By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Billie Holiday’s Lady In Autumn, a
collection of her later Verve recordings:
Let’s start far afield: PT.
Bank Lippo, Tbk, Indonesia’s first private bank, in an attempt to
strengthen its business-continuance process, has bought a storage area network product from Cisco Systems.
The product comprises a Fibre Channel-based SAN with
Internet Protocol integration, enabling stored data to connect with the network
infrastructure. With the new system, LippoBank hopes to be better able to
manage its databases and to recover from a disaster, as well as lower costs and
improving staff efficiency in the bargain.
The product replaced a mixture of storage systems and
servers for customer account information and internal records such as management
information system, decision support system and human resource data. Apart from
the technical problems of keeping track of a growing number of heterogeneous
storage devices, the bank was also beginning to run into significant problems
in attempting to manage disparate data pools that contained a mix of critical
and noncritical information.
Furthermore, with network security as a growing concern,
disaster recovery was always at the forefront in any IT consideration. As well
it should have been.
The new integrated SAN product features Cisco MDS 9506 Multilayer directors
connected via IP links to enable synchronous and asynchronous backups between
the production sites and the disaster-recovery sites. Each Cisco MDS 9506
Director links the IBM pSeries 570 server, xSeries servers, mainframe zSeries
server and 3590 Tape Drives with an IBM Enterprise Storage Server. The Cisco
MDS 9506 is a highly scalable, standards-based director-class SAN switch with
strong disaster-recovery capabilities.
The whole Cisco SAN product installed by Multipolar has improved LippoBank’s
storage capabilities and ability to react quickly to unforeseen challenges, we’re
glad to report. With the Fibre Channel-over-IP (FCIP) link, LippoBank is able
to place two physically distinct storage systems at separate secured locations
for data replication and fast disaster recovery.
…
Pulling it in a little closer to home, Norwegian company Firm
(yes, that’s the name), here meet my pet, Cat), a vendor of software for market research and Enterprise
Insight Management, has announced plans
to launch a new module of Confirmit for onsite self-interviewing.
The new module named Confirmit Kiosk is expected by management
to “improve the way customer experience is measured and how businesses manage
customer feedback.”
Fully integrated with the web-centric Confirmit platform and its suite of
survey, reporting and feedback management tools, companies can deploy the
Confirmit Kiosk software on computer stations across thousands of malls, shops
and/or hotels to measure customer experience instantly and onsite.
Confirmit Kiosk also enables businesses to conduct automatic
follow-up of customer complaints in addition to continuous quality assurance of
its customer facing operations.
“While customer experience and customer loyalty is often regarded as intangible
and therefore immeasurable, it is exactly these factors that have direct impact
on their bottom line,” says Firm’s VP of Marketing Kjell Oksendal correctly.
Confirmit Kiosk can be implemented in online or offline locations and
integrated with existing CRM or other enterprise systems, delivering dashboards
and alerts to management and relevant stakeholders. It’s scheduled for release
in May.
…
SwiftPage E-mail today announced the
availability of SwiftPage E-mail Pro for ACT! by Sage, an integrated e-mail
marketing product that integrates with the popular ACT! by Sage contact
management software.
SwiftPage E-mail Pro includes broad new functionality that
enables businesses to better manage, analyze, and capitalize on their e-mail
marketing efforts.
SwiftPage E-mail offers the ability to monitor and track the results of each e-mail
marketing campaign through detailed graphical reports on who opened the e-mail
and what they clicked on, then assigning a score to rank prospects for target
segmenting.
Thus Sales Managers can compare sent, opened, and clicked
rates by each team member, while Marketing Managers can see how effective the e-mail
content is by analyzing the campaign across multiple users.
Messages may be sent from within Outlook, ACT! by Sage, Sage
CRM SalesLogix, or through SwiftPage E-mail’s host. SwiftPage E-mail is a
permission-based e-mail marketing service, and is fully compliant with the
CAN-SPAM law.
…
CoreTrac, Inc., which sells ResourceOne, a
CRM/Sales Force Automation product for community financial institutions, today
reported the addition of its Express Professional Services.
ResourceOne has been redesigned in response to feedback from CoreTrac customers,
company officials say: “A recently updated client voting system allows each
customer to prioritize development projects outlined for the upcoming year, as
well as provide additional ideas for future products.”
Once or twice a year a major development project, like Case
Management, will be scheduled for completion, CoreTrac officials say. As with
Case Management, some customers require more rapid development than the general
majority.
To expedite the development process of a particular project,
a customer can employ CoreTrac’s Express Professional Services. EPS covers
additional resources needed for quicker development to release a project in a
shorter time.
CoreTrac, Inc. is a privately held corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas.
The company is dedicated exclusively to providing its CRM/SFA product,
ResourceOne, to community financial institutions.
…
ProLogis, a vendor of distribution
facilities and services, today released
the latest edition of the ProLogis Supply Chain Review titled, “Voice
Recognition Systems – Technology at Work in Today’s Warehouse/Distribution
Facilities.”
The report, authored by noted warehousing and logistics
consultant Kenneth Ackerman, contends that VR systems are “arguably the most
important technological breakthrough in warehouse operations” since the advent
of barcode scanning.
“Most vendors indicate that an investment in a voice
recognition system will be paid back in 12 to 18 months,” Ackerman writes in
the report. “Typical testimonials call for a 60 percent reduction in picking
errors, productivity increases ranging from 11 percent to 40 percent over six
months, reductions in training time from days to hours, and a substantial
improvement in inventory accuracy.”
VR enables two-way communications between computerized
warehouse management systems and warehouse workers equipped with special
headsets. It can be used to automate command-and-control of a variety of tasks,
including order selection, receiving, sorting and truck-loading.
According to the report, VR systems generally result in a
wide variety of operational improvements, including lower error rates, higher
productivity, reduced customer returns and more accurate inventory accounting.
It finds that since the core technology behind VR systems
has been around long enough most major bugs have been eliminated by now, and it
concludes that “contrary to widely-held assumptions, warehouse workers are
generally receptive to using the technology.”
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content.