July 2006 Archives

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is "Sugar Sugar" by The Archies:

How about a little MySpace in your space? Patching the holes left by current ERP, CRM and other corporate technologies, according to Rohan Hall, chief executive of Group Members Only, the company is announcing a MySpace-style "social networking technology" debuting today "to help corporations solve issues related to collaboration, innovation, communication, and networking between employees, customers, vendors and partners."

The idea appears to be to use social networking, Web 2.0, and enterprise technology standards to help corporations "gain a better return on investment (ROI) on their 'people assets,'" according to Group Members Only officials.

The company was recently launched by a group of business and technology entrepreneurs whose background include Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and Amazon.com.

Rohan Hall said the technology will help companies foster more innovation by allowing employees to network and collaborate throughout the enterprise beyond the current annoying e-mail lists. Their patent-pending group networking technology "allows collaboration between groups while enforcing various privacy standards," officials explain.

For instance, corporate groups can "build social networks with internal employees and with their external customer base while restricting access to corporate content and other privileged information… Our social networking technology allows companies to identify what collaboration naturally exists between different groups inside their organizations. This visibility will facilitate organizational decisions enormously," Hall thinks.

"Companies are recognizing that half its new product ideas will come from outside their company by 2010," said IBM/Lotus General Manager Mark Rhodin at the June 2006 Collaborative Technology Conference. That does appear to be the quote embroidered and hung on the wall of Group Members Only headquarters.

The Group Members Only technology will allow companies to create virtual teams, communities of practice, expert networks, customer/partner networks, knowledge communities, and other networks inside and outside the corporate boundaries.

The technology include: personalization, private branding, social networking, video conferencing, Voice over IP (VoIP), Blogs, Instant Message, e-mail, document library, video library, live chat, discussion forums, jobs posting, group separation and linking, event calendars, and various tracking and reporting features.

The company will also customize and host the technology for organizations or implement the technology behind the corporate firewall, company officials say. A free version of the technology (www.GroupMembersOnly.com) that includes the basic features was launched for nonprofit organizations in June 2006.

Satuit Technologies, Inc., which sells customer relationship management (CRM) products for the investment industry, has announced that Sands Capital Management, LLC has selected SatuitCRM On-Demand for its marketing, sales and client services team.

Sands Capital Management, in the search for a CRM system, wanted something "way beyond contact management," according to Satuit officials. As Satuit's known primarily for its Sales Force Automation products, it would seem to fall into that category.

However, "our list of requirements were many," said Dana McNamara, Director of Client Services for Sands Capital Management, who said key selection criteria included an on-demand option, simple and easy to understand interface and architecture, the ability to "easily and cleanly" integrate existing data and systems and the ability to connect anywhere.

Sands Capital Management, based in Arlington, Virginia, began operations in February of 1992. Its assets under management increased from approximately $60 million in 1992 to approximately $19 billion as of December 31, 2005.

"We are delighted to have Sands Capital Management join our growing list of clients and we are especially happy to be working with them to integrate Satuit with their back office Advent/Axys systems," said Karen Maguire, chief executive officer for Satuit Technologies.

Many things in this world baffle First Coffee, the ways of an eagle in the air and a serpent on a rock among the least of them. No, true mysteries are how Tom Petty ever earned a dollar in the music industry and why the public's buying all this manufactured anger against the free market.

Oil companies' profits are up. That's what happens when you have a commodity that's in increasing demand due to Chinese and Indian industrialization, and shortening supply due to things like dinosaurs not dying fast enough and Democrats not letting oil companies drill in Alaska.

So why are you getting screwed when you fill your V-8 MegaSUV at the pump? Greedy oil companies? Consider that for every gallon of gas you buy 46 cents goes to government tax, 18.4 cents to the federal government and the rest to states and localities. As ConocoPhillips shows, the oil companies themselves get about ten cents per gallon. Greed, yes. Oil companies, no.

In fact, according to tax analyst Jonathan Williams on the invaluable Right Scale, "from 1977 to 2004, federal and state governments extracted $397 billion by taxing the profits of the largest oil companies and an additional $1.1 trillion in taxes at the pump. In today's dollars, that's $2.2 trillion." Money the oil companies were forced to collect from you on behalf of the government.

In 2005 ExxonMobil reported paying just under $99 billion in taxes -- $23.3 billion in income taxes, $30.7 billion in excise taxes, and $44.6 billion in "other taxes." Its own profit for the year were nowhere near that high.

In fact, Right Scale shows, in April ExxonMobil announced $8.4 billion in Q1 profits, down from $10.7 billion in Q4 2005. The federal government quietly "took in more than $7 billion from ExxonMobil during the first quarter of 2006, a jump of more than $2 billion from the same time period in 2005. And that doesn't count the more than $7.6 billion in excise taxes -- the gas tax -- that ExxonMobil collected for the government during the same quarter."

Consider the $11 billion in "other taxes" ExxonMobil sent the government, and they paid more than $25 billion in the first quarter of 2006. So ExxonMobil, the guys who do all the work and take all the risk and get cussed out at the pump, made $8.4 billion. The federal government sat on its fat lazy butt, did nothing useful and made ExxonMobil collect an extra $25 billion for tax, three times the profit the company itself made.

Then in exquisite gall the federal government sends out Senators Arlen "Dumb" Specter and Harry "Dumber" Reid on the Sunday catfight shows to complain that Big Oil's making too much money, when all Big Oil's doing is being forced to collect the government tax for them because Specter and Reid don't have the guts to come to your door and demand it in person.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that last year, "the top seven U.S. health insurers earned a combined $10 billion -- nearly triple their profits of five years earlier. The windfall came as insurers raised their prices faster than underlying health costs." That's a higher rate than Big Oil. In fact many companies are dropping health care for employees because they can't afford it. Where's the outrage?

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

The news as of the first coffee, the beans, of course, being Kopi Luwak beans hand-ground using a 19th century apothecary's mortar and pestle by my man Godfrey, brewed with imported Swiss spring water in a Gaggia piston-style espresso brewer… see, we've been accused here at Radio KCRM 98.6, All Monkees All The Time, of being somewhat, ah, lowbrow and rather crass, which doesn't seem to bother the vast majority of our listeners, primarily because the vast majority of our listeners have their musical selections made by an institutional officer of one kind or another, but occasionally we do get the more well-heeled, cultured listener.

And as a wise man once said we need to be all things to all men, so instead of grabbing a cuppa Maxwell House from the percolator First Coffee had his gentleman's gentleman Godfrey whip something up in the grand style, and instead of the usual t-shirt won in a bar trivia contest we have donned a finely-tailored double-breasted smoking jacket with Chinese brocade collars and cuffs, and instead of Slobberbone or some other such selection from the usual musical fare we've upgraded to a fine 1961 jazz release, Oliver Nelson's "Stolen Moments."

And we shall strive for the refined diction appropriate for the more educated ear, no more of the Wolfman Jack-style shoutin' and hollerin' here, but a more subtle, sophisticated style appropriate, of course, to you, the more discriminating class of listener.

So bonjour mes amis, and for a historical note we would like to remember that today is the birthday of noted 19th century British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, born in Stratford, England in 1844, noted for his use of sprung rhythm and intricate language and known for such works as "God's Grandeur," "The Starlight Night" and of course, First Coffee's favorite, "The Windhover."

On Tracey Schelmetic's croquet lawn yesterday morning, enjoying her grandmother's secret recipe Magellan G&Ts, First Coffee heard that Information Architects, a vendor of online information products, has announced that they have added a state-of-the-art contact center to their operations through the acquisition of GWIB CO LLC.

GWIB sells contact center services and comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) products. GWIB provides a communications portal that allows clients to connect with their customers through a single entry point.

The company brings what Information Architects officials describe as "a solid and experienced core management team that has a great deal of expertise in contact center development, sales generation, business operations and business expansion." The team has worked extensively in telephony administration, network setup and administration, and has the potential to be "one of the top tier contact centers in the Caribbean," Information Architects hopes.

"With the acquisition of GWIB, Information Architects can now offer… a comprehensive set of on-demand CRM products," said Todd K. Morgan, CEO of Information Architects.

Jon Grinter, President of Information Architects promised that customers can now expect "faster turnaround times on problem resolution and the efficiency of a single point of contact for all your support needs."

And at the polo match held in Rich Tehrani's back yard yesterday afternoon, sipping some of Rich's Roederer Cristal '84 between chukkas, First Coffee heard that StrikeIron Inc., vendor of the Web Services Marketplace, has announced a partnership with c360, a vendor of add-on products and development tools for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform.

As part of the partnership, StrikeIron officials say, c360 will integrate StrikeIron's Address Verification Web service with its Productivity Packs for Microsoft Dynamics, which has multiple c360 products designed to "help users get more out of Microsoft CRM."

C360 products are sold exclusively through their network of over 500 authorized partners.

C360 integrated StrikeIron's Address Verification Web Service into the Data Quality Center of the Core Productivity Pack, a move to let users do real-time verification and standardization of US addresses. The integrated product will allow users to preview old and new addresses, automatically update the verified address and provide a toolbar which allows users to trigger the address verification service on-demand.

And since an XML-based Web service is being used, customers do not need to worry about monthly data updates and the costly maintenance associated with traditional address correction products, StrikeIron officials say.

"This offering is a first for Microsoft Dynamics CRM users," claimed Arvind Raman, Director of Product Management of c360 since "customers can now focus on all processes necessary for a CRM system."

The Address Verification Web Service is part of the StrikeIron Marketplace which offers more than 75 web services to ISVs such as c360. StrikeIron also offers an API to integrate commercial Web services into an ISV's application, which company officials characterize as "an ideal product for the integration of live data directly into real-time business processes to increase productivity and lower costs."

For example, using the product, Web services can be used in CRM applications to incorporate live data feeds and eliminate the methods of bulk data importing, exporting and cleanup, officials say.

My, isn't this an interesting coincidence: Today is also the birthday of Beatrix Potter, born in South Kensington, England in 1866, the wonderful writer who gave us Peter Rabbit. We'll certainly enjoy trading such interesting literary anecdotes at the brie and Chardonnay get-together at Patrick Barnard's place out in the Hamptons tonight, he always has some nice Chateau Montelena on ice -- AquaICE, of course.

And at Michelle Pasquarello's penthouse on the Upper East Side, while circulating (nice touch, Michelle, hiring the Kronos Quartet for live background music) First Coffee met the sales manager at a company new to First Coffee, called Volusion.

Introducing himself only as James, he said his company has developed free live chat software called Volusion Live Chat, which he said was "a 100 percent hosted live chat software, which meaning there's nothing to install on your servers," which has the added advantage of being "free to any and all PC users, even non-Volusion customers."

He said it's a great way to communicate instantly with online customers.

When it comes to determining effectiveness, "feedback is a part of how that's determined," James said, noting that in a monthly meeting, members of Volusion's Sales Staff mentioned that "several customers had asked questions on how to find and install third party chat software on their site."

According to James, customers were catching on to the importance of getting answers to their online customers in a timely manner, shown to reduce cart abandonment and increase sales amongst other things. Talk of creating Volusion's own live chat software quickly began, and what started out as a way to make the documentation clearer quickly turned into the development of Volusion's own live chat software.

"We sent the idea to our development department and we all agreed that a live chat service would be a great thing to offer our customers. Two days after the meeting, work on Volusion Live Chat began," he said.

There are a few reasons James pointed out for why a product like Volusion Live Chat would be good for the success of a merchant's online business. Real-time live help and live customer support is given to the customer at the exact time and instance they need answers. It helps save money and resources; live online support is less expensive than telephone support and several chats can be received by a single chat operator. And it can help lower shopping cart abandonment in giving quick online answers.

For additional information on the benefits of Volusion Live Chat Software and to sign up for the free service, please visit: http://volusion.com/livechat_software.asp

And that concludes the upscale broadcast of Radio KCRM 98.6. Now if you don’t mind, the jazz CD goes off, hello Willie Nelson and I’m off for a beer.

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

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else. Must get more of this man's music:

SugarCRM Inc., a vendor of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, has announced the beta release of Sugar 4.5, its popular CRM product.

Sugar 4.5 introduces such new functionality as personalized views, internationalization and support for Microsoft Windows Server products.

This marks the eighth major release for the company in two years. Since that time, Sugar Open Source has been downloaded over 800,000 times and localized into more than 40 languages, company officials claim, adding that "more than 5,000 developers have contributed over 220 extensions -- ranging from email response and presence awareness applications to Voice Over IP (VoIP) and computer telephony integrations."

SugarCRM has a "community" of probably around15,000 members, and is used by about 800 commercial customers.

4.5 uses AJAX technology throughout the application, which lets end users drag, drop, edit, add and remove objects from pages within the application based on what information they really need and want. AJAX is heavily used in the revamped Sugar Studio, letting all users control the look, feel and accessibility of the application.

And following a five-month technical collaboration with Microsoft, Sugar 4.5 offers what Sugar officials are calling "improved support for Microsoft's Internet Information Services Active Directory and Microsoft SQL Server."

The company is promising to release a new Sugar distribution under the Microsoft Community License beginning with Sugar 4.5, under a license that's part of the Microsoft Shared Source Initiative.

SugarCRM officials are particularly proud of 4.5's enhanced sales forecasting, with quota assignment, scenario planning and forecasting worksheets designed "to allow reps to provide more realistic commit amounts and provides managers the ability to roll-up accurate forecasts across teams and territories."

There are also integrated forums, threaded discussions integrated into Sugar modules for information-sharing on any topic across Accounts, Bugs, Cases, Opportunities, and Projects.

Sugar Suite 4.5 is currently available to review on the Community Preview, a demo instance of the application with the new functionality for the general public to test and experience. Hit it at http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/demo/45-community-preview.html.

The Beta release of Sugar Open Source 4.5 is currently available at http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/download/sugar-suite.html. The general availability release of Sugar Open Source, Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise, will be available in August.

There are milestones, and there are milestones. Delivering your two billionth anything is a milestone, and RightNow Technologies has announced that it has delivered its 2,000,000,000th customer interaction since 2003.

RightNow is available in seventeen languages and is used by companies ranging from Global 2000 corporations and large federal government agencies to entrepreneurial companies and outsourced contact centers.

RightNow announced its 1,000,000,000th interaction in October 2005 -- which means it delivered its second billion interactions in less than a year. Okay, we'll be looking for the three billionth, what, around Christmas.

Kintera Inc. has announced the launch of a new national Web site for existing client Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (www.bbbs.org) and several pilot sites for local Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies using Kintera's social CRM system on the Kintera Sphere technology platform.

Yeah, this flies a bit closer to PR than news, but First Coffee is very much in favor of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America program, so there you are. You get to hear about it. And if you don't have your own kids you should volunteer, too. Don't gimme this "I don't have the time" stuff, check in with them and see how much / little time can make a huge difference to someone who needs a huge difference made in their lives. If you're reading this odds are someone invested a good chunk of time into you, the least you can do, feel good about yourself, get more out of it than you put in, okay, end of sermon.

But you honestly do get more out of it than you realize.

Using a virtual account structure within Kintera Sphere, the new Web sites feature consistent branding across the organization and its piloting agencies, and use the Kintera social CRM system to enable and capture online donations, recruit volunteers -- such as you -- to become Big Brothers and Big Sisters, and enroll children in the mentoring program.

Before this national Web site and pilot agency sites, each local Big Brothers Big Sisters agency housed its Web site individually. You can imagine the data hell that resulted. But now BBBS can create information, branding and interactive Web features once -- and repeatedly share them with agencies across the country. The platform enables sharing of information and interactive features from the national office to agencies, and among the agencies themselves.

The eight pilot sites are local agencies in San Francisco, San Diego, Cleveland, Charlotte, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Puget Sound, Wash., North Texas and Southeastern Pennsylvania.

With more than 450 Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies operating in the United States, several hundred of them are expected to join the Kintera Sphere technology platform following pilot phase completion, and benefit from the consistent branding and online capabilities available using the social CRM system.

Much as business CRM does, Kintera's constituent relationship management system unites constituents' online and offline experiences into one database, giving nonprofits and constituents with a total view of the constituent's relationship with the organization.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America also recently launched a new organization-wide intranet, Agency Connection, which uses the Kintera Sphere technology platform. Agency Connection will allow for customization of content based on user identity and draws upon the national intranet, extranet and local intranet to provide relevant, up-to-date content.

Epicor Software Corporation has reported its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2006, with net income falling from $30 million in Q2 2005 to $7.1 million.

Total revenues for the second quarter grew 40.2% to a record $99.5 million, compared with $71.0 million in the prior year's quarter. Excluding stronger than expected total revenue contributions of $22.0 million from CRS Retail Systems Inc., which was acquired on December 6, 2005, total revenues increased 9.1% to $77.5 million.

For the second quarter, the company reported GAAP net income of $7.1 million or $0.12 per diluted share, compared with $29.6 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, in the prior year's period, which included the positive impact of $0.35 per diluted share related to a non-cash income tax benefit due to the release of a deferred tax valuation allowance.

In the second quarter of 2006 non-GAAP earnings were $11.2 million, or $0.20 per diluted share, compared with non-GAAP earnings of $12.9 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, in the same period last year.

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

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is an old favorite around the sprawling First Coffee campus here on the rolling hills, Dave Brubeck's Time Out:

VIPdesk, a vendor of virtual contact center products, has announced that folks, don't look now, but the 2006 holiday season is coming up. Why, it's practically August. And don't tell me you don't have all your Christmas shopping done, you lazy scofflaw.

What's your strategy for serving your retail customers during the upcoming peak holiday season? The National Retail Federation is predicting a nearly 5 percent increase in sales for 2006 over 2005, which was also a record year.

Well, if you're interested, VIPdesk has undertaken several measures to improve technological capabilities, all with your Christmas ease and pleasure in mind.

"VIPdesk has been preparing for the 2006 holiday season since the 2005 season ended on a high note," said Mary Naylor, CEO and founder of VIPdesk and a person who not only has her Christmas shopping done, she has her shopping for Christmas 2007 done. And no, she doesn't just click Amazon gift certificates for everyone like you do.

To prepare for the holiday season, VIPdesk increased its technological capabilities to meet retailer needs for the 2006 peak holiday season. Specifically, the company added capacity to handle 300% more call volume than last year. VIPdesk has also streamlined its screening and certification processes, putting their customer service representatives through security screening, skills assessment and a certification process.

Higher retention than traditional models and an unlimited home-based national labor pool are what VIPdesk considers to be "among the many competitive advantages" of its VIPdesk Connect virtual contact center product. Other benefits the company promises are scalability, operational expertise, skills-based routing, improved performance and lower overhead and administrative costs.

Basically VIPdesk sells contact center products and services, and "concierge programs" for companies in the travel, auto, financial services and retail industries.

First Coffee's Travel Tip For The Day: Don't ever, ever, ever agree to take a cat on a plane for someone else. Ever. Are we clear on that?

One of First Coffee's friends was flying from Istanbul to Canada, and agreed to take a cat back a friend in Canada had promised was all clear with the airlines, and his sister would pick it up. Heck, he already had a dog, what trouble could a cat be, right?

When I took him to the airport the agent told him that one of the code-share airlines for his flight had not approved the cat for the trip. Forty-five minutes calling Air Canada at four in the morning. Okay, cat's approved. Baggage man said the cat wasn't in a proper travel cage. Half an hour promising him the cloth L.L. Bean carrier was "proper" and that an airline-approved carrier would be purchased in Frankfurt.

No water in the cage for the cat. Promises to buy appropriate water dispenser in Frankfurt. Hold it -- none for the dog either. We'll get two. All set, right? Ha, ha, ha:

At one point in the trip, the frickin' cat took time to stop yowling and pushed on the sides of the crappy muslin and balsa wood cage and escaped. Fortunately someone quickly picked it up and returned it to me (waking me in the process). 

When I landed in Frankfurt I began looking for a place to buy a pet carrier... I ended up looking for hours and finally in the bowels of the airport I found a dungeon-like room where an angry Turk was selling luggage and pet carriers like they were Filipino sex slaves. Anyhow, I missed my flight to Toronto and ended up being 8+ hours late to Canada so Guy's sister wasn't there. 

I feared having to keep the hellish feline. In desperation I checked e-mail and found her phone number and called her. Two hours later she picked up the cat and I was left with the dog only.

So, 32 hours later I landed in Edmonton (as if I hadn't suffered enough).

CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and vendor of CRM and other enterprise software applications, has announced that Eric Musser has been promoted to president of CDC Software, effective immediately.

Previously, Mr. Musser held positions as chief technology officer of Ross Systems and president of IMI, and most recently as executive vice president of strategy for CDC Software.

Peter Yip, chief executive officer of CDC Software said the promotion is "another important step as we continue to prepare CDC Software to operate and grow successfully as a stand-alone company."

First Coffee wonders if it had anything to do with the recent high-profile failure of CDC's hostile takeover of Onyx, which was rejected as quickly and decisively as a John Hinckley love letter to Jodie Foster.

Centric CRM, which develops open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, has announced today that it has completed its port of Centric CRM to IBM DB2 data server software.

What this means is that effective immediately, Centric CRM provides fully optimized support for the entire portfolio of DB2 data server software, including DB2 Express-C and DB2 for z/OS. It's "becoming the first open source application vendor to earn IBM's 'Ready for IBM DB2 Data Server Software' designation," according to Centric officials.

Billed by company officials as an enterprise-class open source application, Centric CRM's strategy is to run on any computing stack, from a pure open source Java-based stack, to the most sophisticated enterprise server stack available from large enterprise vendors such as IBM.

In keeping with the open source spirit, Centric CRM will begin distributing IBM's DB2 Express-C data server with its core CRM offering, giving customers the option to install DB2 as their CRM database.

"Given IBM's release of a freely redistributable version of it, supporting DB2 was an obvious move for us," said Tom Manos, Chief Technology Officer for Centric CRM. "DB2 Express-C, like every other version of DB2, provides absolutely top-of-the-line database performance."

Boris Bialek, Program Director, IBM DB2 Business Partner Enablement. "IBM, like Centric CRM, is committed to the open source community."

Contact center vendor Aspect Software, Inc. has announced that Aspect eWorkforce Management, released June 30, now has "a redesigned user interface for easier navigation" and has improved their support for outbound and blended contact center environments.

And hey, it's available in those Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean and Japanese packages you were waiting for.

The enhanced outbound support now in Aspect eWorkforce Management 7.0 includes an improved algorithm to do a better job ensuring that the right number of agents are scheduled to handle the predicted outbound and blended workload to help maximize the number of contacts made and revenue generated.

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

The news as of the mid-morning coffee break, and the music is Steve Taylor's surprisingly durable album I Want To Be A Clone:

The news was helpfully forwarded on to First Coffee from an Onyx official: CDC Corporation announces that it's "withdrawing and terminating its previously announced $5.00 per share all cash tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Onyx Software Corporation."

The offer was commenced on July 12, 2006 and was scheduled to expire on August 8, 2006. No tenders of shares for the CRM vendor will be accepted, and any shares previously tendered will be returned, according to CDC officials.

So it looks like CDC's hostile bid for Onyx has ended with a whimper. In deciding to withdraw and terminate the tender offer, CDC's management and board cited "the remote likelihood that the conditions to the tender offer would ever be satisfied."

Good call, seeing as how Onyx never showed the slightest interest in being taken over by CDC, was prepared to take a poison pill and had promised herself to another suitor. One imagines that cat chased around Paris by Pepe Le Pew.

Back in January Hong Kong-based CDC had offered to combine all the assets of CDC Software with Onyx, and $50 million in cash, for a majority of Onyx's common stock, keeping Onyx a publicly-listed company. Onyx's management announced almost immediately they were rejecting the deal.

The Puget Sound Business Journal reported at the time that "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 reported, Onyx said on January 5 its board unanimously rejected CDC's offer for being "highly dilutive" to Onyx shareholders. Plus they didn't think there would be anything but "limited synergies" between the companies. And they didn't like CDC's idea that Onyx pay a premium for CDC Software division assets.

Fast-forward to March, when CDC presented a new proposal to the board of directors of Onyx Software for "a strategic transaction that would combine Onyx Software with CDC Software."

Onyx said it would review the new proposal, under terms of which each Onyx shareholder would have a choice to receive, for each Onyx share, consideration consisting of either all-cash, or cash-and-shares in CDC Corporation.

At the time John Clough, chairman of the executive committee for CDC Corporation and vice chairman of the board for CDC Software, said CDC Software still really, really wanted to acquire Onyx, particularly for its Pivotal CRM division, but confessed he was "surprised by the lack of interest” the proposal received from Onyx.

Then in June Onyx announced it signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by privately-held M2M Holdings Inc., the holding company that is jointly owned by Battery Ventures VI, L.P. and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners and whose primary asset is Made2Manage Systems Inc., an enterprise software and services company.

It’s an all-cash transaction valued at $4.80 per share, or approximately $92 million. The parties still anticipate closing the transaction in the third calendar quarter of 2006.

“We believe that this transaction is the right decision for Onyx shareholders, customers, partners and employees,” said Janice P. Anderson, chairman and chief executive officer of Onyx upon announcing the M2M deal. “Upon closing, this acquisition will provide liquidity to shareholders and a premium to our recent trading prices.”

Upon closing of the transaction, Onyx would operate as a separate business unit of Made2Manage Systems. In late June Onyx issued a confirmation, "responding" to "the recent press releases issued by CDC Software regarding the definitive merger agreement executed between Onyx and M2M Holdings, Inc." Onyx said yes, it was still happily engaged to M2M, thank you very much.

Onyx officials noted at the time that CDC’s June 20 press release described an all cash $4.85 offer, "yet only two days later, CDC has abandoned its all cash offer and now purports to offer Onyx shareholders only a combination of cash and stock, demonstrating CDC’s inconsistent statements and unpredictable behavior." They added that the stock could be trading as low as $4.50 by the time the deal went down, too.

Now it's early July. Industry trade journal InsightExec reports that CDC is offering a cash bid of $5 per share in their hostile takeover bid for Onyx. "After continued refusals by Onyx to consider seriously our prior offers to acquire the company, we have been forced to take our offer directly to the Onyx stockholder," said CDC Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Peter Yip, who personally found the offer "clearly superior" to Onyx’s prefered option of selling out to M2M Holdings.

The latest hostile offer, InsightExec says, "comes after CDC offered to buy Onyx for a $50 million cash infusion, saying it would contribute all of its software assets. Onyx rejected the bid, and CDC upped its offer to $80 million."

Later in July Onyx confirms that CDC made its unsolicited cash tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Onyx’s common stock not already held by CDC or its affiliates for $5.00 per share.

Onyx had consistently refused to even discuss making reasonable accommodation to allow CDC to conduct due diligence in connection with negotiating what CDC euphemistically calls "a merger agreement," which should have been the key tipoff right there that they were rummaging around in the medicine chest for the poison pill bottle. Onyx had even made CDC commit to a timeline ending Tuesday evening on July 25, 2006 PST.

Bottom line, Onyx spurned what CDC thought of as "reasonable evidence" that CDC had adequate internal funds to consummate the offer, and imposed a deadline of Tuesday evening, July 25, 2006 PST to complete all due diligence.

Several of the conditions the Onyx board chose not to meet were to waive the provisions of Onyx's poison pill and render the provisions of Washington State's anti-takeover provision inapplicable to CDC.

So seeing as how Onyx set a due diligence deadline and then did everything in their power to make sure CDC wouldn’t meet it short of shooting CDC accountants with rubber bands, CDC's management and board has as of now determined that it is "extremely unlikely the Onyx board would ever take the actions required to satisfy the conditions to CDC's tender offer," and therefore considers continued pursuit of the tender offer "not be the best and most productive use of management's time and CDC's resources."

Probably the correct conclusion. Oh but CDC has to play sour grapes, you know, they really didn't want to go out with that cheerleader, don't know why you would imagine they would. "On July 17, 2006, Onyx announced surprisingly poor preliminary financial results for Q2 2006, including license revenues of only $1.6 million and total revenue in the range of $11.7 million to $11.9 million," CDC officials say, still managing to sound like a guy crying in his beer at the bar.

Still, CDC continues to be "disappointed with the obstacles to productive discussions from Onyx's board of directors. We believe that the process used to sell the company will not provide Onyx shareholders with maximum value," according to Peter Yip, CEO of CDC Corporation.

But it looks like this one's over, folks. Stick a fork in it.

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

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bix Beiderbecke's "Trumbology:"

Along with the (hopefully eternally departed) GlobeTel saga, another ongoing area of CRM coverage for First Coffee has been the actions of certain online vendors whose malfeasance destroys customer confidence.

It's not like online commerce is going away, we're not getting all apocalyptic about it here, but frankly put, there are a lot of people who'd be doing a lot more business online if they simply knew who to avoid. And there'd be even more people doing business online if such vendors weren't there in the first place.

This is quite a big deal here at First Coffee, seeing as how we're primarily a Customer Relationship Management blog, educating your musical taste is merely a sideline -- and to that end, pay no attention to the left-wing British rag The Guardian's list "50 Albums That Changed Music."

Suffice it to say that any list which can get through 50 supposedly "influential" albums, including The Spice Girls, Mary J. Blige, Massive Attack, Chic and The Human League, without listing Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, one of the two or three records which changed how everyone wrote songs, was put together by Brits simply incapable of understanding what makes an American-created musical genre tick. It's kind of like thinking the human actors were the real draws in Jaws and Jurassic Park.

One's surprised Frankie Goes To Hollywood isn't on the list, as their idea of "influential" is "sounds like what I heard when I was stoned in a club in Manchester a few years back." One record is cited for its "influence" on "Native American and Maori reggae bands." I'll give you all day and you can't come up with an example of a Native American or Maori reggae band anybody outside of the Guardian's editorial offices has ever heard.

But CRM is based on trust. That's it. Trust that you as a customer will be treated fairly in your interactions with the company, and trust from the company's point of view that you the customer will respond to efforts to retain you as a customer. And face it, those of us who do business online a lot still have that twinge of "Am I going to get ripped off this time?" when we hit that "Send Order" button.

Which is why as CRM proponent First Coffee takes a particularly dim view of companies who have a pattern of confusing, underdelivering and otherwise scaring off customers. One company I've had personal experience of doing this is Caiman.com, and I wrote about the experience and the terrible customer "service" they offer, vowing never to buy anything from them again. That post, and topic, inspired more comments and e-mails than any other topic I've ever written on.

They keep coming, too: Recently I got this comment. This person's experience sounds hellish, but I tell you it's of a piece with almost every other commenter's experience with this particular online retailer, so I use it as a morality play, my Textbook CRM Case for How Not To Treat Online Customers. Caiman.com provides you with an extensive CRM checklist of What Not To Do To Customers.

Business people love case studies, the comments I've gotten on Caiman.com add up to the Stephen King of CRM case studies. So let's use this as a pop quiz. Count how many things Caiman.com does to provide bad service and lose a customer. We'll compare scores at the end, extra points for tallying up the unbelievably bad contact center service as well, start quote:

DON'T USE CAIMAN! Hopefully I've caught you in time. I recently ordered something for my father's birthday (which is 7/22). I placed the order through Abebooks.com on 7/16, which told me my estimated delivery time was 2-6 days. If I got the item in 6 days, that would be just enough time for Dad's b-day. I paid EXTRA for the faster shipping. 

Abebooks.com connected me to Caiman.com, their supplier for this item. It said the item was located in Florida, and since I'm in Massachusetts, the package shouldn't take that long to arrive. Since I'm pretty impatient, I logged into Caiman's website to make sure my package had been shipped. For three days it said "processing." 

We all know that "processing" does not mean "shipped," so I tried to contact Caiman. There is NO PHONE NUMBER AT ALL! I wrote them a few e-mails which I was supposed to have answered in 24 hours, but that never happened. I previously asked them a question about the color of he item I ordered and they never got back to me on that, either. 

Anyway, I figured I'd contact Abebooks.com (another one with no phone number ... I had to call the media department) since they already debited my MC for the money for the item. They told me that if it goes past 48 hours, they themselves can send a message to the supplier asking them to get back to me ASAP.

I finally start getting answers from Caiman. The first e-mail I received was something like, "Your order is still processing." It was one of those generic message. WTF, right? Then I got a message regarding my question about the color of my item. It said, "Please read your item description for further details." Whatever. I later checked the Caiman.com site and it said that my item was "in transit" and that the ETA for delivery was 7/24. 

I NEED THIS BY 7/22!!! I went to Abebooks.com and checked to see what ETA they had and they had a delivery date of 7/25. UNACCEPTABLE! Why did I pay for shipping in 2-6 days if they weren't going to send it? I start freaking. There had to be a phone number for Caiman.com. THANKS TO THIS SITE, I found a contact number. [Abebooks: 250-475-6013, Caiman: 305-262-4973. You're welcome - FC]

I called them and I finally got a rep. She looked up my item and I asked her why I would receive it on 7/24 and not 7/22 like I expected. She said, "Uh ... your item hasn't even been shipped." I told her what Caiman.com had posted on their site under "track your order" but she told me that they were wrong. I said, "Well, what should I do?" She said it could take anywhere from 2 days to a MONTH to get my order. I asked her to look up a possible tracking number since Abebooks.com also said that my item was shipped (I figured she just didn't know what she was talking about) but then she shocked me. She said, "Do you want to cancel the order?" 

I said no, but she insisted and said, "Maybe you should just cancel. I would." HELLO? Don't they want business? The Caiman.com rep just told me to cancel. I said, "GLADLY!" She told me that I would be sent a confirmation e-mail and that my refund of over $100 should be processed in 24-72 hours. 

THAT IS NOT THE WORST PART! I asked for a supervisor and she said that she didn't have one. I asked her if she was the boss of the whole company (not having a boss and all) but she said no. I asked to speak to someone else but she said that there was no one there. She said she was in a room alone and that she was the first one to arrive for work that day. WTF???? 

I hang up with her and call Abebooks.com. They told me that the supplier (Caiman) has to cancel the order. The best part was when the Abebooks.com rep took my call and looked up my item number, she reads, "You ordered 'The Rise and Fall of the British Empire,' right?" Um ... no. Anyway, she told me that I should wait to hear from Caiman despite the fact that Abebooks.com is the one who debited my MC. Nonetheless, I get an e-mail from Caiman that read "a request for a refund will be processed in 24-72 hours." Oh well, I guess my Dad isn't getting a b-day gift for 24-72 hours. 

HERE IT IS ... THE BEST PART. My bank called me. Suspicious charges from Amazon.com have shown up on my debit card. The first one was for $1.00 something and the next one was for $143.00. The bank held the charges because they looked suspicious and so they were calling me to find out if I had made those purchases. I told her the only charge I authorized for my debit card was the $100+ order to Abebooks.com. She said that was approved, but she would have to cancel my card because apparently someone had taken the number and was using it to buy stuff on Amazon.com. 

I NEVER had this problem before ordering from Abebooks/Caiman.com. Seriously, never go through either of them. It's a trap. They take your card and make charges on it. You will never get your stuff. I'm almost positive that I'm going to have to chase these S.O.B.s down for my damn refund. I'm so annoyed. DON'T USE THEM! Caiman sucks.

End quote. Okay, how'd you do? I lost count about the time the contact center employee urged the customer to cancel the order from the company, but I'd used up all my fingers and had taken my shoes off by that point, I remember.

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

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the Screaming Blue Messiahs' "I Wanna Be A Flintstone." By the way, if anyone knows where I can get that CD again -- I have just the one song downloaded from Limewire -- please let me know:

Just to wrap off a topic First Coffee's covered regularly for months now, then we'll be done with these jokers, since it looks like these jokers will be toast toot sweet:

GlobeTel, which hit First Coffee's radar screen with an out of the blue, too good to be true $600 million Russian Wi-MAX deal last year, will have its shares delisted by the American Stock Exchange. Several news sources report that the AMEX has stopped trading of the stock.

This news came out last week while First Coffee was sampling the customer relationship management practiced by various Munich beer gardens and coffee shops -- we're pleased to report it's wonderful, although more research may be needed in the future. There'll be more coming out about this delisting, no doubt, but frankly First Coffee's tired of these clowns and isn't promising any more coverage after this column; I always kind of feel I need a shower after writing about GlobeTel.

The official version is that the Fort Lauderdale-based Delaware corporation, founded in 2002, has "issued a pattern of overly promotional press releases," according to BizJournals. Other reasons given were that GlobeTel has not issued the exchange information concerning the company, and that GlobeTel or its management "has engaged in operations, which, in the opinion of the exchange, are contrary to the public interest."

But basically, it boils down to the fact that, scientifically, legally and telecommunicationally, these guys are a bunch of weenies. The company lost $6.2 million in 2003, $13.2 million in 2004 and $32 million in 2005 while issuing a blizzard of the most blushingly upbeat press releases outside of Pyongyang around the Dear Leader's birthday.

Props for poking GlobeTel's blimp go in large part to Seth Jayson, Motley Fool writer who has earned the right to raise a glass or two of 101-proof I Told You So bourbon. He started reading the fine print in GlobeTel's sunnier than thou publications last year, and found that he didn't like what he saw very much. As he wrote last week, "penny stocks don't get very far without PR. And they can go incredibly far when PR manages to bamboozle members of the business press."

First Coffee picked up on GlobeTel back in January when he noticed a press release stating "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."

First Coffee loves a catfight as much as the next reporter, and read Jayson's piece, learning that GlobeTel stock shot up 75 percent in a single day in late December after announcing a $600 million " Wi-MAX wireless network" deal for the "30 largest Russian cities," as Jayson said.

Then in a piece titled "More Hot Air From GlobeTel" on January 6 at Motley Fool Jayson said that GlobeTel had a history of hiring brass bands to trumpet the greatest project since free beer and ice cream, few of which ever actually materialized. There was the Internet blimps over Colombia idea, not that that wouldn't make a great title for a Radiohead album, the turnkey VoIP products, deals for wireless networks in China, Japan, and Germany, and "many other projects that so far seem to have produced nothing more than penny-stock froth."

Froth it did, no latté has ever had more. The deal in Russia to supply Wi-MAX to every Ivan and Olga was, according to GlobeTel, to be the greatest thing to hit Russia since the invention of vodka, stealing the market right out from under the nose of Nokia, Avaya, Verizon, Comcast and those other pikers. Warning, Will Robinson, warning. Credibility alert.

GlobeTel's brash CEO Tim Huff promised that $150 million of the funding would be in place by January 31. It wasn't, so as his share price tanked he wrote a press release saying well, y'know, it's a pretty complicated international deal, so the regulators and lawyers and all what have you are making sure everything's legit.

GlobeTel's Russian investors were some company called Internafta LLC, which had no track record in telecom and whose only publicly-identified partner, Maxim Chernizov, said he made his money in "rare earth metals." He swears he isn't Mafia.

Explaining how the completely unknown GlobeTel, with no track record of success, aced out the likes of Cisco and Qualcomm, and all the major multinational, European telecoms in landing the Wi-MAX deal, Chernizov claimed GlobeTel has "new technology to improve the depth and breadth of telephony and other wireless services." GlobeTel executives have never explained the nature of this "new technology."

First Coffee heard from a friend in Russian telecom, Nigel, about what all this looks like from the Russian perspective. "Funny," he wrote, and you could almost hear him sigh. "All the operators here in Russia are getting lots of calls on GlobeTel, and even the authorities are asking us about it."

The Russian market has lots of potential, but the penetration of broadband is not going to be that spectacular, Nigel thinks, "even amongst us that are enthusiastic over the market potential. We don't see more than 10 per 100 penetration for broadband subscribers (note subscribers and not users) over the next 6 years on a nationwide basis."

"I sure wish I had $600 million to spend in Russia, but even if I had a quarter of this amount, it would be a challenge to invest it wisely," Nigel observed. "This all takes a lot of time and experience, and most of the really interesting spectrum is not even available at this point. In any case, I would not want to be doing this for the first time in Russia." 

One GlobeTel shareholder wrote to First Coffee saying "I will disclose that my biggest pet peeve with the GlobeTel management right now is their lack of disclosure and secrets. The problem with GlobeTel is that it seems -- in pure Tom Clancy style -- the operations are 'black bag' secrets and shareholders are left in the dark.

"The SEC filings are very clear in the operations to date, but it has not been profitable so there is no credibility. As a shareholder, I would like more than LOI, but I am a patient person looking to score on the long side (and trade some in the short term…) So, we (collective shareholders) are left wondering and hoping that Huff is a man of his word."

Indeed. Of course the Russian deal collapsed, and along with it GlobeTel's stock price and credibility. Shareholders began launching lawsuits, and the mainstream press noticed that hey, something doesn't smell right with GlobeTel.

Then in late May New York Post financial writer Chris Byron blew GlobeTel right out of the water, calling on theAmerican Stock Exchange to "halt trading in the shares of GlobeTel Communications Corp."

Byron said GlobeTel officials have "pirouetted from one see-through ploy to the next to create the illusion of value in a worthless penny stock." He recounted in convincing fashion what he characterized as "two complete pump-and-dump cycles that have sent an astounding 1.1 billion shares of its stock churning through the market," resulting in "bogus $350 million market value for the company, two-thirds of which has now evaporated, with $74 million of it detouring into the outstretched hands of the company's insiders."

The two "ploys," of course, were the blimps-over-Colombia for cell phone transmission and the $600 million Wi-MAX in Russia schemes, neither of which resulted in anything but a lot of nice-sounding press releases and a slew of class action suits filed against the company on behalf of investors.

Law enforcement finally decided to start poking their noses around GlobeTel, hopefully with clothespins. Then came the announcement that AMEX would be doing the right thing and delisting GlobeTel shares. On Thursday the stock went from about a buck to just north of 50 cents.

Anyway, it looks like the end of the road for GlobeTel. It's certainly the end of First Coffee caring about it, so R.I.P., GlobeTel.

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

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the song "Wild Mountain Thyme" as done by Long John Baldry, Jennifer Licko, The Dust Rhinos, Kevin Slick, The Byrds, Emerald Rose, Papa M and others. The Dust Rhinos' performance is the best of all the versions I have, Emerald Rose's is pretty good, The Byrds' is surprisingly bad:

CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and provider of enterprise software applications, has announced the launch of its Software as a Service human resources and payroll applications throughout China.

HRP OnDemand, a hosted human resources/payroll management product, is CDC Software's first SaaS enterprise application offering to the China market. It's now available on a subscription basis with what company officials describe as "low up-front costs," through both direct and indirect sales channels.

CDC Software will also work with Microsoft to launch SaaS customer relationship management (CRM) offerings in China in December this year.

"We believe that this is one of the first instances in China where software applications are available on demand throughout the region and delivered through a proven network," said Richard Thomas, Senior Vice President of Asia Pacific Region, CDC Software. "This service should be very attractive for our current client base, the rapidly expanding market of over 20 million small and medium enterprises (SME) in China."

Ian Whitehouse, Managing Director of China, CDC Software said the launch of the SaaS offerings in China "is tailor-made for our China customers." HRP OnDemand is delivered through the infrastructure established throughout the country by China.com, the online services arm of CDC Corporation and a sister company of CDC Software.

The network is established nationwide in 30 provinces and 4 municipalities, and CDC Software will use it to deliver enterprise applications as online services with servers in all key Chinese cities.

Dr. Xiaowei Chen, Chief Financial Officer of China.com Inc. emphasized that the target market here is SME. "We are pleased to partner with our sister company, CDC Software, to offer these compelling and cost effective applications to millions of SMEs in China, whose growth will be key in the continued expansion of the Chinese economy," he said.

Chen said the launch of the SaaS service on July 13th is "particularly auspicious and appropriate," as it marks "the 7th anniversary of CDC's IPO on NASDAQ."

For the launch CDC Software has partnered with two early-adopter customers for HRP OnDemand: Shanghai Tuo Yuan Network Technology Co., Ltd. and Beijing Han Bo Zhong Tian Management Consulting Co., Ltd.

On May 23, 2006, CDC Software announced a strategic alliance with Microsoft to develop, market and deliver CRM enterprise applications to customers in China. The companies will offer the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform together with the CDC Software c360 CRM add-ons as on-site applications in China.

As part of the agreement, the two companies will develop and deliver Microsoft CRM applications as hosted, on-demand services in China, which are scheduled for launch in December this year.

Deacom, Inc. has announced that La Tortilla Factory, headquartered in Santa Rosa, California has chosen the Deacom Accounting & Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software System to integrate its entire food manufacturing operations.

La Tortilla Factory, the first baker to introduce fat-free and low-carb tortillas to the market, (some people would think that's a good thing, I guess, but it strikes First Coffee about the same way nonalcoholic whiskey does) will use the Deacom ERP software system to control inventory levels, access sales order information online, manage formulas, and reduce existing manual processes, such as EDI order imports and customer relationship management (CRM).

“With all the growth in the past few years, our manual process control systems have become cumbersome and not very cost effective,” explains Stan Mead, CFO of La Tortilla Factory. “We need the integrated Deacom software system to improve and automate process control in sales, purchasing, inventory, lot tracking, and accounting.”

Jay Deakins, President and Founder of Deacom, Inc., which I guess, yeah, probably is a snappier business name than Deakins, Inc., which sounds too much like that moving company or Susie in Calvin & Hobbes, says Deacom is "designed to be an intuitive software system for batch process manufacturers. That’s why it works so well for the food and beverage manufacturing industry," since it allows for the security and scalability necessary for a highly-regulated product.

No word on whether Jay prefers the normal fat, normal carb tortillas, the ones that taste so good.

The Deacom ERP system is set to achieve full implementation by September of 2006.

Canadian CRM vendor Homeserve Technologies Inc. has reported net income of $4.1 million ($0.48 per common share) on revenues of $5.4 million for the first quarter ended May 31, 2006, compared to net income of $4.3 million ($1.07 per common share) on revenues of $5.1 million for the same period of the last fiscal year.

The $0.2 million quarter-over-quarter decrease in net income was primarily attributed to a $0.3 million increase in amortization from the additional consideration added to the ICON intangible asset in fiscal 2006, as a result of the ICON earn-out option.

Company officials say they're continuing to focus on "rationalizing and controlling costs," developing its CARE II CRM capabilities and assessing opportunities both internal and through co-ownership to further develop the Company's CALMS product offering.

Homeserve will consider seeking a re-listing of the company's common shares when there is a reasonable probability of returning value to common shareholders after having considered the overall capitalization of the company, and in particular the servicing of the obligations related to the company's preferred shares, including their potential redemption.

Homeserve focuses on home-related services for the real estate, relocation and banking industries. Through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Home-Link Services Canada Ltd., Homeserve provides a one-stop shopping service for home buyers and sellers, offering real-estate related products and services throughout the customer's purchasing and selling cycle, coordinated by a proprietary CRM software system and call center.

The last time Israel's neighbors all ganged up and attacked Israel in a war they lasted almost an entire week before Israel blew them to pieces. Maybe they'll hold out longer than that this time. Some people just aren't very smart.

InstantService, a vendor of online customer communications, has announced the release of several enhancements to its chat and e-mail management product.

A new chat client API allows InstantService customers to control the look and feel of their users' chat experience, including the ability to create a branded and unique chat interface in any application, such as an online role-playing game.

The e-mail management suite also includes a couple key features to enhance agent productivity: Multiple Mail Message Reply and Mail Queue Filtering enable reps to more quickly handle commonly asked questions while sorting through multiple queues.

InstantService is a hosted application that integrates with existing ecommerce and CRM systems.

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

The news as of the first coffee this morning here in beautiful crime-free Istanbul, and the guy next door to your apartment has tuned this radio, pounding through your cardboard-thin walls at an ungodly early hour, to Radio KCRM 98.6, All Exile On Main Street All The Time, brought to you by Eljer, the only name you need to know in plumbing fixtures:

Just to let all you guys and dolls know that Radio KCRM will be in Munich next week for a week of R'n'R, so we'll be giving your dial a chance to cool down, returning to our regularly-scheduled programming Tuesday July 25th. Please, no suicide attempts.

Security at the Hofbrauhaus will be beefed up in anticipation of the crush of adoring fans. Last time Radio KCRM was in Munich he went with a friend to the Hofbrauhaus for a little home-brewed Bavarian culture -- okay, a lot of home-brewed Bavarian culture -- and was seated next to a table of Korean tourists and served by a Cambodian waitress. Maybe we could at least have a Western European waitress this time?

We here at Radio KCRM know that it is the human condition to be imperfect -- look at Bill Keller, after all -- and Radio KCRM is no exception: It appears that Mistakes Have Been Made, switch to passive for most effective buck-passing:

Thank you for taking the time to cover SRC and their recent announcement of the Alteryx 2.0 product in "SRC Announces CRM-Compatible Alteryx 2.0," http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2006/07/11/1710074.htm.

You're welcome. This news was also pointed out in Tuesday's column under Radio KCRM's alter -- and evidently more mistake-prone -- ego, First Coffee.

I wanted to bring to your attention that SRC, LLC. (www.ExtendTheReach.com) is not the same as SRC Software (mentioned in the last paragraph of your article) and was therefore not purchased by Business Objects.

Well howdy-doo, that pretty well uses up the allocated mistake budget for the month.

Please let me know when you will be able to run a correction on the article.

Please let me know if I can provide you with any more information.

Sure, you can tell me why two companies working the same side of the street have the same damn name, for one thing, if not solely to make life hard for those of us in the Fourth and Long Estate. I mean, you don't find any other rock band naming itself The Rolling Stones, you don't have authors picking "John Grisham" or "William Shakespeare" for a nom de plume, you don't find American states naming themselves after the nation's capital, sure you do find two Canadian Football League teams using the same name [True Fact™] but that's understandable, I mean after all there are what, eight or ten teams for Canadians to name so of course there'll be some repetition.

No doubt somebody's already got the www.src.com URL (which, as it turns out, is taken by the Atmospheric Studies Group at TRC, makes sense to Radio KCRM), is it really so difficult for two companies working roughly the same particular industry sector to come up with two different names?

The whole thing is my wife's husband's fault, we'll see that he pays dearly for this. I see four… no, five heads from the Radio KCRM 98.6 Fact-Checking Department on poles in the company cafeteria now, rest assured we'll get everyone responsible.

And in the top news story of the day, that headline you thought you'd never see, you were pretty sure you'd see "Osama bin-Laden Converts to Judaism" or "Spine Sighted In Democrat Party Apart From Joe Lieberman" first, according to industry observer Sandra Rossi, "St. George has completed its deployment of PeopleSoft CRM on time and half a million dollars under budget."

The $15.9 million project took seven months to roll out, Rossi reports, "and will enable 8,400 staff to provide more 'personalized' services, the Holy Grail of tech success in the financial services industry."

Indeed, PeopleSoft was integrated with the Teradata warehouse and other existing CRM systems, and as Rossi says, "it replaces three legacy systems including the old lead management system, campaign management system and a third-party local marketing solution from Carrekar called Enact."

Moving right along here at Radio KCRM 98.6, All Adam Carroll All The Time, the good folks over at Select Management Resources, A Rod Aycox company, would like to let you the listener in on its plans to team up with Emerald TC, LLC for the implementation of Sage MAS 500.

For those of you who don't know, MAS 500 is a software system with integrated products that automate all areas of business management including CRM, accounting and financials, project accounting, distribution, manufacturing, human resources, and more.

In addition, Emerald TC will provide professional application training and implementation during the transition to Sage MAS 500.

Emerald TC sells the kind of business software that companies ("of all sizes!") use to get the most from their financial and business data. Billing itself "the premier Sage MAS 500 provider in Atlanta," and anyone from Peachtree Land who knows otherwise do call in, Emerald TC helps companies choose and implement tech products. Here's betting they can even hook up your DVD player if your eleven-year old's busy.

Australian industry observer Angus Kidman (no relation, we presume) notes that discount airline Jetstar is gearing up to expand its customer-facing RightNow CRM system, as well as the internal system. Porquoi? Hey, when you fly to Japan you gotta speak Japanese.

Later this year, Kidman reports, Jetstar will expand its international flights to Japan, Indonesia, Honolulu, Thailand and Vietnam. And customer service isn't far behind: "Shortly after the sales launch for those routes, it plans to launch a Japanese-language of its main jetstar.com site," he writes, "complete with a selection of translated questions from the current RightNow system."

Turns out the company's customer-facing RightNow CRM system was so useful Jetstar employees were using it themselves: "When Jetstar rolled out its Australian site implementation of the query database, it was surprised to discover that many of its own staff were using what had been intended largely as a customer-facing system."

"We're looking at an internal version of RightNow which may include slightly more detail and be skewed towards the internal user," a company official told Kidman. "It will have the same questions but also potentially additional information for people operating over the phone."

Jetstar earned a black eye in the CRM world recently for saying it will discontinue unassigned seating, much-beloved by those of us who know how to get somewhere on time. Nadia D'Almeida, her husband Tim, and their two-year-old Aidan, who flew Jetstar from Sydney to Ballina told industry observer Jane Gardner the existing first-in first-served system is "fantastic. When you're traveling with a child, and carrying all the gear that comes with it you get so overwhelmed. On Jetstar, if you have a young child they let you get on first. It's so nice after such an exhausting journey."

Jetstar chief executive Alan Joyce said automatic seat allocations will begin on all domestic services on or after October 29.

Sigh. Another one bites the dust. But hey, not to end the show on a down note here at Radio KCRM 98.6, All Uncle Kracker All The Time, we'd like you to remember that Dan Rather is still off the air, al-Zarqawi is still dead and not a single one of the twenty-something candidates backed by Daily Kos have won their election. R.I.P. Ned Lamont.

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

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Thelonious Monk's Brilliant Corners:

First Coffee finds it difficult to read, much less understand, jazz criticism, most of which assumes the reader possesses a working knowledge of Mixolydian scales, as opposed to rock criticism, which assumes the reader possesses a working knowledge of beer.

Talking about a record's "arithmetical chord progressions" or "ironic precision" leaves me rather confused, and I'm not sure exactly what's being referred to by "incorporation of the celeste," unless that's a glockenspiel-type instrument I haven't heard of yet, and I take it that "the alpha and omega of post-World War II American jazz" is a compliment, but what it means I can't say.

I do know, however, that Brilliant Corners is one of the best musical discoveries I've made since, oh, Louis Jordan or Peter Wolf.

Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company, has introduced Factiva SalesWorks for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 for Microsoft Certified Partners participating in the Factiva Partner Program. Factiva SalesWorks is a global collection of company, industry and executive news and information.

Directly from within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, users can view a snapshot of a particular company or executive, allowing them to identify and qualify prospects quickly. Factiva SalesWorks can also be integrated into such environments such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services, Office Outlook 2003 and Office Word 2003.

Factiva has developed more than 15 Factiva SalesWorks components for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies that facilitate the delivery of content in context. It's integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 as a way for salespeople to "find and understand information critical to the sales process," said Greg Gerdy, vice president of channel marketing, Factiva: "As a result, salespeople spend less time looking for data."

The product is being billed as extending the consultative role of Microsoft Certified Partners, while increasing selling opportunities and extending their market reach. And "combining Factiva SalesWorks content with a customer's important CRM information promotes greater adoption of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0," according to Gerdy.

Quilogy, a Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner, has become the first national systems integrator to offer SalesWorks.

"Marketplace reception of Factiva SalesWorks has been very strong," said Alan Groh, chief technology officer for Quilogy, who said the value customers see in integrating Factiva SalesWorks' premium business news and information into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 is "to help increase adoption of their technology investment."

Factiva is a Dow Jones and Reuters Company, claiming a collection of more than 10,000 "authoritative sources," including the "exclusive combination of The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Dow Jones and Reuters newswires and the Associated Press, as well as Reuters Fundamentals and D&B company profiles.

Riverside Consulting Group, Ltd. has announced the launch of a new offering for Software as a Service. With the announcement of new pricing for Microsoft Dynamics ERP software, Riverside Consulting is offering a hosted ERP platform for small and medium business on the Microsoft Dynamics GP suite.

This, Riverside officials say, opens "once costly ERP and Accounting software to the smallest of businesses for reasonable price." It dovetails with Bill Gates's statement that “if we're going to empower people in the best way possible, we've got to get into actual business processes, into the business roles."

The expansion of the enterprise-grade ERP system from its traditional home in the large enterprise space to now include the small and medium business space opens competition for Microsoft with companies such as Peachtree and QuickBooks. Microsoft's hoping it does better than it has in fields such as personal finance, where Intuit has regularly kicked its butt.

Such offerings are now possible through the addition of the Microsoft Dynamics GP suite to the Service Provider License Agreement sponsored by Microsoft, as this special agreement allows a hosting service provider to sell licenses to customers on a monthly subscription rate, as opposed to other license arrangements that require a large up-front investment for a perpetual license.

“The SPLA has saved the software as a service market,” believes Diane Silva, Chairman of the Board for Riverside Consulting.

Riverside Consulting Group, while no longer the only company in this market space, was one of the early pioneers in the ERP SaaS marketplace. Located in Riverside, Illinois, the company was founded in 2002 and provides ERP and CRM products built on the Microsoft platform.

In 2005, Joe Johnson was tapped to expand the business into the hosted application market. Johnson, once the youngest business owner in Illinois, built his company, JMDN.net, into one of the largest Fox Valley consulting firms before selling the company at the young age of 17. He now serves as Chief Technology Office of RCG and manages the company’s hosting unit.

Desktopsites Inc. does access serverware for small and mid-size businesses, and has announced the addition of CyberQuest Systems Ltd. to its Konect Reseller Partner Program.

Syed Ali, CRM Specialist at CyberQuest says that while the market for IT products and services is growing substantially for small and mid-size customers, "it has been a struggle to add quality and affordable new products to serve this market as well as the enterprise market."

“Our new partners are demonstrating an increasing interest in not only provisioning Konect to our target market of small and mid-size customers but also with larger enterprise customers,” said Alex Bethlehem, President and CEO of desktopsites.

Desktopsites sells on-demand application publishing serverware products for small and mid-size businesses globally. Its Konect product enables companies to extend network resources and publish applications.

CyberQuest Solutions says its goal is to be a global IT leader in the areas of CRM and project management.

Connextions Inc. has announced the appointment of Albert A. Prast as Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer. Prast, who most recently served in a similar capacity for Rotech Healthcare Inc., will be responsible for all IT-related services at Connextions and at Connextions Health, the company's healthcare services operation.

"Our proprietary CRM platform enables our clients to provide superior service and drive sales by integrating customer interactions, automating contact center activity, and using customer data to strengthen loyalty and retention," said Connextions Founder and CEO Jack LeFort. "The strategic direction of our technological and CRM capabilities aligns perfectly with the evolution of Consumer-Driven Healthcare in the United States, which increasingly will assign all aspects of healthcare-related decision-making to individual consumers."

LeFort said the addition of Prast "better enables Connextions to expand and refine our IT platform capabilities; to address an even more sophisticated range of CRM needs; and to capture the significant market opportunities emerging in CDH."

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The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Slobberbone's "Pinball Song." Happy Battle Of the Boyne Day:

As Steve Ballmer said, Microsoft made the least surprising announcement in its history in Boston yesterday, that they'd like a bigger slice of the software as a service pie.

We've all seen this coming a mile or twelve off, that Microsoft lusteth heavily after salesforce.com, NetSuite, RightNow et al's success selling CRM and other business software online.

But first they needed a CRM worth selling online, and they think they have it fourth time around -- third, to be technically correct since they punted 2.0: According to industry observer Andy Patrizio, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, code-named "Titan," provides true multi-tenancy, "which will allow for multiple customer accounts on a single server."

This, Patrizio says, "will make Microsoft CRM much more competitive with software-as-a-service providers like Salesforce.com, Microsoft's primary target with the release of CRM Live."

We'll see. Marc Benioff remains sanguine, of course, professing not to really care one way or the other what happens in Redmond.

A year ago RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte told First Coffee that as far as the likes of SAP and Microsoft jumping into hosted CRM goes, "there is nothing to be nervous about. These companies are simply recognizing that the hosted model we've been delivering more effectively than anyone else for almost a decade now is the way to go."

Their problem, Gianforte said, is that "they can't possibly beat us at our own game. SAP, for example, would have to completely re-write all of its applications from scratch in order to build a multi-tenancy architecture to match ours. And, from a business perspective, they would have to replace this huge services ecosystem they've developed over the years that thrives on complexity and difficulty."

This is last September that Gianforte's saying this, now. "Microsoft faces similar hurdles," he said at the time. "Enterprise applications are something you have to sell direct, which they don't do. And Microsoft's customers are in IT -- not the business unit, which is where the on-demand buyer is."

Basically, as far as Gianforte's concerned, "the dinosaurs of the software industry can make all the noise they want to. To really come after us, they'd have to completely cannibalize their existing business. They can't afford to do that, and Wall Street won't let them."

With more than 15,000 cards signed in the first week, Xerox Corporation's new Web site, www.LetsSayThanks.com, is a great way for people to send messages to deployed soldiers to show their thanks and support.

Specialist Tommy Brooks of the Illinois Army National Guard says there's nothing like getting mail from home.  After recently completing a 12 month tour in Iraq, Brooks recalled how "with regular mail, it's all yours to keep and take with you when you're on the move."

Visitors to www.LetsSayThanks.com simply click on their favorite free postcard, designed by children from across the country, and enter a message of support.  Xerox will then print and distribute the postcards to soldiers in care packages sent by military support organization Give2TheTroops.

First Coffee's been to the site and encourages readers to take a few minutes and let our soldiers know that yes, moonbats to the contrary the vast majority of Americans do support and appreciate the sacrifices they're making on our behalf.

On-demand CRM vendor NetSuite, Inc., has announced that Business Solutions from The Carphone Warehouse, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse Group (a UK FTSE 250 company), has selected NetSuite CRM+ for its sales force automation (SFA), marketing automation, and customer support.

Business Solutions from The Carphone Warehouse has licensed 400 user seats and will implement NetSuite in three phases starting with SFA for prospecting, opportunity management and booking orders; marketing automation for executing targeted campaigns; and customer support and service for all business users of Business Solutions from The Carphone Warehouse.

In light of what BSCW officials call "the successful results its sister company Opal Telecom has achieved using NetSuite," Business Solutions from The Carphone Warehouse was sold on giving it a shot.

Got a great comment on First Coffee's recent post lamenting Southwest Airlines' trying out assigned seating:

How about all of us who disagree with SW changing into a traditional airline with reserved seats take a little action?

I suggest every passenger concerned about this simply take your sweet old time boarding. A minute extra moving a little slower down the jetway to the plane, say hello to the flight attendant at the door and exchange a few words, find your assigned seat and rest a few moments before you put your suitcase in the overhead bin. Make sure your seat is the way you like it before you sit down.

SW says they are evaluating if assigned seating decreases the amount of boarding time required for a flight. Register your complaint as above and perhaps they'll get the answer and abandon this stupid (new) management thinking.

Excellent idea. The whole principle of Customer Relationship Management is that customer service is a two-way contract between vendor and customer. If one side does something that affects the other side, those effects need to be communicated in a way that'll merit attention.

Sorry the column's a bit late this morning, I've had to take frequent breaks to rest my eyes because I had Lasik surgery yesterday. Greatest $800 I've ever spent.

Had it done here in Istanbul for a total cost -- visits, checkups, operation for both eyes, etc. -- of $800 by a world-class Lasik doctor who spends a week out of each month operating in Germany and Holland, but who stays in Istanbul because hey, when you live in a house your grandfather built and your mother and the rest of your family still lives on the top floors, you don't leave.

But I went from not being able to read billboards across the street without my glasses to 20/20 vision in both eyes. Went out and bought a pair of $100 sunglasses, which my kids'll either break or lose next week, to celebrate.

Things like spoons, books and pens look about 20 percent bigger than they did before, and you realize the world isn't as… curved around the edges as you'd thought. There's some discomfort the first day, but after that you're fine.

So fly here, stay in a fine hotel, have the operation, spend a day or two or five in one of the greatest tourist cities in the world with plenty to test your new, improved sight on and you'd still spend less than you would having it done in America.

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

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Frank Sinatra's Come Fly With Me album:

Microsoft has announced the Business Ready Licensing model and the Business Ready Enhancement Plan for Microsoft Dynamics that introduces "simplifications and improvements in value to the licensing and maintenance programs" for its Microsoft Dynamics business management products, according to company officials.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM customer relationship management functionality will be included on the Microsoft Business Solutions price lists over the next 12 months, starting with Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Business Ready Licensing is described as an attempt to streamline pricing for Microsoft Dynamics products -- Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics SL -- by "moving from a pricing model based on hundreds of modules and granules to a new model based primarily on the number of concurrent users who actually use the software."

This new model has three offerings: Microsoft Dynamics Business Essentials, Microsoft Dynamics Advanced Management and Microsoft Dynamics Advanced Management Enterprise.

The models are based primarily on common functionality and, Microsoft officials claim, represent "a price reduction for a typical entry-level configuration, eliminating much of the complexity of licensing enterprise resource planning software."

Microsoft Dynamics industry partners will receive a reduction in pre- and post-sales administrative efforts associated with the complexity of maintaining and selling multiple product modules, the Redmond, Washington-based software giant claims.

Business Ready Licensing is focused on new customers. Customers not licensed under Business Ready Licensing today will have the choice to stay on their current licensing model (modular-based licensing) or make the transition to Business Ready Licensing.

Business Ready Licensing Plan is available for Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics SL and will be available to purchase worldwide Aug. 1, 2006. The price for Microsoft Dynamics Business Essentials will start at $2,250.

Crystal Xcelsius Workgroup is a simple visualization design tool for users to "transform their company data into interactive presentations, business dashboards, and visual 'what if' models," according to company officials.

The new product allows dashboards and models sharing, with live connectivity to the database, right within their Microsoft Office applications, or over the web through Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

Customers can use BusinessObjects XI Release 2 to create virtually any report from Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, or Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.

SRC, a vendor of geographic business intelligence software, has announced the release of Alteryx 2.0 and Alteryx Enterprise.

Company officials say the product gives company data stakeholders "the ability to deploy complex data transforms and business rules across the entire enterprise."

Alteryx is a dataflow application containing data access, data profiling, data transformation, fuzzy data matching, data parsing, data quality, data reporting, geo-spatial mapping and analytics.

Basically, users say, Alteryx allows a company's analysts and marketing group to access corporate data that was once untouchable and unuseable within the enterprise.

The latest additions to Alteryx provides SRC corporate clients with the ability to develop content rich applications in an easy-to-use graphical user interface. With these enhancements, users can publish applications to their business users.

These new tools and capabilities work with current marketing, campaign management, business intelligence and CRM systems, company officials say.

Centive, a vendor of Enterprise Incentive Management and on-demand sales compensation management, has announced the 5.0 release of its incentive compensation product, CompCentral (formerly known as Centive.EIM).

The 5.0 release of CompCentral is designed to provide reporting and analytics, enhanced workflow and advanced security features. The product integrates with front- and back-office systems, such as CRM or ERP, to enable processing of incentive compensation.

In addition, company officials claim, CompCentral continues to provide a performance architecture that requires "minimal hardware investments," thereby reducing the costs associated with managing incentive compensation in high volume, complex deployments.

CompCentral 5.0 supports reporting and analytic capabilities to provide executives and managers with "detailed visibility into incentive program metrics," company officials explain.

An intuitive report wizard lets users create and save ad-hoc reports without reliance on IT resources (a bigger advantage the higher up the food chain you get in a company). Access to information is restricted by CompCentral's advanced security and organization hierarchy controls, enabling sales representatives to measure their own performance while providing executives with summarized analytics and the ability to drill-down to transaction level detail to further analyze performance by individual, team or region.

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

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Nigel Kennedy's recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons:

Focusing specifically on small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), SAP AG has announced that it will introduce new e-commerce and Web-based capabilities to SAP Business One. The new functions will enable companies to "set up online stores easily and to deploy customer relationship management (CRM) software quickly and simply via the Internet," according to SAP officials.

Addressing increasing demand among SMEs to make e-commerce and CRM core parts of their businesses, SAP officials describe the new features as a way to provide a unified view of information across sales, financials, manufacturing, reporting and customer-facing activities in a single software product.

SAP is acquiring the new e-commerce and CRM capabilities through its recent acquisition of Praxis Software Solutions, a privately-held software company and long-term SAP Business One partner based in Minneapolis. The purchase gives SAP the acquired technology and Praxis employees to throw at the SAP Business One operations.

Why is nobody really very surprised that the French found a way to surrender the World Cup to Italy?

Having outplayed Italy, clearly the best team in the knockout phase of the tournament, for the past hour, Les Bleus found themselves in the precarious position of being in danger of winning. So in the fine French tradition of le grand gesture, the only activity France has always excelled in, team captain and undisputed leader Zinedine Zidane pulls the stupidest move in World Cup history, head-butting Italian player Marco Materazzi, getting red-carded and sent off to end a brilliant career in disgrace.

(For our American readers, this is the soccer equivalent of Bill Buckner's misplay in the 1986 World Series against the Mets. Just as no baseball fan can hear the name of the quite good player Bill Buckner without thinking of that one play, now Zidane's name will forever be associated with the single most classless, idiotic, destructive finale to the career of any world-class soccer player. Fairly or -- most likely -- not, Buckner was blamed for the Sox not winning the Series that year, much more fairly will Zidane be blamed for France losing this World Cup.)

Okay, Materazzi and Zidane had been jostling and jawing with each other (which language, one wonders idly) a bit, but earth to Zidane: THIS IS THE WORLD CUP FINAL. Someone calls your mother the easiest mark in Tijuana you smile and say nothing and be sure to shake his hand after you win. Burning coals on his head and all that.

But no. Zidane's always had an, ah, anger management issue, and it became unmanaged at the worst possible time. He lost his head, last seen being rammed into Materazzi's midsection, he's properly red-carded, and you could see the wind completely go out of the French sails, all momentum lost.

Even the penalty kicks, usually where the Azzuri lose important matches, were a formality at that point. When Zidane, France's most trusted shot for penalty kicks, trudged off the field, quietly dropping the captain's armband on the ground on his way to the locker room, he had let down his team in the worst possible way, Italy had won, and everyone in the stadium knew it.

(P.S. Spare a thought for Roger Federer, first for such a rare tennis talent to come along during the sport's decline, and then to win Wimbledon to the most perfunctory applause First Coffee's ever heard at the All England Club -- the brash punk version of John McEnroe got a warmer hand than this -- on a day when the sporting world's attention was riveted on the World Cup.)

Satuit Technologies, Inc., a vendor of customer relationship management (CRM) products for investment users, is announcing that Sands Capital Management, LLC has selected SatuitCRM On-Demand for its marketing, sales and client services team.

Sands Capital Management officials said they wanted a CRM system "way beyond contact management." 

Dana McNamara, Director of Client Services for Sands Capital Management said key selection criteria leading to Satuit included "an On-Demand option, their simple and easy to understand interface and architecture, their ability to easily and cleanly integrate our existing data and systems and the ability to connect anywhere."

Sands Capital Management, based in Arlington, Virginia, began operations in February of 1992. The company claimed assets under management of $19 billion as of December 31, 2005. The firm sells sales force automation (SFA) and client relationship management (CRM) products, focusing on the professional investment market. The company's SatuitCRM system was designed for sale to asset management and hedge fund companies.

Cogniview Ltd, a vendor of business data conversion products, has announced the release of Eudi (End User Data Integration), a software product designed to give information workers "easy access and retrieval to the data they need from the enterprise application to their desktop environment," according to company officials.

Eudi is being pitched at what Cogniview officials call "a critical gap in the information needs of professionals in organizations," namely "if users can print the data, they can extract the data."

Eudi is a fully-functional software Windows-based program for desktop users allowing users to print the data they see on the screen by selecting the Eudi virtual printer from the printer-list. The data is then captured by Cogniview's Eudi and converted to desktop analysis software. This, company officials explain, "gives users the ability to extract and pull data from any report, spreadsheet, invoice, and other data based programs that have printable data forms."

Eudi can extract any data available through the use of the virtual printer and export that data to popular programs, including MS Excel, MS Word and the clipboard.

"Too often companies are stricken by the tremendous gap between the data needs and the data supply, even at the most sophisticated organizations. The data resides in the organization databases, reports or application screens, but is inaccessible to the users," said Yinon Feldheim, CEO of Tel Aviv-based Cogniview.

"Until now, the common solution was the deployment of data conversion projects. And often those projects just address a fraction of the problem and come with a prohibitive price tag for long-term usage, " noted Feldheim.

In the future the company plans to add support for CSV (comma separated values files) so the exported data can be converted to database applications such as MS Access and others. Cogniview is introducing the new Cogniview Data Integrator in English, and is planning to introduce it in other major languages later this year, 2006.

A single user license runs $145, and for a limited time the launch price is $119 U.S. A fully functional trial evaluation copy is available on Cogniview's Web site – http://www.cogniview.com.

Cogniview claims customers from over 90 countries around the world, including 20 of the global fortune 100 companies, governments and not-for-profit organizations.

Thinking about it some more, how incredibly selfish of Zidane. Psychologists say suicide is the most selfish act a person can commit, and Zidane's choice to commit hari-kiri not only doomed his team, but robbed Italy as well, since this final will be remembered primarily for a French butthead's head-butt instead of as the crowning game in Italy's masterful tournament performance. Adieu et le bon riddance, Zidane.

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

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Ornette Coleman's Change Of the Century:

Wrapping up the big CRM news of the week, Bell Industries, Inc. has announced that its Technology Solutions division has received a number of new services contracts that are anticipated to provide approximately $30 million in incremental revenues during 2007 and add approximately 500 new jobs within the next six months.

In July, Bell will begin providing large scale integrated CRM (customer relationship management) products for a leading broadband phone organization. In addition, Bell officials say, the company has entered into new services relationships with a leading computer manufacturer and a major consumer products manufacturer.

John A. Fellows, chief executive officer of Bell Industries, said "our recent efforts to secure leading operational and business development talent are beginning to pay off." While Bell anticipates start-up costs associated with these new engagements, Fellows said, he expects them to be "fully operational" by the end of 2006, and "significantly contributing to our financial results" for 2007.

"Going forward, we will continue to concentrate on enhancing service levels for our existing clients, while pursuing new engagements in the technology services sector," Fellows said. "We are confident that Bell's Technology Solutions business is properly positioned to emerge as a leading technology, product and services provider in the years ahead."

CRM services to be provided include systems development, customer support, and sales and technical support programs. Bell plans to perform the majority of these services through a new facility located in Springfield, Missouri.

Fellows added that the other new services relationships are expected to lead to increased revenues for both the depot repair and wireless device management operations. In addition, he said Bell has added a new client to its advanced exchange depot and repair operations and will also soon be providing depot repair services for a major U.S. retailer.

The retailer has not yet been identified.

Michael Barker, senior vice president of operations for Bell's Technology Solutions unit, said the company remains focused on "improving and expanding our CRM, depot repair, reverse logistics, wireless device management and product sourcing offerings."

Following the recent expansion of the product sourcing group's business development organization and a heightened operational focus, Barker said, "I am confident that with our new resources, we can begin to capture relevant market share."

Bell Industries is comprised of two diversified business units, Bell's Technology Solutions business and Recreational Products Group. Bell's Technology Solutions business sells technology products and services, while Bell's Recreational Products Group distributes after-market parts and accessories primarily to the recreational vehicle and boating markets.

…

J. Scott & Associates Inc., an Atlanta based national staffing firm providing CRM to its clients, has been recognized by one of its Big 5 clients for "adding an enormous competitive edge, both when it is essential to ramp up resources in a short period of time as well as targeting executive resources."

JSA’s Director of Sales Jason Lawrence attributes the firm’s continued success to “having built long term relationships with our clients and truly understanding their needs."

J. Scott & Associates offers its clients knowledge of the healthcare industry coupled with experience in ERP packages, CRM products and Supply Chain Management.

Hey it's a Saturday, things are pretty mellow around here, we'll run kissy-face Valentines like this, we're in a good mood. Be nice for a change. First Coffee's wife just dropped $200 at a yard sale this morning, haven't done that in a while. Got a lot for it, though, good deals from a couple moving back to the States in a couple weeks.

…

FrontRange Solutions, a vendor of IT Service Management, Voice Applications and CRM products for small to mid-sized enterprises (SME) and distributed enterprises, and Denali Advanced Integration, an IT vendor, have announced that Denali is the newest reseller and service provider of the FrontRange IT Service Management modular product and award-winning HEAT products.

"The products from FrontRange will complement our strategy in the areas of Service Management, Help Desk and IT Infrastructure Support applications, while capitalizing on the latest .Net platform enhancements," according to Miles Austin, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at Denali.

Denali, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, combines their Microsoft expertise with FrontRange offerings. The company focuses on products delivery in the U.S. Pacific Northwest region. It's been named one of the Top 50 Fastest-Growing companies by VARBusiness magazine for the past two years.

…

FYI:

Assuming Riesenbach remains actively employed by Autobytel through each stated anniversary date then his options vest, as to 333,333 of the shares, on March 20, 2007, and thereafter, options to purchase 11,111 of the shares will vest on each monthly anniversary thereafter ending on February 20, 2009, options to purchase 11,114 of the shares will vest on March 19, 2009, and options to purchase 200,000 of the shares will vest upon each filing by Autobytel of its Annual Report on Form 10-K for each of the fiscal years ending on December 31, 2007 and December 31, 2008 provided in respect of this clause Riesenbach and Autobytel have satisfied reasonable performance criteria established by the Board or a committee thereof in its sole discretion after consulting with Riesenbach.

Got that? Good.

…

Fineos, a vendor of CRM and other packaged software products for the insurance and banking industries has announced two executive appointments in support of its strategic growth in Asia Pacific.

Philip Small has been appointed to the Fineos board of directors, with specific responsibility for Asia Pacific, and Mike Brosche has been named Business Development Director, Australasia.

Small has served as an advisory director for Fineos since 2003. He has more than 25 years experience in insurance and banking software and has a detailed knowledge of the market in Asia Pacific, having held a number of senior management positions as a technology executive in the region. He was most recently president of CSC's Financial Services Group in Asia Pacific, a position he held until 2001.

Brosche will be responsible for all aspects of business development for Fineos in Australasia. Prior to joining Fineos, Brosche held a number of senior business development and consulting positions with CSC, IFDS, an outsourcer of collective investment systems, and Paxus Corporation, where he worked and lived in Australia and Europe.

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