August 2006 Archives

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and for the music we needed something laid back yet interesting, familiar but not something we're tired of… ah, here we go, good ol' Gordon Lightfoot's Gord's Gold:

Commence Corporation, which sells a comprehensive CRM Industrial application suite, is announcing the release of "Practices That Pay: Leveraging Information to Achieve Industrial Selling Results," what company officials describe as "a compendium of smart practices from the leading industrial sales and marketing experts and organizations that are growing in today’s challenging environment."

So if that sounds like your kind of thing, well, there you go. It's your lucky day.

According to Larry Caretsky, President of Commence Corporation, choosing a focus is "a difficult task that few industrial organizations do consistently well." Creating a focus, Caretsky thinks, is "as easy as articulately answering the following question: What customers can we serve better than anyone else?"

Your research, he says, should point you in a clear direction. "Leading industrial organizations state that clearly defining the target market, including job title, pains, number of potential customers, locations, and any other pertinent information," Caretsky has found, "is an extremely useful way to generate a list of viable prospects."

Defining your value proposition, he says, is "a key task for all industrial management teams. Without a clear value proposition, sales reps will have varying success and deliver a myriad of messages to your target markets."

Commence's CRM suite is available for use on premise or on-demand as a hosted service.

Intel Corporation has unveiled eight new Dual-Core Intel Xeon 7100 series processors designed for multi-processor servers, described by company officials as "an excellent choice for server consolidation -- particularly in virtualized environments -- and for running demanding enterprise workloads such as database, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management (CRM) and e-commerce applications."

Servers based on the Dual-Core Xeon 7100 series processors are expected to be available from more than 40 system manufacturers worldwide starting today.

Previously codenamed “Tulsa,” the Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 7100 series delivers on key requirements to support the demands of enterprise applications: top performance and reliability. The processor family also includes lower-power, 95 watt options that reduce associated energy costs.

The Dual-Core Intel Xeon 7100 processor series offers up to twice the performance and nearly three times better performance per watt over previous Intel Xeon MP processors, officials claim, and are socket compatible with the currently shipping platform.

Built on Intel’s 65nm manufacturing process, the Dual-Core Intel Xeon 7100 series processors have more than 1.3 billion transistors and 16MB of shared cache in an architecture using Intel Cache Safe Technology. Systems scaling to 32 processors will be available.

No doubt you've heard of Deloitte & Touche, but probably not in the context of CRM. Yet Deloitte has been listed by independent analyst firm Gartner, Inc. for its customer relationship management and business intelligence service offerings.

Deloitte's CRM service offerings have been positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner's "Magic Quadrant for CRM Service Providers, North America," report, for those who take meaning in such things.

In a separate report, Deloitte was listed in the "Visionaries Quadrant for Business Intelligence Implementation."

Doug Lattner, Chairman and CEO of Deloitte Consulting said the positioning within the Visionary Quadrant "validates our commitment" of taking a "more strategic approach to Business Intelligence, and working to support an expanding use of Business Intelligence tools and applications."

Nidal Haddad, Principal and CRM Services Leader for Deloitte Consulting, said that as the CRM market continues to mature, "Business Intelligence offers business leaders a way to more effectively view critical information and create a decision framework -- and when coupled with CRM, it can let them know if, when, and how a strategy is truly achieving desired results."

Kyliptix Solutions Inc., a vendor of web-enabled, SaaS-based products and vendors of the Kyliptix Integrated Business Suite, have announced the appointment of Paul Ulyett to its Board of Directors.

Kyliptix is going after the CRM for small- and mid-sized businesses market, said Mr. Ulyett, who describes the company as "the first company of their kind to offer utility-based pricing with a competitive pricing structure." With their business model, clients "only pay for the product when they use it which means they truly get what they pay for," Ulyett said.

He is the president and founder of Windsor Consulting, a consulting firm in Southern California. Before that he spent seven years at Oracle Corporation, most recently as Vice President, Marketing. While there, his responsibilities included the global marketing of Oracle's technology, applications, services and consulting products.

Contact center vendor Aspect Software, Inc. has announced today the general availability of Aspect Enterprise Contact Server 6.2, which "blends automatic call distributor functionality and computer-telephony integration" and has better capacity, availability and security, according to company officials.

The new release also incorporates the routing and CTI of Aspect Uniphi Suite, which routes the customer voice or Internet-based contact to "the most appropriate agent," company officials say, regardless of whether that agent is in a single or multisite contact center environment.

For contact centers needing only back-end system integration for screen pop capabilities, Aspect Software has released a new version of Aspect Contact Server 6.2.

Aspect Enterprise Contact Server 6.2 was engineered to integrate resources and data from across the enterprise and offer a "cohesive, real-time view of the contact center" by pulling information from multiple channels, switches, reporting and administration interfaces. The latest releases of both products offer built-in real-time displays and historical reporting with standardized templates that may be customized.

High availability enhancements provide recovery in the event of network failure and security enhancements protect against threats by adhering to IT security policies, Aspect officials say.

Aspect Enterprise Contact Service 6.2 provides adapters to support front office integration with Siebel and SAP customer relationship management applications.

The new release also continues to support Microsoft Exchange, permitting e-mail to be routed and handled using the same workflows as those used for voice and web interaction.

In addition, a powerful Software Developer Kit allows for a wide variety of custom integrations to be created. These 6.2 releases support integration with Aspect CallCenter ACD, with support for Nortel and Avaya ACDs to follow later this 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 still Bob Dylan's new album Modern Times. The more I listen to it the more I like it, whereas the more I listened to his last two, Love and Theft and Time Out Of Mind, the less I liked them.

For sheer enjoyable listenability this might be his best since Oh Mercy or his underrated folk cover albums, World Gone Wrong or Good As I Been To You, or even Slow Train Coming. It's a stronger album than Under The Red Sky, Down In The Groove, Knocked Out Loaded, Empire Burlesque… admittedly not stiff competition, but we might have to stub our toes against Infidels to find one this top to bottom solid:

Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. has unveiled its "IP CONVERGENCE Server SS9100 Release 6" (SS9100 R6), the latest model in its IP telephony server lineup with enhanced IP Centrex functions.

In addition, Oki has added "Com@WILL Attendant," a PC-based attendant console to its product line.

Oki has been expanding its SS9100 lineup since its launch in February 2004 by "enhancing functions and increasing peripheral terminals and devices," according to officials of the Tokyo-based firm. SS9100, they claim, is "capable of converging IP-PBX functions and business applications on Microsoft.NET, which enables companies to build private IP Centrex systems to control multiple offices using a single server."

This helps companies to significantly reduce costs for PBX management and for layout and facility changes.

"Our strong track record with the SS9100 series proves our ability to provide excellent private IP Centrex solutions to enterprise users," said Masashi Tsuboi, President of IP Systems Company at Oki Electric. "The newly released SS9100 R6 includes enhanced functions for IP Centrex systems, enabling companies to build IP Centrex systems more easily and at lower costs."

Specifically the SS9100 R6 connects with DISCOVER01, Oki's large capacity IP-PBX.  Customers using DISCOVERY01 can continue to use it as the PBX, but now "they will now be able to build a private IP Centrex system," officials explain.

Oki's newly-added "Com@WILL Attendant," a PC-based attendant console, is required for transferring phone calls. In addition to the basic operator-use functions, it includes a bulletin board function, a presence function and address book interaction.

Oki has also added new service functions to its IP CONVERGENCE Server "SS9100 Type M" (SS9100 Type M), a model for middle and small size offices launched in October 2005, which is now equivalent to higher-end models.

Private IP Centrex is basically a form of IP telephony that integrates voice communication onto IP networks and concentrates PBXs that were conventionally installed at each location into one location for easier management and operation. This generally enables a reduction in operating costs, since it maximizes the usage of existing equipment, and improves connection with internal business applications.

Happy birthday Ernest Rutherford, born in Spring Grove, New Zealand in 1871. He was one of the first scientists to study nuclear energy -- before scientists actually knew what nuclear energy was, Rutherford discovered that radioactivity is caused by particles breaking apart and releasing pieces of themselves.

In New Zealand he began experimenting with the magnetic properties of iron exposed to high-frequency oscillations. He went to study at Cambridge and later took a faculty position at McGill University in Montreal. At Cambridge he discovered the existence of alpha and beta rays in uranium radiation, and at McGill he discovered the existence of a new noble gas, thoron, an isotope of radon. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908.

In 1910 Rutherford's "investigations into the scattering of alpha rays and the nature of the inner structure of the atom which caused such scattering led to the postulation of his concept of the 'nucleus,' his greatest contribution to physics," according to www.NobelPrize.org. In 1919 he also became the first person to deliberately transmute one element into another when he transformed nitrogen into an oxygen isotope by radioactive alpha particles.

Unusually for brilliant scientists he was also a great facilitator of others' talents, as head of the Cavendish Laboratories at Cambridge he helped steer other scientists to Nobel Prize-winning work.

Endeavor Commerce, publishers of SmartCatalog, a guided selling and configuration product for CRM and eCommerce, has announced the availability of new Web Controls.

The company says a new version of the Rule Manager will be released in October.

"Relying on feedback from customers and internal development staff," according to company officials, Endeavor Commerce tweaked Web Controls to allow for simultaneous server and client side processing.

"We did not want to lose the benefits of either processing method," said Jamie Riell, Director of Product Development. "The real benefit is when the clients see a significant increase in performance, which they have. Clients are now experiencing a five-time performance increase with this version."

A new version of the SmartCatalog Rule Manager is scheduled for October. The product is an administrative tool allowing product managers, sales engineers or even power sales users to create product and pricing rules in their CRM and/or eCommerce systems.

Company officials say the Rule Manager will be completely overhauled in Microsoft .NET Windows 2.0 Forms Application that is written in Microsoft's C# language. The Rule Manager connects directly to any Product Catalog in order to retrieve the necessary product information required to build complex rules.

In order to provide an easy, intuitive experience during the rule building process, the Rule Manger utilizes a Tree View drag and drop GUI along with rule builder dialog. The new version will allow users to create rules in four steps.

Convergys Corporation has announced that it has signed a 5-year professional services outsourcing contract with VIBO Telecom, a Taiwanese 3G mobile operator, to manage VIBO's back office operations.

Convergys will continue to manage all aspects of VIBO's customer care and billing systems, extending a contract first signed in 2005 under which Convergys implemented and integrated its Infinys rating and billing and mediation software with VIBO's third party CRM, activation, provisioning, and partner management platforms.

Infinys is a Business Support System software for convergent bundles and IP-based and Convergent Pre-/Post-pay services.

Convergys provides technical and true operational services across BSS and CRM. The company's services framework includes Managed Services, Business Consulting, Technology Services, and Staff Augmentation.

As a subsidiary of the Kinpo Group, VIBO is a Taiwanese 3G operator offering hi-tech resource integration. The parent Kinpo Group is a telecom service provider as well as being a supply chain vertical integrator.

Teleformix, a developer of CRM / eCRM Enterprise-Class Software applications for the banking, insurance, financial services and marketing industries, has been awarded the Avaya DeveloperConnection Compliant Award for ECHO 2.6.1.

ECHO is a browser-based digital, VoIP and screen capture recording product, with an integrated CRM tool, designed to record, evaluate, monitor and archive all customer interactions.

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 Bob Dylan's new album Modern Times. What's it like? Um, think meatier outtakes from Love and Theft. He keeps the punchy, foot-tapping minstrel sound, but with more depth -- a cello is used well -- and the lyrics are far better. The songs sound better on repeated listenings, always a promising sign.

Let's be fair and not compare this album to the likes of Blood On The Tracks or Blonde On Blonde, or even Infidels and Slow Train Coming, those days are long gone and those masterpieces are done, Dylan will never hit that level of songwriting genius again -- nor will anyone else. These days what we look for is the great song, the finely-turned phrase only he can deliver, kind of like how Andre Agassi's fans don't expect the grand champion to win the U.S. Open this year, but watch for flashes of the one-in-a-million tennis brilliance that once poured out.

Dylan doesn't have great albums left in him anymore, but any song can be great. We got a couple on the mostly overrated Time Out Of Mind, "Not Dark Yet" and "Tryin' To Get To Heaven," and Love and Theft had "High Water (For Charley Patton)." Possible keepers abound here, albeit with some disappointments -- "The Levee's Gonna Break" is a generic lyric and has nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina. The songs are energetic, superior to recent dreary by-the-numbers exercises like Under The Red Sky.

A good rule of thumb with Dylan is that when he uses Christian or Jewish motifs, allusions and characterizations he's got something to say, he rarely uses it gratuitously or lightly. The CD's best song, "Ain't Talkin," a dark yet compelling cousin to 1983's "Blind Willie McTell" and more interesting and complex than anything he's done since, is soaked in such imagery. Lines like "walking with a toothache in my heel" and "excuse me, ma'am, I beg your pardon, there's no one here, the gardener's gone" from the mystic garden demand and reward Biblical literacy, and remind one that we're still dealing with one of the most important songwriters of our age.

Anyway: BridgeBuilder Analytics has announced its participation in the new SAS channel program, launched to "help bring SAS business intelligence software to small-to-medium and mid-market businesses throughout the United States," according to SAS officials.

Using the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, BridgeBuilder Analytics plans to develop and market analytical forecasting products targeting companies in the sports and entertainment industry to help "maximize revenue and attendance at events," according to BridgeBuilder officials.

"As a member of the SAS channel program, we will now be able to help companies in the sports and entertainment industry have access to the products that previously only Fortune 500 companies could afford," said Scott Spanbauer, CEO of BridgeBuilder Analytics.

Spanbauer thinks the business intelligence and forecasting software from SAS will be "a significant advancement in this industry and really provide a new level of analytics to help maximize revenue and attendance at each game for these organizations."

As a SAS reseller, BridgeBuilder Analytics will promote and sell the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, which includes data integration, business intelligence and analytics. SAS will train and certify the sales staff and provide ongoing technical support.

In addition, the two companies will engage in targeted marketing activities to drive "greater awareness of SAS software in BridgeBuilder Analytics' core markets," according to SAS officials: "We look forward to working with BridgeBuilder Analytics to support the growing BI demands of the sports and entertainment industries," said Jack Duncan, SAS Director of Channel Sales.

BridgeBuilder Analytics, a subsidiary of BridgeBuilder, develops and markets analytical products to companies in the sports and entertainment industry. Parent company BridgeBuilder was founded in 1995 with a focus on Business Intelligence and Customer Relationship Management products.

ReachForce, Inc., a vendor of on-demand marketing automation products and services for role-based customer and prospect data, has announced industry veteran Bob Riazzi has joined as Chief Operating Officer.

Most recently Riazzi was the Vice President and General Manager of Worldwide Services for 3Com. As COO, Riazzi will focus on ReachForce's services delivery and customer operations worldwide, according to company officials.

Riazzi said ReachForce has "the right focus, right products and services."

Riazzi brings more than two decades of "experience in building and driving services operations businesses," according to Suaad Sait, CEO of ReachForce.

Prior to joining ReachForce, Riazzi was Vice President and General Manager of Worldwide Services for 3Com in Boston, and in Austin, Texas, at the TippingPoint Division. Riazzi also spent seven years at Dell Inc. as director of Services Product Management, Strategy and Marketing.

While at Dell, Riazzi created and led the full function services marketing and product management unit.

ReachForce, Inc, based in Austin, is a privately held venture backed company selling on-demand marketing automation products and services for role-based customer and prospect data.

Want to hear RightNow Technologies' Analyst Day on September 11?

Go to the Copper Mountain Resort in Copper Mountain, Colorado, from 7:30 a.m. to noon Mountain Daylight Time. The day's agenda will include presentations by RightNow Technologies Founder and CEO Greg Gianforte and CFO Susan Carstensen, along with customers and other senior executives.

Or click on the webcast of the event, available on RightNow's investor relations website at http://www.shareholder.com/rnow/.

Dalco Technologies Inc. has announced the Free Personal version of Qasper Business Organizer, described by Dalco officials as "an on-demand business information organizer that goes Beyond CRM™ to deliver coordinated and connected organization to small and medium sized business."

Qasper looks and functions like a desktop application, one which company officials say "overcomes many of the obstacles associated with web-based, on-demand software."

"Personal is a full-featured performer that's an easy choice over traditional, single-user desktop CRMs and similar products," thinks Fred Dalgleish, CEO of Dalco Technologies Inc. The personal version doesn't require an Internet or Network connection to run and has a full upgrade path to the Workgroup Edition.

The Free Personal version of Qasper is ad-supported and has over 20 modules, described as "highly customizable to meet the customer's specific needs." The product's designed to integrate and coordinate business functions and includes contact, connection, opportunity, help desk, document and project management, action and activity tracking, order processing, time charges and e-mail.

Its data visualizer provides several modules with an "intuitive and fun" way to view information. Qasper's Paid Personal version removes the advertising and allows for transparent e-mail, appointment and contact synchronization with Microsoft Outlook.

"There is no other product designed for the small to medium sized business that has Qasper's features," claims Dalgleish, adding that "this is a leading edge product full of new ideas and approaches, implemented in a familiar, easy-to-navigate application that will finally enable small business to compete effectively with the big guys."

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 second cup of coffee (actually a Diet Coke) this morning, and the music is Dusty Springfield's Dusty In Memphis album. There's more good stuff here than "Son Of A Preacher Man," too, although that's like saying there's more good stuff in Tupelo, Mississippi than Elvis's birthplace:

Hummingbird Ltd., a vendor of enterprise content management and network connectivity products, has announced the general availability of Hummingbird Enterprise eDOCS for Microsoft SharePoint, which, according to company officials, "provides access to and interaction with content managed by Hummingbird Enterprise through Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003."

EDOCS for Microsoft SharePoint will also integrate with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 when it is launched.

The product lets organizations use their investment in Hummingbird Enterprise, by providing workers using SharePoint Technologies with access to Hummingbird's document management and records management capabilities in support of regulatory compliance.

EDOCS for Microsoft SharePoint is "a collection of customizable Web Parts," according to company officials, which "expose the functionality of Hummingbird Enterprise within Microsoft Office SharePoint environments, providing a central point of access to documents, folders, and workspaces and exposing" -- you'd think they were flashers, all this talk about exposing -- "Hummingbird's full text search capabilities through SharePoint products and technologies."

The product offers fully customizable document/folder views based on secure metadata and login access rights.

Founded in 1984, Hummingbird employs over 1,400 people and serves more than 33,000 customers, including 90% of Fortune 100 companies. Hummingbird products are sold directly from 40 offices worldwide and through an Alliance Network of partners and resellers.

A word to the wise from Larry Caretsky, President of New Jersey-based Commence, developers of a stand alone industrial CRM product: Caretsky says that most ERP companies offering CRM have shortfalls.

"Managing the sales cycle and sales representative performance, marketing campaign management and integration with customer support are not provided by ERP tools," he said. CRM is not the strength for most ERP systems, which often use an add-on module but are rarely a full CRM package.

In many cases, Caretsky says, "industrial customers who require full CRM capabilities are relegated to third party products or services."

Stand alone industrial CRM products can provide more effective lean CRM processes, provided "the vendor truly understands the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the manufacturing sector; most do not," Caretsky thinks, adding that "Generic databases do not address central issues facing all industrial operations. Smart industrial organizations gather several key data points during customer research, which helps to define a CRM profile."

Aastra Intecom has introduced a strategic alliance program for VARs and strategic partners to offer its Hosted Contact Center product, Centergy Virtual Contact Center, to their customers, "as a value-added service with no capital investment," according to company officials.

Hosted contact centers are, in fact, among the fastest growing telecommunications market segments, growing at 38% CAGR, according to a 2005 Frost & Sullivan study. Usually, however, you find them only in large service providers who can afford the hardware and software infrastructure and experienced human resources required to deploy a hosting center.

Aastra Intecom likes to claim that it "removes barriers to entry for resellers by taking on the operational and support responsibilities of managing a hosted contact center, allowing partners to focus on the customer relationship."

Hence, the CVCC Strategic Alliance Program provides access to the hosted contact center market for resellers, sales training from industry experts, co-branded reseller collateral, client contract signing incentive, recurring commission, commission for cpgrades and expansions and opportunities for cross sales of other products and services.

"The CVCC Strategic Partner Program levels the playing field, giving resellers of all sizes the ability to provide a unique, value-added service to their target market," claims Hugh Scholaert, President of Aastra Intecom. "Aastra makes it easy for partners to make money with CVCC because this program requires no capital investment and provides paid commissions for the life of the contract."

Aastra Intecom provides contact center and enterprise IP communications for distributed entities. The parent company, Aastra Technologies Limited, is headquartered in Concord, Ontario, Canada.

Cisco Systems has announced that IRMC will standardize on the Cisco Unified Contact Center along with the Cisco Unified Outbound Dialer for its more than 5,500 contact center agents worldwide.

By implementing Cisco's standards-based IP software to replace its legacy equipment, IRMC officials say the hope to "streamline management" of its globally distributed contact centers into a central data depot and "reduce operational and maintenance costs."

IRMC's contact center agents provide customer management products such as collections, accounts receivables and customer retention services to IRMC clients around the globe. The company hopes the Cisco Unified Contact Center will give it the ability to manage call routing from its headquarters and will give it a single view into all its service and support processes.

Barry Grant, chief technology officer for IRMC said the company "evaluated a number of products to support our vision of end-to-end digital communications. Cisco's contact center technology easily stood out as the best fit to manage our high volume of data and voice traffic in a highly secure and efficient single-network environment."

Laurent Philonenko, vice president and general manager of Cisco's customer contact business unit and a featured speaker at TMC events, notes that companies that compete on service quality "recognize that the right choice of technology is a business-critical decision."

In addition to the Cisco Unified Contact Center, IRMC will also implement a host of Cisco security, storage and management products to protect and manage its global contact center network, including Cisco Security Monitoring, Analysis and Response System; Cisco Security Agent, Cisco MDS 9000 SAN Management; Cisco QOS Policy Management; CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution; and Security Management.

IRMC provides customer management products specializing in collections, accounts receivable management, and customer retention services through its global call center network of nearly 6,000 employees.

Ever heard the East Village Opera Company? No? It's opera for those -- like First Coffee -- who don't like opera. Accomplished vocalists, gen-yoo-wine arias, electric guitar and (tasteful) drums.

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 great Canadian Celtic rock bar band The Dust Rhinos' album Sociable -- Live:

The British onrec.com site has a report on the two-phase effort of insurance intermediary Kwik-Fit Financial Services to "improve working life for its people."

This is commendable. Highly. Call center employees are frequently treated as so many interchangeable parts, rarely as people who want to do well at a job. And the first phase of Kwik-Fit's efforts was great. Truly. This second phase is… well, I don't know.

At many call centers, the employees feel almost like prisoners. Heck, sometimes they are prisoners -- an Australian contact center newsletter reported last year that prisoners "are to operate telephones for $35 a week at a call center inside a Sydney jail."

About 30 female inmates at the medium-security Dillwynia Correctional Center, according to the report, "will handle inquiries for government agencies within the next month before pitching for private sector campaigns in the future."

The inmates reportedly "will soon begin marketing CSI products, such as recycled ink cartridges and refurbished furniture, to schools and businesses." If they do well on that, they get to "take calls for government agencies, such as license renewal inquiries normally handled by the Roads and Traffic Authority."

Also last year First Coffee saw a report on female prisoners in Singapore working twelve hours a day in a call center as outsource fulfillment for telecom companies in Southeastern Asia. No comments on how much they were paid -- or if they were paid.

Naturally prisoners, virtual or actual, are not the most highly motivated, productive employees one can have. Although absenteeism and turnover aren't the problem among the actual prisoners that they can be among the virtual variety, First Coffee imagines.

Kwik-Fit does try harder than pretty much any contact center First Coffee's seen to keep their call agents happy and motivated, and they have a 50 percent brilliant idea for doing so: Witness the "Making KFSS A Fantastic Place" program put in place last year.

According to News42, Kwik-Fit Financial Services revamped its call center in Uddingston, eight miles east of Glasgow, after asking employees for suggestions -- and receiving 6,550 of them. They spent millions of pounds putting in an IP telephone system, and added a few things not exactly commonplace in call centers:

Some are small things that don't cost anything at all: Employees get to have mugs instead of cups. Some of the other things do cost, but really not a whole heck of a lot, like the nursery opened on the premises. And some things, if done right, shouldn't cost at all, like the coffee franchise, Costa Coffee, opened in the call center restaurant.

Some things just show you're thinking of your employees: Kwik-Fit hired a concierge for employees, who for 5 pounds a month will help out with such jobs as picking up dry cleaning and going to the post office, and a "Minister of Fun," who organizes parties, football games and such for employees. They devised a new pension scheme as well.

Some suggestions were quietly shelved, such as the proposed rooftop helicopter pad. Of course one wonders which employee wishes to get to work via helicopter, and just what such an individual is doing working at a call center.

News42 reports that Kwik-Fit built a "chill out" room, "equipped with board games, vending machines, satellite TV, sofas, table football, games machines and two pool tables." Not expensive stuff, but it lets employees know you put some thought into making their work conditions nice. You know, the ol' "it's not about the money" idea.

Is it working? Over a two-year period the company's staff turnover had dropped by 18 per cent. Plug in your favorite horror numbers for how much employee turnover costs, pick the upper-end costs for pool tables and minimum-wage nursery help and the other amenities and see for yourself if the program's been worth it or not.

But they don't simply incentivize people to show up for work. Last year 18 employees from the approximately 1,000-employee center won all-expense paid trips to New York, the top earner won a car, and there are about a hundred professional skills courses employees can take provided by the center. Hundred-pound shopping vouchers, choice parking spaces and other incentives are handed out frequently for "outstanding quality results," or simply to names pulled from a hat.

Following on the success of that initiative is phase two, just announced: "Fantastic You." First Coffee's frankly dubious over both the goals and idea behind this one, mainly because I can't identify either.

Described as "an innovative scheme designed to build relationships, increase confidence and trust and promote stronger team working within each of the departments of the business," what the program does is sponsor retreats in a specially designed relaxation room within the Uddingston call center, and have "teams taking part in story telling workshops that encourage employees to share stories of positive experiences in their life," according to onrec.com.

The first phase, the putting pool tables and decent coffee in call centers, awarding trips to New York, the best parking spaces to top performers, great stuff. All for it. Sponsoring "retreats" to listen to each other talk, ummmm… the point being what, exactly?

I can see the overall idea. I can see where Kwik-Fit's HR Director Keren Edwards is coming from when she says "We are dedicated to continuing on our journey of improvement." I'm standing applauding when she notes that "we are already delighted to be offering our people a competitive package, from flexi-benefits to a chill out club, the new on-site nursery to a Costa Coffee franchise -- all ideas that came from phase one of our project."

So far so good. A-plus. But the "'Fantastic You" program is, well… it allows employees to "share experiences that have motivated or inspired them or shaped or changed their lives in some way," according to Edwards, who professes herself "amazed by the trust and enthusiasm that each of the participants have paid to the program at this early stage."

Maybe it's because it's a new program that we're not seeing any ROI associated with it the way we do with an 18 percent drop in turnover after the first phase. It has admittedly just rolled out, but the problem is that there are no real ROI metrics possible. A red flag goes up when there's no concrete (i.e. monetary) reason for "Why are we doing this?"

Take the first part of the project, making the call center a better place for human beings than a Singaporean or Australian prison. Good idea. Put in video games, have someone run your errands while you're working, if you work hard you win a trip to the Big Apple, you can drop your kid off at the on-site nursery, name- out- of- a- hat prizes, great stuff -- tied to a specific goal, reducing employee turnover, which is tied to a specific company profit metric, saving the cost of replacing and training new employees.

This improves business quality, improves employee loyalty and morale, which aren't just nice things, but sensible hard-headed business decisions that go straight to the bottom line. As for getting groups together to describe how much they'd like to be on American Idol or talk about their greatest date ever, why not just build a pub on site and hire a couple psychiatrists to sit and talk with whoever wants to talk?

You'd make money off the beer sales, for one thing. Instead of call girls sitting at the bar getting guys to buy them drinks which turn out to be $19 watery gin and tonics, the psychiatrists can be paid according to how much beer they can get people to buy while they're talking… no, seriously, it's one thing to create a nice work environment for your call center, show them you really care about the job they're doing and you're willing to reward good performance and let them break to shoot pool when they need to.

A good call center employee will switch to Kwik-Fit for such amenities and stay, which is the whole point. Beyond that, I can't see where on-site girl talk groups add anything to the bottom line. What, you're saying highly desirable call center employees will stay for that when they won't stay for the free nursery care and concierge, and you need to offer sessions for people to tell each other how much they'd rather be producing movies or writing novels than working at a call center?

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 second coffee this morning, and the music is Eric Clapton's Timepieces collection:

Not a great morning to try to get work done, in addition to this being the height -- or depth -- of holiday season, as news is pretty thin on the ground, and it's also First Coffee's birthday and his Ever-Loving And Wonderful Wife™ bought him The Complete Cartoons Of The New Yorker, whose hundreds and hundreds of pages sit here oh so temptingly…

The title of the book is a bit of a misnomer: The book, great as it is, does not have the complete cartoons, but the two accompanying CDs do, all 68,647 of them. And most importantly, all 1,000 by Charles Addams, the best cartoonist that magazine's ever seen.

One of my favorite Addams cartoons is here, the one of Pugsley at a large pond in Central Park, where at one end is a group of kids with their graceful sailboats in the water, and Pugsley's putting a black submarine in the pond at his end, grinning maliciously at the sailboats.

Norwegian retail chain Coop Trondos has chosen Lawson Software's M3 software to provide a consistent product for its 30-plus chain of stores to help improve their processes throughout the value chain.

The contract was signed in Lawson's first quarter fiscal 2007. Trondos runs two Coop OBS Hypermarkets and more than 30 other retail stores in Norway and has a total annual revenue of $433 million.

With the new retail product from Lawson, Trondos officials say the company is "expanding its use of IT to include more efficient tools for planning functions in goods intake and stock control."

"With our choice of Lawson M3, we want to invest in an integrated retail product that covers processes running throughout the whole value chain. This also includes a service desk solution based on Lawson's Retail concept, which includes integration with the Lindbak POS solution," says Ludvik Erlandsen, financial director for Coop Trondos.

After conducting a market evaluation involving four possible suppliers and solutions in the fall of 2005, Trondos evaluated Lawson M3 (previously Movex) and SAP, resulting in the choice of the Lawson Java-based ERP product.

"The key to profitability lies in integrated information flow between the point-of-sales application and our ERP applications. With the new product, we will be able to provide better central support and give the individual shop the opportunity to concentrate its activities purely on running the store," Erlandsen says.

Over the last year Lawson has made inroads in the retail industry with several new contracts in Norway and the rest of Scandinavia, and a number of new projects with existing customers.

"We found that we reached an efficiency limit within the framework of our existing product. In order to improve further, we had to think holistically and we started a project that we called 'IT in the supply chain.' The aim was to ensure an efficient flow of goods in line with the best players on the Scandinavian market. We understood early that this would require further development of business solutions, and chose to go out into the market to find a solution that met our needs," says Erlandsen.

Here's a good cartoon: Guy talking on a cell phone, walking along the street, says "Can you hold on a minute? I think I've taken another picture of my ear."

CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and a provider of enterprise software applications and services, has announced that it has hired Sam Anidjar, senior vice president, mergers and acquisitions and Fred Dilkes, senior vice president, worldwide major accounts and channels to its senior management team.

Both will report directly to Eric Musser, president, CDC Software.

Anidjar comes to CDC Software from SSA Global where he most recently served as vice president of acquisitions. In his role as senior vice president, mergers and acquisitions, Mr. Anidjar will be responsible for driving all acquisitions on a global basis for CDC Software and will also assist with select opportunities driven by CDC Corporation and China.com.

Dilkes has more than 20 years of sales and management experience, most recently as vice president of sales, southeast, for SSA Global. He will be responsible for expanding the company's global base of channel partners and using the Franchise Partner Program to invest in selected partners in strategic geographies.

Here's one from 2001: Two guys sitting in a Manhattan bar, one says to the other "If I don't have that third martini, the terrorists have won."

QAD Inc., a vendor of enterprise applications for global manufacturers, today reported financial results for the fiscal 2007 second quarter and six-month period ended July 31, 2006.

QAD posted total revenue of $58.4 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2007, compared with $58.0 million in the same period last year. License revenue for the most recent quarter was $13.5 million, versus $16.3 million in the same period last year. Maintenance and other revenue was $30.7 million, compared with $29.5 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2006. Services revenue was $14.2 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2007, versus $12.3 million in last year's second quarter.

Net income for the fiscal 2007 second quarter was $1.1 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, including stock compensation expense of $1.3 million, or $0.02 per diluted share net of tax, related to the expensing of equity compensation under FAS 123R.

In the comparable period last year, net income was $3.8 million, or $0.12 per diluted share.

And of course there's the classic Robert Mankoff cartoon I used to have as a poster on my wall: "10th Anniversary Reunion Of Woodstock," one big cocktail party with everyone in business suits and Laura Ashley.

Okalla Corp. has extended the date for entering into a formal agreement with Web Transaction Services Inc. until October 16, 2006 with all basic terms remaining unchanged. The extension is attributable to unexpected delays with the due diligence and finalization of the closing documentation.

WTS, based in Austin, Texas, is a vendor of secure, reliable, and user-friendly e-check payment and ticketing systems for on-line subscriptions and instant access management processing.

Additional services include ACH gateway processing and file management, fraud prevention, real-time reporting and customer service. WTS processes in excess of $125 million of merchant payment transactions per annum.

There's a good one of a father walking with his little boy through Central Park, he's saying "The sun rises over the Upper East Side and sets over the Upper West Side." A surprising number of Manhattanites don't get the joke.

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 Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition -- orchestrated -- recorded by Carlo Maria Giulini and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra:

You might have missed salesforce.com's second quarter fiscal year 2007 financial results conference call late last week -- personal confession: First Coffee did. However, Seeking Alpha has put up an excellent transcript. It's long -- 22 pages -- but there are highlights:

Marc Benioff noted that "revenue for the second quarter was $118 million, up 64% from the second quarter of last year, and up 13% from Q1. Our second quarter revenue performance was excellent, particularly in a quarter where other large enterprise software companies, like SAP, stumbled."

It's important to get those anti-SAP digs in. As well as the anti-Oracle, anti-Siebel and anti-Microsoft digs. All were duly digged in Benioff's comments.

In the first quarter, Benioff said, "we surpassed the $400 million run rate revenue level by achieving the first-ever $100 million revenue quarter for an on-demand software company. Now we are poised to surpass the $500 million revenue run rate level during our next fiscal quarter, Q3," making them "the fastest-growing software company of our size anywhere in the world today."

And compared with a year ago, "we have added 7,900 customers, an increase of 47%," Benioff said, pointing out Sprint Nextel, which has deployed AppExchange Mobile to approximately 2,800 salespeople.

Oh, and you were wondering who salesforce.com would hire to replace CFO Steve Cakebread? Turns out it was… Steve Cakebread. "Steve has agreed to save his retirement for a later day," Benioff said.

Cakebread reported that non-GAAP operating income for the second quarter was $9.5 million, an increase of 84% over a year ago, and a sequential increase of 25%, saying "we essentially broke even on a GAAP basis for the quarter."

Then it was time for questions. Jason Maynard from Credit Suisse asked "can you maybe talk a little bit about how you're thinking about balancing your resources across both the large end organizations, as well as some of the very small organizations?"

Benioff answered by saying "as we rolled out our product about one-third of our subscribers were in small companies; approximately one-third of our subscribers were in medium-sized companies; and about one-third of our subscribers were in large companies. That surprised us. But probably the most surprising thing is that now, even after this quarter, that mix really hasn't changed at all."

Rick Sherlund from Goldman Sachs said "I know you would like to dissuade us from looking too closely at the net new subscribers on a quarterly basis, but that was a pretty big increase. I'm just wondering in terms of setting our own expectations for next quarter, was there something unusual in that number?"

Benioff said in his opinion, "there is not anything unusual in that number. We have a number of different editions, as you know, Rick. We have our Team Edition. We have our Professional Edition, Unlimited Edition, our Enterprise Edition. We also have our OEM Edition, and we have our Partner Edition. All of these different products address slightly different markets and different customer requirements. At the end of the quarter we add up all the subscribers that we have sold from all these different editions and that is the number."

Laura Lederman from William Blair asked Benioff to "talk a little bit about competition," and following up on Sherlund's question, noted "were there just two deals over 1,000 seats that were added in the quarter, the ones you mentioned earlier? Or was there a greater big deal content? "

Benioff, of course, used the question about competition to flail away at a certain large software producer in the Pacific Northwest: "There is one competitor that I was reading about how they have this new on-demand product. It is a big software company -- and I won't name names here -- I was talking to the reporter, and I said, well, can you tell me what is the URL for their on-demand offering? In the on-demand world the difference between the software world and the on-demand world is we have these URLs. So ours are Salesforce.com and AppExchange.com. What is their URL?"

The reporter said they don't have one. "Then they probably don't have an on-demand product either," Benioff noted, adding "it is kind of amazing to me, because this vendor had announced an on-demand product every year for the last five years in press releases, press tours, demonstrations, but there's no URL. Where's the URL? How do you log on?

Kash Rangan from Merrill Lynch tossed Benioff a big, meaty softball question about the "small software company based in the Pacific Northwest," saying "let's say hypothetically they are going to be launching a product sometime next year. How do you see the market shaking out?"

Noting that salesforce.com is a multi-tenant shared service, and "there is really just only one copy of it in our data center, and it is running all of our customers," and that eBay and Amazon are like that too. But with Microsoft, Benioff said, "to install their product you had to buy SQL Server. You had to buy Active Directory. You had to buy almost every piece of software Microsoft has ever made… you had to buy their application server, IIS. You had to buy their security technology, on and on."

And "then somehow they said partners could then take that thing and then host it for you. Well, I really don't know one example of that. After five years, I don't know of one customer running in the hosted environment. I'm sure it must exist. It has to," Benioff said, no doubt smirking.

For five years, Microsoft has announced they are going to "have the software product and the hosted product, or the on-demand product, or whatever their nomenclature is of the year. But it just has not played out that way," Benioff said. "We just don't see it. Where's their on-demand product? I know they have a software product, but where's the on-demand offering?

Brendan Barnicle from Pacific Crest Securities asked about which applications are seeing the most traction and the most appeal, and "which you see potentially as being the biggest growth and most successful on AppExchange?"

Benioff said if you want to know what the most popular are, , "you can go to AppExchange.com, and you will see a list of the most popular applications -- that is put together by the system, not by us -- as well as new postings that happen every week."

And he used the question to reiterate his recent theme that "salesforce has evolved past just CRM… as we move into a world of match-ups and all these other new technologies, AppExchange is really well poised to show how the future of software looks.

Brent Thill from Citigroup noted that "there was some concern in the quarter over pricing promotions," and wanted Benioff to "talk about the uptake rate that you saw with the promotions for the subs in this quarter."

Benioff's answer was that "you may see us do various promotions or programs or pricing events, addressing some specific niche that we're in. It really, as you can see from the numbers, doesn't necessarily impact one part of the business or another part of the business… [they're] part of our standard business as usual that we have always done."

During the presentation Benioff kept hitting the trust.salesforce.com site's numbers, what he called "our reliability numbers and our transaction volumes and our performance numbers. Those indicate usage, and how many pages we're delivering every day, the number of API calls that are being made."

In Benioff's view, those are the most important numbers discussed by the company. "There's other numbers that we make available, the number of applications on the AppExchange, the number of ISVs that are available. These are important metrics as well. And of course, the subscriber number showing we give you more transparency than any other enterprise software vendor… I think we're even one of the only software companies in the world to report net subscribers numbers. As far as I know, I don't know of any other publicly-traded enterprise software company that gives net subscribers number by quarter."

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 Sonny Rollins's "Moritat," which you'd recognize as "Mack the Knife:"

Gulfshore Technologies, Inc. has announced that Facial Esthetique, a medical spa facility in Bonita Springs, Florida has selected their collaborative InternetOffice.Biz suite of products to manage their eCommerce website and their in-house Point of Sale, as well as to meet their Content, Contact, CRM Management and growing back office needs.

Didn't know some place named "Facial Esthetique" needed CRM, didja?

Facial Esthetique's medical program is run under a licensed healthcare professional, who determined that to run their medical and beauty office well they required an Office Suite that was capable of teaming their online products with their in-house services.

Accordingly Internet Office allows Facial Esthetique to manage and track their product sales and services through their website and in the office at checkout. In addition, the Internet Office Suite of Products allows Facial Esthetique to manage and report on accounts receivable/payable; quickly and easily produce treatment plans upon checkout; schedule treatment rooms; organize their back office; share calendars; manage their online content and products; and collaborate with all aspects of the business with one easy to use, completely online software tool.

Best part of it all? "No need for servers, tech staff, networking and disparate systems to manage the business of beauty," according to company officials, "InternetOffice.biz does it all in a secure online environment with daily backups to co-locations."

...
PacificNet Inc., a vendor of Customer Relationship Management and telemarketing services, call center, e-commerce, and Value-Added Services in China, has been selected by The NASDAQ Stock Market to become a member of the newly established NASDAQ Global Market.

PacificNet President, Victor Tong said the company's move from the Small Cap to the National Market in 2005, "and now to the prestigious NASDAQ Global Market" is a "testament to our continued positive growth."

Tong finds the move significant for both the company and its shareholders "as we continue to move forward giving us increased liquidity and visibility. We believe the NASDAQ Global Market listing will increase our access to institutional investors which will broaden our shareholder base and ultimately benefit our investors."

The NASDAQ Global Market consists of over 1,450 companies that have applied for listing, having met and continued to meet financial and liquidity requirements and agreed to meet specific corporate governance standards.

Formerly called The NASDAQ National Market, this market was renamed in 2006 to reflect the global character of this market and the companies whose securities are listed.

Leifheit, a manufacturer of non-electrical household appliances and bathroom accessories and textiles, has selected arcplan's process-oriented business intelligence platform, arcplan Enterprise, to "underpin its decision support and sales analysis," according to company officials.

The company will be using CIM-OLAP, an arcplan Enterprise-based analytical application, developed by the German arcplan partner antares Informations-Systeme GmbH, to deliver management information.

Before the implementation of the application, or Management Information System, company officials say, Leifheit field sales staff in Germany used a CRM system for sales and revenue analysis. The system was distributed: a central repository was installed on a server and local databases were installed on each salesperson's laptop.

Sounds good, but this resulted in "differences between some of the figures on the laptops and on the central server, making it harder to produce accurate reports on results and the long-term plans based on them," company officials say, pointing out that "this system required a considerable amount of support."

So Leifheit evaluated alternatives and selected the OLAP module of the Corporate Information Mall product, which was developed by the German arcplan partner antares Informations-Systeme GmbH.

(First Coffee's just going by the information he's been given, but is wondering if these Germans have something against capital letters.)

Using this product Leifheit staff can look up the enterprise-wide development of specific customers or product lines as well as revenue comparisons between individual planning periods. With this level of detailed knowledge, Leifheit says its employees can recognize tendencies faster and plan profitable business developments more accurately.

Leifheit's MIS is based on arcplan Enterprise and includes OLAP technology and predefined data models and input forms for analyses and reports. The data are updated automatically on a daily basis and centrally stored in a SQL Server database.

Geeks without a social life have today circled on their calendars, it's the birthday of Gene Roddenberry, and if you have to ask "Who's he?" then you have probably been out on a date at least once or twice in your life.

The creator of Star Trek, Roddenberry was born in El Paso, Texas in 1921. In the early 1960s, he saw there were no quality science fiction series on TV, Writer's Almanac says, "so he created Star Trek. The first episode debuted on September 8, 1966 on NBC."

It's important to understand now that it was a decent show. Wasn't great, wasn't terrible, it was a good show. Rather different for its time, though, folks weren't sure how to take it -- after the premiere, Roddenberry's father went up and down the street apologizing to neighbors for the show.

It didn't get great ratings and was nearly canceled, but the show's supporters helped keep the series going until 1969, as Cheers fans did in the early days of that show, and afterwards turned their attention to ensuring that William Shatner would never have to work at an honest job again and that Leonard Nimoy could foist off some of the worst doggerel this side of Suzanne Somers as "poetry."

It goes along with Dell missing its earnings target in May, and having to "hustle" to spend $100 million "to improve customer service by hiring new call center employees, beefing up service packages, and simplifying cost structures," according to industry observer Ben Ames.

It gets worse: In July, as Ames says, Dell "offered a rebate to customers in China who had received the wrong processor in their laptops, a cheaper version of Intel's Core Duo chip than they had been promised."

Dell had partially blamed a soft market for its disappointing quarterly profits of $502 million, about half of last year's, but when Hewlett-Packard announced strong earnings everyone started asking "Soft market? What soft market?"

And with the ongoing SEC investigation there's Dell blood in the water, and HP sniffs an opportunity to take over Dell's top spot in the PC market. Stay tuned.

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

Alonzo A. Martinez, Chief Operations Officer of AweSumation Inc. unveiled the new look of AweSumation and shed light on the company's plans for the remainder of 2006 today.

Founded in 2004, AweSumation sells on-demand products for managing people and projects online. AppTrax gives small and mid-market professional service organizations a powerful EEOC compliant product for talent acquisition and management. Connects-Us CRM is an on-demand application for managing leads, clients and the resulting work/job orders.

The "unique look of AweSumation's interface drove the design concept" for the company's identity redesign, Martinez said.

AweSumation partnered with Cognizant Designs to develop its new look. Zach Meyer, lead designer for Cognizant Designs said his intention with the redesign was to, "preserve the essence of AweSumation's original concept but modernize the look."

AweSumation's identity "had been established before and I didn't want to force them into adopting a brand new look and feel that was too foreign; I was able to take existing materials and rework old concepts into my new design to produce a fresh look that was dynamic and familiar at the same time," said Meyer.

Martinez believes that the redesign reflects the intuitive nature of AweSumation's products and acts as a springboard for the company's future projects.

Why should you buy Microsoft stock? According to Zacks.com, it's considered the best large-cap stocks to own for the long term, not in the least because of its CRM.

The company posted fiscal fourth quarter earnings per share of 31 cents in July, excluding items, on revenue of $11.8 billion, and it "attributed its strong finish to the fiscal year to customer demand for its recently-launched products of Xbox 360, SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0," according to Zacks.com officials.

The company said upcoming launches position it to continue delivering strong revenue growth in fiscal 2007. For the year, Microsoft expects earnings per share between $1.43 and $1.47 on revenue of $49.7 billion to $50.7 million.

RealMetrics, LLC, a vendor of objective performance metrics based on systematic testing of online service providers, has announced the addition of a new metric for monitoring the performance of technical support response time for Shared Hosting and VPS Hosting providers.

In addition to Web Hosting providers, RealMetrics plans to roll their performance monitoring technologies across multiple other categories in the near future. These will include email service providers, online backups, web conferencing and CRM.

RealMetrics monitors and reports Uptime, Web Speed, CPU Speed, Disk Speed and now the Technical Support response time of web hosting companies. The RealMetrics process is driven by establishing actual hosting accounts and then conducting systematic tests on several parameters of online service.

RealMetrics conducts over 60,000 tests per day on actual web hosting accounts.

"Adding the Technical Support response time metric brings a necessary and critical balance to our existing uptime and speed metrics" thinks Rick Ralston, RealMetrics President and Chief Executive. "For web hosting consumers to make as informed decision as possible, it is crucial to evaluate the response time of the web hosting providers. We attempt to present this critical information in a format that is easy and straightforward."

SMS operator TynTec has announced the launch of a new product to guarantee secure, scalable and reliable SMS delivery for the financial services sector.

The new Banking Grade SMS product uses TynTec's technology infrastructure to let banks send customers' information via SMS. This means financial institutions are now able to distribute account information such as balance statements, overdraft alerts, transaction notifications and authentication information for services such as online banking through a mobile interface.

The product can also integrate with a range of diverse back-end systems such as CRM and ERP, meaning that it can work alongside bank's existing systems with hopefully minimal integration hassle.

The deployment of SMS in the financial services industry has been hampered by the limitations of the technology, TynTec officials think: "Ordinary" SMS as provided by general purpose SMS resellers or operators can often be delayed or even lost en route to the customer, officials charge, calling it "an unacceptable level of unreliability in a critical area such as personal financial information."

Consumer electronics seller Circuit City Stores, Inc. has picked AT&T for support in offering its customers service when they interact with any of Circuit City's sales channels -- retail stores, online store and call center.

To assist Circuit City with its multi-channel customer service, AT&T implemented a converged multi-media networking product that accommodates voice, video and mission-critical enterprise applications on a single network infrastructure. Circuit City also uses AT&T's high-speed Internet access service to provide retail customers and store associates with access to Web-based resources, such as http://circuitcity.com/.

These AT&T products allow Circuit City to share data between locations and to deliver on its 24/24 Pickup Guarantee. Items that are ordered online can be picked up at a specified store within 24 minutes of the order being placed. If the order is not ready, the customer receives a $24 gift card.

Circuit City also uses features provided by AT&T's toll-free voice network for customers calling the Circuit City customer contact center.

The question is, "How many versions of 'Wild Mountain Thyme' does a man need?"

Hard to answer that one, I've downloaded about thirty so far. Even took Joan Baez's version, although that phony falsetto on the "and we'll AAAAALLLLLLL go together" irks the crap out of me. Al Petteway's has a drone going the whole time, gets disorienting, you think your speakers are on the fritz.

This is a song First Coffee made quite a bit of money on during his days busking in the Boston subways. Found it works better in the afternoons than the mornings, there's something people like about hearing it on their way home from work that doesn't appeal on their way to work.

The Byrds do a surprisingly bad version, someone called Papa M does a surprisingly good one. The great debate is whether or not it should be "all around the blooming heather" or "all around the purple heather," he solves it by singing "all around the blurple heather."

And although the song can be found among iTunes' Alternative, World, Blues, Folk, Children's Music, Rock, New Age and Country classifications, I refuse to listen to any version with wave sounds, birds or such bushwa in the background. I avoid weepy gals with harps too -- on iTunes, as in real life.

Best one I've got? The Dust Rhinos, who bill themselves as something like Saskatchewan's Greatest Bar Band. Whatever, man, they tear into that song.

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 at Radio KCRM 98.6, All Aimee Mann All The Time:

We're big fans of the detective fiction genre, would much rather read anything by Raymond Chandler than Moby Dick and eagerly await Robert Parker's next Spenser novel. So imagine our pleased surprise to see JX2 Technologies, a business software company owned by Macdonald and Spillane, two of the greatest names in American 20th century crime fiction.

John D. Macdonald created the towering Travis McGee character, endlessly imitated but never improved upon, and Mickey Spillane's creation, Mike Hammer, is one of the most well-known fictional crime-solvers not living on Baker Street. JX2 Co-Owners Jim Macdonald and Jim Spillane share McGee and Hammer's sense of justice, so we sent the Radio KCRM sound truck for an interview and to get the hubcaps stolen.

"For decades, wealthy companies with Information Technology departments were the only ones that could afford the huge cost of integrating and implementing software of this caliber," says Macdonald, drinking low-rent whiskey in a lower-rent office in the lowest-rent part of town where if you could just get the cockroaches to kick in their fair share of the rent you'd be able to upgrade to the office closer to the water fountain, or one where the radiator worked.

Feet up on the desk, battered fedora fending off the glare from the single light bulb lit as a sentry against a deep darkness which takes no prisoners, Macdonald says JX2 is hoping to change that by offering the same quality of software without the demanding price tag.

"Software as a Service, or SaaS, is the key for small businesses," he notes, cleaning the barrel of his .45 automatic which, if not technically legal, does have the benefit of winning most arguments it's called upon to settle. "There used to be a huge gap in the quality of software available to large versus small businesses. But now the SaaS model takes enterprise-quality software and moves it off-site, lowering the risk and eliminating the overhead of expensive equipment and maintenance."

A silhouette appears behind the frosted glass on the door, and either Macy's mannequins have learned to walk but don't know what parts of town to avoid at night yet and are going to go back to work missing a few pieces, or Barbie's come to life and on the way to her Dream House her Corvette's broken down outside and she's left Ken in the passenger seat to pat down his surfer hair and cool his heels while she goes in search of a telephone.

Barbie opens the door, inquires if this is Madame Sosostris's Clairvoyante Parlour. Macdonald says yes ma'am, you got the right place, Miz Sosostris is out right now getting her crystal ball polished, but if you take a seat she'll be back shortly, cuppa coffee? Barbie wrinkles her nose, says nice try loser, and slams the door as hard as she can slam, which unfortunately is hard enough to shatter the glass but which fortunately slams on the foot of Jim Spillane instead, sparing the glass.

SaaS is basically an on-demand model for delivering software over the Internet, Spillane explains, hobbling into the room and setting a bag of doughnuts and two Styrofoam coffees on the desk. Macdonald opens one of the coffees, tops it up with whiskey and takes a satisfied sip. A black cat -- "name's Dashiell" -- comes in with Spillane.

The software architecture is designed "from the ground up" for speed and flexibility, Spillane says, solely intended to be used in "this on-demand environment. JX2 provides the implementation of SaaS applications, training, daily operation, maintenance and support to their clients in exchange for a monthly fee."

See, what gets Macdonald and Spillane out of bed in the morning, besides the fusillade of knocks from a shockingly underpaid landlord, is "the whole idea of small companies controlling costs and limiting the risk and exposure of their data makes this solution ideal. Ongoing costs are fixed, but more importantly, a catastrophe that may wipe out the physical location of a business won't affect the software since it is offsite in a tier-one data center, well protected from catastrophic failure."

Even in the worst-case scenario of a flood, fire, hurricane, Democratic presidential administration, if an office is destroyed, employees could go back home to do their work until the office is up and running again, Macdonald explains, putting some whiskey in a small saucer for Dashiell.

Spillane and Macdonald have been keeping an eye on the evolution of business management software over the past several years through the bent slats of the Venetian blinds looking out on an urban vista Edward Hopper thought was too depressing for Nighthawks. "We've seen dozens of really good solutions, but a company could easily spend $100,000 in up-front costs just to get the ball rolling," says Macdonald.

"Quarter," Spillane says, mouth full of apple doughnut. Outside there's the sound of a 1961 Corvette revving to life, the 315 horses waking up being the most lifelike sound from the street all night. Dashiell flicks his tail, jumps to the top of the rusted file cabinet in the corner, turns around twice and settles down for a nap.

Macdonald rolls his eyes, digs a quarter out of his pocket and flips it across the room in an old spittoon perching on the water cooler. From the ching as it hits it's obviously among friends -- lots of them. "Every time I use a pretentious word like 'solution' for 'product,' or 'utilize' or 'leverage' instead of 'use' I have to feed the kitty," he explains.

Spillane grins. "It's his retirement plan. If he ever has a career to retire from."

"Anyway, most small and medium businesses simply don't have $100,000 in up-front costs. We were looking for solu- products that would better fit our small to medium business clients, and then the whole SaaS thing began to really take off."

That's when JX2 began changing their business model from hosting and developing web sites and custom software to also offering on-demand, Spillane says. With over one hundred small and medium business clients throughout the country, JX2 needed to stay focused on their market while bringing on complementary services to an already successful business.

From outside there's the sound of a woman's shrill, rather uncomplicated instructions to someone named Ken, the sound of a car door slam and a Corvette getting real scarce real fast. The three of us in the office shudder -- another man down, and it wasn't pretty.

"It's amazing," says Macdonald. "We go into companies and it's always the same story. Running old business management software, or no software at all. There is usually no sign of organized customer relationship management or strategic marketing. Nobody knows what anyone else is doing, which makes it hard to run a business. Unfortunately, this scenario is common in the small business world."

So Macdonald and Spillane set out to change that. "Thank NetSuite for the spacious accommodations," Spillane says, waving powdered sugar around the room. "We're the only authorized solution provider in the Lehigh Valley area for the NetSuite product line, including CRM, and ERP software."

"We're hitched to a pretty good horse, put it that way," Macdonald says, taking a strong slug of the spiked coffee. "NetSuite's the fastest-growing software company in North America, and JX2 offers NetSuite as well as several other 'best of breed' sol- tools for CRM, email, Internet and Intranet portals, online marketing, blogs, communities, and other hosted applications."

"This is the future," Spillane says, nodding. "SaaS is moving to the forefront as the preferred software delivery method for small and medium businesses and will only become more popular as -- "

A knock, the door opens, and an impossibly handsome tan head pokes in the door. "Uh, sorry to bother you guys, but my… um, my car's… broken down, I was wondering if I could call a cab?"

Pity in his eyes, Macdonald gently turns the telephone around, stands up and fingers the Venetian blinds apart to gaze out on a city not at sleep, but in a drunken coma from which it will soon awake. And when it does it will not be in a good mood.

"Nice Corvette," Spillane observes as Ken finishes the phone call.

Ken smiles, reaches for the whiskey and takes a slug. "You should see the pony."

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

Again, sorry for the late posting today, some Perl issues back at HQ, I've been told, but they've been ironed out:

Silicon Space Inc., a vendor of custom web-based software, has announced that it has joined the Google Enterprise Professional Program and "launched a new business practice" focused on enterprise search using the Google Search Appliance.

As a trained member of the Google Enterprise Professional Program, Silicon Space will create custom Google search products to access information buried within the enterprise.

Which hey, is crucial for CRM, according to Kevin Harris, COO of Silicon Space: "Enterprise search solutions are becoming more critical for large enterprises as the volume of data generated by ERP, SFA, CRM and other systems increases exponentially," explained Harris.

For ten years Silicon Space has sold customized software for large enterprises like Disney, Harcourt, the US Navy and Cohn & Wolfe, an international public relations agency.

Cohn & Wolfe, for example, wanted to increase competitive advantage by making corporate information more accessible to their worldwide network of management and sales professionals. Silicon Space custom-built a corporate intranet, extranet, internet portal and then installed, configured, customized and integrated the Google Search Appliance, according to Silicon Space officials, "to provide access to the organization's information assets located across a variety of disparate applications and data sources."

In addition to this new Enterprise Search Practice, Silicon Space promises they'll continue to "provide web software and application development services, complete system integration solutions and outsourced product R&D services to its growing list of commercial and federal clients."

So rest easy, campers.
…

Web host and integrated enabling financial technologies firm Open Solutions Inc., has been selected by Minot, North Dakota-based (and just when's the last time you saw THAT qualifier, huh?) Northern Tier Federal Credit Union, to provide its enterprise-wide data processing platform, The Complete Credit Union Solution.

I like that, "The Complete Credit Union Solution." No pussyfooting around, no hemming or hawing, straight atcha, no wasted words, no pulled punches, it is what it is. Really occupies its space, as a particularly pretentious (but oh so redeeming in other ways) girlfriend taught First Coffee to say in the 1980s in art galleries, pulling me by the ear away from Marc Chagall's White Crucifixion at the Art Institute of Chicago, which still to this day is the only painting I can remember being truly impressed by, and I can swear on a stack of Tom Wolfe's The Painted Words that I never once said -- or thought -- that White Crucifixion "occupied its space" as much as it occupied a few decades of flaccid ol' Impressionism's space as well.

(Please don't bother flaming me with earnest screeds on how "deep," "powerful" or "meaningful" Impressionism is, the whole point of the movement was that the painting is as deep as the canvas. If you don't believe me ask Edouard.)

Located on Minot Air Force base, Northern Tier FCU has $55 million in assets, approximately 11,000 members and four branches. Sounds like Northern Tier FCU really occupies its space in a very real and tangible way.

Darrell Roos, President of Northern Tier FCU said they were looking for a comprehensive technology platform "that would give us both flexibility and control over our business operations. With its scalable, open architecture, we believe that The Complete Credit Union Solution will allow us to customize the system and offer advanced products and services to our members."

Plus I bet he just liked the name, too. Things get… elemental there in North Dakota, there's not much fuss and few frills, a cat -- never named Fluffy if named at all -- is considered a farm tool which pulls its weight with mouse tails draped over the barbed wire at a healthy clip, one does not have time for The Somewhat Together Credit Union Solution, or The Mostly What You Need Credit Union Solution or any software which requires a couple guys named Kenneth and Roger from San Jose to come out and show you how to run and ask if there's any decent soy latte in town.

The Complete Credit Union Solution is built on a powerful Oracle relational database -- bet it is, bet it is, say no more guv'nor -- and is "designed to help credit unions streamline both front and back office applications with a focus on improving member service," according to company officials, since the product's platform is "designed to provide credit unions with a more centralized view of its specific relationships with members, employees and business partners."

Like it says on the door, Charlie: complete. It integrates core data processing with member-centric applications such as Internet banking, business intelligence, financial accounting, credit card processing, imaging and interactive voice response solutions.

''The ability to effectively and quickly train employees to use the system is important. We want to spend more time serving our members and less time training our employees," says Roos, who's sounding more and more like a guy First Coffee could hang with over beers. "We will use this technology as a tool to give our members a more comprehensive blend of products and services and enhance their overall banking experience.'' Damn tootin'.

In addition to The Complete Credit Union Solution, Northern Tier FCU will implement Open Solutions' e-Commerce Banker (Internet banking and cash management), telephony solutions and digital document applications. Hey, you find a company who knows what they're doing you ask to see the rest of the catalogue.

Updata Partners, an information technology-focused venture capital firm, has announced that Amber Gray has joined the firm as an Associate. Gray was first selected for an internship with Updata in 2005 through her participation in The Batten Institute's VC Bootcamp while completing an MBA at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business.

Gray, a former Product Marketing Manager at Informatica Corporation, will source new investments and support Updata portfolio companies.

Hailing from the Old Dominion himself, First Coffee isn't shocked that someone named "Amber" went to U.Va. Back when I frequented Richmond's coffee shops the city's smart, preppy and rich high school grads went to U.Va., William & Mary or Washington & Lee. Dumb, preppy and rich you went to the University of Richmond, smart but not rich you went to U.Va. or Tech, afraid of leaving home and your high school job and under the impression that The Fan was as close as you'd probably get to Greenwich Village before you went to work in middle management for some insurance conglomerate and bought a house in Hanover County, VCU.

Ambitious, you got out of Virginia. Nobody went to George Mason, last year's Final Four was the first time anybody in Virginia heard of the place too.

Before joining Updata Partners, Gray led launch efforts for Informatica's CRM analytics suite of products, including Informatica Web Channel Analytics. In 2004, she championed post-merger integration efforts with UK-based Striva Corporation to launch Informatica PowerExchange, a mainframe connectivity product.

Gray's early professional experience included consulting and marketing roles at startups Clarus Systems, InPart and Packet Engines.

With $250 million under management, the firm also selectively provides recapitalization and management buyout financing.

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 Loudon Wainwright III's great live album Career Moves:

Wow, it's, like, so unlike salesforce.com to announce good news, we're surprised here at First Coffee to see the normally media-shy, reticent founder, Marc Benioff, out in front blowing the company's horn announcing results for its fiscal second quarter ended July 31, 2006.

"As we soar past the half-million paying subscriber mark, we stand on the cusp of another remarkable achievement: a half-billion dollar annual run rate. These are historic milestones for salesforce.com and the industry that we are leading," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com in a rare public appearance. "Few software companies achieve this scale and momentum."

As the company heads towards one million subscribers and one billion dollars in revenue, Benioff, clearly uncomfortable in the spotlight, said he wants "to thank our 24,800 customers, partners, and our 1,625 employees for creating this amazing community of success on the Business Web."

Salesforce.com's announced results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2007include total revenue of $118 million, an increase of 64% on a year- over- year basis and an increase of 13% on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Subscription and support revenues were $106.7 million, an increase of 63% on a year-over-year basis and an increase of 13% on a quarter-to-quarter basis. 

Professional services and other revenues were doing well, $11.5 million, an increase of 82% on a year-over-year basis and an increase of 13% on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

The rub is in Earnings per Share: GAAP earnings per share were "approximately break- even," company officials said, noting that non-GAAP earnings per diluted share, excluding the effects of stock based compensation and amortization of purchased intangibles related to acquisitions, were $0.06. 

Net paying subscribers rose approximately 57,000 during Q2 to exit the quarter at approximately 501,000 total subscribers, an increase of 63% from Q2 of the prior year, and an increase of 13% from the prior quarter. 

Customers rose approximately 2,100 during the quarter and totaled approximately 24,800, an increase of 47% from Q2 of the prior year, and an increase of 9% from the prior quarter.

Based on information as of August 16, 2006, salesforce.com is initiating guidance for its third quarter fiscal 2007 ending October 31, 2006, and updating guidance for its full fiscal year 2007 ending January 31, 2007.

Q3 FY07: Revenue for the company's third fiscal quarter is projected to be in the range of approximately $126 million to approximately $128 million. Non-GAAP diluted EPS is expected to be in the range of approximately $0.04 to $0.05, and GAAP EPS is expected to be in the range of approximately break-even to a loss of $0.02 for the third quarter.

WebMethods, Inc., a business software vendor, has announced an OEM agreement between webMethods K.K., the company's wholly-owned Japanese subsidiary, and Canon Inc.

Under the agreement covering the Japanese market, Canon is embedding webMethods technology as a standard feature within its imageWARE Enterprise Gateway, which is the company's data transaction product for connecting Canon's input and output products with a variety of back-end systems.

Canon is using webMethods as an integration standard for linking its input and output product to a number of enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

Andy Wilkinson, senior vice president and General Manager, Asia/Pacific & Japan, webMethods, Inc., said partnering with Canon's imageWARE Enterprise Gateway "will allow organizations to more quickly and easily implement and automate document workflow."

As a result of the linkages, documents like invoices, purchase orders and payments can automatically entered into each system, and these systems can be linked directly to a variety of digital outputs

Revonet, Inc., a B2B Direct Marketing Company, has announced public availability of its Leads-On-Demand product, which uses market research and database segmentation to identify best prospects and "then makes thousands of phone calls to discover companies that are in the market for purchasing VoIP and telecommunications services."

These leads are then transferred in real time through the LOD product to a select group of vendors "capable of servicing the interested company. Each lead has specifically requested to be contacted by a sales representative and contains very specific information detailing the opportunity," Revonet officials claim.

Each sales lead includes the full customer profile including contact names, addresses, phone numbers, as well as contract size, expiration date and other helpful data. The records can be quickly and efficiently shared or fed into any number of existing CRM systems.

Starting today, Revonet is offering interested customers the ability to test 5 leads at no charge. Vendors can sign up for a subscription to Leads-On-Demand for as low as $75 per lead.

The Leads-On-Demand product is focused on prospects that spend between $500 and $5,000 in Monthly Recurring Charges for data and telephone services.

FYI: Some company calling itself "SalesGuru.com" has announced that their software is 91% less expensive than Salesforce.com.

"How does SalesGuru.com manage to offer prices significantly lower than all other CRM companies?" company officers ask rhetorically. Gee, glad you asked:

SalesGuru.com charges a fee per company as opposed to individual user. "Other CRM applications, including Salesforce.com, Sugarcrm.com, and Salesnet.com charge on a per person basis, which means that whenever a company increases the size of their sales team, their fee also increases," SalesGuru officials say.

Businesses "can be assured," however, that "regardless of how many sales representatives they have, they will only pay one flat-rate at SalesGuru.com."

And of course company officials express the hope that "we are also likely to see an increasing number of companies abandon on-demand services like Salesforce.com in favor of SalesGuru.com."

Sometimes one brilliant bit of clarity explains everything. The BBC reports:

"A survey for the newspaper La Croix found that seven French people out of ten supported the deployment of an international force. However only a small majority -- 53% -- were in favor of the French military getting involved."

Something needs to be done? Oui! Military action? Oui! Us French the ones to accept the responsibility and do something meaningful? Non!

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

Dell tries to find how exploding batteries can help improve customer relationships:

Dell Inc.'s recall of 4.1 million laptop batteries is a major headache and a logistical nightmare. But it may help the Texas computer giant in the long run.

Dell has been trying to improve its image lately after acknowledging that its customer service wasn't making the grade. Its stock has dropped about 40 percent in a year, mostly because its sales growth has slowed and competitors have strengthened.

The recall, issued because the batteries could catch fire on rare occasions, was a great opportunity for Dell to show it's acting voluntarily to protect its customers. If customers find the recall process easy and fast, their opinions of the computer maker may improve.

"In many ways, long-term, this will help in terms of the goodwill Dell is trying to build with its customers and potential customers," said Sam Bhavnani, research director at Current Analysis.

What's more, Dell doesn't expect the recall to cost it very much -- not enough to make a material change in its financial results. Sony Corp., which made the faulty batteries, has said it's financially assisting Dell with the recall, though neither will say who's paying what.

AOL To Dig For Spammer's Gold from the Associated Press:

Dig this: AOL believes a renegade Internet spammer buried gold and platinum on his parents' property in Massachusetts and wants to bring in bulldozers to search for the treasure and satisfy a $12.8 million judgment it won in federal court.

The family says it knows nothing about any buried treasure and will fight AOL's gold-digging plans.

AOL said Tuesday it intends to search for bars of gold and platinum that the company believes are hidden near the home of Davis Wolfgang Hawke's parents on two acres in Medfield, Massachusetts…

At the height of Hawke's Internet activities, experts believe, Hawke and his partners earned more than $600,000 each month -- much of it cash -- by sending unwanted sales pitches over the Internet for loans, pornography, jewelry and prescription drugs.

"They were millionaires, if only briefly," said Brian McWilliams, a journalist who interviewed Hawke and wrote extensively about him in "Spam Kings," a 2004 book about e-mail spammers. McWilliams said Hawke lived a nomadic life as an adult, eschewed luxuries and described burying his valuables.

"Hawke lived like a pauper really," McWilliams said. "He drove a beater of a used car, an old cop car. He never owned a house or anything."

This just in from the Birmingham Post -- Customer service in Britain still stinks: 

Somehow my phone got lost in the taxi home… I rang up the air-time provider the next day to put a bar on the phone.

It took five failed calls over a 30-minute period to get the phone barred. I suffered the usual ridiculous messages like "your call is important to us and we pride ourselves on good customer service." Oh yes? Try staffing your call centre properly then and perhaps even training the staff and paying them well enough to stay and get some experience!

One very frustrating end to a call was a machine voice saying "we have had a technical difficulty -- ring back later." Of course the calls were being charged for at 0870 rates.

The point about this story is that the company cannot provide excellent customer service for the prices it charges me -- it feels like an unsustainable service.

There are many similar examples: credit provision in the UK is another. Just how long can the major banks go on generating the sort of returns they do when effective customer service has all but died? We have been trying to get one of our accounts hitched up to the bank's internet service for over three months. The only people we can get to speak (in a call center) simply do not have the power or training to do anything significant to resolve this service problem.

The Boston Globe: Running Of The Brides attracts advertising:

For the first time, Filene's Basement is allowing select companies to peddle their products at the Downtown Crossing "Running of the Brides" event, the twice-a-year spectacle when hundreds of brides line up for hours to hunt for deeply discounted gowns.

Filene's Basement said it had to turn away many other businesses, including hotels, Redken salons, and the consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, which wanted to give away Swiffer mops.

"The event has just gotten bigger and bigger. Everyone wants to be a part of it. Who would have thought I'd have to turn P&G down?" asked Basement spokeswoman Pat Boudrot. "But I just didn't feel right about giving women mops. And how were they going to carry them around with the gowns?"

The Basement's bridal sale, which began in 1947, will feature over 2,400 gowns, priced at $249, $499, and $699; the dresses normally cost $900 to $9,000 at bridal salons.

The event attracts newly engaged women and their entourages of shopping buddies from all over the country and from abroad. Boston hotels offer deals for the event; the Fairmont Copley Plaza's "Running of the Brides Package," starting at $559, includes accommodations, energy bars, bottled water, and a pair of running shoes.

The Dallas Morning News's Steve Davis finds the best customer value for sports in America:

It's Roller Derby, and it's not your father's Saturday night, tricked-up, made-for-late-night-TV version.

Three local teams form the centerpiece of Assassination City Roller Derby, where the skaters attack the flat track, maneuvering, bumping, falling and, yes, sometimes brawling their way to victory. (Just two teams at a time, of course.)

The bouts are roughly once a month, when a few hundred diverse fans, bonded by the kitschy subculture, fill the Pleasant Grove rink at 400 S. Buckner Blvd.

The skaters, some on the softer side, some with quite an edge, are as diverse as the fans. A few are quite athletic and nimble.

The bargain? Tickets are $10 in advance. Parking is free. And it's BYOB (No $6 beers!). Coolers are welcome.

...

Airlines allowing customers, oh, paperback novels back on board, UPI reports:

Air New Zealand, has relaxed some of the tough new restrictions on cabin baggage on flights to the United States.

Carry-on baggage was restricted to essential travel documents in a plastic bag. Air New Zealand now says normal cabin luggage and electronic devices will be allowed on its planes but passengers should expect to have them ready for inspection.

However aerosols, gels and liquids in carry-on baggage remain prohibited. They must be placed in checked-in baggage. Passengers also are not allowed to carry duty-free liquids in the cabin of aircraft on flights to Britain and the United States, to avoid possible confiscation on arrival, the airline said.

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, in honor of PR maven Ryan Zuk's getting a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert cancelled out from underneath him in Phoenix, is a Crosby, Stills and Nash threefer – Crosby, Stills and Nash, Déjà Vu and CSN – and Neil Young's Live Rust:

Kyliptix, which claims to be "the first company of its kind to adopt a utility-style, usage-based billing model that eliminates the upfront investment associated with software acquisition," although "of its kind" is left tantalizingly undefined, has announced the launch of Kips CRM.

The product's pitched at small businesses, and Kyliptix is marketing it as allowing SMB's to "gain a competitive advantage by employing the cost-effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality previously available only to larger organizations."

Fellow SMB workers, unite! Throw off the shackles of imperialist larger organization oppression!

KiBS CRM is a productivity tool that is described by company officials as delivering "a complete collection of customer facing processes, including Sales Force Automation, Marketing, Customer Service, and Support, to small businesses." Evidently it's designed to simplify processes for growing businesses, since as officials promise, "KiBS CRM can readily serve the needs of a few users, then scale to accommodate several hundred users at a time."

KiBS CRM works with the overall performance of a business concerned with the customer engagement processes -- and hey, who's not? -- including Web lead capture, Outlook integration, reporting, generation of quotes, sales orders, and invoices, sharing of accounts, contacts, leads and calendar events, and support of multiple languages.

Company officials say it's ideal for companies that have outgrown simple contact managers and need to improve their processes. The product has no upfront hardware or software purchase requirements.

William Gast, founder, president, and chief executive officer said the KiBS CRM is "the first in a full suite of offerings that we will be releasing in the coming months. As a provider of Web-enabled solutions, Kyliptix understands that ease of use and ease of deployment are critical in today's marketplace."

Grunge poet Charles Bukowski must have worked here at First Coffee at some point. Here's how he described his working day:

"Every day I'll wake up around noon. Then I'll go to the track and I'll play the horses. ... Then I'll come back and I'll swim and ... have dinner and I'll go upstairs and I'll sit at the computer and I'll crack me a bottle [of wine] and I'll listen to some Mahler or Sibelius and I'll write, with this rhythm, like always."

China-based vendor CDC Games, a wholly owned subsidiary of China.com Inc, a business unit of CDC Corporation which sells CRM software and products, has acquired the license to the Japanese online game, Stone Age 2 from DigiPark, a major game developer in Japan.

The animated game is set in the pre-historic era and players roam a world of volcanoes, deserts, and jungle populated by dinosaurs and spirits. The game encourages cooperation between players by rewarding teamwork. Players work together to build villages, capture and raise dinosaurs and look for treasure.

The new game will be free to play with players paying for virtual merchandise. This business model was pioneered by CDC Games in China with Yulgang, an online games in China with over 30 million registered users and 348,000 peak concurrent users.

Dr. Xiaowei Chen, Chief Financial Officer of China.com Inc. said the new game is "another demonstration of CDC Games' commitment to bring the best products from around the world to provide our users with the most unique and compelling gaming experience in China."

Here's what First Coffee would have liked for Dr. Chen to have said: "Stone Age 2 has many features we believe could be incorporated in our CRM products, see this cool button here that zaps the evil spirits? Watch what happens when we transfer the technology to our CRM product. Now, see this troublesome customer here, who calls in and complains about every cotton-pickin' thing? Ties up your customer service rep time and causes a lot of hassle. But simply set the button to 'vaporize,' and…" (puff of smoke appears over Des Moines, Iowa) "… poof! Gone!"

Database Solutions, Ltd., a customer relationship management (CRM) and technology company selling to the insurance industry, has announced that it plans to open a new database web development subsidiary.

Since 2002 Database Solution’s efforts have been focused on developing and launching its Agent Intelligence CRM product; however, company officials say the requests for customized database-driven sites have "dramatically increased."

There is a rising trend for companies to use database-driven web systems, CRM or otherwise, to manage their customer base and to run their businesses, according to the company's research. Database Solutions sees an opportunity to capitalize on a market and has decided to offer this web-hosted service.

The company has already begun sending out proposals to potential clients. Database Solution’s new subsidiary will only focus on larger scale projects that exceed a price of $25,000 and will not include web stores or standard company websites, except for Agent Intelligence clients.

Database Solutions' CEO Jason Wong, stated, "It is a good decision for any company to diversify -- especially if it has a proprietary technology. We have looked at the potential revenues Database Solutions would realize by offering our technology to other industries, and based on that evaluation, the decision is a no-brainer."

Best kinds of decisions out there. But First Coffee speaks from experience when he says that some decisions are better made using brains.

Kintera Inc. has announced that the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation has selected the Kintera Sphere technology platform to strengthen the organization's online presence and increase fundraising results.

The Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation provides financial assistance in the form of scholarships for higher education to deserving sons and daughters of Marines and children of former Marines. The organization recently embarked on a fundraising campaign to double its average scholarship award to $3,000 a year for children of current and former Marines, and endow its commitment to award $20,000 in scholarship assistance to every child of a Marine or Navy Corpsman serving with the Marines, whose parent is killed in the global war on terror.

MCSF is using a Kintera Sphere solution suite, which includes Kintera Content Management System, Kintera E-mail Communication, Kintera Friends Asking Friends and Kintera Special Commerce.

MCSF has created a new membership program, which helps members keep track of their donations and sign up for golf tournaments, galas and other MCSF events. In addition, MCSF is using Kintera Sphere to enable their donors to establish a scholarship in honor or memory of a loved one -- or use Kintera Friends Asking Friends to set up their own Web page and encourage friends and family to raise funds for MCSF or their named scholarship.

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 second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is a CD my brother-in-law sent me, a compilation of a band named Plain White Ts, not bad stuff:

Commit Business Solutions, a vendor of management software products for small to mid-sized computer service and support businesses, has announced the launch of its new QuickBooks Link in its CRM product.

Maayan Porat, CEO of Commit, said the new feature of Commit CRM will help their customers to more efficiently manage their day-to-day activities, "particularly their billing" procedures.

"Our customers can now easily and accurately bill their customers for every service or repair they've provided without worrying about duplicate data entry and wrong data, errors that are common to manual data entry," Porat said.

"Integrating with Intuit QuickBooks was an obvious decision on our part," he said, since "most of our customers already use QuickBooks, and Intuit has offered us a great integration platform. The Commit QuickBooks Link integrates with a wide range of QuickBooks versions and editions, including the US, Canadian and UK editions."

New Zealand-based industry observer Campbell Gardiner has reported that Wellington's Victoria University has "expanded its RightNow CRM functionality with the purchase of sales consoles for the system."

University officials say the consoles will be used for admissions management for international students.

Victoria has operated RightNow since 2004. Gardiner reports that "it is mainly used as an e-marketing tool to recruit prospective students from as far afield as China, Germany, USA and Malaysia."

E-marketing coordinator Charles Brooks says the consoles will help streamline its e-marketing, sales and admissions processes; important in a competitive international student market.

"One of the biggest issues for New Zealand universities is to maintain their international student numbers in a market that's going through a bit of a downturn. RightNow has helped us maintain our market share, and the enhancements put us in a good position to grow that," Brooks says.

Victoria's international website receives around 10,000 user sessions each month and RightNow provides "a timely response" to a range of student enquiries, Gardiner says: "It provides customized and automated responses, online self help and also captures and uses information for outbound marketing purposes."

As Brooks says, "there's no real alternative to e-marketing for us. We can't go and advertise on BBC or CNN and, given we're looking for a tiny result in a lot of different markets, doing local campaigns isn't an option either."

Gardiner reports that "there are 3,000 international students at Victoria University at any point in time; and to maintain an international focus the university aims to have 16 per cent of all students coming from overseas."

SplendidCRM Software, Inc. has announced the release of SplendidCRM 1.2 for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and SplendidCRM 1.1 for Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.

With these two new releases, SplendidCRM is offering what company officials call a "cross-platform CRM for companies that wish to tightly integrate a CRM with their back-office systems."

"Using the Mono platform, we are able to use the .NET tools from Microsoft, but still allow copy deployment… we can compile our application on Windows, copy it to a Linux installation that supports Mono, and run it," said Paul Rony, President of SplendidCRM Software.

"Not enough people realize that Mono can support copy deployment. Beyond allowing a single code base, copy deployment will allow them to ship a single set of binaries," stated Miguel de Icaza, Vice President in charge of Mono at Novell.

SplendidCRM has also announced the availability of a free Runtime License to hosting companies who license SplendidCRM Professional.

The company provides live demos of its software running on SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, and MySQL. A live demo of SplendidCRM running on Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 has been made available at http://mssqlmono.splendidcrm.com.

Avanade Inc., a technology integrator for Microsoft enterprise products, has announced the results of a benchmark study of enterprise-scale use of Microsoft CRM.

You're holding your breath to learn if the results are positive or negative for Microsoft, right? I know, the suspense is deadly.

The Avanade test… drum roll… envelope please… "demonstrated the capability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 to scale under a medium to heavy sales force load with response times averaging less than 0.5 seconds."

Mike Pazak, vice president of Enterprise Business Solutions at Avanade explained that the benchmarking exercise is part of Avanade's work "to help even the largest customers maximize the value of their CRM investment, and is a response to market demand for extending the success of Microsoft CRM implementations to support more users."

According to Brad Wilson, general manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, "We're seeing a strong demand in the enterprise space for CRM solutions that are fast, flexible and affordable."

During the benchmark tests conducted at Avanade's Seattle development center, data load was carefully simulated to represent records that would be generated by about a year's worth of heavy sales activity.

Peak-hour benchmark performance highlights with a 3,000 concurrent user test parameter included 22,260 CRM business transactions per hour (you know, like you do in your business on a daily basis), 355-millisecond average response time, zero authentication errors and "66.77 percent database server utilization."

Avanade completed the study using the same methodology as Microsoft-based performance tests that were conducted in the early part of 2006. Avanade set up the benchmarking study to measure the software's performance with minimal customization using a default installation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 configured for Web clients only, deployed on three dedicated Web servers.

Tuning was performed to optimize application performance, and Avanade Connected Architecture Infrastructure for .NET was used for optimal configuration of the application infrastructure, including network design, identity and access management, and platform design and deployment.

Hardware components were selected for their enterprise-class characteristics, including a Sun Microsystems V40z Windows database server with four dual-core 64-bit AMD Opteron processors, 16 GB of RAM and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition for 64-bit computing; and two 2-GB Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) adapters connected to a fully meshed SAN fabric with eight paths to an EMC(R) Symmetrix 8430 storage array.

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