The news as of the first coffee this morning and the music is Bob Dylan's Modern Times:
CRM vendor Sand, an international provider of intelligent enterprise information management products, has announced that a large Asian telecommunications provider has purchased Sand/DNA for SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence as a nearline product to manage what Sand officials call "the rapidly growing volumes of data in its SAP Business Information Warehouse environment."
The Sand/DNA product, officially certified by SAP as an integrated ABAP add-on with SAP NetWeaver BI, was specifically developed to address the increasingly complex data management issues faced by companies running large-scale SAP NetWeaver BI implementations.
The sale, which was completed by a Sand business partner with global presence, will "mark the first installation of Sand/DNA for SAP BI in Asia," company officials say.
The telecommunications company, like many others, needs to maintain and use ever-increasing amounts of data in order to improve its ability to respond to marketing pressures and regulatory requirements. The Sand/DNA product is marketed to such companies as a tool which "allows massive amounts of data to be kept in a tiny footprint while retaining high-performance analytic capabilities and ease of management."
This sale provides continued evidence of the need for our product as data requirements continue to grow in the marketplace," said Linda Arens, senior director of marketing and alliances at Sand. "The key factors in this sale were the large infrastructure savings made possible by the ability to store SAP data in one-tenth of its original size, along with the unique retrieval performance offered by the Sand/DNA product."
FileVision, which calls itself a "global provider of office productivity software," has announced the availability of the new 4.5 version of its FileVision product.
FileVision 4.5 gives customers an enhanced custom relationship management (CRM) component for increased search, administration and workflow functionality, company officials say, as well as "a new web client for access from any web browser and an Application Integrator module for increased data access and usability between other integrated software products."
FileVision's new features are being billed as helping customers "further increase efficiency and productivity, while eliminating expenses associated with data integration issues."
"With the new FileVision 4.5, we're providing our small- and medium-sized business (SMB) customers the ability to decrease expenses incurred by integration projects with other software they're using and in some cases eliminate the need to purchase separate software such as a CRM product. FileVision 4.5 customers will have an all-in-one product for many of their office productivity needs," said Darin Davis, VP of product development, FileVision.
The new FileVision Web 2.0 AJAX client in 4.5 will enable customers to access their FileVision anywhere from a Web browser with increased performance and usability enhancements. The new FileVision Application Integrator module will eliminate problematic and expensive integration issues SMBs face when using a product like FileVision with proprietary software such as accounting, records management systems and other line of business applications.
"With many proprietary systems -- especially in healthcare and finance -- it is difficult for users to integrate and correlate information stored in that system with other products. FileVision strives to provide our customers with a product that can be used as a holistic management system or seamless enhancement to their existing technology and business processes," said Davis.
Cisco Systems, Inc. has announced, with the support of Microsoft, that the Cisco Unified CRM Connector 3.0 is now available in 20 languages. So if you were experiencing a failure to communicate with your Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil & Portuguese), Spanish, Swedish, UK English, US English, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese (simplified) and Japanese clients, well, help is here.
The Cisco Unified CRM Connector 3.0 is a customer relationship management (CRM) application integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. The product helps small and medium-sized businesses gain access to customer information on inbound and outbound calls, with a view to increasing operational efficiency and providing an improved customer experience.
The Cisco Unified CRM Connector 3.0 provides users with a complete view of the customer, including current and past purchases, sales information, order status, account relationships and billing information. The product provides employees with access to caller data quickly and simply.
When a call is received by an SMB client using Cisco Unified CallManager or Cisco Unified CallManager Express, the Cisco Unified CRM Connector 3.0 automatically links to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and provides onscreen pop-up windows of the customer contact record and phone call activity so that the service agent can track the call.
The same information and capabilities are also accessible remotely, so sales and service personnel in the field can also connect into the network quickly. New customer data or phone call information is uploaded back into the system, so the next interaction with the customer picks up where the last one left off.
Edzard Overbeek, Vice President, Commercial, Operations & Planning - Europe Cisco Systems, Inc, said: "Seventy per cent of all customer interactions take place over the phone. Companies that fail to establish strong relationships with their customers via this vital means of communication will not be as competitive as they could be."
"Historically SMBs have not had access to products that provide real-time and in-depth information about their customers," Overbeek said, noting that the Unified CRM Connector 3.0 "illustrates our ongoing commitment to SMBs."
Nicolas Führs, from one of those European companies whose names look like typos, connectiv! eSolutions GmbH, said the CRM connector is "an important tool for connectiv! eSolutions GmbH. Before our employees pick up the phone they see all relevant customer information on their screen. With the automatic creation of correlating call activities, all calls are monitored and documented in our CRM system. This is especially helpful when several employees are simultaneously working on the same project."
The newly-translated Cisco Unified CRM Connector 3.0 is delivered through an alliance of Cisco and Microsoft SMB focused distribution partners. To assist these companies, Cisco has introduced the Fast Start program. This is now available in 10 of the most common languages, providing resources to help partners sell Cisco Unified Communications and Microsoft Dynamics CRM products.
ShoreGroup, Inc., a vendor of converged network products, has announced that it has been awarded the contract and has begun the immediate deployment of its CaseSentry Systems Management product to manage a large-scale contact center for a prominent national services organization.
CaseSentry will provide comprehensive monitoring and management of the enterprise contact center environment, which employs a combination of 8,000 agents, 12,000 Cisco Customer Voice Portal ports and processes 100 million calls across 38 ACD systems during the customer's 6-month peak busy season.
The system automates the monitoring of the Cisco Unified Intelligent Contact Management Enterprise application, providing a centralized point of management to ensure that all contact center systems and supporting infrastructure are fully operational and meeting the organization's service level objectives.
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