The Week in Review: September 12, 2003

In the news... The Customer Relationship Management Association (CRMA) has appointed noted industry analysts Chris Selland president and Sheryl Kingstone vice president. In addition the CRMA has added a new chapter in Portland to support its continued growth. Selland is the founder of Reservoir Partners; Kingstone is the program manager of Yankee Group's CRM Strategies Planning Services. Business intelligence (BI) solutions provider Actuate this week announced an expansion of its UpTrade Program to "assist Cognos Impromptu customers coping with the uncertainty created by the recent release of Cognos ReportNet," according to a company statement. Through November 28 Actuate's UpTrade program will now provide financial incentives for customers of Cognos in addition to Brio Software, Business Objects, and Crystal Decisions to migrate to Actuate's information application platform, which the company says offers a single, integrated solution to meet their varied BI needs. During its worldwide launch of ReportNet, Cognos CEO Ron Zambonini pledged continued support for impromptu customers, noting that customers could migrate at any time, or not at all, to the ReportNet platform. To better preview its telecommunications capabilities, Sprint has unveiled five regional executive--briefing centers that will afford business customers and prospects a firsthand look at the telecommunications solutions available to midsize and enterprise customers, and will facilitate sales for the major telecommunications services provider. Dubbed Sprint Experience, these centers are strategically located in major metropolitan areas throughout the United States, including Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and the Sprint World Headquarters Campus in Overland Park, KS. "It's where high tech meets high touch," said Tim Kelly, president, Sprint Business, in a company statement. "The centers are indicative of our customer-centric approach and literally allow prospects to test drive our technologies, business capabilities and solutions." The Wendover-Global Insight IT Spending Index increased by a percentage point overall in August, but this is far from any signal of a robust pickup in IT capital spending, according to the firm. Surveys conducted for the Index confirmed that CEOs are still wary of committing to discretionary IT projects and the flat prognosis for the second half of the year remains. The mild uptick was found mostly in asset-heavy sectors like construction, manufacturing, and communications. Workscape, a provider of benefits and workforce management solutions, has acquired the operating assets of CallConnect, which operates an HR Service Center specializing in employee benefits communication. The combination of Workscape's Web-based self-service applications and CallConnect's HR Service Center will enable Workscape to better deliver a high level of service for each workforce constituency at the lowest possible cost to the employer, according to the company. Executive changes... Chordiant has announced the appointment of R. Andrew Eckert, president and CEO of Docent, to Chordiant's board of directors. Eckert will fill the position being vacated by Bill Ford of General Atlantic Partners, who is leaving at the end of the quarter. Echopass, a provider of hosted contact interaction solutions, this week announced the appointment of Jim Dvorkin as its CTO. Dvorkin was formerly director of engineering for contact center solutions provider Genesys.