The news as of the all-important third cup of coffee this morning, and the music is the peerless Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Cosmo's Factory." As the usually flannel-mouthed Greil Marcus wrote in a rare fit of coherence, rarely in rock history has artistic achievement and popular success aligned so wonderfully as they did with CCR - the band, one of the greatest American rock bands ever, was highly popular, and their best albums were the most popular, and this one is their best:

 

Jigsaw, which sells business information and data services with the angle of "user-generated content contributed by its global business-to-business community," has launched Research Tab, described by company officials as a free resource for "an improved approach to investigating companies online. 
 
"Whether researching companies for lead generation, better targeted marketing or job opportunities, individuals want to be prepared and informed before reaching out," says Jim Fowler, Jigsaw CEO and co-founder. "With Research Tab, the time consuming act of trolling the Web and companies' sites to gather information becomes obsolete."
 
Jigsaw Research Tab uses tools such as RSS and social network sites to deliver aggregated business intelligence. In one view, individuals can access a company's recent news and announcements, Web analytic details, job listings, financial information, maps and more.

It can be used in conjunction with "Jigsaw Unlimited," a newly-released subscription model that gives users access to Jigsaw's database of 10 million business contacts.
 
"We're equipping our community members with the best available resources during this financial downturn," said Garth Moulton, Jigsaw co-founder and vice president of community, listing "Jigsaw Unlimited, Company Wiki, Research Tab along with Jigsaw's free access to company listings."
 
Along with Jigsaw's 1.5 million business contact records and its recently announced company wiki, an open-source resource where any company or individual can promote basic business information, Research Tab is part of Jigsaw's platform for B-to-B.

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Foxwoods Resort Casino has chosen the Netezza Performance Server data warehouse appliance and SAS Marketing Automation software to analyze in more detail its gambling and hotel data of its 40,000 daily customers.

 

In conjunction with Netezza, Foxwoods is expanding its data mart to collect more detailed gambling data and customer demographics for use in micro-targeted marketing campaigns, special offers and comps. Foxwoods wants the SAS products to analyze this data more closely.

 

The application of the Netezza data warehouse appliance in conjunction with SAS Marketing Automation is intended to allow the capture of detailed data from a multitude of departments within the casino, including the hotel, spa, retail outlets, call center, ticketing, food and beverage, and the newly opened MGM Grand at Foxwoods.

 

"When you're welcoming 40,000 people every day, developing strong customer relationships is crucial to persuading them to come back," says Michael Kutia, director of hospitality systems at Foxwoods. "Netezza's speed, coupled with SAS Marketing Automation, lets Foxwoods know our customers like never before."

 

Matt Rollender, director of strategic alliances, Netezza, made the obligatory casino joke, saying "instead of rolling the dice with an unproven product, Foxwoods chose Netezza to get a handle on its customer data and selected SAS to turn that information into action." Glad he took care of it so First Coffee doesn't have to.

 

North America's largest casino, Foxwoods Resort Casino is located in southeastern Connecticut, accessible from Boston, New York, Hartford and Providence. Owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, Foxwoods features six casinos with more than 7,200 slots, 380 table games, the only WPT World Poker Room in New England, High Stakes Bingo and Ultimate Race Book.

 

Yankees are glad their forbearers didn't wipe out all the Indians, evidently.

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Speaking of Providence, the city of Providence, Rhode Island has recently launched a Web-based system designed to assist city departments in tracking and resolving citizen service requests.

 

Using the QAlert Municipal CRM system by QScend Technologies, Providence wants to be more efficient about responding to citizen inquires and better at managing city resources while resolving those inquiries.

 

"This is about using state-of-the-art technology to hold ourselves accountable while keeping residents informed, every step of the way, as we work to improve the delivery of city services," says Mayor David Cicilline. "QAlert also provides us with a clearer understanding of constituents' needs so that we can make smarter decisions about deploying resources."

 

Providence citizens contacting the Office of Neighborhood Services at (401-421-CITY) will have their requests entered into QAlert. Each service request is assigned a tracking number and routed to the appropriate department. The system allows residents to be notified via e-mail when an action is taken on the request, and citizens receive final notification when the matter has been resolved.

 

In addition, QAlert also complements ProvStat, the mayor's existing management tool, designed to improve the delivery of city services by collecting, analyzing and reviewing data about city operations. Through QAlert, supervisors are automatically notified when a request lingers for a prolonged period of time with no action taken, providing an increased level of accountability.

 

QScend and its partner, VUEWorks, will also provide Providence with the VUEWorks Work Order and Asset Management software, which fully integrates with QAlert. QAlert also has a customizable Knowledge Base, which can be integrated into the Providence Web site, allowing citizens to enter their service requests online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

 

First Coffee remembers living in New England in the 1990s when Providence had a reputation for being an unsavory place to live. Cicilline took office in 2003, and has done an exceptional job - since then Providence has gained national recognition for modernizing city operations, reducing crime, expanding its commitment to the arts, establishing an after-school program for youth, creating a new environment for business investment, and improving service delivery to neighborhoods and residents.

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Xtime has announced the deployment of its ServiceCRM software to all Sonic Automotive dealerships nationwide. ServiceCRM provides an automated customer experience, from online retailing and service scheduling, to vehicle drop off and pickup.

 

Sonic Automotive is one of only four publicly traded dealership groups in the U.S. with more than 100 dealerships. Hugh Whiles, Sonic's Vice President of Fixed Operations, says with Xtime "our customers now have online access to pricing, scheduling, transportation, vehicle status and service history."

 

This announcement makes Sonic Automotive the third Fortune 500 public dealership group, in the last year, to adopt Xtime ServiceCRM across all of its dealerships and "highlights Xtime's rapid growth in the automotive service market," according to the Xtimers.

 

ServiceCRM integrates online service retailing, automated service scheduling (customer, dealership and call center), Web-enabled service marketing, shop control and DMS integration into a single product.

 

Sonic Automotive, a Fortune 300 company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, is one of the largest automotive retailers in the United States operating 166 franchises and 34 collision repair centers.

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CDC Software, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation selling enterprise software applications and business services, has announced that a "multi-plant, public company and food industry" firm is expected to implement the CDC Factory manufacturing operations management product at all its North American plants.

 

CDC Software completed the contract with this new customer in October 2008, and expects to implement the CDC Factory product at the company's first plant by April 2009 and complete implementation at all of its North American plants by August 2009.

 

During the evaluation process with the customer, CDC conducted a three-day Factory Performance Audit and Benchmark evaluation and identified potential annualized performance gains averaging approximately $1.0 million per plant, according to CDC officials.

 

According to this benchmark evaluation, these performance improvements are likely to contribute directly to the company's profitability.

 

Mark Sutcliffe, president of the CDC Factory product line of CDC Software, said with "the recessionary climate driving increased demand for economical food-at-home products," food producers are seeking new ways to increase capacity without large capital expenditures.

 

Since CDC Factory is a pre-packaged product for the food and beverage industry, it typically can be deployed in as little as six to eight weeks per plant, Sutcliffe says.

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StreamServe, a vendor of enterprise document presentment applications, has announced that the Santander Consumer Bank of Norway has upgraded to its Persuasion service and is expanding its use throughout its offices in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

 

The StreamServers say that Persuasion, an enterprise document presentment system, will let the Santander Consumer Bank take information from its back-end enterprise applications, including ERP, CRM, SCM and legacy systems, and "transform it into business correspondence that acts as a dynamic and personalized marketing vehicle for cross-sell, up-sell and brand building."

 

According to company officials, presenting a persuasive, consistent and personalized experience across all communication channels is the goal for Santander.

 

StreamStudio Composer, a component of the Persuasion system, is billed as allowing anyone at Santander with editing privileges to "add, edit or remove text from already designed documents, so last minute changes can be made."

 

Geir Berglind, chief technology officer of Santander Nordic, said by upgrading to StreamServe Persuasion, "we are moving to a single platform that will allow us to take advantage of Composer's user interface to add marketing messages to our customer correspondence and invoices. With this upgrade, we expect to improve our customer relations further and lessen our dependency on IT."

 

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