By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Pogues' rendition of Eric Bogle's "Waltzing Matilda," a fine song about the World War I campaign by the ANZACs at Gallipoli, not the unofficial Australian national anthem:

It's a favorite pastime for those of us in CRM to spend lots of time and effort defining what CRM is -- Paul Greenberg's done a heroic job -- but First Coffee would like to take a few moments here to define what CRM is not. Orthodox theologians would call this the apophatic approach -- defining by the negative.

For example, CRM is not the Wild Horse Coordinated Resource Management Project, scheduled to begin this year near Ellensburg, Idaho, according to local reporter Mike Johnston:

The Western Watersheds Project sent a letter to the state Department of Fish & Wildlife indicating it will challenge proposed cattle grazing in the state-owned Whisky Dick Wildlife Area 15-20 miles east of Ellensburg, the site of the Wild Horse CRM project.

Fine idea, great project. But not our baby.

…

NetSuite, Inc., a vendor of on-demand business management software for small- and mid-sized businesses, has announced that Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, a 3D virtual world, has selected NetSuite to help manage its rapid growth.

In January 2007 alone, Second Life Residents converted their Linden Dollars into approximately $5 million, company officials say.

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits' Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards:

Raymond James Financial, Inc., a U.S. financial services firm, has selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM as its software of choice for customer relationship management, which means that the St. Petersburg, Florida-based company "now recommends that its nationwide network of more than 4,600 financial advisors adopt Microsoft Dynamics CRM as its primary customer relationship management tool," according to company officials.

Raymond James will initially offer 3,000 Microsoft Dynamics CRM licenses, but expects to increase the number to more than 5,000 in response to demand over the next two or three years.

Tim Eitel, chief information officer of Raymond James, said Raymond James advisors who took part in head-to-head testing to determine the company's preferred CRM product consistently chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM, "including advisors who had already personally purchased other products."

Features which helped to sell the brokerage of Microsoft CRM, according to company officials, included "greater efficiency and tight integration." Most of Raymond James' corporate technology systems run on Microsoft software, Microsoft SQL Server and the Microsoft Office system.

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is It's A Beautiful Day's hot live album, Creed Of Love, which makes you believe that, yes, a violin can be a rock'n'roll instrument:

CDC Software, the wholly owned subsidiary of China-based CDC Corporation, has announced that RS Components Hong Kong, part of Electrocomponents PLC, has selected the Pivotal suite of CRM applications for its 14 offices throughout the Asia Pacific area, including its seven offices in China.

RS officials say they will be using Pivotal CRM to manage and track customer services including contact and activity management, telesales and sales account planning, account territory alignments and scorecard tracking as well as tracking visits to customers and prospects.

The company will also be marketing and distributing its trade catalogues and comparing customers and prospects data to their customer marketing management lifecycle data using the Pivotal application since the product allows for bi-directional integration of contacts between Pivotal and the legacy ERP system used by RS Components.

Established in 1937, RS sells "a part for every job, from research and development through pre-production to maintenance and repair," according to company officials, and has been operating in China since 1999, selling parts from electronic components, electrical, mechanical, tools and consumer products.

"The RS business model is extremely customer-centric," noted Richard Huxley, Asia Pacific Regional Manager, RS Components, adding that the company offers "a strong local sales and marketing force of more than 250 people, and two state-of-the art call centers with technical support."

…

UDS Group, Inc., a Boca Raton, Florida-based vendor of CRM and other delivery management products, has announced the formation of a new partnership with DevStudios International, Inc.

DevStudios is a tech firm operating in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. This new partnership, according to DevStudios officials, allows UDS "unlimited rollout capabilities and eliminates costly onsite equipment installations."

DevStudios has finished development on a Remote Print Agent dispatch module for use with the UDS call center product, a module which "allows for any remote store location in our delivery program to make a connection to the UDS Delivery Processing Center without requiring any additional hardware," according to one UDS official.

Ryan Coblin, CEO of Universal Delivery Group, Inc., said his company will "immediately realize a cost reduction for every location served… and it will allow us to rapidly scale our capacity in order to meet demand."

Bob Vergidis, President and Chief Executive Officer of DevStudios, described the Remote Printing Agent software as saying "any computer, anywhere on the Internet can become an order receiving station for call center orders… without time consuming or costly requirements."

…

Infor has announced a new Mobile Order Management -- touching acronym there -- product which lets field sales personnel in the distribution industry process orders remotely using a PDA, laptop or any other mobile device.

MOM is billed by company officials as letting sales personnel "spend less time on manual order processing and more time meeting customer need."

"Infor recognizes that in today's competitive landscape, distributors face growing pressure from customers and suppliers to find enterprising ways of saving time and resources," said Thad Zylka, Infor vice president of Distribution.

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Aimee Mann doing acoustic versions of some of her best songs, current track "That's Just What You Are:"

Small and medium businesses, generously defined as those with under a thousand employees, in the retail vertical across the Asia-Pacific region outside of Japan are on track to spend a whopping $11.6 billion on CRM and other IT-related investments this year.

Computing -- which includes PC and server hardware -- and IT Services will be the top drivers of retail SMB spending in 2007, according to the latest study by Access Markets International Partners Inc.

Although CRM and ERP/SCM spending in the retail mid-market segment is expected to grow less than 10 percent in 2007, CRM as SaaS (software as a service) is expected to increase two to three times the growth of the traditional application delivery platforms, the study found.

Key countries in the region which will drive retail SMB IT spending this year include Australia, China, India, South Korea and Taiwan, the study finds.

"While retail SMB IT spending in emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam are set to grow more than 15 percent year-on-year in 2007, spending in mature markets such as Australia and Singapore will grow less than 10 percent in 2007 over 2006," says Nishant Dave, AMI's Singapore-based Research Director for the Asia-Pacific.

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Neil Young's Live Rust:

Got an e-mail from a Dear Reader who had the same terrible customer service experience with Orbitz that First Coffee did a while ago:

How did you find Orbitz E-mail address , I also want to write because after booking a flight they never came through with confirmations as they say. Calling a phone number got me talking to some rep in India [which again got me promises ]  NO RESULTS ! 

Very poor business people which I want them to know if you can provide me with their address.   Thanks much.

Now someone explain to me how Caiman.com's still in business.

…

It might be a function of living in Istanbul, where the sports channels are Fox Sports and EuroSport, but First Coffee is enjoying watching cricket. It's quite a simple game -- keep the ball from knocking the sticks behind you by hitting it away, and score runs as you hit it -- and at least as interesting as baseball. In its one-day variety, anyway.

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is From One Good American To Another by Kinky Friedman & The Texas Jewboys:

Fresh off announcing the release of Siebel 8 for life sciences yesterday, Oracle has announced that UMB Bank, n.a., an independent bank in the United States, has deployed Oracle’s Siebel Sales and Siebel Universal Customer Master. UMB is also deploying Siebel Contact Center.

“With Oracle’s Siebel applications and infrastructure software, we have created an integrated customer information system that brings together data from 11 disparate systems," with the goal of providing "both our front- and back-office personnel with a comprehensive and consistent view of the customer," said Kanon Cozad, senior vice president and director of application development for UMB Bank.

Kansas City-based UMB deployed Siebel Universal Customer Master in its commercial lending and asset management operations. The bank now has a customer data hub that unifies customer information across multiple business units and functionally disparate systems.

The bank, which has operations in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska, also deployed Siebel Sales in its commercial lending and asset management operations following a complete redesign of the sales process. 

UMB is using Siebel Sales to automate core sales processes, including sales call planning, follow up and reporting. Bank officials say they hope Siebel Sales will improve the way it cross-sells products across multiple lines of business by "breaking down information silos and giving the sales team a better understanding of the full sales potential of any given customer."

…

"Better management of outsourcing providers" would save North American companies over $300 million a year in improved contact center performance as well as enhancing service for customers, according to research and analysis by software provider Exony.

The company says organizations that outsource contact center operations could realize annual contract savings of 4.5 percent by targeting 10 key areas for improvement. Coincidently enough, Exony themselves offer products to assist in such outsourcing.

Industry statistics cited by Exony officials show that five percent, or just over 3,000, of North America's 60,000 contact centers are outsourced, and of a total of more than 3.3 million agent positions in the U.S. and Canada, 10.5 percent or 354,000, are outsourced.

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the theme song to Hawaii Five-O:

ARC Advisory Group, an independent research firm in manufacturing and supply chain management, has named Oracle the "leading supplier in the worldwide master data management market."

In ARC Advisory Group's recently published report, titled "Master Data Management Worldwide Outlook Market Analysis and Forecast Through 2011," Oracle is characterized as "the clear MDM industry leader with 39.8 percent market share of total MDM software and services, and year-over-year growth of close to 50 percent.

IBM placed second with 8.8 percent market share.

"Oracle MDM is a core 'Fusion' technology that will enable them to integrate their diverse portfolio of acquired solutions (PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, etc.) and allow them to work together much more effectively," according to Steve Banker, ARC's Service Director and author of the MDM report. 

MDM is -- evidently -- a key component of Oracle's middleware strategy to "aggressively target heterogeneous environments -- products running on different databases, operating systems, and using different data warehouse or analytical products," the report said. 

Oracle sells ERP and CRM applications, "but more broadly," the report notes, "they are a provider of core platforms that help pull together and harmonize all a company's IT assets." 

According to ARC Advisory Group, Master Data Management provides the ability to consolidate and federate master information from disparate systems and lines of business into one central data repository, or hub.

…

Seagull Software, which sells products to "transform legacy business applications into service-oriented architecture assets," has announced that BlueZone Version 4.1 has achieved Windows Vista certification from Microsoft.

Microsoft's Vista certification program is designed to ensure that third-party software applications operating on Windows Vista meet specific technical requirements. It generally deals with third-party software applications in four areas: security, compatibility with Vista, installs and uninstalls, and reliability.

Seagull officials say the company is "one of the first companies to have an application certified for Microsoft Windows Vista," noting that "BlueZone was previously certified on Windows XP."

What it means is that "BlueZone 4.1 takes advantage of the enhanced manageability and productivity features within the new operating platform," said Steve Bireley, vice president product development.

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a CD I burned over the weekend with some White Stripes, Raveonettes, Strokes, Dropkick Murphys and New York Dolls, and with The Godfathers' great "Birth, School, Work, Death" tossed in:

Enforta's a company that's a bit out of First Coffee's usual haunts, but it's doing interesting things with WiMAX in Russia, and it was a great help back when First Coffee was reporting on that shell game of a company, GlobeTel, now delisted.

Enforta has announced that it will extend its wireless broadband network to an additional six cities during the second quarter of 2007. The additional six cities will include:  Voronezh, Lipetsk, Penza, Samara, Tula, and Yaroslavl.

The company also plans entry into eight cities during the second half of 2007.

Enforta currently operates WiMAX and pre-WiMAX networks in 18 cities, giving the company what Enforta officials claim is "the largest high-speed wireless broadband footprint in Russia."

To finance the expansion, Enforta concluded an additional round of investment with its current shareholder group plus the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Enforta's network is constructed using modern broadband wireless equipment manufactured by Alvarion and Infinet Wireless.

The company was formed in October, 2003 with the objective "to provide broadband services using WiMAX and other advanced technologies in Russia's regional capitals," according to company officials.  Enforta is owned by Sumitomo Corporation, Baring Vostok Capital Partners, EBRD, and its management team.

...

Officials at collaboration software provider WorkSmart.net have announced the rollout of an updated version of its hosted digital workplace, featuring what they call "enhanced task management capabilities, including to-do lists, trouble ticket management and task-based time tracking."

Worksmart.net is a subscription based service of collaboration software developers Designlinks International. The service is designed, company officials say, to "minimize costs and deployment issues by allowing enterprises to hit the ground running with a fully-functional and ready-to-use project and customer management environment aimed at boosting the effectiveness of distributed teams."

With the stated intention of offering "big company software for a small company price," WorkSmart.net has a diverse client base, officials say, ranging from "one-man new business start-ups to the second largest corporate [sic] in the world."

The developers pride themselves on offering not only off-the shelf functionality common in many competing platforms -- document management , web-folders, on-line calendars, e-mail, forums, task management, contact management, business process and project management tools, et al -- but "a flexible environment which includes the ability to develop customized site templates, custom database templates, as well as to define complex user access permissions."

Company officials say the service is popular with professional services firms who use it for project-based client management in an intranet/extranet configuration, and that this latest release, "inspired by customer requests," enhances the position of the service in the lower volume and higher value CRM arena by "enabling the management of project and customer specific issues and trouble tickets."

A fully functional 21 day free trial of the enhanced service is available at www.worksmart.net.

…

The Dubai Islamic Bank and @task have announced the successful deployment of @task's project management software at the DIB.

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Charlie Rich's sublime masterpiece, Pictures and Paintings:

Global travel technology vendor Worldspan has introduced a suite of office products for German travel agencies seeking integration of mid-office functions -- specifically combined billing administration and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Two new products, Worldspan OfficeSelect and Worldspan DataSource, both built by Bosys, offer capabilities and functionality designed to "reduce administration costs, expand agency services and increase sales," according to company officials.

Product capabilities include electronic import and processing of vital booking data.

Bosys Software GmbH is a software company specializing in the travel industry, which creates software for use by its own customers and on behalf of third parties.

Through these products, Worldspan is trying to sell agencies tools to simplify and streamline the flow of business, "from their front line agents, all the way to their back-office accounting systems," according to Hans-Gunter Korts, Worldspan regional manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Worldspan OfficeSelect is a standalone product offering advanced mid- office functionality and benefits that support agency billing, customer data management and agency marketing.

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Willie Nelson's gospel album, The Troublemaker:

The worldwide SaaS market reached $6.3 billion in 2006 and is forecast to grow to $19.3 billion by year-end 2011, according to Gartner, Inc.

SaaS is hosted software based on a single set of common code and data definitions that are consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers, at any time, on a pay-for-use basis, or as a subscription based on usage metrics. The SaaS model is popular for CRM, among other technologies, such as human resources.

Why such success? "The dysfunction of the client/server era is driving alternative approaches to IT development, delivery and management, which SaaS is the most apparent version of," said Ben Pring, research vice president for Gartner.

SaaS adoption is broadening out from CRM and HR into new areas such as procurement and compliance management, Gartner has found.

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Beach Boys:

5square.com, which sells Sales Process Automation software to automotive dealerships, has released an automated follow-up tool, built right into the overall 5square.com Web-based system.

Company officials say the follow-up tool "greatly expands upon the previous follow-up functionality," and includes features "specifically requested by dealers to help improve prospect follow-up that to date have not been available in sales process software." 

The new tool links each lead to an automated follow-up schedule, allowing dealerships to "tailor follow-up by lead source and the reason the customer left," company officials explain. They contend such a method "ties directly into how the dealership is spending to get prospects into the store and then targets why they leave to get them back into the store."

Basically the tool is designed to force more discipline inside the store, as management can set a specific follow-up schedule which automatically enforces follow-up.

According to Manny Sousa, Director of Internet Sales at Anderson Honda in Palo Alto, CA; the #1 Honda e-dealer in the country, his dealership has increased its sales by 5-10 percent from automated follow-up alone, because, according to Sousa, it allows the sales people to concentrate on prospects that are in the market right now without abandoning prospects who may not be so high on the sales chain.

"Lots of dealers have a process in place but no guarantee a sales person will follow-up," Sousa said, adding that automatic follow-up is "like having robot sales people working for us."

When a customer leaves without making a purchase, the reason they have left is logged into the computer; conducting more research, credit challenged, bringing back spouse, etc., and a pull down menu directly links to a follow-up schedule. For instance, the credit challenged individual can be offered credit counseling services. 

The follow-up schedule is also linked to the source the lead originally came from; a newspaper ad, AAA, OEM, Web site, etc., and a schedule of follow-up events is tied to how that specific buyer behaves with a schedule of calls, tailored e-mails and letters. E-mails and letters are sent automatically with no sales person intervention.

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Warren Zevon's great song "Accidentally Like A Martyr:"

Boy, publish a news piece about Oracle buying someone in the business intelligence industry and you almost don't have to work the next morning, people are more than happy to pitch their two cents in your cup.

I did contact a good friend at SAS to find out what they, as certainly one of the largest privately-held business intelligence (what we old-timers used to call "analytic CRM") vendor on the planet with almost $2 billion in revenue, thought.

She said the purchase certainly "raises many questions. Has consolidation in the market for business intelligence begun? Is Oracle's announcement of its planned Hyperion acquisition a BI play? What is performance management and how does it relate to BI and to businesses today?"

In short, she said, the question is what does this acquisition and the convergence of BI and performance management mean for companies today? "One thing is clear: speculation will grow over the next hours and days about next moves in the software markets. How will IBM, SAP and others respond? Who is lining up as a dance partner for BI tools vendors Cognos or Business Objects?"

Someone else at SAS, Russ Cobb, Vice President of Marketing  said with performance management and business intelligence a priority for businesses today, "we’ve expected news of further consolidation like Oracle-Hyperion for some time.