February 2007 Archives

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee dot biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is various It's A Beautiful Day cuts:

Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation, a vendor of business process management and service-oriented architecture, and Seagull Software, which sells software to transform legacy business applications, has announced that CentraSite now integrates with LegaSuite, Seagull's flagship product.

Under a cooperative marketing program agreement, Seagull Software can refer CentraSite to customers through its various channels. CentraSite is the industry's only vendor-neutral, standards-based SOA registry and repository.

In September, Seagull Software announced it had become a strategic sponsor of the CentraSite Community, and the referral agreement and integration are the first steps resulting from that sponsorship.

The integration of CentraSite with LegaSuite, according to Seagull officials, means that companies creating an SOA can "expose their legacy assets to their entire corporate development community, as well as the global development community."

There, got all that?

Fujitsu and Seagull Software are among 22 sponsors that contribute to the CentraSite Community, which can be accessed at www.CentraSite.com.

Don Addington, CEO and president of Seagull Software, explained that CentraSite enables services to be "effectively managed and made available for reuse." The benefit for customers, he sees, is that as they build out their SOA infrastructure, "they can minimize the risk in migrating to a SOA environment by maximizing the reuse of their proven, legacy applications."

Robert Sepanloo, senior vice president of the Enterprise Software and Solutions Group, Fujitsu Computer Systems, said the partnership helps "remove complexity and the risks involved in migrating from legacy applications to modern, SOA environments. This helps expand market adoption of SOAs and accelerates individual SOA projects."

Seagull Software plans to offer a CentraSite Jump Start Program to allow customers to explore the benefits of putting their SOA assets into CentraSite.

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Avaya, which sells call centers and communications applications, systems and services, has introduced new Avaya Customer Interaction Suite capabilities which, according to company officials, "enable businesses to deliver superior customer service."

The Basking Ridge, New Jersey-based vendor is introducing Avaya IQ for its Customer Interaction Suite, a reporting and analytics product designed to "integrate disparate data inputs" and "analyze and link the data to the company's overall business objectives." 

Avaya IQ lets businesses assess what company officials call "the complete customer contact experience," defining both good and bad agent behavior and delivering real-time information allowing companies to adjust customer care.

The components of the Avaya Customer Interaction Suite are Call Center, Interaction Center, Voice Portal, and the new reporting and analytics platform, Avaya IQ. Rather than referring shoppers to toll-free numbers or less personal Internet content, using Avaya IQ stores can connect consumers to remote product experts via live video through integrated voice/video kiosks.

It also lets companies reduce live agents costs by streaming video self-help topics related to the customer's inquiry to a browser on a PC or a smart mobile phone such as how to use a satellite TV remote control, record a favorite TV show, or connect a DVD player.

There are also real-time cross-sell, up-sell, and advertising features, where reporting and analytics reveal customers who may benefit from a new service.  Upon next contact the identified customers can then be routed and matched with agents supporting the best offers for the customer type. The agent can then use the customer's preferred communications approach, be it voice, e-mail or streaming video, to introduce the product or service.

The new capabilities delivered by Avaya's Customer Interaction Suite, company officials explain, "allow customers to be served by the most capable resources throughout the enterprise," using new capabilities such as streaming video while providing a complete view of the customer experience. 

All enterprise resources from the contact center to sales offices to supply chain to billing to other support functions can be engaged to serve customers cost-effectively, regardless of location -- and through a variety of media: Avaya's new capabilities include the integration of live or streaming video, and new analytics capabilities provide real-time monitoring and historical data analysis tools.

End-to-end Session Initiation Protocol, or SIP, support is at the core of the Customer Interaction Suite. SIP is an emerging Internet standard for communications that enables people, resources, and devices to be connected over IP networks regardless of location.

"The confluence of open standards, advanced technologies and evolving IT environments are enabling 'decision-oriented enterprises,'" and reducing "decision-making friction," said Mary Wardley, Research vice president, CRM Applications at IDC.

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AdventNet Inc., a vendor of collaboration, CRM & office productivity applications as well as network management software, has announced the upgraded release of OpManager MSP Edition.

OpManager offers a variety of managed network services such as server monitoring, firewall monitoring, exchange monitoring, router monitoring, wireless monitoring, and custom device monitoring at what company officials believe are "attractively low price points." Its probe-server architecture uses a secure HTTPs connection and works without requiring any firewall configurations at the clients' end.

In addition to network monitoring, OpManager MSP Edition's latest release features ticketing, security and inventory modules to let MSPs provide helpdesk and security services to their customers. To download a free trial copy visit http://msp.opmanager.com/.

Edward Martinbor of EJM Solutions, an OpManager MSP partner located in Windsor, California said the helpdesk integration "rocks. Tickets get generated on the fly and are assigned to the right technicians all by themselves. Our helpdesk staffs love it."

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CRM vendor Amdocs has announced that UPC Broadband, operator of the largest cable network in Europe, has selected Amdocs for customer service assistance. UPC Broadband will initially deploy the new system in Romania and Switzerland.

Replacing its legacy system with Amdocs CRM 6 will allow UPC Broadband to reduce its total cost of ownership, automate the ordering process, improve customer service and shorten the time to market for new services, UPC officials believe.

"We are moving to a more flexible and integrated product with Amdocs CRM 6, which has the new features and functionalities to service our triple-play customers throughout Europe," said Mehrdad Mansourpour, managing director and chief information officer for UPC.

Amdocs CRM 6, with its customer management and order management capabilities, is expected to help UPC Broadband improve customer satisfaction and retention, reduce call waiting time for customers, make the ordering process quicker and more effective, and bring new services to market faster.

"In the competitive European cable market, organizations which focus on the customer will be the ones which win," said Michael Matthews, chief marketing officer for Amdocs.

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

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Slobberbone's Crow Pot Pie:

Entellium, a vendor of on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, has announced that Forrester Research invited it to participate in its Q1 2007 Forrester Wave report, Midmarket CRM Suites, released this month.

In this review, Entellium was recognized as a strong performer, offering small and midsize businesses "ready-to-use, affordable CRM."

Forrester evaluated several midmarket CRM vendors using nearly 500 criteria grouped into three main categories: current offering, strategy and market presence. Entellium, according to company officials, earned the highest scores for cost and time-to-value, as well as one of the top three scores for product strategy, corporate strategy, and usability.

Findings of the Wave Report related to Entellium include that Entellium is suited for SMBs seeking SaaS CRM, and has customers across a range of industries in financial services firms, technology providers and business services firms. The company's CRM was noted for its "strong mobile and offline access," company officials say.

Entellium's on-demand CRM suite includes modules for sales and marketing functions (Entellium eSalesForce), and customer service (Entellium eCustomerCenter). Each module is available for purchase separately.

A number of support features are included in the subscription price including the Deployment Automator, a point-and-click customization tool and free 24/7 real-time support for each user.

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Extraprise, which sells B2B database marketing services and CRM integration, has announced that it has introduced its CRM Support Center, what company officials describe as "an outsourced support services platform" letting clients handle support and development issues onshore.

Company officials claim the Extraprise CRM Support Center platform is" the first high-level onshore support center manned by Siebel experts."

Ken Marshall, Extraprise CEO, says the Extraprise CRM Support Center platform will help cut costs by "bundling support and development services together in a retained model rather than engaging consultants, hiring full-time staff, or relying on vendor support."

Marshall says Extraprise developed the CRM Support Center to "provide companies an alternative to what has traditionally been an expensive and hard to navigate process found with off-shore or vendor support models."

The Support Center's model is billed by company officials as giving companies "access to expert, senior-level resources from across Extraprise disciplines capable of addressing critical support issues as well managing development projects." There are no third parties involved and no phone calls are routed oversees.

The Extraprise CRM Support Center offers a simple, retainer-based contract with cost savings "more than 50 percent off industry standard Technical Account Manager services," company officials claim, as well as streamlined requests via a single point of contact and capabilities ranging from enhancements and upgrades to bug fixes and platform support.

Extraprise offers support levels ranging from our Silver offering for part-time support up to the Platinum level, which includes full-time resource benefits, on-site presence, and proactive and ongoing development support.

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InsideSales.com, a vendor of on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) products with built-in dialer, has released what company officials describe as "several enhancements to its hosted CRM and Contact Center automation suite," designed to "make life easier for both managers and users."

The most recent series of upgrades include dialer upgrades, with Voice Detect Management -- meaning the InsideSales.com dialer can now be adjusted to detect live pickups or answering machines more effectively. Customers can set the dialer to connect only with live customers, and later can change the dialer settings to connect with voice mail and leave automated messages.

There's also Account Lookup Capability, where the InsideSales.com dialer lets agents perform account lookup and contact matching from the dialer screen without having to enter the CRM.

It also offers Multiple Owners for Leads, where in addition to having a primary owner on a lead, the InsideSales.com system lets leads be owned by multiple owners for better team lead management and follow-up.

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Tele2, one of Europe's largest alternative telecoms operators, has gone live in Croatia with a new converged CRM and billing product from Cerillion Technologies.

Cerillion officials say they've supplied a turnkey product, migrating Tele2 Croatia from their existing outsourced billing system to its own product in "less than three months."

The product consists of Cerillion CRM Plus, a CRM system allowing sales and customer service staff to manage the customer lifecycle, and Cerillion Revenue Manager, a carrier grade, convergent rating and billing product.

Tele2 Croatia, which launched commercial services over its GSM network in October 2005, celebrated its first year of operations recently with more than 300,000 mobile users.

Louis Hall, Cerillion's chief executive, said the deal represents "a major expansion of our business into Central and Eastern Europe and will act as a strategic stepping stone" to future business in the region.

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Tenrox has announced the availability of Release 9.1, the latest version of the company's Project Workforce Management product.

Release 9.1 has new features, including a Project Planning Module and integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. In addition, several enhancements have been made to project status views, shift and work schedule support, the ability to create custom dashboards and more.

The product uses the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 feature set to provide an end-to-end integrated product that can be hosted or deployed on-premise.

Release 9.1 is "based on customer feedback from the Tenrox User Conference and customer advisory board," according to Rafat Hilal, Vice President of Research and Development, who noted that improvements are designed to provide end-users with "additional flexibility, ease-of-use, configurability and alternatives for CRM integration."

New features and enhancements include the Tenrox Project Planning module, described by company officials as "a simple intuitive tool that addresses the most common project planning requirements."

It's integrated with other Tenrox modules to allow for the sharing of its project related information, including the work breakdown structure, Enterprise Resource Pool, resource assignments and remaining work. Information such as actual work, assignments and estimated time to complete can be retrieved from other Tenrox modules.

Tenrox offers add-on products and special out-of-the-box connectors to financial applications such as Sage Accpac ERP, ADP, QuickBooks, Great Plains, Navision, PeopleSoft, Oracle and SAP, to project management software such as Microsoft Project and to CRM applications such as salesforce.com and Microsoft CRM.

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

The Wall Street Journal has printed the full text of a rather impressive memo Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz e-mailed to company executives on Valentine's Day. In it Schultz laments the fact that Starbucks' rapid expansion -- " from less [sic] than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond" in the past ten years, as he writes -- has necessarily included a dilution in the quality of "the Starbucks experience."

Amen. You simply can't have 13,000 stores, be shooting for 40,000 around the world, and expect everything to be the same as it was in your first store in Seattle. It will lead, as Schultz says, to "the watering down" and "commoditization" of the brand. My friend, if you're opening in airports and Barnes & Noble stores as fast as possible, you're not controlling quality too closely, you're keeping the profits rolling in.

The questions and concerns Schultz raises in the memo amount to "How can we expand to 40,000 stores and still be 'Starbucks?'" His yardstick is the customer and how Starbucks relates to that customer -- and is that customer getting the experience Schultz yearns for him to have in Starbucks somewhere else these days?

Schultz points out that competitors are piecing off Starbucks customers -- " small and large coffee companies, fast food operators, and mom and pops." The strong implication in the memo is that if Starbucks simply gets back to the Starbucks way of doing things, such competitors will, in his term, be "eradicated."

But as the Journal notes, it might be too late: "… in recent years, as [McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts] have added Starbucks-like touches, Starbucks has become more like a fast-food chain, adding drive-through windows, hot food and promotions for movies on its lattes." Once you're banking money it's hard to discontinue profitable ideas.

Some of Schultz's points are almost prosaically specific: "When we went to automatic espresso machines, we solved a major problem in terms of speed of service and efficiency," he writes. The sort of speed and efficiency you need to metastasize to thousands upon thousands of outlets, yes. 

"At the same time, we overlooked the fact that we would remove much of the romance and theatre that was in play with the use of the La Marzocca machines. This specific decision became even more damaging when the height of the machines, which are now in thousands of stores, blocked the visual sight line the customer previously had to watch the drink being made, and for the intimate experience with the barista."

Taking the customer's response as judgment, the loss of such "intimate experiences" are, evidently, considered acceptable tradeoffs. This nags at Schultz.

The memo details more substantial concerns. When Starbucks decided to use "flavor locked" packaged coffee instead of fresh-grinding all drinks it was "necessary for rapid expansion," but as Schultz adds correctly, "I believe we overlooked the cause and the affect [sic] of flavor lock in our stores. We achieved fresh roasted bagged coffee, but at what cost? The loss of aroma -- perhaps the most powerful non-verbal signal we had in our stores; the loss of our people scooping fresh coffee from the bins and grinding it fresh in front of the customer."

Again, what do the customers say? The Starbucks along Istiklal Caddesi here in Istanbul birthed another one, then a third one, and there are stores along Bagdat Caddesi, in Besiktas and Nisantasi. The customers don’t seem to mind.

In point of fact, Starbucks doesn't seem to be losing overall customers. Schultz knows this. What they very well might be losing, however, is a certain kind of customer near and dear to Schultz's heart -- the one who is drawn by the aroma of fresh-ground coffee, one who considers watching a barista prepare a coffee drink an "intimate experience," and who appreciated hand-pulled espresso shots. That guy doesn't feel much at home in a Starbucks anymore.

For the most part, Schultz's fears have been realized. Starbucks is, for most, simply another franchise outlet in the airport, the mall, along the street -- "where d'ya wanna go, Starbucks or McDonald's?" "Ah, you pick." Yet it remains profitable, so there's little momentum to do much but tinker with such a successful business model.

Execs other than Schultz pay lip service to the loss of Starbucks' innocence. "If we just become about products, and not about the people side, I think the experience changes, and changes for the worse," Jim Alling, president of Starbucks' U.S. business, told the Journal in early February. "We never want to lose sight of where we came from."

Sure you're not going to lose sight of it, it'll always be that sepia-toned photograph in the frame on the wall above the manager's office door. And notice, without reading too much into a snippet of a quote, that Alling didn't necessarily say the worse experience would be less profitable for the company. Manifestly it is not.

As the Journal reports, "Starbucks' steady sales and earnings growth have made the company's shares soar since it went public in 1992. Starbucks said net income for the quarter ended Dec. 31 came to $205 million, or 26 cents a share, up 18 percent from $174.2 million, or 22 cents a share, a year earlier. Sales rose 22 percent to $2.36 billion from $1.93 billion." Shares have fallen off a bit in the past year.

But Schultz, as the guy who spent time in Italy loving the espresso bars, who to his eternal credit had the vision that you could do that in America, he doesn't want to see the coffee connoisseur walk past the door of a Starbucks for another café where they still pull espresso shots by hand, still offer fresh-ground coffee on premises. No doubt any other Starbucks executive or shareholder would prefer to see six teenage girls come in to get their frappuccinos if it means the connoisseur goes somewhere else to nurse an espresso or two while reading Stendhal for the rest of the afternoon.

The problem: Can you hold on to your premium customers in a store with prepackaged espresso shots, drive-in windows and breakfast sandwiches? Can the earnest associate professor of Early Renaissance Literature enjoying the aroma of an austere double espresso coexist with the cell phone chatterers slurping caramel macchiatos? I think so:

The trick is to (re-)establish a premium Starbucks. Face it, folks, Starbuckers do know how to make coffee, and they've pretty much single-handedly raised Americans' taste discrimination in coffee to the point where even McDonald's has been shamed into serving quality java, and Dunkin' Donuts coffee, once considered the finest coffee to be had in any fast-food outlet, is improving.

So why not open a second counter in Starbucks stores? Walk in, there's the huge menu with the coffee equivalents of those fruity bar drinks with all the umbrellas and straws -- your frappuccinos, Mocha Strawberry-Hazelnut Caramel Latte-Chinos or whatever, milk and syrup drinks you could leave the actual coffee out of and nobody'd notice. Fine. Go ahead and keep your shareholders happy there.

But walk past that line, in the back of the store there's the La Marzocca espresso machine and a barista who knows what she's doing. She pulls your espresso shots by hand, she grinds the beans fresh for every cup, all she does is coffees and espressos -- but they're done right. It's not the bulk service of up front, it's coffee the intimate experience with the barista, hand-pulled espresso, fresh-ground beans Starbucks way.

Make 'em into second stores, mini-rooms off the main rooms of Starbucks, or smaller counters in a corner of the room, whatever. The point is that's where you keep your true coffee lover, the one Howard Schultz is desperate to retain. Economies of scale would also apply so Starbucks would still be competitive with the specialty shop down the street on both price and quality.

I offer this suggestion as one who shares Schultz's love of the Italian coffee experience, of fresh-ground coffee aroma, hand-pulled espresso, although I'm not so jazzed about "intimate experiences" with baristas. And I also share his concern that those are no longer an expected part of the Starbucks experience.

"Let's get back to the core," Schultz pleads in his memo. "Push for innovation and do the things necessary to once again differentiate Starbucks from all others."

This idea succeeds on both counts, while maintaining the sales volume Schultz needs to achieve his other vision, that of 40,000 stores around the world, without becoming just another logo on the fast-food landscape.

Hey if you can do it some other way, please, be my guest. But Howard, for the sake of us old-timers, the guys you'd like to think still prefer Starbucks for the coffee quality, do something.

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the greatest album released in rock history, The Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street:

Always nice to have a new name pop up on your radar screen: Quilogy, Inc., a systems integrator "headquartered in historic downtown St. Charles, Missouri," according to proud company officials, and located "minutes from St. Louis Lambert International Airport," and offices in lots of Midwestern and West Coast cities, offers professional services, and certified training, and specializes in using "emerging technologies."

Anyway, Quilogy has introduced its Quilogy Collaborative Healthcare Framework at the national Healthcare Information Management Systems Society show in New Orleans.

Quilogy is, in fact, a Microsoft National Managed Partner and a Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains, so you may have heard of them in that regard.

"Many years of working with healthcare organizations have allowed Quilogy to identify a set of patterns that apply universally to healthcare IT endeavors. These patterns form the basis of QCHF," which includes products for its people, best practices, and methodologies, says Bill Van Hout, healthcare practice manager, Quilogy.

Using its alliance with Microsoft, Quilogy incorporates use of technologies such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server in its products, which include Quilogy Healthcare Transparency Management, Quilogy People Finder, Quilogy Media Platform and Quilogy Forms Management.

...

Interesting little bit by Antipodean industry observer Simon Hendery, noting that "New Zealand's biggest IT users seem in no rush to deploy Microsoft's Office 2007, adopting a wait and see attitude to the software suite."

It's generally worth noticing what happens in New Zealand, as sort of a canary in a coal mine. The latest World Bank rankings put Singapore as the most business-friendly economy in the world, with New Zealand in second place and the United States third, followed by Canada, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.

The country's small, highly educated, technologically aware and savvy, so it makes a great Petri dish for other industrialized technological societies -- changes can be implemented faster and the effects seen much more quickly than elsewhere.

A "majority of chief information officers and heads of IT at the country's top 20 government, education and corporate IT users" polled by Hendery's organization expressed "little enthusiasm for upgrading in the near future."

Hendery did manage to turn up Shaan Stevens, executive director of Guinness Gallagher, described as a "small Wellington-based international consultancy firm" who likes Vista and Office 2007 for Vista's added security features and the new version of Outlook, which gives him "the ability to preview attachments, added CRM functions, and a more intuitive interface for Excel and PowerPoint," Hendery reports.

But most corporate, government and education officials told Hendery that they'd be waiting for about a year or so to evaluate for "any security and 'safety' issues," i.e. just how buggy the thing's going to be. Smart move, Kiwis, as Microsoft first releases tend to be as buggy as a flystrip hung over a rotting squirrel monkey carcass in the Amazon rainforest.

"We tend not to be early adopters and would rather see what other large organizations experience first prior to our implementation," one CIO who asked not to be identified told Hendery.

Hendery found Telecom New Zealand, whose fleet of over 10,000 desktops and laptops "rates amongst the country's top five technology users," a bit more intrepid, having committed to deploy Vista across 500 desktops this quarter, "making it New Zealand's biggest user of the new operating system to date."

Hugh McKellar, Telecom's business manager for enabling collaboration, told Hendery he was excited by the "great functionality" within Office 2007:

"It's a really good, logical development for Microsoft. The Outlook voice access is a cool feature [as are] the enhancements around the whole calendar and contact list and so on, and integration with the other Microsoft applications… [and] we can add a strong local flavor to that around service and support."

Microsoft appears sanguine. David Rayner, client product marketing manager for Microsoft in New Zealand (sometimes described as "Mr. Vista") told Jan Birkeland earlier this month that in his view, "the market was ready for something different, and I think there is some compelling and fundamentally good stuff in Vista that will persuade people to take the leap from XP."

Maybe later. Right now most are taking the attitude Hendery found from a "senior government CIO who asked for anonymity," who said at first glance "there is not a compelling reason to upgrade. Potentially it [Office 2007] would fit in with an upgrade cycle and more likely in conjunction with Vista," but for now, "there is no pressure on us to implement either Office 2007 or Vista and we have no compelling event to do so."

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FYI: Nucleus Research has issued a report recommending InvisibleCRM to "organizations hoping to improve their sales and CRM initiatives."

Such firms should "consider the benefits of a new tool that marries on-demand systems with users' familiar desktop applications." According to the Nucleus report, InvisibleCRM's products "synchronize on-demand applications such as Salesforce.com with Windows desktop applications to automatically update, store and transfer customer information between the desktop and the CRM system."

InvisibleCRM, a technology provider of applications designed to increase user adoption and ROI of enterprise systems, in Nucleus' opinion "specifically addresses the biggest challenge with CRM systems: Getting users to actually use it, instead of staying with their desktop systems."

By 'invisibly' synchronizing the desktop applications with the Web-based product, Nucleus says, InvisibleCRM's products effectively remove that hurdle. The result, according to the report, is "a sharp increase in CRM system user adoption."

In fact, the report clams, "a typical salesperson would actually realize a full ROI from an annual investment of the product in just five hours."

InvisibleCRM is offered through a per user, per month pricing structure.

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Datelined Cairo, Egypt comes the news that Piraeus bank has signed with Raya Contact Center to handle its customer care program. Piraeus is expanding its scope of operations to include in-sourced 24/7 customer service center to the bank.

Specifically, Piraeus wants to use the Raya Contact Center to handle various customers’ disclaimers and inquires in "a professional, efficient, and effective way." Support would include customer inquiries on loans, credit cards and other financial packages.

"By this step," Piraeus officials say, "the bank is aiming at acquiring a high class customer care catering for a variety of retail and corporate banking customers." Raya officials say they'll provide "a world of real time business analysis based on CRM (customer relationship management) applications."

The Raya Contact Center has achieved ISO certificate four years in a row, company officials say. The company has acquired a new building with a telecom infrastructure which "accommodates more than 800 seats, to be able to provide its services to a larger customer base in Egypt and abroad."

Khaled Shash, Managing Director for Raya Contact Center, said that the banking sector is considered a strategic objective for his company, since "customer service is one of their competitive advantages."

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

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is It's A Beautiful Day's blazing live album Creed Of Love:

Under terms of the deal, the companies will offer integrated functionality within their respective applications, and are co-marketing the combined product to more affluent investors and their wealth management advisors.

"The market continues to demand greater efficiency and hence, a wealth management platform that integrates front office and back office components for an end-to-end capability," said Investigo CEO Tom Rozman.

Investigo is a Web-based practice management system with an open architecture that allows integration with software applications, while providing data aggregation and standardized portfolio accounting and reporting.

Calling Investment Scorecard's features "complementary" to Investigo's capabilities, Investment Scorecard president and CEO Joe Maxwell says his company has unified Investigo's practice management system and data consolidation engine "with our reporting, analytics and performance management capabilities."

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RightNow Technologies would like you to know that it has been named a leader in the Q1 2007 Forrester Wave report, "Midmarket CRM Suites" released this month.

According to the report, "RightNow scores well in sales, service, marketing and analytics, making it more well-rounded than other choices on the market. The product's ability to support both B2B and B2C needs means it can provide strong CRM for firms selling in either model, as well as firms whose business spans both models."

In evaluating RightNow's CRM offerings, available through the software-as-a service deployment model, Forrester noted the Bozeman, Montana-based vendor has "a strong suite of tightly integrated tools spanning contact channels," and presents "a robust offering for customer service, especially for consumer-facing organizations."

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And in case you weren't sure, it turns out that yes, both ERP and CRM are increasingly becoming mainstream applications for U.S. medium businesses.

That's according to AMI-Partners' 2006-2007 U.S. Small and Medium Business Applications & Solutions Market Overview, which has found that over one third of respondent MBs are currently using ERP/SCM products, and just over one quarter are planning to deploy these products in the next 12 months.

Similarly, almost 40 percent of MBs use CRM products today, and almost one quarter plan to adopt CRM in the next 12 months.

"This data indicates that U.S. MBs have made the connection between streamlining and automating business processes, and maximizing productivity and value in the market," says Sau Lam, New York-based Research Analyst at AMI-Partners.

The research has found that MBs also "recognize the value of integrated suites," as 75 percent of those surveyed use an accounting/financials module that is part of a larger product suite.

Survey results reveal that manufacturing, wholesale and professional services MBs are leading the ERP wave, spending significantly more on these products than counterparts in other sectors. In the CRM arena, the professional services industry outstrips other sectors in adoption and spending.

However, U.S. small businesses are more likely to take a wait-and-see attitude. Although almost three quarters of SMBs use business accounting software, just 12 percent of SBs currently use and 11 percent plan to use ERP/SCM products in the next 12 months.

CRM adoption is low as well, with one out of six SBs currently using and the same percentage planning to use CRM products in the next 12 months.

The study also found that both markets are fairly diverse -- although SMB incumbents such as Intuit, Microsoft and Sage are "strongly represented" in both the ERP and CRM areas, "homegrown, industry-specific and a long list of other products make these markets extremely crowded and competitive."

Meanwhile, although overall SMB adoption of hosted software-as-a-service remains relatively modest, the study found, SaaS is becoming "a well accepted alternative in several specific product areas, such as virus protection, payroll, e-mail/messaging, web conferencing, website content management, HR and CRM."

Based on AMI's 2006-2007 U.S. Small and Medium Business end-user surveys, the 2006-2007 U.S. Small and Medium Business Applications & Solutions Market Overview, authored by Sau Lam, Industry Analyst, and Laurie McCabe, VP, SMB Insights and Solutions, details these and other major trends and spending forecasts across accounting, CRM and ERP/SCM business product areas, as well for related areas, including Internet products, and IT and business process outsourcing services.

Vendors highlighted in the report include Intuit, Sage, Microsoft, SAP, salesforce.com, NetSuite, IBM, Google, ADP, Intacct, and others.

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Hey, color First Coffee totally shocked: It appears that various French "screwups" have conspired to punish an American for having the temerity to continue the American tradition of dominating their favorite sporting event.

Tour de France champion Floyd Landis' attorneys say the cyclist's positive doping tests should be invalidated because "the same technicians were allowed to work on both samples. Lab rules prohibit technicians from participating in both tests to prevent them from validating their own findings," according to the Associated Press.

The findings of elevated testosterone in Landis' case were weird from the word go -- they were never found in any of his other samples, and it's exceeding strange to find a spike in testosterone in just one day's tests.

A similar error at the Chatenay-Malabry lab outside Paris in 2005 resulted in the dismissal of doping charges against Spanish cyclist Inigo Landaluce, the AP reported:

"Lab records reviewed by the Times showed technicians Esther Cerpolini and Cynthia Mongongu worked with the 'A' and 'B' tests of samples that resulted in Landis being accused of doping."

Landis has long contended, and it appears with increasing justification, that the French lab that carried out the tests is unreliable, samples were contaminated and that he has been "subject to fundamentally unfair treatment by the anti-doping organizations and international sports federations."

Greg LeMond winning the Tour was a novelty, plus he spoke French and has a French name and he patronized the French, buttering up their fragile egos so that was okay, Lance Armstrong was obviously the greatest ever, but somebody named Floyd winning the Tour? The French don't like that.

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

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Supersuckers' "A Good Night For My Drinkin':"

OpenTV Corp., a vendor of products for television and cross platform interactive services, has announced a multi-year licensing agreement for its OpenTV Participate system with Mojo Media Works, a Shanghai-based content provider and interactive entertainment operator with operations in mainland China and the Philippines.

Mojo will use OpenTV Participate's single account login and centralized loyalty and CRM modules, "allowing them the ability to build an ongoing relationship with their customers from their very first day of operation," according to OpenTV officials.

Mojo, whose first project with OpenTV is the launch of a multiplatform interactive games and gambling business in the Philippines, will use the OpenTV Participate system as the backbone of its operations. The initial service will involve the management and distribution of the U.S. gambling format Slingo via kiosks in boutiques around the country.

SMS TV services will be deployed shortly afterwards followed by other platforms such as Web, WAP, and J2ME Mobile applications in the future.

The OpenTV Participate system will allow Mojo to manage their entire business centrally with controlled access available for local boutique managers and cashiers. OpenTV will also create engines for Mojo's TV gambling formats as well as provide the OpenTV Participate participation TV module for live TV, web, and SMS-based participation.

…

Business intelligence software provider Advizor Solutions has announced that SalesAdvizor for the AppExchange is now available for test drive and deployment on AppExchange.

SalesAdvizor is built for those who use the salesforce suite of on-demand CRM applications. SalesAdvizor "combines the power of today's cutting edge analytic software with an easy-to-use interface for sales professionals who depend on salesforce.com to manage their sales pipeline," according to company officials.

"Sales managers need instant answers to their most pressing pipeline questions," said Doug Cogswell, president and CEO of Advizor, saying SalesAdvizor's click-and-analyze technology "puts the tools for analysis into the hands of those who are asking the business questions," such as, "Am I on track for the quarter?" "Are my high probability deals big enough?" and "Which demand creation activities are driving my best deals?"

SalesAdvizor is built around 4 key principles, company officials say -- no setup, instant answers, online and offline freedom and easy sharing of results to others through PowerPoint, Word, Excel and PDF.

"Most business intelligence software is cluttered with complex reports, flashy charts, and complicated analytics," says Cogswell. "These products were not designed for serious analysis or are way too difficult to use -- they require an IT department to support them."

SalesAdvizor officials say their product allows salesforce.com customers to "analyze their data with the click of a mouse." The SalesAdvizor application is integrated with Salesforce and is built on the Apex platform.

SalesAdvizor is available today at a $499 one time fee per user.

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Star Marketing has hired Riyad Abu-Sharr as chief financial officer. Star Marketing, a division of Omnicom Group Inc., is a network of customer experience management agencies and specialist services including CRM, interactive, direct, digital, and search media, analytics, teleservices, e-mail, strategic consulting, and process improvement.

Abu-Sharr joins Star Marketing with 25 years of experience in finance and management in company operations, project management, client relations, strategic planning, and financial management, ten of them within the Omnicom Group.

Most recently, he was senior vice president and chief financial officer of MMG, Inc. in Rockville, Maryland, a healthcare and communications firm specializing in clinical trials patient recruitment and an Omnicom/DAS agency.

Other previous roles include chief financial officer at OnMark Corporation and chief operating and financial officer at Optima Direct Inc.

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Plexus Systems, Inc., which sells the on demand manufacturing performance system Plexus Online, has announced the availability of a new benchmark report from the Aberdeen Group titled "Realize the Returns from Enterprise Management Applications: Make the ROI Calculation Speak to the Financial Value of EMAs Investment in ERP."

A complementary copy of the report is available for a limited time at www.plex.com.

The report, published by Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company, found that whether companies are justifying the purchase of an application, an upgrade, or customization, fewer than 25 percent of them are consistently estimating ROI prior to action, and 20 percent or less measure the actual costs and gains to calculate ROI.

The report concluded that best-in-class companies are, on average, a whopping 88 percent more likely to estimate ROI before initiating projects and 130 percent more likely to measure ROI after project completion.

"130 percent?" 100 percent is absolute, bet the farm certainty, isn't it? Or did First Coffee miss the day in math class when they explained how something can be 130 percent likely to happen?

As a result, these best performing companies produce, on average, 93 percent more improvement across a variety of metrics such as cost reductions, schedule performance, headcount reduction or redeployment, and quality improvements.

"Companies reaping the most financial value from enterprise management applications are less burdened by outdated technology, are more likely to deploy existing applications across the enterprise, and are more likely to integrate disparate business applications," said Cindy Jutras, Vice President and Service Director, Manufacturing and ERP Research, Aberdeen.

Jutras adds that best-in-class companies are "less dependent on spreadsheets and ad hoc reporting and rely more heavily on the reporting capabilities of the installed applications and integrated analytics."

Plexus Online is an on demand manufacturing performance system "combining the capabilities of enterprise resource planning, manufacturing execution systems, quality management, customer relationship management, shop floor integration, and much more," company officials say. The product consists of over 350 functional modules, allowing companies access to information using a Web browser.

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Not your typical CRM vendor story here: PacificNet, Inc., which sells Customer Relationship Management, mobile internet, e-commerce and gambling technology in China, has announced today that its Take1 Technologies subsidiary has been selected by a leading gambling operator to provide 400 electronic Video Lottery Terminal machines in Europe.

Take1 has recently introduced a new line of electronic gambling machines, Take1 Electronic Slot Machines, Amusement with Prizes Machines (First Coffee's vote for Euphemism of the Week), Video Lottery Terminal Machines and Electronic Bingo Machines.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, or whether anyone said "Texas Hold 'Em for double or nothing on the purchase price?"

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

By David Sims
David(at)firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Paul Simon's There Goes Rhymin' Simon:

Vancouver-based Colligo Networks Inc., a vendor of offline collaboration products for mobile users, has announced the release of Version 2.0 of the Colligo for SharePoint product family that supports the 2007 Microsoft Office System and Windows VistaT.

Company officials say organizations can use it to "extend the reach of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0" to users who need access both online and offline -- "letting these businesses increase the adoption and utility of SharePoint with their workforce."

The Colligo for SharePoint product family consists of Colligo Reader for SharePoint and Colligo Contributor for SharePoint. The Reader provides offline read access to SharePoint sites and is free for individual users. Contributor is designed for businesses, and adds Microsoft Outlook integration, 2-way synchronization, and advanced security and deployment options.

Barry Jinks, President & CEO of Colligo Networks, said version 2.0 "incorporates feedback from users and we believe it delivers a significant productivity advantage for mobile professionals such as sales people, consultants, managers, and project teams in a variety of industries."

Tony Rizzo, Sector Head, Mobile Software, with The 451 Group, a technology industry analyst company, has written recently "as SharePoint 2007 builds on its customer base, Colligo is going along for the ride -- its services are a true addition to the SharePoint platform."

In addition to compatibility with the 2007 (and 2003) Microsoft Office System, probably the most significant upgrade the product has is the integration with Microsoft Office Outlook. Users can now drag-and-drop e-mails, attachments, events, and contacts directly into SharePoint document libraries whether they are working online or offline. E-mail message fields, such as "To," "From" and "Subject" are automatically mapped into metadata columns.

Other upgrades in Version 2.0 include a new user interface that looks and feels like the online version of SharePoint 2007 (including breadcrumbs navigation), and one allowing documents that have been synced to user PCs to be located instantly through the new integration with Windows Desktop Search (if installed). 

Other new configuration options enable IT managers to deploy and configure Colligo Contributor onto user laptops.

Designed to deliver a complete offline product, Colligo for SharePoint is the easiest product family to deploy, learn, and use. Colligo Reader and Colligo Contributor are lightweight client-only applications (under 5MB) and require no server modifications.

Designed for individual users, the free Colligo Reader allows users to synchronize SharePoint sites to their laptops, providing read-only access to document libraries, InfoPath forms, custom metadata and views, and both standard and custom lists.

Colligo Contributor is available now in single lot quantities for $125 from the Colligo online store.  The free Colligo Reader and a 30-day trial of Colligo Contributor are available at www.colligo.com.

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Graham Technology, a vendor of customer-oriented business software and services, has announced it is to double the workforce at its Indonesian location, expanding the Jakarta office from 50 to 100 employees in 2007.

The majority of the new hires will be software developers, with a variety of skill sets being sought.

Since the recent launch of ciboodle, the company's customer interaction software, the Indonesian office is set to become an important development hub for Graham Technology and will be "a valuable project resource for the company's operations across the globe," company officials say.

Mike Hughes, managing director, Graham Technology, said the additional workforce in Jakarta will "not only boost our presence in the region, but will also enable us to increase deployments of ciboodle worldwide."

Graham Technology already has a strong Indonesian presence, with a number of high-profile customers in the country, and is increasing its capacity for further growth into the Asian markets.

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Forrester Research, an independent research firm, has decided Oracle's Siebel CRM Professional Edition is, in its quite humble opinion, the strongest current offering in the latest Forrester Wave Evaluation: Midmarket CRM Suites, Q1 February 2007. 

Forrester has also named Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand as a leader.

"Oracle's Siebel CRM Professional Edition's product roadmap focuses on usability, reduced total cost of ownership and enhanced support for key verticals such as financial services, communications and public sector," reported Forrester Analyst Liz Herbert, explaining the decision.  "The product's best-in-class functionality, strong customization capabilities and enterprise-class integration tools make it a good choice for larger, more complex midmarket deployments that don't require a full breadth of the enterprise edition."

To assess the state of the CRM market, Forrester analyzed strengths and weaknesses of the leading mid-market CRM suites vendors across approximately 490 criteria in three areas of current offering, strategy and market presence.

The full 2007 Forrester Wave Midmarket CRM Suites report can be found on the link.

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Naseba, a "global business information" vendor located in the United Arab Emirates, has hired Liam Findlay as CRM Director.

Findlay has 12 years of CRM management experience, with the last five years implementing CRM strategies for a leading multinational business information company throughout the Asia-Pacific and Middle East region. He has implemented ISO9001 and BS7799 certifications into multinational companies.

In a previous position as a marketing manager, Findlay "increased the campaign conversion rate from five percent to 25 percent" and doubled the customer base within only 2 years through database-enhanced techniques, Naseba officials say, adding that he has "12 years of experience in team management."

His role within the company is focused on implementing Naseba's CRM ecosystem and community marketing strategy with a twofold focus, Naseba officials say: "to further grow Naseba's reputation and status as a leader in business information and to create new streams of revenue."

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Endeavor Commerce, publishers of SmartCatalog, a guided selling and configuration product for CRM and eCommerce, has announced that its SmartCatalog application has successfully passed the Test for ISV Solutions at VeriTest, a division of Lionbridge Technologies, Inc.

This is the second time SmartCatalog has passed certification testing for Dynamics CRM. In 2004, Veritest passed SmartCatalog v5.0. Today's test certifies the latest release of SmartCatalog v6.0 for Dynamics CRM v3.0.

Company officials say this means Microsoft Dynamics CRM users can use SmartCatalog's guided selling and superior rules manager to "ensure their product and pricing configurations are timely, accurate, and automated across all sales channels."

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

By David Sims
David(at)firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a lyric from T.S. Eliot's majestic poem for today, "Ash Wednesday:"

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

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Talisma Corporation, a vendor of Customer Interaction Management products, has announced that it has promoted existing Chief Financial Officer, Wade Pfeiffer to Chief Operating Officer/Chief Financial Officer, and named Brad Birnbaum former Vice President of Product Development, Chief Technology Officer.

To replace Birnbaum, the company has hired Dan Mason as Vice President of Development. And in what company officials describe as "an effort to standardize recruiting and hiring processes," Talisma has hired Sharon Thompson as Vice President of Human Resources.

Pfeiffer has over 20 years of operational, financial, and management experience. Before Talisma, he served as COO and CFO at X10 Wireless Technology. He also served as President of X10 USA, Inc., a multi-million dollar company which sells consumer electronic products to retailers and contractors.

Pfeiffer also spent 13 years with Ernst & Young LLP as a Senior Manager in the audit and corporate finance divisions.

Birnbaum has 12 years of experience focusing on CIM, and enters his new role after serving in his previous position for two years. He joined the company via Talisma's 2004 acquisition of eAssist Global Solutions. At eAssist, Birnbaum was V.P. of Product Development and Strategy.

Mason begins his tenure at Talisma with 25 years of experience managing development organizations for both small and large companies in the contact center industry. Prior to joining Talisma, Mason consulted with PAR3 Communications following its merger with Envoy Worldwide, providing management assistance in its transition from a small start-up to a larger, more mature company.

Thompson brings 20 years of human resources experience working for multi-billion dollar global technology leaders.  Prior to joining Talisma, she was Director of Human Resources for Microsoft Global Customer Service and Technical Support, where she directed all HR activity for that organization in the U.S., India, China, Japan and EMEA.

…

Wasn't that Eliot good? How about a bit more:

Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

…

InQuira Inc., a vendor of software for intelligent search, knowledge management, analytics and user experience, has announced the launch of InQuira 8, the latest version of its flagship product "for improving customer interactions on the Web," company officials say.

Featuring new collaboration technology that "harnesses the power of their user communities," InQuira 8 is designed especially for companies looking to profit from each and every customer interaction. Good luck finding a company not looking to profit from each and every customer interaction. Here's a hint: Try the graveyard.

InQuira 8 represents the first phase of a new product and technology roadmap for InQuira that will, according to company officials, "eventually structure online interactions into packaged applications tailored for specific industries."

Naturally, for those industry-specific interactions to deliver value to companies and their customers alike, they must satisfy the information needs of the consumer and result in the transactions and conversions desired by companies.

InQuira's strategy is to pitch to companies requiring an integrated platform that can harvest knowledge from all willing contributors -- including employees, customers and partners -- and provide the ability for consumers to access that knowledge.

Their platform includes mechanisms to evaluate user experience and implement improvements, keeping pace with the rapidly changing needs of customers.

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What's that? Oh, okay, one more, it is Ash Wednesday after all, then it's back to work for you:

Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.

…

Wanted Technologies has announced that it has been selected by McClatchy Interactive as a provider of recruitment sales intelligence for its affiliate newspapers throughout the United States.

The agreement enables select McClatchy newspapers to implement Wanted's suite of products in their classified advertising sales process. Comprised of a full-service product bundle, Wanted will provide customized business leads, Web-based advertiser analytics and online market intelligence for the classified recruitment category.

The McClatchy Company is the third largest newspaper company in the United States, with 31 daily newspapers and approximately 50 non-dailies. McClatchy-owned newspapers include The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Kansas City Star, The Charlotte Observer, and The (Raleigh) News & Observer.
 

In addition, McClatchy has a robust network of Internet assets, including local Web sites in each of its daily newspaper markets, offering users information, comprehensive news, advertising, e-commerce and other services.

The company also owns and operates McClatchy Ineractive, an interactive operation that provides websites with content, publishing tools and software development; Real Cities, the largest national advertising network of local news sites, including more than 130 newspaper sites; and 15 percent of CareerBuilder, an online job site.

Wanted Technologies sells real-time sales and business intelligence products for the staffing and recruitment, real estate, and media classified advertising industries. Using its proprietary data mining, lead generation and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) integrated technologies, Wanted aggregates data from thousands of online job boards, real estate, newspapers and corporate Web sites in real time.

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

By David Sims

David(at)firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a sturdy ol' album, Crosby, Stills & Nash:

CRM consultant Paul Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light and Chief Customer Officer of BPT Partners, has announced the finalists for the 2007 Steppin' Out Awards.

(cue the Joe Jackson Night and Day theme music…"we… so tired of all the darkness in our lives… get into a car and drive… steppin' out…" through Joe's elegantly dinner jacketed bass lines you can almost see New York in the '30s and '40s, can't you? See, there's Damon Runyon holding court at Lindy's with all the guys and dolls… feuilletonist S.J. Perelman keepin' 'em in stitches telling about his recent trip to the dentist and declaring "cuspid's last stand… Dotty Parker and Bob Benchley… Paul Greenberg draining a martini or two with Harold Ross… well, guess you had to be there…)

From a field of nearly 40 culled candidates for the award the likes of Microsoft, salesforce.com, NetSuite, Neighborhood America, Rearden Commerce and Zoho, a division of AdventNet made the final cut for what Greenberg describes as "the potentially disruptive impact that they could have in 2007 and beyond."

The Steppin' Out Awards, sponsored by BPT Partners, LLC,  began with the 3^rd edition of CRM at the Speed of Light in 2004. The awards "not only bridge the gap between the traditional CRM vendors and the newer Web 2.0 based customer-focused vendors, but also look at more than just features and functions of a company," Greenberg says:

"This award takes into account the business models, what in fact the companies are actually doing strategically, what kind of culture the company has to execute their strategy and what kind of offerings and pricing models are being presented," he said, noting that the award particularly focuses on companies' "willingness to be innovative and the impact that their innovations have had and are likely to have on the customer community and business as a whole."

Neighborhood America, a Naples, Florida-based enterprise social networking company, was cited by Greenberg as one which "does not fit the traditional mold of a CRM company, but at the same time, has a technology and strategy that can potentially change the customer landscape in the near future."

Neighborhood America CEO Kim Patrick Kobza said Web 2.0 has "created a societal expectation that customers can meaningfully interact with companies that provide the products and services that affect our lives. This expectation is highly disruptive to traditional notions of business/customer relationships."

The finalists will be required to fill out a questionnaire that will be the major factor in choosing the ultimate winner of the 2007 Steppin' Out Award vendor category. The winner will be announced by the end of March 2007.

Prior to the announcement of the winner, each of the finalists will have an extensive individual profile on Greenberg's worthwhile blog, Pgreenblog, (http://the56group.typepad.com) a lifetime supply of Turtle Wax and Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat.

The other Steppin' Out categories are service providers and practitioners. The practitioners will be broken down into several categories. The service provider finalists and winner are expected to be announced in the second quarter of 2007 with the practitioner finalists and winners to follow soon after.

BPT Partners LLC is a CRM training and research authority, founded on "a business model that uses industry thought leaders to develop the content and do the training," Greenberg says.

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Altitude Software, a vendor of contact center products for Unified Customer Interaction, has announced that Smart Link, Inc. an outsourcing provider in Saudi Arabia, has implemented the Altitude uCI product to boost the performance of its contact center located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The project is with Electronic Solution House, a contact center firm in the Middle East and a certified Altitude Software partner since 2001.

Altitude uCI is a Customer Interaction Management product that's billed as enabling organizations to "improve contact center productivity while increasing customer retention and revenue generation," according to company officials. Altitude uCI provides support for voice (inbound and outbound), IVR, e-mail, Web collaboration and chat.

Founded in 2005, Smart Link, Inc. is an outsourcing contact center for all inbound customer service and support, outbound lead generation, telemarketing, SMS, fax and Web chatting. It is a joint venture of two giant business groups in Saudi Arabia, Al Khaleej Training & Education and Al-Alamiah Training & Education.

Smart Link's client list includes organizations in the Kingdom such as NCB, National Energy Efficiency Program, Saudi SCT, Sama, Fursan Travel and Bank Albilad.

"At Smart Link, Inc., we focus on the relationship building aspect of working with our clients, while using next-generation and proven contact center technology. World-class contact center outsourcing service is, and will remain, our main goal," said Safwan Al-Khatib, Executive Director, Smart Link, Inc.

"Our objective is to be the Middle East's number one contact center outsourcing provider, offering service at world standards of quality," said Badr O. Al Nasser, CEO, Smart Link, Inc.

With scheduled 24/7 CRM outsourcing operations, Smart Link, Inc. needed "a robust contact center system that could easily support high-volume contact management across multiple channels," officials said, settling on Altitude uCI.

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Cebu, Philippines-based ICatchIT has announced their "evolution" from being a BPO service provider to "the more sophisticated and dynamic KPO."

Evidently you're supposed to substitute "knowledge" for "business" in the acronym. KPO, or Knowledge Process Outsourcing, is defined as "the outsourcing of knowledge-intensive projects to an expert company."

"As usual the industry is roiling with change, and we think this step gives us added-value in the long term," says CEO Jonathan Corners.

This industry has been emerging in India, iCatchIT officials say, and is "gradually gaining ground in other countries, such as the Philippines." For iCatchIT, this includes Finance and Accounting, Sales and Marketing KPO. Not your run of the mill, dirtyshirt BPO, mind you. KPO.

"We are not a contact center, but if you need help with your customer-contact system, CRM, or Sales and Marketing, that's what we do," says VP for Public Relations Jerry Corners. "We are quite excited about our services because we are among the first to offer this in Cebu. The Filipino KPO is not yet as popular a destination as the Indian counterpart, but we are catching up rapidly."

…

Martin Dawes Systems, an independent software and services vendor offering BSS solutions to the converged communications sector and full MVNO services worldwide, has announced the launch of its new Convergent Pre-Paid Post-Paid product.

CPP converges pre-paid and post-paid billing into a single CRM system, letting operators use one billing and CRM system for both customer groups. The product provides customer management functions that let you offer services to both pre-paid and post-paid customers.

Tony Wilson, Chief Operating Officer, Martin Dawes Systems said pre-paid customers now represent around 55 percent of global wireless subscribers. "Typically," he noted, "they have not been able to enjoy the same services as their post-paid counterparts and this is a real loss to the service providers as well as their customers.

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

By David Sims
David(at)firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is an Ornette Coleman twofer -- The Shape of Jazz to Come and Change of the Century:

SpikeSource, a vendor of open-source business software with research operations located in Bangalore, and Bull, a European IT company,  have announced a "worldwide technology and business partnership" to "accelerate adoption of open source applications in the enterprise market," according to SpikeSource officials.

The agreement is SpikeSource’s first pan-European partnership. It will include integrating CRM and other open source software applications.

The partnership combines the efforts of both companies to help organizations use open source to innovate and reduce costs, by benefiting from business-ready, fully industrialized open source applications and services.

It will combine Bull’s platforms and services capabilities, with SpikeSource pre-integrated stacks and applications, designed to reduce the costs and deployment challenges associated with open source middleware and application integration.

Bull and SpikeSource will work together in three areas:

Open source platform readiness. Bull will integrate current and future SpikeSource open source software applications -- such as enterprise content management, e-mail, CRM and Web 2.0 suite -- with its NovaScale servers, extending the range of the ready-to-deploy OSS infrastructures it provides to its customers.

Bull and SpikeSource will collaborate on optimizing SpikeSource products on NovaScale servers.  

Open source integration services. Bull will integrate SpikeSource products as components of its Open Energy offering. Open Energy is a set of services aimed at helping enterprise and government IT organizations maximize the benefit of OSS in their IT projects.

There will also be open source support. Within Bull’s Open Access offer, Bull customers may elect Bull Support Centers to receive global support for all SpikeSource software products, as well as to subscribe to the SpikeNet service developed by SpikeSource. Bull will provide first and second level support capability, backed up by SpikeSource for third-level engineering support, and will provide a single point of contact to customers for both software delivery and support.  

As part of the agreement, Bull and SpikeSource will collaborate and exchange information for the development of future, new OSS-based products, by sharing roadmaps and market feedback.

Jean-Pierre Barbéris, General Manager of Bull Services and Solutions, said the partnership with SpikeSource will add to NovaScale platforms and Open Energy offers "after our recent alliance with JBoss."

For SpikeSource, this agreement "ties in with its aim of bringing the global open source community together in a network of developers and ISVs in order to offer sophisticated applications to enterprises, but with much less complexity and at a competitive price," stated Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource.

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Salesforce.com has announced that, for the second year in a row, it has been named among the nation's "100 Best Corporate Citizens" by The CRO, a membership organization for Corporate Responsibility Officers.

The 100 Best Corporate Citizens list ranks companies in eight categories: shareholders, community, governance, diversity, employees, environment, human rights and product, to identify organizations that excel at serving a variety of stakeholders well. The list is drawn from more than 1,100 of the largest U.S. publicly traded companies.

Among those, salesforce.com and its Salesforce Foundation rank number 11 on this year's list.

"During 2006, salesforce.com employees and the Salesforce.com Foundation worked with 3,000 non-profit organizations around the globe to further the causes of youth development, to aid in the recovery of natural disasters, and to equip communities for self-sufficiency and prosperity," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at salesforce.com.

Now in its 8th year, the 100 Best Corporate Citizens list was first developed by Business Ethics magazine, which was incorporated last year into The CRO.

…

Aastra has announced the addition of Chris Capo to lead its reseller program for hosted call center services, Centergy Virtual Contact Center Strategic Alliance Program.

Joining Aastra last quarter, Capo is tasked with recruiting VARs for the Aastra OnDemand hosted service offerings including hosted call center products.

"We're very pleased to have someone of Chris' experience and energy leading this important effort," said Tim Whittington, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Aastra Intecom. "He has hit the ground running and has already generated significant interest from major distributors and resellers in our hosted call center products."

Before joining Aastra Intecom, Capo led the U.S. and EMEA channel development team at an Avaya value-added products vendor based in Houston. Prior to that, he worked with a California-based software developer specializing in real-time reporting and visual management products for the contact center.

Capo began his channel management career with Paxar Monarch, an apparel identification provider.

…

Verizon Business has received the 2007 recipient of Frost & Sullivan's Market Leadership Award for Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR) services. 

A key component of the Verizon Business Contact Center portfolio, the Hosted IVR product line, includes Enhanced Call Routing, Global ECR, Speech Services and Internet Protocol IVR. 

Seema Lall, contact center strategic analyst, Frost & Sullivan, noted that hosted IVR services "represent a strategic growth market for the company." 

By using its IP assets to introduce IP Toll Free and IP IVR services, Verizon Business lets customers integrate contact center data and voice applications, manage geographically dispersed operations and help companies transition at their own pace from time division multiplexing -- a method for sending multiple digital signals along a single telecommunications transmission -- to IP. 

Tom Roche, vice president, network voice and data services for Verizon Business, said the key factors for his company's hosted IVR strategy include a "technologically strong product portfolio, understanding of hosted services dynamics, deployment value chain, and the ability to use our core strengths as a leading network service provider."

Roche mentioned the company's continually upgrading its IVR portfolio to incorporate the latest technology advances "such as developments in speech recognition and natural language research."

Using the Verizon Business Customer Center, Contact Center Service customers can order products, manage their networks, view and pay invoices, and access tools and tickets. These capabilities include Verizon IP Toll Free, which routes incoming toll-free calls over IP, which supports multiple-contact media, such as phone calls, e-mail or instant messaging from around the globe.

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

By David Sims
David(at)firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring:

Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins have announced that Atlanta-based Studiocom Interactive has been awarded the beverage and food marketer's digital marketing duties for 2007, which will include developing "long-term strategies for Customer Relationship Management," Dunkin' Brands officials say.

Studiocom will provide "online strategy and creative support for selected new product launches, plan and buy all online media, and redesign the two brands' consumer websites," Dunkin' officials say, adding that the WPP-owned agency will develop long-term strategies for CRM surrounding the Dunkin' stored value Card, and Baskin-Robbins' Birthday Club program.

Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and enhanced e-Commerce efforts will also be part of the overall agreement.

"In today's world having a strong and creative online presence is critical for business," stated Will Kussell, Chief Operating Officer of Dunkin' Brands.

Studiocom President, Carlos Pimenta said Studiocom's new Boston office personnel will be collaborating with the brand's agency partner, Hill Holliday, Connors and Cosmopolous in developing online extensions for select product campaigns.

Dunkin' Brands has more than 13,000 franchises in 50 countries worldwide -- 7,293 Dunkin' Donuts restaurants, 5,838 Baskin-Robbins restaurants and 280 Togo's restaurants with system-wide sales of $6.4 billion at the end of 2006. Dunkin' Brands, Inc. is headquartered in Canton, Massachusetts.

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PacificNet Inc., a vendor of Customer Relationship Management, mobile internet, e-commerce and gaming technology in China, has announced today the appointment of Daniel Lui as Chief Financial Officer.

Tony Tong, Chairman and CEO of PacificNet, noted that Lui has experience working in China and Hong Kong, as well as experience working with Big-4 accounting firms including a position as an auditor at KPMG and manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

He's fluent in English, Chinese Mandarin and Cantonese, but hey, who isn't, right?

Lui has also managed financial accounting and internal control efforts for an American telecom equipment company based in Shenzhen, China, with over 800 employees in China.

Tong said PacificNet has "made a concerted effort during the past months to expand our accounting staff and improve our procedures to assure on time earnings reporting and complete transparency as a public company."

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Jagged Peak, Inc., a vendor of Enterprise Demand Management, e-Fulfillment, and CRM Execution products, has announced a national agreement with California-based Towne AllPoints Communications Inc., a direct response communication firm, to supply "joint fulfillment and logistics services," Jagged Peak officials say.

Company officials say the partnership allows growth of Jagged Peak's and Towne AllPoints's "fulfillment and direct marketing execution footprint to expand throughout the country."

Paul Demirdjian, Chief Executive Officer of Jagged Peak, says, the decision to engage Towne AllPoints "expands distribution networks, while appreciably increasing client value."

The partnership, according to Jagged Peak officials, allows each venture to take advantage of fully integrated EDGE-based demand and supply chain management infrastructure, making it possible to offer clients national products.

Towne AllPoints uses Jagged Peak's flagship product Enterprise Dynamic Global Engine within its order management systems.

Michael Mercier, President/CEO of Towne AllPoints Communications, calls his company's relationship with Jagged Peak "fully collaborative… a true partnership where investments have been made on both sides of the coin. We consider it more of an in-source than anything else."

EDGE, is a Web-based software application that enables companies to "control and coordinate distributed orders, inventory, and fulfillment across multiple customers, suppliers, employees, and partners in real time," according to Jagged Peak officials.

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CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and a vendor of CRM and other industry-specific enterprise software applications and consulting services, has announced the acquisition of Respond Group, Ltd. a European provider of customer service software applications generally focusing on the management of complaints and enterprise feedback.

Mirroring CDC Software with a position in key vertical industries, the Respond applications and organization are called "highly complementary to CDC Software's Pivotal CRM products" by CDC officials.

Respond adds 800 customers to CDC Software, which itself claims over 5,000 customers. Respond brings AXA Insurance, Barclays, Aegon and other prized pelts, primarily in the financial services industries.

Allianz Dresdner Asset Management, Julius Baer Investment Management and Morgan Keegan & Company are current Pivotal CRM application customers. In October 2006, Pivotal CRM was added to the SecuritiesTech 50 list of top front-office products in financial services.

The Respond products are also used in government organizations, which CDC officials see as a cross-selling opportunity for its Pivotal CRM applications, as well as other software and consulting services from CDC Software itself.

As Pivotal CRM sales and marketing applications are also used in the home building and real estate industries "the importance of complaint management, improving customer service and increasing satisfaction in these industries is expected to create additional cross-selling opportunities for the Respond applications," CDC officials said.

In addition to the synergies of the product lines and industry expertise, both CDC Software and Respond are Microsoft Certified Partners, and the respective applications share complementary architectures based on standard Microsoft platforms. The applications are deployed via the Internet, enabling browser-based deployments.

James Heavey, CEO of Respond, said the pairing would "create a variety of new choices and expanded set of solutions for both customer bases."

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Xtime, Inc., a vendor of CRM products aimed at service operations, has announced that the Conant Auto Retail Group of Newport Beach, California has committed to a group-wide rollout of Xtime's flagship software product, ServiceCRM. Conant dealers include Norm Reeves Honda Superstore in Cerritos, the nation's 14-time Honda sales leader since 1991.

Xtime's ServiceCRM software combines consumer Web scheduling, service BDC automation, shop control and service marketing into one product for automotive service departments. Monell chose Xtime's CRM software even though he had invested six months implementing a different CRM product.

Since it was launched at Norm Reeves Honda Superstore in 2005, five Conant group dealers have enrolled in the CRM program with additional implementations planned.

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

By David Sims

David(at)firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Band's "The Weight" from the Bob Dylan and The Band live album Before The Flood, where The Band's set frankly blows St. Bob's away:

XY Media Solutions have announced the launch of AdReply, a platform that provides "actionable real-time information about college and university enrollment advertising campaigns," according to company officials.

AdReply manages online advertising campaigns and tracks the lifecycle of a lead at various stages from prospect to enrollment within a school's customer relationship management (CRM) system.

AdReply provides point and click reporting, CRM integration, and real-time data feeds that deliver the information advertising vendors need to determine ad placements and help meet established cost per enrollment objectives. "Since the system tracks the costs associated with individual campaigns, performance metrics can be established that rank leads based on the ultimate cost to enroll someone," says Frank Healy, President of XY.

First Coffee wonders about the thought process that led to naming a company "XY" instead of "But Not Z," "24/25," "Male Chromosome," or a similar name.

Healy said the product "allows an institution to use a 'right-pricing' model with vendors if they choose." Additionally, he said, AdReply "manages and tracks multiple lead collection form pages for campaigns such as TV, radio, direct mail, and outside sales rep activities."

The idea, evidently, is that AdReply "puts real-time detailed reports in the hands of key marketing decision makers at the right moment to significantly improve lead to student enrollment rates."

The product's pitched at non-profit and for-profit colleges and universities requiring regionally targeted lead generation campaigns benefit from a built in geo-targeting feature. The product will clean and filter data prior to delivery into the school's CRM as well.

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Sand Technology, Inc., a vendor of enterprise information management products, has announced that its Sand/DNA data management  products will run on HP Integrity servers.

Sand is currently working to deliver Sand/DNA Analytics, Sand/DNA Access, and Sand/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI for HP Integrity servers running HP-UX 11i v3 as well as the new rx2660 entry level server.

The combination of Sand/DNA running on HP Integrity servers will provide a product that lets enterprise customers retain massive amounts of compressed data for extended periods and "retrieve this information when needed for greater operational efficiency," according to Sand officials.

Customers can expect Sand/DNA applications to run on HP Integrity servers in early Q2 2007. "We are pleased to extend Sand/DNA products to HP Integrity servers and the new HP-UX 11i v3 operating environment, making our advanced enterprise information management software available to a larger customer community," said Linda Arens, vice president of global alliances and marketing at Sand.

Data warehouses are growing at exponential rates. A recent survey by the Winter Corp. found that user organizations estimate their data warehouse systems to more than double in size by 2008. Organizations are faced with this growth, as well as the demand to support more users, greater query and data complexity and increasingly stringent compliance regulations.

These factors are probably driving much of the need for intelligent, cost-effective methods to manage and gain control over information systems in a scalable manner.

"The increase in data warehouse systems has created a distinct need for effective management," said Michelle Weiss, vice president of marketing, Business Critical Systems, HP.

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On-demand CRM vendor NetSuite sure has been busy recently, announcing a host of new functionality extending their Software as a Service applications to mid-sized companies' e-commerce operations.

The new features -- including multi-channel, multi-store, multi-currency, and multi-language support, and automated Amazon.com-like upsell/cross-sell capabilities -- are designed to "enable mid-sized companies to automate e-commerce operations and avoid the cost and pain of developing complex custom applications," NetSuite officials say.

NetSuite's bread and butter is selling hosted on-demand products for companies with Web stores of up to $10 million in revenue. They currently claim over 1,500 e-commerce sites running on NetSuite, generating an aggregate $290 million of sales revenue in 2006.

The new set of NetSuite advanced features emphasizes globalization, multiple Web stores and multiple companies and their subsidiaries. Additionally, NetSuite tweaked the business process customization to "meet the specific needs of larger, more complex businesses and their industry requirements," company officials say.

All new features are tied with NetSuite's CRM and ERP business application suite.

It's NetSuite's professional, unbiased opinion that applications such as Microsoft Great Plains and Sage were designed a decade before the rise of the Internet and, as a result, "it is very difficult and costly to extend them to support e-commerce for a Web business."

New applications from vendors such as Venda and Demandware are designed specifically to build e-commerce websites, NetSuite officials helpfully point out, but "result in isolated, bolt-on systems that are difficult to integrate into core business processes and applications."

Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, touts his product as one where "one system manages transactions placed on the Web as easily as those placed in person or via the phone -- for businesses large, medium and small."

Some of these new e-commerce features are generally available immediately with the standard NetSuite service, some require add-on modules. NetSuite starts at $499 per month per company, then $99 per user per month.

Website Assistant & Manager and Multiple Sites/Multiple Companies are currently in Beta and will be generally available in the second quarter of 2007.

NetSuite claims "1,901,844 Web transactions totaling more than $290 million sold through NetSuite-powered websites in 2006."

The company has also announced the ability to manage online sales with eBay from within the NetSuite on-demand business management suite.

The NetSuite eBay integration, company officials say, allows sellers" to sell on eBay as easily as they do on their own Web sites or with their internal sales teams. Additionally, it also offers powerful capabilities for users to manage all business operations such as inventory, warehouse management, accounting, direct sales, telesales, keyword marketing, e-mail marketing and site hosting.

Earlier this month NetSuite announced that Keith Grinstein was appointed to NetSuite's board of directors. He currently serves as chairman of Coinstar Inc. and as a member of the board directors and audit committees of F5 Networks, Labor Ready, and Nextera.

NetSuite's board of directors consists of Evan Goldberg, founder and CTO of NetSuite; Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite; Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Deborah Farrington, founder and general partner of StarVest Partners, L.P.; Steve Fink, CEO of Lawrence Investments, LLC; and Philip Simon, president of Lawrence Investments, LLC.

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

By David Sims
David(at)firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is John Coltrane's Giant Steps:

TeaLeaf Technology, a Customer Experience Management (CEM) products vendor, has announced that TeaLeaf CX has been selected by uSwitch.com to "provide a comprehensive understanding of each customer journey on its website," according to TeaLeaf officials.

London-based uSwitch.com officials hope the move will "further improve the user experience and increase conversions of consumers searching for the best utility, financial services, or communications services supplier to suit their requirements."

USwitch.com is not a supplier but acts as an independent advisor, giving consumers a view of what's on offer for home services such as gas and electricity, broadband, landline calls, credit cards and current accounts by offering a comparison of prices and features.

TeaLeaf CX will provide uSwitch.com with a better understanding of transactional processes on its Web site so that uSwitch.com can address issues as they occur. This 360-degree view into its customers' experience, uSwitch.com officials hope, will improve how they resolve issues and increase customer satisfaction.

Narisa Wild, Head of User Experience at uSwitch.com, says TeaLeaf is "architected with straightforward and painless installation taking only two days -- this made it easy to deploy."

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Satuit Technologies, Inc., a customer relationship management (CRM) vendor focusing on the investment market, has announced what company officials are terming its" second consecutive year of record growth."

Worldwide revenue growth for 2006 exceeded 68 percent, supported by "a strong expansion in Europe where revenues more than doubled," officials said.

Satuit officials credit the growth to the company's "continued focus and commitment to the financial services sector," The growing trend for hosted products also played a role in the company's growth, they say, with SatuitCRM On-Demand outpacing the On-Premise product at a rate of nine out of every ten deals.

The company likes to differentiate itself by saying "unlike other CRM products targeted at the investment professional market, SatuitCRM was designed and built for investment professionals, by investment professionals."

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Interestingly enough, today's the birthday of two of the most successful cartoonists in America today -- Matt Groening in 1954 (his name rhymes with "complaining," as he says), creator of the underground "Life In Hell" comics and a TV show you may have heard of, The Simpsons; and Art Spiegelman in 1948 in Stockholm, another underground cartoonist who created Maus: A Survivor's Tale, My Father Bleeds History, a cartoon rendering of the memories of his father, a Holocaust survivor, where all the camp inmates were drawn as mice and the Nazis as cats.

The Simpsons became the most successful sitcom in television history and Spiegelman became one of the rare cartoonists to win a Pulitzer Prize for a book.

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According to recent research conducted by CustomerSat Inc. with the Strativity Group, a majority of companies fail to deliver differentiated value to customers and therefore fail to maintain their loyalty.

Additionally, companies routinely fail to analyze and manage their customer relationships according to specific financial criteria, leading to what the survey authors call "the ineffective execution of customer strategies."

Although respondents declare that customer strategies are more important than they were three years ago, the majority acknowledge that their employees do not have the tools or authority to resolve customer issues -- a major indicator of customer commitment.

"Respondents honestly admitted that they are selling commodities and that their core value proposition does not merit customer loyalty," stated Lior Arussy, company founder and author of Passionate & Profitable (Wiley, 2005). "Such an admission should serve as a wake up call to every executive."

The survey's highlights -- lowlights -- include findings that 60 percent of senior executives claim they do not deserve their customers' loyalty, 51 percent of respondents claim that their company does not deliver unique and beneficial products or services, while 56 percent agree that their company's products or services are worth the price they charge.

Ponder the 44 percent.

34 percent affirm that they have the tools and authority to serve their customers, but fully 75 percent said they "do not know the cost of a new customer."

According to the study, 70 percent of companies indicate that customer strategies are "more important than they were three years ago." Yet, what survey authors call "basic execution parameters" such as frequently visiting customers (34 percent), providing the necessary tools and authority to employees (34 percent), and strongly linking compensation with service quality (29 percent) are, well, lacking.

Overall, the study authors say they found "widespread ignorance regarding the economics of customer relationships." As noted above 75 percent of respondents did not know the cost of a new customer, while 81 percent did not know the cost of a customer complaint.

To be fair, those are rather abstruse numbers, it's hard to think of a failsafe methodology for producing what can be relied upon to be accurate numbers for either of those metrics. One can be forgiven for not having them at one's fingertips when a survey drops in over the transom.

Other numbers are less defensible. 50 percent of respondents did not know their organization's annual retention rates. And as the survey notes correctly, "the failure to manage customer relationships on the basis of clear and pertinent financial metrics explains why companies' strategic intentions often fail to translate into sustainable customer-centric actions."

Basically put, organizations do not invest the appropriate resources and funds to establish long-term relationships because they are unable to justify them financially. It's the old ROI conundrum -- CRM needs to show ROI, but how do you measure that? Customer loyalty? Where are the numbers there? Increased profits?  How do you parse out your CRM investment's effectiveness? Upticks in customer survey "Very Satisfied" answers? So what?

"The general trend," the survey found, worryingly, is "one of diminishing corporate investment in employees -- ultimately leading to the curtailment of the employee's ability to properly execute customer strategies."

Many reasons behind this, all pointing back to the difficulty of acquiring reliable numbers tying employee satisfaction to customer satisfaction, although anecdotal and other evidence strongly suggests the two are one and the same. Sure the increased mobility of the workforce is a contributing issue -- "Why should we train what'll soon be someone else's employee on our nickel?"

29 percent of the respondents indicated that their compensation plan emphasizes quality of service and not just productivity. Yes, that is a low number.

34 percent of respondents claim that their employees have the tools and authority to solve customer problems, while only 30 percent of respondents agreed that their company invests in people more than in technology. That last finding can be taken with a salt lick, as someone's definition of what appropriate investment in himself as an employee might not match someone else's. But overall it matches other findings that for all the lip service companies pay to the "our people are our greatest asset" talk, they can't stay away from the shiny toys.

Companies continue to declare their commitment to customers while not fully comprehending what this commitment entails. As such, customer experiences are commoditized, employee readiness is limited, and strategy execution is deficient, the survey concludes.

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

By David Sims
David(at)firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits' Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. Now that's my idea of Valentine's Day music:

Lumtron Technologies, a vendor of document management products, today announced the release of its AccuraScan module, a tool to efficiently scan, index, and file large numbers of paper documents with minimal user involvement, while at the same time linking those documents to corresponding client records within an organization's client management system.

Calling AccuraScan "the most advanced document capture functionality our users have ever seen," Dan DeSerto, President of Lumtron Technologies, said the company has "capitalized on the power of .NET technology."

Simultaneously supporting both early capture (front-end, or pre-process) and late capture (back-end, or post-process) centralized batch scanning, AccuraScan lets the user verify the accuracy of the document capture process by displaying thumbnails of the scanned pages, and distinguishes control sheets from actual documents.

Multiple scan setting presets and automatic image enhancement tools (auto-rotate, de-skew, de-speckle, etc.) help automate the document capture process. Committing the documents to the database, the product uses integration methodologies for the documents to be routed to the appropriate recipient's inbox (in an early capture environment), or to be automatically indexed, filed, and tied to the appropriate clients' records in the organization's business or CRM system (in a late capture environment).
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Happy Valentine's Day… Robert Louis Stevenson. One night in France, Stevenson passed by the window of a house, looked inside and "fell instantly in love with a woman he saw eating dinner with a group of her friends," according to Writer's Almanac. Stevenson "opened the window and leapt inside," bowed and introduced himself to the woman, an American named Fanny Osborne. They fell in love and got married.

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TRG, a vendor of global training products, has announced  a partnership agreement with Xentor Products Ltd., a UK based sales force Performance Management software and consultancy provider.

TRG and Xentor are shooting for sales in the Performance Management field. Combining Xentor's software platform with the support of TRG's ROI analytics team and advisors "enables an organization to… enrich individual learning and development plans for sales professionals,"  believes Larry Laws, Xentor Chief Marketing Officer.

The partnership will extend TRG's European market as well as Xentor's Western hemisphere relations, and is expected to "allow us to create a global synergy that will ensure our clients can gain real competitive edge," according to Don Kyle, Director of Operations for Xentor.
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Happy Valentine's Day… William Butler Yeats. The great Irish poet spent his adult life hopelessly in love with Irish Nationalist Maud Gonne, who told Yeats that she couldn't marry him because she believed they had been brother and sister in a previous life.

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Netezza Corporation has announced that Telekom Slovenije, Slovenia's leading national and international telecommunications provider for fixed line, mobile and Internet services, has selected the Netezza Performance Server data warehouse appliance.

Telekom Slovenije began reviewing its data warehousing requirements in early 2006 after internal discussions showed the existing product wasn't able to scale effectively to deal with the increased levels of data processing.

Following a discussion with its retained reseller partner, crmT Slovenia, Telekom Slovenije chose Netezza's NPS system.

Jovo Suput, CIO at Telekom Slovenije explained that even "the most straightforward queries started to take longer to process," and found the price and scalability of the Netezza system "attractive."

Telekom Slovenije will use the Netezza system as a central data warehouse integrating data from billing, inventory, CRM, SAP and others systems to analyze all data across business-critical processes.

Telekom Slovenije officials say they hope the product will "help us reduce customer churn, potentially fraudulent activities and ensure accurate revenue assurance, improving sales and marketing, product offerings and development."

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Happy Valentine's Day… Sylvia Plath. In 1956, studying in Europe on a Fulbright Scholarship, she went to a publication party and met Ted Hughes, whose poetry she admired. "When he introduced himself, Plath quoted one of his poems to him, and he guided her to a side room of the bar," Writer's Almanac writes. As Plath later wrote in her journal, "He kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hairband off ... and my favorite silver earrings ... I bit him long and hard on the cheek and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face." They married four months later.

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SAS officials credit "strong demand for industry-specific and packaged products" for the 30^th straight year of revenue growth for the CRM analytics vendor.

Total revenue in 2006 was $1.9 billion, up 12 percent over $1.7 billion in 2005, SAS has announced. New software license revenue increased 20 percent, nearly twice the growth rate expected in the market this year. 

The results "validate the new course we set for the company several years ago when we began investing heavily in business and industry-focused applications built on an enterprise intelligence platform," said SAS CEO Jim Goodnight.

Industry and packaged business products were up 49 percent over 2005, SAS officials said. Goodnight added that "one of our core strengths, powerful predictive analytics, continued to represent a significant stream of revenue at 19 percent growth."

Sales of business intelligence and data integration/warehousing were each up by nearly 50 percent.

Dan Vesset, Research Director, Business Analytics, IDC, said given SAS' latest financial performance announcement, "it is clear that the shift toward packaged analytic applications has benefited the company faster than we expected."

Over the recent years, SAS has transformed itself from a company known primarily for its advanced analytics tools to "a provider of a broad portfolio of packaged analytic applications," Vesset said, which "incorporate the company's analytics, query and reporting and data management expertise."  

SAS officials say they saw strong increases in key vertical markets. The retail-based sector grew 18 percent, revenue from financial services jumped 17 percent and life sciences revenue grew 12 percent -- "a result," company officials say, "of organizations increasing investment in advanced analytics to improve business operations."

In the public sector, where fraud detection products drove increases, revenue rose 10 percent. Cross-industry business products saw total gains of 45 percent because of high demand for marketing automation, performance management, and risk and IT management software. 

The Americas accounted for 45 percent of total revenue; Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) 45 percent; and Asia Pacific 10 percent.

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Happy Valentine's Day… E.B. White. Depressed over not writing a masterpiece he was thinking seriously of quitting his job at The New Yorker and running a summer camp.  He wrote a letter to the fiction editor, Katherine Angell, who wrote back "for you to give up writing now would be like a violinist giving up music, the thing he most loved in the world, because he can't be [the best]." White returned to New York and married her.

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

By David Sims
david(at)firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Stephen Stills' first solo album, cleverly titled Stephen Stills, currently listening to "Go Back Home," on which he's got a guest guitarist named Jimi Hendrix:

Could abusive e-mail messages be a problem for your CRM? Cloudmark, Inc., a vendor of carrier-grade messaging anti-abuse products, is introducing Cloudmark Authority for Mobile Operators, an end-to-end messaging security platform designed to block all categories of mobile threats.

The security risk for businesses increases as mobile devices provide hackers and phishers with a new, often unsecured channel for infiltrating corporate systems, company officials say, adding that "mobile devices are now used to store and access CRM, ERP, and other applications so mobile messaging attacks have the potential to compromise highly confidential corporate data."

Cloudmark predicts mobile messaging threats will escalate in the next 12-24 months as more consumers receive their personal e-mails on mobile devices. In North America alone, the number of mobile e-mail users will jump more than 300 percent from 2006 to 2009 based on Gartner Group estimates, driving traffic on wireless networks up significantly.

The percentage of e-mail determined to be spam, phishing or virus attacks reached 95 percent in 2006 according to statistics compiled from Cloudmark's Global Threat Network. This same rate of abuse will extend to mobile devices that access personal or corporate e-mails.

As a result, Cloudmark officials believe, mobile operators offering e-mail services will experience large volumes of unwanted and potentially damaging traffic entering their network, costing millions of dollars in network upgrades, operations, and customer support.

In addition to consuming valuable bandwidth, mobile threats can potentially damage device software, invade consumer privacy and breach corporate security. According to a recent report by the TowerGroup, more than 200 mobile virus attacks have already been identified, with that number expected to double every six months. In addition, mobile banking and payment services will be increasingly targeted by phishers engaged in fraud and identity theft.

David Ferris, founder of Ferris Research says malware authors are "clearly aiming to broaden their reach onto pocket-sized devices. The risk of mobile threats will rise significantly this year. Increasingly powerful devices are allowing malware authors to achieve these aims, jeopardizing consumer privacy and corporate security."

Cloudmark Authority for Mobile is being marketed as a product to protect mobile networks and subscribers from spam, phishing and virus attacks originating from traditional Internet e-mail as well as attacks from other mobile devices.

Cloudmark Authority can be implemented by mobile operators at the e-mail to mobile gateway, SMSC (Short Message Service Center), or MMSC (Multimedia Messaging Service Center) to provide protection against threats generated via e-mail and mobile devices.

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Microsoft has announced the availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation, what company officials call "a new way of using business intelligence tools from Microsoft" that "enable comprehensive analysis and management of customer-facing processes, including business scorecard management, ad-hoc analyses of aggregated customer information, predictive analytics, enhanced reporting, and more."

Our friends from Redmond say they provide Microsoft Dynamics CRM users with "real-time access to key information and metrics, allowing them to respond quickly to changing dynamics in today's competitive business environment."

Microsoft officials say Analytics Foundation allows business performance to be tracked continuously through dashboards, lets managers and employees create reports and drill down into areas of interest and helps sales, marketing and service employees identify new opportunities to grow revenue and increase efficiency through the use of predictive analytics.

"Analytics and business intelligence are essential to getting the most from customer management systems," said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Analytics Foundation uses unified dimensional models to build analytics that can be delivered to end users in the tool of their choice. Capabilities include real-time business performance management giving users access a real-time graphical view of the health of their business and lets them drill into the details from their desktops.

The business reporting and ad-hoc analysis uses online analytical processing cubes that enable managers and users to analyze Microsoft Dynamics CRM data without the need for IT help. The predictive analytics use the data-mining algorithms within Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services to detect patterns within customer information streams to generate recommendations for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities to contact-center agents or sales professionals, or prioritize leads based on a historical analysis of the types of leads that are most likely to convert to opportunities.

In other words, your basic CRM analytics.

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Salesforce.com signs up another one:

Got Corporation, an e-mail service provider, has announced that its new CampaignerPro integration with salesforce is now available on salesforce.com's AppExchange.

The integration lets e-mail marketers using CampaignerPro use constantly- evolving CRM data to send e-mail campaigns to leads and contacts managed in salesforce. This functionality is being billed as reducing the sales cycle time by "helping users nurture leads and increase the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns," Got officials say.

"The new CampaignerPro integration with salesforce offers instant value-add to CampaignerPro customers looking to nurture leads through each stage of the sales cycle," said Josée Paquin, President, Got Corporation.

With the new CampaignerPro integration with Salesforce on the AppExchange, marketers can now "Send on Behalf of" salesforce lead owners to implement personalized e-mail campaigns from marketing, but that appear to come from the salesforce lead owner.

They can also automate lead nurturing campaigns to salesforce leads or contacts based on "date added" or any other standard field or custom field in salesforce, as well as auto-update (up to 2 times per day) the salesforce activity history and update the e-mail opt-out so that future e-mail campaigns are not sent to contacts who unsubscribe.

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Oracle has announced that Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management, a "convergent, real-time enterprise revenue management application," according to company officials, will support the Linux platform.

Oracle officials say customers running Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on Linux may benefit from lower total cost of ownership in that hardware, operating system, environmental and support costs may be lower in environments using grid computing with the Linux operating system than in traditional UNIX enterprise server or mainframe environments.

They're also touting "unparalleled flexibility and scalability," since "service providers may launch new services at a lower cost of entry by using the modularity and scalability of grid computing."

Oracle now provides Linux support for Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database.

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