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[May 24, 2006]

First Coffee for 24 May 2006: CRM Vendor NetSuite's "SAP For The Rest Of Us," Google Gmail Incorporated in Free CRM, VoIPers GlobeTel Spanked By NY Post, Bob Dylan Turns 65 Today

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is today’s birthday boy, Bob Dylan, nee Robert Zimmerman, born May 24, 1941 in Minnesota. That’s right, Bob Dylan’s 65 today, so we’ve combed through our extensive Dylan catalogue here at First Coffee headquarters, and have come up with what we consider the greatest achievement of Zimmy’s 40+-year career, the five-song run on 1966’s Blonde On Blonde starting with “Visions of Johanna” on Side One and ending with “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat” on Side Two.

Kids, go ask your parents what “Side One” and “Side Two” mean.

Runners-up were the entire Highway 61 Revisited album, Side Two of Bringing It All Back Home and “Tangled Up In Blue.”

Hard to imagine, I know, but Blonde On Blonde would be an even better album if “She’s Your Lover Now,” recorded during these Nashville sessions, the truncated version of which appears on the Bootleg Series, had worked as a take. That’s Dylan for you, though, his studio sweepings would be most any other singer-songwriter’s career highlights:

On-demand CRM vendor NetSuite, Inc. has announced what company officials are characterizing as “new advancements that bring mid-sized companies the benefits of a single business management suite without the cost, complexity, and rigidity of traditional software applications like SAP.”

Important to get that dig at SAP in there, evidently. The NetSuite promo is actually named “SAP For The Rest Of Us.”

NetSuite Version 11.0, a new release currently being rolled out, adds what NetSuite considers three “key features” that “now make back-office applications as easy to use as front-office applications.”

First is the new ERP functionality including Landed Cost, Project Accounting, Milestone Billing, Expense Amortization, Bin Management, Demand-based Inventory Replenishment, and CRM functionality such as activity management, integrated e-mail messaging, and task tracking.

Second is the NetSuite Customer Dashboard, “an industry first,” company officials claim, which provides a single graphical view of each individual customer including purchase history, collections status, yearly pipeline, and custom metrics

Third is the NetSuite KPI Scorecards, which are billed as bringing “corporate performance management to the mid-market” by allowing a company to measure its performance against customized key goals and time periods.

KPI Scorecards can also be used to measure individual performance within the organization based on the employee’s role.

Of course NetSuite can’t help pointing out that “contrary to its previous stance,” on April 20, 2006, SAP acknowledged that an on-demand approach is an important way to bring the power of a single suite to the mid-market and that on-demand software can be applicable beyond CRM in the lower mid-market.

However, SAP’s proposed product, SAP All-in-One, is in NetSuite’s estimation “far from the answer to this need. All-in-One, a derivative product from SAP’s incredibly complex and expensive enterprise R/3 product, was never designed to be delivered over the Internet.”

All the problems of the traditional R/3 code base – difficulty in upgrading to new versions, etc. – will, as NetSuite contends, be magnified to customers attempting to use it over the Internet, so why they want to tag their product as “SAP For The Rest Of Us” is beyond First Coffee.

There is no extra charge to existing customers for the core features of KPI Scorecards, Customer Dashboard and ERP usability enhancements. The new ERP features will be included with specific modules and vertical editions of NetSuite. NetSuite Version 11.0 is being delivered to customers using NetSuite's patent-pending "phased release" process, starting in April 2006 and continuing through June 2006.
…

Free CRM, a free, multi-user CRM software provider has announced Google Gmail support now directly integrated in the Free CRM product.

Google Gmail users can now send out mass e-mail campaigns, newsletters and template e-mail merges directly in the Free CRM system. Mail items in a Gmail account can now be copied to the user’s contacts in the CRM.

Businesses can now sign up for a free Gmail account at Google (http://www.Gmail.com) and a free CRM account at http://www.FreeCRM.com.

Google Gmail users can view their POP mail boxes using SSL encrypted security and also send out e-mails using secure TLS SMTP with FreeCRM.com. The combination of FreeCRM.com business services with Google's Gmail is being marketed as an “inexpensive vehicle for powering small businesses.”

Eric Stone, CEO of CRM ASP, Inc. says integrating Google Gmail with Free CRM product provides “integrated business services with a standard Gmail account and also provides FreeCRM.com users a… way to integrate e-mail with the CRM system."

FreeCRM.com positions itself as an “alternative to SalesForce.com and other CRM products with web based products or on-premises licensing options,” offering “an easy migration path from GoldMine, Act, SalesForce, Siebel On-Demand, and SugarCRM.”
…

Would-be Russian WiMax czars GlobeTel officials are steamed about a piece in the New York Post by financial writer Chris Byron calling on the American Stock Exchange to “halt trading in the shares of GlobeTel Communications Corp.”

Byron says GlobeTel officials have “pirouetted from one see-through ploy to the next to create the illusion of value in a worthless penny stock.” He recounts in convincing fashion what he characterizes as “two complete pump-and-dump cycles that have sent an astounding 1.1 billion shares of its stock churning through the market,” resulting in “bogus $350 million market value for the company, two-thirds of which has now evaporated, with $74 million of it detouring into the outstretched hands of the company's insiders.”

The two “ploys,” of course, were the blimps-over-Colombia for cell phone transmission and the $600 million WiMax in Russia schemes, neither of which resulted in anything but a lot of nice-sounding press releases and a slew of class action suits filed against the company on behalf of investors.

Byron says GlobeTel’s new “fan dance” consists of “plans to sell prepaid phone and debit cards to Brazilians looking for ways to move cash in and out of the U.S. unobtrusively.”

According to Byron, law enforcement might be finally taking an interest in GlobeTel’s machinations: “Much of the fishiest selling in GlobeTel stock seems to have originated from the Boca Raton office of the brokerage Raymond James, where several of the company's top insiders maintained accounts.

“In March, the broker handling those accounts was abruptly dismissed, after which the firm's compliance officials began ordering his clients to withdraw their money, close down their accounts and take their business elsewhere,” Byron writes.

GlobeTel CEO Tim Huff’s response to Byron is to quibble over Byron’s definition of a “blimp” and the hypothetical structure of Russian WiMax project GlobeTel never delivered. The company’s stock, trading just north of $5 last May, is as of the market’s opening today worth a buck and a quarter.

Stay tuned.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

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