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Tmcnet says that Vernon Hills, Illinois-based Protocol Link Inc., market leader in pharmaceutical and healthcare consultant project management, has chosen to license Deltek Vision. Parent company Deltek touts Deltek Vision as the sole business solution specifically designed for professional service companies. Vision has been called upon to manage Protocol Link Inc. client relationship management, project management, resource management, and project accounting. The choice of Deltek marks a switch at Protocol Link from QuickBooks and various other programs. Protocol Link Inc. vice president Dr. Dan Hoch said in press material, “With its scalable web-based architecture and robust project functionality, we believe Vision is the only truly integrated project management solution on the market today that will meet our business requirements.”

Protocol Link provides comprehensive regulatory compliance, quality assurance and validation services to FDA-regulated companies; the Protocol mission statement emphasizes ethical conduct and mutual trust. Deltek is the number one provider of enterprise management software for project-based firms. The Deltek software structure is built upon Deltek Costpoint, Deltek Vision and Deltek GCS Premier; from these Deltek produces various applications in accounting, billing, budgeting, business intelligence, control, CRM, employee management, human resources, materials management, project management, proposal automation, and business intelligence.

Already big news, the mobile phone-ready AppExchange by Salesforce.com is generating yet more buzz. SecureLM.Net for AppExchange has been released under the auspices of salesforce.com and Secured Dimensions. AppExchange itself is the world’s first on-demand application platform and salesforce.com hopes SecureLM.Net will generate some firsts of its own.

Salesforce.com is touting the product as a direct and thus more efficient provision software for their ISV customers. The company can now directly and more efficiently provision software on demand to their users with SecureLM.Net licensing and software management tools. The product can be tested from the salesforce.com website.

SecureLM.Net is offered as a product that provides publishers with a platform on which to package and license new applications. On SecureLM.Net, software is partitioned according to features and functions. Real use times and patterns subsequently determine the distribution of the software. With its flexible software sales models, SecureLM.Net is said to be ideal for ISVs desiring to sell software on-demand.

As Secured Dimensions CEO Avi Shillo explained, SecureLM.Net “gives software publishers a secure and manageable way to productize, monetize, deliver and price packaged software on demand.” And salesforce.com senior vice president Bobby Napiltonia emphasized in turn that “Salesforce.com’s ISV customers can deploy SecureLM.Net solution directly from the AppExchange to have unparalleled control over their software sales and distribution within Salesforce.” Along with announcement of the Secure LM.Net release came the statistic that Salesforce.com has now produced more than two hundred applications, with Secured Dimensions’ Secure LM.Net for AppExchange the latest entry.

AppExchange itself, says press material, “provides unprecedented ease of customization and integration for Salesforce deployments, as well as enabling a whole new generation of on-demand applications that go beyond CRM.” Essentially, AppExchange expands the platform into another medium. Secured Dimensions, an on-demand software management solution developer and marketer, now sees their first platform-wide release with SecureLM.Net.

Secured Dimensions is known for their use of patent-pending algorithms with the enviable result of customer satisfaction. Salesforce.com has become the on-demand customer relationship management technology and market leader with just under 400,000 subscribers and just over twenty thousand customers. In their customer portfolio are Advanced Micro Devices, AOL, the Cendant Rental Car Group, Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom and SunTrust.

Digital controller and printer providing firm EFI announced with speech and imaging solution provider Nuance Communications, Inc. today that their two firms had come to a licensing and collaboration agreement in providing complete document routing solutions and scanner to desktop solutions. The firms will, as a result of the far-reaching agreement, combine forces in sales areas, marketing activities, and future product releases.

With the target audience of office workers and design professionals, EFI will in future standardize via Nuance’s ScanSoft PaperPort. This will become its desktop component for EFI product including the Fiery and SendMe solutions and will be carrying the brand names of EFI Desktop SE and EFI Desktop Professional. Automation of document processes is at the heart of the collaboration, with easy-to-use scanning, image enhancement, PDF and document management capabilities.

EFI SendMe is claimed to be the number one digital document distribution and management solution, with more than fourteen million users using Fiery technology for its color, high quality output and innovation. ScanSoft PaperPort is the top scanning and document management application in the world, boasting patented features used by millions in document work on the personal computer. The EFI Desktop products are promised to complement the EFI Fiery and SendMe solutions by adding scanning, document assembly and PDF capabilities on the desktop with a training-free application.

Document Imaging Report editor / publisher Ralph Gammon said that “The collaboration between Nuance and EFI represents a powerful alliance of independent vendors. It creates a versatile solution that can be deployed in conjunction with the multiple hardware lines and software applications that typically exist within a single organization.”

Meanwhile EFI worldwide marketing and sales senior vice president Frank Mallozzi enthused that “The EFI Desktop SE and Desktop Professional solutions enable customers to distribute, archive and print documents from a single, unified interface. Now, managing the deluge of electronic documents corporate workers face everyday will be a lot simpler.”

As a Hindu Business Line story would have it, CRM is currently characterized by businesses “seen struggling to deploy tools and measures that capture quantifiable benefits.” And while SCM is barely given a passing notion on the Subcontinent, the Indian ERP market is playing host to a flurry of acquisitions and a mass consolidation of ERP suites.

The time for ERP integration vendors to strike is now, and as example of the big deals going on in the sector, California-based IT services provider US Technology Resources International recently announced what USTRI COO / President Sajan Pillai called a contract “to help a Fortune 500 manufacturer effect transition to Oracle Fusion by year 2010.”

“We build strong customer centric services portfolio and delivery mechanism to leverage IT budgets in the most effective and productive manner,” said Pillai. “We deliver IT as an investment to our client’s business, which has a positive impact both on the topline and the bottomline, thereby seeking to enhance shareholder value for them. Thus, we exclusively engage with Fortune 500 clients who are leaders in their business.”

It isn’t Hollywood, California, but as far as business intelligence solution provider Business Objects staff is concerned, it was for a night. Business Objects recently announced that its on-demand business intelligence site crystalrepots.com had won the “Best in Show” Midsize Enterprise Innovation Award at the Midsize Enterprise Summit in Hollywood, Florida. Business Objects marketing held the product’s release until the summit and wowed the assembled senior IT executives well enough to take home the prize.

The site is designed as a secure network for mid-sized businesses exchanging data over the web. According to Business Objects press material, the award is recognition for “the most innovative solutions and the most integrated, high visibility promotional effort throughout the summit.” Business Objects mid-market business vice president Todd Rowe said, “The launch of crystalreports.com extends our market position in delivering BI solutions targeted specifically at the mid-market […] . We feel winning the Midsize Enterprise Innovation Award is a great achievement and is further proof that Business Objects continues to set the bar in the BI industry.” Business Objects is quick to add that crystalreports.com is but one in a range of business solutions, which includes Crystal Reports Server XI, a web-based packaged reporting solution.

With the recent announcement of the impending release of their revamped Sugar Network, SugarCRM has been making waves in the industry. How much more powerful can the number one CRM open source technology vendor get? Well, as Sugar Online co-founder / general manager Clint Oram said on Crmbuyer.com, “2006 will be an extremely exciting year as we look to double and triple our customers.” That’s right: Triple.

This from a company which scored its first commercial client about eighteen months ago, in an industry which barely existed two years ago and certainly not at all competitive in the corporate arena. Of course, Oram has some room in which to speak: The one client of 2004 has become four hundred today, and the SugarCRM website sees about 200,000 downloads monthly. Oram cites the 4,000 developers signed on at the company’s development community as evidence that the influence of sugar is growing.

Telecom software solution and security services firm AsiaInfo Holdings Inc. today announced a CRM platform developed for Shanghai Unicom. In what is becoming an increasing trend in the far east, AsiaInfo has been contracted to produce solutions so that Shanghai Unicom may manage the customer life cycle in its entirety, from pre- to post-sales customer service and everything in-between.

AsiaInfo promises to strengthen the Chinese’s firm ability to handle user growth and telecom competition. Upon announcing the contract, AsiaInfo Holdings CEO / president Steve Zhang said that ”The Customer Management platform will give Shanghai Unicom a deeper understanding of customer needs and enable them to make prompt business decisions and adjustments to their marketing strategy,” said Steve Zhang, president and CEO of AsiaInfo.

In India, CRM systems are making their way into the massive container freight stations market. The latest big fish to enter the CRM pond is Saurashtra Containers; this container freight station will be operational by the end of April in Mundra, Gujarat, and reportedly the number one priority in the business plan will be on customer relationship management.

With offices in New Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad and acting as the Mundra port cargo hub that will serve locations as widespread as Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthand, Surashtra in itself represents the huge shift Indian companies are making to supply proper CRM tools. “Personalised level of services and customer care will be the prime focus to facilitate our clients,” said Sant Khare, CEO of Saurashtra Containers.

Tata Motors, an Indian vehicle manufacturer with 22,000 employees and one million customers, has implemented the comprehensive CRM software Siebel Automotive. The program has been integrated with SAP applications including inventory and warehouse functions.

CRM and ERP systems provider Scribe Software representatives took a little time to pat themselves on the backs this week, announcing some preliminary results from Scribe implementation at ADESA Inc. ADESA purchased Scribe Insight and the Salesforce adapter program from Scribe and reports better results than ever. ADESA, Inc. acts mainly as an auction house for used vehicles.

The American company has an amazing 11,000 employees and 57,000 customers, making them the biggest such dealer by far. ADESA had been using a combination of Salesforce and Oracle products and, while the former performed satisfactorily in serving the purposes of a national database, Oracle product failed to ease in data retrieval problems. They realized they needed a more comprehensive and accessible way to get to their data, housed in both Oracle and Salesforce.

The goal of a national database was successful with Salesforce, but the ability to quickly and easily retrieve data from their Oracle application fell far short of what was necessary. ADESA CRM integration manager Frank Scott was all enthusiasm for the new system. “Scribe Insight and the Scribe Adapter for Salesforce was intuitive and easy to use,” he said, going on to say that “The training and support from Scribe was better than excellent.”