SAS and Netezza, Salesforce.com and PivotLink, Implix, NexJ and ATB, DynamicsExchange, ESalesTrack for KC

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

SAS and Netezza, Salesforce.com and PivotLink, Implix, NexJ and ATB, DynamicsExchange, ESalesTrack for KC

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits' Rain Dogs. After this we'll play Elvis Presley's From Elvis In Memphis, and vote on which one's the winner in today's War of the Records. So nice to have our own office:

Business analytics vendor SAS and Netezza Corporation, a vendor of data warehouse and analytic appliances, have expanded their partnership to bring in-database analytic processing to mutual customers, SAS officials say.
 
Company officials add that "joint R&D will further integrate the companies' respective products, starting with SAS Scoring Accelerator for Netezza, available in early 2010."

The SAS Scoring Accelerator for Netezza is evidently designed to help businesses obtain analytical results: "Customers using SAS Enterprise Miner and the Netezza TwinFin data warehouse appliance will translate and execute scoring models directly within Netezza's parallel environment."

 
Rather than manually transforming and processing code outside the database, the product automates data preparation and model deployment tasks inside the database to let customers use Netezza data warehousing investments with SAS Business Analytics.

The idea here is that reducing data movement across networks lets organizations process more analytic models "without jeopardizing reliability," SAS officials say, adding that the results are "higher returns from data assets and reliable results supporting operations such as fraud detection, credit scoring and risk management."

Keith Collins, SAS Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, said the SAS Scoring Accelerator for Netezza, which he called "our first in-database activity with Netezza," is a demonstration of SAS' "commitment to integrating SAS Analytics across leading database vendors."

Netezza is headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts and has offices in Northern Virginia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, France, Japan, Korea, Australia and Singapore.
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More fallout from Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference: PivotLink, a vendor of business intelligence delivered via Software as a Service, has announced more customers rolling out PivotLink for Salesforce.com via the AppExchange. 
 
Built using the Force.com platform, PivotLink's on-demand Sales Analysis and Reporting product is pitched by PivotLink officials as a way to deploy such a tool "without the upfront cost and complexity of traditional on-premise."

It's intended to let allows sales and marketing users analyze the data in Salesforce.com to get returns on investment from their sales force automation. PivotLink provides a view of sales performance data and customer metrics that are "commonly scattered across Excel spreadsheets, on-premise systems and SaaS applications such as sales, marketing automation, finance, order management and manufacturing," company officials say.

The tool is billed by company officials as a way to "slice and dice trend information from Salesforce.com, analyze pipeline opportunities and snapshot pipeline value, create trend charts and dashboards for all sales metrics, boost the accuracy of sales forecasts, assess variance between bookings and quota and pinpoint profitable customer segments and products."
 
It's also supposed to identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, determine why deals aren't closing faster and "integrate data from ERP, CRM, supply chain and marketing systems for a 360 degree view of the variables that could affect revenue performance."
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Implix, an e-mail marketing vendor to the SOHO/SMB market, has announced the launch of GetResponse Developer Zone, a portal dedicated to helping "small to large enterprises integrate the GetResponse e-mail marketing API platform with in-house applications, databases, e-commerce shopping carts, CRM, and CMS systems."
 
The idea evidently is to "improve targeted marketing capabilities and increase campaign ROI," company officials say. CEO Simon Grabowski says "since my first attempt at age six, writing code has been a passion of mine." 

Implix officials believe that one of the biggest challenges facing high-growth SMB organizations today is how to integrate existing software with e-mail marketing to increase automation and improve efficiency -- "without costly integration projects."
 
They think much of the reason for this is that in a typical SMB, internal IT resources are limited, which leads to marketers struggling to implement targeted campaigns using tools that don't play nicely with others. If that sounds like your operation, this might be for you.

The GetResponse product, company officials say, provides resources to "integrate and automate targeted e-mail marketing across customer environments." Developers can use its API documentation, tutorials, templates, sample implementations and FAQs to use GetResponse features "wherever they're needed, integrate existing software, or create entirely new applications that take advantage of e-mail marketing."
 
They say the product helps with synchronizing and updating subscriber and customer profiles, segmenting lists by demographics and geolocation -- "all supported by GetResponse's automated list hygiene."

It also can help with implementing behavioral targeting, creating mailing lists based on user behaviors such as clicks, opens, navigation and timing, and by exporting purchase history data to GetResponse for campaign targeting.

Grabowski says in spite of the current economic downturn, "SMB spending on software and self-service applications like GetResponse is expected to reach $35 billion by 2013."
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Toronto-based NexJ Systems, a CRM vendor for the financial services and insurance industries, has announced that ATB Investor Services picked NexJ Contact for Finance as the customer relationship management tool for its investment and wealth management business practices.
 
ATB Investor Services is the operating trade name for the investment services subsidiaries of ATB Financial, an Alberta-based financial institution with assets of $27.2 billion.

NexJ officials say ATB Investor Services liked their product's "view of all customer profile and financial data." NexJ Contact for Finance integrates best-of-breed CRM functionality such as customer profiling, householding, relationship and referral management, schedule and task management, and reporting and analytics, company officials claim, "with existing back office portfolio management, trade order management, and marketing systems."
 
NexJ Contact for Finance is expected to provide a consolidated view of customer data across all users and departments to improve the consistency of the customer experience, NexJ officials say, adding that ATB also expects "automation of core business processes, referral management to identify and respond to prospective customers, reporting and analytics to identify new products for cross sell and upsell opportunities and mobile access via NexJ Contact for BlackBerry."

NexJ Systems was founded in 2003 by former executives of Janna Systems.
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DynamicsExchange.com has announced what company officials are calling "a new focus, new design, and new resources to support the broad solution customization capability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the xRM platform evolution."
 
If you haven't heard of San Diego-based DynamicsExchange, it's an online super-community dedicated, its officials say, "exclusively to driving down costs associated with developing and implementing Any Line-of-Business or x-Relationship Management" products.
 
It's based on the platform of Microsoft's Dynamics CRM xRM, and is announcing new DE functionality, including integration of Microsoft's Live ID for seamless user access improvement across the DE Community Portal and Microsoft eOpen, CustomerSource, and PartnerSource portals for single-login and single point-of-entry for all xRM resources.
 
DynamicsExchange also wins First Coffee's Most Interesting URL of the Week award.
 
It's also announcing a recent expansion of free xRM code share, how-to, and technical resources, as well as what its officials call "improved aggregation of all community blog and forum knowledge contributions," which continue to allow DE to accomplish the single-source location to search, find, review, and exchange openly for the needs of the industry's prospects, users, developers, and professional support community.

One function of DE is to facilitate engaging providers with experience, products, and service offerings available to Dynamics xRM custom tool implementation, coupled with knowledge contributions of topic-dedicated social media, "reducing the costs of business tool adoption across the business eco-system."
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Never let it be said First Coffee doesn't know how to get local: ESalesTrack CRM is offering "more features and services for local users" in the Kansas City area.
 
Kansas City -- Kansas, even, not the Missouri side -- based eSalesTrack is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software application designed for small to medium sized businesses in Kansas City and surrounding areas, company officials say.
 
Although eSalesTrack is Web-based CRM software, universally accessible, First Coffee supposes the reason company officials have chosen to focus on the KC area is because Kansas City users get the "standard service and support" the vendor's offering, as well as "access to personal, on-site support and service, and a greater degree of customization consultation."

Noting that yes, "we have solutions for companies across the world," Grady Hawley, public relations officer for the company, said "we have something special for our Kansas City users. It is hard to find any other CRM software like eSalesTrack due to its combination of powerful and scalable customization with low pricing."

ESalesTrack is a customizable CRM product from Soleran, a Web technology company based in Overland Park, Kan. It has mobile and MSOffice plugins, as well as the standard features, such as marketing, leads, sales, customer support, workforce management and digitalization.


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