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Representatives of Intervoice, Inc., a converged voice and information solutions provider, have announced that Technology Marketing Corporation’s Customer Interaction Solutions magazine has given a CRM excellence award for the Intervoice Personalize IT solution.

Personalize IT seeks to empower companies in automatically synthesizing a customer’s user profile with live data such as current company promotions. The Intervoice system recognizes and anticipates customer needs and preferences in hopes of enabling an individually tailored customer experience.

Companies can also proactively connect callers to the appropriate customer service agent based on pre-determined criteria. The CRM Excellence Award winners for 2006 were published in the May and June issues of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine. Intervoice, Inc. provides leading enterprises and network operators with the Intervoice Solutions Framework, which includes platform, software, applications and services for voice automation solutions.

Intervoice Media Exchange is a standards-based multi-media platform offering unparalleled flexibility for advanced multimedia messaging, portal, IVR and payment applications. Intervoice is focused on the enterprise and network markets, and has implemented more than 23,000 systems worldwide at companies across a variety of industries.

Intervoice is a Microsoft certified partner and Learning Solutions certified partner; its headquarters are located in Dallas, Texas. Customer Interaction Solutions has been the flagship publication of the Technology Marketing Corporation print house since 1982, and focuses on the customer relationship management, call center and teleservices industries.

TMC publications include print magazines Customer Interaction Solutions, Internet Telephony, SIP Magazine and IMS Magazine, and digital publications Speech-World, WiFi Telephony Magazine, VoIP Developer, IPTV Magazine and WiMA.

CDC Software division Pivotal Corporation representatives closed last week by announcing the release of the latest Pivotal CRM platform, Pivotal CRM 5.9, this morning. Pivotal CRM 5.9 includes Pivotal Handheld, a BlackBerry wireless handheld mobile application; Pivotal Call Scripting for automating customer interactions; and some other enhancements.

Pivotal CRM is designed for companies with complex business processes, and seeks to enable sales representatives to access and update critical CRM data via BlackBerry mobile devices. All Pivotal customers can immediately take advantage of the user productivity enhancements delivered in Pivotal CRM 5.9 because Pivotal’s flexible platform is designed to enable simple upgrades.

Existing customer implementations, including all configuration, customization, and integration performed on the Pivotal platform are compatible with the new platform. IT gets what it wants – the latest technology, while the business users get what they want – fit to business requirements and seamless upgrades. In the same manner, the new capabilities of Pivotal CRM 5.9 are also immediately applicable to Pivotal’s vertical CRM applications for financial services, homebuilding and real estate, legal services, manufacturing and others.

These applications are now established as leading solutions for their respective industries and planned enhancements, enabled by Pivotal CRM 5.9, will further cement those leadership positions. Pivotal Corporation is a software unit of CDC Corporation and a provider of customer relationship management applications. Among Pivotal’s clientele of some 1,800 companies are AvMed Health Plans, CMS Cameron McKenna, ESRI, Farm Credit Services of America, Premera Blue Cross, Qiagen, Sharp Electronics Corporation, and WCI Communities.

CDC Software is a provider of enterprise software applications designed to assist organizations in delivering a superior customer experience. The CDC Software product suite includes Pivotal CRM, c360 CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform development tools, Ross enterprise resource planning, Ross supply chain management, IMI warehouse management, order management, Platinum China human resource solutions, and business analytics.

CDC Software now boasts more than 5,000 customers worldwide in the manufacturing, financial services, health care, home building, real estate, and wholesale and retail distribution industries. 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.

Amdocs, a provider of software and services to enable integrated customer management, announced on Friday the signing of an agreement to acquire Cramer Systems Group Ltd, an operations support systems solutions provider. Under the terms of the agreement, Amdocs gets all of Cramer’s shares of capital stock for approximately US $375 million in cash.

Completion of the acquisition is subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions customary to such transactions and is expected to occur in the current fiscal quarter. The transaction is expected to be approximately US $0.04 dilutive to non-GAAP earnings per share in fiscal 2007 and then accretive thereafter. With the acquisition, Amdocs seeks to expand its service management and OSS offerings and expects to become a leader in OSS.

Cramer’s product repertoire includes OSS product portfolio, including products in network resource management, activation and auto discovery. Amdocs can now claim to be the only company to deliver an end-to-end solution spanning OSS and customer-facing business support systems such as billing and customer relationship management.

Amdocs Management Limited chief executive officer Dov Baharav proclaimed that “Together, we intend to deliver a complete automated service fulfillment solution across all lines of business - for any service, on any network.” Cramer will form a new division in Amdocs to be the centerpiece of Amdocs’ OSS strategy and activities and will leverage Amdocs assets in BSS and OSS. Amdocs has promised to keep Cramer’s current management in charge of Cramer business.

The announcement came on the heels of Amdocs’ release of some earning statistics from the third quarter of fiscal year 2006. Third quarter revenue for Amdocs grew 23 percent, up to US $626 million, and a 32 percent increase in third quarter diluted non-GAAP EPS, excluding acquisition-related costs and equity-based compensation expense, to US $0.49. The forecast released by Amdocs for the quarter had EPS at US $0.46.

Free cash flow for the quarter was US $94 million. The revenue figures represent a new high in Amdocs income. Along with the figures came guidance forecasting for the current quarter. Expected revenue for Amdocs will be approximately US $657 million and diluted non-GAAP EPS of US $0.49. Diluted GAAP EPS is expected to be approximately US $0.41, mostly due to acquisition fees.

For fiscal year 2007, Amdocs experts expected revenue of approximately $2.885 billion US with diluted non-GAAP EPS in the US $2.11 ballpark. “We are confident that our success in 2006 will continue as we look towards fiscal 2007,” said Baharav. Amdocs’ third quarter was highlighted by eleven key wins and a few other memorable moments credited by Amdocs brain trust for the company’s nice three-month run.

Amdocs expanded its relationship with Rogers Communications, which will install Amdocs CRM across its cable, wireless and telecom lines of business. Australia-based Telstra selected Amdocs a key vendor for their OSS transformational program. In the United States, Amdocs was awarded several projects related to assisting customers in their consolidation and integration of acquisitions.

And there is, of course, the Cramer acquisition… Amdocs is a software and services provider that seeks to accelerate implementation of integrated customer management by the world’s leading service providers. Amdocs boasted revenue of more than US $2 billion in fiscal 2005 and has 13,000 employees in fifty-one countries around the world. Cramer is a provider of operational support system software for the telecom industry.

Among Cramer solutions users are Bell Canada, KPN, TDC, Telefonica, TeliaSonera and Vodafone. Cramer has partnerships with industry heavyweights such as Accenture, Alcatel, Ericsson, HP, IBM, Oracle and SAP.

Red Wing Software, Inc. representatives have announced that third-party developer Data Developers Plus, Corp. has released a new interface between the Red Wing Software TurningPoint accounting software series and the Riata customer relationship management software application by Data Developers Plus. The Riata CRM application provides TurningPoint customers the ability to view all customer activity in one place, including notes, phone calls, email, mailings, invoice history and order history.

Because of this new interface, the data is actually shared between both systems. The strategy is simple and creation of the solution was obvious, really: "Both of our organizations were already working with a number of the same channel partners.

This interface now expands the market for our existing partners along with providing us the ability to work with more of the Red Wing Partner channel,” explained Data Developers Plus Corporation vice president Traci Lewis. Red Wing Software, Inc. develops, integrates and supports software for the accounting and financial management needs of small- to mid-sized businesses across North America.

Enterprise customer management solutions provider Onyx Software today announced that DirectNET has chosen the full suite of Onyx customer relationship management products as a unifying company-wide platform. DirectNET is the top value-added reseller of KVM switch solutions in America. DirectNET selected Onyx’s integrated CRM, business process management and analytics solutions in the hopes of uniting DiretNET’s three independent business units which focus on selling KVM switch solutions to enterprises, online, and the online server rack superstore.

Onyx’s solution is designed to integrate disparate systems in order to streamline processes and eliminate operational redundancies; to improve customer support through enhanced access to data, ticket tracking, defect tracking and contract management; to provide remote connectivity for sales staff; to provide streamlined and centralized quote, proposal and RFP processes; to supply business intelligence tools to mine data and identify new sales opportunities; to give marketing automation to conduct campaigns and target prospects.

Under terms the agreement, the Onyx solution for DirectNET includes Onyx Customer Management, a browser-based solution to manage the entire customer lifecycle; Onyx Process Management, a platform for customer-centric processes, performance optimization and business agility; and Onyx Analytics, which performs analysis and adjustment using advanced performance metrics; Founded in 1995, DirectNET is comprised of three independent business units: 42U, Server Racks Online and KVM Switches Online. DirectNET is today the number one reseller of the major KVM and server rack brands in the market.

Onyx Software Corporation is a provider of customer management and process software for mid- and large-sized enterprises. Onyx provides flexible solutions that enable organizations to automate, manage, and evolve customer processes. Onyx seeks to provide an integrated suite of customer process automation applications encompassing customer management, process management, and analytics capabilities. Among Onyx clientele are the Amway Corporation, the Mellon Financial Corporation, the Regence Group and the State Street Corporation.

Data pipelining and workflow tools provider Accelrys has announced the licensing of its enterprise technology, Pipeline Pilot, to Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Pipeline Pilot, from the SciTegic division of Accelrys, seeks to provide Jazz Pharmaceuticals with a flexible and scalable platform to develop a full-featured sales force automation tool and a robust sales reporting architecture. Jazz Pharmaceuticals will also use the platform to integrate applications that process clinical and life sciences data.

With the implementation, Jazz hopes to use the solution in combination with mobile devices, getting on-demand access to sales and contact information at their fingertips. "Obtaining reports from disparate databases has never been easier than with the tools we are able to build using Pipeline Pilot," said Eric Mosbrooker, Commercial Analytics at Jazz Pharmaceuticals director, and clearly a happy customer. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Jazz Pharmaceuticals is focused on helping meet unmet medical needs in neurology and psychiatry with therapeutic products. Jazz Pharmaceuticals is currently aggressively building its product portfolio through commercialization and development activities.

Jazz works closely with patients, patient advocacy groups and healthcare professionals. Accelrys, Inc. is a leading provider of software for computation, simulation, and the management and mining of scientific data used by biologists, chemists and materials scientists, including nanotechnology researchers, for product design, drug discovery and development. SciTegic, Inc., a division of Accelrys, has pioneered "data pipelining" to process research discovery data with unprecedented flexibility. The company is headquartered in San Diego; its materials research and development team is based at its European Headquarters and Centre of Excellence in Cambridge, UK.

Alliance Data Systems Corporation representatives have announced the signing of a five-year agreement to provide private label credit card services for Savannah, Ga.-headquartered Friedman’s Jewelers. Under terms of the agreement, Alliance Data will provide a full-service private label credit card solution including account acquisition and activation; receivables funding; card authorization; private label credit card issuance; statement generation; remittance processing; customer service functions; and marketing services.

Along with the announcement, Friedman’s Jewelers CEO Sam Cusano spoke of Alliance Data’s “expertise, knowledge of consumer purchase behavior and impressive credit and marketing tools” as fundamental components of the decision to implement Alliance. The Friedman deal represents the second attention-grabbing maneuver as of late, with late June seeing the inking of a five-year agreement to provide private label credit card services for Bealls Outlet Stores, Inc. and Burke’s Outlet Stores, Inc.

This agreement calls for Alliance Data to provide turnkey private label credit card services including account acquisition and activation; receivables funding; card authorization; private label credit card issuance; statement generation; remittance processing; customer service functions; and marketing services. Chief impetus for the deal on Bealls’ part was the rapid expansion the corporation currently has underway, highlighted by plans to open “at least” forty new stores within the next twelve months. “We are pleased … to help them meet their aggressive growth targets,” chipped in Ivan Szeftel, president of retail services for Alliance Data.

Bealls Outlet Stores and Burke’s Outlet Stores are a division of Bradenton, Fla.-headquartered Beall’s Inc. Family owned since 1915, the corporation consists of 80 department stores Florida and 500 outlet locations in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and California.

The shops represent sales of US $600 million. Friedman’s Jewelers opened its first store in 1920; today, 422 Friedman’s outlets operate in twenty states, and is America’s third- largest jewelry retailer. Alliance Data is a provider of transaction services, credit services and marketing services; the firm claims management of more than 105 million consumer relationships for North American companies. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Alliance Data employs approximately 8,000 associates at 41 locations worldwide.

Representatives of APAC Customer Services, Inc. were proud to announce today that Technology Marketing Corporation’s Customer Interaction Solutions magazine bestowed a seventh consecutive CRM excellence award on the firm for its atHOME service solution. Customer Interaction Solutions magazine implemented the CRM Excellence Awards in 1999 to “commend the companies that have proven to be true CRM partners to their customers and clients.” APAC Customer Services’ atHOME focuses on to the virtual work concept. APAC Customer Services, Inc. is a customer care services and solutions provider in the healthcare, financial services, business services, publishing, communications, travel and entertainment industries.

Customer Interaction Solutions has been the flagship publication of the Technology Marketing Corporation print house since 1982, and focuses on the customer relationship management, call center and teleservices industries. TMC publications include print magazines Customer Interaction Solutions, Internet Telephony, SIP Magazine and IMS Magazine, and digital publications Speech-World, WiFi Telephony Magazine, VoIP Developer, IPTV Magazine and WiMA.

Relationship management systems provider Lagan today announced that Bracknell Forest Borough Council members have signed a contract with the firm for their Frontline Customer Relationship Management system. The system is currently being implemented, and seeks to more efficiently allow council customer services to respond to enquiries from more than 110,000 residents plus “handling enquiries from people who work in the area or are simply passing through.”

Implementation of the Frontline CRM system is part of a £750 million regeneration project across Bracknell (itself part of a greater effort in London and Britain to upgrade municipality CRM) which is planned to result in a central point for all enquiries. Council spokesperson Keith Woodman hopes that “This shared service delivery system will … enable Bracknell Forest Borough Council to track enquiries and react proactively to issues which generate a high volume of calls.”

The first phase of the system is slated for a September 2006 release. Ultimately, said Woodman, the goal is to give citizen self-service access to information on a 24 / 7 basis.

Innovative wireless software provider Pyxis Mobile, Inc. has announced its mPlatform Alliance partnership with capital markets contact and ownership data provider Bigdough. This initiative will deploy Pyxis integrated client relationship management to customers via mobile device. The technology has been made available to Bigdough through that company’s participation in Pyxis Mobile’s mPlatform Alliance program. Bigdough can now wirelessly deploy CRM data and relay to users’ mobile media, making the mobile phone a handheld extension of the Bigdough system.

Part of the Hemscott Group, Bigdough seeks to provide users with an integrated CRM solution designed specifically for relationship management in the equity capital markets. The Bigdough platform integrates a CRM system with a database of contact information, investment strategies, and holdings data for over 50,000 capital markets professionals. Pyxis Mobile had more to announce from the SIA Technology Management Conference in New York, N.Y. earlier this week with the picking up of Pyxis programs by Boston-based IXIS Asset Management Advisors, L.P. Purchased by IXIS was Pyxis Mobile mWholesaler, which leverages the Research In Motion’s BlackBerry enterprise solution from Research In Motion for retail sales.

IXIS makes the twenty-second of the top fifty American financial service firms at which Pyxis Mobile software is now installed. Pyxis Mobile mWholesaler, together with BlackBerry, promises to put real-time data at wholesalers’ fingertips, including IXIS’ existing Siebel CRM data. Pyxis Mobile is a provider of innovative wireless software specializing in the financial services industry. Pyxis Mobile mPlatform solutions are industry tailored wireless applications that extend data from existing enterprise systems to wireless devices.

Pyxis Mobile clientele includes AIM, Deutsche Asset Management, Goldman Sachs Group, Henderson Global, IXIS Asset Management Advisors, L.P., Manulife, Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, New York Life Investment, Pioneer, Sun Life Financial, and Oppenheimer. mPlatform applications are used by twenty-two of the top fifty asset managers.