Posts Tagged ‘Datasquirt’

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Datasquirt Strikes Deal with Leading US Call Centre Provider

May 2, 2011

Datasquirt (ASX:DSQ) has just signed a white label supply deal with a leading US Call Centre Provider for its Cloud-based multi-channel messaging console “CONTACT”. This is an exciting development for Datasquirt, opening the opportunity to gain significant traction in the expansive US market and beyond.

The following press release has gone out this morning.

Leading US call centre provider chooses CONTACT – April 2011

Posted in Cloud, Communication, Datasquirt, Multi-tenant, Social Media | Leave a Comment »
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The Social Media Revolution for Corporate Contact Centers

September 18, 2010

Opportunities and demands on today’s Corporate Contact Centers have evolved extensively since the early days of the “Call Center”. Whereas the primary communication channel has always been the voice call, today we have the addition of SMS Text, Email, Faxes, Web Chat and now Social Media.

Social Media (such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) opens up new possibilities for corporates to interact with their customers and analyse what people are saying and thinking about them and their products.

With the addition of Social Media capability to Datasquirt‘s CONTACT messaging platform; Corporate Contact Centers now have a solution that enables them to leverage Social Media channels alongside SMS, Fax, Email and WebChat. This is ideal for enabling conversations with customers to span multiple channels without compromising the ability to holistically report and audit across the whole spectrum of channels.

Click here for a preview of “CONTACT Social”, Datasquirt’s new Social Media capability for its CONTACT messaging platform.

Posted in Communication, Datasquirt, Social Media | Leave a Comment »
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Social Media Marketing Mistakes

June 21, 2010

I’ve just been reading a very interesting article by Mike Proulx of Bloomberg Businessweek, called Top Five Social Media Marketing Mistakes.

In the article, Mike is saying that businesses large and small should;

  • Monitor Social Media in order to know what is being said about them.
  • Ensure that the right people are responding when needed. The wrong responses can be very damaging and costly.
  • Respond Quickly – delays send bad signals to the market.
  • Never fake anything in Social Media – you will be found out!
  • Never Stop – Social Media is an ongoing activity and marketing investment.

The larger the business and the bigger its public profile, the more critical it is that it manages its Social Media presence expertly and diligently.

Datasquirt’s product “CONTACT” is ideal for corporations wanting to manage all of their Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc) and other direct messaging (SMS, Web Chat, Email etc) from a single web-based multi-user console. CONTACT addresses all of the challenges normally faced by corporates wanting to manage their social media presence, from monitoring & reporting, through to team management, standard messages, audit trails, cross-media conversations and general compatibility with modern Contact Center operational requirements.

Datasquirt have been in the Corporate short-messaging business for nearly a decade and supply CONTACT solutions to leading businesses and government departments throughout the world.

www.datasquirt.com

Posted in Cloud, Communication, Datasquirt, Social Media | Leave a Comment »
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Corporate Contact Centers extend to Social Media with Datasquirt

June 18, 2010

This week I sat in on a pre-release demonstration of Datasquirt’s Social Media offering for its flagship product “CONTACT”. It was being presented to a large British corporate customer who is already very active in the Social Media and non-voice Messaging space.

Social Media is a “hot potato” for large corporate businesses and government departments because they typically require a team of people to operate their Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc accounts and therefore have specific requirements for coordinating, distributing, recording and reporting these messages and conversations.

What excited this British customer (and me for that matter) was how Datasquirt’s CONTACT solution would allow the corporate contact center to mix Social Media channels in with other channels such as SMS text, web chat, fax and email. All of these channels mix together in a single management & reporting console and allow conversations to span over multiple channel types if needed (for example a conversation could start out on Twitter and then shift to email or SMS).

As a Cloud-based application, CONTACT has been designed from the ground up to run in a web browser and be compatible with the work-flows and reporting expectations of corporate contact centers. It is used by some of the largest corporations and government entities for processing SMS text, Web Chat, fax and email communications. This is about to extend into Social Media, starting with Twitter and moving in to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media channels.

More details about CONTACT and its multi-channel communication capabilities can be found on Datasquirt’s web site.

Posted in Cloud, Communication, Datasquirt | 1 Comment »
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How ERP will be Sold, Deployed and Supported in the New Decade

April 22, 2010

Speaking as someone who is involved in the global SME ERP Industry through Enprise NZ and Enprise Software, involved in the Cloud Control Panel & Hosting industry through EMS-Cortex and involved in the Business Messaging and Social Media Industry through Datasquirt; here is my prediction of how ERP Software will be sold in the new decade that we are now entering;

Sales Process

  • Firstly, the prospective customer will search the Internet for an ERP Solution and ERP Reseller that look suitable for their type of business. This will involve the use of a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo and would include searches of web sites and various Social Media including Twitter, Linked-In, YouTube, Facebook and others.
  • The prospective customer will then contact the ERP Reseller via Email, Instant Message, Voice Call or Social Media Tweet, asking for more information and a demonstration of the ERP solution.
  • An initial consultation/discussion will follow via Email, Voice Call, Social Media etc to determine whether the fit between the ERP Solution and the customer requirements is such that a product demo is warranted.
  • The ERP Reseller will then set up a temporary demonstration ERP solution in the Cloud using their own portal in the Cortex Cloud Control Panel. The demonstration system would be a clean installation of the ERP demo, complete with its own clean virtual database server and (optional) desktop environment. The exact solution, including add-on industry vertical components and temporary user accounts can be selected and configured in the Cortex portal. This demo system would be provisioned, up and running within minutes of being requested on the portal and would be set to last for a predetermined duration for the purposes of the demonstration.
  • The ERP Reseller would then either visit the prospective customer and demonstrate the ERP solution on-site (geography permitting) using a computer connected to the Internet or will demonstrate via a web meeting tool such as GoToMeeting or WebEx.
  • The prospective customer might then want to spend further time trying out various aspects of the demonstration system after the ERP Reseller has finished demonstrating it. If the ERP Reseller agrees to this then they can arrange for the demonstration system to be kept alive in the Cloud for a longer duration to enable the prospective customer to continue with their own trial use of the system.
  • If/when the prospective customer decides to purchase the ERP system, the ERP Reseller would go back into their portal on the Cortex Control Panel, delete the demonstration system and configure a new live ERP system. The company and user names would be entered into the Cortex portal and also any additional up-sell items would also be included, such as Exchange Email accounts, SharePoint, Blackberry, VOIP accounts, Backups, Firewalls, Hosted Desktops (eg XenApp, XenDesktop), Payroll Access etc.
  • Application licensing information would be sent via Web Services to the respective vendors (eg Microsoft, Citrix, SAP, MYOB etc) and licences would be generated and applied back to the new hosted system via web services.
  • The Cloud-delivered ERP solution is now live, up and running. The ERP Reseller’s consultants can now access the system to configure the ERP Solution to the requirements of the customer.
  • The ERP Solution is now live in the Cloud and can be accessed from anywhere via the Internet. This includes all the branch and home locations of the customer as well as the ERP Reseller and the ERP and other software vendors.

Applying Upgrades and Patches to the ERP System

Prior to a new upgrade or patch being applied to a live ERP system, it must be tested against the individual customer’s data and processes to ensure that the software changes work correctly and cause no disruption to the business.

To enable this testing process, the ERP Reseller will go into their portal of the Cortex Control Panel and request a temporary test copy of the live ERP Environment. This enables the ERP Reseller’s consultants, in conjunction with the customer’s staff, to test the new software version and identify any possibly reconfiguration issues on the test system.

Once the testing process is completed and signed off, the ERP Reseller can go back into their portal of the Cortex Control Panel and apply the upgrade to the live system. They can also delete the test system when they are finished with it.

Support

Support of the ERP System by the ERP Reseller and the ERP Vendor is a lot easier, more efficient and less costly under this new model for the following reasons;

  • Because the ERP System and its virtual operating environment was provisioned by Cortex, it would be done the same every time, using best practices, using the correct program versions and configuration. These things are therefore known to the support personnel and not subject to variation.
  • The support personnel have quick and easy remote access to the hosted ERP solution (subject to permission from the customer to access their system and data).

The model works better for everyone involved in the ERP system sale. The customer, the ERP Reseller and the ERP and other software vendors.

The Customer gets:

  • Extended Access to a Demo System
  • Reduced Capital Outlay
  • Faster Implementation
  • Reduced management overhead of looking after local server & infrastructure

The ERP Reseller gets:

  • Up-sell opportunities
  • Faster Implementation – freeing up time to sell more!
  • Repeatable Cookie Cutter implementations
  • Easier to Support

The Vertical Solution Vendor gets:

  • Opportunity to list solutions on the Cortex Portal
  • Easier Support on a Known Environment

The ERP Vendor gets:

  • Faster Implementations = More Sales
  • Easier & Less Expensive Support
  • Better Product Performance in a Correct Known Environment

Posted in Cloud, Communication, Cortex, Datasquirt, Enprise Job Costing, ERP, Multi-tenant, MYOB EXO, SAP Business One, Sap Isv, Virtualization | 1 Comment »
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Introducing Datasquirt

March 25, 2010

I have to be careful about what I say about Datasquirt because it’s a publicly listed company on the Australian stock exchange (ASX:DSQ) and being a non-executive director and chairman, there are strict rules about what I can and cannot say, without making an announcement to the ASX.

What I can say is as follows; 🙂

Firstly, I have to say that Datasquirt is a cool company, made up of people who are passionate about what they do. Datasquirt’s product is called CONTACT and it’s a SaaS, Web deployed Communications Console for Corporate Businesses to enable their Contact Centers (formerly Call Centers) to interact with their customers, suppliers or staff using SMS text, Instant Messaging, email, fax etc.

I was one of the founders of Datasquirt and so my involvement dates back to when the company started up in 2001. This was soon after I (and some of the other Datasquirt founders) sold our previous business, Exonet.

In the early days we did a lot of experimenting to see how SMS Texts could be used for business purposes. After several years of building custom SMS applications for various industry verticals, we started to see what common functionality everyone wanted and realized that all the big customers had Contact Centers – so we designed and built CONTACT as a product to satisfy this market need.

Being web deployed, CONTACT can be run from any browser on the Internet, so requires minimal effort by the customers’ IT departments to get it up and running. The product integrates with the customer’s internal databases such as CRM, ERP etc and has advanced logic algorithms to pre-process messages automatically and/or distribute them to applicable call center operators. Templates and automation facilitate a speedy response to incoming messages and advanced reporting functions enable all types of reports and analysis – including the types of reporting normally expected in corporate contact centers.

In today’s world of advanced and instant world-wide communications, it is more important than ever for businesses to engage with the new communication technologies and new social media types like Twitter, Linked-In, Facebook etc. Accordingly, these are exciting times for Datasquirt and its product CONTACT which empowers corporate business customers to communicate directly, instantly and intimately in the new communications age!

Watch this company this year!

www.datasquirt.com

Posted in Communication, Datasquirt | 1 Comment »
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