CRM Product Ciboodle from Sword Noted in Forrester Report

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

CRM’s Sword ciboodle reportedly has been named as a “strong performer” in enterprise CRM suites by independent analyst firm, Forrester Research (News - Alert).

 

Sword ciboodle was among the companies invited by Forrester Research to participate in its Aug. 29 report, “The Forrester Wave: Enterprise CRM Suites, Q3 2008.”

 

The report says ciboodle (formerly Graham Technology (News - Alert)) “has pushed into the CRM market with focus on the intersection of business process modeling, customer service, and customer interaction management.”

 

As enterprises “begin to understand the importance of truly integrating end-to-end customer-facing processes from front office to back office,” the report says, “they are turning to solutions with native BPM capabilities that can support highly unique – and flexible – process flows.”

 

The Forrester report called ciboodle “a good fit for buyers who are looking for a vendor that can bring business process acumen,” giving ciboodle the highest score in the report for time-to-value.

 

Targeted primarily to large companies in sectors such as banking, insurance, utilities, telecommunications and retail, ciboodle is a BPM-based CRM product that enables all service channels natively from a single platform.

 

About two weeks ago, Sword ciboodle announced that it had established its North American headquarters in Chicago.

 

The office will initially be staffed by key U.S. sales and operations personnel, with further expansion through a major recruitment drive over the next 12 months as the company seeks, in its officials’ words, to become “the fastest-growing CRM provider in North America.”

 

Additional Sword ciboodle consultants will be based in Sword Group locations in North America, including New York and San Francisco.

 

Sword has appointed Howard Koenig to head up North American operations for the group, while Rick Rowley has been appointed as Sword ciboodle’s U.S operations director. Rowley will be based out of Chicago, while Koenig will operate out of Sword’s New York office.

 

Koenig will “drive Sword Group’s North American strategy,” company officials say, with responsibility for business development and operations across all the group’s U.S. business units. Rowley’s role will include management of several enterprise customers from Sword ciboodle’s North American client base, as well as managing field operations, development of staff and recruitment.