By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

A second cup of CRM coffee this morning, and the music is still Aimee Mann’s Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse, it’s one of those albums I can’t seem to get out of my mind or off the iTunes player these days:

 

GeNUIT, Inc., what company officials like to think of as “an emerging name in enterprise software products,” has announced that KTL Solutions, Inc. has signed on as a Promys Authorized Reseller.

 

KTL will be providing the fully integrated Promys PSA suite to professional services organizations across the Mid-Atlantic United States. Promys is a business management application designed to deliver performance indicators and other information. It can be accessed remotely.

 

After evaluating a variety of applications, KTL selected Promys to be an offering of Professional Services Automation in its portfolio of technology products which also includes software and application installation, system integrations, custom development, consulting, training and support.

 

In addition to reselling Promys as a standalone product, KTL will be developing an integration utility to facilitate a plug-and-play scenario with Promys and Microsoft Dynamics GP.

 

Stephanie Smith, Certified Account Executive, KTL Solutions, said there are cases where the Dynamics GP modules, such as CRM and Field Services, “could satisfy the customer’s functional requirements, but are not within their budget and would not give them the flexibility they need.”

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IFS, an enterprise applications company, has announced the North American launch of its Business Analytics offering, an Office Business Application that makes IFS Applications enterprise resource planning (ERP) software accessible to users of the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

 

Business Analytics is the first deliverable of the IFS Intelligent Desktop initiative, which company officials say will integrate IFS Applications with the 2007 Microsoft Office system “to make these applications more broadly available to enterprise customers.”

 

The product provides “secure and traceable integration between Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and IFS Applications,” according to company officials.

 

IFS North America President and CEO Cindy Jaudon said her firm is doing ongoing work with Microsoft on the Intelligent Desktop initiative, “in particular, extending ERP, enterprise asset management (EAM), supply chain management (SCM)” and other tools, such as maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO); product lifecycle management (PLM); project and contract management; customer relationship management (CRM); and corporate performance management (CPM) capabilities.

 

“Integration between IFS Applications and the 2007 Microsoft Office system will help our mutual customers increase productivity using the innovative Business Analytics OBA,” said Eddie Amos, senior director of Developer and Platform Evangelism at Microsoft Corp.

 

IFS was founded in 1983 and now has 2,600 employees worldwide. It sells component-based ERP software with IFS Applications, now in its seventh generation, which is available in 54 countries in 20 languages.

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Crediting the bank’s CRM project as a contributing factor, the National Bank of Dubai recently accepted the Asian Banker Award for Best Retail Bank in the UAE for the year 2007. Mr. Suvo Sarkar, Group Head-Retail Banking, received the award on behalf of the National Bank of Dubai in Shanghai.

 

NDB was selected by an international panel consisting of figures in the world of Retail Banking. Winners were selected on the basis of a scorecard of ten categories used to rank banks and their retail banking units. Among the criteria used are retail banking performance, long term prospects, retail sales figures, how well the retail bank is managed and the quality of staff training.

 

“NBD is committed to providing our customers with innovative value-added products and the highest levels of customer service,” said Suvo Sarkar. The bank has expanded its branch and ATM network to one of the largest in the country, and “a new 24/7 state-of-the-art call centre supported by CRM technology has recently been launched,” company officials say.

 

NBD’s new product launches include the NBD-Dnata credit card, the first joint venture between a bank and a travel company in the region, as well as NBDirect, the first payroll card in the country. In addition to the successful NBD Home Loans product, the bank recently launched NBD Office Loans for commercial property, and has emerged today as a leading player in mortgages.

 

The bank’s range of investment and Bancassurance products was recently supplemented with the introduction of the NBD-HDFC Bank NRI services for the Indian expatriate community.

 

National Bank of Dubai was set up in 1963, and is the oldest locally incorporated bank in the country.

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VoIP Unlimited, a service provider for the UK market, and Zultys Technologies, the developer and manufacturer of communications products, have launched a new combined bundle of VoIP services to “fortify their positions in the UK market and complement their hardware offerings,” according to Zultys officials.

 

Through Hampshire-based Zultys distributor Siracom, VoIP Unlimited, a wholesale SIP specialist and an approved Zultys partner, has been selected to provide SIP trunking and numbering services to the UK channel.

 

Siracom believes that presented together, the proposition can only benefit the channel. VoIP Unlimited has already started working with Siracom’s resellers on SIP and VoIP projects in the retail sector.

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Sage Software announced today that Qqest [sic] Software Systems, a direct marketer of time and attendance products, payroll services, and asset management and maintenance software, has deployed a customized Sage SalesLogix CRM and Sage MAS 90 ERP product.

 

Early reviews are good: Qqest officials say they have experienced “a 28 percent revenue increase initially deploying Sage SalesLogix, and integrating it with Sage MAS 90 ERP.”

 

The company continues to measure month-to-month revenue increases in the tens-of-thousands of dollars. Qqest cites improved employee productivity and higher customer retention rates as additional benefits of its Sage Software product.

 

Burke Plummer, president of Qqest, said upon deployment of Sage SalesLogix “our sales went up $70,000 from the previous month.”

 

Prior to Sage SalesLogix, Qqest was using three different databases that could not share data. All sales leads were tracked manually by individual employees, slowing the sales process and making accurate oversight of the sales team difficult. The lack of a centralized database made it difficult for support representatives to respond to customer requests, if the associated sales representatives were unavailable.

 

Qqest evaluated five CRM systems and selected Sage SalesLogix for its “customization capabilities, ease of use, and ability to integrate with the company’s existing Sage MAS 90 ERP system.”

 

Sage SalesLogix was initially implemented for 25 Qqest employees, and currently is used by 130 employees. Looking forward, Qqest has begun a project to upgrade its Sage MAS 90 ERP software to Sage MAS 500 ERP.