By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Arlo Guthrie’s “Last To Leave:”
Cognos, a business intelligence and corporate
performance management (CPM) vendor, has
announced the latest version of Cognos 8 Business Intelligence.
This new version of Cognos 8 BI includes new search and
reporting capabilities to extend the reach of BI to more users, and expanded
enterprise-application and data support.
Leah MacMillan, vice president of product marketing said the
additional support for enterprise applications in Cognos 8 BI is engineered to
help companies get more out of their ERP investments “by providing ways to
measure, monitor, and analyze business information.”
Cognos 8 BI delivers a simplified, zero-footprint interface
for all users, authors and administrators. New capabilities announced include:
BI search. Cognos Go! Search Service, a new BI search
capability, lets users find enterprise information available through Cognos 8
Business Intelligence. It uses a familiar, browser-based search that ranks
results based on user priorities.
Extended Cognos Office Connection. In addition to the
ability to embed refreshable reports within Microsoft Excel, users can now
view, interact with, and refresh Cognos 8 BI reports, analyses, and metrics
within Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel.
Access to mySAP and Siebel. The new Cognos 8 Report Packs
for mySAP FI/CO (for SAP R/3 data) and Siebel CRM let users combine, in one
report or dashboard, historic data from the data warehouse with current data in
mySAP and Siebel CRM transaction systems without additional coding. It also delivers
pre- defined content for more than 60 commonly used reports to provide
immediate access to mySAP and Siebel CRM data.
Certified SAP NetWeaver support. Cognos 8 BI received
updated certification for SAP NetWeaver, allowing customers to access data in
the SAP Business Information Warehouse, deploy Cognos 8 BI on the SAP Web
Application Server, and display information through the SAP NetWeaver Portal.
…
A recent Forrester Research report recognizes Oracle’s Siebel Enterprise
Marketing Suite as having the strongest product offering in the latest Forrester Wave Evaluation: Enterprise
Marketing Platforms, Q1 2006.
Forrester refers to this broader suite as the Marketing
Technology Backbone and the application layer is the Enterprise Marketing
Platform.
Siebel Enterprise Marketing Suite was rated “Strong
Performer” and was ranked first in the current offering in the Forrester Waves
for B2C and B2B Marketing platforms. Siebel Enterprise Marketing Suite was also
ranked first or second in Marketing Planning and Resource Management, Campaign
Management, Lead Management, Analytics and Reporting, Architecture and other
vertical capabilities, including Loyalty Management and Trade Promotions
Management products.
Siebel Enterprise Marketing Suite also scored well for
Application Usability and Interaction Management.
“Siebel Enterprise Marketing Suite provides the broadest
functionality in the market and is the best product for B2B marketers,”
reported Forrester Analyst Elena Anderson. “Siebel Enterprise Marketing Suite
offers top-notch analysis tools and very strong campaign design and
segmentation tools.”
To assess the state of the enterprise marketing platform
market, Forrester analyzed strengths and weaknesses of the top enterprise eight
CRM vendors across 168 criteria that incorporated current offering, strategy
and market presence.
The complete Forrester
Enterprise Marketing Wave report is available online.
…
LLP KaR-Tel, a mobile operator in
Kazakhstan and a VimpelCom affiliate working under the Beeline brand, and CRM
vendor Amdocs
have announced that KaR-Tel has deployed
Amdocs CRM to improve its customer service and increase operational
efficiencies.
KaR-Tel is also using Amdocs billing products for automated
resource and inventory management to improve and simplify sales and
provisioning processes of pre-paid and post-paid services.
Amdocs CRM enables KaR-Tel to centralize customer
information and provide its customer service agents with a single view of the
customer, according to KaR-Tel officials. Additionally, the operator can better
manage incidents and problems via its contact centers across Kazakhstan,
driving down call handling time.
The Amdocs CRM deployment is a collaboration of teams from
VimpelCom and KaR-Tel, Arstel Consulting and Amdocs.
“With Amdocs we can now deliver an intentional customer
experience, with a level of service not known before in the Kazakhstan
marketplace,” said Ansat Zhabagin, chief financial officer at LLP KaR-Tel.
Amdocs CRM currently supports more than 150 KaR-Tel agents
handling more than 10,000 customer calls per day. KaR-Tel plans to further
expand the deployment to support its regional contact centers as well.
…
Queue Associates, Inc., a Microsoft
Business Solutions consulting firm based in New York, has announced the expansion of its operations into Europe with the
opening of Queue Associates UK in London, England.
The company also announced that it has acquired the
intellectual property for “Global Projects Suite,” an enterprise project
management software enhancement for the Microsoft Dynamics SL product.
Queue Associates will implement the newly-acquired GPS
technology in conjunction with the Microsoft Dynamics SL suite of
project-management products. Global Projects Suite (GPS) consists of three separate
components, including Global Project Extensions, Multi- Currency Expenses and
Multiple Base Currency General Ledger, specifically designed to help
international organizations manage their multi- currency, multi-office and
multi-national projects while maintaining local responsibility.
…
Bharti Tele-Ventures, an Indian provider of
telecommunications services, has signed
a five-year managed services agreement with Nortel to host contact center
services for more than 19.7 million subscribers to Bharti’s Airtel GSM mobile,
broadband and fixed-line services.
Nortel will create a Network Operations Center in New Delhi
and provide network design, integration, support and maintenance services for Bharti’s
contact center architecture.
A 24x7 virtual storefront voice portal based on Nortel’s
interactive voice response product will be the cornerstone of Bharti’s new
contact center operation. Calling a single number from anywhere in India,
Bharti’s wireless and wireline customers will be able to speak in English,
Hindi, or four other regional languages to complete routine transactions and
subscribe to new services. Nortel has also designed the architecture for future interactive video response capability.
To simplify business, Bharti has designed with Nortel an innovative
“per call” approach to paying for Nortel’s hosted services, linking its contact
center cost structure to network traffic, service levels and customer growth.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content.