New Product Spotlight: June 11

J.D. Edwards has not stalled product development in light of a potential merger with PeopleSoft. The company announced this week at its user conference that it has released three major product enhancements to J.D. Edwards 5 CRM software, including configured item support for CRM applications, which streamlines the process of configuring products specific to customer needs and facilitating mass customization; deeper analytics capabilities that will enable a variety of users, from top execs to project managers, to access deeper and richer views of its CRM and ERP data; and expanded mobile sales functionality via new wireless CRM capabilities for iPaq and Palm products, enabling the field professional to access real-time critical information while in the field, the company says. J.D. Edwards also announced that it has made a number of upgrades to its supply chain management (SCM) solution, specifically targeted to manufacturers and distributors. Enhancements include new, modular functionality for planning, order management, multimode manufacturing, distribution, and logistics, the company says. It has also added more vertically targeted features to J.D. Edwards 5, specifically designed for the life sciences industries and consumer packaged goods companies. Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories has introduced Genesys Voice Callback, a new offering that provides customers the option to receive a callback instead of waiting on hold for a customer service agent. With the solution, customers can choose a callback as soon as possible or specify a particular time that is convenient to them. At the same time, companies can prioritize customer callbacks based on predefined segmentation strategies. For example, "gold" customers might be routed directly to an agent, while "silver" and "bronze" customers are put in queue for a callback. Genesys says callbacks can be centrally managed and routed to the best skilled agent across multiple sites, so companies can match resources based on customer value. Silvon Software announced version 4.0 of its Stratum suite of enterprise performance management (EPM) applications, featuring a new module designed to help businesses plan, analyze, and optimize inventory performance. The new Inventory Performance Management module includes more than 30 prebuilt planning and analytical templates. The product also features rules-based exception management functionality for alerting planners of trends that will result in future problems. WebSideStory this week announced the launch of new conversion analytics capabilities for its HitBox Web analytics service that the company says make it even easier for businesses to streamline navigation, eliminate roadblocks and increase conversions. The new capabilities are funnel analysis, which measures how effectively visitors move through any series of steps; and form abandonment, which reports on the effectiveness of online forms, such as a membership registration. The Igneous Group today announced the availability of a spam-free eBusiness application, called Igneous eCampaign, that enables the legitimate distribution of information to mass audiences. Igneous says eCampaign works with company proprietary email lists and opt-in subscriptions, thus preserving the integrity of each broadcast message.