First Coffee for 31 May 2006: CRM Help Wanted In Charnwood, TeaLeaf's CX, Fujitsu's GPON, Kayote and TeleMessage's VoIP Partnership, "Stingy" America Helps Indonesia

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

First Coffee for 31 May 2006: CRM Help Wanted In Charnwood, TeaLeaf's CX, Fujitsu's GPON, Kayote and TeleMessage's VoIP Partnership, "Stingy" America Helps Indonesia

By David Sims

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Willie Nelson’s great gospel record, The Troublemaker:

CRM Help Wanted: Charnwood Borough Council is inviting expressions of interest from experienced integrators to provide a CRM product to support its front and back office staff in the provision of improved service to their customers.

The product must possess the following functionalities: (i) Multi-channel access including the ability to uphold the same high standards across multiple different channels; (ii) Back office integration with legacy and partnership systems; (iii) Provision of common customer database to enable the holistic view of the customer.

It is proposed that over time most of the Council’s front office activities will be supported by the selected product.

The time limit for receipt of requests for documents or for accessing documents is June 12th, the time limit for receipt of tenders or requests to participate is June 19th.

Contact the Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation at www.espo.org if interested.

TeaLeaf, a vendor of “Customer Experience Management” products, has introduced TeaLeaf CX, a comprehensive data store providing what company officials claim is a “360-degree view of the online customer experience.”

TeaLeaf also introduced four new products that are powered by TeaLeaf CX, enabling a “clear and consistent view of the customer across the enterprise,” according to TeaLeaf officials.

David Stone, senior vice president, director of online customer experience and support, Wachovia, claims that “Wachovia is consistently rated amongst the leaders in online banking.” This rating must have been compiled without First Coffee being consulted, as customer service is why we switched from Wachovia to First Market for our primary online banking.

TeaLeaf CX provides the visibility – including new support for Web 2.0 applications such as those built in AJAX – “required to detect unknown obstacles blocking business processes,” according to company officials.

TeaLeaf CX also provides Business Impact Analysis reports to help “quantify the business impact of issues and identify commonalities to rapidly pinpoint application problems.”

Fujitsu Network Communications Inc., which does sell wireline/wireless networking and IT products, today announced the availability of its new Flashwave 6100 Gigabit Passive Optical Networking platform.

Fujitsu officials claim to have created a broadband access platform that provides density and channel capacity, inter-working with legacy networks and packet infrastructure, and “the ability to inexpensively respond to future bandwidth requirements.”

Group products include the Flashwave 6100 Optical Line Terminal and a series of Flashwave 6100 Optical Network Terminals.

The Flashwave 6100 GPON platform supports dual- and quad-port GPON cards within a 9U (15.75”) chassis to provide broadband services to up to 10,240 homes and businesses per standard rack. Current Broadband Passive Optical Networking systems typically support 75% fewer homes per rack, Fujitsu officials claim.

One of the goals for the Flashwave 6100 platform is to allow seamless integration with existing networks. In addition to the new GPON service units, the Flashwave 6100 platform supports all service interface cards from the Flashwave 4100 Multi-Service Provisioning Platform.

This capability gives service providers the option of deploying traditional MSPP, Ethernet, and GPON services from a single multi-service access node.

VoIPers Kayote Networks, Inc. have announced a partnership with TeleMessage. The partnership allows TeleMessage’s SMS and Text-to-Speech technology to help Kayote’s VoIP Traffic Manager notify users instantly of any event that causes a decrease in call traffic quality.

“Feedback has shown us that customers want to receive call traffic quality alerts as quickly as possible, so they can take immediate action or update other team members,” said Baruch Sterman, chief executive officer of Kayote Networks.

The TeleMessage system enables Kayote users to receive instant alerts through landline, mobile phone, fax, e mail, SMS, Instant Messenger or pager and respond to these alerts with voice or text commands that VTM acts upon immediately.

The new feature will also provide an additional channel for users to contact the Kayote 24/7 NOC (Network Operations Center) for support.

VTM is Kayote’s hosted VoIP softswitch that enables carriers of all sizes to outsource their entire VoIP back-end at reduced hardware investment. VTM monitors VoIP traffic, triggering alerts to users when predefined quality of service, volume, or billing thresholds are not met. The system automatically switches to failover routes predefined by each user in line with specific business needs.

If a first-response user does not take action within a specified amount of time, another message is sent to a second contact number, as well as to an additional user. VTM can now also send users file attachments to facilitate an educated analysis of a problem.

The good news this morning is that significant help has reached Indonesian earthquake survivors. And guess who got it there.

It wasn’t the Indonesian government. It wasn’t the incompetent U.N., which when needed in East Timor responded by evacuating as fast as it could, leaving it to Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia to restore order and the Red Cross to provide food and water.

No, as usual in these major disasters, Indonesians have the U.S. military to thank for actually providing the actual help. American military cargo planes landed a field hospital, a disaster assistance response team from the U.S. Agency for International Development is being readied and the amphibious assault ship USS Essex, which has extensive medical facilities, is speeding to the area. Plus America’s kicking in several million more dollars in aid, according to news sources.

All for the most populous Muslim nation on earth, all free of charge. As usual we’ll do far more than any other country to help, and we’ll be thanked with the usual brainless sniping from do-nothing world bureaucrats.

The U.N. will do what it does best: Loudly take credit for America’s work and loudly criticize America that we’re not doing more they can loudly take credit for.

In 2004, the last year for which complete figures are available, “40 percent of all emergency aid provided worldwide by governments to victims of natural disasters last year was provided by the United States,” according to Jack Kelly. First Coffee’s lowball estimate is that the U.N. claimed 97.2 percent of the credit for America’s work.

We gave well over a billion dollars to the Asian tsunami relief alone, yet Norway’s Jan Egelund, the U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, characterizes us as “stingy.” And how much did Norway, per capita one of the wealthiest countries on earth, contribute to Katrina relief? Can you spell S-T-I-N-G-Y?

Already the U.N.’s claiming credit for “organizing” a “multi-nation effort” in Indonesia, which will consist mainly of a few countries sending a few doctors and a few countries cutting a few modest checks. But of course the majority of any help that actually reaches people and saves lives with be courtesy of the U.S. military. As usual.

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



Featured Events