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Infor Global Solutions has announced that VV-Auto Group has chosen the Infor customer relationship management system.

VV-Auto Group recently launched a new company-wide initiative to focus heavily on the development of customer relationship management, and Infor Global Solutions was lucky enough to be the one for the mission.

The Infor CRM Epiphany system will be employed in the importation, retailing and after-sales services of Volkswagen passenger cars and commercial vehicles and Audi passenger cars. A decision regarding implementation of the system for the Seat will be made later.

The system will be built to serve the needs of the entire network and its implementation will be phased to start at the beginning of 2008, with rollout of the system throughout the retail network in 2008 and 2009.

Another week, another study of mobile applications, and the bar is now set at $9 billion.

According to research from Compass Intelligence LLC, businesses in the US will spend approximately $9 billion on mobile applications by 2011. This year alone, Compass forecasts American businesses to spend $3.8 billion on mobile applications, including productivity, Enterprise Resource Planning, Email, CRM, and security applications.

Compass sees the market as poised for double-digit annual growth into 2011 and primarily targeted to improve productivity and collaboration across businesses. Major trends in this industry, according to the company, include “growth in productivity-based applications, growth in sophisticated and business-oriented devices, and a major attraction to service providers to strengthen profit margins.”

Other tantalizing tidbits revealed by Compass include:

? The professional services and government industries are expected to be the two largest spenders on US mobile applications representing 37 percent and 22 percent, respectively, in 2007.

? The small business (representing 38 percent) and enterprise business (representing 42 percent) segments are expected to be the largest spenders on mobile applications from 2006-2011.

? US annual growth rates in this market range from 20 percent to 37 percent from 2006 to 2011.

? Major mobile applications include Email, SMS/text messaging, CRM, project management, collaboration and file sharing.

Today’s big deal of big deals: Dow Jones & Company and Salesforce.com have announced the availability of Dow Jones Wealth Manager for the salesforce.com AppExchange.

Dow Jones Wealth Manager is touted for its “Client News Match” capabilities, which map Dow Jones information to custom client profiles in an effort to spur personalized client communication.

Built using the Salesforce platform, Dow Jones Wealth Manager is available for test drive and deployment from the Financial Services category on the AppExchange.

EMS-Cortex, a New Zealand-based solutions provider for telecommunications and service providers, yesterday released Cortex 7.0 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.

Cortex is the flagship of the company and 7.0 promises “a number of” enhancements designed to work with Microsoft Exchange 2007, SharePoint services 3.0 and the provisioning pack for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.

Cortex 7.0 configures multiple CRM instances and servers to be managed and allows customers to be allocated to a CRM front-end server.

Representatives of Auto/Mate Dealership Systems yesterday announced that the firm’s Customer/Mate CRM system has achieved certification status from GM OneSource, the lead management service employed by General Motors.

GM OneSource is an electronic hub that collects leads generated by GM divisional websites, the GM-certified internet website, GM Handraiser leads, third-party internet leads and other sources.

Customer/Mate is a complete CRM solution and is one of 14 modules in Auto/Mate’s Automotive Management Productivity Suite.

Auto/Mate Dealership Systems was established 25 years ago and today offers 21 fully integrated modules. Auto/Mate boasts a continuous growth rate of more than thirty percent per year, and its system is currently in use by more than 400 dealers.

Sterling Commerce, a subsidiary of AT&T Inc., has announced the availability of Sterling Service Contracts. Service Contracts is a new product within the “Sterling Multi-Channel Selling Solution” built for assistance in selling and post-sales management of duration-based offerings, service and maintenance contracts, and software subscriptions.

Sterling Service Contracts promises to allow firms to manage business rules that define how product and service offers are bundled and priced for selling and post-sale contract changes; to proactively monitor equipment warranties, maintenance agreements, and service commitments; to manage the sale and maintenance of service contracts through self-service storefronts; and to manage complex pricing for services, including multiple price types to support.

Sterling Commerce is a subsidiary of AT&T Inc. and has products used by eighty percent of the FORTUNE 500, with 30,000 customers in the retail, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, financial services, supply chain, logistics, and telecommunications sectors.

Centive, the leader in on-demand sales compensation management, today
announced that a recently released report from Technology Evaluation
Centers (TEC), a leading analyst firm specializing in impartial
enterprise software evaluations, cites increasing interest in on-demand
sales compensation management applications.

Authored by principal
analyst P.J. Jakovljevic and issued as a four-part series beginning on
May 7^th, the report marks the latest in a surge of industry
analyst research on sales incentive compensation management (ICM) and
sales performance management (SPM).

Last month, Gartner published a report entitled “Sales
Incentive Compensation Management Achieves Operational Benefits, but
Must Focus on Strategic Value.” SiriusDecisions also issued an April
brief entitled “Incentive Compensation, the Systematic Way.” A partial
list of analyst firms who have recently issued, or are in the process
of issuing, reports related to sales compensation management include
Forrester Research, Beagle Research, IDC, and Aberdeen Group.

“The market for sales performance management solutions has increased
dramatically, and it’s due in large part to the introduction of
affordable, on-demand solutions like Centive Compel,” said Bob Conlin,
Chief Marketing Officer, Centive. “Small and mid-sized companies can
apply performance optimization technologies, now available on-demand,
that were previously affordable for only larger companies. The research
and reporting coming out from the analyst community reflects the
interest their customers have in learning how they can leverage
on-demand sales compensation management to drive sales performance.”

Sedona Corporation, Customer and Member Relationship Management solutions provider for the small- and mid-size financial services market, today announced an addition to the “CRM: Effective Control of Sales and Profitability for your Business” Latin American CRM conference: President / CEO Marco Emrich will be speaking at the Wednesday event running from 8:30 am to 12:00 pm at the Hotel Nikko in Mexico City, Mexico.

(This writer’s never been there himself, but everyone tells me Mexico City is fantastic. And every Mexican dude i’ve ever met says it’s the greatest city in the world, bar none.)

Over 80 executives from Latin American institutions’ marketing and finance departments are expected to attend the conference. In addition to Emrich, making presentations will be Todd B. Avery, US embassy commercial attache, and Alex Logan, vice president of the Haydrian Corporation Latin America/Caribbean region.

In March, Sedona announced an international partnership with Haydrian in which both companies would develop a co-branded version of Intarsia, Sedona’s CRM/MRM solution. Haydrian will localize, market, install, and support Intarsia to the developing countries of the world. Haydrian will also offer integrated Intarsia with their anti-money laundering platform (!), XM3.

Vodafone did a little damage control early this week Down Under, releasing a statement explaining that the recent nine-day brown out of services in Australia was due to implementation of a CRM upgrade and was expected.

From May 17 to May 27 (but completed a reported nine hours ahead of time!), Vodafone upgraded its Siebel pre-paid billing system. During the quasi-down time, could not provide new products or services including voicemail, moving customers to new plans, change rate plans, or churn customers to or from pre-paid phone accounts.

Like top-five lists? Well, you’ll love the telephony/customer relationship management VendorGuru.com this week. The loftily-named company yesterday released a pair of white papers entitled The Top 5 Telephony Solutions Your Business Needs Today and The 5 Must-Have Features of a CRM Solution.

Best of all, the white papers are free after the registration process.

The Top 5 Telephony Solutions Your Business Needs Today promises to expostulate on how the telephone communications landscape is changed and how businesses like yours have increased productivity by implementing the new standards.

For those who love only the thrill of the list and find the prose second, the following are the five “must have features of a CRM solution":

• data tracking and integration, to give users throughout the company access to key data;

• customer support, to provide high levels of service, quick response times, accountability, and prompt problem resolution;

• sales management tools, to help managers distribute sales leads and help salespeople process orders in real time and close more sales;

• marketing automation, to generate automatic responses and collect data to help track leads and results; and

• analytics to organize and analyze customer data, for more better customer experiences.