CRM's Verticals onDemand and TerrAlign, Aberdeen's HCM, Net@Work and Sage, NetSuite and IT247, Open Solutions and Fincentric

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
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CRM's Verticals onDemand and TerrAlign, Aberdeen's HCM, Net@Work and Sage, NetSuite and IT247, Open Solutions and Fincentric

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, a blessed Good Friday to you, and the music is -- still -- Aimee Mann's Live At St. Ann's Warehouse:

Verticals onDemand, a vendor of industry-specific on-demand CRM delivered on the Salesforce Platform, and TerrAlign, a vendor of Sales Resource Optimization, have announced that the two companies are partnering to provide life sciences companies with a product for the "creation, optimization, implementation, and maintenance of territory alignments."

Verticals onDemand sells on-demand CRM applications designed specifically for the global biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical device industries. The company's flagship products, VBioPharma and VMedical, will be integrated with TerrAlign's sales resource optimization software, TerrAlign 4 and TerrAlign eMap.

The TerrAlign Group sells products that enable organizations to optimize and manage the deployment of sales resources. TerrAlign already provides sales resource optimization tools to several pharmaceutical and medical products companies.

"Managing territory alignments is a key requirement for CRM success in the life sciences industry," explained Matt Wallach, vice president of sales & marketing at Verticals onDemand.

With TerrAlign's mapping, optimization, and realignment features, users can visualize and analyze data to design profitable territories. Combined with direct access through VBioPharma and VMedical, field managers can evaluate territory configurations and update account or geography assignments right in their CRM system.

TerrAlign also provides services that include promotional response modeling, field force sizing, account profiling, call planning, territory optimization, and territory realignments.

TerrAlign's Jean-Yves Kainic, vice president, client solutions said given TerrAlign's roots in the life sciences industry, "ongoing consolidation in the CRM market, the strong history of the Verticals onDemand team, and their technology choice of the Salesforce Platform," it was "an easy decision" to partner with them.

General availability of the integrated solution from TerrAlign and Verticals onDemand is planned for Q2 2007.

A new benchmark report has been published by Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company, titled "Incentive Compensation Management: Aligning Employee Performance with Business Goals." It's freely available at: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30410673&cid=3951.

According to the Aberdeen Human Capital Management  benchmark report, companies using incentive compensation management applications, such as those sold by vendors like Xactly, are able to exceed Best in Class performance in rolling out changes or new programs and they are 50 percent more likely to design, model, test and implement in less than one month.

Additionally, the report cited the need to align employee behavior and performance to business goals as the key driver prompting 88 percent of all companies surveyed to use incentive compensation applications.

Aberdeen surveyed 206 companies in order to measure the impact incentive compensation has on the achievement of these goals and the role technology plays in enabling the use of incentive pay to improve employee performance.

Karen Steele, Xactly, vice president of marketing, said historically, companies have used incentive compensation management almost exclusively with their sales teams. But with the advent of on-demand sales compensation management applications, "companies are now extending incentive compensation programs to a much wider array of employees in call centers, services, support, marketing and other areas."

"Variable compensation can be one of the most effective levers for aligning employee behavior to corporate business goals," said Cindy Jutras, Aberdeen, vice president and service director, HCM, ERP & Manufacturing. "While variable compensation is the norm in managing the sales force to drive sales and revenue goals, an increasing number of companies are using incentive compensation to motivate more employees, reward exceptional performance, encourage customer satisfaction, and retain talent."

Additional findings in the Aberdeen report include that Best in Class companies are three-times more likely to have implemented an ICM application, and that these companies "achieve better business benefits in terms of growth of revenue and profitability and reduction in overall staff turnover," according to Xactly officials commenting on the report.

Based on the findings from this study, Aberdeen recommends implementing a balanced scorecard goal-setting and measurement system, a structured performance management process to give workers      feedback on their performance against goals and standards and a system allowing workers to go online immediately after work performance to learn whether they qualify for a bonus, and to determine the financial impact of their compensation.

On-demand CRM vendor NetSuite, Inc. has announced that Into Technology Limited, based in Cheshire, England has automated its entire business operations on NetSuite.

IT247.com -- "as in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," company officials say -- is an online B2B reseller of computers, hardware, accessories and components.

Starting the company in 2005 with an online test catalogue of only 100 products, IT247.com's plans were to grow that number within a year to more than 50,000, pulled from their various suppliers' available inventory of around 200,000 products and generating 4,000 plus orders per month.

They purchased NetSuite for "one software application that integrates CRM, ERP and e-commerce," according to IT247 officials.

Hey, guess what the company CEO's vanity license plate is?

Open Solutions Inc., a vendor of integrated data processing technologies for financial institutions, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Canadian-based Fincentric Corporation, a vendor of core retail banking and customer value management software to financial customers.

This acquisition, which is subject to final approval by Fincentric's shareholders, is expected to close within the next month or so. Open Solutions hopes the transaction will let it expand its product offerings and market presence in the Canadian and global marketplaces. Fincentric will continue to operate from its location just outside of Vancouver.

Net@Work has expanded its Sage Pro ERP practice with the acquisition of Apptech, a Connecticut-based consulting firm specializing in Sage Pro ERP sales and support.

Since its founding in 2000, Apptech has sold its services to over 60 customers across Connecticut, Massachusetts, and around the country, including business process and work flow analysis, implementation planning, and customized programming. Net@Work will maintain Apptech's Connecticut base of operations.

Apptech's two founders will remain in senior positions: Rod Quenneville will serve as Senior Development Specialist and Michael Healy will continue on as Senior Sales Consultant, enhancing Net@Work's Sage Pro ERP domain expertise.

Today's Merle Haggard's birthday, and unlike these country singers of middle-class background who try to sound "authentic," Haggard grew up in a house his father had converted from a railroad boxcar, joined the country music band in San Quentin Prison where he was put for burglarizing a roadhouse, and wrote his first song while on parole.

Take that, Garth Brooks.

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