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Technology Stocks : FirstWave Technologies (FSTW) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (7935)	2/13/2003 6:28:10 PM
From: TEDennis	Respond to of 9677

Hey, where've you been, Bitter Bob? Haven't seen any posts from you for a while. You didn't take that job at FSTW, did you? That could explain why you don't have the time to post. Oh, wait. Don't tell me. I know. You're probably sitting there wondering why FSTW hasn't put out a PR for that completed UK Football Association project that RTB mentioned in the CC. Or, was the completed project the one with EDS for the government call center application? Seems like that announcement would be a great place to also announce their new "Disruptive Technology" .NET product. As I predicted a few months ago after researching the company's history of new product PRs, I suspect that "industry shaking" PR will happen in February or March. So, never fear. The time is near. TED

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (7935)	2/13/2003 6:47:06 PM
From: TEDennis	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9677

Microsoft officially kicks off midmarket CRM tool By Ryan B. Patrick, ITWorldCanada.com FEBRUARY 13, 2003 Depending on who you ask, Microsoft Corp.'s dive into the customer relationship management (CRM) market will cause either a splash or a ripple. Geared specifically toward the small and midsize business market -- organizations with fewer than 500 workers -- the company's Business Solutions unit officially kicked off its CRM product last Thursday at an event in downtown Toronto. Dubbed Microsoft Business Solutions Customer Relationship Management, the application is built on Microsoft's .Net infrastructure. At the launch, Microsoft Canada Co. President Frank Clegg focused on selling the offering as a business process rather than a technology. CRM has become vital in recent years, but enterprises have had difficulties actually defining CRM and implementing a successful strategy, Clegg said. The first-generation offering -- built from the ground up and the first business product since acquiring enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors Great Plains in 2001 and Navision last year -- targets sales force automation, including forecasting, lead and contact management. It's not about feeds and speeds, Clegg said, adding that the CRM market has been littered with failed CRM implementations and product complexity. Available now, the offering requires Windows 2000, SQL Server, Internet Explorer 5.5 and Active Directory. Pricing starts at $595 per user, with an additional $1,945 for the Standard Edition and $2,990 for the Professional Suite Edition. The company said Microsoft CRM doesn't need a client-side installation and is accessible both as a browser-based application and via Microsoft Outlook, adding that the solution can either be hosted through certified resellers or offered as an on-premise tool. Laura Pollard, president of the Toronto-based Customer Relationship Management Association of Canada, echoed Clegg's statement, trotting out data from her organization's joint study with Microsoft showing failed CRM implementations in Canada was in the neighborhood of 60%. Pollard said this is due to lack of enterprise-level planning and the failure to shift to customer-facing business processes. Warren Spitz, CEO of specialty lumber products distributor UCS Forest Group in Toronto, is an early user of Microsoft CRM. Initially a Great Plains ERP customer, the company needed an integrated CRM tool for inventory database and interactions with both vendors and customers. "CRM is a logical extension of the database that we have as a tool to manage that information and make it readily accessible," Spitz said. In terms of measuring return on investment, he noted that the company has had prior failed implementations. "This is our third attempt at CRM," Spitz said, adding the issues at hand were integration, scalability, usability and compatibility with existing infrastructure and data. "We've tackled the puzzle by layering the [Microsoft] CRM on top of our Great Plains system, which means that all of the information is seamless and accessible -- now the issue is simply using it," Spitz said. According to Gartner Inc., Microsoft is entering a stagnant CRM software market. Recent figures from the Stamford, Conn.-based research company show that worldwide CRM sales dipped from $3.7 billion to $3 billion in 2002 and will remain flat in 2003. Time will tell if Microsoft manages to make any impact into a flagging CRM market, said Jacob Abramowicz, senior research analyst at Toronto-based E-Search Canada. It's a pretty simple solution that's coming into a pretty weak market, he said, adding, "It might spark interest, but then again, it's a matter of looking but not buying. I hope they don't have their expectations too high in the short term -- it's just not something that's going to immediately make a splash." In Microsoft's favor is that it is targeting the Canadian midmarket, which has typically had no clear vendor leader -- it's a good idea for it to go into this market first, Abramowicz said. High-end CRM vendors including SAP AG, Oracle Corp., Siebel Systems Inc. and PeopleSoft Inc. won't feel any pressure from Microsoft's strategy, at least in the short term. "They're going for a market where 90% are already running Windows and already integrated with Outlook and Excel," he said. computerworld.com