NetSuite
www.netsuite.com
NetSuite

NetSuite is an on-demand, Web-based suite of integrated business applications. The company’s hosted applications include customer relationship management (CRM), order fulfillment, inventory, finance and product assembly, e-commerce and Web site management. Targeting small and midsized businesses, this comprehensive hosted suite of applications gives extensive functionality and upgradeability at an affordable price while simultaneously reducing the total cost of ownership.

In 2004, NetSuite introduced AJAX-powered business dashboards, bringing Windows-like navigation, drag-and-drop and direct-list editing interaction capabilities to Web-based business applications. NeSuite told TMC Labs, “Since day one, our goal has been to deliver a fantastic user experience that rivals or exceeds that of a traditional desktop application. NetSuite was the first business application to leverage advanced browser technologies to create a rich and friendly interface. We were pioneering the use of extensive AJAX technology (JavaScript, DHTML, XML) years before the term AJAX was coined.” In fact, because of this strong AJAX support, NetSuite supports Apple’s iPhone natively, making NetSuite the first vendor to provide business applications for the popular iPhone.

NetSuite has many innovative firsts to its name, including the first on-demand accounting application, NetLedger, launched in 1999. In 2001, the company launched the first on-demand business suite, spanning all of a company’s key business operations, around a single, centralized database, which saves both time and money on complex IT integration and implementation. Another benefit is the ability to manage cross-departmental business workflows more effectively and efficiently than with disparate point solutions.

Nexidia
Nexidia Enterprise Speech Intelligence 6.1
www.nexidia.com

Corporate voice recordings of customer conversations contain a treasure-trove of information, including customer complaints, which can be used to improve business processes and customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, it is impossible for managers to listen to hundreds of hours of recordings to find customer complaints, determine how the agent handled the call, and prevent problems from reoccurring. Nexidia solves this problem with its 100 percent phonetic-based technology. Called Nexidia Enterprise Speech Intelligence (ESI), the software searches recorded audio files for keywords and phrases using a phonetic-based search technology to extract valuable insights that can be applied back to the business.

Nexidia’s core Phonetic Search Engine, which is the basis of all Nexidia products, reduces the time and increases the accuracy of searches against large collections of recorded audio. The Nexidia server ingests audio files to create a .PAT file (phonetic audio track), marking the files so they are rendered phonetically searchable; a one-time process. Search terms and queries are created and applied against these .PAT files. The search results are then compiled and generated into dashboards, charts, trending and analysis reports.

ESI provides language models trained on a wide variety of accents and dialects with support for 30 languages. The search and query functionality available through ESI not only spots words and phrases, but also finds them in proximity to other content, thus generating relevant results. The audio can immediately be played and the result can be listened to within the context of the original file. Nexidia claims that their powerful phonetic search engine can even deliver relevant data from poor-quality audio such as cell phones. Their solution is agnostic to a caller’s age, gender, accent, language and dialect.

Nexidia has improved its technology and the use of more powerful hardware, allowing it to render over 8,000 hours of audio data searchable per day. Unlike speech-to-text applications, which are dictionary-dependent, Nexidia uses an open-systems vocabulary retrieval system, which greatly reduces the time and increases the accuracy of searches against large collections of recorded speech. Nexidia ESI can be delivered as an on-demand service. Nexidia’s on-demand managed service offering gives organizations the ability to leverage Nexidia’s secure infrastructure to upload recorded audio for analysis and reporting via an on-demand portal.

Nortel
Business Communications Manager 50 (BCM50)
www.nortel.com

Business Communications Manager 50 is an all-in-one, converged voice and data communications platform for small to medium-sized businesses. BCM50 includes several advanced capabilities including voice messaging and unified messaging, IP networking, Internet access, contact centers with skills-based routing, auto-attendant and IP telephony. It offers integrated Ethernet and ADSL router options that both feature QoS, Contivity VPN client support and WAN failover. Nortel told TMC Labs, “What is really unique and innovative with BCM50 is how it combines hundreds of standard, built-in features often found in different products and combines them into a single, easy-to-use platform.” The latest version of BCM50 features new analog and BRI trunk interfaces for the EMEA, APAC and Greater China markets.

The BCM50 adds some powerful mobility functions including Digital Mobility (based on DECT) and Wireless LAN IP (WLAN) sets which were previously offered only on the higher-end BCM200/400. Release 2.0 provides a number of new application capabilities including ad-hoc conferencing for up to 18 simultaneous users, skills-based agent features and a Web-based mailbox manager.

The main innovation of the BCM50 is how it brings feature-rich communications technologies that were previously available only to much larger organizations to the small to medium-sized business market. In addition, the BCM50 supports digital certificates for security, SIP trunking, proactive voice quality monitoring with alert thresholds and CTI applications. Finally, it supports intelligent routing (CLID/ANI, DID/DNIS and caller input, overflow, change priority of calls), Web-based reporting, wallboard/softboard support and a host of agent and supervisor features.

NTRGlobal
NTRSupport
www.ntrglobal.com

A new feature is Numara Track-It! 8 Online Training. The instructor-led, Web-based training system is fully interactive, providing help desk technicians with a learning experience that works wherever they have an Internet and phone connection. With the virtual classroom, students can view class material and notes, witness Numara Track-It! 8 software operation and ask questions through either audio or text interfaces. Numara Software offers a suite of add-on modules to support service desk management including a bar code module to identify assets, a patch manager to ensure software patches have been deployed, and several other modules.

OpenSpan, Inc.
OpenSpan Platform
www.openspan.com

Unfortunately, the Windows clipboard is still the number one integration tool for connecting disparate business applications. Copying and pasting information from one application to another is not only tedious, it’s a one-way operation. Also, any changes to the data are not reflected in the original source application. What if instead you could instantly turn all of your legacy business applications into reusable and interconnected components? OpenSpan provides integration of applications by injecting itself into a running application and exposing the objects through an “instant API” for integrating various desktop applications. Essentially, the OpenSpan Platform allows enterprises to improve productivity at the desktop by integrating applications, automating processes, extending functionality of applications, and building new composite applications, all without coding and regardless of the application type. You could even consider OpenSpan a type of mashup that will take data from various application sources and present that information to the user. OpenSpan enables enterprises to quickly and easily integrate newer applications, such as Web 2.0 applications, into their existing legacy IT environments, with little or no programming required.

OpenSpan enables enterprises to improve the productivity of their employees by providing a simplified way in which to integrate data between applications, build automations to replace manual tasks, extend functionality of existing legacy applications, and build new composite applications that provide a single dashboard interface that spans multiple applications. Integrating your ERP, CRM and accounting systems, which normally would take months or even years, can done in hours using OpenSpan.

Premiere Global Services
PGi Netspoke Pro Version 2.5
www.pgiconnect.com

PGi Netspoke is an easy-to-use Web conferencing solution. PGi Netspoke Professional enables businesses to have productive meetings with up to 125 people. Premiere Global Services recently upgraded its PGi Netspoke Web conferencing product by integrating the international calling capabilities of ReadyConference GlobalMeet and providing conferencing users with a unique self-service conferencing management tool. For customers who utilize Web conferencing to meet with participants outside the U.S., PGi GlobalMeet provides cost-effective international toll-free and local access via its VoIP technologies.

PGi Netspoke features include scheduled or spur-of-the-moment meetings; desktop, application and presentation sharing; text chat, Q&A, polling and virtual whiteboard; audio host controls; integrated audio and Web recording; video conferencing via Webcam; and live customer support and help desk access. It also supports SSL encryption and file transfer capabilities.
Premiere Global Services delivers its on-demand communications platform via its new Web portal PGiConnect.com, a self-service Web portal. The management tools available on PGiConnect.com enable users to schedule and launch Web conferences, manage multiple audio conferences, control audio and polling features, initiate impromptu meetings, store content, view reports, request recordings and transcriptions online, replay past conferences, access billing and find support information, all from a single hub.

Netspoke takes advantage of the full multimedia capabilities in the latest versions of Sun Java and Adobe Flash Player to provide a rich, interactive collaboration platform. The Conferencing Hub is built on .NET 2.0 and Web Services to provide a rich user interface and administrative console for moderators and administrators to manage audio and Web conferences, recordings, reports, users and branding. AJAX was used extensively to improve application performance and responsiveness. One huge benefit is users do not require PC admin rights as no software client is required to be downloaded and installed on a user’s local PC. Licensing is available as per minute, seats or named user.

Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com Customer Portal
www.salesforce.com

There is no doubt that Salesforce.com is one of the leading hosted SaaS companies in the world. With the Spring ‘07 release, Salesforce.com introduced a new customer portal to enable self-service capabilities for customers. The Salesforce Customer Portal enables users to exploit the capabilities of the Web to deliver quick self-service while at the same time lowering the cost of serving your customers.

Just like other Salesforce.com solutions, the Salesforce Customer Portal is delivered on-demand, running entirely on Salesforce.com’s servers. With the Salesforce Customer Portal, a company’s customers have round-the-clock access to information about their account, can find solutions to their questions themselves and can log new cases and check and update existing cases — the customer portal is a completely customizable space where companies can share and collaborate directly with their customers.

The Salesforce Customer Portal is delivered on-demand and therefore can be easily and quickly deployed. The Portal is tightly integrated with other Salesforce applications to give both the company and their customers complete insight into their relationship. Salesforce.com explained, “Traditional self-service portals deliver a knowledge base and basic case management for customers to resolve their issues. The Salesforce Customer Portal breaks new ground by allowing companies to easily enable other self-service processes and custom applications in the portal like self-service training registration, license management, project management, collaboration or any other business-specific process a company may have.” They continued, “Using point-and-click customization, companies can define new data objects and processes and expose them securely to their customers. Companies can also leverage a whole range of applications on the Salesforce AppExchange and expose them to their customers using the Customer Portal.”

TeleDirect International, Inc.
Liberation 6000 V6.6.3
www.tdirect.com

Liberation is a comprehensive CRM platform combining customer interaction management, CRM and workforce optimization technology to help companies increase revenues and optimize their workforce productivity.

CIM includes infrastructure technology, such as campaign management, computer-telephony integration (CTI), multi-mode dialer and channel management. The CRM capabilities include sales workflow design, agent desktop software, industry templates, and integration/access to supporting systems to increase revenues. Finally, WFO enables digital voice recording, screen recording, quality management, coaching, real-time statistics, historical reporting, trend analysis and dashboards to help companies develop their workforce and measure success.

TeleDirect claims they were the first to ship an outbound dialer product that provides built-in compliance with the federal do-not-call (DNC) registry that went into effect October 1, 2003. They also claim to be the first to be certified by Visa for PABP (payment application best practices) for secure credit card processing to ensure merchant compliance with the PCI data security standard.

Sure, remote desktop control applications are a dime a dozen, and some even free, such as the Windows Remote Desktop application. However, most of these solutions are designed for personal use or for IT administration of various internal corporate servers. Many of them do little or no encryption and aren’t designed for help desk or technical support applications where agents require the ability to remotely assist customers using a trouble ticket queuing system.

Enter NTRsupport, a secure, Web-based, on-demand remote support solution that provides a simple way for technical support professionals to quickly manage and resolve online PC and Mac support requests. NTRSupport establishes an immediate and secure connection between a support agent’s PC and a client’s PC or Mac to solve IT issues faster. NTRsupport works with firewalls and proxies without any special configuration, and uses 256-bit AES end-to-end encryption. NTRsupport provides all the tools needed to manage a queue of online requests, communicate with customers online, monitor a remote machine and control a remote customer’s PC or Mac to resolve issues. They also offer secure chat with no download.

NTRGlobal Inc., which designed NTRsupport, isn’t well-known, but they are one of the best kept secrets in remote desktop support. The company stands out from competitors because it integrates voice over IP into its remote support solution, and offers PBX integration as well. The company’s API and Integration Toolkit allow for easy integration with third-party CRM and help desk applications like Salesforce.com, Remedy, Autotask and Siebel. Additionally, NTRsupport is the only application that provides computer-telephony integration (CTI), enabling users to leverage the existing rules in their automatic call distribution (ACD) system. This enables NTRsupport users to distribute support sessions based on technician skill set and availability.

NTRsupport is sold as a software-as-a-service model or as an on-site license, giving companies flexible licensing options. NTRGlobal told TMC Labs, “We are recognized by IDC as having the smallest download and are the fastest into session. This is because our applications have been designed around the call center — NTRsupport is not a ‘meeting product’ that attempts to provide support center capabilities. NTRglobal was first to market with a dedicated solution for the call center. NTRglobal was also the first company to offer Mac support.”

Numara Software
Numara Track-IT! 8 Enterprise Edition
www.numarasoftware.com

Numara Track-It!, a help desk and asset management solution, enables IT professionals to automate repetitive and time-consuming activities like logging and tracking help requests, inventory, asset auto discovery, auditing systems, reporting stats and more, allowing customers to spend their time focusing on their end users and businesses.

Numara Track-It! 8, one of Numara Software’s flagship products, allows organizations to automate and control critical help desk and asset management functions from one integrated portal. With Track-It! 8, IT professionals can collect, assign and resolve help desk requests and gain control of both their hardware and software assets through a comprehensive auditing and automated discovery.

Numara Track-It! was one of the first applications to provide notifications for compliance violations out of the box with its Software License Management functionality. Numara Track-It! 8 also allows users to easily identify assets which may have license overages or unused and retired software titles. With the tight integration into Help Desk, technicians can be proactively notified of software compliance issues before they occur. This helps to reduce software licensing and maintenance costs, and also enables IT organizations to meet regulatory compliance obligations.

A new feature is Numara Track-It! 8 Online Training. The instructor-led, Web-based training system is fully interactive, providing help desk technicians with a learning experience that works wherever they have an Internet and phone connection. With the virtual classroom, students can view class material and notes, witness Numara Track-It! 8 software operation and ask questions through either audio or text interfaces. Numara Software offers a suite of add-on modules to support service desk management including a bar code module to identify assets, a patch manager to ensure software patches have been deployed, and several other modules.

OpenSpan, Inc.
OpenSpan Platform
www.openspan.com

Unfortunately, the Windows clipboard is still the number one integration tool for connecting disparate business applications. Copying and pasting information from one application to another is not only tedious, it’s a one-way operation. Also, any changes to the data are not reflected in the original source application. What if instead you could instantly turn all of your legacy business applications into reusable and interconnected components? OpenSpan provides integration of applications by injecting itself into a running application and exposing the objects through an “instant API” for integrating various desktop applications. Essentially, the OpenSpan Platform allows enterprises to improve productivity at the desktop by integrating applications, automating processes, extending functionality of applications, and building new composite applications, all without coding and regardless of the application type. You could even consider OpenSpan a type of mashup that will take data from various application sources and present that information to the user. OpenSpan enables enterprises to quickly and easily integrate newer applications, such as Web 2.0 applications, into their existing legacy IT environments, with little or no programming required.

OpenSpan enables enterprises to improve the productivity of their employees by providing a simplified way in which to integrate data between applications, build automations to replace manual tasks, extend functionality of existing legacy applications, and build new composite applications that provide a single dashboard interface that spans multiple applications. Integrating your ERP, CRM and accounting systems, which normally would take months or even years, can done in hours using OpenSpan.

Premiere Global Services
PGi Netspoke Pro Version 2.5
www.pgiconnect.com

PGi Netspoke is an easy-to-use Web conferencing solution. PGi Netspoke Professional enables businesses to have productive meetings with up to 125 people. Premiere Global Services recently upgraded its PGi Netspoke Web conferencing product by integrating the international calling capabilities of ReadyConference GlobalMeet and providing conferencing users with a unique self-service conferencing management tool. For customers who utilize Web conferencing to meet with participants outside the U.S., PGi GlobalMeet provides cost-effective international toll-free and local access via its VoIP technologies.

PGi Netspoke features include scheduled or spur-of-the-moment meetings; desktop, application and presentation sharing; text chat, Q&A, polling and virtual whiteboard; audio host controls; integrated audio and Web recording; video conferencing via Webcam; and live customer support and help desk access. It also supports SSL encryption and file transfer capabilities.
Premiere Global Services delivers its on-demand communications platform via its new Web portal PGiConnect.com, a self-service Web portal. The management tools available on PGiConnect.com enable users to schedule and launch Web conferences, manage multiple audio conferences, control audio and polling features, initiate impromptu meetings, store content, view reports, request recordings and transcriptions online, replay past conferences, access billing and find support information, all from a single hub.

Netspoke takes advantage of the full multimedia capabilities in the latest versions of Sun Java and Adobe Flash Player to provide a rich, interactive collaboration platform. The Conferencing Hub is built on .NET 2.0 and Web Services to provide a rich user interface and administrative console for moderators and administrators to manage audio and Web conferences, recordings, reports, users and branding. AJAX was used extensively to improve application performance and responsiveness. One huge benefit is users do not require PC admin rights as no software client is required to be downloaded and installed on a user’s local PC. Licensing is available as per minute, seats or named user.

Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com Customer Portal
www.salesforce.com

There is no doubt that Salesforce.com is one of the leading hosted SaaS companies in the world. With the Spring ‘07 release, Salesforce.com introduced a new customer portal to enable self-service capabilities for customers. The Salesforce Customer Portal enables users to exploit the capabilities of the Web to deliver quick self-service while at the same time lowering the cost of serving your customers.

Just like other Salesforce.com solutions, the Salesforce Customer Portal is delivered on-demand, running entirely on Salesforce.com’s servers. With the Salesforce Customer Portal, a company’s customers have round-the-clock access to information about their account, can find solutions to their questions themselves and can log new cases and check and update existing cases — the customer portal is a completely customizable space where companies can share and collaborate directly with their customers.

The Salesforce Customer Portal is delivered on-demand and therefore can be easily and quickly deployed. The Portal is tightly integrated with other Salesforce applications to give both the company and their customers complete insight into their relationship. Salesforce.com explained, “Traditional self-service portals deliver a knowledge base and basic case management for customers to resolve their issues. The Salesforce Customer Portal breaks new ground by allowing companies to easily enable other self-service processes and custom applications in the portal like self-service training registration, license management, project management, collaboration or any other business-specific process a company may have.” They continued, “Using point-and-click customization, companies can define new data objects and processes and expose them securely to their customers. Companies can also leverage a whole range of applications on the Salesforce AppExchange and expose them to their customers using the Customer Portal.”

TeleDirect International, Inc.
Liberation 6000 V6.6.3
www.tdirect.com

Liberation is a comprehensive CRM platform combining customer interaction management, CRM and workforce optimization technology to help companies increase revenues and optimize their workforce productivity.

CIM includes infrastructure technology, such as campaign management, computer-telephony integration (CTI), multi-mode dialer and channel management. The CRM capabilities include sales workflow design, agent desktop software, industry templates, and integration/access to supporting systems to increase revenues. Finally, WFO enables digital voice recording, screen recording, quality management, coaching, real-time statistics, historical reporting, trend analysis and dashboards to help companies develop their workforce and measure success.

TeleDirect claims they were the first to ship an outbound dialer product that provides built-in compliance with the federal do-not-call (DNC) registry that went into effect October 1, 2003. They also claim to be the first to be certified by Visa for PABP (payment application best practices) for secure credit card processing to ensure merchant compliance with the PCI data security standard.

Importantly, DialogGuide, the company’s desktop agent software, has been developed for seamless integration with legacy applications using Web services (XML or SOAP). DialogGuide also acts as an agent’s campaign dashboard by encapsulating workflow, call control, dialog requirements, key offer details, and a knowledge base for every customer interaction. It uses branched logic to prompt agents with the most helpful course of action and the best product recommendations. It also allows agents to view up-to-the-minute individual and group performance statistics to motivate agents toward increased sales performance and higher levels of success. Finally, Liberation features excellent easy-to-use business intelligence reporting, enabling users to view historical and trending reports as well as integration with Crystal Reports.

Toshiba Telecommunication Systems Division
Toshiba Strata CIX40 IP Business Communication System
www.toshiba.com

It often seems that SMBs (small to medium-sized businesses) are underserved by traditional phone manufacturers because these manufacturers force smaller companies to purchase higher-end phone systems to attain advanced communications functionality. Toshiba aims to change all that with its SIP-compliant Strata CIX40 IP-PBX, which supports up to 16 station ports and eight IP channels, and offers all the benefits of Toshiba’s larger Strata CIX systems at a size and price that is perfect for small businesses.

As with Toshiba’s other Strata CIX offerings, the new Strata CIX40 offers Toshiba’s FeatureFlex adaptability capabilities, can be TDM-enabled, can be networked with any other CIX40 or larger Strata CIX systems, and provides a smooth migration path. The Strata CIX40 can be networked with all of Toshiba’s Strata CIX family, including the CIX670, CIX200, CIX100 and other CIX40 systems. This allows large companies to use the Strata CIX40 for remote or branch offices and allows smaller companies to add additional networked systems as they grow. Strata CIX40 can be TDM-enabled, giving users a choice of running a pure IP system or a mix of IP and digital TDM. This allows users to choose how they will maximize their systems and migrate existing equipment. Because of its SIP support, Strata CIX40 gives you a plethora of endpoint choices, including IP phones, IP wireless telephones, third-party IP soft phones and digital (TDM) and analog telephones, as well as Toshiba CIX Digital and IP Attendant Consoles.

The CIX40 is optionally available with an integrated four-port, 40-hour integrated plug-and-play voice mail system supporting up to 374 mailboxes. It features live message call monitoring, LCD feature prompting, soft keys, call record and more. Finally, for more robust applications, users may choose Toshiba’s Strata Media Application Server (MAS), which allows multiple applications to be combined on a single media application server. Applications include auto-attendant, voice mail, automated speech recognition, text-to-speech, unified messaging, IVR, automatic call distribution and reporting, Web-based personal and system administration, Web-based telephone applications and more.