www.tmcnet.com/1551.1
Marketplace Still Receptive To Oracle Fusion

The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) has announced that a majority of Oracle-based enterprises intend to upgrade to Oracle’s Fusion middleware infrastructure within the next two years. The purpose of the survey was to measure the attitudes of users of Oracle’s major enterprise platforms, including Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and Siebel, toward Oracle’s Fusion middleware solutions.
www.oracle.com

www.tmcnet.com/1552.1
Teleservices Firm PRC LLC Files For Bankruptcy

PRC LLC, a Plantation, Florida-based provider of teleservices, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, January 23, 2008. The company operates several call centers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and four other Iowa cities. The company has indicated that it plans to continue operating as usual during the Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization and does not plan to close any call centers or lay off any staff for the time being.
www.prcnet.com

www.tmcnet.com/1553.1
Tuvox Recruits New CEO, Chairman of the Board

Speech applications provider TuVox announced this week the appointment of two industry veterans: Mark Lazar as CEO and Sam Spadafora as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Both men were recruited, in part, for their experience building companies that have gone through an IPO, as well as managing growth through acquisition. TuVox’s next phase of expansion is expected to combine growth of the existing TuVox On Demand business with the acquisition of complementary companies and products.
www.tuvox.com.

www.tmcnet.com/1561.1
Astute Solutions Offering RealDialog
Agent Assist

Astute Solutions has announced the expansion of its RealDialog product family with the launch of RealDialog Agent Assist, which was designed to enable contact center agents to more quickly deliver consistent, accurate and personalized responses. According to the company, the solution is capable of addressing issues and questions of varying degrees of complexity in a conversational manner.
www.astutesolutions.com

www.tmcnet.com/1555.1
CRM, Enterprise Vendor Epicor Announces Expanded Support, Capabilities

Epicor|CRS, the Retail Solutions Division of Epicor Software, recently announced new capabilities and expanded support. CRS RetailStore, Epicor|CRS’s point-of-sale product, now offers more capabilities to sell to retailers doing business internationally. Additionally, the company plans to expand its Bracknell, UK office and add a new professional services and support center in Malaysia. As a result of the company’s acquisition by parent company Epicor Software in late 2005, Epicor|CRS has expanded into the international retail markets in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific.
www.epicor.com

www.tmcnet.com/1556.1
Active CRM Releases Latest Version

Active Modules has released the latest version of its customer relationship management application, Active CRM. Highlights of the improved features include sales and marketing enhancements, such as now giving invoices custom fields, and the ability to track payment history and status. The product can automatically capture lead information from a Web site and comes with what company officials describe as “advanced workspace and calendar features,” which lets users maintain a universal event calendar for the whole organization, keep all employees up-to-date on tasks, meetings or holidays and create personal events and keep them private.
www.activemodules.com

www.tmcnet.com/1557.1
Tango Networks Delivers Voice Call Continuity Solution For Enterprise Market

Tango Networks has announced that it has enhanced the functionality of its Abrazo product line with Voice Call Continuity (VCC) functionality, which facilitates seamless hand-off of voice calls between disparate networks, as well as seamless hand-off in both directions, from WiFi to mobile and vice versa, with automatic selection of the best network to use.
www.tango-networks.com

www.tmcnet.com/1558.1 ASC Announces VoIP Recording For Cisco

ASC, a provider of solutions to record, analyze and evaluate communications, has announced a new version of its VoIP recording solution, EVOip for Cisco. The company recently announced EVOip 8.0, a new VoIP recording solution with additional channel capacity and compatibility with a wider range of IP phone systems. EVOip for Cisco records all customer interactions in Cisco environments. It was certified through the Cisco Technology Developer Program and is compatible with any version of the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM).
www.asctelecom.com

www.tmcnet.com/1559.1
Customer Relationship Metrics To Launch Second WFM Study

Contact center research company Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C., has announced that it is set to launch the second Workforce Management Practices Study endorsed by the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals. Several workforce management providers, including InVision Software, Verint and Calabrio, are actively offering support to the research. The project will be led by well known consumer scientist Dr. Jodie Monger, who is president of Customer Relationship Metrics.
www.metrics.net

www.tmcnet.com/1560.1
N.E.W. Acquires ServiceBench

N.E.W. Customer Service Companies, a provider of extended service plans and buyer protection programs for consumer products, announced the acquisition of ServiceBench, a provider of Web-based service management solutions for U.S. retailers and manufacturers. The acquisition is expected to afford NEW increased visibility into the entire service life cycle. The combined capabilities of NEW and ServiceBench is expected to help bring clients turnkey solutions for the development, implementation, and management of more comprehensive customer care and warranty programs.
www.newcorp.com

www.tmcnet.com/1562.1
Selltis Offers New Version of its On-demand CRM Solution

On-demand CRM provider Selltis, LLC has announced the launch of its next-generation version of the company’s namesake CRM solution, Selltis Sales 5.0, which is delivered via a hosted, software-as-a-service business model. Expanding on the company’s proprietary Hyperrelational technology that offers “many-to-many” data linking, the new version allows users to proactively manage complex, team sales environments. The Selltis Sales platform includes tools to automate marketing campaigns and lead management as well as quoting and field service.
www.selltis.com

www.tmcnet.com1554.1
Loquendo Improves Speech Recognition Engine

Speech recognition and text-to-speech provider Loquendo has announced the launch of its latest version of Loquendo ASR 7.5. The speech recognition engine now boasts a number of improvements and features to make it possible to more quickly and efficiently create and use advanced, complex speech. Available for both the Windows and Linux OS, and in the embedded version for all major embedded operating systems, ASR 7.5 was designed to make it much easier to deal with complex grammars and large vocabularies, and thanks to reduced grammatical nodes, and a redesign of recognition objects, enhances its overall performance.
www.loquendo.com

www.tmcnet.com/1685.1
Customer Effective, Inc. Partners With SalesCentric

Customer Effective, Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and value-added reseller of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, recently announced a partnership with SalesCentric to offer its customers Relationship Charts, an add-on for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Relationship Charts were developed by SalesCentric to complement Microsoft Dynamics CRM software with easy-to-use, visual tools that improve sales performance, forecast accuracy and marketing effectiveness.
www.salescentric.com
www.customereffective.com.

www.tmcnet.com/1686.1
Protech Adopts MadCap Software For Real-Time Customer Feedback

Multichannel content authoring software provider MadCap Software announced that Protech Associates has adopted MadCap Feedback Server. Protech is using the Web 2.0 capabilities of the Feedback Server to track use of its MadCap Flare-based documentation and get real-time customer feedback. Additionally, Protech has directly integrated Feedback Server into its own software to bring customers and Protech developers together in a common community. MadCap Feedback Server replaces an earlier solution used by Protech, which provided only basic tracking functionality.
www.madcapsoftware.com

www.tmcnet.com/1687.1
Software As A Service CRM For Electronic Records Compliance

In another demonstration of how CRM can help industries outside the call center, Verticals onDemand, which provides pharmaceutical software-as-a-service CRM solutions, announced its VBioPharma Primary Care Edition CRM application for life sciences organizations. According to the company, the product is the first CRM application pre-validated for PDMA and the Food and Drug Administration’s CFR Part 11 compliance, which defines the criteria under which the FDA considers “electronic records, electronic signatures and handwritten signatures executed to electronic records to be trustworthy, reliable and generally equivalent to paper records and handwritten signatures executed on paper.”
www.verticalsondemand.com

www.tmcnet.com/1688.1
GroupWise Integration For SugarCRM Available From Omni Riva GroupWise

Integration for SugarCRM was announced recently by Omni Technology Solutions, Inc., offering customers with SugarCRM’s information on Blackberry, Web and desktop clients. With the Riva GroupWise Integration for SugarCRM, users are provided with transparent, server-side synchronization between GroupWise and SugarCRM Community Edition, Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition for both on-site and hosted on-demand versions.
www.omni-ts.com

www.tmcnet.com/1689.1
Broadlook Technologies Partners With InfusionCRM
Marketing software provider Infusion Software has announced a new partnership that brings together their InfusionCRM software solution with Broadlook Technologies, a provider of lead generation and recruiting software solutions. InfusionCRM offers sales and marketing automation for small businesses that also improves customer management. InfusionCRM brings together direct response marketing, eCommerce and small business management all in one system.
www.infusioncrm.com

www.tmcnet.com/1690.1
Maximizer Rounds Out Maximizer CRM 10 Suite With Entrepreneur Edition

Maximizer Software Inc. has released the Entrepreneur Edition of Maximizer CRM 10 – thus rounding out its CRM software suite with a new edition targeted at the small business. Maximizer CRM 10 already covered the SMB market with its Group, Professional and Enterprise Editions. Now, with the introduction of the Entrepreneur Edition, the suite has an edition for every size business (including departments within a larger organization), from small to medium to large to enterprise.
www.maximizer.com

www.tmcnet.com/1691.1
Voxify Receives $15 Million In Venture Capital

Voxify, which offers speech-enabled self-service solutions for the contact center industry, has received $15 million in venture capital which it will use to expand its portfolio of solutions as well as to boost its partner ecosystem. Leading the funding round is new investor Intel Capital, along with existing investors El Dorado Ventures, Palomar Ventures and Sigma Partners. Voxify’s self-service solutions or “automated agents” employ advanced speech recognition software, which facilitates natural dialog with callers.
www.voxify.com

www.tmcnet.com/1692.1
Vonage Plus SaaS CRM Equals High Functionality For SMBs

Software-as-a-service CRM provider CRM ASP has announced the availability of Vonage VoIP services fully integrated in the CRM platform. Available immediately, Vonage integration brings small businesses full integration with Free CRM and CRM ASP licensed products, providing one-click calling and automating phone dialing and outbound sales campaigns with Vonage. CRM ASP provides CRM solutions to over 75,000 companies and 90,000 subscribers.
www.freecrm.com

www.tmcnet.com/1694.1
Convergys To Open New Philippines Facility

Teleservices giant Convergys Corporation announced that its new integrated contact center in Bacolod City, Philippines, will be operational in April. Construction is nearing completion on the site, a new build-to-suit facility that is located in the San Antonio Park Square in Barangay Mandalagan. Training for the first 100 new hires is underway. The new state-of-the-art contact center, encompassing more than 3,000 square meters with room for expansion, will have approximately 500 new employees at opening, and Convergys hopes to create another 500 new jobs in Bacolod City by the end of 2008. With this new facility, Convergys will have nine of the largest, multi-client, U.S.-owned contact centers in the Philippines.
www.convergys.com

www.tmcnet.com/1695.1
Verizon Business Offers Hosted IVR Service In Europe
Verizon Business recently announced that it has expanded the availability of its Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR) service to the European market. Targeted at organizations with large or geographically dispersed contact center operations, Verizon Hosted IVR is a fully managed, advanced voice response service that enables organizations to improve contact center efficiency and enhance overall customer satisfaction. Verizon Hosted IVR aims to maximize the potential of the network, ensuring that there is always sufficient capacity to handle customer calls, even when call volumes are high. Customer enquiries are directly routed to the appropriate agent while call transfers are set up on a network level, preventing infrastructure congestion and reducing costs.
www.verizonbusiness.com