“With stringent government regulations and the need to protect brand loyalty, effective and efficient product recall management has become a critical issue for manufacturers and distributors.” quoted Frank J. Vukmanic, Senior Vice President and General Manager, V-Soft. “Immediate communication with the consignee/customer and the ability to accurately report recall progress can help control the cost of a recall. Loss of reputation and customer loyalty can sometimes be much higher than the cost of product recalls. VPRMS is a solution that addresses these concerns.” he added.

Based upon a rapid deployment SaaS software model, VPRMS can help customers easily manage and track product recall activities. Easy to use import capabilities are included to provide effortless import of consignee/customer, contact, and product data into VPRMS. Data captured in VPRMS can be exported to ERP or other systems. Reports on recall activities, inventory returned, replacement inventory requirements, and estimated accounts receivable credits are just some of the standard reports available in VPRMS.

Key features and benefits of V-Soft’s Product Recall Management Software (VPRMS) are:

1. Rapid deployment of the application
2. Secure recall data management
3. Increased operational and financial visibility
4. Comprehensive activity recall reporting
5. User-friendly application

For more information please visit them at http://www.v-softinc.com/crm/product_recall_management_software.html

About V-Soft, Inc.

V-Soft, Inc. is a US based global product engineering and IT solutions provider enabling clients transform ideas into business results. V-Soft’s range of services spans product development through product life cycle management, product recall management to customer relationship management. V-Soft is a certified reseller and implementation partner of Oracle’s CRM On Demand and Oracle Agile PLM.

Additional information about V-Soft Inc. can be found at www.v-softinc.com.

For further inquiries please contact:
Reshma Nigam, Vice President Marketing
408-342-1700
info@v-softinc.com

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

It’s the typical start to a day at a life sciences company. The sales representative grabs a coffee, sits down at his desk, checks his voicemail, and logs in to the system. Only this morning, the system is different and offers new functionality. Users have a new window into the status of a drug’s formulary position, a new account wizard has been added to PDAs and tablets, and rolling 4-week time frame displays are now available. These enhancements and more were pushed out to Veeva CRM users without any disruption to their workday. They never had to be retrained how to use a new version of software. And, the customer never had to pay one extra penny for the new features.

“We’ve experienced six Veeva upgrades, and they’ve always gone smoothly,” said Rick Keefer, president and CEO of Publicis Strategic Solutions Group. “We also like the ability to turn the new functionality on or off as needed. Veeva CRM is web-based SaaS, state-of-the-art technology, and a significant improvement from what we had been using for our field sales teams.”

Every 90 days, Veeva Systems (developers of the first and now leading SaaS CRM system for the life sciences industry) upgrades its CRM application for the benefit of every customer – large and small – and all of their users regardless of whether there are five or 5,000. Upgrades are based on verbal and analytical feedback from customers as well as ongoing research and innovation from Veeva’s development team. The enhancements are automatically and transparently pushed out to users via the web, and customers are given the option to turn the new functionality on or off based on their needs. All mobile users also benefit from the same upgrades simultaneously.

Veeva CRM’s multi-tenant SaaS architecture enables the company to provide its customers with quarterly upgrades at no extra charge and with no system interruption.

In its latest upgrade, Veeva made the following enhancements:

• Pull-Through Campaigns – combines payer and formulary data to enable true pull-through campaigns and improved physician messaging. It bridges the gap between physicians and their top payers, providing reps with an easy to understand representation of the top payers and the corresponding formulary details for each product for each target physician;
• Prescriber Level Restricted Products – enables compliance officers, looking to ensure compliant product detailing and sampling, to specify restricted products by prescriber to prevent marketing and distribution of products for “off-label” uses;
• Analytics Enhancements to VInsights^™ – provides the addition of rolling 4-week time frames, reach-and-frequency analysis, and efforts vs. results reporting;
• Mobile Enhancements to VMobile^™ – adds a new account wizard, a new visual tool to see scheduled calls on a Google^™ map, 1-time sample drop support from the PDA, and other general enhancements.

“The ability to seamlessly upgrade all our products is critical to the essence of what makes multi-tenant SaaS applications so powerful,” said Matt Wallach, executive vice president and general manager of Veeva Systems. “New regulatory changes are incorporated as necessary. Improvements are made to the system based on real user feedback. And, what we learn from one customer is applied for the benefit of all our customers, regardless of their size.”

About Veeva CRM

The Veeva CRM suite of applications, comprised of VBioPharma™, VMobile™, and VInsights™, is the life sciences industry’s top multi-tenant SaaS-based CRM solution. As the foundation, VBioPharma offers multiple editions in one CRM product to accommodate the unique needs of various life sciences commercial teams. It is also the only Pharma CRM application to come pre-validated for PDMA and CFR Part 11 compliance. The complete Veeva CRM suite gives customers the mobility and reporting solutions needed to drive user adoption and sales effectiveness.

About Veeva Systems

Veeva Systems is the leader in multi-tenant SaaS-based solutions for the global life sciences industry. Veeva has dozens of customers ranging from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies with thousands of users to emerging biotechs commercializing their first products. Veeva customers achieve the fastest time to value through the deployment of fully functional applications that are flexible, simple to deploy, inexpensive to operate, and provide a superior user experience. Veeva is a privately-held company headquartered in Pleasanton, CA. For more information, visit www.veevasystems.com.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

Therefore, a CRM system, whether it’s your Rolodex and notepad, on-premise software, or a true web based SaaS, it’s all about the relation between you and buying customer or support.

For the sales or support team, it’s all about your strategy intermeshing culture, processes, and metrics.

When I say “processes”, I also mean”rules”.

Thus, I define CRM as Culture, Rules, and Metrics.

That’s my “C. R. M.”.

“C” can also stand for “Communication”.

The CRM Time Machine

I’ve always felt the 4 big milestones in human communication were:

1. Speech – words are better than hitting someone back with a blunt object
2. Written text  – whether it’s paint on walls or on paper
3. The Printing Press – the power of duplication
4. The Digital Age – the power of electronic transmission

These 4 are the basic “killer apps” that transformed us from cavemen (and cavewomen) to where we are today.

We are all going crazy over the Social CRM hype as everyone is trying to redefine “Communication”.  You can throw in unified communications while you are at it to really confuse you.  Or sell you something!

Processes or Rules are just logical steps required in the workflow.  A good analogy is like dating.  After exchanging cards (or meeting on-line), when do you call back?  Too soon means you’re desperate.  Too long, and it means you don’t care.  When do you follow-up?  When do you meet face to face?  Lunch?  First kiss?  You get the idea.

And then there are Metrics.  Everyone loves stats.  It’s one way of proving how effective your process (or rules) are in place.

So basically, Social CRM is just another outlet that has been done the past 100 years, another flavour-du-jour, until the customer takes a call to action.

In other words, it’s just another way of "Communicating”.

Should “Social CRM” be number 5 on my list?

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

She discusses how Pivotal’s CRM is helping an “on-your-lot customer home builder” bridge the gap between disparate software packages and provide streamlined processes that increase the company’s competitive advantage.

2 key things for the take home message.

1) Analyze ALL of your business practices.  What are you competitive at?  What can you do faster and better with technology?  People and qualified skills are another matter.

2) (from an on-line perspective) Marketing is a science.  If you are using a pay per click (PPC) campaign, you can analyze to your hearts content what keyword or keyword combination went the full distance on a sales funnel.

Analyze ALL of your Business Practices

Remember it is humans that can properly strategize the processes of a successful sales and marketing group.  And at the end of the day it will be humans (hopefully highly qualified sales and marketing people) that will execute the marching orders. 

Computers and software only help automate the processes.

If I was a software vendor, my biggest fear would be the competition trying to out price you.  Everyone is looking for value, and believe me, a lower price tag can perk my ears.

Especially when I’m unhappy over a few issues.

It’s like the restaurant business.  Owners hate it when you leave unhappy and quietly.  They know you’ll end up telling two friends, or worse, set up a web site, or blast it on Twitter and Facebook!

Take a good hard look what you’re good at, and where you can improve.  Then take a look at technology to see if it can be automated.  Rinse, and repeat.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

REDMOND, Wash.–Avidian Technologies today announced the launch of Prophet OnDemand Premium Edition, the newest addition to its leading Microsoft Outlook-based customer relationship management software product line. Prophet OnDemand Premium Edition is designed to give individual users the power of a robust cloud-based CRM solution.

“Avidian continues to listen and respond to customer demands for easy-to-use, more powerful and more extensible CRM software,” said James Wong, CEO and co-founder of Avidian Technologies. “The new Prophet OnDemand Premium Edition brings the power of Prophet OnDemand Enterprise to individual sales people and smaller companies at an affordable price. We just made the easiest CRM for Outlook even easier.”

Prophet OnDemand is the Software as a Service (SaaS) version of the award winning, Outlook-based Prophet CRM software and gives sales teams working within Outlook an easy-to-use sales CRM solution without having to purchase or maintain server software. Prophet OnDemand Premium Edition extends these benefits to individual users for just $9.95 per month with no contract or long-term commitments.

“We needed a CRM solution that was simple to implement, gave us quick and easy-to-use access to our sales pipeline and that would be available remotely,” said Daniel Scherer, CEO of Secure Health, Inc. “Prophet OnDemand helps us meet all of these objectives and stay on top of our sales prospects in the fast-paced healthcare industry. It has been a positive experience with the deployment, technical support and best of all, having a cost-effective CRM solution that works without all the drama and crashes.”

Prophet OnDemand Premium Edition includes the following capabilities:

• All the features of the on-premise Prophet Premium Edition, including workflow automation, sales assistant, group e-mail wizard, sales opportunity tracking and reporting, all inside of Outlook.
• Security of a hosted database which is automatically backed up daily.
• Quick and easy installation.
• Flexibility to access Prophet CRM data from a work or home computer.
• Free upgrades to new versions of Prophet as released.
• Easily upgradable to Prophet OnDemand Enterprise.

Unlike traditional big iron CRM or sales management software, Prophet is built into Outlook, eliminating the need to manage multiple contact databases or toggle between separate applications. Built on the .NET 2.0 platform and web services, Prophet OnDemand Premium Edition works entirely inside Outlook and easily integrates with other critical business capabilities. As a result, Prophet turns Outlook data into the building blocks of an effective sales management solution.

About Avidian Technologies

Avidian Technologies is a software company specializing in creating both cloud-based and on-premise software solutions for users of Outlook and Exchange. Prophet, developed by Avidian Technologies on the .NET platform, is the leading contact management and CRM software built inside Microsoft Outlook. The company is headquartered in Redmond, Washington. For more information, please visit http://www.avidian.com.

Contacts

Avidian Technologies
James Wong, 206-686-3001
jamesw@avidian.com
or
Connect Public Relations
Aaron Searle, 801-373-7888
aarons@connectpr.com

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

Google will soon allow search engines to crawl and index Google Apps Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations that are published on Google Apps.

Yes, YOUR Google Apps.

This only applies to files explicitly published using the "publish as web page" or "publish/embed" options and linked to a public webpage.

This does not apply to files shared via the "Allow anyone with the link to view (no sign-in required)" option.`

If you don’t want your publicly-published documents crawled by the Google spiders, you can de-publish them

According to Google,

"We will be launching a change for published docs. The change will allow published docs that are linked to from a public website to be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in search results you see on Google.com and other search engines."

Currently, the Google Apps master view does not indicate which documents (Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations) are publicly published

I have a lot of data in Spreadsheets that dynamically change onto a public web page.

I better start cleaning up my files and checking file permissions.

Just what I need on a Monday morning…

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

OpenID and OAuth are two important mechanisms that made some news last week.

These two should not be confused.

OpenID focuses on using a single identity to sign into multiple sites, whereas OAuth priority is giving access to your data without sharing your identity.

OAuth has been implemented on popular websites such as Plaxo, Digg, Flickr, and Twitter. 

Yahoo! Supports OAuth and OpenID

Both OpenID and OAuth were implemented by Google last January with their Hybrid Protocol.

Now Yahoo! has embraced the OAuth and OpenID technology (a little too late in my opinion).

The benefits are simple: it reduces the total number of browser redirects and website roundtrips, plus it’s one less password for the end-user.  Ask yourself how many user IDs, passwords and PINs you have memorized, only to be forced to change them every 90 days or so.

Now with Google and Yahoo!, you can log into Plaxo seamlessly but where is support for LinkedIn and Facebook?

Zoho Extends OpenID Support to Google Apps

Gmail and Yahoo users are able to log into Zoho, and now they have extended the services to include Google Apps.

When you try to login to Zoho, you’ll notice a new ‘Google Apps’ option in the sign-in box on all Zoho Apps. If you are a Google Apps user, you can choose this option to sign-in to Zoho.

Once you provide your Google Apps domain name, you’ll be redirected to Google to sign-in using your Google Apps credentials.

When you authorize accounts.zoho.com, you’ll be logged in to Zoho directly.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

In this short video, you will see how to prepare for your sales call is quick and insightful with Oracles CRM On Demand. The CRM On Demand architecture was built with one click in mind – one click to derive insight immediately and align your sales team with trusted information.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

In this video, Marc Benioff shares salesforce.com’s market momentum and corporate strategy to start the day at the Service Cloud 2 launch.

The Service Cloud has been helping more than 8,000 companies deliver stellar customer service. Helping them run more efficient contact centers, connect with customers online, and even join the conversation in social communities. And today, their agents got a lot smarter. Now, they have a new way of joining the conversation online. And their customers have a new way to solve their service issues in the cloud, in real time.

The next chapter in the customer service revolution kicks off with three exciting new products from salesforce.com: Salesforce Knowledge, Salesforce Answers, and Salesforce for Twitter.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

SAN FRANCISCO —  Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced Contact Manager Edition (http://www.salesforce.com/contactmanager), a new edition from salesforce.com that provides the essential tools needed to manage business contacts and customers in the cloud. Contact Manager Edition introduces salesforce.com to an entirely new audience, very small businesses and individuals, ensuring that everyone can enjoy the benefits of cloud computing for only $9 per user, per month.

Contact Manager Edition – Manage Customer Interactions in the Cloud

Contact Manager Edition enables any company to jump-start their business by tapping into the power of the cloud and provides users with a wealth of features including:

• Contacts and Accounts – With Contact Manager Edition, users can store and manage all contacts and accounts in the cloud. Now users can access this vital information regardless of location – all you need is an Internet connection.
• Outlook and Email Integration – Now, anyone using Contact Manager Edition can easily track email communications from Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo or any email system, keeping a complete record of customer interactions for better sales execution and improved customer satisfaction.
• Reporting – Run pre-configured and customized reports on your contacts, accounts and associated activities to gain powerful insights.
• Customization – Contact Manager Edition is a solution that can be tailored to fit a user’s unique needs. Users can customize Contact Manager Edition to track the data that is most important to them.
• Google Apps – Companies using Contact Manager Edition benefit from an out of the box integration with Google Apps, combining essential applications for productivity (email, calendaring, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, instant messaging, video) and CRM. This combination introduces an entirely new way for users to communicate, collaborate, and work together in real time over the Web.

Salesforce.com and Cloud Computing – The Right Choice for Every User

Background and benefits of cloud computing:

• Ten years ago, salesforce.com introduced cloud computing, a new technology delivery model that allows users to access applications over the Internet without having to install and manage hardware or software.
• With salesforce.com and cloud computing, customers pay as they go and are up and running in less time than it takes with traditional software applications.
• Three times a year, salesforce.com customers receive an automatic upgrade that delivers new features and functionality. These upgrades do not break any customizations or integrations and are completely seamless and invisible to the end user.
• Time and again, customers choose the low cost, low risk, and fast results of salesforce.com and cloud computing over expensive hardware, software, and data centers that burn through precious capital and yet rarely produce the promised returns.

Background and benefits of the Force.com platform and infrastructure:

• Contact Manager Edition is built on Force.com, a complete platform that provides users with everything they need to develop any application, on any device and deliver it to any user.
• Force.com is a trusted platform because it is enterprise-tested and serving more than 63,200 successful customers around the world.
• Additionally, customers using Contact Manager Edition gain all the benefits of the proven security, reliability and scalability of salesforce.com’s world-class global infrastructure.

Quotes

• "Salesforce.com has always been committed to democratizing software and making cloud computing accessible to businesses of all sizes," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "Contact Manager Edition opens up a whole new world for very small businesses and individuals, empowering them to experience success with cloud computing."
• "Contact Manager Edition enables entrepreneurial businesses to harness the power of cloud computing without the cost and complexity of managing hardware or software infrastructure," said Denis Pombriant, Beagle Research.
• "At Trazzler we are using Contact Manager Edition to manage thousands of business contacts, each segmented by category, company size, and geographic region. Contact Manager Edition has enabled me to experience the benefits of cloud computing first hand," said Adam Rugel, CEO and founder of Trazzler.

Pricing and Availability

• Contact Manager Edition (http://www.salesforce.com/contactmanager) is available today in a 1 to 2 user edition for $9, per user, per month.
• For more information, visit http://www.salesforce.com/contactmanager

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company. The company’s portfolio of Salesforce CRM applications, available at http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways that companies collaborate and communicate with their customers across sales, marketing and service. The company’s Force.com platform (http://www.salesforce.com/platform/) helps customers, partners and developers to quickly build powerful business applications to run every part of the enterprise in the cloud. Based on salesforce.com’s real-time, multitenant architecture, Salesforce CRM and Force.com offer the fastest path to customer success with cloud computing.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.