ERMLive, Forrester on Epicor, Salesforce Winter '09

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ERMLive, Forrester on Epicor, Salesforce Winter '09

The news as of the all-important third cup of coffee this morning, and the music is The Rolling Stones's 1978 "Some Girls," alternately dubbed their greatest album "since Exile On Main Street," or "since Sticky Fingers," or "since Let It Bleed." However far back you want to go, all Stones albums since 1978 are measured by it as their standard. And no, none are better:
 
Christchurch, New Zealand- based Donald Hastie has announced a successful year for ERMLive, the most comprehensive product for employee management available today.
 
Since 2005 Donald Hastie, CEO of ERMLive and founder and former director of PayGlobal, says he has been "busy developing and perfecting" the HR & payroll product he says he has "always dreamed of."
 
ERMLive is described by Hastie as "a full featured Employee Relationship Management (ERM) tool designed to enhancing the relationships companies have with their employees," as the culmination of his "almost 20 years HRIS and payroll experience, knowledge of next generation technology and understanding of business improvement processes. The product is a radical departure from traditional rigid payroll systems."
 
Hastie says HR managers "need to be heard at the executive table," and says he developed ERMLive to let them "focus on enhancing the employee relationship in line with the strategic goals of the organization." He says he has taken into account "the mistakes and inflexibilities" of existing payroll software, and introduced new employee management functions that "meet the increasing demands of HR professionals, managers and employees."
 
"Considering the increased investment involved with managing employees, the benefits of an integrated approach between the operational and strategic has never been more important," he says. "ERMLive is designed to... allow management to at all times understand every aspect of the employee relationship."
 
Hastie estimates that the international ERM market is around $15-20 billion annually, and hopes to cut a decent slice of this pie with ERMLive. With what he describes as "few overhead expenses and a lean business model" ERMLive has been profitable from year one. Confirmed contracts are already well in excess of $1 million, and Hastie expect this to climb to $15 million in the next two years.
 
Sales support and service are also provided by channel partners Intergen and HR Solutions. A strategic relationship with Microsoft lets Hastie operate a business "with low overheads," he says, adding that the software is already in use in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and Asia.
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In a recent evaluation by Forrester Research, the report states "Epicor Software ascends to the Leader band in this edition of the Forrester Wave evaluation of order management hubs."
 
The report says Epicor delivers "mostly advanced capabilities across the four key order management cycle business processes."
 
Epicor was among the companies invited to participate in the November Forrester Wave report titled "The Forrester Wave: Order Management Hubs, Q4 2008." The report looked at eight order management products in a 152-criteria evaluation, noting Epicor for its support for end-to-end order processes and product strategies.

Ray Wang, vice president and principal analyst with Forrester and author of the report, writes that adoption of Microsoft tools and technology "provides Epicor with an agile and comprehensive application foundation." Wang singles out the company's analytics, user experiences and support for data in its evaluation.

The report noted that Forrester recommends consideration of Epicor Software for clients considering a product built on Microsoft Visual Studio .NET technologies and for "SMBs up to $5 billion" in revenues looking for "an alternative to the usual suspects."

Founded in 1984, Epicor has over 20,000 customers in more than 140 countries, providing products in over 30 languages. The country's worldwide headquarters are located in Irvine, California.
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Launching Salesforce Winter '09, Salesforce.com is announcing what company officials call "the free exchange of data between every company in its network."
 
Flogging what it claims is "the only CRM built on an enterprise cloud computing platform," Salesforce this week continued its love affair with the concept of cloud computing. Whether they play up cloud rhetoric because they believe it so fervently, or because it irritates Larry Ellison so much, is debatable.
 
What's not debatable is that it does irk Ellison. To some folks, that's its own reward.
 
The Salesenforcers say cloud computing's "unique model" - Larry grinds his teeth - has enabled Salesforce CRM to connect separate Salesforce CRM deployments, allowing companies to share sales leads, contacts, and company information, "without the need for complex integration software." Such as that marketed by... um...
 
Salesforce officials say the new Force.com technology "will allow its customers to extend Salesforce CRM applications through the creation of interactive Web-to-lead forms, which will enable site visitors to signal interest in products and services via a Web site."
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A new study, in the words of study sponsors, "highlights barriers to widespread adoption of mobile operators."
 
Generic customer relationship management (CRM) systems, "fragmented data and poor campaign monitoring and reporting systems" are "undermining the ability of mobile marketers to put subscribers at the heart of their marketing relationships," the study finds.
 
So says a mobile community research report commissioned by Business Logic Systems and conducted by the London analyst firm Freeform Dynamics.
 
Titled "Mobile Marketing Imperatives: Transitioning to a Customer-Centric Approach," the report is based on interviews with chief marketing officers (CMO) and campaign managers at thirteen Tier 1 and Tier 2 mobile operators in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Using the insights into best practice taken from discussions with the panel, Mobile Marketing Imperatives "outlines a set of principles and imperatives that mobile marketers should consider in their path toward a genuinely customer-centric culture," study officials say.
 
The report also shows that at a time when many mobile markets are saturated, panel members are placing ever more emphasis on developing customer loyalty programs, improving customer segmentation and aligning systems and processes.

However, most members of the survey panel agreed that set-up delays, cost over-runs, lack of automation and over-reliance on IT departments affected their ability to execute campaigns. Poor lead monitoring systems mean that non-performing campaigns are often not spotted until they are too late to rectify.
 
And Josie Sephton, principal telecoms analyst at Freeform Dynamics and report co-author, warned that the "combination of suboptimal systems and processes, along with a disjoint between functions can create both frustration and dissatisfaction issues among staff, and perpetuate political problems between departments."

Corporate-wide CRM systems such as Oracle's Siebel, are typically not one-size-fits-all, as was perhaps first assumed when the original business cases were made, the study finds: "The functionality they provide is not always adequate when dealing with the more real-time nature of highly interactive campaigns driven directly via the handset. The end result is the heavy emphasis on manual processing and IT integration workarounds."
 
Still the problems are formidable: "We have invested a lot of time and money into our current systems. To replace them is not an option, nor is it necessary," one study respondent said. "However, it would be a useful exercise to consider products and approaches that could help address our issues without having to change everything."


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