Enterprise Ireland – Best Connected -

One of many interesting talks at last week’s DevDays Mobile/iPhone developers event, was a session entitled “Engagement through Gamification” by Chris McClelland of Ecliptic Labs.

Not a completely new idea, but great to spend some time listening to someone who has put a good deal of thought into it. I’ve read about people using games controllers for education and other non-game applications, but here the focus was on the social interactions in gaming and taking those into the “real” world.

The idea is that people are more likely to participate in a community if they are engaged using some or all of the basic human triggers common in games – the desire for reward, status, achievement, self expression or respect whether it is driven by competitiveness or even by altruism. Chris went on to give examples of social media companies who use these triggers in their products and also to outline some software frameworks that can be used to provide much of the functionality if you don’t want to build your own.

A question to readers of this blog – are there elements of gamification that you could use to engage your customers further? Apart from the obvious areas of social media and elearning, could it apply to enterprise applications? Should you incorporate a leaderboard into your next release?

Reference: Chris recommended a book called Total Engagement on the subject of gamification.

DevDays: Mobile developers from across the island gathered in Belfast and Dublin last week for DevDays 2010 (http://devdays.info). I attended the  Dublin session although the agenda was similar at both events. There were talks on Facebook integration from Tapadoo.com, Connected/Mobile Health solutions, Card Payments in iPhone Apps separate to the AppStore, adding location to your apps from OS3.ie , good/bad product strategy from Des Traynor of Contrast and the importance of good design.

Zarion is specifically focused on the financial services sector and specialises in improving human centric processes.

Products/Services
TouchPoint2 is Zarion’s process optimisation software for the banking, insurance and capital markets industries.
• Loans/insurance customer enrolment.
• High value processes such as swap payments.
• High volume, low value processes such as claims settlements.
• Zarion’s business process consulting organisation aligns strategic objectives with operations and business processes.
• Zarion’s Lifetime Support team provides ongoing support for customers.

Key Benefits
• Build on rather than replace, existing work management platforms including Global 360’s Execute360
• Achieve quick implementations.
• Reduce long term support and maintenance overheads.
• Require minimal customisation.
• Reduce or eliminate custom build and integration work.

Clients
AIB, Bank of Ireland, GMAC Commercial Finance, Irish Life and Permanent, ING Group.

Partners
Microsoft, Kofax and Global 360.

Tel +353 (0)1 240 5200

Web www.zarion.com

Address
Marine House, Clanwilliam Place, Dublin 2.

Phoenix Technology group delivers enterprise content management and business process management solutions to the financial services sector.

Products/Services
• Claims management solutions.
• Loan origination and approval solutions.
• Customer service solutions.
• Electronic document and records management solutions.

Key Benefits
• Phoenix integrates to line-of-business systems using a range of technologies including .NET, Java and XML.
Phoenix employs a unique project delivery approach:
• Reduce claims cycle times.
• Identify and reduce claims leakage.
• Approve loans rapidly.
• Increase productivity.
• Provide real-time management information including:
   o Service levels.
   o Productivity.
   o Costs.
   o Pipeline activity.
   o Workload balancing.

Clients
AXA Life, Winterthur Life, Allianz, Canada Life, Royal & SunAlliance, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, First Assist, Landesbausparkasse (LBS).

Partners
Oracle, Global 360, IBM, FileNet, Microsoft, Kofax.

Tel +353 (0)1 670 7722

Web www.phoenix.ie

Address
32-34 Castle Street, Dublin 2.

Orbism simplifies the management of virtualised and physical environments through automation thereby providing better utilisation and availability of machine resources.

Products/Services
• ORBISM provides enterprise level consultancy from design through to deployment and also deliver skills transfer through bespoke training programs.
• ORBISM adopts a service oriented architecture (SOA) approach to systems design.
• ORBISM delivers automation solutions that deliver business priorities and provide a fully integrated management solution, controlling hardware, and virtualisation software and application servers.
• ORBISM’s solutions are business led and apply leading products from Cassatt (Collage) and BEA (Weblogic product suite).

Key Benefits
• ORBISM is recognised as a specialist in J2EE applications deployment, meeting rigorous non-functional requirements of performance, scalability and reliability.
• Simplified management of virtualised and physical environments

Clients
Royal and Sun Alliance, ICON plc, BEA systems, William Hill, Zurich and Credit Suisse.

Partners
BEA Systems, Intel, Cassatt Corp.

Tel +353 (0)1 678 8238

Web www.orbism.com

Address
60 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2.

Norkom Technologies is a provider of innovative financial crime and compliance solutions to the global financial services industry. Its solutions enable organisations to detect and combat financial crime reducing their operational losses and addressing the industry’s ever-changing global compliance and regulatory requirements.

Products/Services
• Anti-Money Laundering (AML) solutions, Risk-based Customer Due Diligence / Know Your Customer (CDD / KYC), Identity Resolution solution, Watch List management solutions including:
• Transaction Monitoring solutions
• PEP Screening and Sanctions Filtering solutions
• Enterprise Investigation Management (EIM)
• Fraud Detection and Prevention solutions including:
• Multi-Channel Fraud solution
• Card Fraud solution
• Online Fraud solution
• Internal Fraud solution
• Deposit/Cheque Fraud solution
• Identity theft solution.

Key Benefits
• Norkom enables organisations to take intelligent action, control their defences and evolve their strategies against financial crime.
• Cost effective solution is proven to reduce financial losses, protect reputation and improve operational efficiencies.
• Norkom offers a comprehensive set of solutions which can be scaled and customised to meet clients’ current and future needs.

Clients
Credit Agricole, Standard Chartered Bank, Erste Bank, HSBC Bank, Bank of Montreal, ING Direct, Fortis Bank Group, KBC Bank, Rabobank, National Australia Group (Europe), Visa (Europe), EuroClear, Travelex, New York Clearing House, DTCC, Western Union, Allied Irish Bank.

Partners
Norkom has a global network of value added integration and configuration partners.

Tel +353 (0)1 873 9600

Web www.norkom.com

Address
55 Strand Street Great, Millennium Walkway, Dublin 1.

Inish Technologies helps organisations to plan for and implement CRM.Inish works with fixed line telecommunications organisations, mobile telecommunication providers, financial services organisations and retail organisations.

Products/Services
• The Concynity Suite drives corporate marketing from the development of the strategic corporate and brand plan to its tactical implementation as part of a workflow process.
• Inish Technologies improves data quality and develops data maintenance.
• Designs, builds and enhances network and database infrastructures.
• Build and deploy effective application solutions.
• Define and implement both above and below the line processes and campaigns.

Key Benefits
• Enhancing CRM helps clients to make the best use of their existing CRM infrastructure.
• Management Support provides management with an expert view of their options in developing a CRM capability, or when developing strategy or evaluating emerging technologies.
• Business Support provides business support services for organisations wishing to outsource some key aspects of their technology-enabled marketing or underlying infrastructure.

Clients
Accenture, Nokia , Eircom, Bank pekao Unicredito (poland), Plumbline Ltd (UK), Reflections (UK) Ltd., Bank of Ireland Capital Markets, Norwich Union (UK), Alliance and Leicester (UK), Canadian Tire Financial Services (Canada), UniCredito Italino (Italy), Orange poland (poland), E*Trade (US), Abbey National (UK), Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank (Germany), DTAC (Thailand), Rabobank (Holland), Banco Comercial Portugues (Portugal), ABSA Bank (South Africa), UBS (Switzerland).

Tel +353 (0)1 671 1608

Web www.inish.com

Address
111 Lower Rathmines Road, Rathmines Dublin 6.

Idiro Technologies provide software for market automation, customer relationship management and data mining/analysis for the communications sector.

Products/Services
• Idiro Customer Intelligence analyses the behavioural activity of social networks. Through this, marketeers can deliver data driven viral marketing.
• Idiro Next Best Activity automatically installs marketing intelligence into the marketing process. It is a comprehensive offer management system designed to enhance sales, care, loyalty and save offers through centralised intelligent information processing.

Key Benefits
• Ability to influence and predict customer behaviour.
• Optimisation of acquisition and retention strategy.
• Strengthening of customer loyalty.
• A highly scalable solution for even the largest networks.
Idiro Next Best Activity:
• Technical and business flexibility.
• Ability for targeted and more effective marketing strategy.
• Real-time ability to prevent service bottlenecks.
• Customer service becomes proactive rather than reactive.

Clients
Vodafone, ESB, proximus.

Partners
HP, Symbian, Microsoft, Sybase and MySQL.

Tel +353 (0)1 443 3696

Web www.idiro.com

Address
Synergy Centre, ITT Dublin, Tallaght, Dublin 24.

Avnet Client Solutions provides bespoke application development, Business Intelligence, SAP and Business Service Management solution services. We have over 1000 projects to our name across all sectors.

Products/Services

• Application Development:  Specialising in the design, development, implementation and support of custom solutions with emphasis on Java and .NET core platforms.
• Business Intelligence: Design, build and deployment of medium and large scale data warehouses with a variety of front end tools such as Business Objects and Microstrategy.
• IT Service Management: Using software from the BMC product portfolio.
• Enterprise Resource Planning: SAP integrated business applications across a wide range of disciplines.

Key Benefits
Over 16 years in business with 100% success in project delivery. A strong reference base spread across a wide range of industries in Europe and USA. Teamed with global business partners with skills to contribute to corporate growth strategies. Part of the Avnet Inc Group since 2008.

Clients
Elan Corporation, ACC Bank, AIB, Bank of Ireland, Davy, EBS, GiftVoucherShop, B&B Ireland, Global Refund, Meteor, Intel, Vodafone, Takeda, Glanbia, OpenHydro, O2, Sumitomo Bank, Ulster Bank, FBD, Aviva, Cork County Council, Wexford County Council

Partners
Microsoft, SAPBusiness Objects, Microstrategy, Sybase, Teradata, BMC Software, xMatters,

Tel +353 (0)1 620 4800
+353 (21) 452 1000

Web www.ts.avnet.com/clientsolutions

Address
14 Joyce Way, park West Business Park, Dublin 12
National Software Centre, Mahon, Co. Cork

Econiq is a developer of software that uses existing business applications rather than replacing them. Econiq’s software allows for the support of staff by providing real time prompts and recommendations which are transaction specific. Monitoring, reporting and analysis of sales behaviours and activities, and the corresponding effect on closed sales and referrals, allows ongoing improvement at the individual and organisational level.

Products/Services
• IQ Front line: A set of tools that interact with a company’s own applications to help front line staff respond to customers with more relevant recommendations and more focused service.
• IQ Visibility: performance management tracking and reporting.
• IQ Configure: A set of user friendly configuration and implementation tools.

Key Benefits
• Increases closed sales and referrals.
• Enhances productivity to empower employees.
• Strengthens sales effectiveness.
• Improves employee satisfaction and retention.
• Creates customer satisfaction, loyalty and confidence.

Clients
Targeting banks and financial institutions.

Partners
S1, NSS Corp.

Web www.econiq.com

Tel +353 (0)91 745 575

Address
Galway Technology Centre, Mervue Business park, Galway.

Deep-insight’s online assessment tools are used to assess and improve business relationships with customers, employees, channel partners and suppliers.

Products/Services
• Deep-Customer-Insight is a B2B assessment tool that identifies potential account defections before they happen.
• Deep-Organisation-Insight identifies employee issues before they become industrial relation issues.
• Deep-Channel-Insight ensures that you know the real value of your third party channel relationships.
• Deep-Supplier-Insight enables companies to build stronger relationships with key suppliers and outsource partners.

Key Benefits
• Improved customer revenues and account management.
• Improved employee commitment and performance.
• Stronger channel and supplier relationships.

Clients
AIB, Atos Origin, AXA, Bank of Scotland (Ireland), hasbro, Irish Life, KBC, Reed Elsevier, Renault, Suncorp.

Tel +353 (0)21 230 7025

Web www.deep-insight.com

Address
National Software Campus, Mahon, Cork.

Fineos provides enterprise software solutions for insurance, ‘bancassurance’, and government. Their solutions address core business processing requirements including claims & case management, CRM, new business/underwriting, and policy administration. The company has offices in Ireland, North America, Europe and Australasia.

Products/Services
Fineos solutions enable governmental insurance providers to streamline their operations while delivering exceptional service. Their solutions support institutions that deal with bodily injury, compulsory third-party (CTP) and work cover insurance.

Key Benefits
• Automate repetitive tasks according to best-practice reducing the risk of costly human error.
• Comprehensive customer and case information, empowering agents to provide superior customer service.
•A flexible infrastructure for new product introduction, legacy enrichment, and business transformation.

Clients
Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), New Zealand, Lifetime Care & Support Authority (LTCSA) Australia, Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) Canada, Road Accident Fund (RAF) South Africa, Transport Accident Commission (TAC) Australia, WorkSafe Victoria Australia.

Partners
IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu, Computer Sciences Corp, Oracle, Sun Microsystems.

Web www.fineos.com

Tel +353 (0)1 639 9700

Address
Pembroke House, 8-10 Lower Pembroke Street, Dublin 2.

BrokerCRM is a software solution designed for professionals in property, mortgage and financial services at retail level. BrokerCRM provides an integrated solution which enables advisors to view and manage client business across a broad range of products in the Wealth Management, Financial Services, Mortgages and House Insurance sectors.

Products & Services
BrokerCRM Ltd have developed two systems for the broker and auctioneer markets.
• BrokerCRM Lite: .NET based platform is ideal for those who prefer a web based system and want to access information outside of the office.
• BrokerCRM: All the functionality of BrokerCRM Lite plus this system has an advanced property module for estate agents.
• Both Systems: Can be purchased as a combined suite or as individual modules i.e. MortgageCRM, PropertyCRM or FinancialCRM or a combination of any module(s).

Key Benefits
• Office management system with quotations, needs analysis and customer relationship management features creating strong marketing and advice capabilities.
• Provides Instant access and visibility of client and product data as well as complete workflow processes management including tasks, diaries, letters, emails and SMS facility.

Clients
Allied Irish Banks , EBS, Willis Brokers, Zurich, Arachas Brokers, Irish Life.

Partners
Microsoft Certified Partner.

Web www.brokercrm.com

Tel 065 6949675

Address
22 Abbey St, Ennis, Clare.

Vulcan Solutions is an Irish software solutions company specialising in the provision of custom integrated solutions for the public sector. Vulcan Solutions employs over 30 highly-skilled IT professionals and is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner. Vulcan Solutions have a 20+ year track record of system implementation success in Ireland and abroad.

Products/Services
• Vulcan Solutions are a leading specialist in the provision of custom integrated solutions on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) platforms.
• Custom integrated line-of-business (LOB) applications on Microsoft platforms.
• Licensing and regulatory solutions.
• Case management solutions.
• Portals & collaboration (Internet/ extranet).
• Relationship management solutions (xRM).
• Complete service offering; solution design & development, systems integration, system implementation, training, support & maintenance, IT consulting, and software project management.

Key Benefits
• Cost-effective and rapid delivery of custom business applications that are scalable, performant and future-proof.
• Technical expertise on Microsoft platforms ensures excellence in solution design.
• Vulcan Solutions-owned components extend the capabilities of Microsoft platforms, reducing project cost and project risks for clients.
• They have delivered mission-critical and enterprise-scale solutions in Ireland, the UK and the US, and have excellent reference-able experience of large-scale system implementations in the Irish public sector.

Clients
Road Safety Authority (RSA), Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB), NUI Galway, Tipperary Institute, Postbank (One Direct), Hibernian Aviva, Marsh Ireland & UK, Bank of Ireland.

Partners
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, c360, ICE Group.

Web www.vulcan.ie

Tel +353 (0)91 781781

Address
Vulcan House, Parkmore East Business Park, Galway.

QMS Software is an international provider of customer care software. The ulysses CRM software suite offers powerful complaints and feedback capabilities that allow for rapid customisation and appeal to both the SME sector and large organisations. It is also a leading service management system that is used by organizations that utilize field service engineers.

Products/Services
• Ulysses Enterprise: Created for larger organisation’s needing scalable CRM and Service solutions.
• Ulysses Professional: Retains the functionality of enterprise edition whilst being highly customisable for smaller users.
• Ulysses Workgroup Edition: Designed for workgroups within a business.

Key Benefits
• Tailored CRM solutions for individual business and scale requirements.
• Analytics and business capabilities.
• Easily Integrated.
• Short Training Period.
• Exceptional value with a rapid and proven return on investment.

Clients
Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, Dublin City Council, The Revenue Commissioner, Cable & Wireless, Communications Regulator, Bank of Ireland, KBC, Acorn Life, The Rotunda Hospital, Irish Medicines Board, Cuisine de France, Mazda Motors Germany, OKI Systems, Pensions Board, Primark (Penneys), Supermacs, Mater Hospital and Fortis.

Partners
Microsoft

Web www.qms-software.com

Tel +353 (0)1 6854830

Address
Brook House, Corrig Avenue, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland.