We Blog CRM

San Diego, Calif.-based content management and web application provider MEDSEEK today announced its partnership with Middletown, Wis.-based CPM Marketing Group to provide hospitals with technology to personalize online health information for patients through a combination of CPM CRM solutions and MEDSEEK’s own content management solutions.

More specifically, the teaming up will allow the connection between MEDSEEK CMS and CPM’s internet-enabled instant CRM interface. The interface will in turn allow MEDSEEK CMS in identification and information retrieval. Should the given hospital needing data not have a CRM database, CPM can assist with its own national database containing information on over 170 million individuals to provide demographic intelligence.

Dubbing it “SAP for the rest of us,” on-demand business software suite provider NetSuite, Inc. introduced a new level of ERP functionality to its business management suite. Promising “deep ERP functionality with CRM-like usability,” NetSuite released a few details regarding NetSuite version 11.0. Specifically, three key features have been added, designed especially for back-office applications.

New ERP functions include activity management, bin management, demand-based inventory replenishment, integrated email messaging, expense amortization, landed cost, project accounting, milestone billing and task tracking. A second addition, claimed to be “an industry first” in press material, is the revamped NetSuite Customer Dashboard. Reportedly revolutionary is the single view provided for each individual customer and features all vital statistics, including purchase history, collections status, yearly pipeline, and custom metrics. The dashboards are promised to deliver (with a click or two only, mind you) a quick gauge for metrics, show the overall health of a customer, and divulge details associated with all aspects of the customer relationship.

Third on the list are the KPI scorecards, which flexibly measuring performance against goals, times, and budgets. This feature is designed for the mid-market and is touted for its ease of use. With the release, NetSuite, Inc. is assuming direct confrontation with SAP and its SAP All-in-one product. Calling the product “derivative,” “incredibly complex,” “problematic,” and, most damning of all, “expensive,” NetSuite PR claims that the distance between its company and SAP is growing further still. Now, we suppose it’s high time for SAP to respond. Surely they will…

It’s hard to imagine that, nearly seven centuries after Marco Polo’s famed visit to Cathay, making inroads to China is still seen as a revolutionary act. Yet in this respect, the 21st century echoes the 13th, with a second opening of the mysterious land. Of course, in our day, this quest to the unknown is all about profit. So who better than Microsoft to start laying the groundwork for relationships between East and West? Today came the announcement of another strategic move from the California behemoth: CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation, announced a strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp. to develop, market and deliver CRM enterprise applications in China.

The applications will be based on the Software as a Service design and will feature on-site and on-demand deployment. In the multi-phase long-term strategy, plans are in the works to integrate Windows Live Services and MSN with CDC Corporation’s China.com portal. The SaaS CRM offerings are planned for December 2006 release and is set to take advantage of the infrastructure established in China by internet service and video game company China.com., a division of CDC Corporation. China.com has been established nationwide in thirty provinces and reportedly serves more than 5 million first-time visitors daily.

The China.com network currently supports the company’s widely online games, portal business and hosting services for more than 1,700 Chinese businesses. Exercising his right to understate, Microsoft Dynamics CRM general manager Brad Wilson said that “China represents a strategic growth opportunity for our CRM business” and called the country “an important high-growth market.” Wilson added that the alliance was crafted to enable the company to “leverage its popular c360 CRM add-on products, its deep knowledge of Chinese markets and channels, and its nationwide infrastructure to accelerate delivery of … products and services.”

And one CDC manager said “We are bullish on the opportunity to work with Microsoft as its Microsoft CRM strategy expands in China.” Clearly, these businessman are hiding scads of elation behind such businesslike comments. CDC Corporation is a provider of enterprise resource planning and supply chain management (SCM) software applications in addition to its CRM solutions. CDC Software’s add-ons for the c360 CRM systems and its development tools for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform are now employed by over 1,000 customers worldwide in nine languages; no word yet on which forms of Chinese other than Mandarin will be deployed in the alliance solutions.

As though the allure of no price weren’t enough, Free CRM has just added another perk: Google Gmail support directly integrated in the product. And yes, Free CRM does literally live up to its name. All that is required to take advantage of the offer is to set up a (free) Gmail account at Google.com and then a (free) CRM account at FreeCrm.com By integrating Google Gmail, users are able to send mass email campaigns, newsletters, etc. directly within the Free CRM system. Any contacts you have already amassed in Gmail are simply transferred to the contact database in the Free CRM program. Gmailers can view POP mail boxes using SSL encrypted security, and this security is provided when emailing from FreeCrm.com as well.

According to press material (a release instantly all over the web), “The combination of FreeCRM.com business services with Google’s Gmail provides an inexpensive vehicle for powering small businesses using the latest in online communications technology.” Indeed, zero is a very low price, and this service could well represent thousands of businesses’ first experience with the benefits of CRM. Free CRM opened less than two years ago and already boasts more than 30,000 companies and 53,000 subscribers. Free CRM has now established itself as the world’s single largest on-demand CRM provider.

Included in Free CRM are unlimited data storage and XML data integration; Microsoft Outlook integration; Palm Pilot support; RIM / BlackBerry support; and Pocket PC support. Free CRM representatives again pushed the idea that their company is to act as a full-on competitor to the dominant growing giant SalesForce.com, though Act, GoldMine, Siebel On-Demand and SugarCRM also get notice from Free. As for the competition, this latest addition to Free CRM is a double-edged sword: Many will be introduced to CRM thanks to the low low low price, but one wonders how many will later switch to any service which must be paid for…

IP-based contact center technology provider CosmoCom announced a global partnership with Neocase to create what is reportedly the first complete virtual customer service center platform. The fruit of their labor is the comprehensive contact center platform CosmoCall Universe, and Neocase 10, Neocase’s flagship collaborative customer service application. The new solution, promising to provide “out-of-the-box, completely web-based customer service center” will be available through Neocase On-Demand, and through other service provider and channel partners of the two companies.

CosmoCall Universe is designed for communication work and features a unified contact center suite that includes ACD, IVR, IVVR, CTI, multimedia recording, and administrative tools. The Universe is a multi-tenant platform that supports multi-channel contacts via telephone, videophone, live internet, and e-mail while supporting all media including IM, text, video, voice, and real-time collaboration. Neocase will provide the applications, promising to “[take] customer service to a new level by giving customer service agents the power to access expertise anywhere within a company or to collaborate with external partners for tailored case resolution.”

The new product and is implementation will be demonstrated at CosmoCom’s own global user conference, CosmoCommunity 2006, this week. The product is promised for release by the end of next month. Neocase and CosmoCom will market the solution through Neocase On-Demand, partners and service providers. In terms of customer volume, CosmoCom is said to be the most-selected provider of hosted contact center platforms to top-tier telcos worldwide. Their large platform seeks to unify contact center functions, including administration; automatic call distribution; computer telephony integration; interactive voice and video response; progressive dialing with campaign management; recording and quality monitoring; and reporting. administration and reporting. Among CosmoCom customers are BT, Deutsche Telekom, Eagle ACD, France Telecom, NTT and Telefonica.

Herzliya, Israel-based Formula Telecom Solutions, Ltd. announced that the Leap Business Control Engine has been dubbed one of the most innovative new products in 2006. The provider of business control, billing and CRM solutions stated that Leap BCE had been singled out by the IIR World Billing Awards to be a finalist in the Most Innovative Product category. Leap BCE was noted for its innovation as the industry’s first fully-integrated business-policy control engine based on business considerations. The product boasts real-time platform to facilitate cross-networking, cross-product service and multi-play service creation. The system is built upon the FTS Leap Business Control and Charging Foundation.

The IIR World Billing Awards represent perhaps the highest recognition of billing excellence in the industry, and are given to trend setters and best practices in the communications industry. According to the mission statement of World Billing Awards founders, the prizes are awarded to “help raise awareness of the significance of billing and information management processes to the communications industry.” identifying key trends and rewarding billing best practice. In a statement following the nomination, marketing and business development vice president Yair M. Sakov summarized his company’s philosophy as one in which “Customer needs should be analysed and addressed in the context of the service they are consuming.” FTS plans on rolling out its own red carpet for the product at the Billing and Information Management Systems in London in early June. At center stage will be spokespersons from Telenet, Belgium’s largest provider of cable and broadband services, who “will present their successful experience with Leap BCE.” The firm hopes to stay on the map after being ranked 54th on the 2005 Deloitte Technology Fast-500 EMEA list enumerating the fastest-growing technology companies.

Promising “eight days’ worth of education packed into two information-filled days” and “the no. 1 i-technology educational and networking opportunity of the year,” the 10th International SOA Web Services Edge Conference and the First Annual Enterprise Open Source Conference has been announced for a June 5-6 run in New York City. The list of conference faculty members is huge this year — over 100 are scheduled to lecture, engage in panel discussions, and / or hold classes on subjects such as AJAX, SOA, Web Services and Enterprise Open Source. The conference program promises to present a comprehensive view of all the development and management aspects of integrating SOA strategy and open source systems.

Scheduled keynote speakers include Cassatt founder / CEO Bill Coleman to kick things off; on Tuesday, it will be JBoss CEO Dr. Marc Fleury commenting extensively on enterprise open source options and principles. Fog Creek Software founder will give a keynote talk to be entitled “Making Truly Great, ‘Blue-Chip’ Software Products.” Two “power panels” will take place, led by SYS-CON Group publisher / editorial director Jeremy Geelan. Of course, attending discussions simultaneously remains impossible, the complete content from all the conference sessions will be recorded as a set of DVDs. This on-demand archive set carries a price tag of $995 and webcast archives also exist as sys-con.tv. Conference press material uses a statistic from the Gartner Group in order to emphasize the importance of such an education: According to the analyst firm, by 2008, “more than 60 percent of enterprises will use SOA as the guiding principle when creating mission-critical applications and processes.

This just in: RightNow Technologies, Inc. has announced the acquisition of on-demand sales workflow automation software firm Salesnet, Inc. in a cash transaction. RightNow inherits Salesnet’s twenty-six employees, twelve off-shore development contractors, and the Salesnet consumer base of 2500 users. As of now, only one change to personnel or extant customers have been announced: Former Salesnet chief technology officer / co-founder Rich Perkett has been named RightNow product development director. Parkett will be responsible for integration and expansion of Salesnet’s technology into RightNow product. Initial integration between RightNow and Salesnet is expected by the end of August, and full integration will be achieved within one year afterward. RightNow expects that the transaction will not greatly affect cash flow from operations and will be dilutive to GAAP EPS in 2006. RightNow will be moving to the former Boston, Mass. Salesnet corporate office in Boston development, marketing, sales and support functions.

RightNow representatives were quite excited about the agreement, claiming that the acquisition will “accelerate RightNow’s customer experience management development efforts by combining RightNow’s patented knowledge foundation with Salesnet’s sophisticated workflow engine.” TMCnet called the move “a shot across the bow of salesforce.com,” but RightNow officials have shrugged off that claim.

As though the Customer Respect Group’s survey of last week weren’t enough, here comes another consumer report that makes certain aspects of the CRM industry look very bad indeed. In the middle of May, the international research and consulting firm CRG released their “Second Quarter 2006 Online Customer Respect Study.” The report card given certain CRM companies and the industry in general was none too pleasing. And in CRG’s “communications” section, most of the big twelve CRMers certified were dubbed “poor” in the category.

Now here comes another one.

Entitled “Customers Say What Companies Don’t Want to Hear” (let the pessimism begin), the research study polled thousands of consumers regarding some fundamental business management concepts. The results indicate gaps of understanding, perceptions of unsympathetic CRM providers, and growing customer dissatisfaction. Richard A. Lee and Dr. David J. Mangen co-authored the study. Mangen is of Mangen Research Associates while Lee calls High-Yield Methods the office; the two have worked together many times previously.

The foreword is by Paul Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light: Customer Strategies for the 21st Century. Greenberg has quite the high opinion of Lee and Mangen. Most importantly, CRM guru Greenberg comments that “there are lessons in this study for customers, marketers, advertising agencies and CRM practitioners” and that the study “proves a mission-critical strategic point. Businesses need to rethink their logic and develop new operating models based on customer centric behaviors and valuations.” One would think such philosophy is obvious, but given that the findings have already been called “shocking” while rippling through the trade press, clearly Lee and Mangen are on to something. Some of study tidbits being bandied about in popular press include the acknowledgement of the presence of a growing gap between customer expectations and company behavior.

The study authors go on to note that this condition actually creates opportunity for some companies, should they be paying attention to market forces. And on the subject of market forces, the study states that “buyers are taking widespread control of buyer-seller relationships, and many companies don’t know how to respond.” As indicating in the CRG study, the amount of direct attention given the customer is overwhelmingly the single most important factor in consumer decisions. Meanwhile, the option of online customer service was nearly irrelevant in purchasing decisions. CRM was singled out in the survey for its focus on technology-laden solutions and support rather than taking that customer-based focus so ardently wanted by consumers.

Again, the Mangen and Lee study is akin to that of CRG’s, producing the conclusion that CRM firms are erring in exactly the area in which they ostensibly specialize. Indeed, Mangen has an airtight answer for the would-be debaters of the conclusions printed in “Customers Say”: “Frankly, contesting the core findings means telling customers they don’t know what they’re talking about–and that’s pretty far down the slippery slope of doing what you want to do, not what customers want you to do.” After all, the study’s statistical measures and fact finding has been praised as “comprehensive and straightforward.” Neither critical acclaim nor a bit of backlash from the business world are new experiences for the study leaders.

Mangen is a highly credentialed customer expert and author of eight books. Lee is an internationally-respected consultant and author in the customer-centricity field. Predictions of Siebel Systems’ fall helped get Mangen Research and High-Yield Methods on the map in a big way, or, more previously, the demise of Siebel two years later did. Another Mangen and High-Yield joint effort indicated the present-day slowing of the CRM industry, dude, to the gradual diminishment of spending on CRM. Greenberg, meanwhile, has jumped on board in time for Mangen and Lee to warn about the newest industry-wide Titanic. Contributing a foreword available for free reading online at www.the56group.typepad.com, Greenberg both sells the book and eloquently urges careful studying of the book. First, the hype. Paragraph one: “[Mangen and Lee] have this tendency to initiate groundbreaking studies every other year. They ALWAYS find something that companies don’t want to hear but have to hear. And they ALWAYS seem to be right.”

As Greenberg sees it, Mangen and Lee’s findings are not surprising, but actually seeing the hard data to back up the philosophy and prognostication is. Greenberg (and, by inference, the study’s authors) imagines that our world is now a consumer ecosystem, as opposed to the corporate business ecosystem that dominated in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He figures Mangen and Lee to be among the first to realize this and that CRM professionals had better become “disabused” quickly “of serious misperceptions.” (Just to satisfy the curious, top kudos were given to Amazon.com for its high customer-centricity, and Wal-mart was deemed the least such. Lee has implied that he sees a dark future for Wal-mart.)

Many just became one more. To kick off the week, the Edison, N.J.-based advanced enterprise contract management solutions provider I-many, Inc. announced the naming of David Blumberg to the position of fulfillment services executive vice president. In this new position, Blumberg will be responsible for all professional services, customer support and engineering functions. He will also be responsible for formulating and directing I-many marketing strategies in the Life Sciences and Healthcare business line.

Blumberg made his name at the global management consulting giant Accenture, putting in fifteen years, ultimately as managing partner, with that company. Blumberg rose from consultant to a number of senior management positions, where he served as the lead partner for the pharmaceutical and medical products practice, global account manager for one of Accenture’s Diamond pharmaceutical accounts, and oversaw Accenture’s global pharmaceutical and medical products CRM business. The CRM business at Accenture may have lost a good one here, but even the folks at Accenture will surely wish him luck…