The news as of the all-important third cup of coffee, and the music is an old high school favorite, The Kinks' live album "One For The Road." Long one of First Coffee's favorite bands, they were admittedly a bit twee and fey on studio recordings, but this is one full-blooded, muscular, hard-rockin' live album:

 

Agresso has reported a change in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) buying habits for the first time in 15 years as companies look for a faster ROI in the face of a global recession.

 

The vendor recently reported strong third quarter global results with a 37 percent increase in revenues (28.8  percent in North America) including new orders in the $1 million-plus category. The Agressians throw an elbow as company officials point out that "this compares to market rivals like SAP, who announced an unimpressive nine percent year-over-year decline in new license revenues" over the same period.

 

"ERP buying habits are changing," says Shelley Zapp, president of Agresso North America. "The downward trend we see in SAP licensing revenues suggests that organizations are unwilling to invest in a product that hooks them into a never-ending cycle of need-spend-need-spend... unnecessary IT spending is no longer an option."

 

Agresso officials cite a survey of nearly 900 users by Technology Evaluation Centers, aimed at determining the impact of ERP products on an organization's perceived ability to make changes, reporting that 70 percent of ERP users feel "notably disadvantaged" by their existing systems.

 

According to another survey, conducted by the Business Performance Management Institute, only 11.2 percent of respondents could keep up with business demands to change processes.

 

Earlier this year, the TEC prepared a report detailing the ability of different ERP vendors to manage a list of business change scenarios. An analysis of these results determines that Agresso users "can expedite required changes to their ERP product to support over 95 percent of the change areas studied," whereas SAP and Oracle systems "require application development conducted by external IT consultants to support more than 95 per cent of these changes," Agresso officials say.

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Osoyoos Credit Union officials say they have selected The Complete Credit Union Solution: DNA, the latest version of the relational core data processing platform from Open Solutions, a vendor of technologies for financial institutions in the United States, Canada and other international markets.

 

The credit union serves the community of Osoyoos, British Columbia, and it's nice for First Coffee to report once in a while how technology benefits people who don't live in the Boston-D.C. East Coast Amtrak corridor, Silicon Valley or greater Chicagoland. When it says it has a "commitment to its members," a phrase heard ad nauseum from the global corporations, you know they're talking about the people they see at the bakery and at church Easter services.

 

There's also a swell of summer residents in the resort town who require away-from-home banking services, and that seasonal swing factored in the decision to choose TCCUS: DNA and Open Solutions, according to General Manager D.W. "Bill" Collins.

 

"Our basic goal is to provide the same or better service to our members that they would receive if they were anywhere else," he said. "The town is mostly a retirement community. New residents to the community are sophisticated consumers who expect the same service here that they would get in Vancouver, Calgary or Edmonton."

 

There's your municipal marketing tag line - "Osoyoos: All The Sophistication of Edmonton Without The Freakin' Wind."

 

TCCUS: DNA uses an Oracle relational database and open architecture platform. The product is expected to help the credit union streamline both front- and back-office applications, as well as provide a centralized relationship-based view of members, accounts, products and services.

 

"The CRM program looks like a far simpler and more valuable method to doing the proper analysis of our business," said Collins, who added that another factor in the credit union's decision was the simplicity of the product - "in a day or two, a teller or MSR is comfortable processing a job."

 

Plus, as Collins says, "I've known people at Open Solutions for 20 or 30 years. That came across for the staff - if there's a problem, they can call them up and know who they're talking to."

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Traditionally, say Volante Systems officials, restaurateurs "have looked at the front of the house for ways to increase profitability and productivity." That means the dining room and bar, for those of you who didn't spend high school and college busing and waiting tables.

 

"But by doing so," they add, "they're overlooking a very important opportunity to take control of their business and their costs. And that opportunity doesn't reside on the floor -- it's found in the back office."

 

The University of British Columbia's food service operation isn't making that mistake - Volante officials say UBC has implemented a new Volante POS system in lieu of one described by UBC officials as "a plethora of different technologies and topologies, comprising of a mix of old style cash registers and rudimentary POS systems spread throughout the university."

Their most pressing need was the ability to process 2,500 students at lunchtime while managing the school's many different residence meal plans at the same time. "Processing 2500 students in an hour and a half used to cause database overload," says one UBC official. "Our old system had lots of hiccups."

Nowadays, hospitality technology is focusing more than ever on convergence and getting all systems into one. Here's where products such as an efficient POS and back office system come in - if you can't handle the connections between POS terminals on the floor, the kitchen, the back office and the inventory backend, it doesn't matter how cold your beer or how fluffy your soufflés, you're not going to be as profitable as you could be.

 

Integration with the back office, says First Coffee, a veteran of many years in the restaurant industry's trenches, means that managing inventory and food and labor costs becomes much easier. Real time access to data can help you determine good sellers quickly and avoid the worst five words in the restaurant industry - "Sorry, we're out of that."

 

Throw in some customer relationship management tools, and the bottom line is further boosted with the ability to implement customer loyalty programs, create gift cards, or track customer transaction histories. Volante sells just such CRM tools, employee management features and a full reporting suite.

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InterCall, a conferencing and collaboration services vendor, has announced the launch of InterCall Online, an online account management tool designed to "streamline the way companies manage conferencing and collaboration services," company officials say.

 

Free to InterCall customers globally, InterCall Online is touted as giving administrators ways to tinker with the way workers use virtual meeting tools like Web conferencing and telepresence.

   

Basically the product lets conference leaders manage and control all conferencing services, edit user profiles, create new leaders and change account settings, schedule, update or delete pending conferences and view detailed billing and usage reports.

 

InterCall Online is being released as an upgrade of the previous online portal. "Users will notice a new look and feel that's more intuitive, user-friendly and provides easier access to account information," says Scott Etzler, president of InterCall, adding that "underneath the hood" are improvements such as a stronger infrastructure."

 

The product lets customers set up additional security requirements for joining a meeting and allow meetings to continue after the leader leaves. Call management features are designed to make it easier for users to control their conferences through the online interface, such as muting lines, recording the conference, dialing out and even changing entry tones.

 

The company's U.S. presence is augmented by a global reach "that extends to Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, India, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan," company officials say. So they obviously have experience with hairy online collaboration scenarios themselves.