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.