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

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

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.
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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.
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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."


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