By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning… actually, it being evening here in Istanbul, the news as of the first glass of wine, and the music is Dave Brubeck’s stone-cold classic Time Out, inspired in part by the 9/8 time signature used in Turkish music:

 

SugarCRM, a provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, has announced Softbank Technology has signed an agreement to distribute Sugar solutions in Japan.

 

The new partnership will service a broad range of customer needs by offering ASP services that use Sugar.

 

“We are constantly looking for ways to improve the service we give our customers. We looked at Salesforce, SugarCRM and Siebel, and ultimately decided to go with SugarCRM because of its superior functionality in relation to cost,” said Norikazu Ishikawa, President & CEO, Softbank.

 

Ishikawa said the company “saw the value of having access to Sugar’s source code, which allows us to make specific customizations to meet our needs and those of our customers.”

 

Softbank sells a range of products and services, including support for e-business operations and products for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of various types of networks and systems. The company has also deployed a 100-user subscription of Sugar Enterprise within its customer call center.

 

SugarCRM continues to increase its global presence — over 75 language packs and 400 extensions are currently available for SugarCRM’s global community of more than 2,000 commercial customers.

 

In January 2007, SugarCRM announced a strategic partnership with CareBrains, the Japan-based provider of open source software applications and support. Softbank joins SugarCRM and CareBrains as a J-Gold Partner to provide its partners and customers access to SugarCRM partner program benefits, which include special partner Japanese language packs, resell rights to Sugar commercial editions, and fully localized sales and marketing tools.

…

 

HP and Sage Software have introduced reference configurations designed to help simplify deployment of the latest release of Sage SalesLogix v7.2, which brings customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities to small to midsize businesses, according to Sage officials.

 

The new reference configurations align the key hardware, software and services components as well as best practices, which are needed to expedite the successful deployment of CRM products, company officials explain. The configurations provide customers with a choice of servers and storage systems based on their data requirements.

 

The Sage SalesLogix reference configurations are part of the HP Business Intelligence portfolio, and according to Sage, help channel partners by reducing the time spent determining what IT needs to purchase, minimizing configuration and deployment time through the use of best practices and limiting implementation risks, as the configurations have been sized and validated.

 

Additionally, the configurations provide room for growth, allowing resources to be allocated according to the changing demands of customers’ CRM systems and data warehouse environments.

 

“For organizations migrating from earlier versions or looking to use business benefits for the first time, the HP reference configurations for Sage SalesLogix can put them on the road to building a world-class CRM infrastructure,” said Urs Renggli, director, worldwide small and medium-sized business activities, Technology Solutions Group, HP.

 

HP reference configurations for Sage SalesLogix will be of particular value to companies that are jumpstarting CRM proof-of-concept and implementation projects, he said.

 

The reference configurations for Sage SalesLogix CRM systems include a choice of HP ProLiant or BladeSystem servers, a choice of direct-attached storage, HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Arrays and HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Arrays and management software — HP Systems Insight Manager, HP ProLiant Essentials and HP Business Technology Optimization software.

…

 

Knouen Technologies, a vendor of information worker productivity products, has announced the release of Knouen OfficeSync for Siebel. Knouen officials say OfficeSync is used to let information workers — and hey, in the greater scheme of life, aren’t we all self-employed information workers, when it comes right down to it? — “access, manage and share information from enterprise CRM applications like Siebel through desktop productivity applications such as Microsoft Outlook.”

 

Knouen’s feature set does not require a customer to upgrade to the latest version of Siebel. Knouen OfficeSync’s powerful feature set allows information workers to bi-directionally synchronize Microsoft Outlook data, link e-mail and create Siebel items from within Outlook through an integration directly between Microsoft Outlook and Siebel CRM.

 

Knouen officials say this integration “eliminates laborious and error-prone duplicate data entry of critical customer sales information. Information workers also have a real time and at-a-glance view of sales performance through Knouen’s digital dashboard.” Users can collaborate between Siebel users using Microsoft Outlook either online or offline.

…

 

Well over two years ago First Coffee did a case study article about bad customer service, using Caiman.com as the poster child, based on First Coffee’s own bad experience with the company. It was an apt company to feature for bad customer service, as it’s generated far more responses than anything else that has ever been published, dozens of commiserating “me-too” comments and more coming in all the time. Here’s the latest:

 

 

 

 

 

Carolyn, you’re not alone, but this is the first time I’ve heard this variety of story about Caiman.com. Truly, the horror stories from customers of Caiman.com come in all the time. First Coffee heartily disapproves of bad customer service wherever it rears its ugly dragon butt, especially online, as it tends to depress the entire online economy. How this company, after the true life customer stories First Coffee has received, is still allowed to do business on such an otherwise reputable site as Amazon.com is beyond me.