We Blog CRM

Time for another Gartner Magic Quadrant nod, it seems, with this time the lucky winner Deloitte.

Deloitte has been listed by the analyst firm in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner’s "Magic Quadrant for CRM Service Providers, North America" report. Deloitte also bagged a spot in the "Visionaries Quadrant for Business Intelligence Implementation."

To be named to a Gartner Magic Quadrant, a given firm must pass a set of evaluation criteria, including ability to execute, overall viability, sales execution/pricing; market responsiveness and track record, marketing execution, customer experience, operations, completeness of vision, market understanding and strategy, sales strategy, offering, or product, strategy, business model, vertical/industry strategy, innovation, and geographic strategy.

More online games? Cool!

Yes, folks, it’s true China.com has announced a grand search for participating developers from Japan, Korea, China, the United States, Europe, India and Australia “with long-standing, successful track records in the development of top-quality and successful online games, and the vision and innovative skill to develop games from the ground up that will be culturally attractive to the vast and growing China gaming user base,” as the firm attempts to get the huge nation as hooked to video gaming as the rest of us.

CDC Games chairman Fred Wang explained the grand plan by stating that "China is just at the very beginning of its evolution of developing its entertainment, and gaming sector.” China.com, says Wang, will provide games that are “culturally aware, entertaining and educational.” (Come on, educational? Really?).

The program is based in the franchise partnership rolled out by CDC Software earlier this year, the reception of which by the Chinese enterprise software market has reportedly been impressive.

CDC Games will invest the equivalent of up to US $20 million per game development partner. CDC also plans to undertake market research and game research via the CDC Games team; the CDC plan is to mine their 30 million-plus registered users for feedback. The Online Games Developer Program will be managed by Dr. Xiaowei Chen, chief executive officer of CDC Games and chief financial officer of China.com Inc.

Would-be game developers interested in participating (and with a potential US $20 million as a prize, who wouldn’t be?) can contact the company at www.cdccorporation.net. CDC Corporation is focused on enterprise software, mobile applications and online games.

As part of its strategic review, the company has reorganized into two primary operating business units, CDC Software and China.com Inc. Internet service and video game company China.com. is 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.

Vistula Communications Services, Inc., a supplier of flexible and reliable VoIP services to telecommunications carriers and internet service providers, today announced the selection of its V-Cube platform by DirecPath. V-Cube will be employed in running a pilot program for the delivery of DirecPath’s consumer VoIP service offerings.

Vistula will initially run a six-month pilot program, after which (assuming everything runs smoothly), it will provide VoIP service across a large portion of DirecPath’s customer base. Vistula seeks to allow DirecPath to manage the communications needs of a diverse range of MDU and gated-community properties, and to add to its suite of bundled services the benefits of a secure, simplified, scalable and highly resilient VoIP infrastructure.

DirecPath was formed in May 2006 by Hicks Holdings LLC and The DIRECTV Group, Inc. to provide bundled DIRECTV programming, broadband voice and data and security services to multiple dwelling unit and gated-community owners across the United States.

Vistula Communications Services, Inc. is a telecommunications company providing hosted, managed VoIP services to carriers, cable operators, service providers and transit network operators.

Texas Instruments Incorporated representatives today announced that ZyXEL Communications Corp., reportedly the world’s largest residential gateway provider, has chosen TI’s VoIP products for its voice-enabled DSL access devices, VoIP gateways and IP phones. The first IP phones with the Texas Instruments chipset of the V501D-T1 and the V300 will be available at the CeBIT 2007 show.

At an announced date prior to the show, ZyXEL will roll out its high-port density VoIP gateway, P2024. This teaming promises to be far-reaching in the ZyXEL range, indeed. "TI’s VoIP solutions are at the heart of ZyXEL’s next-generation voice-enabled CPE and IP phone products," said Dr. Albert Ju, Telco/VoIP product line assistant vice president at ZyXEL Communications.

The selection of TI’s TNETV24xx and TNETV25xx series of VoIP gateway technology, says ZyXEL PR, will enable the firm to deliver high-performance voice processing and new feature-rich access products to market rapidly and efficiently across a broad range of CPE devices. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas Instruments Incorporated provides DSP and analog technologies in two major segments: semiconductor work and the educational and productivity solutions business.

TI has manufacturing, design or sales operations in 27 countries. ZyXEL Communications Corp. is headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan. ZyXEL IP networking solutions include access multiplexors, customer premise equipment, internet security and Wireless LAN equipment for small- to mid-sized businesses and service providers.

Call center jobs are moving again, but this time it’s good news.

Recently upwardly mobile Convergys Corporation made happy headlines in Oklahoma today with the announcement that the firm would be expanding its customer service work for DirecT-V and thus would need to expand total employment at its Moore plant to about 1,350, a net increase of 220 new jobs. The company also offers college tuition reimbursement. Good for them, then.

A member of Standard & Poor’s 500, Convergys Corporation is a provider of customer care, human resources, and billing services. Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, Convergys has more than 65,000 employees in 75 customer contact centers, three data centers, and other facilities in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

And ContactinGauteng was also able to announce another, much more visible achievement today as well: a full-on business process outsourcing skills hub. Gauteng province in South Africa aims at creating a whopping 60,000 new jobs in the call-centre industry within the next three years. ContactinGauteng seeks to develop this potential talent pool to its call-centre industry.

Through this initiative, Gauteng’s school dropouts would be able to gain the opportunity to learn basic skills to increase their level of employability and career prospects. ContactinGauteng doubles as call-centre industry authority and member association in Gauteng.

The firm is responsible for more than 60 percent of call centres in South Africa; the city of Johannesburg’s economic development unit itself will be partnering with ContactinGauteng to develop the BPO skills hub: “The Joburg BPO skills hub will enable successful incumbents to qualify with a BTech certificate provided by the global training organisation Edexcel,” said a CIG spokesman.

The hub carries a mission statement that promises to reduce the cost of recruitment, subsidize the cost of training, provide balance sheet relief, and reduce attrition of agents in call centres, consultants and human resources in other BPO service centres. In theory, the BPO Skills Hub will benefit the local market by providing employers access to a massive human resource pool that can deliver “an internationally recognised quality of service.”

Further, the CIG brain trust envisions that, with its assistance, South Africa can become a power in the international outsourcing arena.

Call centre and business process outsourcing authority ContactinGauteng has been named host Direct Channel Holdings (née Direct Channel Marketing) as its platinum sponsor for the Gauteng contact centre industry’s annual awards. “…we felt that this high profile industry event is an exclusive opportunity to position and promote our newly consolidated brand,” said Direct Channel CEO / founder Suleman Shaik.

“Although Direct Channel has a national presence, Gauteng represents an important destination for our business growth.” The Annual Awards allowed ContactinGauteng to “pay tribute to individuals and companies that achieved extraordinary results within the call centre and BPO sector.”

Australian Laboratory Services has reported a good CRM / bad CRM story this week. ALS has “ripped and replaced” its Sage ACT! CRM solution, complaining that it did not sufficiently synchronize data between company sites in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth: “Record changes made by staff in different locations would not always replicate to the master database," explained ALS managing director Dr. Peter Harman.

After what is always described in publicity material as “an extensive evaluation process” (and this time, wishing to avoid repeat mistakes, no doubt was), ALS chose Legrand CRM CORP edition. Legrand CRM CORP was built on SQL, manages account and contact details, tracks campaigns and sales forecasting, and can be accessed by remote sales staff via VPN.

The company went through the process of converting and transferring Sage data to Legrand via an input field in the new system. Harman estimates that Legrand has been "95 percent successful" thus far, but admitted he’d like to see more customizable interfaces to improve the application.

The brain trust at Surado Solutions, a provider of customer relationship management solutions for small- to mid-sized enterprises, has revealed details regarding the next major release in its CRM product line, including the next generation of application design capabilities in Surado CRM 5.1.

Entitled Surado CRM 5.1 Custom Application Designer, the program seeks to allow the design, testing and deployment of custom applications within Surado CRM. Surado CRM CAD is touted for small business owners creating industry-specific applications in-house and enterprise development teams who wish to develop applications that extend and leverage traditional CRM software.

Surado CAD supports UI-based scripting, a scripting language and the calling of stored procedures. Surado press material states that companies with the beta version of the product plan to use Surado CRM CAD in developing a custom placement wizard, and creating a large-scale healthcare application for patient services.

Surado CRM 5.1 also promises new features, particularly the ability to create individualized preferences in pull down lists. Other new stuff include additional features in work flow, project management, automated business rules, and enhanced administrator level functions.

Representatives of Endeavor Commerce made a couple of announcements today. Firstly, Endeavor’s new web controls are now available. The second announcement stated a new version of the firm’s SmartCatalog Rule Manager program is slated for October release.

Primary to the new version of web controls is the allowing of simultaneous server and client side processing. SmartCatalog Rule Manager is an administrative tool seeking to allow product managers and sales engineers to create product and pricing rules in CRM and / or eCommerce systems.

Key to the release is its, well, complete overhauling: Rule Manager will be reset in Microsoft .NET Windows 2.0 Forms Application that is written in Microsoft’s C# language. Endeavor Commerce is a provider of specialty solutions for mid-size enterprises and divisions of Fortune 500 corporations.