By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is as guilty and pleasurable as guilty pleasures get -- literate dance music, specifically ABC's late-career live album, Lexicon Of Live:

Jacada Ltd., a customer service operations vendor, has announced that Lillian Vernon, a 54-year-old national catalog and online retailer selling gift, household, children's and fashion accessory products, has selected Jacada WorkSpace as its standardized unified agent desktop for its customer service operations.

Mike Muoio, CEO for Lillian Vernon, said his company is standardizing on Jacada WorkSpace "as our unified desktop to create greater operational efficiency, increase agent and customer satisfaction and reduce agent training times, which is critical during our peak seasons." 

Instead of having to locate customer data in multiple systems, using Jacada WorkSpace, all relevant data can be automatically displayed when and as the agent needs it, "significantly reducing the amount of time it takes to navigate through complex customer interaction processes," according to Jacada officials.

Jacada WorkSpace, using non-invasive integration methods, will unify many unlinked processes into a single, intelligent desktop for each of the 500 Lillian Vernon agent desktop environments.

…

By the way, a couple days ago I thought I'd go back and fill in the gaps and catch a piece of rock history I'd overlooked the first time around by downloading the "underground classic" album New York Dolls, frequently cited as one of those hugely influential records nobody's ever actually heard, much more talked about and namedropped than listened to.

What a waste. Mind you my Stones-Ramones-Velvets-Clash-X-Pistols-Supersuckers credentials are fully in order, but man, this album stinks. $5.99 I wish I had back. It's one thing to be a genuine punk, it's another to derive influence from genuine punks, but I have no use for smarmy mannequins who simply try to imitate punks.

The music's not horrible, but David Johansson comes across as such a fake, insufferable twit. He's since tried to surf pretty much every pop trend that's come along, I haven't heard any of his Buster Poindexter music but it can't be any more puerile and disposable than this.

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Interactive Intelligence Inc., which sells business communications software, has opened a new Eastern regional headquarters office in Herndon, Virginia. Located about 30 minutes west of Washington, D.C., the move is part of "an ongoing strategy to add education centers around the globe that supplement the company’s primary North American training facility at its global headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana," according to company officials.

The new Herndon office will initially be staffed by Interactive Intelligence sales, support, and professional services employees. It officially opens next Thursday.

In addition to its new Herndon office and a recently opened Western regional headquarters office in Irvine, California, Interactive Intelligence relocated its U.K. headquarters to a larger office near London last month, and the company has plans to expand its Amsterdam sales and support office later this year.

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Palo Alto-based startup Xeequa Corp. has announced new Web 2.0 software applications for business people.

While traditional software, whether installed on-premise or delivered as a service (SaaS), is purchased and owned by one company for their employees, company officials say, Xeequa is "designed to cross company boundaries and allows instant networking with partners and alliances, sharing of business opportunities and sales leads and collaborating over the Internet."

What the company calls its "simple sign-up process" allows business people to "create a partner network and collaborate immediately without any of the time-consuming implementation processes common to traditional enterprise software."

"While today's business world is completely networked, most of our business software architecture still goes back to the '70s" claims Xeequa founder and CEO Axel Schultze. "Even if you are looking at the latest on-demand CRM applications, they are architected for and purchased by individual companies for their internal users but can't cross company boundaries."

This gave him the idea to design Xeequa's Web 2.0 applications to be used "by millions of consumers." The way company officials explain it, Xeequa created a Web 2.0 business application "entirely from scratch and converges what works for the consumer net with business applications. That way we help business people to network, share and collaborate across company boundaries instantly."

"While the price of traditional CRM software ranges from several thousand to millions of dollars and SaaS-based tools is purchased for rates starting at $50 per user per month, the Xeequa system is offered to the end user at no charge," company officials state. "In order to accelerate adoption, the Xeequa management team selected a sponsorship-based business model."

And you know what that means.

The new system is currently in Alpha test and will be available for public Beta on February 22nd 2007. Registration is open now at www.xeequa.com.

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NetSuite, Inc., an on-demand CRM vendor, has announced that Tim Dilley has joined NetSuite as executive vice president of Services for NetSuite.

In this role, Dilley is charged with overseeing NetSuite's global initiatives in professional services, training and customer support and customer service.

Company officials say he brings "more than 26 years of experience in enterprise consulting, and executive management leadership in professional services and customer support. Most recently he headed Services for Informatica Corp."

Prior to NetSuite, Dilley served as senior vice president of Global Customer Services at Informatica Corporation, a $300 million annual revenue enterprise software company, which provides the Global 2,000 with data integration products and services.

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1TouchSoftware Solutions Inc., which sells Enterprise Restaurant Management Systems (eRMS), has announced the expansion of the 1TouchSoftware eRMS to include enhanced integrated customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities.

The new features "amplify customer loyalty and retention, enhance the customer experience, and increase revenues," according to company officials.

1TouchSoftware has upgraded the 1Touch.pos front-of-the-house module with real-time CRM functions designed to improve the overall in-restaurant customer experience. The integrated features allow wait staff and managers to access and view customer preferences on the POS while those customers are seated and served.

Based on configurable customer attributes, the system displays data such as customer loyalty statistics, birthday and anniversary dates, meal and beverage preferences, preferred seating and server, as well as special needs such as allergies, accessibility and diets. Heck, you almost don't have to open your mouth: "Hi Mr. Schicklegruber, happy birthday today, here's your favorite birthday meal, the Hawaiian Chicken Livers, side of slaw and a nice cold Pete's Wicked…"

The 1TouchSoftware was developed for the multi-unit market, using customer data captured at all restaurants across the franchise or enterprise.

No, you can't escape it, so here's what you do: Pay cash. They hate that.

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