The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is the sweet spot of late '50s and early '60s jazz - Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, Dexter Gordon, and others. There's probably a name for that specific style of jazz:
Selltis, a vendor of on-demand customer relationship management software, has announced that the Industrial Distribution Program at Texas A&M University has selected Selltis Sales 5.0 for use in its Supply Chain Systems lab curriculum.
The Industrial Distribution Program has been using Selltis for its industrial distribution course offering since 2002 and recently migrated to the newest version of the company's namesake CRM software.
Officials of the Thomas and Joan Read Center, a part of Industrial Distribution Program at Texas A&M University, say theirs is the only university center in the United States that focuses on research and education in industrial distribution: "Its professional development and educational programs are designed to increase an organization's competitive advantage and profitability."
Texas A&M's Supply Chain Systems Lab is accessed by the University's Industrial Distribution programs at every level, including approximately 500 undergraduate, 20-80 graduate, and 300-500 continuing education students each year. Additionally, numerous faculty members and graduate students use the Lab to conduct millions of dollars of research each year for the distribution community as a whole, including major corporations throughout the U.S.
"As part of the curriculum, our goal is to help students understand the workflow for making and selling products as well as he technology behind them," said university professor Arunachalam Narayanan. "Our goal is to simulate usage of this CRM software as preparation in guiding their technology decisions as they embark on careers in industrial distribution."
Expanding on the company's technology that offers "many-to-many" data linking, the new Selltis Sales 5.0 "Link The Way You Think" approach provides the capability to manage complex, team sales environments. The Selltis Sales platform includes tools to automate marketing campaigns and lead management as well as quoting and field service.
According to Narayanan, students use Selltis 5.0 to create a project and opportunity and then track each one. Students then add a customer code and an opportunity for cash report.
"With most of our students taking industrial sales positions, CRM is critical in their job function and products like Selltis are invaluable for the front end of the sales process," said Narayanan.
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Market strategy "will trump technology in determining which SaaS companies will be successful," while the key to driving adoption will be "better product integration and alliance with other SaaS companies," according to Demian Entrekin, founder of on-demand PPM provider Innotas.
On-demand, or SaaS products are usually less initially expensive and quicker and easier to implement than installed products, they can be deployed in days or weeks and are adaptable with ability to add or delete seat licenses to correspond with fluctuating business needs.
Entrekin recently identified what company officials say are ten trends that SaaS companies should think about as they work toward driving growth and adoption of on-demand applications in the marketplace:
First, "it's the product, stupid!" Due to the emphasis of "Try It Buy It" approaches for marketing SaaS applications, product management and product marketing teams are forced to push more of the "whole product" and "solution selling" concept back into the product itself. Instead, developers should focus on incorporating business process into product features.
Second, think software without borders. Applications are becoming less and less restricted to a particular organization and more oriented around user networks. This has the effect of making the applications more user-centric rather than organization-centric. Paradoxically, this is good for the organization since it will lead to better adoption.
Third, first impressions come first. SaaS applications have a few minutes to make an impression, and the first three minutes are critical. If you can create a sense of value in three minutes, you're off to a great start.
Fourth, pinch your pennies. COGS and Gross Margins are financial metrics that should drive the technology strategy - "the ability to support a reliable, scale-able service at a low cost is becoming a bigger and bigger advantage," Entrekin says.
Fifth, Tier 1 support reigns. Now that there is less and less room for fancy, high priced consultants to answer the fancy, high priced questions, Tier 1 support will take on a bigger and bigger responsibility to represent the company and answer tough questions during the sales cycle. Will a good FAQ cut it? We doubt it.
Sixth, go with more product alliances. SaaS vendors will dedicate more resources to integration partnerships with other SaaS vendors. Right now, they talk about it but they don't do it well.
Seventh, video trumps text. SaaS products will begin to use more and more video for training, support, documentation and other functions. It's cheap and easy and more interesting to look at. Text based tools are being replaced by A/V.
Eighth, SaaS for SaaS: SaaS companies are going to start outsourcing more and more parts of their own operations.
Ninth is the grid computing muddle: Utility computing remains an open question and will be driven by the cost to provide the service. SaaS vendors should build applications that are "cloud compatible" so that they can take advantage of grid computing when it makes good risk/reward sense.
Finally, tech takes a back seat: There are fewer and fewer technical hurdles to get a SaaS application to market than when we started this in 1999. Now the emphasis is shifting more to marketing strategy; the technology, while obviously essential, is taking more of a back seat.
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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin has voiced his support for a rulemaking that would establish a quiet period for broadcast carriage talks between cable operators and broadcasters during the digital television transition.
Responding to a report by Broadcasting & Cable yesterday, ACA applauded the chairman for his leadership and renewed its claim that for a quiet period to be effective, it must begin no later than December 31, 2008 -- the expiration date of thousands of current broadcast carriage deals.
ACA president and Chief Executive Officer Matthew M. Polka opined that unless the FCC establishes a quiet period, "dropped signals in the months ahead will continue to cause confused cable and satellite customers to needlessly request digital-to-analog converter box coupons."
The NTIA recently reported an uptick in households requesting coupons in some markets affected by LIN TV's decision to pull 15 broadcast stations from 1.5 million Time Warner and Bright House cable customers in 11 markets for nearly a month in October.
The Government Accountability Office's June report to Congress found that among households that would be unaffected by the transition, which includes many cable and satellite TV customers, 30 percent actually had plans to ready themselves -- despite the fact that no action is required on their part to maintain television service (the report is available here).
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AT&T has announced that the use of social networking tools as part of everyday working life has led to an increase in efficiency, according to an independent market report it released.
The pan-European survey of more than 2,500 people in five countries, conducted by Dynamic Markets, shows that of those employees using social networking tools in the workplace, 65 percent say that it has made them and/or their colleagues more efficient. Forty-five percent say that it has sparked ideas and creativity for them personally.
The top 5 social networking tools being used by organizations across Europe are companies' own collaboration sites on intranets at 39 percent, internal forums within the company at 20 percent, company-produced video material shared on intranets at 16 percent, online social networks, like LinkedIn and Facebook at 15 percent and external collaboration sites on the Web and internal blogging sites, both at 11 percent.
The study shows that 65 percent of employees surveyed in Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands say that their company has adopted social networking as part of their working culture.
No word on how many employees use time at work to update their Facebook pages when they should be working.
The research also reveals that the rate of adoption is most popular in Germany, leading the way at 72 percent while Great Britain lags behind with 59 percent.
When asked, 74 percent of European employees think there are benefits to using social networks and online communities in the workplace. Increasing an individual's knowledge and giving access to products to problems (both 38 percent) were the two main benefits highlighted.
Harnessing the collective knowledge of employees, customers and suppliers (36 percent) and stimulating team building and better internal collaboration (32 percent) were also mentioned by those employees who have first-hand experience of using social networks at work on a daily basis.
A sample of 2510 interviews was collected with adult employees, aged 18+. Each country's sample includes a minimum of 500 respondents per country from small and medium enterprise (249 employees or fewer) to large organizations (250 or more employees).
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