edocs Acquires Brightware eService Business From Firepond
edocs announced that it has acquired the Brightware business unit of Firepond. Brightware is recognized as a pioneer in delivering eService software solutions for inbound e-mail response management, knowledge management and chat. The acquisition complements edocs' existing e-billing, web self-service and assisted care offerings, enabling companies to provide customer care regardless of which channel their customers choose for service.

Platinum Equity To Acquire CompuCom Systems
Platinum Equity and CompuCom Systems announced they have entered into an agreement under which an affiliate of Platinum Equity will acquire CompuCom in a cash-for-stock exchange. Under the terms of the merger agreement, CompuCom shareholders will receive $4.60 for each outstanding share of CompuCom common stock they own. The all-cash transaction is valued at approximately $254 million, including the payment of $15 million plus accumulated dividends with respect to the company's outstanding preferred stock.

DoubleClick Q1 2004 Email Trend Report
DoubleClick released its Q1 Email Trend Report which reveals a healthy email marketing environment for marketers. Performance overall remained steady with a slight improvement in deliverability and a slight decline in open rates and click-through rates. The Q1 report, which contains the trend data for the first quarter since the introduction of the CAN-SPAM act, shows that the new legislation has not had a negative impact on the delivery rates of legitimate email marketing messages with overall delivery rates (measured as the number of email sent minus the hard and soft bounce-back rate) increasing slightly to 88.8%, an increase of 1.3 points or 1.4% from Q1 2003 (87.5%). Q1 2004 open rates (average of 38.2%) declined slightly from Q1 2003 (39.2), as did click-through rates, which fell to 8.4% in Q1 2004 from 8.9% in Q1 2003.

Witness Systems Provides Contact Center Solution For Accor
Witness Systems announced the deployment of its eQuality software solutions in eight hotel reservations chains owned by the Accor Reservation Services Group. By offering solutions that record, evaluate and analyse interactions between employees and customers, the eQuality suite enables companies, like Accor, to optimise agent performance by using captured customer contacts to ensure adherence to processes and procedures and to share agent best practices by leveraging them for training purposes.   (about Witness)

			Required Reading
		Six Sigma and Marketing - Mind the Gap    Imagine a pharmacy where 999 out of 1,000 prescriptions are filled correctly. Would you shop there? Would you buy a car whose brakes are guaranteed to work 999,999 times out of a million? These are the sort of manufacturing and engineering challenges to which Six Sigma can be readily applied to help define, measure, analyze, improve, and control the underlying business processes. more >>
Archive of past Required Reading articles

Teltone Introduces Emergency Notification Solution
Teltone Corporation announced the release of Notify Express. Notify Express enables proactive announcements to inform key personnel quickly in crisis and non-emergency situations. Notify Express is a second-generation rapid notification solution for contacting people via phone, email, pager, or SMS text message.

Assurant Chooses Westbury Report Manager
Assurant, a provider of specialized insurance products and related services in North America and selected other markets has successfully implemented and is using Report Manager. Assurant uses Report Manager at 2 of the 4 lines of business, as well as in their Shared Services group.   (about Westbury)

The Sant Corporation Releases Sant Suite 6.2
The Sant Corporation announced the availability of Sant Suite 6.2. The new version was developed using Sant Suite's Unified Architecture Design (UAD), which allows users to access all Sant products from a single interface. New features in Sant Suite 6.2 include the ability for users to create effective PowerPoint presentations "on-the-fly" from pre-approved slide content.

First American Interactive Division Selects MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy announced that the Interactive Division of The First American Corporation has chosen the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform as its business intelligence standard. MicroStrategy was selected over a field of five major business intelligence competitors. MicroStrategy will be adopted for extensive applications involving real estate and lender products and services, including an extranet for more than 30,000 customers.

UniPress Software Receives ITIL Service Support Certification
UniPress Software announced that its FootPrints 6.5 service desk software has been verified by Pink Elephant as a tool that supports the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Service Support best practices standard. FootPrints was ITIL-certified through Pink Elephant's PinkVerify program.   (about UniPress)

Positive Software President And CEO Named Finalist For Award
Edward Mandel, Positive Software Systems president and CEO, was named a finalist by professional services firm Ernst & Young LLP for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2004 Awards in the Southwest Area. Mr. Mandel was selected as a finalist in the Southwest Area by a panel of judges comprised of local community and business leaders. Award recipients in several categories will be announced at an awards banquet on June 12 at the International Apparel Mart in Dallas.   (about Positive Software)