By David Sims

david at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Frank Sinatra's Songs For Swingin' Lovers album:

 

OneSource Business Information Services, in the business of aggregating and organizing content from world-class suppliers, has expanded its European coverage through relationships with Dun & Bradstreet, ICC Information, and Kompass.

 

These vendors will "add to the company profile, financial, and executive information already provided by OneSource," company officials say.

 

OneSource customers will get "over a 150 percent increase in European company coverage," the OneSourcerians say, adding that the new relationships "predominantly extend coverage" in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden.

 

"We are pleased to offer expanded European coverage through these new relationships," says Phil Garlick, President, OneSource, explaining that the new content will be incorporated into the OneSource flagship Global Business Browser offering as well as its other business information service subscriptions.

 

OneSource, an infoGROUP company, combines content from suppliers to sell business intelligence on millions of companies worldwide, delivered through the Web, CRM integrations, and information portals.

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StrongMail Systems, a vendor of on-premise products for marketing and transactional e-mail, has been selected for e-mail delivery for Marketo, a B2B marketing firm, as the e-mail delivery platform for its marketing automation system, Marketo Lead Management.

 

Marketo's marketing automation software features e-mail marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, and closed-loop reporting capabilities. It's designed to "help marketing and sales teams work together to generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles and demonstrate marketing accountability," company officials say.

 

Prior to the launch of Marketo Lead Management in March 2008, the company wanted an e-mail delivery platform that would integrate with its marketing automation system and provide e-mail deliverability, management and reporting to its clients.

 

The Marketians decided that OEM-ing StrongMail's e-mail delivery technology would give it full ownership of this mission-critical component of its system, company officials say.

Phil Fernandez, president and CEO of Marketo, said having StrongMail as part of their infrastructure "gives us ultimate control over e-mail delivery at a fixed cost that is much cheaper than outsourcing to an ESP."

 

Marketo integrated StrongMail with the Marketo Lead Management product to use StrongMail's "marketing and transactional e-mail features, including smart bounce processing, real-time reporting and e-mail deliverability services," Marketo officials say.

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George Slater, a CRM and Internet marketer who offers CRM and Internet training, has set up an online training resource for Infusionsoft users.

 

For the majority of Infusionsoft users "good implementation and training is very often the difference between those users being considered hugely successful and many others where implementations just languish, never really show good return on investment and never realize their full potential," Slater says.

In an online interview recently he explained that to set up an initial CRM flow "you just have to do three things; attract highly targeted prospects who sign up, contact these prospects with targeted offers and have an online system to convert the orders."

 

That "sounds really simple," he concedes, adding "it isn't. You need to have an exact receipt to follow, otherwise you'll be floundering about for months. That's why I set up www.infusioncrm.org, to help Infusionsoft users get there quickly."

The Infusionsoft CRM Training Course discusses "Best of The Best" CRM & Infusionsoft techniques, as well as ways to use the Application Program Interface to integrate different list building methods.

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ReachForce, a vendor of on-demand software and data services for targeted lead generation, has announced that Marc Griffin has joined as Senior Vice President of Sales, with a focus on the growth of the ReachForce business and "leadership of all revenue channels, inside direct, enterprise and partner sales."

Griffin has "two decades of experience in building and driving sales organizations" at companies such as Sage Software and ADP, said Suaad Sait, CEO of ReachForce, adding that his track record with sales organizations in new and emerging businesses makes him "a perfect addition to the ReachForce team."

Prior to joining ReachForce, Griffin was EVP of North American Sales and SVP/General Manager of the Public Sector Business Unit at Sage Software. Prior to Sage, he spent over 18 years at Automatic Data Processing as Senior VP/General Manager-National Accounts Business Division.

"ReachForce is an exciting place to be... positioned to deliver measureable lead generation impact to B2B marketing and sales organizations," said Griffin.

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Blackbaud has announced that it has completed the first phase of investment in its Kintera division's support offerings, including increased personnel investments, expanded training, the use of Blackbaud's industry-leading support infrastructure, improved access to product and industry experts, and self-service options.

 

"Since the Blackbaud acquisition, I have experienced a vast improvement in the customer service quality and turnaround time," said Lyndsay Myers, American Heart Association's associate director of CRM.

 

To date, Blackbaud has increased the San Diego-based support team by 50 percent and has begun sharing support methodologies for all aspects of the business from call handling and service metrics to client surveys.

 

The firm is also further integrating its support teams to provide peak call-load balancing between its Charleston, South Carolina, headquarters and San Diego office.

Jerry Zink, Blackbaud's chief customer satisfaction officer, said the firm is "going to provide the Kintera division support team members the tools they need to build on their past performance and match or exceed the level of support that Blackbaud customers are accustomed to."

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NetSuite, a vendor of on-demand, integrated business management software suites for mid-market enterprises and divisions of large companies, has announced an uptick in companies from the wholesale / distribution industry switching from Microsoft Great Plains to NetSuite.

 

These customers, which include Telebyte, J. Frank Golden & Associates, Total Beverage Solution and Camcal, cited "advanced functionality and ease of use" as a reason for moving to NetSuite.

 

On-premise software applications like Microsoft Great Plains were once very popular within mid-sized companies, NetSuite officials say, adding that they are "falling out of favor due to a number of deficiencies. Most do not allow business data to move easily across departments, resulting in a lack of real-time visibility across key metrics needed to optimize business operations."

 

NetSuite is a single system for ERP, CRM, inventory, and e-commerce operations delivered as Software as a Service, so "not only is the cost of integrating disparate systems eliminated," NetSuite officials say, "but also the on-going cost of maintaining on-premise applications."

 

Total Beverage Solution is an importer of wines, single-malt Scotch whisky and beers based in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. The company was formerly known as Vino.com. Camcal is a retail wholesaler of petroleum equipment based in Kent, Washington, which calibrates meters for oil refineries, repairs reels, hoses, pumps and meters, and re-sells and wholesales petroleum equipment.

 

J. Frank Golden & Associates is a jewelry wholesaler based in Hampton, Georgia.