August 2009 Archives

Dimension Data, RightNow, Opengear, Parrot Hands-Free, Magic and Salesforce.com, Hacky Christmas to You

August 31, 2009 12:35 PM | 0 Comments
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one of the more inspired CD re-release twofers, The Beach Boys' Sunflower and Surf's Up. It's a minority opinion, but First Coffee finds Surf's Up the band's best album -- I know Pet Sounds is supposed to be, but I find it difficult to listen to that album all the way through:

Isn't speech self-service technology supposed to be improving? Why are the numbers of customers satisfied by it going down? Why do 40 percent of customers avoid using speech systems "whenever possible?"

Dimension Data, a vendor of IT products and services, has announced "disturbing feedback" regarding today's speech-based customer service systems -- in addition to the 40 percent who avoid speech systems like the plague, more than 2,000 respondents, 42 percent of the total, said they use the Internet instead of the phone, and only 25 percent of consumers reported they would be happy to use a speech-based customer service option again.

The vendor drew its findings from its 2009 Alignment Index for Speech Self-Service report, conducted in conjunction with Cisco and Microsoft subsidiary Tellme Networks. The report will be presented at SpeechTEK 2009 in New York City.

There is "a disconnect between why companies install speech self-service, and the way consumers perceive and value them," study officials say -- "Nearly half of the organizations surveyed said they also had a genuine desire to improve the service they provide to their customers, but only 15 percent of consumers believe improving service to be the real goal." Frankly First Coffee's surprised that many consumers believe it.

"While speech and other forms of self-service are great for an organization's bottom line, they need to align with consumer needs," notes Martin Dove, Dimension Data's global managing director, Customer Interactive Solutions. "Organizations should heavily consider consumer preferences and deploy solutions that provide choice, speed and accuracy."

When using automated systems, one-third of U.S. consumers polled are most frustrated when a human agent requests they repeat themselves after they've already provided information to the automated system. First Coffee is as well, since it shows the company doesn't care that you waste your time.

More than 20 percent of U.S. consumers reported that they are most annoyed when the system doesn't recognize what they've said. And 16 percent are irritated when they can't skip directly to what they'd like to do.

Looking to the future, more than half of consumers age 16 - 34 use the Internet as their first port of call when it comes to customer service. Overall 40 percent of consumers prefer to use traditional touchtone services rather than systems which require them to verbally answer a series of questions.
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Bozeman, Montana-based CRM vendor RightNow Technologies have announced August '09 with new graphical desktop workflow capabilities and new analytics for Cloud Monitor, company officials say.

The graphical desktop workflow capability within the dynamic agent desktop "steps an agent through a business process and automates tasks behind the scenes," company officials explain, adding that this capability is supposed to help "extend the increases in agent productivity and decrease agent training costs associated with high agent turnover."

The dynamic agent desktop includes desktop workflow, new with RightNow August '09, a graphical, business process designer to guide agents across workspaces and processes throughout a single customer interaction.

It also has drag and drop design functionality -- easier on the managers -- and can link multiple scripts and workflows together to help agents guide customers through complex customer interactions. Using it you can also keep automated tasks in the background, such as updating contacts and incidents.

George Sternecker, customer care systems manager, myFICO, notes that his company "maintains a presence on social networks like Twitter and YouTube," and using RightNow Cloud Monitor they can watch the clouds to "proactively respond to posts related to our business."
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Based in the high-tech Mecca of Sandy, Utah, remote access console server vendor Opengear has announced what company officials call "record revenue and rapid expansion," reporting a "doubling of sales and an increase of staff numbers by 30 percent against comparable period in 2008."

The open source-based Opengear line of console server products are intended to replace the more expensive proprietary products from companies such as Avocent, Raritan, MRV, Digi and Lantronix.

"AAA National Office provides managed firewall services to AAA Clubs and needed an out-of-band management product to the remote firewall," says Rick Dimmick, senior systems architect and network and systems management at the AAA national office, adding that they chose Opengear's product "at a reasonable price, via the Internet or dial-up."

Opengear has recently expanded its R&D facilities and has put new software engineers to work on open source management software projects to be announced at industry conferences in October in Chicago and November in Portland, Oregon.

"Our quarterly revenues are up and we have a good order book outlook through mid 2010," says Bob Waldie, founder and CEO of Opengear," saying he expects market conditions to "return in late 2010."
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Paris-based Parrot is thinking of families sending their children off to college, parents shuttling kids to after-school activities, and "how they can stay in touch while driving," company officials say
And in fact they have just the thing: Hands-free kits to "allow families to stay in contact while on the move," Bluetooth kits that work in the car, home, office or dorm room.

Once paired with an iPhone, BlackBerry or other Bluetooth-enabled phone the Parrot tools pair the mobile phone's contacts and assign voice keys to each, creating instant voice commands and hands-free features for driving.
Kelly Zachos, Director of Marketing North America of Parrot, notes that "hands-free legislation" is driving market demand for just such products: "Back to school is a busy time for most parents, and our hands-free products are designed to make it easier to comply with requirements."

The Parrot Minikit Slim is a portable Bluetooth hands-free kit that can be used in the car, in the office and at home. Its "intuitive interface" connects to a Bluetooth phone when nearby, and it can affix to the sun visor in a car. The Parrot Minikit Chic, similar to the Minikit Slim, is for "those who want to combine fashion with convenience," company officials say.

Parrot, was founded in 1994 by Henri Seydoux, and sells hands-free systems for cars, motorbikes and scooters, including wireless multimedia products geared towards audiovisual applications. Headquartered in Paris, the company generates 85 percent of its sales overseas.
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Magic Software Enterprises, which sells application platforms and business and process integration tools, has announced their participation in the Salesforce.com Foundation's "Power of Us" Partner Program. 
The objective of the corporate patronage program is to provide Salesforce.com partners with what Magic officials describe as "a simple and scalable model to make contributions to their communities through a donation of time, equity, and products to nonprofits."
As part of the partnership, Magic Software's UK subsidiary is offering licenses of its iBOLT business integration tool basic package free of charge, or at 80 percent discount, to Salesforce.com Foundation customers in the UK and Eire. Training and professional services will also be available at a reduced rate. Full details of the offer are available at.
The Salesforce.com Foundation uses a 1/1/1 philanthropy model, which supports nonprofit organizations via such methods as providing donated and discounted Salesforce CRM licenses as part of its One Percent Product Donation Program. Over 5,500 organizations in 60 countries have participated in the program. 
Salesforce.com Foundation customers in the UK will be entitled to Magic Software's iBOLT for Salesforce.com free of charge. Standard, Professional and Enterprise licenses will be available at the 80 percent discount, "as will a number of additional components and adaptors," Salesforce.com officials say.
David Akka, Managing Director, Magic Software Enterprises, UK, Nordics and Eire, said the firm "hopes to help young, disadvantaged people gain IT skills and qualifications through its work with both Landmark Training and the Salesforce.com Foundation Biz Academy."
Landmark provides free training programs and work opportunities for 14-24 year olds.
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The hacking community is giving you a Christmas present now -- they're refraining from hacking you. Come Christmas, though, watch out.
Tufin Technologies, vendors of security lifecycle management products, conducted a "Hacker Habits" survey among 79 hackers attending DEFCON 17 in Las Vegas earlier this month. 
Contrary to a widely-circulated urban myth, eighty-nine percent of hackers claimed that IT professionals taking a summer vacation would have "little impact" on their hacking activities. Fully 81 percent said they are "far more active" during the winter holidays with 56 percent citing Christmas as the best time to engage in corporate hacking and 25 percent specifically naming New Years Eve.
Bear in mind that the validity of this study, of course, rests in the amount of faith you put in a hacker's word and your confidence that they aren't engaged in a bit of creative misdirection. First Coffee wonders why else they would be far more active over Christmas unless their middles names are "Grinch" or "Scrooge."
"The survey reveals that the Christmas and New Year holidays are popular with hackers targeting western countries," says Michael Hamelin, chief security architect, Tufin Technologies. "Hackers know this is when people relax and let their hair down, and many organizations run on a skeleton staff over the holiday period."

Again, taking a bunch of hackers' word for it, you should be most on guard against hacking weekday evenings, as 52 percent said that this is when they spend most of their time hacking. Thirty-two percent favored during work hours (weekdays), and just 15 percent hack on weekends. 
Of course that's the dedicated hard-core working those hours. Oh, and don't worry about any hacking taking place during Star Trek reruns.

Ninety-six percent of hackers in the survey said it doesn't matter how many millions a company spends on its IT security systems, it's all a waste of time and money if the IT security administrators fail to configure and watch over their firewalls. 
"This may be stating the obvious," says Hamelin correctly, "but poorly configured firewalls remain a significant risk for many organizations. It's not the technology that's at fault, but rather the configuration and change control processes that are neglected or missing altogether."

 

OpenAir and NetSuite, TimeTrade, TeamSupport.com, ESecuritel, GoldMine, Intaglio, Oracle

August 21, 2009 10:45 AM | 1 Comment
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense. A total 1980s time capsule, but in a good way -- brought back some good times for First Coffee, living in Chicago, but that's another column:

OpenAir, a NetSuite company and vendor of cloud computing professional services automation and services resource planning software, has announced new customers from the Asia Pacific region -- AIPEX, Waugh Infrastructure Management, Fronde, and Matsco Solutions. 

Through cloud-based product upgrades and product offerings, OpenAir markets its advantages as providing "low total cost-of-ownership by eliminating the need for support staff and on-site server maintenance. 

AIPEX is a business and technology consulting firm based in Melbourne which "had no faith in their forecasting capabilities and limited visibility into the key metrics of the business," OpenAir officials said, adding that they integrated OpenAir with NetSuite for financials and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

OpenAir sees its value proposition coming into play when businesses feel like they're overwhelmed with such challenges as manual and inaccurate time and expense tracking, disconnected Sales Force Automation and financial point tools, restricted transparency into performance metrics, lengthy and inefficient billing cycles, and limited visibility into resource and skills profiles. 

Waugh Infrastructure Management, a Timaru, New Zealand-based provider of infrastructure management services, reported "an immediate improvement in timesheet submission and approval" due to OpenAir's SaaS model, and Wellington-based Fronde found a reduction in its billing cycle.

OpenAir's product is designed to help users streamline business processes and eliminate "siloed, disjointed data sources," company officials say: "As the cornerstone of an SRP strategy, OpenAir connects time tracking and usage management with SFA and back-end financial data, accelerating the quote-to-cash process." The company has offices in Boston, London and Sydney.

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Customer self-service appointment scheduling vendor TimeTrade Systems has released a consumer survey conducted by Beagle Research Group, finding that consumers typically have a maximum 10 to 20 minute tolerance when waiting for services -- depending on the service offered.

The study also found customers value services that are set by appointments more highly and consider them "more professional." The complete findings are available in the Beagle white paper "Improving Service Businesses with Appointment Scheduling." 

According to the results, more than 30 percent of the people who visit a business for service expect instant attention -- in some cases even if they do not have an appointment. More than 80 percent said they would be willing to set up an online account to make subsequent appointment scheduling easier. Walk-in services were generally found to be "impersonal, crowded and rushed." 

Denis Pombriant, managing principal, Beagle Research Group, correctly observed that "consumers do not like to wait. Service organizations should be more aware than ever that keeping consumers waiting can have a negative impact on their business."

Pombriant said the survey showed that people are generally more patient waiting for professional services than consumer services, and that "shorter wait times improve their impression of the quality of the service. Even so, long waits are not tolerated for any service other than medical."

The TimeTrade personal appointment scheduling tool, TimeDriver, lets users add a self-service scheduling link to Web pages and e-mails so their customers and colleagues can schedule time with them, company officials say, putting appointments into a user's Outlook or Google calendar in times that fall inside user-defined availability windows and do not conflict with other commitments on the calendar.

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TeamSupport.com has announced integration between TeamSupport and 37Signal's CRM system HighRise.

"Customer Service/Bug Tracking and CRM products don't typically communicate with each other, so keeping their separate customer databases in-sync can be a painfully manual process," said Robert C. Johnson, TeamSupport's CEO. 

Johnson said his company has "made it easy to connect the data dots. TeamSupport imports information for any contact flagged as a 'customer' in the HighRise application, then we monitor the CRM for any changes to those records and update TeamSupport."

He noted that the product can "place TeamSupport ticket information directly into the HighRise customer record as a note, complete with an active URL link back to the support ticket."

TeamSupport, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dallas-based Muroc Systems, was created to address this "need to keep everyone in-the-loop by integrating customer service, product development, sales and QA," Johnson said. "Having both groups working from the same knowledge base enhances internal and external communications."

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As millions of college students arrive on campus in the weeks ahead, they'll have something First Coffee never did in college -- a cell phone. And, of course, in the tradition of college students, they'll take time to sit down and learn about cell phone insurance options and the benefits of such programs instead of hitting the campus beer bash, and... hey, stop laughing you.

All right, so Mom and Dad might have to help out there a bit as well.

"Like selecting a college or university that is the right fit for a student, it is important to conduct research and understand the differences among handset protection plans," says David Leach, CEO, eSecuritel. "Not all offerings are equal."

So what might you look for in a policy? Leach suggests considering the question of how long after the initial purchase of a phone you can, in fact, buy handset insurance -- "typically carrier-specific, some service providers require that a subscriber enroll in handset insurance at the point of purchase while others honor a 15 to 30 day post-activation enrollment period."

And the key question: "How much will it cost to replace the cell phone if -- when -- my kid loses it at college?"

Leach notes that if the phone is under a contract, which it usually is for about two years, the phone is heavily subsidized, "so the price you pay for the phone initially will not be the same as what you would later pay if you had to replace it. It will be substantially higher."

Smartphones that can access the Internet are much more attractive to thieves so they should probably be insured. Leach says coverage for protection services for the phone when you prepay for minutes or a specific amount of time, or if you're not under any sort of contract can vary, too.

Leach says in "the majority of cases" handset insurance providers fulfill claims via direct mail fulfillment in as little as one to two days. Others provide in-store fulfillment. The approach is carrier specific.

And, of course, as Leach advises, "read the fine print."

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From Bangkok comes the news that True Clarity, a local partner of FrontRange Solutions service and customer relationship management software, has launched GoldMine Premium Edition 8.5.1.


Company officials say it has "true Universal Search" functionality, which lets users conduct a single search for any information associated with a customer or prospect's record, as "one of over 300 enhancements" to latest GoldMine CRM product.

James McCracken, Managing Director at True Clarity, said Universal Search "makes it much easier to access that information in real-time, while you're actually dealing with customers. Say you want to find some account information from a customer that they gave you six months ago, or perhaps a previous sales proposal. With most products you'd need to know exactly where to look for that data. With GoldMine, just one search will find it for you, regardless of where it was saved."

The search functionality introduced in the GoldMine tool covers "every type of information associated with a record," company officials say, including "data fields, e-mails, notes, linked documents, knowledge base articles and more."

Greg Anderson, GoldMine General Manager at FrontRange, said "we've essentially created a hugely powerful search engine within the CRM application itself."

Through the end of September 2009 True Clarity is offering GMPE 8.5.1 and Professional Services at a 30 percent savings from the normal retail price. Potential Clients are welcome to a free Trial of GMPE 8.5.1 for 30 Days via the following http://bit.ly/CeC5L.

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Guilford, Connecticut-based INTAgLIO Business Solutions (info) has introduced CRM Jump Start Services for small and midsize companies that "favor Salesforce.com, but don't have the in-house staff to manage the project and can't afford high priced system integrator fees."

But, they add, which also don't want to keep using rudimentary spreadsheet and contact manager tools which "don't foster the strong CRM environment that is essential for running a successful business."

A successful CRM environment, company officials say, "facilitates customer-facing efforts aligned with a common goal" of acquiring and retaining satisfied customers.

"There are a number of best-in-class CRM consultancies around the world who have invested heavily in their Salesforce.com practice," says John Bernardi, INTAgLIO's owner. "However, many companies do not have a need for their deep level of expertise, at least at the outset. They can't afford the fees that are commensurate with their overhead structure."

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Telefónica O2 Czech Republic, a fixed and mobile operator in Central and Eastern Europe, has deployed Oracle Communications Unified Inventory Management "as part of its business support system and operations support system architecture," according to Oracle officials.

With multiple existing in-house and third-party inventory systems, Telefónica O2 Czech Republic officials say they were looking to "define, manage and unify" their customer services and associated logical resources, such as phone numbers and IP addresses, and physical resources -- switches and routers, etc., to reduce service introduction times and automate service fulfillment.
"The growing complexity of contemporary IP services was challenging our ability to launch and deliver services," said Tomas Prokopik, business planning and performance manager, Telefónica O2, Czech Republic.

The project included Oracle's Siebel CRM integrated with Oracle Communications Order and Service Management and Oracle Communications Service Activation.

Telefónica O2 Czech Republic officials say the move helped them get a 62 percent reduction in the time needed to design and launch new converged fixed and mobile services and a 47 percent reduction in the time needed to deliver broadband services.

New From Genesys, CCL Study, Fiserv, ISoBusy for IPhone, CoreMatrix, OrderDynamics

August 21, 2009 10:36 AM | 0 Comments
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a Frank Sinatra album we don't listen to much, 1962's Point of No Return. It's not great Sinatra, it's the last recordings he did for Capitol Records in a rushed two-day session, and apart from "As Time Goes By" and "September Song" there isn't much inspired here. But over the eight years prior to this he recorded his best work for Capitol and made them a boatload of money, so they can't complain about this album too much:


Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories officials have shared what they call "key breakthroughs" in Dynamic Customer Engagement, which go "beyond traditional customer service strategies to create an environment for customer service to engage at critical moments," they say.

Unlike what they call "traditional customer service, separated from the core of the business and too often regarded as a cost center designed to minimize overhead and quickly complete interactions," Dynamic Customer Engagement in the Genesys vision aims to "extend customer service beyond the contact center," and let enterprises "serve consumers who interact across multiple channels."


The announcements were made at a Genesys Asia-Pacific user conference in Melbourne.

Genesys officials discussed Service Delivery Optimization, "in which enterprises use intelligent Workload Distribution to virtualize customer service operations and improve productivity," designed to help "integrate branch offices, remote or home agents, mobile field employees and experts in the back office." 

With iWD software, enterprises can distribute customer service work items across all resources and departments of the enterprise while matching, prioritizing and managing service levels, Genesys officials say, adding that the iWD software "works in concert with virtually any existing enterprise software application including ERP, CRM, workflow, business process management and homegrown legacy systems."

Genesys officials also announced a Cross Channel Conversations initiative for "identifying the gaps in customer interaction today and providing a platform to serve as the hub of these interactions."

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Customer and change management company Customer Consulting officials estimate that 40 per cent of all calls to contact centers, "especially those in the financial services sector," are the result of failure demand.

"Failure demand," CCL officials say, occurs "where an organization fails to deliver clear and timely information about a product or a service to a customer." That failure generates a demand for customer service.

"In my experience, an average of 40 per cent of all calls to a contact center could be prevented," says Brian Jopling, CCL associate director. 

CCL's managing director Simon Rustom noted that failure demand "results in more costs for the business because of the time and resources spent in responding to additional customer enquiries and complaints as a result of processes that do not work."

For example, CCL officials say, a product doesn't get to a customer on time, or the customer's bill is incorrect. Naturally, the customer telephones the supplier to find out what the deal is. Or when a standard letter sent to a customer doesn't jibe with what they customer was told on the phone, she's on the phone again.

Not only are these costs hidden within the operating costs of the contact center, he says, but "they mask the real problems that the organization is facing in not meeting customers' wants and needs first time... organisations find it hard getting to grips with this area of wastage."

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Financial services tech vendor Fiserv has released a study "confirming the positive impact of electronic billing and payment on customer satisfaction, retention and profitability," according to company officials. 

The study is said by Fiserv officials to "quantify the impact of different billing and payment channels on an organization's customer relationships and key business drivers," finding what study officials said is "significant linkage" between billing and business benefits among early tenure customers -- those who had been customers for less than 28 months.

Conducted by Aspen Marketing Services on behalf of Fiserv, the study evaluated data from 8 million Qwest Communications residential customers over an 18-month period, with analysis concluded in April 2009.  

The study found that customers who receive paperless electronic bills at a company site or at a financial institution site, or who use recurring payments, are more profitable for the billing organization. 

Among those studied, 74 percent of customers who receive an e-bill at a bank site pay using a deduction from their bank account, and 40 percent of customers who receive bills at the company site pay using a card-funded payment, a higher cost method of payment.


Among early-tenure customers e-bill users are 12.5 percent less likely to leave, are 35 percent more likely to pay their bills on time, and purchase 20 percent more products than paper bill users, the study found.

Automatic, recurring payment users are 14 percent less likely to leave and 86 percent more likely to pay their bills on time. "Users who combine e-bill with recurring payment are more loyal and more profitable than other customer segments," the study's authors concluded.

Founded in 1986, Aspen Marketing Services is a privately-held marketing services agency headquartered in West Chicago.

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We love the endless creativity that comes with iPhone app creation: A partnership called iBeSilly, formed by Detroit techies Stout Systems and branding consultant David Brier of DBD International has created iSoBusy, which they tag as "The Ultimate Social Repellent."

The concept was a simple one: Enable iPhone owners to have believable alibis to excuse themselves. Yes, and you thought the ultimate social repellent was prefacing a remark at a cocktail party with "My therapist thinks..."

This app is designed to call its owner anytime or on an immediate basis with any of the 23 pre-recorded "accomplices" who will "rescue its iSoBusy owner from any situation in business or social settings," company officials say. Such as somebody yakking on about what their therapist thinks.

But you say, I already have a fake call app on my iPhone. Yes, but as Partner John Stout says, you need "a more believable" excuse. Hence the 23 accomplices. 

Once an accomplice calls, they continue to talk until the user terminates the call. Accomplices include a contractor with ADD, a French Maitre d', a family attorney, a promotional call from hell, a dry cleaner calling about that stain he can't get out, family members -- mom, dad, sister, brother, daughter on a spring break and "the bodily pierced son."

There's even a "Nigerian statesman with a sincere offer that will make the iPhone owner an immediate millionaire," Stout noted.

Those don't grab you? ISoBusy also has a Virtual Accomplice Recording Studio where you can create up to 17 original callers: "Oh hey, sorry, I have to take this, it's the director of the CIA... look, I'll take care of the check here, why don't we call each other...Leon, what's up?"

Brier said iSoBusy "arose from the fact that so many people dread long-winded meetings, socially odd circumstances and even family gatherings," including "a disastrously bad blind date. Some people need a bit of help extricating themselves from those situations."

Check that: Some people need socially acceptable help. First Coffee is able to extricate himself from pretty much any disagreeable social situation without help.

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CoreMatrix Systems, a consulting company in the cloud computing space, announced a 51 percent increase in revenue in Q2 2009 over the same period last year, crediting "the tripling of customer service and support-related CRM revenue" for fueling growth.

Company officials say they see a shift to cloud-based IT services resulting from the economy and tightening IT budgets, since cloud computing allows companies to hit the ground "without significant hardware or infrastructure investments."

In tough economic times "companies are looking for ways to work smarter," said Frank McMahon, co-founder of CoreMatrix Systems. It's a growing field -- according to Gartner, the go-to guys for these sorts of numbers, worldwide cloud services revenue is estimated to not only surpass $56.3 billion in 2009, but top $150 billion in 2013.

Simple cost isn't the only advantage, though -- the undeniable customer service advantages are causing companies to "focus more heavily on an integrated customer view and new ways to communicate with them through social media," CoreMatrix officials say.

According to Steve Grant, managing partner of Customer Research Center, a CoreMatrix partner, said many companies want 360-degree customer view since they realize "the importance of using that data to find new revenue. The support center can be a crucial part of this process."

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OrderDynamics would like to remind you that two of its competitors, payment providers were down within four weeks of each other (Authorize.NET July 3, 2009, and PayPal August 3, 2009). 

"Failures like this are considered unacceptable to executives, although they are an unfortunate reality of doing business online," OrderDynamics officials say.

And as providence would have it, they offer "one way of mitigating the impact of a payment provider failure," an on-demand eCommerce platform with an integrated Order Management System.

The OrderDynamics Order Management Systems "facilitates the capture and processing of Web site orders for retailers," company officials say, describing their OMS as a system "linked into all areas of the eCommerce platform, such as eMail Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, Fulfillment and Inventory Control" and others.

And this is important because... OrderDynamics "eliminates order errors by capturing all order information without being dependent on third party systems, like payment processors," company officials say. 

The product also automatically creates a customer service ticket for any abandoned PayPal or Google Checkout orders.

Skyward for Schools, iPhone Deposit, Faith via Skype, Unified 360, Softtek, Shoot it!

August 13, 2009 12:19 PM | 0 Comments
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one of the few Jimmy Buffett albums where the deep cuts are better than the hits, Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes. We've all heard "Margaritaville" and the title track, but the real gems are "Banana Republics," "Biloxi," "Landfall" and, well, okay, the title track:
 
Skyward, a vendor of K-12 administrative software, has announced the upcoming release of their Web-based data warehouse application, billed as eliminating "any extract, transform, and load hassles."

 
The application is configured to accept data elements from the Skyward School Management System to reduce the implementation time and save money. It also offers flexibility for "summative and longitudinal analysis," evidently a big deal for decision making as it lets one "quantify the effectiveness of educational programs within the district," Skyward officials say, and we'll take their word for that one.
 
The module provides an customizable, interactive dashboard for everyone, "from the superintendent to the teacher." 

So why design a native data warehouse instead of working with existing third-party ones available? "Customer needs," says Jon Oliver, Skyward Executive Vice President of Corporate Operations. "Our customer feedback for a data analysis toolkit always returned to the struggles with data mapping and ongoing costs, especially when capitalizing on ARRA funds."

The data warehouse application will be available this fall, and there's an early adopter discount through the end of 2009.
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USAA has launched mobile check deposit capability for the iPhone.
 
This is part of USAA's Deposit@Home service, introduced in 2006, which lets certain members scan and deposit checks on a home scanner. Company officials say qualifying banking members can use iPhones to deposit a check from "anywhere else they can get a wireless signal."

The feature, called USAA Deposit@Mobile, lets you snap a photo of both sides of a signed check with the iPhone camera and transmit the image to USAA, which verifies the deposit information and signature to complete the transaction. Approximately 14 percent of USAA's 7.2 million members currently interact with USAA via their mobile devices, which is three times greater than any other bank's level.
 
Maybe the mobile-centricity is due to the fact that 97 percent of USAA members own a mobile device, compared to 89 percent for the general population.

Wayne Peacock, USAA's executive vice president of Enterprise Business Operations, noted that since nearly 50 percent of their one million mobile users are active-duty military who may be deployed anywhere, "the convenience of mobile access is essential."

In May USAA offered their Mobile App for the iPhone, letting members manage insurance, investment and bank accounts on a single platform. The app is free, and has been downloaded nearly 140,000 times from Apple's iTunes store.

USAA also lets members access account information and transact business via SMS text messaging, a mobile banking application and its mobile Web site, mobile.usaa.com.
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Skype, voicemail and other "hot technology" are two reasons why The Healing Today Show "is not your typical faith-based show," says Randy Wecker, the show's executive producer and host.

 
One wonders what the "typical" one is, First Coffee hasn't watched one since channel-surfing Ernest Angeley in the '80s -- there's twenty-dollar donation I'd like to have back -- but Wecker says one difference is that guests will "share their own fascinating stories of faith healings to a potential audience of 40 million households."
 
The show will incorporate "hot technologies such as Skype," Wecker says, to allow guests to appear on the show via a HD monitor "without having to leave the comfort of their home or office," although they may want to make sure their boss isn't watching the show if they're Skyping Randy for healing while on the clock. 
 
The show's watch & win giveaway incorporates "an advanced voicemail application allowing viewers to answer a question at the end of the broadcast for a chance to win exciting gifts and prizes," show officials say.

Wecker co-hosts the show with his sister, Rhonda Lynn Wecker-Bilbrey. "It's definitely not unusual to hear people say we are the 'Donny & Marie' of faith-based talk shows," Wecker says, joking that it's probably not appropriate, since "I can't dance and Rhonda can't sing." For those of you who don't remember Donny & Marie, it isn't a compliment.

 
With what he termed his "past experience in Los Angeles," Wecker says, "I understand how mainstream television is produced. I have an unrelenting passion to produce revolutionary faith-based television programs and entertainment... appealing to a mainstream audience."

Show officials say upcoming guests include eleven-year-old Zach Bonner, who founded The Little Red Wagon Foundation and walked over 1200 miles across the US to raise funds for homeless children, and Julie Shematz, co-founder of Beauty From Ashes and former adult entertainer who now "shares God's love directly inside sex clubs." We're quoting directly from the press release, people.

Wecker's still raising funds to purchase a mobile satellite production vehicle "which will allow us to travel and broadcast live at sports events and other venues" to "attract a broad audience." Indeed.
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In an example of electronic communications giving a shot in the arm to snail mail, shoot it! has announced the launch of its postcard messaging application for the iPhone, letting users "take a picture, create a personal message and have it mailed as a REAL postcard from anywhere to anyone in the world," company officials say.

 
Well, that's the plan, anyway. Currently the US & Western Europe are available. Other countries coming soon.

 
The application lets you pick the recipient's addresses from your iPhone contacts. That's right -- you have to go through and put them all on first. After that it gets easy: Type a personal message right from the device keyboard and "postcards print and mail the next business day from the country closest to their destination."

 
Your photos appear in brilliant color on heavy card stock, Shoot it! officials say.

Available for just 99 cents at the iPhone App Store, shoot it! comes with one free postcard. Future postcard credits start at 99 cents for US addresses, $1.25 for UK addresses and $1.50 for other Western European addresses, with quantity discounts starting at 10 postcards.

"We're excited to bring postcard messaging to the millions of iPhone users," said Tom McDermott, shoot it! founder and president. "With our global print network, you can take a photo from the beach in Australia and send it to your friends in London and New York, in about 30 seconds, all right from your iPhone."

 
Okay, amend that above: Evidently Australia's included too. No word on New Zealand yet. 

 
Of course one advantage of purchased post cards is they were usually much better pictures of Big Ben, the Colosseum or Haigha Sofia than you could take, especially on an iPhone, so we're guessing this fills more the need for those personal touch photos.
...

Unified360, a unified communications provider, has announced the formal launch of their suite of managed services including e-mail security, hosted exchange service, Web security, message continuity, remote monitoring, and global N.O.C. services.

"These are applications our customers have been asking for," said Paul Tran, CTO/Founder of Unified360, adding that "as we roll these services out we are going to refine our offerings to bundle these with our value added services already being delivered. In the current market and with new technologies making it feasible to manage networks remotely, companies are electing to outsource this aspect of their business."

Jim Barker, CEO/Founder of Unified360, called the launch "a new direction for the company that enhances our core competency." In Barker's view, "we have already seen growth in this area of our business and expect it to play a major role going forward."

Dallas-based Unified360 is a premier partner of Cisco Systems, and sells to SMB and larger organizations for next generation communication solutions.
...

 
Softtek, which styles itself "the largest private IT service provider in Latin America," has been recognized as a "strong performer" in an August 2009 report from Forrester Research titled "Forrester Wave: SAP Implementation Providers, Q3 2009." 
 
The report evaluated 18 SAP implementation providers based on 60 criteria, including their current product offering, strategy and market presence.

The Forrester Wave Vendor Profile on Softtek records that Softtek is "well-known in Mexico and Latin America" in the SAP space, especially in such industries as aviation, oil and gas, and pharmaceuticals. 
 
The report finds Softtek's strongest area being "around SAP support and maintenance as well as technical elements of the implementation." It also rated Softtek highly for client reference rating for transparency of costs. 

Mauro Okamoto, VP of SAP Business Development for Softtek in the United States, said Softtek works with clients "across the Americas" for SAP engagements. Softtek's SAP Practice also received the SAP Award of Excellence in the "Best Regional Partner" for the 10th time in 11 years. 

Beni Lopez, CEO of Near Shore Services at Softtek, says the company combines their SAP practice with a "Global Nearshore delivery model."

The annual award is offered by SAP to one outstanding partner in each geographic category that obtained the best results in annual client satisfaction research, according to pre-established criteria.

Founded in 1982, Softtek counts 6,000 associates across 30 offices in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia, as well as nine Global Delivery Centers in Mexico, China, Brazil, Argentina and Spain.

iPhone Shrink, Ascentis, Results CRM, Oracle, Sant and Salesforce.com, Consona and KCS

August 13, 2009 12:16 PM | 0 Comments
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a Bruce Cockburn iTunes shuffle. We don't listen to enough Bruce Cockburn around here. The trick is to separate the wheat from the chaff, the fun, thoughtful music from the shrill, tiresome screeds:

Here we go, another day another iPhone app. It might even be time for First Coffee to avail himself of an iPhone -- my birthday is coming up soon, hint hint to any Mrs. First Coffees reading this... where were we... oh yeah.

 
Think Like a Shrink is today's iPhone app described as "a therapy game for the iPhone and iPod Touch" that lets you "play doctor like never before," according to its developers, Mind Gamz.

 
It's going to be one of those days, I can tell already.

 
"Think Like a Shrink is the first true interactive therapy game with a narrative structure," says Mind Gamz Director Glennis McClellan, noting that "prior to this, psychology and mental health games consisted mostly of personality tests and quizzes."

 
But vive la difference: "With Think Like a Shrink, players are invited to conduct their own therapy sessions.." Couches not included: "Instead of the traditional therapy office setting, players travel back through time with Doctor Z, the game's zany resident therapist, to examine the inner conflicts of Achilles, a troubled warrior."

 
Just like in real life, at least the real life of shrinks anyway, "Achilles' words are veined with clues to problems and patterns that the player must identify, question and interpret." Throughout the game, players "interact with Achilles and help him get clarification on his life issues, perhaps giving players insight into their own relationships."

 
Hint: Ask about his heel.

"We are breaking new ground here," McClellan says, and First Coffee certainly isn't arguing. There's more, too, once you've got Achilles figured out: Mind Gamz, company officials say, "will expand this brain game genre into 'Emotional Fitness,' which can give players new insight into human behavior."

The product design team worked with a couple of psychiatrists, including C.L. Zois, M.D., author of the self-help book Think Like a Shrink and the text Short-Term Therapy Techniques.

"It's as close to mind reading as most people will ever get," say the game's developers, people who have obviously never been on a third date.
...

 
Ascentis, which sells human resources software, has announced that Illinois-based Joint Utility Locating Information for Excavators -- cute acronym -- has invested in Ascentis HR to automate such human resources processes as open enrollment, employee benefits and data management, COBRA management and asset tracking.

JULIE HR Manager Laura Donahue said she was "struggling with manual HR processes and paper-based files for two and a half years." Before implementing Ascentis HR, she had to "pull data from multiple sources, including the benefits management system, a time-clock system, and reports from payroll."

 
But the work was just starting: She then had to manually integrate, edit and organize the information -- "and hope it was accurate. It could take up to two days to do something as a simple as verify employment status," she said. "And something as straightforward as a turnover report required manual payroll check counts."

JULIE -- and Laura -- needed an HRIS product that could manage functions such as compensation, performance, COBRA, leave, monthly reconciliation, organizational charting, reporting, payroll integration and electronic connections to carriers. But, "because of limited IT resources," they also required a hosted product. 

Now with Ascentis HR, all JULIE HR information is now in one place, and accessible with a mouse click or two. "Reports that used to take hours are now produced in minutes," Donahue said, and with Ascentis's Employee Self-Service, she can push out benefits information, as well as grocery and health club memberships.

The fun didn't stop there, though. With the customizable capabilities of Ascentis HR, Donahue added a screen that tracks company assets. "The finance department went crazy over this feature," she said. "I created a tab I labeled 'asset management' and captured data about who is assigned what computer and the date of the assignment. I can add or change any field quickly. I no longer have to track this manually, and I simply run a report whenever it's requested."

Ascentis HR and Ascentis Payroll were formerly known as HROffice and EBS On Line's InstaPay respectively.
...

Results International, a CRM vendor, has announced the availability of Virtual Media Commentators -- online videos billed as helping "turn more Web site visitors into sales" by company officials. 

 
It's video, which can help gussy up the site -- According to Thompson Reuters, studies show that before making a decision, consumers visit an average of four to five Web sites -- but only two when the site contains a video.

 
And you can choose from "a vast array of professional actors" or have somebody in-house do the online videos. And hey, Tom Cruise's agent's number is in the book, too.
 
The commentators greet site visitors and communicate the value propositions you want surfers to see regarding products and services, as well as guide potential customers to fill in Web forms or contact an organization to make an inquiry.

It's being marketed as a way to bring "high impact TV quality online videos within reach of small to medium size organizations." The VMC technology includes capabilities to rotate different Virtual Media Commentator messages on each site.

According to Christopher Whittier, Results International's Manager of Corporate Solutions, every site visitor asks themselves four questions before choosing to contact a firm: "Do I trust them? What is in it for me? Do I believe them? And, what should I do next?" With text only sites, Whittier said, a visitor can lose interest "if they cannot find that information within thirty seconds" of hitting a site. 

 
The Virtual Media Commentators, Whittier explained, can answer "at least two of the four questions within the first five seconds of a site visit, orient the visitor and encourage them to contact the firm."

Enhanced search rankings, reduced pay per click costs, scalability for custom corporate online videos, video embedded within e-mail campaigns, training material and executive announcements are a few of the additional advantages offered by the CRM software service.

Pricing starts at $1,100 for a 30-second video, plus whatever deal you work out with Tom's people.
...

Oracle today announced the extension of the Oracle Validated Configurations program to include Oracle VM server virtualization software, "enabling customers to deploy virtualized environments and optimize data center resources."

 
Additionally, a new Oracle Linux Kit is available, including Oracle VM which allows end-users to create their own validated configurations.

 
The Validated Configurations are billed as providing faster, and lower-cost deployment of Linux and Oracle VM products in the enterprise. The program offers validated architectures, with what Oracle officials describe as "documented best practices for software, hardware, storage, and network components."

A "partner-accepted and endorsed" program offering "documented best practices for virtualized and Linux deployments," Oracle Validated Configurations provide details on what to deploy, how to deploy and recommendations on hardware and software combinations that have proven to be the most effective.

Since the launch of the program in 2006, Oracle and its partners have done over 145 configurations.
...

Salesforce.com has announced that The Sant Corporation, vendor of proposal and sales document automation software, has switched to running its entire business in the cloud with Salesforce CRM.
 
Sant deployed the Service Cloud and the Sales Cloud, reporting "83 percent revenue growth and resolving customer support issues 60 percent faster," according to Salesforce.com officials. Today Sant's customers report issues via phone, e-mail, and Web-to-case forms on the company's site. All of these interactions are logged and tracked in the Service Cloud.
 
And every professional services engagement is tracked and managed in the Sales Cloud -- "from initial sale to final delivery," company officials say.

"We were using spreadsheets and a contact management application to run sales," using spreadsheets to log and track customer support issues. "This prevented us from taking the company to the next level. We needed a new approach to conducting business," says Brian Vass, vice president of marketing at The Sant Corporation. 
 
And shiny, happy people count: Vass remarks when they looked around for some help, one reason they settled on Salesforce.com was that "no other vendor could illustrate they had so many happy customers."

Sant also used Force.com to create applications to automate other areas of the business, including the professional services organization and customer feedback. 

Nowadays customers receive survey invitations when Sant closes a support case, complete a professional services engagement, or launch a new version of Sant's software application. Feedback from these surveys is rolled up to dashboards monitored by department managers and executives daily. 

"We've added ourselves to the long list of happy Salesforce.com customers," Sant says.

And they all lived happily ever after.
...

Consona Corporation has announced that its Consona Knowledge Management Version 7.3 and Consona Knowledge Driven Support Version 1.0 product lines have met the Consortium for Service Innovation's Knowledge-Centered Support v4 Verified standards.

Consona therefore joins "the short list of KCS Verified v4 vendors," according to Greg Oxton, executive director of the Consortium for Service Innovation. 
 
KCS v4 verification includes a new categorization of vendor products, and the requirement that vendors "make their verification questionnaire available to any customer or prospect on request," Oxton explains, adding that Consona, which previously was KCS v3 verified with its Knowledge Management product, "now offers tools for both the knowledge management and incident plus knowledge management categories."

The KCS Verified program bases its methodology on the best practices of various service and support organizations. The Consona Knowledge Management product line integrates with "virtually any CRM or case management" product, company officials say, adding that Consona Knowledge Driven Support "represents the integration between Consona's own case management (formerly Onyx) and knowledge management (formerly KNOVA) functionality."

A non-profit alliance of organizations, the Consortium for Service Innovation developed the KCS in "an effort to capture and structure a support or service interaction and reuse the knowledge gained, resulting in an improved operational efficiency, employee morale and customer satisfaction."

CustomerCentric, Avocent Upgrade, SaaS Study, LG Social Phone, SaaS CRM, RightNow

August 11, 2009 5:18 PM | 1 Comment
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one of John Cage's more accessible recordings, Daughters Of the Lonesome Isle. The trick to appreciating Cage, as we've tried to explain to Mrs. First Coffee, is not to think of it as "music" per se, but rather as interesting thought-sound experiences using for the most part traditional instruments. We haven't convinced her. Nor are we likely to, we must admit:

CustomerCentric Selling, which describes itself as "a proven methodology for predictably improving revenue growth and sales performance," has announced that the unfortunately-acronymed Decision Dynamics Technology, which sells software products and services for financial controls, implemented the CustomerCentric Selling methodology earlier this year.

In February, Calgary-based Decision Dynamics officials say, they decided their primary challenge was "navigating through a sales culture that was product-centric and focused on selling features and functionality" instead of focusing on the product's value to clients. 
 
Applying a customer-centric approach lets Decision Dynamics' sales force have "meaningful conversations" with customers as "business improvement consultants rather than salespeople," which then allows them to address their customers' business pains. With Decision Dynamics products.

Since the CustomerCentric Selling workshop and implementation, Decision Dynamics officials say, they've seen a "65 percent increase in pipeline." Decision Dynamics also uses CCS Key Performance Indicators, using such tools as a champion letter or a value sheet to disqualify opportunities that waste company resources where the prospect is "unable or unwilling to commit to solving their business pain."
 
Jason MacVicar, EVP of Sales for Decision Dynamics Technology, said if the prospect is not "willing to explore the potential ROI from using Decision Dynamics Solutions, they move on to the next opportunity," whereas before, "we would end up wasting valuable time and resources."

....

Salt Lake City-based Avocent Corporation has announced an upgrade to its LANDesk Service Desk IT Business Management Suite, billed as a tool to help companies "increase productivity, improve service quality and reduce IT management costs." 

 
The new version, generally available immediately, continues Avocent's LANDesk product line strategy of providing service desk and IT service, infrastructure and asset management.
 
The upgraded LANDesk Service Desk  provides new features such as a Web Desk application and dashboards for more proactive service management. Web Desk allows access to LANDesk Service Desk from any location via an Internet connection -- great for avoiding local installation.

"The latest version of LANDesk Service Desk builds on our Touchpaper acquisition with service desk technologies customers want," said Steve Workman, vice president, product management, LANDesk, explaining that the LANDesk product line lets organizations "transition the service desk from a cost center to a business services center, improving service processes."

Avocent officials say organizations are looking for tools "that grow with them as they evolve from basic incident management to more long-term IT goals and proactive ITIL service management disciplines, such as problem and change management." 

 
"The ability for us to have even quicker response times through a browser, from anywhere with Web Desk, coupled with the new version's  dashboard, are benefits," says Tom Mortimer, director of computing services, University of Dundee. 

It also offers integration with SolarWinds Orion Network Performance Monitor, a network management product, via new Event Management functionality that allows events occurring on the network to be automatically reported to the service desk.
...

MarketResearch.com has announced the addition of IDC 's new report, "Attitudes to Software as a Service Are Driven by Experience," to their collection of software market reports. 
 
"This year, it focused on a reality check of investment," MarketResearch officials say, as "a vital question for companies selling SaaS into Europe is who to target." Topics covered  include... "Where Might Software as a Service Be Used For Next?" and "Does Existing Adoption Affect Attitude?" 

This IDC Insight looks "specifically at the attitudes of European user organizations on adopting or further adopting SaaS in their organizations," MarketResearch officials say, adding that it's "based on data from IDC's annual European Enterprise Services Survey 2009."
 
This included 553 enterprises with more than 250 employees in seven countries and regions in Europe, eight verticals, and four size classes. 

The IDC report analyzes the SaaS areas that user organizations see as the most appropriate for their next SaaS acquisition, and the differences in attitudes towards SaaS between the user and nonuser groups. 

 
In both areas, this report identifies "significant findings" with "strong implications" for marketing.
...

The LG GW520 is mobile phone which has "embraced the new trend of social networking and has made it more mobile than ever before," according to company officials, who say it's targeting "the millions and millions of users of sites like Twitter or Facebook by giving them a similar experience."

It has a "push" updating feature letting users connect to other people, "much like what Twitter or other social networking sites currently offer." And presumably what outmoded cell phones offer with their nifty feature of letting you push a button to talk to someone?

 
This new phone also lets users assign custom animated characters to specific contacts in the phonebook, characters which are "then placed all around the homescreen for quick access, much like a speed dial function, but much more fun."

 
But, in fact, much like a speed dial.

Naturally it comes in a trendy, stylish case, defined as "trying to look as much like an iPhone as possible without unduly riling Apple's lawyers," and a 2.8-inch touchscreen with 240 pixel x 400 pixel resolution and 256K colors. It has a slide out QWERTY keyboard, enabling quicker typing and qualifying one genuine improvement over the iPhone. Plus it's got the requisite downloadable games, themes, camera, 40 MB memory, FM radio, Bluetooth Connectivity and Internet browsers.

It doesn't have an infrared port, WLAN, GPS or secondary camera. And it is pretty clearly designed for the youth market, you wouldn't want to pull one of these out of your pocket during a client presentation or board meeting.
...

Sydney-based Australian data management expert David Taber recently stated that SaaS CRM software is only as useful as the data put into it is relevant. 
 
Hardly an earthshaking observation, but it does raise the question of whether businesses need to train staff in using software like Salesforce.com, and for developers there's the issue of whether their CRM programs can be updated to help staff input more relevant information passively.

On the current SaaS and CRM market there are several programs aimed at large businesses, such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which work through an Intranet system to help staff work together and keep up to date using one easy and efficient platform.

But unfortunately for large businesses, "it is difficult to stop staff entering inaccurate data, but for smaller businesses there is a much simpler solution," according to Daniel Barnett, founder of the WORKetc Online CRM. His company, online CRM software developers, offer an alternative to programs like Salesforce "designed to make sense in a small business environment" by combining CRM with project management and billing.

"CRM software won't work to the best of its ability if staff don't use it in the way it's intended," Barnett points out quite reasonably. "This is why we've spent time ensuring the features are easy to use and easy to teach to new employees." 

On the whole, it seems small business management teams and staff are happier with the service than they are with CRM software that has been designed for large businesses. WORKetc are also confident that their online CRM structure encourages employees to input relevant data by default. They expect to see a rise in sales and a shift within the SaaS market, with more smaller businesses turning to their total customer relationship management software.
...

Stamps.com, which trades in postage online and shipping software, has picked the RightNow on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) to provide customer service via the Web, phone and e-mail. 

 
With RightNow, Stamps.com officials say, they expect to improve customer satisfaction and agent productivity by having agents located in multiple support centers access one central self-learning knowledge foundation for "consistent information to customers."
 
Using the RightNow products, Stamps.com officials say their customers can find answers online regarding postage printing instructions, USPS regulations and delivery confirmation, which "reduces e-mail and call volume, allowing agents to focus on complex issues."

 
Because that's what happens once you shunt the easy stuff off to the Web: People calling the center have the harder questions.

Stamps.com also wants to use the RightNow capabilities to capture customer feedback from survey responses on interactions, products and services, and to reduce the training period of new agents through RightNow's "simple" desktop implementation.

SugarCRM, Telework Day, Symmetry and SAP, SunGard, Call Center Jobs, Parallels

August 11, 2009 5:14 PM | 2 Comments
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Miles Davis's mind-blowing album "A Tribute to Jack Johnson," which I guess technically is a jazz album, but which rocks harder than most other albums released in 1971. Thanks to Mikal Gilmore for introducing me to it:

SierraCRM has released the newest version of its process management engine for the open source SugarCRM. 
 
This latest release is described by company officials as a way to help users "capture more new business" and create a "customer-for-life" environment. If you think your business would benefit from that sort of thing.

 
"Companies are striving to get to know their existing customers better and market to new customers more effectively," SierraCRM officials believe, saying that their Process Manager product lets users model company best practices for acquiring and retaining customers through automated workflow.

 
It's offered in both full-featured and a "lite" configuration, which tastes great and is less filling. The full-featured Process Manager module, combining features of a marketing campaigns module and Process Driven module, sells for $149.00, and lets users send e-mails, schedule calls and meetings and create tasks over time. 

 
"Common uses of Process Manager include sending e-mails to customers after a sale or support ticket is closed and schedule follow-up calls and tasks for sales and support staff," company officials say. Uncommon uses include... well, use your imagination. 

 
Sierra's products for SugarCRM include the Process Manager and Marketing Manager, as well as SierraCRM's Routing Manager.

SierraCRM was founded in June of 2004 by people familiar with both AmdocsCRM and SugarCRM. It seems to have staked out its turf among products automating daily tasks associated with acquiring, processing, and marketing to prospects and customers.
...

Wi-Ex, which sells cell phone signal boosters, would like you to know it did its part for Telework Day last Monday. It'll be nice when Hallmark has a "Happy Telework Day" card, First Coffee seems to have let it slip by this year. 

 
The company -- Wi-Ex, not Hallmark -- started teleworking on a trial basis earlier this year with select departments. According to the zBoost "State of the Cell Signal Survey" commissioned by Wi-Ex and conducted by Harris Interactive, 31 percent of employed cell phone owners spend at least some time teleworking, or working from home, each week.

"We started allowing select departments the option to telework earlier this year and have been happy with the results," says Lloyd Meese, CEO of Wi-Ex, explaining that the company selected departments "that make the most sense," and it has worked well "in both our marketing and accounting departments." The custodial department was not selected for telework this year. 

 
"Our employees enjoy the flexibility of teleworking and being based in Atlanta they look forward to not having to worry about one of the nation's worst commutes." he notes. The man is telling the truth: Atlanta ranks second in the nation for worst commutes, according to Atlantacommute.com, which estimates commuting costs Atlantans 60 hours a year. 

 
There are issues, of course. The zBoost "State of the Cell Signal" Survey found that 38 percent of teleworkers experience cell phone service problems while teleworking, including poor signal reception or dead zones in their home -- 26 percent -- and 21 percent reported dropped calls.

 
Telework Day is a joint project by the Telework Exchange, Telework!VA and Virginia government officials.

"My commute is 22 miles one day and on a good day it takes me between 20 and 30 minutes, but with rain or high traffic it can take up to an hour each way," says Sharon Cuppett, Wi-Ex Vice President of Marketing, adding that her marketing team "all telework one day a week, and I found that myself as well as my team are often more productive on those days."

Technology considered "extremely or very important" for successful teleworking included computer (88 percent), high speed Internet (84 percent), and landline (38 percent). Coffee makers no doubt scored highly as well.
...

Symmetry Corporation, which sells basis and security services in support of SAP, has announced it is now an SAP hosting partner offering SAP-certified hosting.

Dan Wilhelms, president of Symmetry Corporation, calls the certification "confirmation of Symmetry's methodology for managing SAP application-based environments, adding that concepts like cloud computing are "driving the IT industry towards a centralized, hosted model."

 
The Sym-Hosting service from Symmetry provides 24x7 production support and ongoing maintenance as well as support services for infrastructure, implementation and security. It relies on dedicated resources -- "clients never suffer performance issues or downtime as a result of shared servers or infrastructure," Symmetry officials say. 

 
Perhaps a bit unusually Sym-Hosting clients pay for rack space, rather than by the gigabyte, so businesses "are not penalized for their increasing storage requirements," company officials explain.

Symmetry achieved certification of its hosting services from SAP after an audit of its infrastructure, technical staff, and operations. The company claims over 200 SAP implementations and "over 80 outsourcing customers."

"Symmetry's status as an SAP hosting partner in the U.S. with hosting services certified by SAP is an important progression," says Michael Ressemann, global head of BPO Solution Delivery and Partner Enablement at SAP. 

Frank Powell, chief operating officer at Symmetry, says the company has what he called a "SAP-centric approach. With 14 years experience in Basis-managed services, we understand that SAP is not just another app on the net."

Symmetry is "100 percent U.S. based," company officials say, with services delivered primarily from Milwaukee.
...

SunGard has added what company officials describe as "a new watchlist checking online compliance" tool for corporations to its Ambit Anti-Money Laundering suite. 
 
Available through SunGard's Infinity SaaS platform, Ambit Customer Due Diligence will "help corporate risk and compliance officers maintain compliance with domestic and international regulations and sanctions, without adding a large technology footprint," company officials say. The perfect Christmas gift for that corporate officer with everything.

The checking of government sanctions and terrorist watch lists has become a part of protecting and safeguarding corporations' business interests, what with the increase in legislation -- Patriot Act, Sarbanes Oxley, etc. -- to curtail the illicit flow of funds into financial systems. 
 
Currently in the U.S. every business is required to cross-check their customers against the government's Specially Designated Nationals list, checking it twice to determine who's naughty and nice.

Ambit Customer Due Diligence provides a range of Web-based tools for "resolving and verifying the identity of potential and current employees, customers, suppliers and business partners," company officials say, adding that it also helps customers comply with government anti-terrorist legislation and list checking regulations. 

 
Colin Day, vice president for compliance and financial crime solutions in SunGard's banks business, said watch list checking is "a big challenge" for many of their customers: "There are many lists like the SDN list, and most are frequently updated and difficult to search. Most small-to-medium enterprises don't have the funds and resources to support an in-house software solution to track and check against these lists."
 
Infinity is described by SunGard officials as a tool to help financial institutions develop and deploy custom applications, "integrating SunGard components with their own proprietary or third party components," using SunGard's Common Services Architecture.

SunGard reports annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, ranking 435 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and services company on the Forbes list of private businesses.
...

Are things getting better on the job front in America? Despite the needle not moving on the latest unemployment report, some think there are indications.
 
The Daily Oklahoman recently ran a piece noting that while a nationwide report this week said planned layoffs by U.S. firms jumped 31 percent in July, "close to 400 job seekers arrived at the first of three job fairs for a new AAA Operations Center in northwest Oklahoma City."

As the paper reported, "An eager line of applicants began forming at noon Wednesday for the event's 6 p.m. start, AAA Oklahoma spokesman Chuck Mai said."

Mai told the Oklahoman that while "there were 370 people, it looked more like 3,000 to me. It was just amazing; I've never seen so many people in one area who were so well-dressed and with resumes."

 
Well-dressed people with resumes jostling for a place in line at a call center still under construction. You be the judge of whether that bespeaks improvement in the nation's economy or not.

The center will be a contact location for millions of AAA members in 10 states, the Oklahoman reported, adding that "AAA initially is looking to hire between 350 and 400 employees to fill insurance policy servicing, underwriting and claims positions... The center's ultimate goal is to have a work force of more than 800."

Mai termed Oklahoma City's work force "educated, sincere and motivated." He probably could have added "desperate," too.

The bump up in layoffs last month was the first increase in job cuts since January, according to global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas. So far this year, employers have announced 994,048 job cuts, the Oklahoman noted.

You know, "Oklahoma" is one of those words that starts to look weird the more you see it. 

According to the Challenger report, hardest hit nationwide was the transportation industry, which said it would reduce payrolls by almost 28,000 positions, up 400 percent from June's layoffs. Telecommunications jobs also suffered, with job cuts climbing 209 percent from June.
...

Automation and virtualization vendor Parallels has announced increased demand for its Parallels Automation offering among its hosting provider partners.

 
The service delivers applications like Microsoft Hosted Exchange in a software as a service model. 

 
Using a third party - such as a host or telco provider - to manage corporate e-mail and unified communications can be an alternative for companies lacking space or resources to administer what SMBs consider their most important business application. In the hosted exchange model, the service provider manages all the technology and support for the SMB.

 
"Hosts, telecommunication providers, and MSPs" are leading the industry trend, Parallels officials say, and "providing hosted e-mail services to SMBs in a cloud model, with capabilities that were historically only available to large enterprises."

 
The economy is probably increasing the attractiveness of Microsoft Hosted Exchange by SMBs as a way to lower their IT costs and overhead. In fact, according to a Gartner report in 2008, Microsoft Hosted Exchange will grow to 35 million users by 2012, "representing an 88-percent compound annual growth rate."
 
Microsoft Hosted Exchange is billed as offering SMBs an alternative to managing an in-house e-mail server. Parallels Automation is used by such cloud services providers as Apptix in the US, Cobweb in Europe, and GMO Hosting and Security in Asia, as well as telcos such as Portugal Telecom and Sunrise.

"E-mail continues to be the most popular form of business communication today," said Philbert Shih, research analyst at Tier1 Research and winner of the First Coffee Interesting Name of the Week Award. "But in order to save on IT spending, SMBs and enterprises are increasingly making the move from on-premise e-mail deployments to a hosted model."

Chris Damvakaris, Vice President of Sales and Business Development for Apptix, reported "tremendous interest from our channel partners for the expanded suite of hosted communication services." 

"Our SMB customers need to avoid upfront costs associated with purchasing the hardware and software, but need to access the latest applications and services, such as business-class e-mail," notes Claudio Granella, Product Manager at Sunrise.

RFID Tightens, AnchorFree, BT's Marks, Seapine's TestTrack, Kentico, OtterBox

August 7, 2009 3:14 PM | 0 Comments
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and it's a Friday kind of day, clearing out the odds and ends from the news wires, things a bit more wide-ranging than straight CRM, and the music, appropriately, is an iTunes all-song shuffle, first selection, The Ramones' "Rock 'n' Roll High School:"

The drop in exports has dealt a blow to the radio frequency identification market, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan, forcing manufacturers to "take drastic measures to stay afloat."
 
Analysis from Frost & Sullivan on the Asia Pacific RFID market finds that the market earned revenues of $569.7 million in 2008 and estimates this to reach $2.17 billion in 2015, at a compound annual growth rate of 21.1 percent.
 
Most RFID manufacturers have tightened their budgets on technology-related investments,  the study also found, "creating further hurdles to product uptake." The high capital costs and system integration issues deter vendors and retailers, the study found: "RFID companies should not fail to justify the business return on investment in their eagerness to focus on technology," the study's authors caution.

The bright spot, evidently, for the RFID market is government, in the form of direct funding for vendor initiatives or subsidies to end users intending to adopt this technology. Frost & Sullivan's research also found that governments provide encouragement schemes in proof of concepts and pilot projects.

"The Japanese and South Korean governments have promoted extensive research in RFID to keep track of their high-valued assets," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Parul Oswal, adding that South Korea is "more aggressive than others."

There has also been increasing government sector potential for active RFID deployments in Australia, and more government-backed initiatives and deployments are expected to be rolled out in the next five years across Asia Pacific.

The study found "huge potential for newer applications," where vendors need to demonstrate the uniqueness and innovation of their systems and their ability to provide an appropriate solution to a specific problem. Other integration technologies include RFID with closed circuit television (CCTV), smart cards, biometrics, and other access control systems.
...

With what AnchorFree officials characterize as "growing censorship and political tensions around the world," Internet users may be interested in a free online privacy and security tool called Hotspot Shield to access the Internet "freely and safely."

 
The product is a free ad-supported virtual private network guaranteeing users complete privacy and security online. Available on desktop computers, laptops and iPhones, it establishes a secure tunnel between a user's computer and Internet connection, encrypting entire Web sessions to keep IP addresses protected and the user anonymous. 

 
This means third party Web sites and Internet Service Providers cannot block or censor Internet content. Developed in 2005, Hotspot Shield has a user base of over 7.5 million monthly, averaging almost 30 million page views per day, company officials say.

 
When Hotspot Shield is downloaded and enabled, all Web activity is immediately encrypted, and the user's identity becomes anonymous. 

 
AnchorFree Founder and CEO David Gorodyansky noted that many of their users are in countries "where individual efforts to thwart governmental censorship online have recently been thrown into the spotlight," listing the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Thailand, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and China.

 
Domestically it's used for secure Wi-Fi connections at airports, hotels or coffee shops, as well as to secure online shopping or financial transactions.

One result has been surges in traffic in frequently-banned Web sites overseas, such as Google, Orkut, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, as well as news sites such as BBC, FOX and CNN, AnchorFree officials contend.
...

BT announced that Kevin Marks has joined as Vice President of Web Services, reporting to JP Rangaswami, Managing Director of Service Design. Marks will be based in Mountain View at Ribbit, the company BT acquired a year ago.

Rangaswami remarked that to date, telecommunications "have typically been walled off, limiting the possibilities for innovation and choice for consumers and the enterprise," but that Marks has "a long history of pursuing open standards and an open approach to communications." 

 
Marks said working with BT "is an opportunity to connect the solid engineering culture of BT with the open Web standards culture of Silicon Valley... connecting the mobile and Web worlds through an open platform, and making sense of them through social software and open initiatives is an exciting prospect." Before joining BT, he was Developer Advocate for OpenSocial at Google.

The Ribbit communications platform supports a global community of 15,000-plus application developers designing voiceware applications for consumers and enterprise. 

Ted Griggs, CEO at Ribbit, noted Marks's work with Apple, Google, and Technorati. Ribbit is a wholly owned subsidiary of BT.
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Seapine, a vendor of application life cycle management products, has announced the release of TestTrack RM for managing and tracking project requirements "throughout the entire development life cycle." 

 
Company officials say it's part of Cincinnati-based Seapine's recently-launched TestTrack 2010 product "that includes the latest versions of issue tracking and test case management applications."

Mark Shapiro, Chief Technology Officer, Segue Technologies, an IT products vendor and early adopter of TestTrack RM, said early in the specification phase "we were trying to formalize on a requirements definition process and select the best tool to employ." He said the company liked TestTrack's integration with other Seapine tools "and reasonable pricing."

TestTrack RM builds on the platform of TestTrack Pro and allows users to manage requirements definition, including planning, traceability, impact, review processes, measurement, and reporting. It also "ensures team members stay informed of each other's tasks and progress by centralizing requirements management, automating the requirements planning and review process, and triggering RSS feeds and e-mail communications," company officials say.

It has features to meet regulatory compliance requirements, including 21 CFR Part 11, Sarbanes-Oxley, and others as well.
...

 
Web content management system vendor Kentico Software has released a free Kentico CMS Connector for Microsoft SharePoint. 
 
Company officials say it lets business users create content on their SharePoint intranet and publish it on the public-facing Web sites powered by Kentico Web Content Management System. 

 
Kentico CMS lets business users create content in the SharePoint environment and publish it automatically on the public Web sites, instead of duplicating content in several applications. It's a good workaround for the lack of Web Content Management features of Microsoft SharePoint, and to simplify the publishing workflow as well.

Indeed, getting Microsoft SharePoint "leaves many organizations in a difficult situation," Czech Republic-based Kentico officials say, since "SharePoint doesn't provide a complete tool for public-facing Web sites," and have to manage their online content in other systems. 
 
"While SharePoint was designed for intranets, Kentico CMS for ASP.NET provides a method for public-facing Web sites," says Petr Palas, Kentico CEO. "If a marketing manager wants to publish news, she may need to get it approved by several people. Now, she can do everything in SharePoint and automatically publish content on the public site."

Kentico CMS Connector works with both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0. Company officials say clients include Microsoft, Vodafone, Audi, Samsung, Gibson, Bayer, ESPN, Guinness, Medibank, Ireland.ie and others.
...

 
OtterBox has announced two products for the BlackBerry Tour smartphone, company officials say, enabling device accessibility "right through the case."
 
The company's offering "simple, silicone protection," and we'll thank you to keep your sophomoric jokes to yourself, you, with the Impact Series, and "more rugged, durable protection with the three-layer Defender Series.
 
Inner coring provides "drop and shock protection and a self-adhering screen protector safeguards from scratches," company officials say, adding that this does not protect against water.

"Keeping your life organized can get overwhelming with phone calls, e-mails, meetings and appointments," OtterBox officials say, noting that with the OtterBox Impact Series case, "you can maintain peace of mind knowing your smartphone is safe." Always nice to have one less thing to worry about, isn't it?

 
The Defender Series has three shielding layers -- a clear polycarbonate window for scratching and dust intrusion, a "high-impact polycarbonate shell" and a silicone skin wrapping over the device to absorb bump and shock. Again, OtterBox officials say, this is not intended for water protection.

Yes, of course volume, trackball, convenience keys, camera, mute button, speakers and the micro USB port all remain accessible through the case.

SugarCRM and Microsoft, NetSuite and Fujitsu, Sage and Rand, Free Kayako, Intelestream, DisputeSuite

August 7, 2009 3:12 PM | 0 Comments
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits's Rain Dogs. Yesterday was a Sinatra kind of day, today's a Tom Waits kind of day. What can I say? These things happen:
 
In what Microsoft officials characterized as "a continued effort to show support for open source technology," The House That Bill Built made SugarCRM Community Edition available for free download on the Windows Web App Gallery.

 
The Microsoft Web Platform is a Microsoft framework for developing, deploying and hosting Web applications. SugarCRM and Microsoft have had a partnership since 2006, when SugarCRM announced support for Internet Information Services as well as optimization for Active Directory and SQL Server.

 
Lauren Cooney, group product manager at Microsoft, called SugarCRM "a great addition to the Windows Web App Gallery."

Based on the Sugar Open Cloud, Sugar CE, as well as all other SugarCRM products, can operate in any cloud environment, according to company officials, adding that SugarCRM's application "offers a single system for managing customer interactions across different lines of business."

"More than 60 percent of SugarCRM installations worldwide run on the Windows platform today," notes Clint Oram, vice president of product management at SugarCRM, adding that many of their customers are running SugarCRM "deployed on top of Microsoft Web Platform components such as IIS and SQL Server."

The Microsoft Web Platform offers a way to build and host Web sites, services, and applications, combining what Microsoft officials say are a Web application framework with "a supporting cast of tools, servers, and technologies."

Founded as an open source project in 2004, SugarCRM applications have been downloaded over five million times. Sugar Community Edition is currently used by more than 55,000 companies and 600,000 users.
...

 
NetSuite has partnered with Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Business Systems to distribute, resell and support NetSuite in Japan, NetSuite officials announced.

Fujitsu officials say the partnership gives them a cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning offering for small to mid-sized enterprises. Financial terms were not disclosed.

NetSuite officials say its Release J is a localized Software as a Service business management suite available to Japanese businesses, providing support for Japanese accounting requirements, including Tegata payments, J-GAAP compliant financial statements and Consumption Tax configuration capabilities.

Partnering with NetSuite gives Fujitsu an immediate presence in cloud computing, as well as the cloud-based ERP offering for SMEs. The companies have collaborated on a strategy to expand the reach of the product, calling for 500 new customers within three years.

According to terms of the partnership, Fujitsu will promote NetSuite to mid-market manufacturing companies, while FJB and its external partners target SMEs in the industry-specific verticals.

The deal "enables Japanese companies to run the core aspects of their businesses in the cloud," NetSuite officials say.

NetSuite Release J was launched in December 2008.

 
Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, says Fujitsu and "FJB's experience and reputation" will help the growth of SaaS in Japan.

"Fujitsu is confident that the alliance between NetSuite and Fujitsu Group creates a new leader in the Japanese SaaS ERP market, powered by NetSuite Release J," according to Taro Mizuno, President of Manufacturing and Distribution Solution Unit at Fujitsu.

NetSuite K.K. opened in 2006 to solidify the company's support for the growing number of NetSuite customers in Japan and provide infrastructure for further growth. 

Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited reported consolidated revenues of $47 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2009.
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Business technology consulting firm The Rand Group has announced that it's adding "a range of" Sage products for small and mid-size businesses, including ERP, human resource management, fixed assets and CRM solutions, to its portfolio.

 
The Rand Group will be offering its clients the full Sage MAS ERP line, as well as Sage Abra HRMS, Sage FAS, and Sage SalesLogix lines. Company officials add that Rand will open new offices in Dallas to serve businesses in the region.

Ron Rand, CEO of the Rand Group, said partnering with Sage adds a "range of products to our portfolio of services."

The Rand Group serves customers in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and Austin and is involved with community charitable work in support of March of Dimes, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and Houston Public Radio. It serves industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing, distribution, construction, property management and technology as well.
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Open source CRM consultant firm Intelestream has announced that the company is reaching out to its partners and contacts through Twitter.
 
Chicago-based Intelestream officials say they believe Twitter can help people better understand open source applications: "User adoption is the main reason the company is encouraging CRM users to subscribe to relevant Twitter channels."

Noting correctly that "a lot of people don't fully understand CRM," CEO Jason Green said "office workers don't always know that their company's new CRM system is really there to help them do their job. The reality is that no one wants to read a giant user's manual."
 
Therefore, Green explained, Intelestream's goal is "to educate people one tweet at a time, by providing CRM users with useful tips every day. By staying informed without being overwhelmed, users should feel more comfortable with CRM and use it more."

Intelestream sells the inteleCRM application.
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If you're a charity or open-source software projects today may be your lucky day.
 
Help desk software, CRM and live chat software vendor Kayako has announced the immediate availability of "free, perpetual and unlimited" licenses for their entire line-up of help desk products for just such organizations.

"As a business, we are aware of our social responsibilities. We are passionate about helping those in need, especially during markedly tough times for charitable and non-profit organizations," says Jamie Edwards, operations manager at Kayako. "We would hate to think that price is a barrier to entry for these organizations."

 
He added that Kayako "feels strongly about the undervalued contribution open-source developers are making to the progression of technology and software, which is why we are offering to give something back."

John Smart, IT director of the American Motorcyclist Association, said that the AMA is currently facing many of the same struggles which private industry IT departments are seeing today, because "we struggle everyday to control our support costs." He notes that Kayako are "putting a world-class support product in the hands of those who would otherwise consider this option as unthinkable within their current budget."

The free license on offer is perpetual and comes with twelve months of technical support. Eligible organizations are also entitled to receive any number of free licenses of Kayako's supplementary add-on products, such as KayakoMobile, a help desk management client for mobile devices.

Kayako products are available as both host-it-yourself and fully managed SaaS.
...

SaaS software vendor DisputeSuite.com has been acquired less than a year after launch.
 
DisputeSuite provides Web-based customer relationship management and automation software for the financial services industry.

In 2006 Brett Ryckman founded and created DisputeSuite.com to provide back-end software for credit repair, loan modifications, debt settlement, and short sales. The application is described by company officials as a "multi-tenant software as a service... supporting thousands of customers and users on a single platform."

In May 2008, the company publicly launched DisputeSuite. Ryckman said "shortly after launch," DisputeSuite attracted a capital investor and raised funding. Since the May launch, Ryckman says, "over 1500 companies have signed up for the software."

 
He says the company succeeded, in part, because "we went after an industry that had a giant void. No other software companies were targeting credit repair or loan modification businesses, so these companies were ecstatic."

 
Prior to launching DisputeSuite, Ryckman worked as a Web and software designer for companies such as Kforce, Verizon, Catalina Marketing, and Perficient. He founded Elite Web Tech, a Web design agency, when he was 18 years old and ran it throughout college.

In April 2009, less than a year -- just -- after launch, an offer to acquire the company came from a private investor, Ryckman said. The company was purchased by a private investor for an undisclosed amount.

iPhone Workout, Convergys, Sword Ciboodle, Zumasys, Acquirelists CRM, iPhone Church?

August 5, 2009 11:59 AM | 0 Comments
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Frank Sinatra's greatest album, Sinatra's Swingin' Session. Made in 1961 it sounds a whole lot like Sinatra taking on rock 'n' roll, it's his hardest-swinging album ever:

Trimble is offering an iPhone app, the Trimble AllSport GPS for the iPhone 3G, designed to help users "manage their personal fitness regimens," according to company officials.

The application is pitched to those who enjoy such outdoor activities as walking, running, hiking, cycling, mountain biking and snowboarding, as it can track exercise activity by monitoring time, speed, calories burned, and distance traveled during outdoor workouts.

 
It costs a one-time $9.99 fee. Buy it through the Health & Fitness category in the iPhone App Store.

 
It can also download map images and recommended routes to somebody via their iPhone, which probably isn't as big a deal if you're on the StairMaster at the gym, but could be distinctly more useful if you're doing triathlon road training.

Users can also download content from Bicycling and Backpacker magazines, "store favorite outdoor workout routes" and "share fitness progress with friends and family."

Trimble officials say that through the Trimble Outdoors Web site, "AllSport GPS subscribers can also view and analyze workouts, upload and recommend routes and workout plans, and customize trips taken by others."

And for those who need some serious competitive juice to get up for a workout, you can send workouts to your iPhone and "race" against someone else on the same program.
...

Convergys officials have announced that Sterling Home Retention Services, a provider of loss mitigation services for the financial services industry, has signed a contract for Convergys' relationship management tools, specifically to "support the loan modification process for the mortgage servicers, Government Sponsored Enterprises, and investors in the U.S."

 
"Many borrowers today are defaulting on their loans and are facing the possibility of foreclosure as the current economic crisis continues its hold on the housing market," says Jim Boyce, Convergys President, Global Business Units.

Requests for loan modifications and refinancing are at an all time high, imagine that. The Convergys loan modification product offers a turnkey tool designed to expedite the acquisition of information for completing the loan modification process.

The Convergys product offers Sterling Home Retention Services "expanded customer contact capabilities," allowing Convergys contact center agents to gather information from borrowers to let Sterling reps determine the loan modification options available to the borrower: "The workout process begins immediately with a Sterling representative on the same call," Covergys officials say.

Sterling Senior Vice President, Chris Sabbe said the "anxious borrowers" they work with are receiving the information they need "to retain their homes in a timely fashion."
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Sword Ciboodle officials say they have delivered a CRM system to online marketer Vistaprint, designed to "help the company enhance its customer service capabilities."

 
Vistaprint officials say Sword Ciboodle is "the central technology hub for Vistaprint's customer support." Vistaprint sells small businesses brand identity and promotional products, marketing services and electronic marketing tools. Company officials say they wanted support for multiple languages as well as normal CRM functionality.

"Our business is constantly evolving, and many of the existing CRM packages in the market were not the right fit for this kind of business environment," says Michelle Healy, vice president design sales and service, Vistaprint, adding that Sword Ciboodle delivered the features required "out of the box, on time and on budget."

The process-based implementation was designed to be managed by Vistaprint with minimal input from the vendor.

With operations in 37 countries, Sword today employs over 2000 people and in fiscal year ending December 2007 generated $263 million in consolidated revenue. Paul White, CEO, Sword Ciboodle North America, called the project "a step in our plan for growth in the U.S.... this is a key deployment for Sword Ciboodle in North America."
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EFileCabinet, a vendor of electronic document management systems, has announced a reseller partnership with Zumasys, a vendor of infrastructure tools for small and medium businesses.

 
Irvine, California-based Zumasys brings a network of more than 2,000 customers across North America to the table, and under the agreement, will offer eFileCabinet software to its hosted customers seeking an advanced document management system designed "to protect and manage data in an electronic repository." 

EFileCabinet officials characterized the Zumasys partnership as "a witness to the growing focus of IT providers offering technology to their customers... eFileCabinet will provide the tools and resources for Zumasys direct sales customers, including training, enablement and documentation."

Giobbi, president of Zumasys, said he liked eFileCabinet's system for digitally managing business documents, adding that his customers "are excited about the opportunity electronic document management will bring."

"We're pleased to welcome Zumasys to the eFileCabinet partner network," said Matt Peterson, president and CEO of eFileCabinet. "We especially look forward to the debut of our partner relationship and product suite at Zumapalooza 2009."

 
In 2006, Zumasys launched an Application Hosting offering letting companies move their applications to a hardened data center and run their business on a 100 percent virtual server platform.
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Acquirelists has announced the launch of the company's CRM Data Enrichment, CRM Data Cleansing and Total Marketing Data Management products for B2B marketers.
 
"Data management requires a single and accurate view of data and CRM data cleansing enables this," Acquirelists officials said, adding that their CRM data cleansing services "extract, deduplicate, standardize, analyze, validate and enrich data" according to "business rules management and in data governance compliancy."

Company officials say the CRM data cleansing services "ensure that data within ERP or CRM silos, data marts or legacy systems is accurate and complete," enriching it with "data from trusted sources."

Acquirelists Marketing Manager George Goss said that while the company's CRM data services are used by "all the industries," they're now "bringing CRM data products to all types of business to business sales companies."

The data enrichment services offered include the abilities to append contact name, title, e-mail, SIC code, DUNS number, revenue, phone & fax number "or other internal or external information to your data." The company also touts its help in improving logistics by "increasing geographic intelligence and mapping the most effective delivery routes."
 
The Albany, New York-based Acquirelists offers "specializes in providing business and consumer mailing lists that are privacy-compliant, accurate and affordable," company officials say.
...
 
What's that? Another iPhone app? My friend, there are already over 65,000 apps, ones to level a picture on a wall, ones to sound like an air horn, what possible app could be new under the sun... iPhone church?

Yes, indeed: Several churches are now streaming services over the iPhone. One of the first was Northland, A Church Distributed, which launched an iPhone Web app last month offering not just videos of past church services, but the ability to join in live services via streaming video.
 
Today, approximately 2,000 people regularly worship with Northland online, bringing the church into homes, coffee shops, restaurants, military bases, offices ... "even a Burger King restaurant," church officials say. For the completely emergent church pomo experience First Coffee supposes there are those who participate in a bar over a Guinness, too.
 
The church started in 1972 with eleven people in the "north land" of Orlando, and today claims a congregation of 12,000.
 
"Love it - in seat 9E on the Tarmac worshiping with ya," Twittered one man waiting for his flight to depart. For the more techno-cluelessly devout the church has posted step-by-step instructions on its blog. And if you can't manage that, well, you probably need to read Pop-Tart cooking directions, too.

Nathan Clark, Northland's director of digital innovation, and leader of the team that brought Northland's services to the iPhone, said the congregation gathers for worship on a weekly basis in a normal brick and mortar church, and since they were already "asking people to leave their communities and come to this place" to temporarily form another community, it "just made sense to help people worship where they are."

Northland operates four sites throughout Metro Orlando, Florida. The church began webcasting its services in January 2006, and two years later launched an interactive version of its webstream including "immediate access to an online pastor and the ability to chat instantly with other worshipers."

Northland officials say that given the ability to connect the iPhone -- or iPod Touch, it works on those, too -- to an external display such as a TV or monitor, "many users will use the iPhone to start home churches, especially in countries where advanced cell networks are far outpacing broadband connectivity."
 
Clark dismisses criticism that people are opting out of the communal church experience in favor of an isolated worship experience. "We continually hear stories of people who start to worship online and eventually find a community to worship with others, or start one of their own. We don't see this as a zero-sum game."

SugarCRM, RIAS, Integrify SaaS, ATSI and ACA, ORCS Web, iPhone and POT

August 5, 2009 11:55 AM | 0 Comments
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a weird album from 1968, The Zombies' "Odessey and Oracle."
 
You've heard the one hit from the album, "Time of the Season," the rest of it sounds like a decent pop band trying to cross Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper, as so many albums of that moment did. Listening to Odessey and Oracle, especially solid tracks like "A Rose For Emily" and "Hung Up On A Dream," one thinks "Man, these guys were good, why were they messing around with this overproduction, dubbing in flutes and harpsichords, and not just doing what they did best -- straight-ahead smart pop?"

Veon has announced the launch of a Territory Management product on the SugarCRM platform.

Officials of the Hyderabad-based firm say they believe Sales Force Automation products are "the need of the hour for organizations with distributed marketing geographies." Using the tool, they say, regional sales teams can "keep lock-step with one another when collaborating."

The idea behind Territory Management, Veon officials explain, is so managers can gain "an up-to-the minute view of their individual territory pipeline from the highest level to the most granular." Territory management "develops and implements a strategy for directing selling activities toward customers in a sales territory aimed at maintaining the lines of communications, improving sales coverage, and minimizing wasted time." Functionality for the product, therefore, includes the allocation of sales calls to customers and the planning, routing, scheduling of the calls and similar options.

The TM product, using the SugarCRM platform, is easy set up and assign territories, Veon officials say, adding that it's designed to simplify territory realignments after sales reorganizations, eliminate lag time in lead assignment and "plan effectively for avoiding losing sales to better organized competitors."

It also claims capability for "minimizing distractions and procrastination," which for First Coffee alone would be worth the price of admission. And of course it includes the more prosaic functions, such as maintaining contact with key prospects and accounts and helping find ways to improve users' return on investment (ROI) and reduce turn-around time.
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Here at First Coffee we write a lot about how to improve your customer service, it's nice to recognize companies who are, in fact, doing it well. So a tip of the coffee pot to insurance provider RIAS, which sells to the over-50 demographic, for being named a finalist in customer service categories in two industry awards -- the UK Broker Awards and the CCF European Call Center Awards.

This is the third time in two months RIAS has been recognized for its customer service, company officials say, explaining that these latest two accolades come "hot on the heels of RIAS being announced as a finalist in the 'Customer Care Award' category at the 2009 British Insurance Awards" in June.

As a finalist in the 'Customer Service Provider' category for the 2009 UK Broker Awards, RIAS was noted for its "customer-centric culture and service innovation," including the launch of Voice of the Customer, an online system allowing all colleagues to feed customer comments directly into the system.

The 2009 CCF European Call Center Awards put RIAS in the "Best Centre for Customer Service" category against teams from all over Europe. Janet Connor, Managing Director of RIAS, said being recognised by "independent judges"for customer service in an increasingly competitive arena is "rewarding."

Adam Clarke, spokesman for the CCF European Call Center Awards, said their awards "highlight the quality performances of individuals, teams and call centers as a whole, and has entries in the hundreds."

Although independent of each other, the winners of both the 2009 UK Broker Awards and the CCF European Call Center Awards will be announced in September.
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Keep the recognitions for customer service well done coming: The Association of Teleservices International are honoring Answer Center America with the 2009 award of distinction. This recognizes call centers across the United States who provide "superior customer service management," according to ATSI officials.

 
"Customer service is the heart of our operation. When we put customer needs first, business needs second, our employees will always come out on top," says Michael McMillan, director of sales and marketing. ACA recently received this award at the ATSI 65th annual convention and expo in Pittsburgh.

ATSI officials say call centers across the United States have "a need for a tool to measure the customer service skills of their professional agents." As a result, ATSI created the award of distinction to be what they describe as "an impartial, third-party means to measure agent courtesy, etiquette and proper call techniques, as well as response time and accuracy." To qualify for this award, call centers must receive an overall score of 80 percent or above in these categories.

The Association of TeleServices International was founded in 1942 as a national trade association representing live answering services. It now encompasses companies across the United States offering specialized and enhanced operator-based services including call centers, contact centers, inbound telemarketing (order entry), paging, voice messaging, emergency dispatch, fax, and Internet services, among others.

Based in Chicago, Answer Center America sells call center and answering products.
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Integrify Software, which sells Enterprise Request Management software, has announced a new Integrify Single Sign-On service for its hosted SaaS offering, Integrify OnDemand.

 
In addition to the always-laudable goals of reducing employee frustration with multiple log-in events and remembrance of pesky passwords, the product is touted as a way to "help reduce costs associated with Help Desk fielding user authentication support calls," according to Rich Trusky, CTO of Integrify.

 
The Chicago-based Integrify's product is available either on-premise as licensed server software or as a hosted service, with a Web-based product to "streamline business processes, centrally manage user requests from multiple locations, streamline workflow and operations, automate business processes, and provide increased compliance, visibility and efficiency across organizations," according to company officials.
 
Basically, for a customer's internal users, the SSO service works by having the internal users browse to integrify.customername.com which brings them to the Integrify OnDemand SSO Web Client, described by vendor officials as "a small Web site running on the organization's internal network. This site is configured to authenticate users against their internal Active Directory.
 
Then once the user is authenticated, their User ID is passed to Integrify OnDemand along with a shared token and secret which is signed using OAuth. If the signed token, secret and User ID match, the user is presented with the Integrify Portal and may use any of the features available to them.

 
For a customer's external users, they simply browse to yourcompany.integrify.com and log in directly to the Integrify Portal.

The SSO Service lets organizations "authenticate their users internally using Windows Integrated Authentication, Active Directory or LDAP bind or custom authentication schemes," company officials say, adding that this service "will allow users to access their externally hosted Integrify OnDemand account without having to be prompted for their username and password once they are already authenticated within their organization."
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ORCS Web, a vendor of Microsoft Windows-based Internet hosting for businesses, has announced its renewed service agreement with Freshview, a Sydney-based e-mail marketing software developer.
 
According to the agreement, Freshview will continue to use ORCS Web as its primary hosting provider for its dedicated cloud environment. Dave Greiner, co-founder of Freshview, said his company "values ORCS Web as our hosting provider because of their customer service and their fully-managed dedicated cloud environment."

Freshview's flagship product, Campaign Monitor, is an e-mail marketing software to let Web designers send campaigns for themselves and their clients. Freshview officials pride themselves on their "refreshingly simple software" as well as "maintaining a fun workplace." First Coffee would like everyone to know that providing a fun workplace is a top priority here as well at the sprawling First Coffee campus, under stately pines amidst the rolling hills.

Brad Kingsley, president and chief executive officer of ORCS Web, said using a fully-managed dedicated cloud environment, "the Freshview team receives the benefits of a virtualized cloud such as their own Dell hardware which includes multiple PowerEdge R900 servers each with four Six-Core Intel Xeon processors and 64GB of RAM."

Operating as an extension of internal IT teams for clients such as Zagat Survey, Lake Quincy Media and AMD, ORCS Web provides a portfolio of hosting and managed services.
...

People operating technology (POT), a publisher devoted to buying, developing and promoting iPhone applications, has announced the launch of AudioPeople on the Apple App Store.
 
AudioPeople is described by POT officials as a way to post audio messages on friends' Facebook walls. POT CEO Jason Petralia said by "allowing you to access your social graph and leave crystal clear audio recordings on Facebook walls, AudioPeople will revolutionize the way you communicate with your friends." He added the company made this application "with simplicity in mind.
 
Simple it is, indeed -- the user needs no instructions, just log in and start posting. "With AudioPeople, iPhone users don't have to leave any more sterile wall messages. You can leave animated audio recordings on your friend's Facebook walls whenever and wherever," company officials say. First Coffee hereby owes an apology to all his Facebook friends subjected to sterile wall messages this past year.

AudioPeople is available for $1.99 from Apple's App Store on iPhone and iPod touch. Founded in 2009, POT is a publishing house devoted exclusively to creating iPhone and iTouch applications, drawing on "a global pool of developer talent to create, develop, polish and promote mobile applications in gaming, social networking, utilities and more." The company currently has several other applications available for download, including Magnetic Personalities, Animal Fun Time and the gag entertainment of 2009 Blockdrop iCon Trick.

Portrait in Scotland, SprinxCRM, iBabyBuddy, TRM RulesManager, Jenzabar's Newest, Jailhouse Phone

August 5, 2009 11:49 AM | 0 Comments
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the cool piano jazz of Bill Evans. Sometimes mistaken for wallpaper music, this is, in fact, highly accomplished unshowy playing -- there's a reason Miles Davis wanted him for the "Kind of Blue" sessions:

Portrait Software, a vendor of customer interaction software, has announced that VisitScotland, the national tourism agency, increased revenues through the use of Portrait Customer Analytics to the tune of £48 million.
 
PCA, delivered as a hosted service through Optima Value Group, is credited by officials of the tourism board with increasing the revenue in the Scottish tourism industry "by £48 million in one year alone," or $80 million. That figure is evidently calculated from independent market research referenced by VisitScotland officials, who say it represents the value of trips by visitors who claim they would not have visited without prompting from marketing.

The agency wants to give Scotland "a real presence in the global marketplace,"benefiting the whole of Scotland." Agency officials say their priorities are to "attract visitors to Scotland, engage with partners within the industry and to add value to the visitor experience." An upwards of 200 campaigns a year are now processed through the managed service, Portrait officials say.

 
If the goal for Scotland is to attract visitors, then as one with experience of the British isles, may First Coffee suggest doing something about the weather. I for one could do with fewer bagpipe skirls in favor of more non-rainy days. 

VisitScotland claims a database of over 3.5 million consumers collected over the last four years, and "needed to determine how many were regular visitors, as opposed to occasional visitors so that marketing effort and monies could focus on those most likely to re-visit and those with a particular interest relevant to Scotland," Portrait officials say. Segmenting the data ("Here's the last names beginning in 'Mac,' here's everyone else...") and being able to apply marketing campaigns had been primarily a manual task, evidently, and the level of analysis and accuracy charitably described by Portrait officials as "fairly random."

Using the Portrait Customer Analytics VisitScotland has developed a Relationship Marketing Program based on the analysis of the travel behavior and patterns of UK and Irish tourists and from tourist feedback. The database has now been segmented into a "loyalty ladder" with the level of marketing investment spent on each individual dependent, quite reasonably, on their position on the ladder. Ian Rippin, Managing Director, Optima Value Group, notes that Visit Scotland "is now able to process information so that the right message is sent to the right people at the right time."

 
Oh, and a complimentary bottle or two of the wonderful highland single-malt whisky for business writers probably wouldn't go amiss either. Just a suggestion.
...
 
SprinxCRM has announced the launch of SprinxCRM QuickBooks Connector.

Radko Jelinek, Sprinx' Director of Sales, describes the product as something to allow businesses to link customer profile data captured by SprinxCRM with "corresponding financial data captured by QuickBooks," and "assess the total value and total potential of their customers."

Basically it lets users of QuickBooks, a popular financial software product for small business, import their contacts and invoices to SprinxCRM -- "and vice versa" -- to develop and implement marketing campaigns. "It provides a view of customers' overall health in terms of the indicators, without the capital investment and user training typically associated with custom IT," says Jelinek, adding that it "operates real-time so deviations in the purchasing behaviors of customers can be spotted and addressed immediately."

 
Sprinx Systems was founded in 1996 in the Czech Republic, and today sells it CRM products "and related business marketing applications" worldwide. The company is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.
...

"There's a new playmate in town," the press release begins, capturing First Coffee's attention. Oh, it... it's an iPhone app, Mantaray Creative Lab's iBabyBuddy, described by company officials as something "designed to keep babies and toddlers entertained when there's not a toy box in sight."

 
The iBabyBuddy features "iconic" animal characters that make noises and "vibrate in response to baby's movement and interaction," company officials explain. Of course for the low-tech parents there's always a set of keys. Hours of fun, believe me. And personally I'd rather toss a two-year old my keys than my iPhone, but that's just me.
 
"Busy parents often find themselves juggling fussy babies and a long list of errands and there's rarely enough time to pack a bunch of toys for the road," says Tamara Rosenblum, principal and creative director of Calgary-based Mantaray Creative Labs. "Most people have their phone at their disposal regardless of where they are so with that in mind we developed iBabyBuddy to be a traveling playmate that never leaves your side." It's available at The App Store for $1.99.

Designed to work with both the iPhone and iPod Touch, iBabyBuddy "entertains, stimulates and teaches through interaction and discovery." The first release has animal, musical instrument and whimsical toy sound themes. New themes will be added regularly free of charge, company officials say. Just be prepared for your kid's first sentence to be "I want an iPhone!"

 
"Combined with a Shake-n-Change feature" -- which will not go unused in the hands of a toddler -- "iBabyBuddy guarantees an endless array of non-stop, educational fun...and an opportunity for Mom or Dad to take a quick break from being the constant entertainer," according to Mantaray officials. In other words, "This keeps kids quiet. Line forms to the right, no pushing..." Just be sure you can extract it from aforesaid toddler's grip when a call comes in. This isn't as easy as it may sound, he said from experience.
 
To view a video of child and iBabyBuddy visit www.youtube.com/user/ibabybuddy. The iPhone survives the encounter.
...

Alexandria, Virginia-based Total Resource Management has unveiled its newest version of TRM RulesManager SE 4.0, configuration software designed for IBM Maximo and Tivoli Asset Management for IT.

 
Al Johnson, VP of Product Development, said current customers who are in the process of upgrading to Maximo 7.1 "were clamoring for the next version of RulesManager."
 
The tool is intended to let Maximo systems be "tailored to meet business requirements with configuration, integration and data migration capabilities and control of Maximo." Company officials say it offers improved service delivery, reduced operating, lifecycle maintenance and support costs and lower training costs.
 
RulesManager 4.0 also has enhancements for administrators and developers, including what company officials characterize as an "improved integrated development environment with additional drag-and-drop capabilities, advanced error-checker and RulesManager Help."

In addition to the features in previous versions, this release, according to company officials, has an adaptive user experience, simplified data migration and scrubbing and specific functionality applied only to certain application servers, groups and users.

 
It also has Maximo Web services, "direct XML Web services in Maximo rules, enabling real-time transactions. These include the ability to dynamically attach value lists and auto-populate Maximo fields," company officials explain. They tout the product's "visual feedback," which includes the ability to dynamically control the presentation in any event. They say they've also added functionality to change the look of the browser: "Advanced users also have the capability to send JavaScript commands to the user's browser allowing the display to be modified."
...

 
Jenzabar, which sells tech for higher education, has announced the release of new Jenzabar Institutional Intelligence products with improved reporting and analytical capabilities.
 
The tools aren't just standard business metrics, they're designed, Jenzabar officials say, to support measures "vital to higher education." These include "keeping pace with changing goals and strategies and changing constituents, who represent the core business of higher education institutions." The products are designed to support recruitment and retention of students, financial health, regulatory compliance, and fundraising.

When integrated with the Jenzabar EX or Jenzabar CX administrative systems, company officials say, Jenzabar's Institutional Intelligence lets the institution analyze office and project statistics from a single database. In addition, Jenzabar has used its partnership with IBM-Cognos to integrate Cognos 8 reporting tools with its Institutional Intelligence product for reporting on institutional data residing in the Jenzabar product.

"Evaluating the effectiveness of operational initiatives and forecasting future trends can be challenging for higher education institutions, especially amidst a changing economy," says Robert A. Maginn, Jr., Jenzabar Chairman and CEO.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given its target market, Jenzabar is headquartered in Boston.
...

Inmate Telephone has added the OffenderConnect.com portal to provide additional service and support to families and friends of inmates who have Inmate Telephone's service at their facility.

OffenderConnect.com replaces the InmateBanker.com and ITI Bill Pay Web sites used by "nearly fifty thousand customers currently, offering existing services as well as several new services." English and Spanish language versions of OffenderConnect.com are available

 
The portal lets ITI customers open a telephone account, deposit funds in an inmate's commissary and telephone accounts, check balances on their telephone accounts, view prior statements and payment histories, move money on telephone accounts between participating facilities and close accounts online.

"We really wanted to add more self-service options online for our customers," says Matt Caesar, Chief of Product Development for DSI / ITI, adding that OffenderConnect.com "provides us with a platform to add additional services to better serve inmate family and friends in the future." Existing Inmate Telephone, Inc. customers using ITI Bill Pay and InmateBanker.com may convert their accounts into OffenderConnect.com accounts until August 3rd, after which any ITI customers will have to create an OffenderConnect.com account. Customers "don't lose anything in the transition,"says Caesar.

Established in 1984 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Digital Solutions Incorporated is a privately-held technology company that specializes in automating corrections agencies. Its sister company, Inmate Telephone Incorporated, was founded in 1994 to create and maintain inmate phone systems.
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