BRIC Mobile Report, EnterpriseWizard and Entellium, 'ProSultative' Selling, QAD and Digirad, WebQA and InTouch

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David Sims
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BRIC Mobile Report, EnterpriseWizard and Entellium, 'ProSultative' Selling, QAD and Digirad, WebQA and InTouch

By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz
 
The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is the wonderful pre-rock boogie-swing '40s music of Louis Jordan, of Five Guys Named Moe fame. It's entirely appropriate that The Clash covered his "Junco Partner" on their Sandinista! album:
 
Increasing adoption of messaging and content services, aided by increased availability of 2G and 3G-based mobile networks, is "expected to push operator-billed data revenues in the mobile markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China" from $26.2 billion in 2008 to more than $48.3 billion by 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research.
 
The research looks at broader expectations that these four markets will be among the six largest economies in the world by 2050, by which time "their mutual interdependence and trading abilities will have shielded them from weakening economic conditions elsewhere in the world," Juniper officials say, adding they will be matched in size only by "the United States and by Mexico."
 
According to report author Andrew Kitson, as fixed-line telephony and broadband availability via traditional forms of access remains low in comparison with other important economies, "these countries are expected to turn to the mobile phone for much of their future communications, banking, entertainment, commerce and lifestyle needs."
 
Indeed, Kitson says, in countries such as India, "low-cost multi-functional mobile handsets will become an essential part of everyday life for millions of people otherwise beyond the geographic and economic reach of basic fixed-line infrastructure. This, in turn, will help continue to drive economic growth."
 
For operators, the key change Juniper sees in the next five years will be the launch of commercial 3G services -- currently available only on a regional basis in Russia and Brazil -- as well as migrating low-cost prepaid users to higher-value postpaid offerings wherever they can.
 
"With billions of dollars set to be spent on establishing these next-generation networks, the fundamental question facing players will be whether they can turn a profit from markets that will still have very low GDP per capita levels by 2050," the report's authors say.
 
Other findings include that the BRIC mobile user base is expected to rise from 1.209 billion in 2008 to 1.644 billion in 2013, total operator-billed voice revenues for the region are expected to peak in 2010 at $117.1 billion and will decline thereafter, and that China will record the highest operator billed data revenues of all four markets throughout the forecast period.
 
Whitepapers and further details of the study, "BRIC Mobile Opportunities: Markets & Forecasts 2008-2013," can be freely downloaded from http://www.juniperresearch.com.
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The scavengers are circling the Entellium carcass: EnterpriseWizard, a vendor of CRM products for B2B organizations, has announced that it's offering Entellium customers a free upgrade to EnterpriseWizard CRM and transfer of their data.

EnterpriseWizard offers "a fully configurable data model" for Entellium users, according to Colin Earl, CEO of EnterpriseWizard. And just to drive the knife in a bit further and twist it a bit harder, he adds "we are profitable, with no debt or outside investors, and the company has been in business for over 15 years." Hey, nobody ever said this business suffered from a surfeit of consideration and compassion.
 
Should a customer ever want to take the system in-house, they can transfer their entire EnterpriseWizard system from our SaaS server to an in-house server "in just 6 mouse clicks," Earl says.

Customers have switched to EnterpriseWizard from "a host of other systems" and with "full support for LDAP and Web services," Earl says, adding that the autumn release of the product can be deployed as a hosted SaaS application or an in-house server.

Complete product information, as well as demos and free CRM and Customer Support software trial downloads, are available at http://www.enterprisewizard.com.
...
 
US medical imaging products manufacturer Digirad has gone live with QAD customer relationship management (CRM) alongside its existing QAD Enterprise Applications, according to Digirad officials.

Donna Vogt, director of customer service for Digirad, says the company needed CRM to sustain its "growth ambitions," and that it chose QAD and system integrator Strategic Information Group for "their combination of functionality and service."

Strategic and QAD "helped us identify CRM's full potential and how we could apply it to our business needs," she says, adding that QAD CRM "maximizes communication between sales and customer service. Cross functionality has streamlined processes and helps us respond to customers faster. Now when a customer calls, we can quickly assess their equipment service history and respond to their immediate needs."
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A new book titled ProSultative "Selling: The Death of the Consultative Sales Person" is available, described by its author as "a new way of approaching business-to-business sales."
 
The book, authored by Marketbright executive Mike Pilcher and currently available for sale on Amazon.com, provides observations on the change technology "is exacting on sales and marketing functions, and how ProSultative selling techniques are being implemented to change the way businesses think, act, make and sell products to consumers," Pilcher says.
 
"The fully frictionless sale in which a customer fully self-serves and self-sells is close to being attainable," says Pilcher, Marketbright vice president of customer operations. "The ProSultative business sells as proactively as possible, while communicating with the customer and minimizing the interactions required to make a business decision."
 
Only with this shift, he warns, will sales teams be able to "stay productive and convert customers."
 
Pilcher has over 20 years of business and enterprise sales experience. Before joining Marketbright, he served as vice president of worldwide sales at HyperRoll, general manager of worldwide financial services at TradeBeam, and executive vice president of worldwide sales at Velosant, which was acquired by Harbor Payments.
 
Prior to Velosant, Pilcher served as vice president of sales at Epiphany, acquired by Infor, and senior vice president of worldwide sales at Tenfold Technology, acquired by Versata. Prior to Tenfold, he was the divisional manager for U.K. financial services at Sybase, and before that ran the Oracle U.K. insurance team.
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WebQA has announced it has acquired the InTouch product line for government citizen servicing from MMI Internetworking, a division of privately held MMI Professional Services based in Fort Worth, Texas.

The InTouch portfolio of modules allows local governments around the country to capture service requests, execute work orders and manage code enforcement in both a hosted and non-hosted environment.
 
WebQA officials say they will incorporate these offerings into the WebQA Action Center Series product line to augment its current suite of capabilities to the government marketplace. They say they will continue to support all InTouch customers.
 
For WebQA, the acquisition of the InTouch platform and customer base represents "the opportunity to further expand its government suite of offerings," WebQA officials say, adding that the acquisition "will expand the functionality available to all customers with the code enforcement and work order capabilities."
 
"With InTouch, we will have both a Java and .Net offering for our customers," said Gary Tarr, WebQA president. "We also will now have the opportunity to provide hosted and non-hosted platforms depending upon the needs of the local government."
Effective immediately, WebQA will support all InTouch customers and have responsibility for maintaining all InTouch software.
 
 


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