CRM Daily

Is Google Dashboard Really Transparent or a PR Stunt?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:06:46 -0500

A new product that gives users a new level of insight into what the world's biggest search engine knows about them was launched Thursday. Google Dashboard lets users see reports on the data Google has collected on them.

In a blog post, Google said the Dashboard is an improvement on past efforts like the Privacy Center to give users access to retained information. Dashboard is "an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control ... (and) designed to be simple and useful," the posting said.

"The Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings," Google wrote. At launch, Dashboard included 20 Google products, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk and Reader.

Privacy Settings Hard to Find

While Dashboard offers a new level of user access to their data, it's also raising privacy concerns about how secure the service is. "If you want to make that stuff private -- or just find out if it's even possible to make it private -- you have to go deep into the settings of each Google app. If you don't already know where to go to change this setting, you may not get there," complained Robert X. Cringley on InfoWorld.

Google's programs contain scads of potentially damaging information about users. For instance, an article on the Dumb Little Man site details how a burglar could easily discover when a Google Calendar user is away from home just by looking at a public calendar and using a few easy research techniques. The author details his pursuit of one user like this:

"In literally 20 minutes, I now know the name, address, phone number, and schedule of this woman. If I can do it, you can be ... sure...

TioLive Unveils SaaS ERP/CRM Solution

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:25:09 -0500

Dover (USA), Paris (France) -- November, 4th 2009 - Nexedi, the company behind ERP5, the Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution in use for over seven years by large organisations such as a multi-national Central Bank spanning eight countries as well as Infoterra (EADS�Astrium group), Beteire Flow (Abertis group) and The Artois-Picardie Water Agency, is proud to present TioLive, a SaaS (Software as a Service) version of ERP5 available immediately through the Web.

TioLive: On-line Enterprise Management Software for Free. TioLive is marketed by TIOLIVE�LLC (Dover, USA), a fully owned subsidiary of Nexedi SA (France). TioLive has been designed to eliminate all the complexity of mission critical ERPs such as ERP5. With TioLive, a small organisation with little or no budget can access a mature ERP,�CRM�and CMS environment, custom-configured to its needs, in less than 10 minutes. Hosting service on�TioLive servers is provided for free without time restrictions. TioLive software is Open Source.�It has no license costs for extra users. "TioLive introduces unprecedented progress in enterprise management and economic competitivity. Job shops and startup companies can now benefit immediately from the same level advanced information infrastructure as the largest corporations, without even spending a cent". According to Jacques Honore, TioLive Community Manager, "As your company grows so does your data.�The TioLive Premium subscription provides extra storage space for your data and value added services such as mobile access. At $49�/ month for the whole company and for any number of users. This price is well below any competitor offer."

TioLive: a Global Business Application. TioLive provides all the tools for companies to run their daily business:

People and Contacts.

Psst! Private-Sale Shopping Sites Are Hot

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:02:23 -0500

During last year's bleak holiday shopping season, fashion designer Lauren Merkin greatly overestimated the number of handbags she'd sell in upscale retail stores such as Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale's.

She found a good way to sell them elsewhere without consigning them to a bargain-basement rack that might tarnish the brand in the eyes of would-be customers. All year, she's been selling the excess goods for half-price on the members-only Web site Gilt Groupe, during 36-hour sales that are hidden from the view of the general public. "What we're selling is first-rung, but if it sits around at a sale I think the consumer gets the wrong impressions about the product," Merkin says.

Saddled with overstock from the retail recession, makers of luxury apparel, home furnishings, and other high-end goods are selling their wares at reduced prices through Gilt Groupe and other private shopping sites. Many of these companies help fuel pent-up demand by limiting membership, forcing would-be clients to park on a waiting list or be referred by existing members.

Lure for Bargain-Hunting Fashionistas

Luxury brands can use these members-only sites to hide markdown prices from retail shoppers willing to pay the full amount, while attracting scores of wannabe fashionistas willing to wait for haute couture at a low price. "The brands they offer are of such high quality, and because they're at discount prices it makes them much more attainable," says Meghan Donovan, a 24-year-old San Francisco resident who shops on Gilt.com.

The private-sale model also makes sense for Gilt Groupe and other sites that act as middlemen, because they carry no inventory and earn a wide margin on sales. Combined revenue at Gilt Groupe, Rue La La, and Ideeli, three of the top four players in the U.S., is expected to exceed $300 million this year. That, along with sales at other private-sale...

Commerce Search Aims To Help Retailers Boost Sales

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:54:00 -0500

As part of its quest to organize the world's information, Google is upping its commitment to organizing everything you can buy. On Thursday, the search giant announced Google Commerce Search, a new hosted enterprise search product that will help customers find products at online retail stores and e-commerce sites.

Google noted that, while the last 15 years have seen advances in e-commerce, the search methods used for e-commerce have been a barrier to growth. "The average online retailer conversion rate is just three percent," the company said, "but could potentially be five to 10 times higher" by improving the shopping experience for consumers and the conversion rate for retailers.

Real-Time Marketing

Commerce Search uses proprietary ranking technology to analyze products and provide "the most relevant match" in what the company said would be subsecond response times to customer searches. The idea is that faster and more accurate searches increase conversions, since customers are less inclined to leave the site or use complex navigation.

In addition to speed and accuracy, the new search product offers aids, such as sorting, spell checker, and synonym suggestions. Results can be filtered by category, price, brand or other parameters. In addition, administrators can update marketing approaches in real time to create product promotions that follow search trends. Retailers can also customize web-site searches through an API.

The product can be implemented and scaled up very quickly, since it is cloud-based. Scaling can be an issue for retailers, particularly with the huge bump of the Christmas holiday season, where spikes in traffic are hard to predict. David Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, told news media that the company is "excited" to bring the product to market in time for the holidays.

As might be expected, Commerce Search also integrates with such Google tools as Google Analytics and Google Product Search, its consumer-facing...

Presence Technology and CGS Join Forces

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:38:00 -0500

Atlanta, GA & Edison, NJ -- Presence Technology, a global software provider of a modular all-in-one contact center solution suite, and CGS, LLC, a leading provider of high-technology and hosting solutions, have signed a collaboration agreement to extend the reach of their contact center applications.

"In today's economy, there is no room for wasteful capital expenditures and operating expenses," observes Joseph Teichman, CGS president and CEO. "Contact center organizations are agile, flexible, and extremely price conscious. They require rapid deployments and quick adaptation of their business tools, such as their contact center management applications. Often, return on investment [ROI] is measured by time to value [TTV], that is, how much time elapses between the placement of their solution order and when their agents actually begin taking and/or making calls."

"Contact center organizations today face a multitude of complex issues, but they also have many new opportunities," notes Presence founder and EVP of business development, Jose Luis Casta�os. "From technology changes [e.g., TDM vs. VoIP] to business changes [e.g., on-premises vs. SaaS], the contact center industry demands solutions designed to keep pace with continually evolving needs."

The recently inked agreement enables Presence and CGS to provide both hosted and on-premises "contact center in a box" solutions. This exciting technology partnership offers clients a full suite of contact center applications, as well as rapid deployment, cost savings, short TTV, and proven ROI. Whether an on-premises solution or a hosted solution is needed, the Presence-CGS collaboration delivers and supports full-life-cycle contact center applications solutions, enabling organizations to excel in their service delivery while maximizing their business potential in terms of creating value and revenue.

About Presence Technology

Presence Technology is a software company specializing in advanced productivity solutions for the contact center industry. Since 2000, its software solutions have been helping clients optimize their processes while increasing the...

Google Dashboard Lets Users Review Collected Data

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:00:17 -0500

On Thursday, Google launched a new feature that aims to silence privacy advocates who have criticized the search industry's data-collection and storage practices. If the initiative appeases the critics, other search engines could move to adopt similar strategies.

The initiative is called Google Dashboard. For Google users who have wondered what data is stored in conjunction with their Google accounts, Dashboard offers a new level of transparency. Google Dashboard lets users see what data the search engine is storing and offers some control over how it's used. Users can even delete some data.

Google software engineer Alma Whitten, Google product manager Yariv Adan, and Google Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer made the Dashboard announcement on the company's blog.

Moving Beyond Privacy

The trio pointed to Google's 11-year focus on building innovative products for users and how hundreds of millions of people are using those products around the world. Google, they wrote, is very aware of the trust that consumers have placed in the company and its responsibility to protect user privacy.

"In the past, we've taken numerous steps in this area, investing in educating our users with our Privacy Center, making it easier to move data in and out of Google with our Data Liberation Front, and allowing you to control the ads you see with interest-based advertising," they wrote. "Transparency, choice and control have become a key part of Google's philosophy and today, we're happy to announce that we're doing even more."

Google Dashboard is the "even more." It offers more transparency and more control. Google said the Dashboard is designed to be simple and useful. It summarizes data for each product that consumers use when they are signed in to their account and provides direct links to control personal settings.

Setting an Industry Standard

Google is the first Internet company...

New York Charges Intel with Anticompetitive Actions

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:57:39 -0500

Intel's antitrust troubles haven't ended with the European Union's record-breaking $1.45 billion fine. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed suit Wednesday against the company, alleging bribery, coercion and other anticompetitive activities.

"Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market," Cuomo said. "Intel's actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors but also hurt average consumers, who were robbed of better products and lower prices. These illegal tactics must stop and competition must be restored to this vital marketplace."

The suit says Intel essentially bribed major personal-computer manufacturers by offering huge rebate checks if they agreed to buy chips only from Intel rather than archrival Advanced Micro Devices. But Intel offered not just a carrot to stifle competition but also a stick, according to Cuomo, who said, "Intel also threatened to and did in fact punish computer makers that they perceived to be working too closely with Intel's competitors."

'We Never Threatened Anyone'

Intel threatened to cut off those PC makers from payments, fund the manufacturer's competitors, and cut off joint-development projects, he said.

Intel spokesperson Chuck Molloy vehemently denied Cuomo's allegations. "We never threatened anyone," he told National Public Radio.

The so-called "rebates" to PC makers actually had no legitimate business purpose, Cuomo said, and to make matters worse, Intel attempted to cover its tracks by "eliminating crucial but flagrantly objectionable provisions from written agreements or by camouflaging language about illegal guaranteed market shares with terms like 'volume targets.'"

Dell, HP, IBM Pressured

AMD, which has filed its own suit against Intel, high-fived the lawsuit, crowing, "The New York attorney general's 83-page complaint, filed on behalf of New York State consumers and governmental entities, details explicit evidence of Intel's harm to U.S. consumers and computer manufacturers," according to Tom McCoy, AMD's executive vice president of legal, corporate and public...

Augmented Reality Helps Sell the Product

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:12:33 -0500

Wise Foods wanted to make its Cheez Doodle brand appealing to a broader market. The snack food is typically purchased by parents for kids, but Wise Foods set about capturing a younger demographic. "We wanted to stretch that market to the tween and teen audience," says Kevin Foltz, the brand manager. So the company embarked on a new marketing campaign that included an animated alternative rock band called the Cheez Dudes. What really set the campaign apart is a contest, using a cutting-edge technology that merges virtual reality with real-world images, that challenges consumers to build their own music video with the Cheez Dudes.

The technology is known as augmented reality, and it's taking hold across the marketing world as consumer brands as varied as Kia Motors, Nestle, and Frito-Lay look for newfangled ways to push snack foods, cereal, and automobiles to a younger demographic. The hope for marketers is that augmented reality will engage an audience more deeply than other forms of social media, such as viral videos, fan pages on Facebook, or Twitter followings. The total market for augmented reality is expected to hit $350 million in 2014, up from about $6 million in 2008, according to ABI Research. Of the total five years from now, almost $170 million will come from mobile augmented reality advertising.

How exactly does augmented reality marketing work? Many campaigns require consumers to use computers and Webcams. For Wise, digital marketing firm Zemoga created a contest called Rock the Cheez! that requires consumers to print and cut out small square patterns from the Web site and then place them in front of the computer's Webcam. When viewed on screen, each square becomes an animated character set in whatever real-world background or stage the consumer chooses to create. The contestant who can create the most...

Storytelling Tips from Salesforce's Marc Benioff

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:13:22 -0500

Software-as-a-service pioneer and salesforce.com co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff credits storytelling as one of the primary reasons for his company's rapid success. "Communication is probably the most essential part of my job," Benioff told me in an recent interview about his new book, Behind the Cloud. The book describes how salesforce went from idea to $1 billion company in less than a decade. Whether you own a small business, run a large company, or have a great idea for The Next Big Thing, consider these seven tips from Benioff about how to shape and articulate your vision.

Commit to transparent communication. Customer relationships take work, and a big part of that work is dedicating yourself to constant communication with customers and prospects, says Benioff. "We invited them to come in and see what we were working on. We asked them to test it, and we made changes based on what they said. Having this kind of inclusive communication -- sharing and listening -- from the beginning set the tone for our entire company." According to Benioff, salesforce used this feedback to make fast changes -- "intelligent reaction."

Make friends with reporters and bloggers. Despite a very busy schedule, Benioff responded to my interview request immediately and met my deadline. "I never treat members of the media as adversaries; they are friends of the company," says Benioff. His relationships with reporters and bloggers have been a "pivotal part" of his marketing strategy. "Journalists immediately think of me as a resource for a quote or comment because they know that I will be available to offer fresh insight and meet their deadlines." Benioff says that social media has also turned customers into content creators. "The future of communicating with customers rests in engaging with them through every possible channel: phone, e-mail, chat, Web,...

Urgency Shapes Race in Web Search

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:14:55 -0500

There's a new race in the Internet search business and, like most races, it's about speed.

Start-ups including LeapFish, Factery and Aardvark hope to lap the field by supplementing conventional search results, such as what you'd find on Google, with instant access to social networks including Twitter.

"This is going to become mainstream very fast," says Sean Suchter, general manager of the search technology center at Microsoft. "Everybody in the world is going to expect that they can find out anything, anywhere, instantly."

Last month, Google and Microsoft's Bing signed deals that give them access to Twitter's public postings, called tweets.

Yahoo is working with start-up OneRiot and others to display real-time search results.

To keep users from being overwhelmed, companies sort results by their relevance to what you're searching for, timeliness and, in some cases, the expertise of the source, says Nick Halstead, CEO of Tweetmeme, the No. 2 real-time search site after Twitter.

Real-time searches are mostly for Web users who want to know "what's being tweeted, what people are talking about," says Danny Sullivan, editor of the blog Search Engine Land.

That can be important for people tracking unfolding news events. But that audience may be small.

"Most people don't have this burning need for immediate, precise results unless it's the Iran elections or Michael Jackson's death," says Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Marketing Intelligence.

The new companies say that they offer more than speed. LeapFish, which launches this week, says it's the first site that lets consumers both contribute and search for information in audio and video as well as text.

Factery will launch a site in mid-November that enables users to pose questions to people in social networks who may give immediate answers.

"Old-fashioned search engines just don't work in this real-time (Web) world," says co-founder and President Paul Pedersen.

"People are looking for recommendations from those...