The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Steve Miller Band's Brave New World:
German CRM software vendor SAP AG has announced its preliminary financial results for the third quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2006, reporting that software revenues for the third quarter of 2006 were euro 691 million, up from 2005's euro 590 million, representing an increase of 17 percent -- 20 percent at constant currencies compared to the third quarter of 2005.
Product revenues for the 2006 third quarter were euro 1.6 billion, compared to 2005's euro 1.4 billion, which is an increase of 13, compared to the same period in 2005. Total revenues were euro 2.2 billion for the third quarter of 2006.
According to company officials, based on software revenues on a rolling four quarter basis, SAP's worldwide share of Core Enterprise Applications vendors, which account for approximately $16.4 billion in software revenues as defined by the company based on industry analyst research, continued to grow by 0.9 percentage points to 22.6% at the end of the third quarter of 2006. This, SAP officials say, represents "more than twice the share of the next largest vendor."
The company reported double digit growth rates in software revenues in each of its three regions for the third quarter of 2006. Software revenues in the Americas region grew 19 percent to euro 292 million for the third quarter of 2006 with the U.S. reporting an increase of 15 percent to euro 228 million. In the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region, software revenues increased 14 percent to euro 301 million with Germany reporting a three percent increase to euro 117 million for the third quarter of 2006.
Software revenues in the Asia-Pacific region for the third quarter of 2006 increased 22 percent to euro 98 million, with Japan reporting a 51 percent increase to euro 39 million.
Microsoft CRM integrator Neudesic has announced its expansion to the East Coast, initiating operations in Malvern, Pennsylvania, just 25 miles west of Philadelphia with offices in New York and Washington D.C. to open in the near future.
This expansion corresponds with the appointment of Tom Dodds as Vice President of Eastern Region Services. Dodds joins Neudesic after 14 years at Microsoft where he served in a variety of jobs. As an Architectural and Managing Consultant, he played a role in many of Microsoft Consulting Services' engagements, including shipping the Microsoft Systems Architecture and building the Southern California Security Team.
As part of the move David Armstrong joins Neudesic as its Eastern Region Technology Officer. Prior to joining Neudesic, Armstrong was Principal Consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services. For over 8 years,
The close proximity to New York and Washington D.C. will allow the Philadelphia headquarters to be used as a launching pad to service all three geographies, company officials say, focusing on both commercial and public sector clients.
Neudesic is a Microsoft Gold Certified and Managed Partner working with .Net Custom Application Development, Enterprise Application Integration, CRM/ERP, Portals and Collaboration, and SQL/Business Intelligence.
You don't need to be a huge multinational hotel chain to offer good loyalty point CRM programs: Great Hotels Organization has announced plans to launch a rewards scheme aimed at the independent hospitality industry.
The model for the points program is the airline alliances' One World and Star Alliance. It was confirmed that GHO "Great Hotels Rewards" program will form part of the new "Voila Hotel Rewards" scheme, currently in development with American firm, Hospitality Marketing Concepts.
Participants say the program will place GHO on the same playing field with brands such as Hilton, InterContinental and Marriott. They hope it will offer value, recognition and rewards across GHO’s two flagship brands; Great Hotels of the World and Special Hotels of the World.
CEO Great Hotels Organization Peter Gould noted that hotels who operate loyalty and frequency programs "create value, recognition and rewards for consumers," and get not only a rise in their repeat business but also an increase in their revenue per available guest. "Our research indicates that guests who participate in frequency programs tend not to be as price sensitive because of the value and recognition they receive," Gould said.
The first phase of the program aims to involve 1,000 hotels and 5.5 million members, based in over 60 countries. The objective is to generate six million paid room nights per year. Hotels will be able to manage the rewards program online using CRM technology.
The frequent guest program was designed to secure and increase business from existing customers, as well as increase new business from members in other regions within the global network. Participating hotels can lower their cost of sales and realize net revenue gains over and above the cost of the rewards program, while lessening their dependence on third party bookings and advertising.
St. Louis-based Savvis, Inc., a vendor of IT infrastructure services for business applications, has announced that it has teamed up with Entellium to run that company’s suite of hosted customer relationship management (CRM) products.
Under the agreement, Savvis will provide a fully managed hosted computing infrastructure that underpins the delivery of Entellium’s CRM products, featuring service level agreements. Entellium data will be protected by Savvis’ managed security services and audited and tested by Savvis’ Professional Services.
Entellium, which pitches its products mainly to SMBs, claims a comprehensive service level agreement with all customers, including a money-back system availability guarantee. "Unlike many CRM providers that primarily target large enterprises," Entellium officials say, the company "has tailored its offering to meet the sales force and customer management needs of the vast mid-market."
Based on 50,000 hours of usability research, Entellium’s eSalesForce and eCustomerCenter help users to manage sales opportunities and customer service incidents. Entellium CRM products also allow businesses to automate many routine tasks such as filling out forms, tracking results and creating reports.
Paul Johnston, Entellium's CEO, said Savvis's partnership allows Entellium to focus on developing CRM products "while they manage the critical elements of our IT infrastructure."
SPL WorldGroup has introduced a mobile resource scheduling and optimization application, the SPL Enterprise RealTime Scheduling as a CRM add-on.
The enterprise scheduling application, designed for companies with large field-service workforces and specialized logistical requirements, was previously marketed in the UK under the name Sidewinder. It is part of the commercial UK and Australian operations that SPL acquired in May of this year from Sidewinder Holdings Ltd.
SPL ERTS, an intelligent platform which a company can integrate with its core business processes, uses the latest "on the ground" information to automatically re-schedule and re-route field resources as circumstances change, all in real-time.
Scott Miller, SPL’s Executive Vice President & General Manager for EMEA, said that while many companies have invested "significantly" in the front-end processing operations for customer service requests, namely their call centers, they should now focus on enhancing the efficiency of their field-based resources.
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