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. It correlates information and communications, such as call notes and investor reports.

 

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The Temptations’ “I Wish It Would Rain!” Tim Hardin’s “If I Were A Carpenter!”

 

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William Kreuder has been hired by MetaLogix as resident CRM and SharePoint Consultant. He is a Microsoft Certified Business Solutions Specialist and received a BA with honors from the University of Connecticut.

 

Kreuder’s a CRM vet, having spent eight years working with CRM systems from Microsoft CRM, Siebel, Lexus Nexus/Inter Action, and Sales Force. He has worked with Microsoft CRM since its inception, being involved with the beta testing on the system.

 

His experience within many industries including legal, manufacturing, automotive, insurance, real estate, and new media has come with providing many CRM installations for companies worldwide at the small, mid-market, and enterprise levels.

 

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The Irish Rovers’ “The Unicorn!” Public Image Ltd.’s “Rise!”

 

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Sage Software has announced it will host free Webcasts featuring Nucleus Research analysts Rebecca Wettemann and Marc Songini. Wettemann will present “Maximizing ROI For Your CRM Solution” on January 15th at 11:00 a.m. PST, and Songini will present “Maximizing ROI For Your Contact And Customer Management Solution” on January 16th at 11:00 a.m. PST.

 

Attendees can register at www.sagecrmsolutions.com/nucleus and www.act.com/nucleus, respectively. Attendees will receive a free Nucleus Research GuideBook at the conclusion of each session looking at Sage implementations and best practices.

 

“There’s no such thing as a bad CRM application, just a mismatched CRM application,” Rebecca Wettemann, Nucleus Research vice president, has said. Her position is that knowing the fundamental differences between contact management and CRM software, “and how they impact business, can help companies select and maximize value from their ideal solution. We will detail these differences in each session.”

 

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Melanie’s “Lay Down (Candles In the Rain)!” John Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses!”

 

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According to industry journal PrecisionMarketing, the former head of strategic development for CRM at Orange UK, Lynn Brunner, will join Experian ClarityBlue as director of its customer value management consulting practice.

 

Brunner was director of customer management within Amdocs’ consulting division, the journal reported: “Prior to that she was at Orange and has also worked for Coca-Cola & Schweppes Beverages as its head of marketing services.”

 

At Experian ClarityBlue, Brunner reportedly will be tasked with leading the planning and development of integrated customer management programs for its blue-chip clients.

 

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Lightnin’ Hopkins’s “Coffee Blues!” Tom Waits’ “Hang On St. Christopher!”

 

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Virgin Mobile, a leading Mobile Virtual Network Operator, has implemented a MySQL Enterprise Platinum subscription to manage its CRM and other data.

 

“This service is at the heart of all SMS/mobile applications — and operates the CRM applications, billing and the management of Virgin Mobile orders,” the Virginians say. The mobile phone operator has become very popular thanks to a particularly attractive offer: unlimited outgoing SMS text messages towards all operators, for an unlimited time.

 

In terms of mobile applications, SMS remains the most commonly used medium. The considerable storage and processing requirements for SMS require a highly available database management system. Over 500 gigabytes are contained in MySQL data tables, and subject to thousands of queries per second — and with Virgin Mobile’s SMS messaging, each text message can generate over a hundred database queries on average.

 

The MySQL offering subscribed by the operator includes enterprise class database software, monitoring tools and production support.

 

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Rod Stewart’s “Stone Cold Sober!” Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train!”

 

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Noble Systems/Amcat, a vendor of contact center technology, has received a “Product of the Year Award” from Technology Marketing Corporation’s Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine for its Interactions product.

 

Interactions provides flexibility, scalability and management control for contact centers via a suite designed on an IP protocol with voice and data communications. It uses a modular open architecture to allow contact centers to deploy a communications platform with such functions as ACD, IVR, inbound call handling and predictive dialing without the need for a physical hardware connection.

 

Basically the product acts like a comprehensive nervous system, routing voice and data traffic based on predetermined business rules, regardless of where the resources are located. Much like how your brain works, see?

 

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The Crash Test Dummies’ “Superman Song!” U2’s “I Will Follow!”

 

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Salesgenie.com, a service of infoUSA, announced that Mark Israelsen has been appointed President of Salesgenie.com. Israelsen, formerly Senior Vice President of Global Professional Services at Salesforce.com, will join Salesgenie.com February 1.

 

Before joining Salesforce.com in 2005, Mr. Israelsen was Vice President of Global Alliances & Channels at Oracle Corporation.

 

“With thousands of subscribers, Salesgenie.com has become popular with sales executives and owners.” Vin Gupta, founder and chairman of Salesgenie.com said.

 

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No Michael Bolton! At all! Have a nice, Bolton-free day!