Latest CRM Software Industry News

IRVINE, Calif., March 28, 2007 — Epicor Software Corporation (NASDAQ: EPIC), a leading provider of enterprise business software solutions for the midmarket and divisions of the Global 1000, today announced that its global manufacturing solution, Epicor Vantage®, has received Managing Automation magazine’s ‘MA Validation’ certification.  Designed for progressive, mid to large sized make-to-order (MTO) and mixed-mode manufacturers, Vantage delivers greater business agility and increased return on investment (ROI) through a flexible service-oriented architecture (SOA).

“Managing Automation’s independent vendor validation reports are designed to give manufacturing technology decision makers access to the most complete and reliable information from vendors,” said Managing Automation publisher Heather Mikisch.  “Today’s manufacturing companies are transforming their business through the progressive use of technology, and we will continue to invest in innovative new services that help our readers accelerate their decision-making process.”

The ‘MA Validation’ certification is only awarded to vendors that successfully complete a thorough independent review of the product information they provide to prospective software customers visiting the magazine’s Web site.  Managing Automation’s Validation Reports are written by an independent consultant to confirm that feature information provided by the vendor about its product in the magazine’s database is accurate. 

Managing Automation’s validation process begins with a detailed review of the software supplier’s latest update to the Managing Automation database of functional capabilities.  Then an independent consultant visits personally with members of the vendor’s corporate staff – not the sales team – to discuss their detailed responses.  During this visit hundreds of functions are selected for further review, demonstration and discussion.  Any discrepancies are addressed and resolved during the briefing, and changes are made to the database responses as required to receive the final ‘MA Validation’.

“We are very pleased to receive the ‘MA Validation’ certification from Managing Automation magazine,” said John Hiraoka, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Epicor.  “Certifying that Epicor Vantage has met or exceeded the stringent validation criteria of an independent consultant helps assure prospective customers that the information they are receiving about this industry-leading solution is accurate— whether from leading industry analysts, existing customers or from Epicor.   This independent validation confirms that we’re a vendor they can rely on and trust.”

The Epicor Vantage Validation Report consists of a solution overview, functional overview including a summary of key capabilities by application and industry, technology overview, enhancement releases, company overview, and validation methodology.  To access the complete Epicor report, please visit the Managing Automation Web site at the following link: http://www.managingautomation.com/maonline/directory/validation/15073281.
 

IRVINE, Calif., March 19, 2007 — START-IT magazine and Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine have named George Klaus, chairman and chief executive officer of Epicor Software Corporation (NASDAQ: EPIC), to their 2007 prestigious rankings of industry innovators.  As head executive of Epicor, a leading provider of enterprise business software solutions for the midmarket and divisions of the Global 1000, Klaus’ accomplishments have earned him a spot on START-IT’s CEO Visionaries and Supply & Demand Chain Executive’s “Pros to Know” listings.

Part of an elite group of ten CEO Visionaries, Klaus was selected by a panel of editors from nominations submitted by customers for “having a vision for the future” and “finding great success in the SMB market.” 

John Buell, editor-in-chief of START-IT, writes in his coverage of the CEO Visionaries, “Each of the [CEO’s] honored… have a vision for the future and a desire to improve their company’s bottomline. START-IT would like to congratulate them all for setting such high standards for themselves and their companies.”  Buell continued, “Each brings with them a passion for their respective industries and one common goal in mind: to give of themselves 100% to serve their customers and lead their employees by example.”

For the Supply & Demand Chain Executive Pros to Know listing, a selection committee comprised of Editorial and Advisory Board members culled through scores of nominations to find the applicants that best fit the criteria, such as how the nominee has personally helped raise the profile of Supply Chain and increased the recognition of the importance of Supply Chain as a strategic function within the enterprise; and their opinion of technology’s role is in enabling Supply Chain to achieve a more strategic role within the enterprise.

“This year’s Provider Pros to Know have shown themselves to be thought-leaders in their respective supply chain segments,” said Andrew K. Reese, editor of Supply & Demand Chain Executive. “Their efforts in developing the tools and processes necessary for supply chain transformation, and in promoting new approaches to supply chain enablement, are helping raise Supply Chain’s status within the enterprise, earning them a place on this year’s Provider Pros listing.”

 “Today’s global manufacturers and distributors demand solutions that enable them to run efficient operations chains and meet businesses challenges head-on,” said Klaus. “Epicor is meeting these requirements by delivering next-generation technologies that help today’s companies optimize their operations. Every Epicor employee has contributed to our success and it is an honor to be recognized by START-IT and Supply & Demand Chain Executive for our accomplishments in this area.”
 

IRVINE, Calif., March 13, 2007 — Epicor Software Corporation (NASDAQ: EPIC), a leading provider of enterprise business software solutions for the midmarket and divisions of the Global 1000, today announced new functionality for IT Service Management (ITSM) that provides a complete IT service desk footprint – from critical issue tracking and resolution features to support for compliance initiatives.

Epicor ITSM 2007, a complete service desk management system that enables IT issues to be addressed quickly and efficiently by providing essential tools for IT teams, also includes new features for rapid creation and application of Service Agreements and bi-directional integration with Microsoft Office.

Compliance in IT Service Practices

Epicor ITSM 2007 supports the demand for global enterprises to remain transparent in their operations through the application of secure and strict rules for change management that depend on the state of a record and role of the user.  For example, when a support call is closed Epicor ITSM restricts the call from being edited unless it is reopened.  Standard roles – for observer, change approval board member, creator, assigned user, owner and supervisor – are applied to users with each role having individual authorization rules for acting on a request for change (RFC).  Epicor ITSM also documents activity using secure audit trails, enabling managers and decision makers to see when and where information was modified and by whom.

Driving Efficiency in the IT Center

Epicor ITSM includes new Service Agreement and Call Templates giving IT service teams the ability to define default values for common incidents, requests for change (RFC), and service requests making the registration process more efficient. Inclusion of multiple Holiday and Working Time Calendars in Epicor ITSM 2007 enables companies with advanced service level management and global needs to successfully configure service level agreements (SLA).

Additionally, Epicor ITSM has a bi-directional integration with Microsoft Office Outlook® providing tools to make the IT service professional’s job easier: creating and attaching documents, performing mail merges with Word, publishing to Excel, synchronizing contacts and converting emails to ITSM call records, and more.

Supporting the Global Enterprise

Epicor ITSM is used successfully by midmarket and large enterprise companies around the globe with implementations ranging from fewer than 500 up to 10,000-plus supported employees.

Skanska USA Building is part of the Skanska AB group of companies which combines global presence with local expertise to offer a broad range of services – from pre-construction services, construction management, general contracting and design-build services. Skanska serves a broad range of U.S. industries including life sciences, healthcare, education, aviation, sports and entertainment. Skanska uses Epicor ITSM to manage IT services for its 4,100 employees throughout the United States and Puerto Rico.

“We chose Epicor ITSM as our solution for a number of reasons. First, it provides us with key functions for IT Service Management. Secondly, enhanced features of ITSM give us the flexibility to work within each customer’s business processes. For example, we now have the ability to easily set and monitor specific service levels promised to our customers,” said Jason Geiger, director of IT for Skanska USA Building. “As a company with global roots, transparency in all areas of the business is essential – including IT Service Management. The enhanced change management functionality in the new version of Epicor ITSM provides controls for carefully tracking IT service records ensuring compliance.”

Recently, Epicor itself completed implementation of Epicor ITSM internally to support its 2,200 employees worldwide. With 78 total users in 10 different countries, logged calls are routed to three different service desks and are then automatically passed to the correct queues for disposition within the Americas, Asia Pacific and EMEA.  “Epicor ITSM provides an intuitive, globally capable solution that enables Epicor to provide its internal customers with excellent support,” said Rick Parrish, vice president of Information Systems for Epicor.

Leading Technologies Support Industry Best Practices

Epicor ITSM 2007 is built from the ground up using the Microsoft .NET Framework, enabling a rich user experience and optimal flexibility.  Epicor ITSM earned ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) certification in Service Level Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management and Configuration Management from Pink Elephant, acknowledged worldwide as the ITIL experts.

ISO 20000 Central is the international standard for IT Service Management set by the International Standards Organization and designed to provide a range of information to support the standard. The compliance functionality in the latest release of Epicor ITSM will help companies obtain ISO 20000 Central certification.

Since first releasing its Web services-based help desk solution in 2005, Epicor has seen an increase of more than 100% in adoption by a combination of new customers and from within Epicor’s installed base of more than 20,000 customers.

“The market for ITSM continues to be a buoyant one.  Epicor has already seen significant success, and this release – delivering robust support for industry best practices and compliance standards – helps ensure our competitive advantage,” said James Norwood, vice president of product marketing for Epicor.  “Because Epicor ITSM includes end-to-end service management capabilities including cost management and business intelligence, Epicor is able to differentiate itself from other IT service management vendors.”

Epicor ITSM 2007 is available immediately worldwide. Future enhancements planned for Epicor ITSM include a purchasing module, support for mobile users and integration to Microsoft Project Portfolio Server (PPS). 

IRVINE, Calif., March 8, 2007 —The Technology Council of Southern California has named George Klaus, chairman and chief executive officer of Epicor Software Corporation (NASDAQ: EPIC), “CEO of the Year” in its 2007 Technology Industry Awards hosted Wednesday evening in Los Angeles.  Epicor is a leading provider of enterprise business software solutions for the midmarket and divisions of the Global 1000.

“With another year of record revenues and strong profitability, George Klaus continues to guide Epicor in the right direction and has been recognized by our panel of judges with the ‘CEO of the Year’ award for all of his accomplishments,” said Jon Kraft, Technology Council chairman of the board.  “Outstanding leadership from CEO’s like George helps ensure that Southern California attracts high quality employees to maintain its reputation as a region where technology companies flourish.”

The “CEO of the Year” award is presented to the CEO of a technology company headquartered in Southern California that has been in operation at least five years, and receives the highest aggregate ratings in sales growth, job growth in Southern California, profitability, product innovation, industry trade organizations, legislative activities pertinent to the technology industry, and community and industry involvement.  This is the second “CEO of the Year” honor for Klaus, as he also received this honor in 2004.  In addition, Epicor won the Technology Council award for “Company of the Year” in 2005 and 2006.

With over 30 years of experience in the high technology industry, Klaus has served as CEO of Epicor since February 1996.  In September 1996, Klaus took on the added role of chairman of the board.  Under his leadership Epicor has grown to serve more than 20,000 customers in over 140 countries and more than 30 languages.  Klaus continues to guide Epicor to strong financial execution as illustrated by the Company’s most recently reported quarter with record quarterly revenues that exceeded $100 million for the first time in the Company’s history.  Klaus, a veteran Marine, remains active in the community, and currently serves on the University of California, Irvine – Information and Computer Science CEO Advisory Board.

“It is an honor to be recognized as ‘CEO of the Year’ by the Technology Council from among the many highly qualified CEO’s and distinguished technology companies in Southern California,” said George Klaus.  “Epicor’s successes in 2006 were highlighted by our first $100 million revenue quarter, which was achieved through the hard work of every one of our more than 2,200 employees as illustrated by record sales in every key area of revenue contribution. Our consistent financial execution, coupled with our long average employee tenure, is testament to Epicor’s commitment to delivering innovative technologies that help our customers remain competitive.”

The Technology Industry Awards, now in its thirteenth year, recognize industry leaders and companies that have made extraordinary contributions to the growth of Southern California as a center for technological innovation.  The 2007 awards were presented during a gala dinner ceremony at the historic Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles March 7, 2007.

Bozeman, MONT. (February 22, 2007) — RightNow(R) Technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) today announced that a number of clients – including Activision, Toshiba, Pearson Technology Center, 170 Systems and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system – are already taking advantage of RightNow 8, its new enterprise-class, on demand solution for service, sales and marketing. Built to meet the needs of the most demanding global organizations, RightNow 8 is designed to be easy to use, quick to deploy and simple to customize and manage.

In related news, the company also launched the RightNow Customer Community. This online community provides tools and resources that help RightNow clients deliver exceptional customer experiences. More important, the community provides an environment for customers to network, collaborate and share best practices through forum discussions on product- and industry-specific topics, as well as other subjects.

“The RightNow Customer Community is an excellent resource,” said Ken Melrose, global security manager, eServices and Network Services, Proxim Wireless. “The discussion forums have been extremely helpful. By connecting with other RightNow clients, many of whom are addressing similar business issues, we’ve learned a great deal and have been able to adapt other clients’ best practices to use in our business.”

Bozeman, MONT. (February 14, 2007) — RightNow(R) Technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) today announced that publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is using the company’s next-generation customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to build long-term customer relationships, while cost-efficiently supporting highly diversified and continually expanding product and service lines.

“With RightNow, we can deliver an exceptional customer experience across all communication channels,” said Lou Peragallo, Wiley’s vice president of operations. “That’s extremely important for both protecting our brand and succeeding in multiple competitive markets.”

In today’s business environment, delivering superior customer experiences can be the single most powerful way for companies to drive sustainable differentiation. With RightNow, Wiley is able to provide customers with exceptional service, while lowering costs.

Wiley uses RightNow across its product lines, which includes CliffsNotes, Frommer’s travel guides and the For Dummies reference guides, to manage and streamline phone, email, chat and web self-service interactions with its customers. In fact, 86 percent of all customer questions are handled by Wiley’s RightNow-powered web self-service system and first-tier support. RightNow helps Wiley maintain a consistent customer experience across all of these channels, along with a complete view of all customer interactions.

RightNow’s solutions also helped Wiley launch a new version of highly popular electronic courseware design-and-delivery solution. Within 24 months, the company’s customer base grew twenty-fold yet because of the efficiencies RightNow provides, Wiley was able to maintain outstanding levels of support without making major staff additions. Profitability increased and the company was able continue aggressive marketing efforts without worrying about post-sales support issues.

“One of the great benefits of RightNow is that we can deliver prompt, consistent support across all communication channels—even when our budget is not quite what we’d like it to be,” says Peragallo.

Bozeman, MONT. (February 14, 2007) — RightNow(R) Technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) today made two key personnel announcements designed to help extend the company’s leadership role in the next-generation, software as a service (SaaS) CRM market.

As RightNow continues to build market momentum, the company has appointed Laef Olson as chief information officer. Most recently, group vice president of global technology operations at Orbitz, Olson managed the global hosting operations for Orbitz. Olson also has experience as the chief technology officer at Cars.com and vice president at Chase Bank.

With more than 25 percent of revenue coming from outside of North America, RightNow has also made key moves to accelerate growth and better support international clients. The company promoted Joe Brown to general manager of Europe, Middle East and Africa. Brown previously served as RightNow’s vice president of voice solutions. During this time, he was responsible for successfully driving RightNow’s entry into the Voice-enabled CRM sector following the 2005 acquisition of Convergent Voice, Inc. Brown also held CEO positions at Séance Software and Edify Corporation.

“We are committed to helping our clients deliver exceptional customer experiences while lowering costs,” said Greg Gianforte, founder and CEO of RightNow. “As we expand our global presence and product portfolio, we’re adding senior management expertise that will be instrumental in helping us continue to grow our business. We are pleased to have Joe and Laef on the leadership team.”

Leading Provider of Customer Loyalty Programs for the Hospitality Industry Delivers Top-Tier Service with RightNow Solutions
Bozeman, MONT. (February 6, 2007) — RightNow(R) Technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) today announced that Hospitality Marketing Concepts (HMC), a leading provider of customer loyalty programs for the hospitality industry, is using RightNow solutions in 50 countries and 10 languages. HMC uses RightNow to provide its clients, which include the world’s leading hotel brands, with extremely responsive service that meets the highest standards of professionalism and courtesy.

“RightNow provides an exceptionally powerful and flexible system for delivering a superior customer experience,” said Mokhtar Ramadan, CEO at HMC. “Our implementation of RightNow will help us achieve even higher program renewal rates and improve our ability to help our hospitality clients strengthen their customer relationships.”

In addition to providing customer service to hundreds of thousands of paid membership loyalty program members, HMC’s decision to implement RightNow was made in part by its introduction of Voilà Hotel Rewards, a new points-based guest loyalty program. HMC needed to bolster its technology environment to handle increased activity. RightNow’s on demand delivery model enabled HMC to link all of its employees around the world through a single system without making costly investments in IT infrastructure. With RightNow, HMC is managing customer experiences across all geographies and all communication channels: voice, email and web. HMC is also integrating RightNow with its internally developed customer relationship management (CRM) application, to give its service representatives worldwide full visibility into all the customer data they need to quickly and effectively answer questions and resolve issues.

Bozeman, MONT. (February 5, 2007) — RightNow(R) technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) today announced that Greg Gianforte, Chairman and CEO, will keynote the Credit Suisse Disruptive Technology Conference on Thursday, February 8, 2007, at 8:00 a.m. PT in San Francisco, CA.

Mr. Gianforte’s keynote, “The Year of the Consumer,” will describe the growing power of consumers and how delivering exceptional customer experience can be the single most powerful way for companies to set themselves apart from competitors.

A webcast of the presentation will be available on RightNow’s investor relations website at http://www.shareholder.com/rnow/medialist.cfm.

First SaaS provider to offer integrated voice applications with enterprise customer service, marketing and sales solutions
Bozeman, MONT. (February 5, 2007) — RightNow(R) Technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) today announced three new voice solutions: Web Click-To-Call Back, Voice Caller Information Delivery and Voice Outbound Survey. These voice-driven applications help organizations deliver superior customer experiences – while significantly reducing operating costs – by quickly providing customers with a wide range of content and self-service options.

With RightNow’s Web Click-To-Call Back solution, customers visiting a company’s web site can request that a representative contact them by phone, provide a call back number, request specific times for calls, submit questions and describe problems. Customers are automatically informed of when to expect a call, which is most often immediately. The solution forwards customer information to the appropriate contact center agent, who can then prepare to address customers’ needs before phoning them. Giving customers the option to request a call back enables organizations to deliver a level of personalized service not typically available through a web site.

With RightNow’s Voice Caller Information Delivery solution, customers using voice-automated self-service can opt to speak with a contact center agent, who is immediately provided with all of the information the customer has previously shared, eliminating the need for customers to repeat themselves. According to the recent Customer Experience Impact Report¹, 35 percent of those surveyed expressed frustration at having to repeat information they have already provided. RightNow’s Voice Caller Information Delivery eliminates this source of aggravation and helps companies deliver exceptional customer experiences by providing immediate assistance and ensuring that agents have all relevant customer information.

RightNow’s Voice Outbound Survey Solution enables companies to create questionnaires and automatically call customers to solicit feedback about recent interactions, such as service visits or support calls. The solution can be customized to support any type of survey. It can also trigger actions, such as a callback if a customer wants to make a purchase or needs help resolving a problem. By quickly responding to customers, companies can optimize selling opportunities and minimize customer dissatisfaction.

“Customers today expect their interactions with a company to be fast, convenient and easy,” said Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow. “To meet consumer’s high expectations, companies need to engage with their customers when and where the customers want. The telephone is a critical channel that helps companies connect with customers. By delivering voice applications that enhance the total customer experience—and that fit seamlessly into the enterprise CRM environment—RightNow is setting a new standard for the voice market.”

These new applications are available under RightNow’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model, which allows companies to implement them quickly, without having to make extensive investments in computing or telephony infrastructure.