October 2008 Archives

Wipro BPO and AmBev, ComScore Mobile Survey, Sales Simplicity, Avaya and BMW

October 31, 2008 8:54 AM | 0 Comments

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Jimmy Buffett's last pre-megafame album, Living and Dying in ¾ Time, recorded before he locked himself into the beaches-boats-bars pattern all subsequent albums followed:

Saturday here in northern New Zealand, Jimmy Buffett playing in the background, a nice warm sunny day, played tennis in the morning, my wife and oldest son off to check out a new beach, Steinlagers in the fridge for the barbecue later on tonight, why don't we look at a few news items that don't fit the normal weekaday CRM-focused coverage of First Coffee:
 
This one's of interest because it involves beer: Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Limited, has announced that its Business Process Outsourcing division, Wipro BPO, is setting up a Shared Services center for AmBev, the largest brewery company in Latin America with such brands as Brahma, Becks, Stella and Antarctica.
 
The Shared Services Center is slated to provide services to AmBev across Latin America in the areas of finance and accounting, order management, customer services and HR Services. The partnership is expected to provide financial benefits across AmBev operations in the region, with services provided from Wipro's facility at Curitiba in Brazil.
 
Renato Nahas Batista, Zonal Vice President at AmBev, said the partnership with Wipro will focus on transforming the existing Shared Service Center and provide services across Latin America for AmBev.

"Wipro's capability to transform processes, implement SAP and provide service delivery is a strength," says Ashutosh Vaidya, Head, Wipro BPO.

Wipro's Consumer Products Industry practice has a team for Food & Beverage industry, focusing on helping food and beverage companies re-engineer the way they meet end consumer's needs through Information Technology products.
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We like this one because we always like seeing mobile advertising lose the shotgun approach: ComScore, which "measures" the digital world, reports that fewer European consumers say they are receiving advertisements for mobile products and services, while more receive adverts for consumer goods such as food, fashion, restaurants, travel and financial services.

Over the past year, the number of people receiving SMS adverts for mobile products and services fell nine percent in Europe, while the number receiving offers for non-mobile consumer goods and services climbed 15 percent.

Overall, ComScore's research shows, slightly fewer Europeans report receiving an SMS ad, with a decline from 112 million in August 2007 to 110 million in August 2008.
 
The fastest-growing category of SMS advertising since August 2007 is food, the company found at a rate of 53 percent, followed by clothing/fashion at 38 percent and restaurants at 37 percent.
 
Advertisements for restaurants and food also boast the highest level of response, with 16 percent of those receiving an advert for a restaurant responding and 13 percent of those receiving an offer for food, such as grocery coupons, responding, ComScore officials say.
 
The number of consumers responding to an offer for a mobile product or service remained flat, at four percent.
 
"While the majority of SMS adverts are still for mobile products and services, the mix is beginning to shift toward consumer goods and services," observed Alistair Hill, analyst, ComScore. "Mobile advertisers are beginning to show a higher level of sophistication in their targeting efforts, as the targeting criterion is no longer 'has mobile phone' but is based on knowledge of consumers' tastes and behaviors."

ComScore has also announced the results of its August Benchmark Study, finding that mobile social networking posted double-digit growth in all markets except Germany, which happens to show the lowest number of mobile social network users (as a percent of all mobile subscribers) of the five European countries measured by ComScore.
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This one's just so gosh-darn reaffirming, it's lovely to see so many happy, satisfied customers: Sales Simplicity Software, a vendor of sales automation, CRM, marketing and reporting tools for home builders, has announced the results of an independent user-based satisfaction survey, conducted by North-Carolina-based Propel Marketing Group.

The survey revealed what SSS officials call "broad and overwhelming satisfaction with Sales Simplicity Software among its users, with remarkably positive results in multiple categories."
 
These survey results come on the heels of an announcement that 45 percent of Sales Simplicity Software 2008 sales were to builders who elected to remove an inadequate Sales/CRM system and replace it with Sales Simplicity.
 
The survey found that an overwhelming majority (95 percent) of Sales Simplicity survey respondents said that their "overall level of satisfaction" with Sales Simplicity is either very satisfied, satisfied, or somewhat satisfied. Sixty six percent answered "very satisfied" or "satisfied."

There were no "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" responses among the user base -- none, according to company officials.

The Sales Simplicity survey also found similar results when users were asked to rate Sales Simplicity's "overall ability to save the company time and reduce staff." Eighty-six percent said that Sales Simplicity was "highly effective, effective, or somewhat effective" in saving the company time and reducing staff. Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed said that they would "choose Sales Simplicity again" if they were searching for a new CRM system.
 
Respondents represented builders of all sizes, but 94 percent of respondents had between one and 20 Sales Simplicity licenses, and six percent had more than 20.
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We like this one in that we like BMWs: BMW Financial Services has implemented IP-based communications product from Avaya in a Europe-wide reference installation jointly organized by the consulting firm Cirquent and Avaya.

BMW Financial Services, Munich worked with Cirquent and Avaya to develop the system for its five German contact centers with a total of 450 employees.

"In the case of referral to free advice about places to flow competence and skills of the advisers, regardless of their location. Inquiries by phone can always be a competent partner and will be answered more quickly," officials of the project said in a written statement.

"At the same time," BMW officials said, "the project partners Cirquent and Avaya, the heterogeneous telephony landscape in the service centers to consolidate and thus an important target in the IT strategy of the BMW Group to implement."

Evidently -- First Coffee may be misreading this, apologies all around if that's the case, believe me I'm doing my best -- the Cirquent consultants were working on the project from its inception in 2006 to completion. And based on the rough objectives and requirements specified for the project, chose Avaya as a technology partner because the use of the IP communications product Avaya Communication Manager "provides a significantly faster and more personalized care of the customers of BMW Financial Services."

One thing that evidently impressed BMW was that the flagship Customer Interaction Suite from Avaya offers a range of intelligent routing features, at can be used to reduce unnecessary redirects: "With the help of the so-called load-based routing rules can be defined, calls locations automatically to a free people over," project officials said.

There's also an interface for Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which can be accessed at the contact center when an agent is dealing directly with a customer, so the agent can view "the important information on the display screen."

With the new IP system consolidated, a central server in BMW's own data center replaces the existing local telephone systems. The unified platform, the integration of the existing CRM system and the central IT management are moves designed to "reduce the operating and maintenance costs of the system and improve availability," according to BMW officials.

 "Due to the good cooperation between BMW Financial Services, Cirquent and Avaya the tight timetable was easily observed. It was much emphasis on the transition to new systems for individual consultants as gentle manner," said Kay Scheil, technical project manager at Avaya.

"Currently we handle nearly three million requests a year. Thanks to the intelligent routing and management tools, we can shorten the response time," said Melanie Schillinger, head of customer service at BMW Financial Services Germany.
 
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

Aspect Opens in China, Open Solutions in Mexico, Mobile Worker Security, Bw.Connect for Salesforce, AMI Looks at Vendors

October 31, 2008 8:37 AM | 0 Comments

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Frank Sinatra's great Nice 'N' Easy album. As my son just said, "It's a Frankie Friday:"

Aspect, a vendor of communications and contact center software and services provider, has announced the opening of its new technical support center in Dalian, China. The 4,055 square foot contact center will provide support services to customers and partners across the Asia Pacific region.

"It is critical that organizations are able to manage their customer inquiries with no downtime, so this new center in Dalian is designed to ensure that calls are handled by knowledgeable Aspect experts," said Lui Simhua, senior vice president, Asia Pacific and the Middle East, Aspect.
 
The new contact center reflects what Aspect officials characterize as "the company's growth in the Asia Pacific region" and allows Aspect to provide service to its customer base by offering extended global technical support on a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week basis.

The technical support engineers at the Aspect Dalian contact center "have received extensive training," company officials say, and are "well-equipped to respond to customer inquiries."

The Dalian contact center is designed to provide issue resolution through remote support abilities and distributed field services personnel, support for system performance with ongoing application updates that refine system capabilities and the ability for Aspect users to ensure "Aspect products are always up and available to service customers."
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Mexican-based El Banco Deuno officials say they have implemented Open Solutions's enterprise-wide database core banking product, The Complete Banking Solution: DNA. Open Solutions sells integrated enabling technologies for financial services providers.

Headquartered in Mexico City, El Banco Deuno, a de novo institution, is a subsidiary bank of IXE Banco, which serves the upper end of the financial market in Mexico and signed with Open Solutions in December 2007.

Currently, the bank is in the process of upgrading its core technology platform across all verticals to ensure each business unit is using the same front- and back-office system. El Banco Deuno, the first business unit to go live with this project, was founded to reach the historically under-banked, mid-to-low retail markets in Mexico and offers universal financial services, focusing on consumer and commercial loans for small- and medium-sized companies.

During 2007, IXE Banco was recognized by Expansion magazine for the customer service and assistance within the financial system it provided. Also in 2007, 33 new branches were opened, totaling 92 branches, and deposits grew from Mexican $10.3 billion at year-end 2006 to Mexican $16.7 billion.
 
El Banco Deuno opened with 12 branches and has an aggressive growth plan for the near future, company officials say. The bank determined that Open Solutions could support the bank's goals and its exponential five-year growth strategy.

"The bank was founded with a very specific goal and market in mind, making the enterprise-wide, core platform decision an even more critical one," said Javier de la Calle, general manager and CEO of El Banco Deuno and a director of Ixe Grupo Financiero.

In addition to The Complete Banking Solution: DNA relational database core banking platform, El Banco Deuno will be implementing Open Solutions' StreamLend Velocity retail and commercial loan origination platform (paperless, end-to-end loan origination). El Banco Deuno also has plans to use Open Solutions' advanced ATM switch, POSH, and its multifunctional capabilities, as well as its ConCenter ATM management platform and the cView CRM/business intelligence application.
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Bluewolf has announced the availability of bw.Connect for Salesforce CRM Ideas on the Force.com AppExchange.
 
Bw.Connect for Salesforce CRM Ideas is a product designed to let organizations manage and act on the information gathered using Salesforce CRM Ideas, company officials say: "Salesforce CRM Ideas helps companies build their own online communities to collaborate with customers, partners, or employees in an interactive, online forum."
 
Salesforce CRM Ideas is a SaaS application from Salesforce.com that allows customers to post, discuss, and vote on ideas of their customer and employee communities. It lets organizations tap into their online community, as a constant source of innovation, using it as a tool to be more responsive to market demands.
 
Bluewolf is a provider of consulting services for Software as a Service, Open Source and Cloud Computing products, and provides a product around Salesforce CRM Ideas. Built using the Force.com Platform, bw.Connect for Salesforce CRM Ideas is available for test drive and deployment on the Force.com AppExchange.
 
Bluewolf officials say bw.Connect for Salesforce CRM Ideas lets organizations "tie every comment submitted via Salesforce CRM Ideas back into Salesforce CRM at the contact record, closing the loop on community feedback." Additionally, it's engineered to enable what Bluewolf calls "E-mail to Idea," allowing customers to submit input by e-mail, eliminating the need to require customers to log in.
 
The product also aggregates all submitted activity by user, providing organizations a customer-specific view of comments and feedback.
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Fiberlink Communications Corporation, a vendor of enterprise software and services that solves mobility issues, has announced survey results looking at mobile employees' thoughts on mobility, security, IT and work-life issues.
 
The firm commissioned Kelton Research to conduct a survey of 300 employees who work at companies with more than 500 employees and work remotely on company-issued laptops at least some of the time.
 
The survey showed that many employees are aware of the importance of IT security on their corporate laptops: "Seventy percent of remote workers would rather get their work done on a secure network connection even if it meant their assignment would be late," the survey found.  However, many admit to actions that have the potential to put their companies at risk.  "For instance," survey officials said, "nearly a quarter of the survey respondents have either altered security settings or purposefully delayed security updates."
 
When company laptops and other mobile devices are connected to the Internet but are out of reach of conventional security defenses, IT experiences what Fiberlink calls the "mobile blind spot," defined as "a gap in network security that can leave an organization exposed."
 
The survey found that 43 percent of respondents "download personal pictures and videos." Thirty-one percent "download software for their own use," and 25 percent admit they've "visited a blacklisted or inappropriate Web site."

24 percent "altered security settings," and 23 percent "delayed security settings purposefully."
 
Whatever actions you take, you'll need to address mobile workers, since 55 percent of survey respondents plan to "become more reliable on remote and mobile connections in the next year" and 46 percent plan to "rely more on video conferencing than they do now."

It won't be an all-bad thing, either: Forty two percent of laptop-toting employees work more hours each week when working remotely, the survey found, adding that "thirty-five percent of these employees work more than 30 additional hours each month, and twenty-four percent work 10 to 14 additional hours when working remotely each month."
 
Oh, and what percentage of remote workers surveyed think there are "advantages to having a laptop provided by their employer?" 99 percent. Really makes you wonder about that one percent, doesn't it?
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"Adding Fresh Value to the SaaS Equation: Six Vendors to Watch" is the new study from AMI Partners looking at the approaches that smaller, newer vendors are taking to help accelerate adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) products in the small and medium business markets.

The report examines how, specifically, Boomi, Dreamfactory, LucidEra, MyBizHomepage, Zoho and Zuora are bringing new value to SMBs by "concentrating on making SaaS products more affordable, accessible and flexible.

The SaaS model, as popular as it might be in pockets, isn't mainstream yet: "Currently, about 26 percent of small businesses, and about 33 percent of medium businesses currently use or plan to use SaaS," according to the AMI survey:

"Especially as some established SaaS players move upstream to focus on large and upper mid-market customers, ample opportunity remains for other vendors to innovate and add the kind of value needed to pull more SMBs into the market," says Laurie McCabe, VP of SMB Solutions & Insights at New York-based AMI-Partners.
 
Though often more affordable than traditional, on-premise products, many SaaS products are still out of reach for cash-strapped SMBs, the survey finds: "Vendors such as Zoho and MyBizHomepage are reducing the pricing barrier with free and low-cost products; others, such Zuora and Boomi, are slashing infrastructure and integration costs for SaaS developers, who can pass their savings on to customers."
 
The shift from product-centric to service-centric businesses is "well underway," the survey finds, adding that vendors such as Zuora, with its Z-Billing and Payments products, and Zoho, with Zoho Creator and Marketplace make it easier for other vendors to make the shift.
 
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

AP Election Results, Ovum Expands, Free AT&T Wi-Fi, Cable Modem Usage Outstripping DSL

October 31, 2008 8:30 AM | 0 Comments

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is... you'll be surprised... Wings Over America. Yes, my favorite high school album, I downloaded it from iTunes to see how it holds up. The verdict?

The opening "Venus and Mars/Rock Show" holds up quite well, all the Beatle stuff is better now than I thought it was in high school, some songs you delete straight off the download ("Silly Love Songs," "Let 'Em In," "Go Now," et al). "Maybe I'm Amazed" is still excellent, one does forget how good guitarist Jimmy McCullough was, how forgettable Denny Laine was and how utterly unremarkably good or bad Linda's keyboards were, as well as how much better McCartney still was than most pop in the '70s... overall worth the reduced price:

The Associated Press and U.S. Cellular have launched two mobile Web sites tailored for U.S. Cellular customers across the country. The content distribution deal offers what the AP says is "a gateway to both AP's popular Mobile News Network, which provides international, national and local news, and AP Elections '08 coverage."

The AP Elections '08 and Mobile News Network WAP sites are accessible through U.S. Cellular's easyedge To Go, nWeb browser, and the newly launched Mobile Browser.

"If you're looking for news and information on your wireless phone, it should be quick and easy to find," says Alan Ferber, vice president of sales operations and chief marketing officer for U.S. Cellular.

The AP Elections '08 site is only available to U.S. Cellular customers. It is featured at the top of the U.S. Cellular browsers' "News and Weather" home page so the latest breaking political developments are more noticeable.

Jeffrey Litvack, general manager for mobile and emerging products for AP, says the Elections site "will include coverage in U.S. Cellular markets in swing states such as Missouri and North Carolina."

Founded in 1846, the AP has counted votes and declared winners every four years since Zachary Taylor was elected president in 1848.

London-based research firm Ovum has announced additions to its roster of global telecoms experts.

Mark Little joins Ovum as a principal analyst within Ovum's consumer practice, specializing in broadband multimedia content. He brings client-side experience in online media, content acquisition & delivery, and e-commerce, Ovum officials say, adding that he has worked with digital media start-ups and developers of multimedia download platforms. His previous employers include Entertainment UK and Mintel Market Intelligence.  

With eight years of experience as an industry analyst working for Yankee Group, Jonathan Doran joins Ovum as a principal analyst within Ovum's consumer practice. He will be responsible for the topic management of Ovum's Broadband Content research stream. 

Emeka Obiodu joins as a senior analyst with Ovum's mobile team. Prior to joining Ovum, Emeka was a senior analyst with Global Insight, where he managed Global Insight's consulting and research portfolio for the mobile sector, including for the mobile handset market.

Mike Sapien joins as principal analyst within Ovum's enterprise practice. With over 25 years of industry experience, including working for US carriers as well as consulting with many of the CLECs in the US, Mike leads Ovum's research & advisory services on enterprise network services and managed products in North America with a major emphasis on the Tier 1 carriers and providers.

For the handset market, William Lee joins as an analyst based in the South Korea office. Prior to Ovum, he spent six years in the Global Technical Marketing & Strategy Division in LG Electronics working with various operators around the world creating business models and technical and marketing strategies for handset launches.

Returning to Ovum is Charlie Davies who originally joined Ovum in 2000 and spent over five years managing Ovum's broadband and broadband content teams. Charlie left Ovum in 2005 to work in a senior strategy role for Cancer Research UK, focusing on strategic positioning and the use of technology in fundraising and marketing. Charlie joins as a senior analyst and is based out of Ovum's office in France.

AT&T has announced a free AT&T Wi-Fi service to current and new customers of select smart phones, including the new BlackBerry Bold, available Nov. 4.

AT&T officials claim "the nation's largest Wi-Fi network," with more than 17,000 hot spots including Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and thousands of other locations.

The free Wi-Fi service is for customers with unlimited data plans. In addition to the BlackBerry Bold, the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 and the BlackBerry 8820 will follow later this year, AT&T officials say, adding that the company "plans to make the offer available to more mobile devices in the future."

 

David Christopher, chief marketing officer of AT&T's mobility business unit, said having hand sets plus "the nation's largest Wi-Fi network, it only makes sense for us to bring these together for our customers."

Free Wi-Fi access is also available with all AT&T small business broadband plans, AT&T High Speed Internet plans and with qualified AT&T LaptopConnect plans. For customers without an AT&T broadband or smart phone plan, Wi-Fi subscriptions are available for $19.99 a month.

Cable modem usage is increasing at a faster rate than DSL usage among Internet customers as dial-up use continues to decrease, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Internet Service Provider Residential Customer Satisfaction Study just released.

Now in its 11th year, the study measures customer satisfaction with high-speed and dial-up Internet service providers based on performance and reliability, cost of service, customer service, billing and offerings and promotions.

The study finds that the percentage of Internet customers who subscribe to cable modem service has increased to 41 percent in 2008 from 36 percent in 2007. DSL penetration among Internet customers has also increased to 30 percent in 2008 from 27 percent in 2007.

The share of Internet users that still subscribe to dial-up service has continued to decrease and now accounts for only 25 percent of Internet subscribers, a decline of 10 percentage points since 2007, the study finds.

"Customers now view Internet service as a necessity -- not a luxury -- and they're looking for faster products capable of handling higher bandwidth," said Frank Perazzini, director of telecommunications at J.D. Power and Associates. "As more movies, television shows and videos are being offered online, Internet users are looking for faster, higher quality connections to view content."

The study finds that the number of Internet service customers who consider themselves loyal to their provider has decreased significantly among high-speed customers to 30 percent, from 42 percent in 2007 and to 36 percent from 51 percent in 2007 among dial-up customers.

Cost savings is cited by 69 percent of high-speed Internet service customers and 40 percent of dial-up Internet customers as the main reason they would consider switching providers.

"Even when customers aren't necessarily dissatisfied with their current provider, they're willing to switch to another provider if they find a better deal," said Perazzini. "Building customer loyalty should be at the forefront of every Internet provider's 2009 initiatives."

EarthLink Net, including EarthLink and PeoplePC subscribers, ranks highest in the dial-up segment with an index score of 633 on a 1,000-point scale, performing particularly well in customer service, billing, and performance and reliability. United Online (630) and MSN (602) follow EarthLink Net in the rankings.

In the 2008 study, high-speed Internet providers are examined in four regions. In the East Region Cablevision ranks highest with a score of 650, followed by EarthLink with 643. For the South Region, with a score of 670 Road Runner (delivered by Bright House Networks) ranks highest, followed by Verizon (663).

For the North Central Region WOW! ranks highest with 702 and Cincinnati Bell takes the silver with 665, while in the West Region Cox Communications ranks highest with 641, followed by EarthLink (630) and Verizon (625).

The whole report itself is worth a read, honestly, to learn stuff like customers who use online billing experience fewer billing errors and have higher satisfaction scores compared with the average customer:

"Overall satisfaction among dial-up customers who receive online bills is 47 points higher, on average, than among those who receive only paper bills... the satisfaction scores of high-speed customers who receive online bills are 21 points higher, on average, than those who receive paper bills."

And among Internet customers, 65 percent report bundling their Internet service with one or more telecommunications services, compared with 52 percent in 2007.

The 2008 ISP Residential Customer Satisfaction Study is based on responses from 16,933 residential customers of Internet service providers nationwide. The study was fielded in July 2008.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

CRM Part of MTS-Vodafone Deal, Atos and LCL, Magic's iBolt, Transzap and Oracle, Telefonica and IBM, Avaya and Merrill, Transzap

October 30, 2008 8:22 AM | 0 Comments

The news as of that all-important third cup of coffee, and the music is a posthumous release by the most self-effacing genius in jazz history, pianist Bill Evans, You Must Believe in Spring. If you're into understated, highly accomplished jazz playing, "restrained brilliance," as one reviewer put it, get the Bill Evans Trio's 1961 Village Vanguard sessions recorded live at club shows. For such a talented player the guy was so unassuming he actually had them include the club noise -- glasses tinkling, laughter -- on the records:

Atos Worldline, an Atos Origin Company, has been selected by French bank LCL to develop, build, run and host a secure banking Web 2.0 messaging service dedicated to client-advisor interaction.

Through the development of this channel, LCL officials say they hope to strengthen and widen the bank's existing client communication channels. The service targets a specific group of clients who have subscribed to the secure, on-line banking site LCL Interactif.

E-mail has become "an unavoidable means of communication," LCL officials say (probably in translation), and for banking it "must meet strict security and confidentiality requirements. Only a dedicated messaging system developed specifically for private communication channels can meet these requirements."

LCL chose Atos Worldline to develop a global WebMail messaging system in Web 2.0 based on a secure platform to guarantee information confidentiality for clients and advisors: "This tool meets standard messaging system requirements so that it can connect with the bank's existing routing and response software programs," Atos officials say.

Atos Origin has annual revenues of EUR 5.8 billion and employs over 50,000 people in 40 countries. It is quoted on the Paris Eurolist Market.
 
Magic Software Enterprises, a vendor of application platforms and business and process integration products, has announced that it will be showcasing an enhanced version of its iBolt Special Edition for the Salesforce.com business integration suite at this year's Dreamforce.

Calling it a "substantially enhanced" version of the company's code-free and hardware-free business integration suite, company officials say it has a new SDK adaptor "enabling ISVs to transform their existing applications from a standard / monolithic architecture to service-oriented architecture ."
 
It also features a visual data mapping studio and engine, and is being touted by the vendor as "eliminating recurring situations that normally require additional steps, updates and mapping." The Salesforce.com Replicator is designed to -- funnily enough -- replicate your Salesforce.com data to a selected database for backup, reports "and peace of mind."
 
There's also Lotus Notes application DB connectivity and the iBolt business integration suite which supports open standards and requires no special hardware, and lets organizations "automate their application integration processes with user-friendly wizards and a model driven approach that eliminates the need to write complex code," company officials say.
 
With off-premise applications and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), the product's Salesforce.com Replicator is designed to not only 'replicate' Salesforce.com data on-site, but in the process "improve the ability to apply Business Intelligence systems to that data."

Regev Yativ, President and CEO for Magic Software Americas, said the product's enhancements are designed to eliminate many of the redundant integration steps and processes "so that our customers can expect to spend even less of their time and resources developing projects and instead move straight to deployment."

Telefonica, a telecommunications technology provider, has announced an agreement with IBM in Brazil to manage its midrange servers.
 
With the agreement, Telefonica officials say, IBM's Services Center in Hortolandia, near Sao Paulo, will support the operation of all the Telefonica's midrange servers in Brazil. IBM said it also will provide support and maintenance services 24-7 to keep the company's IT infrastructure running and available to internal and external clients.

In other news, Telefonica has renewed a contract with IBM in Argentina for the same services. The contracts, valued at $50 million, were signed in July 2008 and run through the end of 2011.
 
Merrill & Associates, a Platinum Avaya Partner and Solutions Provider, has announced that they're adding to their network engineering teams and increasing their efforts around unified communications and applications.

Mike Merrill, President and CEO, made the announcement, adding that "the future of this industry is in unified communications and IP-enabled applications. Adding to our engineering resources will allow us to remain strong in TDM-based areas, while growing our company through network integration products including CRM and Security Solutions."
 
Merrill & Associates sells end-to-end communications services including Unified Communications, Voice over IP, convergence, mobility, and contact centers. They also specialize in consulting, design, implementation, maintenance, and technical support services.

As a Platinum Avaya Business Partner, Merrill works closely with Avaya and other partners such as Cisco, Extreme Networks, Juniper Networks, NetIQ, Polycom, and Tandberg, to integrate hardware, software, video and applications into e business products.

"We truly believe that our partnership with Avaya will help us to add tremendous value to our customers through unified communications and contact center products," said Lenin Rodriguez, CTO. "However, our ability to provide other products such as Microsoft integration to telephony services, video, and data is what our customers are looking for. They want a true end-to-end provider that can design, implement, and support their network as a whole."
 
IBM has announced that Transzap, a services provider of ePayables and digital data exchange products, has consolidated its distributed Oracle environment of servers to a System z9 Business Class mainframe and IBM storage.

As a mainframe customer, Transzap operates Oildex, which provides an Internet-based ePayable, digital data, and spend analysis products in the energy industry.
 
"Transzap processes over $80 billion in transactions but we are still a small company with fewer than 100 employees," said Peter Flanagan, CEO of Transzap. "We invested in the mainframe for its ability to scale to meet our business needs at a moment's notice, and to provide our customers with a reliable environment with virtualization capabilities."
 
"Transzap is not only a new mainframe customer but they are also running System z to behave like a cloud computing environment, an efficient architecture designed to deliver software services to clients," said Anne Altman, general manager of System z.
 
Transzap currently supplies its Oildex services via an SaaS model.
 
Mobile TeleSystems, a mobile phone operator in Russia and the CIS, and Vodafone have announced a non-equity partnership to provide customers with communications services and to collaborate jointly on future technological developments.
 
The agreement allows for MTS to "draw on Vodafone's expertise in building and developing third generation networks and mobile broadband products," MTS officials say, adding that it includes "deploying CRM practices."

In addition, MTS will have an exclusive access to a range of products, services and devices from Vodafone for its markets of operation in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Armenia.

The partnership with MTS is expected to give Vodafone insight into the opportunities of the telecommunications markets of Russia and the CIS, Vodafone officials say, adding that aforesaid markets are "among the fastest growing in the world."
 
Vodafone's products will be made available to MTS' 87 million subscribers, including more than 60 million customers in Russia. Vodafone's products and services will be marketed in Russia and the CIS under a co-branded approach. Vodafone will also open a representative office in Moscow to co-operate more closely with MTS on future offerings and customer services.

Oracle-Haley Deal, Epicor Results, Kana Results, Credit Unions go Open

October 30, 2008 8:16 AM | 0 Comments

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is the sound I can hear all the way from Philadelphia to here in northern New Zealand... sounds like... 28 years' worth of pent-up cheering...

Oracle has announced an agreement to acquire RuleBurst Holdings, the parent company of Haley Limited, a vendor of policy modeling and automation software, to create an end-to-end product for social services agencies.

It's the belief of Oracle officials that "social service agencies are moving to commercial software to automate entitlements. With limited resources to serve a growing constituency, these agencies need to administer and distribute entitlements consistently and accurately as defined by underlying legislation."

To that end, they say, Haley's policy automation platform "translates legislation and policies into defined, automated rules that are deployed in an application."

Oracle will put it with their ERP and Siebel CRM applications to "create the first packaged software product for social services agencies with an enhanced case management application," using Haley to drive eligibility determinations.

The Haley policy automation platform is also used in other regulated industries, such as financial services and insurance, to implement and manage policies in common language without the need for specialized software programming.

Haley management said they and the company's employees will join Oracle to form a global business unit focused on enterprise policy automation products across multiple industries. Haley's CEO Dominic O'Hanlon is expected to lead the business unit as Senior Vice President and General Manager.

The transaction is subject to stockholder and governmental approvals and other customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the first quarter of calendar 2009. Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Oracle Senior Vice President of CRM, Anthony Lye, said by acquiring Haley, "Oracle is accelerating its investment in public sector to create an integrated product."

Epicor Software has reported financial results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2008. All results should be considered preliminary pending the company's filing of its quarterly report on Form 10-Q.

Epicor President and CEO Thomas Kelly said "customer retention rates remained near all time highs at 94 percent."

GAAP revenue for the 2008 third quarter was $135.8 million, with net income of $3.8 million, or $0.06 per diluted share. This compares to 2007 third quarter GAAP revenue of $103.1 million, and GAAP net income of $8.1 million, or $0.14 per diluted share.

Non-GAAP revenue for the 2008 third quarter was $137.7 million, with non-GAAP net income of $11.3 million, or $0.19 per diluted share.

2008 third quarter non-GAAP license revenue was $22.4 million, compared to GAAP license revenue of $24.1 million in the 2007 third quarter. Non-GAAP consulting revenue was $41.8 million in the 2008 third quarter, which excludes approximately $0.1 million in fair value adjustments for NSB purchase accounting, compared to GAAP consulting revenue $32.8 million in the 2007 third quarter.

The company's balance sheet at September 30, 2008, included cash and cash equivalents of $95.7 million. The balance sheet benefited from free cash flow of $18.7 million during the 2008 third quarter, which helped support a $46.8 million pay down on the company's credit facility during the quarter.

Epicor's total debt balance as of September 30, 2008, consists of $8.5 million in current debt primarily related to the current portion of the company's outstanding term loan from the company's credit facility, which helped to fund the NSB acquisition, and long-term debt of $331.3 million.

At the end of the 2008 third quarter, net accounts receivable was approximately $95.4 million.

The company is updating its 2008 fourth quarter and full-year guidance for non-GAAP revenue, non-GAAP earnings per share and free cash flow expectations due to the uncertainty and limited visibility surrounding the global economy, IT spending and exchange rate fluctuations.

"Any prior guidance provided by the company with respect to the 2008 fourth quarter and full year should no longer be relied upon," company officials said, adding that 2008 fourth quarter non-GAAP total revenue is expected to be $125 to $140 million, with 2008 full-year revenue expected to be $497 to $512 million.

Kana Software has announced financial results for the first nine months and third quarter ended September 30. Their total revenues for the first nine months of 2008 were $51.6 million, a 19 percent increase from $43.3 million in the same period in 2007.

The company's revenues in the third quarter of 2008 were $16.7 million, a 1 percent decrease compared to $16.8 million in the same period in 2007.

License revenue for the first nine months of 2008 was $15.0 million, company officials said, a 16 percent increase over $12.9 million in the first nine months of the previous year. License revenue for the third quarter of 2008 was $5.3 million, an 8 percent decrease from $5.8 million in the third quarter of 2007.

For the fifth consecutive quarter, Kana achieved non-GAAP operating profit and net income. The vendor focused on optimizing the company's cost structure, company officials say, adding that the company "took actions during the quarter that are expected to achieve $2.9 million in annualized savings."

The company reported a net loss in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of $1.1 million, or $0.03 per share, for the first nine months of 2008, compared to a loss of $8.6 million or $0.23 per share for the first nine months of 2007.

For the third quarter of 2008, Kana reported a GAAP net loss of $887,000, or $0.02 per share, versus a GAAP net loss of $1.3 million, or $0.03 per share, for the quarter ended September 30, 2007.

For the first nine months of 2008, Kana reported non-GAAP net income of $1.5 million, or $0.04 per diluted share, as compared to a non-GAAP net loss of $5.6 million, or $0.15 per share, for the first nine months of 2007.

For the third quarter of 2008, Kana reported non-GAAP net income of $863,000, or $0.02 per diluted share, as compared to $156,000, or $0.00 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2007.

Open Solutions has announced that two credit unions have selected The Complete Credit Union Solution's Standard Market Edition to address their enterprise-wide core processing needs.

TCCUS-sme is described by company officials as "an open, flexible core system, built on a centralized relational database, designed to be a competitively priced product targeted toward the more traditional credit union market."

The vendor sells data processing technologies for banks and credit unions.

Oldham Family Alliance Federal Credit Union in Baltimore and Heritage USA Federal Credit Union in Midland, Texas are the new clients.

Tina Horn, branch manager for Oldham Family Alliance FCU and a woman who's never had anyone drop the "a" from her first name for a groaner, says Open Solutions' "long-term strategic vision" was a factor in selecting its core platform. "As the credit union experienced growth, we realized our current system could no longer meet our needs."

 Since its launch in 2006, Open Solutions officials say TCCUS-sme "continues to gain momentum among more traditional credit unions seeking a lower cost product with significant functionality." With TCCUS-sme, credit unions can select either the in-house or outsourced processing option.

 Betty Seay, CEO, Heritage USA Federal Credit Union, said the thrift has a relationship with Open Solutions, so "when the time came to upgrade from our previous system, they were the natural choice. Our credit union places a lot of emphasis on giving back to the community, and it was clear that a partnership with Open Solutions would help us continue that endeavor."

Open Solutions sells a product platform, integrating core processing with strategic applications such as Internet banking, business intelligence, financial accounting applications, electronic imaging, payment and interactive voice response products.

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CRM from Oasis, AccuWeather on BlackBerry, Kana and Barclays, TimeDriver and Salesforce.com, Jitterbit and Infowelders

October 29, 2008 8:08 AM | 0 Comments

The news as of the first cup of coffee this morning, and the music is one of Van Morrison's unjustly overlooked albums, Veedon Fleece -- in all frankness Van's done albums justly overlooked, but this isn't one of them. It might be a stretch to say this 1974 album of introspection after an emotional loss inspired Bob Dylan's masterpiece album on the same theme, Blood On the Tracks in 1975, but assuming Bob heard the record it's plausible to conjecture that it sparked something:

AccuWeather.com has announced the launch of a service that will make deeper AccuWeather.com information more easily accessible on BlackBerry smart phones from Research In Motion.

Users can subscribe to this new free service directly from their BlackBerry smart phone and an icon will appear on their home screen that displays high-level weather conditions based on weather data regularly "pushed" to the smart phone; users can also click on the weather icon to instantly access the most updated and more detailed weather information including hourly forecasts, 10-day forecasts, severe weather alerts, and radar images.

Honestly, is it just me, or is there a rash of "deeper" BlackBerry news here recently? Just earlier today I wrote up a piece on Rave Wireless also announcing "deeper product integration" between Rave's safety applications and the BlackBerry.

"Recent studies have shown that weather is one of the most requested forms of content from mobile users accessing the Web," said Jim Candor, Senior Vice President of New Media for AccuWeather, adding that "BlackBerry smart phone owners are frequent users of the Web."

Candor speaks candidly: A recent Nielsen Mobile report showed that weather was the second most popular category of mobile content, surpassed only by e-mail. In late 2007, AccuWeather.com was rated one of the top fifteen mobile brands, also by Nielsen Mobile.

TimeTrade Systems, a vendor of customer self-service appointment scheduling products, has announced that TimeDriver, the company's personal appointment scheduler, will be available on the Salesforce.com Force.com AppExchange.

Sales professionals "will be able to use Salesforce to invite and confirm appointments with customers," according to the TimeTraders, who add that the integration with Salesforce is being co-developed with Appirio.

TimeTrade will be unveiling TimeDriver for Salesforce at the upcoming Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco in a couple weeks. The product will be available on the Force.com AppExchange by the end of the year.

TimeDriver lets users invite customers and prospects to schedule sales demos, account reviews, phone consultations and other sales interactions. By including a "Click to Schedule" link in e-mail messages and on Web pages, customers can schedule time with them for phone and face-to-face meetings, "without playing phone tag or e-mail tag," TimeTrade officials say. 

TimeDriver for Salesforce will be available to the SaaS community through the Force.com AppExchange marketplace.

Ed Mallen, CEO of TimeTrade Systems, said his company will "look forward to continuing our relationship with Appirio on this project and future opportunities."

The product lets users control availability of time for appointments based on the user's free/busy status in their Salesforce, Google or Outlook calendar, view and manage TimeDriver data via Salesforce or TimeDriver and "automatically add or update appropriate data records in Salesforce through schedule links, e-mail invitations and appointments created in TimeDriver," company officials say.

"We welcomed the opportunity to help TimeTrade bring its appointment scheduling product to the Force.com platform and are looking forward to using the product ourselves," said Mike Epner, VP of Sales for Appirio. "It made sense for TimeTrade to extend their reach into the Salesforce.com ecosystem."

"This economic environment provides a perfect opportunity for innovative technology to help businesses do more with less such as maintaining consistent contact with customers and prospects," said Denis Pombriant, Founder and Managing Principal, Beagle Research.

Kana Software has been selected by Barclays to provide its Secure Messaging technology in the UK, according to the Kanians.

The vendor is providing Barclays with the technology to support its customers to use its online channel in "a secure environment and secure communication," Kana officials say. With accompanying personalized services and marketing campaigns, the initiative is called "a keystone of Barclays multi-channel customer communication strategy to improve customer satisfaction, reduce customer attrition and increase online sales."

Secure Messaging will be used by Barclays Personal, Premier and Local Business customers in the UK. Over four million customers are expected to have access to the system by 2010.

Kana Secure Messaging combines e-mail management with secure Web portals and provides customer communication through Web channels without the need for encryption applications.

The integration of Kana software with Barclays' current systems is also expected to provide Barclays customer-facing teams with full visibility of customer communication across all channels through secure messaging.

As the bank's customers currently use the branch and telephony channels for secure communication, Barclays officials expect Kana Secure Messaging to give customers "an additional choice of channel to communicate with the bank securely through an online session."

KnowTia Corporation has announced that the Oasis CRM product line will now be enhanced with a new interface to QuickBooks Pro, Premier & Enterprise.

New features include integrated automated contract billing interface as well as detailed inventory and order management. These features will be coupled with their integration with both Intuit QuickBooks product lines.
 
Oasis CRM for Intuit QuickBooks incorporates Sales Force and Customer Service Automation with comprehensive inventory control features, automating "the entire customer life cycle and eliminating duplicate data entry for clients," company officials say.
 
KnowTia officials say many companies rely on disconnected software systems to handle SFA (Sales Force Automation), Customer Service, Fulfillment and accounting. These "disconnected products" in turn caused process bottlenecks and further prohibited growth, they contend:
 
"Additionally, the increased chance for errors and overall increases in operation costs limited the businesses future success. As such, Oasis CRM was designed to eliminate these bottlenecks and provide a structured, easy to use system where information is entered once and flows automatically through the various stages of the company, including accounting."
 
Founded in 2001, KnowTia Corporation is currently headquartered in Tampa. Oasis CRM is the fourth product that KnowTia has presented to the small business market and is a QuickBooks Gold Certified Solution.
 
Jitterbit, a vendor of open source integration software, has announced its relationship with Infowelders, a certified Salesforce.com implementation partner. Both companies will be showcasing successful data integrations at Dreamforce, Salesforce.com's annual user and developer conference November 2-5 in San Francisco.
 
The partnership between Jitterbit and Infowelders is designed to provide implementation resources for integrations between Salesforce.com and other enterprise applications and database technologies, the Jitterbitters say: "As part of this program, customers are able to use Jitterbit's open source platform to solve integration" problems.
 
"Our relationship with Infowelders... is a partnership that provides support to customers integrating with Salesforce.com," said Sharam Sasson, Jitterbit chairman and CEO.
 
Infowelders officials say it's "important to integrate customers' broad range of systems and technologies while standardizing on a single, dependable platform for every integration project." In fact, "we always recommend supported middleware as opposed to hand-coded integration products," said Nick Hamm, director of technology at Infowelders. "As consultants, we have seen and used many different integration products over the years."
 
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MrTed's SmartRecruiters, Yakabox Version 3, Rave Wireless and BlackBerry, Datacap, ItracMedia

October 29, 2008 7:49 AM | 0 Comments

The news as of the all-important third cup of coffee, and the music is The Marshall Tucker Band's 1974 jam session Where We All Belong. Call 'em Allman Brothers clone wannabes if you must, but that's both an unfair and a too curt dismissal of a fine '70s southern rock jam band:

MrTed, a vendor of talent acquisition products, has announced the beta availability of SmartRecruiters, described by company officials as "a 100 percent free applicant tracking system" for corporate recruiters and hiring managers.

Designed for businesses with as many as 2,500 employees, company officials say the product is "easy to use, works in two minutes, and runs every facet of a recruiter's business."

Unlike their predecessors, MrTed officials say, SMB recruiters in 2008 "are comfortable using online tools to find and recruit employee talent." SmartRecruiters, they says, "fits this mold -- and breaks the mold of conventional ATS products -- by combining powerful functionality" with ease-of-use.

"In providing a free product for the masses, we are doing something that has never been done before," said Jerome Ternynck, CEO, MrTed. "There are six million small businesses in the US with as many as 2,500 employees. We are telling small businesses, 'Throw away your old ATS, you don't need it anymore.'"

SmartRecruiters is described by company officials as "free, limitless and easy to use," with an open architecture that "connects users to other recruiters and essential pay-per-use services such as job posts and background checks."

A set of features allows recruiters to tailor the look and feel of corporate career Web sites, front office and online application forms. Recruiters can edit job ads in real-time, rate candidates, screen candidates and track history of actions and interactions with candidates from within the application.

In addition to being the first free, full-featured ATS, SmartRecruiters also is pioneering a new segment of the SaaS category known as "Open SaaS," a mash-up of SaaS and open source concepts, products which typically derive revenue through alternative channels such as pay-per-use services.

An appliance built to eliminate five common knowledge-sharing obstacles has been announced by Yakabod. Version 3.0 of the Yakabox Knowledge Network, a workgroup collaboration system used since 2003.

It has an interface described by company officials as "so intuitive that users are productive the first time they log on," which "deploys up to ten times faster than traditional knowledge management products."

Two government security agencies are already using pre-release versions of the system, according to Yakabod CEO Scott Ryser.

"Seventy percent of KM initiatives fail for five reasons," says Ryser. "They take too long to deploy, they're too hard to secure, they're a bear to integrate or they're functional dead-ends. But usually it's because people can't -- or won't -- use the systems."

The Yakabox Knowledge Network meets National Security Agency Protection Level 3 security requirements. "Program managers who've had a sneak preview of Yakabox 3.0 get it right away," says Ryser. "The user experience is as intuitive as e-mail. Most important, stuff that matters doesn't disappear into a black hole when you need it most."

The system "learns" which topics, events and categories each team member deems relevant, then delivers that information to the desktop Activity Viewer, company officials say, adding that "unlike data-centric architectures, the Yakabox captures soft knowledge, the experiences and insights teams generate every day, then lose in shared drives and in-boxes."

...

 

And now it's time for Silly Songs With Larry, the part of the show where Larry comes out and sings a silly song.

...

 

Rave Wireless has announced deeper product integration between Rave's safety applications and the BlackBerry.

 

Rave Wireless officials say they'll benefit from the global use of BlackBerry smart phones, and will work with Research In Motion's sales groups to market Rave Wireless' products within higher education and other vertical markets. Expect marketing efforts to kick off this week at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference.

Rave Wireless sells mobile safety applications to higher education. Company officials say many institutions use its Rave Alert emergency notification system, and others have launched the Rave Guardian personal mobile alarm.

The "deeper product integration" lets organizations use the Rave Alert system to send emergency notifications to BlackBerry smart phone users via PIN messaging. A PIN uniquely identifies BlackBerry smart phones on the wireless network. By sending alerts via PIN message, administrators can track who has received and opened the messages.

This new delivery mode will join text messaging, e-mail, RSS and recorded voice messages as ways to send notifications through Rave Alert, further increasing broadcast alert deliverability and accountability.

It also gives police officers and other first responders the ability to monitor Rave Guardian personal mobile alarm cases on their BlackBerry smart phones. Rave Guardian is a phone-accessed application that can be armed, and when triggered, automatically sends the user's picture, mobile number and personal information to campus police.

Company officials say Rave Guardian works on any cell phone from any provider in the U.S., and in many cases can even display the user's GPS location on a map for campus police or other first responders to provide assistance more quickly.

ItracMEDIA, a vendor of e-mail marketing software and CRM technology, has been selected as the "official supplier" of marketing CRM software products used by Online Sales Counsellors with Drees Homes.

Aaron C. Tackett, National Sales Director, M.I.R.M., C.S.P., said "their technology is superior and they have a proven success ratio."

A Toronto-based marketing CRM software company, itracMEDIA's technology is used by over 45 of North America's developers, comprising almost 250 separate development projects. Specializing in real estate e-marketing, itracMEDIA's e-mail marketing CRM software enables developers to capture leads, identify prospects and conduct lead scoring.

As part of the deal each of Dress Homes' ongoing developments now has its own Web site. Through user sign-in on the Web site, itracMEDIA's technology tracks a potential buyer's site usage, monitoring which pages are viewed, how long they are on the site, the number of times that person returns, things like that. ItracMEDIA then transforms this information into a lead scoring system.

"In the end, Drees Homes' decision came down to our lead scoring analytics," says itracMEDIA's Justin Parker. "Real estate is a highly competitive and challenging industry."

Not the sort of thing First Coffee usually covers, but Datacap's a regular on the show: A vendor of capture and forms processing software solutions, they've announced the recipients of the Third Annual Datacap Channel Excellence Awards.

Datacap created the awards to recognize VARs that have mastered and expanded Datacap software functionality and pushed its products and technology into new regions or markets.

"Datacap salutes the 2008 Channel Excellence winners for demonstrating innovation in design, implementation and customer service," said Scott Blau, Datacap CEO.

The 2008 Datacap Channel Excellence Award winners include Cutting Edge Solutions  of Kansas City; RJS Software Systems, a vendor of information management products; Metafile, a privately held software development and systems integration company headquartered in Rochester, Minnesota and vendors of the MetaViewer line of imaging products.

If  read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

CRM's Lasso and Equine, Truphone Anywhere, SAS and HF Holidays, Web Center in Oulu, Symphony's Price Manager

October 28, 2008 11:03 PM | 0 Comments
By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz
 
The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is one of the greatest albums recorded in the second half of the 20th century -- Frank Sinatra's A Swingin' Affair:
 
Global mobile network operator Truphone has launched a beta of its mobile internet telephony service, Truphone Anywhere, for BlackBerry smart phones. The service is described by company officials as a way to get cheap international calling to BlackBerry users.
 
Truphone Anywhere works in 33 countries worldwide, and company officials claim it "saves BlackBerry users from those countries money on the international calls they make from their home country. The service works alongside domestic service providers, but reduces international call costs to as little as six cents per minute."
 
Instead of requiring the user to remember what to do, Truphone Anywhere simply asks whether he wants to make a Truphone call whenever an international number is dialed.
 
"There's no GSM business tariff that gets close to the prices we can offer BlackBerry users with Truphone for international calling," says Geraldine Wilson, new CEO of Truphone. "And in these days of financial belt-tightening, businesses are looking at every means of cutting costs, which is an opportunity for us."
 
In technical terms, company officials explain, Truphone Anywhere works by connecting to a local Truphone server, which then connects the long-distance part of the call over the Internet. Because most BlackBerry users are contract customers, they say, the local connection to Truphone is, typically, free because it uses bundled minutes from the customer's usual cellular service provider.
 
Truphone for BlackBerry smart phones is available to download for free from www.truphone.com/blackberry.
...
 
Self-described "Walking and cycling holiday specialists" HF Holidays officials say the company has chosen SAS Marketing Automation software to be "the foundation for improving its marketing communications."
 
SAS' marketing software is expected by HF Holidays officials to create better targeted direct mail campaigns and e-newsletter offers to its customers, based on accurate customer data. "Using SAS," company officials say, they want to accelerate growth by an additional 5-10 percent within the next 5 years through better targeted mailings.
 
HF Holidays turned to SAS for a customer profiling system to improve their targeting and personalization of marketing communications. SAS is expected to provide HF Holidays with data management, campaign management and customer analytics in one integrated product.
 
SAS officials say the product will integrate data from several separate databases within HF Holidays, "improving the quality and accuracy of its customer information... this centralized platform will enable the company to generate targeted campaigns, as well as understand and track customer responses."
 
Aimee Hart, Communications Manager at HF Holidays, says SAS' complete marketing product "will provide us with a holistic approach to marketing to our customers. With SAS we will be able understand all of our customer data and gather insight into their behavior."
 
Ian Manocha, Managing Director of SAS UK, called the leisure industry "a real growth area for SAS. We have recently expanded our footprint in this market by acquiring IDeaS Revenue Optimization and forming a new Profit Optimization Global Practice."
...
 
Vancouver-based CRM Vendor Lasso Data Systems, specializing products for the real estate industry, has announced that Equine Management Services, a vendor of equine-themed communities, has selected Lasso as its enterprise CRM.
 
Please tell me First Coffee isn't the only one to see the total tonnage of bad punnage lying in wait here.
 
EMS is the master developer of the mega 200 acre residential project, Escape, located in Ajman, United Arab Emirates.

"Our team evaluated several CRM systems," said Anwer Sher, Co-Founder and Managing Director, EMS. "Lasso provides the functionality that we need for marketing and customer service for Escape and our upcoming equine projects."

Located thirty minutes from downtown Dubai, Escape will comprise more than five hundred "Arabian and Mediterranean-influenced" villas, saddle home duplexes, and 16 low-to-medium rise apartment buildings to be constructed and sold over the next two years.
 
Escape will also be home to a one hundred-fifty room boutique hotel, an equestrian center for two hundred horses with spa and therapy center, several multipurpose sports arenas and the HoofbeatZ Center.
 
...
 
Symphony Metreo, a vendor of enterprise pricing and operations management products, has announced availability of its new Price Manager software, described by company officials as a tool for pricing and product managers to build pricing strategies linked to financial objectives. 
 
"With Price Manager, users can predict the impact of pricing decisions on the business and set new prices based on changing market or competitive conditions," company officials say.   
 
According to a recent AMR Research study cited by the Symphonians, when setting and executing prices, the largest gap occurs in the planning phase: "Conducting profitability analysis and incorporating findings in future price analytics and setting presents the biggest disparity with a gap of 31 percent," they say. 
 
The Symphony Metreo pricing suite is designed to "close that gap," company officials say, since the product "treats price as a lever and driver for achieving a company's revenue and margin goals." It's designed to bring "order and efficiency" to the process of setting and managing list prices and price lists for products and services by combining planning and analysis with interactive what-if scenario capabilities to test trade-offs.
 
Price Manager offers a set of reports for analyzing the current state of business, identifying problem price points and understanding the impact of changing prices, as well as role-based dashboards and alerts to "provide each user with his or her own view of the price setting process, and a J2EE-compliant Web interface is designed for ease-of-use," company officials say.
 
There's also a feature called Decisionflow which lets users "make the necessary midcourse pricing corrections for achieving the pricing plan, including what-if scenario capabilities for appreciating the trade-offs involved," and a feature called "ActiveRules" technology, which manages the business rules in complex models, enables customers to "capture all the interdependencies of the rules pertaining to their business operations."
...
 
FYI: Working in cooperation with Oulu Innovation, Global Connexus has announced that plans are well underway to set up the world's first Web Commerce Center of expertise in Oulu, Finland.
 
The new center, according to Global officials, will provide companies seeking new Internet business models "the resources to develop Web stores, simplify electronic purchases, reduce the need for working capital, increase e-commerce volumes and develop a higher standard of customer service."
 
That last one sounds pretty good.
 
The Technical Services Department of the City of Oulu has zoned an area in Oulu for industrial and business development. Itella Corporation has announced plans to build a sorting facility scheduled to be fully operational in summer 2009. Palmberg-Rakennus is developing other facilities to provide logistics.
 
"This is the time to focus on Web commerce as consumers continue to seek virtual shopping and easy electronic purchases," said Samuli Romppainen, former vice president of Erätukku and current Web commerce consultant.
 
Web commerce is the fastest growing type of consumer trade in Europe with consumers purchases largely focused in leisure time products, home electronics and interior decoration. In recent years, Web commerce has grown at a rate of 20 to 30 percent in Finland against an annual overall retail trade growth of some five percent.
 
However, over 30 percent of the web purchases made by Finns go to Web stores abroad.
 
The project's partners include the Technical Services Department of the City of Oulu, the University of Oulu and the Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT.
 
Oulu Innovation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the competitiveness of business expertise in the Oulu region, as well as increases the region's attractiveness as an operating environment for skills and business development. Global Connexus is a management consulting firm located in Silicon Valley.
 
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.
 
 
 
 

NII and BlackBerry Curve, Nutricia and Ciboodle, Telrex's CallRex, Boomi Grows, Interactive Intelligence Results

October 28, 2008 7:01 PM | 0 Comments
By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz
 
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one of the most overexposed yet underrated acts in rock history, The Supremes. More American #1 singles in the '60s than anyone -- more than The Beatles -- their music has serious legs, their melodies are as sturdy as oak and they sound as wonderful today as they did forty years ago:
 
NII Holdings and Research In Motion have announced that Nextel Argentina, Nextel Brazil, Nextel Mexico and Nextel Peru will launch the BlackBerry Curve 8350i smartphone during the first quarter of 2009.
 
The BlackBerry Curve 8350i is described by NII officials as "the first smartphone in Latin America to offer the Push-to-Talk service, International Direct Connect and WiFi capability."
 
The BlackBerry Curve 8350i smartphone and Push-to-Talk service "will provide one-touch, instant communication between NII subscribers in their home markets and with over 10 million iDEN subscribers in North and South America," NII officials say, adding that the BlackBerry 8350i will also come with built-in Wi-Fi, a 2-megapixel camera, an internal antenna and "a host of other features."
 
Greg Santoro, chief marketing and strategy officer, NII Holdings, said the smartphone "combines the power of Push-To-Talk with the BlackBerry platform's features."
 
The BlackBerry Curve 8350i smartphone is designed to combine BlackBerry data services such as e-mail, messaging, organizer and Internet access with the connectivity of Push-to-Talk. The BlackBerry Curve 8350i smartphone is designed to integrate into the IT networks of organizations that use the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution.
 
It has 128-MB of onboard memory, and the smartphone will accept microSD/SDHC cards for up to 16 GB of storage. Users will be able to store spreadsheets, images or pictures, and with the DataViz Documents to Go software users will be able to edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents directly on the smartphone. Plus it's got GPS).
...
 
Sword ciboodle, which sells business software and services, has announced that it is working with UK baby food giant Nutricia to help the company "enhance its customer service capabilities."
 
By deploying Sword ciboodle's CRM platform, Sword officials say, Nutricia aims to boost its contact center's performance. Part of Groupe Danone's Baby Nutrition division, Nutricia sells baby food brands Cow & Gate and Aptamil.
 
Nutricia runs customer relationship programs both in the consumer and healthcare professional marketplace, supported by a Careline staffed by dieticians, nutritionists, midwives and mothers. The programs, Nutricia officials say, are designed to provide information, support and advice to their respective audiences, via a wide range of contact channels, including phone, postal mailings, Web site, e-mail, SMS, live Web chat and a desktop character.
 
Sword ciboodle is providing Nutricia with a CRM platform that links the various contact channels, and provides a consolidated view of each customer's interactions with the company. The system is also designed to accommodate an expected growth in the number of contacts over time and handle increasing volumes without the need to increase staff numbers.
 
"Sword ciboodle provides us with a much clearer view of the interactions mothers have with our CRM channels and our Careline," says Nic Yates, Head of CRM, Nutricia. "We believe that this project will set a CRM best practice standard for our group."
 
The product will underpin Nutricia's contact center operation, Nutricia officials say, providing its teams of advisors with "a vastly simplified single desktop view of each customer's contact history, allowing them to access previous contact records to determine what questions have previously been asked and what advice has been provided."
 
All contact center channels will be integrated into the new platform, ensuring a complete, auditable record of all interactions, Nutricia officials say. The system is also designed to eliminate the data quality issues that resulted through previous duplication of customer information.
...
 
Telrex, sellers of the CallRex IP call recording and call center products, has announced that Keany Produce has adopted the CallRex call recording software for "improved customer service processes" and to "streamline dispute resolution."
 
The call center optimization product is being used to help Keany "stretch their current infrastructure... using CallRex Professional software on their Mitel 3300 ICP system," Telrex officials say.
 
Dawn Eastwood, director of IT for Keany Produce, said the CallRex call recording product is intended to help with quality monitoring, employee coaching, dispute resolution, and to identify customer and process trends. "CallRex has allowed us to identify trends and correct issues or train agents," said Eastwood. "Using call recordings, we discovered issues that we hadn't even thought of."
 
Reviewing calls, managers discovered that agents were not necessarily answering the underlying or unasked questions. "We heard customer exchanges where agents were continually answering the customer question 'how much does that include' with 'five pounds,' when the real question may have been 'how many servings are included?'" Eastwood says.
...
 
Interactive Intelligence has reported results for the quarter and nine-month period ended Sept. 30, 2008.
 
2008 third quarter revenues were $30.1 million, a three percent increase from $29.2 million in the same quarter last year. Operating income for the 2008 third quarter was $1.4 million, compared to $2.5 million in the 2007 third quarter.
 
Non-GAAP operating income was $1.8 million, compared to $3.3 million in the third quarter of 2007. Non-GAAP operating income excludes charges for stock-based compensation of $439,000 and $812,000 in the third quarters of 2008 and 2007, respectively.
 
Net income in the 2008 third quarter was $924,000, with diluted earnings per share of $0.05, compared to $3.0 million and $0.15, respectively, in the 2007 third quarter. Net income includes fully taxed earnings in 2008. Non-GAAP net income in the third quarter of 2008 was $2.0 million with EPS of $0.11, compared to $3.8 million and $0.19, respectively, in the 2007 third quarter.
 
"As in the previous quarter, demand was strong from new customers while current customers limited expansion of their existing implementations," said Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO Donald E. Brown. "Both trends were primarily driven by the difficult economic environment."
 
For the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2008, revenues were a record $90.1 million, a 12 percent increase from $80.6 million in the same period in 2007.
 
Net income for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2008 was $2.9 million, with EPS of $0.15, compared to $7.1 million and $0.37, respectively, in the same period in 2007. Net income includes fully taxed earnings in 2008. Non-GAAP net income was $7.3 million with EPS of $0.38, compared to $9.4 million and $0.49, respectively, in the first nine months of 2007.
 
During the third quarter of 2008, the company repurchased 353,000 shares of its common stock for $3.4 million under a plan that was approved by the board of directors in July 2008.
...
 
Boomi, a vendor on-demand integration, has announced that the company has added over 100 new customers since the introduction of its on-demand integration service, "adding to its existing client base of over 300 customers in 11 countries around the world," company officials say.
 
"Boomi was the clear choice for TacitLogic to synchronize Salesforce.com with our business networking platform, MyReferNet," said Drew Massie, COO & Co-Founder of TacitLogic. "I was able to build and deploy my integration processes within just a few hours."
 
With its "connect once, integrate everywhere" approach, Boomi officials believe the company's popularity is driven by its fully cloud-based delivery model, its visual approach to integration that does not require coding, its product for behind-the-firewall integration and its pay-per-connection pricing model.
 
Bob Moul, CEO of Boomi, says the integration challenge is not caused by SaaS technology itself "but in the attempt to integrate SaaS applications with conventional integration products."
 
 
 
 

Epicor and Microsoft, Go Daddy's Upgrades, Persistent and Rackspace, eGlue and Nationwide

October 28, 2008 5:24 AM | 0 Comments

By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is John Mellencamp's Dance Naked, generally regarded as one of his lesser efforts in that it lacks the high points of albums such as uh-huh or The Lonesome Jubilee, and okay it's not exactly Exile On Main Street, but it also lacks any songs you have to skip which litter the rest of Mellencamp's albums, and around First Coffee we appreciate solid, workmanlike consistency:

 

Epicor has announced at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008 its support of Microsoft's cloud computing initiative Azure Services Platform.

Epicor and Microsoft "share a complementary vision for cloud computing and building applications that bridge the gaps between PC, Web and phone," the Epicorians say, noting that Epicor recently announced its next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) product Epicor 9 -- expected to be generally available before the end of the year -- which will virtually put "ERP everywhere."

 

Robert Wahbe, Corporate Vice President, Connected Systems Division at Microsoft, called taking advantage of cloud computing "the next logical step in the evolution of Epicor's service-oriented business applications."

 

Epicor 9, the company's enterprise business software product designed for companies in domestic and global markets, is built on a second-generation service-oriented architecture, Epicor Internet Component Environment 2.0. It's engineered to combine Web 2.0 concepts, such as Enterprise Search, presence and real-time communication with business acumen, officials say.

 

Erik Johnson, senior director of development at Epicor, said in his opinion, "Azure Services Platform will be a game changer for cloud platforms -- it incorporates Microsoft's .NET Framework which means Epicor can use our existing skills and code libraries. Azure will also include new storage, identity, and data geo-affinity features that are crucial for deploying commercial enterprise applications in the cloud."

 

Epicor has been working with Azure Services Platform since mid-July in developing Enterprise Search for its Epicor 9 offering.

...

 

Go Daddy officials say in response to the economic slowdown the firm has "implemented product upgrades and service enhancements," including upgrades for businesses and for individuals in need of additional disk space with their hosting accounts, as well as a complete remodel to the GoDaddy.com Web site itself.

 

Go Daddy CEO and Founder Bob Parsons said Go Daddy is expanding Web site building services "for people who want to have their site developed without investing lots of time or money."

 

The company has introduced two plans -- Create-it-for-me Web sites are for those who want an informational site to target customers, company officials say, while "anyone needing ongoing and continuously refreshed content can use Power Content Plans." Both include Traffic Blazer and Traffic Facts for no extra charge.

 

Go Daddy has also introduced an Unlimited Hosting package designed for those who want more disk space and bandwidth. Unlimited Hosting is available on both Windows and Linux. The vendor's also selling a new integrated product suite which allows users to switch between Website Tonight, Quick Shopping Cart and Quick Blogcast. It's aimed at business users who "want to build a complete online presence," company officials say, "including ecommerce, using Go Daddy's simple-to-use products."

 

"Our developers actually listen in on customer calls to learn how we can improve products," Parsons said.

...

 

Persistent Systems, a vendor of Outsourced Product Development services, and Rackspace Hosting, a vendor of hosted IT services, have entered into a partner agreement where both companies make available each other's product, "ultimately creating a total product stack for customers -- from managed infrastructure to software development and enablement for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Web applications, data migration and application support," Persistent officials say.

 

Through this relationship, Rackspace officials say, they can recommend Persistent's full array of software development services to their customers, who can use them over the life of their applications and products. This product partner agreement comes on the heels of a successful outsourcing product development relationship between Rackspace and Persistent.

 

"Rackspace had never worked with an offshore vendor before. We engaged Persistent in order to see how the model would work," said Tony Campbell, director, software development, Rackspace Hosting.

 

Rackspace officials say they use Persistent's expertise on a variety of projects, and avail themselves of "the knowledge of Persistent's people... its data warehouse and Java competency centers."

...

 

EGlue, a software company selling real-time customer interaction products, has announced the deployment of eGlue InterAct at Nationwide Financial Services, an insurance and financial services firm.

 

Nationwide officials say their contact centers receive more than 129,000 calls per month from consumers and brokers, and that the eGlue product lets them increase the accuracy of handling and routing of these calls.

 

Diane Martin, Director of Technology Services at Nationwide, said the eGlue product increases efficiency and makes "the experience easier for CSRs and more positive for Nationwide's customers... the asset retention process was simplified, while call information was captured for reporting."

 

EGlue's customer interaction management product provides customer service representatives with information when needed during the call. Company officials say it builds a profile of the call in progress, interprets the information and applies business rules to send specific instructions to CSRs in the form of "call-outs" or pop-ups.