A new customer relationship management (CRM) solution is available for small businesses from the maker of Quickbooks. Intuit has released a product called Customer Manager which small business users can operate to manage customer relationships online and achieve continuity of data.

Customer Manager is built on the Intuit Partner Platform and is available either as an online service or mobile application. The product syncs with Quickbooks, so that data can be updated quickly, which is especially useful when visiting customers. Intuit is giving a thirty day trial and currently the solution is priced at $9.95 per month for up to five users, after the trial ends.

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FedEx Freight has announced they are to conduct trials with a zero emission plug-in electric/hydrogen fuel cell hybrid tractor. FedEx will be converting a standard truck from Vision Industries of Florida, to a Tyrano hybrid. FedEx will be evaluating the Tyrano technology over the next year.

Vision Industries claim that the Tyrano heavy duty class 8 truck is 35 percent cheaper to operate than current diesel powered trucks and 50 percent cheaper than liquefied natural gas. The Tyrano has a standard range of 200 miles with 536 horsepower. It has a number of environmental bonuses such as zero emission and noise pollution.

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Harvey Software, manufacturer of Computerized Parcel System (CPS), is offering its clients the opportunity to save money and decrease their company's carbon footprint. Their CPS Smart RateBots allows users to in real-time, to obtain the best price for their time-guaranteed carrier services. In addition they can also implement an automatic shipping system that minimizes a company's carbon impact for the carrier services chosen.

Even if a freight carrier's standard, ground service may guarantee delivery in one or two days, many companies only consider express services when a date definite delivery is requested. Express service often includes air transportation as part of its delivery process. Whenever ground transportation can be utilized for the entire delivery trip, the package creates a smaller carbon footprint and greener delivery route. Smart RateBots make this best, green choice automatically. Harvey Software estimates that Smart RateBots can reduce the environmental impact of shipping by as much as 20 percent.

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A study by the National Computing Center (NCC) in the UK has found that over 65 percent of British firms are postponing their ERP implementations, with 24 percent on hold indefinitely and 41 percent reporting a temporary delay. The economic situation has caused companies to reduce their IT budgets and due to the complex nature of ERP implementations, firms did not have the personnel or money to invest in a long-term project.

However, the NCC did find that 29 percent of firms were not reducing investment in their ERP project and in fact some firms are increasing their investment. But on the whole UK firms were wary of such large projects at this time. Data from the NCC found that only 12 percent of firms said their implementation had come in on time, while 6 percent said it had taken less time than planned. Estimating the cost of an ERP implementation seems to be an issue for UK businesses as the NCC found that 53 percent of implementations had gone over budget.

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