Chordiant Offers Unified CRM And Knowledge Management.

During my conversation with Kevin Pasquinelli of Chordiant Software Inc., he made the point that business relationships ate mote than "business-to-business" or "business-to-consumer;" they are Business-to-Customer. While this may seem an oversimplification to some, it unmistakably reminds us where to focus our efforts for achieving success in any business venture, and Chordiant believes that CRM integration with the "back office" provides an enhanced customer contact center infrastructure. Its recently announced Knowledge System v2.O is a modular advanced knowledge management system designed so companies can act on the wealth of information gathered from a variety of sources (e.g., Web sites, customer interactions, product sources and customer service representatives). Chordiant Knowledge System, combined with the Chordiant Unified CRM Solution, allows companies to provide highly customized responses to inquiries based on a combination of knowledge and information unique to individual customers, such as tran sactional history, behavioral information, customer preferences and demographic data. Chordiant's integrated approach ensures that responses to individuals are consistent with standardized business policies implemented across entire organizations. By acting on a combination of structured and unstructured data, the unified solution allows companies to rake advantage of the increasing number of informational inquiries" made via online self-service applications. Knowledge System v2.0 offers advanced FAQs (frequently asked questions) that "learn" in real-time and are automatically ranked according to the most frequently asked question. Answers are given in the form of documents (e.g., Word, text, PDF, HTML or audiovisual), URL links and memos. Additional features include Web-form support; Web self-service knowledge base search portals; a Java-based "vortex" knowledge engine that learns, over time, what knowledge is most valuable and automatically favors this knowledge in the future; and virtual "knowledge domains " where companies can provide business-to-business collaboration portals (sharable over the Internet) where individuals from multiple firms can share knowledge. The Chordiant Knowledge System is completely Web-based and supports interfaces via e-mail, Web browser, XML and WAP-enabled devices. The technology uses LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) to manage domain information and end-user profile data. Chordiant Knowledge System offers features to optimize Web-based self-service capabilities, such as the ability to recognize users as individuals; providing access to data ("knowledge domains") relevant to each individual's relationship with the company; the ability to learn, over time, what knowledge is most valuable and automatically prioritizing this knowledge each time a request is made; and the incorporation of the combined, learned knowledge of consumers, CSRs and groups of individuals or communities. Chordiant's approach brings together knowledge with unified customer data pulled from multiple s ources. The flexible XML-based architecture inherent in Chordiant Knowledge System enables ease of integration with Chordiant Workflow Server and Chordiant Foundation Server,