By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Emerson, Lake and Palmer! Yes! High school rock revisited!

Automotive CRM vendor Autologica S.A., a specialist in business management software for automotive dealers and distributors (known in the industry as Dealer Management Systems), has announced that they will open an office in San Juan, Puerto Rico next April, to "help dealers in the region through their mix of software and specialized training," company officials say.

"Our goal is to become the leading DMS for medium-sized dealerships, a segment that has trouble accessing a quality system due to the high costs that currently prevail in the market," said Ana Drovandi, Autologica's Sales Manager.

Autologica currently provides its dealer management system globally to Toyota, Renault-Nissan, Ford, GM, BMW, John Deere, Mitsubishi, and Isuzu dealerships, among others.

The company offers a version of its DMS adapted to regional needs -- it resolves vehicle importation inventory management; duty, tariff, tax handling; distributor vehicle management; multi-location inventory management and other functions.

"We already have several clients in the region and this office will help us serve them better, and also new dealers from throughout the Caribbean and Central America that we'll be adding," said Drovandi.

Autologica DMS is a Windows-based software product that manages the entire dealership, and also includes integrated CRM, multi-store management, on-line accounting, Excel integration, and advanced strategic tools such as real-time performance indicators.

The company offers its software in English, Spanish and Chinese.

Founded in 1994, Autologica has a "presence" in South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Asia-Pacific and Argentina. Their website is www.autologica.net.

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Auckland, New Zealand-based technology and telecommunications products vendor Argent Networks has announced that it has deployed its Eclipse real-time data billing product to Libercell, Liberia's national telecommunications provider, for CRM and other functions.

ArgentSDP and ArgentEclipse will provide Libercell with IN & NGN based pre-paid and post-paid voice and data billing, unified real-time rating and CRM for all mobile, fixed line, and value-added next generation services, Argent officials say. ArgentEclipse will operate on a network supplied by Huawei Technologies and Ericsson Communications.

ArgentEclipse will have dual interconnects to both the existing Ericsson MSC and the new Huawei MSC providing "2.5G Edge billing for real-time convergent pre-paid and post-paid subscribers using the ArgentEclipse unified rating engine," Argent officials say.

Larry Barker, CEO of Argent Networks, says that with more than five times the number of mobile phones to fixed lines and increasingly more convergent data being used by Libercell's many customers, Liberia is set to continue its rapid growth in its telecommunications networks.

"The ArgentSDP and ArgentEclipse unified real-time rating and billing product will be rolled out across all of Libercell's mobile, broadband, and next-generation network services based on a Huawei platform, providing one rating engine, one CRM and converged prepaid and postpaid billing for all subscribers," says Barker.

Barker says that Huawei, China's leading state-owned carrier provides next generation telecommunications networks, and has built the platform for Liberia's telecommunication infrastructure to expand on the current Ericsson network.

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Hey, call me a conspiracy nut, but what with Anna Nicole Smith, her son, her ex-husband,  her ex-husband's son, that's a lot of corpses hitting the floor with, as Terrell Owens' publicist would say, 474 million reasons to play rough.

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In response to what company officials call "a huge demand" from VoIP entrepreneurs as well as PSTN and IM providers migrating or adding VoIP, Super Technologies has completed 10 rebrands during January 2007 for the ASP service, Call Forwarding Management System.

It enables DID to ring to Gizmo Project, PSTN, MSN Messenger, FreeWorldDialup, and any SIP soft or hard device. The rebranded portal service also known as hosted white label software meets what company officials say are "the needs of total CRM for call forwarding/diversion."

The CFMS CRM hosted white label product places Super Technologies, Inc. as a disruptive but extremely practical enabler of voice profits worldwide with integration to DIDXchange. Wholesale providers may signup at http://www.didx.net for DIDX membership and CFMS product.

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Convergys Corporation and Tribold has announced the enhancement of Convergys' Infinys Business Support System with additional product management capabilities.

Through the integration of Tribold's Product Portfolio Manager application software, Convergys will enable Communication Service Providers to centralize vital product data into a single enterprise catalog.

By integrating Tribold's suite of Product Management application software to the Infinys BSS product, so the reasoning goes, CSPs should be able to create, manage, and control their products end-to-end, from business case development to product retirement, within a single view across all disparate BSS and OSS systems.

"Convergence is driving the need for operators to provide better product and service alignment. Yet, current back-office architectures are a challenge to this alignment," said François Lançon, Convergys Senior Vice President of Product Management and Marketing.

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The Stanley Works, a 163-year old manufacturer of tools, hardware and security products, has deployed IP-based business communications software by Interactive Intelligence Inc. for CRM.

The software, called Customer Interaction Center, was initially deployed by Stanley Works in September, 2006, and is being used to replace the company's numerous legacy PBX systems from Avaya, Nortel, Siemens and others.

Scott Rudden, director of worldwide telecommunications and network engineering for Stanley Works, said the manufacturer selected CIC from Interactive Intelligence "because it provides our enterprise users with the functionality they require, while giving our technical and support teams a system that is quick to deploy and easy to manage."

Currently, CIC provides Stanley Works with several IP telephony-based software applications used by its enterprise users across multiple sites. "We plan on expanding the deployment of CIC to additional sites across North America as part of our migration strategy to convert traditional legacy environments to voice over IP (VoIP) and SIP-based architectures," Rudden said.

In addition to CIC, Stanley Works uses Interaction SIP Proxy by Interactive Intelligence, a server-based appliance used to route session initiation protocol (SIP)-based calls over IP networks.

Stanley Works has integrated CIC with its existing Cisco Systems IPCC design, which the company uses to run its contact centers.

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So, kids, who wants to be an astronaut when they grow up?  "Me, me!"

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