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.
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