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Who's Afraid of Big, Bad Outsourcing? "Can I help you with your problem?" means the same thing all over the world. A report from Jupiter Research finds that despite the hype around customers' aversion to outsourcing, only 17 percent of online customers say that it affects their purchase decisions. "Customer Service Outsourcing" looked at the state and proliferation of outsourcing today and found that although the level of outsourcing customer service continues to remain relatively flat, the attitudes companies and consumers display concerning outsourcing are shifting.

That Dog Must Hunt--Tight labor markets, globalization, and increased performance expectations have combined to make the sales environment one where only the strong survive, and organizations themselves must have effective sales management processes to keep their people content and their business growing. Sales effectiveness consultancy Watson Wyatt Worldwide has identified the key similarities among top sellers and among top companies in its "Driving Profitable Sales Growth," survey. Among the top common factors were less time spent on administrative tasks and customer care, and better incentives for strategic behavior related to finding deals and closing opportunities.

Witness Eyes the Enterprise--Witness Systems nabbed Demos Solutions Consulting Group and Exametric, workforce management solutions providers catering to the financial services industry, for $29 million in cash and a potential earn-out of up to $18 million. These acquisitions are projected to add $13 million to $15 million to Witness's revenue in 2007. The companies will be combined and operate as Witness Enterprise Solutions, which will focus initially on WFO solutions for retail bank branches and operations. Darryl Demos, CEO and founder of Demos Solutions, will lead the group.

PeopleSoft's Financial Management 9--Another Step Toward Fusion Oracle announced the release of PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management 9, the first major release from PeopleSoft's Financial Management in 18 months. The new Enterprise Financial Management 9 answers the call for compliance in the corporate world today, while remaining cost conscious, according to PeopleSoft. The release focuses on providing a more complete Web-services offering, as well as use of Oracle Business Process Execution Language Process Manager and Oracle XML Publisher, both of which come out of an integration with Oracle Fusion Middleware. The release marks one point on the road map toward Fusion, according to an analyst.

Kumbaya My App, Kumbaya--SugarCRM made available SugarExchange, a community-built apps and extensions for SugarCRM end users and administrators. "SugarExchange is a logical extension of the commercial open source business model," says John Roberts, chairman and CEO. "This marketplace, combined with the SugarForge.org open-source community, gives the worldwide community of Sugar users and developers an end-to-end solution for developing, testing, and purchasing SugarCRM extensions."

Marketers Miss the Mark on Privacy Crisis Containment--Despite the press and political rhetoric regarding security concerns, only 29 percent of marketers say that their firm has a crisis containment plan in case of a security breach, according to the findings of a CMO Council's "Secure the Trust of Your Brand: How Security and IT Integrity Influence Corporate Brands." Without such a plan and other security strategies in place, companies risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars through loss of reputation and brand trust, according to Scott Van Camp, CMO Council editorial director and author of the study. (For the full stories and more news, visit destinationCRM.com.)

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