Open source tips. CRM, ERP, CMS and open source tutorials.

Indian service providers, once considered the darlings of the outsourcing industry, today face challenges causing U.S. clients to question the benefit of sending work overseas. Also, as the value of the U.S. dollar drops in relation to the Indian rupee, some offshore providers feel compelled to raise prices, which negates the cost savings U.S. companies expect when offshoring I.T. work to India. And if smaller India-based offshore providers hope to compete with the IBM Global Services and Accentures of the industry, they must build global service delivery centers and expand their reach beyond their own geographic region.

“While it is less expensive than operating solely in the U.S., the cost of doing business in India has become more onerous because the demand for talent there is so high now that workers want more money and staff turnover has increased,” says Mindy Blodgett, research analyst at Yankee Group.

Foreman attributed the problems he experienced with high staff turnover as well as an increase in jobs for Indian workers at U.S.-based companies such as IBM. “The attrition there was uncontrollable and we also had issues with the quality of staff available to us. Add onto that customer complaints and language barriers and the situation becomes a time and resources drain,” he said.

Despite the cost increase WatchGuard will inevitably incur by locating those positions back in the United States or in the Philippines, Foreman said the company and its customers will benefit long-term. “We want to maintain our customer loyalty. The India support is not what our customers have come to expect for mission-critical equipment,” Foreman said.

In response to such scenarios, India-based offshore providers are establishing facilities in more diverse geographic regions. For instance, Wipro, India’s third-largest outsourcer behind Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies, in 2007 set up its first U.S., or onshore, development center in Altanta, and also established a near-shore location in Monterrey, Mexico.

And the creation of outsourcing facilities closer to home doesn’t mean U.S. companies will stop sending work overseas to India. More likely, U.S. clients will engage in blended contracts in which the customer-facing processes or services are outsourced to a nearshore location while back-office functions continue to be sent to India-based facilities.

Tags: news, outsourcing, closer, CRM, CRM news, software, facilities

SugarCRM, the applications company, intends to become a public company within two years, said CEO John Roberts.

SugarCRM launched 3 years ago in what Roberts said was an “experiment” to use an open-source business model to create high-quality CRM applications. The company on Monday released a beta of Sugar 5.0, a major update to its application suite.

Since its launch, SugarCRM has funded its growth largely from revenue, rather than the $26 million in venture funding it raised, CEO John Roberts said.

“Now we’re at a point where we’re acquiring customers extremely fast,” Roberts said.

Roberts anticipates that the company, which now has 125 employees, can grow to $100 million in yearly revenue in the next 2 years.

SugarCRM

The open-source business model, which had not been tried in packaged applications before SugarCRM launched, is what has allowed the company to grow so rapidly and to focus on making quality software.

Doing software engineering in the open, where outsiders can view the source code, has improved the product development process.

Selling is easier, too. Because the company makes a low-end version available for free, most of its customers are already very familiar with the product and don’t require a costly sales and marketing process, Robert said.

SugarCRM’s approach can be replicated by other companies. Database company MySQL has said that it intends to go public, and middleware provider JBoss was sold to Red Hat for $420 million. XenSource, which has built its commercial product on top of an open-source hypervisor, was bought by Citrix for $500 million.

Traditional software companies spend too much on marketing and sales and not enough on research and development

“I came to Silicon Valley to write great software. But we saw this disconnect in enterprise software companies,” Robert said.

Enhancements to Sugar 5.0 focus on making the application foundation more robust and appropriate for large-scale deployments.

New features include an Ajax e-mail client that is closely integrated with the applications and a revamped on-demand version. On-demand installations account for 40 percent of SugarCRM’s customers.

The new version also includes a Module Builder that lets business users visually create and share their own application add-ons.

Tags: open-source, SugarCRM, stock market, news, Ajax, software, CRM

This program provides rapid Mp3 (ID3v1, ID3v2) and Ogg/Speex/Flac Vorbis tags editing and file renaming functions. Mass Tag editing is done using special variables and Regular Expressions.

MP3 Book Helper is a multi-purpose MP3 ID3 tag editor that gets the artist and album information from the freedb database over internet.Play your mp3 files in Winamp while editing Tags.

MP3 Book Helper can create WinAmp-compatible playlists (M3U files), Information (NFO) files, Parity archive (PAR) data recovery files, Simple File Verify (SFV) and Sound Verification (.SV) checksum files.

MP3 Book Helper maintains duplicates database is a list of all the files you have and MP3 Audio Only checksums (SV) for this files. This will help you to find Identical files on your hard drive even with different tags.

MP3 Book Helper can export and import ID3 tags to and from XML and comma delimited text files, verify CRC/MD5 checksums and more.

MP3 Book Helper

Tags: open source, MP3, Book helper, software, download, open source utils

Oncontact Software, the experts in mid-market customer relationship management (CRM), launched its new, interactive Web site featuring fresh, contemporary imagery, CRM industry resources and an online software demonstration. The new Web site also highlights Oncontact’s “Run With It” ability, which enables users to access their important business information any way they want it, whether its Web, network or sync-based.

Oncontact Software develops award-winning .NET CRM software for mid-market companies.
Oncontact Software is a privately held company with a presence throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Middle East. Oncontact Software’s products are available through its corporate headquarters in Wisconsin and an international alliance of value-added resellers, system integrators and distributors. Oncontact Software has over 600 customers worldwide, including Prudential, Foremost Insurance and Carfax.

“Our new Web site is designed to complement our solution offerings in an easy to use, interactive format,” said Jon Zimmerman, president, Oncontact Software. “It also provides a wealth of industry information and advice to provide organizations the critical information they need when deploying a CRM solution.”

In addition to the online demonstration, Oncontact’s Web site features case studies, a library of white papers and a complimentary Forrester Research report. The site also features a CRM blog offering tips and trends to improve business efficiency.

“Our site is not only designed to inform about our solution, but to educate as well,” Zimmerman added. “Our goal is to provide businesses with the industry information and tools they need to maximize their CRM capabilities to stay ahead of the competition and drive results.”

Tags: news, CRM, CRM News, Oncontact, software, lauches, interactive, web site

Rimini Street is the leading independent provider of enterprise software support services. The company is redefining the market with an innovative, next-generation support program that enables Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards licensees to remain on their current software release without any required upgrades or migrations for ten years or more. In addition to a higher service-level commitment, Rimini Street provides customers with an average savings of more than 50% in annual support fees when compared to Oracle.

Rimini Street, Inc., the leading independent maintenance and support provider for Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards (NASDAQ:ORCL) software, announced its clients are saving millions of dollars in annual support and upgrade costs by extending the lifespan of their current enterprise software releases for three, five, or even ten years or more. Rimini Street Support enables software licensees to avoid costly upgrades by leveraging their existing software releases ranging from brand new to more than a decade old and receiving full support, including tax and regulatory updates, 24×7 with 30 minute guaranteed response. In contrast, software support policies from vendors like Oracle and SAP require their support customers to continually upgrade to new releases or face increasing annual penalty fees and eventual termination of new update service for their older, stable releases.

The City of Flint, Michigan is using Rimini Street Support to leverage its stable, decade-old PeopleSoft 7.5 release to smoothly support city human resource and payroll operations. Originally debuting in September of 1997, PeopleSoft Release 7.5 turned ten years old this year and is a clear example of how enterprise software coupled with Rimini Street Support can deliver significant annual IT cost savings, a better value, and a strong return on existing software investments.

“We look forward to driving even more value and a longer lifespan out of our stable PeopleSoft 7.5 release,” said Tom O’Brien, Database Administrator, The City of Flint Michigan. “Rimini Street’s knowledgeable staff, responsive service, and high quality tax and regulatory updates continue to provide us the support we need to keep our PeopleSoft 7.5 release operating smoothly. Additionally, we have saved over 50% on our annual support costs and have been able to avoid several costly upgrades that were required under the vendor’s support program in order for us to remain eligible for support. Rimini Street is a strategic IT partner for the City of Flint, and we couldn’t be happier with the service and results.”

Siebel CRM 6, initially introduced as Siebel eBusiness 2000, is nearly eight years old and continues to provide value for many licensees, including Rimini Street client Wenger Manufacturing.

“Wenger Manufacturing has been running Siebel 6 for almost 8 years now and we have not found any business need to upgrade,” said Jesse Mitchell of Wenger Manufacturing’s IT Group. “Siebel 6 continues to meet all of our business objectives, and after years of paying high annual maintenance fees we switched to Rimini Street Support. Rimini Street provides the annual support services we need to keep our mission-critical Siebel 6 system operating properly, and we are saving more than 50% over what we were paying Siebel and Oracle in annual support costs and we are not required to upgrade. Rimini Street has allowed us to redirect annual cost savings and resources to other important IT projects.”

Many other Rimini Street clients are running newer software releases such as PeopleSoft 8.9 and Siebel 7.8 that were just made available in recent years, and Rimini Street Support is designed to help keep these releases running smoothly and delivering strong returns to clients well into the next decade.

“Enterprise software today is more stable than ever and current releases can run business operations through 2020 and beyond with the right support program,” said Seth Ravin, president and CEO of Rimini Street. “As more and more organizations come to understand that the enterprise software releases developed over the last decade are going to be the stable and mature releases that carry them into the next decade and beyond, the focus is clearly shifting to cost savings and driving stronger returns out of existing enterprise software investments.”

Tags: Rimini Street, clients, saving, software, news, CRM, case studies

If you run a small business, you know how important customer relationship management, or CRM, can be to your bottom line. And you know it can be a bit daunting. Well, not with GoldMine and GoldMine 8 For Dummies!

GoldMine is business software designed to help you organize your contacts, track activities, schedule appointments, create reports that tell you how you’re doing, and make accurate business projections. GoldMine 8 is completely revised to make it more useful than ever, once you get the hang of it.

That’s where GoldMine For Dummies comes to the rescue! Written by an authorized GoldMine trainer, this guide shows you how to:

- Set up GoldMine 8 and customize it for your business

- Create, view, and update customer records

- Schedule activities and manage leads

- Monitor your marketing efforts and see what’s working

- Predict sales based on past results

- Work with GoldMine’s e-mail system

- Organize and distribute information

- Access GoldMine from outside your office

- Integrate GoldMine with your company Web site

Even if you’ve used a previous version of GoldMine, you’ll find some big changes in this newest revision, but GoldMine 8 For Dummies makes it easy to get up to speed. When you’ve read this book and discovered how GoldMine can help you keep track of your clients, reduce costs, and improve efficiency, you’ll think you’ve hit the motherlode!

WHAT THE BOOK COVERS: navigating GoldMine, setting up preferences, creating and viewing customer records, using filters and SQL queries, scheduling activities, sales forecasting, connecting to Word documents and templates, using Outlook with GoldMine, remotely accessing your GoldMine data, creating new labels and fields, linking GoldMine to your Web site, and more.

UPDATED COVERAGE OF THE NEW VERSION: This new edition will have approximately 40-50% new content, covering the new features and enhancements made in the latest version of GoldMine.

SERIES FEATURES: Information presented in the straightforward but fun language that has defined the Dummies series for more than fifteen years.

Tags: Goldmine 8, Dummies, CRM, CRM News

Best-in-class companies are implementing Intelligent Contact Center solutions to differentiate through service excellence. This is the overarching message in the new AberdeenGroup benchmark report entitled: “The Intelligent Contact Center: Increasing Multi-Channel Visibility“.

The study addresses the reality that the contact center has evolved into a critical interaction point for customers. Companies are striving to gain a competitive edge through customer service. Yet, Aberdeen found that 61 percent of organizations surveyed are challenged to leverage the increasing amounts of data available to the contact center accumulated through customer management systems (CRM, SFA and order fulfillment) and customer interactions (customer data, issues and transactions). This can diminish the customer experience by negatively impacting service speed and reliability.

Best-in-class companies that strive to differentiate themselves through customer service are rolling out Intelligent Contact Centers to address the quality of responses provided to customers. According to the study, an Intelligent Contact Center provides consistent, accurate and timely information in response to customer inquiries via the customer’s chosen medium. It is capable of collecting, analyzing, managing and disseminating data across multiple channels such as phone, email and Web self-service.

Aberdeen cited competitive pressures, the need to improve first contact closure rates and escalating operational costs as the three main drivers among best-in-class companies implementing an Intelligent Contact Center strategy. 97% of these organizations experienced improvement in customer satisfaction within two years of implementing an Intelligent Contact Center. In addition, most have experienced an improvement in cost per contact and first contact closure rate. Conversely, none of the laggard companies experienced an increase in customer satisfaction, and some report that their cost per contact has increased over the same two-year period. This is due largely to the challenge of managing data to effectively meet customer needs with their existing solutions.

“In order to achieve best-in-class status, companies must implement knowledge management solutions. Providing dependable, accurate and well-timed data across channels is critical to enhancing the customer experience,” said Alan Hubbard, SVP, Customer Management Technologies Group at Aberdeen.

The study revealed that best-in-class companies are more than twice as likely to implement knowledge management solutions. Enabling technologies like natural language queries and guided search drive success because customers and agents can retrieve data quickly and reliably across any channel. Companies can deal with customer issues at their point of origin, while increasing agent efficiency and improving customer satisfaction levels.

Through its offerings, which include ePowerCenter and RealDialog, Astute Solutions is meeting the urgent need for driving cost reductions through multi-channel agent success. It is focused on ensuring consistent responses across phone, email, chat, Web and self- service channels.

Tags: Astute Solutions, knowledge, management, capabilities, CRM case studies, CRM news

Founded in 2000, Selltis has a broad range of domain expertise in delivering CRM software to support the needs of technical and industrial sales organizations. The company’s software is widely used by leading manufacturers and distributors serving a range of vertical markets, such as electrical, power generation, process control, among others.

Selltis, LLC, a provider of on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) software for end-to-end sales process automation, announced that it has received venture funding from Advantage Capital Partners and Enhanced Capital Partners.

“We are not just bringing to market a new product but truly shaping a new mindset within SFA/CRM to empower customers to ‘link the way you think’ through a complete sales process automation tool,” said David Erath, CEO, Selltis, LLC. “The continued support of our funding partner Advantage Capital along with new investment from Enhanced Capital gives us the resources to continue to market our new platform to existing and prospective customers.”

Advantage Capital Partners is an innovative group of venture capital partnerships with more than $800 million under management. Founded in 1999, Enhanced Capital Partners is a national investment firm with over $400 million under management specializing in investments in small and mid-size companies.

About Enhanced Capital Partners

Founded in 1999, Enhanced Capital Partners is a national investment firm with over $400 million under management specializing in investments in small and mid-size companies. Enhanced Capital provides a range of investment options to promote the growth and expansion of businesses. Our flexibility and practical investment approach can make the difference in maximizing the growth potential for a company poised for rapid growth. Enhanced Capital’s team members have extensive experience working with high growth businesses and a proven track record for helping our portfolio companies realize their full potential.

About Advantage Capital Partners

Advantage Capital Partners is an innovative group of venture capital partnerships with more than $800 million under management. Established in 1992, the firm has grown from its origins in Louisiana to include offices in Missouri, New York, Texas and Washington, D.C. From the start, Advantage has raised private funds to invest in states and communities undeserved by traditional sources of risk capital. The firm has built a strong track record of public-private partnerships with state and federal organizations, facilitating the flow of billions of dollars of investment capital into these communities. In conjunction with such efforts, Advantage provides equity and debt capital – along with value-added counsel and other support – to promising operating businesses that have the potential for excellent investor returns as well as significant community impact. The firm uses this dual bottom line to measure its success.

About Selltis, LLC

Selltis, LLC is a provider of on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) software for end-to-end sales process automation. Specializing in the needs of technical and industrial sales organizations, Selltis manages all aspects of the customer and partner relationship lifecycle. Built on the company’s unique, “many-to-many” data linking Hyperrelational technology, the Selltis Sales platform allows industrial sales teams to “Link The Way You Think.” Selltis customers include leading specialized manufacturers, distributors and technology companies such as Toshiba Plant System & Services Corporation Power Systems Division, Waukesha-Pearce Industries (WPI), Ashcroft, General Sports Venue, Falk Renew Prager (Division of Rexnord), Contech Bridge, Pratt & Whitney (a division of United Technologies), Texas A&M School of Industrial Distribution, Detronics (a division of Kidde), WIKA, ITT Industries, Colder Products, Kidde Fire, Asbury Carbon, Hansen Transmission, Milwaukee Valve, and American Lewa.

Tags: CRM, CRM news, Hosted CRM, new version, Selltis, software

This HTML text editor brings to the web much of the power of desktop editors like MS Word. It’s lightweight and doesn’t require any kind of installation on the client computer.

FCKeditor features

* Internet Explorer 5.5+ and Gecko browser (Mozilla / Firefox / Netscape)compatibility
* XHTML 1.0 support
* Cut, Paste and Past as Plain Text, Undo and Redo
* Paste from Word cleanup with auto detection
* Image insertion, with upload and server browsing support
* Table creation and editing (add, delete rows, etc) - one of the best systems in the market.
* Skins and Plugins upport.
* Spell checker
* Multi-language support
* Automatic browser detection and customization
* Integration with ASP, ASP.NET, Java, ColdFusion, Perl, PHP and Javascript.

You can download this product from here.

The online demo.

Tags: FCKeditor, open source, open source utils, HTML text editor, desktop editors

GroupForce is a set of various business management tools designed to be easily tailored to the way you do business, so as to streamline your processes, increase your productivity, and your profitability.

GroupForce is designed on the premise that each business is different from the next, and the tools you use should be adaptable to how you need to use them, and not you having to adapt how the tool works. GroupForce is a comprehensive set of easily configurable business tools that adapt to your way of running your business.

GroupForce CRM

The GroupForce User Portal gives users the unique facility to enter a portal where all relevant tools in GroupForce are accessible to them. Based on the user’s role within your organization, you can define the tools available for that role, providing your users with one central place from which to access the tools and information they need to do their job.

For users that have more than one role in the organization, with a single click they can change the portal to display the information and tools required for their alternate role.

GroupForce Contact Management provides you and your users with an easy to use, highly secure, multi-level tracking of information about the companies and contacts you deal with.

It includes functionality to track all types of activities (calls, e-mails, meetings, tasks, letter, and others, including customizable activity types) with those contacts. Tools such as mass mailing, reporting capabilities, integration with Microsoft Office applications, PDF, and full integration with your mail, calendar, and task infrastructure make GroupForce Contact Management a powerful tool to manage your customers and partners, and your interactions with them.

GroupForce CRM

Your sales process can be managed from beginning to end using the GroupForce Opportunity management tool. From defining telemarketing and cold calling targets, to managing leads through your sales cycle, and winning new business, GroupForce provides you with tools to know who your next customer may be, who you compete with, what you are trying to sell, and the actions that need to take place for you to win that business.

GroupForce Project Management

GroupForce Project Management provides with tools to track the progress and performance of your internal and external projects. Project tasks, cash-flow information, resources, and performance indicators are just some of the things captured about your projects.

Strong two-way integration with Microsoft Project provides you with capabilities to perform critical path and Gantt chart analysis and update project information accordingly. Integration with personal To Do’s ensures each project assignee knows what needs to be done, and flexible, e-mail based reporting lets project managers know the state of a project at any given moment.

GroupForce CRM

The GroupForce Invoicing module provides a quick and efficient way to generate invoices in your organization. Invoices can be generated ad-hoc or related to existing quotation, project, expense items, or customer information and printed to your pre-defined invoice layout.

GroupForce invoices handle all local and federal tax models and exchange rate information, including variance in exchange rates from invoice date to paid date.

GroupForce Invoices also provides you with facilities to export information to any accounting package.

GroupForce Quotations

The GroupForce Quotations module provides your users with a tool to build outgoing quotations for clients, including products and services involved, support documents, resource requirements, and all relevant information.

GroupForce CRM

Through the quotation document in GroupForce, users can track all information for the quotation, and at any point compile the information to a Microsoft Word document using a pre-defined template.

Internal approval cycles ensure that quotations delivered to clients adhere to company standards. Integration with Opportunity Management and Project Management ensure a continuous flow of information through your organization.

GroupForce Problem Reports tool

The GroupForce Problem Reports tool gives you the capability of tracking problem reports, feature requests, and enhancements related to your internal systems and your products and services.

A GroupForce Problem Report allows for the tracking of impact, severity, and customer requirements and details of the request itself.

GroupForce CRM

Giving your service personnel a facility to track, manage, and prioritize development time, GroupForce Problem Reports can also auto-generate reports for completed requests.

GroupForce Document Library

The GroupForce Document Library takes advantage of document management paradigms found in larger systems (Domino.Doc) in an easy-to-use implementation for your organization.

GroupForce CRM

The Document Library provides functionality to author, revise, manage and distribute documents throughout the organization. Document revision cycles and security profiles facilitate a centralized location for the maintenance of all relevant company documentation.

GroupForce can be accessed through the following:

* Lotus Notes Client – provides full access to GroupForce functionality
* Microsoft Office Tools – provides task specific tools from common applications like MS Word and Excel (example, telemarketing efforts being managed from an Excel spreadsheet and updated real-time in the GroupForce application)
* Instant Messaging – Quickly “chat” with the GroupForce application to get to information fast
* Microsoft Outlook Client – As an alternative to the Lotus Notes client, a user can choose to use the Outlook client for contact management efforts. All information captured through Outlook is synchronized real-time to GroupForce.
* Mobile Devices – From Pocket PCs, Palm, Smart Phone, and Blackberry devices, GroupForce functionality is quickly available from the palm of your hand.
* Custom Applications – Through GroupForce’s API and web services, you can tie in GroupForce functionality to your existing applications.
* Web Browsers – Access GroupForce via the web, both for your employees, and as self-service options for your customers and partners.

GroupForce CRM

Tags: GroupForce CRM, CRM, Case studies, software