By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is The Best of 1968-1973 by The Steve
Miller Band. I’m a joker…
Datamonitor is predicting that North America's
$458 million hosted and managed speech services market “is tipped to exhibit an
aggressive 15% year-over-year growth rate through the next four years.”
Their report, “Voice as a Service,” says growth is being spurred by a
saturated hosted/managed DTMF market forcing hosted IVR
providers in North America to sharpen their focus on speech services to arrest
the precipitous slide of their revenues and create new revenue streams.
“In tandem with this,” they say, “smaller providers that
specialize in hosted speech services are gaining greater momentum and
credibility among enterprises and service providers.”
…
NCO Group, Inc., which sells business
process outsourcing services, announced today that during the second quarter of
2005, it reported net income of $14.1
million, or $0.42 per diluted share, as compared to net income of $14.4
million, or $0.43 per diluted share, in the second quarter of 2004.
Their revenue declined – in the second quarter of 2005 they
got $247.2 million, a decrease of 3.2%, or $8.1 million, from Q2 2004’s revenue
of $255.3 million.
NCO’s operations are organized into four market specific
divisions that include: Accounts Receivable Management North America, Customer
Relationship Management, Portfolio Management and Accounts Receivable
Management International. For the second quarter of 2005, these divisions
accounted for $192.5 million, $43.8 million, $27.8 million, and $3.3 million of
revenue, respectively.
For the second quarter of 2004, the ARM North America, CRM,
Portfolio Management and ARM International divisions accounted for $185.0
million, $59.4 million, $24.1 million and $3.5 million of the revenue,
respectively.
The decrease in
revenue is being pinned on the loss of a telecommunications client within the company’s
CRM division. “While the implementation of newly committed client contracts
is progressing on schedule, the revenue from such opportunities has not yet had
a meaningful impact on the company,” officials say.
Michael J. Barrist, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
said “During the quarter our CRM division continued both the planned exit of a
large telecom client and the implementation of several new client opportunities.”
NCO also announced that it continues to expect earnings per
share to be approximately $1.70 to $1.80 per diluted share for 2005.
…
This came out late yesterday afternoon, so if you, like,
knocked off early or something you missed it. FrontRange Solutions USA Inc.,
which sells service management, CRM, and voice application products for the
enterprise market announced the
availability of IP Contact Center 5.0 to the Communication Management product
group.
The new version of FrontRange’s Voice Over Internet
Protocol-based software suite features Quality Management and integration with
other FrontRange product “families,” including the company’s HEAT, GoldMine
Corporate Edition and the new IT Service Management modules.
IPCC is being pitched as having relatively painless
integration to industry-leading business applications, which is a selling point
for the target of “contact center managers [who] scrutinize and manage costs
meticulously,” according to company officials, as it’s engineered to reduce
implementation as well as ongoing costs.
There are also features like the optional module Quality
Management, with which a supervisor can record calls with server based
recording and call rating. Recording can be activated by schedule, call
scenario or upon supervisor request.
It has business application integration reducing the need
for middleware or professional services, and hey, those Russian and German
versions are ready, too.
…
You may have seen this yesterday, First CoffeeSM
missed it, so here it is – London-based Voipfone – guess what line of business they’re
in – has added a Virtual PBX service
aimed at small business to its range of self-service Voice over IP
products.
Voipfone’s Self Service PBX is being pitched squarely at small
businesses, trumpeting “features and functionality of telephone systems that
were previously only affordable by large corporations,” according to company
officials.
It’s actually a fairly sophisticated call system, suitable
for an ordinary office, a virtual office, several offices in several locations
and even the home, if you’re more into techy-toy phone systems at home than
First CoffeeSM is.
“The new service costs less than £1 (about a buck-thirty) per
extension per month; there are no set-up costs and no contracts,” officials say.
Translation: “We want small businesses to have no excuse not to buy this.”
All extensions have a full PBX suite of features, including the
obligatory Call Conferencing, Call Transfer, Voice Mail, Music on Hold, Call
Waiting, Call ID, Three Way Calling and free calling between offices and homes.
As sophisticated and low-priced as it is, what really gets
it in the door with small businesses is how easy to set up it is, since it’s
all preconfigured and web-based. “The features just work – you don’t need to spend days with a telephone
expert to use it. It’s as simple or as complicated as you want it to be,”
company officials promise.
Colin Duffy, CEO of Inet Telecoms Ltd (Voipfone) said with modern
IP technologies, “our customers no longer need several incoming PSTN and ISDN
lines and complex and expensive hardware just to make and receive phone calls
within their offices. Nor do they need a trained telecoms engineer to set it up
and maintain it – Voipfone’s Virtual PBX does all that for you.”
“All the calls within our network are free, no matter where
they are made to,” Duffy promises. “It means that you can have one number for
your customers to dial and it doesn’t matter where your extensions are located;
if you have home workers or a home office, a real office in the UK and another
in France, it’s as though you are all in the same building.”
As Duffy says, “it sounds too good to be true, but for once,
it isn’t.”
Infonetics has recently predicted that business-hosted VoIP
service revenue will outstrip managed IP PBX services by 2006, “driven largely
by uptake among SMBs.”
...
Here’s an interesting bit: GMPCS, a provider of global
mobile personal communications via satellite, is announcing that it has placed
the first order for personal broadband
satellite terminals for the Inmarsat
Broadband Global Area Network service.
“Personal broadband satellite terminals” – sounds cool,
doesn’t it?
“Why, yes, that’s my own personal broadband satellite
terminal there in the Hummer.”
Or: “Hey, wanna see some etchings of my personal broadband
satellite terminal?”
The order for 1,000 units was placed with Nera SatCom, a
subsidiary of Nera.
The Nera WorldPro 1000 terminal, which is about the size and
weight of a large and heavy cell phone, will enable customers of GMPCS to connect to
Inmarsat’s BGAN service at speeds of up to 384 kbps – okay, we’re not exactly
downloading streaming video right off the bat here – from 85 percent of the
world’s land mass.
The service is scheduled for availability from the fourth quarter
of 2005 and will let users “access both voice and data communications
simultaneously from a single satellite terminal,” according to GMPCS officials.
It’s marketed specifically to military, aid and media users “who
need instant access to broadband communications in areas with poor terrestrial
communications infrastructure,” company officials explain. There are wireless
and wireline options for connecting computers and voice handsets.
GMPCS Personal Communications is a subsidiary of the
Norwegian public company Telenor Satellite Services, and raked in revenue of
over $24 million in 2004.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content.
