Microsoft has introduced the Dynamics CRM November 2011 service update for Microsoft CRM Online. It is also for on-premise and partner hosted deployments. The main features are integrated “social collaboration capabilities, as well as a unified Microsoft Office 365 experience and enhancements for enterprises using Microsoft Dynamics CRM in the cloud.” All these goodies are being rolled into the product at no additional cost. The Social CRM features include activity feeds, micro-blogging, conversations, automated activity updates and mobile activity feeds, the latter, not surprisingly enough, is mentioned as support only Windows Phone 7.
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Bennett Porter, a reseller based in Portland, Ore., has boosted its managerial ranks with the hiring of two vice presidents. One is David Edwards, who joined the company in August as vice president of operations. Originally from England, Edwards had run his own consulting business since 2000. Also hired was Grahame Martin as VP of sales. Martin has 17 years with Syspro resellers and is a member of the Syspro VAR council. That shows the firm, owned by Sue Bennett, is continuing to develop the Syspro line that it took on a couple of years ago as it branched out from its Sage reseller business. Bennett Porter had 15 employees and revenue of $2.67 million for the year ended September 30. The company also sells SAP’s Business ByDesign. Read more...

SAP has released Business One version 8.82 which offers new capabilities for campaign management and materials requirements planning.

The campaign management capabilities, an extension of CRM functionality, enable businesses to create, maintain and analyze multi-channel marketing campaign information. The system also lets users allocate serial numbers to items for sales orders, accounts receivable reserve invoices and inventory transfer requests while serial and batch numbers can be allocated to items throughout the pick and pack process. Read more...

NetSuite has released OneWorld 2011 with one highlight being automated intercompany management that the company says “accelerates and increases the efficiency and rigor of the close process.” (I like to pretend I understand what all this stuff means.) It expands support for international taxation and audit reporting and provides new advanced inventory costing capabilities, Standard Costing functionality. Tax reporting has been expanded to more than 40 companies and support for Dutch and French Canadian is offered. There is also new vendor bill approval routing and real-time multidimensional analysis through Pivot analytics. CRM has been enhanced with Product Affinity Analytics, designed to provide insights into correlations between products typically purchased together and new sales activity management. Read more...