The Software Intelligencer

New classes of BI tools

Rick Davey — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:25:00 +0000

I have been starting to really look at alternatives to the traditional BI tools. The one that most enterprise IT departments roll out to support massive amounts of data and users like Cognos, Business Objects cost plenty and take months and sometimes years to design build and implement a system. I wanted to see what was out in the market that could meet a few modest goals:

Total cost of ownership had to be much less than the enterprise products Far easier to development and build out Have something usable in less time Make the user in control

I started [...]

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Please…. No more 8080

Rick Davey — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:09:53 +0000

Those of you who run many of the linux/java applications know that number “8080″. Right. It is the port address that almost every program that runs wants to use, http://localhost:8080/SomeApp. Unfortunately, only one can use the port at the same time. I don’t want to waste my time anymore finding and changing, then remembering the new port address that I was forced to change so I can run these applications simultaneously.

Seems like there is no imagination out in software land. Can’t software developers find other numbers to use… It’s really not [...]

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Web Design Tool

Rick Davey — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:23:26 +0000

I recently found and tried a great product: the WireframeSketcher (http://wireframesketcher.com )a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. I have used over time almost all of the techniques and tools that help web developers and designers create a high level web designs. All the way from notepad, PowerPoint to Visio to graphical programs. None have been my favorite although I have tended to use PowerPoint since it is the fastest way to create screen layouts. The two things that we must do for our clients is to present them with a web flow (the storyboard) and screen [...]

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Open Source CRM Product – OpenCRX

Rick Davey — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:08:25 +0000

I always try to take the time to review then evaluate CRM products. I like to see what vendors are doing, what they think is needed out in real world. One such product I’ve recently tried is OpenCRX http://www.opencrx.org/ . I t look like a nice product for small to smaller mid-sized businesses. I have a lot to learn my here are my first reactions.

More difficult to install then a straight Java based application. Especially when compared to a bunch of other open source java applications that install easily. It requires a [...]

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Segmentation Thoughts

Rick Davey — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:09:08 +0000

One of the more frequent questions from marketers I hear is “what (or how) attributes (data fields) can we do segmentation on for our campaigns”. The answer is usually more or less this; almost all data in your CRM system can be available for use in the key process in many CRM software systems. Let’s take a look at the data for segmentation. Some of the data is straight forward and relatively easy to understand and acquire, but other data may take some deep thought and effort to produce.

Major Attribute Categories

In most CRM systems, they will [...]

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CRM Systems and Subscription Product Marketing

Rick Davey — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:28:59 +0000

Subscription marketing is a bit different then marketing a non re-occurring product or service and you CRM system needs to be capable of handling these extra needs. While most CRM system can handle subscription products or service it will take some additional work to make things really hum. Let’s take a look at what can make a CRM system handle subscription marketing.

Subscription products and services and their needs

If you sell a subscription product you have several things going on that a non-subscription product does not have. [ We will use products in this article, but the [...]

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Open Source for Small Business?

Rick Davey — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:45:38 +0000

By now most business people have an idea of what open source software is and how it is now considered an option when choosing your next solution for your business. The question is; is it right for your business especially if your business is small and doesn’t have a full time IT team to assist you. We will explore the issues surrounding choosing an Open Source solution.

Open Source Solutions have different origins and business models

Open source is a catch all for software solutions that provide the software for free. But they are not all created with the [...]

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Salesforce.Com adds new Service for Individuals and Small Businesses

Rick Davey — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:49:01 +0000

On September 2, 2009 Salesforce.com announced that it now has a new service aimed at very small businesses and individuals to manage contacts via Salesforce.com cloud. The price is $ 9.00 per month per user. Since it is a cloud implementation there is no software or hardware for the user to buy and install.

The service will include:

Contacts and Accounts Mangement Outlook and Email Integration Reporting - Customization of the Contact Manager Google Apps integration

What this all means is that Salesforce.com wants small businesses to get used to cloud computing for a minimum investment with the obvious hope that they can move them up into [...]

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CRM User Poll # 1

Rick Davey — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:56:14 +0000

While I get to listen and talk to a number of business people about their CRM implementations, I decided to conduct some informal polls. I like to keep them very short, just a few questions so that folks will answer them without taking up their entire afternoon. This poll had two questions and was offered to LinkedIn users during the month of August 2009. We had just under 25 responses to date. I’ll place the link on more places to get a wider response and report back.

Question # 1 How successful would you rate [...]

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New Data Warehouse Product from Microsoft: Project Madison

Rick Davey — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:31:20 +0000

Microsoft has done very well in the single instance database marketing with their SQL Server product. They have been trying for several years to make a real foothold into large scale data warehouse applications. I would suspect that currently there are not many organizations that need to store petabyte range data that has tried to use a Microsoft product as their solution. Now Microsoft is creating a new product which is currently code named Project Madison to fill the large scalable data warehouse market. The product has its origins in a company that Microsoft bought [...]

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