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January 2008

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CRM Syncing From CompanionLink, Jigsaw Hits 400, CRM Vendor RightNow 2007 Results, Epicor and Cricket, Avaya India Cops Awards

January 31, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the “Workrock” shuffle playlist on iTunes, currently pumping out the second-best song the Rolling Stones ever recorded, “Sway.”   CompanionLink Software, a vendor of mobile sync products, has released a wireless synchronization product for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Palm OS mobile devices.   The CompanionLink Professional software package has an option to wirelessly synchronize information with various CRM and contact management products and Web-enabled mobile devices so users can access and update their CRM contacts, schedules, and notes from anywhere.   The software synchronizes data with ACT! by Sage, FrontRange GoldMine, IBM Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, Time & Chaos, Google Apps, Microsoft Outlook, and Palm Desktop databases.

CRM Salesforce and EXpresso, SAP Results, OSA in Europe, Graham's Estate Software, Talisma and ClickFox, Giuliani (Happy to be) Back in NYC

January 30, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s highly underrated Works, Vol. II:   It's amazing that Rudy Giuliani, the guy who led all the national Republican polls for most of 2007, is out of the race. Maybe his not actually running in any of the early primaries led people to figure the man doesn't want to be President all that badly.   Hard to fault that logic. Had Rudy at least competed in easy pickoff states, like Wyoming or Nevada, it would have kept his name in circulation.

Microsoft CRM in South Africa, Sage Online Community, SAS Results, ShoreTel and Microsoft, Bango Mobile, RightNow CRM, Cocker Spaniels from Hell

January 29, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is John Mellencamp’s Dance Naked, a quickie he banged out in the middle of a string of disappointing records and along with uh-huh — another two-week album — my favorite Mellencamp album.   His albums disappoint because he tries to think too much, tries to make them “important.” But he’s not Bob Dylan, he’s not Richard Thompson, he’s at his best when he keeps it simple, turns it up and let’s fly and leaves deep lyrics to those who can write them.   Sage Software has announced the new ACT! by Sage Online Community available at http://community.act.com for registered ACT! users.

CRM for Auto Dealers from DataOne, Sage Seminars in Ontario, Plexus at Pacific, DBI's Solutions Schedule 2.0, LoopFuse 3.0 Released, Roybal at Iventa, ICT Group

January 28, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is from the Wayback Machine: Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow. Sadly the Jeffs, a clever singles band in their time, have not aged well. There's plenty of music from the 1960s which sounds as fresh as if it was recorded yesterday -- Astral Weeks still sounds like it was recorded tomorrow -- but the Airplane's music, even this their best album, is a time capsule, little more than an enjoyable blast from the past:


Gail Wilson & Associates, a provider of Sage Accpac ERP, Sage CRM and Sage BusinessVision, has announced details of its annual Sage Accpac Business Solutions Seminars, open to both existing and prospective customers.

The events will be held at the Best Western Otonabee Inn in Peterborough, Ontario on February 15 and at the Richmond Hill Country Club in Ontario on Tuesday, February 26.

The seminars will be geared towards current and prospective Sage Accpac customers interested in educational sessions about business software and technology, discussion forums and opportunities to network with peers, keynote speakers discussing such technologies as CRM, Electronic Data Interchange, Business Intelligence and Reporting.

There'll be tips & tricks for Sage Accpac Version 5.4, as well as a preview of what's to come in Version 5.5.



DataOne Software, a division of Dominion Enterprises, has announced that its iMarketAuto inventory management program has been enhanced to support all major inventory management provider products.

The change lets dealers using any inventory management platform, data collection tool and on-the-lot inventory management service manage their online vehicle listings.

"As more and more dealerships choose to manage their own inventory, the need for a hybrid inventory management product that provides both full and self-service options has emerged," said Jock Pereira, managing director, DataOne Software.

Using an automated process, iMarketAuto captures data from on-the-lot service companies such as Dealer Specialties, Dealerskins or XiGroup. The information is then broken down, scrubbed, cleaned and rebuilt as an iMarketAuto inventory file.

The inventory can then be managed from the iMarketAuto console, where dealers can change prices, add and remove vehicles, add seller notes, upload additional photos and print window stickers.


















CRM in China PacificNet Update, ASI's iMIS TaskCentre, Dominion Buys AVV CRM, Netrics and Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Skyytek

January 25, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a stone cold rock classic, Van Morrison's St. Dominic's Preview album:


Okay, we get to write about Imus this morning. Great guy, First Coffee likes his comedy stuff, his skewering of the pompous Clintons, the fact that he uses Kinky Friedman's "They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore" for a theme song, good to have him back… what's that? It's "iMIS?" Oh. What's their theme song?

Advanced Solutions International, a vendor of Web-based software for associations and non-profits, has announced the availability of iMIS TaskCentre, described by company officials as "a business process management module offering advanced business alerts, workflow, document automation and information on demand for iMIS 15."

The new module improves iMIS 15's ability to work with off-the-shelf, packaged software. Monitoring an organization's iMIS database and incoming e-mail, iMIS TaskCentre launches processes based on an organization's business rules.

Basically, this lets users notify staff or constituents when something happens, generate and publish documents, reports, and communications as a result of completed processes or on a schedule, or trigger responses to incoming communications.

The idea here is that more timely communication with constituents improves customer satisfaction, while significantly decreasing the workload of staff responsible for repetitive tasks such as updating basic contact information and taking action on opt-out requests.

Bob Alves, CEO of ASI, sums it up by saying "automating order confirmations, dues billing, event reminder e-mails, and staff notifications can free up hours of staff time.



Dominion Enterprises has acquired substantially all the assets of AVV, which sells an Internet Lead Management software product, Web Control, for $22.75 million.

Founded in 1995 and headquartered in that silicon nexus of Westerville, Ohio, AVV provides lead management and polling support to over 2,300 automotive dealerships nationwide and employs 42 people.

Need more?


















'Sexy CRM' From SalesCentric, CRM Consultancy in Michigan, Infusion's Consultant Channel, Active Modules, Epicor New Capabilities, Duxoft

January 24, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bob Dylan's fun version of "Froggie Went A-Courtin'." Little piece of cornbread layin' on the shelf, if you want any more you can sing it yourself, uh-huh:


Infusion Software, which styles itself a vendor of CRM software "for True Small Businesses," has launched its Infusion Certified Consultant channel program.

The software is designed to "meet the needs of this market with a new channel partner program for Certified Consultants," the Infusionistas say. These outside vendors will sell and implement Infusion CRM to TSBs.

"Alliances play a critical part in Infusion's overall business strategy," said Clate Mask, President and CEO of Infusion. The Infusion Certified Consultant program will be led by Adam Ross, Vice President of Sales and Business Development. Ross is an industry veteran of NetSuite, SalesLogix, Sage Software and others.

"This program will increase Infusion Software's market penetration," said Ross, saying Ross intends to "recruit the right amount of partners, without saturating any markets."



Michigan IT Services has opened it doors for business.










CRM Functionality for BizBox, Jenzabar's Good Year, SugarCon 2008, Pika's Asterisk Compatible with Fonality, They Might Be Grating Giants, ForceLogix

January 23, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is They Might Be Giants' Flood. First Coffee had never heard this college cult band, much to the chagrin of my hipper friends, not even the Istanbul-Constantinople song (which I now realize was what everyone started singing when we told people we were moving here to Istanbul).


"Birdhouse In Your Soul" is clever, but "Dead" is just plain stupid and the rest of it sloshes around somewhere in between those two. Sure it probably would have been fun to sit by these guys in high school study hall, but this sounds like the perfect album for a math/physics major party:


Customer, heal thyself: BT BizBox has launched what company officials call "new CRM functionality" as part of the product.

BT BizBox's new form of customer reporting "helps customers understand their own customers behavior," company officials say, and the document creation tool "allows customers to automatically generate documents, the alerting systems ensures that meetings and deadlines are never missed," and the important information module provides a place for personal information.

The Web 2.0 concept of "collaborative functionality" was invoked as the driving force for streamlining Tierlinear's Web-based BT BizBox. Its CRM product can be accessed online, and the product covers "a wide area of functionality, which means customers only need one CRM product," company officials contend.

"With the need for CRM products increasing in small businesses, the need to make sure they are suitable for them is critical," company officials say. "With the increasing number of competitor offerings in the marketplace, the easiest and quickest way to engage with your customers is via forums and blogs."



Jenzabar, a vendor of CRM-style software and services for higher education, has announced that 2007 was "a successful sales year," with 30 institutions of higher education purchasing new Jenzabar Total Campus Management enterprise-wide products.











SAP and IBM Intro Lotus 'Atlantic' Product, iEnterprises' iLeads, Salesforce's Tibet Benefit Concert, PacificNet and Octavian, StayinFront and HP, DataOne

January 22, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Louvin Brothers' "Do You Live What You Preach?"


At the annual Lotusphere conference this week, IBM and SAP AG have announced plans to deliver their first joint software product, codenamed "Atlantic," to integrate IBM Lotus Notes software with SAP Business Suite. It will be a "new style of applications that present information and data in the context of users familiar with the Lotus Notes desktop," according to SAP officials.

Currently planned for inclusion in the first release of project Atlantic is support for SAP workflows, reporting and analytics, and the use of roles from within the Lotus Notes client. Other planned tools would provide the ability to extend and adapt these roles and capabilities, as well as use additional collaborative and offline capabilities inherent in Lotus Notes and Domino products.

The initial release is planned to ship in the fourth quarter of 2008 and will be sold by both companies.

IBM Lotus and SAP have "thousands of mutual customers," SAP officials say, who have been "asking for the functionality that Atlantic software will provide." IBM officials say the majority of IBM's top 100 customers also use SAP products. Vishal Sikka, CTO, SAP, said the joint project "reaffirms the strong commitment we have to our partnership with IBM.”



IEnterprises, which sells desktop and wireless CRM, has launched iLeads, a new online lead generation functionality to help companies "efficiently manage their Web site traffic," and "improve their Web site rankings."

The tool lets companies use enhanced search engine optimization, as well as high-impact workflow.












Microsoft CRM from CRM OnTarget, Clickatell and Dontgo, Omniture and Air Alaska, Cornerstone, Auto/Mate CRM, Real Magnet and Salesforce

January 21, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Reckless Kelly's great live album Reckless Kelly Was Here, featuring standout cuts "Sixgun," Baby's Gone Blues," the Alejandro Escovedo cover "Castanets" and, of course, "Wiggles & Ritalin:"


Happy Wellington Anniversary! I love day timers with New Zealand holidays.



CRM OnTarget, a supplier of hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM, has announced the deployment of multi-tenant Dynamics CRM 4.0 to new customers this month, and the process of upgrading existing customers has begun.

Sean Joseph, a Senior Engineer at CRM OnTarget, said the company's "deep experience" let them build out the infrastructure, test it, and put it into production "in less than one month of RTM from Microsoft."

Instead of putting clients in single tenant server environments, "we are able to load balance thousands of users across application servers, reporting servers, dashboard servers, workflow servers, and a clustered SQL farm." The change is "enormous," said Bill McVicker, Director of Engineering at the unit's parent company, TriVenture.

CRM OnTarget has pricing for the Dynamics CRM 4.0 (CRM OnTarget Current Pricing). The company also announced that it has now made available a demo server which features an out-of-the-box installation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

The server, which replaces the Dynamics CRM 3.0 demo server, has been available since January 10th and allows visitors to click through all modules of the Dynamics CRM 4.0 application.












CRM From Infor, Callidus and IMS, Benioff in Top Ten, Boomi, CDC Software, Infogain Buys Spider

January 18, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Creedence Clearwater Revival’s album, Cosmo’s Factory, or maybe it’s Green River, or Willy & the Poorboys. Who can tell the difference? And what’s the point? It’s all great. …   Callidus Software, which sells Sales Performance Management, has announced it has entered an exclusive resale agreement with IMS Health, a vendor of market intelligence to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

Etelos Version 6 Now On Demand, Dhanus Buys Borusan, Drexler at Dovarri, PacificNet Gets Octavian, Overstock.com, Cloud9 Hires

January 17, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is “Honky Tonk Blues” from The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s great outlaw bluegrass album Will The Circle Be Unbroken:   CRM vendor Etelos has announced that the Etelos Application Server, Version 6, is now available as an on-demand service platform for Web developers. This version gives Web app developers an “open, agnostic platform with support for the most popular Web languages, tools and databases,” according to the Etelosians.   V6 includes support for MySQL, PostgreSQL and legacy LAMP-based apps as well as other frameworks. Features include cross application synching, integrated database management interfaces, sub-version control, and Web-based development environment.   Company officials say the new product lets developers sync multiple applications at the database level without coding, and to ensure application updates occur with better version control.

CRM and IBM and Casinos, E-Zest and .NET 3.5, VirtualLogger VoIP and CRM, CDC and Ingersoll Rand, ClickFox and Wipro, SalesFocus

January 16, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is an iPod random play. You know, First Coffee really wonders about that "Shuffle Songs" feature on the 30 gig iPod. With over 5,000 songs on the thing you'd think I'd be continually hearing songs I hadn't heard in a long time, but it seems even then I keep hearing the same songs over and over. I unchecked the "play more popular songs" feature, but it doesn't help. So what I do now is go to "Songs," start at a random place on the alphabetical listing and just let it play in order.

CRM on iPhone, Active Purchase Released, Greenhill Invests in ReachForce, Salesforce.com World Tour, Customer Connect, Deacom, ABS

January 15, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Frank Sinatra’s 1957 classic Come Fly With Me, the First Coffee Favorite Work Album Of the Year for 2007:   Let’s start off with a few pearls cast by Seán Jackson of Kognito on CRM As Just A Very Expensive Address Book:   “To many businesses it makes perfect sense to implement CRM. However, once the database is in and operational the business should constantly review its usage and its yield,” he writes.   “What is its ROI? What is the solution being used for?

CRM Vet Ross at Infusion, Giants Don't Lose, Upswing CRM, Endeavor and Microsoft, Openbravo Speaks French, ICON

January 14, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is an old favorite: Aimee Mann's Live at St. Ann's Warehouse:


Good NFL games yesterday, here in Istanbul we got the New York Giants - Dallas game on FOX Sports, were treated to passes whistling through T.O.'s hands, him jogging back to the huddle, smiling like it just didn't matter. He's T.O. and you're not, you don't tell him when to catch passes, T.O. decides when T.O.

Don’t Fire Bad Customers, Open Solutions, More CRM Awards for Sage, and MECU, PacificNet Mobile Gambling

January 10, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and after that hellaciously loud Turkish Air Force jet flyover — one wonders why central Istanbul is a flight path for such events — we’re back to the music, which is Tim Hardin’s Tim Hardin 2 album:   . . . .   A recently-released study bears your attention:   The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School marketing professors Jagmohan Raju and John Zhang, and Wharton doctoral student Upender Subramanian, have found that the all-too common CRM practice of firing low-value customers “may actually decrease firm profits,” and that even “trying to increase the value of these customers may be counterproductive.”   A review of the study appears on the Knowledge@Wharton site.   The conventional wisdom is that low-value customers, the scofflaws who don’t spend all that much money on your services or products but who are always on the phone with questions and complaints, are net losses which, if they can’t be upgraded, should be axed.   Much CRM technology goes into identifying such slugs, and to prod them with better privileges, poke ‘em with discounts or other inducements to see if there’s a high-value customer butterfly hidden in there somewhere.   Raju and Zhang give us new buzzword, customer value-based management to describe this notion.

CRM Webcasts from Sage, MetaLogix’s CRM, York and Vantage, Brunner to Experian, MySQL for Virgin CRM, Israelsen at Salesgenie, Noble and TMC, No Michael Bolton!

January 10, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the good ol’ iTunes shuffle of recently downloaded songs. That’s right, the last 50 carefully-selected prime tracks — Joe Strummer’s “Leopardskin Limousines!” Zelda and the Unibrows’ “Dance At the Fraser Senior Center!” “Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’“ from the 1998 London revival of Oklahoma! Larry Norman’s “Forget Your Hexagram!”   And, best of all, absolutely no Michael Bolton whatsoever!   Vantage Reporting, which sells software to private investment firms, has announced that York Capital has selected Vantage Investor to streamline and improve the $13 billion AUM investment advisor’s global investor servicing and communications.   Built on Microsoft’s open .NET Web development platform, Vantage Investor adds contact relationship management tools for the client environment. The product, built for the private investment lifecycle, works with deal flow management, portfolio performance reporting, fundraising and investor servicing.   Vantage’s products “customized for each client and adaptable to incumbent products was a critical factor in our choice,” says Brooke Parish, managing director at York Capital.   The product centralizes and helps York manage hierarchical contact, account and entity relationships to improve fundraising and servicing to prospective and existing investors.

Oracle and Solix, Autonomy's Cardiff and Hunt, LongJump's DaaS, DrishtiSoft's Contact Center Upgrades, Convergys Cares

January 9, 2008

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and in keeping with today's theme of sturdy, serviceable, professional, not terribly inspired but certainly listenable 70s rock product, we have Jethro Tull's Aqualung and The Alan Parsons Project's Tales Of Mystery and Imagination on the iPod:


LongJump, a vendor of on-demand business applications, has unveiled application programming interfaces to let LongJump's platform deliver a "Database-as-a-Service" offering.

LongJump's new DaaS gives companies self-provision relational database access and storage on-demand, according to the LongJumpers. Similar to Amazon's S3 on-demand storage service, LongJump gives developers something for housing their Web-based applications.

LongJump's DaaS provides an environment for hosting a Web-enabled database marketed as "cutting the costs and easing the hassles for entrepreneurs and developers who would otherwise have to purchase a database server, provision it, address data access and availability issues, manage backup and replication issues, and tackle security and data protection."

"Businesses want unified Web applications that help them manage their critical business information and processes with increased team communication and collaboration," said Pankaj Malviya, LongJump's founder and CEO.

Company officials say a "surprisingly large number" of businesses manage, share, and update important company data in spreadsheets and ad-hoc databases. These databases are usually put together by business analysts or team members who take the initiative to solve a problem but often lack the performance, access control, security, maintenance, or backup to ensure data and keep teams from effectively collaborating around that data.

Data loaded into LongJump is accessible to team members via a Web browser. Alternatively, Web developers can build integrated data-driven Web sites without managing a database infrastructure.



Drishti-Soft Solutions, a vendor of contact center products, has announced new enhancements in the upgraded version of its flagship DACX Contact Center Suite v3.2.

In this release, company officials say, the focus has been on improving IT management and maintenance and "reducing the IT hassles that SME contact centers are constantly grappling with."

According to Nayan Jain, CTO, SME contact centers spend on an average "11 hours of productive time every month, which can be attributed to human error, with respect to IT management and maintenance."

The company's business proposition is that by automating most of the manual operations and eliminating the need for human intervention in tedious and error-prone IT operations, their contact center suite lets IT personnel focus on other activities.

The primary drivers for the roll-out of this release are automation, configuration & control of maintenance related functions in the IT department, the Drishtians say, adding that "VoIP management tools have also been enhanced."

Some enhancements include automatic history cleanup letting IT schedule regular cleanup activities, monitoring of system resources with alarms and notifications for errors/ issues on system, automatic system resource management like disk-space, bandwidth and CPU and separation of offline and online reporting to facilitate faster response time for frequently used reports.

There's also a new feature to track detailed telephony failure cause for improved VoIP management, composite entity support for automated switch-over between the VoIP providers to minimize any impact due to poor performance of telephony services, and the addition of advanced reports including Key Performance Indicators, filter based interval reports and Call Duration Record Sum in DACX-M.



Cardiff, a division of Autonomy Corporation and a vendor of BPM and intelligent document products, has announced that Hunt Construction Group has expanded its use of Cardiff LiquidOffice technology to streamline and enhance "a multitude of project management and approval processes related to its worldwide commercial construction initiatives."

Hunt, founded in 1944, completes over $1.8 billion of commercial construction work annually and has between six and eight billion dollars of work under contract at any given time.

"Moving from a system of manual and paper-based project status tracking to a secure online system based on Cardiff LiquidOffice has streamlined many core construction management processes at Hunt," said Steve Atkins, vice president and chief financial officer at Hunt Construction Group.

With its decision to extend its Cardiff LiquidOffice implementation, Hunt will now have access to expanded BPM capabilities such as business process modeling and Mobile BPM, the Cardiffites say.



Solix Technologies, a vendor of Enterprise Data Management products sold to enterprise customers, has announced that the Solix Enterprise Data Management Suite now supports the Oracle Database 11g, including the Total Recall and Partitioning options.

Solix EDMS "addresses both compliance and information lifecycle management requirements through four complementary products: Solix Enterprise Archiving, Solix Secure Test and Development, Solix Application Sunsetting and Migration, and Solix Data Auditor," according to the Solixians.










































CRM 9 from Oracle and PeopleSoft, Envox PhoneLink 2 for Salesforce, 360 View CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Seminar

January 9, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Rolling Stones' It's Only Rock'n'Roll, because hey, sometimes you're just in the mood for competent, dependable, professional mid-70s rock product. I mean, I might put The Steve Miller Band's Fly Like an Eagle on after this. Hey I might even put Fleetwood Mac's Rumours… well, okay, maybe it won't get that bad:


Oracle has announced out-of-the-box Oracle Fusion Middleware based integration between Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 9 and Oracle Customer Hub.

The Oraclians say PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM customers can now use MDM capabilities for data quality management, data enrichment, and customer mastering capabilities, keeping incremental changes to customer records within PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM synchronized with the Oracle Customer Hub in real time.

With the new integration between PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM and Oracle Customer Hub, Oracle officials say, users can cleanse and remove customer information duplications across systems, consolidate customer information and generally improve data quality management and the sharing of data.

Functionality for the new integration includes real-time, bi-directional sync of customer data between PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM and Oracle Customer Hub through Oracle BPEL Process Manager, as well a enhanced fuzzy search capabilities in PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM customer search screens using data quality management configurable match rules.



Envox Worldwide, a vendor of IP-based voice products, has announced the availability of Envox PhoneLink 2, a computer telephony integration product letting Salesforce customers add screen pop and click-to-dial capabilities to their contact centers.

Blair Pleasant, president & principal analyst of COMMfusion, said Envox PhoneLink "delivers on the promise of unified communications -- blending telephony functionality into mission-critical products and applications such as CRM."

Using Envox PhoneLink, organizations can use the data from their Salesforce CRM product to automate their inbound and outbound dialing, and give agents screen pop, click-to-dial, and other telephony capabilities, the Envoxians say.

Envox CT Connect is based on industry standards, such as SIP and CSTA, which let application developers and systems integrators add CTI capabilities to their voice self-service, contact center and unified communications products.

New features of Envox PhoneLink 2 include support for the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system on Envox PhoneLink client applications, support for VMware on the CTI Middleware server component and two line support for agent extensions on Nortel Meridian, Avaya S87XX series, Siemens Hicom, Cisco CallManager and Nortel CS1000.



InBusiness Services has announced that Umpqua Bank has licensed their 360 View CRM software, in what the Umpquans describe as "an effort to enhance" their customer relationships and "improve their employee incentive process."

360 View CRM is a software product integrating a financial institution's core products and services with third party offerings independent of any core customer information file limitations. 360 View CRM was developed specifically for financial institutions to improve their managing referrals, incidents, customer touches, personal follow ups, cross-sells and other functions.

Kevin Anderson, President of inBusiness Services, said his team is "on a mission to develop the best relationship management product for financial institutions on planet Earth," and "can't think of a better partner at this point to help us achieve our goal than 'The World's Greatest Bank,' Umpqua Bank." Gotta admire the man's enthusiasm.

InBusiness Services, developer 360 View CRM, is a privately-held software development corporation based in Nashville.




























CRM’s eLoyalty, Autonomy and Inovis, IFS’s SoTY 2007 Award, 2008 Mobile Predictions, TEC’s ERP Guide, Datacap Awards

January 8, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the second first coffee, and the music is The Crofters’ Hold My Beer While I Kiss Your Girlfriend:   Autonomy Corporation has announced that Inovis has used Autonomy’s Intelligent Contact Center products to “improve support staff training,” resulting in an increase of Level One Service request closures within a six-month period.   Inovis, which sells on-demand Business Community Management products, has installed Autonomy etalk’s call recording, agent performance evaluation, and speech analytics products. Inovis authorities credit the Autonomy products with improvements in providing products to customers at first touch.   Inovis has used Autonomy etalk’s voice and screen recording capabilities for coaching and providing ‘best practices’ training for new hires and existing agents. By capturing customer interactions to use as examples, Inovis has improved the way its agents handle customer calls.   “A focus on first call resolution is important.

CRM from FranklinCovey Now Mobile, SWK Expands CRM, Great Sooner Buys Dovarri, Skyytek and NetSuite, Bookies Paying Out On Obama, SugarMaps

January 8, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music, in honor of today's birthday boy who would have been 73, is Elvis's 1968 album From Elvis In Memphis, the best actual complete album he ever recorded, with bass nice and high in the mix:


FranklinCovey has announced that PlanPlus Online is now accessible from any smartphone with a Web browser, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm or Windows Mobile device.

Developed jointly by FranklinCovey and COMPLETExRM, PlanPlus Online is described by the FranklinCoveyites as a secure Web-based application that provides CRM as well as "planning, sales management, team collaboration and process management for small and medium-sized businesses via the Internet."

Its planner-like interface is based on FranklinCovey's planning and time management methodology which, First Coffee's given to understand, is rather popular in certain circles. The application offers team calendaring and scheduling and an integrated contact manager to track client information, sales opportunities and activities.

FranklinCovey officials say some of the key features are the sales management and CRM features, and that the product can organize daily tasks by using a Quick Prioritize Module. And if you're into the FranklinCovey's planning methods and concepts, well, they're here for your daily or weekly planning help.

There's also a built-in e-mail center which converts e-mails to Tasks, Appointments and the like, as well as standard e-mail features and functionality.

Calling it an "on-line planning, sales management and CRM application," Jeff Anderson, Senior Vice President of Product Management, FranklinCovey said using the product can "save businesses the expense of purchasing a costly corporate server."

The new mobile client support is free and available now for all current and new users of PlanPlus Online, which is available in 87 FranklinCovey retail stores at a suggested retail price of $25 per month. A one-month introductory subscription is available for $9.95.



SWK Technologies, a Sage Software products provider serving SMBs in New York and New Jersey, has unveiled an expanded Customer Relationship Management (CRM) division offering customer service, customer support, engineering, training, sales and pre-sales capabilities.

Jeffrey D. Roth, CEO at SWK Technologies, has named Peter Conway as vice-president of SWK's new CRM division.


















CRM Phama Rank for Oracle, SugarCon 2008, Accenture Finds Customer Service Failing

January 7, 2008

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is simply the sounds of melting snow:


Better be sitting down for this one, we know you'll be as shocked as we were here at the walled First Coffee compound in Waco, Texas: A recently-released study by Accenture find that -- brace yourself -- companies "are not keeping pace with consumers' rising expectations for service, especially in emerging economies." Smelling salts all around.

The report, "Customer Satisfaction in the Multi-Polar World: Accenture 2007 Global Customer Service Satisfaction Survey Report," the third in a series of annual studies designed to examine consumer attitudes toward customer service, expanded the scope of past reports to include not just the United States and the United Kingdom, but Australia, Brazil, Canada, China and France as well.

Which immediately raises the question, "Is customer satisfaction really falling, or does including France for the first time just give a truer indication of how bad it's always been?"

More than 41 percent of all respondents reported that the overall quality of service they receive is "poor/terrible" to "fair." The most severe evaluation of quality was rendered by French consumers, with 60 percent of them saying that the service they receive tends to be "poor/terrible" to "fair." Although satisfaction with service was highest in the United States, only 7 percent of U.S. respondents rated it "excellent," and 28 percent said it was "poor/terrible" to "fair."

More than one-half -- 52 percent -- of the more than 3,500 consumer respondents surveyed this year across five continents reported that their expectations for better service have increased over the past five years. This is encouraging. First Coffee lives in Istanbul and has figured out that one reason why things don't improve here is simply that the locals have built up extraordinary tolerances for shoddy workmanship and second-rate quality.








CRM SMB Newby LogicBright, Oracle Siebel's CRM Subscription, John Todor Live, Socitm, Connextions Hires Perleberg

January 7, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Paderewski's great Symphony in B Minor, the "Polonia:"


Oracle has announced the availability of Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand Partner Subscription option. The Siebellians say it's designed for more effective collaboration with third parties and to improve the partner network.

Through a limited use license, the subscription option lets companies share information with their partners to "streamline joint sales, marketing and service activities," company officials say: "Partners can access a subset of core Siebel CRM On Demand features," such as leads, services requests, analytics, what have you. "All customer information is centralized, accessible and secure."

Oracle Senior Vice President of CRM Anthony Lye said the option is basically "giving our customers the ability to integrate better with their partner channels."



LogicBright CRM, a relatively new player in the small business CRM marketplace, has announced over 200 users in their first quarter of doing business. The LogicBrightians attributes this success to "providing small business owners a simple CRM software product." Sounds like the better mousetrap principle at work.

Steve Schmidt, president of LogicBright, said in his opinion an easier to use Web-based interface is "the most important thing for a small business." He added that his company's success shows "traditional contact managers such as ACT!










CRM and SMS Service Released, Dubai CRM Deal, OpenPro 5.4 Released, Your Weekend Picks Here, Naseba Results, Storis and Finger

January 5, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is good ol' Reggie Dwight's Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The Piano Player. Not a great album, but I define anybody born between 1960 and 1975 as "normal" if they know the words to "Crocodile Rock:"

Through a joint venture between Cast Release and Ad Authority, the latter firm has released a CRM service combining customer relationship management and SMS technology. "The idea behind this new CRM system is simple," the Ad Authoritarians say, to produce a means of contacting new and old consumers who have fallen out of the sales process, or welcome them to the process in real time."

The program is a collaborative effort between Randall Steinmeyer, Chairman of Cast Release, and Jake Vale, COO of Ad Authority.

Basically the product identifies the users in any database who are mobile phone users. A message is designed to either initiate or renew a relationship between company and consumer.





ACT CRM Most Popular Forecasting Tool, ROI Widely Untracked, Open Solutions For People's Fed, Cherrypicking CRM 2008 Predictions, CRM Is Not…

January 4, 2008

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is good ole Mississippi John Hurt singing about that lovin' spoonful. As in Maxwell House Coffee, good to the last drop. Uh-huh, John, sure.

Mark Friedman, executive vice president of the Sales Lead Management Association, has announced what First Coffee considers to be fairly disheartening results of the 2007 Second Annual Sales Lead Management Study conducted by the Velos Group and the Association.

Staggeringly, nearly 83 percent still do not track ROI. The survey also found that 69 percent of companies do not qualify sales inquires before they distribute inquires to their sales channel.



CRM Data Security from Salesboom, Salesforce PaaS in Carlson, CRM And IT Trends In Britain, Hillary Holed Or On Hold?

January 4, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music this morning is The Zombies’ 1967 psychedelic album Odessey and Oracle, yes that’s how they spell it. How’s that for a blast from the past?   It’s a pretty good album, today’s the first time I’ve heard it — well, the whole thing, I’d heard “Time Of The Season,” of course. I’m doing a novel set in the 1960s, so as part of the research I’m listening to a lot of stuff from that era, 1964-1968 especially, and you know what?

CRM SaaS Growth in Asia, 2008 LSP Predictions, Hagel Appointed Sage Council Chair, Autonomy Bank Deal, Activeo and Calabrio

January 3, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Alice Cooper’s Killer:   The SaaS Customer Relationship Management market in Asia (excluding Japan; these sorts of reports on Asia are always “excluding Japan” the way studies of popular bands from Liverpool, England are “excluding The Beatles”) will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 61 percent between 2006 and 2010, according to a study by Springboard Research.   Springboard pegged the SaaS CRM market in Asia at $69 million in 2006, and expects it to reach $460 million by 2010.   Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, India, and China are the key SaaS CRM markets in Asia Pacific, the report finds. Of these, Australia remains the top market, accounting for 35 percent of all SaaS CRM sales generated in the region.   “SaaS CRM has gained acceptance in Asia’s business mainstream and the coming year will see higher adoption rates as larger enterprises opt for SaaS CRM,” said Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, Senior Manager for Emerging Software for Springboard Research.

Ascendix CRM for Real Estate, The Lindisfarne Experiment, Knowledge Relay, Auto CRM From Dealer Specialties, AdCalls Speaks For Itself

January 2, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one dusted off from the vaults, Lindisfarne's Nicely Out Of Tune. My wife -- and she's not the only one -- is of the opinion that pop music has a shelf life, and it simply wouldn't occur to her to pluck out a 1970 album for a new listen.

She has somewhat of a point, in that much pop music does tend to sound dated -- try listening to Phil Ochs or Spandau Ballet today -- but some sounds as fresh today as the day it was recorded. I've never heard Lindisfarne beyond a handful of scattered singles, I know they were part of the same late '60s/ early 70s English folk rock scene which spawned the likes of Steeleye Span, Maddy Prior, Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention, but I've never really heard them.

Hey if I'm hearing good music for the first time I don't care when it was recorded, music new to me is new music:


Ascendix Technologies officials have announced the availability of Nurture Marketing for Real Estate Advantage, a CRM product built on the Microsoft CRM platform and "tailored," the Ascendixians say, "for the commercial real estate industry."

Evidently the product "helps maintain relationships such as prospects and tenants from being overlooked." A noble goal.

"Some leads that companies generate need to be nurtured over time. These leads tend to be overlooked or forgotten about in favor of a more viable prospect," company officials say.








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