We Blog CRM

Queplix, a provider of commercial open source software for customer care that must be located in French Canada, took time recently to announce some successful results its flagship solution QueWeb Customer Care has produced for John Deere.

As most know but Queplix PR nonetheless reminds, John Deere is the world’s leading manufacturer of agricultural and forestry equipment; a leading supplier of equipment used in lawn, grounds and turf care; and a major manufacturer of construction equipment and engines for heavy equipment. Heck, in the ‘States, the words “John Deere” are basically synonymous with “tractor.”

John Deere also provides financial services and the like, so it is here where QueWeb and its CRM product come into play.

Just about three years ago, John Deere migrated its extant “Dealer Technical Assistance Center” from a legacy system to a web-based platform, yet reportedly still preserving all customization, core functionality, and aesthetics of the old applications.

The John Deere DTAC is used in the company’s agriculture; construction and forestry; commercial and consumer equipment; and power systems divisions to support a global network of approximately 8,500 dealers, field service technicians and Deere DTAC analysts.

QueWeb is used in tracking equipment trouble tickets, searching customer support history, and finding documented solutions to product problems. DTAC was originally built on Quintus eContact software, which later became Avaya’s Interaction Center suite. When Avaya discontinued its line of business applications, John Deere moved to Java-based QueWeb.

And after three years, everything is still swell for Deere. The company has since expanded use of QueWeb in multiple internal and external customer-service departments, ultimately making QueWeb Customer Care a universal-level solution for John Deere.

Queplix offers a suite of software tools and professional services in areas of contact centers, help desks, and eService. Flagship product QueWeb can be deployed as a stand-alone or can convert entrenched legacy CRM applications from Avaya, PeopleSoft, Quintus, Siebel, and Vantive to its open source platform. Among QueWeb customers are John Deere, Hewlett Packard, Sony Ericsson, Telcordia, and Norfolk Southern.

ViryaNet, a specialist in software applications that automate business processes for mobile workforce management, today announced that the Building Commission of Victoria, Australia has purchased additional licenses to expand its use of ViryaNet.

The Building Commission of Victoria is located in Melbourne, acting as a statutory authority overseeing the building control system in Victoria and regulating building practices.

The commission has originally selected the ViryaNet product for its Compliance and Conciliation Group, and will now deploy the product to its Technical Services Group. With this roll out, the entire building commission will be using the ViryaNet product as its CRM tool, thereby enabling that ever-desirable 360 degree view of customer while unifying disparate customer data and databases.

The Building Commission was established by the Building Act of 1993 to administer Victoria’s building legislation system. It operates within a national legislative framework administered by the Australian Building Codes Board. The Building Commission oversees the building control system, including the registration and regulation of building practitioners, standards in construction and building maintenance, protecting the health and safety of building users, and the building and occupancy permit system. It also seeks to demonstrate industry leadership by promoting initiatives such as sustainability and accessibility, and continuing professional development for building practitioners.

How would you like a $4 million line of credit? Seagull Software got just that, announcing this week that SVB Silicon Valley Bank has extended a $4 million revolving line of credit for general corporate purposes in support of Seagull Software’s business plans. The line represents a neat doubling of the $2 million working capital line of credit established in 2004.

With the announcement, Seagull representatives announced that the software firm had not actually found the need to dip into its SVB line of credit as of now, but the company “is very pleased to have this resource at its disposal as organic and external business investment opportunities emerge.”

Seagull Software specializes in technology that converts legacy applications into SOA-compliant web services. Seagull’s LegaSuite software platform includes integration, GUI, workflow and terminal emulation technology. LegaSuite is based on open standards including web services, XML, J2EE and .NET.

Company figures show that Seagull Software technology is used in more than 10,000 business and government organizations in over 30 countries. Seagull Software has direct operations in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, UK, France, and Germany, supplemented by distributors serving approximately 30 additional countries.

SVB Silicon Valley Bank provides commercial banking services to emerging growth and mature companies in the technology, life science, private equity and premium wine industries. Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., SVB today has 27 U.S. offices and three international operations. SVB Silicon Valley Bank is a member of global financial services firm SVB Financial Group, with SVB Alliant, SVB Analytics, SVB Capital, SVB Global and SVB Private Client Services.

Pacific Net Inc., that beast of the east, made some headlines this week.

Happily (for PacificNet), the company announced that its WAP portal MOABC had been given a nod among the “2006 Top Ten Most Promising Internet Companies” in an industry peer ranking organized by Sohu.com Inc. Communications World Web.

The award seems a logical extension to MOABC’s award as one of the “2005 Most Promising Internet Investment Projects” by Sohu, and the Internet Society of China’s naming MOABC one of the “2005 Top 50 Internet Innovations” and “Top 100 China Internet WEB2.0 Enterprises” in March 2006.

The Sohu.com industry event is held annually and this year the winners cover more specialized areas such as download engines, online games, video, classified information, search engines, and media player software. And while it’s always swell to be recognized by your peers, the notice is of key importance to PacificNet, as Sohu.com is affiliated with China’s Ministry of Information Industry.

MOABC.com is a leading mobile internet portal in China, reporting 11 million registered users, 120 million daily page views and 1000 gigabytes of daily data traffic on one of Cathay’s top-ranked mobile internet sites, featuring mobile social networking, mobile games, and entertainment.

The free WAP portal provides mobile internet services such as news, mobile gaming and entertainment services, mobile blogs, mobile email, Avatar and virtual pets, mobile online dating, mobile instant messaging, virtual communities, mobile social communities and virtual showrooms.

Not so happily (for Clancy and Co. P.L.L.C.), news from PacificNet reported that the CRM company had dropped its public accounting firm, Clancy and Co., effective January 19. The audit committee of the company is currently interviewing and negotiating with several potential audit firms in connection with the upcoming audit for the year ended December 31, 2006.

Happily (for PacificNet), the change in auditors was reportedly “driven by the growth and business expansion of the company,” a growth that has seen PacificNet revenue balloon from less than $1 million in 2001 to nearly $60 million in 2006, and “operations and financial reporting requirements have outgrown the resources of its prior auditors.”

Finally, PacificNet president Victor Tong announced that the company had “installed a corporate-wide Virtual Private Network” (a.k.a. secure intranet) “that connects our various offices in China, Hong Kong, and the USA. PacificNet has also implemented a centralized accounting system and office automation intranet web sites for all subsidiaries and geographic locations.”

Beijing- and Hong Kong-headquartered PacificNet Inc. is an investor in and operator of companies that provide outsourcing, e-commerce, and value-added services in China, such as call centers, telemarketing, direct response television marketing, CRM, interactive voice response, mobile applications, and communications product distribution services.

PacificNet corporate clients include China Telecom, China Mobile, Unicom, PCCW, Hutchison Telecom, Bell24, SONY, TCL, Huawei, American Express, Citibank, HSBC, Bank of China, Bank of East Asia, DBS, TNT, and the Hong Kong government. PacificNet employs over 2,300 in China with offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Macau, and branch offices in 26 provinces.

Sales Simplicity Software has announced some nice numbers indeed: namely, 35 percent year-on-year growth in 2006. Sales Simplicity is a sales automation, contact management, and CRM tool for production homebuilders.

In tandem with the announcement of past results, Sales Simplicity representatives stated that the firm had already seen enough sales activity in the first three weeks of January that the company “will easily double the company’s size again in 2007.” Commenting upon the sweet 2006 the company had, officials stated that the success was “that much more remarkable … given the current slowdown in the home building sector.”

With the current interest that Sales Simplicity is generating among builders, Sales Simplicity hopes to “move dramatically up-market in 2007, with the addition of marquee customers among the Builder 100.”

Pre-integrated into BuilderMT-Timberline, JD Edwards, Corrigo, Punchlist Manager, Builderfinish, FAST, and Envision, Chandler, Ariz.-based Sales Simplicity now counts over 175 builders as clients.

Enterprise software provider Infor has announced that Folksam, a leading Swedish insurance company, has chosen Infor CRM Epiphany to “implement its five-year CRM vision.” Said vision actually began in 2003 and, in the master plan, Infor CRM Epiphany enables Folksam to implement the user interface for the CRM strategy.

The project’s initial phase focused on data warehousing, analysis and process development. The deployment of Infor CRM Epiphany sales, service and inbound marketing will be fully supported by one system with one comprehensive customer view, in theory enabling Folksam to completely implement all defined CRM processes.

Infor also got some attention for itself on Wednesday. After SAP CEO Henning Kagermann unveiled his firm’s “new game changing approach to the mid-market,” which involves SAP developing a hosted suite of business applications for the midmarket, in hopes of “attract[ing] an untapped segment of customers with the promise of faster implementation and lower ownership costs,” Infor CEO Jim Schaper quickly shot back.

“One has to wonder if SAP truly understands the mid-market or whether this strategy is solely an effort to detract attention from the slowing growth of their Fortune 500 base,” said Schaper. “Medium-sized customers do not want all-in-one products that need massive customization efforts to address their line of business. That approach is a relic of the past, when ERP implementations were akin to corporate open heart surgery. … The bottom line is that customers want more functionality, less complexity and the lowest total cost of ownership. That is not the plan we see from SAP.”

Ouch.

Swedish insurance company Folksam was founded in 1908 and today handles more than 18 million insurance contracts in over 100 offices. The company has approximately 3,700 employees and settles 600,000 claims annually. Folksam numbers show that the company now insures half of all family homes, half of all citizens, and one-quarter of all automobiles in Sweden.

Retail integration and technology consulting firm Tango Consulting, and salesforce.com today announced the availability of Tango’s “Retail Intellect” for salesforce.com’s AppExchange.

Retail Intellect for AppExchange seeks to assist retailers in integrating ERP systems to the Salesforce suite of on-demand customer relationship management applications.

Tango Consulting first showcased Retail Intellect for AppExchange last week at the National Retail Federation 96th Annual Convention and Expo.

Katherine Carol is the founder of Tango Consulting and the author of “Tango: Dance of Self-Discovery – Fun & Simple Steps to Passionate Partnerships and Soulful Living” Carol is an international business and organizational coach and consultant whose strategy focus on teaching companies “what matters most –Trust, Ethics, Values-Based Leadership and Management – blended with a passion for work and life.”

The Tango transformational process unleashes the pent-up potential boxed in by limiting belief systems, old-school business practices and fear. The approach is based on the quality improvement movement, “recapturing the notion of building corporate citizenship, elegant yet simple solutions, great tools and clear intentions (outcomes for or clear focus-some alternatives, not necessarily better ones) in the workplace and life.” Huh.

Genesys Conferencing, a global multimedia conferencing product creator, has announced their choice of Salesforce Service and Support for its global, “follow-the-sun support operations.” Combined with its existing Salesforce SFA deployment, Salesforce Service and Support enabled Genesys’ three-tiered support organization across ten countries to gain instant access to account information.

Eyebrow-raisingly, Genesys Conferencing’s project leader of sales and care automation Marcus Johansson said, "Before Salesforce, we had more than 20 customer databases that could not be easily integrated.”

Genesys now plans to integrate its Salesforce Service and Support solution with its Avaya contact center technology, so that agents may receive instant screen pop-ups of customer data. Genesys also plans to integrate Salesforce with its Cognos business intelligence tools in an effort to allow deeper analysis of customer support issues.

Founded in 1986, Genesys Conferencing is a provider of converged collaboration and communication services to “thousands of” organisations including more than 200 of the Fortune Global 500. The company’s flagship product is Genesys Meeting Center. Genesys has offices in twenty-one countries in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

TICKETsage, Inc. announced the release of TicketVERIFY this week. The program is a “revolutionary” (you know that’s the company’s word) anti-scalping product designed to improve venue security by detecting the unauthorized resale or transfer of live event tickets in – get this – as little as two seconds at the point of entry.

TicketVERIFY hits the market after a reported five years of development. (“We saw a need back in 2002 and have been working to perfect [the technology] since,” said Stephen Cassar, TICKETsage president/CEO.) Developed to tighten security loopholes in unauthorized resale channels, the TicketVERIFY product uses a combination of patent-pending software, processes, and hardware to detect resold or transferred tickets.

TicketVERIFY is touted as a solution to venues and ticketing companies wishing to control the unauthorized resale of tickets and who may currently be forced to cancel tickets en masse or resort to legal action in cases of suspected mass forgery.

Fayetteville, Ark.-based TICKETsage was founded in 1999 with a mission statement stating the desire to “address the limitations of legacy ticketing systems.” TICKETsage can also lay claim to creating a true 64-bit architecture.

RezOvation, a producer of property management and website booking engine software, had a couple of big deals to talk about today: Company reps announced a the major product upgrade RezOvation Desktop 7.0 and the addition of more than 100 new clients in the fourth quarter of 2006.

RezOvation launched its Guest Tracker product last summer, “much to the delight of Munsenware Guest Tracker users” says Rez. The product are said to represent over a year of development with the release of updated connectivity software including new versions 4.0 of the RezOvation Booking Engine, GDS Connect and Credit Card Connect.

In 2006, RezOvation upgraded every other aspect of its software, releasing in turn Booking Engine 4.0, GDS Connect 4.0, and Credit Card Connect 4.0. RezOvation also reported implementing Salesforce.com CRM “to make sure customers get fast and thorough service” as key to their recent success.

The company claimed that the truly new and improved RezOvation Desktop has been re-engineered so that the Booking Engine is three to ten times faster than RezOvation’s closest competitor.