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Successful SFA, or CRM solution software and implementation begins with a comprehensive project domain specification. This is comprised of four major components:
a well-defined list of goals to be achieved by using the planned system
a prioritized user requirements description,
a system environment specification detailing how, and from where, information flows into and out of the planned system, and
a well-organized Request for Proposal (RFP) that effectively documents these requirements to vendors.
The RFP must be done correctly since it will affect almost all subsequent steps in the CRM software system solution process. Many complex tasks must be performed to:

prepare an RFP (Request for Proposal) that accurately communicates your organization's software requirements to vendors,
distributing the RFP to qualified vendors,
use quantitative evaluation techniques on all vendor RFP responses to select the software system best suited to your organization continued to...

California-based IT services company Computer Science Corporation has licensed its claims management accelerator and customer service accelerator systems to Jackson National Life Insurance Company. The US insurer will use the solutions to improve customer service and to increase productivity and efficiency in claims handling.
According to Computer Science Corporation (CSC), Jackson is the first organization to license the claims management accelerator, which it will implement at its Lansing, Michigan facility. The insurer, which acquired 1.6 million life insurance policies in 2005, will integrate the solution with its existing software to reduce its paper-intensive processes, improve automation and streamline its claims processes.
CSC commented that the claims management accelerator enables life insurers to eliminate most manual processing tasks, integrate third-party information vendors into the claims process and automatically approve low-value claims.

In addition, Jackson is to implement CSC's customer service accelerator, a web-based common interface that provides a consolidated view of customer data. Jackson will deploy the solution alongside its existing CSC policy administration software in order to simplify tasks and reduce costs and training time.

Laura Prieskorn, vice president at Jackson, commented: "CSC's packaged solution for claims management offered us more functionality than we could easily achieve by enhancing our homegrown system."

InfoVista SA has inked a $15m deal with Microsoft Corp, in which InfoVista will license service-centric performance management software to Redmond during the next three years.
Microsoft will license various InfoVista software, including VistaInsight for servers, networks and VoIP
The deal would enable Microsoft to "optimize" its IT management, said Microsoft CIO Stuart Stock, in a statement

There have been more than 100 million downloads of the newest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser since it was released last October, according to Microsoft Corp.
More than 25% of all visitors to websites in the US did so using IE7, making it the second most-used browser after IE6, according to WebSiteStory, a company that tracks these things.
"We expect these numbers to continue to rise as we complete our final localized versions, scale up AU distribution, and with the consumer availability of Windows Vista on January 30, 2007," said IE group manager Tony Chor, on his corporate blog.

Microsoft made security improvements with IE7 over its predecessor, by eliminating some of the code that may have led to exploitable vulnerabilities. However, IE7 is still widely considered to contain security bugs and potential vulnerabilities

FRANKFURT, Germany (Reuters) -- Shares in German software giant SAP fell as much as 9.5 percent on Friday after SAP missed expectations for the fourth quarter, wiping as much as 5.1 billion euros ($6.6 billion) off the company's value.

Slowing growth in the United States, the world's biggest software market, compounded by an unfavorable development of the euro-dollar rate, meant SAP missed not only market expectations but also its own forecast for licence-sales growth.

By 1009 GMT, SAP shares were down 8.2 percent at 38.81 euros with more than 20 million shares having traded just two hours into the Frankfurt trading day -- almost three times the 30-day and 90-day averages.

The stock was by far the biggest decliner in a flat German blue-chip DAX index, and the heavyweight dragged the DJ Sox European technology index down 1.4 percent.

In the second shock SAP has delivered to the markets in the space of six months, SAP said late on Thursday its 2006 licence sales rose 13.5 percent in constant-currency terms, against its target of 15 to 17-percent growth.

In the fourth quarter, licence sales -- which are key to future service and maintenance revenues -- were about 1.26 billion euros ($1.63 billion), missing the lowest forecast in a Reuters poll of 23 analysts, which averaged 1.348 billion euros.

"It's a pretty bad miss," said J.P. Morgan analyst John Erich. "While Europe is improving, the U.S. has certainly slowed, and the U.S. has been the engine of growth for SAP."

In the United States -- the world's biggest software market where SAP makes about 30 percent of its licence sales -- licence sales grew by just 4 percent, compared with 15 percent in the third quarter.

Goldman Sachs removed the stock from its "conviction buy" list, downgraded it to "neutral" and cut its price target to 39 euros from 49 euros, saying SAP's premium was not sustainable.

SAP trades at 24.3 times expected 2007 earnings, according to Reuters Data, a 50-percent premium to U.S.-based arch-rival Oracle.

"SAP's strong growth had supported a premium valuation which is likely to erode near-term as investors trim growth rate expectations. We would expect SAP to take a more cautious approach to guidance when full results are reported," Goldman said in a note.

SAP is due to report full results for 2006 on January 24.

Source: CNN