February 2008 Archives

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Rod Stewart’s, “Every Picture Tells a Story,” one of the ten best albums in rock history by any reasonable standard.

 

The TAS Group, the world leader in on-demand sales effectiveness products, has announced TAS Select Live! for Account Management, described by company officials as an “approach to enhancing the sales effectiveness of sales organizations.”

 

TSL! AM is a Sales 2.0 product for account managers, billed as a product for those in sales to “build account plans, share the information in real time with other team members and sales management, and use the data in corporations’ CRM systems.”

 

Using the “built-in intelligence” in the software, TSL! AM “shows how to find more opportunities in existing accounts,” company officials say.

 

The product is designed for account teams to understand customers’ businesses. Using it, account teams can develop “customer specific” value propositions based on each customer’s business drivers. TSL! AM allows for different methodologies, depending on the customer scenario, and provides approaches for a large enterprise as well as a portfolio of accounts.

 

“As economic growth slows, sales organizations will be increasingly challenged to hit their numbers,” said Don Daly, CEO of The TAS Group. “Many are missing out on the most effective way to recession-proof their revenue growth — that is delivering more value and products to their existing customers.”

 

TSL!/AM can be integrated with Salesforce.com, Oracle/Siebel CRM, Microsoft CRM or any other SOA-compliant CRM systems or can be used as a standalone application.

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A sad farewell to William F. Buckley, Jr., one of the smartest, clearest-thinking, most irascible, and funniest commentators on American life and politics of the past century.

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SPS Commerce, a vendor of SaaService EDI products, has announced a new industry-specific application for manufacturers who need supply chain management visibility. Built using the NetSuite Business Operating System from NetSuite, this Supply Chain add-on for NetSuite uses SPS Commerce’s multi-tenant trading partner network to build an application targeting companies in need of EDI services.

 

It “allows for end-to-end visibility and automation in one system when working with trading partners,” according to the SPSers.

 

The new product uses the NS-BOS platform, including the SaaS infrastructure, SuiteFlex, and the core NetSuite application. End-to-end visibility within the supply chain is particularly important for manufacturers, who tend not to like delayed shipments from trading partners, late orders for customers or costly production flow management.

 

The combined SPS and NetSuite product provides a B2B business exchange with EDI capabilities layered on top of the CRM, Accounting/ERP, and E-commerce core of NetSuite.

…

 

NetSuite has also announced the hiring of Michael Ni as Vice President, Industry Solutions and Ecosystem. In this role, Ni “will direct NetSuite’s industry vertical initiatives, software developer programs, and oversee the continuation of the development of NetSuite as a vertical app platform,” according to NetSuite officials.

 

“Third-party vertical application developers are struggling to move their client/server applications to the SaaS model, and NS-BOS provides the technology they need to do that quickly,” said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, adding that Ni “has the experience and the skill to take our platform initiatives to the next level and to help our partners transition their business to the Software as a Service model.”

 

Ni — a guy who’s never heard any Monty Python and the Holy Grail jokes — brings to NetSuite more than 16 years of experience in enterprise applications in business product and platform management. Prior to joining NetSuite, Ni served as Vice President, Product Management at Oracle Corporation for PeopleTools, JD Edwards Tools and “Fusion Architecture” for Oracle Applications Platforms.

 

At Oracle, he directed the applications technology platforms, providing applications development and management tools to Oracle’s customers, partners, and developers. Before that, he held multiple leadership positions at CRM / ERP vendors, technology startups, and in strategy consulting. These roles include VP of Product Management / Strategy at PeopleSoft, VP of Product and Operations at OnePage (now Sybase), as well as Marketing Strategy Consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

 

Ni holds an MBA from Harvard University, an MS from Stanford University, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Sydney-based CRM Works, in collaboration with Web site development company iCatchIT, has announced SMaps, described by company officials as “a mapping tool that connects customer relationship management systems to Google Maps in real time.”

SMaps automatically links addresses and locations of individuals or companies to their location in Google Maps. Viewing full contact information from their CRM database with Google’s mapping functionality makes scenes from recent movies like Minority Report “a reality for companies,” according to the CRM Workers.

 

The product lets users use Google’s mapping capability with their CRM information, such as contact details, price, and order history to zoom in and make decisions.

SMaps is billed as a product to “boost efficiency of mobile workers, helping them save time and cost.” The Target List functionality provides “access to geographic information to sales managers and personnel who can then use that information to focus marketing and sales efforts,” explains CRM Principal Consultant for Asia Pacific David Gill.

“We built an interface between Google Mapping API and CRM Databases using Microsoft ASP. Initially, we are supporting Sage CRM and Microsoft CRM, and we plan to release a PHP-based version for Sugar CRM by Q2 2008,” says iCatchIT CEO and Web site development officer Jonathan Corners.

“Using popular server-side scripting technologies as an interface between the API and address databases allows us to quickly adapt the product to a wide range of mapping/address applications,” Corners added.

…

 

Blink Logic has announced it has been selected by CRMG, a CRM vendor for small and medium businesses, to provide reporting and analytics tools.

 

Using Blink Logic’s Software-as-a-Service business intelligence product, CRMG provides its customers with “a way to take control over their own data, analyze information as required, generate complex ad-hoc reports, and make strategic decisions based on customized reports that provide in-depth visibility into business processes,” according to company officials.

 

“The reason most CRM implementations fail is because enterprises cannot halt business activities to select, implement, and adapt to software,” said Mir Ali, CEO and Founder, CRMG. “People need tools that easily integrate into their existing workflow.”

 

Using their proprietary Strategic Evaluation and Planning methodology, CRMG establishes immediate, short-term needs and long-term goals for each implementation. A dedicated account manager for each client guides the phases of the CRM deployment.

 

As part of the STEP process, CRMG establishes the main objectives and end results expected at the desktop level and at the management level. In most cases, not all initiatives can be met at once, as each level of success in the CRM implementation is inherently dependant on the effectiveness of the previous phase.

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is rockin’ Rod Stewart. When he really wanted to, there wasn’t anyone who did fun, boozy, bluesy, good-time white-knuckle rock ‘n’ roll any better:

 

Good morning all, and amidst all the news of Obama and Hillary raking in millions upon millions of dollars, shopping malls exploding in Illinois, and Roger Clemens approaching The New Republic’s Scott Beauchampian levels of credibility, I know the Number One burning issue on all your minds is, “Who the heck thought up February 29th anyway?”

 

Good question. As it turns out, it takes the earth 365.5 days — specifically, 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds — to orbit the sun. So, once every four years, to reboot the calendar, we add one day.

 

Okay, the calendar’s not exact. So? Big deal.

 

For agrarian cultures, it was a big deal. Farmers had to do with such wisdom as that provided by the Greek poet Hesiod, who told farmers to sharpen their farming tools when snails began climbing up plants. Clearly, a calendar was needed, but with inaccurate calendars, the equinoxes had this nasty habit of slipping off their dates, throwing barley, hops, and other less important crop planting and harvesting cycles all to the winds.

 

According to the invaluable Writer’s Almanac, the ancient Egyptians had developed a calendar with 12 months and 365 days, while the Romans were using a calendar that was so faulty they often had to add an extra 80 days to the year. This is, of course, the calendar still used by the people who promised to send someone out to fix your heat pump “in a few days.” In 46 B.C., after his affair with Cleopatra, Caesar chose to adopt the superior Egyptian calendar, and this became known as the Julian calendar.

 

In the 13th century, friar Roger Bacon sent a letter to the Pope saying he had calculated the actual length of the solar year as slightly less than 365.25 days. The Pope thanked Bacon by throwing him in prison for implying that the Pope was fallible. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII hired a group of Jesuits to fix the calendar, and they came up with the system of omitting the leap day at the beginning of each century, except for those centuries divisible by 400. That seemed to clear things up — it’s the calendar we use today.

 

But Pope Gregory’s calendar was about 10 days off, so he simply eliminated October 5 – 14. Popes back then could do things like that, one of the perks that made it kind of a fun job. Protestant countries didn’t adopt the new calendar until much later, so if you crossed the border of certain European countries, you had to set your clock back or forward by at least 10 days. Great Britain accepted the Gregorian calendar in 1751, lopping 11 days from the year, and mobs gathered in the streets, chanting, “Give us back our 11 days!” You wouldn’t believe the fun enjoyed by landlords and renters on monthly contracts.

 

“Okay, so why is it called a ‘leap year?’“ Thank you, there in the back. Hundreds of years ago, February 29th, while widely accepted, had no legal status in English law, which required counting February 28th and 29th as one day. The magistrates simply “leaped over” the day, hence the term, “leap year.”

 

The upside is that it was considered a day when tradition could be broken all around, which led to the practice of allowing women to propose to a man on February 29th.

 

Any leaplings out there? People born on February 29th? Raise your hand Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker order, and Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini, Jimmy Dorsey, and Dinah Shore, Mario Andretti, and Henri Richard, and in one of the more gruesome coincidences, serial killers Aileen Wuornos (1956) and Richard Ramirez (1960).

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Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource, took some time out from the SaaS Summit to answer some questions about OpSource’s current doings:

 

TR: OpSource delivers Web applications and Software-as-a-Service for on-demand companies. FedEx delivers packages, OpSource delivers on-demand applications. The OpSource On-Demand platform provides the operational infrastructure, networking, servers, databases, things like that, and application management and business operations such as application analytics and online support.

 

TR: OpSource was founded in 2002, and initially focused on managed services for telecommunications companies. When SaaS emerged in 2005, OpSource saw an opportunity to start working with small startups, and larger, more established software companies as well, helping them outsource software as a service delivery, which, at the time, really wasn’t in their DNA.

 

TR: Oh, hundreds of customers, millions of end users. Business Objects and BMC, along with startups such as Etology, Ribbit, and Zipidy. Etology’s grown from a startup to a company currently serving over two billion ads per day via OpSource On-Demand, and has, over the past twelve months, grown 832 percent.

 

And as far as CRM goes, OpSource was Salesforce.com’s first SaaS delivery partner, effectively giving Salesforce.com’s customers more options for delivering their on-demand applications. AppExchange ISV partners can accelerate their time to market by up to 33 percent by choosing OpSource On-Demand for Web application delivery. To use a familiar analogy, if AppExchange is the iTunes of enterprise application software, then OpSource On-Demand is the iPod.

 

TR: We allow on-demand companies to focus on the application functionality instead of spending time and millions of dollars on technical operations, applications management, and business optimization tools. Companies can offer not only more reliable and secure applications, but much richer functionality than they would be able to do otherwise.

 

TR: It’s a combination of direct sales and channel relationships. We were the first certified SaaS provider for AppExchange, and we’re certified by WebEx. Microsoft has certified OpSource as a Gold Partner. We’re SAS 70 Type II audited, Level One PCI DSS compliant, and European Safe Harbor certified.

 

TR: It’s called “Success-Based Pricing,” basically a unit-based pricing model that lets businesses begin with a minimum commitment and scale expenses as revenues increase.

 

TR: Glad you asked. OpSource Connect, which extends the economies and versatility of OpSource On-Demand by letting enterprises both consume and publish Web services across a common, secure platform and operating environment — the OpSource Services Bus.  OpSource Connect deals with the problem of SaaS integration, and lets on-demand companies to extend and enhance their offerings to support business requirements.

 

As the first multi-tenant enterprise services bus in the market, the OpSource Services Bus allows two-way integration of customer or third-party Web services accelerating revenue generation and speeding time-to-market.

 

TR: OpSource Billing lets customers sign up online and engage prospects in a free trial situation. Now, if an end user signs up for a free trial, that information can be integrated into the company’s Salesforce.com account. When the customer signs up, that information can be integrated into an app like QuickBooks or SAP, and a new billing record created. Companies can view trouble tickets in Salesforce.com or RightNow.

 

TR: Integrating SaaS is a huge issue for today’s enterprise. OpSource Connect can help SaaS companies — of any size — overcome integration hurdles and break out of the SaaS-only box. This speeds up adoption of SaaS in larger enterprise environments, opening the door for on-demand companies to cultivate business with large systems integrators. Plus, I’d say we’re the only company providing Web operations from the ground up, addressing operational infrastructure, application management, and business operations.

 

TR: Today, integrations are expensive and one-to-one. For instance, while you can currently integrate your application with Google Maps as a composite application, OpSource Connect lets you integrate your app with many others, using just one platform. You can integrate your application with, for example, SAP, salesforce.com, Intuit QuickBooks, NetSuite, and a host of other SaaS and legacy applications.

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. For American classical music (a clunky misnomer, “classical” music, like “West Coast offense” or “tuxedo,” but what else can you call it?) Copland is as good as it gets, and in many ways the last great classical composer anywhere:

 

Dublin-based Kainos, an IT consulting company, has announced that it has extended its Microsoft Gold Partnership with the addition of the Microsoft competency for Custom Development Solutions.

 

Kainos achieved Gold Certification in 2005. Solution Competencies are the cornerstone of Microsoft’s Partner Program, as they allow partners to define their areas of expertise in specific products that reflect their business model. Kainos now holds Solution Competencies for Information Worker, ISV/Software Solutions, Network Infrastructure and Custom Development Solutions.

 

Brendan Mooney, Managing Director at Kainos, called the partnership a “win-win partnership.” Colin Cassidy, Partner Development Manager, Microsoft Ireland said Kainos’ Gold Partner certification makes them “one of only a handful of Irish companies to have achieved this partnership status.”

 

Kainos designs and implements IT products. The firm was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Belfast with offices in Dublin, London and Gdansk.

 

. . . .

 

Customer Effective, yet another Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and reseller of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, has announced a partnership with SalesCentric to offer its customers Relationship Charts, an add-on application for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

 

Relationship Charts were developed by SalesCentric to complement Microsoft Dynamics CRM software with visual tools to improve sales performance, forecast accuracy and marketing. Customer Effective is including this functionality in its portfolio of Microsoft Dynamics CRM products.

 

Scott Millwood, CEO Customer Effective, said the Capital Effective offering is intended for organizations in commercial banking, private equity, investment banking, hedge funds and wealth management, since such clients “crave the visual integration and mapping of entities… the rich, graphical look.”

 

With attributes and relationships tagged in the database, users can see relationships and connections between organizations and individuals within the CRM platform. For example, a wealth management portfolio manager could use Relationship Charts to keep a visual of her clients’ information to see which individuals belong to specific funds and the brokers and accounts tied to the total portfolio.

 

Established in 2003, SalesCentric sells add-on software to visually enhance Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

 

. . . .

 

IntoScape, a British firm, has launched Total Commerce Management for NetSuite, an application suite designed to automate and integrate supply chain business processes.

 

Total Commerce Management is powered by the NetSuite Business Operating System. The product automates the merchandising activities of a business “from supplier sourcing and competitor analysis to margin-based pricing calculation” and other functions, company officials say.

 

NS-BOS is a Software as a Service platform for software developers. IntoScape uses the development platform of NS-BOS for its Total Commerce Management for NetSuite to NetSuite customers.

 

By tying into the core business processes supported by NetSuite’s on-demand business suite, the IntoScapers say, TCM automates related business processes, including content management updates for any Web store that makes use of the NetSuite shopping cart and checkout process.

 

The combined NS-BOS and TCM product will be marketed to mid-market wholesale and distribution, and online retailing-dependent businesses.

 

Steve Willock, Managing Director at IntoScape, said previously companies “may have taken weeks to achieve what Total Commerce Management allows them to do in minutes. The human resource requirement to run it is minimal.”

 

. . . .

 

Dow Jones has reported that Salesforce.com said Wednesday it swung to a profit in its fiscal fourth quarter, as revenue “jumped 50 percent” over the same period last year. The CRM vendor also raised its revenue outlook for the full fiscal year.

 

Salesforce.com said net income for the period ended in January rose to $7.38 million, or 6 cents a share, Dow Jones said, compared with $516,000, or break-even, in the period a year earlier. Revenue rose 50 percent to $216.9 million.

 

Analysts have been estimating Salesforce.com would post earnings of 4 cents a share for the quarter, on $208.9 million in revenue, according to FactSet Research.

 

Salesforce.com said its number of subscribers, “a closely watched metric,” Dow Jones said, rose by more than 450,000 to roughly 1.1 million during the year.

 

Shares of Salesforce.com rose nearly 8 percent to $56.80 in after-hours trading following the earnings report.

 

As Dow Jones reported, Salesforce.com raised its revenue outlook for fiscal 2009, to between $1.03 billion and $1.035 billion. The company had previously said it expected revenue between $1 billion and $1.02 billion.

 

. . . .

 

E-autobusiness, a vendor of CRM products for automobile retailers, said its Aeros Software Suite Internet Management and CRM system is now certified by BMW of North America as a BMW iSTAR Certified Lead Management System.

 

Now BMW and MINI dealers using Aeros will receive leads from the OEM’s consumer Web sites directly into the Aeros system. This “eliminates duplication of lead handling activities at the dealership,” according to e-autobusiness officials.

 

Leads from BMW are first scrubbed and in some cases augmented with customer information BMW has in its database and then delivered to the dealership. This iSTAR integration creates a built-in loop that provides BMW with feedback on lead activity, such as whether the lead has been opened or a test drive scheduled.

 

Explaining the benefit of the product, Alan Graham, general manager for Michigan’s Erhard BMW, noted that hey, “time is money.”

 

Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, e-autobusiness’ Aeros Software Suite is a Web-based family of CRM software applications.

 

. . . .

 

Salesforce.com has also announced the availability of the new Force.com Toolkit for Adobe AIR and Flex, a new set of tools and services to enable development of rich Internet applications on Salesforce.com’s Force.com Platform.

 

Freely available at http://developer.force.com/, the new toolkit is designed to help developers create new RIAs using the capabilities of Adobe RIA technologies, including Adobe Flex 3, Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe AIR software, with their Force.com projects and offerings.

 

Developers can also publish applications built with Adobe Flex and deployed on Adobe AIR on the AppExchange marketplace, making them immediately available to Salesforce.com’s customer and developer communities.

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and we’ve had enough of musical experimentation around here for a while, we want something we just know we’re going to like, a good, solid album we can program on the iPod and forget. Ever have one of those mornings? It’s that kind of morning here at the sprawling campus headquarters of First Coffee, with Van Morrison’s It’s Too Late To Stop Now playing:

 

G&A Partners, a Houston-based Human Resource and administrative services company, has announced that it has launched a new Customer Care Center.

 

G&A’s “high touch” and “high tech” service center will allow the firm to improve its support to the nearly 250 small to mid-size Texas companies who contract such administrative functions as human resources, employee benefits, workers compensation, payroll, and financial reporting to the firm.

 

Now when clients call G&A’s Customer Care Center, the service rep will use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology to “document, categorize and track any pending issue,” from the time of the call through resolution, company officials say.

 

“At G&A Partners, we have made a significant investment in technology specifically designed for our business,” said John Allen, President and COO, G&A Partners. “But ‘high-tech’ alone cannot meet the needs of our clients.”

 

Allen claimed that with the addition of its Customer Care Center as well as other investments in resources and new technology, G&A’s practices “are meeting the highest industry standards set by and typically seen only in larger national HR service firms.”

 

At G&A every employee, including the CEO, “participates in bi-monthly training on service-oriented principles and practices,” Allen added. Without even having to close from 5:30 to 9:00.

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Plexus Systems, which sells Plexus Online on-demand software for the manufacturing industry, has named Anil Khanna its Senior Account Manager of the Western United States, responsible for the firm’s Western region customers.

 

“Anil Khanna brings a long track record of selling and delivering large Enterprise Resource Planning software projects for manufacturing customers,” said Thomas Mackey, Executive Vice President for Plexus.

 

Khanna and Plexus Systems’ growing Sales and Service team will pursue new business and assist customers in a variety of industries including medical devices, aerospace, defense and automotive, Mackey said.

 

Most recently Khanna was Regional Business Development Manager for Strategic Information Group of San Diego, and before that he was Canada Territory Manager for QAD. Khanna also has been a consultant for CapGemini, IBM and American Express.

 

Plexus Online is an on-demand product, using the SaaS model pioneered by Salesforce.com and NetSuite. It offers over 350 functional modules, providing companies access to information and management functions using a Web browser.

 

The on-demand product features enterprise resource planning (ERP) functions such as accounting and finance modules, customer relationship management (CRM) features such as order entry and tracking, manufacturing execution systems (MES) functions such as production scheduling and machine integration, and supply chain management (SCM) functions.

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Oslo, Norway-based Opera has made Google the default search engine in Opera’s mobile Web browsers, company officials have announced. Opera Mobile or Opera Mini users can access Google’s mobile search directly from the browser start page.

 

Because Opera Mini targets feature phones that have traditionally possessed limited browsing capabilities, company officials say, users choose to download and install Opera Mini to their phones. These consumers tend to use the mobile Web more frequently and actively than consumers with more static, less dynamic mobile Web browsers.

 

Every month, Opera Mini users browse more than 1.7 billion pages, with much of that traffic generated through the search function in the browser.

 

Google has been the default search option on Opera’s desktop browser for seven years. This new mobile collaboration covers all global territories except Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and includes all of Opera’s standard mobile Web browsers.

 

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera, said 2008 is “poised to be the year the mobile Web goes mainstream.” He noted that Opera Mobile has shipped on more than 100 million mobile phones so far, and that in 2007, more than 55 new phone models were launched with Opera Mobile pre-installed as the default Web browser.

 

Opera Mini is available completely free from http://www.operamini.com/. Opera Mobile is also available from http://www.opera.com/ in a free trial on select platforms. Google will appear as the default search engine for new and current users of Opera Mini as of March 1, 2008.

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Calling it a “tool for mastering CRM, acquisition and monetization from a single platform,” Datran Media, an inbox marketing and Web advertising products vendor, announced StormPost 4.0 at the Coremetrics Client Summit 2008 in Fort Worth, Texas.

 

This ESP platform offers a “Facebook social media marketing tool alongside other analytics, interface and ad inventory management enhancements,” company officials say.

 

Datran Media’s client base includes many of AdAge’s most recent top 100 media company list, including Lionsgate, an independent producer and distributor of motion pictures, television programming, home entertainment, family entertainment, video-on-demand and digitally delivered content.

 

StormPost 4.0’s Facebook tool makes it possible for marketers to send personalized communications to social media content subscribers through the StormPost system.

 

Other enhancements to StormPost 4.0 include analytics enhancements, upgrades to its user interface, trend-based reporting and Inventory Management features.

 

To date, the Datrainians say, ad-supported companies have been frustrated by standard ESP pricing policies largely designed for retailers and other organizations aiming to drive transactional activity.

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Scribe Software, a vendor of configurable data integration and migration software technology for leading business applications, has announced its release of the Scribe Adapter 4.0 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

 

The product “supports a customer’s ability to choose the deployment that best fits his organization by offering migration and integration capabilities for both on-premise and SaaS deployments of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0,” according to the Scribes.

 

Implemented by thousands of Dynamics CRM customers, by hundreds of Scribe Certified Resellers, Scribe’s integration tool, Scribe Insight, is used for migrating and integrating customer data within a company’s CRM environment.

 

The Scribe Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, built on the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM API, supports the multi-organization capabilities now available to customers with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

 

Bob Peskin, MSCRM Practice Director at Infinity Info Systems, an Elite Reseller for Scribe Insight, said Dynamics CRM 4.0, with its multi-tenant architecture and availability as a true SAAS application with CRM Live, “represents significant innovation.”

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is an oddly appealing ‘60s psychedelic album, The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle. Kind of a strange record, not First Coffee’s usual thing at all, but it frankly gets better the more it’s played:

 

SharperAgent’s e-mail engine is now certified as “a reputable sender” by Habeas, an Internet whitelist. Habeas will monitor and manage SharperAgent’s reputation to improve deliverability to the in-boxes of customers and partners.

 

According to the SharperAgents, inclusion on the Habeas Safelist means better e-mail access to the over five million e-mail receiving systems of partner ISPs and enterprises, as well as faster deliverability and a reduced likelihood that their messages will be treated as spam.

 

“Using e-mail as a means of communication is one of the most cost-effective ways that real estate professionals can connect with their clients,” explains SharperAgent President and Co-founder, Brian Wildermuth.

 

SharperAgent, headquartered in Denver, coaches those in the real estate and mortgage industries and business owners on how to market their services.

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CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of China’s CDC Corporation, has announced that Vectors Innovation Group, an Asian enterprise products provider, has selected Pivotal CRM for Financial Services as the platform for its CRM, direct marketing and telemarketing for the insurance industry in Greater China.

 

Through this product, VIG is expected to help insurance companies in Greater China to better track sales leads and improve both marketing campaign efficiencies and customer loyalty, according to the Pivotalians.

 

With operations in the Asia Pacific region including Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, VIG sells products from front office to middleware to back-end applications. One of its business lines is selling a CRM, direct marketing and telemarketing product designed for insurance companies.

 

Pivotal CRM offers a product tailored for insurance industry functionality, including a full enterprise application suite, and best-in-class customization abilities. Alex Cheung, general manager of Vectors Innovation Group, said they selected Pivotal CRM because of its fit to the business processes of insurance companies.

…

 

Compiere, which sells open source business products, has announced the opening of a product development center in Noida, India, located near the capital of New Delhi.

 

The company says the new development center is needed for its recent growth in “capabilities, skills and geographical presence” needed to address the expanding demand for its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products.

 

The center, which is fully operational, is staffed by application software development and test engineers with experience in enterprise application functionality, Java development, Web architecture, automated application testing and customer support.

 

“Having a presence in Noida provides ready access to state-of-the-art technical infrastructure and to a workforce emerging from nearby universities,” said Sunny Gosain, Compiere’s vice president of development and customer support.

 

Compiere’s products for the automation of financial, distribution, sales and service processes are intended to be used in industries such as distribution manufacturing, retail and professional services, according to the Compiereans.

…

 

Richmond, Virginia-based AMC Technology, a vendor of multi-channel interaction management products, has reported results for 2007. The company claims 37 percent growth in closed deals over total 2006 results, with deployments in 15 countries and “continued expansion” of their multi channel management suite offerings.

 

Last year, say AMC officials, the company received new and add-on orders from 37 customers, including Vorwerk, TNT Post, and Marstons. Deployments spanned 15 different countries. “AMC continued to make investments in our customers, partners, employees, and our products” said Anthony Uliano, President and CTO of AMC

 

AMC expanded their multi channel management suite by introducing new functionality to support salesforce.com, Microsoft CRM, and Cisco IPCC Express— also known as UCCX. AMC also began offering subscription based licensing for all of their products.

 

“Customers continue to demand certified products instead of custom projects” said Paul Nussbaum, VP of Marketing of AMC. Nussbaum said AMC has “ongoing commitments” to validate all products with both CRM and CTI platforms, as this “reduces risks for customers and provides them with a fully certified, end-to-end product.”

 

AMC received Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine’s “CRM Excellence” award in May, followed in August by selection to Inc 500’s Fastest Growing Private companies. It was the second time AMC received each of these awards.

…

 

“Dear Shareholders,” writes Geary Broadnax, President and CEO of Dovarri. “I have a lot of exciting news about your investment in Dovarri!”

 

The past year, according to Broadnax, has seen progress towards the company’s goal of completing and bringing to market the newest version of Dovarri 7.0 Orizon. “We developed Orizon on the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services platform and expect testing to be completed by the end of February,” he said.

 

Orizon has already been presented to several major companies “who will wait for the program’s availability,” writes Broadnax, adding “with the potential of closing as many as 10,000 seats as soon as Orizon is released, we could generate over $12 million in annual revenues, right out of the starting gate!”

 

During recessionary times, businesses usually avoid large capital expenditure, except in services that manage vital functions such as payroll, travel, communications and sales, Broadnax noted: “Software purchases now focus on managing and analyzing specific business processes and frequently are delivered over the Internet.” He described Orizon as a CRM product “specifically designed to be intuitive and easy to use and customize.”

 

Dovarri is “in the final discussions to sign contracts” with two resellers “who will drive us into the European and Asian markets,” Broadnax wrote, adding that “announcements will be made as soon as these deals are finalized. Negotiations are almost complete with several U.S. based resellers, names that you will recognize.”

 

“Look forward to more exciting announcements,” Broadnax wrote. Stay tuned.

…

 

Computer Generated Solutions, a vendor of IT products and services, has announced that it has expanded its executive team and staff in Los Angeles to support what company officials call “strong demand” in LA as well as across the western region.

 

As part of this expansion, CGS appointed two new executives. Troy Corfield, Vice President, Technology Solutions Training Sales, Western Region, will oversee the Infrastructure and IT Services group. He joins CGS from Oracle, where he held the position Senior Consulting Director.

 

And in what company officials characterize as a response to increasing demand for BlueCherry, the company’s supply chain product for fashion, apparel and distribution, CGS appointed Elaine Collins as Vice President, Application Solution Sales, Western Region. She’ll be responsible for growth of the BlueCherry line throughout the Western States. Collins joins CGS from Sterling Commerce/AT&T, where she headed sales. Previously, Collins held sales management positions with PeopleSoft and SAP America.

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music, according to the dictates of "Shuffle Songs," is Jimmy Buffett's Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes. First Coffee understands that critics think this is his best work, probably because it's the stiffest and driest album he's done. Critics like that kind of thing:

SyncSite, a Sage SalesLogix National Business Partner, has announced the implementation of CRM product Sage SalesLogix and the companion business intelligence tool QlikView for a Fypon, a home-products manufacturer based in Ohio.

Fypon had been using a popular contact management software package "that lacked integration with the company's ERP software, Friedman Frontier," according to SyncSite officials. As a result, data was held in the contact management system, the ERP software, in spreadsheets, and other applications: "Management did not have confidence in the business intelligence data since it was coming from so many sources."

SyncSite implemented Sage SalesLogix and QlikView to bring together data from different applications into a cohesive set of views and reports, producing views such as sales by customer, by product line, by item, by ship to address, by sales representative, by date, "or any combination of these factors," SyncSite officials said.

SyncSite configured the software so that the sales team's laptop computers synchronize to the main database each day, giving both in-house and traveling employees current data.

Fypon's business is closely tied to the construction and housing markets, currently experiencing a significant slowdown. However, the company's integrated information system has allowed it to mitigate the affect of the downturn, its officials say: "We have not seen anything approaching the drop off experienced by the majority of the building industry."

…

MadCap Software, a vendor of multi-channel content authoring and a Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft XPS showcase company, has announced that Protech has adopted MadCap Feedback Server.

Protech is using the Web 2.0 capabilities of the Feedback Server to "track use of its MadCap Flare-based documentation and get live customer feedback in real time," according to Protech officials. Additionally, Protech has directly integrated Feedback Server into its own software to bring customers and Protech developers together in a common community.

MadCap Feedback Server replaces an earlier product used by Protech, which only provided basic tracking functionality.

Protech sells CRM products for associations, products "tailored to optimize associations' internal processes and decision-making, as well as improve sales and member services," according to company officials.

"We have been one of the early adopters of MadCap Flare," said Chad Ohman, director of corporate strategic technologies for Protech Associates, adding that the Feedback Server "combines Web 2.0 community features with usage tracking."

The Feedback Server allows Protech to get live user feedback on its Flare-based documentation, whether Web-based or on the desktop. Customers comment blog-style directly in documentation, as well as rate different topics. Protech also can view and track all customer activity.

Protech uses the Feedback Server's native-XML architecture to integrate it with the company's CRM environment, so the administrator can read user comments, and respond in real time to resolve issues.

"The future of documentation is to move away from static information delivery to offering content enriched by interactive knowledge sharing," said Anthony Olivier, CEO of MadCap Software.

MadCap Software, headquartered in San Diego, is "just a new name for a group of familiar faces," company officials say, from the technical writing and documentation community, including many former core members of eHelp Corporation.

…

Paderborn, Germany-based Orga Systems, a vendor of billing products, has introduced new charging and billing mechanisms for "context-dependent mobile services" within the scope of the European research project Local Mobile Services, at CeBIT, held from March 4 to March 9.

At the booth of the German Ministry of Education and Research, two examples for context-dependent mobile services will be demonstrated. One is a mobile service for receiving latest news depending on the location of the user, called the Latest News Service, and the other is a mobile information and maintenance service to assist mechanics for repair works.

Research projects were selected for the Information and Communication Technology section at the BMBF's joint booth, including LOMS, in which Orga Systems is part of the German subproject.

The LOMS project presents methods and tools allowing local service providers to launch context-dependent mobile services through an open service platform, even without deep technological know-how in terms of telecommunication and value-added services. As part of this platform, Orga Systems offers charging and billing services for context-dependent online charging of mobile services.

…

Glasgow-based Graham Technology, a vendor of customer-oriented business software and services, has announced that its customer, South African energy giant Eskom, has won the Gold Award for the Middle East and Africa region at the International BPM Awards and Technology Showcase in Nashville.

Eskom, South Africa's state-owned electricity company is the seventh largest utility in the world in terms of generation capacity, and ninth in terms of sales.

The winning project, codenamed UBUSO, which, as you of course know, is the Zulu word for "face," created a Customer Service and Relationship Management product underpinned by Graham Technology's business process platform, which provided the means to control routing and monitoring of work over Eskom's vast operational arena and sharing workloads across their seven regional call centers.

Gabriel Kgabo, Divisional Customer Service Manager, Eskom, said the firm has "focused entirely on our people and processes over the last few years," and with Graham Technology's software platform "have been able to strip out waste and dramatically improve the customer experience."

Eskom, with revenues of over $5 billion, serves more than 3.7million customers throughout South Africa. The vertically integrated utility generates 95 percent of the electricity used in South Africa and generates over 50 percent of the total electricity produced in Africa, making Eskom by far the continent's largest utility company.

…

Pika Technologies, a vendor of media-processing hardware and software, has announced that it has expanded its product range to support fax applications built on the open-source platform Asterisk.

Pika Fax software is now extended to Asterisk, allowing developers on the platform to build fax capabilities into their applications.

Terry Atwood, vice president of sales, marketing and customer care at Pika, called the addition of fax support "the logical evolution of our product suite."

Until now, faxes could be sent and received in Asterisk-based applications only by using Span DSP, a software fax plug-in. Unlike Span DSP, Pika Fax works independently from zaptel. Its driver works at the kernel level, providing control of real-time applications. Pika Fax will work with any vendor's board that supports Asterisk and has been tested specifically with Digium, Sangoma and Pika hardware.

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 first coffee this morning, and the music is "I Saw Her Standing There," from the last stage performance John Lennon ever gave -- duetting with Elton John at Madison Square Garden in 1974, captured on Elton's Here and There album:

The Open Solutions Alliance, which describes itself as "a nonprofit, vendor-neutral consortium," dedicated to "driving the interoperability and mainstream adoption of comprehensive open products," marked its one-year anniversary with three new members.

"The commercial open-source industry is no longer in an early-adopter phase," said Dominic Sartorio, OSA president and senior director of product management at SpikeSource, an open-source services company. "Now that we've entered the mainstream phase of adoption, it's even more important that open products have the fit, form and function that an enterprise organization expects."

The OSA seeks to promote interoperability among open products by fostering a multilateral approach, as in its Common Customer View, described by alliance officials as "an integrated suite of front-office, back-office, business intelligence and business planning applications." The CCV was the first of several joint projects to be focused on making open source products work together in a cohesive suite of products.

The CCV was built and tested by OSA members including Adaptive Planning, Concursive, Ingres, JasperSoft, Openbravo, SpikeSource, Talend and Unisys, and is currently available for purchase through Unisys.

Going forward, alliance officials say, the CCV will continue to expand.  Future versions will include participation from more members, will introduce loosely coupled integration best practices including SOA and REST, and will serve as a reference implementation of those best practices.

In January, the OSA underlined its global focus by announcing a new chapter structure. The first non-U.S. chapter will be based in Europe and will debut this spring. The OSA expects to expand further with chapters in Latin America and Asia in the coming year.

New OSA members include the consortium's first Asian member, Kaigen Solution K.K., a systems integrator based in Yokohama, Japan, specializing in open source deployments, internationalization and localization. IONA Technologies, a vendor of service-oriented architecture infrastructure products, also joined the OSA recently.

The Open Solutions Alliance is a nonprofit, vendor-neutral consortium founded in 2007.

…

SAP AG has announced the availability of the third enhancement package for its ERP application, cleverly named SAP ERP. Released incrementally and "at no charge to existing customers," the product lets customers access new software features via a download to switch on as needed, "without touching mission-critical core systems."

The software vendor also said more than half of the enterprise services bundles created for the third enhancement package were developed "through efforts of the SAP ecosystem of partners and customers."

SAP officials say the incremental delivery is a value benefit for customers in the latest release of SAP ERP (release 6.0). "Customers can consume innovation at their own option," company officials say, "switching on the innovation they require at a pace of their choosing and business case."

The enhancement package has updates in the retail, trading and public services sectors, as well as enhancements to core ERP modules including financials, human capital management, procurement, corporate services, and sales and service.

For the public sector it adds functionality to enable grant management, tax and revenue management, tax return processing, shopping cart commitment and item hierarchies.

And for the retail and trading industries it has modules for global data synchronization, merchandise and assortment planning, retail method of accounting, product lookup in the customer order management process and other features.

SAP officials say there have been over 4,000 go-lives since January 2007, including GISA GmbH in Germany, HT Media in India and Valero Energy Corporation. The firm also announced that its third enhancement package includes over 50 enterprise services bundles, groups of existing services interfaces for various modules.

"Software applications managers need ways to make ERP more relevant to business users to maintain support for next-generation ERP projects," said Jeff Woods, research vice president, Gartner. "Making users wait until the next major ERP upgrade cycle for new functionality isn't a user-oriented practice."

…

IFS has announced that Prism Solar Technologies, has implemented IFS Applications at its Lake Katrine, New York location.

Prism makes solar module technology, used in residential, commercial and industrial solar electric applications. By implementing IFS Applications, Prism officials say they expect to be "able to react more quickly to changing market demands" and "implement process controls to accommodate its expanding business."

Corning Data Services, of Corning, N.Y. helped Prism with their application selection process, and will further assist them in the implementation of IFS Applications. Prism Solar will implement the IFS Applications product suite of mixed-mode manufacturing.

The high-tech industry is one of IFS' targeted vertical markets. IFS offers industry-specific products for companies in the electronic equipment, electronic component, and semiconductor industries. These products are for business processes from design and mixed-mode manufacturing to after-sales support and warranty management.

…

RightNow Technologies has introduced RightNow February '08, the latest release of its enterprise-class, on demand customer relationship management (CRM) product.

This version, company officials say, offers "a new contextual workspace" as well as topic monitoring capabilities to help "understand customer sentiment."

The agent desktop is enhanced with a new workspace to help provide "relevant, personalized service." Using information from and about the customer and knowing what actions the agent must take, RightNow tailors content and functionality on the agent's desktop to address the issue at hand.

For example, if a customer calls to return a product, the agent's desktop -- which can be integrated with a return merchandise authorization system -- will automatically present the data and steps to enable a return. Or, if a customer is calling to register a product, the agent's desktop instantly displays a product registration screen.

…

Antenna Software, a Certified Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork, has announced that it will discuss mobile CRM strategies and host a series of networking events at this week's Oracle CRM Community Spring Meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The three-day event will feature industry experts, including Antenna Software executives, who will offer "real-world examples and best practices on how to use CRM systems and maximize ROI," according to the Oraclians.

Jim Somers, vice president of marketing at Antenna Software, will join Chris Armstrong, CRM product strategy director at Oracle, on a panel titled "New Integration with Sales for Handhelds."

Somers and Armstrong will discuss how mobile CRM technologies can be used more effectively in the field with live sales teams.

The event will be held at the Scottsdale Hilton Resort & Villas, in Scottsdale, Arizona, February 24-27.

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 …

Next month Xactly reaches its three-year anniversary, having debuted at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce 2005 event, where they introduced their on-demand Sales Compensation Management (SCM) product.

Xactly Incent brings automation and end-to-end visibility to the incentive sales compensation process, which, Cabrera says, "in nearly 90 percent of companies today is still managed by manual, spreadsheet-driven processes that breed errors and disputes, don't cost-effectively scale, can't easily accommodate plan changes and additions, and ultimately don't align sales behaviors with corporate goals to effectively drive profits."

But hey, other than that, they're great.

Cabrera says Xactly addresses this issue "in much the same manner that on-demand CRM brought automation, real-time visibility and efficiency to pre-sales processes." And Xactly is now heading for what Cabrera sees as a much larger market: on-demand Sales Performance Management. Forecast to reach $13.5 billion by 2010, the SPM market is an exciting opportunity for companies with a comprehensive suite of integrated, on-demand applications for driving overall sales performance.

FC: What is SPM, and how is it related to sales compensation management?

CC: In 2006, Gartner predicted that "a sales performance management market will coalesce around best-of-breed vendors largely originating from the sales incentive compensation management market." This is now happening.

Sales compensation management is the core foundation of any SPM product. Compensation management applications serve to consolidate, scrub and centralize critical post-sales data from systems such as ERP, order-management, pricing, inventory, product, accounts receivable and HR. This data is used to calculate commissions for the sales organization, or anyone with a variable component as part of their compensation.

But just as importantly, this data can then be used to model the impact of compensation-plan changes, and drive analytics that help companies determine their most profitable products, understand their commission’s exposure, determine the most productive territories, optimize the structure of their sales organizations, and much more.

FC: What is the relationship between SPM and CRM?

SPM and CRM are complementary. CRM deals with pre-sales data, or everything leading up to a sale to make sure that sale happens. SPM manages post-sales data, helping users best use this wealth of data to boost future sales and business performance.

Post-sales data is used to figure commissions, model plans, optimize pricing and territory coverage, and all the good things we just discussed. But post-sales data can also be married to pre-sales data to drive entirely new kinds of value for CRM users.

Here's a good example. Many of our customers are using Xactly Incent directly within their CRM applications, and allowing their reps to run "what if" scenarios by marrying live opportunity data from Salesforce CRM with compensation-plan data from Xactly Incent. Without ever leaving their CRM application, they can now see how much they stand to make on particular deals and how best to structure those deals for maximum commission payout. Under a strategic compensation program, what's best for the rep is what's best for the company.

FC: What's the compelling value proposition you offer to potential customers?

CC: The convergence of SPM and on-demand SaaS delivery has created a new, affordable way to improve sales effectiveness. We let companies automate and integrate strategic sales and finance business processes, and let individuals, from sales reps to top management, make better, more informed and timely decisions.

In the on-demand world, the customer holds all the cards and can kick an on-demand vendor out of the game at any time. Hence we're driven by the notion that each customer's business must be earned anew every day. Xactly's 94.4 percent customer-renewal rate is, we think, testament to our culture.

FC: How do companies benefit from implementing SPM?

CC: The whole idea behind SPM is optimizing the effectiveness of sales and driving profits. To this end, SPM does for post-sales processes what CRM does for pre-sales processes, it automates, provides visibility, and improves process efficiency across the board. Companies using SPM products can analyze and monitor key incentive metrics, management reports and dashboards. By using industry best practices, these companies can increase ROI by driving sales of the right products, uncovering potential in new territories and adapting compensation plans to match changing market conditions.

FC: What do you see as the most promising market opportunity over the next 18 months?

CC: Especially in the face of a potential global recession, the SPM and SaaS markets are both poised to see dramatic growth. Pairing the technologies together will especially deliver a one-two-punch meshing SaaS economic value with SPM business value.

Instead of being tied to an expensive, on-premise enterprise software infrastructure, SaaS means no upfront hardware and software costs, no worrying about costly ongoing software maintenance, and no vendor lock-in.

Even in the best of times, businesses need to invest in getting the most profit possible out of their front-line employees. SPM applications help align sales behaviors to corporate objectives, focusing reps on the most strategic sales, maximizing agility in the face of market change, and providing visibility into sales success drivers through comprehensive analytics. And along the way, they help to greatly reduce administrative time and costs, and support compliance efforts.

FC: For a business that succeeds in the SPM space over the next five years, what will it have done that its competitors didn't?

CC: There's a host of things that need to come together to ensure long-term success in this market. Just as the on-demand model has re-invigorated the enterprise software sector, it will prove essential to the success of modern SPM. On-demand SaaS will create and sustain the market through its cost-effectiveness, innate custom-centricity, and ability to deliver innovations into the hands of users without delay.

A successful vendor must remain attuned to how customer-centric the on-demand model is, and deliver on a clear commitment to customer success that ensures retention.

Completeness of product vision and breadth of product offerings will be equally important, both in attracting and keeping customers. These product offerings will have to not only integrate seamlessly with one another, but with a customer's end-to-end business processes and IT infrastructure, including both on-premise and on-demand applications. Thus openness and vendor neutrality are absolute requisites.

Finally, a successful player will need to create and nurture a rich partner ecosystem. Commitment to a completely open platform and integration with key applications is critical. You can't go it alone in this market -- you need to connect all the dots.

FC: What's your outlook for 2008?

CC: 2007 was a watershed year for SaaS in general, and on-demand SPM was not left out of the party. During the year, Xactly achieved triple-digit revenue growth, doubled its customer base, tripled its subscriber base, and completed its third round of financing to help fuel future growth.

Looking ahead, 2008 will be the year that SaaS becomes more savvy. By this I mean that on-demand products will become increasingly robust, with greater functionality, support for end-to-end business processes, and seamless user experiences across applications.

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 Stevie Wonder's Music of My Mind, his answer to Motown finally taking off the leg irons and letting him do what he wanted. Not his best album, but hey, Innervisions and Talking Book were up next:

According to SugarForge contributor Lyle Arnot, SugarBird 0.9.0.3, the former Asertiva Thunderbird Extension for Sugar, has been released.

"Please check the changelog for fixes and new features information," Arnot says, adding that it's "now with SugarCRM 5 support, and a new soap engine that fixes many connection problems."

From now "we will focus on Lightning (Calendar) Support," Arnot explained. "Features like Send and Archive are now not possible without hacking Thunderbird."

He said Sugar would try to contact Mozilla developers to find a solution.

…

Figures from the American Bankers' Association show that the banking industry holds in excess of $7.17 trillion in loans, including the billions of dollars in mortgage, credit card, auto loans and commercial loans.

So you'd think that in such a large industry where products and services are being rapidly commoditized and the cost of switching is low, customer service would be a primary competitive differentiator banks have over one another.

Think again. A recent audit commissioned by online customer service vendor Talisma Corporation reveals "significant service failures" by the top 50 banks in North America.

A mystery shopper during November 2007 queried the top banks on how to open an account and what kind of products and services are available for individual customers. The audit revealed that 36 percent of customer e-mails went unanswered by the banks, 96 percent of those audited did not offer live chat as a communication channel and 94 percent of banks did not offer a "true" dynamic, flexible knowledge base -- "the majority of banks offered little more than a list of static FAQs," the report found.

The audit awarded each bank a score out of 100, based on a range of customer service criteria, including speed of response, accuracy, completeness of information provided, and the personalization of interactions.

Talisma will be discussing the results from the audit and providing best practices for contact centers seeking to improve customer service during a webinar presentation on February 28th at 11 a.m. PDT / 2 p.m. EDT titled "Crisis in the Call Center:  An Audit of Customer Service at the Top 50 Retail Banks in North America."

To register for the Webinar, visit http://www.talisma.com/tal_news/webinars/default.aspx?id=1314. The complete audit findings will be available for download at the conclusion of the Webinar on the Talisma Financial Services Web page.

"We hope this report will be a catalyst that sparks an improvement in online banking customer service," said Dan Vetras, President & CEO, Talisma, adding that it is "encouraging" that banks are providing "good customer service" via the phone.

…

Go2Group, a vendor of Software Production Line Automation, has announced its Go2Group CRM Plugin has received certification from Salesforce.com. The certification allows Go2Group to integrate the CRM Plugin with all Salesforce versions and Atlassian's JIRA issue tracking system.

"We're certainly excited that the CRM Plugin has been certified to work with all Salesforce versions," said Brett Taylor, Go2Group's CEO. "We've had many customers look to integrate Professional Salesforce with Atlassian JIRA."

Additional updates to the CRM Plugin include public visibility on salesforce.com's AppExchange platform, a new installation wizard, and minor bug fixes and performance enhancements. The updated CRM Plugin version now works on Windows, Mac, and UNIX platforms.

The updated CRM plugin is available for evaluation at www.Go2Group.com.

SPLA is constructed from integrated suites of systems such as configuration management, requirements management, build/workflow management, and defect tracking products.

…

Kana Software, a vendor of multi-channel customer service products, has announced that Chief Financial Officer John Thompson is retiring and will be succeeded by Mike Shannahan, current Kana board member and chairman of Kana's audit committee.

Please note this Mike Shannahan is not, in fact, Mike Shanahan, the head coach of the Denver Broncos who, of course, accepted the CFO position at IBM.

Thompson will begin phasing out after filing the company's annual report on form 10-K with the SEC and will remain with Kana for several months to assist in the transition of his responsibilities to Shannahan.

"John has been an integral part of our turnaround efforts and has done a great job managing the company's financial organization, which led to our return to profitability in the third and fourth quarters," commented Michael Fields, Kana CEO.

…

First Coffee has conducted an interview with Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly, in honor of their third anniversary in March. The firm officially debuted at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce 2005 event, where they introduced their on-demand Sales Compensation Management product.

The full interview will be printed in a later edition, some highlights:

"Xactly addresses compensation management in much the same manner that on-demand CRM brought automation, real-time visibility and efficiency to pre-sales processes. Xactly is now pioneering the emergence of a much larger market: on-demand Sales Performance Management. Forecast to reach $13.5 billion by 2010, the SPM market is an exciting opportunity for companies that -- for the first time -- will have a comprehensive suite of integrated, on-demand applications for driving overall sales performance."

"In 2006, Gartner predicted that a sales performance management market will coalesce around best-of-breed vendors largely originating from the sales incentive compensation management market. This is now happening.

"SPM and CRM are complementary. CRM deals with pre-sales data, everything leading up to a sale to make sure that sale happens. SPM manages post-sales data, helping users best leverage this wealth of data to boost future sales and business performance.

"Post-sales data is used to accurately calculate commissions, model plans, optimize pricing and territory coverage, and all the good things we just discussed. But post-sales data can also be married to pre-sales data in a CRM system to drive entirely new kinds of value for CRM users.

"Here's a good example. Many of our customers are using Xactly Incent directly within their CRM applications -- and allowing their reps to run "what if" scenarios by marrying live opportunity data from Salesforce CRM with compensation-plan data from Xactly Incent. Without ever leaving their CRM application, they can now see how much they stand to make on particular deals and how best to structure those deals for maximum commission payout. Under a strategic compensation program, what's best for the rep is what's best for the company. Thus this real-time capability can be instrumental in pointing reps towards the most strategic and profitable sales.

"The whole idea behind SPM is optimizing the effectiveness of sales and driving profits. To this end, SPM does for post-sales processes what CRM does for pre-sales processes -- it automates, provides visibility, and improves process efficiency across the board. Smart companies adopting SPM products see immediate benefits in the alignment between finance and sales teams to achieve corporate goals."

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 Modern Lovers:

Toronto-based Clarity Systems, self-described as a vendor of corporate performance management products, has announced the launch of Clarity 6 Legal Edition 2.0, a software product for professional services organizations.

The product's capabilities include budgeting as well as financial variance reporting and analysis. Variance analysis of data such as billings, expenses, compensation and hours at the timekeeper level can be compared in real time. It also lets users to drill down from a report to a single transaction, view invoice or expense details or attach user commentary to a specific field.

These enhancements are specifically designed for professional services firms. Since the launch of Clarity 6 Legal Edition in June 2007, approximately two dozen firms have used the product. "Out of the box, the software is defined to meet most of the specific needs of the industry," company officials say.

Clarity Systems' expertise in providing legal vertical products is strengthened by its partnership with Thomson Elite, which sells financial and practice management systems to professional services markets worldwide. Clarity 6 Legal Edition 2.0 integrates with Elite Enterprise databases.

Clarity 6 Legal Edition is marketed as a product which "facilitates collaboration during the budgeting cycle while supporting real time aggregations, driver-based budgeting, top down planning through global assumptions, bottom up adjustments by regional offices and other processes" for law firms by company officials.

…

Talisma Corporation, which sells Customer Interaction Management software, has announced annual revenue growth of 53 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2006. Talisma also enters 2008 with "the highest bookings backlog in company history," according to company officials.

Earlier in the year, Talisma released CIM 8.0, a customer service suite for interaction management that includes e-mail, chat, VoIP, phone, collaboration, and Web self-service. It incorporated "numerous enhancements" designed to improve customer service, including proactive capabilities in both Talisma Chat and Talisma VoIP.

Talisma also claimed some industry notice this year, including Deloitte & Touche Washington State Technology Fast 50 Award and CRM Magazine Service Leader Award, as well as the Inc. 5,000 Award.

The company entered into partnerships in an effort to expand the breadth of its offerings. Among these, a partnership with Autonomy is intended to improve Talisma's Knowledgebase, delivering Meaning-Based Computing capabilities. The partnership with Bucher & Suter is for integration between the Talisma CIM Suite and Cisco ICM.

Dan Vetras, President & CEO of Talisma, said in 2008, Talisma will "continue our mission to transform the industry by providing software that makes superior customer service the norm, rather than the exception."

…

Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby has selected SAP to provide a product platform and a clear product road map to "help the company manage operations and continue to grow," according to SAP officials.

From its beginnings in a 300-square-foot retail location in Oklahoma City in 1972, Hobby Lobby has grown into nearly 400 retail stores in 32 states, and projected sales of $1.8 billion in 2008. It wanted a platform to enable "rapid response to market and customer demands," as well as help reduce total cost of ownership.

Hobby Lobby has selected SAP's flagship enterprise resource planning software, SAP ERP, to replace its existing JD Edwards software. The retailer was particularly attracted to the application's "model of incremental upgrades via enhancement packages," according to the SAPpers, that will provide Hobby Lobby a "stable core system and the ability to add new functionality and capabilities" without disrupting operations.

"A flexible product platform that allows for incremental enhancements based on business needs and a clear road map for the future is critical to the long-term success of Hobby Lobby," said Jeanne Cotter, CIO, Hobby Lobby.

Hobby Lobby chose SAP applications for financials, human capital management and payroll, mainly to have all systems on a common, modern platform. SAP products will also help the company manage domestic operations, such as adjusting to the ongoing changes of national and local laws.

"Retailers are investing in strategic platforms that provide them with data integration and transparency," said Greg Buzek, founder and president of IHL Consulting Group.

…

CallCopy, a call recording and quality monitoring vendor, has introduced cc: Survey, a telephone-based survey application allowing contact centers to "capture the voice of the customer."

Cc: Survey is an IVR-based survey system available as part of CallCopy's cc: Discover call recording and quality monitoring suite or as a standalone product. Callers can be transferred from the phone representative into the cc: Discover survey system, or they can dial a toll-free number to participate in surveys independent of the contact center.

The product has Web-based reporting capabilities which provide real-time information on survey results. Report results can be filtered by date range, by agent, by ANI (Caller ID), and other criteria. The reporting system also provides granular analysis of survey results. Companies can report on automated post-call survey completion rates, and compare survey results to automatic call distribution reports to determine sample population.

The application can also capture voice messages and callback information from the customer, which can be accessed through the secure Web-based reporting portal.

Ray Bohac, president and chief executive officer of CallCopy, said a customer feedback survey application is "an ideal way" to capture customers' perspectives.

Cc: Survey allows an organization to create surveys through a Web-based interface. The data can be tied to recordings, which allows companies to calibrate their internal quality assessment measurements against customer satisfaction. Survey questions can also have dynamic point values assigned to them to weigh sections and surveys according to the needs of a center's staff and clients.

...

Oracle has announced that Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management, its convergent, real-time billing and revenue management application, now supports IBM's AIX operating system.

AIX, IBM's Unix operating system, in combination with IBM's PowerVM virtualization offerings, allows consolidation of workloads on fewer servers.

With this announcement, Oracle officials say the company "extends its support for AIX, which it has previously supported with other Oracle Communications applications including Oracle Communications Service Activation, Oracle Communications Unified Inventory Management and Oracle Communications Order and Service Management, as well as Oracle's Siebel CRM.

Oracle's support of AIX strengthens Oracle's relationship with IBM, a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork.

"By supporting AIX, we give service providers increased flexibility to choose the operating system that works best for their environments," said David Sharpley, vice president product marketing and channels, Oracle Communications.

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 Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald's sublime "Summertime" duet:

B2BGateway, a product of Shannon Systems, and an integration product partner of NetSuite Inc. since 2001, today announced the release of the B2BGateway client portal.

With the B2BGateway client portal, NetSuite users can use the client portal to initiate new trading partner relationships, review data transmitted, schedule transaction imports/exports and to cross reference data, B2B Gateway officials say.

B2BGateway has provided NetSuite users with EDI connectivity in North America to Wal-Mart, Home Depot, General Motors and over 700 other organizations. In the European Union, NetSuite users use B2BGateway to connect to ASDA, Argos, Tesco, Carrefour, and many others.

Any NetSuite user who intends to sell products to these large organizations is required to use EDI.

Before 1999, when B2BGateway started providing fully managed EDI products, the industry process of receiving electronic purchase orders and sending electronic invoices could be difficult, costly and prone to errors. B2BGateway's idea was to connect to trading partners through a central hub. Consequently, all of the data translation required in EDI takes place in a central location.

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The music now is Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty."

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Salesforce.com has announced that Priority Telecom, a division of UPC Broadband, The Netherlands, has chosen to deploy some of its applications, with Accenture as its business planning and implementation partner.

Using the entire suite of Salesforce Software-as-a-Service CRM applications, Priority Telecom expects to gain a 360-degree view into its customer interactions throughout its marketing, sales and customer service departments.

Hans Luyckx, Vice President of Operations for Priority Telecom and a guy who never has to spell his name over the phone to Americans, said replacing the current legacy systems with Salesforce is "a major shift for our company," but "Salesforce.com will save us money."

"This project will enable Accenture to combine its global Salesforce.com delivery capabilities with its telecommunications, systems integration and data migration expertise to deliver business transformation to Priority Telecom," said Peter van Tilburg, manager CRM service line at Accenture.

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The music is now the title track from Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, one of the few Springsteen albums First Coffee finds listenable. His debut doesn't suck either.

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Glasgow-based Graham Technology has announced that it has successfully rolled out a company-wide CRM platform for Australian mobile phone retailer, Crazy John's. The platform is based on ciboodle, Graham Technology's customer interaction platform, and represents the first deployment of the software in Australia.

Crazy John's is Australia's largest independent mobile phone retailer with over 100 retail outlets across six states, two mainland territories and three time zones, employing over 700 staff. The company recently launched its own mobile virtual network, and ciboodle provides the underlying CRM and sales platform.

"The evolution of Crazy John's has to be supported by the right kind of technology platform," said Stephen Tuffley, Head of Operations at Crazy John's. Ciboodle is Graham Technology's flagship customer interaction software for contact centers, what the Grahamites call "a refreshing alternative to the rigid CRM and telephony software packages prevalent in today's call centers."

While Graham Technology has had an established presence in Australasia for some years, with customers including Energex, MBF Group and Telecom New Zealand, the Crazy John's deployment is the first implementation of ciboodle in the region.

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The music is now Dan Gediman's "Three Time Loser." C'mon, admit it -- you care.

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Brand2Media, a vendor of e-commerce products, and Assured Logistics, which sells logistics products, have announced an Alliance Partnership.

The agreement implies integrating e-commerce and supply chain management abilities into a single product for retail companies looking to take their business online. Together, Assured Logistics and Brand2Media officials say, they believe they will be able to lower the deployment and recurring operational costs of e-commerce in Canada "while ensuring enterprise level performance."

The Brand2Commerce Pro system ties into catalogue, pricing, CRM, ERP, logistics and other sources of data to "help extend retail activities online." The product is configured to maximize the use of Assured Logistics' current systems, namely SAP. This gives users real-time information on package tracking, inventory levels, shipping and return status.

"Assured Logistics understands the real-time integration requirements of bringing e-commerce logistics to life," said Christopher Thierry, President, Brand2Media. "This alliance will allow us to package e-commerce with warehouse logistics."

"The partnership adds value to customers looking to go big online in Canada," said Louise Villeneuve, Vice President - Business Development and Marketing for Assured Logistics Inc.

Brand2Media is a division of ETeleSolv.com, a Canadian vendor of e-commerce products, e-mail, and e-marketing products. The Brand2Commerce Pro e-commerce product supports multi channel sales, both B2C and B2B. It comprises site development, hosting, order management, fraud prevention, customer service and other functions.

Brand2Media currently builds and manages online products for Motorola, Aliant, Bell, Rogers, RBC Financial Group, and other retailers.

Assured Logistics sells third party logistics products to the retail industry. Clients include Amazon.ca, Vonage Canada and Canada Post Corporation.

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The music is now They Might Be Giants's "Hearing Aid." These guys suck so badly you're kind of mesmerized, like at a car wreck.

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Consona Corporation, a vendor of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management software and services for the enterprise, has reported "record revenue and customer satisfaction levels" for the year ended December 31, 2007.

In 2007, Consona delivered a 64 percent increase in total revenue over the previous year. Following a 129 percent increase in revenue between 2005 and 2006, the company was named one of the top ten fastest growing software companies by Software magazine."

"We've grown our revenues by more than 400 percent since our first acquisition, Made2Manage Systems, in 2003," Consona's Jeff Tognoni said.

In 2006, the company acquired six product lines, followed by the acquisition of Knova Software in March 2007. In the latter half of 2007, the Consona management ceased M&A activity and assessed the business. As a result, the company implemented several organizational changes that will be rolled out in early 2008.

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… Moby Grape. Yep, the great 1967 debut album from the best pure rock band to emerge from the San Francisco scene, a promising act killed off by the double whammy of a dishonest, incompetent manager -- Matthew Katz -- and the stupid record company gimmick of releasing five singles at once, thereby ensuring none would gain any traction. Their debut was better than those of The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, It's A Beautiful Day, Love, Flamin' Groovies or Quicksilver Messenger Service -- First Coffee'd put it above The Doors -- one wonders how their already sophisticated blues-rock harmony sound (think The Steve Miller Band's Sailor or the Dead's American Beauty) would have matured if the suits hadn't screwed it all up:

Verticals onDemand, a vendor of of Software-as-a-Service CRM products, has launched VBioPharma Primary Care Edition CRM application for life sciences organizations. Company officials say this is the first CRM application pre-validated for PDMA and the Food and Drug Administration's CFR Part 11 compliance, "saving customers up to 80 percent of their system validation costs."

The vendor sells an out-of-the-box call reporting and sampling system with IQ and OQ documentation for reducing costs and the risk of being issued a damaging consent decree from the federal government.

"The consequences of not properly validating your system can be devastating," said Patrick P. Den Boer, CEO of Q Pharma, a regulatory compliance consulting service. "At the very least, a company will be issued an FD-483, which damages a company's reputation. At the worst, a company could enter into a consent decree costing the organization millions of dollars in fines, and even shutting down the facility."

VBioPharma is described by company officials as "the industry's first SaaS CRM product for primary care and the only Pharma CRM product to come pre-validated." It's built on the Force.com platform, and has functions for physician and account profiling, tracking physician and account affiliations and call scheduling and route management.

Online demonstrations of Verticals onDemand's VBioPharma Primary Care Edition are available at www.verticalsondemand.com.

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Oracle has announced Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand Single Tenant, Enterprise Edition, which enables regulatory and internal compliance, security and flexibility, according to the Oraclians, giving users a "fully-dedicated database, middleware and application instance of Siebel CRM On Demand."

The product gives users the functions of Oracle's On Demand technology and services with a dedicated environment that doesn't share infrastructure with other customers. The private hosting model requires no upfront IT investments.

Hosted at Oracle's data center in Austin, Texas, the product uses Oracle Grid computing.

Siebel CRM On Demand Single Tenant starts at $125 per user per month. Terms, conditions and restrictions apply. For further information, please visit www.oracle.com/crmondemand.

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Attitude POSitive, a vendor of Point of Sale, inventory and time clock software, has announced that Wabash Valley Goodwill Industries in Terra Haute, Indiana has converted to the new version, AccuPOS Retail 2008, for its six stores.

The AccuPOS software includes features aimed at the small and mid-market retailer sector, designed to streamline sales, back-office processes and target customer incentives.

"I tried a lot of other Point of Sale software, including QuickBooks -- which is geared for businesses that have all their merchandise bar coded, which we don't -- and Microsoft, which we couldn't afford. Other software we tried just didn't work very well," said William Tennis, Executive Director, Wabash Valley Goodwill Industries.

Tennis, a man who has never once heard a joke involving the words "Wimbledon" or "racket," said AccuPOS "allows us to track our inventory and customers, do mass e-mailing to customers who opt into our e-mailing system, and accept credit cards and offer customized gift cards."

AccuPOS works with such popular accounting programs as QuickBooks, Peachtree Simply Accounting Line 50, and MAS 90/200.

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First Coffee always like promoting tech firms when they work for charitable causes, and notes that Datacap will be holding a benefit reception Monday, March 3, in Boston to kick off the 2008 Cycle Faster program. Datacap sells document-capture and forms-processing software, and is teaming with other scanning and electronic content management players to try to raise $100,000 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

The campaign also will support Boston's Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. "Cycle Faster" refers to bicycling as well as what Datacap officials say is their product's ability to speed document-processing cycles. Cycle Faster is the brainchild of Datacap CEO Scott Blau, an avid cyclist.

The event coincides with The Enterprise Content Management Association Expo in Boston, where Datacap will hold virtual-cycle time trials at its booth from March 4-6.

For additional information, see http://cyclefaster.datacap.com.

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Boomi, a vendor of on-demand integration products, has announced that MDS Pharma Services has implemented Boomi On Demand to integrate its Salesforce CRM application with its legacy on-premise Oracle applications.

Boomi's SaaS integration app is expected to give MDS Pharma Services operational efficiencies through more accurate data and reporting, the Boomers say.

By integrating its SaaS and on-premise applications and allowing information to flow between related systems, MDS Pharma Services is marketed to both global pharmaceutical and biotech clients.

Boomi On Demand provides integration services without the need for hardware appliances, software packages or coding. Integrations are built visually via point-and-click, drag-and-drop.

Once integration processes are built using Boomi On Demand, they are deployed via a lightweight runtime engine called an "Atom." Boomi Atoms contain the components required to execute an integration process from end-to-end, including connectors, transformation rules, decision handling and processing logic. Atoms can be hosted for SaaS-to-SaaS integration or downloaded behind a customer's firewall.

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Senokian has launched Tactile CRM, "the first in a series of Web-based applications." The Coventry, England-based Senokians call it a contact and sales pipeline tool.

Senokian officials say Tactile aims to make CRM easy for organizations to adopt, letting them manage and track sales, leads, prospects and e-mails in one place. "You can stop wondering if colleagues have spoken to a prospect already, Tactile will tell you," company officials say: "Need to read an e-mail a colleague sent to a customer but they aren't in the office today? Tactile will let you."

Before beginning work on Tactile CRM, Senokian officials say they "worked with local companies to understand the issues their sales and admin staff had." With a free trial for organizations to test the system and several paid plans, which start from about $12 per month, Senokian has clients from across the UK and from America to Australia.

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 first coffee this morning, and the music is Mahalia Jackson’s “What A Friend We Have In Jesus,” one of her rare missteps. Greatest voice in the history of gospel music, oh yes, no doubt about that, but this is a majestic song when done straight as a flowing hymn. As Jackson’s proved elsewhere she owns that style, but here she chooses a 6/8 time and does it almost as a jazz vocal. Doesn’t work.

 

CDC Software, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation, has announced the general availability of Pivotal CRM for Home Building and Real Estate 5.9, described by company officials as a new product version for builders to “reduce the cost and effort of integration with common back-end systems.”

 

Pivotalians describe the product as an “industry-specific customer relationship management system (CRM) designed to help building and real estate firms.” It’s supposed to help manage front office functions, including marketing automation, lead management, sales automation, quoting and contracting, surveying, and customer care.

 

The product has library enhancements with support for units of measure, option rules and wildcarding, group calendaring including support for delegation, and C# conversation, which “helps with migration to newer Pivotal platforms,” company officials say.

 

Pivotal CRM is also designed to reduce the cost of integrating with Envision, a widely-used enterprise suite of applications among builders.

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Concursive Corporation, formerly Centric CRM, a vendor of open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM), says that AlphaGraphics has implemented ConcourseSuite 5.0 in the company’s corporate headquarters, and is “recommending it as the preferred CRM program to its network” of franchises.

 

Part of the U.K.’s Pindar Group, AlphaGraphics operates a franchise network for printing, document management and visual and marketing communications products. The firm wanted a front-office product to improve customer management and communications throughout its extended enterprise, including employees, customers and franchisees.

 

ConcourseSuite 5.0 has multiple deployment options with the same software application. For example, the ConcourseSuite 5.0 used by corporate staff at AlphaGraphics’ corporate headquarters in Salt Lake City hosts a private, multi-tenant on-demand system for use by its network of franchisees. This lets AlphaGraphics franchisees collaborate, manage projects and share information with corporate headquarters and each other.

 

“A single instance of ConcourseSuite 5.0 gives each franchise operation its own dedicated CRM, sales and Web content management system,” the Concursivians say. System capabilities include managing leads and marketing activities and tracking customer service queries, a Web content management system that allows franchisees to create customer-facing Web portals and e-commerce sites and team collaboration tools with shared workspaces, project management, discussion forums, and more.

 

ConcourseSuite 5.0 was launched to coincide with Concursive’s corporate name change and providing front-office products beyond “simple CRM,” officials say.

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StayinFront Group (Australia) officials say the company has been awarded the contract to develop a new CRM product for Sandoz, which picked “several StayinFront products” including StayinFront CRM, Analytics, Marketing Center and Knowledge Management. Sandoz, a Novartis company, markets off-patent medicines, as well as pharmaceutical and biotechnological active ingredients.

 

The Sandozites say they wanted a product configured to fit the company’s existing needs while being flexible enough to change over time. The product will be integrated to Sandoz Pty Ltd’s SAP ERP systems, they note.

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Infusion Software, a vendor of CRM software aimed at small businesses, says author of Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch, will keynote the Infusion Software 2008 User Conference March 5-7, 2008 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

 

Jantsch runs Duct Tape Marketing, a daily blog with tips for small business marketing.

 

Jantsch will cover such topics as “How to create the best possible marketing strategy on a small business budget” and “How to use new social media tools to enhance your company’s image and bottom line’ “Jantsch will also share best practices on CRM in his own business.

 

Infusion User Conference 2008 is the annual gathering of the Infusion Software community. “We’ve been hosting this event for three years,” said Kelly Roy, Vice President of Customer Loyalty, Infusion Software. “It’s the place to exchange ideas and get feedback from customers.”

 

Infusion CRM is a Software-as-a-Service product automating small businesses’ marketing, sales, and customer management, with modules including e-commerce, lead capture, e-mail marketing, marketing automation and others.

 

Pat Sullivan, godfather of contact management and former CEO and founder of ACT!, will be a featured speaker at the conference. He will discuss what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Also speaking will be Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth and founder of The Dreaming Room.

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Apatar, a vendor of open source software tools for the data integration market, has announced a technology and marketing alliance with EnterpriseDB, the Oracle-compatible database company. Apatar will support EnterpriseDB’s Postgres-based database products as both sources and targets of data integration initiatives.

 

Apatar sells open source tools for non-technical staff and customers to access application data. The products let users link information in EnterpriseDB databases with CRM products from Salesforce.com and SugarCRM, as well as information in other databases, such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle and Excel spreadsheets.

 

According to Gartner, corporate developers spend approximately 65 percent of their effort building bridges between applications. With Apatar’s visual toolset, the Apatarians maintain, “EnterpriseDB users can perform even a complex data integration job without having to write a single line of a code.”

 

Apatar will provide support, training, and consulting services to assist EnterpriseDB customers in achieving their data integration objectives. Apatar provides support, training, and consulting services for its integration products. Headquartered in Western Massachusetts, the firm operates a development center in Minsk, Belarus.

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Happy birthday to YouTube, whose domain name was registered February 15, 2005.

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Officials from Autonomy Zantaz, a vendor of archiving, eDiscovery and Proactive Information Risk Management products, say the company was named “leader” in the February 2008 Forrester Wave: Message Archiving Hosted Services, Q1 2008 report.

 

“In Forrester’s 71-criteria evaluation of message archiving hosted services vendors, [Forrester] found that Autonomy Zantaz leads the pack with strong search functionality and vision for its services,” the Zantazians say.

 

In this evaluation, Forrester reviewed the offering, strategy, and market presence of message archiving hosted service vendors, which included the Autonomy Zantaz Digital Safe offering. Autonomy Zantaz was the only leader named in this report.

 

Message archiving hosted services provide massive storage capacity and scalability, along with the management and maintenance, for huge volumes of information and records that organizations are required to archive by regulations.

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is John Coltrane’s Giant Steps album:

 

The North American contact center applications markets are poised for “significant growth” in the next few years, and growth rates are “expected to peak between 2008 and 2010,” notes Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Kunal Kakodkar in a recent report.

 

“Growth in contact center applications will primarily be driven by two factors: an increasing trend amongst customers to move to IP-based technology and the replacement sales of systems sold around Y2K,” the report notes.

 

As expected, the tier one contact center products vendors lead the aggregated market share. Frost & Sullivan found that Avaya’s “dominant presence” in the ICR market carries forward to the overall numbers and combined with the company’s play in outbound dialing and IVR markets, its revenues exceed the total of its next four closest competitors.

 

At the same time, “significant merger activity has resulted in relatively niche participants grabbing significant shares of the market,” the report says. NICE Systems ’ mid-2006 acquisition of IEX gave it a healthy 4.2 percent overall share — all of it in the agent performance optimization space.

 

Oracle’s acquisitions of Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft strengthened its play in the North American customer relationship management market, giving it a lion’s share of the MM systems.

 

However, as the large enterprise segment begins to saturate, there may be a marked stagnation in growth, the report cautions: “Taking this into consideration, vendors should adapt their marketing strategy to target the small- to mid-sized business.”

 

There will be “tremendous potential for growth in the small- to mid-enterprise sector,” says Kakodkar. “The industry may experience a slowdown till the still-nascent SMB strategies of the large enterprise vendors come to fruition.”

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The YMCA of Greater New York chose the Oracle E-Business Suite to revamp its information technology systems and benefit from an integrated suite of software applications, Oracle has announced.

 

The not-for-profit human services organization plans to deploy Oracle Human Resources Management System, Oracle Grants Accounting, Oracle Financial Management and Oracle Customer Relationship Management to “better cultivate its workforce of 4,400, create more sophisticated fundraising and grant management initiatives and grow its membership,” YMCA officials said.

 

The YMCA of Greater New York began in 1852 in rented rooms in lower Manhattan. The organization has since grown to be the largest YMCA in the world, serving more than 350,000 New Yorkers each year through 19 full-service branches and 180 program sites throughout the five boroughs of New York City.

 

Previously, the YMCA of Greater New York relied on a patchwork of proprietary and legacy IT systems including financial management software from Lawson, various applications running on IBM, and a 25 year-old human resources and payroll program written in COBOL, which probably should be donated to the Smithsonian.

 

The YMCA of Greater New York determined that it required 33 different modules to effectively support all of its business processes.

 

“When our IT infrastructure started to become a liability, we knew it was time to invest… instead of worrying that our payroll and human resources systems might fail,” said YMCA of Greater New York senior director of technology, John Atwater.

 

Oracle Applications will enable the YMCA of Greater New York to replace its manual, labor-intensive HR processes, and roll out a new talent management initiative to more effectively attract and retain employees. Oracle iRecruitment will be used to manage “every phase of finding, recruiting, hiring and tracking candidates via a self-service interface,” YMCA of Greater New York officials say.

 

“When 63 percent of our overall operating expenses is connected to payroll and benefits, we need a mature system that is reliable and rich in functionality,” Atwater noted.

 

Each year, the YMCA of Greater New York secures approximately 25 million dollars in state and federal grants for an array of offerings ranging from after school programs to transitional housing to substance abuse counseling, requiring substantial reporting efforts back to Grantors.

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QuickArrow, a vendor of SaaS Services Automation, has announced the selection of Akamai Technologies, a content and applications vendor, to deliver an application “experience” to their end users, resulting in “increased productivity.”

 

“Corporate users of software-as-a-service products expect rapid response times from these on-demand applications, no matter where they are located,” according to Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies and the founder of the SaaS Showplace.

 

As a Professional Services Automation vendor, QuickArrow sells its accelerated product to clients paying for the same performance domestic users have. Using the Akamai platform to deliver its on-demand PSA product, QuickArrow has improved the level of performance for its end users, Quick Arrovians say, “decreasing transaction times by 4X in Asia and Europe, and 3X in the Americas.”

 

Akamai’s Web Application Accelerator service uses Akamai’s globally-deployed platform, comprising approximately 30,000 servers in 70 countries, and a number of techniques including dynamic mapping, route optimization and connection optimization technology.

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Cabela’s, a retailer of hunting, fishing, camping and related outdoor merchandise, has announced the adoption of RightNow Technologies on demand customer relationship management for customer service.

 

Using RightNow products, Cabela’s is able to chat with customers online, “particularly useful in assisting customers during their online shopping experience,” and as a result, the company has reduced the number of abandoned shopping carts, according to the Cabelians.

 

The RightNow chat feature also lets customer service staff handle several chats at once.

 

Cabela’s has also built and continuously refines a searchable online knowledge foundation on the company’s Web site. The RightNow product routes Cabela’s incoming customer e-mails to the most appropriate staff member, based on the customer’s needs.

 

Company officials say with the RightNow system, the company can reply to most customer e-mails within 2.5 hours, and the volume of phone calls to Cabela’s contact center has dropped.

 

Customers who prefer a bricks-and-mortar experience can use Cabela’s site to find company store locations and hours of operation without contacting the company.

 

BusinessWeek magazine ranked Cabela’s among its “Top 25 Customer Service Elite,” Fast Company named Cabela’s one of its 15 “Leading Listeners,” and Cisco ranked Cabela’s as the number one online retailer in customer experience in a benchmarking study.

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Industry journal Precision Marketing is reporting that Experian has hired away Dunnhumby’s Gareth Mitchell-Jones to take on the position of director of analytics in its integrated marketing division.

 

Mitchell-Jones previously held the role of UK customer engagement operations director at Dunnhumby. He has also held senior customer relationship marketing positions at HBOS and CitiGroup.

 

In his new role at Experian, Mitchell-Jones will head up a team focusing on innovations in analytics and data insight. He will report directly to Tony Mooney, consulting and propositions director for the integrated marketing division.

 

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a song I haven't been able to get out of my head for a week or so, the Grateful Dead's "Brown-Eyed Women" from their Europe '72 album:

 

Advanced Solutions International, a vendor of Web-based software for associations and non-profits, has released a set of best practices for using online tools — particularly peer-to-peer fundraising applications — to "increase donor participation, reach new donors, and reduce campaign launch time overhead," according to company officials.

 

Peer-to-peer fundraising technology lets an organization create and launch event Web sites for participants to register, donate and build their own networks. Donors can create personalized campaign Web pages in minutes, with no technical skill required, while the overall campaign look and feel is maintained. Integrated e-mail, donation capture, tax receipt generation and real-time leader board technology lets donors communicate to measure their efforts, and expand their own networks in support of a nonprofit's cause.

 

First among these best practices is to "integrate peer-to-peer fundraising into your current fundraising strategies." Inventory your current communications tactics such as e-mail, physical mailers and Web sites, and examine the messaging. Through peer-to-peer campaigns, you maintain the core messaging but enable your donors to personalize the message for their own networking and recruitment efforts.

 

Secondly, "introduce online events to the list of ways a donor can help." A-thon-based events can be launched and managed online far quicker, with less overhead cost, than multi-location physical events.

 

And thirdly, "identify campaign 'champions' and give them the tools to expand the donor network." Take the time to find your top supporters, reach out to them first and show them how to use peer-to-peer tools.

 

They also recommend that you "create friendly competition and build individual and team incentives into your campaigns." Create accurate, real-time responsive leader boards that allow campaign champions to see how their fundraising efforts stack up against fellow champions.

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Customer Effective, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and reseller of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, has announced that Jamestown, which works with closed-end U.S. real estate funds in Germany, has selected the company to provide CRM software implementation and customization services.

 

Jamestown will use Microsoft Dynamics CRM technology for contact management, but has also configured it as a tool for managing its acquisitions pipeline.

 

Beginning in 2007, Customer Effective officials say, Jamestown's Atlanta office reassessed its technology infrastructure for contact and document management systems and evaluated a CRM product integrated with Microsoft Outlook and Sharepoint.

 

"With no effective contact management system and thousands of property-related documents stored in a shared-folder structure, we knew the IT strategy had to stay ahead of the changing business model," said Chuck Niswonger, IT director, Jamestown.

 

"The acquisitions pipeline report is a tool we use for managing deal flow and interacting with various audiences within our organization," said Clay Adams, Jamestown's Chief Investment Officer.

 

Matt Bronfman, one of three managing directors (and project sponsor), said Microsoft CRM, integrated with Sharepoint and SQL 2005, will "form the foundation of our business intelligence system."

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Advent Software, which sells software and products for the global investment management industry, has announced that Patten and Patten, Inc., an independent investment advisory firm in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has implemented Advent Portfolio Exchange, Advent's portfolio management product.

 

Patten wanted a product that had customer relationship management capabilities, and decided to integrate all of its portfolio management, accounting and reporting into APX. With APX, the firm's CRM system, portfolio management and reporting functions all operate on the same SQL database platform and share the same data.

 

Clay Crumbliss, Vice President of Operations and Finance and Chief Compliance Officer, Patten and Patten, said APX is expected to "improve efficiency in virtually every aspect of the investment process — without adding staff."

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CRM vendor Maximizer Software has announced the adoption of Maximizer CRM 10. "In its first month of general availability, November 2007," company officials say, "over 690 leading organizations purchased or upgraded a total of over 12,500 seats of Maximizer CRM 10."

 

Market demand from existing and new customers was largely based on the introduction of enterprise-level features such as mobile CRM access, increased business intelligence, and on-demand sales and professional coaching, the Maximizerians say.

 

Company officials say they developed Maximizer CRM 10 to "reflect the growing sophistication of SMBs competing globally and with large enterprises." The MaxMobile for BlackBerry offers increased mobility and provides BlackBerry smart phone users access to their information on their handset, through wired or wireless synchronization. When BlackBerry's working, that is.

 

Maximizer CRM 10 also improved its reporting, including more than 175 out-of-the-box reports, improved dashboards, Vista Gadget desktop dashboards, and a partnership with 90 Degree Software.

 

Maximizer CRM 10 also includes sales and professional coaching from CanDoGo, allowing users to access advice via the Web on business or professional topics such as sales negotiation, proposals, leadership and motivation.

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Officials from both firms say Oracle and Accenture have integrated Oracle Fusion Middleware into Accenture Communications Solutions, a suite of business offerings and assets designed to "mitigate the risk of deploying, and reduce the time to deploy, OSS and BSS software applications."

 

Oracle Fusion Middleware is a portfolio of software dealing with portals and process managers to application infrastructure and business intelligence. The newly integrated capabilities are intended to let communications service providers launch new services and reduce the inherent risks -- such as exceeding project budget or project time limits — associated with new software implementations.

 

Accenture has worked with Oracle's suite of software products for the communications industry for sixteen years, including Oracle's Siebel CRM and other offerings.

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Industry observer Lilia Guan has reported that network security vendor WatchGuard has chosen eXeed as its value added distributor in New Zealand. Auckland-headquartered eXeed is an IT distributor focused on the HP brand.

 

Scott Robertson, regional director A/NZ, WatchGuard, told Guan that eXeed has around 1,000 resellers in its value added distributor network and provides ongoing training, pre-sales tech support, co-marketing and joint sales efforts.

 

"We see the WatchGuard security products complementing their HP storage, server and blade business allowing their channel partners to deliver more secure products and adding value to their business," he said.

 

According to Robertson, the vendor has Distribution Central and WhiteGold Solutions as distributors in Australia. In New Zealand, distributors include eXeed and Packet Engines.

 

Robertson told Guan that in 2008 the vendor introduced an Associate Level to its WSPP program, saying the move would provide easier access for WatchGuard resellers to many of the benefits gained from the program, including access to the Customer Renewal Tool, described as an online CRM for partners to manage customer activations.