Sage Software announced today that Sage CRM SalesLogix customer Conferon Global Services, Inc. (CGS), a worldwide conference and trade show business services provider, has been selected as an International Success Strategy winner by Aberdeen Group from among 800 companies researched. CGS is featured in Aberdeen’s new report, “Success Strategies for Leveraging Customer Intelligence,” and is cited for achieving a 35% annual improvement in customer acquisition rates using Sage CRM SalesLogix as its business process enabler. “Customer service is a key differentiator in highly competitive markets,” explained Leslie Ament, Director of Customer Intelligence Research for Aberdeen. “Purchasers know similar products are available from numerous vendors and, as a result, expect more value. In parallel, providers of goods and services are focusing on building higher value relationships to grow revenues and reduce customer churn rates. Conferon Global Services’ Sage CRM SalesLogix implementation demonstrates how companies can leverage CRM applications to achieve these results.” CGS needed a technology solution that provided customer data management and analysis tools to help enhance its customer service and monitor key performance metrics. The company evaluated several vendors and selected Sage Software based on “its reputation for providing affordable, user-centric, - more available

CRM, Help+Desk, Customer+Service, Sage

tags: crm, customer+service, help+desk, sage

Cognos has updated its Cognos 8 business intelligence (BI) suite to add search technology to its flagship product. The new Cognos Go search capability offers users a way to use key words to search through BI content. Cognos Go, which works with Cognos 8, searches the full content of BI reports, not just report titles and metadata descriptions, and uses fuzzy logic and word stemming to fine-tune search terms, Cognos says. It also indexes BI content and can publish that content to XML, which allows it to be used with other applications. The new version of Cognos 8 is more tightly integrated with Microsoft Office and supports PowerPoint. It provides enhanced support for SAP NetWeaver, including improved integration with the NetWeaver Enterprise Portal. Cognos is also offering new report packs for MySAP and Siebel CRM applications. In addition, the new version includes report packs for mySAP (R/3) and Siebel CRM that allow users to combine historical data from a data warehouse with current data from those applications in a single report or dashboard.

CRM, Help+Desk, Cognos, SAP

tags: cognos, crm, help+desk, sap

The insight division of Chrysalis Radio has appointed Data Intelligence, the insight arm of Response One, to design and build a CRM platform.

CRM, Software, Chrysalis, Music

tags: chrysalis, crm, music, software

Five9, Inc., the leading global provider of on-demand telemarketing, customer service, and call center solutions for customer interaction management, today announced that it has been named a recipient of the 2006 Beagle Research CRM WizKids Award. The annual award recognizes companies with advanced business technology solutions that have a significant impact on CRM or the front office in general. Five9 is being recognized for the far-reaching influence and wealth of profitable opportunities its innovative on-demand call center solution offers customers. The CRM WizKids report details how Five9 customer, XACT TeleSolutions, has greatly benefited from deploying the Five9 Virtual Contact Center™, and has found the innovative alternative has enabled it to identify and quickly respond to new business opportunities with its employees and customers.

“Beagle Research Group recognizes that the right CRM technology can help any company compete and become more profitable in today’s global marketplace,” said Denis Pombriant, managing principal, Beagle Research Group, LLC. “Five9 enables its customers to more flexibly configure their businesses to take advantage of market opportunities, and have greater latitude over staffing issues and real estate costs which can enable them to be more responsive to customers, draw from a larger talent pool, and take on new lines of business.”

The Five9 Virtual Contact Center enables companies of any size to build a comprehensive, feature-rich call center - anywhere in the world - without any hardware, software or upfront capital expenditures. In addition to the cost savings, Five9’s on-demand, hosted service allows for easy set-up and administration of at-home agent workforces as well as singular or distributed, multi-site centers to act as one, regardless of geographic location. Additionally, Five9 can seamlessly integrate with Salesforce.com, NetSuite, RightNow, and a variety of other leading vendors.

XACT, a contact center outsourcing solutions provider, had been rapidly growing through an aggressive acquisition strategy when they began looking for a call center solution to help manage their new businesses. They deployed the Five9 Virtual Contact Center in June 2003, and were almost immediately able to consolidate twelve different contact centers into two locations, and support the thirty percent of their agents who work from home. Five9’s CRM capabilities enable XACT to provide reports to every client detailing each marketing campaign’s success rate, cost, and agent productivity metrics. In turn, XACT clients know precisely which advertising campaigns and toll-free numbers provide the best return on investment, can determine the effectiveness of different agent scripts, ascertain the ongoing cost of each 800-number versus the number of leads or closed sales generated, receive detailed logs and recordings of agent-customer interactions, and can pinpoint peak traffic periods for each toll-free number. Additionally, with the on-demand VoIP-based solution, XACT has been able to reduce its phone bill by forty-one percent, reduce IT staff from twelve to three engineers, and generate an increase in projected revenues of twenty-eight percent during its first year of use.

“We are honored to receive this award and to be recognized for making a positive impact on the CRM market,” said Brian Silverman, president and CEO of Five9, Inc. “The Virtual Contact Center offers our customers, like XACT, the flexibility required to take advantage of new business opportunities and keep pace with today’s ever-changing business environment.”

The winners of the CRM WizKids award are included in a Beagle Research Group report titled, “2006 CRM WizKids: Taking CRM to the Next Level.” More information about purchasing the report can be found at www.beagleresearch.com.

About Beagle Research Group, LLC
Beagle Research Group, LLC is a consulting and market research organization focused on emerging technologies and companies that will have an important impact on the way business is conducted in the years ahead. Located near Boston, MA, Beagle provides insight and advice on front office software issues to the vendor and end user communities around the world. For more information, visit http://www.beagleresearch.com.

About The Five9 Virtual Contact Center™
The Five9 Virtual Contact Center™ enables companies of any size to build a comprehensive, feature-rich contact center - anywhere in the world - without any hardware, software, or upfront capital expenditures. In addition to the cost savings, Five9’s on-demand service allows for easy set-up and administration of at-home agent workforces as well as single-site or distributed, multi-site centers to act as one, regardless of geographic location.

Built from the ground up by Five9 to eliminate third-party license fees and ensure costs are kept low, any business with just a PC and a broadband connection can afford a comprehensive suite of applications including: Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), Predictive Dialer, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Computer Telephony (CTI), Remote Agent Capabilities, Skills-based Routing, Recording, Silent Monitoring, Real-time Reporting, Chat, and Centralized Management.

About Five9
Five9 is the leading global provider of on-demand telemarketing, customer service, and call center solutions for customer interaction management. The award-winning Five9 Virtual Contact Center targets call centers, contact center operations of large enterprises, and companies that provide outsourced telemarketing, customer service, and call center services. Companies on five continents profit from Five9’s reliable, robust functionality that is fast, easy, and affordable to deploy for any contact center. For more information, visit www.five9.com.

Media Contact:
Heather Fitzsimmons
MindShare PR
650-947-7400
heather@mindsharepr.com

CRM,Five9,Award

WPP Group’s Wunderman, a leading global
relationship marketing agency, today announced the acquisition of
Bridge Worldwide, a Cincinnati-based interactive relationship marketing
agency specializing in Fortune 100 consumer packaged goods and
healthcare. AdMedia Partners a New York investment bank specializing in mergers and acquisitions
advisory services to the advertising and marketing, media, and related
online and information services businesses, represented Bridge
Worldwide in the acquisition.

“Bridge pioneered the use of the internet to establish active ongoing
relationships between major consumer brands and their customers,” said
Seth Alpert, one of the investment bankers who led Bridge’s deal team.
“The acquisition reflects Wunderman’s understanding of the importance
of this new way to serve CPG clients.”

The official release is as follows:
New York, Dec. 28, 2005 – Wunderman, a leading global relationship
marketing agency and part of WPP Group, acquired Bridge Worldwide, a
Cincinnati-based relationship marketing agency specializing in Fortune
100 consumer packaged goods and healthcare.

Leveraging the Internet as the hub of many of its programs, Bridge
Worldwide’s results-driven creative has built consumer relationships
for some of the world’s best known brands, including the CPG leader
Procter & Gamble. Bridge Worldwide will have access to the diverse
resources of Wunderman’s global network; however, it will operate as an
independent unit of Wunderman. Terms of the financial agreement were
not disclosed.

“Bridge Worldwide’s depth of online and healthcare experience
complements Wunderman’s, and we both share the same philosophies about
the power of customer relationships and online dialog,” said Wunderman
chairman and CEO Daniel Morel.

Bridge Worldwide, headquartered in Cincinnati, OH, employs more than
120 people and was named as one of the fastest growing companies in the
city.

Jay Woffington, president and CEO of Bridge Worldwide said “We are very
excited to join WPP and be affiliated with a world-class organization
such as Wunderman. This move allows us to tap into the expertise and
the global scale of the network while maintaining our entrepreneurial
culture and our flexible creative and strategic approach for our
clients.”

About Bridge Worldwide
Headquartered in Cincinnati, Bridge Worldwide
is an award-winning relationship marketing firm, serving clients such
as Procter & Gamble. Bridge is a top-40 interactive agency and a
top 100 marketing services company in the US. With the internet as the
hub, Bridge creates marketing programs that engage customers in the
brand, sustain the dialogue over time, and drive loyalty and advocacy –
all with a focus on measurable return on investment.

About Wunderman
Wunderman is one of the largest, most experienced customer-focused
marketing communications companies in the world, with 76 offices in 36
countries. Our focus is simple: acquire, keep and offer value to
consumers in the most creative ways possible. Last year, Wunderman was
recognized for creative excellence with 180 awards and citations. Since
2002, Wunderman has won 19 Lions at the prestigious Cannes Lions
Advertising Festival, including the coveted Direct Grand Prix two years
in a row. Wunderman is part of Young & Rubicam Brands and a member
of the WPP Group.

About AdMedia Partners

AdMedia Partners is a leading boutique investment bank that provides middle market
mergers and acquisitions advisory services to advertising and marketing
services, media and publishing, and related internet businesses.
Founded in 1990 and located in New York City, the firm has completed
over 100 transactions since 1999.

Selected transactions completed by AdMedia Partners in the last six months inc:

• Representing Creative Domain in its merger with Trailer Park to form one of the largest providers of diverse entertainment marketing services in Hollywood. The transaction was backed by a financial commitment from Lake Capital.
• Representing Dittus Communications, a Washington, DC based public affairs firm with legislative and regulatory expertise, in its acquisition by Financial Dynamics.
• Representing Federalist Group, a Washington, DC based government relations firm, in its acquisition by Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, a unit of WPP Group.
• Representing Grupo Editorial Expansión, Mexico’s second largest magazine publisher, in its acquisition by Time Inc., a subsidiary of Time Warner.
• Representing Gruner+Jahr USA in its sale of Inc. magazine and Fast Company magazines to Mansueto Ventures LLC.
• Representing Dynamic Logic, the leading independent marketing research company, in its acquisition by Millward Brown, a unit of WPP Group.
• Representing Taylor Rafferty, an independent global investor relations and financial communications advisor, in its sale to Xinhua Finance, China’s premier financial services and media company.
• Representing Interweave Press in its acquisition by Aspire Media, a newly formed magazine entity backed by private equity firms Frontenac Company and Catalyst Investors LP.

Technorati Tags: CRM, Customer+Relationship+Management, Marketing

tags: crm, customer+relationship+management, marketing