March 2008 Archives

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is R.E.M.’s best album, 1986’s Life’s Rich Pageant. Saw a good piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning about them, how the band’s trying to reverse its Chinese water-torture death with a new album, Accelerate, to be released on April Fool’s Day.

 

Get this progression: Their 1991 album Out of Time sold 4.5 million copies in America. 1992’s Automatic for the People sold 3.5 million. Great. One of the world’s top bands.

 

1994’s Monster moved a respectable 2.9 million units, then the bottom fell out. 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi sold 996,000; 1998’s bitter joke of a title Up sold 645,000; 2001’s Reveal moved 416,000 copies and not even the band’s family members bought 2004’s Around the Sun, which totaled a pathetic 234,000 in sales, less than one-twentieth of Out of Time. Such a stately, consistent decline in sales is truly remarkable

 

That’s some accomplishment, to chase off 19 out of every 20 fans. There’s a grisly CRM case study in there somewhere.

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Intelestream, a vendor of SugarCRM Professional Services, has announced the company has developed Goals and Metrics for SugarCRM, what Intelestream officials describe as “a revolutionary tool that greatly enhances sales management.”

 

The tool, which is available as an add-on module to all editions of SugarCRM, allows sales managers and team members to set goals and track progress together in real time.

 

Features include a module located on the user homepage to display goals and progress related to the number of calls made, quotes, lead conversions, opportunities won, and instance-specific custom data. Sales representatives are constantly reminded of their progress by a thermometer that measures where they stand in reaching their goals

 

There’s also an administrator tool to allow managers to set goals for teams and users.

 

Intelestream Sales Director Ray Stoeckicht said, “Teams need goals to win. It’s true in sports, it’s true in business. In sports, you can always look up at the scoreboard to see how you’re doing; we decided there should be a scoreboard in business too.”

 

The tool is available for immediate purchase directly through Intelestream.

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Sage Software has announced that Scottsdale, Arizona-based Capital Processing Network, a vendor of electronic payment processing products and services, has selected the Sage SalesLogix CRM suite.

 

Sage officials say CPN will use the product to manage its sales, customer service, and technical support departments. Customer Systems, a local Sage CRM Solutions business partner, implemented the product.

 

Capital Processing began operations in November 2006 and generated $4 million in revenue during 2007.

 

“Servicing merchant bank accounts requires us to manage sensitive data,” said Jeff Stephan, President of Capital Processing Network. “The smallest of errors could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.”

 

Capital Processing’s Sage SalesLogix system automates all aspects of client contact and account maintenance, including monitoring of clients’ point-of-sale systems. It’s also used to keep track of sales opportunities and client interactions, process data search queries, manage the customer service department’s client maintenance records and return material authorization tickets.

 

Company employees can restrict user access to specified data fields within Sage SalesLogix to maintain confidentiality of sensitive data. Employees can also view one another’s calendars.

 

Sage SalesLogix is a full-featured, multi-client CRM product with sales force automation, customer service and support, and marketing capabilities, as well as interactive dashboard and reporting functionality.

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CRM for nonprofits vendor Kintera has announced that Marla Davidson, chief information officer and executive vice president of strategy management for the Arthritis Foundation, will be the keynote speaker at Kintera’s annual user conference scheduled for April 30 - May 1 in Washington, D.C.

 

Davidson will address attendees comprising of Kintera clients and partners. As CIO for the national office of the Arthritis Foundation, she’s responsible for the deployment of system-wide hardware, data networking, personal productivity and office automation systems, the financial system and the Constituent Relationship Management system to the national office, nearly 50 chapter offices, and numerous branch locations.

 

Kintera’s User Conference 2008 provides a forum for the company’s clients to learn the latest in Kintera technology, upcoming product releases, and industry best practices. The conference includes specially focused tracks on CRM/donor management, engagement, and accounting and offers sessions featuring clients, partners, case studies, and best practices.

 

This year’s conference theme is “Raising the Bar.”

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China-based CRM and gambling technology — and First Coffee isn’t saying those two are synonymous, mind you — vendor PacificNet has announced that three holders of PacificNet’s Convertible Subordinated Debentures filed an involuntary petition for Chapter 11 relief in federal bankruptcy court late Saturday, March 22nd in Wilmington, Delaware.

 

“The company has retained counsel to oppose the filing because the petition fails to meet the standard for invoking an involuntary bankruptcy and fails to take into consideration other binding agreements between the company and the petitioning creditors that control

the relationships between them,” PacificNet officials said in a prepared statement. “The company intends to vigorously oppose the petition and move for dismissal of the filing, and, if successful, will seek damages and attorneys fees.”

 

The vendor “intends to take all appropriate actions and remedies regarding the involuntary petition,” said CEO Tony Tong. “We are working very hard with the advice of counsel to resolve this issue as soon as possible. We regret the action taken by these bondholders, however, we must be sure that any settlement reached is fair to all parties involved, including our shareholders. In the meantime, we will continue to operate as

usual with no changes to our day-to-day operations.”

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Computer Generated Solutions has announced Ariela-Alpha International has selected BlueCherry Enterprise Suite by CGS, described by CGS officials as an “enterprise application designed for the apparel industry,” to “continue the process of fully automating their global operations.”

 

Ariela-Alpha International, a privately-held global manufacturer of branded and private label intimate apparel, required improved visibility to critical data across its supply chain in order to “streamline efficiencies across planning, design, merchandising, sales, manufacturing, distribution and production,” company officials said.

 

“We evaluated a number of competitive offerings in the marketplace and chose BlueCherry Enterprise Suite,” said Barry Graff, Vice President, Global Supply Chain & Technology. “With our continued growth and expansion, the ability to manage real-time information will allow us to increase value to our business partners.”

 

By allowing clients to control their business in a management-by-exception manner, BlueCherry presents itself as a flexible product “optimized for leading fashion, apparel, accessory, and footwear brands to meet globalization requirements and sourcing demands,” company officials say.

 

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Primal Scream's Give Out But Don't Give Up:

New Zealand industry journal The National Business Review has a good article on the 25th anniversary of Kiwi IT firm OneNet, titled "Memoirs of an IT Survivor."

As managing director Michael Snowden tells journalist Stephen Ballantyne, "We've progressed through three companies. First there was Financial Systems, which was a systems integrator and started selling IBM PCs when they launched. Then in the 1990s we got Great Elk going."

Great Elk became "perhaps the most famous success of Financial Systems/OneNet," Ballantyne writes, "a remarkably ambitious CRM product. Indeed it proved so attractive to large US-based companies that eventually one of them bought the Elk, renamed it StayinFront CRM, and moved its administrative and sales operations to New Jersey with only a sales and development centre in Ponsonby remaining as a souvenir."

First Coffee would much rather be in Ponsonby than New Jersey, but to each his own. OneNet is still going strong as a company of "about 20 people working from a couple of converted suburban houses behind a white picket fence in the Auckland suburb of Herne Bay," Ballantyne says.

"We developed [Great Elk-StayinFront] as a multi-national product from the start—we had a Mandarin version in 1996, we had a Japanese version distributed by Canon—but at the same time we were developing the concept of software as a service," Snowden tells Ballantyne. "This turned out to be a prescient notion—the 1999 release of a version of the Great Elk CRM product as a Web service charged for on a monthly per user basis was well ahead of the curve in the low bandwidth environment of the late 20th century and may have been the final inducement necessary to attract StayinFront to move."

Snowden and his wife, who also served as his business partner, then took some time off, and Snowden looked to re-enter the IT market a few years ago. "It appeared to me the applications service provider market had not gone anywhere," he tells Ballantyne. "At the time the technology wasn't that good, and the dot-com bubble was just bursting. It appeared to me that ASPs were offering portfolios of products, such as accounting and CRM, but they weren't necessarily going to fit a business well enough to be attractive."

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ReachForce, a vendor of OnDemand software and data services for targeted lead generation, has announced the general availability of ReachForce Convert, the company's second Software-as-a Service (SaaS) product.

The product analyzes Web visitor behavior and market segment patterns using predictive analytics to let B2B marketers target companies based on Web site visit data.

ReachForce Convert is used to define patterns of interest and identify market segment opportunities. "By applying custom business rules to score Web visitors based on their activity, marketers are able to determine if a Web visitor is ready for sales follow up or if the lead needs additional marketing to become sales ready," company officials say.

"So many marketing dollars are being spent on SEM, SEO, and PPC in effort to drive more Web traffic, yet these initiatives are delivering a less than three percent conversion rate, which means over 97 percent of online marketing dollars are essentially unaccountable from a revenue perspective," said Suaad Sait, ReachForce CEO.

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Zilliant announced that it has received a "Positive" rating in Gartner's "MarketScope for Price Optimization and Management, 2008." Gartner evaluated the price optimization and management vendors in a number of areas, including overall viability, customer experience, products and services, and offering strategy.

The company's Precision Pricing Suite comprises seven applications built on what company officials call "pricing science, business intelligence tools, and flexible process automation capabilities."

Gartner's MarketScope notes that "the market for price optimization and management software is rapidly gaining visibility and growing by more than 30 percent per year, as enterprises increasingly look to capitalize on the business value such applications offer in improving margins, revenue and efficiencies with pricing processes."

The report went on to say that "through 2010, price optimization technology will have a more-direct impact on increasing revenue or margins than any other CRM technology."

"Pricing may be the last bastion of guesswork in B2B companies," said Greg Peters, Zilliant CEO.

A copy of the Gartner MarketScope report can be requested on Zilliant's Web site - www.zilliant.com.

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CRM veteran Michael Thomas has joined Neighborhood America as Director of CRM. He'll spearhead the integration of Neighborhood America's ELAvate platform with CRM products to "enable customers and partners to use enterprise social networks through existing CRM applications," according to Neighborhood officials.

"We are pleased to have Thomas on board," said Dan Miller, Neighborhood America's Executive Vice President of Sales and Business Development. "He is a nationally recognized expert within the enterprise software industry and is highly capable of leading our efforts to position Neighborhood America products as an extension of CRM systems, setting the standard as CRM evolves to include social applications."

As the national president and board member of the Customer Relationship Management Association, Thomas brings a wealth of industry knowledge to Neighborhood America.

"Enterprise social networking and mobile messaging are key components in the Web 2.0 age of CRM," said Thomas. "Web 2.0 tools have shifted the power to customers and prospects. Social networking represents an industry-changing phase of the CRM industry and companies are focusing on changing the nature of customer relationships -- from purely structured transactions to the consumer expectation of dialogue and conversation."

"We believe that there is an enormous opportunity to drive revenue growth by enabling the installed base of CRM software to manage more data in a way that drives deeper customer relationships and customer understanding," said Kim Patrick Kobza, Neighborhood America's President and CEO.

In 2004, CRM Magazine recognized Thomas as one of the CRM industry's most influential leaders. He joins Neighborhood America's regional team in Atlanta.

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Dealer Specialties, a division of Dominion Enterprises, has announced an upgrade for Inventory Manager, the company's flagship inventory management product.

Inventory Manager v2.5's capabilities now include "an enhanced user interface and more vehicle marketing features that give dealers better inventory control and increased online marketing flexibility," according to company officials.

"These improvements focus on several areas of pre-owned inventory marketing that we know are important to dealerships, such as application ease-of-use and the ability to uniquely market each vehicle in the dealer's used car inventory," said Al Hess, general manager of sales and operations for Dealer Specialties.

Inventory Manager is an Internet-based product that provides dealers with tools to manage, market and distribute their vehicle inventory online. The new version includes an Improved Price Comparison Module that lets dealers compare vehicles within their market area to determine price competitiveness.

There's also a vehicle history log, described by company officials as a "historical snapshot of data changes, including updated mileage and weekend pricing, at the vehicle level, providing a quick view of all data touch points."

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 Mary Lee's Corvette pulling off a rather audacious stunt: re-recording Bob Dylan's entire Blood On the Tracks album in front of a live audience. "Tangled Up In Blue" is ragged, the rest is okay, and it's interesting to hear these songs sung by a woman:

CRM vendor Dovarri has announced that Microsoft's principal Windows SharePoint Services expert, Errin O'Connor, has endorsed Dovarri's CRM software. O'Connor, Founder and CEO of EPC Group, literally wrote the SharePoint manual for Microsoft (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Inside Out, Errin O'Connor, Microsoft Press 2008).

O'Connor sells custom products built on SharePoint. He has executed more than 60 deployments, including a number of Fortune 500 companies. His company partners with Dovarri, with O'Connor assisting in the rollout of SharePoint-based Orizon, Dovarri's CRM software.

"SharePoint is the most powerful platform available, and Dovarri is the first company to take full advantage of all of its capabilities," said O'Connor. "We are frequently asked by our clients to recommend a good CRM, and until now, we haven't had an answer. Now we do—it's Dovarri Orizon."

"We chose SharePoint for the same reasons these Fortune 500 companies are choosing it—it delivers flexibility and power," added Geary Broadnax, Dovarri President and CEO.

EPC Group consults with companies for document management and staff collaboration. The firm designs, implements and manages SharePoint products for organizations. EPC Group has implemented some of the world's largest SharePoint deployments. Several long-term clients include Microsoft, Dell, HP, ExxonMobil and Boeing.

Dovarri sells Customer Relations Management and SFA.

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But then I thought, why listen to a copy when I can listen to the real thing? We now have Zimmy's version of Blood On the Tracks on and all's well with the world.

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TBL Capital has invested $2 million in Mission Research, Inc, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to fund the software company's expansion into the Small Office/Home Office retail software market with SalesWorks, and continue its work in the nonprofit sector with GiftWorks Fundraising Software.

GiftWorks is fundraising software for nonprofits. Vendor officials say it's marketed for its "affordability and unique, elegant user interface, donor segmenting, easy mail merge and inherent social networking capability."

Mission Research officials say they "serve most nonprofits with software for $399, while companies like Blackbaud target large enterprises for an average cost of $40,000."

Charlie Crystle, co-founder & CEO of Mission Research, said TBL "shares our values of social responsibility, and shares our goal of enabling small nonprofits and businesses to do more through software."

SalesWorks Standard 2.0 launches in late April into the online retail channel, and will be priced at $99. The company's Hybrid Web platform ships as part GiftWorks and SalesWorks. "Our built-in social networking in GiftWorks integrates well with the Facebook platform in prototype tests," said Crystle.

TBL (Triple Bottom Line) Capital officials say they invest in socially responsible companies that have social impact as well as profitability. Joe Marshall, Principal at TBL, said Mission's co-founders donated 20 percent of founding stock to a foundation.

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"Targeting, attracting, and retaining new customers" will remain a top priority for chief information officers in 2008, according to a worldwide survey of 1,500 CIOs by Gartner Executive Programs.

The research firm also outlines seven types of initiatives that can help organizations "focus on specific efforts that, in aggregate, will boost customer loyalty and satisfaction."

"No one project will, by itself, improve the overall experience, but the combination of these seven types of projects, if implemented well, will contribute to the development and perpetual improvement of the organization's customer experiences," said Ed Thompson, research vice president at Gartner.

Focus your efforts on projects that are doable and critical, Gartner advises, while keeping the broader business objective as a future project. It lists the seven fundamental initiatives for improving customer experience:

1. Act on feedback, deploy changes and communicate actions to employees and customers: "Companies that fail to act on these actions in response to customers' feedback are throwing away the chance to increase the number of satisfied and loyal customers," Gartner officials said.

2. Design processes from the outside in. Most process redesign is done with the objective of improving operational efficiencies rather than to improve the customer experience -- the classic inside-out approach. Rather, identify which processes matter most to customers, then set about identifying what to improve for an outside-in approach.

3. Act as one organization to ensure consistency. The customer may interact with many parties as part of his business with a company. The challenge for the company is to ensure that information gleaned at one interaction is not forgotten in the next channel.

4. Be open. Organizations that want to improve the customer experience often become more open, which may just mean opening up more channels or opening hours, or letting customers support, promote or refer their products through an online community.

5. Personalize products and experiences. Customization creates complexity and costs for the company, so beware of just evaluating the costs of personalization against the sales benefits and factor in the longer-term value of improving the customer experience.

6. Alter attitudes and employee behavior. "Employees' actions are often the most powerful improvements in a customer's experience," study officials say. So either recruit the right types of employees, ensure standards such as policies, procedures and governance structures and create training programs and incentives to modify employee behavior.

7. Design the complete customer experience. In many organizations the customer experience is unplanned and accidental in its execution.

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Firepond has announced that Kelvin Hughes, a designer and manufacturer of marine navigation systems, has chosen Firepond CPQ OnDemand for "streamlining its quoting, pricing and proposal approval processes."

Hughes will use Firepond's multi-tenant application with single sign on through salesforce.com's SFA application. Like Salesforce.com, Firepond's multi-tenant application offers multiple new releases per year. End-user companies simply log on to access these new enhancements through an Internet browser.

Hughes is based in Essex in the United Kingdom with offices throughout the world. With a range of marine navigation equipment and service offerings, the firm wanted a product that would integrate into Salesforce.com and allow access to users around the world.

Firepond CPQ OnDemand allows for product and pricing rules to be centrally administered supports multiple currencies. Using Firepond's Product Data Manager, Kelvin Hughes' business analysts want to be able to make changes to their product and pricing data while "accelerating the distribution to a worldwide sales force.”

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CIBER Enterprise Solutions, a division of CIBER, Inc., has won a $3.6 million contract to implement Oracle's PeopleSoft enterprise resource planning information technology system for Azusa Pacific University. The new system replaces the university's existing legacy system, which will no longer be supported by its manufacturer as of 2010.

This two-year project equips APU with an IT system, while offering the university technology that "addresses the growth and the technical demands of its faculty, staff, and students today and in the future," according to CIBER officials.

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 Frank Sinatra's Come Swing With Me, a rather underappreciated album from 1961. It was his last swing record for Capitol Records, and the last really good swing album he recorded. Not as well-regarded today as Sinatra's Swinging Session!!! or A Swingin' Affair, and to be frank -- sorry -- it's probably not in that league. But its highlights -- "American Beauty Rose," "The Sunny Side Of the Street," "That Old Black Magic," stand with his best:

Autologica, a vendor of business management software for automotive dealers and distributors, has announced its arrival in the Dominican Republic as part of what company officials say is "a strategic plan for the Caribbean region."

Company officials say Autologica's objective goal is "to help dealers in the region" through their mix of software and specialized training.

"We want to be the DMS of choice for medium-sized dealerships, a segment that has trouble accessing a quality system due to the high costs that currently prevail in the market," said Ana Drovandi, Autologica's Sales Manager.

Autologica currently provides its dealer management system globally to Toyota, Renault-Nissan, Ford, GM, BMW, John Deere, Mitsubishi, and Isuzu dealerships, among others.

The company offers a version of its DMS specifically adapted to regional needs: it manages imported vehicle inventory; handles duties, tariffs, and other importation expenses; manages multi-location inventory; among other functions.

"We already have several clients in the region and this office will help us serve them better, and also new dealers from throughout the Caribbean and Central America that we'll be adding," said Drovandi.

Autologica DMS is a Windows-based software product that manages the entire dealership, and includes integrated CRM, multi-store management, real-time accounting, among other features.

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DealerAdvance, a vendor of business technology products to the automotive industry, has entered into a software bundling and re-sale relationship with ADI System of Calgary.

ADI System of Calgary sells a mobile inventory management and inspection system, which it claims is currently being used by nearly 70 pre-owned automotive dealers -- best euphemism for "used car salesmen" First Coffee's ever heard -- in North America.

The agreement allows ADI and DealerAdvance to integrate the two software programs as one single software package, which allows used car dealers to manage their inventory and their customer relationships in one platform.

Clint Stevens, business development manager of ADI, said he's "excited about working with DLAV. This new relationship opens up the doors to the more than 1,500 pre-owned dealers in Canada that have never been able to afford both a vehicle relationship management application and a customer relationship management (CRM) system."

Dave Wange, CEO of DLAV, said the addition of the existing ADI clients to the WebDA software "could represent nearly $3 million a year in additional revenue for DLAV. We could easily generate over $6 million in revenue."

According to the company, WebDA is the newest iteration of DLAV's hand-held CRM application.

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NexTec Group has announced the release of a Royalty/Rebate Tracking Module for Sage MAS 500 ERP. NexTec Group, a Sage Software Business Partner and Developer, specializes in business management products to small and mid-sized enterprises.

The Royalty/Rebate Tracking Module lets users automate royalties, rebates, field development, slotting fees, customer refunds, or any other paid fee based on Sage MAS 500 orders. The idea is to create an automated payable transaction to the vendor.

Sage MAS 500 customers can set up relationships between items, vendors, and customers from one maintenance screen. Royalty/Rebate Tracking Module eliminates the need for 'offline' spreadsheets to calculate what is owed to vendors and saves significant time at period end.

Andy Nunez, general manager of NexTec Group, said the new module "allows Sage MAS 500 customers to track and pay royalties, rebates, slotting fees, and any other commissions that are tracked and paid over time." He added that the module will also be bundled into Escape Velocity's O2 Process Manufacturing Suite for Sage MAS 500."

NexTec Group sells ERP, CRM and other products to small, mid-market and mid-enterprise companies.

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Auto/Mate Dealership Systems, which sells dealer management software products, has announced that Carfax Vehicle History Reports have been integrated into the company's Automotive Management Productivity Suite.

Dealer customers can now view and obtain Carfax Reports right from AMPS, a comprehensive dealer management system. The integration gives dealers "faster, more convenient access to used vehicle history information from Carfax," according to Auto/Mate officials.

Mike Esposito, CEO of Auto/Mate, said the deal meant that AMPS dealer clients can retrieve Carfax reports from their DMS console "with only a few keystrokes." Dealers can generate a Carfax report using AMPS' Customer/Mate CRM module by clicking on the Carfax logo located on the vehicle inquiry screen. The report can then be viewed, printed from the screen, or e-mailed.

Carfax Vehicle History Reports can also be generated from AMPS' trade-in entry screen to help determine the vehicles trade-in value. The reports provide information to buyers and sellers of used cars, including ownership history, mileage and vehicle damage.

AMPS is currently installed at more than 400 dealerships nationwide. The system has more than 20 modules, including Sales, F&I, Fixed Operations, Accounting and CRM. It was designed by former auto dealer executives.

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LongJump, a platform for on-demand business applications, has announced a new Workflow-as-a Service component, called LongJump Workflow Designer, described by company officials as "a visual environment to design and deploy business workflows."

Generally with workflow automation, organizing and sequencing how work gets done improves communication and collaboration between team members, across company departments and between suppliers and partners. Implementing workflows is of value when they model and reflect how a business really operates.

"Until now, there has been a big hole in the market for this type of capability. While there are a lot of workflow products available, they are difficult to use, customize or adapt in order to support new business processes," said Pankaj Malviya, founder and CEO of LongJump. Using Workflow Designer, he added, businesses can "supercharge their LongJump applications to make them far more relevant to the workers who use them."

Built on Adobe Flex, LongJump's product is designed to let "non-technical business users" design workflows, customize processes on-the-fly, assign access rights, and trigger e-mail and task notifications, company officials say, "all with drag-and-drop commands."

With Workflow Designer, users capture their workflow processes using "States" and "Actions" to create steps, assign staff to be a part of any specific step, and connect these steps into the correct sequential routing order. For example, Human Resources may establish a customized workflow process for new job candidates, whereby the workflow process takes the potential candidate's record through multiple hand-offs and stages, including resume review, telephone interview, in-person interview and multiple interviewer sign-offs and approvals.

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 one of First Coffee's favorites, Aimee Mann's Live At St. Ann's Warehouse:

I know we all had Davidson and Villanova on our Sweet Sixteen brackets, but hey, how about Western Kentucky?

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Semantra, a Dallas-based software company, has announced the launch of Semantra 2.0 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The product is described by company officials as "a business intelligence tool designed to make it easy for all types of business users, including non-technical users, to access data from existing databases via common language commands and requests."

Semantra 2.0 was specifically created to extend the value of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, "enabling users to make ad hoc inquiries to retrieve precise results from any Microsoft Dynamics CRM database," the Semantrians say: "With little to no training, Microsoft Dynamics CRM users can turn questions into information via a familiar search box and the terms and concepts of their CRM system."

"With Semantra 2.0, an executive or front-line employee can access their CRM data in terms they commonly use," said Chris Davis, CEO, Semantra. "Until now, the market has been missing an analytics application for ad hoc CRM data inquiries."

"Companies are often frustrated with the inability to access information from their CRM systems. Finally, a BI tool for the masses," said Alan Hopp, general manager, ePartners.

General availability of Semantra 2.0 for Microsoft CRM Dynamics Solution will be in April 2008.  Future releases will follow in 2008 and 2009 to address a variety of ERP and CRM applications, including Dynamics AX.

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ASK Software has launched QoS-IT version 2, according to company officials, introducing the Microsoft Dynamic CRM service module plug-in for Managed Service Providers.

ASK officials explain that QoS-IT is a process-based software product developed to "manage IT services on agreed Service Level Agreement signed between MSP and customer and managed by the Service Level Management process."

SLM is the process of measuring and monitoring service quality, using metrics such as performance, availability and customer satisfaction, relative to customer expectations, and "reporting results and taking action to ensure the quality stays within agreed upon parameters as defined by the SLA," ASK officials say.

"Market researches show that for IT MSPs to manage and support the IT infrastructure of their customers, maintain long term relationships with customers and be profitable and efficient, they must adopt the best practices and guidance set out in well known standards such as ITIL & Microsoft MOF," says Ged Ellis, CEO of ASK.

"As most MSPs are Microsoft Partners, they have an access to Microsoft Dynamics CRM via Action Pack," says Ellis, "for less than $3,000. That includes 10 users license for QoS-IT and 12-month maintenance and support of the application."

Ellis compared the QoS-IT Service Catalog to a restaurant's menu, with a "list of all IT services the organization provides. Clients select from the Service Catalog the right mix of services that suit their needs based on their network infrastructure, response time and the hours and days of the week they wish to be serviced, which is then defined in the SLA Contract and recorded in QoS-IT."

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Following on efforts from the Kuwaiti Government to diversify the country's economy, Sage Software will address government business leaders on the benefits of using technology to develop emerging sectors such as construction, manufacturing, and services.

Sage's Kuwait Solutions Day will see over 80 decision makers and channel partners gather for a vision of how technology developments will affect their industries. European and regional technology experts from Sage will brief Kuwaiti officials on how the company's products can be used, explained Marc Van der Ven, Managing Director, Sage Software, Middle East.

"Despite its size, Kuwait has been able to punch above its weight for some time in terms of developing businesses that have gone on to become multinationals. We want to appeal to this strong entrepreneurial spirit to further empower Kuwaiti firms as they look to spread beyond the country and into the rest of the Middle East," he said.

Joined by its in-country partners Bader Al Mulla & Bros, SECOITS, and Arabesque, the main Sponsor for Sage Solutions Day, Sage will be hosting a number of its present Kuwaiti customers as well as other companies.

Sage sells Human Resource Management, Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management software for medium and large organizations. The company counts over 5 million customers worldwide, and over 1500 customers, 10,000 users and 45 partners in the Middle East.

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Kana Software and IBM have announced that the two companies will "significantly expand" their Global Strategic Alliance agreement to jointly market sell and support Service Oriented Architecture-based customer service products built on open technologies from both companies.

As part of the news, Kana has also signed a new original equipment management agreement designed, in company officials' words, to "capture a larger piece of the growing customer service and support segment of the customer relationship management (CRM) market."

Kana will embed IBM middleware including WebSphere and DB2 in its next-generation enterprise customer service products.

The agreement is designed to let clients resolve customer inquiries "taking advantage of IBMs SOA and Information on Demand capabilities to share data across multiple applications, across all channels, including call center Web e-mail chat kiosk agent and branch," Kana officials say.

Kana and IBM will bring to market a new Service Experience Management product engineered to help drive customer loyalty and retention by "creating service experiences across all channels within the business." This product will be built upon IBM's SOA Foundation and DB2s capabilities, and include Kana's customer service capabilities.

IBM SOA Foundation is an integrated open-standards-based set of software best practices and patterns for SOA.

"Customer service organizations are transitioning from cost centers to loyalty centers charged with the strategic mission of enhancing the value of each customer relationship," said Michael Fields, CEO Kana.

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IFS is announcing what company officials characterize as "major functional enhancements" supporting project-centric industries.

The enhanced product, developed with customers including Aker Yards and First Engineering, supports businesses operating in industries such as construction and contracting, EPCI, project-based manufacturing, as well as asset-oriented companies.

IFS' components for project-centric industries support the complete process from estimating through to decommissioning, covering the whole project and contract lifecycle. The technology focuses on managing projects, contracting and subcontracting, risk management, cost management, resource allocation and payment processes.

"There's a huge demand in the market from companies who are tired of trying to force-fit applications designed with a product focus into project-driven work," said Ian Fleming, Managing Director, IFS, Middle East, Africa and South Asia. "Since the mid-90s we've been developing components for customers in the project-based industries."

"Project professionals remain challenged by business products that force-fit production and manufacturing applications to meet the needs of knowledge-based information workers," wrote Forrester Principal Analyst Ray Wang in the May 2007 report, "Introducing Project-Based Solutions," adding that project-based products "transcend traditional functional boundaries of project management, ERP, CRM, and supply chain management."

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The news as of the first coffee this Good Friday morning, and the music is Willie Nelson’s wonderfully appropriate "There Is A Fountain:"

"In line with the rebranding across Europe of all country organizations," according to company officials, "Qurius has realigned its existing business alliances and has founded the Qurius Global Alliance."

The Quriusians say they're following the strategy of being the leading player in the European market of business products based on Microsoft technology.

The Qurius Global Alliance is open to the Microsoft Dynamics product providers and is covering Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas to support customers with international deployments of Microsoft Dynamics AX, NAV and CRM projects.

Qurius officials say the "differentiator of the alliance" is "the uniformity in contractual agreements and consistency in working practices for our international customers."

Holland-based Qurius N.V. sells systems management of Microsoft technology-based business and IT products, including infrastructures. It was the 2007 global Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the Year.

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Conseco Services, a vendor of supplemental health insurance, life insurance and annuities, has extended its long-term 15-year agreement with Open Solutions for another five years.

Conseco uses Open Solutions' Customer Access Accounts program, a turnkey asset retention product using its traditional banking platform to provide the back-office processing and customer service required to support account holder relationships. Open Solutions sells integrated enabling technologies for financial service providers across the United States, Canada and internationally.

Based in suburban Indianapolis, Conseco has more than $36 billion in assets. Conseco's insurance subsidiaries have more than 4 million customers. Hank Wong, Senior Director of Conseco, cited Open Solutions' expertise in the CAA market as the primary reason for extending the contract.

Open Solutions' Customer Access Accounts reduces the outflow of cash, retains investment income and disburses benefits to account holders. The program "fosters ongoing customer relationships with beneficiaries and claimants and earns investment income on funds that otherwise would have been lost to another financial services firm," Open Solutions officials say.

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The Saudi e-Government Conference and Exhibition concluded at Riyadh Four Season Hotel on 18 March 2008 with "great sponsorship support" organizers said.

The Saudi e-Government Conference and Exhibition addressed the issue of improving CRM through customer-centric mobile services and "tracking the performance of e-government in the Middle East," among others.

Conference organizers say the get-together also addressed examining the latest trends in the global e-Government and its impact on Middle East, synchronizing a seamless next generation public service to increase government's efficiency, exploring difficulties and challenges hindering the application of e- government concept, boosting citizen confidence in online service through intelligent authentication and security and benchmarking e-government practice for greater governance.

As an Internet Service Provider in Saudi Arabia, AwalNet participated in the four-day event as bronze sponsor. Its participation comes in tandem with its strategy to support what AwalNet officials called "all effective events that play an important role in enhancing the local economy."

AwalNet offers connectivity, Internet services and IT products to businesses and households. A privately-owned company, it was established in 1998 and in April 2002 merged with two other ISPs in the Kingdom, Naseej and Al-Alamiah.

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Really Simple Systems, a British hosted CRM vendor, has announced general availability of their white label product, Really Simple OEM. Company officials say it allows marketing, sales organizations and traditional CRM resellers to offer a "hosted CRM system with their own branding."

Really Simple OEM allows resellers to offer a hosted customer relationship management (CRM) system under their own brand, with their own contact and support details, personalized domain and at their own commercial terms.

As well as addressing the technical and legal aspects of reselling hosted CRM, Really Simple Systems has "solved the commercial issues around reselling subscription services by billing the reseller monthly in arrears for usage," company officials say, "leaving the reseller free to set their own end user commercial terms, which are normally a year's subscription in advance."

John Paterson, CEO Really Simple Systems, said the company sees "two distinct marketplaces for Really Simple OEM, both the traditional specialist CRM reseller and the newer market of outsourced IT providers, marketing service companies and sales consultancy companies."

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Parallels has announced that its Parallels Automation data center product now supports Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Parallels Automation provides what company officials call "a complete back-office infrastructure, so service providers can go to market and incorporate CRM into their service offerings."

The product is billed as having "both operational and business support systems" to help service providers use server resources. Using a single login, service providers can deliver integrated offerings that include multiple services such as hosted Microsoft Exchange, hosted Windows SharePoint Services and hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Service providers that already sell hosted Microsoft Exchange can use Parallels Automation to up-sell customers to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

"Parallels Automation for Dynamics CRM allows service providers to offer businesses an alternative to in-house CRM products," claims Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. "This delivers the benefits of the Parallels Open Platform architecture combined with Dynamics CRM to help service providers tap into the hosted CRM opportunity and the broader software-as-a-service market."

“With more and more customers adopting on-demand CRM products, there’s no question this is among the fastest-growing market segments,” said John Zanni, director of Worldwide Hosting at Microsoft.

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EDS has announced it has been selected by the U.S. General Services Administration to provide call center services for all federal government agencies under the newly awarded USA Contact contract. EDS is one of nine companies that may compete for task orders under the $2.5 billion Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract.

USA Contact will provide a vehicle for any federal government agency to purchase a range of automated and manual customer support services to respond to inquiries about federal government programs and policies from the general public, congressional offices, the media and other government offices.

EDS officials say its scope encompasses any type of contact center services from order fulfillment to customer relationship management (CRM) and can be tailored to the individual needs of client agencies.

First Coffee would like a $2.5 billion contract with indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity parameters too.

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The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the hardest swing album Ol' Blue Eyes did, Sinatra's Swingin' Session!!!:

Standard Bank of South Africa has been voted as the overall winner at the CRM Excellence Awards at Gartner's CRM Summit in London.

The Gartner CRM Excellence Awards are "designed to highlight world-class CRM initiatives," according to officials at Graham Technology, the bank's technology vendor.

The Standard Bank Group is the largest South African banking group ranked by assets and earnings. Graham Technology's customer interaction platform, ciboodle, is the technology behind the bank's customer experience initiative.

Rolf EichWeber, director, customer experience at Standard Bank, said the deployment of ciboodle has brought "significant improvements" in such areas as "customer experience, business efficiency, technology optimization and flexibility."

"It's always a rewarding experience when one of our customers is recognized for their achievements in CRM, especially at a major event like the Gartner CRM Summit," said Mike Hughes, Managing Director, Graham Technology. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, Graham Technology has customers in twelve countries.

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Opera, together with Helio, has announced the first deployment of Opera Mini on a mobile service provider in the United States. As of today, Helio members can surf the Web with Opera Mini on their Ocean device with a specially-tailored version of the browser designed specifically for the handset.

Available as a downloadable application from Helio's Web portal, Opera Mini provides what the Operians describe as a "desktop-like experience that lets the user dive into the page to access the content they want."

"We're excited to be the first service provider in the U.S. to make Opera Mini an on-deck option," said Doug Britt, Vice President of Service Management at Helio, calling the fact that Opera Mini is optimized for Ocean and running on a nationwide 3G network "a combination that's tough to match."

Opera officials claim more than 39 million "cumulative users." Opera Software is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices around the world. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol OPERA. Helio is a joint venture between SK Telecom and EarthLink.

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The president of Business IT Professionals, Steve Noe, has announced that the company has partnered with CRM Accelerators to provide what he describes as "end-to-end CRM products on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for their clients."

CRM Accelerators, a Microsoft Certified Partner, will handle infrastructure requirements, customization, deployment strategies, maintenance, and custom development to design their client's CRM product. Once the product is deployed, a consultant from North Carolina-based Biz IT Pro will provide either training for the client or courses from Microsoft's official curriculum.

"With this partnership, we are able to provide the best product to our clients from start to finish," stated Noe.

CRM Accelerators works on implementations of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and with Microsoft Partners who are implementing CRM for themselves or for their customers. They provide Microsoft Dynamics CRM installation, deployment, and custom development services to small to mid-size businesses throughout the US.

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Happy birthday to Fred Rogers, host of “Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood,” which ran on U.S. television for 32 years. An ordained Presbyterian minister, Rogers wrote more than 200 songs for the show.

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To mark the introduction of its first eBook, Infusion Software, which sells CRM software for small businesses, has announced the launch of a contest to find "the most inspired small business."

The contest is based on the eBook authored by Infusion Software's CEO, Clate Mask, The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales.

To enter the contest, entrants must submit either a 60-second video or a blog post reacting to the book. The winner will receive Infusion CRM, Web-based automated marketing and customer relationship management designed for entrepreneurs, free for a year with what Infusion officials say is "a built-in guarantee that within three months Infusion Software will help the winner double their sales."

The eBook is available as a download at http://www.infusionblog.com/the-edge. "We're so confident in our software that we're going to prove that it can double a small business' sales in three months, guaranteed," said Dave Lee, Vice President of Marketing for Infusion Software.

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CRM and Sales Force Automation vendor Dovarri has announced what the Dovarrians are calling "a major expansion" into the European market via a signed agreement to resell its Customer Relations Management (CRM) software through London-based sales training and support provider Winning By Design.

Dovarri focuses on the small and medium-sized business sectors. It differentiates between CRM and SFA by saying "CRM software develops stronger customer relationships by identifying and managing customers' needs, SFA regulates the sales cycle by automating sales tasks, managing customer interactions, and analyzing sales forecasts and performance."

Winning By Design works with intact sales operations to improve sales skills and effectiveness, "using real data about prospects and customers," company officials say. Their programs range from specific skills development to executive management.

"This agreement gives Dovarri a major foothold in the European market," Dovarri President and CEO Geary Broadnax said. "It's gratifying that one of our own clients perceives that the European market is ready for us, and recognizes a tremendous money-making opportunity for us all."

Dovarri 7.0 Orizon is Web-based CRM and SFA software, and according to company officials, "80 percent of the program can be learned within an hour.

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Convio has announced the availability of the Convio Database Connector on Salesforce.com's AppExchange. The Convionis are calling it "the first development in a relationship between Convio and the Salesforce.com Foundation… to meet the needs of the nonprofit market."

The Convio Database Connector for Salesforce.com integrates Salesforce.com with Convio's on-demand constituent relationship management suite, "enabling the synchronization of constituent, donation, and campaign data between Convio and Salesforce.com."

"The Software-as-a-Service model is improving the way nonprofits operate, not only in their ability to connect with constituents but by improving their efficiency and effectiveness in accessing and sharing constituent data," said Gene Austin, CEO, Convio.

Clarence So, Chief Marketing Officer, Salesforce.com, said the company counts more than 3,000 nonprofit customers.

Mobile Loaves and Fishes, an Austin, Texas-based ministry to the homeless and indigent working poor, has implemented the Convio and salesforce.com product as their primary data management system.

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Chelsea Football Club reported ready to appoint SmartFocus to "build a detailed picture of its fan base, spearheading its strategy to turn the club into a major global brand," according to British trade journal Precision Marketing.

"It is believed the company -- which was recently appointed to handle Manchester United's CRM strategy -- will manage Chelsea's pool of databases," PM says, noting that the appointment follows the recent departure of Chelsea's customer management chief, Lucinda Brock.

The role of CMC included responsibility for developing, maintaining and implementing Chelsea FC's group customer relationship management strategy, and providing the strategic and tactical focal point for planning and execution.

Appointed as head of marketing at Chelsea in 2005, Brock replaced Bernadette Fitzsimons in June 2007 after she left.

"Chelsea has also used Unica and EuroDirect," PM notes, adding that "it is unclear how these relationships will be affected. EuroDirect maintains it is still working for the club."

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The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Duke Ellington's Blues In Orbit album:

Clarity Systems, a vendor of corporate performance management (CPM) products, has announced the availability of its latest release, Clarity 6.2.

"Clarity 6.2 makes it easier for our customers to manage their company performance," says Mark Nashman, President and CTO, Clarity Systems. "This latest release improves the modeling tools at their disposal. We've made numerous enhancements across all functional areas of the product."

Some new features in Clarity 6.2 include interactive What-if Modeling -- Users can now perform interactive what-if modeling to examine multiple scenarios. They simply define data targets and any required constraints, and "watch as the new Clarity 6.2 algorithm, within the existing business logic, adjusts the available variables to deliver targets that satisfy all of the constraints," the Claritians say.

Clarity 6.2 supports any number of "drill paths" from a single data point into any number of other data sources including other OLAP data, source ERP data, and data warehouses. This means different users can follow their own desired drill path from any data point.

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Today in 1962 the greatest postwar American songwriter, Bob Dylan, released his debut album -- which contained only two original songs. The entire album cost less than $500 to make, and didn't go gold until 1973.

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AccuWeather.com has announced a partnership with Opera Software to offer a direct link from the Opera Mini start page to AccuWeather.com's mobile Web site.

Opera Mini is available completely free from http://www.operamini.com and downloads over the air to your mobile phone.

Jim Candor, Senior Vice President of New Media for AccuWeather, said the company has had success with the Opera traditional Web audience through its Web site and through an AccuWeather.com widget "that has had over 400,000 downloads."

The Opera Mini browser works on almost every mobile phone today, even ordinary feature phones. Opera officials claim the browser has "more than 35 million cumulative users and is available on phones by Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung."

The Opera Mini home page offers a link directly to AccuWeather.com. The AccuWeather.com mobile Web site offers free, ad-supported content such as radar and satellite images and worldwide local 10-day forecasts and current conditions.

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Ninety-five percent of those surveyed in a recent Harris Interactive study commissioned by Chordiant Software said a "personalized" customer experience is at least somewhat important to them.

Sixty-five percent said it is important, and 27 percent said very important. The study surveyed over 2,000 U.S. adults who regularly interact with high-volume service providers such as credit card companies, mobile providers, insurance carriers or banks.

Personalized is defined as the service provider "knows who I am, my buying history, past problems or complaints, preferences, and billing record." Asked what they would do if they have a negative experience, 62 percent said they would be likely to cancel their service agreement.

In fact the survey revealed 60 percent of these adults have already switched providers as a result of negative experiences. Eighty two percent defined a positive customer experience as "having their needs anticipated or met."

Seventy percent of adults who communicate with any service provider on a regular basis had a negative customer experience with a telecommunications, credit card, and insurance or financial service provider. Of the 28 percent of these adults who have never switched service providers, a full 78 percent said they would switch if they experienced poor customer service.

A recent Forrester Research "Customer Service Best Practice Adoption" report (January 10, 2008) found that consumers are "increasingly expecting their customer service experience to be seamless, and want the option to be able to transition from self-service to live-service in a single session with no loss of context or information."

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The CRM Alliance has announced its ACT! Software Sweepstakes with a prize for one sales organization of a $6,325 ACT! Software database system installed with training.

"Sales managers and their sales teams are being asked to produce more sales results in less time than ever before," said John Kaufman, president of The CRM Alliance. "We created a fun way to reward them."

"Every business has a customer list. The key is to code your customers and prospects so you can keep in touch with your current clients and show them you appreciate their business," Kaufman said. "But you must also have an easy way to follow up with prospects over time -- even when they're not ready to buy from you." This, he said, requires "customer relationship management software."

The ACT! Software sweepstakes has five prize levels. The grand prize is a "fully loaded" ACT! Software System installed with training valued at $6,325. Second prize is a five-user ACT! 2008 Premium EX Corporate License valued at $1,750. Third prize is $975 worth of ACT! add-on software, including CompanionLink PDA Synchronization software; Durkin Computing's Contact List Plus, Opportunity List Plus and Calendar List Plus; Patricia Egen Consulting's CompanyMaker; and Mondo Media's ACT! 2008 Unlimited User Single-Site Training CD.

The sweepstakes ends April 30, 2008, and is open to business owners, sales managers and sales representatives in United States who are 21 years of age or older.

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InsideView has announced the availability of its SalesView application for SugarCRM customers. SalesView is an on-demand Business Search and Intelligence application, designed to glean information from subscription-based and user-generated sources.

SalesView presents customer data aggregated and distilled from social groups and social media in the context of the SugarCRM customer relationship management (CRM) application. InsideView is offering a free version of the application as a mash-up with SugarCRM to let anyone tap into SalesView's information. PRO and TEAM versions of SalesView come with deeper feature sets.

"The SalesView mash-up provides SugarCRM users with sights about prospects," said John Roberts, co-founder and CEO of SugarCRM, adding that the combination of these two open products "reduces risk while offering a sales intelligence product."

SalesView is built on InsideView's Business Search and Intelligence platform, and uses meta-aggregation technology.

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InsideSales.com has announced its first product to be released under the Genesis Platform, and is in testing with a joint customer.

Omniture, an online business optimization vendor, announced expansion of the Genesis network of partners to include InsideSales.com on December 3rd, 2007. Genesis is a plug and play product for integrating marketing applications.

InsideSales.com sells Lead Response Management technology, which includes offline analytics tools that help companies respond to leads. InsideSales.com is a hosted lead management CRM product with built-in dialer and voice messaging technologies for companies who respond to Web leads over the phone.

"We are excited about our relationship with Omniture, combining our technologies and making them available on the Genesis Platform," said David Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com, saying the integration "allows Omniture SiteCatalyst users to link Web analytics with inbound calls generated from toll free numbers on a Web site."

InsideSales.com recently added marketing automation products like ResponseVoice after research done with the Kellogg School of Management and MIT "challenged traditional assumptions on lead management and marketing automation," said Ken Krogue, President of InsideSales.com.

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The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is 1974's Will The Circle Be Unbroken, one of the truly great albums in American music history, the one that broke the classic bluegrass and traditional artists, such as Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Earl Scruggs, Jimmy Martin and Mother Maybelle Carter herself, to a wide audience. The music is first rate, the talking between tracks almost worth the price of the album itself:

The Business Marketing Institute has announced the Salesforce Field Marketing, described by BMI officials as a product to help marketing, sales and product management professionals in companies using Salesforce "re-engineer their company's marketing programs to integrate them with Salesforce, using principles and techniques in the New Marketing Model, a new process for better B2B marketing programs."

The New Marketing Model is a business marketing re-engineering process that helps companies with their marketing programs (called campaigns in Salesforce), to generate sales leads in Salesforce and "maximize the conversion of these leads to prospects, opportunities, and customers during the company's sales cycle," company officials say, using "the key contact management and measurement features in Salesforce."

While Salesforce provides capabilities for sales and marketing to measure the return from marketing programs, "measurability is only the end result of a far more extensive process, defined in the New Marketing Model, of developing Salesforce campaigns that are optimized from the ground up to generate measurable response, and then developing ongoing lead development programs to support the sales team by increasing conversions during the company's sales cycle," MBI officials say.

This new process of lead generation and lead development for Salesforce has been incorporated into the Business Marketing Institute Salesforce Field Marketing (SFM) system, an assessment, training, and certification system that helps attain proficiency and competence in using Salesforce.

A new eBook available from the BMI Web site, titled "Salesforce and The New Marketing Model." The 39-page eBook can be downloaded free from the BMI Web site.

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QuickArrow, a vendor of SaaS Services Automation, and Pervasive Software, a data management software vendor, have announced that their partnership has enabled QuickArrow to sell "a universal data integration product."

QuickArrow officials say the company is using the Pervasive Data Integrator to product QuickConnectIT, an integration engine capable of integrating QuickArrow with any application. This lets QuickArrow and Pervasive "deliver integrations that are consistent with the speed and economics of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model on one code base," QuickArrow officials say.

The partnership also enables QuickArrow to better focus on its core competency, Professional Services Automation, company officials say.

The partners have already implemented more than 50 bi-directional integrations between QuickArrow and other best-of-breed applications such as salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Peachtree, and QuickBooks. With QuickConnectIT and more than 150 standard Pervasive adapters in Pervasive Data Integrator v9, the partnership will enable QuickArrow to integrate with almost any other application using a configuration process versus a custom development exercise.

QuickConnectIT uses Pervasive Data Integrator and QuickArrow's Web Services API to support both on-premise and SaaS integrations, and can also operate as an Integration as a Service product. On premise, the product lets businesses connect QuickArrow with their other business critical applications including CRM, ERP, Financials, and HR.

Mike Hoskins, CTO and general manager, Integration Products at Pervasive, said both companies "are now able to focus more efficiently on their core businesses, QuickArrow on industry-leading PSA and Pervasive on integrations."

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Autonomy Corporation, a vendor of infrastructure software, has announced that BioLab, a Chemtura company, has selected Autonomy etalk products to replace its existing systems in the contact center.

BioLab is implementing etalk's call recording and agent performance evaluation products for customer support in its contact center. The firm sells products for recreational water treatment and home cleaning, and the contact center handles support calls for more than 20 brands of pool and spa products.

Scott Shute, Autonomy etalk's chief executive officer, said the company's Intelligent Contact Center product "makes it possible for organizations to capture, share and analyze critical structured and unstructured data that flows through the contact center, allowing the bi-directional sharing of that data with the rest of the enterprise."

This is accomplished, he said, via a combination of multi-channel interaction analysis, real-time agent support and contact center performance management, including tools for call recording, quality monitoring, agent performance evaluations, eLearning, and customer surveys.

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Redi2 Technologies, a vendor of fee billing products for the global financial services industry, and Odyssey Financial Technologies, a vendor of asset management products and services, have announced a global partnership to offer Redi2 Revenue Manager as the fee billing and revenue billing component of Odyssey's wealth management platform.

The new partnership "rounds out Odyssey's offering with an automated product that easily handles complex fee billing calculations and invoice generation," according to Odyssey officials.

To accommodate the fee billing in the financial services industry, such as the unified managed accounts market segment, Odyssey began searching for a more robust fee billing product in early 2007.

Under the new licensing and reseller agreements, Odyssey will initially offer Redi2 Revenue Manager to its North American clients. The next phase of the relationship is expected to target Odyssey's European client base, which includes more than 180 financial institutions in 30 countries and 15 of the top 25 European banks.

Redi2 has begun integration and testing, and the first joint installation went into production in December 2007.

"With a strong European client base and a growing presence in North America, Odyssey was seeking to forge a formal relationship with a US-based firm to extend its capabilities and global presence," says Seth Johnson, CEO of Redi2 Technologies.

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NetSuite a vendor of on-demand, integrated business software suites that include ERP and CRM, has announced the introduction of two new vertical editions -- NetSuite Ecommerce Company Edition and NetSuite Ecommerce+ Company Edition.

NetSuite has also added new Web Store functionality including PayPal Express Checkout integration and "Tell a Friend," "Log in for Price," enhanced eBay integration and Fraud Protection tools.

According to a Forrester research report issued in January 2008, e-commerce has an exponential growth opportunity, projecting that the industry will add $30 billion per year for the next 5 years. The report also finds that the compounded annual growth rate for traditional retail is projected at 2.6 percent through 2012 while in comparison, CAGR for e-commerce is 14 percent, due to the fact that online retail is less sensitive to economic shocks.

However, "limitations in traditional software have forced many companies to build their own custom Web Store capabilities," NetSuite officials say, adding that many products created specifically to build e-commerce Web sites "result in isolated, bolt-on systems that are difficult and costly to integrate into core business processes such as accounting, fulfillment, inventory management, shipping and marketing promotions."

The NetSuite Ecommerce Company Edition is billed as being useful for e-tailers "looking to grow beyond selling via stand-alone shopping cart products, eBay stores and Yahoo! stores." And the NetSuite Ecommerce+ Company Edition is made for e-tailers with "substantial inventories of a large number of products spread across multiple warehouses."

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The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Australia's finest, Slim Dusty. As someone once said, "Slim Dusty doesn't sing about Australian culture. Slim Dusty is Australian culture."

SAS, a vendor of business intelligence and analytics products, has announced the acquisition of privately held Teragram, a vendor of natural language processing and advanced linguistic technology.

The SASsers say the acquisition will improve SAS's own text mining and analytical BI offerings, and "extend them to enterprise and mobile search."

"The addition of Teragram's domain expertise and NLP technology will change the landscape of the BI and analytics markets," said SAS CEO Jim Goodnight.

Teragram, a 40-person firm headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will be run as a SAS company. Terms of the acquisition deal were not disclosed. Teragram's NLP customer base includes CNN, Forbes.com, Sony, WashingtonPost.com, Wolters Kluwer, the World Bank and Yahoo!

"As the data explosion continues, companies need an intelligent way to make sense of it all, whether data is in structured databases or in the huge variety of unstructured sources," said Yves Schabes, President of Teragram.

Teragram's natural language processing technologies help turn text -- in many languages and from many sources -- into useable information. SAS officials say it enables "richer data processing at the level of words, linguistic relations and word meanings." Teragram has developed and maintains large annotated dictionaries containing several hundred million words in more than 30 languages.

Business management expert Bill Jensen first decried the downsides of today's information explosion back in 2001, in his book Simplicity. According to his research, echoed by others, the most conservative estimates currently show that business information is doubling every eighteen months. This data flood has only grown more pronounced in recent years, and much of it lies outside traditional structured databases.

According to estimates, unstructured data comprises up to 70 percent of all business data. This unstructured data resides in customer comments and service notes, e-mail and chat threads, documents and surveys, blogs and RSS feeds, warranty claims, resumes, voice-mail and phone logs, among other sources.

Today's announcement came at SAS Global Forum, the largest annual SAS users group conference, attended by more than 3,000 business and IT users of SAS software and products.

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Sage Software has announced the general availability of the Sage FAS Fixed Asset Economic Stimulus Service Update 2008.1.1. Described by the Sagians as "a response to the Federal Economic Stimulus Act of 2008," the Service Update gives Sage FAS customers a way to "maximize tax benefits under depreciation provisions expanded by the new law."

The Service Update is available for existing customers to download on the FAS SupportPlus Online Web site at www.sagefas.com/update.

Several business investment incentives for Sage FAS customers are contained within the new Economic Stimulus law, and are supported by the update. Specifically, it provides customers of FAS Fixed Assets, Sage MAS Fixed Assets and FAS for Peachtree with updated benefits support in two main areas -- IRC Section 179, for qualified assets placed in service in tax years beginning in 2008, and IRC Section 168(k).

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422 Group, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, has rolled out a new version of Continuum 422 CRM, built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 platform.

Continuum 422 CRM is a constituent relationship management product for colleges which incorporates enrollment management analytics, electronic campaign and event management capabilities, as well as adaptive workflow rules to automate and personalize interaction with constituencies.

Released at the beginning of 2008, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 platform is designed to put capability in the hands of end users and provide tools for handling data from multiple sources.

Doug Wofford, President and CEO of 422 Group, said administrators and staff will be "able to use our higher education tools in a more integrated manner while also accessing Microsoft Dynamics CRM."

The new release of Continuum 422 CRM provides options for modeling enrollment outcomes related to admission and retention. It allows colleges to take action on the models by incorporating results into adaptive communication and workflow rules that allow colleges to tailor interaction with students at a one-to-one level.

Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, called 422 Group "a great example of how the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform can be used… in the field of higher education."

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CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation, has announced general availability of Pivotal CRM On Demand and what company officials characterize as "the first related industry-specific application, Pivotal CRM On Demand for Institutional Asset Management."

Designed with a new Software as a Service architecture, Pivotal CRM On Demand can be hosted by CDC Software and accessed on-demand, via the Web browser by customers. The product can also be deployed on-premise and hosted internally by customers or used in a blended mode.

In addition to the flexibility of deployment options, enterprises also can provide user access to the system via their standard Web browser with a zero footprint client or use CDC Software's Smart Client Framework for a richer interface supporting a range of application extensions.

The Pivotal CRM On Demand platform addresses the customer relationship requirements of Institutional Asset Management firms, the Pivotalians say. The product provides the industry-specific capabilities already in use by customers such as The TCW Group with "the added benefits of increased flexibility and lower cost deployment options," company officials say.

As the needs of asset management firms change, such as is common with acquisitions or divestitures, companies can adjust their deployments of Pivotal CRM from on-premise to on-demand or a mixed blend,  company officials say.

Lance Hoffman, senior vice president of Information Services at TCW, said his company wanted "the low-overhead and low-cost benefits of an SaaS CRM product, while maintaining critical and competitively sensitive information and related functions internally, on-premise."

Pivotal CRM On Demand uses Web 2.0 and AJAX technology, featuring drag and drop mashing, integrated RSS feeds and reporting and screen design capabilities. The product can be accessed via a standard Web browser and also supports smart client technology and PDA-based technologies such as Blackberry and Windows Mobile-based devices.

Smart Clients enables synchronized off-line use of the same applications that are accessed through the browser on line. "Users of Pivotal CRM On Demand have the ability to work anytime, whether wired or wireless," company officials say.

Pivotal CRM On Demand for IAM has 360-degree view of client relationships, relationship/influence tracking, performance and client reporting, workflow management and automation and integration with leading 3rd-party data for consultant, plan sponsor and investment manager information.

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 green beer this morning, and in honor of St. Patrick's Day, the music is a pubful of great Celtic bands -- The Pogues, of course, Brace Yourself Bridget, Van Morrison, The Crofters, The Dropkick Murphys and The Dust Rhinos. I mean, we have over twelve versions of "Whiskey in the Jar" alone. You think I'm kidding.

Incidentally Patrick himself, born in Scotland around 385 A.D., was the first person recorded in world history to publicly oppose slavery in all forms. This position would not appear publicly anywhere else until the Enlightenment:

Carchex, a products resource for auto dealers, has announced that automotive CRM vendor Autobase, a division of Dominion Enterprises, has integrated the Carchex WarrantyCRM remarketing program with Autobase's Platinum CRM Program.

Explaining the move, Jason Goldsmith, CEO of Carchex, said the partnership would "make it easier for dealers to use customer data to create new revenue streams."

With WarrantyCRM from Carchex, dealers can access a remarketing program that provides a dealer's existing customer base with extended warranty protection. Carchex contacts each customer on behalf of the dealer and offers the present warranty product.

The program requires no investment from the dealer, Carchex officials say, as it uses customer data from each dealer's Autobase CRM system, and pays the dealer for each extended warranty sold.

The subscription-based Autobase Platinum CRM Program gives participating dealers benefits and services including data enhancement, multi-touch digital campaigns, permission-based e-mail marketing and automated voice messaging. In addition to WarrantyCRM, dealers also will have access to services such as Polk Lead Scoring, creative e-newsletters, video e-mail postcards, and financial performance reporting.

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ReachForce, a vendor of on-demand software and data services for lead generation, has announced the launch of the ReachForce Partner Network, a consortium of Sales, Marketing and Service/Support Automation vendors.

Automation tools are intended to improve the execution and tracking of business processes in marketing, sales and services. ReachForce's role-based contact databases are marketed as improving the effectiveness of marketing and sales initiatives, and supporting these relationships once they are established. ReachForce has already partnered with Salesforce.com.

"Our goal in creating the ReachForce Partner Network is to enhance the value of CRM products that enables companies to win new customers," said Suaad Sait, CEO of ReachForce.

ReachForce has brought on Adrian DeVore as Senior Director of Corporate Development to focus efforts on creating and maintaining these relationships. "The CRM landscape can no longer look at these technologies in silos; they need to look at the aggregate value they provide companies running their businesses," said DeVore. "Our goal in building this partner network is to bring the missing ingredient into the mix, decision support dashboards and data."

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SalesCentric officials say they have launched the Enterprise edition of Relationship Charts for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 at the Convergence 2008 conference in Orlando.

SalesCentric's Relationship Charts offer users "a visual interface for managing critical business information in Microsoft Dynamics CRM," company officials say. The Enterprise edition supports all entities inside the CRM product, including those known as "custom" and "system" entities.

This flexibility, SalesCentric officials say, allows CRM users to view and manage charts of a variety of relationships. Sectors where Dynamics CRM users can use the views are Financial Services, Legal, Government, Manufacturing, Pharmaceutical, Medical, Member-based Organizations and Transportation, among others.

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Vehicle inventory management product vendor DataOne Software, a division of Dominion Enterprises, has announced that its WebMall technology was selected by the Greensboro News & Record consumer auto site. The WebMall platform provides "increased functionality, new tools and more high-quality content" for local auto buyers and sellers, according to DataOne officials.

Jock Pereira, general manager of DataOne Software, said "the user experience has been redefined to attract more visitors and provide them with everything they need to research and purchase a vehicle."

The new site combines DataOne Software's inventory management and WebMall technology with the paper's online, print classified and For Sale By Owner vehicle listings to create a searchable online database.

Additional features include an advanced system for promoting specific dealers and cars as well as an open source architecture ad banner system that supports multiple banners and targeted advertising.

WebMall uses LAMP (Linux operating system, Apache Web server, MYSQL database management system and PHP programming language) product stacking for a 100 percent open source platform.

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Business information vendor ZoomInfo has announced that ZoomInfo PowerSell is now fully integrated with Salesforce. Users of Salesforce can now use ZoomInfo PowerSell's advanced search capabilities from within Salesforce to "find and de-dupe new leads, qualify prospects and complete the data quality of their existing Salesforce leads, contacts and companies," according to ZoomInfo officials.

ZoomInfo was certified and available in Salesforce.com's AppExhange this month. It's a business information search tool designed to help sales teams access sales intelligence on companies and people. PowerSell SF users can access personal profiles on decision makers with organized data and Web references.

Matthew Gonnering, vice president of sales and marketing at Widen Enterprises, said by using the tool directly within Salesforce and our CRM workflow, "ZoomInfo has made it easy to find key contacts and build lists of prospects."

ZoomInfo PowerSell SF is available immediately through the salesforce.com AppEx.

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Open Text, a vendor of enterprise content management, has unveiled its Enterprise 2.0 strategy designed to "help customers transform their organizations with powerful social computing tools," according to Open Text officials.

The Open Texters say they're taking collaboration and Web products offerings to "a new level, providing 2.0 capabilities -- wikis, forums, blogs, tagging, moderation, communities and real-time collaboration," while "still respecting compliance initiatives."

Web 2.0 technologies allow the Web to be "a platform to harness collective intelligence," company officials say: "Applied in the enterprise, organizations can achieve a future desired state of Enterprise 2.0, where its internal and external Web sites and applications get better the more people use them. Application of these new technologies creates more engaging Web experiences, improves knowledge sharing and collaboration, increases employee productivity and helps improve brand loyalty and interaction."

The company said Open Text will provide products aimed at "collaboration and social computing requirements behind the firewall as a natural extension of customers' current ECM initiatives," as well as enablement of public Web sites, intranets and extranets.

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

Newton's Third Law of Physics, as you well know, states that for every e-mail, there is an equal and opposite e-mail. And we live in the parallel universe where we get those equal and opposite e-mails.

We also get to hear what's really on politicians' minds when they're talking, we know how often girls actually wash their hair and we always get good parking places in midtown Manhattan. It's nice, yeah, but we wish we could get a decent cup of coffee from the Starbucks here, because Newton's Fourth Law of Physics holds that for every cup of good coffee, there is an equal and opposite cup of abject swill.

We know you want to provide good customer service via e-mail, so you tell customers when they can expect a response -- and you keep to that schedule. You actually respond when you say you will. This is because you know that response time depends a great deal on how quickly your automated routing gets the appropriate e-mail to the appropriate respondent in your organization.

You never write in all caps, you have a punchy, relevant subject line, and you even include the recipient's name in the response. Your agents have access to all the customer information they need to write an intelligent, useful response, they understand what the customer's talking about and have the reporting and analysis capability to track trends.

You've analyzed the most common customer queries and have developed responses with highly effective habits. You've done such a good job with your FAQ that your agents are only getting the complicated questions, but because you've prepped your agents so well they don't have any trouble.

Remember that confirmation e-mail you sent last week to Elmer Schlumpkin of Rusty Gulch, New Jersey, confirming shipment of his order of 12 anvils? My, it was perfect:
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