Commence Announces Enterprise Edition
Commence Corporation announced the release of an enterprise edition of (Commence RM) the company's CRM application suite. Commence RM has now been extended to a database platform better suited for supporting the functional requirements of larger organizations. The new version is targeted at mid-market companies and divisions of the fortune 1000.

Elix Helps Santa Handle Calls
Elix announced that it has pooled its expertise with that of Nü Echo and CONCEPT S2i to build an application for the Holiday Season that showcases voice technologies while providing a unique and memorable Holiday experience. This application, which runs on Elix's open-standard IVR (Interactive Voice Response) platform and is accessible at www.talktosantaclaus.com, allows anyone to invite a child or a child at heart to have a personalized interaction with Santa and his automated elf, Pixel.

Vignette Completes Acquisition of Intraspect
Vignette announced the completion of its acquisition of privately held Intraspect Software Inc. Vignette is now offers organizations a unified content management, portal and collaboration solution that incorporates business processes. Vignette also is announcing today general availability of three solutions based on Intraspect technology.

META Recognizes Siebel Enterprise Marketing
Siebel announced that its Marketing solution has been ranked a market leader in META Group's METAspectrum vendor analysis for Enterprise Marketing Portfolio Management (EMM) Applications. Leadership status is the highest ranking awarded by META Group.   (about Siebel)

			Required Reading
		Case Study: Employee Performance Management in Healthcare Contact Center    Executives have always sought to link individual employee performance to corporate goals and objectives, but the tools have always made this a fairly manual and tedious task. A new category of software is emerging called employee performance management that is tackling this tought problem right in the contact center. more >>
Archive of past Required Reading articles

Online Order Abandonment Report
Kefta announced the results of its twelve month shopping cart/financial applications abandonment study. The results were culled from online surveys offered on several of their clients' websites. The survey concluded that between 50% and 90% of prospects who start an order leave the website before completing it, most prospects that do not complete the order do have an interest in becoming customers, less than 10% of prospects left the site because the ordering process was too complicated and the most often mentioned reasons for abandonment are: not a good time, price, uncomfortable buying online, need more information or help.

NICE and Dictaphone Settle Patent Litigation
NICE and Dictaphone announced that the two companies have agreed to dismiss all claims and counterclaims in connection with Dictaphone's patent infringement suit against NICE. The terms of the settlement call for NICE to pay Dictaphone $10 million. Dictaphone and NICE will each grant the other a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual license to certain of their patents including the disputed patents.   (about NICE)

California AAA Selects AIM
AIM technology announced that the California State Automobile Association (CSAA), the AAA Club serving Northern California, Utah and Nevada, will deploy AIM technology's applications for monitoring and analyzing performance. CSAA plans to AIM's applications in its four member service centers to uncover opportunities for performance improvements and make productivity, customer service and revenue correlations.

NBAD Luanches With Altitude Software
Altitude Software announced that National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) has launched its contact center with the Altitude uCI suite to accommodate its growing number of customers. HP's Services Division was responsible for the design, consultancy, and project management of the contact centre. The Altitude uCI suite is a Customer Interaction Management (CIM) solution that provides blended support for voice (inbound and outbound), IVR, email, Web collaboration and chat.

McFadyen Consulting And ATG Team Up
McFadyen Consulting and ATG announced six new service offerings designed to facilitate the implementation of ATG Publishing. ATG Publishing is an application for managing the content assets needed for personalized commerce, self-service, and other Web applications. When implemented correctly it makes the process of modifying an ATG site fast, easy, and reliable.