A recent Gartner survey states that over 50% of customer service calls are related to invoicing. As a result, leasing companies such as Xerox Capital Services is constantly seeking new ways to compete more effectively. By Choosing Avolent's Online Invoicing, Xerox Capital is the first in the leasing industry to offer customers online self-service to review, parse, dispute, approve and pay invoices.

Epicor announced a new portal strategy that will provide rich portal content to Epicor customers through a secure, standardized portal platform. Concurrently, Microsoft announced its support of Epicor's portal strategy.

Salesforce.com announced that First New England Mortgage is quantifying the value of purchased sales leads using salesforce.com. The company is also integrating Salesforce -- using the Sforce integration platform -- with its loan origination system to improve access to that data for all departments.

Vignette and Certus Software announced that they will join forces to expand the breadth of their compliance offerings by together bringing to market a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance application with a records management backbone. This integrated solution enables critical compliance information to be correctly managed over its lifecycle.

Single Source Systems and CMS Mechanical Services are pleased to announce that CMS has selected SM-Plus as its new Enterprise software system. CMS expects SM-Plus to improve operating efficiencies for its nationwide HVACR and facilities management organization.

The regulatory and representative body for 116,000 solicitors in England and Wales (The Law Society) has successfully completed a first phase implementation of Axios' assyst product on its IT Service Desk which it has moved in-house from an outsourcer. The main business driver was to transform from an outsourced Help Desk into an in-house full Service Desk where a high percentage of calls could be answered and resolved over the phone.

Green Beacon, a business consulting and systems integration firm, announced an agreement with smartFOCUS to offer its smartMARKETER solutions. The smartMARKETER line of products provides business users with accesses to customer data.

ClientLogic announced that it has increased its presence in Latin America with the addition of a new customer care site in Panama and the expansion of an existing site in Mexico. This move will expand ClientLogic's global footprint while bolstering its bi-lingual and near-shore English services to North American clients.

Exstream announced it has entered into a value-added reselling agreement with Prinova, Inc., a provider of document design, development and delivery solutions. Under the terms of the agreement, Prinova will offer Exstream's personalization software, Dialogue, to small and mid-sized insurance companies in the United States and Canada.

Content Management Professionals (CM Pros) announced its new member-driven committee process including a framework for the formation of regional chapters. The CM Pros committee process-which enables members to formally organize in groups based on geographic location or common interest in a particular topic- empowers any group of at least three members to form a committee by issuing a call for participation to the entire membership.

  "OUR TAKE" (more)

8/23/05 - Do Farmers Add Value? Before everyone jumps on the farmer bandwagon, one reader offers a less positive view on the role, and value, of a farmer. Specifically, he says:   "The hunter versus farmer debate seems to be useless to me. Everyone seems happy to farm out all their call center operations to people glued to a rigid script. You may as well refer to them as migrant labor harvesting fields. They may be efficient, but you won't get hunting or harvesting out of them."   Since we've also had quite a bit of discussion about outsourcing, I find these comments extremely useful. If an organization does value the role of "farming," it might be inclined to wring the costs out while ignoring the potential to exploit the revenue and profit potential. Does that happen in your organization?   Gary Lemke, Publisher (Share your thoughts)