November 2007 Archives

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Slim Dusty’s Aussie country classic, Tonight the Woolshed Swings:

 

CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and vendor of CRM, has announced recently that its CDC Supply Chain Solutions were selected for a new parts distribution and packaging center of Shanghai General Motors, a 50-50 joint venture partnership between General Motors and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp.

 

Shanghai General Motors recently opened the first of four new model parts distribution and packaging centers in Guangzhou, China. This facility uses the CDC Supply Chain product suite, including Warehouse Management, Labor Management, Slotting Optimization, Yard Management, Event Management, and Enterprise Visibility.

 

These applications provide Shanghai General Motors with “an advanced supply chain execution software suite,” SGM officials say, adding that Shanghai General Motors “intends to implement CDC Supply Chain at the other three facilities as they are built.”

 

Formed more than 10 years ago, Shanghai General Motors is one of the largest and fastest growing car manufacturers in China. The joint venture assembles, distributes and services vehicles under the Buick, Saab, Chevrolet, and Cadillac brands through more than 400 dealers in China.

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On December 1st, Kitsite will be launching a new hosted content management service called PostCMS. The launch will be based around a software Advent calendar, where a new feature will be released every day until Christmas.

 

“We’re hoping to do for CMS what Salesforce and Basecamp have done for CRM,” says Michael Kowalski, CEO of Kitsite. “We’ve focused on two key areas: usability for content authors, and flexibility for Web developers.”

PostCMS marks “a new step in the shift towards utility software,” company officials say, allowing “sophisticated content management services to be deployed without installing any software.” The product has an Ajax-based interface that simplifies the management of content-rich Web sites and includes WYSIWYG page editing and metadata tagging. It also offers customization opportunities for developers, via a Web-based IDE.

“The idea is that you can get a site up and running pretty quickly. But then if you need to, you can customize almost everything. You can code your own Web services to integrate with other applications, you can write new workflows, and you can even build entire new user interface screens,” Kowalski says.

Many other CMS products, especially the open source ones, force content authors to use essentially the same user interface as developers, despite their very different requirements, Kowalski says, adding “we’ve avoided that. To make the difference clear, the developer app and supporting site have a quite distinctive white-on-black appearance. We think of it as the ‘evil twin’ of the content authoring interface.”

From 1st December until Christmas, one new feature will be added to PostCMS every day. The planned feature list includes design pattern library, support tracking, UGC moderation and, hopefully, little chocolate Santas.

 

PostCMS is free for developers who are trying the service out or building very small sites. For larger sites, pricing starts from £50 per month, depending on total users, pages and storage.

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Cape Clear Software has announced an alliance with Appian, a vendor of business process management technology. The combination is intended to “enable the design, development and deployment of end-to-end business processes spanning system-to-system integration and service orchestration with Cape Clear’s ESB platform, and advanced human-facing process management delivered by Appian’s comprehensive BPM suite, Appian Enterprise,” according to Cape Clear officials.

 

The partnership is supposed to give customers the benefits of an integrated BPM and ESB environment “that facilitates rapid time to product, process simplification and less complex integration to existing systems.”

 

By bridging the gap between human interactions and system interactions, Cape Clear officials say, “users of the combined product will significantly improve their ability to change and modify enterprise process applications” while using the benefits of service oriented architecture.

Cape Clear and Appian have already engaged in multiple opportunities across a variety of industries in North America. Future plans will focus on implementation and support best practices, embedded components, and other features.

 

“Clients are increasingly looking to bring together SOA and BPM in order to connect IT assets with the processes that ultimately consume them,” commented Ian Charlesworth, principal analyst at Ovum.

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Firepond, a vendor of multi-tenant on-demand configure-price-quote applications, has announced what company officials call “record growth:” New customer wins for Firepond’s CPQ OnDemand multi-tenant application are up over 65 percent for 2007 to date, with “growth across a variety of verticals including software, security products, medical services, telecommunications and high tech manufacturing.”

 

Subscription-based recurring revenues and bookings to date in calendar 2007 have increased by 134 percent and 54 percent, respectively, versus the same period in 2006, with total bookings, defined as the unrealized revenue from existing contracts, currently in excess of $7 million.

 

Additionally, the total value of customer-generated quotes created using Firepond’s CPQ OnDemand has increased over 400 percent during the same period, as measured in U.S. dollars.

 

Firepond’s salesforce.com AppExchange partnership continues to drive growth, company officials say, pointing out that Firepond was one of the first AppExchange partners, “and continues to expand its relationship with Salesforce.com by sponsoring four cities on their CRM Success OnDemand Tour as well as their UK Holiday Party held in London in December.”

 

A party to which First Coffee was, ah, not invited, he notes.

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Nuance Communications, a vendor of speech products, has announced that it has closed the acquisition of Viecore, a consulting and systems integration firm specializing in the deployment of contact center products for large enterprises.

 

Viecore “expands Nuance’s professional services capabilities and complements its existing partnerships,” Nuance officials say, allowing the company to “deliver end-to-end speech products and system integration for speech-enabled customer care in key vertical markets including financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, utilities and government.”

 

In connection with the acquisition of Viecore and in accordance with NASDAQ Marketplace Rule 4350, Nuance will grant 613,363 shares of its common stock, in the form of stand-alone restricted stock units, as an inducement that is material to 334 individuals entering into employment arrangements with Nuance.

 

The restricted stock units will be granted upon the approval of the Compensation Committee of Nuance’s Board of Directors. 577,600 of the restricted stock units vest over a four year period, 11,921 of the restricted stock units vest over a 90-day period, 11,921 of the restricted stock units vest over a one year period and 11,921 of the restricted stock units vest over a two year period.

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Van Morrison’s hugely enjoyable album St. Dominic’s Preview:

 

Industry observer Niall Byrne has reported on a newly released survey from Really Simple Systems finding that “four fifths of senior executives cite employee resistance to using customer relationship management (CRM) software as the biggest hurdle they face when implementing the technology.”

 

Really Simple Systems, which sells hosted CRM software, surveyed 500 users of this technology in the United Kingdom, “encompassing SME owners, directors, and sales, marketing and IT managers.” Fully 83 percent said getting the staff to use the software was their biggest challenge, Byrne reports:

“The survey also found that 72 percent of the respondents said they would be prepared to trade functionality in their CRM systems for ease of use.”

“Too often companies make purchasing decisions for applications based on features, not ease of use, and then find that those extra features get in the way of usability,” he quotes John Paterson, CEO, Really Simple Systems as saying. “CRM adoption has always been an issue and the solution is to make the software easy to use, not more complex. Companies need to make sure that simplicity is as important a factor as functionality when choosing CRM systems.”

That nearly three quarters of the people surveyed are prepared to trade functionality in their CRM systems for ease of use is “indicative of an increasing desire for CRM products to provide core functionality in an easy-to-use package rather than products which in their attempts to tick all the boxes become unwieldy,” Paterson said.

The survey, Byrne reports, also found that “43 percent of respondents use less than half of their existing CRM system’s functionality, 51 percent said synchronizing data was a major issue and 67 percent said finding time to evaluate CRM systems was a major problem.”

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CRM vendor CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation, has announced today that Savills Asia Pacific has adopted CDC Software’s Pivotal CRM suite of applications for customer relationship management, property management, valuation, and agency services needs.

Since implementing Pivotal CRM, Savills Asia Pacific has seen “a shortened development cycle, a decrease in development costs, an increase in the size of its client base and a decrease in sales and leasing cycles,” according to CDC officials.

With more than 80 offices in over 20 countries, Savills sells property services industry in the Asia Pacific region, operating in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Macao, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.

Savills’ U.K. and Europe had already switched over to Pivotal CRM, so Savills Asia Pacific decided to adopt the system as well. Using Pivotal CRM as the foundation, Savills Asia Pacific created a joint CRM/ property management system and is now measuring benefits that include enabling agents to manage twice as many clients as before.

“Pivotal CRM has lowered our cost of development and accelerated our ability to bring new acquisitions onto the same system,” said Avi Raju, director of Asia Information Technology for Savills Asia Pacific.

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Over 300,000 citizens under the wing of Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council could benefit from a new partnership designed to “transform council performance and reduce costs,” according to officials of Northgate.

 

In an agreement worth £400,000 over four years, Northgate’s citizen-relationship management service will be introduced at Wigan council, as the authority seeks to build upon its “excellent” CPA rating.

This service will encourage the council to deliver continuous improvement in public services for local citizens and businesses, Northgate officials say, including such benchmarks as resolving over 80 percent of customer queries at the first point of contact and equipping staff with the tools to provide service with access to information for answering multiple service enquiries.

These enhancements are taking place as part of a wider program to change the way the council and its partners deliver public services. A Joint Service Center is under development to enable a range of agencies including the council, the police, fire service and the voluntary sector to deliver citizen-centered services. It should commence service early in 2011.

The center is slated to provide an Information and Learning Zone with a library and One Stop Shop, a Healthy Living Zone incorporating a new pool and “dry” leisure facilities together with health and social care services.

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PacificNet, a CRM vendor and seller of gambling technology in China, has reported un-audited results for the third quarter, ended September 30, 2007.

 

Quarterly revenue was $9,802,000, approximately 7 percent less than the same period last year (2006 Q3: $10,525,000) due to lower non-core (low margin) mobile telecom products distribution business in China. Revenues from its multiplayer electronic gambling machine product line to casino operators reached approximately $1 million for the third quarter, an increase of 99 percent as compared to Q2 2007.

 

The Quarterly gross profit was $2,374,000, of which 37 percent was gambling product related, representing an increase of 115 percent as compared to $1,107,000 for Q3 2006.

 

The Quarterly operating income was $137,000, a turnaround compared to Operating Loss of $618,000 for Q3 2006. Operating Income margin increased to 2 percent from 6 percent in Q3 2006, as the company continued to gain traction on the high margin gaming technology business.

 

The Quarterly net loss of ($220,000), or EPS of ($0.02) basic/diluted loss per share, represents a quarter-over-quarter increase of 80 percent as compared to a loss of ($1,115,000), or EPS of ($0.09) basic/diluted loss per share for the same quarter of 2006.

 

Total revenues for the first nine months of 2007 were $28,090,000, representing a decrease of 13 percent as compared to $32,332,000 for the same period of 2006. The gross profit for the first nine months of FY2007 was $7,274,000, an increase of 57 percent, as compared to $4,622,000 for the same period of 2006.

 

The net loss for the first nine months of this year was ($639,000) or EPS of ($0.06) per basic/diluted loss per share, as compared to net income of $604,000, or $0.02 per basic/diluted earnings per share for the same period of prior year.

 

“Due to the dynamic nature of the rapidly evolving gaming market in Macau and Asia,” PacificNet officials say, “the company will not be providing detailed revenue and profit projections at this time.”

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A British supplier of integrated software products for CRM, licensing and billing, UltraSoft Technologies, has won the BCA Trade Supplier of the Year award, for “outstanding performance in the delivery of tangible operational and revenue benefits to operators of flexible managed space across the UK,” according to UltraSoft officials.

The award was presented to UltraSoft at the Business Centre Association’s 7th Annual Industry Awards ceremony held in London recently.

BCA chairman Tony Waldron said, “It’s the quality and efficiency of supplier service provision that is the key differentiator of our industry. With all trade suppliers striving to excel in delivering the highest level of service, value for money and operational benefits, the judges’ task was tough and complex.”

 

The news as of the third cup of coffee this morning, and since we're all pretty awake by the third cup, the music is Aimee Mann's Live at St. Ann's Warehouse. I know, but I think you can handle it:

Oncontact Software has released Oncontact CRM 6.1 Web, a customer relationship management (CRM) product that allows users to access data via the Web, network and synchronization.

The product gives customers "a consistent user experience feature set no matter how they wish to access their CRM system," Oncontact officials say.

"CRM users are constantly evolving with more people traveling and working remotely," said Jon Zimmerman, president, Oncontact Software. "Users can view their Oncontact CRM system through a Web browser, a traditional Windows network or on the road in a disconnected environment by easily syncing their database anytime, anywhere."

Oncontact CRM 6.1 Web is a Microsoft.NET, Vista-compatible product that only requires a Web browser to access. The Oncontact CRM system is built upon one consistent data model that allows an organization to utilize the system in any combination of environments.

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Agresso, heretofore an ERP vendor, has announced the availability of Agresso CRM, a customer relationship management product aimed specifically at the mid-market services sector that Agresso's been working for more than 20 years.

Agresso CRM is being rolled out globally via either a standard, on-site license or software-as-a-service agreement.

The newest Agresso offering for sales and marketing staff is either standalone or integrated into the Agresso Business World enterprise resource planning suite in place at over 2,700 companies globally. 100 percent Web based, it can run on multiple databases, operating systems, and stationery or mobile devices, Agresso officials say.

Agresso CRM is part of a larger corporate strategy "intrinsic to the company's plans to grow to a $700 million company by 2010," Agresso officials say, adding that the company has been growing at 40 percent or more in 2007 on the strength of its flagship ERP product line, Agresso Business World, which was released in late 2005.

Agresso CRM is the first in a series of what the company calls "BLINC -- Businesses Living IN Change" plug-ins, and will provide integration to their ERP suite.

Agresso's parent, Unit4Agresso in the Netherlands, evaluated a wide scope of global CRM partnership strategies, including an alliance with Microsoft. Agresso had also acquired a European-based company with a strong CRM product, CCS of Spain, nearly a year ago that brought a base of 1,700 customers. Nearly 10 percent of those customers are in a SaaS model.

"We carefully reviewed the business requirements of our target market against all of our options to acquire the best possible CRM product," said Jose Sanchez, managing director of Agresso Spain and a member of the Unit4Agresso Board. "It was our original intention to partner with Microsoft, who we thought might come closest to meeting the CRM needs of mid-market, services organizations. However, neither the Microsoft CRM product line, nor any others we reviewed, were as robust as our acquired CCS technology."

The company has established a Spain-based CRM Service Hub of more than 100 full-time professional services employees, with "decades of years of CRM experience selling, implementing and supporting Siebel and Microsoft products, as well as the original product underpinning Agresso CRM," company officials say.

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Reportlinker.com has announced that a new market research report, "Decision Matrix: Selecting a CRM vendor in the pharmaceutical industry" is available in its catalogue.

This report provides "a comparative analysis of the leading CRM vendors in the pharmaceutical market in order to help companies select a CRM product based on its technology strength, reputation amongst end users and ability to influence the market," Reportlinker officials say.

According to Reportlinker, the report identifies which technology vendors pharmaceutical companies should shortlist when considering the purchase of a CRM product. It provides a comparative technology assessment of the CRM products offered by vendors in the pharmaceutical market, identifies which CRM providers have the most impact on the pharmaceutical market and "explores how end users perceive CRM vendors across eight categories, such as product quality and service capabilities."

The report finds that "by combining robust CRM technology with extensive market impact in the pharmaceutical sector, Oracle is positioned as the leader for CRM products in the life sciences."

It also notes that "with its recent acquisition of Dendrite, Cegedim has increased its market impact and has positioned itself as an important leader in the pharmaceutical CRM market," and that by offering new technology platforms, "StayinFront and Salesforce.com have become players in the pharmaceutical CRM landscape.”

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SugarCRM has announced that two SugarCRM customers – WeberHaus and Kassel Initiative -- won top honors for CRM deployments at the CRM-Expo in Nuremberg, Germany.

CRM-Expo, Europe's largest CRM event, was held in Nuremberg on November 7th and 8th. "These awards, which are the most prestigious CRM awards in Europe, demonstrate the impact of SugarCRM's commercial open source model globally," said Clint Oram, General Manager, Sugar Europe.

WeberHaus, a builder of high-end, energy efficient homes headquartered in Rheinau-Linx, Germany, secured the award for Best B2C implementation. Founded in 1960, WeberHaus employs over 900 employees and has built more than 28,000 houses in Germany, France, Switzerland and several other countries.

In an industry not known for repeat customers, WeberHaus focused its SugarCRM implementation on deploying a marketing and sales management system that offered its existing customers cross-sell and upsell offers to continue to grow the value of the relationship after a home was built. The award cited WeberHaus for its ability to use CRM to build lifelong relationships and create customer loyalty with buyers in the residential construction industry.

The Kassel Initiative is a non-profit focused on attracting tourists and industry to the Kassel region of central Germany. Kassel used Sugar to build an online platform where residents, businesses, and visitors could share information about the Kassel region. Kassel was praised for its modern and innovative implementation of CRM to build and sustain lasting relationships across the community.

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CNP Integrations has announced a strategic partnership with Holdcom, a vendor in the audio marketing industry, to integrate its branded, online audio production service. This product offers audio marketing tools including Voice-over, message-On-Hold products and voice prompt production for telephone call processing and Web audio applications.

"CRBM, Customer Relationship Business Management, is the new watchword for competitive companies," said CPN officials. "The evolving science of engineering and implementing products in this category is moving at a lightning pace. CBRM is the inevitable and powerful combination of CRM and Social Networking technologies; it integrates any company's front and back office functions."

The alliance provides a resource for CNP, whose core business is consulting and implementation of Web-based CBRM products. The CNP portal now features the marketing functionality of the Holdcom offerings which fit into CNP's vision to provide a launching point for empowering clients' business systems.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Willie Nelson's great gospel album, The Troublemaker:

Clarity Systems, a vendor of corporate performance management (CPM) products and EDGARfilings, which sells Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) compliance software and services, have announced a partnership to offer an integrated financial reporting product.

This partnership lets public companies "create SEC reports using Clarity Financial Statement Reporting and electronically file these reports with the SEC using EDGARizer software," Clarity officials say.

Clarity FSR, a software product launched by Clarity Systems earlier this year, produces external financial documents, such as the 10K and 10Q, and other regulatory reports. EDGARizer software converts and transmits properly formatted and compliant documents to the SEC within filing deadlines.

Clarity sells a CPM product with the ability to automate the creation of external financial reports with a secure audit trail, automatic rounding, compliance checklists, workflow, and business rules, says Mark Nashman, President, Clarity Systems, who added that this deal "extends our product by providing our customers with the ability to electronically file their financial documents with the SEC, in an EDGAR-ready format."

Clarity FSR is a key component of Clarity 6, a Web-based, unified and open CPM product. Andrew Neblett, CEO, EDGARfilings, said with compliance and financial reporting requirements being top of mind for companies, "adopting software products to streamline the process is a high priority."

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Happy birthday today to Christian writer and Oxford don C.S. Lewis, who would have been 109 today. Lewis, then a bachelor, took children from London into his country house during the World War II air raids on the city in World War II. One day a child asked him what was inside the big wardrobe in the house.

So Lewis made up a story about Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, staying at a country house during the World War II air raids, who find a magical world called Narnia, including a lion and a witch, in a large wardrobe in the house.

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Bango has reported "strong key performance data for billing off-deck content and services," through a new UK industry standard called Payforit.

Based on an analysis of the last million transactions processed by the company in the UK mobile market, 92 percent were completed successfully with an error rate of less than 1 percent, Bango officials say: "And with refund levels at below 0.01 percent of payments processed, there was a significant reduction in the need for costly customer care."

Payforit is a WAP billing standard for mobile purchases, which provides a familiar, Web-like payment experience for consumers browsing and buying content from their mobile phones. It is the product of nearly two years of development between the UK mobile operators and technical service providers including Bango.

The product is meant to ensure that UK users see the same standardized payment screens across every operator network and when purchasing from third party content provider.

"This analysis is so compelling that I believe all other major mobile markets will choose to standardize on the WAP model," said Anil Malhotra, SVP Marketing at Bango and chair of the MMA mobile Web committee. "In the US this approach to off-portal content purchasing is increasingly adopted by mobile operators, content providers and though the work of the MMA."

WAP billing is now being promoted in the US through the Mobile Marketing Association's Best Consumer Practice Guidelines and is already supported by AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile for off-deck content purchases.

Bango's data derived from the UK experience found that seven percent of transactions failed because users had insufficient funds to complete their purchase. Bear in mind that the British market has a comparatively high pre-paid user base -- of over 60 percent of all subscribers, compared to around 10 percent in the US. This means more people have insufficient funds available to pay for purchases.

As part of its research, Bango also calculated the average transaction speed. This is worked out as the time elapsed between the user clicking the "Buy" link and seeing the confirmation Web page. Across all five networks the average is five seconds and in the best cases an average of two seconds is achieved.

Bango created a global exchange for the mobile Web, where content providers see all users as a unified global community. Users then discover and access the range of content and mobile operator's partner with Bango for their subscribers. Billing providers, search engines and advertisers are automatically connected to content providers in Bango's global exchange.

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Opera Software has announced that Opera Mini 4, the newest version of the company's mobile Web browser, was downloaded more than one million times in the 10 days following its worldwide debut on November 7. Opera Mini is free from http://www.operamini.com/.

Overall, Opera Mini has "already been embraced by more than 26 million cumulative users who view more than one billion Web pages every month," company officials said.

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera, said the reception for Opera Mini 4 is proof that "consumers want the freedom to choose the same experience, the same Web, regardless of what device they use."

According to Gartner, more than half of cellular subscribers in the U.S. and Western Europe will access the Web on a mobile device at least once a week by 2010. Opera officials see that as Opera Mini's market, since the product automatically reduces the size of the transferred pages, so Web sites load faster while reducing the cost of surfing.

In related news Opera has announced its initiative with Tata Teleservices to provide Opera Mini on its upcoming BREW-enabled handsets. The revolutionary browser will be made available first on the Huawei C2900i, a mass market BREW-enabled handset. Tata is an Indian telecom provider with a user base in excess of 20 million.

Research studies conducted by Gartner have confirmed that India's mobile phone market is set for a period of rapid growth, with revenue from cellular services expected to jump by more than 18 per cent year on year for the next five years, Opera officials say. Indian mobile data revenue is expected to outpace that of voice services and contribute to about a fifth of total revenues by 2011, doubling year on year.

A report by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the Indian telecom industry watchdog, suggests that the number of Indian consumers connecting to the Internet via mobile handsets has more than doubled in just over a year-to 38 million from 16 million.

Opera Mini uses a remote proxy server to pre-process Web pages before sending them to mobile phones. Web content is compressed to reduce the size of data transfers, enabling faster browsing experience.

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Graham Technology has announced that Vodafone Netherlands has deployed its ciboodle customer interaction platform. This is the largest deployment of ciboodle so far, Graham officials say, which "paves the way for a customer service revolution" at Vodafone.

Vodafone Libertel B.V. is part of the worldwide Vodafone Group. Vodafone Netherlands chose ciboodle to help improve the company's ability to deliver customer service. Vodafone Netherlands is now using ciboodle in handling calls 24/7 from an active customer base of 3.9 million customers.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The New Riders of the Purple Sage's obligatory Bob Dylan cover, "Farewell Angelina:"

Yes, First Coffee's back in the saddle after the yearly ironic practice of leaving Turkey for Thanksgiving to travel to America. But now we're back in Istanbul and… what's that? Oh, okay:

When Spanish explorers found the bird in North America in the 1600s they brought it back to Europe, where the English mistook it for the woodcock, a bird they called a "turkey," since it came to Europe via Turkey. So they called both the woodcock and the new North American bird a "turkey."

Turks themselves call the bird a "hindi," since they got it from India -- "Hindistan" in Turkish. Arabs call it the "Ethiopian bird," and Greeks call it after a French girl. The French call it "dinde," which means "from India."

Confused yet? Imagine the poor bird itself trying to figure out who to root for during the World Cup.

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Etelos has announced that two executives have recently joined the company: Leon Drozdowski, who joins as the Vice President of Operations, and Don Campbell, their new Vice President, Strategic Development.

Jeffrey L. Garon, President and CEO of Etelos, said he was confident both men would "play key roles in driving Etelos" in the firm's mission to "use Web applications to achieve their goals."

Drozdowski will lead Etelos' global sales and service efforts. He has more than 30 years experience with software sales and services teams. Most recently, he was Vice President of Americas Professional Services for Mercury Interactive. Prior to MI, he held senior executive positions with Computer Sciences, Oracle, CATS Software and Compuware.

Campbell will lead Etelos' partner development and platform evangelism efforts. Most recently, he led the evangelism efforts for Office Live at Microsoft, building the partner ecosystem and driving grass-roots community engagement using channel9.msdn.com and other similar vehicles.  Prior to Microsoft, he was Senior Director, Product Management at Infravio, which was acquired by WebMethods.

Etelos sells on-demand, customizable browser-based applications on the hosting environment chosen by clients.

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Datacap, a vendor of flexible capture and forms processing software products, has announced that it has developed scanner certification for Fujitsu's fi-5900C scanner.

The Fujitsu 5900 offers best-of-breed technology and was designed for high volume applications, to "convert large volumes of paperwork to electronic data," Datacap officials say. The scanner offers a rated speed of 120 single-sided pages per minute and 240 double-sided images per minute.

Testing to certify the scanners involved setting up a system that models typical Datacap user configurations. For example, the scanner, a PC and Datacap's software are tested in such configurations as USB 2 with Kofax VRS, Adaptec SCSI connection with an ISIS driver and Firewire IEEE connection with a TWAIN driver.

"Our scanner testing program enables our users to select our certified scanners, knowing that Datacap's software applications will support a scanning device at its rated speed without any compromise to the system's speed and integrity," said Scott Blau, Datacap CEO. Now certified, the Fujitsu 5900 will run with Taskmaster at its fully rated speed.

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Satuit Technologies, a vendor of sales force automation (SFA) and client relationship management (CRM) products for the professional investment market, has announced the general availability of SatuitCRM version 10.6.

The latest version of the company's CRM product provides support for the latest Microsoft platforms, and includes more than 30 enhancements "in direct response to user requests," company officials say, adding that SatuitCRM now supports MS SQL 2005, Internet Explorer 7.0, Windows Vista operating system and Longhorn Server.

As well as SatuitCRM version 10.6, the company has released version 2.0 of its Outlook Add-in, which allows users to add new contacts, activities, and notes directly from the Outlook interface.

Njal Larson, senior vice president, product strategy for Satuit Technologies, said the company is "focused solely on meeting the CRM demands of the financial services industry."

Among the highlights for SatuitCRM 10.6 are Embedded Application Integration, which allows client displays of third-party application data and functionality in the SatuitCRM user interface, and Support for Unicode character sets, such as Kanji.

There are also completely rebuilt internal calendaring functions with individual, team and company wide calendar views, high level functionality for recurring tasks and auto-notification when tasks are created for others.

Karen Maguire, CEO of Satuit Technologies, said the company is preparing enhancements to the SatuitCRM product with the pending release of version 10.7 in the first quarter of 2008. "As most of our customers are supported by our on-demand product, they automatically receive the latest updates to our software," she said.

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Oracle has announced that its Configurator 11i.10, part of the Oracle E-Business Suite, has received a "Strong Positive" rating in Gartner's "MarketScope for Sales Configuration, Q307." Oracle was one of 13 vendors evaluated in the report.

According to Oracle officials, "Gartner considers companies receiving a strong positive rating to be solid providers of strategic products, services or solutions and recommends that existing customers continue investments while potential customers consider the vendor a strong strategic choice."

Oracle Vice President Product Strategy, Aaron Shidler, said Oracle believes Gartner's strong positive rating "is recognition of Oracle's success working with global customers across vertical industries to simplify the configuration of complex products and services."

As part of the Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Configurator lets users specify, sell, manufacture and fulfill complex, customized products to customer requirements. The application supports configurations throughout the enterprise from a centrally managed configuration model, and integrates with Oracle Supply Chain Management and CRM applications.

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Monitise Americas, a mobile banking and payments service provider, and Metavante, a vendor of banking and payments technology, has announced the launch of Monitise Americas mobile financial services in the United States.

The service, which is integrated into the NYCE Payments Network, allows financial institutions to offer mobile financial services to their customers without significant investment in new technology. NYCE Payments Network, LLC, is a leading U.S. debit card payments network and a subsidiary of Metavante Corporation.

Initial launch partners include Harvard Employees Credit Union, North Jersey Community Bank, Sutton Bank and Sutton Bank's Greenlink Payment division. Its initial launch partners will use their connections to the NYCE Payments Network in order to deliver the new service to their customers.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is ABC’s “When Smokey Sings,” a tribute song to the great Smokey Robinson, which is a lot better than Brits’ crooning soupy anglicized R&B has any right to be:

 

Phishing crisis? What phishing crisis? Salesforce.com reported a 74 percent increase in net income for the third quarter, aided by a 48 percent surge in revenues.

 

For the third quarter, the on-demand CRM vendor reported GAAP net income of $6.52 million or $0.05 per share, compared to net income of $339,000, or $0.00 per share in the same quarter last year.

 

On average, thirty-one analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial expected earnings of $0.02 per share for the quarter.

 

Earnings per share for the recent quarter benefited by a gain of approximately $0.01 per share associated with the sale of a minority investment. In addition, results for the latest quarter include approximately $14.2 million in stock-based compensation and approximately $1.4 million in amortization of purchased intangibles related to previously announced acquisitions, as well as a 46 percent tax rate.

 

Total revenues for the quarter rose 48 percent to $192.8 million from $130.1 million in the comparable quarter a year ago. Wall Street analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $190.6 million for the quarter.

 

CEO Marc Benioff said at this rate, “we expect to push well past the $800 million revenue run rate in Q4, and we are now on track to become the first ever on-demand company to exceed $1 billion in annual revenue in our fiscal ‘09.”

 

On a geographical basis, revenues in the Americas surged 40 percent from the previous-year quarter, while revenues in Europe grew 71 percent. Revenues in Asia rose 92 percent from a year ago.

 

For the first nine months of the fiscal year 2008, the company posted net income of $11 million or $0.09 per share, compared to net loss of $35,000 or $0.00 per share a year ago. Year-to-date revenues climbed to $531.8 million from $352.9 million in the previous-year period.

…

 

Kana officials say they’ve helped the City of Amsterdam improve the quality and efficiency of customer service it offers to citizens. The city was honored with the Dutch KING award 2007 for innovation and quality in public service, and was recently recognized by the European eGovernment award 2007 for its achievements in this area.

 

The City of Amsterdam selected Kana as the basis of its new multi-channel customer service product, designed to make it easier for citizens to access the full range of government services. A combined implementation of Kana’s integrated e-mail, Web self-service, and contact center applications has enabled the City of Amsterdam to “consolidate on a single point of contact for telephone and e-mail enquiries,” according to the Kanalians.

 

Amsterdam has also improved Web self-service, making it easier for citizens to find the information they need online about all of the services managed by local government, including taxation, social services, passports, and driving licenses.

 

City officials say they’ve “dramatically increased” the number of inquiries handled with the same staff, from 100,000 per month to over 400,000 per month.

 

Prior to launching the Kana product, a complex network of hotlines and switchboards was used to route inquiries through Amsterdam’s 15 autonomous districts and 41 administrative departments. The system was so inefficient that when the local authority carried out a survey to find out what inhabitants thought of its customer service, half of them said that they couldn’t figure out where to go. So it was inefficient, but hey, it was expensive as all get-out too.

 

The majority of inquiries are now handled through a new 90-employee contact center which handles approximately 120,000 calls per month. Since the project was completed at the beginning of 2007, the number of inquiries has risen 400 percent. Over the same period the number of direct contact center interactions has fallen slightly, and the number of inquiries handled by the Web self-service system has risen fourfold.

…

 

Cyber Gear has announced the launch of a Web-based CRM application for the real estate industry. According to Sharad Agarwal, CEO of Cyber Gear, “Our application is a result of having worked closely with leading real estate developers and property brokers in UAE over the last two years. Our application allows real estate companies to provide their clients up-to-date information on their investments.”

 

Some of the salient features of the application, according to the Cyber Gearheads, include secure authorized log-in for investors, a database of clients and a centralized information warehouse with image gallery.

 

It has payment record and payment history in multiple currencies, mortgage calculators and XML newsfeeds, as well as SMS/E-mail News Alerts on status of development, set-up reminders & preferences and an MIS reporting dashboard.

…

 

Sedona, which sells Customer and Member Relationship Management products for small and mid-size financial services organizations, has announced its operating results for the third quarter and nine-month periods ended September 30, 2007.

 

Total revenues reported for the third quarter 2007 were $354,000 compared to $389,000 a year ago. Product license revenue totaled $167,000 and $248,000 in the three months ended September 30, 2007 and 2006 respectively.

 

Product license revenue decreased in the third quarter of 2007 because “the company sold a number of license agreements to smaller financial services institutions, compared to the same period in 2006, when the company completed a sale to a large financial institution with a significantly higher asset value,” according to the Sedonians.

 

For the nine-month period ended September 30, 2007, revenues were $984,000 compared to $1,167,000 a year ago. Revenue from license fees was $390,000 and $486,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2007 and 2006.

 

Gross profit reported for the three months ended September 30, 2007 and 2006, remained constant at $272,000, or 77 percent of revenue and $298,000, or 77 percent of revenue, for 2006. For the nine-month period ended September 30, 2007, gross profit reported was $712,000, or 72 percent of revenue, compared to $928,000, or 80 percent of revenue in the same period a year ago.

 

Net loss applicable to shareholders decreased in the third quarter 2007 to $538,000, or ($.01) per share, compared to $566,000, or ($.01) per share reported in the third quarter 2006. For the nine-month period ended September 30, 2007, net loss applicable to shareholders increased to $1,800,000, or ($.02) per share, versus $1,521,000, or ($0.02) per share, a year ago.

…

 

Intelestream, which sells consulting services for SugarCRM applications, has announced today the release of the Sugar Theme Club, a nonprofit online portal where users of the Sugar Suite line of products can “download and share custom background themes to compliment their CRM experience at no cost.”

 

The concept for a theme club was developed by the Intelestreamers, who thought the growing demand for new Sugar background themes could be fueled by graphic designers seeking a forum to showcase their talents to potential clients.

 

“We believe the Sugar Theme Club will make CRM fun to use while putting graphic designers in touch with CRM users interested in services such as logo and Web site design,” states Jason Green, founder and CEO of Intelestream.

 

Introductory themes now available for download include designs inspired by automobiles, baseball, scuba diving, night clubbing, and the mountains of New Zealand. Users can download themes for immediate use by registering for a free membership at www.sugarthemeclub.org.

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is just as good as it gets — a nice, 50-song Rolling Stones iTunes mix, heavy on the 1968–1972 supernova albums. There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide people in the world into two kinds of people, and those who thrash air guitar to “Sway” while doing so:

 

LongJump, a vendor of on-demand business apps, introduced a new full-featured application, E-mail Campaign Manager, to its expanding suite. The product includes a visual dashboard and a step-by-step process that salespeople and marketers can use to build and track e-mail campaigns.

 

Unveiled in September, LongJump provides a catalog of customizable, interconnected applications aimed at small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

 

LongJump users pay a monthly fee for access to LongJump E-mail Campaign Manager, and a catalog of other business applications including CRM, sales force automation and deal tracking. Users of the LongJump Campaign Manager get 250 free e-mail messages each month, with pay-as-you-go pricing based on the number of e-mails sent. Companies can add new users and buy only what they really need.

 

The E-mail Campaign Manager is billed as being able to help “improve campaign results through better integration between Marketing and Sales department processes,” according to LongJump officials: “For example, it lets Sales or Marketing automatically schedule a call back task for a sales person when a prospect has opened and clicked an e-mail containing the latest newsletter.”

 

LongJump officials say the product can review all previous campaigns directed at a particular customer, and combine e-mail templates with simple mail-merge features, build and manage lead lists for sales teams.

 

As part of its announcement, LongJump has also opened up its platform to third-party integration, announcing its first partnership with VerticalResponse, a vendor of self-service e-mail and direct mail services.

 

This partnership with VerticalResponse “solves one of the biggest CRM issues: affordable, integrated e-mail marketing” products, says Pankaj Malviya, founder and CEO of LongJump. “This partnership also signals LongJump opening up its platform to third-party integration.”

 

LongJump is a service of Relationals, a privately-held provider of on-demand CRM and SFA business applications to more than 100 enterprise companies.

. . . .

 

IEnterprises, which styles itself the “wireless customer relationship management (CRM) experts,” has announced the availability of its pre-built wireless CRM application, Mobile Edge, for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers.

 

Mobile Edge lets businesses access CRM information from Microsoft Dynamics CRM on the BlackBerry smartphone. Contacts, account cases, opportunities, and call reports, you name it, anytime, anywhere.

 

“Remarkably easy to use,” according to iEnterprises officials, Mobile Edge is a “configurable Web Services-based application that retains the data integrity and security of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and BlackBerry smartphone.”

 

The product offers hosted and/or on premise deployment and can be configured to support any language, so fields and actions are shown in the user’s preferred language. It supports custom Microsoft Dynamics CRM Objects, and as a pre-built application, there is no development platform required and no need for hefty customizations or consulting costs.

 

. . . .

 

Search engine marketing technology developer ClearSaleing has announced the release of Version 3.3 of its software, which can provide phone tracking, enhanced CRM integration, detailed granular lead tracking and customer buying behavior analysis, according to the company officials.

 

The product lets search engine marketers capture and measure offline phone orders resulting from their online advertisements. Research cited by the firm suggests that for every one online contact form or registration an advertiser receives, an advertiser will receive three to five additional sales phone calls.

 

The ClearSaleing 3.3 release also provides enhanced integration capabilities with major CRM platforms, including Oracle CRM OnDemand, SalesForce.com, ACT and Goldmine. Search engine marketers need only to install the ClearSaleing tracking code on their Web site to track and properly value each online ad’s contribution to sales that are consummated offline.

 

ClearSaleing’s phone tracking product “removes conversion tracking loss by relating phone orders back to the original online advertising source,” ClearSaleing officials say, so “online advertisers may accurately value each ad’s true profit contribution and return.”

 

“We have known for some time that there is substantial leakage in our current online advertising analytics as a result of not being able to capture call-in orders and track them back to the online ads that generated them,” said Marian Dieter, Executive Vice President of Princeton Watches.

. . . .

 

Parature, a vendor of on-demand customer support and help desk software, has announced a partnership agreement with TMA Resources, a vendor of association management software.

 

Organizations soon will have the opportunity to integrate Parature’s on-demand customer support software with TMA Resources’ flagship software, Personify. Integrating the two software systems will allow organizations to “extend Personify’s current customer service capabilities by providing their members with the ability to submit questions online, search an online knowledge base for answers, read documents to learn more about a topic of interest and participate in discussion boards,” according to the Parature officials.

 

The integration will enable TMA Resources’ clients to synchronize customer information and inquiries between Parature’s customer support software and Personify, the primary source for storing all customer data.

 

The Parature suite of modules is integrated into one product allowing organizations to manage support needs. This online software provides tools necessary to resolve issues.

 

Edi Dor, TMA Resources CEO & President, said integrating Personify with Parature’s customer service software “will enable associations to improve member and customer relations via the Web, which in turn may improve members’ perceived value of their membership.”

 

. . . .

 

Avidian Technologies has announced that Prophet 4.0 has been upgraded to support Microsoft Outlook 2007. This upgrade will enable users of the newest version of Outlook to “benefit from Prophet’s sales and contact management functions,” according to Avidian officials.

 

“We’ve continued to update Prophet for ease of use, integration, and to use Outlook’s best features,” said Tim Nguyen, CIO and co-founder of Avidian Technologies. “Now Outlook 2007 users can also take advantage of Prophet’s sales automation features while continuing to rely on the latest version of Outlook for their e-mail, calendar items and contact information.”

 

Prophet’s technology supports contact management features such as automatically linking all Outlook contacts with the same company name into one company account — without needing a separate stand-alone application.

 

Unlike traditional CRM or sales management software, Prophet is built into Outlook, eliminating the need to manage multiple contact databases or toggle between separate applications. Built on the .NET 2.0 platform, Prophet works entirely inside Outlook and integrates with other business capabilities.

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Led Zeppelin, in honor of iTunes finally getting the Zep catalogue. Of course it took them so long First Coffee had already purchased the essential Zeppelin on CD or downloaded it for free from Limewire. I did purchase "Gallows Pole" to mark the occasion. Wonder how many millions of dollars they lost, though:

InfoVision Consultants have announced the signing of contract with EniRepSa Gas Limited in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, for implementing MaxPro ERP software for human capital management and payroll management.

In the first phase, EniRepSa will use the standard version and in second phase the advance modules having Recruitment Management System, Training Management System and Key Performance Indicators System to measure performance will be integrated with standard version.

The selection of ICON MaxPro ERP was made after "rigorous review of the functionalities and features offered by the software and HR best practices already available in system," according to InfoVision officials.

Mustaqeem Sheikh, General Manager for ICON, uses a word new to First Coffee when he says "Glocalization is our strength. We believe our approach to introduce global best practices with local implementation ensure that almost all our implementations for ERP and CRM are successful."

One consideration for EniRepSa Gas Limited is the shortest possible time for setup, trainings, implementation -- "just one month to start generating first payroll from system and managing company wide human resource," InfoVision officials say.

…

CRM vendor Computer Generated Solutions, a vendor of software, IT services and outsourcing, has announced its expanded presence in Romania and the inauguration of its European headquarters, a wholly-owned subsidiary, Computer Generated Solutions Europe, S.R.L. (CGS Europe).

The expansion comes on the heels of the company's first year anniversary of its Romanian call center acquisition, CGS Romania (formerly EasyCall), completed in October 2006.

"We're pleased to announce our decision to open our European headquarters in Romania following the success we have had since our acquisition of CGS Romania," said Phil Friedman, President and CEO. "We believe that the CGS Europe Software Development Center located at our new European Headquarters in Romania will be a key driver to further success."

Friedman said CGS' call center and outsourcing experience in Romania, "coupled with our global, multi-shore experience in software development, underscores our commitment."

Florin Chiutu was appointed to the CGS Management team as General Manager of CGS Europe and the new operations at the Software Development Center. Chuitu has experience in developing technical development services across multiple platforms including Microsoft .NET, IBM, Oracle and Sun.

"Romania and the European community offer an opportunity for continued strategic growth in supporting our existing multinational clients, as well as for new offshore and outsourcing opportunities worldwide," Chiutu said.

CGS Europe and its new Software Development Center will initially focus on client-server applications and component software development for business applications including Microsoft Dynamics AX among others.

…

Eloqua Corporation, a vendor of automated demand generation applications and expertise for business-to-business marketers, has announced that it has developed integration points between Eloqua Conversion Suite and Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand.

Eloqua and Oracle have tested these integration points that will help enable companies to get hosted, demand generation and lead management system integrated with Siebel CRM On Demand.

As a Certified Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork and member of the Oracle CRM On Demand Go To Market Initiative, Eloqua is one of the first partners working with the Siebel CRM On Demand product management and engineering teams to deliver an integrated, seamless, combined product.

The result, Eloqua officials say, will help customers close the loop between sales and marketing by providing their sales force with real-time marketing information on prospects available from within their Siebel CRM On Demand application.

Marketers using the combined product can maximize lead conversion, automate marketing processes and analyze campaign results. "Customers are looking for improved controls and greater visibility into their marketing program," said Joe Payne, CEO, Eloqua.

…

Parature, a vendor of on-demand customer support and help desk software, has announced the release of a free white paper offering customer support professionals insight on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model versus implementing software on-site. The paper, titled "10 Reasons to Get Your Support Software as a Service" is available online at http://www.parature.com/res_whitepapers.aspx.

Providing customers with superior customer support is often an invariable challenge within many organizations. "Taking advantage of the many benefits that the on-demand support model can provide helps to facilitate and ensure optimal performance within organizations, allowing them to provide their customers with the quality of service they demand," Parature officials say.

The SaaS model empowers every company, independent of size, with the ability to better compete within their space, company officials believe: "Perceived barriers that once kept many organizations hesitant to explore the on-demand model are rapidly dissipating. The white paper explores the top reasons companies cite for opting to get their CRM functionality on-demand rather than implementing software in-house."

…

CIBER Enterprise Solutions, a division of CIBER, Inc., has announced the implementation of Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition for Burns & McDonnell, an international architecture and engineering firm based in Kansas City.

To manage its projects, Burns & McDonnell uses three project management information technology applications to keep track of scheduling, budget, and resource details. To manage its back office activities, such as accounts payable and receivable and purchasing activities, the firm uses the Oracle E-Business Suite -- including Oracle Financial Management, Oracle Projects, and Oracle Supply Chain Management.

The firm wanted to enhance the process of obtaining detailed reports about the schedules, budgets, and resources for each project to make strategic plans and forecasts. Prior to the implementation of the Oracle enterprise BI suite, Burns & McDonnell would send requests to the firm's IT Department to create special reports to compile data from multiple systems.

They tried numerous other products, but found that none would work within the parameters of their IT environment and their IT security systems. So they had begun work on an interim product developed by a Java programmer -- who left the firm after three months. They decided they needed outside help at that point.

"We had not worked with CIBER before, but met with them at a trade show in April," said Dana Witthar, Enterprise Applications Programming Manager at Burns & McDonnell. CIBER specializes in business intelligence, human capital management, and Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise, and Oracle's JD Edwards upgrades.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is U2's Achtung Baby:

 

InQuira, a vendor of software for intelligent search, knowledge management, and analytics, has announced that Sterling Commerce, a subsidiary of AT&T, has selected the InQuira 8 integrated platform.

 

Sterling Commerce is using InQuira 8 to "integrate its knowledge base with its search capabilities to improve the problem resolution experience for online customers and call center support representatives," InQuira officials say.

 

InQuira Information Manager, a knowledge base application, lets Sterling Commerce create new articles for the knowledge base. InQuira's Intelligent Search gives representatives and customers search and retrieval capability to find the information they need to resolve customer problems, and InQuira Analytics provides management with a mechanism to evaluate user experience and implement improvements.

 

Representatives and customers "found it difficult to find the information they knew existed in the knowledge base, and customers wanted better search capabilities on our support site," said Doug Olson, Vice President of Global Support at Sterling Commerce. "We realized, though, that search on its own will not provide our agents and customers with the fulfilling support experience we want to deliver. We need a tightly integrated knowledge base and search."

 

"More and more companies recognize they need an integrated platform of knowledge management, intelligent search, and analytics," said Mike Murphy, InQuira's President and CEO.

 

Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Sterling Commerce has offices in 19 countries and most major cities around the world. Blue-chip customers of InQuira include Bank of America, AVIS Group, Pitney Bowes, Chrysler and Sun Microsystems. The company is headquartered in San Bruno, California.

…

 

Infusion Software, vendor of Infusion CRM for small businesses, has announced that the company has reached the highest levels in e-mail deliverability and e-mail volume in the company's history.

 

In the month of October, small business customers used Infusion CRM to send 59.9 million e-mails to prospects and customers as part of one-off and multi-step event-triggered marketing campaigns. Monthly deliverability reached an all-time high with 93 percent of e-mails sent in less than 60 seconds, 96 percent of double opt-in e-mails were delivered to each recipient's inbox and 85 percent of single opt-in e-mails reached recipients' inboxes.

 

Industry averages show that typically only 50 percent of e-mails ever make it to the intended recipient's inbox.

 

"E-mail is still king when it comes to marketing, especially among small businesses," said Clate Mask, President of Infusion Software. "Marketers see the beauty of being able to send e-mails directly f as a one-off communication, a batch, or as part of an automated event-triggered lead nurturing program that moves people through the buying process from lead to customer to life-long customer."

 

Some features of e-mail functionality designed for marketers found within the Infusion CRM Web-based suite include the ability to automatically initiate a series of actions (add to sub-list, remove from list, start multi-step sequence, stop campaign, send further-targeted content via e-mail, generate a task to make a live phone call…) when a prospect or customer clicks on the trackable links within your e-mails, and to send e-mail templates automatically or manually as part of a multi-step e-mail marketing campaign, as a one-off response, or as a batch to multiple prospects or customers in segmented lists.

…

 

Travel Sciences announced at the 2007 Phocuswright Conference being held Orlando, Florida this week — ever notice that nobody holds conferences in places like Newark or Detroit this time of year? — that it has integrated Facebook with its customer relationship management product known as OpenTravel CRM.

 

OpenTravel CRM is the first free, all-inclusive CRM and back office software for travel agents and travel businesses. Featuring Web 2.0 capabilities and tools that are built into its core, OpenTravel CRM extends conventional CRM functions to include social network relationship management capabilities, hence the Facebook attraction.

 

The public beta version is scheduled for November 23rd.

 

The integration of Facebook with OpenTravel CRM is intended to provide travel professionals with the ability to automatically download and include Facebook Friends profiles into OpenTravel CRM's customer profiles. It also will enable OpenTravel CRM users to maintain and link to their own profiles directly from the application.

 

Additionally, OpenTravel CRM, will enable agents to set-up Facebook groups for travelers who can view itineraries, post comments and share photos.

 

According to Joseph Mazzarella, President and CEO of Travel Sciences, "In terms of CRM, it is essential for businesses to participate as members in these communities and to use their innate networking power. We believe businesses can and should actively participate in social networks and, in doing so, will foster and cultivate customer relationships."

 

According to information provided by Facebook, they have over 25 million users and are "growing approximately 3 percent per week." Fifty percent of Facebook users visit the site every day, and there are over 60 billion page views per month, they say.

 

"That is the essence of a strong CRM product — one that provides real insight about customers with the tools to act on that knowledge in a meaningful way," said Mazzarella.

 

Formed in 2001, the Hartford-based Travel Sciences is a leading developer of intelligent, web-based software products for the travel industry. It offers reservations, distribution and business automation for cruise lines, tour operators and retail travel business.

. . . .

 

The fur continues to fly in London as BSkyB and CRM vendor EDS face off over the age-old problem of vague instructions, a deep-pocketed client who's not really sure what he wants and the myriad temptations and slippage therein.

 

Basically the problem is that BSkyB hired EDS to build them a rootin'-tootin' state of the art CRM system, with EDS filling in the details. EDS contends that yes, they cashed the checks — but Sky didn't know what it really wanted. BSkyB contends that EDS cashed the checks without giving any real value for aforesaid cash.

 

According to invaluable industry observer Leo King, Sky and EDS "clashed heavily in the Technology and Construction Court yesterday over the specifications the broadcaster required for a new customer relationship management system." Or, rather, the inherent lack thereof.

 

Mike Hughes, former managing director Sky Services and a major witness for the broadcaster, said the company did not want to experiment with technology that had not been well tested elsewhere, King reported: "He explained that the firm only wanted a system advanced enough to put 'clear blue water' between it and the competition in areas such as churn management and call resolution."

 

"This was a business project not an R&D exercise," he said under cross examination. "We wanted new technology but we did not want to be the first corporation using a new component or set of components."

 

But Mark Barnes, barrister for EDS, said Sky wanted cutting edge technology in order to set the pace among rivals, King reported: "He said Hughes had told workers in an internal workshop that the project needed to be 'innovative, world class, and cutting edge.' Hughes had said he wanted it to be 'the next quantum leap,' after the work he had done setting up a major new CRM system in his previous role at travel firm Thomas Cook."

 

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one of the finest listening experiences rock music offers, the 1969 classic album Crosby, Stills & Nash:

 

At Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, Oracle announced the general availability of OracleSiebel CRM Integration Pack for Oracle Trade Promotion Management.

 

Delivered “as part of Oracle Application Integration Architecture,” Oracle officials say, the product “reflects the company’s continued commitment to delivering pre-built integrations across Oracle ERP, CRM and industry applications.”

 

Used for integration between Oracle’s Siebel CRM and the Oracle E-Business Suite, the, uh, SCRMIPOTPM “enables consumer goods companies to create efficiencies across the enterprise and extract more value from promotions by synchronizing customer, product and financial information across Oracle applications,” the Oracle officials say.

 

This process integration pack uses a common object model and an open, Business Process Execution Language-based integration approach, and SCRMIPOTPM provides process maps for managing the entire promotion through settlement process.

 

Siebel Trade Promotions offers “robust functionality” which “enables promotion planning and simulation for accounts, including trade funds allocation against promotions, category level planning, flexible promotion setup and commitment, funds checkbook management and promotion plan performance analysis,” Siebel officials say.

 

. . . .

 

Titan Technology Partners, which sells hosted and managed industry products, has announced a successful go-live in four months using Titan’s S2V implementation methodology at Jewelry Television.

 

The deployment of the Oracle E-Business Suite Human Capital Management Solution is used to manage over 2,500 employees and “enhance Jewelry Television’s ability to manage their workforce,” Titan officials say.

 

Jewelry Television partnered with Titan to implement their first Human Resources system. Opting for a multi-phase approach, the initial phase went live with Oracle Human Resources; Oracle Advanced Benefits; Oracle Self-Service Human Resources; Human Resources Intelligence, a bi-directional interface with their payroll vendor, as well as a custom on-line pay slip and PTO product.

 

“We were able to capitalize on Titan’s recent purchase of GBSynegy by having them create training for our new system for every level in the organization,” said Wyndle Kingsmore, Vice President of Human Resources for Jewelry Television.

. . . .

 

Oracle and Cisco WebEx announced that they will offer Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand Service through the WebEx Connect application ecosystem. This means a WebEx Connect user can build a sales mashup with WebEx Sales Center, Siebel CRM On Demand, a social networking site, and an e-mail and calendaring client.

 

Also at Oracle OpenWorld, Cisco has announced that it has been collaborating with Oracle in the development and validation of Reliable Datagram Sockets, an acceleration protocol to further scale Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g, using InfiniBand.

 

Cisco has also worked with Oracle in testing and validating designs for integrating Cisco application delivery and storage networking technologies with the Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications 11i product families.

 

These efforts support Data Center 3.0, Cisco’s strategy to help customers develop data centers. Oracle Real Application Clusters supports the deployment of a single database across a cluster of servers to provide fault tolerance, high performance, and scalability.

 

Implemented as an OpenFabrics upper-layer protocol, the Reliable Datagram Sockets protocol is designed to improve the scalability of Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g deployments using industry-standard servers, and provide for modular growth and flexibility while helping to reduce both capital and operating costs.

 

Combining Cisco InfiniBand server fabric switches with the RDS interconnect protocol “helps accelerate and scale Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g to 16 industry-standard servers and beyond,” Cisco officials say.

 

. . . .

 

Graham Technology, a vendor of customer-oriented business software and services, announced that it has deployed the first phase of a ciboodle-based customer service platform at Falkirk Council. It gives Falkirk Council a complaints management system, letting the council “the ability to monitor the volume, type and status of complaints,” company officials say.

 

Falkirk Council is a unitary authority providing local government services for the Falkirk area in central Scotland. Covering 112 square miles, it has a workforce of 7,000 and serves a population of around 145,000.

 

“Addressing the handling of complaints was very much at the forefront of our objectives as it is an area where our citizens expect efficiency and responsiveness,” said Fiona Campbell, Head of Policy and Performance Review at Falkirk Council. “Ciboodle allows us to improve this area of our business, while laying the foundations to apply the platform to all customer service areas over time.”

 

The complaints handling system is the first step in an ongoing project designed to meet the Scottish Government’s Modernizing Government initiative, which recommends that 80 percent of core service requests by citizens be dealt with at the first point of contact.

 

The next phases will see ciboodle applied to all customer-facing areas of the council, the point being to give staff “a single, centralized view of the customer across all services, be it council tax, roads or freedom of information queries,” Falkirk officials say.

 

. . . .

 

PipelineDeals, which sells hosted CRM, announced the release of its Mercury upgrade, with new features and functionality “delivering on the promise of Simple CRM for Big Business,” according to company officials.

 

“This release continues our commitment to functionality with simplicity,” said PipelineDeals co-founder J.P. Werlin. “We have added more than 35 new capabilities, while keeping the simple, user-friendly interface.”

 

Using the software-as-a-service model, PipelineDeals provides online deal tracking and sales support to sales reps and management personnel. New developments include what company officials call “the cleanest and most intuitive user interface for a CRM product currently on the market,” and the ability to import contacts and leads from a host of other sources including: Outlook, Salesforce, SugarCRM, Highrise, vCard, or en masse.

 

There’s also new contact management functionality that allows you to begin to see relationships between and among contacts, a Drag and Drop calendar that allows customers to move appointments and the ability to e-mail into PipelineDeals to keep all sales related communications with sales leads in one place.

 

. . . .

 

Dealer Specialties, a division of Dominion Enterprises and vendor of data and photo collection, inventory management and data distribution services, has announced a partnership with Carfax to give dealers dynamic window labels with vehicle history.

 

Using the labels, shoppers can find details such as ownership history, including Carfax 1-Owner cars, whether the vehicle qualifies for the Carfax Buyback Guarantee and if no accidents or structural/frame damage have been reported to Carfax, among others.

 

Glen Garvin, General Manager of Dealer Specialties, called the inclusion of vehicle history data on window stickers a “merger of our respective industry strengths, which benefit both dealers and consumers.”

 

Labels can be generated by Dealer Specialties, a division of Dominion Enterprises, right on the lot, once dealers run a Carfax Vehicle History Report for their inventory.

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one of the better musical parodies to be found outside of Weird Al Yankovic, himself the reincarnation of all-time master Spike Jones -- Cheech and Chong's "Born In East L.A."

Webcom, a vendor of quote-to-order enablement and a Certified Partner in Oracle PartnerNetwork, has announced that Triveni Digital, a subsidiary of LG Electronics is implementing the Webcom WebSource CPQ product to "simplify the quote-to-order process."

Triveni Digital works in the digital TV market. "With nearly every television station in the U.S. using one of our products and now concentrating on the next phase of our company's development, we needed a quote-to-order product flexible in delivering our product offerings to a diverse customer set through both direct and indirect channels," said Ralph Bachofen, Director of Product Management and Marketing at Triveni Digital.

Bachofen said Triveni "found the integrated Siebel CRM On Demand and WebSource CPQ product, and the implementation expertise of Webcom to be a potent combination in addressing those needs."

WebSource CPQ is designed to "help drive increased revenues and margins, increased customer satisfaction, reduced costs and improved productivity," company officials say. "Addressing the complexities raised by multiple product choices, sales hierarchy, discounting rules, pricing rules and multiple channels, companies can automate quoting, revisions and the approval process."

WebSource CPQ not only handles the traditional bill of material, routing and diagram generation tasks frequently associated with product configurators, but also addresses the guided selling, proposal generation and multi-level channel management tasks associated with sales configurators, company officials say.

…

In yet another sign of the growing popularity of CRM for the public sector, the United Welsh Housing Association has signed a contract for Customer Relationship Management systems in order to, well, improve its customer service. Encouraging that government agencies are even thinking in those terms now, isn't it?

IBS OPENSystems will provide United Welsh with its OPENHousing, OPENFinancials, and OPENMobile software to "streamline document management, workflow processes and ultimately enhance the service provided to customers," IBS officials say.

IBS OPENSystems' software will go live in April 2008 and is expected to "generate efficiency gains across United Welsh's housing operations," agency officials say, adding that the product will "provide the 125 members of staff with a variety of enhancements from communication methods with customers and contractors, to superior streamlining of document management and workflow."

United Welsh is one of Wales' leading Housing Associations. They provide housing services to over 3,600 properties, providing "homes that people can afford to rent or buy." The organization also provides accommodation for older people through its Living+ scheme and for individuals with additional support needs.

Tracy Williams, ICT Manager for United Welsh, said the IBS product will "enable our staff to process documents such as invoices and bills more efficiently, whilst offering customers the ultimate service through our users' access to real-time data. Once the system is fully implemented, caller I.D. will be instantly recognized. The user will be able to view customer call history and details enabling requests to be dealt with more efficiently."

…

Want to get in First Coffee? Just do some really cool thing for the community, like Altico Advisors, a Microsoft Certified Partner headquartered in Massachusetts, who's donating all proceeds from the Year End Class conducted every December for Microsoft Dynamics GP clients to the Central New England Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. You'll get a tip of the coffee pot.

"There are so many incredibly worthy causes that we could support. Choosing just one is always a difficult task. This year, once again, we chose an organization that is close to our hearts and has personal meaning for us," says Mike Kean, President of Altico Advisors. "My wife Susan and I have personally raised money for MS by participating in the annual MS Bike Ride -- cycling 150 miles over 2 days."

Altico co-founder and CEO Rich Maloney concurs: "This act of annual giving is another way of supporting the communities we serve. I'm proud to be part of a company that has its heart in the right place."

Central New England Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Program Director Judy Cotton sees the direct impact of the Chapter's efforts. "The programs we fund," Judy explains, "provide concrete support in the form of home care and modifications that allow people with MS to live independently and safely at home. But there are intangibles, too. You can't measure or put a price on emotional support."

Altico Advisors implements and supports business, financial, and customer management software products for mid-market companies throughout New England. Altico is a Microsoft Certified Partner specializing in Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) and CRM systems for manufacturing, distribution, software development companies and service organizations.

…

The Bonadio Group accounting firm has released a business intelligence and performance management system aimed at CPA firms.

Using the product, "managing partners, firm administrators, executive committees, engagement partners and other types of supervisors can look at data combined from their company's financial, time reporting, scheduling, CRM and billing systems," Bonadio officials say.

P3 Advanced Performance Management Solution for CPA Firms includes Salient Corp.'s performance management software tailored to the needs of CPA firms. The system offers access to business data and multi-dimensional analytic capabilities across different practice management applications.

CPA firms can use it to compare and rank clients for purposes of profitability analysis and action, and prepare margin analysis by client, project, partner and team, Bonadio officials say. They can also do chargeable hours trending and capacity analysis, and review job statistics by individuals, teams, locations and partners.

Bonadio began working with Salient when it did fraud auditing for the New York State Medicaid system, according to Don Eichenauer, CPA, a partner with the Bonadio Group.

…

Euroffice.co.uk has launched its newly branded online office supplies site -- www.euroffice.co.uk. There has been technology and functionality upgrade to the service, company officials say, and "the internal CRM systems have also been rebuilt."

The branding exercise, conducted by leading agency Branded, has been spearheaded by the recently appointed CEO, Simon Drakeford, who joined the company from T-Mobile UK where he led, developed and managed T-Mobile UK's online business.

Central to the branding activity has been a focus on better understanding attitudes amongst a broad range of customers towards office stationery and online purchasing --Euroffice.co.uk having achieved year on year growth of 49 percent since its launch in 2000 and a current customer-base of some 300,000 UK SME's.

"From the focus groups that were conducted, it became acutely evident that we all have strong -- often unexpressed -- attachments to the everyday items that surround us in the office," Drakeford said. "It is important that we learn to tap into this emotion in addition to just leading on price and service. We need customers to know that we love our products as much as they do."

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Dwight Yoakam's "This Drinkin' Will Kill Me:"

Today we have an interview with Sales Performance Management vendor Callidus Software's CEO, Robert Youngjohns:

FC: What does Callidus Software do?

RY: We help companies identify and optimize the ROI on their incentive spend, the second biggest line item on a company's P&L sheet. Companies, no matter the industry, spend millions, and in some cases billions of dollars every year paying incentives and compensations to their sales force.

Surprisingly, most companies don't track these vast amounts of dollars and many have absolutely no idea where the money goes and what it actually accomplishes in terms of how sales performance impacts the bottom line of their business.

In the late 90's, Callidus also established the precursor to SPM, the Enterprise Incentive Management market.

FC: Uh, what's Enterprise Incentive Management?

RY: The modeling, administration, and reporting of all forms of non-fixed (e.g., salary) or variable pay.

FC: Okay, so how would you define Sales Performance Management?

RY: Sales performance management is the broader umbrella product set over EIM and can be closely aligned with corporate performance management systems to ensure consistency between corporate financial plans and more detailed sales planning and administration activities. It's an integrated framework that enables organizations to plan and model sales strategies and ensure timely execution of sales initiatives.

It adds science to the sales process, which has traditionally been driven by the art of relationship building.

FC: How do companies currently track and manage compensation spend?

RY: Many companies today are still using cumbersome and disparate spreadsheets. For global enterprises, the amount of money invested in payments to the sales force, as well as to distributors and other third-party resellers is staggering -- as I mentioned earlier, it's the second largest line item on the corporate P&L, often 40 percent. The real dollar investment of some of our customers is in the billions.

Yet many enterprises still manage it in a way they would never dream of managing their supply chain or their R&D investments, where they would want to measure the impact of their investment and see direct ROI.

On top of this, look at the host of compensation scandals in 2006. The culprit, according to The Wall Street Journal, was "the poor design and administration of the sales commission plan." Effectively, companies had paid out as much as double commissions on the same sale after acquiring companies, leading to the huge overage and big company losses. Stock price, revenue and image all took a major hit.

FC: So why do companies ignore SPM tools and products?

RY: Corporations often choose not to invest heavily in their compensation system because it doesn't fit neatly into the typical IT budget: CRM, SCM, ERP, etc. Instead, compensation dollars are thrown into a black box represented by inadequate spreadsheets and home grown compensation systems. The result is a huge blind spot that can ultimately threaten revenue, stock price, shareholder value. It can also literally cripple a company's overall corporate and business performance.

FC: Can you tell me about some of your customers?

RY: Callidus products are used by more than 1.7 million salespeople, brokers and channel representatives worldwide. Our customers include six of the ten largest U.S. banks -- Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, US Bank, National City -- and others like HSBC. We have three of the five largest U.S. telcos, four of the top five U.S. health insurers and five of the ten largest U.S. insurance carriers for life, health and P&C.

FC: Sounds good. How's business overall?

RY: Business is very good. Q3 was our fourth consecutive quarter with year-over-year revenue growth of 40 percent or more. In addition, we achieved a record level of on-demand bookings and with 23,000 subscribers are now the clear leader in SPM for both, on-premise or on-demand applications. We've also just made our flagship TrueComp product available on the salesforce.com AppExchange.

FC: What is the real market opportunity here?

RY: The market opportunity for SPM is enormous. According to a June 2007 report by independent market research firm Evalueserve, the market is expected to grow to over $1 billion by 2010. The firm also expects the market for global third-party EIM products to continue to grow by about 30 percent, compared to 10 percent growth expected for CRM and HCM.

Our market has grown by over 400 percent, and in about one year from just three to now over 12 companies.

FC: I'm guessing most of your business still comes from America?

RY: Sure. Due to differences in the sales culture, the U.S. is considered the biggest market for third-party EIM products, while the European market comes in second place, and the Asia-Pacific region is just beginning to realize the significance of SPM. But any company that has a sales force should know about SPM, regardless of whether they are in Omaha, Oslo or Osaka.

FC: We usually focus on CRM around here, so how's SPM different from CRM?

RY: CRM is based on a lot of guesswork and estimates, while SPM is based on facts and hard data. CRM does an excellent job using technology to capture opinions and data estimates, whereas SPM is a market devoted to a scientific and analytic approach to sales productivity based on real and accurate calculations of data.

FC: What's your personal vision behind SPM?

RY: I've participated and observed "sales organizations" from many different positions over the years. My first sales job, selling IBM products to tire manufacturers in the industrial Midlands of England, showed me that absent a strong management team, or the influence of corporate culture, the only thing that drove the behavior of sales people was the commission check.

Over time, I refined my vision to optimize the selling process so that it can be better aligned with a company's overall business objectives. My work at Sun as head of global sales taught me how to run a large global sales team and what elements are critical to continually growing revenue and building greater efficiencies.

In order to get more commission checks, it was ingrained in us to become sales heroes. Go into any airport bookstore, and you'll see a myriad of books on how to become better sales soldiers: "calling-in higher," working the deal or closing them faster. The frontline, so to speak, is most often about the "art" of sales.

FC: Do you offer your products on-demand?

RY: Callidus offers both on-premise and on-demand products. Despite the hype around on-demand, many customers don't want a 100 percent on-demand product. The reality is, on-demand and on-premise both offer great business benefits for companies; and our strategy of "going hybrid" is working as customers and software vendors are coming to us asking for a customized product built for their specific business needs.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Todd Rundgren's The Ever-Popular Tortured Artist Effect:

Teradata and gambling products firm Bally Technologies have announced that they will work together to provide products based on the new Bally Business Intelligence product integrated with the Teradata Warehouse.

"The Bally BI strategy is to bring our customers the best technology products, and Teradata brings to our Portfolio a world-class pedigree in data warehousing and CRM applications," said Bruce Rowe, senior vice president of strategy and business development for Bally Technologies.

With Bally's expertise in casino systems and slot networks, along with Teradata's enterprise data warehouse leadership, "mutual customers will benefit from optimized slot operations, better analysis and management of customer relationships and more robust marketing strategies," and "gain new insight into the overall profitability of the business," officials of both firms say.

Some mutual customers include Harrah's Entertainment, Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, Silverton Casino and Spotlight 29 Casino.

Bally Technologies needed a technology partner that could provide deeper customer understanding to use its enterprise data visualization, Bally officials say, adding that the firm wanted to "enhance reporting capabilities and performance analytics on a platform that could support their growing user requirements for more sophisticated analytics."

The Enterprise Data Warehouses produced by Teradata is expected to let Bally "analyze business operations to drive smarter, faster decisions by providing a complete view of the business," Bally officials say.

…

Bally has been busy, formalizing relationships with a variety of tech companies leading up to next week's Global Gaming Expo trade show in -- where else? -- Las Vegas, to showcase the concept of open architecture while building products into its vision of "The Networked Floor of the Future."

In addition to its deal with Dayton, Ohio-based Teradata, Bally will debut TournaMaker, a concept to turn a casino's regular GameMaker HD slot machines into "roped-off" tournament machines on demand.

Bally has partnered on the project with Toronto-based Strategy9, a vendor of Web-based marketing, e-mail, CRM and database products.

The Bally tournament session server links the gambling machine and the tournament and player-management server technology provided by Strategy9. The two server applications provide all tournament services to the gambling machine during tournament play. These services include machine conversion from conventional to tournament mode, player enrollment and tournament game play and leader board data distribution to the gambling machines and overhead signage.

At G2E, Bally will also be demonstrating its server-based Bally Live Rewards tournament technology on the iVIEW player-communication display embedded in the slot machine.

With a history dating back to 1932, Las Vegas-based Bally designs, manufactures, operates and distributes advanced gambling devices, systems and technology solutions worldwide. Bally's product line includes reel-spinning slot machines, video slots, wide-area progressives and Class II, lottery and central determination games and platforms.

It also offers an array of casino management, slot accounting, bonusing, cashless and table management products.

…

Open source business intelligence firm JasperSoft has announced a new Business Intelligence offering, jointly developed with Noetix, for Oracle ERP users.

According to industry observer Madan Sheina the Jasper4Oracle E-Business Suite software blends JasperSoft's core BI Suite software with a set of Noetix reporting objects called NoetixViews designed to generate metadata about ERP data sources.

The software creates query subjects and items of Oracle E-Business Suite data and predefines their relationships to identify joins between dashboard-driven NoetixViews. The views are then used by JasperSoft's BI for end-user analysis and reporting.

"These simplified views transform data complexity into easily recognizable business views of data, allowing non-technical business users with intuitive and affordable Web-based, ad hoc BI for simplified self-service reporting," said Jose Morales, vice president of business development for San Francisco-based JasperSoft.

This is Noetix's third integration with a BI vendor; and its second this year. In March it developed a dashboard "Generator" for Cognos BI that populates the Cognos Framework Manager model with NoetixViews that also map directly to Oracle's E-Business Suite. In 2006 it also struck a deal to integrate views inside Business Objects' Xcelsius software.

…

Epicor Software, which sells CRM products for the midmarket and divisions of the Global 1000, has announced that Michael Piraino, executive vice president and CFO for Epicor, will be presenting at the UBS Global Technology & Services Conference Wednesday, November 14, at 10:15 a.m. Eastern/7:15 a.m. Pacific at the Grand Hyatt New York Hotel in New York City.

Investors may listen to a live audio Web cast at www.ibb.ubs.com.

Epicor was named one of FORTUNE magazine's 100 Fastest-Growing Companies in 2006. It sells enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and professional services automation (PSA) products. Founded in 1984, Epicor serves over 20,000 customers in more than 140 countries, providing products in over 30 languages.

…

MDI, a project services and professional staffing firm, has named CRM veteran Randy Hulse as its Director of Business Development for IT services. Hulse will be responsible for propelling the company's growth across the IT services spectrum.

Hulse comes to MDI with 17 years of experience as a technologist, sales professional and delivery manager in the financial services, telecommunications and logistics industries.

Certified in both Miller-Heiman and Siebel Sales/CRM processes, he most recently held leadership positions with Silicon Valley hardware and software companies. Hulse's prior experience includes 11 years leading data center and operations deployments at several Fortune 500 companies, managing design and delivery of messaging infrastructures for major Internet service providers (ISPs) and cable multi-service operators (MSOs), and building strategic customer relationships with key, global customers.

…

Xactly Corporation, which sells on-demand sales performance management, will showcase its incentive compensation estimation capability and integration between its Xactly Incent and Oracle Siebel CRM On Demand.

The integration and secure data sharing promises single sign-on between Xactly Incent and Siebel CRM On Demand. More details on the new integration will be announced next week at Oracle OpenWorld.

Also at OpenWorld in San Francisco Xactly will unveil its patent-pending Incentive Estimator, which "provides Siebel CRM On Demand customers with the ability to run 'what-if' scenarios based on Siebel CRM On Demand opportunities or estimated sales to calculate potential commission and bonus estimates and payments before, during and after a sale,'" according to Xactly officials.

As a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, Xactly's integration with Siebel CRM On Demand has been validated through the Oracle Application Integration Architecture for Partners initiative.

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By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Jimmy Buffett on iTunes:

 

Oracle announced the latest release of Oracle Contact Center Anywhere, what Oracle officials call the company’s “all-in-one multichannel IP contact center” product. It’s considered by Oracle officials to be “even more accessible and easier to use by providing more options to monitor and manage contact center information and employees.”

 

Following the release of Oracle Contact Center Anywhere 8.1 in June, version 8.1.1 offers agents a 360-degree customer view across a wide array of communication channels including voice, e-mail, chat, fax, Web and interactive voice response. New features in 8.1.1 include enhanced administration and platform management, architectural and VoIP improvements and enhancements to the client interface.

 

Using the new creation wizard, Oracle officials say, users can now deploy contact centers, and select capabilities based on the contact center needs. New administration features also enable user management through the automated ability to disable user logins, limit total user logins, and automatically set agent extensions.

 

There are also VoIP and architectural improvements, as the product optimizes voice network usage and bandwidth by routing voice through the core system as needed, which, according to Oracle officials, “enhances the distributed voice capabilities by routing real-time media to the platform only when needed for services such as recording, conferencing, IVR, or monitoring.”

 

Oracle Contact Center Anywhere 8.1.1 is built to run on Oracle infrastructure software including Oracle Database 10/g/ and Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle Contact Center Anywhere 8.1.1 was also built to support upcoming extended media and channel integration with Oracle’s Siebel CRM.

 

. . . .

 

Speaking of Siebel CRM, that vendor announced Siebel CRM Mobile for the BlackBerry platform. Created from a collaboration between Oracle and Research In Motion (RIM), Siebel CRM Mobile has what Siebel officials describe as “secure mobile CRM functionality that mirrors the simplicity of the BlackBerry e-mail experience.”

 

This offering is available to existing Siebel Wireless customers and uses the open development platform provided by the BlackBerry Mobile Data System to simplify integration with Web services used by Siebel CRM.

 

The product lets users access Siebel CRM applications from BlackBerry smartphones and use the mobile functions of the push-based BlackBerry system architecture. The offering enables access to CRM data online or offline.

 

Enterprises can already wirelessly access Siebel CRM through the BlackBerry Browser, and “Siebel CRM Mobile goes further,” company officials say, “by providing an additional level of integration with the BlackBerry platform to make real-time CRM data available to sales forces, executives and field service engineers.”

 

. . . .

 

Surado Solutions, a vendor of CRM products, announced the availability of Surado CRM Audit Trail Module. The module will help companies “adhere to the data audit portion of the various security compliance regulations,” company officials say.

 

Most organizations are facing an increased need for more robust tools to protect sensitive information, and find the first line of defense is to use access control techniques to prevent unauthorized users from getting to sensitive information. “However,” Surado officials say, “it is also important to monitor the security architecture to ensure it is effective and to provide an additional deterrent. Robust auditing capabilities complement access controls and are key to comprehensive security architecture.”

 

It has an automated auditing product to “reduce the burden of establishing effective audit measures” by providing a graphical user interface to assist in planning and configuring the audit environment. Audited information is stored in tables for review and reporting. Security officers may audit specific database access, functional access, sensitivity of the data and data manipulation actions based on individual and/or group affiliations.

 

Audit trails are a technical mechanism that helps managers maintain individual accountability. By advising users that they are personally accountable for their actions, which are tracked by an audit trail that logs user activities, managers can help promote proper user behavior. Users are less likely to attempt to circumvent security policy if they know that their actions will be recorded in an audit log.

 

. . . .

 

Hafslund ASA, Norway’s largest utility company, has “improved customer service through reduced cycle times and streamlined processes,” company officials say, by using the business consulting and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) expertise offered by Infosys.

 

Hafslund partnered with Infosys to centralize processes across its business units and two product lines with the objective of improving operational efficiency and customer service. The effort has enabled Hafslund to scale its business and, according to company officials, “improved its ability to add new service lines in the future.”

 

Infosys helped Hafslund “transform from a product-centric business to a customer-centric organization,” according to Hafslund officials: “The CRM aims to improve customer relationships by improving service.”

 

Infosys consultants worked alongside Hafslund’s management and operational executives from business development, marketing and customer servicing functions in Norway to harmonize customer-centric business processes and applications. The recommendations of the exercise resulted in a CRM product specific to the Norwegian utilities industry and Hafslund’s business and strategy.

 

. . . .

 

Autobytel, a CRM vendor and automotive marketing services company, announced financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2007.

 

Revenue rose to $24.8 million from $23.7 million in the prior-year period and $24.3 million in the second quarter of 2007. The year-over-year increase in revenue was primarily the result of a 7 percent increase in lead fee revenue compared with the third quarter of last year, offset by a 4 percent decline in CRM services and other revenue.

 

Autobytel reported a loss from operations of $6.9 million for the 2007 third quarter, compared with a loss of $8.3 million in the third quarter of 2006 and a loss of $5.8 million in the 2007 second quarter. The year-over-year reduction in operating loss relates mostly to lower patent infringement litigation expenses and other professional fees.

 

Net loss in the third quarter of 2007 was $6.3 million, or $0.14 per share. This compares with a net loss of $7.9 million, or $0.19 per share, in the third quarter of 2006 and a net loss of $1.7 million, or $0.04 per share, in the second quarter of 2007.

 

. . . .

 

Research and advisory firm Financial Insights, an IDC company, announced the release of a new report, “Assessing CRM Strategic Initiatives in U.S. Banking: Run after Catch,” presenting “a holistic perspective of the re-emergence of CRM initiatives among banks and credit unions in the United States.”

 

The research found that financial institutions are moving to a more customer-centric product and delivery model. Christine Pratt, Research Director, Consumer Banking and Credit and author of the report, will be discussing these findings at the annual BAI Retail Delivery conference in Las Vegas on November 13-15.

 

The report profiles efforts of several institutions including Commonwealth Bank of Australia , Navy Federal Credit Union and Bank of America that are, in the words of Financial Insights officials, “in the lead for the ideal CRM payback.” The report is the culmination of research based on interviews with bankers and credit union executives.

 

“Active and high-level participation from our surveys allowed us a statistically significant view of the industry’s strategic direction with 47 percent of respondents coming from Tier 1 institutions,” said Christine Pratt of Financial Insights.

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Lou Reed's absolutely terrific set Live in Italy.

Boston-based Adenin Technologies, vendors of enterprise Intranet software suites, have announced version 9 of their IntelliEnterprise, which includes CRM, relational search, social networking, and "MyProfile" for the enterprise. The enhancements are designed to "enable enterprise employees to uncover previously unrecognized relationships between information assets," company officials say.

With the fully reengineered Relational Search module, users have "a 360 degree view of all structured and unstructured information assets, including documents, wikis, blogs, streaming videos, podcasts, database, contact records and more," company officials say.

This capability is engineered to take advantage of user participation through things like tags and social bookmarks, which are supposed to provide more accurate search results, and allows users access to relevant content, as well as subject matter experts.

"Employees searching the Intranet for a travel expense report form, for example, will not only be presented with the desired form, they will also be shown a listing of other related information they may need to access, such as travel advance requests, mileage reimbursement forms, and travel policies; or a listing of company-approved travel agency sites," company officials explain.

IntelliEnterprise is an integrated suite offering traditional Intranet functionality, including dashboards, content and document management, search and workflow, as well as a library of more than 100 ready-to-run applications. Modules include CRM, an employee directory, organizational charts, help desk, Flash video streaming and project management among others.

…

Cisco has announced its financial results for the period ended October 27, 2007, posting Net Sales of $9.6 billion, an increase of 17 percent year over year. The firm turned in Net Income of $2.2 billion and Q1 Earnings per Share of $0.35.

For its new products, the company noted that WebEx will offer Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand Service, a customer relationship management application service, through the WebEx Connect application ecosystem.

A tax benefit of $162 million or approximately $0.03 per share relating to a settlement of certain U.S. income tax matters was included in both the GAAP and non-GAAP results for the first quarter of fiscal 2008.

John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco, said the migration to the second phase of the Internet and the proliferation of networked Web 2.0 technologies "will help drive dramatic gains in productivity and innovation across all industries. If this market transition continues to unfold as we expect, it has the potential to power Cisco's and the industry's growth for many years to come."

Cash flows from operations were $3.1 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2008, compared with $2.3 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2007, and compared with $2.7 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007. During the first quarter of fiscal 2008, Cisco repurchased 96 million shares of common stock at an average price of $31.28 per share for an aggregate purchase price of $3.0 billion.

The company announced a definitive agreement to purchase Navini Networks, a vendor in the Mobile WiMAX 802.16e-2005 broadband wireless industry. Cisco expects that its broadband wireless product portfolio, including WiMAX products, will play a key role in Cisco's "Digital Inclusion" initiative to drive broadband penetration to consumers and businesses in emerging markets.

…

ELoyalty, an enterprise CRM services and products company, has also announced financial results, for the third quarter ended September 29, 2007.

For the third quarter of 2007, total revenue was $26.6 million and the net loss was $4.3 million. The net loss available to common shareholders was $0.55 per share. ELoyalty officials say the company realized an "Adjusted Earnings" loss of $1.5 million for the third quarter of 2007. Adjusted Earnings is a non-GAAP measure.

"Our third quarter revenue was approximately $1.0 million below our internal target. The primary reason for this shortfall was lower than expected revenue in our traditional CRM and Integrated Contact Solutions (previously referred to as CIPCC) Service Lines as a result of lower revenue at several large accounts and later than anticipated start dates at several new Integrated Contact Solutions customers," company officials said.

In spite of the lower than expected consulting services revenue in the third quarter, officials say the firm "continues to make progress transforming our business model." To support this they point to $3.4 million of Behavioral Analytics revenue, $9.8 million of Managed Services revenue and the fact that "60 percent of our Services Revenue came from Behavioral Analytics and Integrated Contact Solutions."

   

ELoyalty officials say the basic premises of eLoyalty's strategy are to build strong position in two compelling niches -- Behavioral Analytics and Integrated Contact Solutions -- and "deploy a unique delivery model that combines managed services and consulting to produce significant benefits for our clients."

…

All Flex, a Northfield, Minnesota manufacturer of flexible printed circuits, has earned the Transformation Award at the Consona Customer Conference in Orlando recently. And with a name like "All Flex" maybe they should run for governor of Minnesota.

Consona Corporation sells customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and services. Company officials say the Transformation Award honors a company "able to reinvent its business or achieve a strong return on investment in a relatively short period of time."

Since the implementation of the Paradigm ERP System five years ago, All Flex has increased sales by greater than 30 percent, increased margins after adjusting job costing, 50 percent fewer returned materials, reduced production delays, and significantly improved shop floor tracking and visibility, All Flex officials say.

…

Salesforce's data security woes are but one area of concern for those checking out hosted CRM. Recently Auckland, New Zealand-based industry observer David Watson reported that the New Zealand Police "cancelled a tender for a Web-based CRM system because the preferred vendor could not meet security requirements."

The police had been seeking a CRM system, Watson writes, "to be provided either as a hosted service or housed on their own servers, but the tender was cancelled because the proof of concept failed." The potential vendor was not identified by Watson. NZ Police procurement manager Peter Rendall said "this tender was terminated at the proof of concept stage, as the vendor was not able to meet" security requirements.

Hosted CRM systems have been gaining in popularity in recent years, as Watson says, "as they have a flat per-monthly charge and are provided on a rented, or SaaS basis." However, as Salesforce.com is learning to its chagrin, "not wanting sensitive data hosted off-site has been cited as a reason by some organizations for preferring to keep to the in-house, on-premise CRM model," Watson says.

…

Funambol, a vendor of mobile 2.0 messaging software powered by open source, has announced the release of an open source native app for iPhone contact synchronization. The Funambol plug-in for iPhone synchronizes the iPhone's address book with contacts from popular sources such as Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, GNOME Evolution and SyncML servers such as the Funambol server.

Until now, contact synchronization on the iPhone was possible only using a cable connected to a computer running iTunes. The Funambol iPhone plug-in was developed in large part by Patrick Ohly, a long-time member of the Funambol community.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.