Compass Technology, Alliance Bank Malaysia, FrontRange Voice, Open Solutions, Steria, Frost and Sullivan, Cisco, InsideSales.com

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
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Compass Technology, Alliance Bank Malaysia, FrontRange Voice, Open Solutions, Steria, Frost and Sullivan, Cisco, InsideSales.com

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 album Live In Seattle:
 
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and independent software vendor Compass Technology will be presenting fundraising software for nonprofits at the Microsoft Partner Solutions Theater during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, July 10-12.
 
Nonprofit technology and software pioneer Jeff Shy will lead the presentation of Compass CRM for Fundraisers. With over thirty-six years of experience in developing nonprofit fundraising software products, Shy recently joined Compass as vice president of product management.
 
Compass wants other Microsoft certified partners in the nonprofit industry to join the Compass Channel Partner Program. Compass Partner Program manager Susan Turner explains the goal is to “selectively develop an elite group of Microsoft partners that currently serve the nonprofit sector… participating in the Compass Partner Program gives Microsoft partners the opportunity to compete with Sage and Blackbaud for fundraising and financial management business in the nonprofit sector.”
 
Compass officials claim their Compass CRM for Fundraisers is “the only complete fundraising and donor management software running entirely in Outlook and built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform.”
 
Malaysian industry observer Lee Wei Lian has reported that Alliance Bank Malaysia Bhd group has “committed to invest over RM260 million ($75.2 million) over the next three years to build an enterprise-wide business intelligence platform.”
 
Its group chief executive officer Datuk Bridget Lai, Lee said, wants the business intelligence platform to “enhance its customer relationship management and business scorecards as well as help move it closer to FRS 139 compliance.”
 
Lai was speaking at a partnership-signing ceremony between ABG and business intelligence products provider, SAS Malaysia. SAS was represented by its CEO and founder Jim Goodnight at the signing ceremony, according to Lee. Goodnight is a new member of the International Advisory Panel, a group advising the prime minister on matters pertaining to the development of ICT in the country.
 
FrontRange Solutions, a vendor of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and other products for the mid-market and distributed enterprises, has announced the availability of version 5.1 of FrontRange Voice, a communication product.
 
Among the federated products offered by FrontRange, FrontRange Voice 5.1 combines several technologies to create a single IP telephony product developed entirely in software, so customers “just need a PC, a broadband voice provider and an Internet connection to begin calling,” company officials say.
 
In the past, businesses had to buy a Private Branch eXchange from a proprietary vendor, run phone lines to all desk phones, contract with outside sources for telephone lines and buy specialized hardware to connect them. Additional needs included an Interactive Voice Response, an Automatic Call Distributor, a recording product, and more that were required including the necessary integration performed by a specialized service provider.
 
In most cases, this integration was not feasible to small and medium-sized businesses, so they were unable to provide the level of service afforded to large enterprises. But with FrontRange Voice 5.1, the integration has already been done, so customers get integration between the phone system, CRM, IT Service Management and Help Desk.
 
Palm Desert National Bank has selected Open Solutions Inc.’s The Complete Banking Solution, a relational core data processing platform for community banks, to address its enterprise-wide data processing needs, according to Open Solutions officials. Based in Palm Desert, California, the bank has approximately $411 million in assets, as of December 31, 2006, more than 5,000 customers and four branches.
 
Built on an Oracle relational database, The Complete Banking product’s open architecture and customer-centric platform is designed to help financial institutions streamline both the front and back office applications with a focus on customer service, providing “a centralized view of its specific relationships with customers, employees and business partners,” company officials say.
 
Nice to see government institutions taking constitutent services seriously enough to invest money in improving them: Steria, a European IT services company, has announced a ten year business transformation deal to modernize and update IT systems at Eastbourne Borough Council. The contract, worth €8 million, is supposed to improve the customer experience for Eastbourne’s 90,000 plus residents by “streamlining key services and business processes,” according to Steria officials.
 
Steria’s task is to improve the council’s CRM system so employees can manage and respond to resident inquiries — everything from tax payments to garbage collection — faster, as well as offering customers the facility to serve themselves online.
 
Steria will also be helping Eastbourne in its ongoing efforts to provide interactive maps online, allowing residents to check for planning applications and other relevant developments near to their homes. It will also help provide a ‘Where is my nearest?’ online search facility supplying residents with details of local services, organizations and resources in their area.
 
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Brazil IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Services Markets, finds that the Brazilian markets earned revenues of $1.1 billion in 2006 and estimates this to reach $3.3 million in 2012.
 
The introduction of open communication networks and the prospects of remotely managing and maintaining network elements and applications help the growth of the IT infrastructure outsourcing services markets, the study found.
 
This is generating substantial revenues in the market as customers have higher expectations and are constantly demanding substantial results from the infrastructure-outsourcing project in terms of efficiency and cost reduction.
 
On the demand side, the finance, telecommunications and Government sectors are in some way more advanced in outsourcing theirs IT services. However, in the upcoming years, these verticals are likely to enhance their adoption of new services due to regulation issues, along with the entry of other major vertical markets such as retail and health care as important clients.
 
Cisco has announced that it has deployed a wide-area network for its 1,000th customer. The vendor launched its Wide Area Applications Services product in September 2006.
 
Nanometrics Inc., a vendor of process control metrology systems, reports that the Cisco WAAS “enabled a dramatic improvement for the company’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM application,” according to Dave Kizer, director of information technologies.
 
InsideSales.com, a hosted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software product with built-in dialers, has announced its partnership with ActionTrak to provide an integration solution with QuickBooks, by Intuit.
 
QB Link offers the ability to move account, contact, and invoicing information directly into QuickBooks from InsideSales.com’s CRM system with the click of a button.
 
InsideSales.com customers and prospects can purchase QB Link through their Account Executive. ActionTrak will provide post-sales support with each purchase.
 
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