By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee today, and the music is The David Crowder Band's "Turkish Delight." FYI, today's First Coffee Fun Fact for those of you who saw the Narnia movie or read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe -- "aslan" is the Turkish word for "lion," and "jadde" is the Turkish word for "witch." C.S. Lewis had traveled in Turkey before writing the book and was impressed with it:

 

Infor Public Sector has announced that the city of Rockford, Illinois, heretofore known to the world as the place in the 1980s which launched a successful petition drive to get The Rolling Stones to play a concert there, to First Coffee's knowledge the only city to ever succeed in that, has selected its community development and regulation software.

 

Infor Hansen CDR, for Building Permits, Code Enforcement, and Neighborhood Development and Planning will be implemented by the city. Used by more than 100 municipalities nationwide, Infor Hansen CDR is designed to help "increase operational efficiency, cross-departmental communication and transparency, and citizen satisfaction."

 

The new software will be integrated with Infor Public Sector's CRM software, used by Rockford since early 2007 to address citizen issues.

 

Rockford officials said the selection of Infor Hansen CDR was due in part to Infor Public Sector's online access tool, Infor DynamicPortal, which integrates with the call-in and citizen service functionality of the CRM product.

 

DynamicPortal provides contractors, developers, and citizens Internet access to the licensing and permitting process. With this system, builders are able to apply for permits, make payments, track progress and status of permits and inspections, and reschedule inspections online, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 

Rockford citizens can use the online portal to input service requests and check the status of previously submitted items.

 

"We received support from local developers, contractors and builders in favor of implementing the system, to increase the efficiency of conducting business with City Hall," said Glenn Trommels, director of IT for the City of Rockford.

 

Building "on the foundation of our successful CRM implementation," Trommels said, the city "chose to again partner with Infor Public Sector."

 

Previously, Rockford relied on a system using multiple spreadsheets to enter and record data for permits, planning and code enforcement. Rockford processed over 7300 permits in 2007.

 

. . . .

 

Coghead, a platform-as-a-service provider, has introduced a new flat-rate pricing option, as well as Coglet Builder and open API tools which company officials say "together provide a way to give a broad number of users access to a slice of application functionality."

The Limited User pricing model is a flat-rate price of $50 per month letting an unlimited number of users -- customers, prospects, partners, suppliers, Web visitors -- interact with relevant slices of Coghead applications.

 

It's being billed by the Cogheads as "an economical and easy way for businesses to make a piece of their Coghead applications -- such as forms and list data -- widely available to an unlimited audience without logging into Coghead."

 

It's generally designed for users who occasionally access applications, or for applications that have small numbers of active users and a large number of less active users.

 

. . . .

 

Ever Ready Mortar, which sells ready to use mortar to the building trade, has installed the Rostrvm blended call center product to "support its outbound sales and inbound customer service operation," Rostrvm officials say.

 

Several call center technology providers were invited to submit a tender, but Rostrvm Solutions was selected, as Stacey Baillie, Call Centre Manager at Ever Ready Mortar, said: "Rostrvm demonstrated a willingness to meet the requirements on our wish list."  

 

The Rostrvm software suite integrates with Ever Ready Mortar's existing Sage CRM system, allowing the call center to manage both sales campaigns and inbound customer service calls in the form of a blended product from a single easy-to-use database.

 

The system also allows for multiple outbound campaigns to run alongside each other, and can prioritize campaigns and schedule call backs.

 

Rostrvm software has tweaked Ever Ready Mortar to include features for its inbound customer service operation, an identifier allowing agents to provide a personal service, a distance calculator to establish delivery costs and a routing product enabling calls outside of office hours to be routed to the nearest depot.

 

. . . .

 

LoopFuse and Acquia have announced the availability of the LoopFuse OneView integration module for Drupal, designed to let marketing organizations "extend their LoopFuse marketing automation processes across their Drupal Web sites."

 

Using LoopFuse's Web analytics and campaign management capabilities, Drupal site owners can track activities and connect with customers who participate in their community-based Web sites.

 

LoopFuse is the marketing and sales automation suite offering organizations the ability to generate leads from their Web site, score and route leads, marketing campaign capabilities, full Web analytics support, and full CRM integration with most major vendors.

 

Roy Russo, LoopFuse's CEO, noted that "more and more CMOs are seeking to build interactive, community-oriented Web sites to deepen their engagement with customers."

 

The integration between Drupal and LoopFuse OneView will allow LoopFuse customers using Drupal for their content management system to have their Web sites instrumented with LoopFuse tracking, "providing analytics on Web site visitors without the need to modify any Web site code," LoopFuse officials say.

 

It will also allow for the automated capture of Web site registrations within LoopFuse, so marketers can assemble their Web sites and integrate their marketing automation product without relying on their IT department to develop custom applications and integrations from scratch.

 

"As a commercial open source vendor, it's critical for us to automate our marketing processes from initial contact on Acquia.com through to qualified opportunity in our CRM system," said Jeff Whatcott, Acquia's Vice President of Marketing.

 

. . . .

 

NewMarket Latin America has announced UniOne Consulting has signed a contract to implement Oracle's Business Intelligence Suite - Enterprise Edition for Distribuidora de Medicamentos Santa Cruz, a wholesale distributor of pharmaceuticals, medical and surgical supplies throughout Brazil.

 

The project is expected to be multi-phased, and Unione has started on the first phase of the project, scheduled to be complete in January 2009, for the customer's Department of Sales.

 

While UniOne pronounce themselves "excited" about this opportunity, the terms of the contract are being kept confidential at the request of the customer.

 

UniOne, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, also has an office in Santiago, Chile, and focuses on providing Business Intelligence, as well as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) consulting services throughout Latin America.