December 2006 Archives

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Elton John's "Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock 'n' Roll):"

123Together.com, a vendor of Hosted Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint and CRM services, is now offering a free license of the new Microsoft Outlook 2007 e-mail client to every user of their Exchange Hosting service.

Outlook 2007 is the latest release of Microsoft's E-mail client. The latest version adds new features, including greater integration with Exchange Server, deeper integration with Sharepoint and CRM, all of which are provided as hosted services by 123Together.com as well as improvements in calendaring, collaboration and information management.

One nice thing they've finally done, which First Coffee has been wanting for years, is giving Outlook advanced searching capabilities. Given the amount of information residing in Outlook mailboxes today, it's about time they gave us an Instant Search tool to search by keyword through the information residing in Outlook 2007 as well as for those keywords within e-mail attachments.

Also users can now read and manage Really Simple Syndication feeds and blogs right from within Outlook 2007. Unfortunately this increase in information also brings with it increased complexity and data storage requirements. 123Together.com has pounced on this need to pitch Microsoft Exchange Hosting services, which IT departments can use to offload these back end infrastructure issues to 123Together.com's Exchange staff, who allow users to manage mailboxes which can be as large as 10 gigabytes.

They've also decided to allow greater integration with mobile devices -- Outlook Mobile Service has the ability to send and receive text and picture messages between Outlook 2007 and any mobile phone. OMS also enables users to forward Outlook e-mail, contacts, appointments, and tasks to themselves or other people as text messages.
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PacificNet Inc., a provider of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which seems to be having more fun in the gambling business than CRM these days (as if that's such a huge leap), has reported that its PacificNet Games Limited subsidiary has been selected by Jai Alai Casino, a casino in Macau, to provide multi-player electronic gambling machines.

Phase one implementation includes 40 multi-player electronic gambling machines. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed for competitive reasons.

Located at Jai Alai Building, Avenida de Amizade, Macau, in Communist China, Jai Alai Casino Macau has 67,075 square feet of gambling with about 250 slot machines, 61 table games and 4 VIP rooms, and is open 24 hours a day. And if jai alai, baccarat, blackjack and roulette aren't your cup of green tea you can lose money on more traditional Chinese gambling such as Fish-Prawn-Crab, Sic-Bo Cussec and Fan Tan.

Two weeks ago, PacificNet announced that its PacificNet Games Limited (PacGames) subsidiary was selected by Casino Lisboa to provide 120 multi-player Electronic Gaming Machines (EGM) for Phase One implementation at Casino Lisboa. Previously, PacGames also announced that it was selected by Holiday Inn Macau Casino to provide multi-player electronic gambling machines.

Victor Tong, President of PacificNet, notes that Macau has become the fastest growing part of China and "we are very excited to be moving forward in our pursuit of the Macau gaming technology business. We believe the Asian gaming market has huge growth potential and that we are well positioned to win more hotel-casino clients and capture a growing market share as a leading gaming technology provider in the region."

The numbers bear him out: According to recent statistics provided by the Macau government, Macau is one of the fastest-growing gambling markets in the world and is predicted to surpass Las Vegas in total revenues by 2007. In 2005, Macau's gambling revenues reached $5.8 billion, second only to Las Vegas gambling revenues of $6 billion.

With the disposable income of the average Chinese on the rise Macau, the only area in China where gambling is legal, expects its gambling and entertainment market to grow for years to come.

One wishes the same could be said of China's CRM market with equal confidence.
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Cognos Incorporated, a vendor of business intelligence (BI) and performance management products, last week announced financial results for its third quarter of fiscal year 2007, ended November 30, 2006.
   
Revenue for the third quarter was $247.8 million, compared with $212.3 million for the same period last fiscal year, an increase of 17 percent. License revenue was $94.0 million, compared with $75.5 million in the third quarter of last fiscal year, an increase of 24 percent.
   
Net income in the quarter on a U.S. GAAP basis was $16.5 million or $0.18 per diluted share, compared with $24.0 million or $0.26 per diluted share for the same period last fiscal year.  Net income in the quarter on a non-GAAP basis (excluding amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, stock-based compensation expense and restructuring charges) was $43.1 million or $0.48 per diluted share, compared with $29.5 million or $0.32 per diluted share for the same period last fiscal year.
   
Revenue for the first nine months of fiscal year 2007, ended November 30, 2006, was $694.7 million, compared with $624.4 million for the same period last fiscal year, an increase of 11 percent.  License revenue for the nine-month period was $245.7 million, compared with $225.3 million for the same period last fiscal year, an increase of 9 percent. 

Net income on a U.S. GAAP basis in the nine-month period was $54.8 million or $0.61 per diluted share, compared with $69.3 million or $0.74 per diluted share for the same period last fiscal year.  Net income for the nine-month period on a non-GAAP basis (excluding amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, stock-based compensation expense and restructuring charges) was $93.0 million or $1.03 per share, compared with $84.4 million or $0.91 per diluted share for the same period last fiscal year.

Cognos' balance sheet, according to company officials, "remains strong. Third quarter operating cash flow was $23.5 million."  As a result, the company exited the quarter with $599.3 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. 

Officials also pointed to 24 percent license revenue growth in the third quarter, driven by strong Cognos 8 performance; 11 contracts greater than $1 million in the third quarter, which they characterized as "reflecting continued strong large deal performance," pointing specifically to the fact that IBM selected Cognos 8 Workforce Performance for its Human Resources Business Transformation Outsourcing Workforce Analytics, "the second multi-million dollar contract for this product."
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The total market for BPO services in Finland is $362 million, according to a new IDC study. This is expected to increase to $642 million by 2010. Customer care accounts for the biggest portion of the total, the analyst firm found, followed by the industry-specific sector.

While the outsourcing of human resources and finance and accounting are approximately the same size, the smallest share is held by procurement, a sector that is expected to account for the highest growth until 2010.

"Today's business processes such as payroll and finance face increasing technical complexity as they are connected to corporate ERPs. This, combined with increasing demand for secured delivery, is currently pushing companies toward greater use of BPO vendors," said Staffan Söderman, research analyst at IDC.

The Finnish BPO market consists of three types of players: consulting companies, with a background in IT or accounting services; niche players from the payroll services industry and customer care/call center companies.

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Peter Wolf's great solo album Sleepless:

Yesterday First Coffee got an e-mail from Mike Smock, managing director of vSente, who had evidently read Paul Greenberg's CRM blog, PGreenblog, and saw the following entry, slightly edited for this format:

2007; CRM 2.0 Gets Going

OK, neck out wide time. Cut me if I'm wrong. But here's my 2007 forecast interspersed with other 2007 forecasts I've found out there and my comments on their comments.

First Them for 2007....

Forrester Research -- Their Forecast: CRM revenues will skyrocket to $74 billion (approximately $21 billion in applications sales, $53 billion in services sales. There will be a serious shortage of CRM skilled workers).

My Thinking: While I'm not sure how whether they are calling CRM-related on demand subscriptions a service or an application, I can see strong numbers in 2007 for CRM without a doubt -- though how anyone can forecast numbers that specifically is beyond me. </end quote>

Incidentally, First Coffee agrees with Greenberg here, I have no clue how anyone can sit down, sift numbers and come up with specific projections like "$21 billion" or "$53 billion" instead of "$20 billion" or "$55 billion." Maybe analysts have twigged that we business readers suspect nice round number projections like "$10 billion" are nice round guesses, so they throw out jagged numbers like "21" and "53" to lend an air of exactitude. But I speculate.

Mike wondered about that $74 billion number, so he contacted Paul, who referred him to this reporter, who on December 22nd had written in an article on VendorGuru here on TMC the following:

With the customer relationship management (CRM) market for 2007 predicted to grow 11 percent, VendorGuru.com recommends that businesses find a CRM vendor who "recognizes the benefits of an effective CRM strategy to build customer loyalty within their specific industry."

There you go, Merry Christmas from all of us.

According to technology market analysts at Forrester, the CRM market is set to hit nearly $74 billion in sales in 2007. CRM applications represent about $21 billion of that market, with services making up the rest. </end quote>

Mike sent me a nice e-mail:

Hi David,

I'm trying to track down the Forrester $74 billion projection. The only thing I can find is from a 2002 report by Bob Chatham here:

http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/Summary/0,1338,14653,00.html

Do you happen to have the link to the current projection?

I asked Paul Greenberg who referenced you...

http://the56group.typepad.com/pgreenblog/2006/12/2007_crm_20_get.html </end quote>

I wrote back saying I had gotten the figure from a press release VendorGuru had issued, giving him the article I wrote cited above. Mike then took it to VendorGuru:

Can you confirm the source of the Forrester projection you used in your press release:

http://prweb.com/releases/2006/12/prweb493215.htm

It appears to have been pulled from a 2002 Forresters projection by Bob Chatham.

Both Paul Greenberg and David Sims have referenced this projection.

We're all curious where it came from.

Help! </end quote>

Somebody from Pepperlake Communications, the PR firm which First Coffee surmises had prepared the press release for VendorGuru, answered Mike, writing "Yes, I believe you're correct.  The projections came from the 2002 report by Bob Chatham."

So as Mike wrote to me, "it seems as if the $74 billion number was pulled from the 02 Chatham report by VendorGuru."

Fine. Then Mike -- wouldn't you love to have this guy working for you? -- wrote Forrester to confirm, and got this interesting reply from their Vendor Relations department:

Mike,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, the reference in the Vendor Guru was not approved for use by Forrester. Please note that Forrester's projections for the CRM market have been updated in the October 2006 report entitled CRM Market Size And Forecast, 2006 To 2010.
http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/0,7211,40497,00.html </end quote>

Now, hang on a second. Although Forrester says the reference in VendorGuru's release was "not approved for use" by Forrester they don't say they didn't make the projection, they did, and they're still selling it. The online summary for Chatham's October 2002 report accessed early this morning reads "After shrinking by more than $2 billion in 2002, the CRM market will grow at more than 11% annually -- hitting $73.8 billion in 2007. During this period, users will shift from integration to continuous optimization."

The 2002 report retails for $499. Forrester's happy to ding your credit card for $499 today for the report. There's nothing on the page saying "Hey, wait, before we bank your five hundred bucks, you should know that these numbers have been updated, and that we really don't stand behind these projections anymore."

The 2006 report Forrester directed Mike to, titled "CRM Market Size And Forecast, 2006 To 2010," written by respected analyst William Band, which is said to contain the best-as-we-know projections and numbers, retails for $279. There's nothing on the Web page saying "This report renders our October 2002 report obsolete."

So I'm sorry, Forrester, if you're still taking $499 for a report then it's perfectly jake for guys like VendorGuru, Paul and myself to cite those numbers as what you're selling today. If you don't stand behind the numbers anymore then stop charging $499 for them, take the report down, put some disclaimer on the page saying "These numbers have been updated, they don’t represent the best available analysis anymore." If you don't stand behind your product then do the honorable thing and stop selling it.

As far as I'm concerned if you're selling anything, cars or ice cream or CRM analysis, you're standing behind what you're selling, and if you're not standing behind it you have no business selling it. If I buy a 2002 model Ford from a Ford dealer I expect to be able to drive it, if the dealer knows it's unreliable he should be sued for selling it to me.

The fault, if there is any in all this, is entirely Forrester's. Not Bob Chatham's for doing the best he could with 2002 information, not VendorGuru's for relying on unqualified numbers sold for full price today by Forrester, certainly not William Band's for doing the best he could with more recent information, but entirely the fault of Forrester itself for selling outdated information.

Bottom line: If you don't want to be associated publicly with the projection, Forrester, stop selling the damn projection publicly. You can't have it both ways.

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Smiths' Louder Than Bombs:

CRM vendor TechExcel, Inc., which sells what it calls knowledge-centric Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and support and service software, has announced it has opened an office in the UK to concentrate marketing and service to EMEA.

"Historically the UK has championed global efforts to optimize businesses and IT infrastructure with best practice approaches such as ITIL. We chose to join this rich heritage by establishing our European headquarters just outside of London," said Tieren Zhou, CEO and Chief Software Architect at TechExcel.

Zhou said the investment "reinforces our presence in the EMEA market where we already have a significant customer base."

Company officials say the addition of a UK presence means that the company can now "more effectively support the global customer base and distributors and resellers" by providing a true 24/7 environment. The company is also expanding its direct sales and channel sales development efforts to include EMEA and is actively building distributor and reseller partner programs to further extend its reach.

TechExcel's DevSuite helps enterprises ensure that all knowledge, from feature requests to design diagrams to resource planning, are shared across the various phases of the development lifecycle. The suite is comprised of core components including KnowledgeWise, a system that collects ideas, plans and features across a project based on environment and roles.

TechExcel sells CRM as an advanced product for managing marketing and sales automation and customer support.
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Microsoft CRM consultants InterDyn AKA, which sells accounting and business information systems, has announced that Peter Ward has joined the company as Business Collaboration Manager.

Ward will be responsible for leading InterDyn AKA's Business Collaboration Group focused on Microsoft's SharePoint 2007, Project Server 2007, Portfolio Server 2007 and Groove Server 2007.

Ward has 14 years of industry experience in consulting and project management. Ward holds a Bachelor degree in Business Information Technology from Kingston University, London.
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CACI International Inc. and Evolutionary Technologies International, Inc. have announced an alliance to offer clients services integrating data, especially on large systems integration projects.

Under the terms of the agreement CACI will serve as a premier reseller of ETI's systems integration tool, ETI SolutionV5, and both companies will pursue joint sales and marketing opportunities.

ETI Solution is a data integration tool designed to meet the needs of large organizations, both government and Global 1000, to use ETI to lower the cost and risk on integration projects. Extending and complementing existing data assets and tools already in place, ETI connects to virtually any data source, including mainframes, data warehouses, file systems, legacy databases, proprietary applications, and web services.

CACI currently uses ETI Solution as part of its ongoing development of an enterprise-wide system for the federal government, the Department of Defense Standard Procurement System, for which CACI serves as primary integrator. The SPS program combines multiple, separate contracting systems throughout the DoD into a single system. The system currently supports more than 18,000 deployed contracting professionals who purchase approximately $90 billion in DoD goods and services each year.

Evolutionary Technologies International, Inc. implements applications ranging from SOA, ETL, EAI, EII, CRM and ERP to compliance reporting and data warehousing.
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PacificNet's Epro subsidiary has been selected by China Unicom's Shanghai Branch to provide CRM consulting and call center training services.

According to China Tech News, under the project service agreement, PacificNet Epro will "enhance the CRM service level and telemarketing management capability of China Unicom's customer service center, called the 10010 Information Hotline," according to PacificNet officials.

This consulting project's scope covers a number of key areas including customer service and telemarketing management, development of outsourcing telemarketing programs, call center workflow design, business management, project Return on Investment, customer affinity, designing effective telemarketing scripts, and improving customer service agent capabilities.

Fei Jing Zhi, Manager of China Unicom's Shanghai Call Center 10010 Information Hotline, said the company hopes to work with PacificNet Epro "as our long-term CRM partner on future call center projects."
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And in a heartwarming example of Christmas cheer, Nichia Corp. has announced that it has issued patent infringement proceedings (HC-06C03955) in the London High Court (Patents Court) against the UK-based high street retailer, Argos Ltd., claiming patent infringement by Argos's white LED Christmas lights.

The proceedings, which include a claim for damages and a permanent injunction from future infringement, have been served on Argos.

The claim relates to the sale by Argos of white LED Christmas lights including the "120 White Multifunction LED Lights" sold in autumn and winter 2006, and "144 Multifunction White LED Crab Lights" sold last year.

Nichia believes that these products infringe at least two of its European patents.

The company's no stranger to the courtroom, as earlier this year they announced the settlement of its pending design patent litigation in the U.S. between themselves and Creative Technology Ltd, Creative Holdings Inc. and Creative Labs Inc.

On January 10, 2006, Nichia filed a Complaint in the Federal Court for the Northern District of California against Seoul Semiconductor Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiary Seoul Semiconductor Inc., as well as against Creative Technology Ltd and two of its U.S. subsidiaries, who had sold products which incorporated the LEDs manufactured by Seoul Semiconductor, alleging that they infringe 4 of Nichia’s design patents.

The parties have arrived at a commercial settlement which will be mutually beneficial.

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is my own Christmas song compilation, modestly titled The Greatest Christmas Song 3-CD Set Ever Assembled. Current song: Patty Loveless' "O Come All Ye Faithful."

CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and a provider of enterprise software applications, has announced that Davidson Companies has chosen the Pivotal Customer Relationship Management (CRM) suite of software applications for its Equity Capital Markets practice.

Davidson chose Pivotal CRM, CDC officials say, because of its financial services industry-specific functionality which "will allow its employees to cultivate deeper relationships with their clients and… provide greater insight into their workflow, automate multi-step processes, and track performance."

Davidson Companies, founded in 1935, is an employee-owned financial services holding company based in Great Falls, Montana. Davidson Companies owns D.A. Davidson & Co., the largest full-service investment firm based in the region.

Before implementing Pivotal CRM, Davidson's Equity Capital Markets practice relied on a homegrown system which Davidson officials say provided "limited reporting and archiving capability and no workflow management."

Pivotal CRM will provide Davidson Companies with what the company describes as "a comprehensive, integrated, industry-specific application that will increase operational performance, streamline processes across the value chain, and improve responsiveness to client requests."

When the Pivotal CRM implementation is complete, Davidson Companies will have approximately 200 users in 20 offices supporting 16,000 contacts.

"As a result of our growth, we determined that we needed a system that would help us ensure a consistent experience for customers in all of our critical touch points," said Donn Lassila, chief information officer, Davidson Companies, who added that the Pivotal product "is financial services-specific right out of the box, Microsoft compatible, and has an easy to access web-based interface for our users."
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Salesforce.com has announced that Karl Strauss Brewing Company has customized its Salesforce SFA and Apex Mobile applications to "meet the specific needs of its field sales teams."

The brewery is also using partner applications from the AppExchange directory to integrate data from Microsoft Dynamics GP with Salesforce, creating a single, centralized source of customer data for sales operations. Applications available via the AppExchange directory are built using salesforce.com's proprietary platform Apex.

The brewery was looking for a way to "help our field reps transition from order takers to service and relationship managers," said John Snead, Director of Beer Operations -- now there's a job title -- at Karl Strauss Brewing Company. "AppExchange has allowed us to provide our field team with complete access to information they need while in the field."

The brewery used the Apex platform to build and customize applications to suit its needs for its sales operations, customizing salesforce to track multi-leveled relationship information about current and potential beer customers including funnel-status for in-process opportunities, demographic profile data, potential volume, alcohol licensing status, geographic detail, and customer contact personal information.

The company also developed a tailored application to track brewery vehicle repair and maintenance expenses, for comparison against territorial profitability and to identify areas for improved performance.

The Apex mobile product allows representatives to complete all necessary order forms via a Blackberry mobile device without changing screens. Within a matter of minutes, the account data is wirelessly transmitted to the home office, an order invoice number is assigned and all of the data is available in the Salesforce application.

To help integrate back-office data in salesforce, Karl Strauss Brewing Company deployed partner applications from the AppExchange directory, including Scribe Sales Order Component, which extends the functionality of salesforce to support order integration with ERP systems, letting users convert opportunities to orders and automatically pass those orders to the back office.

The brewer also uses Scribe Insight for AppExchange, which integrates the salesforce environment with existing on-premise third-party and custom applications in a simple, customizable, cost effective, and straightforward manner.

"With Salesforce, our field team is more effective and business data is readily available for our sales, finance and management teams," said Snead.

The Karl Strauss Brewing Company is the brewer and distributor of micro-brewed craft beer. Based out of San Diego, it was founded in 1988 as the first brewery in the region in 50 years.
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Sand Technology, Inc., a provider of intelligent enterprise information management products, announced today that Entega Service GmbH, a subsidiary of HEAG Sud-hessische Energie AG and Stadtwerke Mainz AG (but hey, you knew that), has
implemented the Sand/DNA nearline product for SAP NetWeaver BI.

The Sand/DNA product, officially certified by SAP as an integrated ABAP add-on with SAP NetWeaver BI, was developed to address data management issues faced by companies running large-scale SAP NetWeaver BI implementations.
    
Entega Service GmbH is an independent service provider for power network operators and energy suppliers, specializing in meter reading, management of energy-related data, invoicing services and accounts receivable management, as well as in information technology and data processing. The company relies on SAP's ISU module to process contract and invoicing data. For reporting purposes, this data is moved into SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW).

"Because we recently switched over to invoicing and data exchange processes based on a dual contract model that distinguishes between power grid operators and energy suppliers, we are expecting data volumes to continue to grow. Therefore, we were looking for a way to accommodate the expansion of SAP BW, and decided to adopt an ILM strategy incorporating a nearline component in order to limit increases in data size and minimize administrative requirements," explains Michael Mokler of Central Project Management at Entega Service.
    
Entega Service officials say they chose the Sand/DNA nearline product "primarily on the
basis of its ability to provide very high compression rates for selected data -- especially the huge volumes of PSA data used in SAP NetWeaver BI -- while keeping it available for use in analysis or as the basis for new ODS objects or InfoCubes."
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CRM for nonprofits vendor Kintera Inc. has announced the availability of gadgets designed to use constituents' nonprofit fundraising involvement on social networking pages, such as MySpace, Facebook or blogs.

The gadgets launch marks a broader Kintera initiative to let nonprofit organizations use "the power of their constituents' social networks" for fundraising and engagement efforts.

A standard feature built in Friends Asking Friends, Kintera gadgets enable nonprofit supporters to share the importance of the organization in their lives with friends, peers and colleagues. In addition to expanding an organization's Web presence, each placement of a Kintera gadget serves as a personal endorsement of the nonprofit. Kintera gadgets also provide a direct connection from the constituent's social networking page to their Friends Asking Friends personal fundraising page.

For example, Kintera's fundraising thermometer gadget offers graphic representation of a constituent's fundraising success in respect to their personal fundraising goals, or tracks the organization's goals overall. Donors receive immediate reward and gratification in seeing the impact of their gift.

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Jethro Tull's Aqualung. Scoff if you must, but that opening title track is an accomplishment a lot of bands would be proud to have stand as their finest hour. Toss in gems like "Mother Goose," "Up To Me" and "Cheap Day Return" and you have yourself a sturdy ol' album:

Habitat for Humanity International, based in Americus, Georgia, an ecumenical Christian ministry dedicated to eliminating poverty housing, has announced the adoption of a new Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007-based portal system, created by Alpharetta, Georgia-based Abel Solutions, Inc.

The contact center system will improve Habitat for Humanity's ability to manage and share information, both with its hundreds of worldwide affiliates and its international Board of Directors, according to company officials.

The portal will be used as a central information store to ensure organization-wide compliance with financial, legal and other corporate policies. These same portal capabilities can also extend to Habitat for Humanity's knowledge-base, to ensure consistency of answers to questions that often come to the organization's contact center, and to make that knowledge available on Habitat for Humanity's extranet for use by its worldwide affiliates.

Abel Solutions will also create a specific application to enable Habitat for Humanity's Board of Directors to access board-specific informational and educational materials at key points during the year.  

Habitat for Humanity CIO Jim Thie said Abel Solutions "came to us highly referenced and we are looking forward to a continuing relationship with them."
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Seagull Software, a legacy business applications transformation vendor and a company which, as noted yesterday, others would do well to take a community spirit page from, has announced general availability of the LegaSuite IMS Gateway, which company officials describe as "a new addition to the LegaSuite platform of integration, user interface and workflow" products for legacy applications.

Prior to this announcement, LegaSuite already supported 3270 screen-based IMS application integration, along with direct IMS transaction-based integration using IBM's IMS Connect. LegaSuite IMS Gateway is a new method of integration directly to IMS transactions which, officials say, does not require IMS Connect, nor the installation of any other software on the mainframe.

The selling point the company sees is that IMS Gateway means that customers have "three methods for curing IMS mainframe integration headaches" with LegaSuite.

"LegaSuite is designed to close the skills gap and enable existing development teams to accelerate their response to business demands in a SOA-compliant way," said Don Addington, CEO and president of Seagull Software. "Now with LegaSuite IMS Gateway, we are offering even more options that give customers architectural flexibility as they SOA-enable important IMS applications."

Some of the product's features include IMS transactions can expose industry standard interfaces such as XML, Web services, (WSDL), Java Command Beans and .NET assemblies with no changes to the IMS code, and distributed architecture which means XML parsing and SOAP handling is performed 100 percent off the mainframe -- available platforms include Unix, Linux on Intel and Linux on z/Series, Intel and Windows.

There's also an Eclipse-based workbench designed to be easily learned and used by existing development teams, and no additional software required on the mainframe.
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If you're interested:

Contact center observer Dawn Walton has written a book, From Bad To Worse: The Shortest Route to Contact Center Destruction, which as the preview says, "outlines how to deliver consistent, high quality service to customers each and every time."

I mean, if you're interested in that sort of thing for your contact center.

Calling it a "frank and funny book," Walton says she has been working in the contact center marketplace on a global level for over twelve years, "often from the ground up."

In the book she shows readers why they should never accept the average or forget the customer's perspective, a worthy goal for any contact center. She discusses how to build a framework of operation that is consistent with any company's vision and how to set and communicate a company's direction.

Readers can "learn the building blocks of workforce management and how to tell if employees are doing a good job with speed, efficiency and quality," she says, calling the book "full of practical ideas and easy-to-implement concepts to help any business person deal with the problems they have and to help every individual look towards their business's future."

From Bad to Worse: The Shortest Route to Contact Center Destruction is available for sale online at Amazon.com, Borders.com, and through additional wholesale and retail channels. Walton has spent over twelve years in the contact center marketplace throughout Europe, the Scandinavian countries, Canada, Egypt, India and the United States. A self-confessed techno-geek, Dawn Walton lives in Dundee, Scotland.
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CRM vendor PacificNet Inc., which also sells mobile internet, e-commerce and gaming technology in China, has announced that its PacificNet Games Limited (PacGames) subsidiary has received orders from two more casinos in Macau, China for multi-player Electronic Gaming Machines (EGM).

Terms of the orders were not disclosed for competitive reasons.

Tony Tong, Chairman and CEO of PacificNet, said although the company cannot divulge the specifics on these sales "due to the highly competitive current market in Macau," he does want to convey the company's "rapid progress in the Macau gaming market to our shareholders and the gaming world."

Initial sales and acceptance of installed units are showing that PacificNet's machines are "right for the Macau market," according to Tong, adding "we are happy to see that our multiplayer EGM installation base is seeing steady growth in Asia."

According to recent Reuters reports, multiplayer gaming machines have proven to be very popular in Macau, as the trend is away from traditional, individual terminal games towards multi-player, shared experience games. Electronic adaptations of popular table games are proving exceptionally popular, both by players and casino operators.

Players enjoy a private betting terminal over a crowded table while casino operators enjoy greater accuracy, dealing speed, and cost savings of not having a human dealer.

"A powerful and developing trend over the next two years will be the movement toward multi-station, communal play gaming devices," said Merrill Lynch analyst David Anders in a note quoted by Reuters.
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PRC, a vendor of outsourced customer management, has announced that it will open a new contact center in Huntington, West Virginia. The company plans to bring 700 new jobs to the area, and will be hiring associates at all levels including management and technology team members to support the company's client base.

PRC manages customer relationships through its global network of centers. The company
employs over 14,000 team members worldwide.

Joseph Livingston, President and COO of PRC, said the Tri-State area is "known for the quality of its people and their unwavering loyalty."

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Lou Reed, now that iTunes has finally made the complete Rock 'n' Roll Animal available for download:

Knova Software Inc. a vendor of "customer experience" applications, has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by privately held M2M Holdings Inc., a holding company jointly owned by Battery Ventures VI LP and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners.

The assets of M2M Holdings currently include Onyx Software Corporation and Made2Manage Systems Inc., among others. The all-cash transaction is valued at $5.00 per share, or approximately $47 million, and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2007.

Closing of the transaction requires approval by the holders of a majority of Knova's outstanding common stock and is subject to other customary documentation closing conditions.

Bruce Armstrong, president and CEO of Knova Software, said as an independent product line within a private company, "we will have the flexibility to further accelerate the adoption" of the company's service resolution products."

Jeff Tognoni, chief executive officer of M2M Holdings, said Knova "fits perfectly" into M2M's enterprise application portfolio, "complementing" their existing CRM and ERP companies.

Once the transaction has closed, the company will continue to market, sell and support Knova products for "any CRM platform." With the addition of Knova, M2M Holdings officials say they gain a "broader worldwide sales and services presence and greater coverage across numerous industry segments, including high technology, financial services, and telecommunications."

As part of M2M Holdings' standard acquisition model, the Knova service resolution management product line would continue to be supported by dedicated product development, product management, and technical support resources. Knova's board of directors has unanimously approved the merger agreement and has recommended that the stockholders vote in favor of the merger agreement.
…

Canada's Resolve Business Outsourcing Income Fund has announced a cash distribution to unit holders of $0.0833 per unit, covering the period from December 1, 2006 to December 31, 2006.

The distribution will be paid on January 19, 2007 to unit holders of record at the
close of business on December 31, 2006. This cash distribution is consistent with disclosure of the Fund's distribution policy in the prospectus dated March 9, 2006.

Resolve is a business process outsourcing firm, providing services to over 1,000 businesses and governments across North America. Resolve sells business functions to its clients on an outsourced basis, including Finance and Administrative, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management.
…

First Coffee's happy to publicize announcements like, complete with puffy comments, around Christmas in the hopes it'll prod imitators: Seagull Software, which sells products to transform legacy business applications into service-oriented architecture assets, has surpassed its employee United Way campaign goal for 2006 just four hours after kicking off the campaign.

For the past five years, Seagull Software has sponsored a United Way campaign for U.S. employees, matching employee contributions fifty cents on the dollar. Contributions
this year exceed the campaign goal by 56 percent.
    
"I am really proud to say we knocked our United Way campaign goal out of the park this year," commented Don Addington, CEO and president. "Our employees are some of the most caring and giving people I have ever had the privilege to be associated with. They give selflessly of their time and their money to local community organizations throughout the year," he remarked.

Several years ago, Seagull Software decided to consolidate its philanthropic efforts around the United Way to make the biggest impact, and to give back to the local communities that support its employees in Atlanta and other cities in the United States.

According to local officials, 91 cents of every dollar contributed to the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta goes to the programs, with only 9 cents going to administration. "This is one of the reasons we support the United Way so enthusiastically," said Addington.

Seagull Software employees also participated in TechBridge's Habitat for Humanity building project and the U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots program this year.

Seagull sells technology that transforms "legacy" applications into SOA-compliant Web services. Their LegaSuite software platform includes integration, GUI, workflow and terminal emulation technology. With LegaSuite, customers connect legacy applications on IBM mainframe, VME mainframe, System i5, UNIX/VT and Windows client/server platforms to the Web, to other middleware and to newer- generations of applications such as portals, CRM and SCM.

The company has direct operations in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, UK, France, and Germany.
…

Salesforce.com has announced that the wealth management department of a large international bank has been "standardized on salesforce.com to be the business web desktop for their relationship managers."

The department is projected to receive an annual return on investment of 112 percent in a payback period of only 1.75 years, according to Nucleus Research.

(Evidently Nucleus calculated the costs of software personnel, training and other investments over a three-year period to quantify the company's total investment in salesfore.com. Direct benefits included reduced software, hardware and IT staff costs associated with retired system; indirect benefits were quantified based on time savings of relationship managers, using a correction factor to account for the inefficient transfer of time. Not quantified in this analysis was the change in working capital the company achieved by accelerating the account opening process or the ability to attract new clients through better customer service.)

The wealth management department chose salesforce.com to store and bring together all of their customer information. Since large client teams of relationship managers work together on each customer, according to salesforce.com officials, the ability to update and access the 360 degree view of their customer from anywhere, at any time is essential for customer retention. So they picked salesforce.com for "all their CRM needs."

In addition to the usual litany of CRM functions, the customer said Salesforce helped the department stay in compliance, which is a consideration in this age of Sarbanes-Oxley. There was also the ability to implement salesforce in weeks, and not months.

In building their wealth management business web desktop, the department used the Salesforce CRM application and integrations with the Apex platform to front-end, middle and back office functions such as wire transfers and account changes.
…

StreamServe Inc., a vendor of Enterprise Document Presentment, has announced that it received a United States patent (# 7,127,520) for a “Method and System for Transforming Input Data Streams.”

The company says the technology processes and automates the analysis of incoming data streams from a variety of applications, enabling organizations to create personalized, consistent and targeted customer communications on a massive scale.

It works for unstructured data coming into an organization’s applications, including ERP, CRM, SCM and content management.

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

[Yesterday's column could not be posted for technical problems, here we be.]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Allman Brothers' Eat A Peach:

QuickArrow, Inc., a vendor of Professional Services Automation and associated management products, has announced the availability of its Winter '06 product release.

This latest version of QuickArrow's Software as a Service (SaaS) application adds Subcontractor Invoice Reconciliation capabilities, which are meant to reduce overhead and support Sarbanes-Oxley compliance -- a concern, company officials say, for QuickArrow's clients.

QuickArrow Vice President of Product Strategy, Louise K. Allen, said, "PSA was originally designed to automate the numerous processes inside the Services Organization. Our clients are asking us to help them manage the processes associated with managing their partners, contractors, and offshore resources, who already comprise more than 10 percent of all QuickArrow users."

Specifically, Allen said, "our clients told us that they wanted to reconcile the invoices they receive for their contractors within QuickArrow. This is the next step towards our vision of automating the entire Services Supply Chain."

Stephen Satterwhite, Founder and CEO of Entelligence, said that because subcontractors are "a critical part of our business," the ability to "automate and track our vendor time entry and reconcile it with subcontractor invoices is tremendous."

This release also includes enhancements to their SOA-supported Web Services interface and further use of AJAX technology to enhance the application's usability and performance.
…

Mobile software developer Syclo has today the latest release of its flagship mobile application development platform, Agentry 4.3. The latest version provides what company officials call "a multitude of new features, including a number of components that enhance the end user experience and make it even easier to develop mobile applications."

Many new field types and controls have been added highlighted by the inclusion of what Syclo calls "clickable image controls." With this functionality, a user can click onto a displayed image and execute different actions, depending on where the image is clicked.

For example, a user can select an image of a utility pole on the handheld device and click on the crossarm, a screen pops up where he can enter damage inspection findings to generate a work request.

In addition to the adaptive communications that were added in Agentry 4.1, which allowed for automatic switching between available networks and the control of the amount of data that is sent over a particular connection, now in Agentry 4.3 a device can send information directly to another device via Blue Tooth, Peer-to-peer wireless or IRDA.

Syclo officials say the device-to-device direct communication will probably be marketed to "crews or teams." And the Agentry Administrative Server Console has been integrated with both the IBM WebSphere Portal and the SAP NetWeaver Portal.

"We are seeing organizations using our Agentry platform to deploy multiple mobile applications," said Richard Padula, Syclo's president and CEO.

Syclo's Agentry is a software platform for designing, deploying and managing the entire lifecycle of mobile projects, and employs a 4GL framework. Agentry is billed as being able to shorten development times, lower application maintenance costs and allow organizations to keep up with mobile standards and technologies.

Agentry features a library of application building blocks, or mobile functions and transactions, which can be imported, configured and deployed. With Agentry, company officials say, "80 percent of the application is already built, allowing the designer to concentrate on the business, while the underlying Agentry components handle the technical details."

Syclo mobile software solutions are deployed at over 600 organizations worldwide across a wide variety of industries. All Syclo products are built on the Agentry platform, and its mobile products are designed to give organizations "the ability to work in and out of wireless coverage, mix and match devices."
…

CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and a provider of CRM and other enterprise software applications, has announced that Isaberg Rapid has "improved operating efficiency and customer service" with the company's IMI Replenishment and Sales Analytics software applications.

Headquartered in Hestra, Sweden, Isaberg Rapid is a supplier of staplers and hand tools, such as tackers, punches and glue guns, for office, home and professional use. Isaberg Rapid has development and production facilities in France, China and Sweden and sales in 140 countries around the globe.

"The IMI applications from CDC Software have helped us harmonize our European operations and played a key role in the structure and growth of our global business. Without IMI, we would not be where we are today," said Peter Wanemark, CFO of Isaberg Rapid.

Due to rapid growth through acquisition, Isaberg Rapid faced the challenge of managing a wide variety of operations in different countries, each with its own systems, currency and accounting rules. Efficient coordination was a constant challenge and calculation of profit was almost impossible, say company officials.

Using the IMI suite of supply chain management applications, Isaberg Rapid has simplified and consolidated its European operations. Today, Isaberg Rapid operates as a single legal entity and offers standardized products and uniform pricing wherever it does business. Bottom line improvements achieved by Isaberg Rapid include:

    * Uniform pricing and product identification worldwide
    * Reduction of prices by 25 percent over the last 15 years
    * Reduction of warehouses from seven to two
    * Consolidation of multiple, multi-country operations into a single system
    * Fewer personnel hours consumed by labor-intensive analysis

Isaberg Rapid today has only two warehouses in Europe, one in Sweden and one in France. The advantage is a significant reduction in capital investment for the company. The potential risk, however, is a slim margin of error when it comes to customer service.

The company must maintain what its officials call "a delicate balance" between minimal stock in the warehouses and meeting the customers' expectations for order fulfillment. The procedure for stock replenishment is crucial, and Isaberg relies on their IMI Replenishment system to handle it.
…

Guess it had to happen sooner or later: UPI is reporting that a cafe in Mito, Japan, is serving "Coffee Stout," a coffee-flavored beer, citing the Mainichi Daily News.

The dark beer is made by mixing sweet wort -- a derivative of barley -- with coffee beans, the UPI piece says: "Although it looks like a regular beer, a sip of it reportedly releases the flavor of coffee."

Koji Kawasaki, the cafe owner, told the Daily News he developed the drink because he wanted to "make an alcoholic beverage using coffee beans."

Well, if it's coffee alcohol you're looking for, First Coffee recommends Kahlua, Bailey's or Frangelico, or the surprisingly good Starbucks Coffee Liqueur introduced early last year, a 40-proof drink produced in partnership with Jim Beam, which handles the actual development, manufacture and distribution.

It's not as sticky sweet as the other coffee-mixing liqueurs, it's more on the coffee side of things. Plus it's in a nifty cocktail-shaker style bottle with a shot measure cap.

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the underrated Al Stewart's finest achievement, Between The Wars:

RightNow Technologies has announced that it has been ranked 34th in Baseline Magazine's list of the 50 fastest-growing software companies in 2006.

The ranking was based on RightNow's 41.1 percent growth rate for the twelve months ended June 30. Baseline compiled its list after reviewing the performance of 304 publicly held software companies with annual revenue of more than $10 million.

RightNow has achieved 35 consecutive quarters of revenue growth and in October reported third quarter consolidated revenue of $30.1 million. Driving the company's continued growth is "the business value provided by its next-generation CRM solutions, its on demand delivery model, and its commitment to the success of its diverse global clientele," according to company officials.

A couple weeks ago Nikon Europe said it has extended its relationship with RightNow and deployed RightNow Marketing as its out-bound customer communication system. The new deployment gives the camera manufacturer "increased capabilities and capacity for all types of communications including information about latest offers and promotions, training and seminars, and newsletters," according to RightNow officials.

Individual countries will be responsible for driving local marketing campaigns and will be able to segment the registered user base as they please. In France a promotion for Nikon's new D80 camera is already underway. This entitles newly registered users to a free gift. As soon as they register, the marketing tool sends an email to them with an offer for a free SD card.

Nikon Germany and Austria are using RightNow to run a sales promotion to target eligible customers with either a six month "all risk" insurance policy or a cash back incentive. Customers who register a product receive an email containing a link to a Nikon Web page. Once the customer clicks through, adds any necessary additional details and submits the information, the system automatically generates a PDF voucher unique to the contact. This is attached to the customer's personal account and the details emailed to the customer.

Nikon officials like that fact that is now possible to "discern return on investment" for their direct marketing programs and forecast more accurately the result of these. By replacing relationships with external marketing agencies, the application places Nikon in the driving seat, allowing marketers to create, time and execute campaigns.

By adding the marketing application, Nikon is standardizing both its in-bound and out-bound customer touch points on RightNow's CRM suite. As customers communicate with Nikon during registration or a service incident, relevant information will be gathered and used, with permission, for more targeted campaigns. Likewise, Nikon's service agents will also have greater insight into customer histories and preferences.

Deployment of the system is still in its early stages; however projections suggest that the original specification of 2 million e-mails per year may fall short of actual usage, with Nikon Germany already anticipating that it will send 1.5 million emails to customers in 2007.

The pan-European roll out of RightNow Marketing is part of a global program which has seen RightNow Service and Marketing also deployed in the US.
…

AppExchange just keeps it coming: Axentis, a vendor of on-demand governance, risk and compliance management products, has announced the availability of Insurance Sales Compliance for salesforce.com's AppExchange.

Salesforce.com customers can now deploy Insurance Sales Compliance as part of their salesforce implementation, making it "easier and faster to manage sales training and ensure compliance and certification requirements," according to Axentis officials.

Insurance Sales Compliance is immediately available for deployment at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange. Applications available via the AppExchange directory are built using Apex.

Robert Hoyt, CEO of Axentis, said that by using the Insurance Sales Compliance tool, brokers and agents using salesforce "now have access to a comprehensive tool that lets them monitor all key compliance requirements from one platform."

Axentis officials say the Insurance Sales Compliance product "makes it easier and faster to manage sales training and ensure compliance and certification requirements." Specifically, it lets users automate and distribute the right compliance content to the right brokers and agents. They can then use the same application for a broad range of governance, risk and compliance applications, including IT risk and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Axentis officials claim they're the only GRC company using the SaaS model to deliver consistent workflow, reporting, security and content and learning management.
…

HyperQuality, Inc., a contact center quality assurance firm, has announced it has secured a Series B venture capital financing investment of $10 million.

Ignition Partners, based in Bellevue, Washington, is the lead investor; additional  participation came from key, long-term investors Miramar Venture Partners, Rustic Canyon, and Divergent Ventures, all three of whom participated in the earlier Series A financing effort.

HyperQuality officials say they have "extensive plans" for the financing proceeds, including a major investment in new product development and technology, accelerating the expansion of the sales force and further development of the company's infrastructure to support the new growth.

The company expects to use these and other enhancements to attract "substantial" new business from some of the world's largest call centers, ultimately resulting in a projected revenue increase of 200 percent in 2007.

"As quality customer service and support become increasingly significant competitive differentiators, the contact center quality function will grow in importance," said Jonathan Roberts, one of the founders of Ignition, a venture capital firm that invests in a variety of high-tech markets.

"With that as a backdrop, we believe that HyperQuality is poised for significant short- and long-term growth," Roberts added, citing the company's "impressive customer base and growth rate," along with its "profitable track record."

This new round of financing follows a $5.5 million lead investment from Miramar, Rustic, and Divergent in June 2005 to increase the momentum that HyperQuality had generated since its founding in 2003. As a result of that financing effort, HyperQuality almost tripled its client base, multiplied its employee base by 350 percent, and grew revenue by 250 percent.

Starting with its core business of evaluating telephone conversations, HyperQuality today evaluates telephone, e-mail and chat interactions for mid-size to Fortune 1000 companies, as well as implements customer satisfaction surveys. Clients include AOL, Allconnect, Carlson Leisure Travel Services, Covad, Lillian Vernon and Time Warner Cable.
…

The Board of Directors of eLoyalty Corporation have declared a cash dividend of $0.1785 per share on its 7 percent Series B convertible preferred stock (Series B stock), payable on January 2, 2007 to record shareholders as of the close of business on December 15, 2006. The aggregate amount of this dividend payment will be approximately $732,000.

ELoyalty sells management consulting, systems integration, and managed services "focused on optimizing customer interactions."  It offers a broad range of enterprise CRM services including hosting best-of-breed CRM and analytics software applications.

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one of the greatest songs of the 1970s, "Miracles," by one of the '70s lamest bands, Jefferson Starship, not to be confused with their great '60s incarnation as Jefferson Airplane:

Salesforce.com has announced that Singapore Airlines has deployed Salesforce SFA and Salesforce Marketing to "foster collaboration and information sharing among its growing number of home office-based sales representatives," according to company officials.

The company used "fourteen applications from the AppExchange directory" to enhance its Salesforce product by automating manual tasks, increasing efficiency in campaign efforts and improving visibility into account status.

"We have a highly dispersed team of inside and outside sales representatives in North America, and it was often a challenge to collaborate as a team to meet our sales goals," said Michael Stellwag, manager of direct sales and marketing at Singapore Airlines.

While "many of their competitors are dismantling their sales teams," salesforce.com officials claim, Singapore Airlines is "committed to providing customers with a point of reference. However, in order to make this economically viable, Singapore Airlines has moved a majority of the sales team to a home office, and they needed an application to facilitate the collaboration between different sales people."

The Apex platform, formerly known as the AppExchange platform, is available as of this week. The next release of the Apex platform is currently scheduled to be available in conjunction with the release of Winter '07. The Apex programming language is currently scheduled to be available during the first half of 2007.
…

Jacada Ltd., a vendor of desktop and process optimization products for customer service operations, has announced that two of Capita's regional business centers have selected Jacada WorkSpace, a unified customer service desktop, for customer service operations.

Capita, a British vendor of integrated professional support services, wanted to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its contact center operations. Specifically, it wanted its customer service representatives (CSRs) to better serve customers, bridging together all desktop applications and tools they use for greater accessibility and simplified processes. Capita wanted Jacada WorkSpace to create a central interaction point for the CSR.

Mike Minahan, Customer Services Director for Capita, said they wanted the new technology to "provide our CSRs a central point of activity for more expedient call handling, and to streamline many of the complex processes that are presently performed in numerous disparate applications."
…

And just because we enjoy practicing random acts of kindness here at First Coffee, we'll note that Knova Software, a vendor of Intelligent Customer Experience applications, has announced its inclusion on the Software 500, Software Magazine's list of the world's foremost software and services providers, published as an online catalog on www.Softwaremag.com.

Knova was ranked No. 304, with software revenue of $23.6 million. But hey, they're on.

Bruce Armstrong, president and CEO of Knova Software, said with the launch of Knova 7, the acquisition of Active Decisions and "high demand for our software and service, we expect to continue our strong performance in 2007 and beyond."

"The 2006 Software 500 results show that growth in the software and services industry was flat from 2004 to 2005, the ranking year. The industry continues to be dynamic with more than 90 new companies on the list this year," says John P. Desmond, editor of Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com.

The list is a revenue-based ranking of the world's largest software and services suppliers targeting medium to large enterprises, their IT professionals, software developers and business managers involved in software and services purchasing. It's based on total worldwide software and services revenue for 2005.

Rankings include revenues from software licenses, maintenance and support, training and software-related services and consulting. Suppliers are not ranked on their total corporate revenue, since many have other lines of business, such as hardware. The financial information was gathered by a survey prepared by King Content Co. and posted at www.Softwaremag.com, as well as from public documents.
…

I Told You So™, Part 1: Incoming House Speaker, San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi, demonstrated her party's new "tough and smart" approach to national security by wimpily caving in to intraparty racial preference politics to pick, as Chairman of the all-important House Intelligence Committee, the stupidest option possible: Texas Democrat Silvestre Reyes, a man who does not know the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and who thinks al-Qaeda and bin Laden are… flip a quarter… uh, Shiite? Wrong, Bozo. Thanks, Nancy.

Sleep safely in your beds, friends and fellow Americans, knowing this is the level of talent that you voted in to make the intelligence decisions to defend your country for the next two years. Yes, in fact it is your fault: See, in reality, as opposed to snappy political ads and MSM-spooned up sound bytes, elections have consequences. Real ones.

Here's a little tip for the 2008 elections: When America's enemies are pulling as hard as openly as they were for Democrats to win the 2006 elections, ask yourself why enemies sworn to destroy the United States have such a strong preference for one party over the other. Saves them the work, I guess.
…

A good source of RFID trade news, RFID Update, has noted that United States government efforts to tighten security in the pharmaceutical supply chain "hit a roadblock last week when a federal court judge issued an injunction that lifts pedigree requirements for drug shipments."

RFID is an industry those of us in CRM should keep an eye on, dip a toe in the trade journals once in a while, there'll be an inevitable convergence between marketers frantic to know what customers want and don’t want and spy chips with the ability to track what customers buy and what they do with it.

"While RFID had not been a requirement for the pedigrees," RFID Update writes, "industry observers agreed that pedigree enforcement generally was a positive step toward the ultimate adoption of RFID-based e-pedigrees. Thus, with the FDA pedigree requirement now postponed, momentum behind RFID e-pedigree adoption may be slowed."

The requirement, as RFID Update notes, was established in 1987 "as part of the Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA), but it was stayed repeatedly for years in hopes that practical technology solutions could be developed." None have. The FDA, drug manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and "various industry associations" think RFID can meet the pedigree requirements, so the FDA removed its stay this summer and will require paper pedigrees effective January 1, 2007.

However, ten pharmaceutical wholesalers have filed suit against the FDA's Department of Health and Human Services in federal court to block the pedigree requirement, claiming it would cause them "irreparable harm." Judge Joanna Seybert of the Eastern District Court of New York agreed, and issued the injunction last Friday. This injunction is likely to stay in effect until the suit is ultimately resolved, RFID Update notes, "which could take years."

Still the RFID industry hopes to cash in on a government-mandated boom in demand: "Ultimately, the courts tend to favor the government in cases such as this that allege Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause violations when the rational basis test applies," according to a lawyer cited by RFID Update, who said it was "likely that the FDA pedigree requirements will eventually take effect."

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

By Fsbof Do,d

That's how my name looks using the touch-type method when you move your fingers one key to the right. Anyway welcome to First Coffee, I'm your host David Sims, and the music is a great discovery I made out of the blue on iTunes last night -- don't you love it when that happens?

Here's something for nothing (not that the respect and adulation my millions of readers shower upon me is "nothing," you understand) -- you know when you're on iTunes, looking up a record, and there's that feature on the right of the screen, "Listeners Also Bought?"  Check out those records once in a while if you've never heard of them. I did, and ended up downloading It's A Beautiful Day, the 1969 San Francisco "progressive rock" classic. I've listened to it about four times since -- and this from a guy who doesn't like repeating music listenings, San Francisco or prog rock. And frankly, Let It Bleed aside, wasn't all that crazy about 1969 either.

I think it's mainly because you get the feeling their guitarist never really wanted to be in a San Francisco prog band, listening to him you suspect there's a guy who was on his way to his metal band rehearsal when he was abducted by David and Linda LaFlamme and forced to play in their ahtistik band and is flashing SOS messages via guitar the whole time. It's a great dynamic given the virtuosity of the rest of the band -- David LaFlamme was violin soloist for the Utah Symphony before moving to San Francisco and starting the band -- and saves it all from being a rather precious affair.

Don't believe the Coffee? Get It's A Beautiful Day's 1971 live album Creed Of Love and cue up "Don & Dewey." Forget twee proggies, there wasn't any guitarist anywhere rocking harder.

One of the classic album covers of all time, too:

CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and a vendor of CRM and other enterprise software applications, has announced its investment in Business Intelligence Consulting de México, SA de C.V. (BI), as part of its previously announced Franchise Partner Program with selected partners in certain international regions.

Earlier this year, CDC Software launched its Franchise Partner Program, which includes $20 million designated for investment in channel partners. Under this program, CDC Software provides direct cash investments, equity investments, lines of credit and a combination of these, to distribution partners in high-growth geographies, including Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, India, China and Asia/Pacific.

BI is the third partner selected into the Franchise Partner Program in recent months. According to the agreement with BI, CDC Software will acquire a 19 percent equity stake in the company, with the option to acquire 100 percent of the company in three years.

For more than four years, BI has been a partner of CDC Software in Mexico and Central America. Mutual customers of BI and CDC Software include Sky Chefs (Mexico and Venezuela), Schenectady, Torrecid de Mexico, Kluber Lubrication Mexicana, TechData, Hewlett Packard, Consorcio AGA, Polikon and Embasador AGA.

Business Intelligence Consulting, founded in 1998, provides collaborative business solutions for the process manufacturing industry, with expertise in systems information, manufacturing, distribution and finances, as well as network wired structures.

"We have established a successful partnership with CDC Software over the last four years through our sales and support of the Ross Enterprise applications," said Manuel Larios, managing director of Business Intelligence Consulting.

"Through the Franchise Partner Program, CDC Software is expanding its global footprint," said Oscar Pierre, senior vice president of Latin America for CDC Software. "By using our significant cash reserves, our Franchise Partner Program allows us to invest in key partners globally which not only benefits both companies, but customers."
…

Got a nice note from the SugarCRM folks yesterday:

… thought you might be interested in the latest milestone to be reached by commercial open source CRM provider, SugarCRM. Though it's not necessarily viewed on par with salesforce.com, yet, SugarCRM is on a similar growth path.

Amongst Sugar's new customers is Starbucks Corporation. Starbucks is using Sugar Professional On-Demand to manage the front-end of their HR applicant-tracking process.

[Insert your own "cream or sugar?" joke here.]

SugarCRM was founded in April 2004 on the notion that open source is a fundamentally better software development model that is less expensive than entrenched proprietary solutions and that frees customers from vendor lock-in. SugarCRM is very excited to announce [exciting news under embargo until Monday].

Sterling PCU, provider of specialized equipment for the appliance and automotive industry switched from salesforce.com to SugarCRM after getting fed up with hidden costs. Sterling expects to save $18,000 annually, paying $239 per user with Sugar instead of $780 per user with salesforce.com.

"Things were fine with salesforce.com until we tried to do a second database back-up," said Christopher Edwards, General Manager of Sales at Sterling PCU. "That is when salesforce.com started to charge us an arm and leg for backing up our own data. It's just not acceptable. It is our data, they do not own it, we do. We moved from salesforce.com to SugarCRM because Sugar gives us twice the functionality at half the price. SugarCRM also gives us the flexibility we need to grow as a business."

Since switching to Sugar, Sterling has achieved a 90 percent user adoption level. The company is currently using Sugar On-Demand but will most likely move customer assets to Sugar On-Premise in the future, a flexibility salesforce.com cannot provide.

Just thought you'd like to know.  Stay tuned for Monday's milestone.
…

PacificNet Inc., a vendor of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), mobile internet, e-commerce and gambling technology in China, has announced it has acquired an additional six percent interest in PacificNet Games Limited (PacGames).

Prior to this, in connection with the acquisition of Able Entertainment previously announced during the Q3 earnings conference call, PacificNet owned 45 percent of PacGames. PacificNet now owns 51 percent of PacGames.

Tony Tong, Chairman and CEO of PacificNet, said in recent board and management meetings "we evaluated the early success of our gaming technology operation and were very satisfied with the rapid progress and financial performance of the gaming operation. The board of directors and management team has approved our new strategy to focus on the rapidly growing gaming market in greater China, Macau, and Asia."

In September 2006, PacificNet opened an office in Macau to focus on the rapidly expanding gambling and entertainment industries in that region.

Macau is one of the fastest-growing gambling markets in the world and is predicted to surpass Las Vegas in total revenues by 2007. According to recent statistics provided by Macau government, in 2005, Macau's gambling revenues reached $5.8 billion, second only to Las Vegas gambling revenues of $6 billion.

Macau borders Zhuhai City of Guangdong Province of China, one of the country's wealthiest and most developed regions and is an hour away from Hong Kong via ferry. The number of tourists visiting Macau reached 18.7 million in 2005, of which 56 percent or 10.5 million visitors were from mainland China. By 2010, the number of tourists is expected to double to nearly 30 million visitors per year.
…

From the Poetic Justice Department: ZDNet is reporting that a former UBS PaineWebber employee, Roger Duronio, was "sentenced to eight years in prison on Wednesday for planting a computer logic bomb on company networks and betting its stock would go down.

"The investment scheme backfired when UBS stock remained stable after the computer attack and Roger Duronio lost more than $23,000."

Duronio, 64, was sentenced 97 months in prison and ordered him to make $3.1 million in restitution. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving idiot.

David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the current selection in the iTunes Christmas shuffle -- Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." Like Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," hers is the only acceptable version of the song:

Confirming widespread media reports yesterday, salesforce.com has announced its AppStore "vision and monetization strategy for the AppExchange marketplace."

Customers will be able to use AppStore as "a single source for trying, buying and deploying on-demand applications on the AppExchange," company officials say.

AppStore will provide what salesforce.com officials say is "a complete package of commercial services and revenue-sharing programs for developers and partners," who will be able to use AppStore as a global distribution network to market, sell, invoice and deliver the applications they have built using the Apex programming language and platform and made available on the AppExchange.

Company officials hope the move will goose sluggish growth, and that "AppStore will be the catalyst to unlock the value of Apex and the AppExchange, accelerating the vision for the creation, delivery, and success of any application on demand."

The company has announced an increase in its revenue outlook for its full fiscal year 2008, saying they expect revenue to be in the range of $710 million to $720 million for its fiscal year ending January 31, 2008. On November 15, 2006, salesforce.com said that it expected FY08 revenue to be between $700 million and $710 million.

CEO Marc Benioff made the announcement, saying "in connection with the announcement of our AppStore strategy today, which we will roll out in phases over the next 12 months, we are raising our revenue expectations for fiscal year 2008."

Benioff will host a lunch meeting today at 12:00 p.m. (PST) /3:00 p.m. (EST) to discuss the AppStore strategy. A live audio and slide webcast will be available on salesforce.com's Investor Relations website at http://www.salesforce.com/investor.

Industry observer Aaron Ricadela says salesforce "expects to book an additional $10 million in revenues next year as a result of fees and sales of its software, generated by [this] new program for independent software developers."

Whether the company can "wring more revenue out of its online software marketplace will be closely watched by investors looking for the rapidly expanding company to return to even higher rates of growth." Says Ricadela.

"For customers, AppStore will make purchasing on-demand applications as easy as buying music on iTunes, and for partners, AppStore will remove the burden and expense of building out a sales and distribution channel," said Benioff, who has spoken frequently in the past of "the iTunes model" for selling software.

"From the moment we started talking about our vision of a marketplace of on-demand applications, the market has been asking 'What is salesforce.com's strategy to monetize the AppExchange?' AppStore is the answer," he said.

AppExchange, an on-demand application marketplace, has more than 20,000 applications installs by over 7,400 salesforce.com customers in 57 countries, according to company officials, who say the service is "extending the benefits of on-demand applications beyond CRM to recruiting, IT, human resources, legal and all areas of the enterprise." More than 430 applications from over 230 partners are available today on the AppExchange.

The way salesforce.com sees it, on AppStore "a growing community of customers draws more developers and partners into the ecosystem; the development capabilities enabled by the Apex platform and language expand the range of applications available on the AppExchange; the growing diversity of applications inspires existing customers to expand their deployments and helps drive more subscriber growth."

The company hopes that as customers deploy more on-demand applications and customizations, they upgrade to premium salesforce.com offerings and services such as Unlimited Edition.

Next up for the vendor is The AppStore Referral Program and AppStore Checkout. The way they explain it, AppStore will provide commerce, marketing and referral services "that enable developers and partners to offer a seamless experience to salesforce.com customers."

Basically it adds a zero-touch, self-service channel model that manages billing, invoicing and renewals across multiple currencies and languages, and will introduce services and programs including different revenue sharing models.

Salesforce.com will provide AppStore services to partners for a revenue share percentage of closed deals that will vary depending on the level of services provided. AppStore services, including the AppStore Referral Program and AppStore Checkout, are currently scheduled to be offered in a phased approach throughout 2007.

The AppStore Referral Program will provide access to marketing services intended to increase demand for partners' AppExchange products. The Referral Program will be offered at two levels:

"Standard Referral" gives you premium placement on searches and AppExchange categories, marketing program and event eligibility and benefits, incubator eligibility and requires a 10 percent referral fee on all closed transactions.

"Premium Referral" provides all of the above benefits plus demand generation programs, structured seminars to educate salesforce.com customer-facing employees and a premium listing on AppExchange. Companies must meet certain eligibility requirements to participate, and it requires 25 percent referral fee on closed transactions.

Program and service availability is currently scheduled for Q3 of calendar 2007.

"AppStore Checkout" will provide commercial services including online ordering, billing, invoicing and collection services. It costs a 20 percent commission on all amounts invoiced on an ongoing basis, and will be offered separately from the AppStore Referral. The program and commissions will be independent, and are currently scheduled for Q4 of calendar 2007.
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Autobytel Inc. has announced the appointment of Jeffrey M. Stibel, President and CEO of Web.com, to its board of directors. Stibel's term on the board begins immediately.

Autobytel President and CEO Jim Riesenbach said Stibel's recent experience and "progress in turning around and revitalizing Web.com will be of great value to the Board as we continue on our mission to restore growth and profitability."

Mr. Stibel currently serves as President and CEO of Web.com, a vendor of websites and web services that has built more than 4 million websites for small businesses and consumers.

Prior to Web.com, Stibel served as Senior Vice President and General Manager overseeing the Web Services division of United Online. Before United Online, he was a founder and served as Chairman and CEO of search and marketing technology company Simpli.com, which was sold to ValueClick.

Stibel received a master's degree from Brown University and studied business and brain science at MIT's Sloan School of Management and at Brown University, where he was a Brain and Behavior Fellow.

So if somebody says "Hey guys, this CRM stuff isn't exactly brain surgery," we can ask Stibel whether it is or not.

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music, joy of joys, iTunes finally made The Pogues' old catalog available.  It's been a downloading frenzy here. Why can't all pop rock music be this good? I mean, here you have a bunch of adequately but not overly talented guys who just enjoy playing fun, energetic music, and damn near every song's a winner. Is it really so hard to do? First Coffee can't detect more than a dozen chords in their entire repertoire, it's not that complicated.

CRM veteran Wendy Lea was appointed today to the board of directors of Metallect. "With more than 20 years of sales and marketing strategy and alliance expertise for venture-backed startup companies," Metallect officials said, "Lea will serve as a key contributor to Metallect's strategic growth plans."

Lea is currently Chairman of the Board for Newmerix, a provider of enterprise application lifecycle management software, a board member for Stratify and the Forum of Women Entrepreneurs & Executives, and an advisory board member for StillSecure, Beam and Amazon Consulting.

Previously, Lea led Siebel Systems' eBusiness Consulting division, which provided channel strategy to Siebel's global customers. She joined Siebel in 1999 as a result of its acquisition of OnTarget, Inc., a provider of sales and marketing process to the high technology industry, where she held the position of VP of Marketing and Alliances.

Lea has been in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) space since 1984, initially as VP Sales and Marketing for Acclivus. In 1992, she joined The Sales Consultancy in the UK, as VP of Marketing and assisted with its European expansion. In 1995 she moved back to the US as co-founder of TSC-US.

Lea has co-authored two sales methodologies, CHAMP (channel and alliance management process) and TMP (territory management and planning), which have been adopted as global standards by IBM, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft and Oracle and embedded in Siebel System's software applications.
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CRM vendor Neocase Software has announced that Global Refund has selected Neocase 10 to "reshape the company's client services in France and Italy," according to Neocase officials.

Global Refund is a supplier of financial services for merchant markets' interactions with foreign customers, running over 200 international Cash Refund offices across four continents. It has over 230,000 merchants worldwide as customers.

The product manages administrative and financial operations relating to tourist tax refunds and dynamic currency conversion services. It produces tax refund slips, verifies their validity and provides reimbursements in cash or by mail.

Global Refund wanted something to "bring more intelligence and collaboration to the customer case management process," company officials said.

"France is the number one tourist destination in the world, hosting 76 million visitors a year. Of these travelers, 14 million are non-EU residents and therefore qualify to receive a tax refund," explains Julie Weinberg, tourist relations manager with Global Refund France.

Designed for quick implementation, easy use, and optimized for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, Neocase can be deployed either on-demand or on-premise.

"Neocase couples extensibility with ease-of-use to offer comprehensive software applications that facilitate efficient responses to our customer service inquiries," added Corinne Goetz, director of operations with Global Refund.

Global Refund's deployment of Neocase 10 is expected to roll out to additional countries in upcoming months.

Present in 34 countries and on 4 continents, the company performs over 25,000 tax reimbursements a day.
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Harte-Hanks, Inc., a direct and targeted marketing company, has announced that Ultimate Electronics, a vendor of home and car entertainment, has selected Harte-Hanks and its Allink Advantage solution for multichannel database marketing to "increase customer retention and market share," according to Harte-Hanks officials.

As part of the relationship, Harte-Hanks will provide an integrated database marketing product to drive Ultimate Electronics' newly-implemented prospecting strategy. In addition, Harte-Hanks will provide analytic support to help the retailer enhance its understanding of its customer base and fully-integrated e-mail delivery through the Harte-Hanks Postfuture platform.

Ultimate Electronics has 32 store locations in nine states selling name-brand consumer electronics and high-definition televisions.

"There is an inherent value in understanding our existing customers and prospects, so we chose a database marketing solution that allows for real-time analysis and reporting on customer profiles and purchasing behavior," said David Smith, senior vice president of marketing at Ultimate Electronics.

Smith added that Ultimate wanted to "identify valuable customer segments and acquire new customers."

Ultimate chose Harte-Hanks because of "the breadth and depth of its retail marketing experience, the strength of its analytics team and its ability to easily integrate with our existing CRM [customer relationship management] systems," Smith said.

Initial reports from company officials are that Ultimate Electronics has gained "a new, complete view of its current customers and has an enhanced ability to segment and analyze its customer and prospect data." Going forward, Ultimate Electronics plans to delve deeper into customer behavior analysis to support and grow its customer retention and customer prospecting programs.

Carey Lowrey, vice president of information technology at Ultimate Electronics, said the Harte-Hanks product "allowed us to turn the data into information in a fraction of the time of building our own solution and extending our limited CRM capabilities."
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Oracle today announced that Arizona State University has implemented Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Student Administration and PeopleSoft Enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for Higher Education.

University officials say they want to "streamline recruiting and admissions processes, improve service to current and prospective students and create efficiencies across the student lifecycle." The implementation is the first stage of an extensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) system initiative, which ASU is deploying to support the university's rapid increase in enrollment.

ASU is currently rolling out Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Online Marketing and PeopleSoft Enterprise Support for CRM, which will enable the university to plan interactive, ongoing marketing campaigns and provide support for CRM system users respectively.

Already the nation's fourth largest university, ASU's vision is to become "The New American University," hoping to increase enrollment by 56 percent. "No other Research-1 institution has taken on an ERP implementation of this scale in this short a time period," said Oracle Higher Education Vice President Jim McGlothlin.

With centralized student, financial and human resources data, as well as an integrated CRM system that tracks interactions with students, ASU officials hope to have access to more comprehensive, accurate information.

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

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

The Fourth Oracle Grid Index Report, released today in Australia, points to "growing momentum in grid computing adoption" across Australia and New Zealand.

The latest figures confirm that grid computing is finding fertile ground down under. In fact, ANZ ranked fourth worldwide (3.9) in terms of adoption, behind the US (4.3), Germany (4.3) and the Nordic region (4.7).

Grid computing is useful for moving core business systems including data warehousing, document management and CRM applications. The idea is that grid computing uses low cost commodity hardware, creates a consolidated computing infrastructure that virtualizes and provisions computing resources dynamically and "this," says Oracle officials, "leads to a higher quality of service, improved performance and better reliability."

According the Grid Index, ANZ's adoption index progressed by more than one index point, the sharpest rise in adoption worldwide in a six-month period. The Asia Pacific & Japan (APAC) region progressed faster than the U.S. and Europe, recording 83 per cent growth in either planned or actual deployment.

ANZ has consistently kept pace with or led the APAC region since the Grid Index began in April 2005.

Almost 90 percent of organizations in APAC see a move to Grid Computing as a possibility; 60 percent indicated this was very probable or inevitable, the report's authors say, adding "these signs suggest that the technology is moving from an early adoption phase to becoming a mainstream" product.

The report talked with New Zealand's Public Trust's principal database specialist, Simon Brock. Public Trust its CRM applications and other functions onto Oracle Real Application Clusters 10g. "The new infrastructure has allowed us to cost effectively scale our processing capacity in line with future growth," he said, "while delivering significant improvements in the reliability and performance of our document management system."

A major advantage gained by the move to an Oracle grid computing solution is the time saved on Public Trust's month-end processing. "One of the month-end reports previously took over 29 hours to run, but now takes 72 seconds. Aggregated data summaries, known as materialized views, can now be created four to eight times faster than they used to be," Brock said.

Oracle started the idea of building a scalable application grid with the introduction of Oracle Real Application Clusters, a key building block for grid computing architectures. Oracle Real Application Clusters enables companies to virtualize their computing resources on a single consolidated and standardized commodity hardware platform. The technology provides the same benefits as a grid but on a smaller scale, i.e. fewer nodes.
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Another study released recently by Bullhorn, which sells on-demand front-office staffing and recruiting software, is titled Cornerstone Survey Update, "Trends in Staffing and Recruiting: Front-Office Synchronization."

It finds that staffing firms often overlook automated staffing technology -- "more than 64 percent of respondents are dependent on non-industry specific tools such as the Microsoft Office Suite or non-integrated, non-synchronized CRM and ATS applications," and some Philistines and Luddites "still manually manage all leads and jobs," report officials say.

The report covers the software that companies are using to manage and streamline recruiting; the technology used by recruiters and how synchronization affects sales and recruiting. Receive a free copy of the report at www.bullhorn.com.

More than 500 staffing and recruiting industry workers completed the survey. 75 percent believe they would see "higher placement rates" if they employed a more integrated front office. In addition, 50 percent of those surveyed felt that "real-time collaboration between job orders and candidate sourcing" could significantly impact revenue growth.

The survey also found that sourcing new candidates is the top priority for almost half of the respondents.

The recruiters who use only Microsoft Outlook and an ATS were the most likely to name a need for enhanced placements, i.e. improved access to qualified candidates and faster rates of placement. Respondents who relied on rudimentary front-office technology had the most need for upgrades to enhance placement rates, the survey found.

Seventy-one percent of respondents felt that sourcing candidates from multiple job boards and sites, directly from their front-office software, would improve their placement rate, and eighty-seven percent of respondents agreed that an integrated front-office would have a positive impact on revenue growth; while 15 percent thought that such an integration would have a substantial impact on revenue growth.
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RemarkableSelling has announced that it has designed its RemarkableMail application tool to offer direct mail via the Web by integrating functionality with the Sage SalesLogix Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system from Sage Software.

Direct marketers can now use RemarkableMail to send custom, four-color, laminated postcards directly from Sage SalesLogix the next business day. It uses the AmazingMail.com platform for the creation of direct mail campaigns via the Web.

Users can upload their own images and text for the front and back of the postcard, add variable data if they choose, and hit send -- postcards, whether one or thousands, are printed and mailed the next business day and there is not a minimum quantity to send.

RemarkableMail for Sage SalesLogix is available via direct resellers or from RemarkableSelling for $295 per organization for licensing the software. Postcard charges are additional, and volume discounts for postcard printing are available.

Robert Yu, RemarkableSelling president. “Furthermore, Sage SalesLogix users will find RemarkableMail easy to use due to its familiar and intuitive design.” For more information visit www.remarkableselling.com.

In semi-related news, Software India announced the appointment of Patni Computer Systems Ltd. as Business Partner for positioning and implementing Sage CRM SalesLogix in India.

With more than 300,000 users at over 7,300 companies, SalesLogix has a hefty slice of the CRM for mid-market companies and enterprises worldwide pie.

Sage Software India Managing Director Thomas Abraham said SalesLogix has over 45 customers in India across a number of verticals, and believes "With the Patni Computer Systems partnership, we hope to bring in world-class consulting expertise in the CRM space to Indian customers… The CRM opportunity in these businesses is huge."
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Happy birthday to my now-9-year old son Dylan. We got him a clip-on iPod. Love that parental volume control feature, thanks, Apple. It'll be useful for a kid who has crammed his new iPod with The Clash, The Supersuckers and Elemeno P as well as Weird Al Yankovic and Veggie Tales's Silly Songs With Larry.

We also got him the Star Wars trilogy, and I watched the first one (the 1976 release, which I guess is actually #4 now) with him and the rest of the family last night. Funny seeing it for the first time after twenty years or so, you realize yeah, it is great storytelling with probably the lamest script in existence. Every corny, cliché line makes an appearance, and there's hardly an original line in the entire thing. Humbles us writers everywhere to see that no, a movie does not need a decent script to be wildly successful.
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First Coffee's starting a pool for how long Larry Caretsky keeps running the same press release with a new dateline day after day after day.  In on six months if you want.

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

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the song is a truly great one, Bruce Cockburn's "Fascist Architecture." Normally First Coffee doesn't care much for Mr. Cockburn's trite self-righteous Canadian hypocrisy, but this song is a gem:

Brotherhood Bank & Trust Company of Kansas City -- the Kansas side -- has recently connected with a network of more than 150 community financial institutions when the decision was made to implement Connections - CRM, the web-enabled system offered by Marketing Solutions, Inc.

Explaining the move Steve Hale, Director of Marketing at Brotherhood Bank, cited a number of reasons, including "the growth potential Connections would bring Brotherhood Bank," and wanting to "empower and equip our team with a comprehensive system that would automate, manage, report and expand the timeliness of both internal and customer communications at every touch-point and opportunity."

Neal Packard, President and CEO of MSI, has said that Connections was designed to be developed in direct response to the immediate needs of community financial organizations.
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Continuing our tour of smaller financial thrifts and their technological advancements, we see that Sedona Corporation, which sells MRM products for small and mid-size financial services organizations, has sold Valley Federal Credit Union its Intarsia MRM application.

Valley Federal Credit Union, a federally-insured institution, has over $113 million in assets, serves more than 20,000 members in Billings, Montana.

After reviewing a number of MRM options, Valley Federal determined that Intarsia was the best product for its needs, which include identifying the best ways to monitor the sales, marketing and services of its members. Intarsia will enable Valley Federal Credit Union to analyze product, service and member profitability as well as provide the credit union with next best product and service recommendations to improve cross-selling opportunities.
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Clearing up the end-of-week news, we note that Telecom Communications, Inc. has announced that its subsidiary, Guangzhou TCOM Computer Technology Limited, has recorded sales volume of IBS v4.1 Enterprise Suite during October and November 2006, totaling 102 sets of SME Mega Power Packages to SME's corporate users as a channel that generates from Subaye.com SME corporate video users.

The sold revenue is $2,342,000.

"Most of the new users like the IBS v4.1 covered on-line video on subaye.com and wireless data communications, CRM call center and unique search engine plus distribution advertising at a lower cost," said Tim Chen, CEO of TCOM, adding that GTCT is "more efficient to provide additional services" to China-based users.

The IBS v4.1 Enterprise Suite product line focuses on the one million SMEs in China, with version 4.1 enterprise suite pitched to companies with less than 500 employees, inner information resource management and affiliate networks, vendor/customer, information process and communications over the internet and wireless communications.
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In case you missed it Digisoft, a TouchStar Software company, has announced a joint effort with us here at TMCnet to conduct an online series of industry-wide webinars open to "all business professionals interested in gaining a competitive edge in the call center market."

The first webinar is scheduled to take place this Thursday, December 14th, at 2:00 p.m. EST. The event will offer an opportunity for small to midsize businesses to "gain practical knowledge focusing on proven call center products," according to TMC.

The webinar will address questions for business professionals looking to integrate IP technology and other turnkey call center products. The main focus is to discuss use capabilities of IP Technology to increase revenue, and how the integration of Digisoft technology can provide a scalable product that maximizes growth potential.

Vertical Communications, an enterprise telephony vendor, has been invited to participate as a panel guest. Topics will include adopting innovative customer support products, using cost effective tools such as IP technology, and how small to medium-size businesses can enhance customer service.

The webinar will also cover methods to increase employee productivity by implementing call center products that are affordable and do not require new equipment or a dedicated IT staff.

Norma Mozeé, Director of Sales for Digisoft, will be hosting the webinar. "The TMCnet webinar theme of providing affordable contact center products to the SMB market is timely. Small and medium-sized businesses have the same needs as large companies; to provide high quality customer service. However, they don't necessarily have the same budget or IT and telecom resources."

Over 20,000 TMC subscribers have been invited to join the upcoming webinar, and the general public is also welcome to attend. The Web Summit is offered at no charge. To register for the webinar, visit http://www.tmcnet.com.

Digisoft will host two additional webinars that will be scheduled over the course of the next several months, and will cover additional topics related to call center technology and strategic customer service products.
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According to research from LearningGuide Solutions, a "workplace performance support" vendor, up to eighty percent of companies may soon be using VoIP telephones.

"This is in an increase on previous expectations of the growth of VoIP, signaling further changes in the workplace," said Cees Louwers, Managing Director, LearningGuide Solutions. "Users will be faced with changes in how to use the most fundamental piece of office equipment, as telephones become part of the office network."

Louwers said the "learning and support" that organizations make available to workers will be "a key factor" in the successful adoption of VoIP telephones. Often, he contended, new technology implementations focus too much on the technology and don't take sufficient account of end user support, yet "it is here where the rate of user adoption will be determined."

The poll, conducted between June and October 2006, surveyed the intentions of visitors to its web site, and found that 30 percent were already using IP telephones, 34 percent intended to in the next twelve months, 16 percent were considering it and 20 percent had no plans for IP telephones.

"VoIP telephones bring a whole host of new communications features to the workplace such as calling from anywhere with broadband Internet access and calling clients directly from CRM applications; and they make existing features more accessible such as conference calling and the ability to route incoming calls to other office locations," noted Louwers.
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OpSource has announced that ClearMeeting will be using Optimal On-Demand to offer Software as a Service (SaaS) as the sole delivery option for its customers. The ClearMeeting Express edition, a new edition of the company's No-Frills webconferencing service, includes changes designed for salesforce.com users in anticipation of its debut on the salesforce.com AppExchange in early 2007.

Marjie Zander, president of ClearMeeting, said with the support of OpSource, we accelerated our AppExchange integration conversations with salesforce.com, which will result in a very timely rollout of ClearMeeting Express.
 
If  read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is St. Cuthbert's Cow doing "On Christmas Night, Bring A Torch to The Irish Washerwoman:"

Satuit Technologies, Inc., a vendor of customer relationship management (CRM) products for investment professionals, has announced the commercial availability of SatuitCRM v.10.5.  
 
SatuitCRM v. 10.5 offers what company officials describe as "over 50 new features" designed to make it easier to retrieve data. Managers can "turn their home page into a command and control center," according to officials, "to see what is going on in every part of their organization."

Each user can define and configure his multiple home pages to display all the key summary or detail data he needs to do his job -- a sales page to see what the sales team is doing; a client page to see what is going on with client accounts; or a compliance page to look at documents that need approval.
 
V.10.5 also offers a new reporting tool integrated with Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, since SatuitCRM now offers SatuitSRS, a comprehensive, web native solution that enables the creation, management, and delivery of both traditional, paper-oriented reports and interactive, Web-based reports.  

To deliver this functionality Satuit has created a Web-based interface to the Microsoft SQL Reporting Services API supporting  a WYSIWYG report designer to create reports and configure standard reports. Company officials say it's probably the first Web native interface to the Microsoft SQL Reporting Services engine, and could be offered as a stand alone Business Intelligence tool kit for software vendors operating in the On-Demand or SaaS space.
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Talisma Corporation, a vendor of Customer Interaction Management (CIM), has announced that Speakeasy, an independent broadband services company, has selected Talisma Knowledgebase to "improve customer service for its more than 40,000 customers," according to Speakeasy officials.

"Our customer base has expanded rapidly during the last few years," said Bruce Chatterley, CEO of Speakeasy. "We were looking for an affordable, feature-rich product that."

By using Talisma Knowledgebase, Speakeasy's agents can access information they need to address customers' needs while reporting and tracking relevant customer metrics.

Talisma Knowledgebase is promoted by company officials as "streamlining the entire documentation and workflow process" for companies to share information with employees, customers, and partners. The flexible, self-learning knowledge base captures and presents information to customers in a Web self-service mode, and to agents through a flexible portal within a single screen agent interface.
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In early July of 2006 InsideSales.com rolled out JabberDog, a new voice broadcast feature suite for their hosted CRM application. Since then, Dave Elkington, the CEO of InsideSales.com claims, "we have had customers experience returns in excess of 500 percent."

Elkington pointed to the JabberDog enhancement to their underlying hosted CRM application as "another example of how we are adding features."

JabberDog points to a recent client, the Mule Deer Foundation. Tony Abbott, former GM and consultant of the Mule Deer Foundation, said they had just moved their headquarters and "wanted to make sure that our members where aware of the move."

With JabberDog, Abbott "notified several thousand members about the location of our new headquarters within two hours. Without JabberDog it would have taken weeks to contact all of our members."

Public service announcement. Just read it the way you watch those public TV specials on the mating habits of the slewfoot grouse, you know it's good for you:

The Mule Deer Foundation is a national non-profit 501c3 organization, with over 10,000 members. MDF's mission is to ensure the conservation of mule deer, blacktail deer and their habitats. MDF is dedicated to restoring, improving and protecting mule deer habitat (including land and easement acquisitions) resulting in self-sustaining, healthy, free ranging and huntable deer populations; encouraging and supporting responsible wildlife management with government agencies, private organizations and landowners; promoting public education and scientific research related to mule deer and wildlife management; supporting and encouraging responsible and ethical behavior and awareness of issues among those whose actions affect mule deer; and acknowledging regulated hunting as a viable component of mule deer and blacktail deer conservation.

There, now you're all set for your next cocktail party.
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Infusion Software, a vendor of on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for growing small businesses, has been named by the Phoenix Business Journal as one of the "Best Places to Work in the Valley" for 2006 in the small business category.

Infusion was ranked 19 out of the top 30 best places to work in the Valley. Don Henninger, publisher of the Phoenix Business Journal, announced Infusion's ranking at a luncheon gathering of hundreds of business and community leaders on Thursday December 7, 2006.

"At Infusion, we love creating a place to work that is fun, challenging, rewarding and exciting. We do a lot of creative things to keep the morale and energy high, but the main thing is we have fun working hard with each other," said Infusion Software President Clate Mask. "Happy employees lead to happy customers."

Companies were ranked based on survey responses from management and employees who were questioned about factors key to employee satisfaction: communication within the company, the work environment, personal growth and development, people practices, compensation, benefits, promotions, recognition and how the company embraces innovation and ideas.

See www.bestcompaniesaz.com for the full list of companies.
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PacificNet, Inc., a vendor of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), mobile internet, e-commerce and gaming technology in China, will hold its annual stockholders meeting at 1:00 p.m. (Beijing time) in Beijing on December 15.

The meeting will be held at the company's executive offices located at Room 2309, Building A, TimeCourt, No. 6 Shuguang Xili, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China 10028, for the following purposes:

To elect seven (7) directors to the Board of Directors of the Company to serve until the next annual meeting of stockholders and until their successors are duly elected and qualified; to ratify the appointment of Clancy and Co., P.L.L.C., as the Company's independent auditors; to consider and act upon a proposal to amend the Company's 2005 Stock Option Plan and to transact any other business as may properly be presented at the Annual Meeting or any adjournment or postponement thereof.

Victor Tong, President of PacificNet welcomed "all PACT shareholders" to come to the PACT China Headquarters in BJ, "meet the management in person, and review our business."
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Grand Forks District Savings Credit Union, a community-based credit union located in Grand Forks, British Columbia, has selected Open Solutions Inc.’s Complete Credit Union Solution to handle its core data processing and member service.

Grand Forks District Savings’ data processing will be delivered through Open Solutions Canada’s data centre in Vancouver.

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