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Compiere Announces Support Offerings for Open Source ERP and CRM
Compiere Inc., a provider of open source business applications, has announced new support offerings for companies using its open source ERP and CRM application. Compiere offers a three-tiered support model to meet the needs of its diverse customer base ranging from small to medium-sized enterprises to large corporations across a variety of industries including retail, logistics, distribution, manufacturing and professional services. The company’s new support offerings can be obtained directly from Compiere or through a Compiere authorized partner. In addition to typical support activities, Compiere includes access to migration tools, an optional end user license agreement (EULA) with indemnification, and more.
Microsoft Announces Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation
Microsoft Corp. has announced the availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation, a new way of using business intelligence tools from Microsoft that enable comprehensive analysis and management of customer-facing processes, including business scorecard management, ad-hoc analyses of aggregated customer information, predictive analytics, enhanced reporting, and more. Together, they provide Microsoft Dynamics CRM users with real-time access to key information and metrics, allowing them to respond quickly to changing dynamics in today’s competitive business environment.
Gartner Releases New Sales Tools
Gartner announced the release of its new offering within its Gartner for Business Leaders product suite called “Gartner for Sales Professionals.” This offering is designed to help a sales force win more business. Gartner for Sales Professionals provides IT salespeople with everything they need to deepen their knowledge about their target markets and target customers. Product features include: an easy-to-use portal customized for each sales representative’s territory and interests and customer profiles and streaming business news from leading third-party content providers.
XSell Releases XSell Customer Service Marketing Platform V.3.0
XSell LLC, a provider of cross-sell and retention solutions to the financial services industry, announced the release of version 3.0 of its XSell Customer Service Marketing platform. The enhancements included in version 3.0 were designed to overcome the challenges associated with the deployment of complex employee incentive structures within a customer service marketing program including different incentives by product, associate level and type of offer, as well as the success of the offer. Enhancements to the XSell Customer Service Marketing platform will help companies alleviate the burden of tracking offers that are made and determining the associated compensation.
InvisibleCRM Joins Microsoft Partner Program
InvisibleCRM, a technology provider of applications designed to increase user adoption and ROI of enterprise systems, has become an ISV partner in the Microsoft Partner Program. Launched in 2005, InvisibleCRM has developed an ecosystem of products, designed to bridge the gap between corporate applications and user-friendly environments – Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Windows. Most notably, InvisibleCRM has engineered and delivered integration solutions for Salesforce.com, Amdocs, EMC Documentum and Pivotal.
Fuze Announces V.6.2 of Fuze Suite
Fuze Digital Solutions has announced the 6.2 release of its modular customer care solution, the Fuze Suite. Among its important features, the Fuze Suite 6.2 includes a complete redesign, allowing any language to be supported and providing the functionality necessary to facilitate keeping the Fuze Suite instances across all supported languages in sync. English, Spanish, French, and German are currently supported, but other languages can quickly be added as warranted by market demand.
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Multichannel Service & Support Survey of Executives: Report of Findings
Supportindustry.com recently conducted a survey of contact center, helpdesk and customer service managers and executives, focusing on multichannel customer service and support -- its importance, the current state of their multichannel capabilities and challenges in implementing and managing it.
The survey, sponsored by eGain Communications Corp., contains key findings and analysis in the following areas:
- Strategic importance of customer service
- Metrics and measurement
- Multichannel customer service
- Web self-service
- Knowledge management
- and more!
To get a complimentary copy of the report, click here...
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| U.S. Consumers Ready For Mobile Marketing
Although 79 percent of consumers find the idea of mobile ads annoying, early efforts at mobile marketing have revealed that consumers will happily engage in campaigns as long as marketers deliver valuable information or content. According to a new report released by Forrester Research, a growing number of consumers are shifting from voice-only mobile services to other activities, creating a viable audience for mobile marketing. Thirty-five percent of U.S. households that own a mobile phone currently engage in text messaging and 11 percent access the mobile Internet. To combat preconditioned skepticism, marketers must recognize that mobile marketing is about offering value, not interrupting consumers with unmoving and irrelevant ads.
Forward-looking brands are already successfully employing multimedia messaging, mobile Web browsers, and downloadable applications and content to reach consumers via mobile phones. For example:
- To increase late-night visits, McDonald’s placed mobile ads on mobile Web sites, like Match.com, which are frequented by young consumers. McDonald’s saw higher-than-average click-through rates due to a highly relevant offer: mobile coupons valid between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m. for one night only.
- Clear Channel radio station WXKS (KISS 108 FM) in Boston offers a “text club” in which listeners receive mobile alerts and promotions and use text to interact with disc jockeys during broadcasts. Forty-eight percent of the club sent texts for a chance to win breakfast with Nick Lachey.
- Broadway Marketplace, a small Cambridge, Mass. grocer, replaced its card-based loyalty program with one that uses mobile phones to identify the shopper. This approach allows Broadway Marketplace to deliver promotions based on a shopper’s purchase history directly to a shopper’s mobile phone. Eighty-two percent of Broadway’s shoppers now belong to this program, with 64 percent participating on a regular basis.
More...
Creating Winning Sales Organizations
Miller Heiman has released its annual study of complex, business-to-business selling and sales management best practices. The study identifies the practices of winning sales organizations and perception gaps among sales representatives, their managers and C-level executives related to the sales process.
Among the study’s key findings:
- Winning sales organizations are nearly twice as likely to have a process for knowing when to stop investing in a large deal. According to the study, only 15 percent of most organizations have such a process, compared to 29 percent of winning sales organizations.
- The biggest disconnect between sales representatives, sales managers and the C-suite is the degree to which each agrees that leadership is actively engaged in the sales process. While 78 percent of C-level executives agreed that leadership is actively involved, only 49 percent of managers and 43 percent of sales representatives agree.
More...
Contact Centers Prefer “All-in-One” Communications Systems
BenchmarkPortal, a national research firm specializing in contact center best practices, published its survey results last month showing contact center preferences for “all-in-one” (or “unified”) versus “multi-point” communications systems.
Among the key survey findings, the report showed that all-in-one systems were preferred over multi-point systems based on their ability to support additional applications with virtually no modification or integration issues, and for their ability to lower administrative costs by reducing support staff by a full 25 percent. Systems composed of products or applications acquired from third-party vendors, despite being marketed as single “all-in-one,” “unified,” or “suite” solutions, were qualified as multi-point systems due to their multi-box architectures.
Additional survey results showed that the majority of CTO and IT departments are inclined toward, or favor, all-in-one systems over multi-point systems, and that the former have become more attractive over time.
Also uncovered by the survey were key contact center technology trends, which showed post call surveys, Web chat, and multimedia queuing as the most likely applications to be deployed over the next 12 months.
More...
Consumer Spending Likely to Remain Strong as Customer Sat Hits All-Time High
Customer satisfaction with the goods and services that Americans buy reached an all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2006, according to a report released today by the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The Index climbs to 74.9 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale, up 0.7% from the previous quarter, and up almost 2% from the previous year. This is the highest score the Index has had since its first measure in 1994 (74.8).
ACSI has consistently predicted future consumer spending and is an indicator of financial performance at both the company and industry level. The latest ACSI data suggest that satisfied consumers will continue to prop up the economy, driving consumer spending growth of between 3.5% and 4.1% for the first quarter of 2007.
Every fourth quarter, ACSI measures customer satisfaction for the retail and financial services sectors and e-commerce. Improvements in customer satisfaction occur across the board with 9 of the 13 industries measured in the fourth quarter showing improvements. Customer satisfaction findings from specific sector include:
- Customer satisfaction with the retail sector, which includes department and discount stores, specialty retail stores, supermarkets, gas stations, and health and personal care stores, makes a big jump, up 2.8% to 74.4 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale.
- Every industry save one in the finance and insurance trade has improved customer satisfaction. In the aggregate, the finance and insurance sector jumps 2.7% to 76, its highest score since 1994 (78.5). The finance and insurance sector includes commercial banks and property, life and health insurance.
- E-commerce improves for the second year in a row, and at 80 is less than a point off of its all-time high (80.8 in 2003). The e-commerce sector includes e-retail, online auctions, online brokerages, and online travel.
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| Call Center Voice Biometrics Is Coming
The future is upon us, and there’s no time to waste. The call center sector, dynamic by definition, is changing again as new legislation for banking, medical, and homeland security regulations make it necessary for call centers to move quickly now to find highly accurate, proven, low-cost solutions for higher levels of ID authentication. Whether the shift is met proactively or comes as a sudden shock is up to the shrewd operations manager.
Full Article...
Enhancing Customer Loyalty: Priorities for Marketing Leadership
For marketers in IT services and solutions, loyal customers have always meant faster sales cycles, greater lifetime value, easier acceptance of premium pricing, and all-important references and referrals. In short, loyal customers are the most important driver of profitable growth. Today, however, the loyalty issue has become even more central to marketing strategy.
Full Article...
Can Pay-for-Performance Redefine How Products Are Sold and Serviced?
Imagine paying for your car only when it works. Or your television. Or even your high-end toaster. That might sound far-fetched, but it could be the future model for purchases requiring service over time. Known as “Power by the Hour” (PBH) in the private sector, this new approach is already reshaping customer-supplier relationships in defense and aerospace contracting under the name “Performance-based Logistics” (PBL). Customers and suppliers of mission-critical products, such as semi-conductor manufacturing equipment, commercial aircraft and military weapon systems, are recognizing that the acquisition of world-class products is not sufficient, but rather it is necessary to provide superior, cost effective maintenance and support services throughout the after-sales phase of the customer-supplier relationship.
Full Article...
The Seven Deadly Sins of Web Analytics
Pride. Greed. Envy. There are plenty of sins in the Web analytics world, and some of them can even be deadly. Indeed, while there are any number of little mistakes you could make analyzing your data — like basing important business decisions on hits instead of unique visitors or neglecting the 20 percent of search terms that could be sending droves of visitors through your virtual doors — some mistakes can be downright sinful.
Full Article...
Fed Up with Automated Voices? Press 0
Carole Condon, a 67-year-old librarian from Long Beach, N.Y., supports Easter Seals Disability Services. But when the charity used an automated voice system to call her house recently to solicit a donation, Condon hung up the phone. Condon’s reaction to automated voices and the systems that bring them into our lives is a common one. We love them, hate them, use them and fortunately cannot abuse them — although sometimes we want to.
Full Article...
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|  Exceeding Customer Expectations
by Kirk Kazanjian
This love letter to Enterprise Rent-A-Car is also a comprehensive case study on how a company grows from an idea into a multibillion-dollar corporation within its founder’s lifetime. Despite excessive enthusiasm and a somewhat repetitive writing style, Kazanjian does offer insight into how a company can succeed by remaining focused on motivating employees to satisfy customers completely. Drawing on examples from Enterprise’s history, he emphasizes that focusing on customer satisfaction must permeate every aspect of operations. While Kazanjian’s themes are not revolutionary, he convinces that helping employees improve service to customers attracts more customers, so the company and its profit-sharing employees prosper.
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