Category Archives: Customer Relationship Management

AppExchange, Customer Relationship Management, Salesforce AppExchange, salesforce.com, SpringCM

AppExtremes’ Conga Composer Adds HTML Email Capabilities, Cloud Storage to AppExchange

AppExtremes, Inc., developers of the Conga Suite, today announced availability of their Conga Composer Winter ’13 release which includes HTML email capabilities, tight integration with SpringCM™ content cloud services platform, and support for the PerspecSys™ cloud data security solution and the CipherCloud™ cloud information protection solution.

HTML email output capabilities complement Conga Composer’s extensive output formats (Microsoft Word®, Excel®, PowerPoint® and Adobe Acrobat PDF®) enabling presentation of data from multiple related Salesforce objects and lists in the body of an HTML email message. This key capability may be used alone, or in combination with file-based template options that generate email attachments. This further expands the power of Conga Composer to create and distribute sophisticated documents, reports and presentations to recipients both inside and outside an organization.

“We have leveraged the HTML Email Template functionality to generate weekly, scheduled, comprehensive deal updates for key internal recipients. This functionality lets us present far more detailed content than would otherwise be possible in a simple, easy to assemble manner,” said David Braidman, Senior Manager, Sales Systems & Tools for ServiceSource. “Conga Composer has become a key member of our sales operations team allowing us to generate countless documents across our entire enterprise.”

The Conga Composer Winter ’13 release also adds tight integration with SpringCM empowering Composer customers to distribute final output to SpringCM from within Salesforce. This gives joint customers one-click access to all their content as well as powerful workflow for putting content to work.

AppExtremes’ continued commitment to the highest data security standards has driven the integration with ISV technology partners CipherCloud and PerspecSys. The added support for these leading cloud security and information protection solutions enables Conga Composer to merge sensitive data into documents, while allowing for the data to remain encrypted or tokenized at rest and in flight. Using these gateways empowers organizations to keep control of their sensitive business data in real-time.

“As Conga Composer continues to grow in popularity globally and within organizations we are continually looking for ways to expand its capabilities to meet our clients’ increasing needs,” said Michael Markham, AppExtremes CTO. “The HTML email functionality and ISV technology partner integrations play key roles in extending our position as a leading provider of document generation and reporting solutions on the Salesforce AppExchange.”

Conga Composer is a document generation and reporting solution on the AppExchange. Conga Composer makes it possible for users and administrators to be more productive and serves as the backbone for nearly any operation or process by enabling them to:

  • Create sophisticated documents using any data in just a few clicks
  • Distribute content to anyone, anywhere, any way they like
  • Automate operations with powerful workflow, batch operations and
    scheduling.

 

Business Processes, Customer Relationship Management, JDA, Retail, Supply chain

JDA Releases Customer Engagement Cloud Solution for Retail

JDA Software Group, Inc. today announced the release of JDA Customer Engagement Cloud, a single solution that addresses omni-channel commerce and optimization logic in real time. It not only helps retailers deliver goods to customers, but also aligns real-time supply processes and inventory to profitably source those goods.

“The retail industry is at a critical juncture in its history. Consumers today — empowered with mobile technology — have instant access to information that shapes what they buy, when and where they buy it, and at what price,” said Hamish Brewer, President and CEO, JDA Software. “These connected consumers determine which retail enterprises succeed and which fail. With JDA® Customer Engagement Cloud we have developed a comprehensive approach to address this challenge now, helping retailers to avoid becoming a victim in this rapidly changing retail environment.”

JDA® Customer Engagement Cloud is designed to help retailers profitably achieve customer-centricity in every interaction through the following key capabilities:

JDA® Customer Engagement Cloud enables enterprise visibility to critical information like inventory levels, product information, customer history – including access to a customer’s universal online shopping cart – and customer preferences to associates who interact with the omni-channel customer. Providing this type of customer information in real-time enables in-store associates to better convert in-store visits into sales.

More and more, commerce is happening not just in the checkout lines, but in the aisles of today’s retail stores. Empowering associates with full access to enterprise data and point-of-sale (POS) capabilities in the aisle is critical to creating the ultimate in-store customer experience. Store associates can maximize their ability to help customers by using the JDA® Customer Engagement Cloud associate app on a mobile device. In addition to accessing information and standard POS capabilities, the associate app supports guided price negotiation and alternate delivery options.

Customer experience, Customer Relationship Management, Marketing, Mobile

Total Communicator Solutions Launches Mobile Marketing Communication Platform

Total Communicator Solutions has launched its Mobile Marketing Communication Platform, a cloud-based platform which enables a company to communicate with their clients who download the company’s mobile app via a simple web based dashboard interface.  The solution includes a mobile app that can be dynamically changed and controlled by the CRM system.

“We have created a business solution by combining cutting edge mobile technologies such as an Augmented Reality (AR) solution with a powerful cloud based CRM system. With this we have developed a simple to use Mobile Marketing Communication Platform,” explained TCS Founder and CEO Erik Bjontegard .  “The CRM system serves as the central nervous system. The app can be used to gather information such as activity, location and more – the system then can deliver content that is relevant to the app user’s context and behavior. We have gone from context awareness to what I like to call contextual intelligence.”

The platform is targeted for use by a company’s marketing department. It enables automatic delivery of messages, content and offers based on a variety of parameters. These include location, activity and past behavior within the app. The solution can also reward those that use the app to share with others through their social networks.

The first company to use the application is the cutting edge restaurant group Enlightened Hospitality Group of San Diego. They are active users of social and digital marketing and have their own in house digital ad agency. Partner and CEO, James Brennan states, “When we first saw the TCS solution, we knew we wanted this, and wanted to be the first to use it.  This fits perfectly in our marketing plans where we promote our restaurant group as well as our celebrity Chef, Brian Malarkey .”

Business Processes, Customer Relationship Management, Real estate

RES.NET Platform Now Supports Traditional Real Estate Market

RES.NET, a provider of software applications connecting real estate professionals and consumers, today announced that its platform now supports the traditional real estate market. Originally introduced in 2004 as a technology solution for the default space, RES.NET has evolved its platform to now enhance retail, or traditional real estate transactions. By enabling agents to perform tasks and communicate with other real estate agents, companies and consumers, they can better meet the demands of today’s tech-savvy consumers while gaining the accessibility and accountability to operate more productively and improve their businesses.

RES.NET’s Agent Portal, one of the platform’s six cloud-based portals, connects agents to other real estate professionals, buyers and sellers and allows them to handle every aspect of the sale through one, centralized system – and even on-the-go through a mobile application. Agents can define their unique task workflow and input all details on their properties including photos and videos. The portal facilitates transparency among agents and other participants, who can easily send and sign documents online using e-signature technology.

“Our network has grown to include more than 200,000 users, some of which are Fortune 500 companies with very complex workflows and stringent requirements,” said Todd Mobraten, COO and president of RES.NET. “With our experience in the default space and as a response to the real estate market’s evolution, we elected to expand our platform’s capabilities to support the traditional market. With more than 80 percent of consumers now beginning their home search online, it is important for agents to leverage technology that meets their expectations. With the platform agents can eliminate communication gaps and securely share information in an automated, paperless environment or even from a mobile device, which minimizes their time in front of the computer and lets them focus on serving homebuyers, cultivating relationships and increasing their business opportunities.”

Within the portal, Agents can also access RES.NET’s offer submission link tool, which enables them to submit offers to listing agents directly through the platform, instead of mailing or faxing paper documents. Through the system agents have ultimate control to manage offers, negotiations and counter offers, resulting in faster closings.

Mobraten continued, ”One of the portal’s most valuable features for agents is the ability to add and invite contacts to their network. Not only does this contribute to more efficient communications and accelerates transactions, but the technology also empowers them to increase their professional networks and improve their businesses.”

Actuate Corporation, ActuateOne, Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management

Actuate Offers ActuateOne for Customer Communications Management

 

Image representing Actuate as depicted in Crun...

Actuate Corporation today announced ActuateOne® for Customer Communications Management (CCM), an integrated solution for top-tier organizations to design, process, store and deliver high-volume customer communications, including account statements, policies, and bills. ActuateOne for CCM is the first in a series of solutions based on the BIRT iHub, a next generation solution deployment framework for delivering applications that keep end-users up to date on the insights they need – where and when they are needed.

“ActuateOne for CCM is designed to give organizations ultimate flexibility to integrate individual components within their existing infrastructures, or to deploy the complete solution to manage their enterprise customer communications,” said Steve Jones, Vice President and General Manager, Actuate Xenos Group. “With the solution, organizations are now able to aggregate customer data for campaign analysis, create targeted customer communications and deliver them to customers through their desired channels, via print and mail or digital channels on desktop or mobile devices.”

“In Customer Communications Management, as with other information management environments, awareness of the entire CCM process tends to be fragmented and limited to an individual’s specific area of focus,” said John Mancini, President at AIIM International. “When information managers don’t have a sense of how the entire Customer Communications process fits together, it limits their ability to make optimal decisions, plus they waste an inordinate amount of resources trying to integrate technologies and processes. What are needed are end-to-end technologies that enable CCM to be understood across data acquisition, content composition, processing, archiving and delivery.”

Within an integrated ActuateOne for CCM environment, organizations can:

  • Build market-driven and customer targeted strategies: With
    sophisticated data acquisition, data mining and analytics,
    organizations can freely analyze customer data. Marketers can identify
    market-specific insights and create targeted communications.
    Communications can be defined to insert directed trans-promo, next
    best offers and targeted marketing messages tailored to each targeted
    customer segment.
  • Compose and create targeted customer communications: With
    end-to-end document composition using BIRT, ActuateOne for CCM
    simplifies the creation of customer communications. Taking raw data
    from varying data sources, the solution creates targeted and
    personalized customer communications for both modern-interactive and
    traditional-print delivery. Through the use of definable templates
    organizations can quickly create customer communications with
    organizational branding, customer data and personalized marketing
    messages.
  • Automate and manage customer communications: With leading
    document processing and transformation capabilities, ActuateOne for
    CCM easily stays on top of data deluge and the process complexity that
    accompanies it. The solution simplifies the processes involved in
    managing disparate systems and applications by managing the end-to-end
    communications process, from data acquisition to analysis,
    composition, archive and delivery to end consumers for print and
    electronic consumption. With the ability to define and automate
    business processes, ActuateOne for CCM enables administrators to
    control, log and audit the entire communications process.
  • Securely Store Customer Communications: Using state-of-the-art
    electronic archiving, ActuateOne for CCM addresses a key challenge
    faced by today’s IT personnel – to efficiently store and retrieve
    documents for numerous business purposes, ranging from business
    analytics to online presentment to regulatory compliance. The solution
    provides efficient search and retrieval and enables the retention and
    disposition to satisfy industry-specific regulatory requirements. With
    a built-in audit, logging and reports, ActuateOne for CCM provides a
    360° system view, letting administrators identify potential concerns
    before they become performance bottlenecks.
  • Delivering content where it’s needed, when it’s needed: With
    its electronic, multi-channel delivery architecture, ActuateOne for
    CCM facilitates secure internal and external access of customer
    communications, enabling organizations to efficiently deliver content
    to internal users and external customers. By using ActuateOne for
    CCM’s ability to leverage a single composition design, only a single
    format is required to enable delivery for print, web, mobile and touch
    enabled devices.
  • Enrich customer-facing applications: With the ability to build
    or integrate with application portals and dashboards, ActuateOne for
    CCM enables organizations to share useful information such as
    insurance policies, service specifications and billing details to
    enrich the individual customer experience. The solution connects
    customer-facing applications with relevant content to increase
    application functionality by delivering communications in traditional
    static formats like PDF for simple statement review, as well as
    interactive formats that allow users to analyze, aggregate, manipulate
    and graph data within the customer-facing application.


Business Processes, Content Management, Customer Relationship Management, GlobalSCAPE, Mobile device, Salesforce, salesforce.com

TappIn Pro Edition Includes Salesforce.com Integration

TappIn, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of GlobalSCAPE, Inc. announced today the launch of the new TappIn Professional Edition. TappIn’s Professional Edition offers 10 GB of secure transactional cloud storage, enhanced secure mobile access features, integration with Salesforce, and group management capabilities designed for professional users, businesses, and an increasingly mobile workforce, by creating a go-to service for remote access to all content regardless of where it resides.

“The increasingly mobile nature of today’s workforce, coupled with the rapid diversification of content sources and storage repositories, has forced a re-envisioning of how IT manages the access device landscape,” said Maureen Fleming, analyst with IDC. “Content is no longer stored on just a computer or server, it’s stored across collaboration platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft Exchange, on NAS drives, and in cloud repositories—public, private, and personal. As mobile devices put our lives at our fingertips, businesses and their employees will look for solutions that also streamline access to these content sources, increasing efficiency and eliminating the need for redundant copies and storage.”

“If we have learned anything from the BYOD revolution, it’s that people are looking for the simplest way to manage and access everything they need via a mobile device,” said Chris Hopen, President of TappIn, Inc. “TappIn Professional Edition is the next evolution of our approach to access and management, allowing users to go to a single place on their mobile device and securely access or share all of their important content—whether it resides on a home computer, business server, or SaaS application such as Salesforce. TappIn is the one place they can go for access to all of their content without having to move it all to one place.”

 

 


Customer Relationship Management, Emergence Capital Partners, Insightly, Venture Funding

Insightly Gets $3 Million to Take SMB CRM Apps to More Platforms

Insightly, a provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software for small businesses, today announced it has completed a $3 million financing round led by Emergence Capital Partners. Insightly, which is ranked as the number one customer management application in the Google Apps marketplace, is using this financing to expand its service outside of the Google Apps platform and make it available to all small businesses starting today.

“Small businesses around the world want CRM software that is easy to use, doesn’t require hours of training, and fits their budget. Insightly’s simple user interface and freemium pricing model meets their needs perfectly,” said Anthony Smith, CEO of Insightly. “We’ve seen massive growth in the past two years by meeting this demand, and Emergence’s investment will allow us to further accelerate this growth and continue to enhance our users’ experience.”

Insightly’s intuitive cloud-based CRM software meets the needs of small businesses and allows users to easily keep track of customer interactions and manage leads, proposals, opportunities, projects and files from any device, at any time. Insightly can be accessed via a web browser from any PC, laptop, smartphone or tablet to keep business moving forward, both in office and on-the-go


Customer Relationship Management, Dashboard, Sales intelligence

Cloud9 Simplifies, Secures Sales Reporting

Cloud9 today announced Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards.

Either scheduled and delivered automatically, or accessed on-line, Cloud9’s Sales Reports and Dashboards delivers a broad range of sales reports – including those reports that are difficult to get from the CRM system. Cloud9 delivers a library of pre-defined reports, or users can create any type of customized sales report or dashboard. Reports include a complete history of every bit of sales data a customer cares to track.

As part of the Cloud9 Sales Performance Suite, Sales Reports and Dashboards leverages the single data warehouse Cloud9 pulls from corporate CRM, financial and incentive compensation systems, as well as other data records to provide secure historical and operational reporting with frequent refreshes and snapshots.

“Reporting is regarded as a necessary evil by many sales teams,” said Jim Burleigh, chief executive officer of Cloud9. “It’s a cumbersome process of knitting together data from separate corporate systems, which requires hours of administrative and management time better spent on focusing on future deals. Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards simplifies the reporting process to put the historical information sales leaders need to make the right decisions to identify risk in the pipeline and to deliver on the forecast.”

Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards is built on the Cloud9 analytics platform and takes full advantage of Cloud9’s patent-pending technology for storing and analyzing the full history of data from multiple sources. Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards incorporates Cloud9’s unique tools for seeing historical trends in sales data into a reporting product that provides the following capabilities:

  • Pre-defined and customized sales reports: Saves time with a
    comprehensive library of pre-defined reports and templates – leverage
    Cloud9 to create any type of customized sales report and dashboard,
    automatically. Distributes reports and dashboard to provide unified
    sales intelligence and keep all stakeholders aligned.
  • Custom layouts and design: Provides simple but powerful design
    capabilities including a rich component library and rule-based
    formatting, so you can easily feature tables, charts, pivot tables,
    graphics and custom formulas in sales reports and dashboards. Single
    and multi-page dashboard reports offer unlimited custom layout
    possibilities.
  • Visualization of historical and operational data: Illustrates
    history, trends and patterns of success and failure to sales teams to
    drive performance at all levels of the organization. Brings
    information to life and turns it into actionable insight for business
    decision-making with vivid data visualization, including a wide array
    of graphical representations including column, line, pie, bar, area,
    scatter, contour, doughnut, bubble, radar and embedded sparc lines in
    both 2D and 3D.
  • Secure access to sales intelligence: Gives administrators
    fine-grain control over security and sharing of sales reports and
    dashboards to provide regulated, auditable cross-functional access for
    anyone in the organization. Leverage powerful subscription management
    capabilities for unlimited reports, users and schedules. Automatically
    monitor report availability and adoption patterns.

Cloud9 will be demonstrating its Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards as well as its full Sales Performance Suite at this year’s Dreamforce 2012 conference, being held Sept. 18 – 21 at Moscone Center North, South and West 747 Howard St., San Francisco, Booth No. 500.

For more information about the Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards, please visit http://www.cloud9analytics.com/products/sales-reports-and-dashboards.


Collaboration, Customer Relationship Management, Exafort, Google Apps, NetSuite, Phishing, Salesforce, salesforce.com

Aujas Launches Phishnix for Cloud Services

Aujas Information Risk Services today announced the launch of Phishnix for cloud services, a new product that will help clients protect their sensitive information on the cloud by strengthening their weakest link in the security chain, their own employees. The product is targeted for major cloud services such as Salesforce, Google Apps, Netsuite etc.

Salesforce.com is the most popular cloud CRM company in the world with more than 75,000 companies who trust their customer data on Salesforce. The Salesforce security guideline specifically warns against the threat and says, “As the Salesforce.com community grows, it has become an increasingly appealing target for phishers. Phishers often direct users to enter details at a fake website whose URL and look-and-feel are almost identical to the legitimate one.”

One example is a recent scam that involved an email luring receivers to participate in the beta test of ‘Dreamforce,’ promising discounts and requesting receivers to fill a form, in a fake web link. In such a case, employees who are unaware of it being a phishing attack may easily fall prey to it. Any company is likely to face heavy business loss, when employees become victims of phishing attacks. According to the RSA Fraud report 2011, global loss from phishing is estimated to be about $1 billion.

Phishnix does a behavioral analysis of employees when faced with a phishing attack. It is integrated with Salesforce and has ready Salesforce scenarios which the client can select. They can start the assessment in a matter of hours and analyze how their employees react to a phishing attack. That data is then used to create awareness and train the employees on how to respond to a phishing attack.

Speaking on the occasion Mr. Karl Kispert, Vice President at Phishnix said, “A single assessment and training cycle of Phishnix reduces the phishing fall rate by almost 35%. That is a huge reduction in the phishing risk for any organization.”

The product will be showcased by our partner Exafort at Dreamforce 2012, booth number 326 at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, on 18—21 September 2012. Stop by Exafort’s booth and ask for a demo and additional information about Phishnix. Dreamforce 2012 is the cloud computing industry event of the year with more than 50,000 attendees and 350 cloud computing companies showcasing more than 1000 solutions.

“Data security and confidentiality on the cloud is one of the biggest concerns for all our clients using cloud based services to run their business. Cloud service providers are addressing this concern to a large extent by building robust and secure applications and platforms. By adding Aujas’ Phishnix to our tool belt we can now gain valuable insights of our clients’ employees’ behavior with respect to information security and act upon them,” said  Arun Kanchi, CEO of Exafort Inc.

As cloud adoption increases within organizations, more sensitive data will be stored in the cloud. “We will see more focused phishing attacks targeting popular cloud applications. The road-map is to enable Phishnix for all popular cloud platforms, and help clients reduce phishing risk for all their cloud applications. It would become an integral part of their cloud security program,” said Sameer Shelke, CTO at Phishnix.


Business Processes, Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise resource planning, ERP, Hardware, Medical, Supply chain, SYSPRO, SYSPRO ERP

SYSPRO ERP Software Able to Facilitate Medical Device Unit Recalls

SYSPRO today announced that SYSPRO ERP software offers manufacturers extensive traceability capabilities to facilitate the ability of manufacturers to trace products from origin, through the manufacturing process, to their ultimate destination, fully maintaining assurance certification and tracking expiration dates. The reaffirmation of the extensive traceability functionalities inherent in SYSPRO ERP software was in reaction to the announcement that “over 123 million medical device units were recalled in the second quarter of 2012, reaching an eight-quarter high,” according to the quarterly ExpertRECALL Index released August 22, 2012.

SYSPRO lot traceability and serial tracking functionality afford extensive visibility up or down the supply chain, as well as providing specific component to parent tracking, thereby providing the means to expedite recalls, should the need arise. SYSPRO optionally allows specific traceable components to be reserved for specific work-orders, as well as providing the flexibility of specifying the parent traceable numbers at the beginning, during or the end of the manufacturing process.

The Associated Press article reporting the record number of recalls contains the following statement by Mike Rozembajgier, vice president of recalls at Stericycle ExpertRECALL, “The growing importance of this product category means that companies need to have a comprehensive recall plan in place that can be deployed within the blink of an eye and can effectively protect their customers…”

According to SYSPRO USA President Joey Benadretti, “The implementation of cost- effective SYSPRO software helps medical device manufacturers streamline their supply chains and also to employ extensive ‘backwards and forwards’ component and product traceability for speedy recalls.