By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Israel Kamakwiwo’ole’s Facing Future:

 

Integrated Tech, a vendor of end-to-end business software and CRM products for small and medium-sized companies, has announced that Namaste Solar Electric, Inc., has gone live with SageCRM.

 

The SageCRM product provides configurable workflow features, integration with Microsoft Outlook, sales automation tools, mobile device access and customer support functionality. Namaste added QuickBooks for a complete package.

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Cardiff, a division of Autonomy Corporation and vendor of intelligent document products, has announced that Arrowhead Credit Union has chosen Cardiff TeleForm to automate the processing of its hundreds and thousands of member and market research documents.

 

With more than 161,000 members and over one billion dollars in assets, Arrowhead was slowed by manual processes surrounding its paper-based market research and member satisfaction surveys. The cost of outsourcing services such as data entry proved prohibitive to the company.

 

With Cardiff, Arrowhead officials say, the company can now process twice the number of documents with superior accuracy, speed and efficiency. Formtran, a leading documents provider and long-time Cardiff partner, implemented the TeleForm product for Arrowhead.

 

“Arrowhead faced many data process challenges before Cardiff, including low productivity and high costs associated with the hiring of outside firms to process surveys,” said Mike Stuhley, CEO of Formtran.

 

“The Cardiff user interface is easy to understand, easy to use, and saves everyone at Arrowhead a lot time,” said Michelle Fisher, marketing project administrator of Arrowhead Credit Union, adding that “data is captured more accurately with Cardiff, while any indexing errors are automatically detected and corrected sooner… we can now process twice the number of documents and have reduced reliance on third party market research firms.”

 

The Cardiff Intelligent Document suite automates paper, online and mobile based document-centric business processes, taking formerly static documents and enabling them to “process themselves” through the introduction of embedded intelligence.

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Synchronica, a mobile synchronization and device management vendor, has announced a contract with Sun Microsystems to license key components of the Synchronica Mobile Gateway for integration with products from its Communications and Applications software divisions.

 

Using the Synchronica technology, Sun will enable its customers to build customized synchronization products that can, for example, include over-the-air synchronization of ERP or CRM data to the Smartphones carried by sales or support personnel.

 

The Communications division of Sun plans to use the SyncML synchronization engine of Synchronica’s Mobile Gateway with the Sun Java Communications Suite enabling users to synchronize calendar, contacts, and tasks over-the-air, with a wide variety of mobile devices compatible via the SyncML industry standard.

 

Synchronica will also provide SyncML synchronization clients for Palm OS and Windows Mobile Smartphones, as well as a client provisioning module using the industry standard OMA CP (Client Provisioning), providing over-the-air configuration of mobile devices.

 

The Applications division of Sun has road-mapped to use Synchronica’s SyncML synchronization engine and Java ME (Mobile Edition) SyncML client to enhance the Sun Java Application Platform Suite with an end-to-end synchronization infrastructure, enabling third party developers to build arbitrary data synchronization products.

 

This contract is a breakthrough by Synchronica officials, who say it “marks the successful conclusion of the negotiations, announced previously, with a major hardware manufacturer.”

 

Sun will pay an initial license fee of $1.8 million for the first major version upon Sun’s acceptance of the software. Sun can buy additional licenses on a per-user basis at a price of up to $2.40 per user per annum. The contract offers Sun the option to consolidate the licenses into a one-off fee of up to $4.6 million per major version.

 

In addition, Synchronica has signed a support contract with Sun covered by a base fee of up to $150,000 annually, plus a fee of up to $4,500 per support incident.

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Saraya Holdings Ltd., a Dubai-based real estate development and asset management company, has selected SAP ERP 6.0 powered by SAP NetWeaver as its technology platform.

 

Saraya’s destinations include Saraya Aqaba in Jordan, Saraya Dead Sea in Jordan, Saraya Islands in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE and Saraya Bandar Jissah near Muscat, Oman.

 

The integrated technology platform is expected to provide an essential system for Saraya to continue to develop its assets across the region, company officials say.

 

Saraya hopes that as a result of the implementation they’ll get better automation and optimization of company processes, thereby reducing costs and consolidating internal controls. My SAP ERP along with SAP CRM and RE-FX products will replace stand-alone systems and provide an integrated software system.

 

Saraya’s SAP Business Solutions are expected to go live by the second quarter of 2008.

‘With company interests spread out across the region, the need for a business product that consolidates daily operations, supporting strategic planning and decisions was the main driver in selecting SAP products,” said Ali Kolaghassi, Vice Chairman and CEO of Saraya Holdings.

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British industry journal Manufacturing Computer Solutions has reported that specialist work-wear supplier FlamePro “expects to improve its CRM (customer relationship management), inventory control and sourcing operations when it goes live with an ERP2 XeBusiness.”

 

FlamePro designs and manufactures fire fighting garments, as well as high visibility and breathable waterproof clothing and uniforms, the journal explains, adding that it “needed a system able to support fast growth and ensure accurate fulfillment.”

 

Says FlamePro director Gillian Johnson: “The FlamePro team have evaluated the XeBusiness system for a considerable period and as soon as we were able, decided to commit to its implementation. We are confident it will make a strategic contribution to supporting the rapid growth in sales we are achieving,” according to the journal.

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Product Support Solutions, a vendor of self-service customer contact center systems, has announced that John Hibel has joined the company as executive vice president of sales and marketing.

 

“Prospects are often surprised to learn that we already manage systems for a customer base that represents over 150,000 installed IVR ports,” said Todd Funk, PSS co-founder and CEO. “John Hibel brings a wealth of experience to our team that will help us build on that success.”

 

Hibel is a veteran of four VoiceXML companies that helped create the market for standards-based IVR platforms and applications. He most recently served as vice president of marketing at Voxeo, a vendor of hosted and premise-based IVR and VoIP systems.