By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Al Stewart’s A Beach Full of Shells,
his new album and first in a few years:
It’s quarterly reporting season, and CRM vendor Amdocs
Limited weighs in with a good one.
The St. Louis-based vendor, which is hitting the Chinese
market hard, reported that for the third quarter ended June 30, 2005, revenue was $507.4 million,
representing sequential growth of 3.9 percent and an increase of 12.7 percent
from last year’s third quarter.
Excluding acquisition-related costs net of related tax
effects of $1.7 million, net income was
$78.8 million, or $0.37 per diluted share, an increase of $15.3 million, or
24.1 percent of Q3 2004.
The company’s net income was $77.1 million, or $0.36 per
diluted share, over net income of $59.9 million in Q3 2004.
…
SAP didn’t do too badly either in their Q2
2005, slightly exceeding estimates. They’re
reporting software revenues of 576 million euros… sigh, break out the
calculator… okay, at 1.21 euros to the dollar, that’s… $701 million, up from
$605 million last second quarter. That’s a 16 percent increase in any currency.
American license sales were up strongly, but the Walldorf,
Germany-based giant is a little concerned over declining German license revenue.
Total revenues for second quarter of 2005 were euro 2.02
billion, or $2.46 billion, over 2004’s $2.19 billion, a 13 percent increase.
Software revenues in the U.S. – or, as SAP puts it, “money
that didn’t go into Larry Ellison’s pocket” – increased 24 percent to euro 174
million, or $211 million for the second quarter of 2005, a tidy enough sum.
Software revenues in the EMEA region grew 9 percent to $351 million for the second quarter of 2005, an
eight percent increase from 2004.
“Licenses looked good with 16 percent growth. Within this,
Germany was the one question mark – licenses here were down 13 percent year
over year,” analysts for Morgan Stanley told MarketWatch.
SAP blamed the poor German performance to “uncertainty
surrounding the upcoming national elections and sales-force reorganizations,”
and “expects the region to rebound next quarter,” MarketWatch says.
…
Meanwhile, things aren’t so hot over at Technology Solutions Company.
You know it wasn’t the Quarter of Dreams when the report begins by saying that TSC
“today reported that it has taken actions to improve results.”
The company announced headcount reductions and office
closings, which they hope will result in “annualized savings of approximately
$5.2 million and a charge to earnings of approximately $1.7 million in the
second quarter,” results of which will be announced August 11. It promises to
be a rather dreary day at TSC – among other things, the company will record a
$0.7 million charge for impairment of goodwill and intangibles.
The company anticipates
revenues for the second quarter ending June 30, 2005 to be in the range of $9.0
million to $9.2 million and its earnings results, which includes a $2.7
million gain on the settlement of a contractual dispute as disclosed in the
Form 8-K dated May 13, 2005, to be a
loss of ($0.06) per share.
The company previously had expected revenue of between $9.5
to $10.5 million and a loss between ($0.07) to ($0.10) per share.
…
Best Practices LLC is announcing a
new report, “Managing Contact Center Reps for Maximum Productivity.”
According to company officials, the report aims to help contact center managers
finding the balance between challenging their representatives to achieve
maximum efficiency “without pushing so hard that the contact center suffers
from low morale and high turnover.”
This, the report finds, requires “knowing what expectations
are reasonable, developing representatives to a level where they can achieve
these expectations, and finally rewarding them for successfully attaining
goals.”
The report presents research detailing “every step in the
process of successfully managing contact center representatives,” company
officials say. It has the specific performance metrics of 13 companies in the
areas of employee productivity, turnover, company costs, and more, and “explains
the training and development practices that leading contact centers are using
to develop their reps to the point where they can handle twice as many calls as
their competitor’s reps.”
One best-in-class hiring technique: Conduct a 4-stage
interview process. Begin with an interview over the phone, follow that with basic
skills testing, a role-playing exercise, and an interview where candidates
visit the contact center floor where they would be working. Best Practices
found this process “set realistic candidate expectations for the job, so that
turnover due to poor job satisfaction was minimized.”
…
IP vendor ShoreGroup, Inc. and Prominence Networks, a vendor
of real-time IP voice and video applications are announcing a partnership where
ShoreGroup will OEM Prominence Networks
MediaIP service delivery products.
The partnership combines ShoreGroup’s CaseSentry Systems Management product
with Prominence Networks MediaIP service delivery products, said Sid Nag,
Founder, President and CEO of Prominence Networks.
Nag said the new products will “specifically target the
demanding availability, quality and performance requirements of today’s
advanced IP Communication environments.”
…
A “startling study” conducted by Qpass of 100 U.S. and
European digital content Websites revealed that “more than one third of the
sites are unsecured, allowing users to ‘shoplift’
music tracks and download them as free ringtones,” the press release
warned.
Oh my. First CoffeeSM supposes if he tried really hard
he could give a damn.
“The extent of the problem in US may have already cost the
mobile and music industries an estimated $40 million U.S. since the beginning
of 2004, and a further $123 million U.S. by 2007,” according to Qpass.
$40 million. In other words, what Geffen grossed off two Hole
CDs back in the ‘90s. We’re not talking the death of an industry here, folks.
Evidently when users preview music before they purchase it –
“an important part of the customer purchasing experience,” according to the
press release – they discovered that two-thirds of web sites tested offered
preview music files between 15 and 30 seconds, “the perfect length to convert
into a ringtone.”
Qpass tested 42 mobile carrier portals and 58 online
entertainment and music stores offering full track music downloads. “Out of the
sites tested,” they report, “40 percent of carrier sites and 31 percent of
other portals such as online music stores and entertainment sites were
unsecured.”
“This is the mobile and cyber-equivalent of test-driving a
car and then not having to give it back,” said Steve Shivers, Senior Vice
President, Corporate Strategy and Development at Qpass, trying desperately to
create the perception of a problem a company might hire Qpass to solve. Snitching
a thirty-second ringtone’s like stealing a car... one wonders how Shivers would react to a real problem.
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