February 3, 2005

IN THE NEWS Fuego, a developer of BPM solutions, has released some details of its fiscal year 2004 performance. Software license revenues grew over 350 percent compared to the previous fiscal year, with overall fourth quarter 2004 revenues more than double the same quarter in 2003. Fifty new enterprise customers joined Fuego's client base, which the company hopes to add to with its expanded roster of resellers in the Latin American and European markets it has been aggressively growing. The company also closed a $5 million round of funding last year. Call center outsourcer West Corporation revealed that it has rapidly increased the size of its home-based agent capability. As of year's end the company had more than 5,500 home-based agents, more than double the home-based count of June 2004. The company has continued to open and expand traditional brick-and-mortar contact centers alongside its "homesourcing" efforts. CUSTOMER WINS The Dallas Morning News has selected Siebel to provide incentive management for sales commissions. The newspaper will now manage advertising commissions for its 250-member sales force with the Siebel suite to reduce payment processing times, cut down on rote labor, and improve fiscal visibility. SSA Global released the details of a number of recent client acquisitions. S.P. Richards, a business supply wholesaler, is using the management and demand-flow tools provided by SSA to improve inventory management-and-restocking performance. SSA has also recently been adopted by AmerisourceBergen, Schratter Foods, and Regal . NEW PRODUCTS Enterprise software developer TechExcel has released version 5.5 of both its TechExcel CRM and TechExcel HelpDesk products. The new solutions support operation on multiple Web servers, which is expected to provide greater performance through network load balancing. The company has added enhanced service level agreement (SLA) tracking and automatic escalation based on SLA terms, support team scheduling, and improved analytics. Employee and client comments are now tagged as service incidents for increased attention. BearingPoint has added a mobile field-service system to its solutions for midmarket companies. The new FFA solution is expected to help companies with large, active mobile workforces improve response times, repair times, and travel costs while improving first-visit resolution and cross-sell success rates. ClickSoftware has released version 7.5 of its ServiceOptimization Suite. Two years in development, the new version will allow users of the workforce optimization system to better manage schedule and job exceptions, revamps the planning utility's user interface, improves KPI monitoring, and introduces new automation wizards. Adeptra, a specialist in virtual contact center services, has released a new Auto-resolution Services product aimed specifically at financial collections companies. The on-demand service allows collectors to customize contact with debtors and can process a number of different call resolutions through automated scripts. Related article: Forrester Ranks the Top 10 BPM Companies