May 07, 2009
Eglue Makes Gartner's CRM Magic QuadrantBy David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor Software vendor eglue has been positioned by Gartner (News - Alert) in the Niche Players quadrant of the “Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers” report. Eglue officials say that the current economic situation is "affecting the decisions of business leaders," who are “focusing on the central role of customer service to simultaneously lower costs and build customer loyalty,” maintaining that this is “changing the evaluation criteria of the Magic Quadrant” in light of “budget realities.” The report assesses the market for customer service and support applications, saying selection of an application must take into consideration how the application addresses the requirements of the service center. Hard to argue with that, of course. It rates requirements in increasing order of complexity in what it calls "the four major areas" -- information access, service process optimization, end-to-end industry process experts and intelligent dialogue/real-time decisioning. That last one, deemed the most complex requirement, is where the eglue (News - Alert) product is aimed, as it pulls data from the ongoing interaction and internal or external data sources, translating it into "actionable user guidance" by presenting recommendations in the form of call-outs. Dror Pockard (News - Alert), CEO of eglue, cites the Gartner CIO survey list as putting "cost-cutting, customer experience and customer service as the business factors that will drive decisions in the next 24 months." He says niche players offer important products as components or offerings for vertical segments, as opposed to other vendors who "offer complete portfolios but demonstrate weaknesses in one or more important areas... they usually are focused on support of the large enterprise, rather than small and mid-size businesses.” Almost exactly one year ago today TMC's Dear Leader Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) interviewed Pockard on a Podcast, noting that eglue is one of the very few tech companies in existence developed on an Israeli kibbutz. 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 Patrick Barnard |