Chordiant's RA 6.2, Informatica and Salesforce.com, BigMachines and Force.com, Verizon's Exam

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David Sims
| CRM, ERP, Contact Center, Turkish Coffee and Astroichthiology:

Chordiant's RA 6.2, Informatica and Salesforce.com, BigMachines and Force.com, Verizon's Exam

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is one of the greatest compilation albums possible, The Best of Smokey Robinson & The Miracles:

Chordiant Software
has announced Chordiant Recommendation Advisor version 6.2, a version which allows real-time Next-Best-Action-driven dialog and interaction management at the business-to-business and household level.

The product's multi-level decisioning capabilities allow Next-Best-Action decisions and recommendations to be made on both an individual and aggregate level at the same time, company officials say, adding that this will enable service agents to work better with customers who "represent an entire company or division within a company, or one or all members of a household."

No doubt there will be companies interested in getting support for hierarchical decisioning for complex relationships in an out-of-the-box product.

Large service-focused enterprises, such as insurance companies, retail banks and telecommunications companies often have hierarchical relationships with their small-to-medium sized business customers. Within these relationships, different products and incentives are offered at the corporate level, the departmental level, and the individual level. Existing relationships at each of these levels must be factored into the decision when determining the next best action to be taken during an interaction.

For example, if an individual customer calls in with an inquiry, the system should be able to cough up offers or recommendations to the individual which fall within the parameters of existing departmental and corporate agreements. So if a particular proposition is relevant for a number of individuals, it may make sense to create an "all-in" offer at the departmental or corporate level.

Recommendation Advisor 6.2 is one of those products that let contact center agents and company representatives negotiate and make offers and recommendations that automatically account for corporate programs at all levels of operation. The same mechanism can also be applied to households, where a proposition can be tailored to a family based on recommendations for individual family members.
...

Informatica Corporation, which sells data integration software and services, has announced that Informatica On Demand Data Loader Service was voted "The Best Data Integration Tool of 2008" by Salesforce.com customers, having garnered more four and five star reviews than any other integration application in its category on the Force.com AppExchange.

More than 100 companies around the world now use Informatica On Demand. The product is designed to integrate Salesforce CRM applications and Force.com platform with back office systems. Ron Papas, general manager, Informatica On Demand, said the vendor now offers a range of cloud-based integration services.

Based on Informatica data integration technology, Informatica On Demand is a cloud-based data integration service letting Salesforce CRM customers automate and monitor the synchronization of their enterprise data with their Salesforce CRM and Force.com applications. The company's services are multi-tenant and require "minimal IT resources to implement and manage," the Informaticians promise. The on demand services or data integration platform can be deployed stand-alone or in conjunction with other Informatica products for data integration.

Informatica On Demand is comprised of the flagship On Demand Data Synchronization Service for synchronization between Salesforce CRM and back-end systems, the On Demand Data Replication Service to replicate Salesforce CRM data inside firewalls for archival, reporting and analytics purposes, the On Demand Data Quality Assessment Service to detect and monitor data quality issues such as duplication and missing data and the On Demand Data Loader Service, a free starter service for customers looking to import, export and synchronize their Salesforce CRM and Force.com data.

Informatica On Demand services are generally available on a subscription basis, starting at $500 per month, with a 30-day free trial.
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BigMachines, a vendor of on-demand configuration and proposal software, has announced that it was named among the "Best Apps of 2008" by customers on the Force.com AppExchange from Salesforce.com by receiving the most four and five-star customer reviews over the last year.

BigMachines officials claim "the most joint customers of any configuration and proposal product on the AppExchange," lumping joint customers such as NTT America, Enterasys, Carestream Health, and Teradyne in that assessment.

According to an AppExchange review submitted by Jessica Hoover, who is being mentioned here solely because she has the greatest title First Coffee's seen all week, that of Certified Scrum Master at Rally Software, her company set forth to find a quote tool that could handle a complex pricing model, integrate with Salesforce.com CRM and be handed off to an internal resource for continued maintenance. With BigMachines, "our user adoption is 100 percent," she said.

Kendall Collins, Chief Marketing Officer, Salesforce.com, attributed BigMachines' relentless focus on customer success has resulted in customers naming it one of the Best Apps of 2008 on the AppExchange."
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Verizon Business would like you to know it has completed its annual SAS 70 Type II examination for the company's five IP Application Hosting Centers (Smart Centers) in Germany, Japan, the U.S. and the U.K., and its 15 Premium Internet Data Centers in North America. These are the facilities used to deliver IT services to large-enterprise and government customers.

This marks the eighth consecutive year for examination of the company's Smart Centers in the U.S., the fourth consecutive year for its North-American based Premium Internet Data Centers (except for a new center in Irving, Texas); and the first year for its international Smart Centers in Tokyo and Frankfurt, Germany.

Ernst & Young performed the yearly examinations, reviewing control objectives and controls at the company's managed and Internet colocation data centers. Specific areas of examination, conducted in compliance with the standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, included access to facilities, logical access to systems, network services operations and environmental safeguards.

 

Control processes and procedures were examined for all of the company's Managed Hosting centers, as well as 15 Premium Internet Data Centers in major cities across North America, including Atlanta, Houston and San Jose. Enterprise customers use the company's managed or Smart Centers to outsource the day-to-day management of their Web sites and IP-enabled business applications. Verizon Business provides the technical service and support.

 

For customers that prefer to manage their own servers, data networking and voice equipment, Verizon Business offers a dedicated environment in its Premium Internet Data Centers. In this setting, customers can use Verizon Business' Internet connectivity, facilities and infrastructure while using and maintaining their own equipment. Customers also have access, as needed, to additional support from Verizon Business.

 
 


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