The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Dolly Parton's fine roots album, The Grass Is Blue. Forget the boobs, the hair and her (cleverly self-perpetuated) cornpone image, Dolly Parton is one of the shrewdest and most talented women in show business and, along with Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Bill Monroe, Patsy Cline and the Carter Family, belongs on any short list of the most significant artists in the history of country music:
When Bango surveyed the Top 20 most trafficked PC Web sites -- as according to Nielsen Online, company officials say -- they found that half of these sites did not work well on some mobile phones, "despite the fact that typically five percent of visitors to PC Web sites now come from mobile devices, up from one percent a year ago."
The problem, they say, is that PC Web sites are "not adapting fast enough to match mobile browsing trends and are failing to present mobile-friendly versions of their sites."
Many online businesses questioned by Bango officials told them they do not know how much mobile-originated traffic is hitting their PC site. Bango's research reveals that between three and ten percent of on-line traffic to a PC Web site now comes from users entering Web addresses on their mobile device.
Hence, Bango officials have releasing a service called Analytics for PCs. The plug-in tool "measures the actual number of mobile phone users hitting a PC Web site and provides detailed metrics of these mobile visitors, including the percentage of mobile traffic as a unique visitor count plus the country, network and device mobile users connect through," according to the Bangovians.
It's not just iPhone users that are regularly accessing the Internet from their phones, Bango officials say, citing researchers at IDC who say that 1.3 billion people will connect to the Internet via mobile phones by end of 2008 -- "and the vast majority of these mobile browsers are using mass market phones from Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola."
Bango's figures indicate that "up to 10 out of every 100 customers are now routinely entering Web addresses from their phones and hitting a site designed only with PC users in mind which results in a bad experience," said Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing and Alliances at Bango. "Businesses should be asking now which handsets, countries and languages matter most to their business and developing a mobile strategy to match this."
Bango Analytics for PCs is available as part of an Early Access Program, where the Webmaster puts a line of code into the home page of the PC Web site "and Bango starts measures unique visitors to the Web site from mobile devices with specific details on the users' country, network and device," company officials say.
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Manticore Technology, a vendor of automated demand generation products, has announced the next version of its flagship product, designed with capabilities for "marketers with complex needs," company officials say, claiming "one-hour implementation and ease of use" for the product.
Manticore Technology '09, Enterprise Edition has been designed "with marketing teams in mind," company officials say, adding that the product "allows customers to build programs on the fly with no IT resources and make modifications without wasting time and resources."
The newest version of Manticore Technology starts at $2,000 per month. Product highlights include Multi-Model Lead Scoring, which lets marketers build dynamic lead-scoring models correlating to various product offerings.
It also "delivers content through e-mail and landing pages for increased response rates," company officials say, as well as "increased lead nurturing" with a drag-and-drop lead nurturing program configurator.
There's also campaign reporting, including what the Manticoreans characterize as a marketing mix analysis tool t"hat provides insight into optimum conversion paths from leads to deals."
The vendor "has taken our six years of experience and rocked the demand generation space," said Nicholas Walker, CEO and President of Manticore Technology, adding that the $2000 per month starting price and a free 30-day trial make it a good choice "for a wide array of B2B marketers."
For less complex needs there's the Manticore Technology, Professional Edition, starting at $999 a month.
ERP vendor Agresso has announced an "ERP Healthcheck for Businesses Living in Change," described by the Agressors as "an online tool which assesses the negative impact that systems lacking agility can have on an organization." Bet you didn't think that was measurable.
The ERP Healthcheck "provides organizations with a guide to better assess whether switching to a more agile system would improve business operations, provide a competitive advantage, and save them money," Agresso officials say, adding that the tool "can reveal recurring costs often required to maintain more rigid and inflexible ERP systems."
A recent survey sponsored by Agresso and conducted by analyst firm IDC found that 83percent of mid-sized companies would still buy technology from their existing ERP vendor, "regardless of its inability to adapt to business change." If you can imagine.
"The inability to adapt means missed business opportunities and lost revenues," noted Shelley Zapp, president of Agresso North America. "Many companies have invested so heavily in their current ERP products that they often feel they have no option but to keep feeding that investment."
Agresso's ERP Healthcheck, company officials say, shows that ERP system that lack agility cause excessive IT spend just to keep operating in tandem with the business, overspend on expensive external consultants, failure to deliver service to internal clients and missed business opportunities as well as inflated and expanding ERP maintenance budgets.
The check "takes less than five minutes to complete," company officials say, and can be found at www.showmeagresso.com/US.
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Demandbase, an on-demand software vendor, has announced a new release of Demandbase Stream -- a free software widget working like a news ticker displaying information across the desktop about "which businesses are visiting a Web site, their interests, and contact details for the most appropriate decision makers to contact for follow up," company officials say.
With the new release, users can customize the ticker with Watch Lists to flag existing customers, prospects, partners, and competitors at a glance. Salesforce.com users can update their Watch Lists automatically with a one-click upload from the CRM system.
"Stream takes seconds to install and is so addictive to use, it spread across my organization in one afternoon," said Scott Olrich, chief marketing officer, Responsys.
Since its limited release in August, Demandbase officials say Stream has been adopted by more than 500 B2B companies. "Sales and marketing professionals need products with a clearly measurable impact on revenue generation," said Chris Golec, CEO of Demandbase.
Free features of Stream let users find out which businesses are visiting a Web site, their interests, and the right people to contact, in real-time, company officials say, adding that "LinkedIn integration surfaces relevant contacts from a user's social network to use in follow up contact."
The product claims "unlimited access to over five million best of breed business contacts... qualified for accuracy, then scored and ranked for relevancy to the product or service being sold." The Watch List feature allows users to flag the visitors they care most aboute, and can filter out information from immaterial companies based on territory, ISP, or domain.
There's also a "Send Alert" on the product which allows users to flag a company from the ticker and generate an e-mail with company details to colleagues or managers with a personal note for follow up. The "Track Marketing Performance" feature lets users add a metric of traffic quality to marketing campaign tracking.
Demandbase sources data from Hoovers, Jigsaw, Zoom Information, D&B, LexisNexis and others.
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