact center, taking in branches and home agents as well as HQ.

FYI: A company called Penny Per Call is announcing that it is now servicing mortgage brokers and insurance brokers, as well as “the MLM industry” with its new one penny per call voice broadcasting service.

Here’s betting they get calls every day asking “So, how much do you guys charge for a call?”

Ten Words the world would be better off without:

Utilize. Means nothing “use” doesn’t mean, just consumes more bytes.

Leverage. Again, means nothing “use” doesn’t mean. Pretentious.

Solution. When you mean “product” or “tool” instead.

Enable. What’s wrong with “let?”

Empower. See “enable.”

Leading. Meaningless. If you’re #1 say so, otherwise keep working at it.

Rate of speed. Friends, “rate” means “how fast.”

Provider. What, you’re ashamed to be a “vendor” or, better yet, “seller?”

Insurgent. Shows you don’t have the clarity to recognize a “terrorist.”

Honestly. What, you’re lying whenever you don’t preface a comment with this?

Other gratuitous opinions to follow as events warrant. Oh, and folks, it’s not a “cemetery.” It’s a “graveyard.”

Optum, a UnitedHealth Group Company, has selected DSHI Systems to provide TriageXpert Call Center, DSHI Systems’ proprietary triage decision-support solution, to Optum call-center nurses.

Optum nurses provide health information and education to more than 28 million consumers from 8 call centers across the nation. Nurse call centers direct callers to appropriate care.

TriageXpert uses sophisticated, physician-written – but readable – algorithms to help nurses analyze thousands of symptoms. Algorithms are designed by DSHI Systems’ physician-authors, using best-evidence and best-practice resources. TriageXpert then generates a symptom-based interview from a library of 50,000 questions. The exact sequence of questions is steered by the caller’s responses. TriageXpert analyzes the responses and then provides its recommendation to the nurse. This entire task is completed in less than eight minutes.

Company officials say the product’s outcome studies show that “the majority” of callers who planned to visit the emergency room were re-directed to an alternative location for care.

DSHI Systems supplied Optum with a custom application programming interface to TriageXpert, allowing Optum to choose its own CRM application and use existing information assets, while using high-quality medical decision-making provided by TriageXpert.

In 2006, DSHI Systems will release two new products based on TriageXpert. TriageXpert WorkerWell puts decision making tools in the hands of consumers, letting them make better health decisions. TriageXpert Context Search converts conventional medical web searches that are based on word syntax to more powerful searches based on concepts. The TriageXpert Context Search prompts users for relevant medical history, analyzes the results, and generates the most accurate search terms.

In other call center news, FPMI, Inc., a provider of information resource/call center and recruitment products to the federal government, was awarded a contract extension worth $24 million to continue supporting a major civilian government agency.

The contract extension is the fourth-year option of a five-year contract.

FPMI will continue to provide a full range of information resource/call center products for the agency, including the recruitment and hiring of management, administrative and professional personnel and conducting call center operations for thousands of employment candidates across the nation.

Tim Wilson has a good piece listing the 11 Dumbest Things To Do At Your CIO’s Super Bowl Party.

Highlights include “Mention that the CIO’s high-tech projector looks like the one the IT department bought during last year’s technology refresh,” “After a great play, say, ‘If only our software worked that well!’” and “Yell out, ‘Hey, the data center called and asked how to turn off the fire sprinklers!’”

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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