Unless one is exceptionally
brilliant, collected wisdom is both broader and more concise than that of
the individual. According to Chris Derossi, founder and CEO of ePeople,
the idea behind ePeople 4.0 is to provide a means for assembling a team to
collaborate and resolve complex problems by extending tools to various
team members through both synchronous and asynchronous communications
methods. The common workplace created by ePeople 4.0 provides for the
ability to capture information and identify who contributed to the
solution and how it was arrived at. The permissions structure of ePeople
4.0 also allows for the inclusion of outside vendors and partners in the
collaborative team. Jointly delivered service and support offerings to
common customers, powered by ePeople's solution, allow the partners to
better service the customers, provide both the company and partners with a
complete view of the customer account and lets both close service requests
faster and more accurately.
ePeople Teamwork 4.0 (formerly ePeople Service Network 3.1) is designed
to allow companies to improve customer satisfaction by delivering fast,
accurate answers to complex issues and offering targeted service and
support programs to their key customers in high-technology, heavy
engineering and institutional financial services markets. New features of
ePeople Teamwork 4.0 include: advances in expertise location and sourcing
to better profile, identify and acquire the best team to resolve each
complex issue; an open framework for integrating third-party diagnostic
and productivity tools into the team collaboration workspace; a data
warehouse for enhanced analytics and reporting; and a flexible problem
solving workflow for more efficient issue resolution.
ePeople Teamwork 4.0 is available as an in- stalled license model as
well as an ASP model.
Delivering flexible and effective products to the small to
medium enterprise (SME) market has been a difficult feat, as obviously those
SMEs want the functionality of the products that are developed for large
enterprises but often do not have the personnel or budgets for the
integration mammoth CRM implementations require. Responding to these
requirements, Epicor Software Corporation has announced Clientele Customer
Support 8.0 (part of the Clientele CRM.NET Suite), which is completely
architected on the Microsoft .NET platform. Greg Horton, director of
marketing of Clientele Group at Epicor, said customers wanted functionality
and a rich Windows client, and the .NET platform will allow Clientele to
deliver it to them. Horton added that Epicor is taking the functionality of
Clientele and bringing it to .NET in phases.
In addition to the new architecture, the Customer
Self-Service Portal, a companion to Clientele Customer Support 8.0, will
provide customers access to account information via the Web. Customers can
access a wide variety of account information including call logs, service
agreements and account balances at any time of day. Used as an additional
channel for customer support, the Self-Service Portal is designed to provide
customers the ability to get the information they need, when they need it.
The Customer Self-Service Portal is built on a .NET-based portal framework
that is fully integrated with Clientele Customer Support 8.0.
Using native Web services and XML throughout, Clientele
Customer Support 8.0 makes integration to external applications such as
accounting or manufacturing easier and faster than ever. XML, the universal
format for structured documents and data on the Web, acts as a link,
allowing companies better interaction with partners, customers and vendors.
Clientele Customer Support 8.0 also provides a 'hands free' deployment
model allowing the application to be distributed from a single Web site. In
addition, product updates, enhancements and new releases can be
automatically deployed to the client. Customization is done using Microsoft
Visual Studio .NET.
With a history of providing customer support products that
goes back more than 25 years, J.D. Edwards has released its latest family of
collaborative enterprise software products and services for customers and
business partners, J.D. Edwards 5. J.D. Edwards 5 features modular,
integrated, Web-enabled applications designed to assist large and
medium-sized businesses in improving business performance and includes
modules for Enterprise Resource Planning; Supply Chain Management; Customer
Relationship Management; Supplier Relationship Management; Business
Intelligence; Collaboration and Integration; and Tools and Technology.
The company also introduced the next version of its
implementation methodology, 'OneMethodology,' which provides customers
an integrated set of consulting and education services based on their
specific business and implementation needs.
Karl Johnson, vice president of CRM Strategy at J.D.
Edwards, said J.D. Edwards solutions have been know for their integration
into customer lifecycle management, flexibility in that the software molds
to the user's business process instead of making the business fit the
software, and for its ability to be deployed rapidly. J.D. Edwards 5
provides the enabling technology for Web services, a standards-based
paradigm that is designed to enable businesses to share data, applications
and business processes across the Internet. J.D. Edwards 5 features software
developed as reusable components that interoperate well with current and
legacy technology, enabling companies to match specific software components
to specific business requirements while maintaining IT investments.
Time was, when you bought a predictive dialer, all that it
did was dial (and it would cost you an arm and a leg, or at least a good
part of your budget). Well, time has moved on and dialers have evolved,
especially at Data-Tel Info Solutions, which recently released version 6.0
of its xSELLerator Contact Center Suite, which beyond just dialing, can
provide inbound call routing, blended calling, IVR capabilities, call
scripting, transfer and Web communications among others, to the small to
mid-sized enterprise at a reasonable price.
The improved inbound IVR and skills-based routing features
allow calls to be routed to an auto-attendant, or transferred to an inbound
agent defined by agent-assigned skills. The Web-enabled services now
provided by xSELLerator 6.0 include Web chat, page pushing and Web callback.
Scripting is now available in Logical Branch Scripting and HTML Scripting
(through the HTML-Data Dictionary).
The business-to-business package offers the ability to load
duplicate leads and lead browsing. B-2-B Browse allows the agent to speak
with everyone within the associated phone number without making an
additional return call, increasing agent productivity. The dialer will not
allow these duplicate listings to be called at the same time. Duplicate
interval settings are created within the system and can be changed as an
administrator sees fit.
Scott Murray, president and CEO of Data-Tel, said many
clients are now using Data-Tel solutions from multiple offices. For example,
the dialer or data can be resident in the U.S. and the voice and data can be
sent over International Private Leased Circuits to agents in India or other
offshore locations, adding flexibility to operations as well as providing
the ability to tap into lower-cost labor supplies.
According to Rafael Gomez, vice president, Americas
Operation at Point Information Systems (an S1 Corporation Company), some of
the challenges companies face that they are looking to CRM solutions to
solve are: how to consolidate across all channels, how to increase customers'
satisfaction, how to maintain service levels, how to grow revenue and how to
maintain a competitive advantage. Gomez said the latest release from Point,
e-point 6, has three keys that will help companies address these problems:
it provides a doorway to CRM functionality in an incremental model; it is
designed to maximize productivity and efficiency; and it can measure service
effectiveness and customer satisfaction.
Designed to work with most existing systems, e-point 6
features a CRM Center that integrates key marketing, sales and support
operations to ensure customer process efficiencies. This delivers zero
boundary customer relationship management, allowing for reduced cost of
ownership, increased sales conversion and customer retention.
e-point's architecture allows the three core CRM processes
of marketing, sales and support to operate as dedicated specialist solutions
(Marketing Center, Sales Center and Support Center) while remaining fully
integrated. The Marketing Center helps companies run multiphase,
multichannel campaigns. The Sales Center provides sales staffs with
lead/account management, calendars and cross-selling/upselling
opportunities. The Support Center provides features for logging issues, case
management and a knowledge base.
New features of e-point 6 also include: a Relationship
Manager facility, which provides the motive force for upselling,
cross-selling, renewals and direct marketing support across multiple
channels; the e-point Research Center, which facilitates the collection and
interpretation of customer needs, reactions and moods; and the Customer
Dialog Suite, which contains tools for defining and disseminating an
organization's best practices, and for surveying and reporting on customer
satisfaction issues.