Talisma's 8.1, Infor's Biz Ed, Unifi in Kosovo, Sage SalesLogix 7.5

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Talisma's 8.1, Infor's Biz Ed, Unifi in Kosovo, Sage SalesLogix 7.5

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz
 
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a surprisingly durable old album, The Marshall Tucker Band. Far more than simply a Southern boogie rock workout, there's a lot of jazz and gospel mixed in the brew here:
 
Talisma Corporation, selling what it calls Customer Interaction Management software, has announced availability of version 8.1 of their multi channel products.  This release adds capabilities to Talisma Chat, Talisma E-mail and reporting, company officials say.
 
"With 8.1, Talisma provides functionality to help businesses cross sell and upsell to their customer base," with the additional reporting in 8.1 giving businesses "an in-depth look at how they can deliver the best customer experience," said Dan Vetras, President and CEO, Talisma Corporation. 
 
Talisma Chat 8.1 enables Payment Card Industry compliance for companies that accept online payments: "Agents can see customer credit card information and other personal data in the chat window, however, any data matching pre-configured patterns will be removed from the transcript and CIM database," company officials say.
 
Agents are also notified which proactive rule triggered the chat invitation, and invitations can now be page specific and support additional functionality for displaying invitations, such as location.
 
Using rules, Talisma Chat can now set customer status to Hot, Warm or Cold, letting the agent see if a sales prospect is hot, warm or cold. The product also displays the number of customers that would have been presented a proactive invitation if an agent was available.
 
Talisma E-mail 8.1 lets agents split an e-mail into multiple threads "useful for e-mails with multiple questions that need to be handled by different mail queues," company officials say.
 
The product requires input from agents when they are completing an e-mail response, and placeholders show agents where they need to insert responses in their message back to customers.
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Unifi Communications, a vendor of telecommunication services, has announced that Dardafone, which is granted license by the TRA to provide MVNO services in Kosovo, and PTK J.S.C., a vendor of telecommunication services in Kosovo, have signed Heads of Agreement for a business alliance.
 
Unifi Holdings Inc owns 48 percent of shares of Dardafone via Unitel World, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Unifi Holdings Company, which makes Unifi is the largest shareholder of Dardafone.  
 
The agreement was signed at the PTK headquarters. Adnan Merovci, Chief Executive Officer of the PTK, said further details to the agreement "will be incorporated, following discussions to take place in the near future."
 
Merovci added that this heads of agreement "is a result of the process that was initiated earlier and supported by the current Board of Directors and the definitive agreement to be drafted hereafter will be submitted to the PTK J.S.C. Board of Directors for approval."
 
Philip Walker, representative of Dardafone, said that Dardafone received its license by the TRA in June of this year, and developed the relationship with PTK so that they could "proceed to begin the business."
 
This cooperation with PTK lets Dardafone accelerate MVNO operations in Kosovo which, Dardafone officials believe, "will increase competition, call quality and resulting in lower rates for subscribers."
 
The Post and Telecommunications of Kosovo, PTK, was established in 1959 by the Yugoslavian PTT community to provide basic phone services. Post and Telecom of Kosovo was established in 1999 by the UNMIK administration.
 
New York-based Unifi Communications is a carrier of international voice traffic with over one billion minutes annual traffic.
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If there was anybody First Coffee would have liked to see beat Federer for the U.S. Open it would have been Andy Murray, but don't weep for him, if he keeps playing as well as he did over the past two weeks there's a U.S. Open title or two in his bright future.
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Infor has announced the availability of Infor PM Business Edition, a performance management product designed to help small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) automate their planning and budgeting processes.
 
PM Business Edition "delivers performance management functionality used in larger enterprises but configured for the smaller footprint of the SMB," company officials say, adding that the result is "an easier to deploy and manage product."
 
Most SMBs rely on spreadsheets for planning and budgeting, "which are prone to data entry errors and lack reporting and collaboration functionality," the Inforians say: "Typical planning and budgeting applications offer more robust functionality but are complicated and cost prohibitive for many SMBs."
 
The product's planning functionality lets users model and test various business scenarios to create financial and operational plans. The product enables company-wide collaboration through Web-based access to plans and data, and provides the ability to test "what-if" situations, and to work backward from a financial goal to identify contributing business drivers and required milestones. 
 
Users enter budget data through a central location. The budget controller monitors and manages the overall budgeting process through this same central location with a real-time view of the status of any budget. These capabilities "ensure one version of the truth," Infor officials say, "by eliminating multiple disconnected spreadsheets and providing a single location for all budgeting activity."
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Sage CRM Solutions, part of the Sage Group plc, has announced the new Sage SalesLogix v7.5 CRM suite.
 
Sage SalesLogix v7.5 is described as a "comprehensive connected and disconnected Web user experience," and claims "integration with Web 2.0 technologies so users can access and interact with tools such as Google Maps, Jigsaw, LinkedIn, Zillow and others."
 
Personalized welcome pages, enhanced lead management and list creation, and productivity tools such as timeline visualization are among other new features.
 
Joe Bergera, executive vice president and global general manager, Sage CRM Solutions, said the product can mash up contextual information from the Web, such as LinkedIn profiles. An online flash demonstration is also available at www.Sagecrmsolutions.com/slx75.
 
"We collected an incredible amount of product feedback this year," said David van Toor, senior vice president and general manager, Sage CRM Solutions North America, adding that the product has features users "and competing CRM providers alike will find impressive."
 
New product functions allow users access to Sage SalesLogix anywhere via a Web browser "without sacrificing usability or functionality," company officials say, since the Web client works with an Internet connection or while disconnected. In addition to sales force automation and marketing campaigns, customer support capabilities for assets, contracts, returns, and defects are now available through the Web client.
 
The Web client allows creation and viewing of targeted lists, as well as new group tabs, data filters, and the ability to select multiple records at once: "Users can see at a glance details with a new summary view and drill down for additional details."
 
Mashup capabilities, powered by RESTful Web services that request data via embedded url-style addresses, enable Web applications including Google Maps, Jigsaw, LinkedIn, Zillow and others to display relevant real-time data in Sage SalesLogix. Graphic controls enable sparkline snap shots of historical data, such as sales pipeline amount over time.
 
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