NetOp Savings Calculator Available
CrossTec Corporation has published a new NetOp Savings Calculator on their website that provides enterprises with an estimated annual savings from using NetOp Remote Control. By entering six fields of unique company information, enterprises can calculate the amount of time and money that can be saved by utilizing NetOp Remote Control for helpdesk resolution.

SAP Unveils New Version Of SAP Business One
SAP announced the details of the latest version of SAP Business One, adding new capabilities including integrated material requirements planning (MRP) and other enhancements to meet growing demand for its affordable and easy-to-use business management solution for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). To be available in more than 37 countries internationally, the new version of SAP Business One eliminates the need for businesses to manage multiple unrelated applications by providing a single, integrated software solution that delivers a unified view of up-to-the-minute information for greater control and profitability across the entire business. The solution will be offered through SAP's growing global network of more than 650 channel partners.

DiscoverNET Integrates with HEAT Trouble Tickets
Network administrators are familiar with management consoles that display graphical maps showing all network devices as icons. But in the past, when an icon would turn yellow or red to indicate a threshold limit on CPU utilization or networking bandwidth, for example, the administrator would need to investigate, and then open a separate application for issuing an IT service request form, entering all necessary information manually. Now, users who install the new DiscoverNET management console from FrontRange Solutions are able to streamline network management incident resolution processes.   (about FrontRange)

Salesforce.com Announces Enhanced Sforce Toolkit For IBM WebSphere
Salesforce.com announced the availability of the enhanced sforce Toolkit for IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD), as well as planned support for the new IBM Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software introduced on October 6th by IBM. Together, salesforce.com's sforce on-demand platform and IBM's application development tools enable enterprises to build CRM solutions that integrate customer and sales information across the enterprise, with a fraction of the time and effort required of software-only alternatives.

			Required Reading
		How Do You Get Users to Adopt CRM?    After more than 80 acquisitions in ten years, the sales staff at The Bank of New York Company Inc.-a commercial bank with $93 billion in assets in 33 countries-couldn't consistently track who had spoken to which customer about what. With more than ten separate client databases and tracking systems, the salespeople who dealt with a certain client "may not have known about opportunities to do cross-selling, or found out about them after the fact," says Robert Joyce, managing director of corporate relationship management. (CIO Insight) more >>
Archive of past Required Reading articles

Banknorth Group Deploys RightNow
RightNow Technologies announced Banknorth Group is deploying RightNow Service and RightNow Locator to optimize both the quality of the service its customers receive and the cost-efficiency with which it delivers that service. The deployment of RightNow's on demand CRM solutions will enable this major commercial bank to respond to customer information requests across multiple channels with consistent, accurate and up-to-date answers, while it reduces its contact center workload.   (about RightNow)

Portugal Telecom With Convergys
Convergys and VIVO, a joint venture led by Portugal Telecom and Telefonica Moviles SA (TEM), announced a new, long-term billing contract to support VIVO's 6 million post-paid wireless subscribers. Convergys will license its Atlys billing solution and use its local resources to replace and consolidate VIVO's six different billing systems onto the Convergys solution.

HDI Adds Project Management Training
HDI announced that it is now offering project management training as part of the HDI University training events. This latest course offering, "Introduction to Project Management," which will debut at the HDI University being held December 6 - 10 in Orlando, Fla., has been made possible through an agreement with Looking Glass Development, a Project Management Institute (PMI)-approved Registered Education Provider. Project management skills are increasingly important in IT service and support organizations, and provide immediate benefits in managing customer expectations and better evaluating ROI, for example.   (about Help Desk Institute)

Wal-Mart Expands its Teradata Warehouse
Teradata announced that Wal-Mart has expanded its Teradata data warehouse. The move adds to Wal-Mart's competitive advantage by allowing the company to enhance current applications and deploy new applications that improve Wal-Mart's capabilities to service their customers.

T-Online Selects NICE Perform
NICE Systems announced that it received a deal from a leading European internet provider to implement NICE Perform in their contact centers. In the tough competitive environment of European telecommunications, this leading ISP needs to ensure it exceeds customer expectations for quality of service. With NICE Perform, T-Online will empower their customer representatives with the knowledge to meet the high service standards required in these environments.

Blue Pumpkin Jump Starts New Fiscal Year
Blue Pumpkin announced a start to its new fiscal year - headlined by the latest report from Frost & Sullivan analysts that gives Blue Pumpkin the greatest market share in workforce management software license revenue, surpassing older competitors and pioneering the concept of "Managing to Excellence" for contact centers. In the first fiscal quarter ending August 31, Blue Pumpkin reported another consecutive quarter of customer growth, carrying forward the momentum from the previous profitable fiscal year.   (about Blue Pumpkin)