By David Sims

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the bagpipe-and-guitars Scotrock of The Crofters. How can you not love an album named Hold My Beer While I Kiss Your Girlfriend?

 

Okay, so when does the “one year wiser” part kick in?

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CentricCRM, a vendor of open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Content Management, and Enterprise 2.0 technologies, and LoopFuse, an enterprise-grade open source product for demand generation and closed-loop marketing, have integrated their software to provide users with the ability to track customers across digital channels, score sales leads, and measure ROI on corporate marketing initiatives.

 

LoopFuse was launched by two former JBoss and Red Hat developers in Spring 2007. The company has an open source product that allows organizations to track customer activity on Web sites and via e-mails, score sales leads based on detailed data about customer behavior and integrate marketing processes with major CRM products, including CentricCRM.

 

This, company officials say, enables LoopFuse to “provide the capability to score prospects for the sales team and measure ROI within marketing and sales activities.”

 

The integration of LoopFuse with CentricCRM is intended to allow corporate marketing departments to consolidate customer relationship history with online activity. For example the type of customer, role, buying behavior, and the type and frequency of contact with the organization, can be linked with behavioral activity in the sales process including marketing e-mails opened, links clicked, Web site pages accessed and products viewed.

 

By joining up marketing and sales criteria and scoring each aspect, a cumulative score can be given, which marks the sales potential of each contact. Sales representatives can prioritize their time and efforts on those customers and prospects that will provide the greatest return. Once promising prospects have been identified, they can be placed into a typical CRM-based workflow including pipeline management, quoting, and customer care.

 

Updated versions of both CentricCRM and LoopFuse that will deliver the integration will be available for download from the companies’ Web sites within 45 days.

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CRM vendor IFS has announced that K&L Microwave, a subsidiary of Dover Corporation, has gone live on the IFS Sales and Marketing customer relationship management (CRM) product.

 

K&L Microwave had been running IFS Applications for enterprise resources planning (ERP) since 2002, but in November of 2006 decided they needed a system that would integrate sales, engineering and quality department activities involved in quoting. As an engineer-to-order (ETO) company, K&L Microwave had more demanding requirements that many CRM products could not meet.

 

According to Global Customer Service Manager Yvonne Downie, the company hoped to better facilitate engineering tasks and projects involved with quoting, and also link part numbers by government programs. “We want to turn quotes around within 48 hours when we can,” she said.

 

Because K&L Microwave performs a significant amount of work for customers working on Department of Defense contracts, the ability to tie part numbers, estimates and opportunities to specific government programs is critical. The IFS product can be set to track government programs and relate them to part numbers, sales opportunities and other activities.

 

“At IFS, we believe that back-office CRM — CRM that ties sales functionality into other information from throughout the company — is going to be attractive to many companies in the 21st Century,” IFS CRM Senior Product Advisor Jorge Defreitas said. “It used to be that you did business with people you know. In the 21st Century, you do business with people who know you and use that knowledge to serve you better.”

 

“Let’s say a territory manager is working with a customer in Arizona, and we get information that suggests a different company in Massachusetts is working on the same program,” said K&L Microwave Sales Territory Manager Jeff Burkett. “They likely will need something similar to what we are working on for the company out west. We can use engineering time we have already invested to pursue that business. If we are supplying parts to one of our customers and the program they are working on moves to another prime contractor, our new CRM will help us make decisions about how to handle it.”

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EntryPoint Consulting, LLC has announced the addition of David M. Johnson to its executive team. Dave joins EntryPoint Consulting as Vice President of the firm’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Practice.

 

Prior to joining EntryPoint, Johnson was a Partner with Peppers & Rogers Group, an authority on one-to-one marketing and customer-based strategies for sales, service, and business performance measurement. He has also held national and international roles with management consulting organizations over the past 15 years, including BearingPoint and Deloitte Consulting.

 

Johnson focuses on achieving measurable returns from CRM initiatives including the business, organizational and technological strategies instrumental to driving improved profitability and top-line growth across all customer-facing processes. Johnson’s team will provide customer segmentation, customer life-time value modeling, touch point analysis, deployment of SAP CRM systems and business case modeling.

 

EntryPoint Consulting, based in Independence, Ohio, calls itself a “pay-for-performance business integration consulting firm serving middle-market companies in the United States.”

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Customer Effective, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and implementer of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, has announced the release of Capital Effective, a front office relationship management solution designed exclusively for the financial services market.

 

Capital Effective is being pitched to organizations in commercial banking, private equity, investment banking, hedge funds and wealth management. The product’s users are “able to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to address the highly specific requirements of their unique business models,” company officials say.

 

Powered by Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SharePoint and Office, Capital Effective will be deployed by Customer Effective to address marketing, sales and customer service performance for financial services customers.

 

To support this strategic direction, Customer Effective has opened a northeastern regional headquarters in New York City, located near the hub of the financial district at 33 West 19th Street, 4th Floor, New York, New York.

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Software vendor for large-enterprise lumber dealers and building component manufacturers Deacom, Inc. has announced that Carter Lumber has selected the Deacom Integrated Accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software System to refine and manage its manufacturing business processes.

 

Carter Lumber has over 200 stores in 10 states, retailing building materials, and manufacturing trusses, custom moldings, millwork, engineered lumber, and prefabricated wall panels.

 

Carter Lumber will use the Deacom ERP System to consolidate and streamline its labor tracking, production scheduling, inventory, sales order entry, and purchasing functions in real-time, as well as link to its Mitek design software for integrated ties between the engineering and business process.