The Week in Review: January 9, 2004

In the news... The Indian IT-services market will grow at least 30 percent during 2004, according to a new IT trends report from Forrester Research. Offshore customer service and technical support will focus even more resources on accent neutralization, English-language proficiency, and both product and customer service training to eliminate service complaints by customers, the report states. Convergys says it will be expanding its Canadian operations, opening a 300-seat call center in Manitoba. The facility is expected to be up and running by July. Dendrite International has announced that its wholly owned Dendrite Japan Corporation subsidiary has completed the strategic acquisition of Uto Brain. Based in Osaka, Uto Brain provides more than 30 pharmaceutical companies with data, analytics, publishing, and advisory services. The deal strengthens Dendrite's sales and marketing solutions presence in the pharmaceutical space. LivePerson, a provider of chat, email management, and self-service capabilities for customer service and sales, announced that it has acquired certain assets of Island Data. By acquiring Island Data's Express Response, a hosted knowledge base and FAQ service, LivePerson say it will strengthen its communications platform, adding to its recently released LivePerson Platinum suite. Deals of the week... Cambridge Laboratories has selected StayInFront to provide its CRM system for sales, marketing, and customer services. Crestron Electronics has selected RightNow's on-demand customer service solution to deliver technical support to its worldwide dealer network. MicroStrategy announced that LoanPerformance selected the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform for improved analysis and reporting of mortgage-industry data trends. Clarke American, which provides check-related products, contact center services, and direct-response marketing solutions, has selected Verint to fuel enterprise quality initiatives across the company's five networked contact centers. Executive changes... NetSuite has expanded its management team to include Michael R. Williams as senior vice president of worldwide sales and James Ramsey as vice president of small and medium business sales. Williams previously held positions at Exodus Communications; Ramsey comes to NetSuite from Oracle. Epsilon announced the appointment of former DoubleClick executive Michael Fisher to the post of vice president and general manager.