The Week in Review: July 11, 2003

In the news... No other company will compete with Oracle to acquire PeopleSoft, according to research firm Gartner. "After examining the opportunities for these other vendors, we believe PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards prospects and users should consider a 'white knight' scenario as a low probability when considering their options," Betsy Burton, vice president and research director at Gartner, said in a statement. "However, most vendors' strategies will be impacted by this pivotal event in the next two years. Applications users should accordingly evaluate if and how, in light of this event, their current providers will support them." Demand for chief customer officers has surged 240 percent from January to June 2003, compared to the same period in 2002, says Morgan Howard, an executive search firm. "Companies are realizing that the right CRM initiative can be a continual window into how to tweak and change a business. It is not just the compliant department online. CCOs are necessary to bring the right use and measurement of CRM," Alister Piggott, chairman and CEO of Morgan Howard, said in a statement. Epicor announced this week that it has completed its acquisition of ROI Systems in a $20 million cash deal. Epicor says the addition of ROI Systems' software and staff will bolster its ERP solutions capabilities. Coremetrics, a provider of online marketing analytics solutions, has acquired WebCriteria, a privately held provider of online scenario optimization services. Coremetrics says the deal helps broaden its Web-analytics capabilities. Executive changes... KANA has announced that Brian Kelly has joined KANA as executive vice president of product strategy. Kelly most recently served as vice president at Kanisa. Salesnet has named Dan Starr its new chief marketing officer. Starr was vice president of marketing at Parametric Technology Corporation prior to joining Salesnet. Pragmatech Software this week announced the appointment of Liz Robertson as CFO. Prior to joining Pragmatech Robertson held the CFO post at NTRU Cryptosystems. BeNOW, a CRM technology and database marketing-services provider, announced the appointment of Phil McAvoy as senior vice president of the catalog group, and Phil Kramer as senior vice president of its agency marketing practice. Prior to his role at BeNOW, McAvoy was the founder and principal of PJM Associates, a marketing consulting and services business, while Kramer was vice president of database marketing at Grand Circle Travel. Talisma has appointed Ranjan Chak chairman of its board of directors. Chak joins the company after a nine-year period working for Oracle Corporation, where he served as vice president of India operations. EPartners has promoted Matt Purser to CFO of the company. Purser served as vice president of finance prior to his promotion.