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1/12/06 - Financial Viability of CRM Vendors
The selection process for CRM solutions almost always involves a discussion about the financial stability and future of the vendor. Perhaps that is one aspect where market share comes in to play assuming that bigger means more stable.
Unfortunately that doesn't always hold true. For instance, two of the bigger players, Peoplesoft and Siebel have ceased or soon will cease to exist while numerous small companies will be left standing as independents (at least for the time being). So it is conceivable that you recently selected one of the big guys based on size and stability over a smaller vendor only to find that a less tumultuous product path would have been the smaller vendor.
At any moment, any company of any size big or small can be acquired thus re-writing the product and technology roadmap you bought into. There are no promises against that. Therefore, about the best you can do is to gain a better understanding of the vendor's financial stability, not their ability to stay independent. Do you agree?
Gary Lemke, Publisher
(Share your thoughts)
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TODAY'S NEWS (more)
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FrontRange Solutions announced that the Francisco Partners has completed the acquisition of FrontRange's outstanding shares effective December 23, 2005. As a result of the acquisition by Francisco Partners, FrontRange has been delisted and is no longer traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
Onyx Software has rejected a proposal from CDC, which owns Pivotal Software, to acquire a majority share of the enterprise CRM vendor, citing lack of synergy between the two companies as the prime reason.
Rimini Street announced that it has completed the acquisition of CRM and ERP technology consulting firm Sidney Blue, LLC. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.
UniPress announced that it achieved record growth for its FootPrints product line in 2005. Overall, the company saw nearly 20 percent growth during the 12-month period ending in December 2005, completing its sixth consecutive year of strong growth.
Sento announced that mBlox has chosen Sento to provide scalable, outsourced multilingual support service for end user inquiries. The deal will allow mBlox to continue its international growth while also reducing support costs without compromising workflow processes or the degree of professional service it offers throughout all of its operations.
Sendia helps make closing sales leads faster and easier for MedicalDispatch, based in Chicago. MedicalDispatch selected Sendia for its ability to extend Salesforce to Palm Treo devices.
NICE Systems announced that a report by DMG Consulting LLC has named NICE as the market leader in the contact center quality management and liability recording.
Rare Method's Sports and Event Marketing team has received an assignment from Travel Alberta International to provide unique customer experiences at US trade shows in 2006, and enhance customer data acquisition.
MicroStrategy announced that in a survey of companies using business intelligence (BI) software products, those using MicroStrategy are the most loyal and satisfied. MicroStrategy received an overall customer loyalty score of 81% and was the highest ranked business intelligence software product reviewed.
ASC announced the implementation of new archiving capacity through the use of DBLAN software, developed by ASC's partner in Poland, Bila Trading.
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 FEATURE WEBCAST (more) |
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"The Last Mile in CRM Analytics"
Nicolas Bonnet, VP, Product Management, Sigma Dynamics
While large organizations have invested millions in customer relationship management software and analytics, a tremendous gap still exists between companies' ability to listen to customer needs and their ability to respond appropriately at the moment of interaction. In this session, you will learn how applying real-time predictive analytics to your existing customer processes can help you bridge this critical gap. By bridging the operational and analytical worlds of customer management, you will learn how eal-time predictive analytics operationalizes underutilized customer insights and business logic to deliver real-time decisions.
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| CRMAdvocate Stock Index |
| CRMSI | 48.50 |  | 0.17% |
| Dow Jones | 11,043.44 | | 0.29% |
| Nasdaq | 2,331.36 | | 0.47% |
| S&P 500 | 1,294.18 | | 0.35% |
| Top Gainers |
| RightNow | 19.95 | | 0.97 |
| Unica | 13.83 | | 0.65 |
| HP | 31.34 | | 0.56 |
| Top Losers |
| SAP | 46.64 |  | -0.73 |
| Tekelec | 14.51 | | -0.29 |
| West Tel | 41.89 | | -0.21 |
| Complete Stock Index |
| As of close 01/11/06 | |
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 Case Studies (more)
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Witness Helps 4 Wheel Parts - By deploying eQuality ContactStore for IP within its Cisco converged voice and data environment, 4 Wheel Parts has been able to achieve the following results * Increased agent monitoring efficiency by 30 percent * Increased sales and order volume by eight percent * Enhanced training and development program.(Witness Systems)
|  | | Opalis Software Uses CRM and Reduces Time Per Transaction - To gain clarity into their own business, learn more about their customers, and improve the way departments interact with each other and with customers, Rob Tavares, Vice President of Sales, Opalis Software, invested in a customer relationship management (CRM) system and integrated it with existing technologies, like Intuit's QuickBooks.(Maximizer Software)
| | | Carlson Marketing Group With IEX - Within six months of implementing IEX Carlson Marketing had already seen a service level increase of nearly 10 percent.(IEX Corporation, a Tekelec Company)
| | | Stellar Call Centres Improves Operational Effeciency - With Verint' ULTRA suite of Contact Center Actionable Intelligence Solutions, Stellar Call Centers increased the effectiveness of its quality management program, improved operational efficiency and enhanced the value of its offerings. This has translated into better service for customers and a sharper competitive advantage.(Verint Systems)
| | | MEDEX Global Group With Epicor - MEDEX needed a CRM system with integration capabilities to enable sharing of information across the organization. They found their solution in Epicor Clientele CRM.NET and can now share detailed contract and service information, have improved flexibility in adapting to growth and changing business processes through Web services architecture, and the ability to create HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant reporting.(Epicor Software Corporation)
| | | Carlson Hospitality Worldwide with IEX - In the first year, CHW said it eliminated 1,000 hours of shrinkage per month and reduced labor costs by 8 percent. Manual processes were automated and cycle time was reduced.(IEX Corporation, a Tekelec Company)
| | | Prophet 2004, a Sales Opportunity Management Solution - After looking at sales management software including Prophet 2004, ACT! and custom development, Brandrud selected Prophet to help their sales organization establish a sales process for the first time in company history.(Avidian Technologies)
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"OUR TAKE"