The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is that great old reliable standby, Creedence Clearwater Revival:

Nearly two in five employed U.S. online adults work from home at least one day a month, according to new research in the "The Telework and the Technologies Enabling Work Outside Corporate Walls" from the Consumer Electronics Association. 

 

First Coffee's a perfect one-for-one on that score.

 

The same study also found that "most teleworkers plan to spend at least $925 over the next year on technology products to help them work from home."

 

If that includes coffee and Diet Coke, then okay, we're jake there, too.

 

More than 38 million employed U.S. online adults, or 37 percent of the total U.S. workforce, work from home at least once a month, the study found, adding that "focusing on tasks without disruptions" and "running a business from home" are the top reasons given by employees for teleworking. 

 

The top benefits include flexible hours, reduced travel time and costs, fewer disruptions, greater productivity and "nobody checking up to see how long I play Minesweeper or goof off on Facebook." 

 

Ninety-eight percent of teleworkers use computer/IT technology such as PCs or printers. Ninety percent use communication technologies like cell phones and fax machines, and 75 percent use CE accessorie including surge protectors or laptop docking stations.

 

Only 98 percent? First Coffee would like to see a telework job that doesn't require a computer.

Working from home, according to Steve Koenig, CEA's director of industry analysis, means "employees believe their performance is enhanced and their quality of life improves."

According to the CEA study, teleworkers are often purchasing their own technology equipment required to work from home: "Only a third, 34 percent, have access to an employer-provided computer or other IT technology at home, and less than a third, 31 percent, have access to an employer-provided communication device, such as a phone or fax machine."

The "Telework and the Technologies Enabling Work Outside Corporate Walls" study just published was fielded in July 2009, and is free to CEA member companies. Non-members may purchase the study for $699.

...

Voice CRM has added and certified Google Voice to work with the namesake CRM software system at www.VoiceCRM.com. 

 

"Now," company officials say, "Google Voice users will be able to use the CRM system fully integrated with their virtual Google Voice number, automating calls, and adding features such as scheduling calling and group or conference calling via the Voice CRM system."

 

Voice CRM officials argue that the use of VOIP, CRM and Google Voice all in one system "is a time save and can save money over traditional business phone systems or VOIP alone." Paired with the power of a fully functional CRM system with Google Voice automates sales, marketing and customer service.

The new voice integration was made through their technology partner, Telesocial, using the BitMouth application gateway and API, company officials say: "By adding the BitMouth gateway services from Telesocial, FreeCRM.com is able to use advanced voice and mobile technologies and extend these features to our existing CRM user base."

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Ignify, a CRM and ERP consulting firm and Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle Partner has announced an enhanced Contact Center platform for Microsoft's CRM Call Center Agent Desktop.

The new platform allows "customer service agents using Microsoft CRM to prioritize incidents and escalate those incidents for resolution with just one mouse click," company officials said, adding that "this capability greatly enhances first contact resolution while reducing cost per incident and most importantly improving overall customer satisfaction.

The contact center extension offers an approach to increase sales and handle greater client workloads without the need for additional personnel, company officials contend, by providing customer self-service capabilities and "an integrated agent desktop that ties together different applications and voice, chat and CRM information."

The extension integrates into existing Microsoft CRM deployments, with one touch management to the platform's core features, including "automatic classification of accounts to multiple tiers based on past sales volume, visualizing a sales funnel through probability and accurately forecasting future sales and assigning contacts and customers to various marketing lists among many others," according to Ignify officials.

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Ribbit, a BT company into communication services, has announced its Ribbit for Oracle CRM On Demand is now available via a public beta. 

 

In 2008, Ribbit was selected as a participant in the Oracle Inner Circle Program. Ribbit for Oracle connects mobile phone, Oracle CRM On Demand and e-mail with voice to text conversion. 

 

Officials at Ribbit feel, most likely correctly, that customers who use CRM to manage their business are "becoming even more dependent on" -- read: addicted to -- "mobile devices," so in their view it's "imperative that these sales and service organizations are empowered with technology to sell more and type less."

 

"Sell More, Type Less" -- First Coffee doesn't know a single sales pro who can't get behind that slogan.

With the Ribbit for Oracle product, calls, voicemail and voice memos flow into Oracle CRM On Demand along with text transcriptions. Users call in notes rather than type them. Inbound voice messages are organized into a user's CRM application so they can be managed like e-mail, "without wasting time dialing in to listen or worrying about messages being deleted."

...

Microsoft has announced that several global enterprises have selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM for their relationship management, including Barclays Bank, Booz Allen Hamilton, the City of London, Hard Rock International, Maccabi Healthcare Services, Polaris Industries and Vodafone Iceland.

"In these challenging economic times, businesses need customer management that are fast, flexible and affordable, and that help them build stronger and deeper relationships with their customers," said Brad Wilson, general manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a quote he could have lopped the first five words off. My friend, at all times those are pretty much the customer management products we need.

Barclays Bank, a consumer banking division in the United Arab Emirates, has seen a 15 percent improvement in customer satisfaction and has attributed Microsoft Dynamics CRM for a 22 percent drop in service costs per customer incident.

Booz Allen Hamilton, a strategy and technology consulting firm that licensed the 1 millionth Microsoft Dynamics CRM seat, is standardizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a platform to deliver relational line-of-business applications across the organization.

The City of London in the U.K. uses the power and flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics CRM as an xRM development platform for services such as event planning and voter management it provides to citizens, businesses and visitors.

Hard Rock International, home of the only decent burger this reporter was able to find on his last trip to Munich, uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM to reduce its customer inquiry response times from four days to just a few hours. Wonder what music they play when they put you on hold.

Maccabi Healthcare Services, a health care organization located in Israel, has implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Microsoft Office SharePoint as the center service application to provide response and information to its members.

Polaris Industries, a manufacturer of all-terrain vehicles, deployed a dealer self-service portal and realized efficiency gains up to 35 percent compared with previous processes.


 

And Vodafone Iceland exceeded its own first-time call resolution rates expectations of 95 percent while also increasing sales by 20 percent since implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM for its sales and service teams.

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Cabinet NG, which sells document management and workflow software, has announced a partnership with Tigerpaw Software, a developer of IT business management software, to provide small and midsized companies with a way to manage business processes. 

 

Implementing Tigerpaw's CRM+ software and CNG's Shared Access Filing Environment offers a filing approach that provides "a comprehensive paperless office that scales with business growth," according to company officials.

Tigerpaw's CRM+ lets companies "across a wide spectrum of industries" track customers, streamline sales, improve marketing, optimize service, better control inventory, and more, company officials say: "This integration moves documents between CRM+ and CNG-SAFE without the need to keep and connect manual paper-based processes."

 

It's billed as a way to "transform disjointed documentation into efficient electronic workflows for any project."

 

As part of the process CNG Synchronizer adds and updates folders to an existing cabinet in CNG-SAFE by monitoring the Tigerpaw database for additions or changes to an account. When a new account is added in CRM+, a corresponding folder is automatically created in CNG-SAFE. 

 

Thereby folder index data is also updated in the event a change is made in Tigerpaw. "For example," company officials say, "if a customer gets a new phone number in CRM+, Synchronizer updates the corresponding CNG-SAFE folder index."

CNG Retriever monitors the "Account View" panel in CRM+ and allows the user to access documents filed in CNG-SAFE directly from the Tigerpaw application.