September 17, 2008
Oracle, InQuira Announce PartnershipBy David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor Oracle has announced a partnership with InQuira (News - Alert), which sells software applications for Web self-service and agent-assisted support.
The sales and product partnership is intended for a product "across phone, Web and community-based channels," officials of both firms say, "combining collaboration and Web self-service with Oracle's (News - Alert) applications," bringing Enterprise 2.0 features into one product.
"InQuira's software complements and extends Oracle's software applications," said Anthony Lye, senior vice president of CRM at Oracle, adding that "on occasion," Oracle deems it necessary to "integrate our product with other software providers. The integrated product allows us to provide exciting new functionality that I expect will generate quite a bit of enthusiasm in the marketplace."
"A great customer experience is one that combines unstructured content with transactional content in a consistent fashion across channels," said Mike Murphy, InQuira CEO, adding that the firm already has "several customers" who have integrated InQuira into their Oracle call center applications.
In June, InQuira announced that MSC (News - Alert).Software, a vendor of enterprise simulation products to help reduce costs associated with designing and testing manufactured products, selected InQuira.
MSC.Software contracted to use InQuira's knowledge management platform, InQuira Information Manager, to power Web technical support interactions. MSC.Software chose InQuira for "its ability to harvest simulation knowledge from employees, customers and partners to make it accessible to consumers," among other factors, InQuira officials said.
A 40-year veteran in offering simulation tools, MSC.Software uses simulation knowledge and process management as components of its Enterprise Strategy products. The company announced plans to integrate InQuira with its single sign-on platform and Oracle's service request management applications.
The initial deployment was to power MSC.Software's Japanese support Web site. Deployment of an InQuira-powered English support Web site was slated to follow the Japanese implementation.
"InQuira is capable of capturing and distributing all of our simulation products knowledge with the integrated end-user collaboration required to satisfy the needs of our customers," said Jeffrey Graff, Director of Global Technical Support, MSC.Software.
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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David's articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here. Edited by Stefania Viscusi |