Wires: News and Technology for October 13, 2004
Cognos announced it has completed the acquisition of Frango, which provides consolidation and financial reporting solutions. The acquisition was a cash transaction of approximately $53.1 million. According to Rob Ashe, president and CEO of Cognos, acquiring Frango is an important step in maintaining Cognos' commitment to providing comprehensive CRM solutions to customers.
Ascential Software has acquired iNuCom, which specializes in system software development for relational database servers and data warehousing products. The acquisition was an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $250,000. The acquisition will help Ascential establish a research and development presence in the Asia-Pacific region. This addition to Ascential's development resources will also enable the company to broaden its global engineering presence to all international regions and increase the company's access to technical talent wherever and whenever it is needed.
iPhrase Technologies and Coremetrics, a provider of Web analytics, marketing, and merchandising solutions, have announced a partnership to provide integrated search analytics to retailers, financial service organizations, and technology companies. The partnership is designed to enable companies to improve site search capabilities, enhance navigation, and more effectively merchandise to increase conversion rates, boost revenue, and minimize the support costs associated with assisted-service channels. Combining the iPhrase OneStep platform with Coremetrics Online Analytics 2004 could provide users with the insight necessary to improve their customers' search results.
Onyx Software has announced the Onyx Employee Portal for BlackBerry, designed for the BlackBerry wireless platform from Research in Motion. The offering aims to give mobile professionals fast access to corporate and customer data, including high-priority tasks stored within the corporate Onyx CRM application. It also allows users to easily perform wireless updates on their system, as well as with corporate headquarters and other field personnel. Onyx has also announced that Symetra Financial, formerly Safeco Life and Investments, a insurance and financial services company, plans to implement the new service for its field sales representatives. They'll be able to use the BlackBerry to access sales and service information. According to Pat McCormick, Symetra Financials' senior vice president of sales and distribution, the new wireless application will enable field sales staff to maintain better client-sales relationships. A broad range of Onyx CRM capabilities are accessible through BlackBerry, including contact management, pipeline management, opportunity management, quick search features, and email integration.
Best Software introduced SalesLogix for Pocket PC at the Gartner CRM Summit in Scottsdale, AZ. SalesLogix for Pocket PC is designed to look and feel like it on-premise cousin, SalesLogix 6.2, while delivering full-featured CRM functions with real-time wireless access. SalesLogix for Pocket PC is built on the Microsoft .NET framework.
Pragmatech Software, a provider of sales productivity and proposal automation applications, announced the release of ConnectionsCenter, a solution designed to provide tighter integration between the company's sales productivity solutions and other vendors' CRM applications. ConnectionsCenter is designed to increase the effectiveness of sales teams by providing easy access to information in the CRM system and other third-party enterprise applications necessary to complete sales documents and presentations. Users can also push data from the Pragmatech system back to a CRM opportunity record, including the final drafts of proposals created with the system.
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