By David Sims
David at firstcoffee.biz
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the greatest album released in rock history, The Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street:
Always nice to have a new name pop up on your radar screen: Quilogy, Inc., a systems integrator "headquartered in historic downtown St. Charles, Missouri," according to proud company officials, and located "minutes from St. Louis Lambert International Airport," and offices in lots of Midwestern and West Coast cities, offers professional services, and certified training, and specializes in using "emerging technologies."
Anyway, Quilogy has introduced its Quilogy Collaborative Healthcare Framework at the national Healthcare Information Management Systems Society show in New Orleans.
Quilogy is, in fact, a Microsoft National Managed Partner and a Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains, so you may have heard of them in that regard.
"Many years of working with healthcare organizations have allowed Quilogy to identify a set of patterns that apply universally to healthcare IT endeavors. These patterns form the basis of QCHF," which includes products for its people, best practices, and methodologies, says Bill Van Hout, healthcare practice manager, Quilogy.
Using its alliance with Microsoft, Quilogy incorporates use of technologies such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server in its products, which include Quilogy Healthcare Transparency Management, Quilogy People Finder, Quilogy Media Platform and Quilogy Forms Management.
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Interesting little bit by Antipodean industry observer Simon Hendery, noting that "New Zealand's biggest IT users seem in no rush to deploy Microsoft's Office 2007, adopting a wait and see attitude to the software suite."
It's generally worth noticing what happens in New Zealand, as sort of a canary in a coal mine. The latest World Bank rankings put Singapore as the most business-friendly economy in the world, with New Zealand in second place and the United States third, followed by Canada, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.
The country's small, highly educated, technologically aware and savvy, so it makes a great Petri dish for other industrialized technological societies -- changes can be implemented faster and the effects seen much more quickly than elsewhere.
A "majority of chief information officers and heads of IT at the country's top 20 government, education and corporate IT users" polled by Hendery's organization expressed "little enthusiasm for upgrading in the near future."
Hendery did manage to turn up Shaan Stevens, executive director of Guinness Gallagher, described as a "small Wellington-based international consultancy firm" who likes Vista and Office 2007 for Vista's added security features and the new version of Outlook, which gives him "the ability to preview attachments, added CRM functions, and a more intuitive interface for Excel and PowerPoint," Hendery reports.
But most corporate, government and education officials told Hendery that they'd be waiting for about a year or so to evaluate for "any security and 'safety' issues," i.e. just how buggy the thing's going to be. Smart move, Kiwis, as Microsoft first releases tend to be as buggy as a flystrip hung over a rotting squirrel monkey carcass in the Amazon rainforest.
"We tend not to be early adopters and would rather see what other large organizations experience first prior to our implementation," one CIO who asked not to be identified told Hendery.
Hendery found Telecom New Zealand, whose fleet of over 10,000 desktops and laptops "rates amongst the country's top five technology users," a bit more intrepid, having committed to deploy Vista across 500 desktops this quarter, "making it New Zealand's biggest user of the new operating system to date."
Hugh McKellar, Telecom's business manager for enabling collaboration, told Hendery he was excited by the "great functionality" within Office 2007:
"It's a really good, logical development for Microsoft. The Outlook voice access is a cool feature [as are] the enhancements around the whole calendar and contact list and so on, and integration with the other Microsoft applications… [and] we can add a strong local flavor to that around service and support."
Microsoft appears sanguine. David Rayner, client product marketing manager for Microsoft in New Zealand (sometimes described as "Mr. Vista") told Jan Birkeland earlier this month that in his view, "the market was ready for something different, and I think there is some compelling and fundamentally good stuff in Vista that will persuade people to take the leap from XP."
Maybe later. Right now most are taking the attitude Hendery found from a "senior government CIO who asked for anonymity," who said at first glance "there is not a compelling reason to upgrade. Potentially it [Office 2007] would fit in with an upgrade cycle and more likely in conjunction with Vista," but for now, "there is no pressure on us to implement either Office 2007 or Vista and we have no compelling event to do so."
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FYI: Nucleus Research has issued a report recommending InvisibleCRM to "organizations hoping to improve their sales and CRM initiatives."
Such firms should "consider the benefits of a new tool that marries on-demand systems with users' familiar desktop applications." According to the Nucleus report, InvisibleCRM's products "synchronize on-demand applications such as Salesforce.com with Windows desktop applications to automatically update, store and transfer customer information between the desktop and the CRM system."
InvisibleCRM, a technology provider of applications designed to increase user adoption and ROI of enterprise systems, in Nucleus' opinion "specifically addresses the biggest challenge with CRM systems: Getting users to actually use it, instead of staying with their desktop systems."
By 'invisibly' synchronizing the desktop applications with the Web-based product, Nucleus says, InvisibleCRM's products effectively remove that hurdle. The result, according to the report, is "a sharp increase in CRM system user adoption."
In fact, the report clams, "a typical salesperson would actually realize a full ROI from an annual investment of the product in just five hours."
InvisibleCRM is offered through a per user, per month pricing structure.
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Datelined Cairo, Egypt comes the news that Piraeus bank has signed with Raya Contact Center to handle its customer care program. Piraeus is expanding its scope of operations to include in-sourced 24/7 customer service center to the bank.
Specifically, Piraeus wants to use the Raya Contact Center to handle various customers’ disclaimers and inquires in "a professional, efficient, and effective way." Support would include customer inquiries on loans, credit cards and other financial packages.
"By this step," Piraeus officials say, "the bank is aiming at acquiring a high class customer care catering for a variety of retail and corporate banking customers." Raya officials say they'll provide "a world of real time business analysis based on CRM (customer relationship management) applications."
The Raya Contact Center has achieved ISO certificate four years in a row, company officials say. The company has acquired a new building with a telecom infrastructure which "accommodates more than 800 seats, to be able to provide its services to a larger customer base in Egypt and abroad."
Khaled Shash, Managing Director for Raya Contact Center, said that the banking sector is considered a strategic objective for his company, since "customer service is one of their competitive advantages."
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