By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits’ Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards outtake collection:

 

Neocase Software, Inc., a vendor of collaborative customer service software, has announced that William Pollie has been appointed president of U.S. and North American operations.

 

Pollie will oversee activities pertaining to product development, customer and partner relationships, sales, and channel strategy while facilitating communications with Neocase’s European division as the company continues its U.S. and global expansion.

 

Pollie most recently served as the company’s SVP of sales. He joined Neocase from Microsoft where he was vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions and led their U.S. field and channel sales organization.

 

Prior to Microsoft, Pollie was with SAP America for nine years, where he served in a number of product, sales and management roles, including vice president of field operations for SAP’s focused offerings for the service industry.

 

Neocase can be deployed on-demand, on-premise, or bundled with Microsoft CRM 3.0 sales and marketing modules, meeting the diversified needs of both large enterprises and mid-market organizations.

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Mobile Web tech vendor Bango has published statistics which, company officials say, “confirm that the United States is at the forefront of mobile Web growth with a three fold increase in usage over the last year, taking it to second position behind the UK.”

 

The increasing popularity of mobile search as a way of finding new content and services is fueling this rapid rise in mobile Web usage.

 

By working as a “global exchange” for the mobile Web, Bango is able to provide insight into where mobile users are coming from and what handsets they are using. The Bango platform detects users from more than 190 countries accessing the mobile Web.

 

According to Bango data, the top five countries accessing the mobile Web via Bango in April 2007 are the UK at 27 percent, the US at 21 percent, South Africa at 11 percent, India at 9 percent and Indonesia at 3 percent.

 

In the first quarter of 2007 the top handset was the Sanyo Katana SCP 6600. The fact that the Sanyo Katana is only available in the United States reflects the rapid growth in mobile surfing by U.S. mobile users.

 

(Bango identifies users by their country and network of origin. The ranking is produced by measuring the number of user visits to mobile Web sites from each country.)

 

“We see that wherever flat-rate data charges are pervasive in a country then there’s much more Web browsing,” said Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing at Bango. “We expect to see more competitively priced flat-rate data plans in the U.S. which will stimulate further Web browsing.”

 

Bango also has detected that 9 percent of all accesses to mobile Web sites are from India, up from 4 percent a year ago. Company officials attribute the surge to the fact that India, with a population of just over one billion and no reliable established fixed phone line network, relies on mobile phones to stay in touch.

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Another Forrester Report, another welter of companies announcing their placings in the rankings. From SAP:

 

“Forrester Research, a leading independent research firm, has recognized SAP AG as a leader in all five enterprise customer relationship management (CRM)-relevant Forrester Wave reports issued in 2007.

 

“In each of these reports, SAP achieved leader status after a rigorous evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of a wide range of CRM vendors across an extensive list of evaluation criteria. SAP was ranked as a leader in The Forrester Wave reports for 2007 titled: ‘Enterprise CRM Suites, Q1 2007,’ ‘Enterprise CRM Suites for Financial Services, Q1 2007,’ ‘Partner Relationship Management Tools, Q2 2007,’ ‘Sales Force Automation, Q2 2007,’ and ‘Customer Service Management Software, Q2 2007’…”

 

From Oracle Siebel:

 

“Forrester Research, a leading independent research firm, has recognized Oracle’s Siebel CRM as a ‘Leader’ in record-centric customer service management software in the latest Forrester Wave Evaluation: Customer Service Management Software, Q2 May 2007.

 

“Forrester also names Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand as a leader in the same category in this recent report… According to the Forrester report, the Siebel CRM customer service suite is ‘especially strong in B2B customer service environments, where its full relationship management capabilities can be exploited.”

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Jenkintown, Pennsylvania-based Managing Editor, an Adobe Systems portfolio company and vendor of software products for the publishing industry, has announced that it has entered into an agreement with UK software provider 5 fifteen Ltd. to be the exclusive distributor of the AdsUp software suite in the Americas.

 

AdsUp is a browser-based order-entry and Customer Relationship Management product that provides users with a suite of powerful tools for order-entry, ad-tracking, customer contact, business intelligence and finance, all via intuitive Web interfaces. MEI is teaming up with 5 fifteen to distribute, install, train and support AdsUp for users in North and South America.

 

Known as ad|DEPOT in Europe and other markets, AdsUp is developed entirely in Web services. The SOA-built system adheres to emerging standards for advertising interchange and delivers comprehensive functionality, while ensuring that everyone in the enterprise has access to pertinent information.

 

AdsUp uses the latest technologies from industry suppliers such as Microsoft and Adobe, including Microsoft BizTalk Server to manage all the workflow integration.

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ReachForce, a vendor of on-demand data services for CRM, has announced ReachForce Convert, a service designed to help marketers “convert passive Web site visitors into actionable marketing leads,” company officials say.

 

“ReachForce Convert allows marketers to turn typical Web site analytics into a source for actionable leads, both from pay-per-click and organic search, and use a role-based contact discovery methodology.”

 

As the majority of Web site traffic is generated by pay-per-click initiatives such as Google AdWords campaigns, B2B marketing and sales professionals are not able to convert most of this traffic into “registered” leads, increasing the costs per lead.

 

Studies cited by ReachForce show that less than three percent of a company’s Web traffic is converted into real leads, yet SEM is expected to reach $9 billion in 2007. In the B2B space, the initial “lead” is often not the decision maker with purchasing authority.

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Spare a thought and a prayer today for the men who died during the D-Day invasion of France sixty-three years ago. The Allied bombers which were supposed to soften up the German defenses along the coast missed all — all — their targets, which means the soldiers wading ashore — over half of them Americans — walked into withering fire. Two-thirds of the advance companies were wiped out.

 

Yet without such bravery and heroic sacrifice World War II would have dragged on a lot longer, many, many more deaths would have occurred and Western Europe would have spent a lot more time under Nazi oppression.

 

So from this American, you’re welcome, Europe.