NetSuite has announced NetSuite OneWorld SRP, their "end-to-end cloud business
management" offering.

Company officials tout the product's "integrated financials, resource optimization and services management... down to the individual project level across geographies, currencies, and tax jurisdictions."

Company officials also pointed out that "neither Oracle nor Salesforce.com have this. Neither of them. Ha ha ha. Losers. LOSERS!"
...

There you go, always good to get some local news -- Deskforce, a Software as a Service provider, has signed an agreement with New Zealand-based ActionStep to deliver ActionStep’s CRM-based hosted product to the service provider’s install base.

The deal also expects ActionStep to "target new market sectors via its established network of Managed Service Providers."

There you are, account manager, about to walk into a room with a major customer, wanna know if they've sent any feedback you should know about?

No problem -- whip out your iPhone, click this nifty little app from Walker Information and there you go -- get all the latest feedback from a company or individual, and see who's responded to the survey and who hasn't.

If the first ten Google hits are anything to go by this is the only app on the market designed specifically for this. If they're not, well, much of the world doesn't know what it thinks it knows, wouldn't you agree?

Indianapolis-based consulting firm Walker Information says the app was created to complement Walker Link, an online tool linking account managers to feedback provided by customers. Basically you can cut to the chase on your iPhone now.

Honestly, this reporter automatically deletes the words "leading," "first" and "only" from any company news. We also kill useless wordoids like "enable," "solution" and "utilize." I'm sorry, friends, "utilize" means nothing "use" doesn't mean just as well. If you're writing "utilize" you're pretentiously polysyllabificating due to deep-seated lexicographical inferiority complexes and you need professional help.

Relationships -- it's CRM's middle name. Yep, it's all about the relationships. And now you can compare the size of yours with your friends.

Taking Kevin Bacon one better, a Salt Lake City-based company named 7 Degrees is offering PeopleMaps, an app which they claim will show people "how they are connected" to any person or company. It comes in free and "Professional" editions.

As industry observer Stephen Arnold correctly notes, this is nothing new -- "Companies like i2, Megaputer, and other vendors offer these types of systems," except for the fact that People Maps integrates with Salesforce.com.

CRM vendor StayinFront says that telecom firm Euphony Communications has deployed StayinFront CRM 11 across their European offices.

Euphony established a beachhead in Benelux to support their core business reselling land line telephony, Internet access, mobile, and energy services such as gas and electricity. France surrendered upon hearing the news.

Nigel Huxtable, vice president, Sales EMEA of StayinFront, said he liked the StayinFront product's twin attack of CRM and analytics in one system "without the monetary investment and time requirements of configuration."
...

The Good News: Customer Experience Management vendor Tealeaf has commissioned a survey finding that 48 percent of online adults in America say they're conducting more online transactions than they did in the past "given the current economic climate."

Kana Software says the social CRM capabilities in their service experience management platform, Kana 10, have been "enhanced."

To punch up the "collective intelligence capabilities" of the product, what agents use when navigating, cross-selling and up-selling, the product integrates Baynote's Collective Intelligence Platform to swoop down with predictive analytics for on-site customers.

Great. So how's that "social" CRM enhancement, exactly? Oh yeah -- the Kanians say it'll also enhance search results ranking "based on common search patterns and build communities of customers with similar interests and orientations." Social CRM is based on the idea that it's possible to employ the "wisdom of crowds" to improve service delivery. As people who've been to hockey games know (bada-bing!).

Social CRM is cool, lots of good uses for that, lot of success being reported, but "customer communities?" We had no idea what the heck those are, so we Googled and found, unsurprisingly, that Amazon did -- a place where you can "share your experiences and enthusiasm for your favorite topics with millions of other Amazon.com customers."

Commence Corporation has released a cloud computing edition of its CRM software, scheduled release date, January 2010, for deployment for the Amazon Web Service's Elastic Compute Cloud environment.

Amazon EC2 is a Web service giving users "resizable computing capacity for the cloud," letting people dial capacity up or down in a few minutes.

Commence officials say with their new tool, "customers will not need a data center, additional office space, or a technology team." Common sense, however, as well as a genuine need for the service is recommended, as vendors cannot supply either.
...

In politics the Mobile, Alabama County Democrats named Reynolds Smith, Jr. to their Executive Committee despite the fact that Smith died last November. State Democrat officials said he would be removed from the registered voter rolls "when he comes down to the office and fills out the appropriate forms."
...

You may have heard scuttlebutt or rumors about Google Wave. If you're lucky enough to have had an invitation as part of the extended invite-only roll-out of the past couple weeks, our congratulations.

Ours is, um, still in the mail.

If you are using Wave, let CRM Tool Academy know how you think it'd be useful for CRM. As far as this reporter can see, it might be a good platform for companies who keep yammering on about their "conversation" with the customer to actually have one.

Google Wave is best described as an online conversation participants can enter and leave at will. It's like a living bulletin board post -- instead of writing an e-mail to organize a boat trip, say, and copying and BCCing and replying, a message is posted on Wave and participants added simply by dragging and dropping icons.

In fact, the operative metaphor for Google Wave is "hosted conversation."

Picture it as a live e-mail message everybody's writing to each other at the same time, as well as posting pictures and video via drag and drop. Private messages to participants can be sent as well. Long Wave presentation video from Google here:

Rocket Technology Labs is now accepting requests to Beta test their Rocketvox unified communications platform, which the Rocketmen say is "one place to view and manage all of your communications streams with channels for any POP or IMAP e-mail, VoIP, voicemail, visual voicemail, voicemail-to-text, Twitter, and Facebook accounts."

All your e-mail accounts in one place, all voicemails, everything -- and you don't even need a new phone number. In other words, your one-stop shop for all your social media. What a boon for ADD-afflicted Web surfers out there. Think how grateful your mouse will be with so much less wear and tear.

Here's how they put it on their blog: "It runs on your computer (and soon on your smartphone) by aggregating all your modes of communication into a single, integrated inbox where you can manage all your e-mail accounts, voicemail, VoIP, text messaging, social networking, status updates, contacts, schedules, calendars, chat, fax, conference calls, and screen sharing."

I'd say that pretty well covers it, yes.

Rocketvox Beta’s user interface is being released as an Adobe AIR application that runs on Mac OS, Windows, or Linux. They've partnered with VoIP and voicemail providers Ribbit and PhoneTag to transcribe your voice mails.

This reporter has officially arrived on social media: Here before you is the first fully Facebooked interview of my career.

I met David Mangen, principal of Mangen Research Associates, on Facebook through a mutual friend, probably Paul Greenberg. We friended each other, got to know each other, and I found out he has an interesting take on customer-focused companies. I sent him a note suggesting a brief interview for CustomerThink.

He agreed, I messaged the questions for him and he sent back the answers. So there really wasn't any need to ask about the effectiveness of social media, was there?

DS: David, we've heard businesses talk about becoming "customer-focused" for years. How can you tell which ones are walking it and which are just talking -- what are the ones who are serious about it doing that the others aren't?

DM: These days I assume that the company is not customer focused until such time as they can provide some demonstrable evidence that they are.

Social CRM vendor Helpstream has announced a new social marketing module with "integrated marketing automation and social monitoring functionality."

Companies will now be able to "integrate conversations occurring in public communities such as Twitter and Facebook with their existing customer communities and create actionable insights for market intelligence," such as exactly what "pwned" means.

Helpstream officials say their philosophy is that "customer service is the on-ramp to community," part of the Social CRM Virtuous Cycle and all sorts of other nifty metaphors.
...

In politics Somali pirates fired on a French navy vessel early Wednesday, according to French military sources.

No one was wounded by the volleys from the Kalashnikov rifles directed at La Somme, a 3,800-ton refueling ship, which immediately surrendered.
...