The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the finest country singer you've never heard of - Slim Dusty, who recorded 106 albums and captured the heart and soul of his country, Australia, in a way scant few others have done for any country. It was fairly said of him that "Slim Dusty doesn't sing about Australian culture. Slim Dusty is Australian culture."

 

He is to Australia what Woody Guthrie, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Pete

Seeger and Johnny Cash all rolled into one are for America. He was so revered in Australia that when he died he lay in state with full honors. His 2003 funeral is seen by Aussies as dropping the curtain on Australia's fabled era of swaggies and railroads, bushmates and ranch cowboys.

 

And for the weekend, a bit more wide-ranging column than usual:

 

Symphony Metreo, a vendor of enterprise pricing and operations management products, has announced its next-generation price segmentation and optimization product, Guideline Manager 2.0, developed to automate and standardize guideline setting processes. 

 

It's being pitched as a product to help organizations with analytic and segmentation capabilities with managing pricing strategies and price negotiations "in line with margin goals. 

 

"In most organizations, optimized guideline setting involves a black box process, where techniques, rules and methodologies are understood by a small number of people within the organization," said Symphony Metreo CEO Tal Ball. "Guideline Manager provides users with analytics and the knowledge to defend recommended prices."

 

For companies with a small number of products and segments, simply analyzing win rates or invoice data may suffice, Ball said, adding that "for companies with expanding product lines and complex distribution models," adopting Guideline Manager can help standardize and automate the guideline setting process."

 

The product is billed as helping reduce pricing errors caused by manual data entry and allowing "deep segmentation capabilities across pricing attributes such as location, size of customer, size of deal and channel" as well. 

 

The product is available as a stand-alone product or as part of the Symphony Metreo Pricing Suite. Headquartered in Palo Alto, Symphony Metreo is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Symphony Technology Group, a $2.1 billion strategic holding company.

...

 

Psst. Hey. You there. Wanna switch from your PC to Mac? Sure you do. You know you do. You'd never admit it but you would sort of rather not identify with the dweeby guy in those Mac-PC online ads, right? Right.

 

Help is here - the Belkin Switch-to-Mac Cable provides a way to transfer files, settings, preferences, and more from your PC to that Mac you know you've always wanted. Unlike existing products where you have to drag and drop specific files you want to transfer, the Belkinites says, the Switch-to-Mac Cable "automatically moves your music, movies, photos, files, and Internet preferences."

 

Now that Mac computers support Windows applications, a growing number of PC owners - people just like you, your friends and neighbors, that guy on the subway - are switching to them, making the ability to work with existing PC files a necessity. The Switch-to-Mac Cable is probably as hassle-free an experience as you can have transitioning to your new Mac.

 

Yes, the move to Mac is real - a 2008 Needham report shows that after a decade of stagnation, Macintosh unit sales have almost tripled in the past three years. The same study found that the most significant barrier to switching from PC to Mac was the Mac computer's inability to run Windows applications, and now that it's not a problem anymore, the study predicts over the next ten years, Mac unit sales will grow to almost 40 million units by 2017.

 

Available in the United States now, the Switch-to-Mac Cable (F4U001) costs fifty bucks and transfers at USB 2.0 speeds. It's compatible with Windows XP or Windows Vista, and with Mac OS X v10.4 and v10.5.

 

Founded in California in 1983, Belkin is a privately held company with offices throughout Europe and in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

...

 

Avaya has launched two portfolios of customer service products for the financial and healthcare industries, Proactive Outreach for Financial Services and Proactive Outreach for Healthcare. These are designed to "help businesses use outbound communications and self service automation," company officials say.

 

Outbound self-service is a contact center technology to deliver information to customers -- such as appointment reminders or bill payment requests -- and let them complete transactions using automated menus or speech commands. Avaya's Proactive Outreach portfolios provide outbound self-service products for financial and healthcare organizations, which are early adopters of this technology, according to analyst firm Datamonitor.

 

Financial companies and healthcare providers deal with large volumes of incoming customer calls, and these products are designed to reduce these volumes and pre-empt incoming inquiries by "reaching out to customers about critical events before they become issue," company officials say, adding that companies can use Avaya Proactive Outreach to initiate outbound communications via multiple channels, such as phone, e-mail or SMS, and notify customers about doctor visit reminders, overdraft alerts, and credit card or hospital bills.

 

This not only helps companies cut down on incoming calls, but also frees up live agents to handle more complex interactions. Both portfolios let customers choose to connect to a live agent at any time. When customers get transferred, all of their information gets routed securely along with them to another system or agent, so customers do not need to repeat their personal information.

...

 

Campus Management has announced an agreement with nGenera Corporation to acquire assets of its subsidiary, Talisma Corporation.

 

The assets include nGenera's Talisma CRM software, the Talisma Higher Education business division based in Bellevue, Washington, and Talisma Corporation Pvt. Ltd., an operating unit in Bangalore. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

 

Talisma CRM sells software for enrollment management, student retention, student services, education finance, alumni relations and IT Helpdesks. Customers include Bisk Education, Duke University Fuqua School of Business, eCollege, Johnson & Wales University, Strayer University, University of Alabama, and University of Nebraska.

 

The parties also announced agreements that will enable Campus Management to sell, integrate and support nGenera's Knowledgebase software, used by customers deploying the Talisma CRM product. Campus Management will own the Talisma brand, and nGenera will retain ownership of Talisma's CIM (Customer Interaction Management) software product and business.

 

So basically, the way it all shakes out is that customers using Talisma CRM software will now be served by Campus Management, while nGenera gets the CIM line of business.

 

Nicole Engelbert, Lead Analyst of Vertical Markets Technology for Datamonitor, said the boundary between CRM and the Student Information System "will need to blur in order to provide a truly complete view of the student experience."

...

 

Coordimax, the Australian-owned and operated vendor of CRM, Document Management and Help Desk tools, has acquired asset, lease and property management software company Pinnacle, in a move described by Coordimax officials as a way to expand the Coordimax portfolio and "grow its local and international customer base."

 

Of course it also doesn't hurt that the deal's expected to increase Coordimax's revenue by many million dollars. But overall, purchase of the 20-year old fellow Australian software company is part of what Coordimax officials describe as "a plan to diversify Coordimax's software business products and operating systems,"  and fast track its push into overseas markets, including Hong Kong, Malaysia and the UK.
 
Pinnacle works the asset and lease management software market and has over 200 customers in the education, finance, healthcare, hospitality, government, mining and manufacturing, tourism, transport, utilities and telecommunications sectors. This includes organizations like Coles, Qantas and Multiplex.
 
Coordimax officials say the current climate of merger and acquisitions "is creating stronger demand for asset management," and they see Pinnacle's healthcare and hospitality experience helping them increase activity around their existing Coordimax for Hospitality and Coordimax for Healthcare products.

 

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