Happy Birthday Szilvia! (Or CRMchump’s week in review)

This writer wishes apologies, faithful CRMchump readers, for the week-long cone of silence. It was all due to the birth of my daughter Szilvia; pictures and references to come soon, to be sure. After all, between blogging and PhotoBucket.com, the 21st-century wallet of baby pictures is covered.

The week in review then on this Sunday.

Beagle Research handed out its prestigious CRM WizKids awards to Cast Iron Systems, Centive, Echopass, Electronic Arts (that’s right, the dudes who do Madden, but this nod came for the customization of Salesforce.com), Market2Lead, Pragmatech, Sapias, and Skytide. Qualifications for nomination included “front office software vendors offering applications and solutions that extend the reach of CRM, including those not currently considered as within the mainstream of CRM. Solutions should involve business processes that directly touch the customer.”

And, of course, Beagle Research Group is named for the HMS Beagle, “the ship that carried Charles Darwin around the world on a research mission that lead to the theory of biological evolution.”

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Meanwhile, on-demand, customizable web 2.0 hosting application company Etelos announced development of CRMforGoogle, a fully integrated customer relationship management application integrated into Google’s business software platform. To become a beta tester for the product, go to www.crmforgoogle.com.

Etelos ultimately plans to release CRMforGoogle will in three versions: Personal, Professional and Enterprise. The Personal edition will be free to users.

Built almost entirely using EASE, the English Application Scripting Engine, CRMforGoogle uses conversational English to help business owners customize their Applications. CRMforGoogle promises businesses of any size task, sales opportunity and marketing campaign management.

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Technology Evaluation Centers got quite a bit of industry press for announcing its new strategic partnership with BPT Partners LLC, a provider of CRM research and education. This alliance is aimed at “providing superior software selection services to TEC customers considering CRM software purchases or upgrades.”

Bruce Culbert, Paul Greenberg and Dr. Jeff Tanner of BPT Partners, LLC will become CRM research residents at TEC providing direction, validation and certification of the framework and evaluation criteria used in the software selection process.

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On Thursday, Vertical Solutions, Inc. announced that A.O. Smith Water Products Company has purchased the firm’s PowerHelp CRM, a web-based suite of software for customer-support and field-service processes. A. O. Smith Water Products Company is said to be North America’s largest manufacturer and marketer of residential and commercial water heating equipment.

A. O. Smith purchased a full portfolio of PowerHelp CRM modules, including Knowledge Management, Self-Service, Contract Management, Dispatch Board, and the development toolsets DevStudio and DevServices.

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Finally, in the recommendations column comes a piece entitled “Tenacious CRM” over at CRM magazine. CRMchump’s sending you over there not necessarily because the article is brilliantly written, but rather out of sheer awe, for CRM mag celebrated its 10th anniversary last year. Think about it: Doing anything for ten years is a long time…

Cheers, CRM magazine! And many more!