By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bob Dylan's great "Worried Blues," from The Bootleg Series, Vol. I - III:
Genpact, a vendor of business and technology services, has announced the acquisition of ICE Enterprise Solutions, a European SAP service provider established in 1996. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
ICE is an SAP Services Partner, Utilities Partner, and BW/SEM Partner in the Netherlands and an SAP Partner and StreamServe Partner in Spain. The firm specializes in serving large European multinationals in the manufacturing, utilities, oil & gas, insurance, and financial services industries.
Genpact counts GE, Nissan, Wachovia, Kimberly-Clark, Genworth, Air Canada, Penske, Linde Group among its clients in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Genpact President & CEO Pramod Bhasin said the acquisition "perfectly matches" the needs of clients looking for business process service providers with" broad and deep technology capabilities."
ICE Founder & CEO Cok Volgering said his company is "excited to be part of a growing enterprise that has so much promise for SAP clients worldwide."
"This acquisition is in line with our strategy," said Tajinder Vohra, Genpact Senior Vice President - Software, IT and Supply Chain Services, noting that Genpact has ERP, application and IT workers based in India, China, the UK, and the US, and provides Oracle E-business suite products as well.
Bhasin said his company's "business impact" comes "by applying Lean Six Sigma process rigor across the board."
Genpact was created by GE and became a separate company in early 2005. In the past two years, Genpact has acquired over 27,000 workers. Services are delivered from 24 operations centers in seven countries, plus Holland and Spain with the acquisition of ICE.
The company claims "more than 2,000 Six Sigma-trained Green Belts and 500 Black Belts and Master Black Belts."
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According to the results of research conducted by Nucleus Research and announced recently, Satuit Technologies "differentiates itself by its deep vertical process knowledge and fixed-cost implementations."
Satuit sells a software as a service product bundled with industry best practices in its out-of-the box configurations. Clients can implement Satuit's custom software product in as little as two weeks, company officials say.
"Unlike some other CRM products that are built to support multiple industries and then customized for different verticals, SatuitCRM was designed and built by investment professional, for investment professionals," said Rebecca Wetteman, vice president of Nucleus Research.
SatuitCRM includes modules that address Sales, Marketing and Clients Services.
The Nucleus report said organizations are looking "beyond basic contact and pipeline management, particularly in business-to-business realms such as financial services and energy."
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Scotland-based Graham Technology, a provider of customer-oriented business software and services, has announced it is working with ESPC to help the organization "develop its new Home Information Pack and Purchaser Information Pack IT platform."
ESPC is described by Graham officials as "the largest property marketing firm in east central Scotland." The largest, mind you, in all -- all -- of east central Scotland.
From June first of this year all homeowners in England and Wales will, for the purposes of increasing the amount of government jobs available in the United Kingdom, need to prepare a HIP before putting their home up for sale. ESPC is currently engaged in a government trial with the aim of testing the HIPs before the mandatory introduction.
A similar scheme will be introduced to further encumber daily life, increase hassles and provide more make-work jobs in Scotland in late 2008.
Developing a suitable IT platform can be a complicated process, as HIPs and PIPs can contain as many as 70 different documents. Graham Technology is supporting ESPC through this trial period and beyond with the delivery of a Web-based portal that will allow ESPC members to assemble a HIP or a PIP with relative ease.
"With the member portal, Graham Technology is helping us to deliver a key component of the HIP trial," said Ron Smith, Chief Executive, ESPC. "By simplifying the HIP assembly process, we can offer a very compelling service to our members, and be well placed to deliver PIPs to our Scottish member firms in 2008."
In addition to the member portal, Graham Technology is delivering a contact center platform based on ciboodle, the company's flagship software product. The contact center will incorporate various case and contact management functionality, along with workflow and reporting features.
Mike Hughes, managing director, Graham Technology said the property sector represents "a new market focus" for the company's ciboodle product.
Graham Technology specializes in contact center software and services.
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Focus Softnet, a CRM and ERP software vendor based in Dubai with more than 18 offices across 10 countries, has announced growth of 45 percent during fiscal year 2006 over the previous year.
At the recent Annual General Meeting, CEO Ali Hyder declared that the company had seen growth of over 300 percent since Focus Softnet began its Dubai operations in 2002.
Focus also announced stock ownership plans for its employees.
"Focus Softnet has seen exceptional growth across markets in the Middle East region with the growth rate being significantly higher in UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Our success has been made possible by our hard-working team and we felt it was important to reward them by making them partners in the business in the form employee stock options," said Hyder.
Focus Softnet's client list has grown recently to include Boeing, Air Arabia, Commercial Bank International and Gulf Craft.
Focus develops ERP/CRM application for the mid-market. Focus RT their ERP product, covers Financials, Inventory & Warehousing, Sales & Distribution, Human Resources, Fixed Assets and Production Planning.
Focus6 is their mid-market accounting product, with over 1,500 customers in UAE and over 2,500 customers in the Middle East. The company has recently launched Focus Reach, targeted at small businesses.
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Interesting little bit here: Software vendor Omikron has developed and registered a patent for a similarity analysis process for global data. The new technology, company officials say, makes it possible "to compare data from various alphabets, such as Arabic, Cyrillic, and Japanese."
For example, one can omit vocals in Arabic script, and for Chinese writing symbols not only the tonal, but also optical similarities must be considered.
This'd be a boon to all sorts of CRM and data management and warehousing operations.
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