miércoles, 9 de noviembre de 2011

Results Software Unveils CRM Business Suite 2012

Results Software Unveils CRM Business Suite 2012

Results Software, developers of the award winning Results solution, today announced rollout of the 2012 Results CRM  Business Suite product. Product rollout includes the Small Business and Enterprise Editions of the Results CRM Business Suite desktop  & hosted versions, Results for the Web, and the Results Time Management Portal. Powerful new features, such as enhanced QuickBooks and SmartVault® integration  and an updated and highly intuitive user interface, enrich the user experience and make Results the go-to CRM and business management solution for improving operational efficiency and accelerating business growth while supporting working from anywhere at anytime.
"Our focus continues to be on helping users streamline workflow and improve their bottom line. As such, we consistently listen to client feedback and implement suggestions into the Results products that help businesses better manage  operations," said Sam Saab, President and Founder of Results Software. "We also continue to expand and enhance integration between Results CRM and other industry-standard applications and platforms such as QuickBooks, Outlook®, Constant Contact®, SmartVault, and SharePoint®, creating a single data  hub for the whole organization to work from. Centralized data visibility across the organization offers empowerment and the convenience that we want to provide to our users."

Results CRM Business Suite 2012 includes the following enhancements:



Addition of a full Purchase Order Data Entry module along with support for bi-directional synchronization of Purchase Orders with QuickBooks.

Expanded project/job integration with QuickBooks to automatically capture job costs for labor, material, and other expenses.

Ability to instantly convert quote/estimate line items to assignable activities and tasks for professional services organizations.

Expanded SmartVault integration, including support for SmartVault Notes and placing SmartVault Docs and Notes buttons on every data entry screen.

Expanded support for QuickBooks price levels in Results, including ability to directly assign a contact to the appropriate price level.

Ability to instantly view complete order history for any product being added to a Quote, Sales Order, Invoice, or Purchase Order.

Results for the Web (R4W) 2012 and the Results Time Management Portal enhancements include:



New, highly intuitive user interface.

Streamlined menus with familiar, easy-to-use Microsoft  2010 "ribbon" view.

Redesigned Data Management Centers (DMCs) to include column filtering and grouping.

Compatibility with all standard browsers-Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

Full support for the iPad  and all other tablets.

jueves, 25 de agosto de 2011

Dreamforce 2011 Focuses on Post-PC Revolution


Dreamforce 2011 Focuses on Post-PC Revolution

Salesforce.com is getting ready for Dreamforce 2011, its hallmark cloud -computing event. This year's conference is planned for Aug. 30 through Sept. 2 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, and will focus on something that's been in the news plenty in recent days: The post-PC  revolution.
As Salesforce sees it, the post-PC revolution will further accelerate the social  enterprise . There is clearly a rise in companies working to improve the way they collaborate, communicate and share information with customers and employees in the cloud. That rise, Salesforce said, is transforming companies into social enterprises, which it defined as those that build social profiles of customers, create internal social networks, and listen to and engage with customers over the Internet.

Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, offered a bold statement with which his competitors likely disagree. "Each year at Dreamforce, we set the agenda for the cloud-computing industry, and this year will be no exception," he said. "At Dreamforce 2011, we will showcase customers that have embraced innovation and transformed themselves into social enterprises."

Cloud Battles

The gestalt the technology market is wandering through is moving to an ever more web-centric world, a world that surrounds companies like Salesforce -- and favors them, according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"Salesforce is not really known as a social-networking company by any stretch of the imagination," Enderle said. "Both Salesforce and IBM are having a little trouble grappling with it as a result. On the other hand, it's not like the social networks are flooding into the businesses overtly, it's more covertly and carried by the employees."

As Enderle sees it, Salesforce's take on the market is correct. But He questioned whether the company can position itself to leverage the evolution. While Salesforce was initially one of the biggest enterprise cloud players, he noted, cloud leadership has shifted to the likes of EMC and IBM.

Tapping Relevant Trends

"To a large extent I think Salesforce needs to return to being more relevant in the trends that they themselves helped create," Enderle said. "Salesforce is doing a marginal job riding these trends. The right thing to do is to get back and start talking about yourself as a leader. But the danger is that they aren't anymore, and they need to address that."

Salesforce will work to trumpet its cloud leadership at Dreamforce with sessions on government, healthcare and the social world. Special guests at the annual user and developer conference include Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google. The event aims to teach attendees how their companies can take advantage of Salesforce's cloud offerings. The company expects more than 25,000 people to attend the 450 sessions.

Airlines Lure Premium Customers


Delta Air Lines' master sommelier Andrea Robinson opened up bottle after bottle of white and red wine from France, Italy, Australia, the U.S. and other parts of the world.
As she tasted them Monday, a blue bucket sat on the table next to her. It was there so she could spit out each sip, ensuring she didn't get tipsy and could distinguish between the different wines. By the time she's done in the next few days, Robinson will have tasted and smelled roughly 2,000 bottles.

The delicate work of a sommelier has become more important as U.S. airlines fight for premium passengers willing to shell out up to thousands of dollars to fly business  class on international and transcontinental flights. The idea isn't to make money on the wine -- the passengers in those seats drink for free -- but rather to keep those customers coming back and encourage their well-heeled friends and co-workers to join them. Other airlines including United Airlines and American Airlines also work with wine experts to help them choose what to serve on their flights.

And there's a market for it: According to the International Air Transport Association, through the first four months of this year, there was an 8.5 percent increase year-over-year in premium passenger traffic, which includes business class and first class seats. Those seats are among the most pricey and profitable for airlines. The trade group expects fuel costs to weigh on premium traffic, and stronger growth in the second half of the year will depend on how well the economy holds up.

Robinson's task is to choose 30 labels for Delta, which is based in Atlanta. The wine and champagne will be served in Delta's BusinessElite class cabins in 2012. The world's second-largest carrier expects to order some 1.6 million bottles for the service. The still wines Robinson looks for range from a retail price of $25 to $30 a bottle, while dessert wines will run $30 to $35 a bottle and the champagne will run $45 to $50 a bottle.

"If it costs $20, it has to taste like $40. That's what I'm aiming for," Robinson said.

She is looking for wines with a distinct taste that will come through when sipped at 30,000 feet (9,000 meters) by bankers and vacationers alike, because passengers' sense of taste and smell can be diminished when in flight.

Delta's domestic coach passengers can buy glasses of wine, though the selections won't be as chic and won't get the same special attention from Robinson. Coach passengers on Delta international flights get wine for free.

Sommeliers are also working with other airlines.

Doug Frost, a Kansas City author who writes and lectures about wine and also is a master sommelier, is the wine and spirits consultant for United Airlines. He helps select tens of thousands of cases of wines and spirits each year for the carrier. Ken Chase, a Canadian classically trained wine merchant with an international reputation, does wine selections for American Airlines. According to the airline, Chase selects fine wines for various routes paying close attention to menu parings, as well as the ethnic, cultural, seasonal and stylistic differences of each destination.

Delta also is mindful of the destinations it serves when it selects wines. Some of the offerings on Robinson's taste menu came from Chile and Argentina. Delta has a big presence in Latin America.

The selection of wine, though, isn't the only thing that's important. So, too, is the flight attendants' knowledge of the offerings so they can answer business class passengers' questions. Delta is offering wine training for flight attendants.

Julie Pearson, who has been a Delta flight attendant for 23 years, attended Monday's wine tasting. The 44-year-old works in the BusinessElite cabin on the airline's Boston to Amsterdam route. Some passengers will know exactly what they want, while others have questions and enjoy the ability to taste the different wines on board before making a selection.

"A good sign for the flight is when all my wine glasses are dirty -- and that happens a lot," Pearson said.

sábado, 16 de abril de 2011

IT Software Spending Will Focus on CRM in 2011

A new survey indicates that customer relationship management (CRM ) software will have the largest spending increase this year among all types of software. The survey, by industry research firm Gartner, said 42 percent of respondents expect to increase their CRM spending from 2010.
About 39 percent will increase outlays for office suites, and 36 percent for enterprise resource planning. The survey was conducted among 1,500 heads of IT departments in 40 countries through last July. The questions were oriented toward actual budgets for last year and projections for 2011.
Opportunities in 'Greenfields'
The growing increase in CRM spending comes as spending on application software in general is rising a projected 31 percent this year. The largest increase is taking place in the Asia/Pacific region, which is growing 37 percent. Latin America application spending is growing by 35 percent, and the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region by 27 percent.
Gartner describes both Latin America and Asia/Pacific as "greenfields" with the greatest sales opportunities.
Hai Hong Swinehart, a Gartner research analyst, said key areas for general software investment include the online channel; software as a service (SaaS ) deployments; and technologies that enable customer loyalty management, cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and levels of customer service that are more targeted.
"Software application vendors should continue to build, fund and invest in software sales and marketing programs as the market is recovering," Swinehart said. He added that a market downturn and its aftermath are "disrupters that create great marketing and sales opportunities" if a company has "the right products, market programs, and funding."
Social CRM
For CRM buyers, Swinehart said, spending is focusing on customer retention and ways to enhance the customer experience, and there is increasing interest in "technologies that encourage development of customer communities and social networks."
Gartner said SaaS within the CRM industry could top $4 billion in revenue by 2014, which would make it nearly one-third of the entire CRM market. The segment with the strongest growth is marketing automation, driven by campaign and lead management and analytics.
The survey comes at a time when, according to Gartner, CRM is in a new era that is more about relationships and less about management. This new emphasis, the research firm said, is being driven by social media, and is yielding a "more open, honest and balanced approach" that works with customers to provide mutually beneficial relationships.
Earlier this month, Gartner reported that the CRM market is entering a three-year shake-up period with rapid changes. That report said the keys to the shake-up are the rise of social CRM and SaaS, the market reshuffling led by Salesforce.com, and the selling of CRM software from consultants and system integrators.

jueves, 7 de abril de 2011

Business Intelligence software to reach 65.4 m revenue in 2011

Business Intelligence software to reach 65.4 m revenue in 2011.
The market for business intelligence (BI) software in India is forecast to reach revenue of 65.4 m this year, up 15.7 per cent over 2010, according to consultancy firm.

Worldwide, business intelligencesoftware market revenue is forecast to grow 9.7 percent to reach 10.8 billion in 2011. business intelligencewas ranked number five on the list of the top 10 technology priorities in 2011, according to  annual global CIO survey.
It is a sign of the strategic importance of business intelligencethat investment remains strong, research director.
He said this market segment had remained strong because the dominant vendors continued to put Business Intelligence, analytics and performance management at the centre of their messaging, while end-user organisations largely continued their business intelligence projects hoping that resulting transparency and insight would enable them to cut costs and improve productivity and agility down the line.
He said the market for business intelligence platforms will remain one of the fastest growing software markets despite sluggish economic growth in most regions.
It said decision making in India historically has been based on either gut feelings or on the business experience of managers.
Business intelligence will allow enterprises to make more fact-based decisions.
Business intelligence promotes revenue growth and faster innovation through shorter product and service life cycles and the ability to find where value is being created in the business, it claimed.

domingo, 5 de diciembre de 2010

The Best Small Business CRM Software? Here are some tips.

Customer relationship management (CRM) programs were once been best suited to large enterprises, but today they are essential to businesses of all sizes, and are available to small businesses in various forms. CRM solutions will enhance any business's productivity in sales, marketing, and for the customer service staff, as well as reduce the costs of finding and retaining leads, and increase revenues by unifying many business management processes in one platform. Of course, the trick to success with small business CRM is finding the right solution for your company.
Enterprise-scale CRM can be intimidating for smaller businesses, and it also tends to offer many more capabilities than smaller companies require, and at a price small-business owners will likely balk at paying. Adding even more expenses, large-scale CRM often requires more IT support than small businesses can readily provide. Thankfully, the growing need among small businesses for streamlined sales, marketing, and customer management processes has led to the emergence of small business CRM software, which many refer to as "CRM lite." These solutions acknowledge that employees of small businesses tend to wear many hats and have a variety of responsibilities, and these platforms are traditionally dialed-down versions of the large-enterprise products.
This brings us to an important thing to consider when selecting a small business CRM solution for your company: scalability. Most businesses start small, but when choosing a CRM solution, you have to look down the line and take consideration for growth. Your chosen solution should be able to both accommodate an increase in the user base, and allow for more capabilities as the company's needs evolve. Numbers-wise, small business CRM platforms are designed for companies with fewer than 500 clients, or fewer than 50 customer-facing staff members. And though CRM lite products have a small-business slant, they can still be fitting for divisions of larger enterprises with fewer than 100 simultaneous CRM users. For the most part, small business CRM caters to companies whose user bases are physically concentrated, rather than spread out over multi-server networks.
Almost as important as selecting the appropriate system for a certain number of end-users: deciding which type of deployment is best for your company: on-premise or hosted. Most small business CRM solutions are offered as software-as-a-service (SaaS), or on-demand platforms, which is an option that provides numerous benefits to small enterprise. For starters, on-demand solutions require much less up-front capital, as they require neither hardware nor the licensing fees necessary for on-premise CRM platforms. On-demand CRM solutions are ideal for budding companies in need of a system than can be deployed quickly, and with little impact on IT resources, as on-premise solutions often call for long and complicated implementation processes. On-premise solutions tend to work best for large enterprises that need a constant pulse on their CRM data, and that can afford the temporal and monetary costs of implementation.
The best small business CRM solutions will allow companies to customize the platform's dashboards and key features. This customization is usually offered in the form of smaller "license bundles" that allow users to pick and choose only the features needed, and therefore prevent them for overpaying on extensive packages with features that will remain unused. Small business CRM solutions also reflect the tendency smaller companies have of managing business across a number of different (and sometimes disjointed) productivity applications. This propensity to work across disparate applications adds to the importance of a simple user interface and options for customization, and explains why CRM systems that resemble basic word processing and reporting applications are so successful.
Many small business CRM offerings are primarily contact managers that secondarily provide the ability to organize sales and marketing campaigns, and offer some standard reporting capabilities. Common add-ons include help desk automation, sales forecasting, order-processing and tracking, and advanced analytics. Two companies that offer web-based CRM solutions and recently released contact management tools are Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. Salesforce's Contact Management Edition and Sugar's SugarExpress are both very basic forms of CRM, offering simple contact information and communications records, and both are meant for a small number of users (about 5-10). They are intended for the smallest business users, but the good thing about these products-and another advantage of SaaS solutions-is that they are wholly integrative into Salesforce's and Sugar's more extensive CRM products should the company grow.
Another thing you'll want to look for when choosing the right small business CRM: social networking tools. There has been great debate as to how helpful integrating products like Twitter and Facebook is to CRM processes, but there is no doubt that small businesses benefit greatly from incorporating social media. Unlike large enterprises, small businesses have more direct interactions with their customers, so while large enterprises use social networking tools to maintain a strong web presence and track conversations about their brand, small businesses have the advantage of using these platforms to nurture their existing relationships with customers. Most SaaS CRM solutions have social networking integrations, so look for a system that provides basic social media functionality and has a good tool for monitoring conversations.
The best small business CRM solution is out there. Just remember to assess your needs, and find a product that is scalable, and offers good contact management and social media integrations.

viernes, 3 de diciembre de 2010

Business Intelligence software comparisons for telecommunications companies

Use the software selection tool employed by Fortune 500 companies, Small & Medium Businesses, IT Services and Consultants in thousands software selection projects per year - Access tool and free comparisons below.
Powered by the TEC Expert System, eBestMatch™
... the "Rolls Royce of decision making tools" - ZDNet
Get the best technology match for your company. Our evaluations can save months of research and help ensure a successful project.
 What this comparison report will help you to achieve

4Determine which functional aspects are priorities for your business.
4Evaluate and understand the functionality that addresses Telecommunications requirements.
4Find the Telecommunications solutions that are most likely to serve your business.

About Business Intelligence Software

Business intelligence (BI) is a decision support tool used to capture, report, and analyze a subset of organizational data without affecting operational systems. The software provides essential business visibility to help clients' businesses grow by giving them the information they need about product, sales, and customer behavior. It allows clients to look at their businesses in different ways, and helps them to understand the core issues so they can take action to improve performance.


The function of business intelligence and business performance

With BI and BPM modules included in the ERP system or as standalone solutions, telco companies can better analyze the very high volumes of data that emerge from the enterprise's operational systems. BI and BPM systems provide the right tools to manage data at the right time, including those that enable dynamic reporting, data mining, online analytical processing (OLAP) services, balanced scorecards, and key performance indicators (KPIs). All of these functionalities—together with corporate dashboards that help telecommunications managers, decision makers, and knowledge workers be better able to interpret and analyze data—enable accurate decision making and the ability to modify business workflows that need improvement.

About TEC BI software comparison

Developed in conjunction with software analysts and the world's leading software vendors, TEC's enterprise software evaluation reports are designed to give manufacturers and service organizations a comprehensive list of features and functions (criteria) for each of over forty different kinds of enterprise software solutions. With over 1000 vendor products available for evaluation, TEC is the largest service of its kind in the industry. kind in the industry. ndustry. kind in the industry.

TEC helps thousands of businesses, every month, evaluate and select software solutions that meet their exacting needs by empowering purchasers with the tools, research, and expertise to make an ideal decision.


Industry standard terminology aids evaluation process

The language used to describe each category and criterion has been vetted by TEC analysts and provides a standard description that is understood and accepted by leading vendors and consultants in each enterprise area. During the RFI or RFP process, users benefit from clear, concise descriptions of critical functions that prospective vendors can respond to without confusion. This leads to better participation by invited vendors and reduces the possibility of errors.
Report uses by role:
IT project managers: Save time and avoid errors in the creation of high quality requirements for a software acquisition. Use the reports help develop all RFI, RFP and software tender documents.
IT Consultants: Use comprehensive criteria to determine build vs. buy analysis and perform gap analysis for legacy systems against the latest software functionality included in the reports. With ratings on over 1000 enterprise software solutions, you have access to the most comprehensive vendor data available.
Software manufacturers and vendors: Compare your system against the combined feature set of the leaders in your category to help prioritize future development. Use as a template of included features for any software bid.