By David
Sims
[email protected]
The news as
of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Louis Jordan’s “Doug the
Jitterbug:”
Green Beacon Solutions, a provider of
strategy, consulting and implementation services for Customer Relationship
Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, and Marketing Automation
technologies, has announced that it has
developed a streamlined approach for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 upgrade
projects that includes new and updated enhancements to help customers
achieve more business value from their investments.
An inaugural Dynamics CRM partner, Green Beacon has already
developed a set of targeted enhancements for prior releases that company
officials describe as streamlining the user experience and enabling customers
to maximize the return on their CRM investment.
The new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 platform provides a more
customizable framework for tailoring the user interface, business logic, and
reporting to each client’s business needs. This architecture also lets Green
Beacon’s consulting organization build targeted, vertical products that
integrate with clients’ business processes.
“Unlike most network applications which can be installed and
configured once, CRM applications must be customized and modified regularly to
ensure that they address current business demands,” said Benjamin Holtz, CEO of
Green Beacon Solutions.
Highlights of the Green Beacon’s customizations include:
Website Lead Capture.
Green Beacon’s Lead Capture integration allows companies to convert website
visitors into Microsoft Dynamics CRM leads. Prospects may enter contact
information, request sales literature or complete surveys while online as Microsoft
Dynamics CRM captures the prospect as a lead and triggers the beginning of the
sales process, notifying the appropriate sales representative of the new lead
to be qualified.
Customer Affinities.
Green Beacon’s Customer Affinities Module allows an unlimited set of interests,
preferences, and demographics to be stored on contact and account records. The
affinities are searchable using Microsoft’s new Advanced Searching and List
Building functionality in Dynamics CRM 3.0.
Org Chart. Green
Beacon’s Org Chart offers users a consolidated, hierarchical view of their
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accounts and Contacts. Org Chart provides a visual
depiction of Parent Accounts, Child Accounts (Sub Accounts), Contacts (Employees)
and other key relationships.
Sales Forecast.
This provides reps and managers instant access to an up-to-the-minute snapshot
of their sales pipeline, along with the ability to create custom views by
filtering on sales rep, territory, and/or status. Users have one-click access
to the Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities from the Sales Forecast report,
streamlining the process of updating forecasts for weekly sales meetings.
…
Latens Systems, a provider of IPTV Conditional
Access, has announced that Midwest
TelNet, a consortium of thirteen IOCs in southwest Wisconsin, has selected Latens FCAS Conditional Access
to secure its advanced IPTV services.
FCAS will
integrate with AmiNET110 and AmiNET500 set-top boxes from Amino, an IPTV
set-top box supplier and with Minerva’s iTV Manager.
Midwest
TelNet can now offer its subscribers secured video services that include
Pay-TV, High Definition, personal video recording, video-on-demand and subscription
video-on-demand as MPEG-2 streams.
Rodney
Olson, General Manager of Vernon Telephone, a member company of the Midwest
TelNet consortium said they chose Latens “because they have an enviable track
record in real-world deployments” and offer the sort of product that “satisfies
our service offer in the short and long term.”
Roy
Kirsopp, VP & GM at Amino said the integration of Latens FCAS with the AmiNET110
and AmiNET500 “widens the choice for all IPTV operators and removes the
pre-launch integration required.”
Latens is a
privately held company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, founded by broadcast
technology experts and says its “sole mission” is to provide “the industry’s
leading software-based Content & Revenue Protection Systems for pay-TV and
IPTV operators, as software security replaces legacy Conditional Access
technology.”
Latens uses
Secure Software Modules to maximize security and minimize the risk of attack.
…
A big happy birthday to Alexander Graham Bell, one of Scotland’s better exports, born in
Edinburgh today in 1847 and the man who made possible telemarketing.
…
Network inventory software is gaining telecom industry respect as a
proven ROI generator, according to a recent report from telecom analyst
firm Dittberner.
In a new research study titled “Telecom Provisioning, Network Inventory, and Service Management
Solutions,” Dittberner provides a sweeping 225-page analysis of the market. It also examines vendor offerings into detailed product, financial, and
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats assessments of leading
provisioning and inventory software suppliers.
Dittberner cites network inventory’s key value in providing
a framework and migration tools to help telecoms consolidate their inventory
and mechanize their provisioning processes.
On the heels of several carrier success stories with
inventory, Dittberner forecasts the market for network inventory and related
network discovery software will grow handsomely by a 9.4 percent Compound
Annual Growth Rate, from $333 million in 2005 to $521 million in 2010.
Network inventory systems are proving particularly useful in
broadband networks where they track services that overlay multiple
technologies, OSI layers, and multi-vendor networks.
Some recent successes detailed in the Dittberner study
include the following:
WilTel Communications’ network scattered across dozens of
regional centers was causing data accuracy problems such as stranded network
elements and over-provisioned services that were costly to isolate. An
inventory consolidation using an Open Telecommunications tool enabled WilTel to
reconcile its network and enforce business rules to prevent further problems.
Elisa, a leading operator in Finland, needed to consolidate
about 50 network inventory and provisioning systems it had built in-house or
acquired through mergers with other operators. With Comptel’s help, Elisa
created a new inventory system that assured better data quality, common
processes across the company, and reduced costs from maintaining fewer
inventory systems.
XO Communications faced a pressing need to unite its two
separate networks, the Allegiance and XO networks. The chief drawback was
that services for each of these networks had to be ordered separately. After
inventory was consolidated on a single MetaSolv system, XO set upon the task of
building integrations to mechanize provisioning.
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