Adds Leading Social Marketing and Engagement Platform to the Oracle Cloud

Oracle announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Vitrue, a leading cloud-based social marketing and engagement platform that enables marketers to centrally create, publish, moderate, manage, measure and report on their social marketing campaigns and activities on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+.

Vitrue’s social media SaaS marketing applications help customers amplify their social community engagement by giving marketers the ability to develop campaigns from global to local, across multiple social networks and devices, and publish content that engages fans and drives leads.

Oracle’s leading sales, service, commerce, social data management and analytics capabilities, combined with Vitrue, are expected to create the most advanced and comprehensive social relationship platform.

The combination is expected to help organizations develop more meaningful customer engagements with consistent brand experiences, improve their return on investment across all channels and media, and enhance customer service through real-time responsiveness and high touch relationships.

The terms of the agreement were not disclosed. More information on this announcement can be found at http://www.oracle.com/vitrue.

Supporting Quotes

“The proliferation of social media and an increased demand by consumers to engage with brands across multiple social channels is driving chief marketing officers to look for an integrated social marketing platform,” said Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, Oracle Development. “Vitrue’s leading social marketing and engagement platform coupled with Oracle’s leading sales, service, and commerce products offers a complete social experience solution to our customers.”

“The world’s greatest brands have been built by creating meaningful relationships between organizations and their customers," said Reggie Bradford, founder and chief executive officer, Vitrue. “As a part of Oracle, we can help our customers ensure that consistent high-touch social engagement is delivered across marketing, sales and service interactions.”

About Oracle

Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center.  For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com.

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

Cloud collaboration and content management: the great myth over security

Millions of users, who place documents into the Dropbox storage servers or other Cloud based collaboration solutions such as Huddle each day, are potentially putting their data at risk, despite the belief that it will be safe and secure. This is according to Simon Bain, CTO of Simplexo.

Despite findings from the Cloud Industry Forum, which have highlighted that data security is uppermost in the minds of 62 per cent of businesses in the UK, corporate Britain is seeing a dramatic increase in the use of Dropbox and its competitors, such as Google Drive, Huddle, Box Net and Jungle Disk, thanks to the rise of employee adoption.

Simon Bain stated: “With the glare of security very firmly focused at Google and its new Terms and Conditions for the Google Drive, we should not forget that other players in this market also have similar T’s & C’s.”

“Corporate users need to look more closely at how they are using these services, particularly syncing, which is a really important part of a Cloud storage offering – in other words having all of your files available from anywhere. But do users realize that in a lot of cases their files are physically downloaded to their devices? If you lose a device, or leave it unattended, all of your files are accessible to a third party,” he continued.

In the rush to have documents available everywhere, corporate and data security has been marginalized, often for ease of use for the end user and simplicity of providing the service.

Google has proved over the last 10 years that user data really is king. Most of Google’s profits come from targeted advertising based on their users data – Location, Search Phrases, Blogs etc. – This is exactly the same business model that Facebook and others are trying to emulate. With Facebook it is based on the data that you place on to their social network. With Dropbox and the other Cloud storage providers, they are also looking to monetize the information that you place within their storage. As a corporate user you need to be careful that you do not break your own companies employment policies when you use these services, but also that you are not breaking state or national data protection legislation. As I have said ‘Data is King’ this is true also of your data for you. Sales records, quotations, bank statements. Do not give these away.”

“I am obviously a believer in using the ‘Cloud’ as a way forward for both personal and corporate life. However there are certain guidelines that I think need to be adhered to before we all start throwing our hard disks away and placing everything in to the hands of others,”

“While security on the Cloud servers is very important overall, document security cannot be overlooked and I think suppliers do have responsibility for this. The likes of Dropbox need to be more open with their users and not hide behind T’s and C’s.”

Some of the questions we need to be asking are:

• Can somebody access our data?
• Is your data only yours? Or does your agreement with your provider actually sign usage over to them. (Check as most providers do exactly this)?
• Are the servers secure that my information is stored on?
• Is my store separate from others? Or is there a large silo that everybody’s files get dumped in to?
• What about the files? Are they encrypted?
• If there is an on-line search capability? Is this secure or does it hold plain text in a database?
• If a hacker gains access to the servers, can they see my files?
• Are my login details and or user credentials held on the server?

Bain said: “Get positive answers to these questions before placing any documents into a store unless the data has no commercial value. Banks go to great lengths to make sure that we are secure during our on-line banking sessions. So why go and drop your bank statement in to an on-line box?”

Dropbox T&C’s

How We Use Personal Information

Personal Information. In the course of using the Service, we may collect personal information that can be used to contact or identify you (“Personal Information”). Personal Information is or may be used: (i) to provide and improve our Service, (ii) to administer your use of the Service, (iii) to better understand your needs and interests, (iv) to personalize and improve your experience, and (v) to provide or offer software updates and product announcements.

Service Providers, Business Partners and Others. We may use certain trusted third party companies and individuals to help us provide, analyze, and improve the Service (including but not limited to data storage, maintenance services, database management, web analytics, payment processing, and improvement of the Service’s features). These third parties may have access to your information only for purposes of performing these tasks on our behalf and under obligations similar to those in this Privacy Policy.

Third-Party Applications. We may share your information with a third party application with your consent, for example when you choose to access our Services through such an application. We are not responsible for what those parties do with your information, so you should make sure you trust the application and that it has a privacy policy acceptable to you.

Compliance with Laws and Law Enforcement Requests; Protection of Dropbox’s Rights. We may disclose to parties outside Dropbox files stored in your Dropbox and information about you that we collect when we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) comply with a law, regulation or compulsory legal request; (b) protect the safety of any person from death or serious bodily injury; (c) prevent fraud or abuse of Dropbox or its users; or (d) to protect Dropbox’s property rights. If we provide your Dropbox files to a law enforcement agency as set forth above, we will remove Dropbox’s encryption from the files before providing them to law enforcement. However, Dropbox will not be able to decrypt any files that you encrypted prior to storing them on Dropbox.

Huddle T&Cs

IP addresses and cookies

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

Also, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer when you browse our sites. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. They help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalized service.

You may refuse to accept our cookie by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting, this may adversely affect your user experience of our site.

Third Party Partners Program

When you visit our site, we place a cookie file on your hard drive of your computer so that our advertising partners are able to recognise you when you visit their websites. We do this so that our advertising partners are able to show you advertisements relating to our products and services when you visit their website.

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Such staff maybe engaged in, among other things, the provision of CRM services, marketing campaigns, support and hosting services on our behalf. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

About Simplexo Ltd

Simplexo Ltd is focused on delivering a new experience in federated search, and is founded on a solid history in electronic document management and retrieval. Today, Simplexo technology is delivering value to individuals and organisations in many industry sectors, including financial services, healthcare and local government.

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

London, UK – Adeptra, the global expert in customer engagement technologies, today announced that in partnership with ValidSoft (a subsidiary of Elephant Talk Communications Corp. (NYSE MKT: ETAK)), it has developed, tested and implemented the world’s first detection and prevention application to tackle the growing problem of SIM card fraud for the banking industry. The solution combines ValidSoft’s unrivalled fraud detection technology, with the rich and robust functionality of the cloud based Adeptra Risk Intervention Platform.

Following a successful pilot project at a long-standing Adeptra client, one of the world’s largest banks is the first to adopt the application. This solution provides the marketplace an opportunity to engage and understand customer data in a way that protects the banks and their customers within a real-time intervention delivered by Adeptra. This is the first Adeptra partner to successfully address the issue of SIM card fraud. The bank’s adoption of the application is another stage in its work to secure all transaction channels by using leading edge technology and Adeptra’s cloud based Risk Intervention Platform to deliver the process.

SIM swapping is a financial crime that is increasing in frequency, where fraudsters obtain and utilise a replacement SIM card to acquire security messages and one-time passwords sent to the consumer by the bank. Criminals are then able to change details, add beneficiaries and transfer money out of the account using personal information that may have been acquired through phishing attempts. While most types of financial fraud are recognising reductions due to chip and pin, phone fraud saw a 48% increase in 2011.

The deployment at the bank comprises SIM swap protection provided by ValidSoft’s baseline processing system, coupled with its unique predictive modeling capabilities. Once a suspected case has been highlighted, Adeptra’s Decision Engine considers all available detection sources and a wide array of consumer data to ascertain the risk level. The system will then determine whether a communication is required and initiates the communication via the most appropriate channel for that particular customer.

Adeptra’s CTO, Tony McGivern, commented: “Once again, Adeptra leads the market into a new territory by engaging and delivering the most sophisticated anti-fraud solutions in the industry today. Without any additional capital investment and using existing technology, banks can benefit from best-in-class fraud detection applications that deliver loss avoidance options to our clients. Adeptra assess and defines the intervention necessary to prevent further losses based on the critical data that ValidSoft delivers.”

Pat Carroll, CEO of ValidSoft commented: “We are very pleased to see our partnership with Adeptra bearing fruits so quickly. The contract with a global leader in the banking industry demonstrates that ValidSoft’s security technology is at the forefront of fraud prevention solutions. Our partnership with Adeptra combines the market leader in sophisticated customer care with the best of breed in fraud prevention solutions.”

About Adeptra

Adeptra is the global market leader in consumer engagement technology that automates key call center and back office interactions. Based on an intelligent decision engine that reduces costs and dramatically increases the consumer experience, Adeptra’s applications are fully-integrated, industry-specific solutions for business processes including fraud detection, payment reminders, and opt-in marketing all within a cloud environment.

Adeptra manages thousands of customer engagements simultaneously and achieves higher levels of portfolio penetration to produce significantly better results than human agents alone. The resolutions it secures are delivered to clients’ computer systems for reporting and analysis.

Among its many customers, Adeptra is used by the majority of leading retail banks across EMEA, North America and APAC. It occupies a premium position in the market by continually reinvesting in its technology, operations and service structure. The company’s commitment to the highest standards of data security compliance was recently re-confirmed, as Adeptra became the first Interactive Voice Messaging organization to meet both Payment Card Industry Security Standard (PCI DSS) v2.0 and ISO27001 standards on a global basis. For more information, visit www.adeptra.com.

About ValidSoft

ValidSoft is a subsidiary of Elephant Talk Communications Corp. (NYSE MKT: ETAK), (www.elephanttalk.com) and is a market leader in providing solutions to counter electronic fraud relating to card, the internet, and telephone channels. ValidSoft’s solutions are at the cutting edge of the market and are used to verify the authenticity of both parties to a transaction (Mutual Authentication), and the integrity of the transaction itself (Transaction Verification) for the mass market, in a highly cost effective and secure manner, yet easy to use and intuitive. For more information, please visit (www.validsoft.com).

Elephant Talk Communications Corp. (NYSE Amex: ETAK) is an international provider of business software and services to the telecommunications and financial services industry.

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

• New Chatter Messenger to provide social enterprises with instant messaging and presence in the context of business – completely in the cloud
• New Chatter Screensharing will enable employees to share their screens in real time in Salesforce Chatter – now every group, file, record and dashboard is an opportunity to collaborate live with colleagues and increase productivity and engagement
• Any company can use Salesforce Chatter, including Chatter Messenger, for free by signing up at Chatter.com
• More than 150,000 active Salesforce Chatter networks have been created by companies like ADP, Nikon Instruments and Pandora, making it the industry’s leading enterprise social network

LONDON — CLOUDFORCE 2012 — Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing (http://www.salesforce.com/solutions/) company, today unveiled real-time communication for the social enterprise with Chatter Messenger and Chatter Screensharing. Chatter Messenger is the world’s first real-time communication solution for the social enterprise that will enable companies to have in-context conversations on one trusted platform. Chatter Screensharing will enable employees to share screens and presentations instantly with their colleagues, increasing employee productivity and engagement. And because of Salesforce Chatter’s freemium model, now any company will be able to use Chatter Messenger for free by signing up at Chatter.com. Today there are more than 150,000 active Salesforce Chatter networks, including companies like ADP, Nikon Instruments and Pandora, making it the industry’s leading enterprise social network. 

Comments on the News:

• "Salesforce Chatter is the engine of the social enterprise – unleashing the power of employee engagement, innovation and productivity for companies," said Kendall Collins, SVP and GM, Salesforce Chatter. "Chatter Messenger and Screensharing deliver Skype-like real-time technologies directly in the Salesforce Chatter feed – empowering companies to run their entire business on one trusted platform."
• "Since we started using Salesforce Chatter over two years ago, it’s become the killer app to manage one client’s work across eight regional offices. Chatter Messenger and Screensharing will provide the real-time communication that our client group has been looking for. With every new release of Salesforce Chatter, our team is able to work more efficiently, thanks Salesforce!" said Jonathan Zimmerman, director of digital technology and innovation, Saatchi & Saatchi.
• "Chatter Messenger and Screensharing will empower employees to have real-time conversations around any process. Since conversations are the foundation of many social relationships, this rich new approach will enable companies to get more done, faster and with greater certainty. These innovations continue to position Salesforce Chatter as a trusted and proven platform," said Denis Pombriant, managing principal, Beagle Research Group.

Chatter Messenger: Real-time Communication for the Social Enterprise

Every business is looking to increase productivity and efficiencies by enabling company-wide collaboration. Traditional collaboration technologies have failed to deliver on the promise of a connected enterprise. Instead, email, file management systems, messaging platforms and more have created islands of collaboration – preventing enterprises from reaping the benefits of true collaboration.

Salesforce Chatter eliminates islands of collaboration by enabling employees to work together on sales deals, service cases, marketing campaigns, files, dashboards – any business process – on one, trusted platform. Chatter Messenger will extend the benefits of employee social networks to secure, real-time, in-context communication. Employees will now be able to instantly connect and collaborate with colleagues by leveraging:

• Instant Messaging: Chatter Messenger represents the first secure, cloud-based communication solution for employees. No longer will employees have to download unsecure consumer IM applications and spend time building buddy lists. And IT will no longer have to implement on-premise IM solutions with expensive hardware and software to manage. With Chatter Messenger, employees will be able to chat instantly with their colleagues completely in the cloud, and IT will be able to easily deploy a secure, cloud-based communications solution for free. In addition, employees will be able to keep chatting – even when they minimize or visit another webpage by putting Chatter Messenger into a separate browser window.
• Individual and Group Chat: With Chatter Messenger, employees can have one-to-one or multi-person chats with anyone on Salesforce Chatter. For group chat, users can add up to 10 people to a single chat session.
• Presence: With presence, employees will be able to see which of their coworkers are online in Salesforce and instantly connect through Salesforce Chatter. Employees won’t have to spend time tracking down colleagues; all of the information they need is at their fingertips in Salesforce Chatter.
• Chat Roster: Chatter Messenger automatically populates each employee’s chat roster with the employee’s social graph. Users can also add up to 100 people and groups to their "My Favorites" list and these will always appear at the top of the chat list.

Chatter Screensharing: Share Screens Instantly in Salesforce Chatter

When words aren’t enough, Chatter Screensharing will extend real-time communications by enabling employees to share anything on their screens instantly with their colleagues directly from a chat session.

Leveraging group chat and Chatter Screensharing, employees will also be able to instantly launch meetings and presentations with key teams and groups. With Chatter Screensharing, every conversation and meeting can now take place in Salesforce Chatter, all in the context of a company’s social process.

Salesforce Chatter: The Leading Enterprise Social Network

Salesforce Chatter is at the heart of the employee social network, empowering employees and making business processes social. With Salesforce Chatter, employees can access the collective knowledge of the organization, connect with coworkers, share files and conversations, and work more effectively. In less than two years, more than 150,000 active Salesforce Chatter networks have been created by companies like ADP, Nikon Instruments and Pandora, making it the industry’s leading enterprise social network. And Salesforce Chatter’s freemium model allows any company to experience the power of an employee social network for free by signing up at Chatter.com.

In a survey of more than 5,500 customers, Salesforce Chatter users reported a 33 percent increase in employee productivity, 34 percent increase in employee engagement and satisfaction, a 29 percent increase in innovation and idea generation, 26 percent reduction in email usage and a 25 percent reduction in meetings. Salesforce Chatter is transforming companies and how people get work done.

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

• Salesforce.com plans to add more than 750 new jobs across Europe to meet growing demand for the social enterprise
• More than 20,000 customers in Europe choose salesforce.com to transform into social enterprises
• More than 14,000 people registered to attend Cloudforce London 2012, Europe’s largest social enterprise event

LONDON  — Cloudforce 2012 –  Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the enterprise cloud computing company (http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/), today announced tremendous growth in Europe and plans to add more than 750 new jobs over the next couple of years to meet the growing demand for the social enterprise in the region. The company is immediately hiring qualified professionals of all experience levels in sales, marketing, IT and support functions across Europe.

The demand for the social enterprise has fueled significant growth in salesforce.com’s customer base in Europe. Salesforce.com now has more than 20,000 customers in Europe, an increase of 32% year-over-year. Customers include: AEGON, Barnardo’s UK, Burberry, BMW Group, GTA Travel, Honda Motor Europe, JLT Group, O2, The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead, Thomson Reuters and Vodafone.  

Salesforce.com is hosting its flagship Cloudforce event in London today with more than 14,000 people registered to attend, making Cloudforce London the largest social enterprise event in Europe. Attendees joining the conference will learn how industry leaders like Activision, Burberry, HP, Kimberly-Clark, O2, and Spotify are transforming into social enterprises.

Comments on the News

• "Social, mobile and cloud are key drivers in today’s economy as you can see from the tremendous growth in our customer base across Europe," said Steve Garnett, EMEA Chairman, salesforce.com. "The demand for the social enterprise is creating new jobs in the region, and we plan to add 750 more people to our European organization in the next couple of years."
• "London is buzzing today as thousands of companies arrive in the city to attend Cloudforce London 2012. There is great potential to capitalize on this momentum and drive forward significant growth within our business community," said Colin Stanbridge, CEO of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
• "We have embarked on a process of business transformation with salesforce.com. Employee and customer social networks allow us to collaborate internally and service our customers externally in ways that were just not possible before," said Duncan Jarrett, Sales Director, AEGON.
• "At O2, we believe our strategy of creating a Joined Up Business is a better business and ultimately a more competitive business. Salesforce.com gives us the tools to enable us to become a social enterprise by joining up our employees, customers and partners," said Ben Dowd, Business Director, O2.
• "JLT is a client first and knowledge-based business. Salesforce allows us to actively drive collaboration and rigour across all parts of our business to bring the best of JLT to all our clients," said Ian Cohen, Group CIO, JLT Group.

Additional Resources

• Watch the Cloudforce London 2012 keynote on Salesforce Live! www.facebook.com/salesforce
• Find your #Dreamjob here at http://www.salesforce.com/dreamjob
• Become a fan of Salesforce on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/salesforce
• For the entire Cloudforce Social Enterprise Tour schedule go to: http://www.salesforce.com/events

About Salesforce.com

With more than 100,000 customers, salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company that is leading the shift to the social enterprise. Social enterprises leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies to put customers at the heart of their business. Based on salesforce.com’s real-time, multitenant architecture, the company’s platform and application services allow customers to:

• Create employee social networks with Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Rypple and Salesforce Force.com.
• Develop customer social networks with the Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Data.com, Salesforce Service Cloud, and Salesforce Site.com.
• Connect with customers on public social networks with Salesforce Heroku and Salesforce Radian6.
• Empower small businesses to become social enterprises with Salesforce Desk.com and Salesforce Do.com.
• Extend a company’s social enterprise with apps from the leading enterprise app marketplace, AppExchange.
• Run apps on Database.com, the first social enterprise database.

Source: PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1ctGM)

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

The worldwide Cloudforce Social Enterprise Tour arrives in London on May 22nd, and you can watch all the ground-breaking announcements live – on any device!

•  Hear the latest salesforce.com news from three live keynote sessions

•  See how O2, Burberry, Spotify, Activision, LinkedIn and other companies are becoming Social Enterprises

•  View the latest demos and breakthrough technologies

•  Watch live on any device and join a social stream with thousands of attendees

You can watch all the sessions live on Facebook, just like the page to see the stream.

· Almost half of companies fail to track social media

· Over half of companies have no way to respond to customers on social media

· B2B desperately lagging behind B2C in social media adoption with 75% not measuring social media

London – New worldwide research published today by Satmetrix®, the Net Promoter® software company, highlights that the majority of organisations of all sizes across B2C and B2B are blind to the opportunities and threats of social media.

Highlights of the Satmetrix worldwide social media study include:

• Businesses are blind to the threats and opportunities of social media
• o 39% have no social media tracking in place at all
• o 51% of B2B have no tracking compared to 22% of B2C companies surveyed
• 55% of companies ignore customers who provide feedback via social media – by having no process in place to respond
• o This increases to 69% for B2B companies compared to 42% for B2C
• 67% of companies do not measure or quantify social media – increasing to 75% for B2B companies
• o For those that do have some form of quantification, 56% just count the comments and followers
• o Only 4% have any form of sentiment analysis
• 60% of businesses do not have an integrated social media strategy (either do nothing, track or follow up only)
• North America leads the way with 43% of North American companies having a follow up process compared to about 25% in other regions

“Businesses recognise the need for a social media strategy, however many are challenged in putting an effective strategy in place,” said Richard Owen, chief executive officer, Satmetrix. “Whilst 77% of consumers post about products, 67% of businesses have no means of measuring what is being said and less than one in 20 have any insight into the sentiment of what is being said. This is both a huge threat and a massive lost opportunity. Not only are companies running the risk of losing customers by not addressing their issues shared online but they are also walking past the opportunity to capitalise on positive comments made on the social web.”

“SparkScore™, our breakthrough social media Net Promoter Score and subsequent software solutions will change the game,” continued Owens. “It enables companies to understand and act on the sentiment of content shared online. It will empower companies to harness the power of social media.”

Earlier this year, Satmetrix announced it will change the way businesses measure and use social media with the first-ever Net Promoter social media measurement solution, Satmetrix® SparkScore™. The solution applies the same NPS® methodology of recommendation behaviour, which identifies detractors, passives and promoters of a brand, to social media sentiment. With SparkScore, businesses will be able to measure the fluid and unstructured comments and opinions made about their brands online using Net Promoter, the widely-embraced customer loyalty metric and business practice that drives profitable growth.

In the upcoming weeks and months, Satmetrix will be releasing a series of SparkScore solutions. The first, free edition, is currently live in beta version and a limited number of invited customers have been given access. It is scheduled to launch at the Net Promoter Conference in London in June and will measure SparkScores of major brands across select industries. Using Metavana’s rigorous and reliable sentiment engine, SparkScore will analyse the fluid and unstructured comments made about brands across social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, and more), as well as reviews discussion sites and applicable private customer forums, and assign a SparkScore to each brand. Companies will be able to access their overall SparkScore and compare it to their industry’s benchmark and best and worst scores on a weekly basis.

Following this first release, Satmetrix will be embedding its SparkScore solutions into its Net Promoter in the Cloud software applications to enable companies to generate more powerful social media insights and drive action across their organisations to increase business results.

For media wishing to arrange an early look at the free SparkScore site before global launch in June, please contact Matt Manners. Details below.

The research was carried out in January 2012 with community members of http://www.netpromoter.com/. The results are based on 1180 responses from businesses around the globe.

About Satmetrix

Satmetrix is the leading provider of cloud-based customer experience software for companies worldwide. As co-developer of the industry-leading Net Promoter® methodology, its applications deliver full process support to help companies reduce customer churn, mobilise loyal promoters, generate more powerful insights and drive customer obsession through accountability. With experience on more than 700 deployments in 47 languages and serving clients in more than 50 countries, Satmetrix has the knowledge to accelerate the success of customer experience efforts using Net Promoter. Satmetrix is headquartered in San Mateo, Calif. with offices in London, New York, Paris and India.

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

RALEIGH, N.C. — SplendidCRM Software, Inc., a pioneering provider of Microsoft-centric Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions, has added software libraries to interact with social media sites, including LinkedIn(R), Twitter(R) and Facebook(R). With these new libraries, users are able to import LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers and Facebook friends into the CRM.

Social media is becoming increasingly important to businesses. With these new libraries, SplendidCRM customers get the direct ability to import data, but also have the source code libraries to take integration with social media to a new level.

Also new to SplendidCRM is the ability to import data using the Salesforce.com(R) web services API. This will make it much easier for users to move from a SaaS-only product to an On-premise product.

As part of a new push to attract customers of Salesforce.com, SplendidCRM has released Splendid Backup for Salesforce. This new open-source application allows any Salesforce.com customer to make a complete backup of their data to a local SQL Server database.

Videos that demonstrate the new features are available on the training page at http://www.splendidcrm.com 

About SplendidCRM Software, Inc.

Founded in 2005, SplendidCRM Software provides a Microsoft-centric open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application that enables users to leverage their existing Microsoft infrastructure. SplendidCRM was acknowledged as a leader by CRM magazine in the 2009, 2010 and 2011 CRM Market Awards. The company is located in the Research Triangle, North Carolina, and is privately held. To learn more about SplendidCRM, email sales@splendidcrm.com or visit http://www.splendidcrm.com

New NetSuite SuiteCommerce Combines Core Operational Commerce Platform with Externally Facing, Touchpoint-Agnostic Experience Management System

Delivers Unified Platform for B2B, B2C and Machine2Machine Commerce Models

Completely Flexible Front-End Technology Enables Support for Any Touchpoint, Embraced by Leading Commerce Design Firms

SAN FRANCISCO — NetSuite SuiteWorld 2012 — NetSuite Inc., the industry’s leading vendor of cloud-based business management software suites, today announced NetSuite "Commerce as a Service" (CaaS), enabling businesses to manage their interactions with other businesses and directly with consumers via a cloud platform that delivers the customer experience, via any current or future device, directly on the core NetSuite cloud ERP/CRM business management application.  At the heart of the CaaS initiative is NetSuite SuiteCommerce, a new commerce-aware platform that provides a central system to manage all transactions and associated customer interactions with consumers and other businesses regardless of touchpoint (website, smart phone, social media site, in-store, etc.). 

"Over the past decade, NetSuite has transformed how our customers operate their businesses internally. Over the next decade, NetSuite will transform how businesses operate with other businesses and with their customers through NetSuite Commerce as a Service. Our new NetSuite SuiteCommerce offering is at the heart of this transformation," said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. "By transforming the NetSuite business application into a commerce-aware platform, we enable our customers to extend the richest set of cloud operational capabilities available anywhere directly to their customers, regardless of the device those customers are using – be it a smart phone, a tablet, a personal computer, a point-of-sale system, or touchpoints not yet developed."

At the turn of the century, driven by widespread adoption of the Internet by businesses and consumers, commerce evolved from a process that was conducted on the phone or in a retail setting to the ability to sell online via websites. This drove the introduction of stand-alone "eCommerce" applications designed to support the emerging requirement to sell online.

Consumers quickly adopted eCommerce for its global accessibility, 24×7 availability and diversity of products. Because the industry evolved rapidly and companies were typically running their back end operations on legacy systems such as Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains, Sage or SAP systems locked behind firewalls with no Web capabilities, companies were forced to implement disconnected solutions for selling online, resulting in fragmented customer information built with a distribution channel focus – one set of applications dedicated to retail channel, a separate set of applications for eCommerce channels, and yet another  for telesales operations. Increasingly, companies recognize that implementations of first-generation eCommerce systems such as Demandware, and Magento have resulted in frustrated customers and ever-increasing integration costs as eCommerce becomes a core business competence.

In addition, the proliferation of new end-user preferred "touchpoints" such as smart phones and social media has increased customers’ expectations of a tailored, individualized experience. Consumers assume businesses have full visibility to their transactions across touchpoints and will use that knowledge to provide an optimized experience. Likewise, businesses expect their suppliers to have insight into their business relationships, and assume that they will deliver a B2B experience as compelling as a B2C website.  Finally, physical products increasingly include commerce-embedded capabilities, which enable machine-to-machine (M2M) commerce without the involvement of humans, based upon defined business rules for predictable needs. Enterprises of all sizes have been challenged to respond to this avalanche of requirements because of the speed of change and the daunting burden of integrating inter-related systems to efficiently transact business across these various interaction points.

Rather than take the bolt-on approach of first generation eCommerce systems that attempted to cobble together multiple systems to address emerging customers and business requirements, NetSuite SuiteCommerce enables companies to manage their interaction with customers regardless of channel directly from the most widely used cloud-native business management system. By doing so, NetSuite’s integrated ERP/CRM system is transformed into a commerce engine that is exposed to customers in a device-independent way – supporting traditional browser-based commerce as well as any emerging touchpoint such as smart phones, tablets and POS systems.  Because of both the presentation layer and business logic flexibility, the architecture supports any business model, be it B2C, B2B, M2M, or any combination thereof.

"Every company wants to deliver the commerce experience that Apple delivers to customers – an experience that recognizes the customer regardless of channel or device, and efficiently delivers goods and services in world-class fashion, projecting a powerful brand message. NetSuite SuiteCommerce is architected to enable companies of all sizes to deliver this type of rich, touchpoint-agnostic experience to their customers," added Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. "The secret sauce behind the Apple and NetSuite approach is an integrated back-end system that combines core business processing capabilities with rich customer profiles, to deliver the brand promise of a personalized experience, anytime from anywhere."

NetSuite SuiteCommerce is the result of several years of development. SuiteCommerce exposes native NetSuite commerce capabilities – including merchandising, pricing, promotions, payment processing, support management, and customer management – as services that can be leveraged by any presentation layer, while providing an integrated back-end business management system.

The NetSuite SuiteCommerce platform includes several new important technologies:

• SuiteCommerce Experience – The SuiteCommerce Experience is the page serving and development framework that enables companies to deliver rich user experiences, regardless of touchpoint. The SuiteCommerce Experience is so flexible that it enables designers to create any type of customer experience – from page layout to interaction design. Leading eCommerce design agencies including Fluid, Sweden Interactive, Live Area Labs and Pod1, among others, joined as initial customer experience partners supporting the SuiteCommerce Platform. In addition to supporting any experience design, SuiteCommerce Experience is extremely scalable and high performance. Whereas the industry standard is sub 2-second page load time, SuiteCommerce Experience offers sub-second page times by avoiding the redundant rendering and downloading associated with traditional presentation frameworks.
• SuiteCommerce Services –The SuiteCommerce Platform includes a new group of services called SuiteCommerce Services that expose NetSuite’s back-end commerce functionality and data as services to the SuiteCommerce Experience and any other commerce front-end application. These services, combined with associated SuiteCloud development tools, enable customers to develop new business logic and leverage that business logic across multiple touchpoints. For example, promotions can be implemented once and enabled across online, telephone and in-store transactions to augment the core transactional capabilities, and customize the system to their exact requirements. Leading B2C and B2B commerce providers such as Square, Stripe, SPS Commerce and Retail Anywhere have announced new product offerings to support omni-channel commerce on top of the SuiteCommerce Services platform.
• NetSuite Commerce Platform –The NetSuite Commerce Platform provides the core native business processing capabilities to run modern commerce operations.  Including order management, inventory management and payment processing with personalized promotions, merchandising, account management and support management technologies, NetSuite SuiteCommerce delivers the industry’s most robust cloud-based commerce management technologies. 

The power of providing an integrated experience and cross-channel business logic with SuiteCommerce is apparent in an infinite number of modern use cases:

• Retail:  When customers appear in a retail setting, not only will they be recognized, but store clerks will also be able to see on their point-of-sale system what is in their eCommerce shopping cart or wish list as they serve them. 
• Multi-Channel Business Logic:  Since SuiteCommerce offers a single back-end system for processing orders, managing inventory and generating offers, a business rule such as a maximum number of purchases on a sale item, can be implemented once and enforced across the website, in-store and via telesales.
• Rich Customer Profile driving promotions:  SuiteCommerce provides a single system for customer history, product/item details, and promotions management.  For example, a promotion could be created in seconds targeting customers who have purchased more than $1,000 across any channel and offer a limited time 30 percent off promotion on any item with a gross margin greater than 50 percent.

Product Configurations:

There are two versions of NetSuite SuiteCommerce, one designed to meet the needs of small and mid-sized enterprises and one designed for large and very large enterprises. 

NetSuite SuiteCommerce Mid-market is available immediately and includes the core functionality of SuiteCommerce Services, as well as access to a number of add-on modules including product feeds, ratings and reviews, and loyalty programs.  It is designed to support companies with smaller order volumes and product catalogs.

NetSuite SuiteCommerce Enterprise includes the entire SuiteCommerce offering (SuiteCommerce Experience and SuiteCommerce Services Platform).  It provides support for enterprise scale order volumes and product/item catalogs.

NOTE: NetSuite, the NetSuite logo and SuiteCommerce are registered service marks of NetSuite Inc.

Source: PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1bTkW)

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

Cloud-based Veeva CRM Now Deployed in Over 20 European Countries

With its 4th Annual Global Customer Summit kicking off this morning in Philadelphia, Veeva Systems announced dramatic growth of cloud-based Veeva CRM throughout the continent. Since Veeva’s official expansion into Europe in April 2010, the company has delivered the advantages of cloud computing to more than 35 life sciences companies across 20+ different European markets. When all current deployments are complete, there will be over 30,000 European pharmaceutical representatives using Veeva CRM to better manage their relationships with customers. To support its large user base, Veeva has opened major offices in Barcelona, Budapest and Paris and, along with a network of strategic partners, currently has more than 200 certified Veeva Administrators to implement and support the cloud-based CRM solution in Europe.

Veeva’s European customers include dozens of emerging biotechs and specialty companies as well as ten of the Top 20 global pharmaceutical companies. Key global customers include Astellas Pharma, Boehringer Ingelheim, Daiichi Sankyo, Eli Lilly, and Novartis; key specialty leaders include Actelion, Grünenthal, LEO Pharma, and Stallergenes; and small and medium-sized customers include Human Genome Sciences, Iroko Cardio, Mundipharma, and Pharco Pharma.

"Winning in today’s challenging European pharmaceutical environment requires a fundamentally different commercial approach. To support our new commercial model, we wanted a CRM solution that was truly pan-European, future-proof and agile enough to grow with our organisational needs. Veeva CRM was the only solution to meet all these business requirements," said Wim Kockelkoren, senior vice president EMEA Commercial Effectiveness and CEE Region, Astellas Pharma Europe.

Actelion’s Head of Global Commercial Excellence, Christoph Schmidt, PhD added, "Our search for a single, global CRM solution was driven by today’s increasingly challenging business environment. In order to compete, we need the tools that will enable us to gain a better understanding of our customer’s needs and be more responsive. Veeva offered industry-specific functionality for all different user groups – from key opinion leader managers to key account execs and field reps – around the world, all integrated within a single solution."

Product Enhancements for Region-to-Region Support

Veeva’s success in Europe and elsewhere around the world is due in part to an industry-specific product that is designed to easily meet regional and local needs. Most notably in Europe, Veeva has integrated unique order management and data connector tools into the product. Veeva CRM now includes online and offline order management capabilities such as pricing optimisation engines and other point-of-sale tools to enable European sales reps to place orders directly from pharmacists during the call even without an internet connection. Also, Veeva CRM’s pre-built HCP data connector tool accelerates customers’ ability to integrate with any of the top physician data providers. Thanks to multitenant cloud technology, Veeva CRM’s data connector makes it easy to add new or switch data sources using just straightforward point-and-click design.

Veeva iRep Bolsters Global iPad Growth

Available in 20+ languages, Veeva iRep is the first system to combine CRM with comprehensive Closed Loop Marketing (CLM) on the iPad. Veeva iRep has become the industry’s choice on the iPad with the largest installed base both in Europe and worldwide, according to recent numbers.

"We recognised iRep’s closed-loop marketing functions and the iPad device’s beautiful presentation of multi-media content would support more interactive customer engagements. With iRep, we expect that our account specialists will be more connected, responsive and effective," said Dr. Simon Clough, managing director for Daiichi Sankyo UK. "We’re all about innovation that leads to enhanced quality and value for our customers. We’ve adopted an aggressive agenda for advancing everything from our science to our interactions with stakeholders, and Veeva CRM supports it perfectly," he added.

According to Kevin Crowe, associate director of marketing and sales operations at Human Genome Sciences Europe, "There is no other solution like iRep for Pharma. Having our CRM and CLM capabilities integrated on the iPad is extremely powerful. It will remodel how our commercial teams operate by providing them with accurate, rich, timely customer information on the go, and on a display that appeals to physicians."

Veeva’s dramatic growth in Europe accompanies a record-breaking year for the company on a global scale – Veeva grew customers, deployed users, and employees each by over 100% in 2011. Eric Newmark, program director with IDC Health Insights, which recently published its "Vendor Assessment: 2011 Top 10 Life Science Software Vendors" report concludes, "Veeva is currently the fastest-growing vendor in the sales and marketing space."

About Veeva Systems

Veeva Systems is the leader in cloud-based business solutions for the global life sciences industry. Committed to innovation, product excellence and customer success, Veeva has over 150 customers, ranging from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to emerging biotechs. Founded in 2007, Veeva is a privately held company headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices in Philadelphia, Barcelona, Budapest, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo. For more information, visit http://www.veevasystems.com .

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.