The Week in Review: March 12, 2004

In the news... Cognos announced that it has acquired Softa, a privately held, UK-based performance-management consulting company that specializes in strategy formulation and KPI measurement consulting. The acquisition is expected to enhance Cognos' CPM solution, according to Rob Ashe, president and COO of Cognos. "Most important, it enhances our ability to address the strategic performance management requirements of our clients," he said in a statement. Entrepreneur Press announced that Carrabba's Italian Grill is the first recipient of its Killer Customer Care award. The award is based on criteria developed from Killer Customer Care: Five Star Service That Will Double and Triple Your Profits by George Colombo. What propelled Carrabba's ahead of the hundreds of other companies considered for the awards was its "careful planning, relentless training, and precise execution required to consistently provide a superior customer experience." According to Colombo, Carrabba's uses many of the principles described in Killer Customer Care, including extensive and on-going training, empowering employees, understanding customers' wants and needs, teamwork, exceeding customer expectations, and a diverse work environment. Audentify and Stevens Communications, a solutions integrator for contact centers, have partnered to improve contact center performance for customer We Energies. We Energies, a utility subsidiary of Wisconsin Energy Corporation, plans to use Audentify to find calls for agent skill assessment and fraud investigation. AMR Research has cited Salesforce.com in its newsletter, AMR Research Report, as the "clear leader in the subscription-based CRM space today. "[Salesforce.cm] is increasing industry penetration and deal size." AMR interviewed and analyzed six of Salesforce.com's customers across various industries, with implementation size ranging from 40 to 5,000 seats, and concluded that what these customers "give up in bells and whistles, they make up in user adoption." According to the report all six customers gave Salesforce.com "good marks for user adoption and ease of use." Deals of the week... Enterprise Logix announced that Global SATCOM Technology will implement its Logix software application. Deployment of Logix's ERP and CRM capabilities is expected to help Global SATCOM build, test, and provide customer service to clients in the Department of Defense and other government agencies. Trillium Software announced that T-Systems, a provider of information and communications technology, has implemented the Trillium Software System data quality solution. T-Systems has deployed the solution to ensure internal customer data quality within its Siebel CRM environment. SAP announced that AEPEX Business Consultants, CAC Corporation, Esprit Consulting, Global Enterprise Management Solutions (GEMS), and Sumisei Computer Service have deployed its mySAP CRM solution. Executive changes... Former PeopleSoft CRM Vice President and General Manager Joe Davis has joined Web analytics firm Coremetrics as president and CEO. Davis spearheaded the launch of PeopleSoft CRM 8.4 and 8.8, and helped make PeopleSoft CRM the fastest growing product line within the company. Prior to PeopleSoft, Davis was president of Nortel Networks e-business division. According to Davis, his biggest challenge at Coremetrics will be "figuring out where to make the investments," noting that Web analytics needs to serve specific verticals. "You're not going to make it in this market with a generic solution," Davis says. Intalio has announced the appointment of Sal Gentile as vice president of sales, and Jon Sofield as vice president of strategic alliances. Both Gentile and Sofield come to Intalio with many years of experience in sales. Peter Whalen has joined SAND Technology as vice president of business development. Prior to SAND, Whalen was most recently the general manager of telecommunications at HNC Software. Upcoming events... At the upcoming CRMA-Chicago meeting on March 18, a presentation by several CRM managers will reveal how they extracted additional value from existing CRM assets. The discussion will highlight process improvements that reduce transactional friction, training that supports a cross-selling goal, and data management work and system adjustments. The panelists will be Tom Lindberg, senior vice president and head of CRM at Bank One Treasury Management; Mark Kwasigroch, vice president of customer service at Weber-Stephen Products; and Jennifer Acuna, director of customer care at Beltone. < http://www.crma-chicago.org/