August 2008 Archives

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Van Morrison's live album It's Too Late To Stop Now being piped out to all office buildings, the equestrian annex, branch offices in Dublin, Auckland and Cape Town and to all First Coffee corporate aircraft and yachts:

 

According to Microsoft officials, beginning September 1 customers will be able to move any of 41 Microsoft server applications between servers within a server farm as often as necessary without paying additional licensing fees, and can get expanded specialized technical support as well.

 

"Businesses are taking steps to make their IT operations more dynamic and are delving into virtualization as a cornerstone strategy," said Zane Adam, senior director of integrated virtualization in the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft.

 

Microsoft also will begin a worldwide series of "Get Virtual Now" events this month that will showcase Microsoft virtualization products and partner products, reaching more than 250,000 IT workers, the company said.

 

Microsoft said it is updating its software licensing terms for 41 server applications, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center products.

 

With the new terms, the company is waiving its previous 90-day reassignment rule, allowing customers to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed. For many customers, the change will reduce the number of licenses they need to support their IT systems and simplify the tracking of application instances or processors because customers now can count licenses by server farm instead of by server.

 

"IDC research is finding that the use of server virtualization is moving past the early adopter stage and is quickly becoming a mainstream product," said Al Gillen, research vice president for system software at IDC.

 

Microsoft has updated its technical support policy for 31 server applications so that customers can receive technical support when deploying those applications on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server or any other third-party validated virtualization platform.

 

This month, according to the company, Microsoft begins a worldwide series of events designed to educate people on Microsoft virtualization products, deployment tools and partner products. The series of more than 100 events started Aug. 3 in South Africa, continues Sept. 8 with a U.S. kickoff event and eventually will cover more than 50 other countries.

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CDC Software, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and vendor of enterprise software and services, has announced the introduction of Ross Enterprise v6.3, which company officials describe as a new version release of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) product.

 

Ross ERP now offers CDC Software's Smart Client technology with a thin client graphical user interface.

 

The product, according to company officials, offers "improved access and integration to the Microsoft desktop," so users can extract data from Ross ERP with familiar Microsoft Office products. The product is being pitched "from an IT support perspective," claiming "a lower total cost of ownership through centralized system administration, minimized deployment costs and reduced maintenance requirements when installing system upgrades."

Ross Enterprise v6.3 provides new application features for enhanced visibility into a company's production and supply chain. Inventory visibility with a projected inventory inquiry is now available for a "net change" picture of the actual time-phase availability of finished goods and related intermediate products and ingredients, without having to perform a complete analysis.

 

A new process and production flow user inquiry has also been added. The project accounting module included in Ross Enterprise v6.3 puts financial reporting requirements against individual projects over time. A landed cost feature lets manufacturers include additional related costs of material such as freight, insurance, handling and duty as part of valuing inventory at time of receipt.

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First National Bank of Bosque County has selected Open Solutions's The Complete Banking Solution: DNA, described by company officials as "the latest release of its relational core data processing platform."

 

Open Solutions sells technologies for financial service providers throughout the United States, Canada and internationally.

 

Based in Valley Mills, Texas, FNB Bosque holds approximately $93 million in assets, and serves 6,700 accounts through four branches. Established in 1908, the bank recently announced its 60th consecutive "Five-Star Safety Rating" from Bauer Financial.

 

FNB Bosque will implement the product in an outsourced processing environment.

 

Brent Rickles, senior vice president for FNB Bosque County, says they're making the move for better commercial lending capabilities, integration with the bank's Internet banking application and payments processing and improved Check 21 and branch capture capabilities.

 

"It is clear that changes in the financial industry will be shifting the way banks function in the near future," said Rickles. "We decided it was best to address these changes now, as opposed to reacting when they happen."

 

The Complete Banking Solution is built on an Oracle relational database designed to be an open architecture application, and available as an in-house or outsourced product.

 

In addition to The Complete Banking Solution, FNB Bosque is also implementing Open Solutions' digital document product (electronic document management), cView (CRM/business intelligence), e-Commerce Banker (Internet banking and cash management), loan origination systems, the financial accounting suite, item processing with branch capture, as well as Open Solutions' telephony ASP and ATM services.

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Jordan-based Eskadenia Software has signed with NOW for the license and deployment of its Billing and Customer Relationship Management system (Eskadenia BCRM) at the telco's operations in Southern Sudan.

 

NOW is building the first Southern Sudanese GSM network planned to go live in Q4, 2008 under the brand name Vivacell. The billing system will let NOW handle all billing services, customer care aspects, interconnect and roaming agreements, and customer self-care Internet access for post-paid subscribers connected to its GSM and GPRS networks, according to the Eskadenians.

The bilingual Eskadenia BCRM allows real-time billing in telecommunication networks. The modular software product includes modules for Customer Relationship Management, Marketing, Service Provisioning, Product & Pricing Management, Rate Plan Management and Revenue Sharing, among others, in addition to a Point of Sale system.

 

Eskadenia will also deploy its Web-enabled GSM Mediation Gateway, connected to the switching network. The Mediation Gateway at the New Mobile Network will be interfaced to Ericsson Mobile Switch Center and Ericsson Intelligent Network.

Eskadenia BCRM and Eskadenia Mediation Gateway have been designed and developed at Eskadenia in accordance with both the GSM and CCITT recommendations for billing and number plan standards. The Billing & Customer Relationship Management System supports billing for landline telephony services and Intelligent Network services.

The agreement was signed with PMF Telecommunications Holding Ltd., the entity assigned by NOW to handle its network and services procurement from various suppliers.

"The annual telecommunications investment is rising substantially in Sudan and already represents one of the fastest growing telecom markets in Africa," said Nael Salah, Managing Director of Eskadenia Software. "Our new project with NOW is hopefully the start of other successful projects."

Network of the World (NOW) is a Sudanese telecom operator. Eskadenia Software is based in Jordan and has sales activities in Europe, the Middle East, America and Africa; more than 80 percent of its sales are exported to the Global ICT market.

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, one of the very, very few jazz albums to be every bit as good as the hype:

 

Infusionsoft, a vendor of marketing automation software for small businesses, has been ranked 226th on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. The vendor debuted last year at 258th.

 

Infusionsoft was ranked the 10th fastest growing among software companies on the Inc 500, as well the only marketing automation software provider to make the list. For companies hailing from Arizona, Infusionsoft ranked third highest in growth.

 

"Making the list the first time was a thrill, but getting on the Inc 500 again and beating our debut ranking is even sweeter and cause for some celebration," said Clate Mask, president and CEO of Infusionsoft.

 

Two of the vendor's customers appearing on this year's Inc. 500 are ForeclosuresDaily.com based in Largo, Florida ranking 35th, and Options University based in Boca Raton, Florida, at no. 276.

 

The 2008 Inc. 500 list measures revenue growth from 2004 through 2007. To qualify, companies must be U.S.-based and privately held, independent as of December 31, 2007, and have had at least $200,000 in revenue in 2004, and $2 million in 2007.

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Chordiant and IBM officials say the two firms have expanded their alliance for an additional five years, "with particular focus on global healthcare, communications, and insurance markets." Chordiant and IBM have completed implementations in North America and Europe.

 

Under the agreement, Chordiant can access the network of nearly 40 IBM Innovation Centers in new and emerging markets, such as Asia and Eastern Europe. The Chordiantes will be able to "work side by side with IBM sales, marketing, technical experts and engineers," company officials say.

 

"Businesses globally are spending considerable time and resources on new customer experience initiatives," said Mark Hanny, vice president of global ISV alliances, IBM. "IBM's strength in hardware, software, and services combines with Chordiant's expertise in decision-based front-office products for our chosen verticals."

 

Chordiant and IBM's SOA products are based on Chordiant's decision management products and multi-channel SOA platform, IBM WebSphere, DB2, Rational, and Lotus software, IBM hardware including System x and Power Systems servers, and systems integration expertise from IBM Global Business Services.

 

These software offerings are billed as providing clients with "a single, comprehensive view of their customer interactions across any number of call center agents or channels." The combined products also provide case management, along with "improved control over customer retention."

...

 

IT services and products seller Datacentrix is in the process of implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for South Africa's Rand Water's Customer Service and Corporate Communications departments, replacing its legacy system.

 

The initial phase of the project has seen the CRM product rolled out to Rand Water's Customer Service Center as a tool to log calls and assign actions to the relevant people across the organization.

 

According to Phokeng Mohatlane, Account Director at Datacentrix, Rand Water wanted to manage the turnaround time on the calls received to its call center and also the volume of calls processed per agent. "Essentially, Rand Water needed a product that would provide the Customer Service department with the ability to deliver consistent customer experiences," he said, adding that "in terms of the Corporate Communications department, the company's objective was to deliver 'impactful' marketing campaigns, as well as consistent communication and professional events management."

Steven Moodley, Manager IT Applications at Rand Water's IT & KM Division, said the product has "affordable license fees and fewer customizations to be made to the system to fulfill our specific requirements, resulting in future cost savings and effectiveness through replacing the legacy CRM system with MS CRM."

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Tokyo's Oki Electric Industry has announced that the company's Board of Directors has approved the spin-off of its telecommunications business through an incorporation-type company split and the establishment of Oki Networks Co., Ltd., effective October 1. 

 

By splitting off its telecom division, excluding legacy-type business, Oki officials say they want to expand the company's telecom business by "enhancing product development to compete in the rapidly changing global network market."

 

Oki generally sells telecom products to Japan's major telecom carriers and to the enterprise network market. However, in recent years, as networks migrate to IP and the use of NGN-based ubiquitous networks accelerates, Oki has seen fit to alter their approach to accommodate the competition.

 

"We understand that it is essential to further increase flexibility in management and establish a business structure that can respond to the changing market in a more agile and timely manner. Thus, we decided to establish Oki Networks," said Masayoshi Matsushita, Senior Vice President at Oki.

 

Oki Networks will offer services connecting telecom networks with enterprise networks based on NGN, and will continue to expand its telecom business by creating products "with an eye on the global market." This will be done, company officials say, by using its strengths in network technology and network integration technology.

 

Oki Electric Industry was founded in 1881 as Japan's first telecommunications manufacturer, with its headquarters in Tokyo. Gotta admire a company that's been around for over 120 years and survived World War II.

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Infra-Strategy, a vendor of managed services for small and mid-sized professional service firms, has announced that the company has been named to Inc. Magazine's "Inc. 5000" list of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

 

In addition to placing 169th overall in the U.S., Infra-Strategy ranked eighth in the Top 100 Businesses in the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet-Illinois-Indiana-Wisconsin region, and 23rd among the Top 100 Business Services companies.

 

Revenues for the company have at least doubled every year since its founding, and increased 1,400 percent between 2004 and 2007 alone, according to Edmund Scanlan, founder and CEO of Infra-Strategy.

 

Infra-Strategy sells a suite of services, from marketing to management, to "lighten their load of running a business." Among the services they provide are search engine marketing, professional call centers, CRM products (offered as Software as a Service), IT management and risk prevention, advanced answering services, and legal process outsourcing.

 

Infra-Strategy currently counts more than 1,100 small law firms nationwide as clients. The company's Web-based businesses -- such as TotalAttorneys.com, TotalBankruptcy.com, TotalImmigrationLaw.com, TotalDivorce.com, and TotalInjury.com -- give small, local law firms the legal research resources they need for help in such areas as bankruptcy and settling DUI claims.

 

"There is a huge demand for these types of support services among small and mid-sized firms," said Kevin Chern, Infra-Strategy President and formerly the head of the largest bankruptcy law firm in the U.S."

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Zero Playlist. You ever do this? Realize that even though you hit "Shuffle Songs" on the iPod there are some songs you keep hearing over and over and others you never hear? So you make The Zero Playlist -- songs you haven't heard on the iPod, and play that? Current song: The Glenn Miller Orchestra's "April In Paris:"

 

SugarCRM, a provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, has announced the general availability of Sugar 5.1, which includes new reporting and wireless capabilities for SugarCRM.

 

The new reporting and analytics engine provides SugarCRM users with "improved insight into sales effectiveness and customer behavior," company officials say, adding that the "revamped wireless capabilities" allow SugarCRM to be used on mobile phones, including support for the BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones.  

 

SugarCRM's commercial open source model invites the download and inspection of source code by users, developers, customers and partners, on the theory that this produces a higher quality product than possible in proprietary development models. During the beta process, Sugar 5.1 was installed over 10,000 times and tested by over 25,000 users.

 

Since its founding four years ago, Sugar Community Edition and its related components have been downloaded over 5 million times. SugarCRM's user base consists of over 400,000 users on 50,000 installations in 195 countries.

 

"Software is transitioning from lock-in based proprietary systems to an open, standards-based world," thinks John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM.

 

Sugar 5.1, company officials say, offers such features and improvements across end-user and administrative functions as advanced reporting and analytics to "provide support for complex reporting sets, matrix reports, run-time filters and integration with Excel."

 

There's also a new wireless HTML client and improved user interface, and tracker reports to "provide a snapshot into system usage in order to increase user adoption and visibility into CRM use."

...

 

Oracle has announced the new Oracle CRM On Demand Integration to Siebel CRM, described by company officials as "a comprehensive, prebuilt integration that creates a single customer view across on-demand and on-premise CRM deployments."

 

The product is intended to provide a "holistic" view of the sales pipeline for sales and executive managers, as well as "the ability to perform analytics against it by synchronizing customer data from Oracle CRM On Demand and Oracle's Siebel CRM."

 

The idea, Oracle officials say, is that the integration helps companies with on-premise functionality for industry and process-centric CRM, as well as on-demand CRM for remote offices and mobile sales and other users.

 

The product is based on Oracle's standards-based Oracle Application Integration architecture and Oracle Fusion Middleware. It's billed as reducing the integration risk and solving "the data silo problem through integration between on-premise and on-demand CRM."

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Salt Lake City-based CapitalRock has announced that it has completed the integration of its RightBridge Sales Tool into Salesforce.com's Wealth Management Edition, to "identify real-time sales and services opportunities for financial advisors using the CRM data within Salesforce.com."

 

The RightBridge product uses a rules engine to analyze clients' positions, balances, holdings, transaction history and demographic information to pick sales opportunities for advisors to discuss with their clients. "RightBridge also provides the reasons why each opportunity is relevant," company officials say.

 

John Hyde, CEO of CapitalRock, said with the integration of RightBridge into Salesforce.com, "when an advisor accesses a client within Salesforce.com, they can view the sales opportunities identified by RightBridge and access them directly from the client information tab."

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Autobytel, a vendor of automotive CRM and other Internet marketing services, has announced the appointment of automotive Internet veteran Lenny McGinley as vice president of dealer sales.

 

McGinley has played a role "in advancing Autobytel's dealers relations over the years," company officials say, "most recently serving as director of sales for the western region. In this position, McGinley worked side-by-side with dealers, coaching and training them on process implementation, CRM tutoring, and building customer relationships."

 

"With a shaky economy and lagging auto sales, Lenny's experience assisting dealers in improving their processes and increasing lead conversion is an asset to Autobytel," said Mark Garms, Autobytel's senior vice president dealer operations and strategy.

 

Autobytel's customer referrals and lead notification programs will be a particular focus for McGinley's team. Recent studies show that dealers are increasingly embracing lead notification programs -- Autobytel's is called Rapid Response, and it puts dealers on the phone with customers immediately following a purchase request submission,

 

McGinley joined AutoWeb.com (acquired by Autobytel Inc. in 2001) in 1998. As national dealer trainer for AutoWeb, McGinley ran Internet best practices seminars across the country just as consumer adoption of the automotive Internet was ramping up.

 

In 2003, he became Sales Director at Autobytel, among other tasks working with CRM tutoring.

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Mobile data products provider Genesis Communications has launched Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 4.0 as a hosted service available on mobile devices.

 

Users of the service will be able to sign up to a monthly contract and access their CRM portal from PCs, laptops and handheld devices, to access customer information at any location.

 

Genesis product marketing director Mark Seemann called CRM 4.0 "a fantastic tool," since "for smaller companies, purchasing CRM outright is too large an investment."

 

Signing up to a hosted product is "the perfect way to implement CRM for the first time," Seemann said, adding that businesses can "deliver targeted communications and distinguish between high and low value customers, but without a costly initial investment or the requirement for a large server -- ideal for sales people on the road."

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Eloqua, a vendor of demand generation products for business-to-business (B2B) marketers, has announced the Eloqua Web Services Application Programming Interface, a Web Services API for marketing automation.

 

This release extends the reach of Eloqua's demand generation applications, company officials believe, since by using the product "organizations can integrate any application, service or non-standard Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system with their Eloqua product."

 

This functionality goes with Eloqua's integration with such CRM systems as Salesforce.com, Siebel On-Demand and Microsoft CRM.

 

Eloqua's Web Services API is for marketing automation developed with a pure simple object access protocol API, letting Eloqua's customers and partners "integrate the Eloqua Conversion Suite into any business application or service," company officials say.

 

Web services provide benefits for businesses that need the ability to extract and use vast amounts of data from disparate enterprise applications, scattered data sources and incompatible computing platforms.

 

Eloqua Conversion Suite is available in Enterprise, Team and Express editions for businesses from small companies to global enterprises.

 

 

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is dumb rock 'n' roll fun well done -- John Mellencamp's uh-huh. Mellencamp was so good when he didn't take himself seriously and just enjoyed bashing out good-time music. Lately he seems to think he's the reincarnation of Woody Guthrie -- he's not -- issuing tedious jeremiads:

 

Mobile Web data released by Bango today confirms, officials say, that mobile Web usage not only is gaining traction in the United States but soon will surpass the United Kingdom, "where consumers have accessed the Internet from phones for years."

 

According to data supplied by Bango officials, the top five countries accessing the mobile Web via Bango in July 2008 are the UK at 19.35 percent, the US at 18.88 percent, India at 10.82 percent, South Africa at 8.82 percent and -- here's the one you didn't expect -- Indonesia at 4.08 percent. 

 

Bango identifies users by country and network of origin. The ranking is produced by measuring the number of user visits to mobile Web sites from each country.

 

"The USA share of the browsing market has grown as an increasing number of phones come with bigger screens and service contracts that include unlimited internet access," said Adam Kerr, VP of Bango North America at Bango, adding that. "We fully expect the US will overtake the UK in this ranking as early as this month."

 

Forrester Research told The Wall Street Journal last month that the number of inquiries it received from businesses and service providers wanting to talk about the mobile Web jumped 40 percent last year.

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Satuit Technologies, a vendor of sales force automation (SFA) and client relationship management (CRM) products for the professional investment markets, has announced that for the second year in a row it has been named to the annual Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States.

 

In 2007, Satuit ranked 1,619th. This year, Satuit ranked 1,523th and is one of only 14 software companies from Massachusetts on the list.

 

Satuit ranked 65th out of 195 companies in Massachusetts and 115th out of the 283 software firms on the list.  Among software companies in the Northeast, Satuit ranked in the top 20.

 

"We are very excited to make the Inc. 5000 list for the second consecutive year," said Karen Maguire, CEO of Satuit, saying the ranking "demonstrates the growth and ongoing market potential for targeted CRM products such as our SatuitCRM."

 

SatuitCRM offers professional investment firms and practitioners CRM functionality, application configuration, pre-built integration APIs and application extension functionality. Company officials say the product was designed specifically to "enable asset management and hedge fund companies to increase sales... and master information-intensive business relationships." 

 

The Inc. 5000 identifies companies it deems the fastest growing among the more than seven million companies with employees in the U.S.  The 2008 Inc. 5000 list measures revenue growth from 2004 to 2007. To qualify for the Inc. 5000, nominees must be private and independent U.S.-based companies that are not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies as of December 31, 2007. Companies must have earned at least $200,000 in revenue in 2004 and $2 million in 2007.

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ReachForce, a provider of OnDemand software and data services for targeted lead generation, has announced the integration of its role-based contact data services with Eloqua's demand generation applications.

 

Business-to-business marketers can use the resulting product to "build custom role-based contact databases to fuel their multi-modal marketing campaigns" executed via Eloqua's marketing automation platform, ReachForce officials say.

 

ReachForce products are pitched to marketing and sales teams as providing "the ability to target their initiatives at the right decision maker at the right company, every time." The product identifies a person's role within an organization instead of just a title, company officials say.

 

With the integration of ReachForce, Eloqua customers can now "request and build role-based contact lists instantly from within Eloqua's Marketing Automation platform," Eloqua officials say.

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Greenville, South Carolina-based Acumen I.T. has announced a partnership with Mimosa Systems, a vendor of live content archiving products to provide archiving products for Acumen's customers worldwide.

 

The partnership combines Mimosa's e-mail archiving and eDiscovery products with Acumen's portfolio of IT products and services, including server virtualization and storage products. Officials of both firms say the companies will focus on delivering "practical" offerings for the collection, processing, review and management of electronically stored information.

"Our partnership with Acumen will enable us to provide customers with migration services to help prepare for eDiscovery by allowing them to migrate large amounts of data from backup tapes and legacy data formats to the Mimosa NearPoint archive, making that data faster and more cost effective to discover," said Christophe Culine, senior vice president of sales of Mimosa.

 

David Pence, CEO of Acumen, said by pairing their I.T. products and services, "including our emphasis on server virtualization and storage," the partnership will be able to help clients "archive high volumes of historical data."

 

Acumen sells Microsoft Dynamics accounting software and customization services in addition to other applications like customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and point-of-sale systems.

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PowerObjects has announced that Charles McIntosh and Pratima Surapaneni have earned their Microsoft Dynamics CRM certification, identifying both individuals as "expert" in the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

 

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM certification process was developed to equip IT professionals with the ability to install, configure and administer Microsoft Dynamics CRM products.

 

"We place a tremendous value on our employees delivering technology products and applications to our customers," said Jim Sheehan, COO of PowerObjects, adding that these certifications will help "offer our customers best-of-breed CRM products."

 

Established in 1993, PowerObjects is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in CRM products. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the vendor sells services to businesses and non-profit organizations in multiple industries including insurance, financial services, publishing, distribution, manufacturing and professional services.

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GeoSentric Oyj's GeoSolutions BV Business Unit (GyPSii), a mobile digital lifestyle application and geo-mobility social networking platform, has announced that it has signed an agreement with Nanjing MyNet to make the GyPSii mobile social networking platform available to customers of China Mobile.

 

MyNet provides mobile services and applications to China Mobile's 480 million-plus subscribers. The agreement with GyPSii means that MyNet will offer GyPSii location and mobile social networking features and services to China Mobile customers.

 

The agreement has provisions for GyPSii to share revenues based on current business models for mobile social networking that provide a range of revenue streams, including both subscriptions and advertising revenues.

Yang Guang General Manager of Nanjing MyNet, said he's confident that GyPSii will be "popular with our customers."

 

GyPSii officials characterize their offering as a mobile-centric application on the Chinese market incorporating a range of location-specific functions and mobile lifestyle services -- including user generated content, content-sharing, mobile content search and social networking, as well the ability to view it all on a map -- in a single platform.

 

Using GyPSii, users can access and enjoy "real-time" mobile features on their device, such as "Locating Friends" and sharing information on nearby point of interests, including places -- restaurants, bars and clubs -- contributed by friends and fellow GyPSii users.

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Jim Wallace and Sons doing that great traditional Scots standard "Wild Mountain Thyme:"

 

Sword ciboodle, a vendor of customer-oriented business software and services, has announced it has established its North American headquarters in Chicago.

 

The office will initially be staffed by key U.S. sales and operations personnel, with further expansion via a major recruitment drive over the next 12 months as the company seeks, in its officials' words, to become "the fastest-growing CRM provider in North America."

 

Additional Sword ciboodle consultants will be based in Sword Group locations in North America, including New York and San Francisco.

 

Sword has appointed Howard Koenig to head up North American operations for the group, while Rick Rowley has been appointed as Sword ciboodle's U.S operations director. Rowley will be based out of Chicago, while Koenig will operate out of Sword's New York office.

 

Koenig will "drive Sword Group's North American strategy," company officials say, with responsibility for business development and operations across all the group's U.S. business units. Rowley's role will include management of several enterprise customers from Sword ciboodle's North American client base, as well as managing field operations, development of staff and recruitment.

 

The company expects that a significant percentage of its global growth will come from the U.S. over the next few years.

 

Koenig was previously a Partner at Accenture, a senior executive at Oracle, and has been the CEO of two venture-funded Software as a Service companies. Rowley comes to Sword ciboodle from The Revere Group, where as Principal he worked at client executive levels. Prior to Revere, he was also a contributor to Fujitsu's Global Advisory Services and Enterprise organizations.

 

Sword ciboodle will be demonstrating ciboodle at the upcoming Gartner CRM Summit in Washington DC, September 8 - 10.

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Apisphere, a vendor of location-awareness services for mobile business applications and devices, has announced a partnership with Fieldpoint Service Applications to integrate its real-time geo-location data capabilities into FieldPoint's mobile help desk, field service, contracts and project management applications.

 

Fieldpoint's Alert software offers Web-based professional services applications. Apisphere's Geo-Enabled Mobility platform will be integrated with Alert to enhance the application with location-awareness capabilities.

 

Apisphere will work with Fieldpoint to provide geographical information designed to "improve efficiency and reduce costs," company officials say, ranging from delivering location-specific traffic updates to service vehicles on route, to assigning a support call to service technicians in the field based on their current location.

 

"By providing our customers with up-to-the-minute geographic data, we will be able to help them manage and deploy their resources," said Rich Smart, CEO, Fieldpoint. "With Apisphere's real-time location-awareness capabilities integrated into our Alert software, we can further differentiate our professional services by providing customers access to meaningful and relevant geographic information at their fingertips."

 

"With the enormous growth in professional services market worldwide, businesses are looking for products that can help them respond more rapidly and accurately in any situation as well as make quick decisions on how to most effectively allocate resources," said Craig Harper, CEO, Apisphere.

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AKoTel Telekommunikations GmbH has released IVAN, described by company officials as "an enterprise carrier grade call center management product that combines the call distribution capabilities of an automatic call distribution system with the data collection capabilities of IVR technology, all in one easy-to-use web interface for x800 numbers, international DID's and premium rate numbers."

Interactive Voice Application Network is an enterprise carrier grade platform to handle IVR, call center and call distribution services for x800 numbers, international DID's and premium rate numbers.

IVAN makes use of the freely available Asterisk Open Source and will be delivered inside AsterLive. It can be run straight from the CD without installation. AsterLive uses Debian Etch 4.0 as its operating system and includes Apache, MySQL and PHP. The product supports "all major ISDN HFC-S, Digium and Junghans phone cards," company officials say, as well as -- direct quote -- "their plagiarisms which are available on the market."

"With IVAN you do not get a standalone call center product, you get a complete IVR, routing and interactive telephony platform on which you can combine all features on a modular basis," says Alfred Kohl, CEO of ZaKoTel GmbH.

A comprehensive description, free download and a forum for the AsterTools Suite is available at: http://www.astertools.com.

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Wainhouse Research has found in its latest WebMetrics Survey that energy and gas prices are "greatly impacting" how business is being conducted, specifically leading to "expanded use of existing and addition of new collaboration technologies."

 

The WebMetrics Survey explores attitudes towards telework and environmental initiatives, brand perceptions, usage habits and feature preferences as they relate to Web conferencing for the first half of the year 2008.

 

The study found that almost 2 out of 5 reported that their organizations have launched some type of "green" initiative. One-third of respondent organizations have expanded or have plans to expand their existing conferencing and collaboration technologies, and 22 percent have "added" or "plan to add" new conferencing and collaboration technologies.

 

26 percent of those who responded say their organizations have expanded their telework programs, enabling employees to work from home more frequently.

 

"Rising energy prices have resulted in a surge in use of conferencing and collaboration technologies, and telework is one of several silver bullets that are helping enterprises programmatically add collaboration technologies," said Alan Greenberg, senior analyst & partner, Wainhouse Research.

 

The findings show what Wainhouse officials characterize as "a shift from brick-and-mortar to online meetings through the increased use of Instant Messaging, applications integrated with Web conferencing, and directory services to launch ad hoc meetings."

 

Andy Nilssen, senior analyst & partner Wainhouse Research, said while we expected "some growth, we're seeing a total of 41 percent of the panel -- an increase of 10 percent over this time last year -- taking advantage of enterprise-grade IM technologies."

 

This WebMetrics report was compiled using data collected from 149 end user panelists qualified as individuals in enterprises, small to medium business, education or government and military.

...

 

Neil Young will be present at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce -08. Exactly what he'll be doing there is a bit hazy, but he will be in the building. At some point.

 

Malcolm Gladwell, Dr. Larry Brilliant and Michael Dell will join Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff to speak at 6th annual Salesforce.com user and developer conference.

 

Gladwell is the author of The Tipping Point. Brilliant is Google.org executive director. Young will evidently be there in his capacity as team member of Linc Volt, and Dell will be Dell.

 

Linc Volt is evidently an organization wanting to make cleaner, greener cars. Given the dozens of old gas-guzzlers Young owns and runs it's dry humor at best.

 

Conference registration is now open at http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/.

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bix Beiderbecke's "Ostrich Walk:"

 

Intridea has announced that VisualCV has integrated Intridea's MediaPlug media appliance server with its software for building, sharing and managing Internet resumes.

 

As a result, company officials say, VisualCV customers can create "media-rich resumes," called "VisualCVs," that include photos, audio, video and more. Because MediaPlug uses cloud computing via Amazon Web Services, VisualCV doesn't have hardware requirements to manage and store data-intensive media files.

 

"VisualCV is committed to changing the way recruiting and career management are conducted online, and Intridea is a strategic partner in that effort," said Scott Herman, vice president of product development at VisualCV. You can view an example of a visual CV, Herman's own, at www.VisualCV.com/scottherman.

 

Web services using Ruby on Rails has allowed integration between VisualCV's resume application and Intridea MediaPlug. When members want to upload multimedia files, MediaPlug takes the files from the VisualCV application, transcodes them, re-sizes them as needed, checks for viruses and then store them on the Amazon Simple Storage System.

 

"Though handled by different servers," company officials say, "the media files and resumes appear to members as a single online document."

 

Herman said his company "went from engaging Intridea in October 2007, to delivering alpha code in December, and then launching our public beta in February 2008."

...

 

RightNow Technologies has introduced August '08, the latest version of the company's on demand, customer relationship management (CRM) product.

 

Company officials say the product is for organization to "transform their static Web site support environments into branded, highly interactive online service experiences for customers."

 

With the RightNow customer portal, organizations can "brand and personalize the Web site service experience," using "interactive Web 2.0 information resources," company officials say.

 

The customer portal is part of RightNow Service and includes best practices for online customer self-service, and is designed to support consumers' "increased reliance on digital mediums to make informed buying decisions, with the ability to incorporate Web 2.0 technologies in the form of widgets, video, forums, and blogs."

 

The product also includes a studio development environment to create and manage the online service experience, including integration with Adobe Dreamweaver.

 

There's also something company officials are calling "The Collaboration Key: Co-Browse and Proactive Chat," offering "live, interactive assistance exactly when online consumers need it."

 

Evidently the products' co-browse feature lets consumers securely invite an agent, either on the phone or during an online chat session, to share their desktop and navigate or browse together, whether for resolving a problem, filling out a form, or guiding them through an online purchase.

 

Proactive chat is described by RightNow officials as "a new feature of RightNow chat that presents a chat invitation to a consumer based on specific, definable circumstances, such as being a premier or gold customer or spending a certain amount of time on a site."

 

"With more access to information, more sensitivity to price, and less sensitivity to advertising, customers are getting harder to win and keep. Organizations try to woo these empowered consumers with mediocre experiences - but it won't work. Firms need to dramatically raise the bar on the customer experience they provide," wrote Bruce D. Temkin of Forrester Research in the January 2007 report "Experience-Based Differentiation."

...

 

Demandbase has announced Demandbase Central, a technology platform that "powers a variety of new SaaS products including Demandbase Direct," according to company officials.

 

The Central platform is comprised of a search, scoring, and transaction engine which finds and qualifies B2B sales prospects and delivers them -- "without duplication" -- to a customer's e-mail, desktop or CRM system. It uses a pay-as-you-go model free of subscriptions, minimums or trial periods.

 

"The Direct experience makes finding and buying business contact information and sales leads as easy, fast and precise as buying music online," company officials say.

 

Demandbase Central is described by company officials as "performing as a search and scoring engine for leads, integrates data from the Web, third party information providers, CRM systems and social networks, then cleanses, normalizes and granularly categorizes millions of records based on each user's unique requirements." It uses D&B/Hoovers, Zoom Info, Lexis Nexis Business Information, Data Marketing Solutions, List Orbit, Opt-In Builders, and others, as well as information from across the Web.

...

 

Salesforce.com has announced the appointment of Steve McWhirter as president of its Asia-Pacific operations. He will report to Jim Steele, chief customer officer and president of international operations, and will be based in salesforce.com's Singapore office.

 

He succeeds Stephen J. Russell who served as president since November 2005.

 

"Steve McWhirter will support Salesforce.com's accelerated growth and market development in the Asia-Pacific region," said Steele, adding that McWhirter is expected to be "a driving force in extending the benefits of Salesforce CRM and the Force.com Platform to the growing number of companies in the region."

 

McWhirter joins salesforce.com from serving as vice president of HP Software Asia Pacific, a division of HP Technology Solutions Group, where he led an organization of nearly 500 sales, marketing, services and technical support staff.

 

During his tenure, the HP Software division saw the company's acquisitions of Mercury, Bristol, SPI and Opsware.

 

Before HP, McWhirter held positions as vice president of Red Hat Asia-Pacific and director, APAC software sales of IBM Software Group, Asia-Pacific, among others.

 

The Asia-Pacific region is Salesforce.com's fastest growing region worldwide. For its fiscal year ending January 31, 2008, the company's Asia-Pacific revenues grew more than 85 percent year-over-year and doubled its customer base.

...

 

MuseWorx, a vendor of on-demand marketing automation, has announced the public launch of the MuseWorx Marketing Operating System, described by company officials as "a marketing automation system to use cloud computing to support the marketing ecosystem," including service providers.

 

The product provides a way to integrate automation tools, resource partners and a collaboration and digital asset management system "capable of handling unlimited data, rich media files and users," company officials say.

 

MuseWorx has also announced a partnership with Images.com, an illustration licensing agency and digital asset library. Images.com's customers will now have free access to MuseWorx, and clients can access the inventory of previously licensed assets that Images.com currently provides.

 

For Images.com artists, the new partnership will allow them to consolidate their portfolios, including assignment works, for image management, copyright registration and future licensing opportunities.

 

"Images.com caters to marketers and advertisers frustrated with how few tools actually work together," said Paul Arbor, COO of Images.com. "We anticipate that this new offering will integrate our content into a single workspace for the advertising and creative communities."

 

In addition, MuseWorx has established partnerships with MediaPost and the Direct Marketing Association Affiliate Network, whose members and subscribers can also use MuseWorx to share, manage, track and analyze marketing campaigns and brands assets over the system.

 

MuseWorx will also incorporate other enterprise-class automation applications and tools, such as CRM, analytics, e-mail, and others.

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Belle & Sebastian's The Life Pursuit (think The Smiths meet The Kinks in a studio with a policy against lead guitars, or The Beautiful South on a summer's day). Ungraciously dubbed "twee-rock" in some quarters, it's admittedly no Black Sabbath or Metallica, you'd sooner expect a harpsichord fugue than a guitar solo, but well-crafted pop music with corrosively bitter lyrics swimming in the sweet syrupy arrangements:

 

Equisys, a developer of software products for document production and delivery and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, has announced the launch of Zetadocs for NAV 1.2, the latest version of Zetadocs for Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

 

By adding electronic document delivery and storage to Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Zetadocs for NAV is designed to let users "limit their reliance on paper in their finance processes," as well as improve credit control, and comply with industry regulations on data storage and access, company officials say.

 

The production of financial documents is usually both labor and paper intensive. Delivering documents electronically with Zetadocs is pitched as reducing the amount of time spent producing the documents, cutting down on the amount of paper used, and eliminating postage costs.

 

Chris Oswald, CEO of Equisys, calls the release of Zetadocs for NAV 1.2 "the next step in our vision to provide the complete document management and delivery product for Microsoft Dynamics NAV."

 

Zetadocs for NAV is integrated with Microsoft SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services so companies can store and retrieve financial documents associated with a particular customer or supplier.

 

The latest version supports purchase invoice processing in addition to the sales order processing already available, Oswald says, adding that "this makes it simple to store copies of both inbound sales orders and purchase invoices electronically, whether they are received on paper, by fax or by e-mail."

...

 

DataArt, a software outsourcing company with development centers in Russia and the Ukraine, was selected by InsWorld.com to "improve data import and data mapping processes for its patented publishing software," DataArt officials say.

 

InsWorld.com sells e-mail publications that allow banking, accounting, and insurance organizations to send personalized newsletters to their clients. DataArt integrated InsWorld's existing subscription management system with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 and created a framework that helped to facilitate the integration.

 

Enhancements in the data import processes made the system more "manageable and robust," DataArt officials say, while "improved data mapping usability enriched the overall end-user experience."

 

Eugene Goland, President of DataArt, said CRM customization "has become a strong offering in the roster of DataArt's services, and we'll continue to build on our experience in the sector."

 

Edward Roemke, CEO of InsWorld.com, said the CRM integration tool "has eliminated slower data exchanges, reduced data-entry errors and greatly improved our operational efficiency."

...

 

Cranfield University has announced a new full and part time MSc course in enterprise system implementation. Course director Dr. Ip Shing Fan says it's aimed at "developing individuals' understanding of business operations, how IT can help in industrial business and the necessity of people buy-in for IT to support change."

Coverage ranges from enterprise systems such as ERP and CRM to supply chain management and Product Lifecycle Management.

It also considers "integration tools aimed at increasing productivity by automating work processes, maintaining a single picture of corporate data and satisfying regulatory compliance requirements," course officials say, adding that the enterprise system implementation program "also specifically focuses on implementation challenges."

Cranfield is running an open day on 3 September. The course is open to UK residents and candidates with a good first degree, even some years ago, could receive funding support.

...

 

Integration Technologies, which sells on-demand product integration, has announced the availability of Ascent in IT's integrated supply chain products for InterWeave customers.

 

ISC products are designed to integrate best of breed vendors, companies like Salesforce.com, Nexternal and Merkatis Order Management System, Ascent's Online Inventory and Warehouse System and Intuit's Quickbooks. These core applications are supported by Contactual's on-demand contact center and HelpStreams's customer service application.

 

Customers choose only the applications they need to build their supply chain product, Integration officials say, adding that "this is not a legacy application where customers have no control over function or cost, and it's all configurable with the InterWeave Customer Portal."

 

"The ICP offers an on-demand platform for InterWeave customers to expand their existing applications with integration capabilities," Bruce Magown, Chairman of Integration Technologies said: "Ascent provides customers with inventory and warehouse functionality in a SaaS form -- the first on the force.com platform."

 

"This partnership aims to close the loop by creating a complete SaaS ERP application on the force.com platform," said VP of Sales and Marketing Shaun McInerney. "The Ascent Inventory and Warehouse Solution is the first On-demand inventory control product designed specifically for the force.com platform."

...

 

First Coffee remembers much of the stated reason for awarding Beijing the 2008 Olympics ten years ago was as a reward for pledges from the Chinese to "open up," loosen of the state's iron fist of control, and use the games to celebrate China's emergence as a tolerant society. So how's that working out, cheating with underage gymnasts aside?

 

As Simon Jary reports, "Chinese authorities have blocked Apple's iTunes Music Store, apparently because 'more than 40' athletes have listened to protest songs by bands such as Rush and Alanis Morissette.

 

"The US Tibetan activist group The Art of Peace Foundation invited Olympic athletes to download the album 'Songs for Tibet' free of charge.

 

"On Monday iTunes stopped working in China -- apparently another example of the so-called 'Great Firewall of China.' The size of the Chinese Internet police is estimated at more than 30,000."

 

Incidentally, the other country with a billion people, India, won its first-ever individual Olympic gold medal at this Olympics. Think about it, that's a staggering statistic. As one commentator said, look what happens when you emphasize schooling over sports.

...

 

Ahmedabad-based GlobalTech is "all set" to acquire a majority stake in Belgium-based Perfectview Belgie, a CRM vendor, at a deal price of nearly €2 million, GlobalTech officials say.

With this deal, GlobalTech expects to get "wide reach in the European market and access to the 1,600 client-base of Perfectview," a company executive said, adding that the due diligence of the all-cash deal is over and the deal will be closed shortly.

The company has raised the money through its internal accruals and reserves. "We'll acquire a majority stake in Perfectview that will give us a major footprint in the European market," said GlobalTech director Paresh Vasani. The company will retain the manpower and infrastructure facilities of Perfectview at Belgium, while designing and manufacturing will be done at Ahmedabad.

 

The other procedures "will be over within next month," company officials say.

Perfectview, a client of GlobalTech for the last 4-5 years, has a strong focus on CRM products in Europe. "Our aim is to become a product-selling company besides being a designing company, and to cater to the emerging nations of Europe," Vasani said.

 

The company is aiming to develop CRM based products "so as to directly compete with Microsoft's version in Europe at nearly half the cost," GlobalTech officials say, explaining that "for a long time, the company has been finding it difficult to deal with different language and software applications that are being used in Europe. This acquisition will give a straight entry with local effect."

 

With this deal, the company will also be able to launch CRM based products in India under GlobalTech brand, catering to small and medium range of companies in India across sectors- pharma, engineering, consumer electronics. For the manufacturing of various CRM products, the company will set up a unit in Ahmedabad.

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the literate, enjoyable pop songwriting of Between The Wars by Al Stewart:

 

W-Systems Corp has announced the release of version 1.8 of their wMobile Mobile CRM product. The new version adds graphical monthly, weekly and daily calendars to the application, which display "equally well," company officials say, on "any phone from BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone to Palm."

 

With the latest graphical team calendars, wMobile users can now "interactively access any team members calendar via their mobile phone," company officials say, adding that with dynamic time zone support, "any user can specify the time zone they are operating in and have schedule activities translated on the fly to display in the context of their current location."

 

"WMobile 1.8 illustrates a leap forward in the usability of mobile Web applications" by offering "a parity in user experience across all major phone operating systems," says W-Systems President Christian Wettre.

 

It's the mobile telephone client for the GoldMine CRM system, and company officials say "truly accessible mobile CRM" is not only feasible for large organizations with large budgets, but "equally accessible for small organizations with just a few users."

 

"Our installation procedures and $295 per user license cost means that wMobile is one of few mobile CRM products on the market that supports as little as two users and has been proven to scale up for larger organizations with hundreds of users," says Wettre.

...

 

Salesforce.com announced Wednesday after the closing bell that its second quarter profit more than doubled from last year, boosted by 49 percent increase in revenues and growth in net paying customers.

 

The company also provided outlook for the third quarter, and raised its revenue guidance for the full year.

Net income for the second quarter was $9.99 million or $0.08 per share, up from $3.74 million or $0.03 per share in the prior year quarter. On average, thirty analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial expected the company to earn $0.08 per share for the second quarter.

The San Francisco-based company's total revenues increased 49 percent to $263.08 million from $176.58 million in the same quarter of last year. Thirty analysts had consensus revenue estimate of $260.56 million for the second quarter.

Subscription and support revenues rose 50 percent to $239.7 million, while Professional services and other revenues grew 41 percent to $23.4 million in the year-ago quarter.

Earlier Salesforce.com said that it has acquired InStranet, which provides knowledge management technology for business to consumer call centers. The purchase price of about $31.5 million includes the assumption of $4.2 million in cash on InStranet's balance sheet.

For the first six-month period of 2008, net income was $19.6 million or $0.16 per share, higher than $4.5 million or $0.04 per share in the previous year period.

Total revenues for the year-to-date period increased to $510.70 million from $338.99 million in the preceding year period.

 

Looking ahead, the company anticipates GAAP earnings for the third quarter to be in the range of $0.06 to $0.07 per share, non-GAAP earnings of $0.08 to $0.09 per share, and revenue of $273 million to $274 million. The company noted that non-GAAP earnings exclude the effect of the InStranet acquisition.

...

 

Upswing CRM has announced the general availability of "Upswing CRM for Financial Advisors," version 2.0, described by company officials as "an on-demand customer relationship management service for the investment advisory business."

 

The announcement was made at the 2008 Broker-Dealer Client Conference hosted by a Web-services partner to Upswing CRM, Laser App Software.

 

The new version of Upswing CRM delivers on-demand CRM capabilities and "a clean, intuitive interface" letting users track tasks and opportunities and collaborate as a team in secure Web-based workspaces.

 

Upswing CRM is available as a hosted service at http://www.UpswingCRM.com, where financial advisors can sign up for free to immediately trial Upswing CRM.

 

Alex Turnbull, Upswing's Vice President of Product Marketing, said the product's "ease of use and relevance to the ways financial advisors work" will make Version 2.0 of Upswing CRM and forthcoming feature additions "quite popular among financial advisors and broker-dealers."

 

Laser App Software integrates with Upswing CRM via Web-services integration. The vendor sells automated form filling software designed for broker-dealers and advisors.

...

 

Kaleidico, a vendor of mortgage sales management software, has announced the launch of icoSales 5.0. This new version, "packed with Web 2.0 style features," according to company officials, was designed to "open up this lead management system to a much broader CRM audience."

 

Company officials say they "chose to make working sales in different industry verticals as easy as clicking a button. In fact, Kaleidico's system even allows you to work various sales verticals in a single system -- no reason to have separate systems to serve clients in mortgage, insurance, and real estate."

 

"Our goal in this new release was to bring the icoSales lead management to a variety of sales organizations," said Keith Burwell, Kaleidico's head of business development, basically "building CRM software that helps sales people increase their closing capacity."

 

Using a market-style supply and demand lead distribution system "optimizes lead allocation to top performers," the Kaleidicians say.

 

The product's data interchange API "opens up out-of-the-box opportunities to use third-party automated mortgage pricing engines, loan origination systems, marketing automation, and business intelligence products," company officials say.

...

 

Customer Effective, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and implementer of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, has announced its recent inclusion in the 2008 Inc. 500 list at #266.

 

This marks the company as "one of nation's fastest growing companies," company officials say, noting that since its inception in 2003, the company has grown by 1000.7 percent.

 

The Inc. 500 is Inc. magazine's annual ranking of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States. Firms are ranked according to percentage revenue growth over a four-year period.

 

"Being named to the Inc. 500 speaks volumes about Customer Effective's presence and extensive growth in the CRM space," said Scott Millwood, CEO of Customer Effective, and yeah, First Coffee'll let him crow a bit. He's earned it.

 

Since 2003, Customer Effective has worked with products based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. The firm "correlates our consistent growth in revenue and clients with our customer-first approach, top-tier service and leadership," Millwood said.

 

Last month, Customer Effective was given two Microsoft East Region Awards for superior customer product offerings and consistent demonstration of value to customers. Customer Effective recently earned the 2008 Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle distinction as well.

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is a guilty pleasure: Van Halen II. Quite guilty and quite pleasurable:

 

Knoa, a vendor of performance management software, has announced that Shred-it, an on-site document destruction company, has selected Knoa Experience and Performance Manager to improve end-user performance related to its use of the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application.

 

Shred-it is implementing SAP CRM to manage all customer-facing interactions, including contract administration, service orders, invoicing and customer support services.

 

Dan Snider, vice president, Business Solutions, Shred-it, says he "had concerns" that the IT team would not have sufficient visibility into the real end-user experience with the SAP CRM application and the issues individual employees were encountering. "The 'go-live' implementation of products such as SAP CRM can require a very intensive, hands-on end-user support practice," said Snider. "In those early critical weeks, everyone using SAP CRM should be in the line-of-sight of a support person."

 

Shred-it chose to deploy Knoa EPM to help with the adoption and use of SAP CRM by the end-user population. Knoa EPM monitors application execution from the perspective of the end user, and provides metrics about the user experience as well as measurements on how people interact with software applications.

 

The software delivers metrics on the performance of the application, and what the Knoans describe as "visibility into the actual performance of the end users."

 

Shred-it recently completed its initial implementation and is currently using Knoa to capture a wide variety of metrics about the SAP CRM application. "In a CRM implementation, silence can be hard to interpret. With Knoa, we know if that silence masks adoption issues, if users are struggling with problems they aren't reporting, or if, in fact, things are going as well as they seem."

...

 

Selectica, a vendor of enterprise contract lifecycle management products, has announced that it has upgraded the Selectica Contract Performance Management (CPM) platform with new features that further shorten time-to-contract.

 

"Many of our customers tell us that speeding time-to-contract is an important part of their contract lifecycle strategy," said Anthony Roth, Senior Director of Product and Strategy for Selectica, adding that "our objective is to simplify document handling and speed time-to-approval for new contracts."

 

With CPM 3.2.2, documents can now be accessed from within e-mail, including wireless e-mail, such as on a Blackberry, company officials say. The new release also can convert PDF documents to Word documents using OCR software to make it easier to convert third-party documents for review and editing. Faxes can be converted from PDF format to Word for editing.

 

The latest release also tries to improve access to customer records and other data sources outside the contract management system when creating a contract, for integration into CRM and ERP systems.

 

Selectica sells software products that "automate the complexities of enterprise contract management and sales configuration lifecycles," according to company officials. The company's products are used in such business functions as sourcing, procurement, governance, sales and revenue recognition.

...

 

Experian QAS, a vendor of customer data quality software and services, has announced it will host a Webinar with the U.S. Naval Institute, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support sea services, to discuss how it has used QAS matchIT to improve its entire customer service operation, including the Web site ordering system and member service operation.

 

Since deploying QAS matchIT in 2007, the U.S. Naval Institute has reported a 93 percent decrease in the number of duplicate customer records entered into its database system.

 

During this complimentary Webinar on Thursday, August 21, 2008, Michelle Johnson, customer service manager at the U.S. Naval Institute, will discuss how the company was able to achieve this.

 

QAS matchIT gives users the ability to search for and eliminate duplicates in any database or list. Matches can be based on a customizable set of data fields such as name, address, phone number, date of birth or any other field.

 

Since deploying QAS matchIT, the U.S. Naval Institute has reduced the number of duplicate records entered each week from 140 to ten.

 

"We considered a number of data cleansing and de-duplication software options," said Rick Woodcock, chief technology officer, US Naval Institute. During the Webinar, the U.S. Naval Institute will discuss the effects duplicate records in its database and the product it put in place to help elevate them.

 

The broadcast is tomorrow, Thursday, August 21, at 2:00 p.m. ET, 11:00 a.m. PT. Register at http://www.qas.com/USNI.

 

Fun Fact You Didn't Know: The U.S. Naval Institute was founded in 1873 by a group of 15 naval officers who began meeting to discuss the serious implications of a smaller, post-Civil War Navy and other matters of professional interest. The U.S. Naval Institute focuses on Magazines and Conferences, the Naval Institute Press, and the history and preservation of naval and maritime heritage.

 

And in 1984 The Naval Institute Press, which rarely publishes fiction, decided to publish a novel written by an insurance agent who had never published a novel before, and whose book, The Hunt For Red October, had been rejected by every publisher the author, Tom Clancy, had shown it to.

...

 

MicroStrategy Incorporated, a vendor of business intelligence software, has announced that Sand Technology, which sells intelligent data management software and best practices, has entered into an OEM agreement with MicroStrategy.

 

The Sandmen say the company plans to include MicroStrategy software in its data management products to provide reporting capabilities to its customers.

 

Sand Technology's products are geared to helping users "store and retrieve large amounts of granular or historical data in a small footprint" by compressing the data into a searchable data repository. By including MicroStrategy's business intelligence software, Sand officials believe they can offer a broader product to customers with reporting functionality. Sand customers will have the ability to access MicroStrategy reports.

 

"Our customers rely on Sand Technology for cost-effective data management products for their data," said Richard Grondin, Vice President R&D and Product Deployment at Sand Technology. "MicroStrategy is well-suited for our technology and our customers' reporting requirements."

...

 

StrongMail Systems, which sells on-premise products for marketing and transactional e-mail, has announced the StrongMail Message Studio Express Bundle as a new addition to its product line marketed to small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs).

 

Offered exclusively from StrongMail's value-added reseller partners, this package is designed for businesses that send less than one million messages per month.

 

The bundle is a turnkey package that combines all the hardware, software and services required for SMBs to work with their e-mail programs. StrongMail officials call it an option for managing their email on-premise while also taking advantage of a predictable cost model that eliminates the costly CPM fees associated with ESPs. By expanding its product line for lower-volume senders, StrongMail now makes it possible for any size organization to own its email infrastructure.

 

By offering this new package via StrongMail's fast-growing network of value-added resellers, StrongMail will be leveraging the sales resources of its strategic partners with extensive sales coverage throughout the United States. Lexnet Consulting Group, a StrongMail partner and CRM product reseller, recently sold the StrongMail Message Studio Express Bundle to Lussori, an established retailer of fine jewelry and timepieces.

 

"At Lussori, we represent some of the world's most prestigious jewelry companies, and our email communications must reflect the same level of excellence that is associated with these luxury brands," says Lawrence Kosick, CEO of Lussori. "Lussori chose StrongMail because of the depth and breadth of its tool set, technology and analytics, which will enable us to create highly personalized messages that get delivered."

 

 

 

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Miles Davis's Kind Of Blue:

 

Davis Medical Electronics, a vendor of new and refurbished medical equipment, has standardized on AccountMate products for CRM and other functions, company officials say.

 

The firm had used AccountMate Software to run their core business unit for the last two decades, but tracked their sales leads and customer follow-ups in Excel, company officials say: "Naturally, this process was labor intensive and difficult to manage as more sales representatives joined the company."

 

The company outgrew their client management system. "We quickly realized that an enhanced client and lead tracking product was needed to manage existing customers and post-sales marketing," says Brian Hibbits, their IT director.

 

Davis Medical wanted a Customer Relationship Management product that would manage company workflow, track and assign new leads, and automate the business process on customer follow-up. They also wanted to upgrade their accounting system and wanted a financial business product that would integrate their lead management requirements.

 

Davis Medical upgraded their accounting system to AccountMate for SQL, which provides the "essential business backbone" company officials say they were looking for. INFOtrac for AccountMate, AccountMate's CRM product, provided a way to integrate lead management processes and financial accounting functions.

 

Prior to the INFOtrac installation, Davis Medical maintained customer information in three separate places. One database managed the service department, one database supported accounting functions and another database handled new prospects. Using INFOtrac for AccountMate, Davis Medical was able to consolidate three separate sets of data into what company officials describe as "a real-time CRM product with every interaction entered for their prospects, customers and contacts in one centralized place."

 

Employees have access to their clients' complete history for service, accounting and sales information cross-functionally. Using INFOtrac for AccountMate, company officials say, "every sales opportunity is captured and funneled directly to the sales representative.

 

AccountMate software is distributed exclusively through a worldwide channel of authorized product providers.

...

 

Clickatell, a vendor of mobile messaging products, announced its work with First National Bank and Santam Insurance has "raised customer satisfaction and reduced costs" through SMS within their respective call centers.

 

According to a 2008 Aberdeen study surveying 4,500 respondents, concerns over a potential recession is a top-three business challenge for companies this year. Another Aberdeen study found that 88 percent of best-in-class companies considered corporate profitability to be "a key metric driving the need to manage telecom costs," including in the call center.

 

"We have all been there -- we call for service only to be #134 in the queue when we simply need a balance update or tracking number. Consumers are increasingly mobile and interact with a myriad of companies through call centers, often using their mobile phones," said Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell. "SMS provides an easy to use mobile product that doesn't require long wait times or interactive voice response systems."

 

Results from the recent Aberdeen study found that 80 percent of best-in-class call centers are using text messaging, and concluded that there is "a marked difference" in adoption in what the study's authors describe as "non-best-in-class organizations which are not taking advantage of an opportunity to add a touch point between a given company's expert resources and their customers through the use of text messaging."

 

Aberdeen officials say the cost of using SMS for customer contact is "a fraction of the cost of live agent communications, as well as interactive voice response systems"

 

UK-based call center analyst firm ContactBabel has reported that live-agent service calls average $12 per call, while SMS costs pennies per message. Done correctly, "SMS replaces the need for live agents, as well as IVR systems, for many simple service inquiries, allowing live agents to spend time on dealing with more complex customer inquiries," ContactBabel officials say.

 

Text messaging can be integrated with existing CRM or call center products. Clickatell's APIs and developer tools provide a central point to integrate new SMS capabilities into existing or new offerings.

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Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela lead Latin America in adoption of the mobile Web, according to the most recent "State of the Mobile Web" report issued by Opera Software.

 

The report also specifies the Top 10 most popular sites ranked according to unique visitors in each of the top countries for mobile Web usage in Latin America. Google leads the way in most countries, followed by some of the most popular social-networking sites.

 

Opera's "State of the Mobile Web" report is available each month at http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/ in both HTML and PDF formats.

 

The report find