MasterCard Advisors Acquires Watch Hill Partners
Watch Hill Partners will be integrated with MasterCard Advisors' Customer Experience Group (CEG), which offers a range of strategic and on-the-ground consulting services to companies seeking to deliver differentiated customer experiences. MasterCard Advisors is a global professional services organization, offering consulting, research, outsourcing and information products and services. Watch Hill Partners specializes in optimization of customer relationships through multiple channels and technologies, such as mobile networks and web services. Watch Hill Partners' Customer Relationship Management (CRM) methodology allows its clients to identify gaps between the business case for CRM and the deployment of processes and technology which affect overall success of CRM programs.

Business Objects Expands Integration with Microsoft Office
Business Objects announced new product integration initiatives with Microsoft products. Business Objects announced the launch of Crystal Enterprise Live Office, a solution that enables users to embed active corporate data from Crystal Reports into Microsoft Office documents. In addition, the company unveiled an integrated solution for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and support for the Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework.

Silverpop Marketer 5.0 Announced
Silverpop announced the general availability of Silverpop Marketer 5.0. Among the new features are in-depth delivery and recipient reporting, ability to drill down to reporting based on the recipient's ISP or inbox provider, detailed administration controls, dynamic content and more.

Witness and Fusion Comm Ally in Southeast Asia
Witness and Fusion Comm Solution, a Malaysian-based quality solution provider, announced an alliance designed to deliver Witness Systems' eQuality software suite to customers in southeast Asia. Fusion Comm Solution has been appointed as a master reseller of Witness Systems' software in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Indochina, Brunei and Vietnam. Fusion Comm Solution also will act as Witness Systems' services and support partner in the region.   (about Witness)

			Required Reading
		Customer Intimacy in Financial Services    Retail financial services firms have received their share of accolades as leaders in relationship building. Financial management and planning is, by nature, an individualized process that relies on personal data. As customer-intimate firms, financial services companies look to capitalize on this wealth of data to increase the scope of their relationships with individual clients. A distinguishing characteristic of the customer-intimate firm is its ability to provide a complete solution to each customer's needs rather than focusing on any product's superior features and benefits. more >>
Archive of past Required Reading articles

ServiceWare and HP to Provide Knowledge Management Solution
ServiceWare announced that HP has selected ServiceWare as the preferred knowledge management component for its global help desk solution. The solution will give HP Services customers access to the functionality of ServiceWare's self-learning and self-organizing search technology, the Cognitive Processor. The Cognitive Processor powers ServiceWare Enterprise, ServiceWare's suite of knowledge-powered solutions for customer service and support. ServiceWare's relationship with HP was established in 1999 when HP's global service desk chose ServiceWare as their knowledge management provider of choice. In addition, ServiceWare Enterprise recently achieved integration certification with HP OpenView Service Desk technology.

Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance Turns to IEX
IEX announced that Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance has selected IEX TotalView SC, the IEX workforce management solution for smaller contact centers, to streamline operations and improve agent performance in its customer service contact center. Combining both real-time and historical schedule adherence functionality, the TotalView SC Adherence Suite allows managers to monitor how well agents keep to their assigned schedules.   (about IEX)

RightNow Serves Record Number of Online Customer Inquiries
RightNow announced that organizations used its on demand CRM solutions to deliver more than 102 million online customer service sessions in the first quarter of 2004. To put this figure in perspective, that would provide two online service sessions for each person living in the United Kingdom and three such sessions for each person living in Canada. 102 million online service sessions represent a 93 percent jump from the same quarter in 2003. RightNow delivered more than 249 million customer service sessions in 2003.   (about RightNow)

Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council Saves with Onyx
Onyx announced that Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council has identified cost-savings of over GBP 250,000 in just two service areas resulting from the implementation of Onyx Software's flagship CRM product tailored for local government needs. The cost-savings were identified as part of a return on investment study at Knowsley conducted by the National Computer Center (NCC). The NCC study examined two areas where Knowsley Council has implemented CRM -- a specific service, Revenues and Benefits, and a cross-service function, Council-wide Bookings. Processes before and after CRM implementation were identified, and costs calculated for comparison.

Agefiph Saves Processing Time with Siebel
Siebel announced that Agefiph, the French agency responsible for facilitating the employment and retention of workers with disabilities, has reduced the time it takes to process claims by 40 percent using Siebel Public Sector for Benefits Case Management. By creating a single view of all parties involved in financing and subsidizing disabled professionals in the workplace, agency benefits payments are now reaching claimants 25 percent faster than before the Siebel deployment.