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March 2008

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CRM from Sage SalesLogix, SugarCRM and Intelestream, Kintera Conference, PacificNet Bankruptcy, BlueCherry, R.E.M.’s Slow Death

March 31, 2008

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.

CRM Vendor's Kiwi Roots, ReachForce's OnDemand, Neighborhood America's CRM Hire, Zilliant's Gartner Rating, Dealer Specialties

March 25, 2008

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.







CRM Endorsement from O'Connor, TBL and Mission Research, CIBER and APU, Firepond and Kelvin Hughes

March 25, 2008

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.


CRM in Dominican Republic with Autologica, DealerAdvance and ADI, Sage and NexTec, LongJump, Carfax and Auto Mate

March 24, 2008

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.

CRM and Semantra 2.0, Kana and IBM, IFS, Sage in Kuwait, ASK Software

March 24, 2008

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?



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. 












CRM from Really Simple, Parallels and Microsoft CRM, Qurius Global Alliance, Open Solutions and Conseco, Saudi Conference, EDS

March 21, 2008

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.



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.














CRM Excellence Award, Opera and Helio, CRM Accelerators and Biz IT Pro, Infusion CRM Contest, Dovarri in Europe, Convio, Mr. Rogers, SmartFocus CRM

March 20, 2008

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.



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.
















CRM Alliance ACT! Giveaway, Clarity 6.2 Release, AccuWeather and Opera, Customer Service Survey, InsideSales, InsideView, SugarCRM

March 19, 2008

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.






CRM's NetSuite's Verticals, Salesforce and BMI, QuickArrow and Pervasive, Autonomy eTalk and BioLab, Redi2 and Odyssey

March 18, 2008

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.



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.




















CRM On Demand from Pivotal, CRM for Colleges from 422, SAS Buys Teragram, Sage Fixed Asset Update

March 18, 2008

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.






CRM from Autobase, ReachForce, Bank of America, SalesCentric and Microsoft, Salesforce and Zoom, DataOne, Open Text

March 17, 2008

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.




Newton's Law of Email

March 14, 2008

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.



Microsoft CRM and NaviSite, Vettro’s New VPs, Ignify’s ECommerce Platform, McGraw-Hill Construction CRM, SyncSite, Proposal Software

March 12, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is an Al Stewart iPod mix. Word is our boy’s at work on a new album with former Paul McCartney guitarist Laurence Juber. This is good news, as their last collaboration, Between The Wars, was Al’s strongest album since the Modern Times-Year Of The Cat-Time Passages run.   Vettro, a vendor of mobile products, has announced the appointment of two new senior vice presidents: George Moser will lead worldwide field operations and Tom Erdman will oversee worldwide marketing.   George Moser brings more than twenty years experience to Vettro, having served in senior management positions in high-growth companies and emerging start-ups.

CRM's Customer Connect Gets Microsoft Gold Partner Status, Advent's Asset and Compensation Study, Bluewolf and Big Machines, Cincom, CRM OnTarget

March 11, 2008

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Deep Purple's Machine Head. For a classic album and all it really rises or falls on two songs -- "Highway Star" and, of course, "Smoke On the Water," the greatest guitar riff ever:


Advent Software, a vendor of software and services to the investment management industry, has released the results of a 2007 Asset Management Operations and Compensation Study, showing what it calls "trends in technology and operations spending and employee compensation."

More than a third of surveyed firms are installing new systems and applications, and more than two-thirds of firms surveyed expect investment operations spending to increase in 2008. The most popular anticipated IT investments include those for customer relationship management (CRM), portfolio accounting, and disaster recovery and business continuity.

While the study revealed almost universal increases in 2007 spending, small to mid-size firms generally saw the highest increases in costs. The survey respondents expected total IT and operations spending in 2007 to rise 13 percent on average.

The 2007 survey found that on average, the largest firms spent almost $1.4 million on IT and operations during 2006. Portfolio accounting generally accounts for the highest proportion of costs, averaging 29 percent of the total IT and operations budget.

Trading accounts for just more than 13 percent of the IT and operations budget, with CRM making up nearly 8 percent of the total.








CRM On Demand 15 from Oracle, Sage Global CRM Strategy, Zoho People, TenDigits' MobileAccess v4.0

March 11, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one of the guiltiest of guilty pleasures, right down there with Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell, AC/DC's Back In Black and all the rest of the stuff you listen to but don't admit -- ABC's The Lexicon Of Love:


Oracle has announced Oracle CRM On Demand Release 15, the latest release of Oracle's on demand CRM service. Company officials say it has "new Social CRM capabilities, including social networking and collaboration capabilities."

Social CRM gives users collaborative apps that become "e-smarter" by "using the collective intelligence of social networks, both within and outside the company."

The product includes enhanced collaboration, "driven by the combination of Sticky Notes and a Message Center, allowing back-and-forth commentary," company officials say. For example, pertinent team members can subscribe to sticky notes, creating a social network where all members of the network are kept up to date simultaneously.

Customers can take Oracle CRM On Demand objects, such as top accounts or contacts. and include them within their Web portal applications, such as iGoogle or MyYahoo!, and incorporate content from other Web applications and RSS feeds.






CRM From Sabre, Zantaz Claims Most Data, Pelagic and CRM Live Labs, CRM for Seniors' Financial Products, iCongo Live

March 10, 2008

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen:


Autonomy Zantaz, a vendor of archiving, eDiscovery and Proactive Information Risk Management product, has claimed that its Digital Safe on-demand compliance and eDiscovery archival product has "the largest amount of data under management."

Using Autonomy's IDOL search engine, Zantaz claims the unique position of being "the only service provider to create a consolidated archive of all information sources, including e-mail and IM, voice video, and enterprise systems."

Hosted services for e-mail archiving 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 including SEC Rule 17a-4. Autonomy Zantaz Digital Safe is marketed as helping organizations meet the supervision, records retention and retrieval requirements of these industry and government regulations.

"With the increase in volume and variety of message formats in today's enterprises, including instant messages and voice-mails, it has become mission-critical for organizations to select an effective enterprise archiving product that can help them to better understand the corporate value and legal significance hidden within their information," said Anthony Bettencourt, CEO of Autonomy Zantaz.



Sabre Travel Network has announced enhancements to its cruise shopping and booking platform, Sabre Cruises, to improve travel agents' search, booking, marketing and customer service capabilities.

These enhancements include lead-in pricing functionality, integration with Live Connect providing customer relationship management (CRM) functionality through TRAMS' ClientBase and increased passenger options during the booking process, the Sabrians say.

Dan Westbrook, vice president of merchandising, Sabre Travel Network, said lead-in pricing is "the number one requested enhancement that agents have asked for."

The "Best Available Fare" option now shows displays for inside, ocean view, balcony and suite cabin categories on the sailing results page. Sabre Cruises also offers the capability to determine the alternate passenger category price based on changing factors such as a passenger's age, insurance selection, origination city, transportation or number of passengers in a cabin.

Sabre Cruises integrates customer relationship management (CRM) functionality by supporting the Live Connect feature available on TRAMS' ClientBase CRM tool. The Live Connect feature provides a direct connection to the Sabre Cruises booking engine, with a two-way transfer of information.


















CRM-Enabling at MarketNet, Tectura and SalesCentric, Experlogix and Microsoft CRM, Soffront CRM, Agresso's ERP Survey, Joe Namath in the Hall of Fame?

March 10, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bob Dylan's Live 1966, or what we old-line Dylanophiles (incorrectly) call The Royal Albert Hall concert:


Tectura Corporation, a vendor of Microsoft Dynamics products, has chosen to partner with SalesCentric in offering Relationship Charts to their mid-market companies and large enterprise division CRM customers.

Relationship Charts is an add-on to Microsoft Dynamics CRM allowing account managers to view the relationships within a prospect's organization, including vendors and suppliers, before the deal has passed. It integrates with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, meaning users already familiar with the CRM package will require minimal training.

John McKeague, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Practice Lead at Tectura, said relationships are supported by the charts, allowing salespeople to "store information on their contacts and accounts such as their personalities and personal relationships."



MarketNet Services, a vendor of lead management products and services, has expanded the capabilities of its lead management system to integrate with customer relationship management platforms Siebel CRM On Demand and Salesforce.com. MarketNet clients now can use the CRM platform to view qualified leads, current prospects and accounts.

Regardless of which contact management product a company uses, company officials say, MarketNet's incommand lead system delivers qualified leads into a company's current sales process "in the way that best fits the company's business model," via RSS feed to a computer, cell phone, smart phone or other mobile device.

"However you want your lead, we'll get it to you," said J.T. McDonald, president of MarketNet. "We deliver cleansed, qualified leads directly into the CRM system."

McDonald said an enhanced incommand Marketing System "increases the sales force's accountability.














CRM Live from Microsoft Events, ExactTarget, SalesCentric Partners, IBizInitiatives, Systime and JD Edwards, Salesforce on Forbes

March 7, 2008

The news as of the first cup of coffee this morning, and the music is David Bowie's Station To Station, improved greatly on the iPod by substituting the live versions of both "TVC15" and the title track from 1978's Stage for the lumbering studio versions:


SalesCentric has launched a worldwide CRM Advantage Partner Program for implementers of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SalesCentric Relationship Charts. Under the program, partners will be able to use SalesCentric's marketing campaigns, events, lead qualification and sales optimization services. Companies can participate as Implementation, Hosting or ISV partners.

SalesCentric's Relationship Charts give Microsoft partners "competitive differentiation against other CRM products," according to SalesCentric officials, as they "help sales people visualize their customer or partner relationships."

The forthcoming Relationship Charts Enterprise edition will provide a visualization platform for ISV partners to build Microsoft Dynamics CRM based applications for all vertical sectors. Both editions are also available for Hosting providers.

SalesCentric has partnered with Televerde, a sales and marketing company working in customer acquisition for the high-tech marketplace.






CRM Guide for Dynamics 4.0, Callidus and Covad, Tribridge Gets Productive Gap, Clarity’s Airlines, ProTrak and CorrectNet

March 6, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Israel Kamakwiwo’ole’s Facing Future:   Callidus Software, a vendor of Sales Performance Management products, has announced that Covad has selected and implemented the Callidus On-Demand services to “manage sales performance and incentive compensation programs for its internal and external sales channels,” according to company officials.   Under the agreement Covad will use Callidus On-Demand for its approximately 1,000 internal sales representatives and external dealers in North America.   Joseph Le Chevallier, vice president finance and corporate controller at Covad, said the product will improve the company’s “compensation payment accuracy, timeliness and Web-based visibility.”   To date, Callidus has signed contracts for its hosted on-demand services covering more than 44,000 payees, “more than any other provider of on-demand SPM software,” the Callidians claim.   “We are very pleased to welcome Covad,” said Jeff Saling, vice president of Callidus On-Demand. Saling noted that Callidus’s SPM products are used by six of the top 10 U.S.

CRM SaaS Offer from Salesboom, Jenzabar and Peirce College, Goodbye Brett, CRMA I Atlanta, SAP and Intel, Bango Mobile Web Stats

March 5, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik:


Jenzabar, which sells software for higher education, and Peirce College, which serves adult students, have been named as finalists for the Learning Impact Recognition and Awards, facilitated by IMS Global Learning Consortium, for collaborating to redesign and expand the college's online learning community.

The portal functionality can be extended across the campus community via a full suite of optional Constituent Relationship Modules (Jenzabar CRMs).

The Learning Impact program was initiated by the Consortium for the purpose of "recognizing outstanding applications of technology that address the most significant challenges facing the global education and learning industries."

The final judging for the awards will take place on May 12, 2008, at the Learning Impact Conference in Austin, Texas.

Peirce College set an institutional goal to implement a 24x7x365 Web portal to increase accessibility and services to students, faculty, staff, and others. The College uses JICS to provide all students, regardless of location or time of day, access to most services offered during the business day.

Peirce students now have single sign-on credentials to access physical and wireless networks as well as the Web portal, with seamless pass-through authentication to other online services at the College, including learning management systems, tutoring, and the library.

"Our goal was to use technology to enhance learning and services for faculty, staff, and students," says Christopher Duffy, Chief Information Officer at Peirce College.



So the NFL's all-time interception leader, Brett Favres decides to end the BrettWatch early this year and announce that he no longer intends to keep throwing season-killing picks for the Packers. As a Vikings fan I'm proud that we've contributed a healthy chunk of Favre's career interceptions, and upset because we used to routinely kick his butt, and without Favre the Packers might be able to beat Minnesota.



Halifax, Nova Scotia-based CRM SaaS vendor Salesboom.com has announced the implementation of their Salesforce.com Enticement Program, designed, according to Salesboom officials, for "displeased Salesforce.com customers who are looking to migrate to another CRM provider."

Businesses who migrate to Salesboom.com On-Demand CRM Solutions will receive a $5,000 check and "a guaranteed lower annual rate than that of Salesforce.com." Some restrictions apply.

Salesboom.com's Enticement Program may be combined with existing promotions, for a limited time a company may migrate from Salesforce.com to Salesboom.com with no consulting fees and receive free data migration.

Glad you asked -- yes, in fact, Salesboom.com does have a specific tool designed for migrating data from Salesforce.com called the Migration Magic Button, designed for migrating a company's database, business processes and implementations from Salesforce.com to Salesboom.com with no data loss.

As described by Rami Hamodah, the President and Co-Founder of Salesboom.com, "the relationship between Salesboom.com and Salesforce.com is a one way street. Salesforce.com customers embark on their journey along this one way street and find themselves at our door.




























CRM Vendor Knova on KMWorld 100, SaaS Adoption Rising at SMBs, Pegasystems’ New Healthcare BPM, Opera Mini and Easy Web

March 4, 2008

By David Sims David at firstcoffee d*t biz   The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen album, a document recorded from one of the concert tours First Coffee wishes he had been around to see:   Healthcare systems vendor Pegasystems, which sells Business Process Management products, has announced new versions of its Customer Process Manager products for Healthcare.   Built on Pegasystems’ SmartBPM platform, the product uses customer processing capabilities that automate and optimize the service requests handled through a healthcare organizations’ contact center. Pegasystems’ intent-driven processing is designed to anticipate both customer and service representative needs.   The announcement was made at the 2008 Blue Cross Blue Shield Customer Contact Center and Claims Conference in Los Angeles where, according to Pegasystems officials, over 60 percent of the participating organizations use Pegasystems software.   Traditional data-oriented customer relationship management (CRM) products rely on employees to understand information and translate it into appropriate actions. Even with trained employees, however, you can get inconsistent and inefficient service.

CRM, ERP from Plexus, IFS Wins EAM Award, PacificNet, ICT in Nova Scotia, Sybase iAnywhere

March 4, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird:” Bird bird bird, said the bird is the word…   Applications vendor IFS has been recognized by consulting firm Frost & Sullivan for its increased presence in the aerospace and defense industry. IFS now has 31 percent total global market share of the A&D enterprise asset management systems market.   Frost & Sullivan awarded IFS the Global EAM Systems Market Penetration Leadership Award for A&D for the company’s “product innovations” and “customer focus,” which have resulted in it making “the largest gain in market share over two to three years,” according to Frost & Sullivan.   Frost and Sullivan cited IFS for its “industry focus” and “innovation and collaborative products,” singling out IFS’ customer comments on “the ease of use and faster payback associated with IFS products.”   Aerospace and defense is one of IFS’ targeted market segments. IFS Applications includes functionality designed for the armed forces around the world and A&D manufacturers.

CRM and Salentica, LogicBright CRM, Datacap and Promero Hires, Netelligent's Dance Contest, Atidan and SharePoint, Sage and SyncSite, Retalix

March 3, 2008

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is more of Elton John's 1974 shows in London and New York released in 1976 as Here and There. This was his best band doing his best songs, plus there's a guest appearance by John Lennon, so it's probably the one Elton album you want on your iPod:


Netelligent has launched an interactive promotion designed to showcase the new Cisco Digital Media System, and bring exposure to Netelligent's software applications designed for the Cisco platform.

There's a video dance contest located at www.ucdance.net. The audience can view, submit and vote on the individual dance performances. The Grand Prize is $2,500.


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