We Blog CRM

Dunbar Armored, an armored car company headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, has selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 for its sales teams. Dunbar will use the CRM technology to integrate data that is generated in its 80 branches across the US. Microsoft scored over competing CRM systems on the basis of its role-based CRM capabilities.

The Microsoft offering will work alongside Dunbar’s existing systems that store customer information. The deployment of Microsoft will enable Dunbar to eliminate manual processes and working with spread sheets for obtaining information on prospects and customers. Planning and reporting scenarios, such as consolidation and budgeting, are offered through integration with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server.

Zip realty has picked the open-source, Yahoo-owned Zimbra, an e-mail, calendar and chat (instant messaging) client. The company chose Zimbra over other products including Google apps because of its open source architecture that will enable it to work smoothly with the existing applications that Zip Realty uses.

The new messaging client is facilitating communication between customers and real estate agents. the information fed at the front-end can be easily assimilated into the CRM system.

Coveo Solutions, Inc., is offering Coveo G2B for CRM, an application for bringing together data from diverse sources including salesforce.com, Siebel Systems, corporate intranets, tech support emails, customer support databases, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

G2B also offers content analytics and graphical representation of data so that making sense of tons of data and spotting trends becomes easier. Coveo’s product should further add impetus to mashup devices that help in extracting information from an ever increasing array of sources that come from so many different vendors.

The usefulness of such an application can hardly be overstated. It will help decision makers to arrive at decisions faster and after acquiring a holistic view of the scenario.

AGL Energy, an Australian energy company, announced today that it’s integrating its Avaya contact center and SAP Customer Relationship Management systems with middleware technology from AMC Technology. The integration process will involve deploying additional Avaya technology that includes the Avaya Interaction Center, an Avaya Voice Response system as well as NICE Perform call recording deployed by NSC Enterprise Solutions, Avaya’s largest partner in Australia.

The AMC middleware will allow the placing of customized pop-up windows inside the SAP windows client interface so that one can view real time agent state and call control information.

Intelestream, a Chicago-based software development company that sells automating sales and marketing products for businesses, announced today that it’s signed a partnership agreement with Interspire, a vendor of content management and e-mail marketing software.

The companies say that Intelestream will customize, resell, and host the Interspire Shopping Cart, E-mail Marketer, and Knowledge Manager products.

Intelestream has already customized the Interspire Shopping Cart to include an automated workflow based on customer buying habits, according to the company. The product is intended to enhance e-commerce selling for clients using the product, company officials say. Intelestream has also modified the E-mail Marketer according the particular business needs of one of its clients.

AG announced that South Africa’s Office of the Public Protector has selected an SAP product to transform its case management operations, automating its manually driven investigations, reviews, analysis and reporting processes. The office, an independent and impartial constitutional institution, conducts investigations into alleged improper conduct by state organizations.

The SAP package in question is the SAP Investigative Case Management for Public Sector package, based on the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application and the SAP NetWeaver technology platform. OPP can now introduce automation in the core processes related to dispute resolution.

E-Gain is an established name in the field of multi-channel customer service and knowledge management software. E-Gain OnDemand, the hosted version of its EGain Service software suite., has completed 10 years today. E-Gain considers itself to be “the industry’s first-ever hosted enterprise applications software”. It aims to offer a single platform for multi-channel customer interaction and knowledge management.

Customers for E-Gain products are from varied domains such as consumer goods, healthcare, media and finances, financial services, etc. E-Gain enables its customers to make use of the SaaS approach and have a hybrid of application hosting, both on-demand and on-premise.

Salesforce.com Inc is going after the independent adviser market with Salesforce for Wealth Management, a customized, adviser-focused version of its popular customer relationship management application.Odds are good that the software will make the short list among advisers who desire a hosted solution.Its existing version of Salesforce can claim 60,000 users who are brokers and advisers from companies such as Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. Another 40,000 operations and support staffers from those firms rely on the software as well.

South African company i5 has been named the first global winner of the Microsoft Partner of the Year award in the category, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The award is to be presented at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Texas, in July.

According to i5 CEO Glen Ansell , the award is the culmination of the company’s determination and sharp focus on the Microsoft technology stack, and specifically, Dynamics CRM. “Having recognised the viability and relevance of Microsoft’s CRM package soon after the inception of i5 in 2004, our company took a strategic decision to become the South African market leader in this aspect of Microsoft’s technology solutions,” he says.

The audience for video games is zealous but fickle, and because of that, game studios have a unique challenge in attracting and retaining customers. While the tools they use are similar to those of other industries, studios have learned to be creative in the marketing tactics that support the effort.

The video game industry considers CRM to be a vital aspect of their business as it is based on a recurring payment model where the length of the subscription and the loytalty of the customer are linked. Renewing customer interest is important to have them coming back for more.  Micro-payments and sometimes item-by-item payment are the lifeblood of this business and these have to be renewed through offering something new frequently and letting the customer know about it.