By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is an early Allman Brothers album, Idlewild South.
Sedona Corporation, a vendor of Customer and Member Relationship Management (CRM/MRM) products for the small and mid-size financial services market, has announced it has signed more than $750,000 in new SaaS contracts.
Sedona’s distribution partners offer the Intarsia-based CRM/MRM products as SaaS.
Company officials say the SaaS deployment model “has proven to be especially attractive for organizations that lack the financial resources and IT infrastructure to deploy and maintain enterprise business applications, such as Customer/Member Relationship Management, in-house.”
In a recent study about the total cost of ownership of enterprise applications, Gartner found that 80 percent of the cost of deploying and maintaining in-house applications is not due to licensing costs, but additional costs related to hardware and administration of the software.
According to a study from Nucleus Research cited by Sedona officials, more than 80 percent of companies that outsourced CRM applications achieve a positive ROI.
Sedona recorded approximately $552,000 in deferred revenue for monthly subscription fees in 2007 from its distribution partners’ SaaS contracts. This deferred revenue will be recognized ratably over the life of the contracts, which average 36-60 months. This represents a 34 percent increase over the deferred revenue for monthly subscription fees reported one year ago.
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CRM consultancy eVergance has announced a range of new products and services. The newly available offerings include Enterprise Feedback Management Strategy and Optimization, described by company officials as a product for “organizations looking to plan and deploy customer feedback programs, move beyond surveys and implement the right measurement initiatives.”
There’s also a Knowledge Centered Support Program, a “phased product for benchmarking, designing and rolling out a KCS program in your support organization, based on eVergance’s methodology and relationship with the Consortium for Service Innovation,” company officials say.
Also announced is Enhanced Managed Services, a range of on-premises and hosted products to help “maximize the value of CRM and KM products” while “easing the burden of incident management, capacity planning, application administration and other support tasks,” eVergance officials explain.
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Equipment Trader, a division of Dominion Enterprises, has announced what company officials characterize as “record-breaking traffic” on its newly redesigned Web site, www.EquipmentTraderOnline.com, during the first four months of this year.
EquipmentTraderOnline.com hosted over 285,000 unique visitors per month between from January to April, 2008, up more than 78 percent over the same period in 2007, according to Omniture SiteCatalyst HBX.
Nick Petsos, Equipment Trader brand manager, said upcoming improvements to EquipmentTraderOnline.com, such as the Attachments and Manufacturers Showroom, “will provide even more exposure for our equipment dealers.”
Re-launched in January 2008, the Web site offers equipment dealers a redesigned Inventory Management Tool, Instant Mobile Lead Alert and call tracking capabilities with eStara’s Click to Call technology.
Three main channels, “Find,” “Sell,” and “Research,” take visitors to the appropriate information. The “Find” channel provides access to more than 52,000 pieces of equipment for sale, “Sell” section offers individuals advertising space, and the “Research” section has information on everything from finance and insurance to equipment transport and attachments.
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Magic Software Enterprises, a vendor of enterprise application development, deployment and integration products, has announced the availability of iBolt for Salesforce.com. The iBolt business integration suite is now available for Salesforce users, letting them share data between Salesforce and the customer’s other business applications.
Using a code-free, wizard-based interface, the product lets companies merge customer data across all on-premises applications, including “accounting, ERP, supply chain management, human resource management system, logistics and more,” company officials say.
According to Arita Mattsoff, vice president marketing of Magic Software, the firm plans to exhibit iBolt for Salesforce.com at Dreamforce Europe, Salesforce.com’s user and developer conference.
The product can be used for companies to integrate the data and business processes between on-premises operations and finance systems and on-demand Salesforce applications.
It can be used to automate business processes, including the conversion of lead data into sales orders, item list synchronization, and customer list synchronization.
There are also forecast e-mail alerts, single view of customer purchase history and link of e-commerce sales data into sales ledger / forecasts as well a data cleansing and connectivity to business industry databases captured lead data funneled directly into Salesforce.com, with ROI calculation per campaign, and real-time monitoring of telemarketing activity.
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Sage Software has announced a partnership with Experts Teams, appointing ET as an integration partner for its Saudi ventures.
ET will aid Sage in offering customer service, “in terms of customization and implementation of its products such as the Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Human Resources Management Systems (HRMS),” Sage officials say.
Experts Team is a software products integrator implementing products for enterprise and corporate customers, for both small and medium businesses. ET claims over 300 customers in Middle East and South Africa, with over ten IT partners worldwide.
Experts Team is a software products integrator implementing products for enterprise and corporate customers, for both small and medium businesses. ET claims over 300 customers in Middle East and South Africa, with over ten IT partners worldwide.
Experts Team’s CEO Saed Ali said he increased his firm’s partnership with Sage from business to development partner because “we believe that we can expand our services even further into the immense IT market, as well as facilitate work for our clients in sectors such as real estate and tourism.”
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The Supervisory Board of update software AG, a Vienna-based vendor of CRM products has announced the confirmed business figures for fiscal 2007.
According to these figures, update saw its net income for the year surge by 45.2 percent to €4.716 million. This is equivalent to earnings per share of €0.42 (diluted).
Compared with the year 2006, when earnings per share were €0.31, this means a rise in earnings per share of 35.5 percent. Already announced in January, the company’s revenues of €32.538 million for 2007 — reflecting a rise by 39.3 percent against 2006 — have now been confirmed, as has operating income (EBIT) for 2007 of €3.705 million.
The Management Board of update software AG will, for the first time, propose a dividend of €0.10 per share at the company’s 11th ordinary general meeting on June 11, 2008.
“In view of the consistently good annual results over the last five years, we are pleased to be able in future to offer shareholders of update software AG a sustainable dividend policy,” said update CFO Monika Fiala of the dividend decision.
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Companies today are spending large amounts of money without doing their homework. In order to achieve the increase in revenue that every company wants to achieve they need to find the CRM and dialer that is the one that is the most customizable and user friendly. Keep in mind this doesnt mean the cheapest alternative. The extra money that you may have to spend will provide a significant increase to the profitablilty of your company. The key to making money in this industry is to contact the most leads in the least amount of time while giving the lead a positive experience. When one lead has a positive experience that lead multiplies itself and eventually turns into 5 leads.