CBM News: Workforce Optimization Industry "Doing Great," Demands Bailout

Good morning world, welcome to this week's broadcast of Radio CBM 98.6, all ABBA all the time, and for the top news story of the week we turn, of course to politics, and the event that's been on everybody's mind for the past week -- the attack on former French President Jacques Chirac by his pet poodle, named Sumo. As Dave Barry was fond of saying, I swear I am not making this up, it's just a gift from heaven for any news rounder-upper.

The dog, reported by the Agence France Presse as being "depressed," is a Maltese, a particularly small variety of poodle. "He has been agitated for some time despite receiving treatment with anti-depressants," AFP reported. As a friend of this reporter remarked, couldn't Chirac at least have found a German Shepherd to surrender to?

San Jose-based Xactly Corporation has announced the acquisition of Lowell, Massachsetts-based Centive, in a move that the Xactlians say will create "the software industry's largest provider of 100-percent on-demand sales performance management" products.

The acquisition was characterized as a stock-based transaction, with Xactly getting all Centive's assets, all the employees, and the combined companies will operate under the name Xactly. Company officials say they'll continue supporting Centive's products for 18 months, after which time they'll cancel Centive's credit card and expect him to find his own apartment.

DMG Consulting has published the catchily-titled "2008-2009 Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market Report," a publication just a swimsuit issue away from mainstream success. This year's edition finds that, contrary to the rest of the economy, the workforce optimization market "is not begging spare change in the gutter" or "drinking aftershave products with ex-Lehman guys."

In the first half of 2008 total revenue for the Quality Management/Liability Recording (WFO) market was $1.3 billion, an 18.3 percent increase over the first half of 2007. The contact center segment of the market exceeded $507 million in the first half of 2008, up 13.4 percent over the same period in 2007. DMG thinks the Quality Management/Liability Recording market will exceed $2.5 billion for the year once all year-end reporting is completed.

WFO companies celebrated their 2007 success by hurrying to Washington and demanding a bailout.

Forrester has published a report, titled "The Economic Necessity of Customer Service," finding that during this economic downturn, customer service executives should "regroup" and "reprioritize." Strategies recommended to assist with this are proactive chat, customer-agent co-browsing, online customer communities, multichannel knowledge management, getting used to Maxwell House coffee instead of triple hazelnut lattes at Starbucks, "firing everybody, including people who don't actually work for your company" and spreading rumors that your competitors' products are actually made out of peanut butter.

In sports the Australian Open continues, with the men's side of the draw progressing quietly and obediently towards discovering if it's Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer's turn to win, and the women's side is a bunch of Serbs, Russians and Slovaks with unpronounceable names and the personality of plywood beating up on each other.

In related news, the USTA has commissioned an in-depth study to determine "why the hell nobody watches tennis anymore," reaching the preliminary conclusion that what's needed to arrest the sport's declining popularity is to "rename the top three ranked players 'John McEnroe,' 'Andre Agassi' and 'Michael Jordan.'"

DMG Consulting has published the catchily-titled "2008-2009 Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market Report," a publication just a swimsuit issue away from mainstream success.

This year's edition finds that, contrary to the rest of the economy, the workforce optimization market is "not begging spare change" or "drinking aftershave products with the ex-Lehman guys."

In the first half of 2008 total revenue for the Quality Management/Liability Recording (WFO) market was $1.3 billion, an 18.3 percent increase over the first half of 2007. The contact center segment of the market exceeded $507 million in the first half of 2008, up 13.4 percent over the same period in 2007.

DMG thinks the Quality Management/Liability Recording market will exceed $2.5 billion for the year once all year-end reporting is completed. WFO companies celebrated their 2007 success by hurrying to Washington and demanding a bailout.

Saying "we basically want to remove price as an obstacle for people to try CRM," Jim Sheehan, COO of PowerObjects, has announced that the company is offering hosted Microsoft CRM for $29.95 a month. Company officials say this offer "will only be available through the end of February 2009 and the introductory pricing will last for six months," at which time it will change to $79.95 per month per user.

Officials of the Minneapolis-based vendor say it's "the start of what internally we are calling our hosted CRM stimulus package." This is a reference to President Barack Obama's plan to "stimulate" the U.S. economy by increasing the size and cost of government.

And finally, industry observer Chris Kanaracus is reporting that Starbucks is using Salesforce.com's Force.com Sites technology for the plumbing of the flavored steamed milk vendor's "I'm In" campaign. As Kanaracus explains it, "people who pledge to volunteer five hours on a community-service project get a free coffee through the marketing drive, which runs through Sunday." Salesforce.com's Force.com Ideas tool is already used by Starbucks to run its My Starbucks Idea site.

Salesforce.com is still developing Force.com Sites and will release it some time this year, in what 451 Group analyst China Martens told Kanaracus is an effort to "wean some users away from their reliance on Microsoft's SharePoint as their sales portal provider, along with other portal players," such as IBM's WebSphere."

Starbucks is hoping to get 1 million people signed up for the program, and has about half that so far. The program seeks to reward those who do helpful things for their communities. Starting a business that provides jobs and income for members of the community evidently does not qualify as a community service worthy of a cuppa joe for the entrepreneur.

That's the show for today, we're off to apply for the greatest job in the world.