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Technalign, Inc. and InsynQ’s Appgen Business Software group have announced their firms’ partnership to provide InsynQ accounting software products Appgen’s MyBooks Professional and Custom Suite. Technalign will deliver Appgen applications through its partner network. Prices start as US $59 and run as much as US $295 for the “Executive Dashboard” reporting module. Appgen applications will be available with Technalign’s Frontier, on the distribution CDs; version XI customers may download the TAFusion MEPIS package of MyBooks Professional from the tafusion.org download server.

The second phase of the agreement involves interfacing MyBooks Professional with Technalign’s Hiatlantis CRM; the resultant product will be released by April 2007. Hiatlantis currently interfaces to accounting software using a spreadsheet file to import to legacy accounting applications. Technalign is a leading distributor and manufacturer of Linux, Linux software and CRM applications. No more information is provided about the four-year-old firm in PR material, but those interested are invited to go to  www.technalign.com.

Founded in 1997, InsynQ is an outsourced software application hosting and managed IT services firm. InsynQ promises to allow subscribers to “freely access data with full virus protection and automatic back up from any computer, anywhere in the world.”

But wait. Here comes the bad news, also everywhere in industry media today. No less a source than Microsoft Corp has declared that CRM is failing businesses. However, those presenting the findings chose to site salespeople as the reason for today’s problems. One hundred mid-sized UK companies with between 100 and 1,000 employees were polled for the survey.

Sixty percent of sales directors surveyed see CRM as fundamental to the sales process, but only twenty-four percent of businesses say staff is using the CRM systems effectively. Furthermore, the bulk of sales directors tolerate their staff not making full use of the CRM system, with only twenty-two percent operating a zero-tolerance policy. In contrast, many are reporting holes in the data collection of the survey: Organizations cannot know how much revenue is lost through ineffective use of CRM or the lack of a CRM system, for example. In addition, the survey looked at the sales automation aspects of CRM systems and not service and marketing.

Barriers to the effective use of CRM listed in the survey include resistant sales staff, specifically things like the perception that CRM systems create extra work for little return, resistance to technology, dislike of being monitored, desire to keep hold of contacts, ongoing training, bad experiences with CRM in the past, CRM not being viewed as strategic, and generally difficulty and unreliability. Low user adoption is more likely to be the result of failures elsewhere rather than the root cause, though.

Poor implementation, process analysis, and training could be at the heart, aided and abetted by technology-based issues such as CRM systems being difficult to use. According to the results, fifty-six percent of the organizations surveyed did not use their CRM system for sales forecasting.

This one’s been all over the news today, and is apparently giving lots of web and print writers the opportunity to flex their facetious muscles. Typically headlines begin with something like “CRM systems starting to deliver real benefits,” followed by some temporarily sarcastic tag such as “at last” or “finally” or “finally at last.” It’s all about a PMP Research study commissioned by the Evaluation Centre stating that the proportion of companies who describe their CRM applications as “very successful” has more than doubled in the past twelve months.

Their positive experiences are reportedly encouraging other organizations to review their implementations in the hopes of achieving additional benefits. For the past two years, PMP’s annual survey on CRM found a very small number of satisfied customers of four percent. This year, the proportion stating that their CRM applications have been very successful in delivering all the benefits anticipated leapt to fourteen percent. A further thirty-nine percent label their CRM efforts as “successful” and say that the business has seen some, if not all, the benefits expected.

Put together, this means that half of this year’s sample (fifty-three percent, to be precise) reckons to be seeing real improvements as a result of implementing CRM applications. For some time, it has been a widely held view that up to fifty percent of CRM implementations are failures. However, companies are certainly not giving up on CRM, according to PMP’s findings. Sixty-six percent report that they are currently making changes and additions to their implementations in order to realize more of the benefits they originally sought, or say they have plans to do so shortly. Just eleven percent have ruled out further improvements completely.

Respondents were asked to rate their motivations for adopting CRM technology on a scale of 1 to 5, in which “1” means “not important” and “5” for “very important.” The aggregated results show that the two most common drivers for introducing CRM systems are the desire to improve customer satisfaction levels (3.96) and the requirement to improve customer lifetime value (3.70). Companies have clearly recognized that it is easier and cheaper to keep an existing customer rather than find a new one, and attracting new customers finished last on the list of desirable outcomes (2.84).

Organisations are also making headway in their long journey towards having a single view of customers over a wide range of channels. The company website (ninety-one percent), email (eighty-seven percent) and web forms (sixty-four percent) are all now common methods of online customer communication, along with established choices such as telephone (ninety-six percent) and fax (eighty-five percent). More than half (fifty-six percent) reports moderate success in integrating all these options, while only two percent have failed to tackle this particular problem.

Despite their acknowledged successes, organisations are still reluctant to spend much on CRM systems since the biggest proportion (forty-seven percent) estimate they have invested less than £250,000 on CRM over the past three years. The fact that many IT budgets are under pressure may be partly the reason for this, but organisations show little interest in alternative methods of sourcing CRM technology – only nine percent of those polled indicate any interest in hosted CRM applications and only four percent make use of offshore facilities.

Founded in 1990, PMP Research is currently the leading European independent analyst firm and part of PMP Group Services. The firm provides bespoke research, analysis and consultancy with foci on the IT, telecom and professional services markets. PMP Research has access to a database of more than 68,000 individuals. The Evaluation Centre is a website and service center which seeks to assist buyers of software, services and technology in the procurement process.

From the Netherlands, NEC Philips Unified Solutions today launched a new portfolio of unified communication solutions based on Microsoft Live Communication Server; the product represents the fruits of the partnership between NEC Philips Unified Solutions and Microsoft and integrates NEC Philips overall IP and TDM communication offering with Microsoft’s solutions based around LCS, Sharepoint and CRM.

With this launch, NEC Philips Unified Solutions claims it can now offer a completely unified concept integrating all communication channels including IM, telephony, conferencing, video, e-mail, and presence management. The NEC solution can be extended with operator, contact center, CRM and workflow applications in combination with SIP-DECT and GSM messaging. The concept has been promised to be customizable for any given customer front- and back-office environments, assuring directory integration and enabling single point of management.

Established in 2006 as a joint venture of NEC Corporation and Royal Philips Electronics, NEC Philips Unified Solutions company boasts a half-century of providing communication systems, applications, networks and services to customers worldwide. NEC Philips Unified Solutions is headquartered in Hilversum, the Netherlands. NEC Corporation is one of the world’s largest internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions providers. NEC specializes in tailored solutions in computer, networking and electron devices. The NEC Group currently employs more than 140,000 people worldwide and had net sales of approximately US $41.2 billion for fiscal year 2006.

NICE Systems representatives today announced that one of Scandinavia’s largest (though as of yet publicly unnamed) banks, has decided to expand its implementation of the NICE VoIP solution for centralizing its recordings from European branches by placing a follow-on order for additional channels for a total of 1500. The follow-on order was received together with NICE’s strategic partner IBM and channel partner TM Group.

Employed will be the new Nortel VoIP environment based on the Duplicate Media Stream over IP technology. The NICE implementation seeks to address bank needs in VoIP recording, liability and risk management. NICE offers hybrid solutions involving customer interaction management, combining traditional methods and VoIP, liability and quality monitoring for contact centers, and trading floors and back offices of financial institutions. This good news followed some decent financial results released by the company late last week.

Second quarter revenue guidance has been raised from US $94-98 million, up from the previously announced US $89-$92 million. NICE chief executive officer Haim Shani said that “We are seeing stronger than originally anticipated market demand for our enterprise interactions and public safety and security solutions.” The final results for the second quarter 2006 will be reported in the NICE quarterly earnings release, on 2 August 2006. Following the earnings release, NICE management will host a teleconference. to discuss the results and the company’s outlook for the rest of the year.

NICE Systems is currently the leading provider of Insight from Interactions, and specializes in comprehensive performance management and interaction analytics solutions for the enterprise, public safety and security markets. NICE now boasts 23,000 customers in 100 countries, including seventy-six of the Fortune 100 companies.

RightNow Technologies also announced another feather in the RightNow cap, albeit a bit indirectly. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been honored with the Federal Computer Week’s Pioneer Award for its “high-impact implementation” of RightNow technology. More generally, Federal Computer Week bestows the Pioneer Award annually to agencies that have demonstrated innovative use of technology to improve specific government applications or programs.

The EPA implementation leveraged RightNow’s knowledge foundation, web self-service capabilities, and rules-based email management functionality. Government figures show that EPA program office web sites now answer visitors’ questions automatically 80 percent of the time and have reduced email volume by more than 70 percent. RightNow’s solutions are used by more than 125 federal, state and local government agencies around the world.

The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect human health and the environment. The EPA was established in 1970 and today employs 18,000 people across the country, in the Washington D.C. headquarters offices in Washington DC, ten regional offices, and thirteen labs.

The state of Kentucky has chosen RightNow Technologies to implement its on demand technology in support of a statewide initiative to promote and facilitate postsecondary education for state citizens. Employed in the deployment will be RightNow Service, RightNow Marketing and RightNow Metrics, programs installed with the ultimate goal of helping Kentuckians enroll in and navigate several pilot projects targeted at middle school students, high school students and adult learners.

The program will be managed by the U.S. Council of Education and funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. RightNow seeks to streamline and automate communication between various postsecondary educational institutions, including eight traditional state universities, the Kentucky Community and Technical College system, and the Kentucky Virtual University. Kentucky Virtual University is a postsecondary education outlet with a mission statement of making education “more accessible, efficient and responsive to Kentucky’s citizens and businesses.”

By coordinating and facilitating online programs offered by Kentucky colleges and universities, KYVU seeks to increase the ranks of Kentucky college students. As a bonus, the educational council in Kentucky has also engaged RightNow Professional Services to integrate RightNow applications with existing student bases and computer telephony integration systems.

Founded in 1997, RightNow Technologies itself is billed as the firm “leading the industry beyond CRM to high-impact customer experience management solutions.” RightNow boasts a clientele of more than 1,500 companies around the world, including Alaska Air, Andrews Federal Credit Union, Banknorth Group, Bell Microproducts, Briggs Corporation, Cendant, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, Dow Chemical, Dun & Bradstreet, Friend Communications, Germany Pioneer, International Rectifier, Kodak, Merry Maids, Paddy Power, Sketchers, The Right Start, Thomas Cook, Victoria International, and Victoria University of New Zealand.

Salesforce.com has won another long-term commitment, with representatives announcing today that Jobscience, a leading developer of staffing solutions for the healthcare industry, has now been completely assimilated into the salesforce.com AppExchange platform to run its entire business from human resources and product management to marketing.

Jobscience has used AppExchange to build even custom applications and forty-seven customized tabs, while deploying twenty applications in product development, marketing, sales, service, support, account management and financial operations.

Custom applications built by Jobscience using the AppExchange platform include Sales and Collection, which provides detailed information collection and management; Implementation, which enables the professional services team to manage projects; Service & Support Communications, which enables customers and employees to manage across multiple communication channels; Account Consulting; Marketing Communications; Product Management, which allows company management to collect and manage future product feature requests and enhancements; Quality Assurance; Events; Human Resources; Executive Action, which automates the review and approval of budgets, purchase requisitions and marketing expense requests; and Finance.

Founded in 1999, Jobscience has worked with hundreds of hospitals and has established itself as a leader in recruiting solutions for the healthcare industry. Salesforce.com is currently the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. Salesforce.com’s on-demand platform AppExchange allows the building of powerful new applications, customization and integration of the Salesforce suite. Salesforce.com today manages customer information for approximately 22,700 customers and approximately 444,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices, America Online, Cendant Rental Car Group, Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom and SunTrust.

You have to love the bravado: MagSuite.com today jumped into the cram packed pool that is the CRM market, launching an integrated on-demand application which automates CRM, accounting and inventory control for smaller businesses. The MagSuite system includes core functions such as prospects / customers / vendors; items / services; sale opportunities; activities; cases / solutions; accounts receivable; accounts payable; general ledger; and reports in Excel and PDF formats. MagSuite.com is available for US $30 per user per month.

A fifteen-day obligation-free test drive is available at www.magsuite.com. MagSuite.com is reportedly only the second integrated on-demand online CRM / accounting / inventory package on the US market, placing the small firm after mighty NetSuite. MagSuite PR claims that MagSuite prices are up to three times cheaper than NetSuite’s, though. The MagSuite.com system seeks to offer secure and reliable data storage, hassle-free upgrades, secure access from anywhere with internet access, and real-time access. Future plans include transforming the application to a web 2.0 standard to offer desktop application user experience.

Following this well be the creation of an on-demand online development platform where companies will build and host web applications. Founded in 2002, MagSuite Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, Calif. MagSuite Inc. focuses on the development, sales and support the of magsuite.com on-demand web system for CRM, accounting, and inventory in the United States.

And another huge retail chain gets into the action: Agency.com representatives announced today that their firm has been appointed by Swedish household goods retailer IKEA to handle eCRM and in-store plasma screen strategy. IKEA representatives stated that Agency.com has hit the ground running, already having begun strategy work, with creative set for a winter launch.

The eCRM strategy seeks to address concerns of brand loyalty, promotion and increasing the IKEA loyalty scheme customers’ database. IKEA spokespeople stated that Agency.com was selected for the project “after demonstrating a thorough understanding of the IKEA sense of humor and tone of voice…” Or, as Agency.com managing director Alex Wright would have it, “We can’t wait to get stuck in.” Founded in 1995, New York, N.Y.-headquartered Agency.com is a full-service interactive agency specializing in interactive marketing campaigns and web sites to assist global clients in customer acquisition and retention.

Among Agency.com clientele are 3M, British Airways, T-Mobile and Visa. Agency.com has offices in Amsterdam, Brussels, Chicago, Dallas, London and San Francisco, and is part of TBWA Worldwide, an Omnicom Group Inc. company.