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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."

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."

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

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

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

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

Recommendation Advisor 6.2 is one of those products that let contact center agents and company representatives negotiate and make offers and recommendations that automatically account for corporate programs at all levels of operation. The same mechanism can also be applied to households, where a proposition can be tailored to a family based on recommendations for individual family members.
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Informatica Corporation, which sells data integration software and services, has announced that Informatica On Demand Data Loader Service was voted "The Best Data Integration Tool of 2008" by Salesforce.com customers, having garnered more four and five star reviews than any other integration application in its category on the Force.com AppExchange.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you're looking for a good percentage to increase your efficiency by, how does 100 percent sound?

That's the number given by voice CRM vendor Qire in announcing that the results of research carried out this past December and January, which shows that "UK outbound call centers could be over 100 percent more efficient than they are today," through better use of systems and contact validation.

Qire officials say the research, covering a sample of over 100,000 calls made in the period, concluded that the use of outbound voice contact validation can increase the number of actual customers spoken to by agents -- a.k.a. "Right Party Contacts" -- by over 50 percent on a daily basis.

Just validating user telephone numbers alone, before they're passed to the call center, can reduce call attempts by nearly 30 percent, according to the Qirians, "by removing calls to out-of service numbers."

Over half the calls made were unproductive because they were routed to an answering machine. And even where an automated dialer was in use, the study found, "many of these calls would be passed to an agent, reducing call center productivity."

Guy Cooper, chief executive officer of Qire, said that while "there are still a number of organizations looking to move their outbound call centers out of the UK" such a move can be not only expensive but ill-conceived: "It can also have an adverse affect on customer service and quality. "

Cooper contends that by simply implementing new technologies and simple validation procedures, call centers "can make enormous savings, in fact in some instances well over 100 percent."

Qire's interactive voice messaging products, company officials say, pass the call to a live agent only when the contact is confirmed: "This increases internal call center efficiency, the number of productive calls handled by agents and the gains flow through to the business.
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Always like to report on the hometown news, so since First Coffee lives in New Zealand we're reporting that Atlanta-based Xiocom Wireless has acquired New Zealand's RoamAD , including its brand, trademarks, intellectual property and patents.

"The global market for wireless broadband continues to grow as the need for connected businesses and communities increases in the developing markets," said Jeff Spence, CEO of Xiocom. Company officials added that the acquisition of the RoamAD platform brings to Xiocom a router and network management technology for wireless broadband networks.

Xumii, a mobile social address book, has released a free application for the Apple iPhone combining iPhone contacts with friends from Facebook, MySpace, imeem, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, MSN and Flickr.

The 21,400-square foot London 2 data center would be ready for service during second quarter of 2009.

Using the DataLink feature, QuoteWerks can pull other information from Outlook into the quote as well, such as customer terms, customer sales tax rate, and customer profiles which can be used to determine the appropriate pricing a particular customer should receive. The DataLink feature saves this additional data to the quote file within QuoteWerks.

QuoteWerks can also search the user's Outlook database for a contact by company, last name, or phone number and pull the contact information into the quote. It can search Exchange Public Folders, letting users and their colleagues search for and use shared contact data. Both business and home address entries are supported.

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Key features include dedicated network engineering support, turnaround of changes to customer networks, extended equipment warranties, delivery of spare equipment and access to network reports and analysis.

The news as of the second cup of coffee, and the music is a nice workplace CD, Miles Davis's 1969 album In A Silent Way. Not the masterpiece his earlier Birth of the Cool or Kind of Blue is, this is more moody and ethereal, basically two long (18 and 19 minute) digressions on a theme. For those who are into that kind of thing:

SupportSoft has announced the release of its next-generation Dynamic Agent, described by company officials as software making it "simple for enterprises and service providers to automatically resolve customers' routine tech problems, as well as deploy enhanced services."

The business proposition SupportSoft execs are pushing is that in today's economy, "delivering value-added services is arguably the most effective way organizations can differentiate their offerings and generate new revenue." SupportSoft Dynamic Agent, a desktop-resident portal, is designed to let organizations "extend customer support in order to offer additional products, when the time is right," they contend.

The product is made to provide "point-of-pain services" in the form of "1-click fixes," according to the SupportSofties, "that let organizations provide just-in-time support and help customers resolve their own issues." Because if they're solving problems themselves, they're not eating up your overhead to solve 'em, right? Further, by building on their automated support platform, organizations can create a marketing channel to orchestrate new methods of driving revenue, where personalized and timely offers can be presented -- for example, renewals at or before warranty or subscription expiration; additional data storage upon or before reaching storage capacity or the latest bandwidth enhancement during periods of high usage.

Features of SupportSoft Dynamic Agent include targeting and authoring capabilities to gather user, system and activity data to create offers to customers, as well as tools to capture and analyze navigation data and customer demographics when customizing offers.

It also offers "do-it-yourself tech support," auto remediation of common problems so users don't have to call the help desk except for the real toughies. The product also offers what company officials call "show me," "tell me," or "just do it for me" content.

"Our experience has shown us that customers prefer to have tech support capabilities delivered directly to their PCs and applied at the right time automatically," says Michael Sayer, GM & EVP Enterprise Solutions Group at SupportSoft.

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Fox Mobile Distribution, a vendor of mobile entertainment and part of Fox Mobile Group, has implemented Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management as it rolls out new services, to "improve operational efficiency and enable continued growth," according to the Foxes.

Fox officials say they picked Oracle due to its "real-time capability, out-of-the-box functionality and ability to support business requirements."

Wholly owned by News Corporation, Fox Mobile Distribution can reach more than one billion consumers around the globe with mobile products and services such as games, video and made-for-mobile content. it can deliver content in 38 countries on six continents and in more than 20 languages. Fox officials say they'll use the billing and revenue management application to help adapt to diverse market demands, identify areas for revenue growth and "accelerate time-to-market for new products and offerings."

Basically Fox wanted to create simplified billing plans incorporating various payment options, product and service bundles and customer types, as well as maximize revenue and minimize loss associated with fraud and revenue leakage. The vendor says it has reduced rating run times for all transactions and reduced errors by removing nearly all manual intervention in the rating process as well.

"Our previous billing system was not flexible and required much customization, which translated into higher costs," says Markus Peuler, managing director and senior vice president, finance and administration, Fox Mobile Distribution.

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Amdocs, a vendor of customer experience systems, has announced 2008 saw the expansion of its managed services offerings "with service providers around the world."

Highlights from the 2008 calendar year include "a significant expansion of a seven-year agreement with AT&T for its legacy ordering and wholesale platforms," to include legacy customer care and billing applications and "new multi-year agreements to support Sprint's Xohm initiative and MetroPCS, supporting both Amdocs and non-Amdocs applications."

Additional highlights from 2008 include new wins and expansion agreements with Tier 1 and Tier 2 service providers in Europe and North America, according to the Amdocents.

The vendor has expanded its managed services offering to include more services, including application management and business process operations, infrastructure management, data center operations, and full hosting. It also offers managed services offerings for both business- and operational-support systems. There's also a new "Managed Transformation" offering, enabling service providers to modernize or consolidate systems while presenting operational and capital savings.

Like other on-demand vendors, Amdocs figures it's in a good place for today's economic conditions. According to Gartner, "Although things look gloomy for the larger economy, the potential for outsourcing to address immediate cost pressures and long-term recovery goals will be unprecedented. Organizations that understand and avoid the pitfalls of cost-focused outsourcing and apply business-outcome-focused outsourcing will be successful."

The company reported revenue of $3.16 billion in fiscal 2008, and claimed over 17,000 employees serving customers in more than 50 countries around the world.

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Dexterra has announced the launch of a new online mobility calculator, designed to help IT leaders "better understand the financial benefits of mobilizing their company and workforce," according to company officials.

"At a time of belt tightening and budget cutting across industries," the Dexterrians contend, "investment in mobility technology is now vital for organizations looking to sustain revenues and glean additional efficiencies from their day-to-day business processes."

The mobility calculator provides what company officials characterize as "simple, demonstrable evidence of these benefits," requesting basic information about an organization and the way in which it operates, before calculating "the percentage by which that organization can lower costs or increase workforce productivity."

The fact remains, according to Michael Liebow, CEO of Dexterra, that over the last two years "advances in smartphone technology and lower costs for mobile services, combined with the ubiquity of high speed mobile networks have made it possible to affordably equip an entire mobile workforce. 2009 will be a big year for business mobility - it is a maturing technology with rapid acceptance, and we are experiencing an economy that will drive people to it.  No company would ditch essential tools like e-mail or anti-virus in a downturn economy just to save money. Mobility has now achieved the same status."

Adopting a mobility strategy does not have to involve replacing legacy systems like customer relationship management (CRM) software, accounting solutions or proprietary business systems, and it doesn't mean companies have to reinvent internal processes or the work habits of employees, Liebow says: "A winning mobility strategy is task-centric. It is built on the processes already in place and plays to the way employees want to work.  Mobility lets people complete the things they need to do every day, as they happen, instead of having to disrupt an office worker, find a place to connect a laptop, or return to the office."

Liebow makes a good point when he notes that "whether a business embraces mobility or not," its employees most certainly will, as desirable consumer devices such as Apple iPhone, BlackBerry Storm and T-Mobile G1 become increasingly affordable: "Staff are going to start using these devices for work purposes, even if the company has not sanctioned their use, posing management and control issues that could very well puncture network security and disrupt mandatory compliance requirements such as Sarbanes Oxley."

Coxsackie, New York-based - and how often does one do business with a firm based in Coxsackie, New York? - KinetiCast, which sells SaaS multimedia presentation software for sales and marketing, has announced that Affiniscape Merchant Solutions, a credit card processing company, has chosen KinetiCast's multimedia presentation software to "enhance its marketing efforts to lawyers and law firms around the country," according to the KinetiCastians.

The Law Firm Merchant Account was developed and customized for attorneys to accept credit card payments from clients. Due to special credit card processing requirements in a law firm, AMS chose to use KinetiCast's online presentations to help market and educate their potential clients "with a more visual approach," according to AMS officials.

"KinetiCast has allowed us to get in front of our time-sensitive attorneys," said Janelle Benefield, Business Development at AMS.

AMS found that the KinetiCast online presentation software allowed the sales representatives to engage their clients on an individual basis and gauge their response through tracking and analytics. The tracking features allows the user to see which clients have viewed the presentation and which parts they viewed the most, so they know what is most interesting to the recipient. The presentation can then be added to the Website.

AMS officials say they plan in 2009 to use the KinetiCast technology to go after additional vertical markets.

Plans start at $10 a month. Founded in 2007, KinetiCast is based in New York's Tech Valley.

Jackpot UK announced today that it is handing over the management of its customer list to Lloyd James Group.

The consumer list, which is being made available for the first time, is composed of people who have won prizes or made payments for other items they have bought through Jackpot, a UK promotional and gaming firm.

Jackpot's portfolio covers games and promotional events across the entertainment industry. Respondents, who are 55 per cent female, generally play the games by calling or texting a premium rate number or writing to a dedicated PO Box where they are asked to leave their address. Jackpot officials say they generate 10,000 to 15,000 new records each month.

Lynn Stevens, Managing Director at Lloyd James Group, said with a 0-12 month list size of more than 218,000 individuals, the Jackpot UK list is "a real prize for any marketers wishing to target consumers with niche interests and gaming hobbies."

She credits the multi-channeled way that Jackpot targets its consumers, which includes direct response TV and scratch card inserts in newsstand titles and third party mailings, for resulting in "a very affluent list. This is an excellent opportunity for gaming firms as well as charity, personal banking, financial services, travel & leisure, automotive, mail order and publishing companies."

Lloyd James Group has had pretty good year, adding the Jackpot appointment to an ever-expanding list and media management portfolio, which includes Homebase Spend & Save, Debenhams, Bauer Media and HBoS.

Infusionsoft, a vendor of marketing automation software for small businesses, has announced that it will guarantee to double the sales of any small business that signs up for its Web-based marketing automation software.

Infusionsoft officials say they want to make their product "more accessible to a wider small business audience" in 2009, and that this promo is "a risk-free way" to kick that off.

As of now Infusionsoft customers who sign up for Infusionsoft Pro or Deluxe editions receive the Infusionsoft "Double Your Sales" Guarantee. This official DYS Guarantee evolved from a test trial successfully completed last summer by customer All About Spelling, Inc. "as a result of Infusionsoft's Edge of Success contest," according to the Infusionsofties.

The experience with All About Spelling and numerous other Infusionsoft customers in doubling sales also led to the creation of the Infusionsoft Double Your Sales Club, with membership extended to those businesses that doubled their sales using Infusionsoft. Members will be recognized with perks such as advanced training, free materials and discounts.

"Infusionsoft has been gearing up to offer a guarantee to increase sales, and now we are thrilled to confidently promise doubled sales," said Clate Mask, CEO of Infusionsoft. "2009 will be the year of the entrepreneur."

Infusionsoft officials say the firm has tripled its customer base over the last two years, as well as releasing an upgrade to its core product and adding $7.9 million in Series B financing in 2008, on top of an 80 percent increase in revenue.

The privately held, Inc. 500 company, based in Gilbert, Arizona is funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures and vSpring Capital.

OpenAir, a NetSuite company and vendor of on-demand professional services automation software, has announced a host of changes to its PSA software.

The company has also announced a number of new joint customer wins -- including Bluewolf Group, Resort Technology Partners, NPower NY and M62 - for their work as Salesforce.com integrator. OpenAir, company officials say, brings together the capabilities of customer relationship management and PSA.

With the demand for OpenAir Professional Service Automation Software from Salesforce.com users, company officials felt it was time to "develop its integration platform." Most recently, OpenAir added the ability to specify a task designation when pushing Salesforce.com cases into OpenAir. This new functionality is intended for organizations using Salesforce.com cases for ticket tracking.

OpenAir customers can push their Salesforce.com prospect records to OpenAir via a single sign-on interface and create a project to correspond with each closed opportunity. Company officials say this lets them eliminate the need to re-enter data into OpenAir.

 As a software reseller and systems integration firm, Bluewolf Group both uses and sells OpenAir's advanced software products. "The integration between OpenAir and Salesforce.com provides us with the marriage of two of our critical business systems," said Eric Berridge, co-founder of Bluewolf.

As part of what company officials describe as "an ongoing initiative to achieve a breathtaking customer experience," Sage has appointed nine Business Partners with Customer Development Center status.

Recognition is intended to "highlight the continual efforts DMC Software channel into customer service and their level of expertise in the Sage 200 product area," according to the Sagians.

As featured on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, Mike Ramsay, Managing Director of DMC Software, said that while customer service is integral to any businesses success, "the title Sage Customer Development Center supports this and identifies DMC Software as being better placed to handle Sage 200 support, development and migration from Sage 50 Accounts products."

At the end of January Sage are due to release the latest version of Sage 200, Sage 200 2009. The new edition of Sage 200 has what Sage officials say is improved usability and functionality, and is "the result of customer and business partner feedback, incorporating the input of focus group wish lists."

New features include secure online payment handling facilities, user workspace to provide information at a glance, compliance with VAT regulations surrounding deposit handling, help files in a new Web-based interface and an improved Project Accounting module, as well as tighter synchronization between Sage 200 CRM and other modules.

In addition to the Sage 200 Suite, DMC Software offers independent Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Accounts products as well as professional services.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

FYI: The DynamicsExchange CRM AnswerCenter Wiki is here.

It's described by its developers as "filling a gap in bringing Web 2.0 and Social Web technologies to the time consuming trouble-shooting aspects of implementations and eases the ongoing education of users, and administrators."

Like a normal wiki anyone can use or contribute new posts or edit posts. The Wiki has a posting approval process to keep out objectionable unrelated content or inappropriate self-promotion. Most contributions come from technology communities where issues are discussed and not necessarily resolved, but in the CRM AnswerCenter Wiki only a precise question and the concise answer are posted, its developers say, "saving substantial time on the current multiple searches and reviews, posting and waiting, and searching more."

The Wiki is optimized for easier search and advanced search functionality to reduce time to answer.

DynamicsExchange.com has been in development for over a year by Microsoft's Dynamics CRM Gold Partners, according to the Microsofties, and still in beta, is described by them as "dedicated to the deployment of better tools for the access, review, implementation, support, purchase, development, and maintenance of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM enterprise software platform."

The new community site is said to benefit from the latest Web technologies and philosophies and, most importantly, independence from Microsoft having sole responsibility for global community wide knowledge, product, and service availability. Contributing and accessing anything on DynamicsExchange is free, even partner recognition advertising.

The president of a founding partner of DynamicsExchange.com, Darryl Henderson, says that since this is a beta announcement "we're not ready for a rush of users just yet, just more partners to provide usability feedback and contribution, including their promotional content."

The partner portal is scheduled to enter beta by the end of January, allowing all partners access to community visitors.

Boomi has announced that Ingres Corporation, a vendor of open source database management software and support services, has selected Boomi AtomSphere for its Software-as-a-Service integration technology.

AtomSphere will be used to integrate internal business applications including finance, human resources and analytics for Ingres, according to the Ingressors. The company has adopted a strategy of using only SaaS and open source products for its internal business systems. 

So the company needed a SaaS integration product for its portfolio of SaaS and open source applications.  Doug Harr, CIO at Ingres, said Boomi was "a natural choice," as it "epitomizes the value of SaaS and true multi-tenant products. Just a few years ago, we would have had to pay $100,000 or more for an enterprise grade integration platform like this or spend tens of thousands on writing custom code."

After implementing its initial integration processes Ingres is eliminating manual processes, duplicate data entry and data synchronization errors.

Bob Moul, Boomi's president and CEO, said working with Ingres "is a natural fit as our views and strategies on using pure SaaS technology are perfectly aligned.

DataForceCRM, which makes sales lead management software and CRM software, is coming out with a promotion guaranteeing results or "customers get money back, no questions asked," company officials say.

"CRM users have struggled with low return on high per user costs," according to DataForceCRM officials, who add that in their view, "a great product, offered for a fair price, will add value and win market share."

Hard to argue with that logic. Company officials say most online CRM is priced at $65 per user per month or higher these days - "and the buyer of CRM often needs other modules that jack the cost even higher." DataForceCRM is offering Enterprise CRM for ten bucks per user per month, guaranteeing results "or your money back."

Each client is set up a dedicated server for flexibility, security and performance, company officials say, adding that campaign creation and tracking are provided "to make sure marketing spend is invested wisely. Rich e-mail and mail merge features are provided" as well.

There are Lead and Opportunity Management modules, and the Customer Support feature includes trouble ticket tracking and a customer portal in the user pricing. There's also order management, which company officials claim is "not available in most CRM, including partner and vendor management, quoting, orders, invoicing and PO generation."

Lots of other features as well, including Outlook and Office plugins. The company sells a commission and revenue module for manufacturing companies and manufacturer's representatives to import and track point of sales data and commission data including orders and shipments as well.

Convergys Corporation has announced that long-standing client Vivo has extended its five-year partnership with Convergys with a new two-year contract to provide production operations support.

The vendor's consulting and services team is also working with Vivo on two other projects aimed at "growing Vivo's national footprint" and "ensuring the operator's ability to support future growth." Vivo is a wireless carrier in the southern hemisphere with more than 43 million subscribers.

Under the terms of the two-year contract extension, Convergys will continue to manage its product in the production environment, supporting postpaid subscribers with provisioning, activation, customer care, dispute resolution, finance, collections, rating and billing, usage, customer interfaces, and the launch of new products and services.

"Vivo remains focused on its goals of serving its customers well while growing its business in the competitive Brazilian market," said Jean-Hervé Jenn, Convergys President International.

Vivo offers phone calls all over the country, according to Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações. The firm also develops projects like the pioneer program of recycling cell phones, batteries and accessories, which since its launch has collected more than 1.5 million items.

Through the Instituto Vivo, the company invests in initiatives geared to the cause of socio-cultural inclusion of persons with disabilities and education.

Xactly Corporation, a vendor of on-demand sales performance management, has announced what company officials are calling "the third straight year of record revenue, with significant gains in customer growth."

In the 12 months ending December 31, 2008, Xactly claims more than 140 percent increase in recurring revenue and an 87 percent year-over-year increase in total revenue. The company also added to its customer base, with a third of existing customers adding new modules or subscribers, and increased its total number of subscribers by 84 percent.

Christopher Cabrera, president and CEO, Xactly, said the company had a renewal rate of 90 percent, adding that "more than one third of our customers added subscribers or additional Xactly modules in 2008."

In 2008 the vendor secured $30 million in new financing, launched the fourth generation of its flagship Xactly Incent on-demand sales compensation management application and introduced an application for using non-cash incentives, called Xactly Rewards.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a fine old Eric Clapton rocker, "Tulsa Time." It's hard for me to call Clapton the greatest rock guitarist ever, as many would like to do. Jeff Beck was more brilliant, Jimmy Page harder, Steve Howe more technically accomplished, Jimi Hendrix more inventive, Eddie Van Halen flashier and the best guitar attack in all rock is the Keith Richards-Ronnie Wood two-headed monster for the Stones. Clapton? Probably the best mix of all the above in one package:

Composite Software has announced that the nation's fourth largest bank, Wachovia Corporation (well, fourth largest after its merger with Wells Fargo & Company), has selected its Composite Information Server.  Wachovia officials say the Composite software will be put in its Corporate Investment Banking line to help with holdings and offerings information for customers. 

Composite's data virtualization layer is intended to simplify "the complexity of accessing siloed and disparate data sources," according to the Compositians, who say the technology "reaches data where it is" and "federates the disparate data into services and views." 

 The server's ability to "cache our data from multiple federated sources" was one of the key selling points, according to Sid Vyas, managing director, Corporate and Investment Banking Technology, Wachovia.  "Our data federation platform supports product and client data as well as the transaction data reporting and analytics."

When dealing with data integration, "there is a difference between art and execution," adds Sanjay Mishra, director of data architecture at Wachovia. "We need to get the execution right."

Additionally, Composite Software's technology plays an integral role in service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives that support delivery of best practices in shared services.  These initiatives will accelerate applications' time to market, therefore realizing their business value sooner.

Founded in 2002, Composite is a privately held, venture-funded corporation based in Silicon Valley.

...

Melissa Data's Data Quality Suite has been adopted by Las Vegas-based Clairvoyix, a consumer data management and direct marketing firm.

Melissa officials describe the toolkit as a contact data verification product.

 Clairvoyix performs data hygiene and data enhancement services, counting La Quinta Inns and Suites - described as "limited-service hotels," First Coffee wasn't aware that was a service category. I guess it pretty well describes what to expect, though.

Mike Schmitt, CEO of Clairvoyix, said one factor in choosing Melissa was that the company "has the highest value-to-price ratio in the industry." Schmitt added that his company's clients "see the benefit of targeted marketing, especially in a down economy."   

 Clairvoyix integrates the Data Quality Suite into the marketing automation product it provides to its clients. For La Quinta Inns and Suites, Clairvoyix manages the complete history of guest records while capturing a file of guest checkout records nightly. The company "verifies, validates and standardizes the checkout data at night, in a lights out, automated environment that is part of their Software-as-a-Service marketing automation product.

...

TreeHouse Interactive, a vendor of on demand partner relationship management and other technology products, has announced it closed 2008 with a 35 percent increase in annual revenue and a 30 percent expanded customer base.

TreeHouse officials believe companies are looking at the SaaS model more seriously than ever these days. According to a CMS Watch 2009 IT predictions report cited by the TreeHousers, companies will "look more to their SaaS product providers to offer a full suite of tools and capabilities."

"While economic conditions are challenging in today's market, our customers are more concerned than ever about market penetration and how to expand sales through their partner network," said Erich Flynn, CEO of TreeHouse Interactive.

In a down economy, company officials believe, firms look for tools that can increase revenue and market penetration without increasing costs. What happens many times is they simply turn to their existing partner sales channel to try to do this without incurring the direct costs associated with adding dedicated sales people. TreeHouse's Reseller View product would probably be attractive to companies looking to shave costs by automating partner applications, deal registration, and other scalable partnership management duties.

According to Simplyhired.com, a job search engine and recruitment advertising network, the number of marketing automation and demand generation jobs have increased 262 percent in the last 18 months. So yes, companies are still investing in areas that will advance the sales and marketing process for stronger pipelines.

...

Research announced by The Data Warehousing Institute is said by company officials to indicate what they term "an increasing adoption of columnar databases as the platform of choice for data warehousing and analytic applications."

Company officials attribute the rise to the products' ability to deliver fast query response and  "compress and provide access to large amounts of detail data."  

According to Philip Russom, senior manager, TDWI Research, a common complaint that TDWI hears from BI workers is that their data warehouse platform consists of a traditional DBMS and SMP hardware, both designed for transaction processing, not data warehousing. "Users are spending a significant amount of time and energy tweaking transactional platforms to get adequate performance for the type of queries and data volumes common in today's data warehousing environments," he said.

He says the search for something different "has led many of them to explore columnar databases, especially when they can be deployed in a Massively Parallel Processing architecture."      

"It is clear why companies are adopting columnar database technology. Our survey research aligns with TDWI findings and indicates that more than 50 percent of companies have significant performance and scalability issues with their data warehousing and business intelligence applications," noted ParAccel Vice President of Marketing Kim Stanick.

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Bridgeline Software, a vendor of SaaS-based Web application management software and apps, has announced that a Midwest utility company has launched a new public site developed by Bridgeline Software on iAPPS Framework and iAPPS Content Manager.

The iAPPS Framework and Product Suite are SaaS products that unify Content Management, Analytics, eCommerce, and eMarketing capabilities.

Targeted to a customer base that includes homeowners, businesses, and contractors, the site provides users with a place to pay bills online and access other self-service tools, as well as learn about various energy efficiency tips to help reduce household energy usage.

The site's energy efficiency section includes energy saving programs, do-it-yourself project information, and other resources. Company officials say the energy-efficient house interactive tool available on the site "allows users to see how they can realize energy savings at home in a real-world setting and apply those techniques to their own energy profile." The site also includes dedicated content and tools for the commercial user such as rebate information.

There's also integrated functionality like online bill pay, offered in both English and Spanish on the site.

Bridgeline Software is headquartered near Boston with additional locations in Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, New York, Washington, D.C., and Bangalore.

Last week Bridgeline announced that what company officials refer to as "a leading National Football League franchise" selected Bridgeline to develop an eCommerce application for their online business and the public Web site.

And speaking of the NFL, here's what you need to know for this weekend's games: Arizona has two-time NFL MVP and Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald, the greatest wide receiver on the planet. Philadelphia has Donovan "Choke" McNabb and the genuinely fearsome Brian Westbrook. Edge: Cardinals. Both Pittsburgh and Baltimore have terrifying defenses, whereas the Steelers have Super Bowl winner Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback the Ravens have wunderkind rookie Joe Flacco. Edge: Steelers.