By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

 

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

 

Telerx, a contact center outsourcer working in the packaged goods and healthcare industries, recently announced the appointment of Linda Schellenger to President, effective immediately.

 

Schellenger will oversee six interactive communications centers with 2,000 employees while managing strategic development, business planning and client program consultation.

 

Schellenger recently served as senior vice president of sales and marketing for Telerx, and will serve on the Telerx Board of Directors. Prior to joining the Telerx leadership team in 2006, Schellenger served as chief marketing officer for TCIM Services, Inc.

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OnDemandIQ has introduced a Life Sciences version of its OnDemandIQ Insights' hosted business intelligence product.

 

Specifically designed for small to medium sized sales and marketing organizations in the life sciences industry, OnDemandIQ Insights' is used by organizations to get the information they need "to reclaim selling time and grow sales," according to company officials.

 

The product integrates relevant data such as script data, CRM call activity and sales information into a Web interface. Pre-configured dashboards and reports based on common industry metrics such as total scripts by product or call activity by day streamline standard reporting so that any user can access the information.

 

"Unlike most business intelligence software, our focus is on providing actionable sales information to the field," explains Steven Schneider, Principal. "And because the relevant information reps need is at their disposal at any time, their effectiveness in the field is optimized."

 

OnDemandIQ Insights' analysis capabilities compute more than 100 pre-calculated metrics, including goals tracking and ranking capabilities. The interface allows users to customize their view to highlight key metrics and get more detailed information.

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Televerde, a vendor of outsourced business-to-business customer acquisition products and actionable market intelligence, has announced that it has achieved ISO 9001:2000 certification.

 

Televerde officials claim the company is "one of very few marketing solution outsourcers to earn this certification."

 

Accepted internationally by the national standards bodies of 157 countries, the ISO 9001:2000 certification recognizes that Televerde met or exceeded a series of requirements guiding how the company performs, manages and ensures quality services.

 

The inspection to assess the effectiveness of Televerde’s quality management system across their total enterprise was conducted by BSI Management Systems, an independent ISO registrar.

 

ISO is a non-governmental organization that identifies the international standards required by business, government and society, develops those standards in partnership within the sectors where they will be used, adopts transparent procedures based on national input, and then provides a means to implement these standards worldwide.

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Premiere Global Services has launched PGi iRgent, an online communications platform for small and mid-sized businesses.

 

The product is being billed as bringing Premiere Global’s enterprise class communication technologies together in a product designed for small businesses. With this tool, companies can send information to any recipient contact address — whether by automated voice message to a phone number, text message to a mobile number, e-mail or fax — all from the same Web interface.

 

Users only have to type a message once, and PGi iRgent delivers that message in the appropriate format to their selected constituents.

 

PGi iRgent also lets an enterprise’s constituents select the manner in which they want to receive information, based on the content and context of the information itself. For instance, a patient might want to receive a notice about her doctor’s new office hours by e-mail, while at the same time opting to receive a more urgent notice that her appointment has been canceled via text message to her mobile device.

 

Ken Landoline, Program Manager, Customer Centric Strategies at Yankee Group, noted that whether communicating via e-mail, voice mail, text messaging or fax, "providing the end customer with the ultimate power of choice is a powerful competitive advantage."

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XIGroup, a division of Dominion Enterprises, has announced the launch of a customer advocate program designed to "help its dealer customers get the most out of their Web products," company officials say.

 

XIGroup customer advocates monitor dealer Web site usage and other metrics, then call to offer dealers suggestions, methods for improving results, training tips and ways to stay effectively engaged in the internet marketing process.

 

"One of the biggest challenges in this industry is when dealers make a large investment in tools such as lead generating Web sites, inventory management products and search engine marketing, and then don't use them or use only a small fraction of the features, thereby never realizing the full potential return on investment," said Brian Burns, General Manager of XIGroup.

 

Additionally, many dealers don't call vendors when they do encounter problems, which is why XIGroup implemented a proactive approach.

 

XIGroup offers in-dealership and Webcast training when its Internet products are implemented, but many dealerships use only a small portion of what the products offer. Customer advocates work with the dealers to look at historical information and determine whether the changes they made to their marketing programs worked, and why.

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GroupSPARK, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and vendor of private label services including Microsoft Exchange Server, has announced that it is now offering private label Hosted Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, which upgrades the platform for e-mail, mobility and collaboration.

 

The company says their Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration (HMC) Version 4.0 is "the only platform that Microsoft has designed, tested and validated for Exchange Server 2007 hosting."

 

According to a recent survey of the hosted services market by Osterman Research, the market for Hosted Microsoft Exchange Server will grow from its current base of 1.4 million mailboxes to over 7 million mailboxes by 2009. This growth represents over $600 million in new revenues.

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Smart Online Inc., a vendor of Software-as-a-Service for the small business market, and Jamcracker, the on-demand services company, have announced that the OneBiz platform of private-label small business applications will be available for resale through the Jamcracker Services Delivery Network beginning in the 3rd quarter of 2007.

 

Smart Online's OneBiz platform features integrated daily-use applications for small businesses, including accounting, customer relationship management (CRM), salesforce automation (SFA), human resources, shared calendars and contacts, dashboards, business plan and marketing plan writers, and more than 2,000 business forms and letters.